Variety 04/24/2024

The magazine story you’re about to read was supposed to kick-start Variety’s awards season coverage in 2023. Last summer, we were thrilled to land one of the buzziest fall movies as the cover of our Venice Film Festival issue. “Challengers,” starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist as tennis pros who create as much heat together off the court as on, had been selected as the opening-night movie on the Lido. We photographed the three stars of Luca Guadagnino’s latest drama in London in June for a magazine issue that was supposed to hit newsstands in late August. Then the actors went on strike, and all bets were off. With Zendaya unable to promote the film any longer, Amazon MGM Studios decided to push “Challengers” back to April 2024. We’d…

A raging policy debate in Washington is forcing Hollywood to curb its enthusiasm for mergers and acquisitions — for now. Federal regulators and some legal scholars are moving to radically overhaul how the nation enforces antitrust laws. That’s making it much harder for dealmakers and corporate titans to pursue M&A activity. The regulatory mood in Washington, where transactions of any size must be approved by the Justice Department and other agencies, has become downright hostile to large-scale deals. For Hollywood, the timing is terrible. Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast and NBCUniversal are conceiving potential new combinations with traditional or digital giants, but they’re hemmed in by the chilly atmosphere in D.C. The new breed of regulators are concerned that digital giants à la Google, Facebook and Amazon have been allowed…

Broadcast pilot season has been declared dead so often that the shock factor has worn off. You know the drill: Once upon a time, the broadcast networks each ordered dozens of pilots and made numerous pickups; these days just a handful of pilots are made across the board under the traditional timeline. And yet, pilot season remains a thing. After all, there’s still an upfronts advertising marketplace and a fall TV season — two more antiquated TV traditions that still limp along. Given that Hollywood is experiencing a major contraction, with far fewer shows being greenlit (meaning far fewer jobs), what’s left of pilot season has become comfort food for an industry in uncertain times. “A job is a job,” one top talent agent tells Variety. “People want to work,…

Despite their rom com-heavy résumés, Anne Hathaway and actor-turned-director Michael Showalter had never met prior to collaborating on the May-December love story “The Idea of You,” which bows May 2 on Amazon Prime Video. Unless you count that one time at Beverly Hills’ Gucci Osteria, which in 2022 was the site of a dinner party to celebrate Jessica Chastain’s Oscar nomination for the Showalter-directed film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” “I wanted to talk to Anne, but I was too embarrassed,” Showalter recalls of the soiree. “The path of least resistance is to just not talk to anybody.” Adds Hathaway with a chuckle: “I couldn’t figure out how to breach my wall of shyness.” Months later, Hathaway conquered her timidity when she recruited Showalter to co-write and direct “The Idea…

“Challengers,” Luca Guadagnino’s enthralling sports opera about three great-looking tennis stars who trade partners, is the latest movie to feature that time-honored configuration, the love triangle. And make no mistake: This one is complicated. It’s no mere either/or thing. But then, that’s true of the best movie love triangles. There’s an equality to them, a kind of symbiotic harmony. “Titanic” is a love triangle (and a timeless film), but it’s not like there’s much suspense about who Kate Winslet loves more, Leonardo DiCaprio or Billy Zane. You could say something similar of “Gone With the Wind.” But in the most haunting movie triangles, the triangle has an isosceles aspect; the angles exist in tantalizing balance. With that in mind, here are our picks for the 10 best love-triangle movies. 1 The…

Action romance is a tricky genre to master — it requires the right balance of heart and spectacle. But when done well, à la “True Lies” or “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” it will live on forever in the rewatch rotation. Stunt coordinator-turned-director David Leitch has launched cars straight into the air and staged fight scenes that have had theaters erupting in thunderous cheers. His latest challenge, however, will be making the audience’s heart melt with “The Fall Guy,” releasing in theaters May 3. Smartly, he cast Ryan Gosling, the living embodiment of a junior high schooler’s diary entry, to play the hero. Adapted from the 1980s series, the Universal film follows down-at-his-heels action choreographer Colt Seavers (Gosling), who must unravel a treacherous mystery while on the set of the next…