Movies

Danny Boyle will direct Michael B. Jordan in “Methuselah,” while Simon Beaufoy, who worked with Boyle on “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours,” is being eyed to rewrite the script. The original concept for the film, from Warner Bros., was based on the Biblical story of a man who lived to be 969 years old. But

The Directors Guild of America has been fast-tracking nearly $9 million in foreign levies to 5,000 directors over the past week. “As production remains suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Guild has continued its work to expedite vital income when it is most needed,” the DGA announced Friday. “Foreign levies are fees collected by

“Purge 5,” the latest chapter in Universal Pictures’ dystopian horror franchise, has been indefinitely delayed. The film, titled “The Forever Purge,” was set to release in theaters July 10 and has been pulled from the studio’s calendar. The move underscores the fact that Hollywood studios don’t expect cinemas will be able to operate in full

A new musical based on the classic film “Some Like It Hot” will premiere on Broadway in the fall of 2021. The show, which features a book by “The Inheritance’s” Matthew Lopez and music and lyrics from the “Smash” and “Hairspray!” team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, was originally scheduled to debut in Chicago

The survival of Europe’s film and TV producers amid what is perceived as a growing imbalance between them and U.S. streaming giants was the overarching topic in a Rome MIA market panel on the main challenges faced by European indies as lockdown restrictions begins to lift across the European Union (E.U.). Platforms such as Netflix,

Several film and TV studios are being developed in the U.K. in response to a boom in production there and a shortage of stage space. The total spend on movie and high-end TV production in the U.K. last year was £3.62 billion ($4.49 billion), a 16% annual increase, and the highest figure ever recorded. Underpinning

Spain’s big shoots industry is putting the pedal to the metal, propelled by an encouraging improvement in tax breaks for international productions.The moves aim to make Spain more attractive for big-budget projects, helping the sector look beyond COVID-19 crisis. Approved May 5, the new measures increase tax rebates for international shoots from 25% to 30%

In Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour,” a housewife slips out during the day to an elite brothel, where she’s able to explore kinky fantasies she wouldn’t dare suggest to her husband. It’s one of the most daring films ever made, not so much because of anything it overtly depicts as what this controversial classic reveals

British movie theater chain Showcase Cinemas U.K., owned by the Redstone family’s National Amusements, has confirmed it intends to reopen cinemas on July 4. Showcase has also set out the precautionary measures it will put in place to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19. Mark Barlow, general manager, Showcase Cinemas U.K., said: “It is clearly

South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival, already delayed by a month due to the coronavirus outbreak, is now to go ahead in its new dates, but in reduced format. Some of its titles, however, will screen until September. At the end of April, festival organizers confirmed that JIFF will go ahead May 28 to June

Blame it on “The Avengers.” Or better yet, “Justice League.” Those superheroes are so popular with audiences that Hollywood studios got it in their heads that the world wants to see “expanded universe” movies — unwieldy ensemble productions that bring together half a dozen or more stand-alone characters for a single umbrella adventure. Marvel and

Recent moves by several Indian producers to bypass theatrical release and instead secure direct to streaming outings for their movies has caused a spat within India’s production, distribution and exhibition sectors. As Amazon Prime Video signed up half a dozen movies, and Disney Plus Hotstar and Netflix were rumoured to be sourcing other titles, the

If an Orwellian fable were to be visualized by a surrealist in the vein of Salvador Dali, the result would look and feel something like “The Wolf House,” a jaw-dropping marriage of various animation techniques, chiefly stop-motion. A dystopian tale with haunting echoes of “The Three Little Pigs” and “Red Riding Hood,” this shape-shifting, trippy

David Nichols, a production designer and visual consultant on more than 20 films, such as “Rocky,” “Taxi Driver” and “Groundhog Day,” died on Wednesday in Taos, N.M., Variety has learned. He was 78. Nichols had a 30-year career in the film industry, serving as a production designer, art director, visual consultant, writer and actor at

In the history of civilization, no one has ever been consoled by the thought “Other people have had it worse than you.” In 2020, the pandemic has been devastating, with deaths, illness, unemployment and economic turmoil. But as we observe the 75th anniversaries of V-E and V-J Day, it’s worth remembering that people during World

In today’s film news roundup, Concordia Studios hires Alexa Platt as chief operating officer, horror movie “Hallowed Be Thy Name” gets a release date and indie feature ‘1 Angry Black Man” finds a distributor. EXECUTIVE HIRE Concordia Studio has hired industry veteran Alexa Platt as chief operating officer to oversee all operational, financial and legal

George Miller is planning to expand the “Mad Max” universe with a prequel movie based on Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa from 2015’s “Fury Road.” In an interview with The New York Times, the director said the film is an origin story and he’s searching for an actress in her 20s to take over the role.

