Olga James, the singer, actress and nightclub performer who portrayed the jilted sweetheart of Harry Belafonte’s character in the landmark Otto Preminger-directed film musical Carmen Jones, has died. She was 95.

James died Jan. 25 at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles of complications from a fall in which she broke her pelvis, her niece, actress and acting teacher Janet Adderley, told The Hollywood Reporter.

James also portrayed the fiancée of Sammy Davis Jr.’s struggling showbiz entertainer in the 1956-57 Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful, and she recurred as Verna Kincaid, the sister-in-law of Bill Cosby’s high school gym teacher, on the comedian’s eponymous 1969-71 NBC sitcom.

James had attended the Juilliard School of Music and was a trained opera singer when she was cast as the heartbroken Cindy Lou, who loses her troubled man, Joe (Belafonte), to the bewitching title character (Dorothy Dandridge) in 20th Century Fox...

Zac Efron will star opposite Will Ferrell in an untitled comedy Nicholas Stoller is directing for Amazon MGM.

Stoller also wrote the script, which at one point was titled Judgement Day.

The story follows a young convict fresh out of prison who takes a reality TV courtroom hostage, blaming the megalomaniac TV judge, played by Ferrell, for a past ruling that the convict feels ruined his life.

Efron will star as the convict.

Stoller is producing via his Stoller Global Solutions banner, while Ferrell is producing under his Gloria Sanchez Productions outfit. Gloria Sanchez’s Jessica Elbaum and Alex Brown are also producing.

The project now has two stars plus a director returning to work for the streaming giant. Ferrell is starring opposite Reese Witherspoon in the You’re Cordially Invited, directed by Stoller and which debuted Jan. 30 at the top of the company’s charts.

Efron was one of the stars of Ricky Stanicky,...

A love letter to the the people and places of the New York borough for which it’s named, “Love, Brooklyn” is also a showcase for the talents of its three attractive lead actors. In this entry at Sundance’s US dramatic competition, Andre Holland, Nicole Beharie and DeWanda Wise play upwardly mobile creative New Yorkers in a complicated love triangle. First-time filmmakers, director Rachael Abigail Holder and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman weave a low-key romantic odyssey that simmers with intimate heat while acting as a loving character study of the beloved, always evolving neighborhood.

Casey (Beharie) and Roger (Holland) used to be an item but are now just friends. Or are they? They seem to still carry a torch for each other and treasure the time they spend together. At the same time, Roger’s casual fling with grieving widow Nicole (Wise) takes a turn for the serious when her...

A 14-year-old is obliged to stay at her grandparents’ lake home after her impulsive mom elopes and decides to prioritize her new husband. At the competitive music camp across the water, a determined young violinist pushes himself to be named first chair, sacrificing the personal connections he covets more. Meanwhile, at the local bar, a fisherman finds an unlikely ally in helping him to catch the whopper that’ll change his life. And finally, at a family-run bed and breakfast, two sisters make the most of their summer, before the older one heads off to college.

The location, rather than the characters or their independent narrative strands, serves to unify the four sketches that comprise “Sunfish and Other Stories on Green Lake.” Set in writer-director Sierra Falconer’s old stomping grounds — among the cozy, neighborly community that surrounds a scenic lake in northern Michigan — the pleasantly laconic anthology film debuted in U.

We're in the long waiting period once again between seasons of "Bridgerton," which brings the tempting prospect of pivoting to Julia Quinn's novels to find out what happens next. It's been confirmed that "Bridgerton" season 4 will focus on Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), the second son of the eponymous family. However, Benedict's journey through the Netflix series has been quite different from his characterization in the novels, which means that "Bridgerton" season 4 might make some big changes from the source material.

In the books, Benedict is the star of "An Offer from a Gentleman," the third novel in the series. Netflix skipped to book four, "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton," which focuses on Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), for season 3, and is now going back for Benedict's big love story. In Quinn's version, he gets involved with a woman named Sophie Beckett, the daughter of an earl...

Editor’s note: this list was originally posted January 2025. It will be periodically updated to reflect new release date announcements.

It’s rare for a studio to become a brand, but A24 has managed it. Since its humble beginnings as a New York-based distribution company founded by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges in August 2012, A24 has become synonymous with quality for film lovers, the place that releases the must-see indies everyone is talking about.

A24’s first film was the little-seen and little-loved “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III” from Roman Coppola, which hit theaters in February 2013 to muted fanfare. But the movie that really put the company on the map was “Spring Breakers,” Harmony Korine’s wild crime comedy that released in March that same year and established many of the conventions associated with the brand: Artful neon cinematography, shocking content and stylized violence,...

