Movie News

Even as Covid-19 infections seem to reach new heights on a daily basis, theatrical grosses remained stable; the top 10 accounted for a little less than $11 million. By every other macrostatistic, however, the results remain unsustainable. Of the 3,000 complexes currently open, about half with eight or more auditoriums, the average weekend take is $5,000-$6,000. In normal times, the average would be around $50,000. Aggregate grosses are around 10 percent-15 percent of normal; this weekend last year saw a top 10 of $90,000.

The disappointments this weekend start with “Freaky.” Trying to predict what the Universal and Blumhouse Productions horror comedy would do was an inexact science; in recent weeks, $4 million has been the ceiling for a wide release. The hope was a more mainstream entry like this one could see $6 million or better.

At $3.7 million, it didn’t. Is it the increased resistance to going out? Awareness that it will be available on premium VOD in three weeks?

Bookmark this page for all the latest festival date changes.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused disruption worldwide to the regular festival calendar.

To help keep track of the changing schedule, Screen is keeping this page updated with the latest film festival and market dates, postponements and cancellations.

The events that are still set to run in some capacity are listed first, while those that were cancelled or ran online earlier in the year are further below.

To submit details of a change to your festival dates/status, please contact us here with the name, dates, and website for the event,

Sylvester Stallone is joining the cast of “The Suicide Squad,” according to the standalone sequel’s director, James Gunn. A representative for Stallone also confirmed the news to Variety.

Gunn took to Instagram on Saturday to make the announcement, writing opposite a selfie of him and Stallone: “Always love working with my friend @officialslystallone & our work today on #TheSuicideSquad was no exception. Despite Sly being an iconic movie star, most people still don’t have any idea what an amazing actor this guy is.”

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When a fan asked in the comments if this means Stallone is involved with the film, Gunn replied, “Yep.” Gunn previously said that filming had concluded in February, so it remains unclear as to what extent Stallone will appear.

Stallone later confirmed the news on his Instagram, posting a photo of Deadline‘s report

One of the most anticipated films of this awards season, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” emerges as one of the premier Oscar vehicles for Netflix. At its soulful core, the farewell performance of the late Chadwick Boseman is as invigorating as anticipated. His work as Levee may very well be his best and most spiritual gift to cinema. Boseman has a real opportunity to join a short list that includes Peter Finch and Heath Ledger, two posthumous Oscar nominees who won their respective categories.

Based on the August Wilson play, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” tells the story of the tension that builds between Ma Rainey, nicknamed the “Mother of Blues” (played by Viola Davis), her ambitious horn player Levee, and the white management determined to control her music in 1927 Chicago.

After it was reported that Boseman would be submitted in lead actor by Netflix, one of the questions bubbling has been,

27 films have been longlisted across three new talent categories.

The British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) has moved its ceremony from its traditional early December slot to February 2021, as it announces the longlists for six categories this week.

The nominations will be announced on December 9 and winners revealed “in early February”, according to BIFA. An exact date and format of the ceremony has yet to be announced.

Scroll down for the New Talent longlists

Rose Glass’ horror Saint Maud and Nick Rowland’s drama Calm With Horses are two of six films included in all three of the longlists for the BIFA 2020 New Talent categories.

At the heart of the Spanish Screenings are its market premieres, new titles coming onto the market post-San Sebastian, sometimes with fest runs at other smaller festivals. Variety drills down on a score of titles at this year’s event, including a clutch of 2020 Malaga fest winners.

“Amateur,”.

A 2020 Malaga Wip entry, where it won best production, Gutiérrez’s first doc feature marks a strong personal take on what home means to him. Knit by three different stories, Gutierrez, shoots vignettes of life in a small mountain village. Also an Abycine and Fidba Prize winner at Malaga.

“Antonio Machado, the Blue Days,” (Laura Hojman)

Seville-based Summer Films, which also produces “Once Again,” delivers one take on the life story of Spanish poet Antonio Machado. The second film from Hojman after 2018’s “Solar Lands,” about poet Ruben Darío’s escape from Paris to Andalusia.

