Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/8/2023 i Variety

Mel Brooks came up with the title of his 1981 comedy feature “History of the World, Part I” as a joke. There were never any plans to make a “Part II.” Until now. As the streaming revolution took hold, Brooks, producing partner Kevin Salter and rights holder Searchlight Pictures decided to explore a long overdue sequel, but in series form. They contacted Nick Kroll, who’s known for his sketch comedy (in addition to the painfully funny take on adolescence “Big Mouth”), to kick around a Part II that was four decades not in the making. Kroll brought in Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen to develop the 21st-century spin on the original. But they didn’t want to do a new “History of the World” without the king who started…

Maintaining the location library of 20,000 photos is one of Illinois Film Office assistant deputy director Louis Ferrara’s favorite parts of his job. “Producers always laugh when I say that, but it’s true,” he says. The massive quantity of location photos are categorized into various curated files so when productions have a need, the film office can readily supply whatever they desire. “We scout locations on a regular basis to freshen up the library,” says Ferrara, noting that they also send letters to homeowners and businesses to help with continually growing the resource. There’s no time wasted when productions choose to film in Illinois, and no need to retread the same locations. Of course, there’s no better stand in for Chicago than, well, Chicago. The city’s iconic sites have appeared in…

Illinois pulled in a record-breaking $1.256 billion in qualified film and television production spending over the past two years. And with 14 existing soundstage facilities within city limits, Chicago is no toddling town. In fact, with two additional sprawling studio complexes in the works, Chicago is setting its sights even higher, looking to further increase its production footprint. The expansion is bolstered by the strength and stability of a 30% state tax credit locked in through 2032. “They made meaningful amendments last year … and are open for business — they are serious about supporting long-term growth, long-term commitment,” says Ashley Rice, co-managing partner and president of Cinespace Studios, whose ample space — more than 1.6 million squarefeet — and plum location 15 minutes from downtown Chicago have established it…

Based in the northern French town of Lille since 2018, Series Mania has emerged as a key showcase for premium series and a spotlight for international creators — though, given the wider forces shaping the TV business, that spotlight has often shone on talent from the same three or four territories. And so, when programming the latest edition, the Series Mania brass looked to widen the field. “This year, we will introduce our attendees to new narrative modes and visual possibilities,” says general director Laurence Herszberg. “Because we’ve discovered so many series from countries that haven’t often attended the major festivals, with creative outputs that are much lesser-known. We want to celebrate them as well.” Running March 17–24, this edition boasts 55 series culled from 396 submissions encompassing more than…

TV REVIEW Sitcom: (8 episodes; all reviewed) Starring: Kerry Washington, Delroy Lindo As a performer, Kerry Washington is particularly adept at conveying uptightness; her crispness of bearing and her rat-a-tat delivery suggest a certain passion for organization, for rigor. This was the ingredient that helped elevate “Scandal,” and the emotionally chaotic but professionally fastidious character of Olivia Pope. (And, incidentally, it’s the aspect that made Washington’s work as a free-spirited artist in “Little Fires Everywhere” ring somewhat false.) Now, on the Hulu sitcom “UnPrisoned,” Washington’s back to the angle that suits her best — and at the heart of a sweetly intended show of disarming quality. Here, Washington plays Paige, a relationship therapist whom viewers may not be shocked to learn hasn’t quite got herself figured out. Her tendency…

Seven years ago, pioneering film and TV producer Debra Martin Chase was thinking about leaving Hollywood. The first Black woman to ink an overall deal at any studio, she’d produced such genre-defining hits as “The Princess Diaries,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.” While getting projects about women and people of color off the ground was never easy, suddenly prospects were stagnant. “It was at a point where Hollywood just wasn’t interested,” she tells Variety, reflecting on the career crossroads from the living room of her apartment in New York, where she lives while her popular CBS series “The Equalizer” is in production. “You’d talk to people — particularly white men — and their eyes would just glaze over.” As Martin Chase approached 30 years…

Best Picture • All Quiet on the Western Front• Avatar: The Way of Water• The Banshees of Inisherin• Elvis• Everything Everywhere All at Once• The Fabelmans• Tár• Top Gun: Maverick• Triangle of Sadness• Women Talking Director • Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)• Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)• Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”)• Todd Field (“Tár”)• Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) Lead Actor • Austin Butler (“Elvis”)• Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)• Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”)• Paul Mescal (“Aftersun”)• Bill Nighy (“Living”) Lead Actress • Cate Blanchett (“Tár”)• Ana de Armas (“Blonde”)• Andrea Riseborough (“To Leslie”)• Michelle Williams (“The Fabelmans”)• Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) Supporting Actor • Brendan Gleeson (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)• Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”)• Judd Hirsch (“The Fabelmans”)• Barry Keoghan…

The oversized contribution Chicago has made and continues to make to the American entertainment landscape comes in no small part from its vibrant and varied theater scene. With well over 200 theaters, from small stages featuring intimate fare to larger houses sending major productions to Broadway and beyond, it’s difficult to find any American film or television series that doesn’t have roots that trace back to Windy City stages. The Steppenwolf Theater Company is one where heavy-hitters John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf and Gary Sinise forged their craft early in their storied careers. Playwright and actor Tracy Letts premiered his Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County” at Steppenwolf in 2007. “It’s a lot easier to produce good theater in Chicago than in many other places,” Malkovich told Roger Ebert back in 1984…

