Scarlett Johansson has made a major splash in Cannes with her feature directorial debut “Eleanor the Great.” Competing in the Un Certain Regard competition, the film — starring June Squibb, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Erin Kellyman — earned Johansson and her cast a five-minute standing ovation on Tuesday.

Johansson was escorted by her all-powerful agent and CEO of CAA, Bryan Lourd. Her husband, “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost, arrived solo and mingled with Sony Pictures Classics executives Tom Bernard and Michael Barker. Reigning best actor Oscar winner Adrien Brody and his partner Georgina Chapman also attended, chatting up Jost.

Introducing the film, Johansson said premiering it at Cannes is “really a dream come true.”

“When you make a film that’s an independent film like this, no one’s doing it for the money — surprise, surprise,” she continued. “Really, everyone that came together for this film came together because they loved the story,...

“Titane” director Julia Ducournau made a triumphant return to Cannes Monday evening with her new feature “Alpha.” The mother-daughter infection thriller earned an enthusiastic 11.5-minute ovation after its premiere — one of the most glowing in-person receptions thus far at this year’s film festival. As the applause raged on, Ducournau grew visibly emotional, wiping tears away and making a heart with her hands as a sign of gratitude.

But the premiere of “Alpha” faced a brief interruption when, about an hour into the film’s runtime, attendees in the balcony began waving their phone flashlights. Some audience members shouted for a doctor in French, asking for the screening to be halted. Paramedics eventually arrived and, shortly after, one audience member was carried out on a stretcher. The screening of “Alpha” continued without pausing as the incident unfolded.

It remains unclear what the cause of the medical emergency was. The incident...

Disney is unboxing more of its Toy Story 5 cast.

The studio announced Monday that Conan O’Brien has been added to the film’s voice cast as Smarty Pants, a character that is new to the animation franchise. Andrew Stanton is directing Toy Story 5 alongside co-director McKenna Harris, while Jessica Choi produces the film.

Toy Story 5 is set to hit theaters June 19, 2026. Plot details have not yet been shared, but the movie will involve the toys dealing with modern-day kids’ fascination with electronics.

The Toy Story franchise launched with the original Pixar film in 1995 and features Tom Hanks as cowboy Woody and Tim Allen as space explorer Buzz Lightyear. The new film’s voice cast also includes Ernie Hudson taking over the role of Combat Carl, with the character previously voiced by the late Carl Weathers. Toy Story 4 hit theaters in 2019 and surpassed $1 billion at the global box office,...

Sofia Coppola is recalling the moment she realized “The Virgin Suicides” was an iconic film — and it’s all thanks to Leslie Mann and Maude Apatow.

Coppola told i-d during the 25th anniversary of her 2000 directorial debut that she had no idea Gen Z was aware of the film until she was on set for her 2013 feature “The Bling Ring.” During production, actress Mann cited how her daughter was a fan of the film. Mann has two daughters with husband and collaborator Judd Apatow: Maude and Iris Apatow. At the time of “The Bling Ring,” the eldest Maude would have been 16, the same age as the Lisbon sisters in Coppola’s adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel. (Coppola had previously confirmed to Vogue that Maude Apatow is fan.)

When asked if “a fan or someone [has] come up to you and said something that’s really left a mark about your...

Joey King is in talks to star in “Practical Magic 2” alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.

She’s reportedly playing the daughter of Bullock’s character. Bullock and Kidman are reprising their roles as Sally and Gillian Owens, two sisters who descend from a long line of witches. In the original 1998 movie, the duo finds themselves fighting off a curse that kills the men they fall in love with. Plot details for the second film haven’t been revealed, though sources say the story is based on a later installment in Alice Hoffman’s “Practical Magic” book series.

Susanne Bier is directing “Practical Magic 2” from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the first film. It’s aiming to start production in London later this summer, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the new of King’s casting. Warner Bros. will release the witchy sequel in theaters on Sept.

CAA has announced that the tenth annual CAA Moebius Film Festival, a two-day screening series showcasing graduate student filmmakers, will take place May 28–29, 2025.

Marking its tenth anniversary, this year’s festival features its broadest representation of film programs to date, with graduate student filmmakers from a growing list of distinguished institutions. For the first time, Columbia University joins a lineup that includes returning schools such as Chapman University, the American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory, New York University (NYU), England’s National Film and Television School (Nfts) and CalArts, among others.

The tenth edition of the Moebius Film Festival will spotlight 10 short films selected from a record-breaking 170+ submissions, showcasing both live-action and animated works. This year’s lineup explores themes of self-actualization, coming-of-age and family, spanning genres from drama and comedy to horror, all in service of the festival’s mission to champion cultural and artistic diversity.

