Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon” dominated the U.K. and Ireland box office over the weekend, opening with £8.1 million ($11 million), according to Comscore.

Walt Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” moved to second place in its fourth week, generating $1.9 million for a strong running total of $45.1 million. Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” followed in third with $1.6 million.

“The Salt Path” from Black Bear remained in fourth, collecting $804,146 and bringing its cumulative earnings to $8.1 million. In fifth, Lionsgate U.K.’s “From The World of John Wick: Ballerina” added £$788,495, reaching $3.5 million after two weeks.

Sony’s “Karate Kid: Legends” took sixth with $640,665 for a total of $6.6 million. Warner Bros.’ “Final Destination: Bloodlines” landed in seventh, earning $413,677 to bring its five-week tally to $15 million.

Universal’s “The Ballad Of Wallis Island” placed eighth, pulling in $325,998 for a cumulative $1.2 million. Trafalgar Releasing’s “Peppa Meets The Baby Cinema Experience” remained in the top 10 at ninth,...

Glenn Close and Billy Porter have nabbed roles in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

Close will play Drusilla Sickle, the cruel escort to the District 12 Tributes, while Porter snagged the role of Magno Stift, her estranged husband and the Tributes’ uninspired designer. Close has earlier movies credits like Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs, The Wife and 101 Dalmatians.

Veteran stage actor Porter earned a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for Kinky Boots, and Tony Awards for his production of the best musical winner A Strange Loop. Francis Lawrence directs the movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling novel that will hit theaters Nov. 20, 2026.

Cast members earlier announced include Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Jesse Plemons, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke, Lili Taylor, Ben Wang, Ralph Fiennes, Elle Fanning and Kieran Culkin. Lawrence will direct the latest Hunger Games installment from a screenplay adaptation by Billy Ray.

Production on the new “Masters of the Universe” movie has wrapped, and to mark the occasion, star Nicholas Galitzine (“The Idea of You”) offered up a first look at him in costume as He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe, who must battle the evil Skeletor in this adaptation of the Mattel toy franchise.

Travis Knight, the CEO of Laika and director of the animated “Kubo and the Two Strings” and 2018’s “Transformers” spinoff “Bumblebee,” directed the new “Masters of the Universe” movie from a screenplay by Chris Butler.

“Well, that’s a wrap on ‘Masters of the Universe.’ It has been an honour shouldering the responsibility of playing Adam and He Man,” Galitzine posted on Instagram. “It’s been the role of a lifetime and I put everything into it. There’s not much I can show you, but I am so proud of the movie we’ve made.

It’s a PG box office boon as two live-action remakes are notching impressive theatrical milestones.

Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon” is flying to $200 million globally in its debut, while Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” has surpassed $850 million worldwide after four weekends of release. Both of the family films are successfully selling tickets and drawing crowds despite catering to similar moviegoing demographics.

“How to Train Your Dragon” collected $114 million while landing in 81 overseas markets, ranking as the No. 1 movie at the international box office. The film also topped the charts in North America with $83 million for a global start of $197.8 million. Top territories include Mexico with $14 million, the United Kingdom and Ireland with $11.2 million and China with $11.2 million.

Dean DeBlois wrote and direct the $150 million-budgeted “How to Train Your Dragon” remake, having previously steered the animated trilogy, which includes the 2010 original, 2014’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2...

Acclaimed actress Danielle Deadwyler is back on the big screen this summer with the release of R.T. Thorne’s “40 Acres.” The critically praised 2024 TIFF premiere — a survival action-thriller set after a plague has destroyed animal life on Earth — doesn’t open nationally until July 2. But select audiences can see the movie for free on the upcoming Juneteenth holiday, June 19, courtesy of distributor Magnolia Pictures.

As IndieWire exclusively announces, Magnolia will partner with top radio stations, DJs, and affinity groups in select U.S. cities to bring the film directly to local communities in honor of the 160-year anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States. (Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.)

Cities and partners include Atlanta, Ga (Majic 107.5/97.5), Birmingham, Al (Wbhk-fm 98.7 Kiss), Chicago, Il (Creative Cypher + Xl Fest), Dallas, TX (Juilliard Black Alumni Association – Jbaa), Houston, TX (Prairie View University Alumni), Los Angeles, CA (Radio Free 102.3 Kjlh), Nashville,...

There was no June gloom at the Gotham Television Awards, where Parker Posey and Brian Tyree Henry were honored with special awards and Netflix’s “Adolescence” was the top winner at the New York City gala.

