"People have no idea how to operate their fancy new cars," says one film industry veteran who spent the summer promoting his company's new film at outdoor venues.

Forget fancy food menus. The must-have amenity for drive-ins? Jumper cables.

In decades past, drive-in customers listened to audio on a clunky externally powered speaker box that was affixed to a car window. Now, sound is transmitted via an FM channel, which means cars must leave their radios on.

Picturehouse chief Bob Berney — whose new company arranged a dozen pop-up and drive-in promotional screenings this summer for Fatima — quickly learned that dead batteries are a common problem.

It's a phenomenon that's been happening for years, although it wasn't until the novel coronavirus pandemic that drive-ins became headline news.

While a radio can operate while the car is off, it can still drain a battery. Customers may also not realize various lights are still on, which both taxes the battery and annoys others.

“People have no idea how to operate their fancy new cars. They’ve never had to actually turn their lights off,” says Berney, who says he routinely saw staffers helping patrons figure out how to power down. If that didn't work, staff simply put garbage bags over headlights. (Some drive-ins even offer custom headlight drapes.)

Many drive-ins also instruct customers to turn on their cars every 30 minutes to help charge the engine. And one intrepid journalist who covers a growing number of drive-in premieres tells THR she immediately went out and bought a transistor radio after seeing a car in front of her lose its juice.

Article by: Pamela McClintock for the Hollywood Reporter.

Screen Engine/ASI conduced a poll of U.S subscribers watching the French coming-of-age film.

A majority of viewers watching Cuties (Mignonnes) over the Sept. 18-20 weekend said they did so because of the controversy surrounding the acclaimed French film, according to a new survey from leading Hollywood marketing and research firm Screen Engine/ASI.

Cuties, helmed by Maïmouna Doucouré in her feature directorial debut, is a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old girl from a traditional Muslim Senegalese family who tries to fit in by joining a group of young dancers who carry out sexualized routines and post them online.

The film has become caught up in pre-election rhetoric in the U.S., with several members of Congress calling on the French-language title to be removed from Netflix's catalog. (It is unclear if any of the politicians or pundits condemning Cuties have actually seen the movie.)

Netflix found itself having to apologize several weeks ago after one of its promotional posters for Cuties was widely criticized for being sexually exploitative. "We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties," the streamer said via its Twitter account. However, the apology failed to stop an online movement in the U.S. to boycott the movie itself.

Screen Engine, which has developed a new exit-polling service for movies debuting digitally in the COVID-era, subsequently decided to canvass those streaming Cuties.

"There were definitely a lot of people who watched it because of the controversy," says executive vp Mark Orne, who runs the cross-platform group and is in charge of PostVOD.

More than half, or 52 percent, said the dust-up was the only reason they tuned in, while another 29 percent said it was a major reason.

Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) said they thought the controversy was "overblown" once they actually saw the movie, according to PostVOD's survey of 96 viewers. Of that group, 38 percent strongly agreed.

At the same time, 48 percent strongly agreed shouldn't be on Netflix, while 17 percent somewhat agreed.

The streaming service acquired rights to Cuties after the film premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Dramatic Directing Award in the World Cinema section. Speaking at the Toronto Film Festival in recent days, Doucouré said she wanted to impart an important message in making the movie: "It's because I saw so many things and so many issues around me lived by young girls, that I decided to make this film and sound an alarm and say, 'We need to protect our children.'"

Article by: Pamela McClintock for the Hollywood Reporter.

Hollywood studios need to show more diversity in movie characters if they want to draw audiences to theaters, according to a study released by Movio and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

The report, titled “I Want to See Me: Why Diverse On-Screen Representation Drives Cinema Audiences,” was based on films and audience demographic data for the top 100 films released theatrically in the U.S. in 2018 and 2019.

“As we’ve said before, our goal is very simple: that the characters on screen reflect the population, which is half female and incredibly diverse,” said Geena Davis, chair of the institute. “We know that increasing the presence of underrepresented groups in media can have a very powerful impact on shifting cultural perceptions. Our industry has a tremendous opportunity to foster inclusion in society by taking action to diversify who shows up on screen. As this new research shows, we have made progress, but we need to do better.”

Researchers were attempting to explore if what’s presented on cinema screens affects who shows up for a film during its theatrical run. Their report found a correlation between the representation of various demographic cohorts on screen and their share of the total audience to a particular film.

“The relationship seems to be stronger for race/ethnicity cohorts than age or gender cohorts, where a higher percentage of characters of a given Race/Ethnicity on screen results in a higher percentage of moviegoers of the same race/ethnicity in the audience,” the report said. “Within race/ethnicity it does seem to be most apparent for the Black cohort than other race/ethnicity cohorts.”

The report also found potentially negative portrayals of a group represented on screen did not have a significant impact on attendance by that group.

“Moviegoers being able to identify with the characters in a movie drives their attendance behavior,” the report said. “When there are characters of a certain cohort (group) this is likely to drive more moviegoers of the same cohort.”

The report also found several movies with 100% of their characters being white with the majority having over 50% white characters. For the remaining race/ethnic groups, the majority of films are clustered at below 25% representation on screen. “This is significant considering people of color (Black, Asian and Latinx) comprise 37.8% of the U.S. population,” the report noted.

“As the movie industry begins to recover from the effects of the pandemic, this research carries even more weight,” said William Palmer, chief executive of Movio. “Diverse audiences can go elsewhere to find entertainment options that speak to them and their lives so if cinema is to remain relevant and continue having a cultural impact, it must attract these audiences by delivering more representative content.”

The report also found films aimed at children have male and female leads evenly split in terms of on-screen representation for films but found less of balanced in race/ethnic representation. White characters are very well represented in children’s films, with the majority of films having 50% or more White characters while the vast majority of children’s films have no Asian and Latinx characters. Only six titles had over 18% Latinx characters, despite Latinx comprising 18.4% of the US population.

“When we consider the impact that the media children are exposed to can have, including in the cinema, it is vital for them to see from the beginning that fictitious worlds reflect the real world, and that they see themselves reflected on screen,” Davis said. “When you see someone like yourself reflected, you take in the message: ‘There’s someone like me, I must belong.’ It’s encouraging to see the progress we’ve made with gender representation, but we must show more diversity on screen, if we don’t show more diversity, we are contributing to the serious problem of racial inequity in our society today.”

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety.

Two days ahead of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its new diversity and inclusion standards for the Oscars that will begin in 2024.

Many top filmmakers, actors and talent weighed in on the decision at Variety’s Virtual Studio at TIFF, presented by Canada Goose. The Academy’s initiative, which only applies to the best picture category, was met with divisive feedback from industry figures.

David Oyelowo, who screened his directorial debut “The Water Man,” praised the new standard.