Since its founding in...

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s comedy-drama A Useful Ghost has won the Grand Prix in the independent Critics’ Week sidebar in Cannes.

The film was chosen by a jury led by president Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and fellow jurors Jihane Bougrine, Josée Deshaies, Yulina Evina Bhara and Daniel Kaluuya.

Scroll down for the full list of prizes

Set in Thailand, Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature centres on a man grieving the loss of his wife to dust pollution. He discovers that she has been reincarnated in a vacuum cleaner, which leads to their bond rekindling.

Written by Boonbunchachoke, the film is produced by Cattleya Paosrijeroen...

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s “A Useful Ghost” has picked up Critics Week’s Grand Prize.

The film has been picking up fans among journalists since the premiere, intrigued by its absurd yet sweet story of a woman who dies from dust pollution and a husband who’s shocked to find out her spirit has been reincarnated – in a vacuum cleaner.

“A ghost-possessed vacuum cleaner might sound like standard horror fare, but in the hands of Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, it transforms into a sly commentary on pollution, power dynamics, and the cost of living crisis in Bangkok,” wrote Variety’s Naman Ramachandran earlier this week, with the director adding:

“Thailand is well known for horror cinema, and we also have a genre that might not travel abroad very much – horror comedy. But with this film, I try not to follow the conventions of both paths. One of my first ideas was...

Claes Bang stars as a Kgb counterintelligence officer in “Billion Dollar Spy,” a cold war thriller headlined by Oscar-winner Russell Crowe and Harry Lawtey (“Industry”).

Directed by BAFTA winner Amma Asante (“A Way of Life”), the film is produced by Walden Media and Weed Road Pictures.

Now shooting in Budapest, “Billion Dollar Spy” is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David E. Hoffman’s book by the same name, about the true story of Soviet spy Adolf Tolkachev. Ben August and Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (“Traffic”) penned the screenplay. Variety revealed a first look of the film last week, as Cannes market kicked off.

Crowe stars as Tolkachev, who was among the CIA’s most invaluable assets during the Cold War. Disillusioned with the Soviet regime, Tolkachev risked his life to pass thousands of pages of top-secret intelligence to the United States.

Lawtey plays his CIA handler inside Moscow Station. The...

Luck is a peculiar concept. Winning the lottery is lucky, but so too is it the traditional thing to say when the bus that could have killed you merely breaks every bone in your body. Lloyd Lee Choi’s compassionate, absorbing, sometimes agonizing “Lucky Lu” deals exclusively in the latter type — the tough luck of the narrow escape and the near miss, which doesn’t manifest in sudden windfalls but in the paltry miracle of bad circumstances not being so much worse. Whatever lucky star Choi’s characters must thank, it’s a dim one, usually obscured by clouds and skyscrapers.

Not that there’s much time for anyone here to look up; far down below the skyline, on the streets of New York City, Chinese immigrant Lu (Chang Chen) works tirelessly as a delivery bike rider. After five years of separation from his family back home, he has scraped...

When the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” first premiered on Hulu in 2017, just a few months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president for the first time, its dystopian backdrop of a fictional U.S. run by a faction of ultra-conservative, religious elite seemed safely far away. But eight years later, as the acclaimed series comes to a close with its sixth and final season, the horrors of Gilead and its handmaids feel alarmingly close at hand.

Over the seasons, the cast of regulars and guest stars who played Gilead’s commanders, wives, marthas, and handmaids — women forced into sexual slavery and tasked with repopulating the polluted regime — have infused “The Handmaid’s Tale” with life. But the series’ star, executive producer, and sometimes director, Elisabeth Moss, has been its beating heart.

As June, who’s renamed Offred per Gilead’s custom, Moss delivers a studied,...

For a filmmaker making gripping thrillers dealing with religion and oppressive politics, Tarik Saleh is surprisingly funny and joyful. The filmmaker, who became Sweden’s most prominent street artists before turning into one of the country’s biggest star filmmaker, returns to the Cannes Film Festival with “Eagles of the Republic,” three years after winning best screenplay with “Boy From Heaven.” Saleh hit the ground running with his feature debut, “The Nile Hilton Incident” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2017. His sophomore feature, “Boy From Heaven,” was an arthouse hit that traveled around the world and was chosen by Sweden as its Oscar entry. With “Eagles of the Republic,” he’s delivering his most ambitious film to date, reuniting with Fares Fares who stars as an Egyptian megastar coerced by the Egyptian government into starring in a propagandist film as President Al-Sissi. As he gets closer to the inner circle of power,...

