California lawmakers are poised to vote on Assembly Bill 5, which is largely aimed at “gig economy” jobs such as ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft and is designed to make it more difficult for such companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. But the bill, scheduled to become law on Sept.
Thomas “Tom” Zickler, one of Germany’s most successful producers, died Monday following a short illness. He was 55. Zickler worked with actor-director Til Schweiger on some of Germany’s most successful films of the past two decades. Overseeing production at Barefoot Films and Mr. Brown Entertainment, companies he ran with Schweiger, Zickler produced such hits as
Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man” is to get a theatrical release in China in mid-October, producer Fosun Pictures has confirmed. The film will release Oct. 18. That is a week after its outing in North America, and about two weeks after its commercial debuts in France and Germany. Nevertheless, the date is a prime spot, as
Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s “Una Ventana al Mar” (Window to the Sea), a drama starring Emma Suárez which will have its world premiere at the EiTB Gala held during the San Sebastian Intl. Film Festival. Heretic Outreach is handling world sales. Filmax will distribute the film in Spain.
September 4, 2019 2:00AM PT Tom Waller’s “The Cave,” the first feature film about the miraculous rescue of a soccer team from waterlogged caves in Thailand, will have its world premiere next month at the Busan International Film festival. The film has confirmed other festival dates, including a North American premiere at the Vancouver festival
The Zurich Film Festival has unveiled a raft of gala screenings, with “Joker” among the lineup after its rousing premiere at Venice. “Judy” about a late-career Judy Garland will also have its premiere in German-speaking countries at Zurich, and Ron Howard’s feature doc “Pavarotti” will have its local premiere at a gala screening attended by
U.K. screen agency Film London has signed a memorandum of understanding with Italy’s Apulia and Sardinia film commissions, forging closer ties with the regions that have hosted, respectively, the latest “Bond” movie and George Clooney’s “Catch 22” TV show. While not legally binding, the agreements signed at the Venice Film Festival will pave the way
Just over two weeks before its Sept. 20 global launch, Netflix has dropped its first full franchise trailer of “Criminal,” a 12-episode, four-part police interrogation anthology which reworks the procedural format taking it to a new European level, while focusing on what episodic drama is often held to disdain: Character and actors’ performance. Netflix has
MADRID — Barcelona-based Filmax has acquired world sales rights to “La Innocencia” (“The Innocence”), an uncompromising rites of passage feature which has been sparking good buzz over the summer off sneak previews in Spain. An integrated film-TV production-distribution-sales operation, Filmax will also handle the film’s Spanish distribution. Filmax’s Ivan Díaz will introduce “The Innocence” to
Spain’s Latido Films has snagged worldwide sales rights – with the exception of Peru, Chile and Argentina – to Peruvian filmmaker Maria Paz Gonzalez’s feature debut, “Lina de Lima.” The dramedy’s trailer is launching exclusively in Variety ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto Festival Discovery sidebar. “Following our tradition of accompanying new talents
As a Tibetan director dedicated to illuminating, with love and insight, the everyday culture of his contested homeland, navigating China’s labyrinthine and often-changing filmmaking approval processes cannot be an easy task. And yet, over the course of now seven films, despite or possibly because of those restrictions, Pema Tseden has amassed the most quietly inspiring
September 3, 2019 10:31PM PT “The Horse Thieves, Roads of Time,” co-directed by Kazakhstan’s Yerlan Nurmukhambetov and Japan’s Lisa Takeba, has been set as the opening film of next month’s Busan International Film Festival. “Although Kazakhstan films are not very familiar [to our audiences], the country has produced masterworks for the past five years,” said
Several protests have been filed over the re-election of Gabrielle Carteris to the SAG-AFTRA presidency last week. Carteris won the contest handily to remain as top elected officer of the performers union with 13,537 votes, or 44% of ballots cast, to 10,682 for Matthew Modine and 5,048 for Jane Austin, 1,096 for Queen Alljahye Searles
September 3, 2019 9:08PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv, Twentieth Century Fox claims the top spot in spending with “Ad Astra.” Ads placed for the sci-fi film had an estimated media value of $4.71 million through Sunday for
It would take more explaining than the film merits to articulate why deep-fried rabbit ears are briefly a plot point in “Guest of Honour,” but so they are: The camera grazes over a platter of the oval-shaped delicacies, looking invitingly golden-crumbed and crunchy, and for a second any reservations you might have about the unusual
