Nikki Amuka-Bird (“The Outfit”) will play the lead in Will Gilbey’s “Jericho Ridge.” BAFTA award-winner Gilbey (“A Lonely Place to Die”) also wrote the screenplay for the feature, which is billed as a survival thriller. Amuka-Bird is joined by Michael Socha (“This is England”), Zack Morris (“The Fades”), Chris Reilly (“Wrath of Man”) Philipp Christopher
Movies
The Oscar-nominated “Flee” took home the top prize at the 15th annual Cinema Eye Honors on Tuesday evening at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Going into the evening, Neon and Participant Media’s “Flee” led the field with a total of seven nominations, while “Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could
After several shifts around the release calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “The Batman” finally rolled out the red carpet for its world premiere at Lincoln Center in New York on Tuesday evening. Though Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz and other stars in attendance, the evening was missing one key contributor. Matt Reeves, the director behind
An ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union has become a full-out war with global — and commercial — reverberations. Russia’s booming film and TV industry, with its deep, government-backed coffers, lost its grip on the world stage virtually overnight amid growing fallout from Vladimir Putin’s Feb.
As one Oscar season comes to a close, another opens (at least to speculation) with Matt Reeves’ newest take on the Batman franchise starring Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano and Colin Farrell. The director and co-writer (along with Peter Craig) delivers a dark take on the world’s greatest detective as he battles
It isn’t often that an Academy governor publicly criticizes the Academy itself, but that happened today when music-branch governor Laura Karpman issued a statement condemning the Academy’s plan to drop the music-score Oscar presentation from the live telecast on March 27. She was sharply critical of both the decision and the process. Her statement, issued
On its face, celebrating the year’s most popular films during the Academy Awards makes perfect sense — movies are a popular art, after all. But when the Academy announced that it would celebrate the Fan Favorite movies of 2021 with a Twitter poll, anyone who has spent roughly 15 minutes on Twitter could have predicted
Samuel L. Jackson has a message for the Academy and it has nothing to do with the current drama surrounding the reformatted 94th Academy Awards telecast. Instead, Jackson wants Oscar voters to know that he should have an Academy Award under his belt at this point in his career. Although Jackson is being recognized with
AMC Entertainment, the exhibition giant that became an improbable meme stock, posted revenues $1.2 billion during the holiday quarter as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” galvanized ticket sales at the company. That Q4 performance, revealed Tuesday by AMC, represented a huge jump from the $162.5 million in revenues that AMC posted in the year-ago period and
The Oscar campaign for “CODA” has touted the film as “history-making.” If you wanted to be a literal-minded curmudgeon about it, you could say that the history it’s talking about was already made — when Marlee Matlin, in 1986, became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award for best actress, for her great,
Oscars leaders are trying to clarify and justify their decision to move eight categories from the live telecast and ensure that the nominees don’t feel sidelined. “The board has discussed and agreed on the need to make changes to the broadcast, to allow for a celebratory show that also doesn’t run well over three hours,”
“West Side Story” star Ariana DeBose has joined the cast of Sony’s “Kraven the Hunter.” an upcoming superhero action-adventure featuring Aaron Taylor Johnson as one of Spider-Man’s most deadly antagonists. She will play Calypso, a voodoo priestess who is the on-and-off lover of Kraven. The character first appeared in “Spider-Man” comics in the early 1980s
Lindsay Lohan is partnering with Netflix to star in two new films for the streaming service. The news comes ahead of Lohan’s starring role in Netflix’s upcoming holiday-centric romantic comedy “Falling for Christmas,” which will premiere later this year. “Falling for Christmas” marks Lohan’s first acting role in years. In the movie, she plays a
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro became the first director to openly speak out about the Academy’s decision to make changes to the live Oscar ceremony on March 27. Del Toro, who was awarded the Filmmaking Achievement Award at the Hollywood Critics Association Awards on Monday, delivered a speech in front of an audience including Denis Villeneuve,
Riz Ahmed’s Left Handed Films is celebrating four Academy Award nominations this year, one for the live action short film “The Long Goodbye,” in which Ahmed stars, and three as executive producer of the animated documentary sensation “Flee.” It’s a pretty impressive haul for a company that’s only three years old, but Ahmed and Left
