Movie News

George Miller’s anticipated fantasy-romance-drama “Three Thousand Years Of Longing” with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton will world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Variety has learned.

Both Miller and Swinton are Cannes regulars. Swinton appeared in five movies at last year’s festival, while Miller served as jury president in 2016 and his most recent film “Mad Max: Fury Road” played at the fest in 2015.

The intriguing plot, for which details are being kept under wraps, revolves around the encounter between a scholar and a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. Their conversation, in a hotel room in Istanbul, leads to consequences neither would have expected.

Miller previously described the film as being dialogue-driven and “anti-Mad Max” with some action scenes. Budgeted around $60 million, the movie is produced by Doug Mitchell.

MGM has North American rights will distribute via its United Artists Releasing label. The

Skydance Animation has landed another major talent.

Rich Moore, director of “Zootopia,” “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” is joining the team in an exclusive, multi-year overall deal. Under the new pact, Moore will create, develop and produce original animated features for the studio.

After leaving Disney in 2019, Moore did a brief stint at Sony Pictures Animation. The only feature he helped with, last year’s “Vivo,” was released directly to Netflix.

The move to Skydance Animation sees Moore reuniting with his old boss, former Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer John Lasseter. Lasseter took a six month sabbatical from Disney and Pixar in 2017 after sexual misconduct allegations emerged; he was ultimately never rehired (he consulted until the end of 2018). In January 2019, Lasseter was hired to head Skydance Animation, which then had an exclusive deal with Paramount and is now in partnership with Apple TV+.

Moore

Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” has been cleared for takeoff with a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

As Variety predicted earlier this month, the “Top Gun” sequel will screen during the French fest, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.

Described by Variety’s Elsa Keslassy as the “planetary blockbuster Thierry Fremaux has been dreaming of since 2020,” the Cannes director first aimed to get the movie secured for an out-of-competition slot before Covid-19 delays upended the film release calendar.

Cruise’s long-awaited return to the cockpit as hotshot pilot Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell was likewise delayed by the pandemic, which pushed the movie’s planned release date several times. The film is now set to hit theaters on May 27, while the Cannes Film Festival runs from May 17 to May 28. The full lineup of selections will be revealed in the third week of April.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski,

The Minions are back — and celebrating with a splashy world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

The long-awaited “Minions” sequel, dubbed “The Rise of Gru” will open the festival with a screening on Monday, June 13 in the Grande Salle de Bonlieu.

The next chapter in the “Despicable Me” film franchise tells the backstory of how Gru — the world’s greatest supervillain — met his Minions, forming “cinema’s most despicable crew” and facing off against the criminal supergroup, the Vicious 6.

“The Minions franchise is inextricably linked to Annecy,” stated Marcel Jean, the festival’s artistic director. “As early as 2010, ‘Despicable Me’ made its mark at the event, and since then each film in the series has started its success here. Annecy’s enthusiastic audience is the best there is to uproariously celebrate the return of this happy crew who is the symbol of success for Illumination.”

“We are hoping

If you thought you were free of “Encanto” fever, think again.

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 60th feature, which just won a BAFTA for Best Animated Film over the weekend, is about to get new life as a new sing-along version of the movie is about to be released on Disney+ this Friday. As the early clip (which you can watch above) shows, it’s a little bit more sophisticated than the follow-the-bouncing-dot version you were probably imagining. (Anybody who had a Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS tape knows that we’re talking about.) This new version has more complicated visuals (those big graphics with the characters’ names are great) and a zippier presentation.

And what’s more – there’ll be plenty of these special releases down the line.

The official press release states that there will be more sing-along versions of Disney classics on Disney+ later this year, including “Frozen, “Frozen 2,

Nearly ten years ago, Sandra Bullock pledged she would never again make a sequel to one of her many memorable movies.

It was 2013, the year she and Melissa McCarthy released the buddy cop comedy “The Heat” — which grossed nearly $230 million at the worldwide box office. While simultaneously making the awards rounds for “Gravity” that year, press relentlessly asked if she would return for a second film with McCarthy.

“I’m not doing a sequel to ‘The Heat,'” she said at the time. “I’ve done two sequels. They were horrible. What Melissa and I had was beautiful. We might do another film together. I think we should do a silent film together.”

Film fans and social media users connected the dots, and guessed the two “horrible” sequels Bullock was referring to: the followup to her star-making film “Speed,” which grossed only a third of the original’s domestic box

Colleen Kwok’s “The Stars The Sun The Moon” won the top prize for a Hong Kong-produced in-development project at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum. Mainland Chinese title “Not Found” by Huang Ningwei won the equivalent prize for the best non-Hong Kong project.

A total of 14 prizes were announced at a virtual ceremony on Wednesday, with “Silent Ghosts,” another local project, directed by Hang Yeng, collecting the top work in progress award.

Haf organizers said that this year’s online platform hosted more than 900 private meetings between filmmakers and potential backers, a figure that was almost double the level of activity in 2020, when Covid forced the project market into a virtual format for the first time.

