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Three VOD charts and Netflix’s top 10 all resulted in films set in non-Earth planetary worlds leading the pack in home viewing. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (Disney) is #1 on VOD (at $19.99) at iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu, while “65,” four months after its theatrical release and multiple weeks scoring on VOD, tops Netflix’s movie chart. “Galaxy” had a two-month window, as Disney increasingly slows down its initial home releases (“Avatar: The Way of Water” waited 100 days), and then to PVOD, not streaming. It was dominant enough that it led Vudu’s revenue-based list, even though it was only available for three of the seven days of their full-week rankings. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”Courtesy of Sony Pictures The deal...

Portland local Todd Haynes turned out at the Oregon city’s art museum in late June not to tout his own movies — and he certainly has a major one on the horizon thanks to Netflix’s Cannes pick-up “May December” — but to celebrate his peers: namely screenwriter and author Jon Raymond, longtime collaborator of Haynes’ friend Kelly Reichardt. Raymond also co-wrote with Haynes the script for his acclaimed 2011 HBO miniseries “Mildred Pierce” and developed the story for Haynes’ upcoming gay romance starring Joaquin Phoenix. Haynes, who moved to Portland in 2000, was among speakers at the Portland Art Museum Center for an Untold Tomorrow’s (PAM CUT) Cinema Unbound Awards, which honored the likes of Raymond, Guillermo del Toro, Tessa Thompson...

It’s no longer just David Zaslav, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, and a room full of ruthless Warner Bros. Discovery accountants swinging their Excel sheets like guillotines. Stream your bucket-list series and movies (note: 2008’s “The Bucket List” is only available on PVOD) while you still can — content removal is the new power move. Last month, Paramount+ scrubbed shows “Inside Amy Schumer,” “From Cradle to Stage,” “Tell Me a Story,” “Ghislaine: Partner in Crime,” movies “Fantasy Football” and “Snow Day,” and a crop of Nickelodeon series from its archives, a source confirmed to IndieWire. The library purge followed the cancellation of “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies,” “Star Trek: Prodigy,” “The Game” and “Queen of the Universe,” all of which...

We’ll do the tally for you: No Sandra Bullock, only some birds (and not in boxes), plenty of blindfolds, and the singular desire to make audiences (further) loathe humanity. Such is the movie math at play in David Pastor and Àlex Pastor’s “Bird Box Barcelona,” a continuation (if not a true sequel) to the 2018 smash Netflix hit “Bird Box.” While Susanne Bier’s post-apocalyptic drama featured, yes, plenty of Sandra Bullock and birds (in boxes), it also carried with it an affection for the better side of humanity. At the very least, the thriller made the case that some people deserve to be saved, especially if they have to undergo insane and intense trials to get there. The Pastors’ companion feature, co-written with “Bird Box” novelist...

Serial killer true crime stories are a genre in and of themselves — so much so that the repeated revisiting of murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy almost turn them into clichés that threaten to trivialize the very real consequences of their killings. But rarely are true crime and social justice as cohesively intertwined on the small screen as they are in “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York,” a four-part docuseries premiering on HBO. Directed by Anthony Caronna and executive produced by Howard Gertler from Elon Green’s 2021 nonfiction book, “Last Call” pulls back the curtain on the killing spree of Richard Rogers, a male nurse who, as far back as the 1980s and until 2001 when he was eventually caught by...

With the Writers Guild of America strike now in its third month — and a potential Screen Actors Guild strike on the horizon — nobody truly knows when Hollywood will be able to resume normal operations. Some saw the Directors Guild of America’s recent deal with the AMPTP as cause for optimism, but one of TV’s top showrunners isn’t so sure. In a new appearance on the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast, “The Wire” creator David Simon encouraged striking writers to manage their expectations about returning to work and cautioned them to settle in for the long haul. “I heard a very funny thing,” Simon said. “It may be apocryphal, but somebody, the vice president of the East, she assured me the other day that she had it on good authority that...