Updated, May 21: The raves are in for dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” with the asylum filmmaker in attendance at Cannes for Wednesday’s press conference and Tuesday night’s premiere. The powerful drama — less reflexive than Panahi’s recent films like “No Bears” or “Taxi” in which the director, by virtue of his outsider and formerly incarcerated status in Iran, is forced to become a character himself — has some of the best reviews out on the Screen International jury grid. It follows an ever-growing group of Iranians who kidnap and consider killing their former captor under the regime. In an affecting move, Panahi shows women without hijab, such as a wedding photographer roped into being a part of the man’s captivity, to reflect the shifts in his native country’s society post-Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Panahi spoke openly during the press conference...

The false notes are rare in director Oliver Hermanus’ affecting and dustily textured romance “The History of Sound,” written by Ben Shattuck from his own short story about men in love, together and apart, circa World War I and its aftermath. But for a queer love story starring two of the hottest, of-this-moment leading actors around — Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor — “The History of Sound” almost perversely denies your expectations of what a gay romance could be.

The grandiose, sweeping emotional gestures toward repression and latent desire out of something like “Brokeback Mountain” are nowhere here, Hermanus instead following the lonesome Lionel (Mescal) around America’s hidden corners and eventually into Europe for much of this melancholy mood movie.

Mescal and O’Connor play Boston Conservatory music students who meet in 1917, spend winding but limited bouts of time with one another over the years, and on the way to the film’s rueful conclusion.

“The History of Sound” is a gay love story in which no one ever comes out and says what’s on their minds. We get why. The film is set in the early 20th century, and its two lead characters start off as polite, buttoned-down music students in New England, not exactly the sort of people who get up in the morning with an inner cry of “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to our awards buzz!” Nevertheless, for this sort of movie to work, the scenes need to vibrate with an inner emotional hum. They can’t just dawdle and meander into some flat zone of prosaic free-floating “suggestiveness.”

In “Brokeback Mountain,” the two lead characters spent more time than not repressing who they were, and that turned the film into a tragedy. It’s also one of the greatest movies ever made. Heath Ledger, speaking in a muffled drawl,...

The Cannes Film Festival is underway, and while the Marché Du Film is as booming as ever with exciting packages of future films, there are plenty of titles playing in competition or in the Cannes sidebars that could make a big splash at the box office or the awards season race for the right buyer. Last year’s “The Substance” was acquired by Mubi before it landed a Best Picture Oscar nomination and made $77.3 million worldwide.

Here are the 13 films we predicted ahead of the festival could find homes quickly. We’ll update the below list with all the acquisitions as they come in.

“The Secret Agent”

Section: Competition

Distributor: Neon

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Buzz: If you’re handicapping the Palme D’Or race, keep an eye on “The Secret Agent,” because Neon and Tom Quinn clearly like it’s odds if they’re jumping to acquire it and keep their streak alive.

A new book from Christophe Narbonne offers a deep dive into every Wes Anderson film, episode and short — from classics such as “Rushmore” to newer favorites like “Asteroid City.”

The 288-page book officially comes out Sept. 9 and is part of the “All the Films” series, which so far include analyses and commentary on the films of Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock and, now, Anderson. You can pre-order Anderson’s edition of “All the Films” on Amazon and Target for $40 starting today.

Organized chronologically, the book displays Narbonne’s years of research and film expertise to cover every short film and movie that Anderson has ever directed, including behind-the-scenes stories of how each project was conceived, cast and produced. Narbonne also explores the director’s unique filmmaking style, his relationship with regular cast members like Owen Wilson and Bill Murray and his stories’ recurring themes. It also includes hundreds of photographs to...

Neon has acquired the North American rights to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.”

The film premiered in competition at Cannes on Sunday. Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leon, Carlos Francisco, Alice Carvalho, and Hermila Guedes star.

Neon plans for a North American theatrical release later this year.

“The Secret Agent” is set in Recife, Brazil, in 1977 and follows Marcelo (Moura), a technology expert in his early 40s, who is on the run. He arrives in Recife during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.

Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge said, “Mendonça began his career as a reporter and critic, and that sensibility infuses every frame, striking an enticing balance between originality and homage.”

The film was produced by Emilie Lesclaux. Co-producers include Nathanaël Karmitz, Elisha Karmitz, Fionnuala Jamison, Olivier Barbier,...

Neon has acquired North American rights to Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Cannes Competition title The Secret Agent.

Neon is planning a theatrical release in the territory for later in 2025. mk2 Films handles international sales.

Set in 1977, political thriller The Secret Agent follows a technology agent on the run, who arrives in Recife, Brazil during carnival week. His hoped-for reunion with his son is disrupted by violence in the city.