The third time it has been staged remotely, Haf this year hosted 43 projects, including 15 works-in-progress. There were also 11 Hong Kong projects, with 21 filmmakers presenting their debut feature projects. The event ran for three

Before 1995, Ice Cube was solely a rapper, Chris Tucker was a stand-up comedian, and nobody knew who Felicia was. But all that changed when "Friday" burst onto the scene.

The movie itself is iconic and widely recognized as a cult classic. Almost 30 years later, celebrities are still reenacting scenes on social media, and a little phrase Craig utters once — "Bye, Felicia!" — is all over the internet. The low-budget movie that has become a huge hit introduced the world to actor/screenwriter Ice Cube and the improvisational genius of Chris Tucker. Cube went on to star in and produce two more "Friday" movies,...

The post Why Chris Tucker Didn't Want to Appear in the Friday Sequels appeared first on /Film.

Exhibition sources confirm that they have been told to expect “The Batman” will arrive on HBO Max around April 19. Deadline also reported the platform accidentally ran an advance ad for the date; it has since been removed.

Tuesday, April 19 is Day 47 after the film’s March 4 release date. That aligns with Warners’ agreement with major theaters to maintain a minimum 45-day theatrical window, while emphasizing the value of the streaming service in the overall Warner Bros. (soon to be Warner Bros. Discovery) strategy. Warners did not respond when asked for comment.

By the end of its second week, “The Batman” will have grossed about $264 million in the U.S./Canada, the second highest gross for a theatrical release since 2019. Based on normal patterns and its trajectory, the domestic total should be $400 million-$425 million. Only this film and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which nears $800 million, have grossed more $225 million since 2019.

In

It's clear from the film's opening that David Blue Garcia's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is situated within the universe of Tobe Hooper's 1974 original, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Colin Stetson's rumbling score kicks in with humming horns, almost like an old machine coming to life again before grainy old footage fires up on a tv, and John Larroquette reprises his role as narrator from the intro of Hooper's film, detailing the "grisly and gruesome" attacks on a group of youths in August of 1973. 

The first two minutes of the film re-introduce the lone '74 "Chainsaw" survivor Sally Hardesty (played by Olwen Fouéré following...

The post The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Scene That Hit Fans the Hardest appeared first on /Film.

“The Return of Tanya Tucker, Featuring Brandi Carlile,” a documentary that premiered Sunday at the South by Southwest Film Festival, has had its world rights acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, the company announced Wednesday.

“I’m over the moon that this special documentary has found such a perfect home with Sony Pictures Classics,” said Carlile, who is an executive producer as well as a subject of the film, in a statement. “I don’t think there’s a more fascinating human being on the planet than Tanya Tucker. I can’t wait for the world to fall In love with this legend all over again.”

Sony Classics said the film represents “the birth of a major filmmaker in Kathlyn Horan,” the doc’s director and producer. Horan had worked with Carlile on some shorter-form projects previously, including the 2018 documentary short “Brandi Carlile at Washington Correctional Center for Women” and a

Submarine brokered deal on behalf of filmmakers.

In the first on-site deal at SXSW 2022 Sony Pictures Classics has picked up worldwide rights to Kathlyn Horan’s documentary The Return Of Tanya Tucker – Featuring Brandi Carlile following its world premiere earlier this week.

Horan’s TinFish Films produced alongside Motto Pictures’ Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, and Carolyn Hepburn, who produced SPC release The Mole Agent. The producers worked in association with Impact Partners and Artemis Rising.

The Return Of Tanya Tucker – Featuring Brandi Carlile premiered in 24 Beats Per Second and centres on the friendship between country music legend Tucker and six-time Grammy winner Carlile,

Ahead of her new film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Michelle Yeoh reflected on filming Ang Lee’s martial arts drama “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in a New York Times interview, and revealed two major mishaps behind the scenes. Neither Yeoh nor co-star Chow Yun-Fat spoke Mandarin fluently, and so learning the script proved to be a challenge; both stars opted to learn their lines phonetically instead. But the physical component of “Crouching Tiger” proved to be the hardest skill to master.

The “Supercop” star previously did her own stunts in Hong Kong-based action films, but Yeoh was unfamiliar with the traditional style Lee had in mind for “Crouching Tiger,” which blended influences from Peking Opera and acrobatics. Soon after production started, Yeoh tore a knee ligament while filming the pivotal courtyard scene.

“It was really tough,” Lee said. “That was supposed to be her strength.”

Per Nyt, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once

Gather round Judd-heads, we've got the Apatow announcement you (might?) be waiting for. A decade after the popular comedy director dropped "This is 40," the kind of sort of sequel to "Knocked Up," he's considering taking us all back into the R-rated minds of his favorite married couple and their grown-up children. 

That's right, if Apatow has his way, "This Is 50" could be sliding into a movie theater/onto a streaming service near you ... in the next few years. Movies take a lot of time and considering "This is 50" is still percolating in Apatow's brain, who knows how long it...