Scarlett Johansson said in an interview with Vanity Fair that she spent years forwarding trade reports of new “Jurassic Park” movies to her agents because she was desperate to join the long-running franchise. She’s finally getting her chance with this summer’s “Jurassic World Rebirth,” co-staring Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali.

“I was really crazy about the [original] film, and I slept in a ‘Jurassic Park’ pup tent in my bedroom I shared with my sister for a year,” Johansson said about her enduring love for the franchise. “Anytime the trades would report a new ‘Jurassic’ movie, I would forward to my agents like, ‘Hey, I’m available.’”

When Johansson was filming reshoots for her Marvel movie “Black Widow” in 2020 at Britain’s Pinewood Studio, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard were next door on a soundstage filming “Jurassic World Dominion.” The actor remembered telling her team then: “Show me the sets!

Amid layoffs at Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, a union representing New York City-based employees is hitting back at the theater chain accusing it of unfair labor practices.

Uaw Local 2179, which encompasses Alamo United representing Drafthouse employees at both the Brooklyn and Manhattan locations, on Monday, February 3 filed a formal complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Alamo Drafthouse and parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment, citing Refusal to Furnish Information and Refusal to Bargain/Bad Faith Bargaining.

In a post on X, the union said 70 workers were laid off in Brooklyn and Manhattan and that the layoffs are “illegal” and an “unnecessary firing” of the staff. The union believes the firings have no financial purpose and were made in bad faith while the union was in the midst of negotiating its first contract. It formally unionized in October 2023.

Alamo Drafthouse had no comment. An insider told IndieWire that the cuts made...

Alamo Drafthouse has laid off approximately 70 workers from its Manhattan and Brooklyn locations. These cuts were implemented ahead of an expected strike at two of the company’s New York City venues.

Alamo Drafthouse declined to comment, but sources say these layoffs were part of the annual seasonal slowdown at the movies. Cinema chains usually staff up around the holidays, which is regularly the busiest time for moviegoing. But attendance tends to stall in the early months of the year, so there aren’t enough hours to accommodate the extra staff, according to knowledgable individuals. They add that most of those people were part-time employees who will be eligible for rehire in the spring when the box office is expected to regain steam.

The circuit, a favorite among cinephiles for its strict “no talking, no texting” policy, let go of an unspecified number of venue staff across the country in January for the same reason.

The technology of the "Dune" universe is one of its most curious and distinct components when compared to other prominent sci-fi worlds. Because of the Butlerian Jihad, which takes place thousands of years before the events of Frank Herbert's first "Dune" novel, no "thinking machines" are allowed within the empire. That means no robots and no computers, even when used for steering starship across the dark void of space.

That said, there are still many examples of advanced futuristic technology in "Dune," just ones that exist outside the computer realm. These include the spaceships themselves, tech for cloning and advanced genetic manipulation, and the various vehicles used on Arrakis. Another common piece of technology in the "Dune" universe is the suspensor, a device that allows for equipped objects to float in defiance of gravity. Suspensors are referenced frequently in the "Dune" books and seen often in Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" movies,...

You’ve never seen a movie like Amanda Kramer’s “By Design.”

A woman of limited means played by Juliette Lewis becomes besotted by a chair in an antique furniture store. Besotted by its form. By its materials. By its inherent quality and the skill of its craftsmanship. She becomes so besotted by it that her soul jumps into the chair and resides there.

“I commend you for trying to explain the movie because I can’t,” Lewis said in an interview alongside Kramer and her costars Mamoudou Athie, Samantha Mathis, and Robin Tunney, at the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox. “She wants to become, she wants to inhabit an inanimate object. I connect with it on an emotional level, and it’s sort of someone who needs and wants to disappear from themself to fully be found or fully come alive. And she feels so alive to...

Ilana Glazer is back to writing TV — and this time, they are looking to make “Sex and the City” more queer.

Glazer, who uses she/they pronouns, said during the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast that they are returning to TV six years after wrapping “Broad City.” The beloved Comedy Central series concluded in 2019.

“I’m writing a show right now. I’m doing a rewrite actually of this draft right now,” Glazer said. “It’s like ‘Sex and the City’ with two women and two gay guys. ‘Cause the woman and gay guy friendship is a big deal.”

Glazer continued, “My first best friend is my brother, [who is a] gay guy. All of my best friends growing up are gay boys. I want it to be them.”

Glazer co-created the acclaimed comedy “Broad City” with Abbi Jacobson. Glazer recently said during NPR’s “Wild Card with Rachel Martin” podcast that the...