Wagner Moura leads the cast, alongside Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leon, Carlos Francisco, Alice Carvalho, and Hermila Guedes.

Emilie Lesclaux produced the film for Brazil’s Cinemascopio. Co-producers are Nathanaël Karmitz,...

Quentin Tarantino believes that "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is his best movie, and there are many film fans out there who probably agree with him. While it's hard to decide which Tarantino joint ranks at the top of the list, the 2019 period drama is arguably the most mature and contemplative film in his entire back catalogue. Not only that, but it also serves as a love letter to a bygone era of Tinsel Town that died long ago, which is reflected in the movie applying some revisionist history to the pilot episode of the '60s TV Western "Lancer." What's more, a walk-in bathtub made this storyline possible.

In "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," Leonardo's DiCaprio Rick Dalton appears as a villain in the aforementioned episode of "Lancer," which was released during a time when the actor's career was on a downward turn. Meanwhile, Luke Perry...

Neeraj Ghaywan’s “Homebound” is the first time in ages that a mainstream Hindi-language production has felt vital — at least since Ghaywan’s own “Masaan,” which premiered at Cannes 10 years ago. A drama in which aspirations collide with harsh political realities, its tale of impoverished young men trying to escape their circumstances proves to be both a moving character piece, as well as a searing indictment of modern India.

The stage is set when lifelong best friends Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) — a Muslim and a Dalit, respectively — board a crowded train to a nearby city. They, along with countless other disenfranchised youths, hope to gain access to a handful of increasingly exclusive government jobs, as their only means of making a decent living. In Shoaib and Chandan’s case, they hope to become police trainees, under the optimistic belief that the official uniform will render them immune...

Michael B. Jordan is set to become the 39th recipient of the American Cinematheque Award. The “Sinners” star and “Creed III” director will be feted with a tribute ceremony on Nov. 20 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

“The career of Michael B. Jordan has been an unparalleled showcase for the combination of superb talent and purposeful vision that has made him a major power in today’s movie business,” said American Cinematheque board chair Rick Nicita in a statement announcing the news.

“He entered the ranks of movie stars with ‘Fruitvale Station’ and rapidly followed it up with iconic roles in ‘Black Panther’ and three ‘Creed’ movies, including his directorial debut in ‘Creed III,’ with more directorial efforts to come,” Nicita continued. “He has become a prolific producer with multiple projects across our business and his philanthropic activities are many and wide-ranging. Most recently, his outstanding performances in the...

Fresh off “Sinners” triumphantly returning to IMAX screens, star Michael B. Jordan has another success to celebrate. On Wednesday, May 21, the acclaimed actor, director, producer, and entrepreneur was announced as the incoming 39th recipient of the American Cinematheque Award. Jordan’s awards ceremony is set to be held on Thursday, November 20, 2025 at The Beverly Hilton, in Beverly Hills.

The American Cinematheque Award is part of an annual fundraiser event for the non-profit organization that continues its year-round programming at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, Los Feliz 3 Theatre in Los Feliz, and Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

“The career of Michael B. Jordan has been an unparalleled showcase for the combination of superb talent and purposeful vision that has made him a major power in today’s movie business. He entered the ranks of movie stars with ‘Fruitvale Station’ and rapidly followed it up with iconic roles in ‘Black Panther’ and three ‘Creed’ movies,...

Exclusive: French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz is joining forces with Monaco-based space entrepreneur Gildo Pastor to launch Venturi Production to make features, series, video games and documentaries rooted in the worlds of science, engineering and technology.

“Technology is going to have a major role in cinema so we need to master it before it masters us,” said Kassovitz. “Humans will make art and machines will serve to express their vision.”

Projects in development include “feature films fusing cinema and video games where we shoot a film with real actors, into which audiences can enter,” Kassovitz told Screen.

Venturi Production is also...

India’s National Film Award-winning star Dhanush is set to portray India’s revered former president and aerospace scientist Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in a biopic titled “Kalam: The Missile Man of India,” unveiled at the Cannes Film Market.

The project will be helmed by director Om Raut, who previously won national recognition for “Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior,” with “Neerja” and “Maidaan” scribe Saiwyn Quadras penning the screenplay.

The film will trace Kalam’s remarkable journey, chronicling his rise from humble beginnings to becoming both the celebrated “Missile Man of India” and eventually the nation’s 11th President. The biopic draws inspiration from Kalam’s bestselling memoir “Wings of Fire.”

The film brings together producers Abhishek Agarwal of Abhishek Agarwal Arts (the banner behind controversial blockbuster “The Kashmir Files”) and T-Series’ Bhushan Kumar, marking Raut’s third collaboration with the latter.

