Movies

Journalist Christopher Pickard was at the just-concluded Cannes Film Festival as part of a film crew shooting “Cannes Uncut,” a feature-length documentary celebrating the iconic festival that will be ready in time for its 75th edition next year. He shares his experiences of shooting during this year’s festival exclusively with Variety. Like many others, even

September’s 69th San Sebastian Festival has announced its first nine Competition contenders led by Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet (“The Class”) and English auteur Terence Davies (“Sunset Song”) but packed out by six female directors. Two at least are already sparking anticipation: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, a French genre auteur backed like Palme d’Or winner “Titane” by

Pedro Almodóvar’s new film “Parallel Mothers,” starring Penelope Cruz, will open the upcoming Venice Film Festival in September. Almodóvar’s hotly anticipated pic, which was shot during the pandemic, will world premiere on the Venice Lido in competition on September 1. The film sees the Spanish auteur reuniting with Cruz, a frequent collaborator, most recently in Almodóvar’s

Netflix is teaming with Romain Gavras, the French filmmaker of “The World is Yours” and “Our Day Will Come,” for his next film which will start production this week in France. The untitled film will mark Gavras’s follow up to his 2018 film “The World is Yours,” a crime comedy with Isabelle Adjani and Vincent

The Calculus Creative Content EIS Fund, and other funds managed or advised by Calculus, has invested in Brouhaha Entertainment, a newly formed outfit which combines the slates of seasoned producers Gabrielle Tana, Troy Lum and Andrew Mason. Tana produced the Oscar-nominated “Philomena,” “The Invisible Woman” and “The Dig.” Lum founded Hopscotch Films which became Australia’s

When documentary filmmaker Ezra Edelman, an Oscar winner with “O.J.: Made in America,” sat down at a panel during the Cannes Doc Day last week and started off by saying he was just talking about the rise of fascism in the world and enduring racism in sports, there was a feeling this session would be

The Tokyo International Film Festival has joined forces with Amazon Prime Video to create a new award that will help new film directors. The winner will be given a prize of JPY1 million and the opportunity to explore the production of a feature film with Amazon Studios. The festival is scheduled to be held from

Bollywood star Vidyut Jammwal is debuting as a producer via his Action Hero Films outfit and is teaming with Reliance Entertainment and T-Series for espionage thriller “IB 71.” Jammwal, best known for his “Commando” action film franchise, will also star in the film as an Indian intelligence officer deployed in the run up to the

“Chinese Doctors” gave a shot in the arm to a sluggish weekend at the Chinese box office, coming in first with sales of $44.4 million, according to Maoyan data. The patriotic tear-jerked had little competition: only other patriotic films, children’s animations and youth-centric programming are currently in theaters. The Wuhan-set pandemic film from Bona Film

Whether you’re escaping the heat or escaping the crowds, summertime calls for getting lost in film’s best coming-of-age stories. Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and Showtime are all streaming the very best of the genre, reminding us of a time when life felt a bit more simple, but seemed oh-so complicated at

Fueled by strong reviews, “Roadrunner” ignited the independent movie theater scene, collecting $1.9 million from 925 U.S. cinemas. The documentary, chronicling the life of the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, landed in eighth place on box office charts, which is pretty good for a non-fiction film. Its ticket sales, averaging to a strong $2,050 per

Movie theater operators did not mince words in asserting that Disney left money on the table by putting Marvel’s “Black Widow” on Disney Plus on the same day as its theatrical debut. In March, Disney announced that “Black Widow,” among several of its 2021 films, would premiere simultaneously on the studio’s subscription-based streaming service —

I first learned that “Roadrunner,” Morgan Neville’s documentary about the life and death of Anthony Bourdain, contains three sentences spoken by Bourdain that he never actually spoke out loud in the same way that you learn about a lot of things these days: by seeing an eruption of outrage about it on Twitter. The eruption

Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s chief marketing officer, posted a message Saturday from the company’s Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, in which he discussed the recent firing of three senior marketing executives over disparaging remarks they sent in a public company Slack channel. The three employees of the film marketing team were let go

The Tune Squad ruled over the court and box office charts this weekend. In an unexpected win, “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” which sees LeBron James team up with the animated Looney Tunes crew, dunked on the competition with $31.6 million in ticket sales. The Warner Bros. sequel to 1996’s “Space Jam” sailed past forecasts,

