Innholdsfortegnelse for 02/07/2024 i Variety

Hannah Gutierrez Reed is scheduled to face a manslaughter trial in two weeks, becoming one of only a handful of people ever tried for an accident on a film set. The case against her is relatively straightforward. She was responsible for safe handling of guns on “Rust,” the Western starring Alec Baldwin. She loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s gun. As a result, Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer, was killed. “The primary goal of an armorer is to ensure that no one is injured by a prop gun,” wrote the prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, in a recent court filing. “Obviously, Ms. Gutierrez failed to ensure that the gun handed to Alec Baldwin was loaded solely with dummy rounds.” The defense will have to persuade the jury that it’s more complicated than that.…

AWARDS CIRCUIT The road to the Oscars is checkered with awards group accolades, but uncertainties still lie ahead. Honors are imminent from several industry bodies — DGA, PGA, BAFTA and SAG — all of which share AMPAS members, setting the stage for potential surprises and maybe more question marks. The biggest one of all: Will the Academy go its own way, or will it unanimously favor Christopher Nolan’s epic “Oppenheimer,” potentially setting a record for most wins for a best picture winner since “Slumdog Millionaire” took eight in 2008. Setting aside that known unknown, here’s a look at the races that are firmly in flux as the big night fast approaches. BEST ACTOR Crowding this category are five esteemed actors, each championing a compelling narrative. Paul Giamatti leads with his…

IN 2018, FX Productions sent screenwriter Justin Marks a copy of James Clavell’s historical doorstop “Shōgun.” For FX, it represented a fresh start for a beleaguered project, from which writing teams had come and gone; Marks was a rising talent, coming off two seasons of his buzzy spy drama “Counterpart” and the 2016 remake of “The Jungle Book.” The book sat glaring up at him from his coffee table for days. “It’s like 1,200 pages,” Marks says. “It was the hardest of passes.” It wasn’t just the length; it was the subject matter, or Marks’ impression of it, from the book’s reputation and from its famed 1980 miniseries adaptation: his notion of a story about a white European arriving in a strange land. “The silhouette of a character who kind…

When the Art Directors Guild holds its annual awards ceremony on Feb. 10, prizes will go to talented designers who created looks ranging from the nuclear-threatened whimsy of Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” to the apocalyptic wasteland of “The Last of Us,” to the pink-hued fantasy of a doll choosing between plastic eternity and real-world life and death (she picked the latter). See a common thread here? In addition to the gloom lurking behind these creations, other contenders provided backdrops for the implied genocide of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the grief of a lauded composer stricken by the death of his wife in “Maestro,” the battlefield carnage of “Napoleon” and the development of an ultimate weapon that can extinguish humankind in “Oppenheimer.” Want more? There’s AI armageddon in “The Creator”…

Even more than 40 years after Martin Moszkowicz decided to abandon his plan for a career as a journalist writing about politics for a less-certain one in the mercurial film industry, his eyes start to sparkle when recalling an epiphany that changed his life. The affable executive board chairman of Constantin Film, who got his start in the industry as a driver, recalled the moment when he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. “My plan was to become a journalist, but I was working one summer as a driver while still in university,” says Moszkowicz, who will turn over the reins of the German producer-driven independent powerhouse next month that he has led with aplomb for the last decade. “The experience that changed everything and told…

Back in 2021, when the executives at Skydance Television were looking for a place to shoot their Amazon Prime series “Reacher,” based on Lee Childs’ series of novels, Georgia would’ve seemed like the logical choice. After all, the show’s first season is set primarily in a small town in the Peach State, which offers a tax credit of up to 30% and an ever-expanding production infrastructure. Instead, they picked the Canadian province of Ontario. In Ontario, “Reacher” gets a favorable exchange rate, along with generous tax credits. It’s also able to take advantage of a variety of locations, from gritty urban settings to vast swaths of farmland and forests — a topographical diversity that proved vital as the show moved into Season 2, which has scenes that take place…