“This is one of the most transformative and defining performances of his career,...

Martin Scorsese is finally getting in front of the camera to bare all. The iconic auteur will be at the center of five-part documentary “Mr. Scorsese,” helmed by “She Came to Me” filmmaker Rebecca Miller. Billed as a “film portrait,” the feature will include never-before-seen interviews with Scorsese’s friends, family, and creative collaborators including Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Thelma Schoonmaker, Steven Spielberg, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Paul Schrader, Margot Robbie, and Cate Blanchett. Scorsese’s private archives will also be displayed onscreen.

“I am so grateful to have been given the artistic freedom and access to create a cinematic portrait of one of our greatest living artists, Martin Scorsese,” director Miller said. “His work and life are so vast and so compelling that the piece evolved from one to five parts over a five year period; crafting this documentary alongside my longtime collaborators has...

Michelle Williams has a lot of love for 2010 indie “Blue Valentine,” but the actress is skeptical over whether or not the film could be made today. “Blue Valentine,” which marks its 15th anniversary this year, stars Williams and Ryan Gosling as an ill-fated married couple struggling to maintain their love across years together. Writer/director Derek Cianfrance spent 12 years (and 66 script drafts) preparing to helm the now-acclaimed drama.

Williams said during the “Armchair Expert” podcast, as reported from Variety, that the dedication to and scrappiness during the production most likely could not be replicated today. “I don’t know if anybody could work like that again,” Williams said. “You’ve got a crew that’s on hold. You’re paying people, I mean, it’s such a small movie, so, so low budget and a small crew, but you’re taking a big down period in the middle of the thing.

An adorable blue extraterrestrial creature and a teflon spy operative are expected to ignite the box office over Memorial Day weekend.

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” is projected to lead with a massive $150 million to $160 million from 4,410 North American theaters over the four-day holiday stretch. Independent tracking services believe the final tally could be even higher based on advance ticket sales. (Disney’s “Moana 2” was tracking a similar start to “Lilo” before obliterating expectations with $225 million over the five-day Thanksgiving frame.) Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” the eighth installment in Tom Cruise’s action series, should also start strong with $75 million to $85 million from 3,800 venues for the four days.

Thanks to effective counterprogramming, this weekend — assisted by holdovers like “Final Destination Bloodlines” and “Sinners” — could fuel the largest Memorial Day on record at the domestic box office. The benchmark to beat is 2013 with $306 million across all films,...

History is often told by the “victors” — even if their path was wrong.

For example, it’s a conveniently heroic narrative to tell the story of a country founded by free people who rebelled against an oppressive monarchic regime. It’s less convenient to tell it from the perspective of everyone they stepped on to gain freedom (and sometimes borderline impossible thanks to systemic erasure). U.S. history is filled with the lost stories of Indigenous people, but Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett’s “Chief of War” wants to change that.

The upcoming Apple TV+ drama is a passion project for both Sibbett and Momoa, who also serves as star and writer and directed the season finale. He plays Ka’iana, a warrior who tries to unite the people of Hawai’i against European settlers in the late-18th century. The English navigator John Meares described his “Herculean appearance” as “replete with dignity,...

How far does a billion YouTube views get you in a film pitch? Not very, as Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou learned while scraping together funding for their first feature. In their twenties, the brothers honed their filmmaking chops — and gained millions of subscribers — on their channel RackaRacka, producing fast-paced, comically violent videos like “Harry Potter Vs Star Wars” and “Ronald McDonald Chicken Store Massacre.” All the while, they took some crew jobs on film sets and commercials to work toward directing their own movie.

“RackaRacka was a talking point in meetings, but not a good one,” Danny says, laughing. “They just didn’t think we could do a movie. To be fair, we weren’t making deep stuff on YouTube.” Michael adds: “It was, like, Nerf gun wars!”

Nudging ribs and kicking each other under the table during their interview, the 32-year-old twins — distinguishable by Danny’s bleached...

Screen’s Cannes Close-Up interview series talks to executive producer Nicolas Royer co-founder of Voulez Vous Production Services about recreating Hollywood in France for Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.

Royer discusses the advanges of filming in France, from stages with history to VFX, and of showing Demi Moore the magic of the Épinay-Sur-Seine studios, where classics like Jean Renoir’s The Rules Of The Game were shot.

The French producer also discusses the joy of discovering Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, in Competition in Cannes, and applauds the talent that has recreated the 1959 Paris where Godard shot Breathless, “a great...

Horror icon Eli Roth is set to serve another twisted treat to global audiences as his latest spine-chiller, “Ice Cream Man,” racks up a flurry of international sales following its market debut in Cannes.