“We are saying that women are of value, people of color are of value,” Oyelowo said. He warns the industry: “You will be irrelevant and obsolete if you don’t make this shift.”

Regina King, who also screened her feature directorial debut “One Night in Miami” at the Toronto Film Festival, hopes “people will be more creative” given the new guidelines.

“You can hire a person who is not white for that role because there’s nothing in that role that color has anything to do with it,” she said.

Idris Elba, star and producer of the Western drama “Concrete Cowboy,” also sees positives in the change.

“We need to be telling stories without having to discuss who made it, how it’s made, and however it’s fair,” he said. “We need to get to that place.”

“Shadow in the Cloud” director Roseanne Liang called it “the bravest thing the Academy has done.”

Chloë Grace Moretz, who stars in the World War II sci-fi film as Maude Garrett, sees it “as a step in the right direction.”

Two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest, who leads the movie “I Care A Lot,” echoed those sentiments, adding she doesn’t see it as “locked in.” She cautioned, “It’s still the money talking.”

Some celebrities, such as Viggo Mortensen, haven’t wholly embraced the change. Mortensen said he doesn’t “think it’s a good idea.”

Mortensen, who screened his directorial debut “Falling,” and has received three Oscar nominations over his career — for “Eastern Promises,” “Captain Fantastic” and “Green Book” — said, “in the end, it’s about exclusion, which is discrimination.”

Mortensen pointed to last year’s best picture contender “1917,” a film from Sam Mendes that was nominated last year for 10 Oscars and won three, suggesting it “would not be eligible.” However, under the Academy’s detailed guidelines, the war epic would, in fact, still be eligible. Mortensen did applaud “the sentiment behind it.”

Article by: Clayton Davis for Variety.

The two-time Oscar nominee also shot such films as 'The Last Detail,' 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Fugitive.'

Michael Chapman, the two-time Oscar nominee who shot Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Waltz for Martin Scorsese, Invasion of the Body Snatchers for Philip Kaufman and The Fugitive for Andrew Davis, has died. He was 84.

Chapman's death was announced on Twitter by his wife of 40 years, screenwriter Amy Holden Jones (Mystic Pizza, Beethoven, Indecent Proposal). He died Sunday of congestive heart failure at home in Los Angeles, son Andrew Chapman said.

Michael Chapman also was the DP on several films with a lighter tone, including Carl Reiner's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), Scrooged (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Doc Hollywood (1991) and Space Jam (1996).

He was known for his swooping camera movement and gritty, urban lighting, and his work illuminating New York City on Taxi Driver (1976) earned him the nickname "The Poet of the Sidewalks."

Mentored by famed cinematographer Gordon Willis, Chapman received his Oscar noms for Raging Bull (1980) and The Fugitive (1993). He received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2004.

Born in New York City on Nov. 21, 1935, Chapman was raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He attended high school at the Andover Academy and then Columbia University.

After college, Chapman worked on the Erie Lackawanna Railroad as a brakeman before being given his first job as a camera assistant by his father-in-law, French-born cinematographer Jo Brun. They two traveled the world together for many years, shooting commercials, documentaries and features including The Fat Spy (1966), which starred Phyllis Diller and Jayne Mansfield.

As a camera operator, he worked on such dramas as Irvin Kershner's Loving (1970), Hal Ashby's The Landlord (1970), Alan J. Pakula's Klute (1971), Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). (Willis was the cinematographer on The Landlord, Klute and The Godfather.)

Chapman made his DP debut on Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), then followed by shooting Martin Ritt's The Front (1976) and James Toback's Fingers (1978).

On Raging Bull, Chapman used a handheld camera to shoot much of the black-and-white movie and strapped cameras to actors to capture several boxing sequences. For The Last Waltz documentary, he employed as many as 10 cameras to photograph The Band and their famous guest artists.

In 1987, he and Scorsese collaborated once more on the 18-minute music video for Michael Jackson's "Bad."

Chapman's résumé also included The Wanderers (1979), Personal Best (1982), The Lost Boys (1987), Rising Sun (1993), Primal Fear (1996) and Bridge to Terabithia (2007), his final credit. After retiring, he taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.

He directed one major feature during his career — All the Right Moves (1983), starring Tom Cruise — and occasionally made cameos in the films that he shot.

He received the Camerimage Festival's prestigious Golden Frog award for cinematography in 2016.

Survivors also include his children with Jones, Emma and Patrick; son Jonathan, who like Andrew he had with his first wife, Myriam; and four granddaughters.

Article by: Mike Barnes for the Hollywood Reporter.

The producers of this year’s 72nd Emmy Awards promised some unexpected moments, and it didn’t take long for that to come true. That is, if you classify “almost burning down the Staples Center” as unexpected.

While announcing the very first Emmy on Sunday night with presenter Jennifer Aniston, host Jimmy Kimmel sprayed the envelope with Lysol, and then set it on fire to jokingly sterilize it. Aniston was there with a fire extinguisher — but unlike in rehearsals, the stubborn fire wouldn’t go out. By the third time the flames reappeared, neither Aniston nor Kimmel noticed — until the stage manager alerted them.

“That was very scary, by the way,” said “Jimmy Kimmel Live” co-head writer Molly McNearney, who was backstage at the Staples Center on Sunday, and spoke to Variety after the telecast to share the behind the scenes tales of how the night went. “Not a great time to be lighting things on fire in California. That was not the way it was supposed to go.”

McNearney credited Aniston for “impeccable timing” in keeping the extinguisher going. “That extinguisher was supposed to extinguish the first time and it didn’t,” she said. “I have to tell you that I loved watching it from the sideline, I was there knowing that neither of those two, Jen or Jimmy, had any idea that fire was crawling up that third time was pretty exciting for us.”

But McNearney, who is married to Kimmel, said this is where her relationship with the Emmy host came in handy: Knowing that Kimmel relishes live, unpredictable moments like this, she said she held back producers who were ready to leap on stage.

“I may have grabbed some arms to hold them back,” she said. “Which is kind of crazy, ‘let my husband burn!’ But I didn’t want people rushing out. I knew that they would figure it out. I knew they would get that fire out. And of course they did. And I didn’t want to ruin it. America doesn’t want to see us, they want to see those two.”

Despite being charred on the outside, the first envelope of the night still survived that trashcan inferno — and McNearney still has it. “It was very black, but we’re going to send it to Catherine O’Hara as a congratulatory gift. It survived, and you can still see her name on there!”

McNearney shared a few more behind-the-scenes takes from Sunday’s show:

That opening, where it looked like Kimmel was delivering his monologue to an actual audience, took weeks to prepare and choreograph.