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. As many critics have noted in their reviews this week, Matt Reeves’ strategy when setting out to create his standalone “Batman” film seemed to be to go as dark as possible. With the gloomy
To say “My Best Part,” the directorial debut of “Call My Agent” assistant Nicolas Maury, revels in cringe-worthy moments is, perhaps, an understatement. The opening moments alone find a bowl-cut-sporting Jérémie (Maury) flummoxed by the very straightforward GPS directions spouted at him by his phone. Jérémie, you see, is a bit of a mess. A
Channing Tatum is taking “Step Up” on the road. Tatum’s production company Free Association is launching a new division called FA Live, which will focus on creating, producing and distributing live entertainment. The first project will be a high-concept dance show inspired by “Step Up,” the hit dance franchise that spawned five feature films and
Paramount Pictures is the latest Hollywood studio to pause the theatrical release of its upcoming films in Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine last week. “As we witness the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, we have decided to pause the theatrical release of our upcoming films in Russia, including ‘The Lost City,’ and ‘Sonic the
Selina Kyle/Catwoman is often depicted as bisexual in the comics, but the character’s LGBTQ sexuality has never crossed over onto the big screen in iterations of the character played by Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry and Anne Hathaway. Zoë Kravitz is the latest actor to take on the role of Catwoman, starring opposite Robert
Russia’s war in Ukraine has drawn swift and wide-ranging condemnation from the international community, which has imposed unprecedented sanctions against President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle and pushed the Russian economy to a breaking point, with the ruble plummeting to historic lows on Monday. Amid calls for a boycott of Russian films that have
The European Film Academy (EFA) has issued an unequivocal condemnation of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and excluded Russia from the European Film Awards. In a statement released on Tuesday, the EFA said: “The Academy strongly condemns the war started by Russia – Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory must be respected. Putin’s actions are atrocious and
The Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) has announced its full program, which includes some 200 new films and a whopping 76 world premieres. A dozen documentaries are competing for the top prize in the main Dox:Award competition, a quarter of which were shot in Russia and Ukraine – a testimony to the organizers’ desire
Folklore, feminism and film noir come together in Pushpendra Singh’s meticulously crafted fourth feature “The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs.” Set in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region in Northwest India, this moody fable about an unhappy young bride plotting her escape from tradition and patriarchy is a gripping character study that stutters slightly in
The Hollywood Critics Association held its fifth annual awards on Monday in person at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles, Calif. Siân Heder’s “CODA,” which won for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture at the SAG Awards Sunday, took the top award for best picture, with Heder winning for adapted screenplay and
Warner Bros. has announced that it has halted its plans to release “The Batman” in Russia. The DC adaptation was set to release in the country on Friday. “In light of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, WarnerMedia is pausing the release of its feature film ‘The Batman’ in Russia,” a spokesperson for WarnerMedia said in
Leo T. Reed, an offensive lineman in the American Football League who went on to lead Teamsters Local 399 for 24 years, died on Sunday at the age of 83. Reed was appointed secretary-treasurer of the union in 1988, representing Hollywood studio drivers and other workers for eight terms. He was also chairman of the
Writer-director Geeta Malik’s “India Sweets and Spices” is set in the milieu of the Indian community in a New Jersey suburb, where the wealthy families with their weekend parties look down on the working-class fellow South Asians. The pic opened at Tribeca last year and played in theaters and will be on Hulu after March
The Walt Disney Company announced on Monday that it will be pausing all theatrical releases in Russia, including that of “Turning Red,” which was previously set to premiere in the country March 10. “Given the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the tragic humanitarian crisis, we are pausing the release of theatrical films in Russia, including
Ralph Ahn, who played the fan-favorite “New Girl” character Tran, died on Feb. 26, the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles reported. He was 95. Ahn appeared in seven episodes of the sitcom alongside Jake Johnson, who played Nick Miller. A man of very few words, Tran serves as a friend and grandfather figure. Through