Actor makes dramatic bid for awards glory as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in biopic also starring his Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt
Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt aim for awards glory in the first trailer for fact-based sports drama The Smashing Machine.
The wrestler-turned-actor plays the MMA fighter Mark Kerr in the film inspired by the 2002 documentary with the same name. Kerr won multiple awards and medals in his career and also struggled with substance abuse.
Continue reading...The American actor told Bill Maher’s podcast that he had asked Quincy Jones about the singer’s sexuality and felt he couldn’t ‘play that character 100%’
The actor Terrence Howard has said that he declined the role of Marvin Gaye in a film, because he didn’t want to kiss another man.
Speaking to Bill Maher on his Club Random podcast, the actor said the “biggest mistake” of his career was turning down the leading role in a separate biopic of the singer Smokey Robinson – which Robinson had personally asked him to play.
Continue reading...In a statement, the 86-year-old director of the critical and box-office flop said the book confirms his feeling that ‘art can never be constrained’
Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s $120m passion project, was neither a box office nor a critical success on release last year. Largely funded by the sale of Coppola’s own vineyards, the sci-fi epic starring Adam Driver took around $14m at the global box office amid unconvinced reviews and rumours of abnormal on-set behaviour by its director.
A marketing campaign attempted to leverage bad critical notices by flagging that previous works by Coppola now acclaimed as masterpieces – including Apocalypse Now and The Godfather – had been dismissed by critics at the time. But this backfired after it emerged all of the sniffy historical reviews had been fabricated.
Continue reading...The Holdovers breakout and Oscar nominee will head the cast of Tony, which will follow the food world legend in 1976
The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa has signed on to play Anthony Bourdain in a new biopic.
The casting had been initially rumoured last year, but the 22-year-old has now made it official, with the Oscar nominee Antonio Banderas also joining in a role that is being kept under wraps.
Continue reading...After two actors died in Owerri, Imo State, AGN head Emeka Rollas drew comparisons to events last year, when popular Nollywood actor Junior Pope drowned
The president of the Actors Guild of Nigeria has called for mass prayers and increased unionisation after the death of two actors in Owerri, the capital city of Imo State.
Posting on Instagram, Emeka Rollas advocated spiritual intervention and better workplace regulation to try to prevent future tragedies after the two men, who have not yet been named, died on Friday.
Continue reading...Billionaires, starring Steve Carell and Ramy Youssef, meet amid an international crisis in HBO’s of-the-moment satire
A summit of influential male billionaires is under way in the first teaser trailer for Mountainhead.
HBO unveiled the extended look at the first feature from the Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on Tuesday, which stars Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman as a group of billionaire friends who meet at an alpine retreat during an international crisis.
Continue reading...At 34 seconds, the spectacularly silly song from A Minecraft Movie beats the previous record by two seconds
Actor and musician Jack Black has made UK chart history, with the shortest ever song to reach the Top 40: his novelty track Steve’s Lava Chicken is just 34 seconds long.
The spectacularly silly song reaches No 21 this week, and is taken from A Minecraft Movie, the video game spin-off film, which has earned $570m (£430m) so far at the global box office – and caused cinemas to be overrun by the game’s young and high-energy fanbase.
Continue reading...Presenting an award at the Breakthrough prize ceremony, the actor and writer allegedly accused the president of destroying American science
A pointed criticism of President Trump’s policies on science by Seth Rogen was edited out of the filmed coverage of an annual science awards show, it has emerged.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, which was one of the sponsors of the event, Rogen was one of the presenters at this month’s Breakthrough prize ceremony, a high profile and lavishly funded awards programme recognising “outstanding scientific achievements” co-founded by, among others, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and which describes itself as “the Oscars of science”.
Continue reading...Prolific Canadian director also made one of the country’s first internationally successful films, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss
Ted Kotcheff, the prolific Canadian director of films including First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, Wake in Fright and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, has died aged 94. His daughter Kate Kotcheff told the Canadian Press that he had died of heart failure on Thursday in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he lived. His son Thomas said: “He died of old age, peacefully, and surrounded by loved ones.”
In an amazingly varied career, Kotcheff’s work ranged from hardhitting TV plays and low-budget features in the UK, to hit Hollywood comedies and prestige-laden award-winners and cult films. Kate Kotcheff said: “He was an amazing storyteller. He was an incredible, larger than life character [and] he was a director who could turn his hand to anything.”
Continue reading...After the US president imposed 125% duties on Chinese imports, Beijing says it will restrict American films opening in its lucrative market
Hours after Donald Trump imposed record 125% tariffs on Chinese products entering the US, China has announced it will further curb the number of US films allowed to screen in the country.