In Los Angeles, Emmy FYC events rolled on with Adam Brody and Kristen Bell promoting “Nobody Wants This” and cast members of “Saturday Night Live” jetting to Los Angeles to talk about the show’s 50th anniversary season.

In the good deeds department, Harrison Ford was all smiles as he received the Dr. Randy Sherman Visionary Award at Operation Smile Fiesta in L.A.

As the month went on, Brad Pitt jetted to Mexico City for an “F1” fan event while Dua Lipa was in Europe performing in Belgium.

Keep coming back throughout the month for the best celeb pics of June 2025.

More from VarietyCarrie-Anne Moss 'Never Really Imagined' Working With Arnold Schwarzenegger,...

James Gunn is giving his version of a eulogy for Marvel. The Co-Chairman and CEO of DC Studios, who also helmed the MCU’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy, told Rolling Stone that it was in part the “mandates” for more content on Disney+ that “killed” the MCU IP. Gunn pointed to how he is looking to lead Wbd’s DC Studios in an entirely different way.

“That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them,” Gunn said of the Disney studio demand for more Marvel projects, which led to a so-called MCU fatigue at the box office prior to “Thunderbolts.” “We don’t have the mandate [at DC] to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things,...

Netflix will open the first two locations of its permanent entertainment venue concept “Netflix House” in late 2025, and has plans to open a third in 2027.

As previously announced, the initial spots include Philadelphia at King of Prussia Mall and in Dallas at Galleria Dallas. The newly set third ___location will be on the Las Vegas Strip at Blvd Las Vegas.

The more than 100,000-square feet Netflix House venues will feature experiences inspired by the streamer’s most popular IP, including “Wednesday,” “Squid Game,” “One Piece” and “Stranger Things.”

New immersive experiences specifically created for the first two Netflix House locations include “Stranger Things: Escape the Dark” in Dallas, and “Wednesday: Eve of the Outcasts” and “One Piece: Quest for the Devil Fruit” in Philadelphia. The Dallas ___location will also house “Squid Game: Survive the Trials,” a permanent version of “Squid Game: The Experience,” which previously debuted in other cities, including New York.

Forget Disneyland, this year we’re going to the King of Prussia Mall in Philadelphia, where Netflix is opening one of its two theme park-style locations called Netflix House. The streamer announced today that its first two Netflix House locations in Philadelphia, Pa and at the Galleria Dallas in Dallas, TX will open in late 2025.

Netflix also announced that before those two spots open, it’s already planning a third ___location in Las Vegas set to open in 2027.

So what is Netflix House? If you ask Netflix, a “theme park” doesn’t really do the phrase justice. They are 100,000 square-foot, “first-of-their-kind, immersive story-driven experiences” that will showcase games, experiences, merch, food, and other works centered around Netflix’s biggest shows and movies, all in a physical, brick and mortar (and indoor) venue. Netflix and chill isn’t just for your couch anymore.

The press release teases some brand new experiences,...

If you grew up in the 1990s, you will remember "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," the Melissa Joan Hart-led sitcom about the Archie Comics universe's most magical high school student. It tells the story of Sabrina Spellman, who, on her 16th birthday, learns that she has otherworldly abilities and comes from a long line of witches. Other than that, Sabrina is just a regular teenager who lives with her aunts and their talking cat and spends her free time hanging out with her non-magical boyfriend. The show is far more lighthearted than Netflix's horror-focused "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina," and it has an interesting connection to "Deadpool" star Ryan Reynolds to boot.

In 1996, Showtime released a "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" TV movie, which effectively served as a pilot for the sitcom. The film once again features Melissa Joan Hart in the titular role (albeit with a different surname), and...

Metal Hurlant, the French comic book anthology from the 1970s and 80s credited with reshaping the contemporary sci-fi aesthetic and inspiring films such as “Alien,” “Tron,” “Blade Runner,” “Akira” and “The Fifth Element,” is returning on its 50th anniversary.

A new English-language quarterly edition of Metal Hurlant — first announced last year — is hitting shelves this week from publishers Humanoids, which launched the original in France in 1975. Variety can exclusively reveal several excerpts of new stories from the anthology alongside support from one of the biggest filmmakers working today.

Excerpt from ‘Respect’ by Matthew Allison

Metal Hurlant was first created by comic artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet, together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and finance director Bernand Farkas. Collectively, the four were known as “Les Humanoïdes Associés (United Humanoids), which became the name of their publishing house, first launched in Paris but now based in Los Angeles.

When Steven Spielberg grew up in the postwar era, stories of gun-slinging cowboys fighting Native Americans were extremely popular because they represented the way America wanted to be seen at the time, as a strong and heroic wielder of justice. He snuck in to see John Ford's "The Searchers" when he was nine years old (via The Hollywood Reporter). It became not only one of his favorite films, but also one of his greatest artistic inspirations. 

