Movies

“The Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey is in “awe” over the reaction to the live-action film’s first trailer, which debuted Sept. 9 at D23. The brief clip includes a first look at Bailey singing “Part of Your World” as the mermaid Ariel. Parents on TikTok have been uploading clips of their young children watching the

James Cameron wants you to know 3D isn’t dead just yet. The format was revitalized with the release of Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster “Avatar,” which remains the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide with $2.8 billion. “Avatar” was quickly followed by Tim Burton’s 3D “Alice in Wonderland,” which further proved the bonafides of a 3D release

Fresh off its enthusiastic world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, the Viola Davis-led historical epic “The Woman King” will touch down in 3,700 North American movie theaters over the weekend. The domestic box office desperately needs a boost, but will U.S. audiences be as receptive as festival-goers in Canada? Touted as the real-life “Black

Some people look back at their high school years with a certain wistfulness; others couldn’t be paid to revisit that particular stretch of adolescence… thank you very much. Filmmaker Jennifer Kaytin Robinson falls squarely in the latter category, though she admits she’s at least partially to blame for the bad memories. “I was a bitch,”

Romantic comedies have never gone away, but mainstream examples with A-list stars have been pretty thin on the ground since the glory days of the ’90s and early 2000s, when “Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill,” “Love Actually” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” ruled at the box office. Bucking the trend is “Ticket to Paradise,” a glossy piece

Disney, Amazon Studios, Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery and other major Hollywood players are pledging support for the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet, a major educational outreach initiative championed last year by George Clooney and others. Paramount and NBCUniversal/Telemundo Enterprises are also signing on to become founding partners of the Los Angeles Unified School

Sony Pictures Classics has landed worldwide rights to “It Ain’t Over,” a documentary about baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Sean Mullin directed the doc, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The specialty studio has yet to detail any release plans for the movie. Described as “an intimate portrait of a misunderstood American

By slashing prices, Mitch Lowe transformed MoviePass into a supernova.   The ticketing service, which had ambitions to become the Netflix of moviegoing, had languished for years until Lowe took the reins in 2017 as Helios and Matheson, an analytics firm, purchased a controlling stake. At the same time, Lowe announced that for a monthly fee

The director of “The People’s Joker,” a queer coming-of-age movie set in the Batman universe, has pulled the movie from the Toronto International Film Festival over alleged “rights issues.” Helmed by Los Angeles-based director Vera Drew, the mixed-media movie follows an aspiring clown (played by Drew) struggling with her gender identity while dreaming of being

Beyond Fest Announces Full 2022 Film Lineup, Headlined by ‘Halloween Ends’ World Premiere Genre film festival Beyond Fest has announced its full slate of films. The tenth-anniversary showcase is scheduled for Sept. 27 through Oct. 11. The lineup’s 63 features will include ten world premieres, three United States premieres and 25 west coast premieres. David

“Kate Keane” star Camille Hyde and “Chicago Med’s” Ben Edlin are set to star in psychological thriller “Mindwash.” The feature was written, directed and produced by Beatrice Brigitte (“Gotham”). It marks Brigitte’s directorial feature debut. Producing alongside Brigitte are Nichole Galicia (“Django Unchained”) and Kazy Tauginas (“The Equalizer 2”). “Mindwash” tells the story of motivational

Netflix has set the date for its second annual free virtual fan convention Tudum, plotting out five “global” events in 24 hours for Sept. 24. The 2022 Tudum will offer the streamer’s fans an “exciting day of exclusive news, never-before-seen footage, trailers, and first looks, as well as interviews with Netflix’s biggest stars and creators,”

German film festival Filmfest Hamburg has scrapped its plan to give the Douglas Sirk Prize to the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, following allegations of on-set impropriety and child exploitation against him and his film “Sparta.” However, the festival has decided to continue with its plan to show “Sparta,” a statement released Tuesday by festival director

CAA Media Finance has snapped up the North American sales rights to “Who Invited Charlie?” The film will have its world market premiere at TIFF via CAA and Lon Haber & Co. “Who Invited Charlie?” stars Jordana Brewster (“Fast & Furious 7”) as Rosie, Adam Pally (“Happy Endings”) as Charlie, Reid Scott (“Veep”) as Phil

