Innholdsfortegnelse for 04/03/2024 i Variety

Kirsten Dunst has always been an actress who moves to her own drumbeat. An auteur-loving indie queen, Dunst is every bit at home in the world of studio blockbusters. (Just ask anyone at Sony Pictures, where Dunst’s Mary Jane in the 2000s “Spider-Man” series set the template for decades of sharp, unexpectedly shrewd Spidey girlfriends.) In her latest film, she’s brought both worlds together. Alex Garland’s “Civil War” is the largest movie yet from boutique distributor A24, with a budget of $55 million. But it’s still an A24 movie, with all the intimate character detail and envelope-pushing that implies. The film, which opens on April 12, is set in a dystopian America, divided and in the process of destroying itself. Dunst plays Lee, a war photographer intent on chronicling the…

When the Writers Guild of America went on strike last May, union leaders argued that artificial intelligence posed an existential threat to writers, painting a picture of a dystopian future in which TV shows might be crafted by one writer and a machine. Ten months later, the tone in Hollywood labor circles has shifted significantly. At a March 3 rally in Los Angeles, Matthew Loeb, international president of IATSE, argued that AI has the potential to make union members’ jobs easier. “We want some of the spoils of artificial intelligence,” Loeb said. AI is high on the agenda as IATSE looks to set a new three-year contract with Hollywood’s major studios and streamers before the July 31 expiration of its current deal. Like the other unions that have struck new…

The Universal horror movie “Abigail” began as a modern-day twist on “Dracula’s Daughter,” but making a film about the legendary vampire’s blood-sucking scion wasn’t the main reason the filmmaking trio Radio Silence — producer Chad Villella and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — wanted the project to be their follow-up to 2022’s “Scream” and 2023’s “Scream VI.” “At one end, you have this little girl in a tutu. At the other end, you have exploding bodies. What the fuck could this journey possibly be that ends that way?”Tyler Gillett, Radio Silence “As freeing as it is to challenge the format of what a ‘Scream’ movie is, you’re playing in a pretty specific sandbox,” Gillett says. With “Abigail,” Radio Silence returned to their roots in original horror, from 2012’s “V/H/S”…

Kevin Smith could have bought the Quick Stop market he made famous in his first film, “Clerks.” But when the opportunity arose, the indie director instead put his hard-earned cash into his childhood movie theater in Atlantic Highlands, N.J., reopening it in 2022 as SModcastle Cinemas. Now he’s fighting to keep the 103-year-old theater going, even if “exhibition is in the toilet,” as he likes to say. What he means is that local audiences sometimes prefer to watch big hits like “Avatar” in modern multiplexes. No matter: The “Chasing Amy” director is leveraging his brand to focus on classic cult movies, merchandise sales and fresh popcorn. He’s also shopping a reality show, for which he’s already shot a sizzle reel. “It tells a pretty human story about people struggling to…

Every year, the Miami Film Festival transforms the Florida city into a hub of cultural exchange and discovery, welcoming filmmakers, industry professionals and enthusiastic audiences for a celebration of independent films that entertain as well as inspire conversation. As Miami-Dade College gears up for its 41st edition of the festival, cinema aficionados can expect an array of films, discussions, Q&A sessions, special events, and awards ceremonies from April 5-14. With more than 165 films — including feature narratives, documentaries and shorts from more than 31 countries — the carefully curated fest sports one of its biggest lineups ever, says Lauren Cohen, director of programming. The festival kicks off with “Thelma,” a comedy about a grandmother’s quest to reclaim her lost money, directed by Josh Margolin and featuring a cast including…

“Station 19” is about to hit a huge milestone, but it’s bittersweet. Just three days into production on Season 7 of the “Grey’s Anatomy” spinoff, as plans for a celebratory 100th episode were beginning to develop, new showrunners Peter Paige and Zoanne Clack learned that the show had been canceled. Season 7 would be its last, tasking them with not only ushering the show into a new era, but also to a satisfying ending. They were not prepared. “I was sitting on the floor in my underwear, writing,” Paige tells Variety. Clack adds, “I was on a panel in front of 100 people getting constant phone calls, trying to play it off. I didn’t hear what the actual news was until after the panel.” “Station 19” premiered in March 2018,…

