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Some good news this weekend: The early 2020 small uptick in grosses continued, with total ticket sales totaling around $130 million. (The second weekend of 2019 saw $120 million.) And leading the charge was Sam Mendes’ innovative “1917.” At $36.5 million, it more than doubled #2 “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” for an easy #1 placement. The three-day period saw four new and expanding wide studio releases, compared with two in 2019 — “The Upside” and “A Dog’s Way Home,” along with the independent “Replicas” which only roused $2.3 million. That means the biggest reason for the jump is more new titles rather than suggesting a major box-office resurrection. The big question this year is whether original titles can continue to perform...

“Bombshell,” Jay Roach’s sexual misconduct drama about the scandals that brought down Roger Ailes at Fox News, swept all three contemporary categories Saturday night at the sixth-annual MUAHS Guild Awards, at LA Live. The Oscar favorite took honors for character makeup, special makeup, and hairstyling for the multifaceted transformations of John Lithgow as Ailes, Charlize Theron as anchor Megyn Kelly, and Nicole Kidman as news personality Gretchen Carlson. The team also created the look of Margot Robbie’s fictional Kayla. “Bombshell” boasted the work of Oscar-winning special makeup effects legend Kazu Hiro (“Darkest Hour”), who collaborated with makeup artists Vivian Baker and Richard Redlefsen on the effects work, while Baker and...

Fresh off his Golden Globe win earlier this week, Joaquin Phoenix has been arrested in Washington D.C. for participating in a climate change rally. Phoenix was arrested alongside fellow actor Martin Sheen. The actors were two of 300 people attending the rally, organized by Jane Fonda. Fonda has been arrested several times over the last couple of months for protesting in Washington D.C. Deadline first reported the news. Phoenix addressed protestors at a rally prior to being arrested. “Sometimes we wonder what can we do in this fight against climate change, and there is something that you can do today and tomorrow, by making a choice about what you consume,” Phoenix said. “There are things I can’t avoid. I flew a plane here today, or...

The Palm Springs International Film Festival, which began just after the New Year and wraps January 13, screened 188 films; 51 of them were submitted for the Best International Feature Film Academy Award. The Palm Springs Film Festival prize winners announced Saturday over brunch at the Hilton included a handful of these films. See the full list of winners below. Audience awards will be announced on Sunday. FIPRESCI Prize for Best International Feature Film: “Beanpole” (Russia), Director Kantemir Balagov. FIPRESCI Prize for Best Actor in a International Feature Film: Bartosz Bielenia from “Corpus Christi” (Poland). FIPRESCI Prize for the Best Actress in a International Feature Film: Helena Zengel from “System Crasher” (Germany)...

After delaying the announcement of the group’s final three TV categories due to voting issues, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) released its last batch of nominations on Friday, with just four networks splitting the 15 eligible slots in dramatic, comedy, and variety/talk/news/sports special. Overall, it was HBO that came out ahead in the DGA Award nominations, sweeping the dramatic series category, with two nominations each for “Watchmen” (Nicole Kassell and Stephen Williams) and “Game of Thrones” (David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik), with Mark Mylod of “Succession” taking the final spot for his work on the show’s superb Season 2 finale. Were that not enough, the premium cable network nabbed two nominations in comedy, for Bill...

Nearly three years will have passed by the time Season 4 of FX’s “Fargo” premieres in April, and audiences should prepare themselves for a version of the series never before seen. Not only has “Fargo” left the wilds of Alberta to film stateside — in Chicago, specifically — but the season is set firmly in the past, lending the show some period piece bonafides it only flirted with in prior seasons. And it would be remiss to not mention the most significant adjustment to the DNA of the series: the diversification of a cast whose pallor too-often resembled the the snowy fields of winter in Minnesota. Also, there are so many hats. “This year, we’re really looking at the origins of the American capital crime, which is the exploitation of...

