Hollywood didn’t have a lot to celebrate during a muted Labor Day holiday weekend, as “Weapons,” now in its fourth weekend of release, took the top spot, and “Jaws,” a 50-year-old blockbuster, beat out two new films, “Caught Stealing” and “The Roses,” that failed to generate much heat.

“Weapons,” which lost its No. 1 position last weekend to Netflix’s “Kpop Demon Hunters,” reclaimed its crown, earning an estimated $12.8 million over the four-day holiday. So far, the horror hit has earned $135 million domestically and $235.2 million globally. That’s an impressive result considering it only cost $38 million to produce. It extends a winning streak for Warner Bros., which has recently fielded successes like “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1: The Movie” (which the studio distributed for Apple) and “Superman.” It’s a remarkable comeback for the studio’s chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who were on the...

A half a century later, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws still has plenty of bite as the troubled 2025 summer season comes to a close.

The original summer blockbuster, celebrating its 50th anniversary, is opening in second place at the four-day Labor Day box office office behind Zach Cregger’s August sleeper hit Weapons, which remains in first place for the fourth weekend in a row with an estimated four-day gross of $12.4 million and $10.2 million for the three-day weekend proper. The horror pic, yet another win for Warner Bros. and New Line, looks to finish Monday with a global tally of $234.6 million.

Booked in 1,975 cinemas, Jaws is looking at a four-day haul of $9.8 million — rival studios show it coming in north of $10 million — and $8.1 million for the three from 1,975 cinemas. Either way, that’s enough to swim past Darren Aronofsky‘s new movie starring Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz, as well as Searchlight’s The Roses.

Gus Van Sant is the vision behind a generous handful of the best independent films of our time. “My Own Private Idaho” gave us an ahead-of-its-time gay road movie with Gen X icons Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in 1991; one of the most viciously funny performances of Nicole Kidman’s career as a murderous weather reporter in “To Die For” three years later; and 2003 Palme d’Or-winner “Elephant,” still the most devastating film made to date about school shootings. And don’t forget “Good Will Hunting” and “Milk,” which both earned him Best Director Oscar nominations.

Van Sant, one of the leading voices of the New Queer Cinema of the ’90s and into today, suffered a scurry of critical and box office misses with “Promised Land,” “The Sea of Trees,” and “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” between 2012 and 2018. Ryan Murphy, though, brought him back to directing for...

Former pro wrestler Johnson takes on the role of man-mountain Kerr who goes into meltdown when the unthinkable happens – he loses

Benny Safdie has written and directed a solid bro drama for the UFC fanbase and maybe a little way beyond. It is about the central crisis in the life of man-mountain Mark Kerr, America’s pioneering Mma and ultimate fighting champ, who in 1997 found himself in the ring, or maybe the cage, with his demons after the unthinkable humiliation of losing for the first time.

This feature is in fact developed from a 2002 documentary about Kerr with the same title. He confronted his substance abuse, relationship anxieties and the...

After the success of his "Lord of the Rings" movies, director Peter Jackson could do no wrong. He was beloved by the Hollywood establishment, beloved by the Academy, and beloved by fantasy nerds the world over. His "Rings" movies were phenomenal productions, telling an epic story that took a trio of three-hour movies to cover, and Jackson was rewarded with geek world canonization and permission to make whatever dream movie he wanted. So, he followed "Lord of the Rings" with a slick, expensive, and utterly self-indulgent remake of "King Kong," a $207 million, 187-minute spectacular featuring cinema's favorite giant ape.

With "King Kong" out of his system, it was time for...

After years of retirement and general seclusion, Kim Novak returned to the public eye as a presenter at the Oscars in 2014 — a welcome surprise for classic film buffs and a vicious snarking opportunity for tabloid media and social media’s worst, including one Donald Trump, who seized on the 81-year-old star’s physical appearance and vocal delivery with crushing cruelty.

For Novak, who hit back with a comparatively gracious statement against bullying and ageism, it was proof that Hollywood misogyny endures decades after her 1950s heyday — and perhaps a reminder of why she took early leave of the industry in the first place. She doesn’t bring up the matter in “Kim Novak’s Vertigo,” and one hopes she doesn’t think of it much. But her legacy, and sentiments binding past and present, are much on her mind in Alexandre O. Philippe’s warmly conversational documentary portrait.