Kevin Costner's "Yellowstone" departure and subsequent legal drama have been well documented, but he isn't the only actor from the series to almost go to court with showrunner -- and occasional star -- Taylor Sheridan. Cole Hauser, who plays the Dutton family's reliable ranch hand/resident assassin Rip Wheeler on the neo-Western drama, was sued by Sheridan over a coffee dispute. And to think that both men's respective "Yellowstone" characters are best pals.

As documented by Looper, Sheridan's Bosque Ranch Craft Coffee company sued Hauser's Free Rein Coffee over trademark infringement, false advertising, and unfair competition. Essentially, the folks at Bosque Ranch felt that Free Rein's logo copied their own emblem, arguing that the similarities harmed their brand as customers could potentially get them mixed up. What's more, the lawsuit alleged that Hauser's coffee brand ripped off Sheridan's as both company's marketing both featured cowboy iconography, further complicating matters.

Key Huy Quan thinks the last time he was in the same room with most of his “The Goonies” co-stars was at least 20 years ago. Corey Feldman thinks it was more like four decades ago at the film’s Los Angeles premiere in 1985.

Whatever the case may be, Quan was joined Monday at his hand-and-footprint ceremony at the Tcl Chinese Theatre in Hollywood by Feldman, Josh Brolin, Kerri Green, Jeff Cohen and director Chris Columbus. “I had an incredible ‘Goonies’ reunion this morning,” Quan told me Monday night at the premiere of his new action movie “Love Hurts.”

The cast had a virtual fundraising reunion on Zoom during the Covid pandemic.

Hollywood, California – February 03: (L-r) Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Kerri Green, Ke Huy Quan, Corey Feldman and Chris Columbus attend the hand/footprint in cement ceremony for actor Ke Huy Quan at Tcl Chinese Theater on February 03, 2025 in Hollywood,...

Jason Statham has starred in some of the best action movies ever made, as well as some of the worst video game flops of all time. Through these highs and lows, the actor has probably gained plenty of wisdom, but he's also experienced some regrets. While speaking to Metro back in 2012, the "Crank" star revealed that he wishes that he wasn't synonymous with doing his own stunts, as it became expected he would always perform them. As he put it:

"I did 'Transporter' with Luc Besson and I ended up doing pretty much everything. So, from that day forth, it was a slippery slope to try and change things -- until I couldn't."

While Statham is still alive and well to share his stories, there are some stunts he wishes that he didn't do due to how dangerous and potentially life-ending they were. The actor hasn't come out...

Final voting is February 11-18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The Best Original Score nominees are “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” Emilia Pérez,” “Wicked,” and “The Wild Robot.” Daniel Blumberg’s score for “The Brutalist” is the favorite for his unnerving “slabs of sound,” but Volker Bertelmann could win his second consecutive Oscar for “Conclave,” and “Wicked” could also be triumphant for its immense popularity.

For “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s VisaVision epic, about the struggle to build an institute in post-World War II Pennsylvania, starring Oscar-nominated Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, the director tapped experimental composer Blumberg for his second score. Envisioning the score as “slabs of sound,” the music developed into a...

There are few milestones more important for a sitcom than its 100th episode. That's the moment where most shows officially reach syndication status; with over 100 episodes, the network can now play one episode each weekday for the entire year without ever having to repeat, giving casual viewers plenty of chances to get invested (or re-invested) in the show. So, when a series hits its 100th episode, that's a good sign that the amount of money the cast and crew make from residuals is about to increase.

The importance of syndication has declined a bit in the streaming age, where many viewers no longer use cable and therefore are not tuning in to whatever's currently playing. (This was but one of many issues that led to the 2023 writers' strike.) Still, this hasn't stopped a 100th episode of any sitcom from being cause for celebration. If nothing else, it's a big accomplishment...

Netflix is distancing itself from “Emilia Pérez” star Karla Sofía Gascón in an effort to salvage the film’s Oscar prospects. And as the Spanish actress tries to defuse the blowback for her past social media posts, in which she shared offensive views that were seen as Islamophobic and racist, she’s doing it on her own, without the guidance of the streaming giant or her PR team.

Gascón, who made history as the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, was expected to travel from her home in Spain to Los Angeles for the critical second phase of the Oscars campaign. Her planned itinerary included major entertainment industry events such as the AFI Awards luncheon on Thursday, the Critics Choice Awards on Friday, the Directors Guild of America Awards and the Producers Guild of America Awards on Saturday, and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Sunday.

Golden Globe-nominated actress Constance Wu has signed with Gersh for representation in all areas.

Wu is best known for playing the lead role in John M. Chu’s hit “Crazy Rich Asians,” starring opposite Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Wu is also widely known for her role as Jennifer Huang in the ABC hit series “Fresh Off the Boat,” for which she earned a total of four Critics Choice TV nominations.

