This weekend looked to be in danger of being an exact replica of last weekend, if not for a number of Oscar nominees receiving expansions, and a possible shake-up in first place. Read on for the weekend box office report.

Based on Sunday morning estimates, the biggest shocker was MGM putting Jason Statham‘s action-thriller “The Beekeeper” ahead of Paramount’s musical-comedy “Mean Girls” with $7.4 million to $7.3 million to win first place. This will be an interesting race to check back with on Monday, since that’s a negligible amount of just $100,000 between the two movies, a number that could change once actual box office is reported.

Reported estimates have “The Beekeeper” dropping just 14% from last weekend compared to “Mean Girls” being down 37%, although “Mean Girls” was ahead on Friday. It’s hard to believe a movie targeted more towards older guys might do better business over the weekend, so...

Amazon MGM Studios has purchased the Jason Statham-starring actioner “Levon’s Trade” for a theatrical release. The film is directed by David Ayer based off a script written by Sylvester Stallone.

The film was originally announced in October 2023 and is based on the novel by famed comics author Chuck Dixon. The film follows Levon Cade (Statham), a reformed criminal on the straight and narrow. When his boss’s teenage daughter disappears, Cade is asked to use the skills that made him a legend in the world of black ops. He enters into the heart of a deep criminal conspiracy that threatens his and his daughter’s lives.

Shooting starts on the movie in London this spring.

The film comes two days after “Road House” director Doug Liman chastised the studio for giving his Jake Gyllenhaal-starring remake of the Patrick Swayze ’80s movie a streaming-only release (it will premiere at...

“Super/Man,” a documentary about the life of Christopher Reeve, is finalizing a deal to sell to Warner Bros. Discovery following its buzzy Sundance Film Festival premiere. It’s an interesting home for the documentary, because Reeve experienced his greatest commercial success playing the Man of Steel in the first four Superman movies, which Warner Bros. produced. James Gunn, the co-head of Warner-owned DC Studios, is currently reviving the character in the upcoming “Superman: Legacy,” which he wrote and will direct.

It’s unclear how the deal will be structured, but sources say that it could include some kind of distribution under the DC Studios banner, as well as involve some kind of showing on CNN, which Warner Bros. Discovery also owns. It would also involve showings on Max, the company’s streaming service. The sale has not closed, so it’s possible it could collapse at the eleventh hour,...

The 2024 Slamdance Film Festival, which returned this year to its original home at the Doubletree Park City, announced the winners of its Sparky Awards on Friday. Giuseppe Garau’s The Accident, a 16mm-shot film about a newly separated woman finding employment within the tow-truck industry, won the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize. The Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize went to Matt Moyer’s and Amy Toensing’s Inheritance, an Appalachia-set film dealing with the opioid epidemic. Kiarash Dadgar, whose short film The Steak played the festival, was awarded the Agbo Fellowship, which comes with $25,000 in prize money and […]

The post Slamdance 2024 Announces Winners, The Accident and Inheritance Take Top Prizes first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Richard Linklater’s ongoing fascination with the passage of time has seen him use lengthy shooting schedules to make some of the most beloved independent films of the last quarter century. He famously spent a decade shooting “Boyhood” in order to accurately showcase the process of his actors aging, and the 18-year gap between “Before Sunrise” and “Before Midnight” (with “Before Sunset” coming in between) allowed him to capture a relationship from its initial spark to the domesticity of marriage. But his upcoming adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” might be his most ambitious undertaking yet.

Sondheim’s musical — which has a book by George Furth and is based on George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s play of the same name — famously tells the story of three friends whose lives change over the course of 20 years as they pursue diverging career paths in show business.

The...

Randall Park could be taking on his most ambitious project to date. The actor and comedian has reportedly agreed to a deal with Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions to make what is currently described as an "untitled genre film," as reported by Jeff Sneider via his InSneider newsletter. Park is co-writing the project, which is described as being "in very early development," alongside Michael Golamco.

Jason Blum is preparing to expand his horror empire into the museum world.

