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"Forrest Gump" is one the most rewatchable movies to me because of its compelling cast of supporting characters. Yes, Tom Hanks earned his flowers for his portrayal of the slow-witted titular character who unknowingly influences historical U.S. events during the 20th century, but some nights I pop on the 1994 classic and find myself gravitating toward Forrest's elusive love interest, Jenny (played by Hanna R. Hall in childhood and by Robin Wright in adulthood). Other nights I find myself drawn to Forrest's Vietnam War platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). But at the end of the day, I always circle back...

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It wasn’t a great week for Latinos in Hollywood, but I’m sure many of you knew that already.

Between Warner Bros. axing the release of “Batgirl” starring Leslie Grace, HBO Max canceling the coming-of-age comedy TV series “The Gordita Chronicles” and James Franco being cast as Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in an upcoming feature, Latinos are being mercilessly discarded and overlooked in the entertainment business. Worse yet, not many seem to care.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav addressed the controversial “Batgirl” decision during this week’s company earnings call, saying, “we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it.”

Zaslav may not have realized how much truth he shared in that sentence.

Indeed, Hollywood doesn’t believe in Latino stories, creators or feelings. That’s a fair assumption based on our treatment in the business up to this point. However, this isn

“Bullet Train,” a John Wick-ian romp with Brad Pitt in the aisle seat, arrived in theaters with a 30.1 million opening weekend. That’s enough to top the domestic box office chart, but it’s only a so-so result given “Bullet Train’s” 90 million price tag and Pitt’s star power. The Sony Pictures release will need to maintain its momentum in the coming weeks as it tries to break even or turn a profit.

“A big film like this with lot of expectations should have had stronger debut,” says Jeff Bock, senior media analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “That said, there’s not a lot of competition in August, so ‘Bullet Train’ should have a good window to make its mark in the coming weeks.”

“Bullet Train” is trying to prove that an action flick that isn’t based on a comic book or a toy-line can defy the odds and resonate with audiences.

Hook, line and sinker. “Top Gun: Maverick” has toppled “Titanic” as the seventh-biggest film ever at the domestic box office, earning 662 million in ticket sales.

For Paramount, “Top Gun: Maverick” has also overtaken “Titanic” as the studio’s biggest film in its 110-year history. However, James Cameron’s disaster epic is still outpacing Tom Cruise’s fighter-jet adventure outside of North America with 1.5 billion at the international box office and 2.2 billion globally.

Impressively, “Top Gun: Maverick” has sold a similar number of tickets overseas as it has domestically, with the film’s international tally standing at 690 million. Without playing in China or Russia, the blockbuster follow-up to 1986’s “Top Gun” has grossed 1.3 billion to date.

Thanks to glowing word-of-mouth and repeat customers, “Top Gun: Maverick” is pulling in audiences in a way that would have been monumental even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, it’s close to reaching Marvel

We keep updating these predictions through the awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2023 Oscar picks. Nominations voting is from January 12 to January 17, 2023, with official Oscar nominations announced on January 24, 2023. The final voting is March 2 through 7, 2023. And finally, the 94th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

The State of the Race

Familiar faces lead the Beat Actor fray. Oscar-winners back in contention include Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) as a rural horse wrangler taking on an extraterrestrial threat in his “Get Out” director Jordan Peele’s “Nope” (Universal); Colin Firth engaging with Olivia Colman in Sam Mendes’ cinephile romance “Empire of Light” (Searchlight Pictures), Christian Bale rejoining director David O. Russell’s world in madcap comedy “Amsterdam” (20th Century Studios), and also reuniting with favorite collaborator Scott Cooper as a

Kiwi director Peter Jackson helped revolutionize modern studio blockbusters with his original “Lord of The Rings” trilogy, using practical effects in conjunction with newly developed CGI effects from his companies Weta Digital and Weta Workshop. These companies would later help bring James Cameron’s “Avatar” to life. While there were mixed reactions to “The Hobbit” critically, the three films in the trilogy almost made 1 billion each.

Continue reading Peter Jackson Says Amazon Ghosted Him After Asking For His Help On Their ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Prequel Series at The Playlist.

When Tony Gilroy said that the upcoming "Andor" show would not use Ilm's StageCraft technology — which uses high-def LED video walls to generate virtual sceneries — there was a wave of celebration on social media. The discourse quickly went from celebrating "Andor" using actual sets to denouncing StageCraft and proclaiming it the second coming of the much-hated green screen. In truth, however, the technology reinvents visual effects in a way we haven't seen happen so fast since the early days of CG.