Some viewers were quite confused when the Emmy Awards opened, and it looked like Kimmel was cracking jokes to a roomful of celebrities, like any other year. It wasn’t until we saw Kimmel in the audience, while simultaneously on stage, that the host revealed the truth: He was actually in an empty Staples Center.

“It’s a huge challenge to do a show like this without an audience,” McNearney said. “Any host feeds off of the energy and the laughter from the crowd. And we were going in with a deficit of not having that. I gotta tell you, just going into Staples Center was kind of depressing, even though it was necessary for the safety of everybody. But we still wanted to have that feeling of a live show and with audience reaction. We didn’t want to do 10 minutes of Jimmy standing there with crickets. So we thought it’d be funny to kind of pull one over on the home viewer to think, ‘oh, wait, are people there? Are they not there?’ And then do the turn that Jimmy is sadly all by himself.”

Producers spent the last month pulling clips for the best audience reaction shots, and then figuring out how to pull the best audio to really make it seem like the crowd was reacting to Kimmel’s jokes in real time.

“Jimmy had the idea that he should be a cutaway at the end, and he’s in the audience himself,” she said. “They’ve been working on that for weeks now. And pulling all those clips and making sure it sounded right. Even Jimmy was like, ‘wait, typically when I deliver a joke, it takes one second. And then people laugh.’ So he paid such close attention to the detail of the timing on the applause. He was like, people don’t clap immediately, you can feel the roll of a joke over a crowd. And so thankfully, we had some great editors that helped make that sound realistic.”

The crew handing out Emmy trophies in Hazmat suits worked better than expected, as producers figured out strategically how to place them near as many nominees as possible.

“I don’t know how the hell they pulled that off,” McNearney said. “It was important to us that people got to hold the statue. They have this big night. And we didn’t want to just say we’re going to drop in the mail for you months from now. So we had all these Emmys, delivered by people in Hazmat suits, standing by, and they were outside all of those nominees’ homes or hotel rooms. And then one minute before, they learned if they had the winning Emmy on them, and then brought it into the room and delivered it to the winner. But every nominee had someone in a Hazmat suit stalking their house. Those wonderful, hardworking people in Hazmat suits had no idea they were at the winner’s house or not until right before it was announced.”

Some presenters, including David Letterman and frontline workers, were pre-taped — but they were filmed reading all of the nominees’ names, so that production could air the correct winner once it was revealed.

“Letterman was such an incredible addition to the show,” she said. “As you know, Jimmy loves David Letterman and for him to not only be part of the show but to present the same category that Jimmy was nominated in, I think that that would be enough for Jimmy forever. That was pre taped in New York but then he we had him shoot every winner. At game time, we didn’t know, the booth put up him announcing the winner.”

Yes, after the infamous “Moonlight”/”La La Land” Oscars debacle of 2017, Kimmel was a little nervous that a wrong button might be pushed.

“After our experience at the Oscars, we’d be hesitant about any envelope being correct,” McNearney says. “But there were so many unknowns in the show and the fact that these producers pulled off getting those Emmys to all the right people at the right time. And that the magic box actually opened and worked twice was quite a feat. They should be very proud of themselves because I can’t believe they pulled it off.”

The death on Friday of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave the producers pause, as they figured out how to acknowledge the tragic passing.

“Losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Friday before was weighing on all of us,” McNearney said. We thought, how do we deal with this, she’s not a television star. She’s an American icon, but we wanted to acknowledge her in some way and pay our respects but then also, keep her separate from us petty television people. So that was really kind of the only unexpected moment.”

That was the real Stanley Cup, which Kimmel and the producers thought would be fun to have to taunt Canada, in case “Schitt’s Creek” won big.

And boy, did “Schitt’s Creek” win big. “There’s only one Stanley Cup,” McNearney said. “We had to get the Stanley Cup. We did that in advance because we were looking at the first part of the show and we thought ,you know if ‘Schitt’s Creek’ wins a couple of these, we need to kind of rub it in, that they’ll never have the Stanley Cup. I’m not a huge hockey fan. That was certainly not my idea. That was Jimmy’s idea, he thought, ‘if Canada’s going to take all our awards, let’s flaunt the award we know they all really want — which is the Stanley Cup.’ So we had it on standby. And then it was tricky for us, when do we bring up the Stanley Cup? Are they gonna win this one or the next one? It was a gamble. Because if they hadn’t won best comedy, then we would have just had a sad Stanley Cup in the wings that would have never brought out on camera.”

The alpaca joke was the brainchild of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” co-head writer Danny Ricker.

“We all fell in love with the alpaca,” McNearney said. “That was great. And Randall Park, I love his delivery on it. Typically with these award shows you have banter between two people, but we didn’t have a lot of that because of social distancing and all the COVID restrictions. So we got a little creative and we brought in the alpaca.”

Speaking of in-studio guests like Park, the testing was strict before people were allowed in.

“Everyone was very distant, everyone had to be tested,” McNearney said. “We had two tips up our noses every day and tonight everyone that was there had to be tested negative. And then we all not only had masks on, we had face shields on. None of us could breathe and it was a delight. I have to tell you, it is so incredibly challenging communicating with people with two masks on your face. And it’s live, and you’re trying to yell things at each other. When you cannot see someone’s mouth moving it is impossible. So we may have messed up words because we couldn’t hear them from each other.”

Even little things, like grabbing a pen to jot a joke down, wasn’t easy on a COVID protocol set.

“I remember at one point I’m needing a pen. Someone said, you have to get a sanitized one,” she said. “And I had to wait to get a sanitized pen so I can write notes. We couldn’t have snacks in the writers’ room. It wasn’t COVID friendly. It was like the most stripped-down production I’ve ever been a part of. It was like a ghost town. There were very few people backstage. And the celebrities that did show up had to be scraped down and tested and had a plastic shield over them. It was pretty sad, actually. We did the best that we could.”

The Emmys also pulled off an impromptu mini-“Friends” reunion without paying them $1 million each.

“Those women have been in a pod for a long time,” McNearney said of Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow. “And they’ve been testing every day. We asked Jennifer Aniston to be a part of it. She said, ‘you know, Courteney and Lisa are going to be coming over and we’d love to all be a part of it.’ And we were very excited about that. And then [Jason] Bateman, his wife is one of the producers on ‘The Morning Show,’ and she was over there, so Bateman was over with his wife.”

Because of COVID protocols, Kimmel’s on-site staff was just 25% of what it would normally be.

“I only saw the eyeballs of people for several days, like I didn’t see anyone’s mouth,” McNearney said. “Everyone was completely covered. Jimmy was the only guy without a mask on. And we were all distanced depart. And it was very, very challenging to pull off that show, without having the proximity to one another physically. Everything was over email and texts, and our writers are all in their living rooms, texting in jokes. And that’s not an easy thing for anyone to do. I think they did a really great job. And I’m still just in awe that they got all those cameras set up in all those homes, And that people were willing to let us into their homes. I think that’s pretty incredible.”

