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Throughout the past three years, the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly affected the lives of billions. It became the catalyst for major changes in various industries, and the film industry was no exception. Movie productions had to be halted or postponed, release dates were shuffled around, movie theaters had to close or take immense precautions, and studios had to adapt by embracing the power of online streaming services.

Updated July 15, 2023: This article has been updated to add some more flavors of Covid Cinema to look back on those unprecedented experiences of life.

All of this chaos also birthed a new genre of film: Covid Cinema. It’s a whole subsection of films that put the pandemic as the basis of its story or, at the very least, acknowledge its existence. These films are the result of filmmakers needing to express themselves during these times using whatever resources they have at their disposal,...

“Don’t Look Up” and “Coda” have won the top feature film awards from the Writers Guild of America, which held its annual WGA Awards on Sunday evening.

On the heels of its Producers Guild Award victory on Saturday, “Coda” kicked off the show by winning the first award of the night, for Best Adapted Screenplay. The category also included “Dune,” “Nightmare Alley,” “tick, tick…Boom!” and “West Side Story” — but two of the biggest challengers to “Coda” in the Oscar race for adapted screenplay, “The Power of the Dog” and “The Lost Daughter,” were not eligible for the award because of WGA regulations.

In the Best Original Screenplay category, “Don’t Look Up” scored a surprise victory over “Licorice Pizza,” which was favored to take the award, and “King Richard.” Two other Oscar nominees, “Belfast” and “The Worst Person in the World,” were ineligible.

Television awards included “Succession” and “Hacks” for drama and comedy series,...

You made it through the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Directors Guild Awards, and the Producers Guild Awards, too. The wait for the Oscars is almost over, but one more major guild had yet to give out its trophies before the Academy Awards. Tonight, Hollywood’s top writers came together for the Writers Guild of America Awards, which honored the finest achievements in film and television writing.

On the film side, the nominees were actually quite different from what you’ll see at the Oscars next week. In the Original Screenplay category, “Licorice Pizza,” “Don’t Look Up,” and “King Richard” were still nominated, but “Belfast” and “The Worst Person in the World” were replaced with “Being the Ricardos.” The Adapted Screenplay category was even more distinct, with only two Oscar contenders (“Dune” and “Coda”) nominated.

But it ultimately did not matter, as two Oscar nominees took the top prizes. “Coda...

Sunday’s 74th Writers Guild of America Awards will wrap up the guild season, along with the American Society of Cinematographers Awards. Will the winners be an Oscar preview?

“Licorice Pizza,” written by Paul Thomas Anderson, and “Coda,” by Sian Heder, are favored to win Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively. However, they are not facing off against many of their Oscar rivals as the WGA’s rules have rendered several scripts ineligible, including Oscar nominees “Belfast” and “The Worst Person in the World” in original, and “Drive My Car,” “The Lost Daughter” and “The Power of the Dog” in adapted. But if they both prevail, they will have bagged the two top industry prizes as they won at BAFTA last weekend right in the middle of final Oscar voting (it ends Tuesday).

The TV field features heavy-hitters “Succession” and “Ted Lasso,” both of which are expected to...

On Thursday, January 13, Writers Guild of America West (Wgaw) and Writers Guild of America East (Wgae) jointly announced their 2022 nominations for television and new media. Winners will be rewarded on Sunday, March 20 in a ceremony that also honors motion pictures. Read on for the complete list of 2022 Writers Guild Award nominations for TV, which includes a nice mix of new series (like Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building”) and established fare (like HBO’s “Succession”).

SEEReminder: Here’s who won last year’s WGA Awards

This year’s drama series contenders are “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Loki,” “The Morning Show,” “Succession” and “Yellowjackets.” Of these, only “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Morning Show” and “Succession” also showed up in the Episodic Drama category, which was rounded out by specific episodes of “1883,” “This Is Us” and “New Amsterdam.”

The comedy series nominees are “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Hacks,” “Only Murders in the Building,...

The Writers Guild of America revealed nominations Thursday in television, new media, news, radio/audio and promotional categories for the 2022 WGA Awards, which are scheduled to take place Sunday, March 20 hosted by the WGA West and WGA East.

Nominees in the marquee TV categories include reigning Comedy Series winners Ted Lasso from Apple TV+, with newcomers to the list including several shows with multiple noms: HBO Max’s Emmy winner Hacks, Showtime’s Yellowjackets, Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and Disney+’s Marvel series Loki. That group along with FX’s Reservation Dogs comprise the awards’ New Series nominees list.

The wide-ranging list also includes noms for Netflix’s Maid and Midnight Mass, HBO’s critically lauded The White Lotus and Emmy winner Mare of Easttown, Amazon Prime Video’s The Underground Railroad and Disney+’s WandaVision in the longform categories.

Other notables: noms for Taylor Sheridan’s...

“Only Murders in the Building,” “Hacks,” “Loki” and “Yellowjackets” are among the top nominees for this year’s Writers Guild Awards, announced on Thursday. Winners will be honored at a joint 2021 Writers Guild Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 20, 2022.