If you’re...

Italy’s Fondazione Prada, on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, officially launched its film fund to sustain independent cinema from around the world without any restrictions on theme, genre, or language.

As previously announced, the fund is starting out with a €1.5 million ($1.6 million) pot and will support 10-12 selected feature films per year, including docs and animation.

The idea is “to assemble a very diverse selection and give priority to projects that push boundaries,” said Paolo Moretti, the former Cannes Directors’ Fortnight chief who is managing the fund in collaboration with film programmer Rebecca De Pas.

The Fondazione Prada Film Fund – the call for which is open Sept. 1- Oct. 17 – offers three types of support: development, production and post. The maximum amount of funding a project can get is €250,000 towards production.

“It’s not a lot of money, but still it’s a start. It’s the beginning of something,...

The star-studded Venice Film Festival is underway, with numerous stars and renowned filmmakers making the trek to Italy by plane, train and vaporetto.

Those attending the annual celebration on the Lido include Julia Roberts, Chloe Sevigny, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri for Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” George Clooney and Adam Sandler for Noah Baumbach “Jay Kelly,” Emma Stone for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” and Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac for Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”

Though Clooney is cutting back his activities due to a sinus infection, other stars hitting the red carpet or spotted on a vaporetto include Kim Novak, Laura Dern, Greta Gerwig, Alicia Silverstone and Jesse Plemons.

The Venice Film Festival dury includes director Alexander Payne heading the jury plus director-screenwriter Stéphane Brizé; Italian director and screenwriter Maura Delpero; Romanian director, writer and producer...

Newsflash, slugger: "Murphy Brown" is still one of the best sitcoms of all time. Even though over 35 years have passed since it premiered on CBS, no other series -- not even Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" -- has yet managed to recapture what Murphy and her team at "Fyi" managed to uncover, largely through their ability to balance top-notch comedy writing with a refreshingly sincere respect for what it means to report the news.

Created by Diane English and starring Academy Award-nominee Candice Bergen as the titular journalist, the series' first 10 seasons broadly followed her journey to rebuild her career after seeking treatment for an addiction disorder while also navigating...

There are a lot of magical links to a person's identity in the wizarding world of "Harry Potter." What does that mean? Well, if you live in the United Kingdom, you prepare for your enrollment at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by picking out your very first magic wand, and everything from the wood used to make the wand to its flexibility and magical core (like a phoenix feather or dragon heartstring) says something about the individual witch or wizard who wields it. Picking a pet for Hogwarts is even its own form of a personality test — what does it say about you if you pick a toad?! — and when you arrive at Hogwarts,...

Woody Allen wants Donald Trump for his next movie.

During a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, the four-time Oscar winner said Trump was “a pleasure to work with” when he appeared in his 1998 film “Celebrity,” and that he’d be happy to work with the president again if given the chance.

“I’m one of the few people who can say he directed Trump. I directed Trump in [‘Celebrity’],” Allen recalled. “He was a pleasure to work with and a very good actor. He was very polite, hit his mark, did everything correctly and had a real flair for show business. I could direct him now. If he would let me direct him now that he’s president, I think I could do wonders.”

Trump briefly played himself in Allen’s ensemble dramedy. During his scene, he is interviewed by a celebrity reporter about his latest real estate developments.

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" changed the game for animation. In fact, it's already cemented its place as one of the biggest turning points in the history of how animation is made, right up there next to "Toy Story." By using 2D textures, 2D and 3D animation techniques, and different frame rates, the movie truly feels like a comic book that's been brought to life. It's also led to more experimenting in mainstream animation, with films like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," "The Wild Robot," and "Nimona" having since put their own spin on the "Spider-Verse"-pioneered method of combining 2D elements with 3D animation.

Sony Pictures Imageworks, which worked on "Spider-Verse,...

More than a decade after his death, treasured American filmmaker Mike Nichols still inspires contemporary masters like Noah Baumbach.