The CEO of Blumhouse, who has produced horror hits ranging from “Paranormal Activity” to “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” has announced plans to develop a horror exhibit at the the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The hotel famously served as Stephen King’s inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in “The Shining,” as the author stayed at the Stanley shortly before writing his seminal horror novel that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film.

The hotel, which opened in 1909, will now be home to the Stanley Film Center, an ongoing horror exhibit curated by Blumhouse in collaboration with the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media.

The exhibit is being billed as a “mini Academy Museum dedicated to horror,” and will feature memorabilia from Blumhouse’s vast library, which includes both original franchises like “The Purge” and reboots of...

With no new wide releases this weekend, theater traffic is reaching a near halt to mark the end of January. “Mean Girls” looks to lead domestic charts once again, while the crop of freshly Oscar-nominated features look to extend their big screen runs armed with renewed new awards buzz. Universal’s release of Apple’s star-studded action-comedy “Argylle” will hope to make a splash and kickstart business next weekend.

Until then, Paramount’s “Mean Girls” is staying on top, projecting about $6.7 million over the three-day frame. That would mark the lowest-grossing No. 1 release since “Top Gun: Maverick” returned to the top slot with $6 million in its 15th weekend of release back in September 2022. Since then, there was also “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” which debuted to $8.5 million over Super Bowl weekend last year.

It marks another solid hold “Mean Girls,” which looks to push its domestic gross north of $60 million in the coming days.

Leo Regan presents more than 25 years of footage of Lanre Fehintola, who documented addicts in Bradford so closely that he became one himself

Back in the 90s, Lanre Fehintola was a talented photojournalist who got hooked on heroin and crack while photographing addicts in Bradford. He started dealing, served time in prison, but never gave up on photography. “It saved my life,” he says in this raw, affectionate documentary directed by his friend Leo Regan from more than 25 years of footage. It’s Regan’s third film about Fehintola – and it’s easy to see what keeps him coming back. As a young man, Fehintola had such life force, such energy; a personality of extremes, he was self-destructive and sensitive, completely intoxicating.

This film begins with Fehintola in the present day, processing his recent diagnosis of lung cancer. Doctors have given him six months to live. “It is what is,...

Luck Is A Lady

Margot Robbie, lead actor and producer of “Barbie,” is to be awarded the Aacta Trailblazer Award next month by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

Hailing originally from Queensland, the presentation will be a homecoming of sort for Robbie. The award will be presented to her at the 2024 Aacta Awards Ceremony on Feb. 10 at the Home of the Arts in Queensland’s Gold Coast.

“Margot Robbie’s impact extends beyond her on-screen performances, as she continues to shape narratives and challenge industry norms. Her commitment to empowering women in film, combined with her talent and business acumen, solidifies Robbie as an influential figure in the entertainment world and a deserved recipient of the 2024 Aacta Trailblazer Award,” said the organization.

Her notable roles include “I, Tonya,” where she portrayed figure skater Tonya Harding, and “Bombshell,” where she played a young woman navigating the toxic environment of a news network.

The line sprawling along the corridors and staircases of De Doelen, the heart of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, alerted passersby that there was a star in town. The actor in question? German thesp Sandra Hüller, at the festival to support Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and to give an in-depth talk about her career and latest projects.

Hüller, who landed her first Oscar nomination for best actress last week for Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” said she is “definitely not” used to the growing attention. “I find myself giggling in the morning because it is so nice. When I walk my dog, people are shouting congratulations at me. People I’ve never seen before!” she added of her array of recent accolades, which include not only the Academy Award nod but a Golden Globe nomination for Triet’s courtroom drama, and BAFTA nominations for “The Zone of Interest...