Recently, Disney+ released a documentary series focused on the history of Industrial Light & Magic, and really,...

The post How Ilm's Volume Technology Reinvents Visual Effects (and What It Means for the Future) appeared first on /Film.

Patton Oswalt has several modes: There’s the affable, warts-and-all comedian who has been performing onstage for decades, the comedic performer with dramatic chops known for everything from “Ratatouille” to “Young Adult,” and a comic book junkie who reads as much as he writes for the form.

These days, all those instincts are on display. This week, Oswalt stars in “I Love My Dad,” the sophomore effort of writer-director James Morosini, which won SXSW earlier this year. Morosini co-stars as a teenager whose estranged dad (Oswalt) impersonates a woman online to get closer to his son. At the same time, Oswalt can be seen as the Raven in Netflix’s “The Sandman,” and has a new comedy special coming out on the service called “We All Scream” on September 20. In between gigs, he spoke to IndieWire over Zoom about his relationship to movies, fan culture, and the evolving state of comedy.

One year after she dazzled at the Cannes Festival, winning its Golden Eye for best documentary for “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” Payal Kapadia’s fiction debut “All We Imagine as Light,” has attracted the most potent production partner support of any project introduced at this year’s Locarno Match Me!

“Night’s” producers. Petit Chaos’ Thomas Hakim, Julien Graff in France and Ranabir Das (also Dp and editor on “Night”) at India’s Another Birth will produce “Light.”

Also on board, confirmed early July, is Oliver Pere at Arte France Cinéma. Further co-producers take in Zico Maitra and Aastha Singh, Frank Hoeve, Gilles Chanial.

A potential sign of a project positively courted by producers, the multilateral backing is hardly surprising. “All We Imagine as Light” is highly awaited after “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” a film in which “a palimpsest of dusky imagery, reflective narration and evocative score create

Paris-based Tomsa Films will co-produce Andrei Epure’s first feature “Don’t Let Me Die.” The company, created in 2018, is also behind Laura Samani’s acclaimed Cannes Critics’ Week premiere “Small Body” and documentary “Zaho Zay.”

“Don’t Let Me Die” follows the consequences of a woman’s death in front of her apartment building. Her neighbor, Maria, is interrogated by the police and eventually takes charge of the funeral. She finds herself entangled in a maze of bureaucracy as she tries to escape the feeling that she is being haunted.

Produced by Alexandru Teodorescu and Ana Gheorghe of Bucharest-based production company Saga Film, the project has received production funding from the Romanian Cnc and is about to apply for financing in France. At the moment, production is scheduled to start at the beginning of 2024.

“I was riding the bus one day and some strangers were talking about a Romanian

Ecuador-based producer Daniela Fuentes Moncada of Epopeya is introducing the introspective queer feature, “Ñusta,” as part of three regional films on her development slate at Locarno’s Producer’s Lab, an Open Doors initiative spotlighting Latin America and Caribbean talent.

Epopeya teams Moncada with founder María de los Ángeles Palacio.

Underscoring the project’s industry pulling power, co-producing the project are Director Papu Corotto at Argentina’s Hain Cine (“Esteros”) alongside Lady Vinces(“Checoslovaquia”) and Silvia Arellano (“En Medio Del Laberinto”) of Peru’sCasa Aguaflorida.

The pair bring poignant narratives to life, with Moncada previously backing “La Mala Noche” directed by Gabriela Calvache, a raw portrait of human trafficking that premiered at SXSW and was selected by festivals worldwide, receiving 15 awards and nominations. Epopeya produces animation, documentary and fiction with a focus on forward-thinking narratives.

“We believe we have a powerful tool to transform the world one viewer at a time,

One of the breakout stars of the pandemic, Daisy Edgar-Jones, was finally out and about at Locarno Film Festival, where she picked up the Leopard Club Award and introduced her latest film “Where the Crawdads Sing,” based on a novel by Delia Owens.

“The whole idea of being a ‘breakout star’ is a strange thing to comprehend anyway. The strangeness of that, happening in tandem with the strangeness of the pandemic, meant that those things will be forever mixed up together for me,” she tells Variety, recalling “Normal People’s” triumphant unveiling during the lockdown.

“In reality, nothing in my life was changing. I was still in my bedroom on Zoom. This year, I have been all the more grateful for being able to promote the projects I worked on and actually be with the people I made them with.”