The producers opted to go with minimal pre-taped packages because of the restrictions, and a desire to go live. (A few comedy bits, like the one above with Anthony Carrigan, were live.) But with a few exceptions, there was nothing easier about this year’s show.

“Other than the fact that I’m not gonna be hungover,” McNearney quipped. “It was easy to not be in an uncomfortable dress and high heels and running around. That was the only thing that was easier. Every part of it was more challenging than usual because of the restrictions and limits we had. And typically, we would shoot a big cold open and big pre-tape and would put a lot of big comedy bits in. But first of all, tonally it didn’t quite go right for the year. But it also was just nearly impossible to pull off.”

There’s no rest for the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” crew, who go immediately back to work, as the show returns tonight from its studio.

As Kimmel and McNearney took the summer off, they took their family on a road trip. “It was really nice. We spent a lot of time with our kids — maybe too much. We took an RV to Idaho and Jackson Hole and had all this quiet wonderful being in nature and now we’re back with face shields on and back in the studio,” she said. “Who knows how that’s going to go but we’re going to try it.”

Article by: Michael Schneider for Variety.

For the second year in a row, the Primetime Emmy Awards have hit an all-time low in TV viewership.

Time zone-adjusted Nielsen numbers for ABC's live broadcast of the 72nd annual awards have the show drawing 6.1 million viewers and a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49. The previous low was set a year ago, when Fox had just under 7 million viewers and a 1.7 in the key ad demographic in the finals.

Sunday's telecast was down by about 13 percent year to year in total viewers, and by 29 percent in the 18-49 demo. Those numbers may inch up a little in the finals, when out of home viewing is factored in, but it's exceedingly unlikely they'll get above 2019's levels.

Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, the live Emmy broadcast featured a handful of in-person appearances with Kimmel at L.A.'s Staples Center and remote acceptance speeches from winners, along with Emmy statuettes delivered to winners at their homes. Pop TV's Schitt's Creek, which swept the comedy categories, and HBO's Succession and Watchmen were the big winners.

The downward slide for the Emmys isn't a huge surprise. Broadcast viewing in general is down, and most awards shows this year have turned in smaller ratings than in 2019. The Emmy ceremony aired opposite both an NFL game (which happens every year NBC isn't carrying the awards) and an NBA playoff contest on TNT.

NBC's Sunday Night Football is the runaway leader in the early numbers, drawing close to three times as many viewers as the Emmys.

Article by: Rick Porter for the Hollywood Reporter.

Career highs from Frances McDormand and Kate Winslet, a new Spike Lee joint, Regina King's feature directorial debut and gems from Greece, Iran, Japan and Ivory Coast are among favorites.

'76 Days' (Toronto)

Filmed at four hospitals in Wuhan, China, during the first months of the COVID-19 lockdown, this documentary from U.S.-based director Hao Wu and two reporters he's never met in person, Weixi Chen and a journalist-filmmaker who has chosen to go unnamed, puts viewers in the eye of the medical storm. An emotional-wringer group portrait, it doesn’t have time for talking heads or long-view commentary; 76 Days is a work of true direct cinema, and its specifics make it — to use an overused word — unprecedented. — SHERI LINDEN

'Ammonite' (Toronto)

Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan play emotionally isolated mid-19th century British women of different classes opening themselves up to passion in Francis Lee’s (God’s Own Country) exquisite, transfixingly quiet drama. This is the work of a filmmaker in full command of his voice, yielding remarkable performances — especially Winslet’s complex study of stoicism and desire, possibly the best turn of her career. — DAVID ROONEY

'Apples' (Venice, Toronto)

Debuting Greek director Christos Nikou creates an arresting account of one man’s efforts to reprogram himself in a society afflicted by viral amnesia. Somber and surreal, this is a haunting, meticulously crafted movie with a wonderful central performance by Aris Servetalis, who seems affectless but uncovers layers of feeling. — D.R.

'City Hall' (Venice, Toronto)

At a time when America seems to be tearing apart at the seams, there’s something deeply inspiring about the new doc from Frederick Wiseman, which chronicles municipal life in his hometown of Boston. Like the director’s 2015 In Jackson Heights, it’s a methodical, stirring paean to a place where folks from all backgrounds get together and make things happen. — JORDAN MINTZER

David Byrne's 'American Utopia' (Toronto)

Spike Lee captures a performance from the smash Broadway run of this exhilarating hymn to community and connection from the former Talking Heads frontman and his troupe. Set to debut Oct. 17 on HBO and HBO Max where it should become a repeat-viewing staple — this is an immersive movie experience equal to its illustrious predecessor, Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Stop Making Sense. — D.R.

'Dear Comrades' (Venice)

Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky’s chilling Special Jury prize-winning drama revisits a 1962 Soviet massacre of striking factory workers that becomes the turning point in the life of a 40-year-old apparatchik (a gripping Julia Vysotskaya). The story may seem far from contemporary interests, but it has surprising resonance with today’s political struggles. — DEBORAH YOUNG

'Honey Cigar' (Venice)

Kamir Ainouz (half-sister of Invisible Life filmmaker Karim Ainouz) makes an auspicious directorial debut with this well-acted, intimate coming-of-ager about a young woman living between countries and cultures, adolescence and adulthood. Most of the film unspools in 1993 Paris and its suburbs, tracing the sentimental, sexual and formal education of 17-year-old Selma (played by Zoe Adjani, niece of French acting queen Isabelle Adjani), born in France to Algerian parents. Call Me By Your Name’s Amira Casar is a joy as the protagonist’s mother. — BOYD VAN HOEIJ

'Hopper/Welles' (Venice)

A conversation between Orson Welles and Dennis Hopper, filmed in 1970, has been digitally restored and shaped into a feature. What unfolds is a match of intellects, thrilling not just for its array of topics — religion, the Oedipal complex, revolution, what it means to be a filmmaker — but also for its unveiling after half a century gathering cobwebs in Welles’ celluloid archives. — S.L.