FX’s release of “Impeachment: American Crime Story” will no longer coincide with the 2020 election. Citing executive producer Ryan Murphy’s busy schedule, FX Networks and FX Productions Chairman John Landgraf said the original release date of September 27, 2020 is no longer “reasonable.” He also unveiled his annual tally of the total number of original scripted shows, with 2019 ending up as the highest volume of scripted programming ever. “We’re making 10 episodes. Ryan, who is objectively the busiest man in show business, is not available to start production until March 21,” Landgraf said during his executive session at FX’s TCA presentation. “I don’t think [a September release date is] reasonable, given that we don’t plan to wrap...

When it comes to winning your office pool on Best Documentary Short Subject, think tearjerker and you’ll be close to mark. This year, the documentary branch of the Academy has selected 10 shorts out of 96 submissions to vie for the five final slots for the Oscars. Netflix landed four entries on the shortlist, including New Yorker Nadia Hallgren’s “After Maria,” which follows three Puerto Rican women and their families as they seek shelter in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s catastrophic destruction in 2017; Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper’s searing “Fire In Paradise,” which uses first-hand footage from residents of Paradise, Calif. to recreate the terrifying timeline of the Camp Fire on November 8, 2018 that killed 85 people and...

Entertainment awards shows have long been a venue for actors to deliver political messages to the masses, from Marlon Brando orchestrating a protest against the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood at the 1973 Oscars to Meryl Streep speaking out against Donald Trump at the 2017 Golden Globes. Sunday’s Globes ceremony continued the rich tradition of stars promoting progressive politics. The topic of the evening was the bushfires ravaging Australia. The fires, which have been affecting the country since September, have killed 20 people, destroyed thousands of buildings, and burned 14.8 million acres so far this season. Australian Russell Crowe was not present to accept his award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Film for his...

Over the past few years, when he wasn’t working on getting “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” made, director Terry Gilliam was making sure the world knew his opinion on just about everything and heard his voice. Because, according to Gilliam, the white male voice is simply being silenced these days. In an interview with The Independent’s Alexandra Pollard that was supposed to center on “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” Gilliam decided that he was “so booored of talking about the film” — which took him 30 years to make — and instead pivoted to calling #MeToo “a witch hunt,” self-identifying as a “melanin-light male” (a callback to his earlier comments about identifying as “a black lesbian”), and stating that he’s tired of white males...

The making of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 survival drama “The Revenant” was an infamous nightmare, but it could have been even more challenging had the filmmaker gone through with his original plan to stage the entire movie as one take. The decision would have given Iñárritu his second consecutive one-take movie after “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).” Of course “Birdman” is not an actual one-take but a series of long takes stitched together in editing to appear as a single shot. Regardless, planning for a one-take effect would have made the already-hectic “Revenant” shoot even more grueling. Leonardo DiCaprio revealed Iñárritu’s plan during a recent appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. “There was no way to...

SAG-AFTRA’s New York and Los Angeles buildings were reportedly evacuated Tuesday after a bomb threat. Both of the actors’ union’s buildings, located in busy areas of both cities, were closed for the day as police investigated the threat. “I can confirm that we have received a threat,” said Pam Greenwalt, the union’s spokesperson said in a release to media. “We are taking it seriously. We have evacuated our Los Angeles and New York offices. We have notified law enforcement. They are on scene and investigating. We have no further information at this time.” A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman confirmed to IndieWire that the threat was called in to a building at the 5700 block of Wilshire Boulevard in LA at 11:46 a.m. He declined...

Netflix is leaning into its strengths in 2020. Not only is the streaming giant pumping out dozens, if not hundreds of new shows, but many of their original series meet the demand illustrated by past successes or fill holes left by departing favorites. So is there a new “Stranger Things” on the horizon? Perhaps a worthy follow-up to “Orange Is the New Black?” What about a replacement for syndicated sitcoms like “The Office” and “Friends”? You better believe Netflix is working to give subscribers what they want, and the below 2020 preview should illustrate exactly that. With more competition than ever from Disney and Apple, and even more services on the way (hello HBO Max and Peacock), 2020 will be a critical year for the current king...