The producers of Hollywood blockbusters and arthouse films alike are on the lookout for the most cost-efficient locations. Recent examples include several of the year’s Oscar nominees, from “Aftersun,” which shot in Turkey; “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” which went to Budapest; to “Elvis,” in Australia. “Budapest offered an affordable alternative to both London and Paris,” says Jonathan Halperyn, managing director at Budapest-based Hero Squared and a co-producer on the film. “Hungary often comes up as a shooting destination when there is a budget crunch.” He adds: “We applied for co-production status and support from the National Film Institute of Hungary during the COVID hiatus, and by the end of 2020, we were up and running. This is the kind of flexibility we have become known for.” Oscar-nominated costume…

FILM REVIEW Films: “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” “Ice Merchants,” “The Flying Sailor,” “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” “My Year of Dicks” On Oscar night, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” will almost certainly win the Academy Award for feature animation. For many of those following along at home, it will look as though the director of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape of Water” is being rewarded for some kind of secondary passion, as if del Toro had scaled Everest and then set his sights on a smaller peak on which to plant his flag. But that’s not how it happened at all. “Pinocchio” is every bit as challenging as del Toro’s most impressive films. Animation may be a…

When Jon Favreau stepped onto the red carpet for the Season 3 premiere of “The Mandalorian” on Feb. 28, the Disney+ show’s creator and executive producer was feeling nostalgic. “It’s been a while since we’ve been all together here like this,” Favreau told Variety, evoking the November 2019 premiere for the launch of the show — and of Disney+ itself. “It was before the first episode aired!” At that time, “The Mandalorian” was a scrappy landspeeder in the vast “Star Wars” galaxy, nipping at the heels of “The Rise of Skywalker,” the culminating feature film from director J.J. Abrams that was expected just a month later to obliterate the box office like a cinematic Death Star. Instead, “The Mandalorian” became a global sensation thanks to the incandescent cuteness of Baby…

AWARDS CIRCUIT Class, close your books and clear your desks. It’s time for your Oscar predictions test. Don’t worry — we have most of the answers for you. We’ve watched all the movies and seen all the precursor ceremonies, which have provided the crucial clues to which films will emerge victorious at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12. A24 and its film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” are forecast to take home the evening’s biggest haul, including best picture and two historic acting Oscars — for Michelle Yeoh (the first Asian and second woman of color to win best actress) and Ke Huy Quan (the second Asian to win supporting actor). Don’t let the projections fool you into thinking those picks are surefire — Quan is the only one…

Goldie Hawn still regrets missing her Oscar moment. On the evening of April 7, 1970, the budding 25-year-old actress, with just two film credits to her name, was half a world away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles when Fred Astaire opened an envelope and read her name as the best supporting actress winner for “Cactus Flower.” Instead of basking in the glow of television history, the “Laugh-In” star was sound asleep in London as an early call time loomed for her next film, “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” opposite Peter Sellers. Hawn, now 77, is sitting in front of a fire in a wood-paneled study in her Pacific Palisades home as she recalls those few seconds that changed the trajectory of her life but that she…

Illinois is no stranger to the film industry. Essanay Studios, founded in Chicago in 1907, is where silent film stars including Wallace Beery, Gloria Swanson, and Charlie Chaplin made some of their earliest films. Although filmmakers soon flocked to Hollywood, with its robust advertising industry, Chicago became — and continues to be — a hot spot for making commercials. Today, TV productions are on the rise with shows including “The Chi,” “The Bear,” “South Side” and others joining Dick Wolf’s “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Med.” Many Windy City-based series are shot in the nation’s second-largest soundstage, Cinespace Chicago. “Illinois has long been a thriving arts hub, with iconic movies filmed right here including ‘The Blues Brothers,’ ‘Home Alone’ and of course, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’,” says Gov. J.B.…

In “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s Iowa farmer, haunted by mysterious whispered intonations of, “If you build it, he will come,” plows under part of his property to construct a baseball field. In the real world, though, infrastructure is somewhat meaningless without skilled workers. That’s why Illinois is so intent on strengthening its development and education programs, to both boost local economic numbers and help create a trained crew base that will entice productions to commit to the state. “If you don’t have a workforce you don’t have an industry,” says Ashley Rice, co-managing partner and president of Cinespace. “So it’s all about workforce development, and creating jobs and pipelines for more crew to be available to be hired locally.” Of course, ambitious plans take a village. So it’s an…

The challenge with throwing an annual event for more than 700 people is how to keep attendees engaged without re-creating a “Groundhog Day” luncheon year after year. Tim Menke and Sheryl Main, reigning chairs of Local 600’s Intl. Cinematographers Guild Publicists Awards, are up to the challenge. This year’s celebration March 10 at the Beverly Hilton marks 60 years of recognizing the individuals and teams who promote entertainment content. “It is a luncheon, but it’s also part of seeing where we’re at in the industry, the importance of publicity and the work that we do,” Main says. This year, some of the nominated campaigns include a “Top Gun: Maverick” promotion that saw James Cordon taking to the skies, a specially curated warrior workout tied to “The Woman King” and murder…