The film, backed by Media Capital Technologies (McT) and Roth’s newly launched horror label The Horror Section, has closed new distribution deals with Spentzos Film (Greece), Sun (Latin America and Spain), Selim Ramia (Middle East), Mis.Label (Scandinavia), United King Films (Israel), Plaion (Italy), Praesens-Film Ag (Switzerland), Pioneer Films (Philippines), Bir Film (Turkey), Vertical, Blitz Film and Video Distribution (former Yugoslavia), Aqs (Czech Republic and Slovakia) and Acme Film (Baltics).

These follow last week’s major acquisition by StudioCanal’s Sixth Dimension, which scooped up rights in the U.K., Germany, France, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.

“I’m so excited for ‘Ice Cream Man’ to take the world by storm,” said Roth of the latest batch of acquisitions.

No show was full of as many compelling mysteries as ABC's "Lost." Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had announced the series would end in season 6, and with the finish line on the horizon, the race was on to discover answers to the show's many, many questions. And yet, even as it approached the end, the series kept throwing new mysteries at us to keep us on our toes. Chief among them in season 4 was the mystery of "who is Jeremy Bentham?" In the third season finale, we discover that Jack and Kate had somehow managed to escape the island, but the discovery of a coffin loaded with an unknown person inside pushes Jack to return, teeing up the final run of the series.

In the season 3 finale, we never get to see who this "Jeremy Bentham" inside the coffin is, and so we spend all of season 4 desperately trying to get a glimpse inside.

Michael Douglas is detailing just how much streaming has affected the role of producers in Hollywood. The actor/producer, who at Cannes was celebrating the 50th anniversary of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which he produced and won an Oscar for, told Deadline that Silicon Valley-based companies such as Amazon and Apple have “inhaled Hollywood.” And that’s even despite filmmaking not being their core conglomerate purpose.

“Today, streaming has taken over. It has inhaled Hollywood. It’s very lucrative,” Douglas said. “Silicon Valley made us look like paupers. For Amazon and Apple, movies are a side business. At the same time, many of the great screenwriters went to work in TV and streaming.”

Douglas, who won the Best Picture Oscar alongside Saul Zaentz for “Cuckoo’s Nest,” recalled how the iconic Miloš Forman film itself fared in theaters. The drama made history as one of the three films...

“Romería” is the Spanish word for pilgrimage, ostensibly a clear and apt title for the third feature by writer-director Carla Simón. Based on travels the filmmaker herself undertook as a teenager to meet an extended family she had never known, this is a kind of road movie by sea, journeying in pursuit of some sense of self-completion. Yet as the film wends its way through the narrow streets, harbors and glittering waters of Spain’s salty Galician coastline, immersing itself in chaotic gatherings of family and community, the title’s spiritual aspect takes on a rueful irony. There’s no holy destination or revelation here, and certainly no warm sense of homecoming — though in finding where she doesn’t belong, Simón’s fictional alter ego can at last make sense of her own fragmented childhood memories, and those she’s retrieved from her late biological parents.

After the expansive sociological...

Exclusive: Mubi has snapped up Julia Ducournau’sgenre-hopping drama Alpha for Latin America and India among a slew of global deals for Charades and FilmNationEntertainment on the Cannes Competition title.

Further deals include to Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Spain, Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Germany and Austria (Plaion), Greece (SpentzosFilm Sa), Portugal (Alambique), Scandinavia (Non StopEntertainment), the Baltics, Bulgaria and the Adriatics(McF MegacomFilm), Cis (ExponentaFilm), Hungary (Mozinet), Romania (Bad Unicorn), Ukraine (Adastra), Israel (Lev Cinema), Turkey (Mars Films), Australia and New Zealand (Kismet), Hong Kong (Golden Scene Company), Indonesia (Falcon), South Korea (Challan) and Vietnam (Aeon Entertainment).

Neon has already scooped the...

Following her breakout role as the younger version of Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” Milly Alcock will soon return to screens this week in Netflix’s limited series “Sirens,” starring alongside Julianne Moore and Meghann Fahy. “She’s graceful on and off and it was just really inspiring, just learning off her,” Alcock told IndieWire at the New York premiere about her time working alongside Moore.

The series marks the rising Aussie star’s first production in the United States. “You guys have weird hours,” she said of what it was like working in the States versus her experience on other projects around the world. “On other sets I’ve worked on, you start at the same time every day and you finish at the same time every day. But in the US, they have a thing where you can do 14 hours and then if you go over,...

