Movies

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:

As if the pandemic and tumult of 2020 weren’t enough, this year also delayed a slew of hotly anticipated films, ranging from action blockbusters such as “Black Widow” and “No Time to Die” to the Timothée Chalamet-led sci-fi epic “Dune,” which will now release both in theaters and on HBO Max in 2021. Without jinxing

Hollywood tapped a record number of women to call the shots on major movies in 2020, according to a new study from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. Women represented 16% of directors working on the 100 highest-grossing films in 2020, a high-water mark for

In August of 2020 a tiny TikTok song dedicated to Remy the Rat (the animated star of the 2007 Pixar film “Ratatoullie”) sparked a musical metamorphosis. Within days theater kid TikTok was all asking the same question, “What if there was a ‘Ratatoullie’ musical?” The social media app became awash with 60 second offerings from

Joan Micklin Silver, who forged her own way as a female director in the 1970s and ’80s and helmed seven features including “Crossing Delancey” and “Hester Street,” died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 85. Her daughter, Claudia Silver, told the New York Times the cause was vascular dementia. The 1975 independent film “Hester Street” was

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:

After “Hamilton” made an earwormy global phenomenon from the life story of American founding father Alexander Hamilton, no chapter of history can be declared too dour for spangly, heart-on-sleeve musical treatment — though the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is still a pretty unlikely candidate. The stage roots of “Stand!” go back further than Lin-Manuel

The pandemic may have cancelled live performances and moviegoing for most of 2020, but for film-music buffs, that just meant more time at home listening to their favorite music, including many releases of music never before heard outside their original cinematic contexts. “There is still an unquenchable thirst for classic scores, both previously unreleased and

Academy Award winner Jared Leto credits his success in the entertainment industry to several factors – one being stubbornness. “I’ve been really fortunate, and you know, I’ve just been really stubborn,” he revealed on Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast. “I think eventually, people are like, ‘OK, well, fine. He’s here, we might as well just let

While 2020 has wreaked havoc on society in more ways than one, one small bright spot were several brilliant series and films offerings that helped us make it through this year. Offering everything from escapism to honest portrayals of everyday life, these are the movies and films that helped us make it through the year.

The selfie mode has two faces in “Sweat,” a hard, glistening study of life on the hamster wheel of Instagram celebrity, in which influence and inconsequence aren’t quite the opposites they seem. Swedish writer-director Magnus van Horn’s aggressively accomplished sophomore feature takes as its subject an outwardly easy target for satirical character study — young,

During an exceptionally scary year, genre fans were able to find solace in a creative batch of horror movies. In a sign of the times, many titles mimicked the isolation of quarantine, with protagonists trapped deep in the ocean (“Underwater”), at a snowy retreat (“The Lodge”), in an Airbnb from hell (“The Rental”) or even

The title “Gaza Mon Amour” carries threatening echoes of those cutesy auteur short anthologies (“Paris je t’aime,” “New York, I Love You”) in which assorted drifting souls find love in the same scenic city streets. Happily, Palestinian twin filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s entirely self-contained feature is nothing so slick or glib, though it boasts

The 2019 Viacom-CBS merger will undergo strict legal scrutiny now that a Delaware Chancery Court judge has allowed a lawsuit to proceed from shareholders who say they were shortchanged in the transaction because of pressure applied by ViacomCBS controlling shareholder Shari Redstone. Judge Joseph Slights ruled that the plaintiffs made a credible enough case, or

“Justice League” star Ray Fisher says he will not work on any film associated with DC Films President Walter Hamada in the wake of WarnerMedia’s investigation into the alleged misconduct on the superhero film set. The announcement appears to effectively end Fisher’s brief tenure as the DC superhero Cyborg after the release of Zack Snyder’s

Charlotte Rampling stars as a mysterious entertainer in a new film for fashion house Saint Laurent. The eight-minute video titled “Summer of ‘21,” commissioned by Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and directed by Gaspar Noé, begins with a woman running and screaming in terror through a forest. As an instrumental cover of Donna Summer’s

Frances McDormand could make history for women at the Oscars. The 63-year-old actor has received raves for her performance in “Nomadland” from Chloé Zhao, landing her in contention for her sixth acting nomination after winning two best actress Oscars (1996’s “Fargo” and 2018’s “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”). McDormand is also one of the credited

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists has announced their nominees for their 2020 EDA awards, with Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” leading with nine nominations including best film and director. With 25 individual categories, their awards are divided into three sections: the standard “Best Of” section, the “Female Focus” awards and “EDA Special Mentions.” Women dominated the

Some 44 million people, 78% of England’s population, will be under Tier 4, the highest level of coronavirus restrictions, from Thursday, U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Greater London and its surrounding areas are already in Tier 4. Cities joining London from Thursday include Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and

There’s not a lot in the way of new releases for movie lovers this week, although that might be for the best, given the state of the coronavirus outbreak. The good news: Those films that are bowing in theaters over the New Year’s weekend will filter down to streaming outlets one week later — plus,

Savaged by COVID-19, global box office plunged between 57% and 76% in major markets outside the U.S., with the U.K. and Ireland leading the rout, crashing 76% against 2019, according to a Comscore study, published Wednesday. Also hit hard were China (-70%), South Korea (-71%), and Italy and Spain (both down 72%). Russia (-60%), Japan

Hatem Ali, the influential Syrian multi-hyphenate whose hit historical TV dramas provided collective insight across the Arab world on the roots and complexities of the region’s turbulence, died on Tuesday at 58.  The cause of death, which took place in a Cairo hotel, was a heart attack, according to multiple Middle East news reports. Born

Hong Kong is to provide cash subsidies to cinema operators as the city buckles under the pressure of a fourth wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. Cinemas were ordered to close in December, causing them to miss the lucrative Christmas and New Year holiday seasons. A one-off payment of HK$100,000 ($12,900) will be paid to each

In a message to members on Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and national executive director David White said that many productions will remain on hiatus for the next few weeks as Los Angeles County experiences a continued surge in COVID-19 cases. “We are writing to let you know that we are closely monitoring the recent

Joe Clark, the New Jersey principal who inspired the 1989 film “Lean on Me” starring Morgan Freeman, has died. He was 82. Clark’s death was announced by his family, who said he died on Tuesday after a long illness. Clark was the principal of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J. from 1983 to 1989. Known

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay has partnered with outgoing Warner Bros. Television chairman Peter Roth to launch Array Crew, a division of Array Alliance. which will serve as a database to highlight below-the-line talent. The announcement was made in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, where Roth and DuVernay said that Array Crew is in the

Chinese director Guan Hu is riding high right now: Despite languishing in government censorship purgatory for over a year, his patriotic war epic “The Eight Hundred” has risen to become the highest grossing film in the world in 2020, with sales of $461 million. His next confirmed move? More jingoistic propaganda. Guan is executive producer

British actor Michael Sheen, BAFTA nominee for “The Queen,” has finally revealed why he returned the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) honor presented to him by the Queen in 2009. The decision to return the OBE stemmed from a deeper understanding of the relationship between Wales, where Sheen is from, and the

Looking back over the beloved stars we lost in the past year is always emotional, and this year has been especially devastating, given how many members of the entertainment community died due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic hit the music community especially hard, but television and film performers, as well as stage actors and