Her new film, set in the South and starting all

Tom Hardiman’s feature debut “Medusa Deluxe,” which premiered at Locarno on Saturday, has already seduced multiple international distributors with its mixture of humor, grief and competitive hairdressing.

Now Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has sealed further deals for the unusual murder mystery in Spain (Elastica Films), Benelux (Filmfreak), Scandinavia and the Baltics (NonStop Entertainment), Variety has learnt in exclusivity.

As previously reported, A24 has acquired North American rights to the film, produced by Emu Films with the support of BFI, BBC Films, and Time Based Arts.

Mubi holds the rights to U.K./Ireland, France, Latin America, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, India and Southeast Asia.

“The buyers are excited about ‘Medusa Deluxe’ because it’s a quirky, original piece of cinema which can appeal to younger audiences, especially since A24 and Mubi will lead the way on global marketing,” said New Europe Film Sales CEO, Jan Naszewski.

Hardiman,

The German director, famed for making films about people at the fringes of society, has written a novel about another one: a Japanese soldier who carried on fighting the second world war for 29 years after it ended

Werner Herzog is about to turn 80 and is refashioning himself as a writer. He wishes it to be appreciated that this is what he always was – he is, after all, a virtuoso screenwriter as well as one of the greatest film-makers alive. He is talking from LA, where he now lives, about his new book, The Twilight World, a poetic hybrid, somewhere between dream and documentary. The book, which became a bestseller in the US within eight days of publication, is the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who faithfully defended Lubang, an island in the Philippines, for 29 years, believing himself to be under military orders long after the second world war had ended.

I still remember the unreal awe I experienced as a kid watching the spectacle of "The Fellowship of the Ring" come to life in theaters. Its three-hour runtime is virtually a goosebump minefield, from Gandalf's showdown with the Balrog in Moria to the heart-wrenching splitting of the fellowship at Parth Galen. It's also no coincidence that some of the most emotional scenes in Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy occur within the chaos of battle. 

Especially in that first film, the choreography of every fight scene can be summed up as more than just flashy...

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When making a show that feels as timeless as "Samurai Jack," a conclusion is not something you have in mind when writing episodes. Genndy Tartakovsky was not allowed to follow a serialized format, with the story of one episode having almost nothing to do with another. Unfortunately, that leads to problems in creating a cohesive story with character development. In the case of "Samurai Jack," solving the lack of a throughline was found in the title character's unwavering will and stoic nature. The initial four-season run felt like the old episodic adventures of television series past. While Jack never truly inched closer...

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When I first watched the 1992 Charlie Chaplin biopic, "Chaplin," I didn't know anything about the slapstick comic and actor besides that he was renowned as a legendary figure. But by the end of the first act, I was already drawing connections between the silent-movie star and entertainers of my generation. "Aye, that's Mr. Noodle!" I yelled at the screen during the scene where Chaplin, played by a 20-something-year-old Robert Downey Jr., auditions for Hollywood comedy producer Mack Sennett (Dan Aykroyd). Mr. Noodle and his brother, Mister Noodle, were played by Bill Irwin and Michael Jeter, respectively, during the "Elmo's...

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The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise is no stranger to cool cameos. After all, they had Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards play Jack Sparrow's (Johnny Depp) father in "At World's End" and "On Stranger Tides." In fact, he was set to come back for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales." Considering Depp has said a number of times that he based the character of Jack Sparrow on Richards, it made total sense to have the man himself as Papa Sparrow. 

As we know, however, Richards didn't return for the 2017 film, which was directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg....

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Steven Spielberg had already made at least two World War II classics in "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" by the time he had made "War Horse" in 2011. Throughout those movies, Spielberg seems to have stated very clearly the horrors and the evil prevalent about that conflict. He looked at the plight of persecuted Jews and life inside concentration camps. He explored the horrors of combat. He looked into an internment camp. He used Nazis as villainous stooges destined to be obliterated by God's...

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"Abraham Lincoln has to think about his whole life before he abolishes slavery and ends the Civil War."

This sentence, I can assure you, is not a real line of dialogue from Steven Spielberg's 2012 film "Lincoln." Nor, for that matter, is "Lincoln" what you would call a typical biopic. The movie takes place over the last four months of Lincoln's life in 1865, yet the titular U.S. president is almost a secondary concern in its story. Rather, the true core of the film is Lincoln and his Republican party's efforts to abolish slavery by passing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution without sabotaging Lincoln's peace negotiations...

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