Often considered the best Western of all time, "The Searchers" defined the genre's tropes we all know and love. John Wayne delivers his best performnce as Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who goes on a five-year search for his nieces who were kidnapped by the Comanche after tribe members burned down his homestead and killed his brother, sister-in-law, and their son. "The Searchers" has all the spectacle and adventurous excitement we'd later...

The opening theme song for the corporate dystopian series "Severance" is as eerie as the show itself. Composed by Theodore Shapiro, the "Severance" theme begins with a repeated bass piano note, alternating with a string of semi-dissonant, jazz-like chords. The unharmonious chords imply a lot about the series that viewers are about to watch. This will not be comforting, the music warns; this will be unnerving and unbalanced. You may think you have a solid foundation to stand on with those bass notes, but the jazz chords offer an element of gentle inner chaos. Shapiro was able to communicate all of that in just a few seconds of music. It should be noted that he won an Emmy already for its composition.

Thematically, those first few notes house a further meaning. Because the left hand of the pianist is playing the bass notes, and their right hand is playing the jazz chords,...

Dame Agatha Christie sure knew how to spin a good yarn, and her prolific ability to write page-turning whodunnits helped her become the best-selling novelist of all time. Nowadays, she is regarded as the mother of the cozy murder mystery and she dominated the light-hearted crime genre in the mid-20th century with the help of her two most famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. We're all familiar with the set-up: picturesque locations, amiable amateur detectives, upper-crust suspects who all have a motive, and a satisfying final reveal. Yet while Christie's fiction was usually a non-threatening comfort read, she wasn't above dipping into more grisly real-life crime for inspiration. Indeed, she ripped elements of the "biggest story since the Resurrection" straight from the front pages for one of her most popular novels.

Published 14 years after Christie first introduced Hercule Poirot in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920), "Murder on the Orient Express...

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival will present the world premiere of the cinematic cut of Warhorse Studios’ video game “Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.”

The film is set in 1403 in the Kingdom of Bohemia, where chaos reigns. As invaders pillage this ungoverned land, sowing fear and terror, Henry of Skalitz seeks revenge for his murdered family. Now a trusted servant of the allies of the rightful king, Henry is sent to escort Sir Hans Capon on a diplomatic mission. After they are ambushed and nearly killed, the two young men embark on a series of perilous adventures, putting their skills, character and friendship to the ultimate test.

Daniel Vávra and Petr Pekař are the directors of the film.

Martin Frývadlský, the CEO of Warhorse Studios, said: “I have wished to see ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’ on the big screen for a long time. I believe that the story of a blacksmith...

Trekkies will likely be able to tell you how difficult William Shatner's 1989 film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" was to make. There was a labor strike early in production, and an attempt to pull a fast one on the Teamsters Union, leading to a mysterious truck explosion (which may or may not have been related). There was also an issue with the film's SFX, as the studio couldn't afford to hire Industrial Light & Magic, forcing them to hire a cheaper replacement at the last minute. It also suffered from a bad script conceived of by Shatner himself. One of the stipulations of his contract dictated that he would take a lower salary on "Star Trek IV" if he got to direct and write a treatment for "Star Trek V." What he came up with, though, wasn't terribly polished. 

Then, at the end of all that, the film bombed.

Screenis running this regularly updated page with the latest film festival and market dates from across the world.

To submit details of or alter your festival dates, pleasecontact us herewith the name, dates, country and website for the event.

Ongoing

Europe On Screen, Indonesia - June 13-22

Monte Carlo Television Festival, Monaco - June 13-17

Transilvania International Film Festival, Romania - June 13-22

Bentonville Film Festival, US - June 16-22

Brighton Rocks International Film Festival, UK - June 16-22

CineEurope, Spain - June 16-19

June

Doc Edge Film Festival, New Zealand - June 18-July 31

Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival,...

Filmmaker Peter Chan Ho-sun delivered a remarkably candid and deeply personal masterclass at the Shanghai International Film Festival, offering rare insights into his creative process and the personal battles that have shaped his three-decade career.

In conversation with Zhang Ji, a longtime collaborator who has written several of Chan’s films including “Dearest,” the director reflected on his artistic evolution from intimate love stories to epic historical dramas.

Speaking to a packed audience, Chan traced his journey through what Zhang identified as two distinct thematic trilogies in his body of work, with particular focus on his 2007 war film “The Warlords” and his latest work “She’s Got No Name,” which opened the festival.

