Movies

Actor Louis Koo is a household name in Hong Kong but off-screen, he’s an influential entertainment industry investor, producer and entrepreneur. Rising to prominence during the “golden age” of Hong Kong cinema, Koo built a respected career over the decades but less flashy are his businesses and investments. One Cool Group is one such revenue

Animation co-productions between Japanese media companies and their Asian counterparts were once few and far between, but in the past decade, with the rapid rise of animation industries in China and South Korea, the pace has picked up. Indeed, FilMart is playing host to an animation panel March 13 that explored the advantages of cross-border

Brandon Routh and Mena Suvari will lead the cast of Grammy-winning director Joseph Kahn‘s next film, “Ick.” The film aims to evoke the timeless creature features of the 1980s with an ambitious arsenal of scares and comedy. Routh (“Superman Returns,” “Scott Pilgrim”) stars as Hank, a high school science teacher who still pines for his

Alec Baldwin was offered a deal last October to plead to a misdemeanor — and apparently serve no jail time — in the accidental shooting on the set of “Rust,” according to a filing made public on Friday. But before he could decide whether to accept the terms, prosecutors withdrew the offer and told his

DC Studios is adding to its newly rebooted cinematic universe with a live-action film adaptation of “Teen Titans,” tapping screenwriter Ana Nogueira to pen the feature. The news comes only four months after Nogueria was reported to be writing “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” for Warner Bros. Discovery’s comic book adaptation division. An actor and playwright,

Directed by Neo Sora, “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus” records the final performance of its namesake composer and musician prior to his death from cancer in March 2023. Per Sora, Sakamoto’s son, “Opus” is less a documentary than a concert film, capturing 20 tracks — electronic, orchestral, and everything in between — from his multifaceted career as

Joe Camp, the creator, director and writer of the “Benji” films, died March 15. He was 84. Camp died Friday morning at his home in Bell Buckle, Tenn., following a battle with illness, according to his son, filmmaker and writer of the 2018 “Benji” reboot, Brandon Camp. Camp had nearly no Hollywood experience before he raised

“City of Dreams,” an upcoming drama about a young Mexican boy who gets smuggled across the border, is lining up some heavy-hitting producers as Roadside Attractions looks to debut the film over Labor Day. Sean Wolfington, the executive producer of “Sound of Freedom” and most recently “Cabrini”; Luis Fonsi, a five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and

“Always be two steps ahead,” repeatedly says Rachel Hyde, the famous alter ego of the namesake character in Hammer Studios’ “Doctor Jekyll.” The film’s director, Joe Stephenson, and his screenwriter Dan Kelly-Mulhern don’t take her advice, and it’s much to the detriment of their contemporary adaptation of the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novella, which can’t

French director Yann Gozlan is set to reunite with Pierre Niney, the French star of his two most successful movies “Un homme idéal” and “Black Box,” for his next film, “Gourou.” “Gourou” is being co-produced by Wassim Beji at WY Productions, the Paris-based company behind “Black Box and “Un Homme Ideal,” and Niney’s banner Ninety

Elliot Page has taken aim at the notion that queer films only have a small audience. Speaking at the BFI Flare, London’s LGBTQ film festival, the actor claimed that “30% of young people identify as LGBTQ,” referring to a survey released earlier this year about Gen Z adults in the U.S. “So I’m sorry, but

Variety will present Tom Hiddleston with the Variety Virtuoso Award at the Miami Film Festival on Tuesday, April 9. The award will be for his career achievements across film, theater and television. “From screens large and small to the Broadway stage, Tom Hiddleston is one of our most versatile and engaging actors,” said Jenelle Riley,

This week’s new theatrical release, the dog-friendly adventure movie “Arthur the King” starring Mark Wahlberg and a four-legged best friend, has made $825,000 at the box office in Thursday previews. The Lionsgate movie is expected to make between $8 million and $10 million in its opening weekend. It will have to settle for third place,

A moviegoer at MJR Southgate Cinema in suburban Detroit was arrested for allegedly engaging in lewd behavior during a screening of the new Kristen Stewart film “Love Lies Bleeding.” The Southgate Police Department confirmed to Variety that a patron was arrested after a Thursday night screening of the noir-ish thriller and is still in police

“Lupin” star Omar Sy, “Fast X” director Louis Leterrier and “Gangs of London” producer Thomas Benski have launched Carrousel Studios, a European independent production company with offices in Paris, London, Los Angeles and Senegal.  The banner will finance and produce film and TV projects, with an emphasis on elevated action, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy and comedy.

