Entertainment News Boom

The Walt Disney Co. has struck a long-term deal with historic Pinewood Studios outside London to take nearly all its stages, backlots and other production accommodation. The arrangement is expected to begin in 2020. “It’s wonderful to have Disney here at Pinewood,” Paul Golding, chairman of the Pinewood Group Ltd., said in a statement. “They’ve

Cologne-based Augenschein Filmproduktion, producer of “7500,” which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is moving increasingly into English-language production while also branching out as a financing partner for international projects. In a move reflecting those changes, the company has hired industry vet Rusta Mizani, currently head of business affairs at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, as

Director Minhal Baig’s debut feature, coming-of-age story “Hala,” took Sundance by storm and became one of the first films ever acquired by tech giant Apple.  On the ground in Toronto, Baig spoke with Variety about showing the film, about the identity struggles of a Muslim teen girl, to diverse audiences around the world. Also serving as

The Russo Brothers are using the clout they earned from directing “Avengers: Endgame” and several other Marvel movies to get some interesting projects off the ground. Take “Mosul,” a jittery, intense thriller about an elite group of Iraqi soldiers facing off against ISIS in a bombed-out city. There’s little about the film, which relies on

“Women Make Film” has scored a clean sweep of deals for North America, with buyers taking theatrical, streaming and TV rights to Mark Cousins’ 14-hour opus about female filmmakers. Turner Classic Movies has snagged linear TV, the Criterion Collection has taken the first streaming window and Cohen Media has taken theatrical and ancillary rights to

Forty-two film critics from 13 Arab countries have joined the jury for the Arab Critics’ Awards for European Films, with the award ceremony to be held at the Cairo Intl. Film Festival in November. The jury will select the best European film from entries submitted by national film bodies from across Europe. The awards have

Caitlin Moran’s career kicked off like a power chord. At 17, the rock critic prodigy who’d grown up broke in a Wolverhampton council flat with four brothers and her parents’ illegal puppy mill was being flown to America for an all-night slumber party with Courtney Love. Two weeks after her article ran, Kurt Cobain killed

September 7, 2019 10:55PM PT An audience-pleasing Icelandic drama that is the yin to “Rams'” yang. After the death of her dairy farmer husband, a middle-aged woman courageously sacrifices her livelihood to speak out against the corruption and injustice at work in her community in the audience-pleasing, humanist drama “The County.” Like writer-director Grímur Hákonarson’s

September 7, 2019 10:15PM PT In Sebastian Borensztein’s crowd-pleasing heist comedy, rural Argentinians conspire to steal back from the elites who robbed them. “We’re not thieves,” insists the ringleader of a heist in “Heroic Losers,” a South American crowd-pleaser about a rural collective seeking justice against big-city banking elites. He may be wrong in the

September 7, 2019 9:59PM PT A “time travel pill” produces an epidemic of very bad trips in this disappointingly weak fantasy drama from the makers of last year’s impressive “The Endless.” Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been making intriguing, resourceful and idea-based (rather than action-driven) genre films together since “Resolution” in 2012. Last year’s

Now here’s a mystery worth solving: Why doesn’t Hollywood give us more ridiculously complicated, gratuitously eccentric whodunits? You know, the kind of all-star affairs where a colorful assortment of highly suspicious characters gather in a remote manor, or at an old castle, or on the Orient Express, in order to be confronted by a corpse

Sexuality is a weapon in “Hustlers,” empowering the women who wield it in this seductive true-crime saga, which does for a gang of New Yawk bad girls what “Goodfellas” did for the mob — which is to say, it brings Champagne-rush sex appeal and neon-lit style to a wild case in which a crew of

Here’s a confession: Although Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors, and I got caught up in the skewed homespun mystique of Mister Rogers thanks to last year’s sublime documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” when it was announced that Hanks would play the cardigan-sweatered children’s TV legend in a new dramatic feature, I

In a passionately divided democracy, the hate-filled words of politicians, cultural influencers and the right-wing media incite an extreme nationalist to commit murder. Although this plot summary sounds as if could be ripped from recent U.S. headlines, “Incitement” is actually a provocative drama from Israeli helmer Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”), which looks at what

September 7, 2019 7:31PM PT David Raboy’s debut has style to spare, but holds the viewer at a frustrating distance. First-time feature director-writer-editor David Raboy certainly knows how to conjure up an atmosphere. Expanding his own short of the same title, Raboy’s elliptical psychological thriller “The Giant” gives us the story of a small Southern

September 7, 2019 5:57PM PT DreamWorks attempts to recapture the magic of the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ franchise with a new mythical beast — this one covered in fur. After descending Mt. Everest in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary received worldwide acclaim as the first westerner to reach the top — and also snickers for

September 7, 2019 3:45PM PT Robert Pattinson is going from vampire to a bat, and Kristen Stewart still has his back. While promoting her upcoming movie “Seberg” at the Toronto International Film Festival, Stewart showed some love for her “Twilight” co-star’s new Batman role. “I feel like he’s the only guy that could play that

With only four features under his belt, Ciro Guerra has already established himself as one of Colombia’s most important filmmakers and earned the country’s first-ever Oscar nod for 2015’s “Embrace of the Serpent.” Guerra’s latest feature, and the first in English, is the cinematic adaptation of the same-named J.M. Coetzee novel “Waiting for Barbarians,” which

Toronto-based sales agent Syndicado Film Sales has acquired world rights to “Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer,” director Andrey A. Tarkovsky’s documentary about his father which world premiered in the Venice Classics section of the 76th Venice Film Festival. The film examines the life and work of the great Russian filmmaker, who left behind what is

Documentarian Thomas Balmès was handed a gift when he made “Happiness.” That 2013 documentary, about the rapid development of Bhutan seen through the eyes of an 8-year-old monk, begat the idea for a followup feature in the form of “Sing Me A Song.” This sequel spotlights that same child 10 years later, now a young

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” says William Faulkner. It’s an idea that gets a vigorous workout in Laotian director Mattie Do’s third feature, “The Long Walk.” The followup to her acclaimed 2016 horror entry “Dearest Sister” finds Laos’ first and only female film director taking a risky leap forward to tell

Director Roy Andersson, who has won Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion for best director, delivered his latest film, “About Endlessness,” much quicker than usual. The typically deliberate Swedish filmmaker is known for taking long breaks between projects – including one 25-year stretch he spent directing commercials. Since his 2000 comeback, “Songs from the Second Floor,”