For the roughly 12,000 scribes the Writers Guild of America represents, the last year has been an emotional roller coaster: The guild engaged in a labor stoppage for over four and a half months in 2023 that, alongside a partially overlapping SAG-AFTRA strike, ground production to a halt. But with a new contract now in hand, the upcoming Writers Guild Awards afford union members the chance for a collective exhalation. On April 14, Emmy-winning actress and producer Niecy Nash-Betts will host the event in L.A., part of conjoined and concurrent ceremonies in Hollywood and New York City, which will give writers the opportunity to both celebrate some of the best recent work of their own and simultaneously look toward the future. “We made a lot of gains,” says Meredith Stiehm,…

Across his seven-decade career, Louis Gossett Jr., who died March 29 at 87, delivered one indelible performance after another — notably his Emmy-winning portrayal of Fiddler in 1977’s “Roots” and his defining turn as hard-nosed drill sergeant Emil Foley in 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman.” With that performance, opposite Richard Gere’s cocky Navy cadet Zack Mayo, Gossett became the first Black actor to win a supporting actor Oscar. Here, Gere and Colman Domingo — who shared the screen with Gossett in 2023’s “The Color Purple” — pay tribute. Colman Domingo There is a moment in “The Color Purple” that our wunderkind director, Blitz Bazawule, set up for the great Louis Gossett Jr. and me that is one of the most memorable of my entire career. It is a silent…

How do you play some one as notorious as Vladimir Putin? It would be easy to telegraph his cruelty, to turn him into a mustache-twirling villain. Or to give over entirely to caricature, without capturing what’s beneath the surface. Will Keen, who embodies the president of Russia in Peter Morgan’s latest play, “Patriots,” avoids these pitfalls. Downplaying the complexity and ambiguity of his performance, he says, “Luckily, he doesn’t have a mustache, so that wasn’t a problem.” The British actor has had some time to live in the president’s skin: He played him in the first readings in 2021, and then in the 2020 Off-West End production and the 2023 West End transfer. That performance yielded him an Olivier Award for best actor in a supporting role. Now Keen is…

Two years ago, in the Season 2 finale of “Hacks,” it appeared that Deborah Vance and her protégé Ava Daniels had reached the end of the road. Deborah (Jean Smart), a jaded Las Vegas comic, and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), the young and eager joke writer she’d hired, had together crafted a TV special that showcased Deborah’s wit and her willingness to change with the times. It was a perfect merging of what Deborah brought to the table and what she’d learned, at times unwillingly, from her young partner — and, having decided they’d done all they could together, Deborah fired Ava. What a surprising place to arrive, after the rollicking two-year journey these characters had undergone! But there was a problem with a finale this satisfying. “People are like, ‘It felt…

Tom Hiddleston knows “Miami.” That is, all the words to the Will Smith song titled after the famous city — a video of him reciting the lyrics once broke the Internet (not an unusual occurrence for the actor.) That was in 2012 when he was doing press for “The Avengers,” the movie that would change his life and career. It was also the same tour that last brought him to the city — but that was a whirlwind two days of press. “I do recall promoting ‘Avengers’ in Spanish and the city had a great, unique energy,” he says. “I’m really excited to be back as an explorer.” The British actor will be returning on April 9 to the Miami Film Festival to accept Variety’s Virtuoso Award for his career…

For any television series reaching its 100th episode, looking back is a given, but there aren’t many shows with a 35-year history like ABC’s “The Conners,” the sitcom following the blue-collar family with an affinity for getting knocked down by life’s struggles while making us laugh along the way. “It’s just lucky, I guess,” says John Goodman, who plays patriarch Dan Conner. “Now all of a sudden, it’s 100 episodes. I can’t believe how fast the time went by, but I guess that’s just because I’m getting old.” We first met the Lanford, Ill., clan on Oct. 18, 1988, when “Roseanne,” named for brash standup comedian Roseanne Barr, premiered on ABC. The cast included Roseanne’s big-hearted husband Dan (Goodman), their three salty young children Becky (Lecy Goranson), Darlene (Sara Gilbert)…

Ripley Platform Netflix Premiere date April 4  Episodes 8 Creator Steven Zaillian Cast Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 crime novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” is regarded as one of the greatest thrillers of all time. It has spawned several film adaptations, including Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” starring Matt Damon and Jude Law. Given the 1999 movie’s commercial and critical acclaim, a series adaptation for the streaming era was almost inevitable, and after being sold off by Showtime to Netflix, “Ripley” has Andrew Scott stepping into the titular character’s loafers. Academy Award-winning writer-director Steven Zaillian — behind such works as “Schindler’s List” (for which he won the adapted screenplay Oscar) and the 2016 HBO limited series “The Night Of” — presents his own spin on…

