Movies

Chris Pratt has signed on to produce the action comedy “Stranded Asset” for Universal Pictures, starring Sam Richardson, who co-wrote the movie’s script with Jen D’Angelo. The new project reunites the trio after their successful collaboration on Amazon’s “The Tomorrow War,” which Pratt executive produced and starred in alongside Richardson. D’Angelo was the on-set writer

Matthew López, the Tony-nominated playwright of “The Inheritance,” has been hired to write a reimagining of the iconic Whitney Houston film “The Bodyguard” at Warner Bros. The new movie will be inspired by the 1992 romantic drama, which starred Houston and Kevin Costner. The original grossed more than $400 million at the worldwide box office

FESTIVAL Raindance Film Festival, Britain’s largest independent film festival, will return to cinemas this year, reimagined and restructured with a host of new partners and new films. Running Oct. 27 – Nov. 6, this year’s in-person event will partner with several cinemas across London and offer online screenings in the U.K., facilitated by Curzon Home

Berlin-based Picture Tree International has acquired worldwide rights to docu-fiction “The Painter,” a collaboration between German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, best known for Oscar-nominated “Downfall,” and German artist Albert Oehlen. The work stars Ben Becker, whose credits include “Brother of Sleep” and “Comedian Harmonists,” and features the voice of Charlotte Rampling. The film is completing postproduction

The Venice Film Festival is exerting a positive impact on the Italian box office where Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) got a boost over the weekend from its Lido launch that landed the Toni Servillo-starrer in the number two spot after Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” Italy’s

Asia’s largest film festival, the Busan International Film Festival aims to become both more relevant in the wider Asia region and simultaneously more in touch with its local community. This year, it has been downsized compared with the pre-pandemic era. But its 2021 edition will still weigh in at 223 films (features and shorts) from

Save for a small handful of recent films like “The House with the Clock in Its Walls” or the “Goosebumps” movies — nearly all with Jack Black as comic relief — chillers for children are an uncommon and somewhat dicey proposition. For horror filmmakers even interested in trying, they have to hit an exceedingly narrow

Leading Japanese distributor Gaga has acquired international sales rights for three early documentaries by Cannes Palme d’Or winner Kore-eda Hirokazu.  All three titles are available for theatrical rights only. After joining the TV Man Union production company in 1987, Kore-eda worked as an assistant director on its signature documentary programming, winning promotion to director in

Barry Levinson is 79, so it doesn’t seem much of a leap to say that he made “The Survivor,” a true story of the Holocaust, as a late-career reckoning. The central character, Harry Haft, played by the remarkable Ben Foster, is a Polish Jew who gets sent to Auschwitz in 1943, where he sees the

Revenge is a dish served with considerable style and imagination in “Saloum,” a fast and furious crime-horror-thriller that twists and turns its way around the mangroves, islets and inlets of Senegal’s Sine-Saloum coastal region. Centered on a trio of mercenaries holed up in a strange holiday camp that harbors a diabolical secret, the second feature

Digital writers made big gains in the WGA East’s contentious election for officers and council members that govern the union that represents TV and film writers west of the Mississippi. The election results unveiled Tuesday confirmed that the guild’s governance will be split among scribes in opposing camps. The union has faced division over WGA

Leslie Grace is revealing how she found out that she’d been cast as Barbara Gordon in “Batgirl,” the upcoming HBO Max superhero film. The “In the Heights” star was asked by the filmmakers to jump on a last-minute Zoom for a final casting test before being directed to read the text of an email they

Dreamseeker Media Releases ‘Ferguson Rises’ Trailer Dreamseeker Media, in association with Films With a Purpose, Yoruba Saxon and PhilmCo, released a trailer for “Ferguson Rises,” opening Sept. 17 at Laemmle Monica, with a national rollout following. Directed by Mobolaji Olambiwonnu, the film explores the aftermath of the protests in Ferguson after the police killing of

Christopher Nolan is making his next movie at Universal, severing the director’s nearly two-decade long creative partnership with Warner Bros., the company that has backed many of his biggest blockbusters. Getting to this point has involved months of courtship, clandestine meetings, big promises and a willingness to take a creative leap with one of the

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has appointed Joanna Dodd Massey, Sharlette Hambrick and Jeff Harris as external members of its board of directors. The new members will be responsible for overseeing the ongoing reform plan to restructure the organization that awards the Golden Globes, along with increasing accountability, ethics and greater inclusion of the diversity

Alanis Morissette is distancing herself from “Jagged,” Alison Klayman’s forthcoming documentary of her, claiming it includes information that is “simply not true” and accusing the filmmakers, had a “salacious agenda.” “I agreed to participate in a piece about the celebration of ‘Jagged Little Pill’’s 25th anniversary, and was interviewed during a very vulnerable time (while

A 38-year-old worker was severely injured in a “long fall” at Sunset Gower Studios on Tuesday morning, authorities said. The man fell from a high platform, apparently through an opening, said LAFD spokesman Brian Humphrey. The officials on scene estimated that the fall was from a height of 60-80 feet, though that was not confirmed.

