Backup Systems, the owner of the cloud-based app MovieChainer, has acquired a strategic stake in Moonday, the new AI-powered social and professional network dedicated to the film and TV industry. MovieChainer launched five years ago and allows right-holders to model and track the legal and financial structure of their film projects. MovieChainer and Moonday will
Journalists are the heroes in “The French Dispatch,” so expect film critics to be a little bit biased in their embrace of Wes Anderson’s latest. It flatters the field, after all, just not in the way that Pulitzer-centric mega-scoop sagas “All the President’s Men” or “Spotlight” may have done before. Anderson is more of a
CAA has signed three-time Emmy Award-winning writer, director, editor and producer, Randy Wilkins, best known for his work on ESPN Films’ “30 for 30.” Up next, Wilkins will direct “The Captain,” a multi-episode docuseries for ESPN Films focused on New York Yankees icon Derek Jeter. The series is set to debut in 2022 and will
Lina El Arabi, the emerging French actor of the Cesar-nominated “A Wedding,” is set to headline “The Malediction” (“Leana”), a horror-thriller which will mark the feature debut of Abel Danan. The film is being produced by Leo Maidenberg, whose credits include “Sisters in Arms” and “The Bunker Game.” Xavier Gens, the producer of Mounia Meddour’s
Chile’s Chilemonos International Animation Festival, the country’s largest event dedicated to celebrating its rapidly expanding animation scene, kicked off its second entirely online edition last week, and will run through July 25. 2021 is a milestone year for the festival, marking a decade since its inaugural edition. Since then, the festival has grown exponentially and
Simón Mesa Soto’s “Amparo,” which world premiered Monday in Cannes’ Critics’ Week, is both the portrait of its complex protagonist of the same name and a frightening thriller that over two days follows a desperate mother trying to save her son from forced military service. Mesa Soto, winner of the Palme d’Or for short film
A panel of top animation professionals gathered in Cannes has underlined how festivals can help to promote a new generation of socially engaged animation films. “It is one of the main launching pads for this very specific kind of film, which needs that kind of exposure. We have such strong industries in Europe, especially in
As a cross-section of documentary sales exes winged their way towards the Palais for their first physical Cannes in two years, it wasn’t just the COVID-19 spit tests that marked out the experience as different – the marketplace has also changed, the pandemic exacerbating several trends. For starters, in terms of investment in new feature-length
The key to editing and scoring “Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes,” based on Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book of the same name, was honoring the story at heart and honing in on the key moment that drove each half-hour episode. The six-episode HBO series collects unseen footage, archive interviews and insight into Farrow’s reporting process
After a year-plus as one of the most active livestream performers in the music business, Phoebe Bridgers is finally getting to do a proper tour behind her Grammy-nominated “Punisher” album. Using an awesome faux-heavy metal font, complete with flames, for the tour poster below, the initial brace of dates span September and October and include
After a two-year hiatus, the Stagecoach Music Festival will be back taking its usual post-Coachella slot in Indio next April, with Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood and Thomas Rhett slated as the nightly headliners for the country music weekend. The April 29-May 1 fest in the California desert (whose tickets can be purchased here) has also
CBS looked inside its own neighborhood to find this year’s Emmy host: Cedric the Entertainer will take the stage when the 73rd Primetime Emmys airs on Sept. 19. Cedric the Entertainer stars in the Eye network comedy “The Neighborhood,” which airs Mondays (and likely returns the night after the Emmys, kicking off the entire fall
Jamie McCarthyGetty Images The fashion industry let out a collective gasp this morning in response to two words flooding social media timelines: Pheobe Philo. After a three-year hiatus—following her departure from Celine in 2017—Philo is returning to fashion. The former creative director of Celine and Chloe is branching out to launch her own namesake label
Veteran Hollywood attorney Mathew S. Rosengart is in discussions with Britney Spears about representing her in her conservatorship battle, and plans to attend a hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday, according to reports in the New York Times and TMZ over the weekend. Spears has spoken out bitterly against the conservatorship in recent weeks, which
Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein — first his coverage in The New Yorker in 2017, then his metacoverage of what it took to get that story in his 2019 book “Catch and Kill” — helped to crystallize and define a moment in American cultural life. With the new documentary series “Catch and Kill: The
The loony-tunes world of digital collectibles known as NFTs is now getting actual Looney Tunes. Warner Bros., in the biggest drop of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) for a film to date, is releasing collection of 91,000 limited-edition NFTs featuring characters from “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” including Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Porky Pig — and the pic’s
In 2020, superhero movies were far from a box office hero. Granted, in a pandemic, not much could be counted on to save the day. Still, all three comic book adaptations that debuted that year — Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Birds of Prey” before the pandemic, and 20th Century’s “The New Mutants” and Warner
Audible has landed another big Hollywood talent deal: The Amazon-owned premium audio service announced a multi-project development and first-look deal with Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons through their Jaywalker Pictures banner. Under the pact, Dern, an award-winning producer, actor and activist, and producing partner Lemons are set to executive produce audio projects exclusively for Audible.