Wu can also be seen in “Hustlers” opposite Jennifer Lopez and Julia Stiles, “East Bay,” “The Terminal List,” “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” and most recently, “The Friend” opposite Bill Murray and Naomi Watts. Her upcoming film, “The Embers and the Stars,” premieres later this year.

Wu recently performed on stage in Robert O’Hara’s “Shit. Meet. Fan.” opposite Neil Patrick Harris, which debuted off-Broadway in Oct.

As streamers raise prices on us, it is a (slight) comfort to know that their bills are going up as well.

In 2025, streaming services will finally out-spend commercial broadcasters on content. Ampere Analysis forecasts global content spend by streamers will reach a combined $95 billion this year, or about 39 percent of the total global investment on content. Broadcasters account for just 37 percent of the total spending.

But why is this the year? Well, some year (soon) had to be the year, and ’24 saw an awful lot of streaming-subscriber growth thanks to password-sharing crackdowns. With more eyeballs online than on broadcast and cable television, studios have shifted their budgets to streaming.

Streaming platforms are savvy, Ampere opined, and “are expected to ensure investment grows at a slower pace than revenue to maintain attractive profit margins.” It’s kind of the only way Peacock or Paramount+ will turn a profit, we imagine.

The...

Sunday sees the biggest football game of the year with the Super Bowl. Between some exciting plays, we get a heap of inventive and expensive ads that tend to rely a little more on celebrity appearances than your average game day commercials. One of the upcoming spots (30-second spots said to cost $7-8 million) for Uber Eats called “A Century of Cravings” sees Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”) trying to pitch a movie idea to “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig, however, that idea is a conspiracy-theory film set in the world of football.

Continue reading Matthew McConaughey Wants Greta Gerwig To Make A Football Conspiracy-Theory Film In New Super Bowl Ad at The Playlist.

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It's still pretty early into 2025, but January is in the books and we have at least a few new movies out in the world. All things considered, it was a pretty quiet month at the box office, with movies like "Wolf Man" falling short of expectations. That's in North America though. Elsewhere in the world, namely China, theaters are overflowing with patrons who are eager to see what wonders await them in the cinema. In particular, an animated sequel now stands as by far the biggest movie of the year overall -- and it's not even remotely close.

"Ne Zha 2," the sequel to 2019's blockbuster "Ne Zha," debuted this past weekend in China. To say that it had a big opening would be a dramatic understatement. Over the Lunar New Year holiday in the country, the animated film opened...

Will Ferrell missed out on a shot at an Oscar for his feel-good documentary “Will & Harper,” and he knows exactly who to blame: the doc branch.

During a recent appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Ferrell poked fun at his failure to land a nomination for the film, which follows Ferrell and his longtime friend and “SNL” collaborator Harper Steele as they take a cross-country road trip to bond after Steele comes out as a trans woman. Ferrell’s good-faith efforts to learn the nuances of Steele’s trans experience endeared him to audiences — including Colbert, who began the segment by heaping praise on the documentary and asking Ferrell how it felt to receive an Oscar nomination.

“We didn’t get it,” Ferrell replied.

“Fuck the Academy,” Colbert said to laughter from the audience.

“Especially the doc branch,” Ferrell said. “You don’t want to hang out with the doc branch.

We've all heard of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Marvel is currently in the process of trying to fix before it's too late. But if you happened to grow up in the 90s you might well be familiar with arguably the true forerunner to Marvel's juggernaut of a blockbuster franchise: The Frasier-verse. Ok, Dr. Frasier Crane might not be the real genesis of the gargantuan shared timeline erected by Marvel Studios over the past decade, but he was at the center of a television universe that is much larger than you might think.

Most fans will know that Kelsey Grammer debuted as the character on "Cheers," which ran for 11 seasons from 1982 until 1993, before starring in his own sitcom which also ran for 11 seasons before wrapping up in 2004. Likewise, most will know that he reprised the role in 2023 for the neither disappointing nor remarkable "Frasier" revival series for the Paramount+ streaming service.

It was a perfect awards campaign.

A win for the ensemble of actresses at Cannes and a jury prize for French auteur Jacques Audiard turned “Emilia Pérez” into a solid Netflix Oscar contender with enthusiastic support from critics and audiences through the fall festivals and well into Oscar season.

The movie swept the European Film Awards, winning five, including Best Film and Best Actress for rising Spanish star Karla Sofía Gascón, and won four Golden Globes, including Best Comedy or Musical, Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña, Best Song (“El Mal”), and Best Non-English Language Film.