“Boat Rower Girl”

Blanco’s feature debut,

The Swiss-based director looks at the changing ways of life of the Ayoreo people in Paraguay.

IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia says of Arami Ullón’s opening-night film, Nothing But The Sun, the film deals with colonialism, the theft of land and the destruction of an ancient culture. ”It is tackling some of the most urgent questions of our era but this all comes through in an artistically ambitious style.”

The film’s main protagonist, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno, is one of the Ayoreo people from the forests of Chaco in Paraguay who have been forcibly converted to Christianity. Their

Norway’s ‘Stay Home’ sees the 11 children and teenagers record themselves.

Of the 63 projects being showcased at IDFA Forum just one is a Covid-related title, and it hopes to offer a new angle on the pandemic.

Norwegian directors Maren Thingnæs and Marianne Mørk are pitching Stay Home, which looks at the topsy turvy pandemic year of 2020 as seen through 11 children and teenagers from across the world.

Kari Anne Moe and Gudmundur Gunnarsson produce for Fuglene; in co-production with Therese Högberg for Sweden’s Bautafilm. Aftenposten TV is also on board, and so far, financing comes from Norwegian Film Institute and Fritt Ord Foundation.

Yorinde Segal talks about the second edition of the new media-focused DocLab Forum.

IDFA’s DocLab Forum is taking place for the second time in 2020, providing co-production and co-financing opportunities for web-based docs, VR projects, multimedia installations and other new formats. It’s the industry-oriented offshoot of the festival’s DocLab, the new media programme for interactive and immersive non-fiction founded in 2007.

Fifteen projects are being pitched while a further four have been chosen for one-on-one meetings for the DocLab Forum, which is running online from November 16 until November 20. The selections range from big-scale immersive, psychedelic documentaries such as Jo

The episodic content lab is for writers in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

Netflix is partnering with African filmmaking organisation Realness Institute on a development lab for writers of series content.

The Episodic Content Development Lab is for writers in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria and will open for submissions on November 30. It is open to writers with film and TV experience from the fictional and/or factual sectors, in any language.

Six writers will be selected from the submissions to work on projects that will be developed and commissioned by Netflix. The selected writers will be paid a stipend

He’s played a teen tearaway, a racist cop, a conman and a serial killer. But can he play a cellist? The star talks about his role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s first film since The Favourite – and making a jazz documentary

In his time, Matt Dillon has been about as quintessentially American a screen presence as you can imagine. From his early blazing-youth roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish; through more mature parts like the leader of an addict “family”in Gus van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy; to a whole later catalogue of cops and lowlifes, Dillon has exemplified a hard-bitten homegrown working-class cool that you wouldn’t immediately picture outside the boundaries of American film.

But of late, he has explored some challenging byways of international art cinema. He played an astronaut in French director Alice Winocour’s Proxima; he was austerely chilling as

Lucy Prebble wrote and co-executive produced “Succession,” one of the best television shows in recent memory. Now, the writer’s latest project, the British drama “I Hate Suzie,” is nearly ready to make its American debut. HBO Max premiered the trailer for the upcoming show on Monday.

Per HBO Max, the synopsis reads: Suzie Pickles (Billie Piper), a star on the wane, has her whole life upended when her phone is hacked and a photo of her in an extremely compromising position is released for the whole world to see. This excruciatingly honest show follows the various stages of Suzie’s trauma episode by episode, through Shock, Denial, Fear, Shame, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger and Acceptance as Suzie and her best friend and manager Naomi try to hold her life, career, and marriage together in the face of being exposed for who she truly is. But who the hell even is that?

“The Mandalorian” is rife with “Star Wars” cameos, and last week’s surprise appearance of Bo-Katan, a Mandalorian and leader of the Nite Owls, was one of the show’s most significant surprises yet. Katee Sackhoff, who portrayed the character on the third episode of “The Mandalorian” Season 2, recently discussed working on the series and the possibilities for Bo-Katan in future episodes.

