September 24, 2018 7:02AM PT Cuba Gooding Jr. has lined up financing for his second directorial effort, Variety has learned. Taiwan’s Wudi Pictures will fully back the as-yet untitled film, marking its second collaborative project with the Oscar-winning actor. Maxx Tsai, Wudi’s CEO, will produce the picture and Gooding will star in the film. The
September 24, 2018 7:00AM PT Altered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Yann Gonzalez’s second feature film “Knife+Heart,” starring Vanessa Paradis. The drama debuted in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival and makes its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest this week. Paradis portrays a ’70s gay porn producer whose productions are stalked
Check out the official Bumblebee trailer starring Hailee Steinfeld! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Buy Tickets to Bumblebee: https://www.fandango.com/bumblebee-208500/movie-overview?cmp=MCYT_YouTube_Desc US Release Date: December 21, 2018 Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Martin Short Directed By: Travis Knight Synopsis: On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a
AT&T has long been one of Madison Avenue’s biggest spenders, throwing its commercials across TV, newspapers and the Internet. Now it’s about to become one of its biggest sellers, thanks to its recent $85.4 billion buy of Time Warner. Starting Monday night, the telecommunications giant will go into sales mode. AT&T will kick off a
Michael Kors Holdings Ltd is on a mission to strengthen its portfolio of luxury brands and Versace may be the newest addition to the company, according to a Bloomberg report. On the heels of Versace’s Spring 2019 runway show, rumors began to mount early Monday morning, September 24, that Michael Kors is set to acquire
September 24, 2018 6:26AM PT MUBI has taken the U.K. rights to David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake,” which played in Cannes this year. The streaming service will release the film theatrically. Starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough, “Under the Silver Lake” follows Sam (Garfield), a disenchanted 33-year-old who discovers a mysterious woman, Sarah
CNN’s shows regularly feature people who like to defend the administration of President Donald Trump. Keeping their seats filled is becoming a tougher task. Jason Miller had become a steady presence on CNN, appearing on programs like “Erin Burnett OutFront” to defend White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, among other Trump officials. But Miller,
As the 50th anniversary approaches of the release of the Beatles’ iconic self-titled ninth studio album, known as “The White Album,” the group announced on Monday that on Nov. 9 it will release “a suite of lavishly presented packages.” The album’s 30 tracks are newly mixed by producer Giles Martin, son of original album producer George
Streaming device maker Roku unveiled its fall device lineup Monday, which includes two new streaming devices as well as the company’s previously-announced smart speakers. The common thread for all those announcements is an attempt to introduce better audio and video, thanks to 4K streaming and Hi-Fi sound. “Roku believes that this is gonna be a
September 24, 2018 6:00AM PT Is Jon M. Chu directing the sequel and the possible third movie in the “Crazy Rich Asians” franchise? While he is reportedly on board, Chu tells Variety it’s not official yet. “I’m down to do the next two movies. We’ve been talking a lot about it, but we still have
RockYou Media has acquired millennial parenting website Mom.me from Whalerock Industries, as it continues to roll up digital-media properties. The latest purchase by RockYou follows its acquisitions this year of feel-good-focused LittleThings and CafeMedia’s CafeMom, MamasLatinas, Revelist and BabyNameWizard. With the addition of Mom.me, the company will likely rank fifth in comScore’s Family and Parenting
SiriusXM will acquire Pandora in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.5 billion, the companies announced Monday. According to the announcement, the deal will create the world’s largest audio-entertainment company, with more than $7 billion in projected revenue in 2018. It also moves SiriusXM and its parent company, Liberty Media, aggressively into the streaming market. The
The BBC drama “Bodyguard” bowed out on a high Sunday with 11 million viewers at its peak on BBC One, for a whopping 47.9% audience share. The six-part series, which Netflix is about to launch globally, is Britain’s most popular drama since “Downton Abbey.” Starring Richard Madden (“Game of Thrones”) and Keeley Hawes (“The Durrells”), “Bodyguard” went out
September 24, 2018 2:03AM PT Hannes Baumgartner makes a coldly auspicious debut with this fact-based study of a champion athlete turned serial assaulter of women. In an era of reckoning that is rapidly running out of new ways to describe the evil men do, “toxic masculinity” has become all too familiar a buzz term. But
September 24, 2018 1:57AM PT “Operation Red Sea,” the most successful film of the year at the mainland Chinese box office, has been selected by Hong Kong as its contender in the foreign-language Oscars category. The selection was made by the Federation of Motion Film Producers of Hong and announced on Monday. A violent propaganda