“The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience’s favourability towards American films,” the China Film Administration said in a statement on Thursday. “We will follow the market rules, respect the audience’s choice, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported.”
Continue reading...The 73-year-old actor was diagnosed after her role in the John Wick franchise, and chose to keep it private – but is now speaking out in case it helps others
Anjelica Huston has revealed she was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, saying she is now “in the clear”.
The 73-year-old actor declined to tell People magazine what kind of cancer she had, saying she wanted to keep that private, but did reveal she was diagnosed after the release of her 2019 film John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
Continue reading...Attitudes in France ‘barely evolving’ amid ‘collective denial’ years after the #MeToo movement began, according to parliamentary commission
Sexual violence and sexual harassment are “endemic” in France’s entertainment industry, a damning report by French politicians has found, concluding that women and children are still being routinely preyed on, despite the country’s #MeToo movement.
The Green MP Sandrine Rousseau and the centrist Erwan Balanant found that sexual violence, harassment and bullying were “systemic, endemic and persistent” in all sectors of the French culture and entertainment industry, from TV and cinema to theatre, radio, comedy, advertising, rock and classical music.
Continue reading...The country’s best-known director was refused by Greece’s culture ministry when he applied to shoot scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at iconic Athens site
Greece’s leading contemporary director has had a request to shoot footage for his new film at the Acropolis in Athens denied by his country’s culture ministry.
Yorgos Lanthimos had filed a request to film scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at the fifth-century BC site in April. But in a statement on Thursday, the culture ministry said permission had been refused because “the proposed scenes are incompatible with the symbolism … and the values the Acropolis represents”.
Continue reading...Known for his roles in Batman Forever, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Tombstone, the prolific actor’s cause of death was pneumonia
Val Kilmer, the actor best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, has died at the age of 65.
His daughter Mercedes told the New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, after treatment with chemotherapy and trachea surgery that had reduced hisability to speak and breathe.
Continue reading...The actor died on Saturday night in Waimānalo, Hawaii of complications after a stroke, his publicist says
Richard Chamberlain, the hero of the 1960s television series Dr Kildare who found a second career as an award-winning “king of the miniseries,” has died. He was 90.
Chamberlain died on Saturday night in Waimānalo, Hawaii of complications after a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.
Continue reading...Federal Communications Commission says its DEI efforts may breach equal employment opportunity regulations
The US’s top media regulator on Friday said it was opening an investigation into the diversity practices of Walt Disney and its ABC unit, saying they may violate equal employment opportunity regulations.
Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, wrote to the Disney CEO, Robert Iger, in a letter dated on Thursday that the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts may not have complied with FCC regulations and that changes by the company may not go far enough.
Continue reading...Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy’s statement defending its silence after Israeli settlers attacked his co-director Hamdan Ballal
The Israeli director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land has condemned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its response to a violent attack on his Palestinian co-director Hamdan Ballal, who was beaten by Israeli settlers and detained by Israeli forces in the West Bank on Monday.
Earlier this week, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham criticised the Academy for failing to publicly speak out in support of Ballal. Now he has criticised a statement issued by the Academy to its members on Wednesday, in which it appeared to defend its silence.
Continue reading...The festival, started by Robert Redford in 1978, will move from its previous home in Park City, Utah, for 2027
Boulder, Colorado, has been named as the new home for the Sundance film festival starting in 2027.
The festival, which was started in 1978 by Robert Redford, will move from its home in Park City, Utah. Sundance brings more than 20,000 people a year to the ski town, which many had seen as too small to house something of this size.
Continue reading...Hamdan Ballal says Israeli soldiers beat him with their rifle butts and threatened to kill him
The Oscar-winning Palestinian film director Hamdan Ballal has said that Israeli settlers who attacked him were aided by two Israeli soldiers, who beat him with the butt of their rifles outside his home and threatened to kill him.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ballal, one of the four directors of the film No Other Land, which documents the destruction of villages in the West Bank and won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, recounted how on Monday two Israeli soldiers first encircled him while a settler was assaulting him, before violently striking him on the head and threatening to shoot him.
Continue reading...Film assistant says actor groped her several times in three incidents while filming Les Volets Verts
The French actor Gérard Depardieu sexually assaulted an assistant director on three occasions while she was working with him on a film shoot, placing his hands on her buttocks and breasts, leaving her feeling “petrified”, the woman told Paris’s criminal court on Wednesday.
Depardieu – the biggest French cinema star to face trial for sexual assault since the #MeToo movement – is charged with sexually assaulting the assistant director three times during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.
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