Sackhoff, who also voiced Bo-Katan in the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels” animated series, recently spoke to Entertainment Tonight about the character’s live-action debut and her history performing in “Star Wars” shows.

“My dad raised me on sci-fi and ‘Star Wars’ so this is a dream come true,” Sackhoff told Entertainment Tonight. “When the news of ‘The Mandalorian’ came out I sort of thought to myself in the back of my mind, ‘you never know.’ I knew that it probably wouldn’t happen; fan castings never happen.

These days, there’s always the hope of a second life for a canceled TV show. Especially if one has as long a run and as passionate a fanbase as The Venture Bros., which was recently canceled by Adult Swim after 17 years (but just 7 seasons) on the air. And it seems that the #SaveTheVentureBros. campaign […]

The post HBO Max is Working to Save ‘The Venture Bros.’ After Its Recent Cancelation by Adult Swim appeared first on /Film.

The Kazakh American Association condemned “Borat 2” shortly after its October release on Amazon Prime Video for subjecting the Kazakh community to “ethnicity-based humiliation,” and now the organization is calling on the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America Awards, and the BAFTA Awards to disqualify the sequel from competing (via Variety). The letter is co-signed by the Hollywood Film Academy and Council on American-Islamic Relations, and accuses “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” of promoting “whitewashing, ethnic stereotyping, racism, cultural appropriation, and xenophobia.”

“The Kazakh community worldwide is underrepresented and inherently vulnerable,” the letter reads. “Our nation is still recovering from an oppressive colonial past, which is why we do not have substantial media representation. Sacha Baron Cohen understands this fact and exploits Kazakhstan by hijacking our ethnic identity, whitewashing us by portraying us as Eastern Europeans, and inciting harassment toward Kazakh people worldwide. Our people report countless cases of

I once suggested that Hollywood should remake Dial M For Murder, playwright Frederick Knott’s dynamite stage play which was famously adapted into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954. Three years later, my suggestion is finally being heeded: a remake is being developed for television, with Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander executive producing and potentially starring in the […]

The post ‘Dial M For Murder’ TV Show Being Developed as Anthology Series, May Star Alicia Vikander appeared first on /Film.

The Oscar buzz is coming in hot for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, George C. Wolfe‘s adaptation of the classic August Wilson play which stars Viola Davis and, most notably, Chadwick Boseman in his final film role. And what a swan song for Boseman the movie is, according to early buzz for the highly anticipated Netflix film. Critics are […]

The post ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ Early Buzz: Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis Steal the Spotlight in Raves for Netflix Jazz Drama appeared first on /Film.

Netflix acquired worldwide rights in 2018.

Fernando Frías de la Parra’s I’m No Longer Here has been selected as Mexico’s international feature film Oscar submissions.

The drama premiered at 2019 Morelia Film Festival where it won the feature film competition award and the audience award, and went on to screen at Tallinn Black Nights.

I’m No Longer Here centres on a gang member who flees Monterrey for New York and is forced to question where he belongs when he learns his gang and its defining Kolombia culture are under threat.

Netflix acquired worldwide rights in 2018 and debuted it on the platform in May.

Netflix acquired worldwide rights in 2018.

Fernando Frías de la Parra’s I’m No Longer Here has been selected as Mexico’s international feature film Oscar submissions.

The drama premiered at 2019 Morelia Film Festival where it won the feature film competition award and the audience award, and went on to screen at Tallinn Black Nights.

I’m No Longer Here centres on a gang member who flees Monterrey for New York and is forced to question where he belongs when he learns his gang and the Kolombia culture is under threat.

Netflix acquired worldwide rights in 2018 and debuted it on the platform in May.

Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe anthology consists of five original films set from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s that “tell personal stories from London’s West Indian community.” The first trailer for one of those films – Lovers Rock – is here. Small Axe films played at the New York Film Festival this year, and Lovers Rock seemed to be the […]

The post ‘Small Axe: Lovers Rock’ Trailer: Steve McQueen Invites You to a Party appeared first on /Film.