“Top Gun: Maverick” has crossed $700 million in North America, becoming one of six movies to ever surpass that milestone at the domestic box office. The film returned to the top of box office charts over Labor Day weekend, adding $7.9 million between Friday and Monday and bringing ticket sales to $701 million. According to
“Tequila, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll,” from Goya Award-winning producer-helmer Alvaro Longoria, has been acquired for international sales by Latido Films. Set up at Madrid’s Morena Films, which Longoria co-founded, doc marks a return to directing for Longoria, whose 2012 debut, “Sons of the Clouds,” produced by Javier Bardem, scored a Spanish Academy Goya
Last year Andrea Scrosati – who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle – was at Venice with two films. This year Fremantle’s got six pics launching from the Lido, three of them in competition, which is a larger contingent than any of the U.S. studios or streamers. Fremantle’s business model, which involves
Friendships can be as changeable and temperamental and outright dramatic as grand romances, though they tend to get a bland rap on screen — with friends, for most screenwriters, merely convenient constants, there to support protagonists through matters of supposedly more consequence. If substantial platonic relationship studies are rare, ones about men are rarer still.
Heitor Dhalia, one of Brazil’s foremost and most ambitious movie auteurs, director of “Drained,” “Adrift” and “Bald Mountain,” is teaming with Netflix to make “DNA do Crime,” a banner title for the U.S. streaming giant in Brazil, one of its largest international markets. Described by Dhalia as “one of the biggest series ever produced in Brazil,”
Just how polished does a career-spanning documentary about the anarchic underground filmmaker behind “Greaser’s Palace” and “Putney Swope” need to be? If you’ve seen any of Robert Downey’s films, the answer is obviously: not very. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind “Sr.,” a loose seemingly seat-of-your-pants portrait of
Pop star Harry Styles may be in one of the most hotly anticipated movies at the Venice Film Festival, but he still considers himself a newbie in the acting world. The musician told journalists in Venice: “Music I’ve done a little longer so I’m a bit more comfortable. What I like about acting is I
Liz Truss is the new U.K. Prime Minister. Truss will replace Boris Johnson, who stepped down from the role in July following numerous scandals. She becomes the U.K.’s third female Prime Minister, following Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. In her speech she thanked “my friend” Johnson. “You got Brexit done. You crushed Jeremy Corbyn. You
Czech folk hero Jan Zizka’s story has been dramatized — and mythologized — in various forms many times, including a mid-1950s celluloid trilogy by Otakar Vavra that was arguably the local industry’s most ambitious production in those somewhat stodgy, pre-New Wave days. Purportedly the Czech Republic’s most expensive feature to date, Petr Jakl’s new “Medieval”
Olivia Wilde isn’t commenting on alleged tensions between her and Florence Pugh, the star of her movie “Don’t Worry Darling.” When asked at a Venice press conference whether Wilde can “clear the air” about the alleged falling out with Pugh, the director said: “Florence is a force. We are so grateful she’s able to make
The Venice Film Festival blocked a journalist from asking a question about Shia LaBeouf at a press conference for Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” on Monday. LaBeouf was set to star in “Don’t Worry Darling,” but he exited the project in the fall of 2020 and was replaced by Harry Styles. The back and forth
At the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Biarritz, Studiocanal revealed further sales on its high-budget sci-fi thriller “Infiniti,” produced by Empreinte Digitale and Federation Entertainment Belgium. The show has already sold to more than 60 territories internationally, including Spain, Portugal, Latin America and Brazil, and has now been acquired by AMC Networks International, SBS (Australia), Now Studio
The Unifrance cocktail event at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, held in partnership with Variety, saw a heady mix of film executives and artists mingle at the sea terrace of the plush Excelsior hotel. Presiding over proceedings was Unifrance executive director Daniela Elstner and artists present included director Romain Gavras and actor Ouassini Embarek,
Coinciding with its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has provided Variety with an exclusive peek at the trailer for Chilean writer-director Fernando Guzzoni’s (“Jesus”) thriller, “Blanquita.” Based on the young witness at the center of the Spinak case, a scandal involving Chilean pedophilia and prostitution networks that rocked the country,
The BBC is rebooting hit reality series “Survivor.” The show last appeared on U.K. screens in 2001 and 2002, when it aired on ITV for two seasons. The new adaptation, which will be produced by Banijay U.K.-owned Remarkable Entertainment, will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. It is the latest in a series of
