Movies

Kenneth Branagh, fresh off the Oscar-nominated success of “Belfast,” will reunite with Christopher Nolan on “Oppenheimer.” The two have previously teamed up on “Dunkirk” and “Tenet.” Branagh will play an unspecified role in the ambitious and pricey look at J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in creating the atomic bomb. Branagh recently starred in “Death

Aziz Ansari has been appointed to direct an untitled comedic drama for Searchlight Pictures. He will co-star in the movie with Bill Murrary. In addition to directing the film in his feature debut, Ansari, who created the Netflix series “Master of None,” will also write the screenplay and produce the movie. Searchlight will release the

With a reported budget of $50 million and a U.S. box office gross of only $29 million, “Zoolander 2” is one of the biggest flops of Ben Stiller’s career. The writer-director-actor recently told Esquire that watching his star-studded “Zoolander” sequel fail at the box office around the world was “not a great experience.” Stiller produced,

Mediawan (“Call My Agent!”) has signed a strategic partnership with Laurent Zeitoun’s production company Good Hero to co-develop and co-produce original international TV series and feature films. Based in New York and Paris, Good Hero was launched by Zeitoun, an independent producer whose credits include “The Intouchables,” “The Death of Stalin,” “Ballerina” and “Fireheart” (pictured).

Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), which runs in-person from March 23 to April 3, has unveiled its Science sidebar, a program consisting of 15 science-related films. Among the films are “A.I. at War,” which takes the viewer on a journey with an A.I. robot to some of the world’s conflict zones, “Pleistocene Park,” which

Netflix has signed a three-year agreement with French film guilds to invest a minimum of €40 million ($45 million) in the financing of French and European movies which will be released in French theaters. Netflix previously signed a pact with France’s broadcasting authorities to start investing 20% of their annual revenues on French content, both

Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” and Colm Bairéad “An Cailín Ciúin” lead nominations at the 2022 Irish Film and Television Academy Film and Drama award nominations with 10 nods across categories. “Belfast” is nominated for best film, best director and script for Branagh, with a lead actor nod for Jude Hill, supporting actor recognitions for Ciarán Hinds

“Adipurush,” starring Prabhas (the “Baahubali” films), is one of the most anticipated Indian films of 2022. It is directed by Om Raut, who directed Ajay Devgn-starring “Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior,” the biggest Indian box office hit of 2020 with $50 million. “Adipurush” is Raut’s take on Indian mythological epic “Ramayana,” which has been adapted for

Journalist Jemele Hill, civil rights activist Stacey Abrams, superstar Will Smith and the legendary Cicely Tyson were among the winners of podcast and literary kudos presented Monday as part of the 53rd NAACP Image Awards. The Image Awards’ non-televised awards are being handed out during five virtual ceremonies to stretch across the week starting Feb.

Lacey Chabert and Crown Media Family Networks have agreed to an exclusive multi-picture overall deal. The agreement sets Chabert up to headline and executive produce films and other content for the Hallmark Channel and other Hallmark platforms throughout the next two years. The company announced the deal on Monday. “Lacey’s warmth, talent, relatability and creative

James Cullen Bressack (“Fortress”) is adapting the play “Murder, Anyone?” into a feature film, Variety can exclusively reveal. “Muder, Anyone?” was originally written by Bressack’s father, Emmy Award-winning “Pinky and the Brain” writer Gordon Bressack. The play first premiered at the White Fire Theatre in Los Angeles in 2017. Gordon Bressack, who worked on dozens

“The Alienist’s” Rosy McEwen has boarded Georgia Oakley’s upcoming feature “Blue Jean” in the lead role. McEwen, who was named one of Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch 2020, will play the eponymous Jean, a teacher who finds herself grappling with her identity during the tail-end of the 1980s. Oakley, whose debut short film “Little Bird”

Italian exhibitors are sounding an alarm over the country’s pandemic-prompted box office plunge and the removal of theatrical windows which they say are causing closure of 500 movie screens. Their cry for help comes amid what they say is a lack of signals in Italy pointing to the cinemagoing recovery that is instead currently underway

Daniel Baur’s K5 Film and K5 International are re-teaming with writer/director Mukunda Michael Dewil for the time-loop thriller “Open House.” The script was written and developed by Jon Davis and Sergio Pinheiro. Dewil and Baur, who will produce the movie, already worked together on the action thriller “Vehicle 19,” starring the late Paul Walker, and