Zhang Ji contextualized Chan’s career by identifying an early “Trilogy of Identity and Displacement” comprising “Comrades: Almost a Love Story,” “Alan & Eric: Between Hello and Goodbye,” and “Perhaps Love.” These films, he noted, all centered on shifting identities and geographical displacement,...

Films by Richard Linklater, Oliver Laxe and Joachim Trier are among 53 titles selected by the Munich International Film Festival for its four main competition strands CineMasters, CineVision, CineRebels and CineCoPro.Munich runs from June 27 to July 6.

CineMasters

Oliver Laxe’s Sirat will be joined by another two Cannes 2025 Official Competition titles - Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Mascha Schilinski’s award-winning Sound Of Falling - to screen in the CineMasters competition for the €15,000 CineMasters Award. The prize is being sponsored for the first time this year by Dorint Hotels & Resorts and is presented to the producers of the best international film.

Movie history has no shortage of interesting stories about people who were almost cast as iconic characters, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts (or were fired from major Hollywood movies and replaced with other actors). Superhero movies alone have a long list of such tales, from the various actors who almost joined (or were rumored for) Marvel's "Fantastic Four" cast to Hugh Jackman replacing Dougray Scott as Wolverine in "X-Men" after delays in filming "Mission: Impossible II" threw Scott's schedule out of sync.

Naturally, these aren't the only times when the casting process for Marvel superheroes involved multiple actors before landing on the name we now associate with the role. In an interview with Comic Book Movie, Kellan Lutz (who played Emmett Cullen in the "Twilight" movies) revealed that back in the early days of the MCU, he was in the mix to play either Thor or Captain America:

"Look,...

Deep into the second season of "Twin Peaks," the groundbreaking TV series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, the twisted Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh) holds Major Garland Briggs (Don Davis) hostage, torturing him for more information on the mysterious and mystical Black Lodge. When Earle asks a drugged Briggs about what he fears most in the world, the warm-hearted soldier responds, "The possibility that love is not enough." It's a statement which, like so much in Lynch's work and in the show itself, has enormous resonance and weight. In particular, the sentiment refers not just to one of the major themes of the series but also to the real-world fate of the show itself.

When the episode containing that scene aired in early 1991, the reception of "Twin Peaks" as one of the most popular and exciting new shows to air on network television had shifted, with not only...

A buff, bloodthirsty mouse-man terrorises Mexican teens in the latest horror schlock made from newly expired copyright

It seems “public ___domain horror movies” are now a proper thing: a cinematic subgenre of gory, uber-schlocky fearmongering that revolves around a well-known intellectual property, usually from the realm of children’s entertainment, whose copyright has expired. That means the makers are free to turn a beloved character into a murderous man-beast psychopath, with the Winnie-the-Pooh derived Blood and Honey franchise a prime example.

Meanwhile, the moment black-and-white cartoon Steamboat Willie, the 1928 debut of Mickey Mouse, entered the public ___domain, almost half a dozen Mickey-themed slasher pics were born, like spores released from a fruiting body. In a very low-bar environment, I Heart Willie is perhaps a tick better than previous public ___domain horrors, or maybe we have reached the film critic’s equivalent of Stockholm syndrome, with our defences worn down by shoddy production values,...

FX's long-running "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" isn't exactly the type of comedy series that people normally seek out for inspiration. Unless you're trying to come up with some insulting jokes and extremely immoral humor — or if your goal is to be an awful, selfish, and ignorant human being — "Always Sunny" and its offensive, often gross, and constantly self-centered characters aren't the best fictional TV role models to follow. Yet that's precisely why the series has a loyal and dedicated fanbase of millions and millions of viewers who can't get enough of the sitcom (even after 16 seasons and more than 160 episodes), including me.

Still, choosing to re-enact "The Nightman Cometh's" finale from season 4 is a bold and strange undertaking, for sure. But that never stopped people from using or recreating performances, dialogues, or songs from popular shows, movies, and other pop culture phenomena to help them with a heartfelt task,...

Sony stepped up to bat yesterday (June 16) as the first of the big five US studios to present a slate presentation at the CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona, wrapping its slot by showing the first 28 minutes of 28 Years Latertwo days ahead of the film’s world premiere in London on June 18.

The footage was introduced to the assembled cinema operators in a filmed message fromdirector/producer Danny Boyle, who promised that this belated sequel to 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007) was a “new journey” and “something that stands on its own”.

28 Years Later is the first...

The need for collaboration between film distribution and exhibition is a perennial theme of the annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona, but it was the differing perspectives and priorities of the two sectors that spiced up the Executive Roundtable session on day one of this year’s edition (June 16-19).