Writer-director Baumbach was honored for 30 years’ worth of distinctive vision and indelible movie moments from “France Ha,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Marriage Story” at this year’s Telluride Film Festival. He used the opportunity to reflect on the enduring legacy of his friend and touchstone, Nichols.

“He was the wisest person on every subject, and would say things in a way that would distill it,” Baumbach shared at Q&a following his thunderous tribute to Telluride’s Palm Theater.

“I was going through a painful personal time, a breakup, and I had lunch with him. I just went on and on, at that point I was telling anybody who would listen,” Baumbach said. The filmmaker then laid out a course of action for Nichols, suggesting he was trying to change the outcome of the breakup.

Amanda Seyfried was overcome with emotion as her new film “The Testament of Ann Lee,” directed by Mona Fastvold, shook Venice up with a 15-minute ovation — topping “Frankenstein” as the longest of the festival so far.

Co-writer Brady Corbet worked the crowd while a teary-eyed Seyfried pumped her fists in the air as the applause stretched into its seventh minute. Fastvold, the co-writer of last year’s Silver Lion and three-time Oscar winner “The Brutalist,” beamed at the crowd, overwhelmed by the booming reception. By minute eight, Seyfried whispered to nobody in particular, “What are we supposed to be doing now?”

Most of the crowd in the orchestra dwindled after 10 minutes in, though the packed audience members in the balcony — including members of the production and potential buyers — continued to clap. Corbet and Fastvold made their exit before the applause fully dissipated.

“I think people quite liked it,” Seyfried told...

In the opening scene of “The Smashing Machine,” Benny Safdie’s bracing, clear-eyed, and laceratingly humane sports biopic, we see grainy staged video footage of Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), the mixed martial arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship star, in his very first amateur bout. Kerr originally won notoriety as a wrestler, and in case anyone has wandered into the movie thinking that it might be about “fake wrestling,” this fight will dispel that delusion: It ends with Kerr crouching on top of his opponent, assaulting him with one merciless bare-knuckle punch after another, reducing his face to a bloody pulp.

As all of this is happening, we hear Kerr’s voice on the soundtrack — it’s a voice that’s disarmingly gentle and sweet — describing, to an interviewer, the high he gets when he’s destroying his opponent in the ring and he can feel that turning-point moment when the other fighter crumples and submits.

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There was a minor scandal in the pop culture world when actor Barry Williams (writing with Chris Kreski) published his 1992 autobiography, "Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg." Williams famously played the wholesome teenager Greg Brady on Sherwood Schwartz's hit 1974 sitcom "The Brady Bunch," and he revealed that, behind the scenes, he dated Maureen McCormick, the actress who played Greg's sister, Marcia. He also talked about how he often butted heads with Robert Reed, who played Greg's father, Mike, and sometimes even argued with Schwartz himself. Williams also spread some gossip about how his other co-stars Eve Plumb...

Headlining action-movie idol and wrestler Dwayne Johnson drops “The Rock” from his identity in all senses to reveal a heartfelt core in Benny Safdie’s nimbly executed and oddly endearing “The Smashing Machine.” Johnson, rarely considered a quote-unquote serious actor but most certainly a bona fide movie star thanks to the “Fast and the Furious” films and an abundance of popcorn outings often dismissed by critics, emotionally strips down to play pioneering Mma fighter Mark Kerr in the hole of painkiller addiction while trying to mount a post-rehab comeback.

Safdie’s first solo-directed feature after helming episodes of TV’s “The Curse” and creatively breaking up with his brother Josh sounds like the stuff of awards-season bait: An actor going out of his range to play a tortured athletic soul, physically transformed in a steroidal, vein-bulged-muscles sense, on the rocky path to redemption.

But “The Smashing Machine” is not that,...

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Despite three new Hollywood releases making their way into theaters over the long Labor Day holiday weekend, Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" outshined them all at the box office. Indeed, the blockbuster classic was re-released by Universal Pictures as part of the studio's ongoing celebration of the movie's 50-year anniversary. As it turns out, people still really love this film, so much so that it was the number two title overall this past weekend.

Overall, "Jaws" earned an estimated $9.8 million over the Friday to Monday holiday frame, including $8.1 million from Friday to Sunday. That was good enough for the number two...