Worldwide box office January 26-28 RankFilm (distributor)3-day (world)Cume (world) 3-day (int’l)Cume (int’l) Territories 1. Fighter (various) $24.6m $25.1m $20.8m $20.8m 23 2. Anyone But You (Sony) $19m $126.6m $14.2m $55.4m 49 3. The Beekeeper (MGM) $18.3m $104.2m $10.9m $61.9m 62 4. Wonka (Warner Bros)

$13.7m $552.1m $7.8m $356.9m 78 5. Poor Things (Disney) $13m $51.1m $10m $26.3m 37 6. Johnny Keep Walking! (various) $12.5m $154.6m $12.3m $154.1m 8 7. Mean Girls (Paramount) $11.6m $83.4m $4.3m $22.6m 23 8. Migration (Universal) $10.4m $206.1m $5.2m $104.9m 77 9. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (Warner Bros) $9.8m $412.7m $7m $294.7m 79 10. Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Freedom (various) $8.9m $8.9m $8.9m $8.9m 1

Credit: Comscore. All figures are estimates.

Television in the 1990s would be a decade that revolutionized sitcoms and dramas. The Simpsons spoofed a typical family comedy, while Twin Peaks descended a soap opera into dark surrealism. Never was that more clear than when a long-running mystery show confronted this new reality with an emerging sitcom. Murder, She Wrote ran from 1984 to 1996, and a major reason it ended was because of the growing popularity of Friends. The cozy mystery formula wasn’t enough anymore. Although the sitcom didn’t set out to end it, by the following year, only one of these shows was left standing.

A sublime score from Hiromi Uehara drives this coming-of-age-anime, which brings three young jazz musicians to life with spectacular imagery

Is jazz dead? Yuzuru Tachikawa’s Blue Giant certainly begs to differ. Following three 18-year-old boys who doggedly pursue their musical dreams, the film hits the familiar beats of the coming-of-age anime, yet it also deviates from the format in interesting ways. There are trials and tribulations, quarrels and reconciliation, but what makes Blue Giant really shine is its masterly rendering of the physical ecstasy that emanates from live performance.

Jass, the band at the film’s centre, represents three different approaches to making music. Arriving in Tokyo from a small town, Dai Miyamoto has only picked up the saxophone four years earlier yet possesses a prodigious, ferocious ability to channel his emotions with every note. In contrast, pianist Yukinori Sawabe, who grew up in a family of musicians, is...

A feature-length fully-animated version of smash hit Korean series “Yumi’s Cells” will launch next month at the European Film Market in Berlin. International rights to the property were picked up by Barunson E&a, part of the Korean Barunson conglomerate that also produced Oscar-winning live-action film “Parasite.”

“Yumi’s Cells: The Movie” is a 3D feature animation based on the popular Naver webtoon series of the same title that debuted in 2015. Production of the film is by Locus Animation (formerly Sidus Animation), which was previously responsible for “Red Shoes and Seven Dwarfs” and Studio N, a subsidiary of Naver Webtoon. The film is currently in post-production and will be delivered later this year.

Locus’s latest work, “Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning” is also debuting at the EFM.

“Yumi’s Cells” revolves around an office worker Yumi and the myriad of cells inside her brain – such as Rational Cell, Emotional Cell, Anxiety Cell,...

Viacom18 and Marflix’s Bollywood actioner “Fighter” was the highest grossing film of the weekend at the global box office, with box office revenues of $25.1 million, according to data from ComScore.

The film, directed by Siddharth Anand, whose previous film, Shah Rukh Khan starrer “Pathaan,” was one of the biggest Indian hits of 2023, stars Bollywood A-listers Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor. “Fighter” revolves around the Indian Air Force and released on Thursday, Jan. 25, ahead of the Jan. 26 Republic Day Indian public holiday. The film depicts Indian conflicts with Pakistan and was banned across the Middle East where there is a large Pakistani migrant worker population.

“Fighter” released across 23 territories and recorded a $24.5 million worldwide weekend, with $20.8 million of that total earned in international territories, i.e. outside North America. Including the Thursday numbers, it had worldwide cumulative collections of $25.1 million.

In North America, “Fighter” collected $3.7 million over the...

Chameleon Street, a true-crime comedy about the fraudster who passed as a lawyer, a surgeon and even a basketball-player, fell foul of a racist Hollywood. Can it now be a hit? We speak to its director

When he won the grand jury prize at the 1990 Sundance film festival for his debut picture Chameleon Street, Wendell B Harris Jr thought his film just might be a hit. “Gee,” he remembers thinking, “Hollywood is reaching out to me.” But despite the acclaim, Chameleon Street struggled to get a release. Harris never made another film.

