Movies

Indian filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj is developing a film franchise based on the works of Agatha Christie. The series will feature an entirely new pair of lead investigators. The first film, due to shoot in early 2021, will introduce a young heroine who is thrown into solving a murder, and teams up with an unlikely companion

The Avengers are the latest group in Hollywood to support democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by hosting a virtual fundraiser. “Voters Assemble!” will feature “Avengers” cast members Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana. They will join vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris and “Avengers: Infinity War” directors The

Liam Neeson’s thriller “Honest Thief” limped to first place at the domestic box office, debuting at $3.7 million. Those ticket sales, among the lowest ever to land at No. 1, came in slightly ahead of Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” and Robert De Niro’s family comedy “War With Grandpa.” “Tenet,” now in its seventh week of release,

Sacha Baron Cohen has disclosed several important plot points within the upcoming “Borat” sequel, aptly titled “Borat Subsequent Movie Film: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” In a new interview with the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Cohen revealed that the iconic Borat character uses the

In the eight-plus months since the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Europe, the continent’s film industry has been in the midst of what has often felt like an unprecedented crisis. But for many arthouse distributors, the pandemic has simply accelerated changes that were already sweeping through the cinema business. “The problems haven’t really changed,”

Netflix has paused shooting on “The Harder They Fall” after a member of the production tested positive for COVID-19, Variety has confirmed. The Western, which stars Idris Elba and Regina King, was roughly five weeks into shooting in New Mexico. No members of the primary cast tested positive, according to an insider. Production is expected

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced that movie theaters outside of New York City will be allowed to open beginning Oct. 23. During a press briefing on Saturday morning, Cuomo said that movie theaters not located in the city can open at 25% capacity with a limit of 50 people per screening if they

The hallmarks of screenwriter Michel Audiard – slang-laden dialogue, absurd situations and explosive confrontations – are all in evidence in Gilles Grangier’s “The Night Affair” (“Le Désordre et la nuit”), screening at the Lumière Film Festival as part of the program marking the centenary of Audiard’s birth. The celebration features 18 films scripted by Audiard,

In “Battlestar Galactica” star and sometime director Edward James Olmos’ “The Devil Has a Name,” corporate America is poisoning the little guy, again. Call me cynical, but that will hardly come as a surprise to most audiences, who’ve been watching entities with deep pockets shirk public safety for quick profits for the better part of

Imagine, for a moment, that a stand-up comic is just like a superhero. On stage, he’s a master of the universe, armored and impervious, slinging jokes like lightning bolts. He defeats all adversaries, from hecklers to the potential indifference of the audience; laughter, of course, is his way of killing. If that’s what a stand-up

British actor Amir El-Masry has been ubiquitous on international screens in the last five years, but like most Arab actors in the U.K., he’s reached his threshold for backward stereotypes, and is trying to forge his own narrative in the industry. Born in Egypt but raised in the U.K., El-Masry, who leads Ben Sharrock’s refugee

The competition section of China’s Pingyao Intl. Film Festival on Friday awarded top prizes to Russia’s Philipp Yuryev, Serbia’s Ivan Ilkic, and Chinese directors Li Dongmei and Wang Jing. The films of the first three helmers debuted at the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Venice Days section in September, where Yuryev’s “The Whaler Boy” won

Rhonda Fleming, star of the 1940s and ’50s who was dubbed the “Queen of Technicolor” and appeared in “Out of the Past” and “Spellbound,” died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., according to her secretary Carla Sapon. She was 97. Fleming appeared in more than 40 films and worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock on

Michael B. Jordan will produce “Static Shock,” a movie adaptation of the comic book unveiled by Reginald Hudlin during August’s DC FanDome. Jordan revealed on Friday that he will produce the pic through his Warner Bros.-based Outlier Society banner. Static, aka Virgil Hawkins, was created by Milestone Media and DC Comics in the 1990s. The

A series of suicides in the Japanese entertainment world, including reality TV star Kimura Hana in May, actor Miura Haruma in July and actresses Ashina Sei and Takeuchi Yuko in September, have raised questions about not only their specific tragedies, but also conditions in Japanese society as a whole that may have contributed to an

The sheer range of genres represented by this week’s new releases — from Liam Neeson thriller “Honest Thief” to romantic weepie “2 Hearts” — suggests that distributors of all kinds are doing their best to give audiences the kind of selection they enjoyed before the lockdown. Well, nearly all kinds of distributors. The major studios