Multiple top indie distributors have acquired Maryam Touzani’s crowdpleaser “Calle Malaga,” following its premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Spotlight section. The film, which stars Carmen Maura, will have its North American premiere at Toronto Film Festival next week.

“Calle Malaga” will be distributed in France (Ad Vitam), Benelux (Cinéart), Spain (Caramel), Germany (Pandora), Italy (Movies Inspired), Australia and New Zealand (Potential), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Austria (Panda), Denmark (Camera Film), Sweden (Folkets Bio), Norway (Selmer Media), Finland (Future Film), Greece (Danaos), Hungary (Cirko) and Portugal (Leopardo Filmes).

It is the third collaboration between the Moroccan filmmaker and sales agency Films Boutique, and follows the theatrical success of her previous film, “The Blue Caftan.”

“Calle Malaga” centers on Maria Angeles, a 79-year-old Spanish woman, who lives alone in Tangier, Morocco, and enjoys her daily routine. However, her life is turned upside down when her daughter arrives from Madrid to sell the...

Riz Ahmed thinks Shakespearean scholars don’t get what makes Hamlet tick. The Danish prince, he

says, isn’t on the verge of suicide in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy — he’s trying to man up.

“It’s not ‘Should I end it all?’” says Ahmed, who speaks the iconic lines in a new “Hamlet” that debuted at the Telluride Film Festival and will screen at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s about ‘Are we willing to live under injustice? Do you fight or do you give up?’”

Nor does Ahmed accept the usual portrayal of Hamlet as a man plagued by indecision. On-screen,

his Hamlet is a coiled ball of outrage waiting for the right moment to avenge his father. “He’s continuously active,” Ahmed says. “He’s investigating, strategizing, gathering evidence while he psyches himself up to do the unthinkable.”

This adaptation of “Hamlet” breaks with tradition in other ways,...

Irene Shubik's BBC horror anthology, "Out of the Unknown," is nothing short of groundbreaking. The series, which ran from 1965 to 1971, celebrates science fiction as a genre while embracing the humanity inherent in stories that evoke awe or terror on a grand scale. Series creator Shubik understood that few genres could provide commentary on topical issues like sci-fi, as even the most outlandish genre plots could serve as an allegory for something more pressing and immediate. What's more, our relationship with technology is always on the cusp of change — a theme that "Out of the Unknown" captures by alternating between taut drama and playful satire, brought to life with stories...

By the age of 30, Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher had won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for “Navalny.” His next documentary, “Blink,” premiered at Telluride last year. Wasting little time, he returns to the Colorado Rockies one year later with “Tuner,” but “this one feels a little different,” he told a sold-out crowd Saturday, before its world premiere at the fest’s Galaxy theater. He’s referring to his pivot into narrative feature filmmaking, joining a host of his documentarian contemporaries making this same move of late — including Joshua Oppenheimer whose musical “The End” also played Telluride last year.

“Tuner” continues Leo Woodall’s own move into leading man territory, after “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” earlier this year. The Brit broke out as the conflicted rent boy in Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” and has also starred in recent TV series “One Day” and “Prime Target.” Here he plays Niki,...

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The 1980s were a sea of change for children's television, as the era's deregulatory practices even trickled down to cartoons. During this decade, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a more lax attitude to limiting advertisements in children's TV. Since then, there have been plenty of cartoons that are toy commercials first and foremost, with one of the premier and longest lasting examples being that of "The Transformers."

In-universe, these shapeshifting robots came from the planet Cybertron. The conflict between the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons had drained their world of all its resources, so they came to Earth to...

Italy’s Fondazione Prada has officially launched its new film fund, which has an annual €1.5m to back 10-12 independent films.

First announced in Cannes in May by the fashion brand’s cultural foundation, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund set out its investment criteria and application deadlines at the Venice Film Festival today (September 1).

Speaking to Screen ahead of the launch, the head of the film fund Paolo Moretti said applications are open to “a first time filmmaker or a very experienced master who maybe wants to try something new or something visionary. We don’t want to put boundaries on this,...