Fernando Evole, VP Emea at Mexico-headquartered global cinema operator Cinépolis, called for “more content, more diverse content, stronger windows and more marketing dollars” – in all four cases, putting the onus on film studios and distributors to supply these needs.

Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution at Disney, offered a different perspective.

Beirut-based Abbout Productions, led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, will be celebrated by the Locarno Film Festival with its Raimondo Rezzonico Award dedicated to producers who epitomize the indie ethos.

Schoucair founded Abbout Productions in 2004 with Sassine joining as lead producer in 2010. They have been nurturing a network of Lebanese and Arab filmmakers amid difficult and often catastrophic circumstances, fighting to keep indie cinema alive in the region by shepherding a wide range of Arab and Lebanese feature films and launching them internationally.

Films produced by Schoucair and Sassine in recent years include “Costa Brava, Lebanon” (Venice Orizzonti, 2021); “Memory Box” (Berlinale Competition, 2021) and other works by local filmmakers such as Ahmad Ghossein, Mohamed Malas, Ghassan Salhab, Oualid Mouannes, Cyril Aris, Ely Dagher, Rana Eid and Myriam El Hajj, whose “Diaries From Lebanon” premiered in Berlinale Panorama in 2024.

Schoucair and Sassine have also co-produced several award-winning international films through their...

Sharp edges of bitter history keep jutting through Wes Anderson’s whimsical intrigues that turn international tragedy into light comedy

The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson’s makebelieve treatment of the war-ravaged near east, reimagines the region as a sunlit Levantine fantasia of cypress trees, fez hats, camel-riders and kitsch hotels, all photographed with the lustre of an Ottolenghi cookbook. Meanwhile, livestreamed daily to our news feeds, the warlords of the Holy Land exhibit for us an equally spectacular dystopia of cities pummelled into sawdust, of skies scarred with scorching white phosphorus and gun-toting paragliders.

How could these images be of the same place? What does it mean that they have been produced at the same time, and that we are consuming them alongside each other?...

Producer-director Frank Mannion follows his cordial guide to champagne with a cheerful celebration of beloved tipples of Irish origin

The always likable figure of Irish producer and film-maker Frank Mannion has, in the past, given us a cordial guide to champagne, a slightly more chaotic essay on Britishness, and its counterpart on Irishness. Now, in his cheerfully celebratory and slightly corporate-promo way, he has made a film about Irish viticulture and drink in general, which means not simply wineries, breweries and distilleries actually in Ireland, but also abroad: this is about drinks producers with an Irish background, such as Hennessy brandy, which has an obvious Irish ancestry.

It’s what this film calls “an Irish drink in a French terroir” – or, in fact, a terroir anywhere in the world, meaning places in Europe, the US and occasionally Australia and New Zealand. The film even jauntily insists that Ireland invented whiskey before Scotland.

In this moving and funny documentary, Swedish TV presenters Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson try to rekindle Filip’s father’s zest for life on a road trip to France

‘Do you want to rot away in an old armchair?” asks Filip Hammar, a Swedish TV presenter, talking to his dad. In this charming, often hilarious documentary, Hammar takes 80-year-old Lars on a road trip to the south of France; the idea is to rekindle Lars’s spark, shake a bit of life back into him. Since retiring as a French teacher, Lars has been sitting around at home, steadily more depressed and frail. Hammar wants to show his dad that life is worth living. But as you’d expect from a documentary this heart-warming, Hammar has a lesson or two to learn himself.

For the trip, Hammar has bought a knackered old Renault 4, the same car the family had when he was a kid.

Imax is riding high in China with box office numbers up 106% year-over-year through May, significantly outpacing the overall Chinese exhibition industry’s 27% growth.

The premium format now commands a record 5.3% share of the Chinese box office, signaling unprecedented audience appetite for the Imax experience.

In an exclusive interview at the Shanghai International Film Festival, Imax CEO Rich Gelfond revealed three major Chinese productions filmed with Imax cameras set to dominate the summer slate. “Made in Yiwu” (July 5) marks director Rao Xiaozhi’s second Imax collaboration following “Home Coming.” The film represents the growing trend of Chinese filmmakers embracing Imax’s proprietary camera technology.

“Dongji Rescue” (Aug. 8) sees director Guan Hu return to Imax after his war epic “The Eight Hundred,” which generated RMB3.1 billion ($431.7 million) at the Chinese box office. Gelfond says the film’s visual scale and scope are ideal for the Imax experience.

“A Writer’s Odyssey 2” (August...