'Limbo' (Toronto)

No man is an island in this comic drama about a group of refugees stranded in a remote Scottish town. Building on the promise of his debut, Pikadero (2016), writer-director Ben Sharrock displays a winning flair for observational detail and minor-key mirth in his warmhearted second feature, whose deadpan tone invites comparison to Aki Kaurismaki or Jim Jarmusch. — STEPHEN DALTON

'Monday' (Toronto)

Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough, both intense and committed, star as young-ish Americans in love and living for the weekend in Athens in Argyris Papadimitropoulos' anti-rom-com. There will be viewers who recoil from these characters’ wild, exhibitionistic carnality and druggy hedonism. But many who’ve been in a relationship like this — the kind that starts to feel like a codependent bipolar disorder trapped on a rollercoaster — will relate to the film’s sensual, funny and above all honest look at amour fou. — LESLIE FELPERIN

'My Tender Matador' (Venice)

An aging drag queen (Chilean acting great Alfredo Castro) and a young radical (Leonardo Ortizgris) become unlikely bedfellows in mid-80s Santiago in Rodrigo Sepulveda’s very fine adaptation of the Pedro Lemebel novel. Some of the political and historical context — the story unfolds in the lead-up to the 1986 attempt on the life of Pinochet by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front — has been eschewed in order to concentrate on the smaller, more moving chronicle of two outsiders who find themselves thrown together almost by accident. — B.V.H.

'Never Gonna Snow Again' (Venice)

In Malgorzata Szumowska’s film, co-directed with Michal Englert, emptiness and longing afflict residents of a wealthy gated community in Poland until a mysterious visitor (played with delicious ambiguity by Alec Utgoff) arrives, offering massages with his healing hands. The result is hypnotic — a work that pushes the envelope technically and thematically. — D.Y.

'Night of the Kings' (Venice, Toronto)

In the second feature from Ivorian filmmaker Philippe Lacote, an Abidjan prisoner is forced to invent a story that lasts until sunrise or face the consequences — like a modern-day Scheherazade. It’s a captivating, vivid hybrid of fairy tale and realism, enjoyable even for those without any knowledge of the country’s politics and history. — B.V.H.

'Nomadland' (Venice, Toronto)

In her Golden Lion winner, Chloé Zhao (The Rider) guides Frances McDormand to a remarkable performance of melancholy gravitas as a widow from a collapsed Nevada mining town who finds new life on the road. The star is so rigorously unmannered she’s indistinguishable from the real-life nomads with whom she shares the screen in this haunting, shatteringly eloquent character study. — D.R.

'One Night in Miami' (Venice, Toronto)

Regina King makes a stirring, confident feature directing debut in this adaptation of Kemp Powers’ 2013 play about a fictional 1964 hotel room gathering between friends Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and NFL star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge). The towering turn that centers the strong quartet is British actor Ben-Adir’s quietly impassioned Malcolm. — D.R.

'Quo Vadis, Aida' (Venice, Toronto)

Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic’s harrowing, heartbreaking drama plunges the viewer into the horror of ethnic cleansing during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Seen through the eyes of a UN interpreter (Jasna Djuricic, mesmerizing), the film’s events unfold in 1995 in Srebrenica, where the Bosnian Serb army murdered more than 7,000 civilians and raped the town’s women. — D.Y.

 'Sun Children' (Venice)

Iranian director Majid Majidi’s visually stunning and emotionally gripping film tells the story of street boys hired by a local crime boss to dig for a treasure. Centering on a clever, courageous 12-year-old protagonist (Roohollah Zamani), it succeeds both as entertainment and as a forceful condemnation of child labor and the inaccessibility of education for the poor. — D.Y.

'Topside' (Venice)

In this striking, sensitive debut from Celine Held and Logan George, a 5-yearold girl (Zhaila Farmer) and her troubled mother (Held) are forced from their home in an abandoned New York subway tunnel. The exceptional Farmer inhabits the center of this maelstrom with a preternatural, deeply affecting watchfulness. — S.L. 

'Wife of a Spy' (Venice)

Winner of the fest’s best director prize, Kiyoshi Kurosawa delivers an absorbing, smartly paced period thriller in which a young Japanese wife on the eve of World War II discovers her businessman husband is intent on revealing Japan’s secrets to the Americans. What ensues is a tense and intriguing marital battle. — D.Y.

'Wolfwalkers' (Toronto)

This final installment in Tomm Moore’s animated Irish folklore trilogy — following 2009’s The Secret of Kells and 2014’s Song of the Sea — is a visually dazzling, richly imaginative, emotionally resonant production that taps into contemporary concerns while being true to its distant origins. Set against the 17th century backdrop of Oliver Cromwell’s colonization of Ireland, the film finds magic in the bleakness while tenderly weaving together themes of belonging, female empowerment, environmental preservation and religious persecution. — MICHAEL RECHTSHAFFEN

Article by: David Rooney, Jordan Mintzer, Deborah Young, Stephen Dalton, Sheri Linden, and Boyd van Hoeij for the Hollywood Reporter.

The Frances McDormand-starrer screened at TIFF's virtual 2020 edition after picking up the Golden Lion in Venice.

Chloe Zhao's Nomadland picked up the top People's Choice honor on Sunday at the pandemic-era Toronto Film Festival, which wrapped on Saturday.

The Frances McDormand-starrer was named the top audience prize winner in Toronto, which is often a barometer of future Academy Award nominations. The first runner-up for the top audience prize was Regina King's One Night in Miami, while the second runner-up was Tracey Deer's Beans.

Searchlight is set to release Nomadland, Zhao's look at America's van-dwelling community and her follow-up to The Rider, on Dec. 4. McDormand plays a widow from a collapsed Nevada mining town who finds new life on the road in a drama based on Jessica Bruder's 2017 nonfiction book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

Nomadland, while debuting in competition at Venice, received a gala screening in Toronto and a Telluride-supported U.S. premiere at drive-in screenings in Los Angeles.

The People's Choice award for best documentary went to Canadian director Michelle Latimer's Inconvenient Indian, while the top audience prize for best Midnight Madness sidebar title went to Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud.

This year's audience winners will have an asterisk beside the honors as TIFF had a slimmed-down lineup of 50 titles, against 333 last year, Hollywood studios were mostly absent and the Oscars have been delayed until April 2021.

In juried prize-giving, the FIPRESCI prize went to Dea Kulumbegashvili's debut feature Beginning, and the NETPAC award was picked up by Palestinian filmmakers Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser's Gaza Mon Amour.

And Latimer's Inconvenient Indian also earned the Amplify Voices Award for best Canadian feature, while Tiffany Hsiung's documentary short Sing Me a Lullaby picked up the Short Cuts trophy best short, while the Short Cuts award for best film went to Daila Guiguet's Dustin, and the best Canadian film went to Paul Shkordoff's Benjamin Benny, Benny.

TIFF juries also gave the inaugural Changemaker Award to Kelly Fyffe-Marshall's short Black Bodies.

Amid the pandemic, Toronto opted for far more streaming than screening, as it had limited in-person theatrical play and mostly virtual red carpets, press conferences and industry events amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.

As it went online, TIFF used a first-time digital platform to comply with safety precautions during the COVID-19 crisis, while also enabling Torontonians to view movies from the front seat of their cars at pop-up drive-ins or seated in deck chairs at outdoor cinema venues.

