Movies

Based out of the U.S. and Spain, 34T Sales has taken international rights to surrealist romcom “The Queen of Lizards,” directed by Nando Martínez and Juan González, who go by the name of Burnin’ Percebes. The feature is produced by Pedro Hernández at Madrid-based Aquí y Allí Films which first caught notice with “Here and

Spanish showrunners Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, popularly known as Los Javis, are launching Suma Content, a new, Madrid-based but internationally operating independent production company which will replace their current, smaller label, Suma Latina. The pair are already superstars in Spain and their star is rising abroad. They’re responsible for several recent hit productions including

Director Icíar Bollaín’s “Maixabel” – which world premiered last month in San Sebastian’s main competition and screens at this week’s Spanish Screenings-Malaga de Cine – is a turbulent and emotional look into the repercussions of terrorist violence, both for the victims and the victimizers. The film follows the aftermath of the murder of politician Juan

Rome’s MIA film and TV market chief Lucia Milazzotto is stepping down to head up a newly created sales and marketing unit of Italy’s Cinecittà Studios which is undergoing a radical revamp and looking to become continental Europe’s top production hub. The surprise announcement, made on Thursday by Istituto Luce-Cinecittà CEO Nicola Maccanico, comes just

Offering a different kind of near-future dystopia, “Warning” lets the clock run out on humanity’s stint in the background, while in the foreground we examine ways technology might usurp our lives in the guise of “improving” them. This first feature for music video director Agata Alexander, credited as “a film by” producer Cybill Lui Eppich,

Ralph Carmichael, composer and Emmy Award-winning arranger-conductor for Nat King Cole, Jack Jones, Ella Fitzgerald and Roger Williams, died Oct. 18 in Camarillo, Calif. He was 94. Carmichael got his big break when Capitol Records producer Lee Gillette was introduced to his arrangement in the 1950s. This led to the prolific collaboration between Carmichael and

Lena Waithe admitted at last night’s 27th annual Elle Women in Hollywood event that she tried to convince Halle Berry not to make her directorial debut with the upcoming feature “Bruised” because she was worried that the Oscar winner was taking on too much at once. “I told her to think long and hard about

The Gotham Awards will announce nominations tomorrow and expected to lead the charge, primarily due to the changes in the number of nominees allowed in new categories, are Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” from Netflix and Fran Kranz’s “Mass” from Bleecker Street. The Gotham Film & Media Institute, which oversees the Gotham Awards,

If Maurice Flitcroft hadn’t really existed, a British comedy would surely have invented him. A humble shipyard worker from Barrow-in-Furness who decided, on a rogue middle-aged whim, to enter the British Open despite never having played a round of golf in his life, he was practically a living, breathing Ealing Studios hero. That he managed

Film production in Greater Los Angeles surged during the third quarter of 2021, according to a new report by FilmLA. The increase in shooting marks the third strongest quarter in twenty-six years, with a total of 10,127 shoot days. The last time the region saw filming levels this high was in the fourth quarter of 2018,

The Gotham Film and Media Institute will announce nominations for the 2021 Gotham Awards on Thursday at 7 a.m. PT. The award show will take place on Nov. 29 at Cipriani Wall Street. The nominations will be hosted on Variety.com and throughout Variety’s social media platforms. The event will take place in New York, where

Claimed by both Iraq and Kurdistan, the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq was the site of an ISIL massacre of the Yazidi people in 2014 that lead to a devastating situation which human rights organizations call genocide. The town gives its name to the latest film from Spanish director Anna M. Bofarull who also

DC FanDome Gets 66 Million Views Worldwide Warner Bros. Entertainment announced that viewership for DC FanDome 2021, the virtual fan event, greatly exceeded last year’s, accruing 66 million views worldwide to date. On Oct. 16, the day of the event, DC FanDome was a trending topic in the number one position on Twitter for eight

Amir Ramses, artistic director of the ongoing El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, is understood to have resigned in the final days of the event. It’s believed he may have stepped down due to growing local opposition to Cannes-winning film “Feathers,” by Egyptian filmmaker Omar El Zohairy. The film follows a family thrown into disarray

Hulu has released a first look for their sci-fi movie “Mother/Android,” starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Algee Smith. The new film, which debuts Friday, Dec. 17, marks the feature directorial debut of “Project Power” and “The Batman” screenwriter Mattson Tomlin. Set in the near future, Moretz stars in the film as Georgia, who is days