The post Judd Apatow's This Is 40 Sequel Officially In Development, and You'll Never Guess the Title appeared first on /Film.

The road to getting an adaptation of the popular video game “Halo” to audiences has been an exceedingly long and twisted one. The game has been captivating audiences since 2001, and since that time Hollywood has been determined to bring the ambitious, intense, large-scale world it created to life.

In 2005 plans for a feature film were announced, with “Devs” creator Alex Garland working on a script. Neill Blomkamp, director of “Elysium,” was slated to helm the film. But after several delayed starts, then-20th Century Fox Studios and Universal required the production to reduce its budget (one of several big reasons why the series has taken so long.)

But as television series have gained both more prestige and the ability to have larger budgets the time seems ripe to finally bring “Halo” to audiences as we’re set to see on Paramount+. The 10-episode series will take audiences into the 26-century

The strong debut of Sony Pictures’ “Uncharted” at the box office last month came a happy sign that moviegoing is back to normal-ish levels as families returned to multiplexes for the Tom Holland-starrer based on the PlayStation video game franchise.

Behind the scenes, “Uncharted” is also a textbook case of a movie that needed seasoned and dedicated producers to see it through a nearly 13-year journey to get made. The leader of that pack was Charles Roven, the head of Atlas Entertainment, who has been in the business of making blockbusters for a long time. Think “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Suicide Squad,” “Man of Steel,” “Wonder Woman” and more.

Roven discusses “Uncharted’s” course to the big screen — including his collaboration with producer Avi Arad — on the latest episode of Variety podcast “Strictly Business.” He also weighs in on the debate over what defines filmmaking in the streaming age.

The upcoming Los Angeles-Italia Film Fashion and Art Festival will be honoring Italian directors Paolo Sorrentino (“The Hand of God”) and Enrico Casarosa (“Luca”) as well as costume-designer Massimo Cantini Parrini (“Cyrano”) all of whom have scored nominations for the upcoming Academy Awards.

The 17th edition of the pre-Oscars event will be held March 20-26 at Hollywood’s Tcl Chinese Theatre and also online.

This year’s opening ceremony will be hosted by veteran Italian-American actor Robert Davi, who is also this year’s president of the event. Sofia Milos (“CSI: Miami”) and Hollywood acting coach Bernard Hiller will co-host.

Consul General of Italy Silvia Chiave and Italian Institute of Culture chief Emanuele Amendola will also be introducing honorees both at the Chinese Theatre and during a separate March 25 event being held at the Italian Institute of Culture.

Other Los Angeles-Italia honorees this year are ace cinematographer Dante Spinotti actors Riccardo Scamarcio,

Ireland’s coast serves as a catalyst for a man’s furious unraveling in writer-director Antonia Campbell-Hughes’ strikingly atmospheric first feature. “It Is in Us All,” , is anchored by the force-of-nature turn from its superlative star Cosmo Jarvis. Intoxicating to the senses, this film boasts an indomitable vitality, a zest for life so uncontainable it brims with mortal danger.

British-raised Hamish (Jarvis), a put-together man in his 30s, returns to the seaside Irish hometown of his late mother to see the house he inherited from his aunt before selling it. But on his drive there, a fateful car crash sends him to the hospital without major bodily injuries, but a torturous moral wound: In the collision, a teenaged boy in the other car died, while the alleged passenger, 17-year-old Evan (Rhys Mannion), survived.

What he expected to get resolved in a quick trip turns into a cataclysm of the soul

On the March 16, 2022 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor Ben Pearson is joined by /Film editor and chief film critic Chris Evangelista to talk about what they've been up to at the virtual water cooler.

Opening Banter:

At The Water Cooler:

What we've been Doing: What we've been Reading:

Chris read When Nothing Else Matters by Michael Leahy

What we've been Watching:

Ben watched Spider-Man: No Way Home, Turning Red, and has been watching Severance.

Chris finally watched all of Rick and Morty after avoiding it for years. He also watched Night of the Demon.

What we've been Eating: What we've been Playing:

The post Daily Podcast: Mini-Water Cooler: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Rick and Morty, and More appeared first on /Film.

Jared Leto doesn’t shy away from sinking his teeth into new roles.

The “Morbius” star leans into an “immersive work” ethic, as Leto told Variety in a cover story. Leto stars as Dr. Michael Morbius, a scientist suffering from a rare blood disease whose attempts to find a cure turn him into a blood-sucking monster. The film premieres in theaters April 1.

Leto’s level of commitment to the role, based on Roy Thomas’ Marvel comics of the same name, included creating a physical impairment to literally walk in the shoes of the Marvel vampire in the superhero origin story.

“I don’t want to get too specific because I’d like to keep some of that for myself,” Leto said of his character walking with a cane. “But I leaned in — no pun unintended. I’m a sucker for a pun, but I didn’t mean that. I worked