The People's Choice Awards are voted on by TIFF attendees. Participants could not vote more than once online using their email address, as TIFF measured the origin of each vote and matched them to the festival's ticket buyer information and database.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, whose new Janelle Monae-starring film was inspired by an actual nightmare, had to first get by the DGA to be credited as a directing pair: "It was like the United Nations."

The directing team Bush + Renz — that would be Gerard Bush, 47, and Christopher Renz, 39, partners in life and work — were well into preproduction on their first feature, the psychological thriller Antebellum, when they learned they’d have to face a DGA tribunal. "We did not realize that 95 percent of the time they deny duos," explains Renz. Reality quickly set in: They would have one shot to convince the guild they were duo-worthy. If they blew it, there went their Hollywood dreams.

The former advertising creative execs had met a dozen years earlier at a party in Miami, where they both lived. Bush recalls spotting Renz — "Back then, he was 120 pounds wet" he says — getting into a scuffle with a burly security guard who wouldn’t let him enter. He was instantly smitten: "I thought, 'Wow — there’s a lion’s heart there,'" says Bush. They struck up a conversation, which led to a series of dates. "By our fourth," recalls Bush, "I said, 'I have this idea about a short story about aliens.' And Christopher said, 'Let’s go back and write it.'"

By late 2008, they founded their own advertising agency with accounts that included Moët & Chandon and Porsche. "Then one day I told Christopher, 'I don’t want to sell champagne and luxury cars for the rest of my life," says Bush. "And Christopher said, 'I’m really sad, too. I didn’t want to tell you.'"

They decided to turn their energies toward social-action campaigns. It began with a Twitter DM to the Florida Democratic Party. 'Two weeks later, we had [former DNC chair] Debbie Wasserman Schultz in our office asking how we could activate Black voters in the midterms," says Bush. Back then, the killing of Trayvon Martin was in the news. "We bought billboards that looked like H&M ads with this beautiful little Black boy with a bulletproof vest on," he continues. "The NRA started picketing the billboards. It caused a lot of upset."

Other campaigns followed: Harry Belafontereached out to them in 2016 to produce a PSA about police brutality called "Against the Wall." Jay-Z spotted that one and liked what he saw; he summoned the pair to Los Angeles to commission a video for a song off his 4:44 album.

Antebellum began as a nightmare, literally. The two had moved to L.A. in 2017 and were having a rough go of it: Bush’s father and brother died in quick succession; then the couple’s boxer, Cooper, was diagnosed with a brain tumor (she died in 2018). One morning, Bush woke up to his own anguished shouts. He’d dreamed of Eden, a woman subjected to unspeakable brutality on a slave plantation “screaming desperately for help across dimensions.”

The nightmare became their short story, which got them meetings around town. A bidding war ensued, with Lionsgate winning. A dream cast assembled, with Janelle Monáe signing on to play Eden. But first, of course, they needed that DGA approval. "It was like the United Nations," recalls Bush of the hearing. "With these big U-shaped tables packed with DGA board members. It was actually Seth Rogen who stood up for us and said, 'I’ve been a part of a duo for an incredibly long time, and it’s incredibly satisfying creatively — and if these two aren’t a duo, I don’t know who is.'" Notes Renz, "We didn’t know Seth."

After, the two went to a nearby restaurant to await the DGA’s decision. Says Bush, "We didn’t even get through the first appetizer, and they called us to say it was unanimous."

Article by: Seth Abramovitch for the Hollywood Reporter.

The agreement was reached by the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, Teamsters and the Basic Crafts with the AMPTP.

The industry has just cleared a major hurdle in its effort to get back to work.

After months of negotiations, Hollywood’s top studios and unions have finally come to an agreement on a handful of lingering issues related to COVID-19 filming protocols on Monday (read the full return-to-work agreement here). The deal was reached by the AMPTP, the Directors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and Teamsters, who'd be bargaining over details of the contract since June.

Guidelines were first laid out in a June 1 "white paper" crafted by the Industry-Wide Labor-Management Safety Committee Task Force — members of which include AMPTP, SAG-AFTRA, the DGA, IATSE and the Teamsters — and then later in "The Safe Way Forward" report, a 36-page document released June 12 by the unions.

The AMPTP, which represents the major studios, and the industry’s top guilds had been struggling to agree on certain aspects of on-set safety protocols and other COVID-related contractual issues since June. The thorniest issues were said to revolve around the frequency and type of virus testing, whose responsibility it is to should the cost of the protocols, crew size, workday caps, the role of COVID-19 managers on set and sick day compensation.

Concerning the issue of pay, sources say the guilds wanted to protect members who might become infected with the virus by ensuring they are still be paid for the time they would have worked, while the studios wanted to minimize costs, as their production spend has already sky-rocketed in the age of COVID. Insiders add that another challenging issue to hammer out was testing: both determining the kind of tests and the frequency with which cast and crewmembers should be checked.

The newly agreed-upon guidelines outline testing regimes for productions, health and safety training requirements, paid sick leave, necessary PPE, among other much-discussed issues. The extensive contract also spells out some of what has been unofficially agreed to over the last few months. For instance, meals and snacks are now to be served in individually wrapped portions — something productions that have gotten up and running have already been doing.

“Though this process was not easy, unprecedented inter-union collaboration and unwavering solidarity enabled our unions to achieve strong COVID-19 protections that will translate into tangibly safer workplaces," said Matthew D. Loeb, international president of IATSE.

Added SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris: “SAG-AFTRA members, along with their peers in other entertainment unions, are anxious to get back to work, but safety has to be the highest priority. This agreement establishes sensible, science-based protocols that allow members to return to doing the work they love while managing risk. I am grateful to our sister unions, who pulled together during this extended crisis, as well as to the studios for collaborating on this important issue.”

Sources say the prolonged talks prompted some of the major studios, including Warner Bros. and Universal's TV arms, to push back filming plans. Despite the holdup, several projects have been able to move forward with production by getting approval from the guilds on a case-by-case basis. Still, some insiders who've been on sets recently say that the inconsistencies across productions and studios are confusing and that the industry could benefit from a bit more consensus. Certainly, settling these negotiations is a step in the right direction.

Article by: Bryn Elise Sandberg for the Hollywood Reporter.

The film previously stopped production after sources said the star tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

The Batman is back in action.

“Following a hiatus for COVID-19 quarantine precautions, filming has now resumed on The Batman in the U.K," a Warner Bros. spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

On Sept. 3, The Batman shut down production in London, with Warner Bros. stating that a member of the production had contracted the novel coronavirus. Sources told THR that star Robert Pattinson had been diagnosed with COVID-19, though the studio declined to comment on the specific individual who had tested positive.

