“The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah is developing and may star in a remake of “The President’s Analyst,” the 1967 political satire that starred James Coburn as the Oval Office’s resident psychiatrist. Paramount Pictures will back the film. Noah will have a critical helping hand when it comes to navigating White House life. Pat Cunnane,
Movies
AT&T has refined its pitch to Wall Street on the rationale for owning WarnerMedia. As it approaches the third anniversary of completing its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the telco giant held an Investor Day presentation Friday morning that was long on talk of “software-based entertainment” and global subscriber predictions for the next four
Director Michael Polish has been sued for allegedly assaulting a member of the crew during a production in Montana last fall. Jack Renner, an art director based in Washington, D.C., was hired to work on a project entitled “Bring on the Dancing Horses.” Renner alleges that shortly after he arrived, he and Polish had a
In criminal cases, wiretapped phone conversations are commanding pieces of evidence (juries love them), and in documentaries about crime they tend to be some of the most gripping. We hear people as they really are. In “Allen v. Farrow,” the tapes of Woody Allen in phone conversations secretly recorded by Mia Farrow present an oily
Jongnic Bontemps might just qualify as the unofficial composer of the Black Lives Matter movement. No fewer than four major documentaries on African American subjects — airing now, or soon, on CNN, Netflix, National Geographic and Amazon Prime — feature scores written by the Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based composer. “I asked the universe for this,” Bontemps admits.
China built more than 2,000 new screens in the first two months of the year despite the uncertainty facing the exhibition sector due to COVID-19, according to the country’s National Film Administration. China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest film market last year. It looks set to maintain that status in 2021, as
Raven Banner Entertainment announced it has completed production on Rue Morgue Magazine founder Rodrigo Gudiño’s “The Breach,” marking a reunion with former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, who serves as the film’s executive producer and co-producer of the score. Based on a book by horror novelist Nick Cutter (born Craig Davidson), with a screenplay co-penned
In today’s Global Bulletin, “The Prince of Egypt” musical plans its return to London’s West End, BBC Arts unveils a slate of TV and radio adaptations for its Lights Up festival, Festival MiX Milano rebrands as MiX International Festival of LGBTQ+ Cinema and Queer Culture, Mip Cancun announces 2021 in-person market dates and details, and
Chile’s Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic), and Mexico’s top genre festival Morbido have announced the six titles set to participate at the Sanfic-Morbido Lab, held March 23, a COVID-era online rejigging of their existing co-venture. “Although the pandemic forced us to postpone the August 2020 in-person version of Factoría Morbido-Sanfic, this did not prevent us
Mexican-American filmmaker Sofia Garza-Barba made waves with her award-winning short film “Death After Pancakes,” taking prizes at the Independent Filmmakers Showcase and Lady Filmmakers Film Festival, and has shared with Variety that it’s time to announce her debut feature outing, a supernatural fairy tale thriller “Santos Remedios,” pitching at this month’s Sanfic-Morbido Lab. “Santos Remedios”
Director-producer Dorián Fernández Moris, the leading light on an genre production scene based out of Iquitos in the heart of the Amazon, is set to produce “The Sugar Girl,” a slice of Amazon Noir aimed squarely at international markets. Mixing a cop drama-thriller and doses of Amazon legend and the supernatural, “The Sugar Girl” will
Argentine filmmaker Seba De Caro’s latest outing in the horror genre, “El Viejo” (“The Old Man”) taps collective and childhood memories of Argentina’s military dictatorship and the haunted house fable. “For me, the possibility of narrating a story that pits childhood against the most terrifying past in the history of my country is a unique
Canada-based actor Colm Feore, whose credits include Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy,” “My Salinger Year,” “The Amazing Spiderman 2” and multiple Oscar winner “Chicago,” is to star in post-apocalyptic Western “Six Guns for Hire,” which has just started principal photography in Toronto, Canada. The film also stars Maurice Dean Wint (“The Kid Detective,” “Diggstown”), Oyin Oladejo
Culture channel Arte France is set to co-produce Léonard Cohen‘s debut animated feature “Flavors of Iraq,” a project presented at this week’s Cartoon Movie and produced by France’s Nova Production and Miyu Productions. A documentary, ”Flavors of Iraq” “is the memory of a child, that of an apricot ice cream. A memory that allows the
A Spanish movie spin-off of Netflix 2018 supernatural thriller hit “Bird Box,” which starred Sandra Bullock and was directed by Susanne Bier, is in the works. The as yet to be titled movie will start production toward the end of this year in Spain. Alex and David Pastor, whose credits include Netflix crime thriller “The
