Hong Kong auteur Fruit Chan’s upcoming satirical horror anthology film “Coffin Homes” is set to be released in local theaters in August, distributor Edko Films announced on Wednesday. “Coffin Homes” revolves around Hong Kong’s housing problems caused by the lack of space and sky high property prices. “Hong Kong’s property prices are so expensive that
Netflix has launched a Nordic office in Sweden to continue ramping up production of original local content across Europe. The news was unveiled in a blog post penned by Lina Brouneus, the director of co-production and film acquisition at Netflix for the EMEA. Set to bow during the second half of 2021, the office will
President Joe Biden urged Congress on Wednesday to pass trillions in spending on infrastructure and social services, saying that the country faces an urgent test for democracy. Biden invoked the insurrection that shook the Capitol on Jan. 6 at the outset of his speech, calling it “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil
The Game Audio Network Guild announced the full list of its 19th annual G.A.N.G. Awards winners for 30 categories in music, sound design, dialogue, mixing and more. Co-hosted by composers Rachel Robison and Cody Matthew Johnson, the virtual event was streamed live on Twitch.tv for the second year in a row. “The Last of Us
Plans to celebrate PBS’ 50th anniversary last year with programming and events were scuttled by the pandemic. As it turned out, the tough environment of the past 14 months reinforced the value of public TV in more significant ways than any marketing campaign could achieve, as PBS president Paula Kerger tells Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast.
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead if you have not watched Season 5 Episode 9 of “The Masked Singer,” which aired April 28 on Fox. The unmaskings took a week off, as Wednesday’s episode of Fox’s “The Masked Singer” was instead a special one-hour sing-a-long edition that doubled as “The Maskys,” an award celebrating some
Chinese authorities are investigating top Chinese actor Zheng Shuang for tax evasion and a sky-high salary exceeding government-approved limits, the Xinhua news agency said Wednesday. This marks the biggest case of suspected celebrity tax fraud since the downfall of A-lister Fan Bingbing. The probe comes after screenshots emerged allegedly indicating that she was paid $24.6
Sean Hayes is in a car on his way home from a business meeting in Los Angeles. His husband of seven years, Scott Icenogle, is driving. “Do you have sugar?” the former “Will & Grace” star asks Icenolge. “I haven’t eaten.” Icenolge hands him a piece of candy. “I’m the diabetic but Sean is stealing
Kodak Black just pled guilty to first-degree assault and battery in his sexual assault case in South Carolina, and he’s been sentenced to 18 months probation … TMZ has learned. The rapper was originally indicted on a felony charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, but his attorney, Bradford Cohen, tells us Kodak copped a plea
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” series at Amazon has cast Lola Tung, Rachel Blanchard, Jackie Chung, and Christopher Briney, Variety has learned. The series is based on the Jenny Han YA novel of the same name. It is described as a multigenerational drama that hinges on a love triangle between one girl and two brothers, the
Florence Pugh is set to star in “The Wonder,” a big-screen adaptation of the suspenseful novel by Emma Donoghue. Set in the late 1850s, the story follows an English nurse who goes to a tiny village in Ireland to observe what some view as a medical anomaly and others consider a miracle: a young girl
It was an Oscar night to remember, but perhaps not in the way that all of us would have expected. In this special Awards Circuit Podcast Roundtable Mega Edition, Clayton Davis, Jenelle Riley, Jazz Tangcay and Michael Schneider give one last look at the highs, lows, surprises and jaw-dropping moments from the 93rd Oscars. The
For Variety‘s post-Oscars cover story on Chloé Zhao, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, and the impresario behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, sang the “Eternals” director’s praises two days before the Oscar ceremony. He also made fun of the idea of doing an interview about something that hadn’t yet happened: Zhao’s widely anticipated Oscar
The organization Chinese in Entertainment, the non-profit behind the Los Angeles Chinese Film Festival (LACFF), is changing its name to remove the word “Chinese” after internal discussions about the political implications of the term. After some soul-searching, the team decided that the new name Sino Entertainment Association (SEA) would be better aligned with its goal
Endeavor has set a share price of $24, the final step before the media conglomerate goes public on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company had previously announced that it would seek to raise about $511 million at a share price of $23-$24. The company will be listed on the exchange under the
While multiple outlets, including Variety, reported last April that Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino was foregoing his $3 million salary for all of 2020 due to the pandemic and its devastating effect on the live-entertainment industry and the company, according to SEC filings, he did so for less than two months. His salary was reinstated
“Titans” has cast Vincent Kartheiser as Jonathan Crane, a.k.a Scarecrow, for the upcoming Season 3 on HBO Max. In the show, Crane is an inmate at Arkham Asylum who used to terrorize Gotham City using toxins to exploit his enemies’ phobias. The DC Comics character has appeared a number of times onscreen, including the Fox
Inside a makeshift cafe set at Hong Kong’s luxurious Rosewood Hotel, local actor-producer Josie Ho sits across from British actor Julian Sands. Both are giving director Mike Figgis their full attention as he explains the scene that they are going to film. What was said could not be heard from afar, despite the set being
Over the course of the past century, Monsanto discovered a way to farm the American farmer by developing, patenting and supplying genetically modified seeds. Instead of getting its hands dirty in the fields, the company cultivates its yield directly from the land workers, who have virtually no choice but to buy the agrochemical company’s seeds.