Kazakh filmmaker Askar Uzabayev’s domestic violence drama “Happiness” snagged the Audience Award in the Berlin Film Festival’s prestigious Panorama sidebar, a good sign of its potential appeal in cinemas and festivals worldwide. Whether it will secure distribution in its native Kazakhstan is another matter, however. Based on actual events, “Happiness” centers on a lovely influencer

World premiering in the Berlinale’s Forum, “Dry Ground Burning” marks the second feature collaboration between directors Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, after Pimenta DP-ed Queirós’ “Once There Was Brasilia.” So it’s no surprise that by this point the directorial couple have refined a common language that in “Dry Ground Burning” delivers a movie that’s stylistically

Acclaimed Philippines actor Sharon Cuneta (“Caregiver”) will star in and executive produce the feature film adaptation of Marivi Soliven’s award-winning novel “The Mango Bride.” The novel chronicles the lives of two Filipino women — Amparo, a quiet socialite born into a wealthy family, and Beverly, a wide-eyed mail-order bride — who migrate to California and

Netflix has set a mid-year release date for “Thar,” a revenge thriller film starring and produced by Anil Kapoor. Marking the feature directorial debut of screenwriter Raj Singh Chaudhary, the 1980s-set film follows the story of a man who moves to a big town to seek a job and to avenge his past. Alongside Kapoor

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise is one of the few film series whose name alone could make squeamish folks ill. There’s no way to consider it without facing the blood, sinew and gore erupting from the weapon of choice of Leatherface, the cannibalistic killer who ties things together. The gnarly reputation of the series was

The U.S.-made action adventure film “Uncharted” took a comfortable first place a the South Korean box office on its first weekend of release. “Uncharted” took $2.12 million between Friday and Sunday, grabbing 53% of the total Korean market, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). Over five

The Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild (MUAHS, IATSE Local 706) held its ninth annual awards ceremony Saturday night at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. “Coming 2 America” dominated the night, taking home the awards for best contemporary make-up and hairstyling, in a surprise win, beating out Oscar frontrunners like “Dune,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”

When costume designer Paco Delgado was creating Gal Gadot’s look as the heiress Linnet Ridgeway Doyle in Kenneth Branagh’s “Death on the Nile,” he played with the concept of wealth touched by vulnerability. Branagh assembled an all-star cast, including Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Sophie Okonedo and Letitia Wright, for his retelling

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “Uncharted,” now playing in theaters. In Sony’s “Uncharted” movie, “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland plays treasure hunter Nathan Drake from the popular PlayStation video game series; however, there would be no Drake without actor Nolan North, who voiced and performed motion capture for the video game

Turning a deeply serious, controversial incident in recent German history into a bouncy, beat-the-odds character comedy is a brave move. Thanks in large part to the extrovert likability of German-Turkish star Meltem Kaptan — well-known in Germany as a comedian and TV presenter — Andreas Dresen’s “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush” just about gets

This year’s 79th Annual Golden Globes awards ceremony wasn’t televised or livestreamed, and has never been seen by anyone other than those in attendance for the show on Jan. 9 at the Beverly Hilton. Until now. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has shared with Variety three excerpts from the 2022 ceremony, which opened with HFPA

Sony Pictures has a stacked lineup for the Christmas box office this year, with Tom Hanks’ upcoming film “A Man Called Otto” and the Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” releasing within days of each other. “A Man Called Otto,” which was acquired by Sony last week for $60 million out of the

Jake Gyllenhaal surprised his “Ambulance” co-star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on the set of the upcoming Michael Bay action movie by taking the camera out of the filmmaker’s hand and directing scenes of the movie himself. “Ambulance” is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen. The

Francis Ford Coppola is putting down $120 million of his own money to make his long-in-the-works passion project “Megalopolis.” Coppola wrote “Megalopolis” in the early 1980s and has been reportedly in talks with Oscar Isaac, Forest Whitaker and Cate Blanchett to finally get the film off the ground. The issue Coppola has faced is that

You haven’t seen the last of Gru and the Minions quite yet. Universal Pictures and Illumination announced Friday that “Despicable Me 4” is coming to theaters on July 3, 2024. Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Miranda Cosgrove and Steve Coogan will all be returning for the next chapter in the animated, family-friendly series about

We are in the midst of Hollywood’s two big film events. One is the Oscar race, in which film artists salute great work. The other is the surrounding mini-industry that involves campaigners, contenders, agents, journalists and Oscar pundits. There is always confusion because the latter event is also called the Oscar race — but in