QUESTION TIME The U.K.’s cross-party DCMS Committee, which scrutinizes the spending, policies and administration of the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, is set to interrogate BBC bosses on impartiality, the license fee and earnings. The committee, which is chaired by Julian Knight, is set to convene on Tuesday, Sept. 6 to question
More than a year since SkyShowtime was first announced, the SVOD is ready to join the streaming fray in Europe, Variety can reveal. The new platform — a joint venture between Comcast and Paramount Global that was first unveiled in August 2021 — will officially launch on Sept. 20 in the Nordic countries of Denmark,
Berlin-based Picture Tree Intl. has added “This Place,” by Canadian debut director V.T. Nayani, to its lineup. The film is to have its world premiere at Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 9 as part of the Discovery and Next Wave Selects sections. The film stars Devery Jacobs, who was the lead actor in “Reservation Dogs”
Netflix has snapped up “The Anthrax Attacks” from BBC Studios, a feature-length doc about the 2001 anthrax threat that paralyzed the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 and sparked one of the largest FBI investigations in history. The doc will star Marvel’s Clark Gregg (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”) in scripted scenes recreating some of the events
Spoken English evolved such useful phrases as “blah blah blah” and “yada yada yada” so that in conversation we don’t have to suffer through numbingly repetitive descriptions of the perfectly obvious. Sadly, no such shorthand exists in the “After” universe, which, now on its fourth instalment, seems dedicated to spinning the already vanishingly wispy romance
Iranian cinema is having a great year despite the many impediments film directors face there, including being jailed. Reflecting this burst of irrepressible cinematic energy, after strong showing of Iranian cinema at Berlin, Cannes and Karlovy Vary, Venice has five films from the country, two of which are in competition. Also, Leila Hatami, star of
MK2 Films has scored key territory deals on Japanese director Koji Fukada’s “Love Life,” which makes its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Set in contemporary Japan, “Love Life” is a character-driven film revolving around Taeko and her husband, Jiro, who are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita. When a
Prolific Indonesian producer KawanKawan Media, which has Makbul Mubarak’s “Autobiography” in competition at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons strand, has a raft of projects on its slate. The company, led by Yulia Evina Bhara, scored a hat trick of wins at Locarno over the last few years with Yosep Anggi Noen’s “The Science of Fictions”
Rukmini Maitra (“Sanak”) will play the lead in Ram Kamal Mukherjee’s Bengali-language film “Binodiini – Ekti Natir Upakhyan” (“Binodiini – Tale of a Theater Artist”). The film will be a biopic of Binodini Dasi, also known as Nati Binodini, who had a flourishing career as an theater actor in 19th century Bengal between the ages
Lionsgate India Studios is producing its first feature film, an as-yet-untitled coming-of-age story. Directed by Milind Dhaimade (2016 London Film Festival selection “You Are My Sunday”), the Hindi-language film is a comedy revolving around a mother and son relationship. It stars Neetu Kapoor (“Jug Jugg Jeeyo”), Sunny Kaushal (“The Forgotten Army – Azaadi Ke Liye”)
The music of “The White Lotus,” “Severance,” “Stranger Things” and “Schmigadoon!” won Creative Arts Emmys Sunday night in a mixture of predicted wins and upsets. The big winner was Chilean-born, Montreal-based composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer who walked off with a pair of statues for his music for HBO’s “The White Lotus,” for main title
(SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Solaricks,” the Season 6 premiere of “Rick and Morty.”) “Rick and Morty” kicked off its sixth season with an even bigger reveal than it dropped in its fifth season finale: Rick Sanchez is not Morty’s grandfather — at least this Rick (C-137) is not this
Art-house title “Return to Dust” was a surprise weekend winner, topping the mainland China box office in its ninth weekend of release. The astonishing feat occurred on an otherwise depressed weekend in which China’s cinema box office dipped to a three-month low. This reflected the summer season winding to an end and anti-COVID measures once
“Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers” won outstanding television movie at the creative arts Emmy’s this Sunday. The film is a surprise win at this year’s Emmys, marking the first time that an animated movie has won the category, which tends to be somewhat confusing. This year, nominees included a variety of TV show reunions billed
South Korea’s cinema box office slipped to its lowest level since mid-May as local film “6/45” took the top spot with just $3.06 million over the weekend in its second week of release. Comedy “6/45” was released a week earlier and scored $2.74 million in its opening weekend, according to data from Kobis, the tracking