Now, three decades later, things are a little different. Chameleon Street – recently hailed by the New Yorker as a masterpiece and one of the 20th century’s greatest independent films – was finally given a US streaming release in 2021, and is available for the first time in the UK, via Mubi and BFI Player. For Harris, this means that...

Once upon a time, there was the Swedish queen of crime Camilla Läckberg, steadily delivering international best-selling adult/children’s books, cook books and song lyrics.

Some of her books have turned into series –“The Fjällbacka Murders” – or soon will be – “The Golden Age,’ optioned by Legendary Entertainment.

One day she met Swedish star actor Alexander Karim while shooting the Swedish show “Stars in the Castle” (“Stjärnorna på slotet”).

“We started talking TV, movies, creative ideas and immediately hit it off!” Läckberg tells Variety, in a zoom interview ahead of Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market. There, her executive produced thriller “The Dog,” starring Alexander Karim and helmed by his brother Baker Karim (“Malcolm”), is having its market world premiere.

The Karim brothers and Läckberg are, moreover, now ‘partners in crime’ in Bad Flamingo Studios (Bfs), a Stockholm-based film and TV production outfit founded to “break the film industry’s norms and barriers.

This documentary by Serbian-born director Marta Popivoda is a mildly psychedelic drift into the horror of one woman’s deportation and determined survival

Much of this Serbian documentary uses a striking, mildly psychedelic technique: a super-slow dissolve between images that morph near-imperceptibly into the next. Cracks in rendered rural walls appear to shift and Balkan forest vegetation undergoes subtle mutations, as the film’s subject, nonagenarian Sofia Vujanovic, recalls her past in voiceover: one of Tito’s partisans, her wartime activities and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz. It’s as if an ineluctable force – history – is moving through the material world, warping and reshaping it.

These tectonics operate on human flesh too: Vujanovic’s Auschwitz tattoo has slipped down her forearm as the years have gone by. Purpose still weighting her words, she recounts her journey into activism: she was attracted to communism by progressive classmates in the countryside; cherrypicked as...

Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18-28 and, after a sluggish start, there were deals (click here for the latest), celebrity sightings, and a protest.

Christopher Nolan turned up to collect an honourary award at the festival’s opening night gala fundraiser and called the occasion a “full circle moment” 23 years after premeiring his breakout thriller Memento there back in 2001.

Kristen Stewart also attended the gala and starred in two films this year, while celebrity guests included Robert Downey Jr., Will Ferrell, and Malia Obama, who managed to attend somewhat under the radar with her short film The Heart credited to Malia Ann.

The year was 1977, and it was a particularly interesting year in Clint Eastwood's life. He was in the midst of a drastic image change, brought upon by his irritation with critics' perceptions of him and his characters. The Gauntlet was filmed that same year and the result was representative of his perpetual metamorphosis. Eastwood loved to play around with his mythos, and the action thriller film interestingly becomes personal, as it mixes aspects of his real-life turmoil and the cultural shift the world was entering.

Move over Wayne and Eastwood — Lee Van Cleef is here to steal your scene! Sure, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are practically synonymous with Westerns (and for good reason), but Van Cleef is the most under-appreciated and overlooked regular of the genre. His hawkish, piercing eyes and naturally intimidating demeanor make him an effortless antagonist, but his skill as an actor reaches way beyond his ability to mean mug.

There are very few shows whose fall from grace was harder than Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of the dark fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin. With its complicated political plots, multifaceted characters, and impressive budget for a television show, it captivated audiences around the world and became one of the cultural juggernauts of the 2010s. However, all of that love and praise turned to ash following the disastrous eighth and final season in 2019. Nowadays, Game of Thrones is brought up either to talk about how far it fell, or how the current adaptation of Martin's work, House of the Dragon, compares to its earlier seasons.

This post contains spoilers for episode 3 of "True Detective: Night Country."