When John Mayer took the moderator’s mantle on a Clubhouse talk on Tuesday night (April 27), one got the sense that the seven-time Grammy-winning musician was trying out material. Not shtick, per se, as the charismatic Mayer has no problem holding down a conversation on all manner of topics without prior preparation, but rather, Mayer
Shares of Facebook surged in after-market trading Wednesday, spiking more than 5% after the social networking giant recorded a major earnings and revenue beat for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, a period marked by strong advertising revenue growth and a 10% rise in monthly active users. On the earnings call that followed, Facebook CEO
“Shotgun Wedding,” a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel, will arrive on the big screen next summer. The Lionsgate film has been scheduled to release on June 29, 2022. In “Shotgun Wedding,” Darcy (Lopez) and Tom (Duhamel) gather their families for a destination wedding. But as the couple begins to get cold feet,
Anita Lane, an Australian singer-songwriter known for collaborating with Nick Cave and the Birthday Party as well as her own recordings, has died at 62. Cave paid tribute on social media, tweeting, “From her to eternity” — a perhaps inevitable eulogy, given that the song that went by that title was her most famous co-write
Apple smashed Wall Street expectations for the first three months of 2021, reporting its highest-ever revenue for a March quarter and biggest-ever quarterly haul for the Services business. The company posted revenue of $89.6 billion, up 54% on a surge of iPhone sales, for the quarter ended March 27. Net income more than doubled (up
Shares of Facebook surged in after-market trading Wednesday, spiking more than 5% after the social networking giant recorded a major earnings and revenue beat for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, a period marked by strong advertising revenue growth and a 10% rise in monthly active users. Facebook logged diluted per-share earnings of $3.30 on
For much of his tenure within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character of James Buchanan Barnes — a.k.a. Bucky — has been something of a queer icon. As played by Sebastian Stan, Bucky always maintained a powerful emotional bond with his best friend Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a.k.a. Captain America, which only heightened when Steve risked
Before her notoriety as one of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New York City,” Bethenny Frankel emerged from a very different style of reality TV. In 2005, she competed on “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart,” a show designed to burnish Stewart’s image just after her release from federal prison, and, after having done that, to choose for
Swedish documentary specialist Momento Film, the company behind “Tiny Tim: King for a Day” and CPH:Forum work in progress “Stories from the Debris,” is ramping up its narrative feature film output. A decade after he founded his outfit, helmer/producer David Herdies has propelled Momento Film among Sweden’s top creators of cutting-edge documentaries and shorts. Award-winning
NBC’s “Tonight Show” will try a new way to break out of TV’s late-night pack. The Jimmy Fallon-led program is launching a new six-episode miniseries that chronicles how the show maneuvered during the coronavirus pandemic, moving to “at home” broadcasts that featured the host and his family, and its eventual return to NBC’s TV studios
Fox has ordered the dramedy “The Big Leap” to series for the 2021-2022 broadcast season. The one-hour show was originally ordered to pilot last year, but production was shutdown by the pandemic. Inspired by the UK docuseries “Big Ballet,” the show is about a group of diverse, down-on-their-luck characters attempting to change their lives by