“I don’t see how we could have made the film now had we not shot in Chicago,” writer and director Aaron Sorkin says of his new film “Trial of the Chicago 7,” now streaming on Netflix. Five decades after it took place, Aaron Sorkin tells the story of the seven defendants who were charged by

Variety‘s 10 Screenwriters to Watch panel at the Mill Valley Film Festival brought together a group of talented screenwriters who have penned some of the year’s most exciting films. The virtual event also included a one-on-one conversation with Variety‘s creative impact in screenwriting award recipient, Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman gave viewers a behind-the-scenes look at his

Early on in “Cicada,” a secondary character drops the old maxim, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, that art is never finished, only abandoned. It’s a pointed moment of self-awareness in a film of many. Writer-director-producer-editor-star Matthew Fifer’s debut feature processes lived experience into a cracked, anguished work of autofiction, raggedly cathartic and needfully unresolved as

With characteristic modesty and humor, the Dardenne brothers opened up about their career at a masterclass in Lyon for the Lumière Festival, where they are receiving the Lumière Award for lifetime achievement. But before they answered the questions put to them by festival director Thierry Frémaux, the Belgian brothers graciously gave way to a couple

Entertainment professionals overseeing everything from streaming to podcasts and sports broadcasts took part in the virtual Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit presented by City National Bank on Wednesday and Thursday. The summit’s focus covered the growth of online content consumption and technology’s role in helping entertainment companies survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Below are 10 takeaways

Mary Lambert had directed mainly music videos (Janet Jackson’s “Nasty,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” among others) when she took the job helming “Pet Sematary” in 1989. It was her second feature film, after 1987’s Ellen Barkin starrer “Siesta.” But Lambert had read the Stephen King book, about the Creed family — Louis and Rachel and

In the satirical horror film “Bad Hair,” which debuts Oct. 23 on Hulu, Elle Lorraine plays Anna, a young woman who adopts a new look in order to land a hosting gig at a “106 & Park”-like music countdown show. The hairstyle gets Anna the recognition she’s after, but it comes at a price. Though

R.J. Cutler’s “Belushi” charts the rise and fall of “Animal House” star John Belushi without dwelling on the particulars of his tragic death of a drug overdose at 33. “Drugs and his overdose have become the thing that many people focus on in John’s story, but that’s not what I was interested in,” said Cutler.

Police arrested a man on Friday morning who is accused of murdering Thomas Jefferson Byrd, the character actor who appeared in several Spike Lee films. Antonio Demetrice Rhynes, 30, was arrested by a fugitive unit and SWAT team officers, according to the Atlanta Police Department. Rhynes is accused of shooting Byrd early on the morning

Xochitl Gomez, the young actor who recently starred in Netflix’s “The Baby-Sitters Club” reboot, has joined the cast of Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Sam Raimi, whose highlights include the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” trilogy, is directing the sequel, which sees Benedict Cumberbatch return as the Sorcerer Supreme. Plot details, as what has

The Lumiere Film Festival paid homage to Greek actress, singer and politician Melina Mercouri this week with a mini-retrospective on what would have been the centenary of her birth. The centerpiece event was a screening Thursday of “Never on Sunday,” the 1960 musical drama directed by and co-starring her regular collaborator, husband Jules Dassin, who

Sandra den Hamer, president of the Association of European Film Archives and Cinematheques (ACE) and director of the Netherlands’ Eye Filmmuseum, has called for a European framework to facilitate the sharing of European film heritage with the public. In a lively online discussion between several representatives of European film institutes at the Lumière Film Festival’s

While the global pandemic caused cinema theaters in France to close for the first time ever (“Even the war didn’t close down cinemas!” exclaimed Lumière Festival director Thierry Frémaux on opening night), it did mean people had more time to watch movies. Classics, in particular, enjoyed a come-back during lockdown. Nine out of 10 people

Alex Rodrigo, a director on the acclaimed Netflix drama series “Money Heist,” is making his feature film directorial debut with “The Last Shot,” one of 16 film projects being pitched to prospective buyers this week during Rome’s MIA market. “The Last Shot” is a biopic about the late Spanish photographer and humanitarian Luis Valtueña (pictured),