“That was ultimately Furiosa’s movie, which was fantastic. ‘Fury Road.’ Furiosa. It was in the title,” Hardy said about “Fury Road,” which remains one of the most acclaimed action movies ever made. “It was interesting how that one unpacked. If you look at it now, it was a changeover of hands in a way, from Mad Max to Furiosa. That’s what they’re filming now. ‘Furiosa.’ It was a very well implemented changing of the guard....
“Maybe it is time for me to move on,” Holland recently told GQ magazine. “Maybe what’s best for Spider-Man is that they do a Miles Morales film. I have to take Peter Parker into account as well, because he is an important part of my life. If I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.” Comic book favorite Miles Morales made his film debut in Sony’s animated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” one of the most acclaimed superhero movies of the last decade and an Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature....
“Andor” Episode 4 gets right to its rebellious mission, with Cassian (Diego Luna) joining up with Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) and his team. The episode brings back fan favorite Mon Mothma, first introduced in “Return of the Jedi,” and continues to follow the now-disgraced Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), whose delusions of Imperial grandeur quickly crashed and burned last week. Creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy describes Syril as a character unlike any other....
They didn’t overlap on the show (Shannon’s run ended in 2001, and Bayer’s began in 2010), but it remained a shared experience. The actresses grew up 10 minutes away from each other in Cleveland suburbs and brought their Midwestern sensibilities to the venerable comedy show. “Like when Vanessa’s character is getting a makeover, I relate to her character because that’s how I felt when I started on ‘Saturday Night Live,” Shannon said at the show’s premiere and FYC event at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles Wednesday night....
Still, even Lindon’s most loyal followers may be surprised by the muscle mass on display in Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” which lit up the festival at its halfway point with the most shocking conversation-starter on the Croisette. The movie finds Lindon playing Vincent, a firefighter who thinks his long-lost son has arrived home after going missing in childhood. The boy is actually serial killer Alexia (Agathe Rouselle), who undergoes a dramatic physical transformation to infiltrate Vincent’s home....
In an interview with Variety published Wednesday, Discovery CEO David Zaslav says reinvigorating Warner Bros. is key to his plans at the helm of the conglomerate. Box office will be “the top of the funnel” for drawing eyeballs to his streaming services, including HBO Max and Discovery+, as they charge forward with an existential mission to amass over 200 million subscribers to give Netflix a run for its money....
Even Frances Hodgson Burnett’s happy endings come with a price. The beloved British author responsible for two of children literature’s most enduring classics (and, at least in the case of her “The Secret Garden,” one of the most frequently adapted tales for children) was never precious about meting out “happily ever after” endings with some serious asterisks. Burnett didn’t dislike a happy ending so much as understand that even the most fantastical of plot twists — the long-missing father returns, compassion is cool, the savior was living next door the entire time — should exist in both a fairy tale world and one that looks very similar to the real one....
The openers are “Jungle Cruise” (Disney), “Stillwater” (Focus), and “The Green Knight” (A24). As originals, they stand as outliers. (Only “Jungle Cruise” represents the potential start of a franchise.) While no single weekend determines the future health of the box office, strong results here will be critical if studios are to believe there’s benefit in theatrical releases for less-familiar IP. In the 15 highest-grossing films this year, only “Raya and the Last Dragon” (Disney) was a standalone....
This weekend also contains the biggest disappointment of 2022 as Disney’s “Lightyear” grossed $51 million, falling far short of its projected minimum $70 million opening. That led to the total take of $163 million, a bit under expectations, for a weekend with three major recent releases. For the second straight weekend, total grosses topped 2019’s equivalent — this one, by 20 percent. Combined with the past three weekends, our four-week rolling total now stands 3 percent above 2019 for the first time we’ve exceeded the prior period....
This has always been the brilliance of the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the idea of curating and elevating more intimate productions, shining a bright light on otherwise overlooked projects and sometimes boosting them into a position to reach a wider audience, both within the community and without. Seeing performers included like Abby McEnany from Showtime’s “Work in Progress”, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever,” and the entire ensemble of HBO’s “I May Destroy You” is energizing, a reminder that the Emmys or Golden Globes are not the only arbiter of quality TV programming....