A quick inspection of the major inspiration behind "Black Mirror" leads us to a critically acclaimed CBS anthology series that serves as the blueprint for speculative fiction on television. Yes, Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" generously borrows from Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone," where any similarities between the two stem from Brooker playing homage to the beloved CBS show. Even when these callbacks are not deliberate, the influence of "The Twilight Zone" is impossible to escape, as the series has shaped our collective understanding of stories that evoke the real and the surreal.

Moreover, Serling's show has always held up a mirror to root-level societal issues, with every episode playing out as a morality tale that condemns the hollowness of an increasingly capitalist landscape. "Black Mirror" has consciously mimicked this approach from a postmodern lens, with an increased focus on our complicated relationship with technological progress. As a result,...

Before Jodie Foster’s Lilian can figure out what to do with a sudden opening in her agenda — Paula (Virgine Efira) has missed a third consecutive session — one of her other patients shows up unannounced. Pierre (Noam Morgensztern) started seeing the renowned psychiatrist nearly a decade ago as a byproduct of his search to quit smoking, and now, after all these years, he has seemingly done so, but not thanks to his nearly forty-thousand dollars spent in therapy. As he tells it, all it took was half an hour with a hypnotist. Stopping short of accusing Lilian of being a hack (but suing her for refunds all the same), he represents the first is a series of events that will lead her to rethinking her whole profession, if not her entire life.

“A Private Life,” Rebecca Zlotowski’s delightful and whimsical film, disguises this personal journey as a crime mystery...

Nigerian film producer Funmbi Ogunbanwo, backer of the buzzy Cannes Un Certain Regard player “My Father’s Shadow” – Nigeria’s first-ever selection at the French fest – has been selected as part of the inaugural cohort for the newly launched African Producers Accelerator (APA). The prestigious pilot initiative, developed by South Africa’s Big World Cinema in collaboration with the Bertha Foundation, aims to tackle persistent industry barriers faced by mid-career African film and television producers.

Ogunbanwo joins five other standout producers from across the continent for a 12-week program designed to provide bespoke support and high-level mentorship. Participants include South African Neo Baloyi, producer of Netflix hit “Collision”; Angolan producer Jorge Cohen, co-founder of Geração 80; Josh Olaoluwa, a former EbonyLife producer and alumnus of Red Sea Labs and Biennale Cinema College; prolific South African producer Annemarie Du Plessis, whose film “Carissa” was selected for the Venice Film Festival; and Zimbabwean/South African producer-director Zoe Ramushu,...

Major figures from the Austrian film industry have come together to protest at proposed cuts to the Austria’s production incentive amid fears that this would lead to “destruction of the industry”, “massive increase in unemployment” and “permanent damage to a whole culturalsector”.

Directors Jessica Hausner and Marie Kreutzer (who both participated in the Investors Circle initiative in Cannes with new projects), Barbara Albert, Stefan Ruzowitzky and Ulrich Seidl are among the signatories of an open letter orgainsed by 17 industry associations protesting at the Austrian government’s plan to slash the ÖFI+ incentive’s annual budget from €22m to €15.5m...

Speaking during his first visit to Cannes in 22 years, Panahi who has previously been imprisoned in Iran said he wasn’t doing ‘anything heroic’

Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, who has previously been arrested and jailed and whose films have been banned in Iran on multiple occasions, has said “even my closest friends had given up hope that I would ever make films again”.

Panahi was speaking at a press conference before the premiere of his new film A Simple Accident at the Cannes film festival, his first visit in 22 years since bringing Crimson Gold to Cannes in 2003. Panahi was released from jail in Iran in 2023, having been detained in 2022 after attempting to support fellow film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof and subsequently going on hunger strike.

Austin Butler no doubt will steal each scene in Darren Aronofsky’s crime caper “Caught Stealing.” The highly-anticipated ’90s-set novel adaptation stars Butler as a former baseball prodigy who gets literally caught up in a mob-fueled treasure hunt.

In a who’s who of NYC staples, Zoë Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane co-star in the gritty, Les-shot feature. Benito A. Martínez Ocasio Aka Bad Bunny, Matt Smith, and Regina King round out the buzzy cast.

The official synopsis reads: “Hank Thompson (Butler) was a high-school baseball phenom who can’t play anymore, but everything else is going okay. He’s got a great girl (Kravitz), tends bar at a New York dive, and his favorite team is making an underdog run at the pennant. When his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Smith) asks him to take care of his cat for a few days, Hank suddenly finds...

Julianne Moore celebrated the premiere of her next project, “Sirens” on Netflix, on Tuesday, May 20 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The limited series features Moore alongside Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock, Kevin Bacon, and Glenn Howerton in the Margot Robbie-produced project from “Maid” creator Molly Smith Metzler.