While there were slasher movies before, no movie catapulted the horror sub-genre into the Hollywood mainstream more prominently than "Halloween." Created by filmmaker John Carpenter and co-writer and producer Debra Hill, the movie largely focuses on masked serial killer Michael Myers. The original 1978 film was an enormous success, popularizing slashers and kicking off its own multimedia franchise, including numerous sequels. Since then, the movie series has featured multiple reboots and timelines, repositioning the franchise for new generations.

Like virtually every horror franchise, "Halloween" has wildly diverged in its level of quality over the years, with triumphant highs and embarrassing lows. There are some genuine horror classics in this series, along...

As a massive fan of one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, who watched its seven seasons numerous times, I feel that Rob Lowe's character, Chris "Literally" Traeger, has been a little overlooked over the years. That's only possible because the sitcom featured so many lovable and memorable goofballs (Ron Swanson!) that it was kind of hard to stand out for any character that arrived later in the series and wasn't part of the core cast from the get-go. Lowe's health-obsessed Traeger first turned up at the end of season 2, as an auditor sent from Indianapolis (along with Adam Scott's Ben Wyatt) to review Pawnee's Parks and Recreation department,...

Entriesforthe2026Oscar forbest international feature areunderway, andScreenisprofilingeachtitle onthispage.

The 98th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 15, 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

Aninternational feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025. The deadline for submissions to the Academyis October 1, 2025.

Ashortlistof 15finalistsisscheduledtobeannouncedonDecember 16, 2025, with the final five nominees announced on January 22, 2026.

The2024 awards saw 89 submissionswiththefivenominatedfilmscomprising Denmark’sThe Girl With The Needle,...

If you can’t be in Venice this year, Variety is bringing Venice to you. We’re publishing daily digital editions, running Aug. 29 – Sept. 2, including all the latest news, reviews and star-studded red carpet coverage from the Lido.

To catch up on Day 4, please click below.

More from Variety'The Testament of Ann Lee' Review: Amanda Seyfried Shakes, Battles and Extols in an Arresting Religious BiopicGreek Director Evi Kalogiropoulou Brings Genre-Bending, Dystopian, Female-Empowerment Debut 'Gorgonà' to Venice Critics' WeekGuillermo del Toro Praises Kim Novak as 'Vertigo' Star Receives Venice Career Golden Lion: 'She Was Capable of Projecting Frailty, Power, Mystery'...

The first season of "One Tree Hill" is arguably the best teen drama ever made. It's the perfect confluence of high school melodrama, a small town setting, young hot actors, and writing perfectly tailored to the sensibilities of the angsty teen audiences that flocked to the show. In many ways, it was the proto-"The Summer I Turned Pretty" (which is now coming to an end), featuring two brothers who compete for everything, from basketball to winning the heart of a sensitive and conflicted girl. An entire generation grew up on "One Tree Hill," and while it quickly transformed into a sillier series as it went on, that first season...

Exclusive: BFI Distribution has picked up UK filmmakers Christopher Petitand Emma Matthews’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) world premiere documentary D Is For Distance for UK-Ireland release.

A theatrical release is planned for spring 2026.

The documentary is a film essay montage of contemporary footage, archive and cinema history, documenting how Petit and Matthews’ son’s seemingly incurable and debilitating rare form of epilepsy – which wiped out the memory of his childhood – became representative of the woes of the world and how he triumphed against adversity. UK actor Jodhi May narrates.

It was produced by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola ofElokuvayhtiö Testifilmi,...

UK-Ireland top five, August 29-31 Rank Film (origin) Distributor August29-31 Total Week 1 The Roses (UK-us)

Disney £2.2m £2.2m 1 2 Jaws (US) Universal £1.1m £1.1m 1 3 Weapons (US)

Warner Bros £838,351 £10.4m 4 4 The Bad Guys 2 (US) Universal £807,222 £11.9m 6 5 Freakier Friday (US)

Disney £744,302 £7.4m 4

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.35

Disney’s The Roses was the pick of the bunch this weekend at the UK-Ireland box office, opening to £2.2m from 694 sites, for a location average of £3,170.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman play a couple whose loving marriage takes a nosedive when their gender normative roles are reversed. Jay Roach directs the Searchlight comedy, with further cast including Andy Samberg,...