"Quid Pro Quo, Clarice. I tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case. About yourself," says Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), speaking with FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in "The Silence of the Lambs." The quid pro quo scene is a turning point in Clarice and Lecter's complex relationship, as this allows them to exchange information that they deem valuable — while Clarice gains greater insight into the Buffalo Bill murders, Lecter hones in on her emotional vulnerabilities and the trauma that shaped her as a child. There's an unsavory tint to this exchange that occurs at different points in the film: Lecter's unpredictability and obsessive interest in Clarice pose a threat that could unravel with serious consequences at any given time.

Foster also plays a detective in "True Detective: Night Country," although her Elizabeth Danvers is nothing like the courteous,...

More than 25 years after the hit NBC series ended, Seinfeld is still regarded as one of the best sitcoms of all-time. Sure, there were a couple of missteps over the years, such as the much maligned "The Puerto Rican Day" episode, or the disappointing series finale, but along the way, the series created classic episodes, characters, and catchphrases on a weekly basis. In Seinfeld's eighth season, it was still at the top of its game. This was the season that gave us Elaine's horrible dancing and the birth of "yada yada yada." One episode, "The Chicken Roaster," kept up with the great laughs, but went for some genuine scares as well by introducing us to a creepy doll named Mr. Marbles.

The directors associated with some of the greatest crime movies of all time are an easy group of names to rattle off, with Francis Ford Coppola giving us the timeless epic that is The Godfather, or the many crime masterpieces of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers. However, a year after The Godfather came out, Elaine May –– a legendary comedian and filmmaker in her own right –– began working on a film which would not release until 1976, but would rise in the ranks as one of the best crime films ever made.

Fish out of water comedy film “Jonny Keep Walking” kept its place at the top of the mainland China box office in its fifth weekend of release. The top five titles remained unchanged from the previous week.

“Jonny,” in which a man from the countryside struggles to hold down a corporate job in a big city, earned $12.1 million (RMB86.2 million), according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was another good hold after $15 million in the film’s fourth weekend. The cumulative total for “Jonny” is now $155 million (RMB1.10 million).

Hong Kong-made action comedy “Rob N Roll,” with its starry cast of Aaron Kwok, Richie Jen and Lam Ka-tung, held on to second place, but slipped 56% weekend-on-weekend with $5.3 million, down from $12.1 million.

Another Hong Kong-made film, “The Goldfinger” took $3.5 million in third place. Its cumulative stands at $71 million since releasing on Dec. 30.

Jason Statham-starring “The Beekeeper” maintained fourth place in China with $1.9 million.

This article contains spoilers for "True Detective: Night Country."

2014's "True Detective" season 1 introduced a whole host of unique symbols, tropes, and stylistic choices to the crime procedural. It was so visually distinctive that fans have long since pined for the affecting mix of cosmic horror symbolism, occult mythology, and eclectic styles drawn from various religions native to Southern Louisiana that gave Nic Pizzolatto's original season its inescapably intoxicating atmosphere. The tone of that initial run of episodes was enhanced by director Cary Fukunaga, who shot the Louisiana setting with an impeccable eye for the inherent creepiness of its vast backwaters and ghost towns that, in Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey)'s words, were "like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading."

This is why fans of that first season will no doubt be exhilarated by "True Detective: Night Country" and its usage of season 1 symbolism. New...

While Ari Aster's filmography might not be for everyone, it is an undeniably interesting and singular body of work. He released a series of short films between 2008 and 2016, some of which became fairly well-known and infamous, while others are generally quite obscure. Then, in 2018, his feature film debut, Hereditary, made him an instantly significant figure within the horror genre, and his feature films made since then have continued to be interesting and challenging.

“Citizen of a Kind,” a comedy-drama about a woman who takes matters into her own hands after becoming the victim of a scam, fulfilled its promise from an earlier week of previews. “Citizen” topped the South Korean box office on its opening weekend, accounting for a more than 40% market share. But, with few other fresh titles reaching cinemas, overall theatrical revenues were at their lowest for several months.

“Citizen” earned $2.59 million between Friday and Sunday, according to figures from Kobis, the data service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). Over five days since release on Wednesday, and with the addition of its earlier previews, “Citizen” finished its opening weekend with a cumulative of $3.58 million.