Beirut-based Abbout Productions, led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, will receive Locarno Film Festival’s producing prize, the Raimondo Rezzonico Award, at its upcoming 78th edition, which runs August 6-16.

Schoucair and Sassine will also present two of their films, Costa Brava, Lebanon by Mounia Akl and Memory Box by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, at the festival.

Schoucair took over as CEO of Abbout Productions in 2004, with Sassine joining as lead producer in 2010. They have since shepherded an array of Arab and Lebanese feature films into existence and onto the international distribution marketplace.

In recent years, Schoucair and...

Rebel Wilson had a bloody accident while filming her new action comedy “Bride Hard.”

In a recent interview with Access Hollywood, Wilson recalled a “massive injury” she sustained during the production of her new film, which resulted from a mishap in fight scene choreography.

“In a fight scene, a gun accidentally got whacked across my face,” Wilson said. “It was just a freak accident, and my nose got split open, so I left set. It was really my last night of shooting. I was like, ‘How unlucky can I be?'”

She went on to say that the accident, which occurred during “the last fight sequence” on the shooting schedule, resulted in a “pool of blood.”

“I was freaking out,” she added. “They take an ambulance and they have to call a plastic surgeon, because if they didn’t, I would have been permanently disfigured. So we got the plastic surgeon,...

Among the world’s most famous chefs, Nobu Matsuhisa makes for a wildly interesting cinematic subject — or at least, he would in a more accomplished film. From documentarian Matt Tyrnauer, “Nobu” lays out the factual bullet points of Matsuhisa’s early life in Japan, his fledging business in Peru, and eventually, his success in LA and New York City. However, the movie often brushes past what might have been its most intriguing moments in favor of an unobtrusive hagiography. It approaches dramatic rigor and visual intrigue in only the briefest of scenes, often far too late into its runtime.

The opening images of “Nobu” are enticing: mouth-watering extreme closeups of freshly prepared gourmet sushi and sashimi bathed in golden light, prepared by an expert hand. However, this is the first and last time the food in this food documentary feels like the central focus. There’s much talk about preparation,...

David Hekili Kenui Bell, an actor who recently appeared in the “Lilo & Stitch” live-action remake as well as in shows like “Magnum P.I.” and “Hawaii Five-0,” has died.

Bell’s sister, Jalene Kanani Bell, confirmed his death in a Facebook post. A cause of death has not been announced.

“It is with a heavy heart I share that my sweet, generous, talented, funny, brilliant and handsome little brother David H. K. Bell will spend today in the company of our Heavenly Father,” Jalene Kanani Bell wrote Sunday.

Bell had recently shared photos from the “Lilo & Stitch” set on Instagram, as well as a clip from his audition. He played a character named Big Hawaiian Dude who comedically drops his shave ice at the sight of an alien portal. The Screen Actors Guild member also played a character named Isaac in “Hawaii Five-0” Season 5, Episode 4 and Manu Saluni in...

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2025 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 12 to June 23, with the official Emmy nominations announced Tuesday, July 15. Afterwards, final voting commences on August 18 and ends the night of August 27. The 77th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, September 14, and air live on CBS at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

The State of the Race

Unlike their male counterparts, things have not been so routine for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series contenders. For example, “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri, “Abbott Elementary” star Quinta Brunson, and “Hacks” star Jean Smart have all won an Emmy for their performances in the past two years, with the latter pair winning for this category...

From stories about harrowing queer experiences (“The Miseducation of Cameron Post”) to films that are themselves harrowing queer experiences, Peacock has a decent LGBTQ but with more queer storylines than queer shows.

Peacock’s selection of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer-inclusive movies and TV shows is not nearly as robust as the other catalogues on competing services, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime Video. And it’s an even further cry from the plethora of original gay content at HBO, which is still the only competitor in the streaming wars brandishing a critically acclaimed comedy about gay pirates.

But at least a handful of the LGBTQ stories currently available on Peacock are good enough to consider visiting the service for that purpose, even if you’re not usually there perusing its stockpile of middling NBC sitcoms. On the TV side, “We Are Lady Parts” stands out as a must-watch series about...

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2025 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 12 to June 23, with the official Emmy nominations announced Tuesday, July 15. Afterwards, final voting commences on August 18 and ends the night of August 27. The 77th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, September 14, and air live on CBS at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

The State of the Race

There are a couple categories that are brutal this year because they lost one nomination slot, and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series is one of them. Funny enough, the whole reason the category had six nomination slots last year was because there was a tie. That is not something contenders can count on, though it is...