Continuing its victory lap around the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, indie studio Neon has acquired the North American distribution rights to “A Chiara.” The Jonas Carpignano film won the top prize in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section. It is a companion film to his 2017 “A Ciambra,” for which he took the same award that

CANNES — Spike Lee jumped the gun, announcing Palme d’Or winner “Titane” before the other prizes at the Cannes Film Festival awards. The unplanned goof could have robbed the awards of their usual suspense, but instead, created a thrillingly unpredictable energy as presenters and attendees alike tried to imagine how to get the train back

Since Amnesty Intl. was founded in 1961 there has been, sadly, no shortage of filmmakers who have been killed or persecuted because of their work. Sixty years on, that danger remains. In 1975 poet-turned-director Pierpaolo Pasolini was murdered in Italy, possibly by the country’s secret services. More recently, in 2012, filmmaker and activist Bassel Shehadeh

Spike Lee jumped the gun, announcing Palme d’Or winner “Titane” before the other prizes at the Cannes Film Festival awards. The unplanned goof could have robbed the awards of their usual suspense, but instead, created a thrillingly unpredictable energy as presenters and attendees alike tried to imagine how to get the train back on track

“Black Adam” has officially wrapped. Dwayne Johnson broke the news on social media about the DC movie, due July 29, 2022. “I knew many years ago, the opportunity for me to make BLACK ADAM would be a ONCE IN A CAREER EVENT,” he wrote on Instagram. “It has been my true honor to go shoulder

Warner Bros.’ “Space Jam: A New Legacy” is poised to steal the box office ball away from “Black Widow” this weekend, with a projected North American 3-day gross of $32 million. The basketball movie, a standalone sequel to 1996’s “Space Jam,” brought in $13.1 million from 3,965 locations on Friday, scoring Warner Bros.’ largest pandemic

Sharon Stone wasn’t getting the bids that she wanted. Around midnight on Friday night in France, after a dazzling fashion show on the lawn of a mansion in Antibes, the actor-turned-emcee was auctioning off 32 one-of-a-kind gowns by designers such as Versace, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Givenchy and Balenciaga at the amfAR Cannes gala. Joined onstage

The Deauville American Film Festival is set to reteam with Cannes to showcase five movies that have played on the Croisette during its next edition and will launch a mini-strand dedicated to anticipated French movies. Cannes joined forces with Deauville last year following the cancellation of its physical edition due to the pandemic. The partnership

The three-day 2021 virtual edition of the NALIP Media Summit will feature a conversation with Marvel Studios’ EVP Victoria Alonso moderated by Variety‘s Marc Malkin. The three-day event will feature diverse creative leaders from the Latinx community that will connect with attendees through a series of sessions, workshops, exclusive screenings and mentorship opportunities. The 22nd

When the trailer for “Space Jam: A New Legacy” was released, it required multiple viewings just to spot all the cameos of famous Warner Bros. characters. Filmmaker Malcolm D. Lee packed even more appearances into the film’s two-hour runtime, so if you’re watching at home on HBO Max, frequent pausing might be necessary to find

Actor Kai Ko, the mournful star of Un Certain Regard film “Moneyboys,” declined to jump the queue for vaccinations in his native Taiwan, and so couldn’t walk the red carpet in person at Cannes this year. Nevertheless, his performance in first-time director C.B. Yi’s exploration of Chinese hustlers balancing the pressures of love, family and

The New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center will unspool the 2021 edition Aug. 6-22 at FLC, kicking off with the premiere of “Escape From Mogadishu,” directed by Ryoo Seung-wan. In all, 60 films will screen to audiences in person and virtually, with premieres of first and second features from directors for

No one utters the word “bipolar” until practically the end of Belgian director Joachim Lafosse’s “The Restless,” but you can sense that’s what the character Damien is dealing with from the opening scene, when a father-son day on the sea takes a startling turn. After steering a rented boat a certain distance offshore, the ever-impulsive

C.B. Yi’s Un Certain Regard title “Moneyboys” is a moving exploration of Chinese rural-to-urban migration that feels authentically emotional despite being peppered with incongruous moments and details. The film follows Fei (Kai Ko), who moves from the countryside to different Chinese megacities to support his family as a hustler. When he realizes that they accept

It turns out that Warner Bros. almost developed a sequel to the 1997 crime film “L.A. Confidential,” and the late Chadwick Boseman would’ve starred in the movie. In an interview with The Ringer, screenwriter Brian Helgeland revealed that the potential sequel would have reunited stars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. Taking place in the mid-’70s,