Documentaries can reach places justice cannot: this is the credo of Argentinian writer-director-producer María Silvia Esteve, whose latest project “Mailin” won the 2|35 Post-Production Company Award at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. For seven years, Esteve has been working with Mailin Gobbo in Buenos Aires to document her story of overcoming systematic sexual abuse. Gobbo led a

The nature documentary is inherently preservationist, but Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s “Nocturnes” offers environmental persuasions not through verbal arguments, or even an aesthetic appreciation. Rather, its meditative, hyper-fixated approach to process — as seen through the eyes of seasoned lepidopterists — proves so hypnotic that any appeals or augments the movie makes are deeply

Speaking to Variety ahead of her film’s world premiere at leading European doc fest CPH:DOX, Lisa Jackson was keen to emphasize that “Wilfred Buck” is what she calls a “feel-good story” despite addressing dark issues related to Canada’s colonial past. Written and directed by Jackson (“Biidaaban: First Light”), the film is a hybrid doc that

Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has unveiled its program for film professionals, VdR-Industry, which includes 29 projects in various stages of production. These will be pitched during the four-day event that runs April 14 through April 17, alongside the fest. VdR-Industry, which sees hundreds of professionals descend on the small Swiss town of Nyon on

“The Zone of Interest” executive producer Danny Cohen has become the first member of the film’s production team to publicly address director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech, saying “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan.” While accepting the Academy Award on Sunday evening for best international film, Glazer delivered a set of pre-written remarks in which he

Onir, one of a handful of out and proud Indian filmmakers, is speaking out about the current scenario for LGBTQ filmmakers in the country. “There are a lot of non-Indian queer films and series available on streaming and also a lot of queer short films and reel videos being made across the country. Having said

When two stars have “chemistry,” we tend to think of it as basic animal magnetism. And maybe that’s the essence of it. Yet when a romantic movie works, even a synthetic magical rom-com trifle like “Irish Wish,” what draws us into the chemistry isn’t simply the actors’ sexy connection. It’s that the two characters have

In Alex Garland‘s “Civil War,” the Western forces of Texas and California hardly remember what they’re fighting for. At least, Garland doesn’t say outright what they’re fighting for. The film, which had its world premiere at SXSW on Thursday, depicts a near-future U.S. at the climax of a civil war where the two most populous

The press are the good guys, but also kind of the bad guys, in Alex Garland’s virtuosic “Civil War,” a jarring ground-level account of what a near-future disunification of the United States might look like. Intended as a wake-up call, the long-fuse thriller — which starts slow and snowballs to a jaw-dropping raid on Washington,

Ken Kwek’s acclaimed Singaporean film “#LookAtMe” has secured North American distribution with Buffalo 8. The deal is exclusive for the North American territory and non-exclusive for the rest of the world. The film is a tragicomedy following the family of a teenage YouTuber who posts an irreverent video lampooning a megachurch pastor in defense of

As Ryan Gosling took the mic for a special screening of his latest film “The Fall Guy,” the Oscar nominee was eager to salute the stunt community — in particular, to show off the record-breaking stunt that his double performed. “There’s a gentleman who buckles me into a car — that’s Logan Holladay — for

The first clip for the SXSW Film Festival documentary, “Whatever It Takes,” about two journalists targeted in a Silicon Valley Scandal, has been released in conjunction with its festival screenings.  The clip shows journalists Ina and David Steiner — who are the targets of an online harassment campaign, subjected to cyberstalking threats and bizarre deliveries

Alec Baldwin‘s lawyers asked a judge on Thursday to throw out his manslaughter case, accusing prosecutors of “violating nearly every rule in the book” in the course of obtaining an indictment. The attorneys argued that prosecutors leaked information to the press, failed to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury, and gave a faulty jury

Sam Mercer, producer on several M. Night Shyamalan movies and former head of ILM, died Feb. 12 of younger onset Alzheimer’s in South Pasadena. He was 69. Raised in Weston, Mass., he attended Occidental College and then started working as a location manager on 1980s classics including “Stripes,” “The Escape Artist,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Pee-Wee’s

Upon his 2013 graduation from the Orange County School of the Arts, Justice Smith assumed he would spend some time “waiting tables and doing small roles in indie films here and there.” Instead, he found himself working the blockbuster space fairly quickly, booking roles in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and its sequel “Jurassic World Dominion.”