SAN SEBASTIAN — Spain’s San Sebastian Festival signed a pledge on gender parity Sunday, following in the footsteps of other major festivals in Europe such as Cannes, Locarno, Sarajevo and Venice. San Sebastian Festival director José Luis Rebordinos made the commitment in the presence of Spanish deputy prime minister Carmen Calvo; the minister of culture
SAN SEBASTIAN — At a ceremony held on Saturday evening inside San Sebastian’s iconic Kursaal theater, American actor, director, producer and you-name-it Danny DeVito received the Donostia Award, given in recognition of his decades-long contributions to film, TV and the stage. Other recipients of the award this year are British actress Judy Dench and Japanese
SAN SEBASTIAN — Berlin-based M-appeal has secured additional sales deals for two titles, Toronto’s Netpac winner “The Third Wife”; Bafici’s best Argentine picture winner “The Daughters of Fire,” both screening at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Ash Mayfair’s debut feature, “The Third Wife” is the 19th century tale of May, a girl of just 14 years
When Hirokazu Kore-eda returned to the San Sebastian International Film Festival to accept his Donostia Award on September 23rd, it marked a fitting bit of symmetry for a story that began twenty years earlier. In 1998, Kore-eda arrived in San Sebastian a promising young upstart with his second feature, the bittersweet mortality drama “After Life,” playing in competition. A critical
In one scene in Natalia Meschaninova’s “Core of the World,” animal rights activists free some caged foxes from a hunting dog training farm in the forests of Russia. A few days later, two of the foxes reappear at the farm and climb back into their cages: They cannot fend for themselves in the wild. The
SAN SEBASTIAN — One of the biggest single public-sector funding systems in Europe, the European Union’s Creative Europe-Media Program, is up for renewal. On May 3o, the European Commission, the E.U.’s administrative arm, set out a proposal for renewed funding over 2021-27 of €1.85 billion. The Program’s head, Spain’s Lucía Recalde, used the San Sebastian
SAN SEBASTIAN — Gustavo Hernández and Ignacio Cucucovich’s Mother Superior, producer of Hernandez’s “La Casa Muda” and “You Shall Not Sleep,” has acquired Spanish-language remake rights to cult movie “Big Bad Wolves,” a film Quentin Tarantino described at Busan Festival in 2013 as best film of the year. The move is sure to make waves
SAN SEBASTIAN — As many people talk the talk, some companies are walking the walk – acquiring and selling women’s films as part of a growing business. In the latest move, announced Sunday at San Sebastian as the festival, the biggest in the Spanish-speaking world, signed a gender parity charter, Latido Films has acquired international
September 23, 2018 9:30PM PT Actor-director Jiang Wen concludes his decreasing-returns action trilogy with this good-looking but convoluted period romp. If the delicacy of the English title, “Hidden Man,” makes you think that Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen (last seen by Western audiences in “Rogue One”) might have come over uncharacteristically restrained for the final installment
September 23, 2018 6:27PM PT Michelle Guthrie, one of the highest profile women executives in international television, has been fired as managing director of public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She was less than two and a half years into a five-year contract. ABC board chairman Justin Milne said that the decision was “in the
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is facing heavy scrutiny after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her in high school, has been accused by another woman, Deborah Ramirez, of sexual misconduct. In a New Yorker report from Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, Ramirez recounts an incident that she says occurred during the
For the most part, successful teen comedies follow a tried and true formula. Memorable high school movies typically feature characters who feel like outsiders floundering hilariously en route to the revelation that simply by being themselves, they’ll find what’s eluded them for so long. John Hughes knew it well, as did his imitators, realizing that
In case there are any young folks out there who aren’t convinced that the Nazis were bad — shockingly, there still seem to be stragglers — here stomps Julius Avery’s World War II thriller “Overlord,” a blast of righteous rage in which a group of good American boys avenge themselves against an SS goon squad
Time’s Up has called for a national walkout in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. “Survivors must be heard. Wear black and join the national walkout on Monday, Sept. 24 at 1 pm ET/10 am PT in solidarity with Dr. Christine Blasey
“The Golden Job,” a Hong Kong action film that revives the 1980s “Young & Dangerous” action franchise, topped the mainland Chinese box office over the weekend. Directed by Eric Tsang, it earned a respectable $22.7 million in its opening three days, for a 34% share of a lowball pre-holiday weekend. Second place went to Chinese