Wonder Woman approves of Robert Pattinson as the new Batman and Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman! “Rob looks amazing,” Gal Gadot told me last night at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event at the Academy Museum when I asked if she had seen the new “The Batman” trailer. “I love his voice and I love the whole

Will we see Kristen Stewart as the Joker opposite Robert Pattinson’s Batman? Probably not. “Let’s do something new,” Stewart says. Following a social media campaign to cast the “Spencer” star as the Clown Prince of Crime alongside her “Twilight” co-star and ex-boyfriend Pattinson in an upcoming film from “The Batman” universe, Variety asked Stewart if

Illumination’s “Sing 2,” the animated film written and directed by Garth Jennings, will world premiere at AFI Fest on Nov. 14 at the TCL Chinese Theatre. The movie, a sequel to 2016’s “Sing,” follows a koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) as he and his cast of performing animals prepare for their biggest concert yet

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced the 79th Golden Globe Awards will take place on Jan. 9, with or without a telecast partner, but what does that mean? Speaking to Variety, the gatekeepers of awards season say their understanding  of what’s happening with the Globes is all over the map. Last week, the Hollywood

Emily Blunt is in talks to star in Universal’s “Oppenheimer,” an upcoming World War II movie from director Christopher Nolan. Though nothing is official, the casting would reunite Blunt with her “A Quiet Place Part II” co-star Cillian Murphy, who will portray the title role of J. Robert Oppenheimer in the film about the development of

HBO Max has picked up first window U.S. pay TV rights and Outsider Pictures the remainder of U.S. distribution to Colombian Henry Rincón’s youth drama “The City of Wild Beasts.” Los Angeles-based Outsider Pictures is also handling world sales rights to the film, which is being shown to international buyers attending the 2021 edition of

There was a point, late last week, when Cathy Repola thought there would be a strike. By Oct. 15, Repola, the executive director of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, and other union officials had spent 10 days in marathon Zoom sessions with the studios — and were making little progress. “There was very little movement

As Jennifer Aniston knows, a good haircut can make your career in Hollywood. But in Riz Ahmed’s case, so can a bad one. At age 22, the actor-producer-rapper fell victim to a “horrific bowl cut,” he recalls to Variety. In his arts program at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, the

The feature films of “Dune” producer Mary Parent have raked in more than $ billion at the box office. These five features alone net a box office gross well over $1 billion: “You, Me and Dupree” (2006)In one of her first efforts as a credited producer, Parent coached filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo through the

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead; he’s called to it.” This is the line spoken by Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) to his son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) in “Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic science-fiction novel. But it also underscores the remarkable journey that Mary Parent, vice chairman of Worldwide Production for

Paris-based Les Films d’Ici, producer of Denis Do’s “Funan,” has teamed with Barcelona-based Boogaloo Films, whose credits include Miguel Ángel Blanca’s “Magaluf Ghost Town,” to co-produce documentary feature “Tolyatti Adrift.” Directed by Laura Sisteró ­– an on-the-rise Catalan talent – “Tolyatti Adrift” is being presented at the WIP’s showcase of this week’s Malaga Festival Spanish

Variety Director to Watch Prano Bailey-Bond (“Censor”) and BAFTA-nominated “After Love” filmmaker Aleem Khan are among the 39 filmmakers longlisted in the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) new talent categories. The 39 longlisted filmmakers will be invited to join BIFA’s Springboard scheme, a tailored program of professional development, peer-to-peer support, mentoring, networking and skills enhancement

Seville’s Ferdydurke Films, the label of San Sebastian and Goya-winning director Fernando Franco, will join forces with San Sebastian’s Kowalski Films and Madrid’s Lazona Films to produce “The Rite of Spring” (“La consacración de la primavera”), Franco’s awaited third feature as a director. Delayed by COVID-19 – the project was originally presented at Paris forum

Malaga-based sales house Agencia Freak has picked up worldwide festival distribution rights to two new Spanish documentaries, “An Elephant on a Spider Web” by Cuban director Rolando Díaz, and Marcos Cabotá’s “Sonic Fantasy,” on legendary music engineer Bruce Swedien. Both acquisitions were unveiled at the eve of the 2021 edition of the Spanish Screenings-Málaga de Cine, which

The South of Spain is getting its own dedicate post-production studio, Antípodas Film Lab, the first of its kind in the region. Based out of Seville, the state-of-the-art facilities are co-founded by a group of post-production experts made up of José M. G. Moyano (“Marshland,” “Unit 7”), Juan Ventura Pecellín (“Marshland,” “Juan of the Dead”),