Toronto-based Cream Prods. (“The Haunted Museum,” “Eli Roth Presents: My Possessed Pet”) formed an in-house sustainability team in 2021 and set out to green its production pipeline from top to bottom. It started by signing up for the Albert Calculator, an online toolkit that determines a production’s carbon footprint, then formulates a reduction plan. “We input all of our different activities, like how long we’re on the generators for, how many meals we’re serving every day,” says Angelica Siegel, Cream’s sustainability manager, “We were calculating all the travel for cast and crew and all of our trucks and equipment vehicles, hotels — everything.” Cream discovered the Albert Calculator through Ontario Green Screen, an initiative launched in 2020 to promote sustainable practices in the province’s film and TV industry. The two…

For nearly 40 years, the Walt Disney Co. has largely been seen as an invincible force in the business of entertainment. Sure, the Mouse House has had its good and not-so-good years at the box office and in TV viewership rankings. But with one major exception, in 2004, the company’s status as a high-performing pillar among the world’s largest media companies has rarely been questioned. That changed last year when activist investor Nelson Peltz, chairman of Trian Fund Management, decided to take aim at Disney. Trian and rival firm Blackwells Capital have launched dueling PR campaigns and proxy fights to prod Disney to make changes to its corporate governance and long-term strategy. Both efforts are highly unlikely to achieve their stated goals of forcing new board members on Disney through…

DGA Directs Attention for Oscar After a tumultuous year marked by Hollywood labor strife and cutbacks at major studios, the Directors Guild of America will celebrate helmers, including Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, at its 76th annual DGA Awards on Feb.10. Gerwig and Nolan, the filmmakers behind last summer’s blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” are nominated for the top trophy alongside Martin Scorsese for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things” and Alexander Payne for “The Holdovers.” Directors for popular shows such as “Succession” and “The Bear” were among those nominated for DGA trophies this year. Awards will also be given to documentary film, variety show and commercial directors at the ceremony, which will again be hosted by Judd Apatow this year. Unlike sister guilds the WGA and…

Oliver Berben didn’t just have idle dreams as a youngster about becoming an astronaut. He was actually working on a career in space by studying aerospace and space technology at a Berlin university well into his 20s. But after stumbling into the movie industry through a parttime student job as a driver and runner, Berben realized that he had found his calling on the ground — so he gave up on the galaxies. And now, after a quarter century as a down-to-earth producer and executive at Constantin Film, Berben is about to take the controls of one of Germany’s biggest and most powerful production-distribution companies as its chief executive. “I never would have thought that I’d have the chance to work for this company let alone get into a position…

For renowned Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) multimedia artist Shelley Niro, the decision to film “Café Daughter” — a coming-of-ager about a Chinese Cree girl in 1960s Saskatchewan — in Northern Ontario was key to its success. Filmed in the streets, schools and businesses of Greater Sudbury in 2022, “Café Daughter” is based on a 2013 work by Cree playwright Kenneth T. Williams that was inspired by the early life of Lillian Dyck — the first Indigenous woman in Canada to earn a PhD. in science, first Indigenous female senator and first Chinese Canadian senator. Niro, who recently received the first major retrospective of her work at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, tells Variety that the generous grant from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. helped secure a professional, caring…

Set to open on Feb. 7, the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival enters its 39th year with high stakes. Organizers must re-create past successes while forging new paths to keep proceedings fresh, keeping their eye on a mission to educate while celebrating the power of film. This year’s edition of the coastal festival will open with the world premiere of Matt Ogens’ and Joel Kachi Benson’s “Madu,” a Disney documentary about a young Nigerian whose ballet performance went viral online. It concludes with the world premiere of “Chosen Family,” directed by and starring Heather Graham, who also plans to attend with the cast. In between, SBIFF will host many noteworthy film screenings and events. There are more than 200 films in this year’s lineup and, per programming director Claudia Puig,…