Though it will forever be associated with one brief mid-1970s heyday, the disaster-movie genre has made a stealth comeback in recent years, being a natural fit for a cinematic era dominated by CGI-laden action fantasies. Of course Hollywood has kept its hand in, with efforts like “San Andreas” and “Pompeii.” But there have also been
The first thing one notices about “Azor” is how real it feels: the entitlement, the encyclopedic knowledge of “good” families, the multilingual fluency, the bonhomie of power. The main characters are a Swiss private banker and his wife, and it comes as no surprise to learn that director Andreas Fontana is himself the grandson of
By the time she turned 13, “Punky Brewster” star Soleil Moon Frye had done more to impact pop culture than most Americans will in their lifetime. (“Holy macanoli!” and mismatched high tops, anyone?) But once the show was canceled in 1988, things stalled. That’s roughly when Frye started carrying a video camera practically everywhere she
“Come True” wears its many influences on its sleeve, notably the work of David Cronenberg and Philip K. Dick, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Donnie Darko,” with nods to “The Shining,” “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Terminator” thrown in for good measure. Nonetheless, filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns (“Our House”) melds those inspirations
“Dutch” is dreadful. It’s a shambling, rambling recycling of clichés and conventions from ’70s Blaxploitation fare mixed with stilted murder-trial melodrama and half-baked morsels of sociopolitical topicality. But, really, to describe this rancid slice of ineptitude that way is to risk making it sound a lot more interesting than it is. Written and directed by
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association continued its apology tour on Wednesday by sending a letter to studio and personal publicists that reiterated its promise that change was coming to the embattled organization. “We have been partners with many of you for a long time and recognize and appreciate the significant role you play in the
Patti Harrison has joined the cast of the Paramount Pictures romantic adventure “The Lost City of D.” Starring opposite the previously-announced Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, Harrison comes on board in a role still under wraps. Adam and Aaron Nee are directing from a script by Dana Fox. Bullock is producing through her Fortis Films
Movie theaters in Los Angeles will be able to reopen early next week, public health officials said Thursday. The announcement punctuates nearly a year without cinemas in the film capital of the world, and is welcome news to the exhibition industry, which has struggled over the past twelve months since COVID-19 upended daily life. The
“Fauna” is a curious proposition. On the surface, the ninth feature from Mexican-Canadian independent filmmaker Nicolás Pereda consists of a series of dialogue-driven scenes taking place in a remote Mexican village where an estranged brother and sister are visiting their parents. Yet such a description can’t quite capture the slippery nature of Pereda’s script, which
The cast for “Mission: Impossible 7” just got a whole lot bigger. Director Christopher McQuarrie announced on Thursday via Instagram that actors Cary Elwes (“Stranger Things”), Indira Varma (“Game of Thrones”), Rob Delaney (“Catastrophe”), Charles Parnell (“The Last Ship”) and Mark Gatiss (“Sherlock”) have joined the Tom Cruise spy thriller, which has been filming through
Apple Studios’ hot Martin Scorsese project “Killers of the Flower Moon” has added four new cast members, set to play opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and “Certain Women” star Lily Gladstone. Indigenous actors Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins and Jillian Dion will all take key roles in the project, based on David Grann’s bestseller about
Gina Rodriguez and Damon Wayans Jr. will attempt to fight romantic fate in the upcoming Netflix movie “Players.” The actors are set to star alongside Tom Ellis in the romantic comedy, which centers on Chicago sportswriter Mack (Rodriguez), who has spent years devising successful hook-up “plays” with her best friend Adam (Wayans). But when she
The “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” story might have come to an end on screen with the release of its third and final film on Netflix last month, but the legacy of the franchise lives on, connecting with its dedicated fan base via fashion lines, home goods and, of course, the three books
Eddie Murphy is set to be inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame during the live broadcast on March 27. The Hall of Fame Award will be presented by Murphy’s long-time friend and “Coming to America” co-star Arsenio Hall. Earlier this month, the sequel to the duo’s comedy classic, “Coming 2 America,” debuted
Mubi has acquired “Ghosts,” a Turkish drama by emerging helmer Azra Deniz Okyay that won the grand prize at Venice Critics’ Week. The Mubi deal covers the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia and Turkey. The film is represented in international markets by MPM Premium and is part of the company’s New Visions label. “Ghosts” takes place