In today’s film news roundup, Katheryn Winnick and Juan Pablo Raba get cast, Bruce Springsteen’s documentary gets a release; Kinepolis buys a Michigan movie chain; and Beyond Fest sets its lineup. CASTINGS “Vikings” actress Katheryn Winnick and Juan Pablo Raba (“Narcos”) have joined Liam Neeson in the action-thriller “The Minutemen.” The movie will begin shooting
September 3, 2019 5:17PM PT Ryan Murphy continues to add to his Netflix development slate. The prolific TV creator and producer has revealed that he has a multitude of projects in the works at the streaming giant beyond those that have already been announced. Murphy told Time that he has projects in the works that
The U.K.’s Secret Cinema, which puts on immersive cinema experiences, is to launch its first show in China, the world’s second-biggest film market. The British events company has partnered with SMG Live to debut “Secret Cinema Presents ‘Casino Royale’” in Shanghai in November. The production, which revolves around the film that rebooted the James Bond
September 3, 2019 3:47PM PT In today’s roundup, HBO’s “Watchmen” gets a premiere date and Netflix has ordered the animated musical series “Centaurworld.” DATES HBO‘s “Watchmen” will premiere on Sunday, Oct. 20. The series will follow an original story based on the world of the graphic novel of the same name. Nicole Kassell directs the
September 3, 2019 3:24PM PT Haley Smith, who appeared as a contestant on “American Idol” in Season 11, died in a motorcycle accident in Maine this weekend, police confirmed to Variety. She was 26. Millinocket police responded to the single-vehicle accident at 2 a.m. on Saturday. Smith was pronounced dead at the scene. “It would appear
September 3, 2019 3:22PM PT A coalition of State Attorneys General is getting ready to announce a massive antitrust investigation into Google’s business practices, according to a Washington Post report. The probe is being joined by more than half of the country’s State Attorneys, and may get announced as early as next Monday. It’s still
We’ve seen how this movie plays out. Festival audiences lose their mind for, say, an uplifting drama or a biting satire. Their rapturous response sends studios scrambling for their wallets. Cue an all-night bidding war, and to the victor goes … an indie movie with iffy commercial prospects. From “Late Night” to “Blinded by the
Exclusive Details Getty R. Kelly is finally out of solitary confinement and will join general population, even though prosecutors called BS on his isolation woes. The singer’s attorney, Steven Greenberg, tells TMZ R. Kelly was moved Tuesday … and was only kept in solitary by prison officials as a form of punishment. Greenberg says Kelly
September 3, 2019 2:50PM PT SAG-AFTRA is teaming up with SeeHer, the Association of National Advertisers’ campaign for gender equality in advertising and media, to further more nuanced depictions of women on screen. “Equity and inclusion are core values of SAG-AFTRA, and we are thrilled to partner with SeeHer to bring about greater gender equality
Jordan Pruitt, a contestant on the third season of “The Voice,” has filed a lawsuit accusing her former manager, Keith Thomas, of sexually abusing her beginning when she was 14 years old. Pruitt also sued her former record label, Hollywood Records, and its parent company, the Walt Disney Co., alleging that they had failed to
September 3, 2019 2:33PM PT R. Kelly has been moved out of solitary confinement and into the general prison population, his attorney Steven Greenberg said on Tuesday. The singer has been held since early July at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. He had previously been held in the Special Housing Unit, a section for
YouTube said its hate-speech crackdown resulted in a spike in videos and channels purged during the second quarter of 2019 — although critics say hateful content continues to be a problem on the video platform. In June, the Google-owned video giant announced an update to its hate-speech policy that banned videos “alleging that a group
Just in time to close out the season, Megan Thee Stallion has dropped the video for one of the biggest songs of the summer, “Hot Girl Summer.” It’s everything you’d expect, complete with cameos from featured guests Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla $ign, tight clothes, booty, booze, a mansion in the hills and a poolside
Christoph Waltz is set to star opposite Liam Hemsworth in an untitled action-thriller series which is in the works at Quibi. Waltz is the latest name to join the Jeffrey Katzenberg-founded short form content company. The series centers around Dodge Maynard (Hemsworth) who, desperate to take care of his pregnant wife before a terminal illness
Young Saudi Arabian writer-director Shahad Ameen is making a splash in Venice with her debut feature “Scales,” a feminist fable that draws on Arabic folklore about a young woman named Hayat who rebels against the tradition in her fishing village of sacrificing female children to monstrous mermaids lurking in the sea. She spoke to Variety