“Emilia Pérez” was also nominated for 12 Cesar Awards, 11 BAFTAs, 10 Critics Choice Awards, four SAG Awards including Best Ensemble, and was nominated by the DGA and PGA. So it was no surprise when “Emilia Pérez” landed 13 Oscar nominations, a record for a foreign-language film.

The other historic achievement: Karla Sofía Gascón became the first out...

As recently as 2020, only 27.5% of production designers in the Art Directors Guild were women.

What a difference five years makes. That number has increased, according to the guild’s president Dina Lipton. “I feel seeing more women nominated each year is exciting,” Lipton says. “We also have lots of young people coming out of school, specifically studying production design, and most of them are women.” Furthermore, for the first time, the guild has an all-female executive board.

This year, two women are nominated at the Oscars for production design: Suzie Davies for “Conclave” and Judy Becker for “The Brutalist.”

With the Art Directors Guild set to hand out their top prizes on Feb. 15, Lipton takes a look at the artistry and vision behind the five Art Directors Guild nominees who overlap with Oscar.

“The Brutalist” – Judy Becker

“Judy’s got this big job ahead of her with very little money,...

With the “Wicked” press tour becoming a production of its own, star Ariana Grande has had plenty of opportunities to convey the gravity of playing Galinda in the film adaptation of the blockbuster Broadway musical.

But she’s had few chances to nerd out about the array of technical elements that went into her performance. So when given a moment to discuss how she reformed her singing voice from pop-r&b superstar, past her Broadway baseline, into a full-on coloratura soprano, the Oscar nominee literally jumped at the chance to take to the whiteboard of a medium-sized conference room within the IndieWire office to draw an illustrative diagram of her vocal cords.

Before that came a conversation on her opening song, “No One Mourns the Wicked,” set in the direct aftermath of “The Wizard of Oz.” Her character has already dropped a vowel from her name to become Glinda the Good Witch,...

In movies like Million Dollar Baby, August: Osage County, Blow The Man Down, and series like The Americans, Justified, and Sneaky Pete, “esteemed character actress Margo Martindale” loves to play people much different from herself. And she’s been so good at it for so long that she only started to get truly recognized for her work in her 60s. Three Emmys later, she’s able to pick and choose what she wants to do. Her latest, the Amazon series The Sticky, finds her number one on the call sheet and having a blast playing the bombastic maple syrup farmer Ruth Landry. […]

The post “Being Clean with the Words Gave Me More Freedom than Anything”: Margo Martindale, Back To One, Episode 329 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Harry Potter franchise is beloved for its captivating fantasy storytelling, especially when it comes to the creation of the Wizarding World. So much of the universe in which Harry Potter exists is populated by things that we wish were part of the real world, whether it's magic itself or the delicious golden elixir known as Butterbeer.

Thankfully, the innovation of Universal Studios theme parks collaborating with Warner Bros. brought the latter into reality, with the tasty drink available in warm and iced options within the Harry Potter section of Universal Studios itself, as well as bottles of the beverage sold in gift shops. But Harry Potter's Butterbeer is about to make a splash on store shelves around the world in an amazing assembly of new snacks and treats arriving this spring.

For awhile now, Jelly Belly has delivered a variety of Harry Potter candies, including jelly beans flavored like Butterbeer,...

When a film makes it all the way to the Academy Awards and takes home the top prize of best picture, a safe assumption to be made is that said movie is probably pretty good. Right? Well, that should be the case, but whatever reason, every once in a while a film sneaks through that just isn't up to snuff and leads future audiences to wonder exactly what the Academy was thinking.

That's the exception, not the rule, however. Most best picture winners are worthy of their title, even if some fans may quibble over what the actual best film of the year was. But even amongst this lofty category, there are films that stand out as the best of the best. If there was to be an Academy Awards: All Stars Edition, these 15 would be the ones that would make the cut. No matter how long ago they were released,...

Universal Pictures is prepping their major leg of promotion for “Jurassic World: Rebirth” as a trailer is expected to drop tomorrow, as the first-look footage is set to be seen during this weekend’s Super Bowl. Ahead of that, we’re getting some solid insight into what this new movie will be about, how these new characters factor into the greater scheme of things, and the legacy of author Michael Crichton’s world of resurrected beasties through technology.

Continue reading ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Details Reveal How New Movie Is Influenced By ‘Jaws,’ ‘Star Wars,’ & ‘Alien’ at The Playlist.

For a time, it looked like fans of watching the Spice flow were going to have to wait quite a while to see how things shake out with Paul Atreides in the aftermath of "Dune: Part Two." Fortunately, director Denis Villeneuve has changed his tune and is getting ready to put pen to paper on "Dune 3," aka "Dune Messiah." So, why did Villeneuve decide to fast track the third installment in this epic sci-fi franchise, exactly?