Finnish director Klaus Härö makes his English-language debut with Toronto Film Festival premiere “My Sailor, My Love.” A gentle drama about a retired sea captain falling in love one last time will be spotlighted at the Helsinki-based event Finnish Film Affair next. Global Screen is handling the sales. Härö, an experienced filmmaker behind Golden Globe-nominated

Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, who directed the Oscar winners “A Separation” and “The Salesman,” U.S. producer Christine Vachon, whose credits includes Oscar winner “Boys Don’t Cry,” and Oscar nominees “Far from Heaven” and “Carol,” and Romania’s Alexander Nanau, the director of the Oscar nominated “Collective,” are among the jury members at the 18th edition of the Zurich Film

Ruben Östlund and the cast of “Triangle of Sadness” convened for the first time since the sudden, shocking death of its young star Charlbi Dean earlier this month. The satirical dark comedy, which won the Palme D’Or in Cannes just four months ago, had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on

Film-festival awards don’t usually have much lasting impact, but four years ago, when “Green Book” played at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the People’s Choice Award, it had a seismic effect. It set the film on what would become its road to Oscar glory. Since that turned out to be a very bumpy

Can you imagine anything more delightful than Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin co-starring in a movie with Richard Roundtree and Malcolm McDowell … in 1972? That was the year Fonda won an Oscar for “Klute” and daffy “Laugh-In” star Tomlin released her first comedy album. The two men were riding high with “Shaft” and “A

RLJE Films has acquired “Nocebo,” a thriller starring Eva Green and Mark Strong. The film will open in theaters on Nov. 4 and on-demand and digitally on Nov. 22. Shudder will release the film in 2023. Both RLJE and Shudder are business units of AMC Networks Shudder focuses on streaming movies in the horror, thriller and

Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras slammed the Venice and Toronto film festivals for “providing a platform” for the Clinton family to engage “in a kind of whitewashing.” Her comments come as TIFF this week hosted the Canadian premiere of Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” a documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin, and

“Bros” co-writer and star Billy Eichner had sincere words to share about his upcoming romantic comedy at the Variety Cover Party at TIFF sponsored by Skyy. “I could have never imagined in a million years that we would have been able to premiere in such a spectacular way,” Eichner said about the buzz behind the

Neon has acquired the North American rights to the thriller “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” out of the Toronto International Film Festival, where it world premiered in the auteur-driven Platform section. Based on Andreas Malm’s manifesto tackling the climate crisis, the film is directed by Daniel Goldhaber (“CAM”); produced, co-written and stars Ariela Barer

Candace Cameron Bure’s first Great American Family movie is right around the corner. The actor will star in and executive producer “A Christmas… Present,” set to premiere in November. The movie, directed by Lesley Demetriades and written by Rick Garman, was developed through Bure’s Candy Rock Entertainment venture. “Candy Rock Entertainment’s mission is to bring

Jean-Luc Godard, who died Tuesday at 91, was the filmmaker who changed everything. He directed “Breathless,” the 1960 landmark that helped to launch the French New Wave, employing a new, fast, leaping-ahead technique and style — the jump cut — that altered the DNA of how movies were made. In the ’60s, he took his

“Gangs of London” producer Pulse Films has unveiled the first clip from “Name Me Lawand,” which will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. Directed by Edward Lovelace (“The Possibilities Are Endless”), the film is in competition at the festival’s The Grierson Award for documentaries. The documentary, filmed over four years, follows

Court testimony made by a 29-year-old woman who has accused Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis of sexually abusing her in Italy in June had “numerous inconsistencies and contradictions,” according to a sentence issued on Tuesday by judges in the southern Italian city of Lecce. The District Court of Lecce on Tuesday made public the

After triumphing at last year’s Venice Film Festival, the U.K. and Irish rights to Eric Gravel’s race-against-time social drama “Full Time” (À plein temps) have been snapped up by Parkland Entertainment. It is set to be released in the U.K. and Ireland in early 2023. The film, which stars “Call My Agent’s” Laure Calamy, had

Prague-based sales agent Filmotor has boarded Adela Komrzy’s and Tomas Bojar’s feature documentary “Art Talent Show,” which won two awards at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in July.  After its premiere at Karlovy Vary, where it won the Grand Prix in the Proxima competition section and the FIPRESCI international critics’ award, the film’s North American

Gianni Amelio’s “Lord of the Ants,” a biopic of Italian poet and playwright Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law, has reached the top spot at Italy’s box office following its launch from the Venice Film Festival. “Ants” on Monday reached the numero uno position at the local box office roster with a