The Batman, which is due out Oct. 1, 2021, previously shut down in mid-March as the pandemic forced film and TV shoots to pause work. It was only back in production for a few days before Pattinson's diagnosis shut it down again. 

The film takes place during the second year of Bruce Wayne's battle against crime in Gotham, and it recently debuted the first trailer to strong reactions during last month's DC FanDome.

The Batman also stars  Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Riddler, Colin Farrell as the Penguin, John Turturro as crime boss Carmine Falcone, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred and Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham City DA Gil Colson. Director Matt Reeves is behind the project.

Article by: Aaron Couch for the Hollywood Reporter.

Ottawa's latest cash drop comes as the Canadian industry slowly reopens after Coronavirus-related production shutdowns

As Hollywood location shooting in Canada slowly reopens, the country's overstretched COVID-19 rescue funds for indie film and TV producers has received another injection from the federal government.

The Canada Media Fund, a key investor in local TV series using in part public funds, announced another $19 million for its COVID-19 Emergency Support Fund on Thursday. The CMF offered another $88.8 million to local producers as part of its emergency relief fund in May.

The latest cash drop for pandemic-challenged film and TV producers will go to those who have yet to receive emergency support from the feds in Ottawa. To qualify, locally-owned companies must show their revenues have fallen by at least 25 percent and requires funds to remain in business and safeguard jobs.

In Canada, as elsewhere in the global industry, insurers refusing COVID-19 coverage to indie film and TV shoots has left many local producers with little cash coming in.

"Canada’s audiovisual sector continues to be heavily impacted by the pandemic. This additional support by the government of Canada is a most welcome lifeline to hundreds of production companies across the country. These businesses are the bedrock upon which our industry is built. Their preservation is both a cultural and economic imperative," CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton said in a statement.

On Sept. 16, federal heritage minister Steven Guilbeault held a virtual town hall to in part discuss emergency support for film and TV workers impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The latest rescue package from Ottawa includes $12 million in emergency support funds and an additional $7 million top-up to earlier earmarked monies.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars is Hollywood’s most prestigious artistic award in the film industry. Since 1927, nominees and winners are selected by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). 17 branches are represented within the near 10,000 person membership. The branches are actors, associates, casting directors, cinematographers, costume designers, directors, documentary, executives, film editors, makeup and hairstylists, marketing and public relations, members-at-large, members-at-large (artists’ representatives), music, producers, production design, short films and feature animation, sound, visual effects, and writers. 

Best Motion Picture

“The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics)

“Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.)

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix)

“Mank” (Netflix)

“Minari” (A24)

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures)

“Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios)

“Soul” (Pixar)

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios)

Best Director

David Fincher, “Mank” (Netflix)

Regina King, “One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios)

Shaka King, “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.)

Florian Zeller, “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)

Best Actor

Anthony Hopkins, “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.)

Delroy Lindo, “Da 5 Bloods” (Netflix)

Tom Hanks, “News of the World” (Universal Pictures)

Gary Oldman, “Mank” (Netflix)

Best Actress

Viola Davis, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix)

Vanessa Kirby, “Pieces of a Woman” (Netflix)

Frances McDormand, “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)

Michelle Pfeiffer, “French Exit” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Rachel Zegler, “West Side Story” (20th Century Studios)

Best Supporting Actor

Chadwick Boseman, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix)

Bill Murray, “On the Rocks” (Apple TV Plus/A24)

Leslie Odom, Jr., “One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios)

Lakeith Stanfield, “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.)

David Strathairn, “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)

Best Supporting Actress

Olivia Colman, “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story” (20th Century Studios)

Audra McDonald, “Respect” (United Artists)

Saoirse Ronan, “Ammonite” (Neon)

Amanda Seyfried, “Mank” (Netflix)

Best Original Screenplay

“Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.) – Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas, Kenny Lucas

“Mank” (Netflix) – Jack Fincher

“Minari” (A24) – Lee Isaac Chung

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (Focus Features) – Eliza Hittman

“Soul” (Pixar) – Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers

Best Adapted Screenplay

“The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics) – Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix) – Ruben Santiago-Hudson

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures) – Luke Davies, Paul Greengrass

“Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures) – Chloé Zhao

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios) – Kemp Powers

Best Animated Feature

“Connected” (Sony Pictures) – Mike Rianda

“Onward” (Pixar) – Dan Scanlon

“Over the Moon” (Netflix) – Glen Keane, John Kahrs

“Soul” (Pixar) – Pete Docter

“Wolf Walkers” (Apple TV+/GKIDS) – Tom Moore, Ross Stewart

Best Production Design

“Dune” (Warner Bros.) – Patrice Vermette, Richard Roberts, Zsuzsanna Sipos

“Mank” (Netflix) – Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale

“Mulan” (Walt Disney Pictures) – Grant Major, Anne Kuljian

“The Personal History of David Copperfield” (Searchlight Pictures) – Cristina Casali, Charlotte Dirickx

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios) – Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo

Best Cinematography

“Dune” (Warner Bros.) – Greig Fraser

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures) – Dariusz Wolski

“Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures) – Joshua James Richards

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios) – Tami Reiker

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios) – Janusz Kaminski

Best Costume Design

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix) – Ann Roth

“Mank” (Netflix) – Trish Summerville

“Mulan” (Walt Disney Pictures) – Bina Daigeler

“One Night in Miami…” (Amazon Studios) – Francine Jamison-Tanchuck

“The Personal History of David Copperfield” (Searchlight Pictures) – Suzie Harman, Robert Worley

Best Film Editing

“Mank” (Netflix) – Kirk Baxter

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures) – William Goldenberg

“Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures) – Chloé Zhao

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios) – Tariq Anwar

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios) – Sarah Broshar, Michael Kahn

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

“Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” (Neon) – nominees to be determined

“Dune” (Warner Bros) – nominees to be determined

“Respect” (United Artists Releasing) – nominees to be determined

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix) – nominees to be determined

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios) – nominees to be determined

Best Sound

“Dune” (Warner Bros.) – nominees to be determined

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures) – nominees to be determined

“Soul” (Pixar) – nominees to be determined

“Sound of Metal” (Amazon Studios) – nominees to be determined

“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios) – nominees to be determined

Visual Effects

“Dune” (Warner Bros.) – nominees to be determined

“Eternals” (Marvel Studios) – nominees to be determined

“Greyhound” (Apple TV Plus) – nominees to be determined

“Tenet” (Warner Bros.) – nominees to be determined

“Wonder Woman 1984” (Warner Bros.) – nominees to be determined

Documentary Feature

“All In: The Fight for Democracy” (Amazon Studios) – Liz Garbus, Lisa Cortés

“Dick Johnson is Dead” (Netflix) – Kirsten Johnson

“Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds” (Apple TV+) – Werner Herzog, Clive Oppenheimer

“John Lewis: Good Trouble” (Magnolia Pictures) – Dawn Porter

“The Truffle Hunters” (Sony Pictures Classics) – Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw

International Feature

“Another Round” (Denmark) – not officially submitted

“The Disciple” (India) – not officially submitted

“Memory House” (Brazil) – not officially submitted

“Never Gonne Snow Again” (Poland) – official submission

“Night of the Kings” (Ivory Coast) – official submission

Article by: Clayton Davis for Variety.