During a Q&a at the Saturn Awards (via Collider), Villeneuve addressed his decision to get right to work on "Dune Messiah," which will adapt the second novel in author Frank Herbert's beloved saga. The filmmaker explained that he previously expected to make another movie between trips to the world of "Dune." However, the appetite for this story to continue was downright palpable:

"Chani's heart is broken, and it's the beginning of...

The sequel to “A Simple Favor,” the 2018 comedic thriller directed by Paul Feig and starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, has gotten an official title and been set as SXSW’s opening night premiere.

Additionally, Feig posted on X that the film will debut on Amazon Prime Video on May 1.

In “Another Simple Favor,” Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Lively) travel to Capri, Italy for Emily’s wedding to a rich Italian businessman where, as the logline reveals, “murder and betrayal” occur. The cast also includes Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin and Henry Golding, who starred in the original film, plus Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell and Allison Janney. The premiere is a return to SXSW for Feig, whose films “Bridesmaids” and “Spy” premiered at the festival in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

Should Lively appear at the festival, it will mark her first public appearance since the beginning of her legal battle with Justin Baldoni,...

It starts with this: “It Ends with Us” star Blake Lively is back on the big screen — in a majorly big way — to open the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. Lively, along with Anna Kendrick, co-lead Paul Feig’s highly-anticipated sequel to the beloved 2018 film “A Simple Favor.”

Director Feig’s “Another Simple Favor” will have its world premiere as the Opening Night film for the SXSW Film & TV Festival. The festival begins March 7 and takes place through March 14. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Apple TV+ series “The Studio” will be the Opening Night TV premiere. Check out the full SXSW Film & TV Festival lineup here.

“Another Simple Favor” is an Amazon MGM Studios film. Producer/director Feig worked on developing the script for almost three years between 2022 and 2024 before going into production in April 2024.

The first film was based on Darcey Bell’s bestselling novel and centered on high-powered...

Marvel is denying that generative AI was used in the creation of a series of promotional teaser posters for its upcoming film “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

Posters from the film are circulating on both X and Bluesky along with accusations that they were made via artificial intelligence. In one of the more widely circulated posters, which shows a crowd of onlookers waving flags and cheering, fans observed a pair of repeated faces in the background, as well as one flag-bearer who appears to only have three fingers. In another, in which a girl holding a Thing action figure looks to the sky, out-of-focus women in the background look as though they are each missing a leg.

While repeating faces could just be poor design, missing fingers, limbs, or other abnormalities are typical hallmarks of Gen-ai models.

“AI was not use in the creation of these posters,” a Marvel/Disney spokesperson told IndieWire.

The "Terrifier" films aren't exactly known for being indirect. Creator Damien Leone has created a saga of unrelenting barbarity, with burgeoning horror icon Art the Clown slashing his way across a handful of short films and three features. Indeed, 2022's "Terrifier 2" proved too brutal for even some seasoned horror fans, with reports of walk-outs helping propel the film to relatively impressive box office success. In 2024, Leone continued his mission to depict the most upsettingly graphic kills possible with "Terrifier 3," itself a film that prompted walkouts simply due to a stomach-churning opening sequence.

This a film series that has seen Art the Clown sever a woman in half from the pelvis up, whip a victim with their own intestines, and absolutely decimate the body of a young girl in a scene that happens to represent Leone's favorite kill and which has become the high watermark for unadulterated gore in the "Terrifier" saga.

Today is officially a big news day for the most annoying person you know. While most other blockbusters tend to take over the spotlight, from galaxies far away to godlike superheroes and everything in between, let us never forget that there exists a passionate and extremely nerdy fanbase obsessed with the coolest movie monsters of them all: dinosaurs. The recently-completed "Jurassic World" trilogy may have put a slight damper on things for us -- in case you have chosen to forget, the critically-derided "Dominion" decided to spend an unseemly amount of its runtime on a plague of giant locusts, for some reason -- but we're back and ready for more kaiju-sized punishment. The franchise shows no signs of slowing down, and for once that doesn't sound like a threat.

Vanity Fair has the scoop on several jaw-dropping surprises in store for us in the upcoming seventh film in the "Jurassic Park" franchise,...

Any new project in the "Star Trek" franchise has decades of lore to keep up with, which can be challenging even without the various "Star Trek" storylines that have become unwatchable with age and tend to be quietly ignored. As such, mistakes sometimes happen. These range from strange oversights -- such as when the credits for "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" managed to misspell Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) as "Uhuru" -- to creative decisions that turn out to be flawed in hindsight, like writer Ron D. Moore's admission that the biggest mistake "Star Trek: Voyager" made was defusing the conflict between the Starfleet and the Maquis far too early.