Nominations voting is from January 11-16, 2024, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2024. Final voting is February 22-27, 2024. And finally, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks. The State of the Race As always, big-name directors with big-budget projects get a marketing and awareness lift on the road to the Oscars. But festivals offer a crucial leg up in the prestige department. Sundance introduced the acclaimed “Past Lives” (A24) from rookie director Celine Song, a Korean-American playwright who spins an auto-fiction relationship triangle...

[Editor’s Note: The following story contains major spoilers for “John Wick: Chapter 4.”] John Wick is dead, right? “John Wick: Chapter 4” director Chad Stahelski spoke to Empire magazine about the ending originally shot for the film, which indicated to audiences that John Wick was very much still alive. In the final theatrical version, John Wick appears to die on the steps of the Basilica of Sacré Coeur while ruminating on his family. Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne’s characters are then seen looking over his grave — implying Reeves’ character has died without ever explicitly showing so. “We had a different ending,” Stahelski said. “[The theatrical ending] was the ending Keanu and I wanted, but we shot a different ending. We shot...

Diablo Cody is addressing her botched “Barbie” script for Sony five years after the fact. The Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter was attached to pen the screenplay for a meta “Barbie” movie before exiting in 2018. Cody was enlisted to re-write former “Sex and the City” writer Jenny Bicks’ 2014 Sony script. Amy Schumer was initially cast in the lead role prior to also parting ways with the project. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach took over the film in 2019 after it moved to Warner Bros. Cody infamously never turned in a script due to creative differences with the studio, as the “Jennifer’s Body” scribe told GQ. “I think I know why I shit the bed: When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or...

Seasons change, and so do cities. One thing that doesn’t? Fans’ enduring love for “Sex and the City,” the HBO comedy that premiered in 1998. Endlessly spoofed but also deeply, earnestly loved by millions, the groundbreaking series wrapped its original six-season, 94-episode run in 2004, with a not-terrible, not-great 2008 feature film and a truly terrible sequel following in 2010. In 2021, spinoff series “And Just Like That” — without Kim Cattrall’s iconic Samantha Jones — premiered on Max (née HBO Max). A second season of “And Just Like That” began airing in June 2023, following the misadventures of a 50-something Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda. The spinoff show has received mixed reviews from fans and critics — the less said about...

Dominic Fike is opening up about his drug use during HBO’s Emmy-winning series “Euphoria.” During an Apple Music interview, Fike admitted to being high on drugs for most of the show, despite HBO and showrunner Sam Levinson hiring a “sober coach” for him that “did not work.” “I was so fucked up during a lot of that show. It was really bad,” Fike said, noting that he filmed most scenes that made it into the final cut while high. “I was reprimanded for it. I almost, you know, got kicked off the show. They were like, ‘Bro, you cannot be doing this.'” However, producers “had to” use Fike’s scenes while under the influence. “I was a drug addict and coming on to a show that’s, you know, mainly about drugs, is very difficult,” he said...

IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, laid out its “core principles” around the use of AI in entertainment, the arts, and media, drawing a line in the sand that AI must be used as a tool and not as a means to replace workers or circumvent their rights. “Workers in jobs that use AI should be afforded the same rights and protections as those in roles which have not historically used AI,” IATSE wrote on Wednesday. “New technology must not become an excuse to erode the conditions we’ve fought to achieve for decades, nor should it become a way to circumvent the union altogether. The implementation of AI and ML should not lead to job losses but rather should serve as a tool, complementing the work done by our...

The criticism around “Joy Ride” has swerved in an unexpected direction. The AAPI-led R-rated comedy, which stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu as pals who set out on a wild and raucous trip through China, is executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. “Joy Ride” debuted at SXSW earlier this year, but first-time director Adele Lim is only now having to field racist criticisms of the film, as it hits wide release this week. On Wednesday, Lim retweeted a tweet from film critic Jackson Murphy (aka Lights Camera Jackson) in which Murphy wrote that the film is “embarrassing and incredibly unpleasant” while also alleging that the comedy “objectifies men, targets white people.” In her retweet response, Lim...