Entertainment News Boom

Cate Blanchett, who is a Goodwill Ambassador for refugee agency UNHCR, and Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund have launched a refugee-focused short film grant program called the Displacement Film Fund. The fund, which will give up to five production grants of €100,000 ($104,200) each in its pilot phase, aims to champion and fund

Marie Ulven, the internationally acclaimed musical artist known as Girl in Red, is set to make her feature debut as the lead in Maipo Film‘s “Low Expectations,” the upcoming first feature from director Eivind Landsvik. While “Low Expectations” represents Landsvik’s first foray into feature-length filmmaking, it comes with a great deal of buzz following the

Disney’s “A Complete Unknown” held its spot at the top of the U.K. and Ireland box office for a second weekend, earning £1.6 million ($2 million), according to numbers from Comscore. The cumulative total of the Bob Dylan biopic, starring Timothée Chalamet, now stands at $7.3 million. In second place, Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King”

The Jonas Brothers are reuniting with Disney to produce and star in a Christmas comedy movie, slated for the 2025 holiday season. In the film, which has the working title “Jonas Brothers Christmas Movie,” Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas and Nick Jonas “face a series of escalating obstacles as they struggle to make it from London

London’s Prince Charles Cinema said on Tuesday that it is “under serious threat” of closing after a disagreement with its landlord over a new lease. The cinema posted a petition on its social media accounts calling for help saving the iconic theater, which has been praised by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas

Thomas Vinterberg is ready for “The Brothers Lionheart,” based on Astrid Lindgren’s fantasy novel.  “I’m writing it myself with the brilliant British writer Simon Stephens, so it’s a mix of things. The book is there, it’s not mine, but it’s a great journey we’re on. I really love it,” he tells Variety about his upcoming project.   

Malaysian powerhouse Astro Shaw has joined forces with Sympatico, the newly minted production label from Double Vision’s Min Lim and Argo Films’ Richard Johns, as the outfit commences production on its debut feature “Mojo.” The romantic comedy, which began lensing this week in Malaysia’s picturesque Perlis region, marks a significant milestone in cross-cultural collaboration between

The Italian release of James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” is prompting local media to claim that, unlike in the movie, Dylan traveled to Italy in 1962 in pursuit of Suze Rotolo — named Sylvie Russo in the film and played by Elle Fanning — who had left New York to study abroad.

When Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” was released back in 1993, the AIDS epidemic was still taking lives, marriage equality in the U.S. was decades away and queer representation in media remained limited, even if strides had been made. It was certainly a different time. Considering the progress obtained since — while not forgetting the

Twice selected for Variety’s index of the 500 most influential business leaders in the global media industry, Rikke Ennis, CEO of Copenhagen-based REinvent Studios, is one of the Nordic region’s most market- intuitive and forward-thinking heavyweights. At Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision and Nordic Film Market, she and her sales team will showcase high profile series including “Pressure

It’s the sort of twist no screenwriter would dare invent: “Free Leonard Peltier,” a persuasively well-researched and often infuriating documentary about the American Indian Movement activist convicted nearly a half-century ago of killing two FBI agents, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 — precisely one week after Joe Biden,

A vampire-themed love story starring Saya Minami and Whitney Duff heads a slate unveiled by Australia’s Black Forest Films and New Zealand genre powerhouse Black Mandala. “Haunted & Devoted,” targeting festival premieres in mid-2025, anchors a four-picture deal between the companies. The partnership continues with “Grand Finale: A New York Odyssey,” a neo-giallo starring drag

Amazon MGM Studios is bringing its festival circuit hit “Superboys of Malegaon” to theaters. The Indian film, which gained acclaim at the Toronto, London, Palm Springs and Red Sea fests in 2024, will see a multi-territory release across India, U.S., U.K., U.A.E., Australia and New Zealand before landing on Prime Video. Helmed by acclaimed filmmaker

In the L.A. comedy-drama “Serious People,” remarkable naturalism and immense absurdity sit shoulder-to-shoulder. However, as notable as this tension may be, the novelty of the movie’s tonal dissonance eventually wears out, thanks to a story of swapped identities with no real end goal in mind. The film, from directors Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson, begins

It’s worth mourning the films we’ll never get to see: the unfunded epics, the unmarketable art films, perhaps even the unengaging streaming product. Filmmaker Charles Shackleton faced that grief when his thoroughly researched project, a documentary on the Zodiac killer case, got the plug pulled after years in development. But the director’s vision was simply

In “Sorry, Baby,” the defining moment of Agnes’ adult life happens off-camera, but it haunts nearly every other scene in the movie. A standout of the U.S. dramatic competition at Sundance, Eva Victor’s disarmingly funny, slow-to-unfold debut is less a film about sexual assault than it is a serious look at the process of rebuilding

Both an investigative journalism piece and a first-person perspective, “Life After” derives its strength from clashing these two elements together and finding its story in the tension between them. Filmmaker Reid Davenport sets out to find what happened to Elizabeth Bouvia, a disabled Californian woman who demanded the right to terminate her own life in

“Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears),” the semi-autobiographical feature debut of director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, is a gentle slow-burn that occasionally becomes electric. A rural gay story that begins in a state of mourning and melancholy, it eventually takes on radiant form, with emotional complexities born out of characters walking around the truth, if only because euphemisms

The entertainment industry has already lost several notable figures in 2025. The film world was shaken by the death of “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” director David Lynch, with tributes to the visionary filmmaker continuing for weeks. In music, Garth Hudson, the last remaining member of The Band, died in January, while Peter, Paul and

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively could be headed for a trial on March 9, 2026, a judge said on Monday. The “It Ends With Us” co-stars are suing each other in federal court in New York. She sued him on Dec. 31 for sexual harassment and retaliation; he fired back two weeks later, accusing her