Directed by Park Young-ju, “Citizen” tells the tale of woman whose business has gone up in flames and takes a hefty loan in an attempt to restart it. When she discovers that the loan is...

In “Porcelain War,” a resilient Ukrainian couple divide their time between two seemingly antithetical pursuits: When enterprising Slava Leontyev isn’t training fellow civilian soldiers in the ongoing fight against Russia’s invasion, he and his partner Anya Stasenko are skilled ceramic artists, casting and painting dainty porcelain figurines inspired by local nature and folklore. If the title already suggests something pointed in that disparity, this emotive debut by Leontyev and American co-director Brendan Bellomo leaves nothing to chance in ensuring we get it: Porcelain, we are told, is “fragile but everlasting, and can be restored after hundreds of years.” Lest the point still be lost on us, the couple’s combined voiceover later offers a blunter paraphrase: “Ukraine is like porcelain — easy to break, but impossible to destroy.”

The metaphor is clear enough, then; whether it’s quite complex enough to sustain a feature-length documentary is another question. “Porcelain War” thrives on contrast,...

Think back for a second to where you were around 2014. Perhaps you were in a different job, or you were in a relationship that molded the direction of your life for years to come. The city or even country you call home could be entirely different. Whether we realize it or not, our lives are constantly shifting, pointing us in new directions that we can’t even begin to imagine. What’s normal one year can sound like it came from another dimension just ten years later. If that sounds ludicrous, well, just ask the three famous leading men of a 2014 romantic comedy written by Tom Gormican.

Six years after Jersey Shore went off the air, the cast returned for a follow-up show called Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. That series has been going strong now for six seasons, renewed for a seventh, making it surpass the original. Now that the cast is older, and more mature (in some ways), some with families and careers, it’s a very different show.

The winner of the World Dramatic competition at Sundance, co-directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s understated and essential Mexican drama “Sujo” is one of two films in this year’s lineup (the other being “Ponyboi”) in which children who were given distinctive names by doomed macho dads spend years wondering what those monikers mean. In both cases, the eventual reveal puts a poignant coda on stories of young Latinos struggling to escape the cycle of ignorance and unhealthy behavior that threatens to pull them under.

An optimistic entry in a traditionally brutal genre, “Sujo” is a story about defying gravity. Like Sleeping Beauty — who manages to prick her finger, even after all of the spinning wheels in the kingdom were thought destroyed — or tragic figures from Greek mythology whose fates are dictated by the gods, the title character seems doomed to follow in the footsteps of his father, Josue...

Long before the 2019 revival of "The Twilight Zone" dropped on CBS All Access, there was the 1985 revival of the same name. This version was also not quite as well-received as the original series, but it still delivered plenty for fans of the classic series to enjoy: Fun premises, spooky characters, ominous narration, and plenty of actors who'd go on to become extremely famous. Such was the case with a segment in season 1's eighth episode named "Dealer's Choice," which gives us a delightful performance from Morgan Freeman two years before his breakout role in "Street Smart."

The story centers around a group of guys playing poker, who quickly discover that the new guy at the table is actually the Devil himself, here to claim one of their souls. Going into the episode forty years later, you'd expect Freeman to be playing the Devil. He's proven by now that he's great at playing a somewhat aloof,...

This classic teen comedy-drama was based on a book series of the same name by Cecily von Ziegesar and ran from 2007 to 2012. Gossip Girl follows the everyday lives of the Manhattan elite, specifically a group of teenagers who attend a prestigious private school on the Upper East Side. An anonymous blogger called Gossip Girl who documents their every move torments their lives, exposing secrets and scandals. Starring some now big names, including Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, the show still gains new viewers through Netflix and HBO Max. This iconic teen show defined a generation of television.

Reformed supervillain Felonius Gru (Steve Carell) has come a long way since "Despicable Me" released back in 2010 -- the billion-dollar box office hit that put brand new animation studio Illumination on the map. In the first film, Gru adopted three orphan girls as part of a plot to steal the Moon, intending to discard them when they were no long of any use to him. But Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher) melted Gru's villainous heart and he ended up keeping them.