NBA star Stephen Curry and his Unanimous Media production label have signed a sweeping, first-of-its-kind talent deal with Comcast NBCUniversal. The multi-year template agreement is billed as the media giant’s first-ever “global talent partnership.” It counts a dizzying amount of first-look development opportunities across the company, including: Universal Studio Group for scripted and unscripted TV

“After that summer, nothing would be the same,” says Edo (Emanuele Maria Di Stefano), the narrator of “The Catholic School,” Stefano Mordini’s worryingly watchable, stylistically polished account of the lead-up to the tawdry and brutal real-life incident known to Italians as the Circeo Massacre. It is a curiously light beginning for a film that will

Zendaya, Marlee Matlin and Jean Smart have been named Women in Film 2021 Crystal Award honorees. Formerly, the Crystal + Lucy Awards, the annual benefit supports WIF’s educational and philanthropic programs and its advocacy for gender parity for women throughout the industry. Also honored will be “Coda” writer Sian Heder, “Hacks” actress Hannah Einbinder and

In “The Measure of a Man” (2015) and “At War” (2018), director Stéphane Brizé and actor Vincent Lindon dramatized the working-class struggle with a calm reserve that didn’t cool or dilute the films’ rage. In both films, blue-collar workers find their livelihood, their ethics or both compromised by the hard, inhuman priorities of their capitalist

Firm messages about female liberty and self-determination are delivered with a gentle touch in “Yuni,” a compassionate and engaging coming-of-age tale about a 16-year-old schoolgirl who doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do with her life but does know that she’s not ready to follow tradition and become a teenage bride. The third feature

Russian-Kazakh multi-hyphenate Timur Bekmambetov has teamed up with MarVista Entertainment, Endeavor Content and Pulsar Content on a slate of feature films in his pioneering Screenlife format that will be presented to buyers at the TIFF market. Bekmambetov told Variety during the Toronto Film Festival, that the rapid growth, critical recognition and box-office success of Screenlife

MRC Non-Fiction’s feature documentary “Burn It Down!,” which reexamines the infamous Woodstock ’99 music festival, will have its world premiere at the 65th British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival. The festival took place during the last summer of the 20th century on July 23-25, 1999 and featured performances by Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Korn,

“Where will we run away to this time?” asks Soraya Bakri (Nadine Labaki) of her husband Walid (Saleh Bakri), partly joking but mostly not, when what looks like all the trash in Beirut appears on their rural hideaway’s doorstep. Mounia Akl’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” is mostly a bittersweet dramedy built from an intimate, sprightly understanding

AWARDS Spain has selected a high profile trio of films as finalists for the country’s 2021 International Feature Oscar submission. The favorite, at least at this early stage, is Pedro Almodóvar’s “Madres paralelas,” which just saw lead Penelope Cruz take the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. The film, which world

Production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has inked new key deals on psychological thriller “John and the Hole,” directed by one of Variety’s top 10 directors to watch, Pascual Sisto. The film is written by Nicolás Giacobone, an Academy Award winner with “Birdman,” adapted from his short story “El Pozo.” The Cannes 2020 title,

Sahraa Karimi, film director (“Hava, Maryam, Ayesha”) and head of the Afghan Film Organization, has been named as head of the jury at the next edition of the Stockholm International Film Festival. The festival’s 32nd edition will run Nov. 10-21, 2021 in the Swedish capital. It expects to put on 100 film premieres in both

France’s Les Films d’Ici has has issued a letter of interest to board as a co-producer on “Luis Mariano, All the Colors of the Rainbow,” a new feature-length biographical documentary from Spain to be highlighted at this week’s Conecta Fiction in the Pitch Euroregion NAEN series section. Vet Spanish producer Jose María Lara (“El cielo

Award-winning Taiwan actors Ding Ning and Tsao Yu-Ning have joined the cast of “Pierce” a sports drama film hailing from Jeremy Chua’s Singapore production firm Potocol. Ding, who won a Golden Horse Award for her supporting role in “Cities of Last Things,” and Tsao, who won at the Taipei Film Festival for his supporting role