FILM REVIEW Director: Matthew Vaughn Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston Argylle What looks like diamonds but on closer inspection turns out to be little more than reams of cheap polyester? Why, argyle, of course — that preppy pattern found on socks and sweaters, and an apt name for the latest kooky spy caper from Matthew Vaughn. The erstwhile “Kick-Ass” director has been trapped in “Kingsman” mode for so long (going on a decade now) that it feels like we’ve lost him to that kind of live-action cartoon forever, cramming Gen Z James Bond riffs with disco music and outrageous greenscreen shenanigans. “Argylle” boasts an entirely new set of characters, but sticks to Vaughn’s CG-exaggerated aesthetic as hacky spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) gets pulled into…

Playing to the Crowd The Super Bowl has long been known as the Big Game, but some people out there are treating it like a smaller one. Advertisers typically plunk down millions of dollars for a 30- or 60-second ad in the Super Bowl telecast on the broadcast network showing the annual NFL extravaganza. This year, for the first time, they have some intriguing alternatives. Some have chosen to run commercials only on Univision, which has the rights to air the game in Spanish. Others are relying on ads that will appear only on kids-cable favorite Nickelodeon, which is running a telecast aimed at families. At least one advertiser, Ally Financial, has placed an ad only in the Paramount+ stream of the Super Bowl, rather than on CBS. These niche…

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Theatrical Feature Film for 2023 Michael Apted Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film…

As the film industry braces for a colder-than-normal Berlinale, the indie sector faces a rising level of pain points, now exacerbated by leaner and meaner commercial terms on offer from territorial and domestic distributors for indie titles. Pre-pandemic overproduction, problems with minimum-guarantee payments (commonly referred to by the acronym MG), delays in payments, a decline in theatrical box office and even the deleterious effects of tastemakers ceding control to algorithms give international sellers headed to the European Film Market headaches — despite some giddy deals struck at Sundance. “It’s a complete shitstorm,” states a leading global financier of indie content. “Buyers have been trying to get out of paying the industry’s long-standing minimum-guarantee precedent of a 20% deposit, offering 10% and, in some cases, even zero. And films are often…

Investing in a film and TV production facility is a tricky business. The industry is fickle under the best of circumstances, and if you’re looking to build a soundstage complex in a region that uses its tax incentive to attract projects, there’s always the possibility that politicians will repeal it in the next legislative session, effectively shutting down your studio. So it’s a testament to Ontario’s stability that Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix have both made major commitments to the Canadian province in recent months, expanding an already substantial production infrastructure that includes a wealth of equipment vendors, VFX facilities and cutting-edge LED volumes for virtual production. “We’re in a cost-competitive environment where we’re encouraging infrastructure growth, so a stable tax credit has been priority number one for our government,”…

Given its date and proximity to Hollywood, the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival has become a key stop on the film awards circuit, hosting a series of starry tributes to Oscar nominees. The festivities kicked off Jan. 13, when Ryan Gosling received the Kirk Douglas Award for excellence in film at a black-tie benefit for the festival’s educational programs. Gosling proved he is “Kenough” for audiences and Academy voters alike with his role in “Barbie,” which earned him his third career Oscar nomination 10 days later. “Maestro” multi-talent Bradley Cooper will receive the festival’s outstanding performer of the year award on Feb. 8. The sold-out program, including a live Q&A, will celebrate his work, including on the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro,” which he directed and earned him Oscar nominations for…

TV REVIEW Drama: Netflix (14 episodes; all reviewed); Feb. 8 Starring: Ambika Mod, Leo Woodall, Essie Davis, Tim McInnerny “One Day” is a charming series about friendship, grief and expectations. Based on the acclaimed novel by David Nicholls, as adapted by Nicole Taylor, the U.K.-set narrative follows Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) for almost 20 years, from 1988 to 2007. Beginning with the euphoric evening of their college graduation, the duo move in and out of each other’s lives, forming a bond that transforms over time. Thoughtful and gutting, the 14-episode drama is told in a series of vignettes, checking in on the pair on the same day, July 15, across the decades. Dexter and Emma are strangers who collide as the show opens, flirting briefly…