In "Despicable Me 2," Gru turned away from his former life of crime and began working as an agent for the Anti-Villain League. Gru's family grew a little bigger when Felonius married fellow Avl agent Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig) at the end of the sequel. Now, the trailer for "Despicable Me 4" has introduced Gru and Lucy's baby son, Gru Jr., who seems unimpressed by his infamous father.

In the history of tween-based television, there are few shows and characters quite as defining as Lizzie McGuire. From 2001-2004, Disney Channel viewers followed the relatable (and klutsy) character, brought to life by Hilary Duff, as she navigated middle school crushes, bullies, and all the other coming-of-age challenges she and her friends faced. The series concluded with 2004's theatrical release, The Lizzie McGuire Movie. The film sees Lizzie masquerade as an Italian popstar in Rome while on a school field trip. During the lavish adventure, she ultimately overcomes many of the challenges she faced over the years, as she finds herself and romance blossoms with one of her best friends, Gordo (Adam Lamberg).

The 90s are home to some of the most beloved and widely regarded films of all time, with films like The Shawshank Redemption, Schindler's List, and Goodfellas consistently considered some of the greatest of all time. However, for every critically acclaimed and genre-defining masterpiece that was able to cap off the 20th century in film, several releases managed to accomplish the complete opposite. While it's easy to look back on the 90s with rose-tinted glasses, there was a great deal of bottom-of-the-barrel garbage filmmaking released throughout the decade as well.

Over an impressive 11 years, every season of "Frasier" boasted some top-notch guest stars. The beloved sitcom, which recently returned for a revival show that was neither disappointing nor remarkable, featured everyone from Patrick Stewart to Michael Keaton and almost the entire cast of "Cheers" — the show on which Frasier Crane himself debuted.

But there were also a ton of major guest appearances that we never got to see. Dr. Crane famously ran a call-in talk radio show on Seattle's Kacl station, where he would dole out life advice to embattled residents of the Emerald City, many of whom were big-time celebrities. At one point Macaulay Culkin called Frasier's show as a self-conscious 43-year-old man who was concerned about his youthful voice. Then there was the time Helen Mirren sought Dr. Crane's advice about her kleptomania. But that's just the beginning of the sitcom's extensive list of unseen guest stars. In fact,...

After becoming a hit in the sports scene, various athletes have ventured into reality TV as a way to show fans another side to their lives. After the success of Total Divas and Miz and Mrs., Bianca Belair and Montez Ford are the next ones to have a reality show of their own. Both wrestlers are prominent names in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), but out of the fighting ring, they are a family. Hulu's latest reality series, Love and WWE: Bianca & Montez, will go behind the scenes in the It couple's home life as they balance marriage and their demanding careers. If you want to get to know these two and how their love story came to be, here is everything we know about the upcoming show.

Have you ever had a really big secret? A secret that you knew you had to keep for the sake of the greater good? It's a heavy burden to carry, and one that could spectacularly blow up in your face if it ever got out. This is a situation that the late great Alan Rickman had to embrace being in when he first took on one of his most iconic roles, that of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. Almost every actor in the cast only had knowledge of the first four books and the first film script at their disposal, but Rickman got a very exclusive peek into the future. Thanks to a particular person with rare insider knowledge, Rickman was given the perfect insight to properly capture the soul of a man who remained endlessly fascinating due to how steadfastly he refused to show us anything.

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and for the cast of NBC's sitcom Cheers, that place was their beloved Boston bar of the same name. With the simple premise of staff and regulars enjoying each other's company in their hometown bar, the show's heart and humor came from its brilliant ensemble cast, who quickly became household names. Cheers premiered in 1982 and, aside from coming in at the bottom of the ratings in its first season, was a consistent hit for NBC—it lasted 11 seasons, coming to an end in 1993 after over 270 episodes, earning over 100 Emmy nominations in the process. Known for its clever and funny writing, the show is still considered one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, one which, despite some flaws, still holds up today.