Eight months after the IDA board tapped Rick Pérez as its new executive director, four senior staffers resigned en masse. A fifth left in February; two junior staffers followed suit. All are women or non-binary. This leaves the IDA with five vacant director-level positions on a six-person leadership team. The four former senior staffers — deputy director Amy Halpin, senior director of development and partnerships Jina Chung, interim director of programming and advocacy Maggie Bowman, and funds and enterprise program director Poh Si Teng — posted on Medium shortly after their resignations....
While there’s a lot of fun to be had with casting ideas (Yahya Abdul-Matteen II? Trevante Rhodes? Kofi Siriboe?), this early stage of the project invites a bigger question: What purpose does a Black Superman serve? The truth is that he could not come at a better moment — but only if the character’s modern potential is served. When Ryan Coogler brought the world of Wakanda to life in the record-breaking “Black Panther,” the character became a cultural phenomenon less for its superhero antics than for the way it examined the nuances of Black culture and explored the scope of the African diaspora....
At the time, Eisenberg was gearing up to direct his first feature, “When You Finish Saving the World,” and he was already in the throes of practical challenges that differed greatly from the ones he faced as an actor. “Producing is overwhelming work, and they were starting to do it during a pandemic,” he said. “I was impressed that these two brilliant people wanted to talk logistics and budgets and stuff....
“We will not be moving forward with a second season of ‘Lovecraft Country,’” HBO confirmed in a statement. “We are grateful for the dedication and artistry of the gifted cast and crew, and to Misha Green, who crafted this groundbreaking series. And to the fans, thank you for joining us on this journey.” Given how long it took for the news to break (“Lovecraft Country” aired its finale in October 2020), the cancellation isn’t a complete surprise, though it also wasn’t a sure thing....
“X” kicks off on a secluded Texas farm surrounded by local police. The opening scene, framed within a barn, peers outside toward a simple wooden home peeking above the brush landscape. As an incessant buzz of flies swarm, the camera tracks outside revealing a trio of cop cars. There is a blood-soaked sheet covering an unknown body. A recently used ax grips the porch and a wide streak of crimson leads to inside the quaint, albeit creepy home....
The “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” actor makes his Marvel debut with the upcoming Disney+ series “Wonder Man,” helmed by “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” director Destin Daniel Cretton before he directs “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.” “Hawkeye” co-producer Andrew Guest will also write the series. A Marvel Studios representative confirmed the casting news to IndieWire. “Wonder Man” was introduced in 1964 with “The Avengers” comic book series, created by writer Stan Lee and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby....
First, Yellowbrick has secured an investment from Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, which invests in technology-driven companies now shaping the future of business, entertainment, and society. Additionally, Yellowbrick has acquired Animation Mentor, regarded as the leading online animation school, and founded by Bobby Beck, Shawn Kelly, and Carlos Baena, renowned professional animators behind some of the biggest hits from Walt Disney Feature Animation, Pixar Animation Studios, and Industrial Light & Magic....
Come hither all cannibals, ritual sacrificers, and Antler Queens alike: “Yellowjackets” just gave a Season 2 update. The viral hit Showtime series that follows a group of high school soccer champions after a 1996 plane crash through their present lives is eying a “late summer” production start date. Quite possibly the most disturbing show of last year, “Yellowjackets” stars Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Tawny Cypress as the grown-ups still grieving (and hiding from) their past, when they were stranded in the wilderness and left to desperately try to survive....
In Netflix’s “Yes Day,” a good-natured and diverting family comedy that gets a lot of mileage from marrying über-mom Jennifer Garner to “Carlos” star Édgar Ramírez (cast against type in the role of a fun-loving lawyer dad who twerks within the first 10 minutes ), a “yes day” is basically the Purge for kids. Of course it starts on an innocent note, with the youngest of Allison and Carlos Torres’ three kids forcing her parents to dress up as glitter-spackled superheroes for the family’s gut-busting trip to a Korean ice cream shop, but things quickly spiral out of control from there....
“And then the studio had told me I wasn’t allowed to shoot anything,” Snyder continued. “That there would be no film made of any kind. During production, that was a thing they insisted on. And I shot stuff anyway, of course, in my yard. And one of the things I shot was the Green Lantern scene.” Snyder told the ReelBlend podcast this week he filmed the new Green Lantern scene in his driveway last year during the pandemic with “an amazing actor” playing John Stewart....