Those of us who first understood Shakerism not as a religious movement but as a mail-order furniture company — like a particularly elegant, artisanal version of Ikea — have much to learn from “The Testament of Ann Lee,” and a bit to unlearn too. Ascetic simplicity, the quality most conventionally associated with the vanishing Christian sect, is not exactly the order of the day in director Mona Fastvold’s blazingly ambitious and busy portrait of its founding mother, which oscillates dynamically between the modes of intrepid New World epic and expressionistic musical.

If the results are as bracingly eccentric as that description promises, they’re also less ironic than you might think. Fastvold and her co-writer/creative partner Brady Corbet may maintain a cool, analytical distance in their study of an extreme religious movement founded on challenging principles of celibacy and utopian equality, but “The Testament of Ann Lee” isn’t a travesty or a mockery.

Venice film festival

Amanda Seyfried plays the 18th-century missionary who took her message to the New World, in Mona Fastvold’s elusive film

‘Our ordeal is worth it!” This is the cry of one of the faithful in Mona Fastvold’s movie, co-written with her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist. It is a vehement, fervent, striking but sometimes baffling drama about the historical figure of Ann Lee, who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England as leader of the fundamentalist Shaker movement.

As the embodiment of Christ’s second coming, Lee took her radical message to the New World and in pre-revolutionary America founded an enduring community of souls,...

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"Stranger Things" will finally be releasing its fifth and final season at the end of 2025. It's debatable whether it's one of the best TV shows of the last decade, but it's absolutely one of the most important. It's a premier series for both the Netflix boom and interminable '80s nostalgia. (At least "Stranger Things" got Gen Z to love Kate Bush.)

Naturally, other streaming services have tried to copy the success of "Stranger Things" — one of those attempts was the short-lived "Paper Girls" on Prime Video. Now, granted, "Paper Girls" is based on a comic by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang.

Hot on the heels of “The Brutalist,” Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have returned with another sweeping historical epic about a European iconoclast who comes to America in order to build a new kind of church. Even more excitingly, “The Testament of Ann Lee” — a speculative, feverish, and altogether rapturous biopic about the Mancunian preacher who founded the Shakers and believed herself to be the female incarnation of Christ on Earth — addresses the most glaring problem with last year’s story about the fictional architect László Tóth: It wasn’t a musical.

“The Testament of Ann Lee” isn’t exactly a musical either, to be fair. Sure, its characters are prone to singing and dancing when the spirit grabs them (a divinely heightened play on the “Quaking Shakers’” full-body approach to religious devotion), but the film’s euphoric “movements” cleave a lot closer to prayers than to traditional numbers.

It's no secret that ticket sales are still down. The first quarter of 2025 was largely dismal at the box office, and the blockbuster season wasn't much better. A new superhero cinematic universe launched with the release of James Gunn's "Superman," but that film made about $600 million, which, while impressive, did not denote a supra-hit on the level of pre-2019 blockbusters. Marvel struggles, too, with its three 2025 films also making $600 million or less. The insubstantial car racing flick "F1" similarly made about $600 million, which wasn't much, given its overwhelming budget.

Anecdotal evidence also indicates a general dissatisfaction with the 2020s theatrical experience. You might have heard your friends complain about rowdy crowds,...

Dwayne Johnson said The Smashing Machinehas offered him the opportunity to stop “chasing box office” and break out of being “pigeonholed” into blockbuster roles.

The actor was speaking at the press conference for Benny Safdie’s Venice Competition title, in which Johnson stars alongside Emily Blunt.

“The three of us have talked about, when you’re in Hollywood, it had become about box office,” said Johnson. “And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner. This is...

Though his role in the new A24 film “The Smashing Machine,” directed by Benny Safdie, strikes somewhat familiar territory, with the WWE superstar playing early UFC champion Mark Kerr, actor Dwayne Johnson revealed that taking the project on required the encouragement of his co-star Emily Blunt.