The idea of found footage as a filmmaking technique stretches back to at least 1961 with the release of Shirley Clarke's relatively obscure drama "The Connection." The found footage style was used to present scripted material as if it were documentary footage, employing a lot of shaky, handheld camera work and extemporaneous-sounding dialogue. The term "found footage" sprung from a common conceit of the style, which often implied that something horrible had happened to the filmmakers that prevented them from assembling and editing their footage. Once their footage was found, it was edited by a third party and presented in the theater.

There were many found footage films from 1961 until 2007, but the release and overwhelming success of Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" sparked a years-long wave of the format, with most of its glory-chasers employing horror as their baseline. Late 2000s found footage horror was largely effective, as it often...

Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart's name evokes images of a wide-eyed, optimistic everyman equipped with bumbling charm and a heart full of kindness, as best seen in movies such as Harvey, It's a Wonderful Life, The Shop Around the Corner, and Come Live With Me. He put his mark on the world map when Hollywood kept trusting him with those American-ideal-man roles that he is best known for. He collaborated with some of the best directors in Hollywood including Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra. But Jimmy Stewart's time on screen was not all idealistic. He took up roles that exchanged his charm for grit. One director who significantly facilitated that change was Anthony Mann, particularly with 1952's Bend of the River, which shatters Stewart's typecasting and paves the way for a different Stewart in his decades-long career.

The Beekeeper and Mean Girls were locked in a race for number one at the North American box office, although the more interesting results saw most of last week’s Oscar nominees surge after theatrical expansions or re-releases.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Jason Statham thriller The Beekeeper earned an estimated $7.4m and Paramount’s Mean Girls musical delivered $7.3m in their third weekends in a slow session overall. The studios will report final numbers on Monday when the box office winner will be determined.

Warner Bros’ Wonka ranked third on $5.9m for an excellent $195.2m in its seventh weekend, followed by...

The Beekeeper and Mean Girls were locked in a race for number one at the North American box office, although the more interesting results saw most of last week’s Oscar nominees surge after theatrical expansions or re-releases.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Jason Statham thriller The Beekeeper earned an estimated $7.4m and Paramount’s Mean Girls musical delivered $7.3m in their third weekends in a slow session overall. The studios will report final numbers on Monday when the box office winner will be determined.

Warner Bros’ Wonka ranked third on $5.9m for an excellent $195.2m in its seventh weekend, followed by...

Illumination’s “Despicable Me” franchise has grossed a total of more than $4.4 billion worldwide, and given the brand is the biggest global animated franchise in history, you can bet everyone wants more. So, today, Illumination and Universal revealed the first trailer for “Despicable Me 4,” the first film in the franchise in seven years (not counting “Minions” spin-offs and whatnot).

Continue reading ‘Despicable Me 4’ Trailer: Will Ferrell, Stephen Colbert & More Join Illumination’s Hit Franchise at The Playlist.

Thanks to the power of TikTok, I See You became a sleeper hit when thousands of people caught this 2019 horror film on Netflix. It’s not hard to understand why so many people are fascinated by Adam Randall’s nerve-wracking dive into the world of phrogging, as I See You does a marvelous job of feeding the audience’s paranoia while constantly subverting expectations. The most surprising is that I See You flew under our radar for four years instead of being praised as one of the best horror releases of 2019. It’s great to see I See You getting its well-deserved recognition since it dropped on Netflix, but some fans might still wonder how every plot element fits together by the time the credits roll. So, if any of the many plot twists of I See You confused you while you nervously checked every corner of your home for intruders,...

It’s been two years since “Minions: The Rise of Gru” took the summer box office by storm in 2022, but families won’t have to wait much longer for another adventure with everyone’s favorite pill-shaped heroes. “Despicable Me 4” is set to hit theaters this July, and the new trailer suggests that it’ll be another star-studded adventure featuring Gru and his Minion friends.

“Despicable Me 4” picks up after the events of “Despicable Me 3”, following Steve Carrell’s Gru and Kristen Wiig’s Lucy as their family grows with the arrival of Gru Jr. In addition to the familiar faces, the film sees Gru and his Minions face off against two new evil nemeses: Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) and his femme fatale partner Valentina (Sofia Vergara).

Universal’s Illumination Entertainment division has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most profitable animation companies with hits like...