The nominations from the Writers Guild of America West (Wgaw) and Writers Guild of America, East (Wgae) include outstanding achievement in television, new media, news, radio/audio, and promotional writing during 2021. The WGA Awards announcement caps a busy week that also included the Golden Globes’ unusual non-ceremony ceremony on Sunday, and this year’s SAG Awards nominations on Wednesday.

“Only Murders” led the WGA tally with three noms, including comedy, new series and comedy episodic. Shows with two nominations include “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Loki,” “The Morning Show,” “Succession,” “Yellowjackets,” “Hacks,” “Reservation Dogs,” “Bob’s Burgers” and “The Simpsons.” HBO led all networks with nine; followed by Apple TV Plus, FX, Hulu, NBC, Netflix and PBS,...

"As soon as I get this stimmy check, I'm bouncing." Saban Films + Well Go USA have revealed an official trailer for an indie romantic comedy titled The End of Us, another made-during-the-pandemic film about a couple who is forced to live together during the lockdown even though they're on the verge of breaking up. This first premiered at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at the Philadelphia Film Festival. After a savage breakup, two exes must continue living together when California issues its stay-at-home order for Covid-19. Now they'll try to move on without moving out. Starring Ben Coleman, Ali Vingiano, Derrick DeBlasis, Gadiel Del Orbe, and Kate Peterman. As fun as this looks, I'm getting the feeling no one really wants to watch films about the time during the pandemic where we were all stuck at home with nothing to do. Even though they...

As we recently passed the one-year anniversary of the first coronavirus-dictated lockdown, the internet’s insatiable hunger for short-term nostalgia kicked into overdrive. Memories from March 2020 trended again as fodder for renewed memes and Twitter threads, feeling at once from just yesterday and eons ago. An early entry in the inevitable subgenre of lockdown chamber cinema, Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter’s debut feature “The End of Us” taps into that same throwback impulse, as it plausibly dramatizes the up-and-down tensions between a newly separated couple forced into prolonged cohabitation by the California stay-at-home order.

The film’s evocation of early pandemic panic, in that period where we bumbled cluelessly into practices and precautions that soon became standard, is at once bleak and rosily affectionate — largely relatable even to viewers who don’t identify with the film’s cute but exasperating pair of exes. It remains to be seen how...

Over this past year a lot of relationships have come under pressure as a result of people being confined together under lockdown conditions. This has led to some ugly situations, but even when those involved are lovely people and want the nest for each other, it can be tough. Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner's quirky indie comedy, which screened at South by Southwest, is among the first films to address this subject, and whilst some viewers will feel that it's too soon, others will doubtless jump at the chance to see experiences like their own reflected onscreen.

Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano) have been living together for four years. Leah wants to feel that she's going somewhere in life, however, and Nick is patently not. Like the hero of Lim Jung-eun's Our Midnight, also out this year, he's engaged in the long, slow game of trying to make.

Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner’s “The End of Us” might just be the single most obvious romantic-comedy that some opportunistic Hollywood up-and-comers could — and inevitably did — make about life during Covid-19. Here’s the premise: A couple in their late twenties suffers a rough, long overdue breakup mere hours before Tom Hanks gets sick and California issues a stay-at-home-order, forcing the exes to keep living together with little other human contact for an indefinite period of time. Grievances will be aired, drunken “we probably shouldn’t do that again” sex will be had, “Tiger King” will be watched. Ah, the good old days.

Eschewing the claustrophobic mania of “Locked Down,” the spiraling paranoia of “Songbird,” and the elemental folk horror of Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming “Into the Earth,” “The End of Us” is , and the first of this hopefully short-lived sub-genre to rely upon a certain degree of nostalgia...

Henry Loevner, Steven Kanter directed film about couple going through break-up during pandemic.

Jason Moring’s Ddi has come on board to launch worldwide sales at the EFM on BuzzFeed Studios’ pandemic comedy and upcoming SXSW selection The End Of Us.

Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter directed the film about a couple going through a break-up during a global pandemic.

It is the night of March 10, 2020 – the eve of the California lockdown – as out-of-work actor Nick and his type-a girlfriend Leah are in the throes of splitting up.

When the safer-at-home order ushers in a long period of quarantine, Leah...

Exclusive: BuzzFeed Studios has signed on to executive produce the Schlemiel Pictures pandemic comedy The End of Us which is set to make its world premiere in competition next month at the SXSW Film Festival. Directed by Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter, the film stars Ben Coleman and Ali Vingiano as a couple going through a break up during a — you guessed it — a global pandemic. To get a taste of the romantic dysfunction, BuzzFeed Studios and Schlemiel Pictures released an exclusive clip from the film which you can watch above.

“BuzzFeed is known for content featuring smart, socially relevant themes, and The End of Us speaks to the experiences we endured over the past year through a sharply funny and wryly observant lens,” said Richard Alan Reid, Head of BuzzFeed Studios. “We are excited about our new partnership with the filmmakers, and look forward to our debut at SXSW...