Entertainment News Boom

ITsART, an innovative streaming platform dubbed the ‘Netflix of Italian Culture,’ was rolled out across 26 European countries on Tuesday, with plans to expand into the U.S. and China next year. Commissioned by Italy’s culture ministry, ITsART is an ad-supported and transactional-VOD service touted as the first streamer of its kind globally. It currently provides

The U.K.’s Network Distributing has sealed a deal with iconic British horror label Hammer Films to form Hammer Studios Ltd. Network’s managing director Tim Beddows and financial director Jonathan Lack and Hammer’s CEO Simon Oakes will head the new company. The new entity will manage and control Hammer’s interests in its vast library of content

The recent indie drama “Freeland” is about a fictive longtime Northern California pot grower whose life only becomes more complicated — and her business less viable — when the state legalizes the hitherto-criminalized industry. New documentary “Lady Buds” features several of that character’s real-world equivalents, women whose entrepreneurial (as well as agricultural) skills are transitioning

Dreaming of the sea takes on weightier significance when the dreamer lives in a landlocked country. It’s not just an idle fantasy of beach holidays and salt-rimmed cocktails — though Vera (Teuta Ajdini Jegeni) would like that too — but as Kaltrina Krasniqi’s taut, sorrowful narrative feature debut “Vera Dreams of the Sea” proves, the

At the halfway mark, Aly Muritiba’s “Deserto Particular” clicks into high gear. There’s a change of scenery, yes; we move from the chilly South of Brazil to its arid Northeast. And there’s a change in point of view; we leave our protagonist behind and follow, instead, the person he was so intent on tracking down.

Cinema is a vehicle for investigating historical scars in “Isaac,” a starkly beautiful drama about a filmmaker who returns to his native Lithuania in 1964 to make a movie about a WWII slaughter, and becomes embroiled alongside his schoolmate in totalitarian trouble. Adapted from a short story by Antanas Skema, director Jurgis Matulevicius’ feature debut

The first fiction film to be set amongst the working-class Black Saudi community of Riyadh, this social issues drama, released by Netflix and chosen as the Kingdom’s international feature submission, is more fascinating for the cultural differences it reveals than any felicities of filmmaking. Taking place at the end of the 1990s, the rather ominously

Popular genre franchises never truly die; they’re always primed to rise from the grave in mutated modernized forms. Thus, following six feature films headlined by Milla Jovovich (and often spearheaded by director Paul W.S. Anderson), Capcom’s zombie video games get new big-screen life with “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” a reboot that does away

Jan. 7, 2022, is a date looked forward to with feverish anticipation by both the Indian filmgoing public and the subcontinent’s film industry at large. It is the scheduled release date for blockbuster “RRR.” “RRR” will be the first project for director S.S. Rajamouli after the “Baahubali” films (2015 and 2017), which together grossed a

The story of Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov is coming to screen as a feature documentary, Variety has learned exclusively. Conde Nast Entertainment has brokered a deal for a 2021 profile of Molchanov, which appeared in the pages of GQ, to be adapted into a film from Boardwalk Pictures and production company ClubHaus. Boardwalk is behind

“House of Gucci” has a transfixing backstabbing allure. It may be a drama about a crazy rich Euro chic Old World fashion dynasty, with a cast dominated by American actors scheming and emoting in gaudy Italian accents, but that doesn’t mean it’s some operatic piece of high camp. Based on the trailer, a lot of

Jewish Story Partners, the non-profit film fund that launched six months ago, announced its second round of grant recipients on Monday. The winners came after an open submissions call that saw a 226% increase in participation from the first round. An additional $280,000 has been awarded this year, bringing JSP’s 2021 spend to $500,000 as

Over the weekend, “No Time to Die” eclipsed $730 million in global ticket sales, making the James Bond sequel both the year’s highest-grossing Hollywood film and the top performing film at the box office since COVID-19 appeared on the scene and nearly shut down the movie business. The action-packed spy spectacle, which endured several coronavirus-related

The life and career of legendary cyclist Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor will receive the biopic treatment with the feature drama “Black Cyclone,” helmed by Canadian filmmaker Clement Virgo. The film depicts the life story of the pioneering bicycle racer, best known to the world as “Major” Taylor. At the turn of the 20th century, Taylor

Two of the most acclaimed climbing films of the year, Max Lowe’s “Torn” and The Alpinist, from Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, have taken big awards at this year’s Kendal Mountain Film Festival, held in the U.K.’s Lake District. Its hybrid edition proved once more a dazzling showcase of mountain and sports films whose subjects,

Fork Films, a New York production company co-founded by Abigail Disney, has announced 11 grantees for its 2021 round of documentary funding. Topics explored in the slate of films include social justice, the impact of the pandemic on historically marginalized communities, climate gentrification and maternal mortality.  The company has funded over 100 projects over 14 years,

Ridley Scott doesn’t have “one regret” about his direction or Disney’s promotion of his 2021 historical drama “The Last Duel” — the box office failure is the fault of young people and their cellphones, he says. The director, known for commercially and critically successful films such as “Alien,” “Thelma & Louise” and “The Martian,” appeared