Last week’s column on the rise of vertical dramas prompted a heartfelt text from a friend who’s worked in film and TV sound for two decades.

“Blerrgh. Time to reskill, methinks,” he wrote. “This article made me really see the writing in the sky once and for all.”

I reminded him not to shoot the messenger. Truthfully, I left my conversation with Yun Xie feeling curious, even excited, about what might come next for the format. These may never evolve into masterpieces of storytelling (a tall order when a script must deliver an emotional cliffhanger every 90 seconds), but the business around them is growing. And with that growth comes the potential for new companies, new markets, and new opportunities, even if we can’t see them clearly yet.

And that’s the real problem: We can’t see. The last five years have been an Arrakis-level sandstorm — Covid,...

Christopher Nolan is one of the most popular and roundly respected directors working in Hollywood today. Not only does he make acclaimed epics like "Dunkirk," but his movies are also remarkably popular. "Oppenheimer" made nearly $1 billion and won Best Picture at the Oscars. That blending of financial success and industry accolades is extremely rare. But Nolan wasn't always an A-lister who could pick the projects he wanted essentially at will. Case in point: Even though he's making "The Odyssey" as we speak, he previously flirted with another Greek mythology movie that ended up going to a different director.

Recently, writer David Goyer spoke with the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast in honor of the 20th anniversary of "Batman Begins," which Nolan directed. "I had heard that Chris might be developing a new Batman movie and I remember telling my agent, 'Well, it's never going to get made," Goyer said. "None of...

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2025 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 12 to June 23, with the official Emmy nominations announced Tuesday, July 15. Afterwards, final voting commences on August 18 and ends the night of August 27. The 77th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, September 14, and air live on CBS at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

The State of the Race

The Outstanding Comedy Series nominations have been the most consistent among the main series categories, so it feels really easy to say that “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “Hacks,” and “Only Murders in the Building” are all set for their third or fourth nominations in the category. “What We Do in the Shadows” also feels like a safe prediction,...

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"The Devil Wears Prada" was released in 2006 and remains one of the most beloved films of the last two decades. The David Frankel film starred Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of the fictional Runway magazine in New York City. The movie was written by Aline Brosh McKenna and was based on Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It's no secret that Miranda was inspired by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, but the fashion maven wasn't the singular blueprint for the role, as the character was also inspired by two surprising legendary Hollywood men. 

The story follows Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, an aspiring journalist with little fashion sense, who ends up scoring a job as Miranda's second assistant. Between her disinterest in the magazine and Miranda's difficult behavior, it proves to be a tough job. As Andy begins to try harder,...

In Star Wars, “the Force” is a mystical energy field that can be harnessed into supernatural powers by a chosen few. In Hollywood, it’s called “leverage.”

Kathleen Kennedy, president of “Star Wars” creator Lucasfilm, certainly knows how to use the Force — specifically within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The producer-executive has been ardently lobbying members of the group to obtain an Honorary Oscar for her boss, Disney chief Bob Iger, four insiders with knowledge of the matter told Variety.

Kennedy has reached out to select players at the board level inside AMPAS, encouraging them to recommend one of the annual honors go to Iger – the man who secured Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm for Disney’s war chest of intellectual property, selling billions of dollars’ worth of movie tickets in the process. All branches of the Academy have been active in recent weeks, meeting about new membership matters,...

Henry Cavill was officially replaced as Superman for James Gunn's new DC Universe, but a new report says the actor was considered to be recast years before that. The DC Extended Universe ended ignominiously back in 2023 with a string of flops that seemed to bring an emphatic end to this beleaguered shared timeline. It followed one of the strangest and damaging moments in Dceu history with 2022's "Black Adam." That movie, wherein The Rock got to live out his fantasy of playing a DC hero while simultaneously trying to gain control of DC's cinematic projects as a whole, featured Henry Cavill's Man of Steel in a cameo that was heralded as an official return for the British star. The actor's tenure as Supes began with Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel" in 2013 and previously seemed to have ended with "Zack Snyder's Justice League" in 2021. "Black Adam," however, was...

James Gunn has stressed from the minute he took over DC Studios that no superhero movie under his watch would go into production without a completed script. Now, in a new interview with Rolling Stone, the filmmaker attributed the so-called dying film industry to Hollywood’s fatal mistake of always making blockbusters before their scripts are officially completed.

“I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies,” Gunn said. “It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.”

Gunn noted that DC Studios recently “killed a project” because the script just couldn’t get to the right place, explaining: “Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie...

If one were to rank all the major streaming services by queerness, Amazon Prime Video would be a pretty tough one to pin down.