“There was this voice inside of me; the little voice said, ‘Well, what if? What if I could do more, and I want to do more, and what does that look like?’ And from the beginning, from the time we worked on ‘Jungle Cruise’ together, she really encouraged and believed in me, and said, ‘You know, there’s a place that you can put all this stuff that you have gone through as a kid . . . that place is what you love to do, which is acting. And you have me, let’s do this together,’” said Johnson during the film’s press conference at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Rising Greek filmmaker Evi Kalogiropoulou brings her long-awaited feature debut, “Gorgonà,” to the Venice Film Festival this week, where the movie — a genre-defying female-empowerment story set in a dystopian, male-dominated future — has its world premiere in Critics’ Week.

The film, which was awarded at the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart and the Cannes Cinefondation’s Atelier while in development, follows on the heels of the director’s buzzy short films “Motorway 65,” which played in competition in Cannes in 2021, and “On Xerxes’ Throne,” a Cannes Critics’ Week prizewinner one year later.

Written by Kalogiropoulou and Louise Groult, it’s produced by Amanda Livanou for Greece’s Neda Film, in co-production with Bertrand Gore and Nathalie Mesuret at Blue Monday Productions, Alexandre Perrier and François-Pierre Clavel at Kidam, Fenia Cossovitsa for Blonde, Onassis Culture, Ert and Authorwave. Playtime is handling world sales.

“Gorgonà” takes place in a small, impoverished city-state dominated by...

Exclusive: The Writers Lab UK and Europe has unveiled its selection of 10 participants for its 2025 development programme, that supports women and non-binary writers over the age of 40.

Selected writers are based in Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and Austria.

Industry mentors will work one on one with writers to hone their projects. Director Destiny Ekaragha, screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma, producer Rienkje Attoh, writer Karen Cogan, director Jessica Swale, writer-director Aislinn Clarke and writer-producer Susan Soon He Stanton join previously announced mentors, filmmaker Sally El Hosaini and writer-director-producer Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor.

The lab commences on September 3 and is produced by Untamed Stories’ Julia Berg...

“Vertigo” star Kim Novak was honored with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where the reclusive Hollywood diva made her first public appearance in decades since leaving the limelight in the mid 1960s.

She was welcomed with a warm protracted ovation before Guillermo del Toro took the stage to deliver a glowing tribute.

Novak, 92, became the world’s top box office draw during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s thanks to films now considered classics such as Joshua Logan’s “Picnic” (1955), Otto Preminger’s “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955), George Sidney’s Pal Joey (1957) and, of course, Alfred Hitchock’s “Vertigo” (1958), in which she plays dual characters in the role of her lifetime.

After listing the top directors Novak worked with, del Toro singled out the single aspects of her career that struck him the most: “Most impressive is the fact that...

The fourth and final season of the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" was the show's most divisive. Perhaps that was unavoidable given how "Galactica" had threaded long-running mysteries and philosophical questions throughout its run. When you keep the audience guessing for years, the resolutions can't satisfy them all.

The finale of "Battlestar Galactica," the three-part episode "Daybreak," leaves nothing to chance and no door unclosed. It gives answers and you can take them or leave them — there is an Earth, the God whispered about throughout the show is real (but remains unseen), and the series is set thousands of years in the past. The humans and humanoid Cylons are, collectively, the ancestors of modern mankind.

If AI is coming for filmmakers, don’t tell that to director Damien Hauser.

In his latest feature, “Memory of Princess Mumbi,” which premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, the young Swiss Kenyan filmmaker imagines a retro-futuristic Africa set in the aftermath of a cataclysmic war, creating a rich visual tapestry that makes ample use of artificial intelligence.

The result — a playful, bittersweet meta-fiction that is part love story, part mockumentary — is a film that Hauser readily admits he could have never made without AI, even as he set out to “make a movie that AI could never make,” the director tells Variety.

“Memory of Princess Mumbi” is set in 2093, as a young documentary filmmaker, Kuve (Abraham Joseph), travels to the kingdom of Umata to document the aftermath of the great war. There he meets Mumbi (Shandra Apondi), a free-spirited actress who challenges him to...

The Media Production & Technology Show (Mpts)and Future Media Conferences have partnered to launch a European version of the Post Production World Conference.