Neon, which handled the U.S. release of “Parasite,” is commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Best Picture winner’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The five-minute video, released on Thursday as “Parasite: a Year in Cinema,” begins with the dark comedy becoming the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or, followed by the

The official film rules for this year’s SAG Awards won’t be announced until next month, but an email sent to studios on Thursday morning says the organization will be following the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ temporary eligibility change for the Oscars. “We are still revising our film release criteria but will be

Netflix has acquired “Ball and Chain,” a superhero film starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Oscar nominee Emily V. Gordon (“The Big Sick”) is writing the script, adapted from the 1990s comic of the same name by Scott Lobdell. It follows a married couple going through relationship turmoil who also have superpowers, but they only

Mark Wahlberg is in early negotiations with streaming giant Netflix to produce and star in spy movie “Our Man in New Jersey.” Should the deal be made, Wahlberg would portray a blue-collar 007 James Bond-type character. “Safe House” writer David Guggenheim is also in talks to develop the script. Stephen Levinson, who came up with

“Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker Luca Guadagnino will direct a reboot of “Scarface” for Universal Pictures. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen wrote the latest version of the script with earlier drafts by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Jonathan Herman and Paul Attanasio. “Scarface” will be produced by Dylan Clark for his Dylan Clark Productions. Scott Stuber will

Beanie Feldstein is following stay-at-home orders at her parents’ house in Los Angeles. When she’s not watching “Ozark,” she’s hanging out with the family’s 90-pound English bulldog Jackie or Zoom-ing with friends. “We’ve been doing some trivia in my friend group,” Feldstein says on Thursday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.”

Newly minted Sports Illustrated Studios is launching its first feature film project with women’s rowing story “The Red Rose Crew: A True Story Of Women, Winning, and The Water.” David Glasser’s 101 Studios will, produce, finance and distribute the film adaptation of Daniel J. Boyne’s biography, centered on the formation of a U.S. rowing team

The state with the iconic landscapes launched its incentives 16 years ago, and last year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham helped pass SB2, which more than doubled the state’s annual cap on its 25% to 30% refundable tax credit to $110 million, and added a 5% uplift for shooting outside the Albuquerque-Santa Fe urban corridor. Rural

Pearl Jam offers a startling vision for an Earth ravaged by climate change in a new animated video for their song “Retrograde,” directed by Emmy-winning Australian filmmaker Josh Wakely (“Beat Bugs”). The clip, the latest from Pearl Jam’s “Gigaton” album, extends that project’s environmentally conscious themes by featuring teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg as

In Santa Clarita, a suburb just north of L.A., construction is continuing at the Center at Needham Ranch, which has already seen entertainment companies move in. “For the last week or so we’ve been getting calls and texts from production companies, from locations scouts and studios looking for space,” says CBRE executive VP Craig Peters,

Producers on the Move, a networking forum for up-and-coming producers from Europe, takes place as a virtual event this week. The organizer, European Film Promotion, has given Variety exclusive access to the projects the producers are pitching to sales companies. Here are their projects, including the latest films from the directors of SXSW standout “Lake

Strand Releasing has acquired North American rights to Catherine Gund’s documentary “Aggie,” about her mother Agnes “Aggie” Gund, the high-profile art collector and philanthropist. “Aggie,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, explores the issues of art, race and justice. The elder Gund sold Roy Lichtenstein’s “Masterpiece” in 2017 to launch the $100 million

Walter Presents has acquired U.K. rights to “When The Dust Settles,” the hit Danish psychological drama series, from DR Sales. “When The Dust Settles” tells the story of eight strangers whose lives intertwine in the aftermath of a shocking terrorist attack in a Copenhagen restaurant. The ten-part series was created by Ida Maria Rydén and