On the one hand, you have to give credit where credit is due: One of the service’s very first stabs at original programming was “Transparent,” which in turn was one of the first shows to star a trans main character. That show now has a lot of baggage, but it’s hard to understate its historical significance.

Beyond the thorny topic of “Transparent,” Prime Video does have a good track record of releasing shows with LGBTQ characters and centering their narratives on queer themes; in particular, many of their shows focus on queer women, refreshingly avoiding the centering of gay men that defined queer TV for decades. In 2023, the streamer dropped a phenomenal limited series retelling of David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers,” starring Rachel Weisz as twin lesbian gynecologists.

I'm not breaking new ground when I say that Adam Scott is excellent on "Severance." This isn't a hot take; it's decidedly room-temperature. Technically, Scott plays two characters on Dan Erickson's twisted take on a "workplace comedy," even though they are the same person: Mark Scout, a miserable man who lost his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) in a tragic car accident, and to deal with his overwhelming grief, who takes a job at Lumon Industries that offers a procedure called "severance" that splits his consciousness into two distinct parts. When he leaves work, he's stuck being plain old Mark Scout, but at work, on the "severed" floor, he's Mark S., a willing acolyte of Lumon who has no idea that he ever had a wife, let alone lost one.

As his innie (Mark S.) and outie (Mark Scout), Scott delivers one of his very best performances; in the show's critically adored sophomore season,...

"The Walking Dead" has become such a massive, sprawling franchise that it can be difficult to keep all of the pieces straight. These days, it's primarily known for the TV universe on AMC, which started with the eponymous mainline series before spinning off into "Fear the Walking Dead," "Dead City," "The Walking Dead: The Ones who Live," and a number of other sequel, prequel, and side-story series. Of course, that entire canon is built on top of the original comics from Robert Kirkman, which exist in their own continuity.

And then there are the video games -- the less-discussed but similarly acclaimed side of the franchise. But do these playable entries connect to the AMC canon? The comics canon? Or do they just exist in their own universe? It's a bit of a complicated question, as the answer depends on which "Walking Dead" video games we're talking about.

The most...

While the Italian mob movies popularized by films like "The Godfather" seem worlds away from South Korean shows or K-dramas, there is one series that brings these disparate cultures together. The 2021 Korean series "Vincenzo" follows Park Joo-hyung (Song Joong-ki), an adoptee who is raised by a mob boss in the Italian mafia under the name Vincenzo Cassano. A crime drama with an undercurrent of dark humor, "Vincenzo" is a standout from the many mob-inspired thrillers on television. However, more than just distinguishing itself with its cross-cultural premise, the series is a solidly crafted tale that appeals to both K-drama and mob movie fans alike.

Growing up as the adopted son of a powerful Italian mafioso, Vincenzo Cassano incurs the jealousy of his adoptive brother Paolo (Salvatore Alfano). The series begins with Paolo taking over the mob after his father's death, prompting Vincenzo to flee back to Seoul before Paolo has him killed.

Vertical has acquired U.S. rights to Jonathan Hensleigh’s action thriller “Ice Road: Vengeance.” Starring Liam Neeson, Fan Bingbing and Marcus Thomas, the sequel to 2021’s “The Ice Road” is set for release in select theaters on June 27 and on demand on July 1.

Hensleigh, the writer of “Die Hard with a Vengeance” (1995) and co-writer of “Armageddon” (1998), has returned to direct the sequel from his own script, which follows big rig ice road driver Mike McCann (Liam Neeson) as he travels to Nepal to scatter his late brother’s ashes on Mt. Everest. While on a packed tour bus traversing the deadly 12,000 ft. terrain of the infamous Road to the Sky, McCann and his mountain guide (Fan Bingbing) encounter a group of Nepali mercenaries and must fight to save themselves, the busload of innocent travelers and the local villagers’ homeland. The film was previously known as “Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky.

It didn’t premiere at a film festival, it didn’t open in a platform release, and yet Celine Song’s “Materialists” is quickly one of the bigger specialized box office success stories of the year. That’s because, in many ways, it’s not a specialized film at all.

With an estimated $12 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, “Materialists” is now the third-largest opening for an A24 film ever, behind only “Civil War” ($25.5 million) and “Hereditary” ($13.5 million).

Projections placed it between $7-8 million last week, so for it to finish at No. 3 ahead of “Mission: Impossible” and “Ballerina” is a huge feat. It did so from just over 2,800 screens, which is in the ballpark of some other A24 wide releases. It also continues a streak of solid successes for A24, all of them for original films, which includes “Warfare,” “Friendship,” and “Bring Her Back” all...