Entertainment News Boom

When Chaz Ebert decided to have Black Writers Week on RogerEbert.com, she chose mid-June dates to coincide with the same week as Juneteenth. Upon this decision, she had no idea Juneteenth was to become a federally recognized holiday. “I’m really filled with emotion today because of it being the first federally-recognized Juneteenth Independence Day. The

On Saturday evening, after a week of onsite and virtual screenings, conferences, masterclasses and panels, the Annecy Animation Festival announced the winners of its major prizes, joining the already announced Special Prizes from the night before. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s “Flee” continued its winning form from the previous evening – it won best original music from

French public broadcaster France Televisions confirmed its status as one of Europe’s biggest financiers of animation during the Annecy Festival where it unveiled its wide-ranging slate during a press conference. In 2020, which was marked by the pandemic and two lockdowns, the broadcaster invested €32 million ($38.4 million) in the production of French animated content,

For Don Cheadle and several of the cast members of “No Sudden Move,” the heist movie’s Tribeca Festival premiere was one of the first in-person events they’ve attended since the pandemic began. “I’m looking forward to the movie, it’s gonna be a crazy experience,” Cheadle told Variety at the film’s Friday night premiere. “I haven’t been

French arthouse shingle Autour de Minuit, which produced the Academy Award-winning animated short “Logorama,” has released the first teaser for Nadia Micault’s “Shadows,” awarded as a project with the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at Cartoon Movie last March. Autour de Minuit is joined in co-production by Belgium’s Panique on what will be Micault’s first feature

I’m a critic, but that doesn’t mean I reflexively come at things from a negative angle. I like to accentuate the positive, to see the part of the glass that’s full. So when it was announced, on June 17, that Peter Jackson’s long-awaited, long-delayed Beatles documentary, “The Beatles: Get Back,” would no longer be a

Jacob Tremblay stars as “Luca” in Pixar’s new animated feature. The coming-of-age film follows two young sea creatures and best friends who embark on a summer adventure when they explore the Italian Riviera. Tremblay recently spoke with Variety about recording his part at Pixar’s studios in Emeryville, the message of the film and how director Enrico

If no distributor can ever handpick its audience, once Netflix sent its ribald and irreverent reframing of the U.S.’ foundational myth to the French animation festival, the streamer certainly came awfully close. Produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and directed by “Archer” producer Matt Thompson, the decidedly hard-R “America: The Motion Picture” played to

Lionsgate’s “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is heading toward a $10 million weekend debut at the domestic box office, with an expected gross of $15 million in its first five days in release. The sequel to 2017’s “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” which opened on Wednesday, took in $3 million from 3,331 locations on Friday. This puts the

Ugo Bienvenu (aka Ugo), the popular French illustrator and comics author of “Préférence système,” is partnering up with veteran producer Valerie Schermann (“The Red Turtle,” “Paris, 13th District”) on his animated feature debut “Arco.” An ambitious science-fiction film, “Arco” is being co-developed and co-produced by Remembers, the outfit launched by Bienvenu and Félix de Givry,

The director of the Quirino Awards-nominated “Cranston Academy: Monster Zone,” Mexico’s Leopoldo Aguilar, will direct “Bem & I.” It will be produced by Mexico’s Espíritu Santo Cine and Pēek Paax animation studio, both of whom backed this year’s Quirino best feature winner, “A Costume for Nicholas.” Mexico’s Espíritu Santo is a recently-founded company devoted to

Conceived in 2019 and fielding its first call for projects at last year’s edition, Annecy’s Festival Residency program bore fruit this year, shepherding three projects to pitch sessions at the festival’s MIFA market. They benefitted from nearly six months of professional mentorship and institutional support. “For some time, festival director Mickaël Marin and I wanted

On Friday, the team at BreakThru Films behind “The Peasants” – producer Sean Bobbitt, filmmaker Dorota Kobiela and writer-producer Hugh Welchman – took the stage at an Annecy Work in Progress screening to reveal to the world just what they’ve been working on since turning an experimental hand-painted biopic, 2017’s “Loving Vincent,” into one of

A moody, clenched drama that works its tension so deep you may find your palms marked with the indentations of your fingernails by the end, “Les Nôtres” is the deeply uneasy but compelling second film from director Jeanne Leblanc (“Isla Blanca”). Illuminated by a powerfully self-possessed performance by Émilie Bierre as the 13-year-old whose pregnancy

“She was the air I breathed.” Emmy Award winning animator Joe Mateo takes that heartfelt concept and in “Blush,” his directorial debut, delivers what must rate as one of the most personal yet still resonant films at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival. The inaugural short from Apple Original Films and David Ellison’s Skydance Animation, bowing

Speaking before a rapt audience at the Annecy Film Festival on Friday, director Pierre Földes, producers Tanguy Olivier and Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, and artists from France’s Miyu Productions premiered work in progress footage from Földes’ “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” a 2D animated adaptation of a handful of Haruki Murakami stories that looks to translate the Japanese

Keith Redmon is out after nearly two decades at Anonymous Content, Variety has learned. The manager and producer was a prominent figure at the company, where he was a partner and produced “The Revenant,” a 2015 survival drama that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and grossed $533 million at the global box office. The movie also earned

Steven Soderbergh is a fantastically eclectic filmmaker (you never know where he’s going to go next), but if you look back over his roughly 30 dramatic features it’s telling to consider how many of them are some variety of tricky old-school thriller or film noir powered by suspenseful screw-tightening. I’m talking about the “Ocean’s” trilogy,

Taylour Paige was not familiar with A’Ziah “Zola” King when she auditioned to play her in “Zola,” the film based on King’s October 2015 viral Twitter thread, but she has since corresponded with her on social media. The thread (and film) tells the tale of a crazy weekend during which Zola, an exotic dancer, embarks