Sometimes, though, things get so weird that the franchise keeps deliberately undoing a particular plot point over and over again, across several different projects. This is what keeps happening to Charles "Trip" Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) from "Star Trek: Enterprise,...

Agents have been telling us for years now that the pace of the market at Sundance isn’t what it used to be. Maybe it’s time we started taking them seriously. Just as industry people arrived home from Park City last week, everyone checked the proverbial scoreboard and realized not one world premiere feature had been acquired from Sundance. Where are the sales?!?

The next day, Midnight movie “Together” sold in a $17 million worldwide deal to Neon, a number that matches the high mark of last year’s sale of “It’s What’s Inside” to Netflix and puts it in the upper echelon of all-time Sundance deals. It was a true bidding war, with Searchlight Pictures and A24 also in the mix.

Later that day, a journalist at an event asked Netflix’s Bela Bajaria why Sundance was so “dull” and if this was a sign Netflix is changing course on indie movies.

Don Lemon fired back at Kanye West after the controversial rapper called the former CNN host a “goofball” and claimed Lemon spread an incorrect rumor that West and his wife, Bianca Censori, were kicked out of the Grammys. Censori shocked the red carpet by wearing a nude outfit. The couple then left the event without ever going inside the Crypto.com Arena.

Despite online rumors that West had been booted from Grammys, sources close to the Grammys told Variety at the time that such claims were “not true” and that West simply “walked the carpet, got in his car and left.” West targeted Lemon in a since-deleted Instagram post as the source of the rumors, although Lemon denied it in a video posted to his YouTube page.

“First of all, Kanye, Yee, Ye, whatever your name is — I did not start a rumor about you being kicked out of the Grammys,...

32 years after Steven Spielberg changed blockbuster filmmaking forever with "Jurassic Park," the franchise is getting a major face lift with this summer's "Jurassic World Rebirth." Directed by Gareth Edwards of "Rogue One" and "The Creator" fame, the film is being billed as a new beginning for the dino-centric property. But it will also, in some ways, be going back to where it all started. That's because screenwriter David Koepp (who also wrote Spielberg's classic movie) is finally making use of a beloved scene from Michael Crichton's original "Jurassic Park" novel.

In a first-look piece published by Vanity Fair, producer Frank Marshall confirmed that the book's famous river raft scene involving the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which was cut from the original "Jurassic Park," will make it to the screen in "Rebirth." In Crichton's novel, Alan Grant and John Hammond's grandchildren, Tim and Lex Murphy, try to drift through a...

Greta Gerwig is back onscreen in her first acting gig since “White Noise” (2022) — it’s a 2025 Super Bowl ad.

The “Barbie” director appears as herself in the Uber Eats promo led by Matthew McConaughey. Charli Xcx, Martha Stewart, Kevin Bacon, and Sean Evans also appear in the short film.

McConaughey, who has starred in a series of recent Uber Eats ads, pitches Gerwig a film about his ongoing (storyline) conspiracy theory that football was created to sell food. Yeah, you all know the annoying “Jerry’s eating rice” spots with McConaughey, NFL icon Jerry Rice, and current all-world 49ers player Christian McCaffrey, right?

“Nobody believes that football was invented to sell food,” Gerwig tells McConaughey, while chowing down on nachos, a game-day staple. She sounds like McCaffrey.

In a montage of him acting out football’s evil plan, which takes place over a century-plus, McConaughey portrays legendary tight end/Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka,...

"What's in a name?" William Shakespeare's Juliet once asked. "That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet." That may be true, as far as it goes, but would an A-List actor by any other name sell as many box office tickets?

An actor's name is their brand, so choosing the right name to attach your career to is of the utmost importance. An actor's name can signal all sorts of things to an audience -- familiarity or friendliness, sexiness or masculinity. Some names signal cultural identity, while others are designed to be as bland as possible so as to avoid drawing the wrong sort of attention from a prejudiced crowd. Actors may even adopt different names for simplicity's sake, or to craft an identity wholly separate from their private lives. With all that in mind, read on to learn about fifteen actors who changed their names for Hollywood.

Turning Ebon Moss-Bachrach into gravel and setting fire to Joseph Quinn is one thing, but the biggest challenge that "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" faces involves one of Marvel's most powerful villains: Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson). With the doors to the Baxter Building now open, the new trailer showed us what the Devourer of Worlds looks like — well, his silhouette and the back of his noggin, at least. Sure, it would have been awesome to catch a full glimpse of our new team of heroes going head-to-massive-head with the Devourer of Worlds, or maybe even a snippet of Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) getting blown away by Ineson's world-rattling rasp. However, let's never forget that it could have been a whole lot worse. We might have been met with yet another giant Thanos-colored fart pretending to be one of the most terrifying entities in the universe.