Apple has signed a first-look deal with AR Content, the production company led by Academy Award-nominated producer and director Alexander Rodnyansky (“Beanpole,” “Leviathan,” “Loveless”), Variety can reveal. The deal is for a slate of both Russian-language and multilingual shows for Apple TV Plus, set both inside and outside Russia, and creatively led by both Russian
Netflix announced that the upcoming thriller series “Hit & Run” will premiere on Aug. 6. The nine-episode series follows tour guide Segev Azulai (Lior Raz) living a content life in Tel Aviv with his young daughter (Neta Orbach) and his new American wife Danielle (Kaelen Ohm). When Danielle is killed in a mysterious hit-and-run on
A whole bunch of bull is coming exclusively to ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV. Pluto TV will become the exclusive home of Professional Bull Riders’s RidePass, with PBR changing RidePass from a subscription-video service to an ad-supported digital network. The unusual deal also will make RidePass the first dedicated live sports channel on Pluto TV. Beginning July
“Spencer,” Pablo Larraín’s high-anticipated drama starring Kristen Stewart as Lady Diana, will world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, Variety has learned. Written by “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight, the film centers on a weekend in the early 1990s when Diana decided to separate from Prince Charles amid rumours of affairs. The late
The Playmaker Munich has released the first teaser for upcoming sci-fi movie “Rubikon,” which is one of seven international genre projects selected for this year’s Frontières Buyers Showcase, which is running during the Cannes Film Festival. “Rubikon,” directed by Magdalena Lauritsch and written by Jessica Lind and Lauritsch, is in post-production. Johannes Mücke, a longtime
On Monday, Chinese anti-trust regulators were reported to have penalized U.S.-listed Tencent Music Entertainment for its build-up of a dominant position in online music. Among the penalties are fines for the company’s failure to properly report the acquisition of two smaller operations in 2016, and a commitment to end exclusive deals with music labels. Reuters
RATINGS Sunday night’s Euro 2020 final, in which Italy beat England on penalties, was the U.K.’s most-watched TV event in over 20 years with a peak viewing audience of 30.95 million viewers and an average audience of 29.85 million. The game was broadcast on both the BBC One and ITV, and the combined numbers are
Musical biopic “Rebellion” has wrapped after a four-week shoot in Bogota, Colombia, making it one of the few pics to have filmed in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic breakout in 2020. The film about Afro-Colombian salsa icon Joe Arroyo is directed by Jose Luis Rugeles, whose previous drama “Alias María,” about a pregnant 13-year-old
The Pop Up Film Residency, a mentorship program founded by former TorinoFilmLab artistic director Matthieu Darras and Slovak producer Juraj Krasnohorsky, will be the exclusive and creative partner of Munich Film Up!, a new initiative by Munich’s University of Film and Television in partnership with the Munich Intl. Festival of Film Schools and the Munich
Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film-TV market, is adding a video games forum, Las Maquinitas, to its powerful arthouse, genre and animation focuses. Launching at this year’s Ventana Sur, which runs Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 onsite in Buenos Aires, the video game focus looks set to split two ways, Bernardo Bergeret, Ventana Sur co-executive
Sony Music Publishing has struck a worldwide deal to administer the works of the Australian music company Alberts, which owns the complete song catalogs of AC/DC and the songwriting and producing team Vanda, Young and Wright. The latter team included George Young, the older brother of AC/DC founders Malcolm and Angus Young, and who, with
Paris-based Mediawan Rights has taken international rights to the animated documentary feature “Flavors of Iraq” from director Léonard Cohen. “Flavors of Iraq” is a co-production between France’s animation-focused Miyu Productions (Pierre Földes’ “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”) and documentary-specialized Nova Production (Marie Linton’s “Prison life: Justice in Japan”). Culture channel Arte France is also on board