When Michael Douglas was invited to play Benjamin Franklin in Apple TV+’s “Franklin,” he immediately took out a $100 bill. “I looked at Ben and thought, ‘I’ve got a long ways to go,’” the two-time Oscar winner says. Douglas didn’t just worry that he’d have to spend hours in the makeup chair — the series took more than 160 days to shoot. He was also nervous that heavy prosthetics would hurt his performance. “Your persona has gotta come through,” he says. But Douglas’ fears were groundless. Director Tim Van Patten and producer Richard Plepler had no intention of hiding his face under a rubbery nose and jowls. “They looked at me like, ‘You schmuck. We’re not going to do that to you,’” Douglas recalls. Based on Stacy Schiff’s “A Great…

When Jason Reitman announced that he’d bought the Fox Village Theatre in Westwood, film fans were stunned that some of the world’s most prominent directors, from Steven Spielberg to Chloé Zhao to Christopher Nolan, wanted a stake in the classic movie palace. But it’s a strange time for the theatrical exhibition business. Moviegoing always sees an uptick when blockbusters come to town, but for independent theaters, the past four years have been dreadful. Many smaller cities have no theaters left at all: Just this year, Ridgewood, N.J.’s Warner and Denver’s Esquire turned off their projectors for good. But across the country, some operators refuse to give up, looking to a mix of successful filmmakers and local supporters to reopen beloved movie houses. Other cities are turning art-house operations over to…

As the star of “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink” and “The Breakfast Club,” Molly Ringwald understands why she’s still considered “the patron saint of teenagers.” Commercially successful and critically acclaimed, those films — and her performances — depicted adolescents with an emotional sophistication like few films before them. But Ringwald was bringing that complexity to the screen from her first role in Paul Mazursky’s “Tempest,” and the fact that she’s continued to do so throughout her career is why she’s set to receive the Variety Creative Vanguard Award at the Miami Film Festival on April 6. Ringwald tells Variety that after more than four decades as an actor, she hasn’t been waiting for this kind of honor, but she welcomes it, noting she hasn’t been deluged with trophies over the…

Hailed by no less than the New York Times as “the hottest artist on the classical music planet,” Chinese pianist Lang Lang has expanded traditional performance boundaries beyond the usual Bach, Mozart and Chopin to include Disney songs and contemporary film music. On April 10, he will become one of a handful of classical pianists to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Among them: Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Rudolf Serkin and Ignace Paderewski.) This recognition acknowledges Lang Lang’s connection to movies and his commitment to bringing classical music to younger audiences everywhere. “This is truly a great honor, a great encouragement,” Lang Lang tells Variety from Europe, where he is currently on tour. Now 41, he has spent half his life on stages around the world, stunning…

Only God Was Above Us Artist Vampire Weekend Label Columbia Producers Ariel Rechtshaid & Ezra Koenig, with Chris Thomson and Rostam Batmanglij The biggest problem with early success is getting past it — case in point: the cheerful bop of Vampire Weekend’s first two albums and their image as peppy college boys who’d studied Paul Simon’s “Graceland” like a James Joyce master’s thesis, playing their jaunty global pop to deliriously skanking millennials at seemingly every music festival of the latter aughts. And although that take was understandable — if unfairly reductive — at the time, V.W. is now a very different band. “Only God Was Above Us” — their first album in nearly five years and just their second in the past decade — finds them bringing their vast musical…

Though she was billed sixth in a cast that included Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst stole the show as precocious bloodsucker Claudia in “Interview With the Vampire.” Todd McCarthy’s review in Variety from Nov. 6, 1994, gushed, “Dunst is just right in the difficult part of the child vampire,” while Roger Ebert raved that Dunst “is somehow able to convey the notion of great age inside apparent youth.” The neophyte pulled down the film’s sole Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress, competing against Sophia Loren in “Prêt-à-Porter” and Uma Thurman in “Pulp Fiction.” (Dianne Wiest won for “Bullets Over Broadway.”) Dunst hadn’t yet been born when Paramount Pictures began developing “Interview” after the studio acquired big-screen rights to Anne Rice’s bestseller in 1976. But the…