Thankfully,...

Molly Gordon, best known for “The Bear” and “Theater Camp,” is writing, directing and starring in the upcoming comedy “Peaked” for A24.

According to the official logline, the film follows “the two girls who traumatized you in high school as they try to relive their glory days at their 10-year reunion.” Gordon is co-writing the screenplay with her friend Allie Levitan, who was recently hired as a writer on “Saturday Night Live.”

A24 will finance and produce “Peaked,” which is scheduled to shoot this year. David Hinojosa and Zach Nutman of 2Am will produce alongside Gordon and A24. Levitan will executive produce. Topic Studios, who previously collaborated with Gordon on “Theater Camp,” will co-finance the film.

Gordon and Levitan are also collaborating on the Searchlight Pictures film “Small Parts,” with Gordon attached to direct and co-write with Levitan. That movie, described as a new take on the 1987 Shelly Long and...

Adrien Brody has some words for those criticizing the use of artificial intelligence for dialect purposes in “The Brutalist.” The film, which was recently nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Actor for Brody and Best Picture, employed an AI-powered Ukrainian voice synthesizer software called Respeecher during the post-production process.

After editor Dávid Jancsó explained in an interview how he mixed in his own voice with the dialogue spoken by Brody and co-star Felicity Jones to correct the stars’ Hungarian pronunciations, filmmaker Brady Corbet issued a statement to Deadline clarifying the extent of the AI use.

“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” Corbet said. “They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. … The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.

Fox is finally launching a streaming service.

On Tuesday, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced the planned release of a(nother) direct-to-consumer (Dtc) platform. This one will feature live feeds of Fox TV channels like the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel, Fox Business, Fox Weather, and FS1 (Fox Sports 1). The unnamed, unpriced service will launch “by the end of this calendar year,” Murdoch said.

Fox already has Tubi, a free provider of 24/7 curated, themed channels and on-demand programming, a hybrid of the Fast and full-avod approaches. Tubi is very successful for what it is, but it does not mirror Fox’s broadcast and cable lineups — though it will live-stream Sunday’s Super Bowl Lix — and it does not bring in subscription revenue. There aren’t many Tubi originals worth writing home about; this new Dtc service will have exactly none; it will instead be a vehicle for all of Fox’s live,...

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"Zodiac Killer Project," a new movie from director Charlie Shackleton that debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, is one of the most unconventional true crime documentaries ever made. It begins with a slow pan across a rest stop parking lot, with a narrator's voice telling the audience what we would be seeing if the filmmaker had been able to make the movie he wanted to make. Most of the film plays out this way — we witness establishing shots of banal locations, with narration explaining why they would have been important in a version of this story that we'll never actually see, and the occasional flash of an insert shot showcasing the action that would have taken place. It may sound boring, but against all odds, it's mesmerizing.

Shackleton wanted to adapt former police officer Lyndon Lafferty's 2012 book "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge,...

A-Story Entertainment, a non-profit production company, is officially launching with an impact film fund designed to support independent and emerging creators, Variety has exclusively learned.

The company is collaborating with the Trilith Institute to feed emerging creators into A-Story Entertainment’s production pipeline. Trilith Institute CEO Jeffrey Stepakoff, known for producing “Dawson’s Creek,” is leading the group to focus on developing intellectual property and providing resources and access to diverse projects and talent.

“Independent creators have long sought alternatives to the studio system, and that’s exactly what we’re building,” Stepakoff said. “We are offering opportunities that simply don’t exist elsewhere, reshaping the future of our industry by ensuring productions aren’t just shot in this region—they’re born and developed here. This impact fund guarantees that storytellers have the resources to create and thrive in a dynamic local ecosystem, while also generating significant and enduring economic activity throughout the region.

It is the time of the year when all sorts of wild Super Bowl ads drop as the much-watched final football game sets the stage for all kinds of ways to sell products to the American consumer, and nothing says a Super Bowl ad like star power to get the most eyeballs possible to view one of these ridiculously-expensive commercials.

Dunkin’ (formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts and the American doppelganger of Canada’s beloved Tim Hortons) is now piggybacking on Casey Affleck and Ben Affleck’s love for the Boston-born donut/coffee chain as the duo appears in a new cheeky spot that brings “Succession” actor Jeremy Strong and fellow Bostonian into the fold.

Continue reading Jeremy Strong Showcases His “Bean Method” To Ben & Casey Affleck In Hilarious New Dunkin’ Super Bowl Ad at The Playlist.