Post Production World Conference Europe (Ppw Europe) will form part of the line-up at Mpts 2026, which runs fromMay 13-14 next year atLondon’s Olympia Grand Hall.

The Post Production World Conference has been running for over two decades in the US, becoming aworld-renowned training conference for media and entertainment professionals. This is the first time it will be available outside of the US.

Ppw Europewill be home to dozens of hands-on training sessions across the full two days in multiple breakout rooms.

Mona Fastvold and Amanda Seyfried discussed their efforts to change a “male-dominated” industry and promote “female leadership” through Venice Competition title The Testament Of Ann Lee.

“It’s interesting talking about female leadership right now,” said Fastvold, opening the press conference for the film ahead of its world premiere this afternoon in Venice.

“Trying to create a piece of art in a business that’s very male-dominated,I’m always trying to create a community on set that is a bit different, and to create a culture that is nurturing, that is kind, that has a lot of empathy for everyone on my sets.

China’s 2025 summer box office season generated RMB11.97 billion ($1.67 billion), up 2.7% from last year, with admissions reaching 321 million — the second-highest in five years, according to a new report from Maoyan Research Institute.

The average ticket price dropped to $5.04, the second lowest over the period, driven by reduced distribution fees and ticket subsidy campaigns. The report notes that flexible pricing helped lift audience enthusiasm, with occupancy rates ranking second-highest among the past five summer seasons.

Two films crossed the RMB1 billion ($140 million) mark, on par with 2024, while the number of titles grossing between RMB500 million and Rmb 1 billion increased. Local films slightly increased their market share, while imported films continued a two-year recovery. The top three releases accounted for nearly half of the season’s revenue, underscoring what analysts call the “Matthew Effect” — a dynamic where a few blockbusters capture a disproportionate share of the market, leaving smaller titles with less visibility.

Venice film festival

An intensely personal interview of the 92-year-old Hollywood star delivers showstopping moments for fans of the golden age of movies

At 92 years old, Hollywood movie star Kim Novak – legendary of course for her doppelganger starring role in Hitchcock’s Vertigo – is a vivid and, in fact, yearningly romantic and demanding presence in this gallant, cinephile documentary-interview filmed by director and Novak superfan Alexandre O Philippe. She is one of the very few golden age stars still with us, and maybe the title of this film is a playful pun: at the very apex of Hollywood history, perhaps Novak feels dizzy looking down from her mythic height.

Philippe...

Sarah-Jane Potts speaks volumes without saying a word as a bereaved, selectively mute woman travelling alone who meets a talkative Irishman

Is it possible to recover after the worst imaginable tragedy? Or are there some things that you just can’t get over? These are the themes of this muted British drama about raw grief from actor turned director Joseph Millson. It stars Sarah-Jane Potts as Anne, a woman in her 40s travelling alone in Lanzarote. Dressed head to toe in black, and unsmiling, Anne stands out from the other holidaymakers. And she doesn’t talk; there is a page in the notebook she uses to communicate with the words: “I’m not deaf.

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You might know Vanessa Kirby for her roles as Princess Margaret on "The Crown," the White Widow in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, or, most recently, her turn as the Invisible Woman/Sue Storm in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."

In truth, however, Kirby has been acting since 2010, having gotten her start via supporting roles in British TV and theatre. Her last television role before her breakout work on "The Crown" was in the 2015 period piece horror/crime series, "The Frankenstein Chronicles." But if you think you already know what the show is about based on its title, guess again.

Created...

“Kim Novak’s Vertigo” has one of the more heartwarming and, frankly, historically significant, codas to a film-focused documentary in recent memory. It’s such a special moment that it mostly justifies the way the film has been assembled before it.

Until then, it’s quite an uneven and unstructured cinematic portrait, and one of the weaker efforts from its director Alexandre O. Philippe. The Swiss-born cinephile has become a kind of cross between Laurent Bouzereau and Mark Cousins with his succession of documentaries about iconic films and film subjects.

Novak is certainly a worthy subject for a documentary. She’s not only the last survivor of the film that many consider the greatest ever made, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” but she is the nexus of obsession in a film about obsession that has inspired so much obsession in the 67 years since its release itself. At 92, her star power is as grand and magnificent as ever.