On the carpet, IndieWire caught up with Moore about Jesse Eisenberg’s upcoming A24 musical film. As for what she can tease, Moore told us that she will indeed be showing off her vocal chops, a follow-up to singing a little bit in 2021’s “Dear Evan Hansen”: “Yes, I am. I’m singing. We’re all singing in it,” she said.

“Jesse Eisenberg is just the most extraordinary person,” she continued. “He’s so incredibly creative. I feel so fortunate to be able to work with him. This is very different, but I think that he can have sort of a satirical worldview.

Sony’s “Caught Stealing” trailer shows Austin Butler navigating New York City’s criminal landscape in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film.

Butler plays Hank Thompson, a former baseball player who “unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City, forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined,” per the official logline. Butler is joined by cast members Bad Bunny, Matt Smith, Regina King, Vincent D’Onofrio, Action Bronson, Liev Schreiber and Griffin Dunne. Zoë Kravitz plays Butler’s love interest.

The film is written by Charlie Huston and adapted from his book series. “I am excited to be teaming up with my old friends at Sony Pictures to bring Charlie’s adrenaline-soaked roller coaster ride to life. I can’t wait to start working with Austin and my family of NYC filmmakers,” Aronofsky previously said.

Aronofsky’s most recent film was 2022’s “The Whale.

The team behind Directors’ Fortnight title Militantropos wore dark outfits with mirror panels attached to walk the red carpetfor the world premiere of their film in Cannes this morning tomake a statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine, on the red carpet

Directors Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgovyi and Yelizaveta and their colleagues wore the mirrors to“let others see themselves in us” before heading in to the Theatre Croisette for the 08.45 Cest screening of the documentary about ordinary people transformed by the war, including those who leave Ukraine, those who lose everything, and those who stay to resist and fight.

Exclusive: Mubi has acquired worldwide rights on the 4K restoration of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Amores Perros, and is scheduling a theatrical re-release of the film.

The 4K restoration of Amores Perros launched in Cannes Classics yesterday, 25 years after the film originally debuted in the Critics’ Week sidebar, winning the Grand Prize.

Mubi will conduct a global theatrical re-release of the film, in collaboration with cultural institutions. The film will be available to stream exclusively on Mubi worldwide following its theatrical release, including a co-exclusive period in Latin America until September 2027.

The restoration was carried out by the Criterion Collection,...

Chilean investment firm Screen Capital has acquired Versatile Communications Inc. to launch the region’s first multi-platform hub dedicated entirely to horror and fantasy content. With an initial $2.5 million investment from Screen Capital’s Screen II Fund, the initiative marks a pioneering venture into specialized genre content with global ambitions.

Eduardo Caso, an industry vet and the driving force behind the popular Mórbido TV channel, is at the heart of this new endeavor. “The fantasy and horror genre is among the most diverse in terms of subgenres worldwide, and it boasts a highly loyal audience. Once people become fans, they tend to remain deeply engaged,” he tells Variety of the new initiative’s inspirations. “In Latin America, there is strong demand for this type of content, yet production and distribution remain limited. This gap presents a significant opportunity to boost regional development in the genre, especially with the support of Screen Capital’s investors.

There have been a lot of amazing guest stars on the sci-fi Adult Swim animated series "Rick and Morty" over the years. We've heard people connected to series co-creator Dan Harmon, like "Community' stars Gillian Jacobs, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Jim Rash, and John Oliver. We've heard comedians like David Cross and Keegan-Michael Key alongside serious dramatic actors like Susan Sarandon, and even esteemed documentarian Werner Herzog has loaned his voice to the show. There have been some less-than-stellar guest stars, too, like Twitter killer Elon Musk, but for the most part, "Rick and Morty" has gotten some truly quality guest stars to appear on the wacky, occasionally controversial series. But is there anyone the folks behind the show still wish they could land? 

/Film's Ethan Anderton spoke with showrunners Dan Harmon and Scott Marder about the upcoming eighth season of the series and asked them if there were any...

Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist" didn't win the Best Picture prize at this year's Academy Awards, but the blow was softened by Adrien Brody taking home a trophy for his performance (in addition to the two other Oscars the film won on the night). What's more, the historical drama is finding a new lease of life on streaming, with FlixPatrol noting that it's HBO Max's most watched movie at the time of this writing. The buzz of the Oscars season might be over, but "The Brutalist" looks set to have staying power.

In the movie, Brody plays László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who moves to America to chase his dream of becoming an architect after World War II. The story spans decades, making for a sprawling epic that chronicles the architect's hardships while dissecting the notion of the American Dream, so don't go into the film expecting a...