News

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Disney), with a reported production budget close to $300 million, opened to $130 million worldwide. That includes the studio’s generous estimate of $60 million for the U.S./Canada (that includes a 10 percent Sunday drop, but other distributors calculate a drop of 20-25 percent for their own films). This weekend marks the midway point of the summer movie season, which began with expectations that it might achieve a 20 percent uptick against 2022. As of now, the season’s total gross sits slightly below last year. Add in marketing, including its Cannes Film Festival premiere, and the total investment for “Indiana” might total $450 million with no path to profit. It might lose as much as “The...

Many great actors have filmed provocative scenes that they’d rather their families didn’t watch, but Ewan McGregor was thrilled to show his children the grossest scene of his career. Addressing press at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (via Variety), the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” star opened up about the joys of introducing his kids to his filmography. He took particular pleasure in showing his daughter the infamous scene in “Trainspotting” where he plunges into the aptly nicknamed “worst toilet in Scotland” to retrieve some heroin. “I wasn’t there when [my daughter] Clara watched ‘Trainspotting’ for the first time,” McGregor said. “But I did used to show my kids the toilet scene. Just for a laugh. It’s a unique situation, perhaps, for a father...

Russell Crowe wants to make something extremely clear: He is not in “Gladiator 2.” Ridley Scott’s upcoming sequel, which picks up two decades after the events of the Oscar-winning classic, is set to star Paul Mescal as a rising member of the Roman ruling class. Crowe will not be reprising his iconic role as Maximus, who died at the end of the first film. But that hasn’t stopped people from asking him about the movie. At a press conference at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (via Variety), Crowe complained about how much time he spends answering questions about a movie with which he has no involvement. “They should be fucking paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in,” Crowe said. “It has nothing to...

Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture. Suspense hovers around whether SAG-AFTRA could reach a deal with studios this week, as the union has flown past the June 30 expiration of its contract and extended negotiations to July 12. The next few days could determine the future of the business, but the situation only intensified over the past week with an unexpected update. The last thing that SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members needed to see was Fran Drescher’s smiling face. When the SAG president and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland circulated a giddy update June 23 about an impending deal — one without specifics, beyond offering that it would be “seminal” — it didn’t...

The recent slew of high profile layoffs at Turner Classic Movies sent shockwaves through the film community. Many saw the ousting of longtime executives who shaped TCM into a beloved resource for movie buffs as a sign that Warner Bros. Discovery was planning to neglect or even eliminate the network. News of the shakeup led to increased attention on TCM, with many prominent voices advocating for its role in the current cinema landscape. While the studio was able to tamp down the outrage by announcing that Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson would be involved in the network’s new programming efforts, TCM’s long term health is a topic of concern for cinephiles around the world. While gutting a beloved network to...

Editor’s Note: The following interview took place before HBO confirmed “The Other Two” would end with Season 3 and The Hollywood Reporter revealed that showrunners Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider were the subject of an HR investigation. “The Other Two” may have definitively ended at HBO Max, but the series’ star-studded celebrity roster unique and untouchable. Season 3 included appearances from Simu Liu, Fin Argus, Ann Dowd, Edie Falco, Ben Platt, Dylan O’Brien, Lukas Gage, Kiernan Shipka, Lawrence O’Donnell, Spike Einbinder, Andrea Boehlke, and Dana Delaney — some as themselves, others as hyperspecific characters. In their three seasons with the show, casting directors Alison Estrin and Henry Russell found the right balance in...

A potential actors strike is being put on hold. SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have yet to reach a tentative deal on a new minimum bargaining agreement ahead of their current contract expiring on June 30, but the two sides have agreed to extend the current contract and continue negotiations past the deadline. Both organizations representing the actors and studios announced Friday that the contract that was meant to expire at midnight tonight will now expire July 12 at 11:59 PM PT. So while SAG-AFTRA currently has the power to call for a strike, the guild’s leaders for now will remain at the negotiating table in an attempt to reach a new deal. The guild and AMPTP will continue operating under a media black out until then. “In order to...

[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Nimona.”] Netflix’s “Nimona” (now streaming) represents the latest post “Spider-Verse” animated breakthrough in handmade-looking 2D stylization. The twist here was creating a futuristic medieval fantasy that mixes “Sleeping Beauty” with “Blade Runner.” Fortunately, DNEG Animation (“Entergalactic”) answered the SOS after the trouble-plagued adaptation of ND Stevenson’s queer graphic novel about the titular teen shapeshifter (Chloë Grace Moretz) came back from the dead. That’s because Annapurna Animation and the streamer rescued the Blue Sky feature after Disney shuttered the Fox-owned animation studio in 2021. “We obviously followed it really closely, what happened to Blue...

Before he started building the show’s recycled radios and scrap-metal computers, prop master Jonathan Norman went to “Silo” class. That level of training was necessary for the Apple TV+ sci-fi series about a post-apocalyptic future where the remnants of humanity are living inside the massive, titular building. They can’t leave because the air outside is poisonous, which means that generation after generation, the inhabitants assemble their world from whatever was hauled in when the first inhabitants arrived. It took an enormous amount of planning to decide how this environment would look and function, especially after centuries of wear and tear. (In the series, which is based on Hugh Howey’s novels, it’s suggested people have been...

Judd Apatow didn’t want his freaks to disappear from Hollywood. The multi-hyphenate writer/director/producer behind short-lived cult classic NBC series “Freaks and Geeks” was determined not to let the rising stars of the series fall to the wayside after the show’s untimely cancellation, according to actor Jason Segel. “Freaks and Geeks” revolved around siblings Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and Sam (John Francis Daley), who try to make friends in their new Detroit high school in 1980. Segel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Busy Philipps, Martin Starr, and Samm Levine rounded out the ensemble cast for the teen series that ran from 1999 to 2000. Apatow executive-produced the series, created by Paul Feig. According to Thea Glassman’s new book...

John Landis is looking for a Hollywood savior. The legendary comedy director told Deadline during the Taormina Film Festival that the film industry is “in chaos” amid the WGA strike and lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on theaters. “Do you know it’s the first time in Hollywood history that the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the IA are all united?” Landis said. “The film industry is in chaos and I hope the audience comes back to the theaters.” The Writers Guild is still on a work-halt order due to negotiations for fair wages. The Directors Guild reached a deal with the AMPTP to avoid a strike; however, SAG contract negotiations are still underway. The “Trading Places” director continued, “The sentiment really is the...

If only “After Yang” were made after Donald Trump’s presidency. The Kogonada film, which was critically ranked as one of the best movies of 2022, debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival before playing in the Spotlight section at Sundance. The film centers on family’s android Yang (Justin H. Min), whose malfunctions lead to a philosophical debate as the parents, played by Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, reconnect with their own humanity. Iranian-French “Extraction” actress Golshifteh Farahani revealed during a TikTok video for Elle that she was originally cast in the female lead role, but due to President Trump’s travel ban, Turner-Smith replaced her. When asked by Elle if she had ever been “disappointed” to lose a role...

The Gotham Film and Media Institute laid off two key staffers this week after canceling the Project Market, where seminal indie breakouts from “Clerks” to “Moonlight” have gathered early financial resources, for the first time in its 45-year history. The Project Market, formerly known as the Independent Feature Film Market, was called off after the Gotham was informed by the WGA that writers would be in violation of their contract with the union if they participated in the event. Senior programming director Milton Tabbot, who has worked at the organization since 1996, was let go along with director of narrative programming Zach Mandinach. Tabbot and Mandinach were the core staff responsible for managing the Project Market, while...