Hollywood’s major studios and key industry unions are close to inking an omnibus agreement to restart TV and film production in the U.S. under newly crafted safety protocols mandated by the pandemic.

The sides have been bargaining over all manner of challenges posed by the coronavirus crisis since June, after an industry coalition issued a white paper with proposed safety standards for turning the cameras back on.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the collective bargaining arm for Hollywood’s major production entities, has been knee-deep in negotiations for weeks with IATSE, the Directors Guild of America, SAG-AFTRA, the Producers Guild of America and Writers Guild of America on safety concerns and adjustments to existing contractual commitments amid COVID concerns. The details of safety protocols were the primary focus of the negotiation — how tests would be administered and how often, and the level of PPE required for various production scenarios for on on stage versus on location.

The AMPTP declined to comment, as did IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA and Teamsters, the unions that have been at the crux of the discussions because their members are crucial to getting the cameras rolling on physical production.

On the business end, the big hurdles for the major studios have been questions of legal liability, sick pay and benefits for those who get sick or quarantined, the cost of the mountain of PPE required on set and who pays for it, and perhaps most significantly in the long run, the reduction in crew size implemented to accommodate social distancing requirements. The unions, not surprisingly, were concerned about setting precedents by agreeing to shrink the size of  crew requirements on movie and TV sets. Studio executives have not been shy about questioning the traditional size of production crews at 100 or more at a time when technology has transformed the content creation process.

In the final sprint to setting a deal, the toughest sticking points have been the details on sick pay and time off and who shoulders the liability if cast and crew members fall ill.

The studios have already restarted a number of primetime series and movie shoots by engaging in separate negotiations on project-by-project basis with unions. The majors and other large producers have also gone territory by territory — including Canada and Europe — to set deals. The conclusion of the AMPTP’s omnibus pact will nonethless make it easier for the majors and others to move forward with new projects.

Industry sources said studios and networks are now haggling hard over the new COVID expense item in series budgets. Sources said deals have been emerging at a 50-50 split between producer and platform on shouldering the cost of testing, PPE and extra staff needed for COVID purposes.

The past few months have been a grueling time for the industry’s business affairs executives, with so many new contracts to be hastily haggled and executed. Industry sources noted that AMPTP president Carol Lombardini has had a marathon year of juggling multiple coronavirus safety negotiations on the heels of hashing out new master three-year contracts earlier in 2020 with the DGA, WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

One source close to the situation said Lombardini has stated that sorting out COVID-19 concerns was among the most complex and difficult negotiations she’s tackled in nearly 40 years as a negotiator with AMPTP, given the life-or-death stakes created by the pandemic.

Studio executives have been pushing in the final stretch for more specific rules around COVID-19 testing after a string of problems with inconsistent and inaccurate test results that have led to quick shutdowns of shows that just got on their feet, including the ABC drama “For Life,”produced by Sony Pictures TV in New York.

SAG-AFTRA is known to have made a big push in the last few days for generous sick pay terms for sidelined actors. One studio executive called the performers union’s bid a “big overreach” but said the sides are inching toward a compromise. The executive said IATSE, which represents hundreds of thousands of below the line works, has been “reasonable” and focused on getting its members back to work, even in diminished numbers to start.

Industry sources say that one notable silver lining to the strict safety measures is that productions appear to be more faster and more efficiently as there is renewed focus on getting as much done as possible in a day.

“There are fewer disruptions and distractions for the core group (required on set) and there are no entourages that come with the talent every day,” said a senior studio executive who has been knee-deep in sorting out safety measures on TV series. “We’re seeing efficiencies.”

Article by: Cynthia Littleton for Variety.

As the early rumblings of the Oscar race begin with the conclusion of Toronto and the kickoff of NYFF, Netflix is starting to set their chess pieces up for a strategic and boastful awards season. In an exclusive to Variety, Netflix has confirmed the decision to campaign, Delroy Lindo, the star of “Da 5 Bloods” from Spike Lee, in lead actor for the upcoming Academy Awards.

The 67-year-old actor has been a fixture of film and television for four decades, counting more than 40 screen credits to his name. With two career SAG nominations as part of a cast ensemble  (“Get Shorty” and “The Cider House Rules”), Lindo has never received his proper recognition despite standout roles in films such as “Malcolm X.”

In “Da 5 Bloods,” Lindo plays Paul, a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who travels back to Vietnam in search of the remains of his fallen squad leader. There had been debates among critics and strategists on where Lindo should campaign for the Oscars, as some felt the film was more of an ensemble with no definitive lead. As the movie follows the soldiers on their perilous journey back to the war country, Paul takes center stage, with more screentime than his co-stars — as the focal point of the story.

Co-writer and director Spike Lee has teamed with Lindo many times over his career, including “Clockers” and “Crooklyn.” His role in “Da 5 Bloods” reunites the pair for the first time in 25 years. If Lindo manages to successfully maneuver an upcoming strange and unpredictable awards season, he would be the fourth actor of a Spike Lee joint to receive a nomination from the Academy. He would follow the late Danny Aiello (“Do the Right Thing”), Denzel Washington (“Malcolm X”) and Adam Driver (“BlacKkKlansman”), none of which won their respective categories.

In the lead actor race, Lindo will be facing off against other Hollywood veterans such as Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Gary Oldman (“Mank”), both of which have won best actor previously, with others sure to enter the race in the coming months.

Co-stars Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock, Jr. and Chadwick Boseman will all campaign in supporting actor. Boseman, who passed away in August due to colon cancer, will have two performances in contention this year. Along with “Da 5 Bloods,” Boseman has a role in the upcoming “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” from George C. Wolfe, also distributed by Netflix. Starring alongside Academy Award winner Viola Davis, no decisions have been finalized on Boseman’s category placement as conversations are ongoing on whether he should campaign in lead or supporting categories. The role, originally played by Charles S. Dutton on Broadway in 1984, was nominated for a Tony award in featured actor in a play.

“Da 5 Bloods” was initially set to debut out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Lee was set to be the first Black jury president. The festival was ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Netflix will have other campaign decisions to make regarding their very robust film slate. Internal discussions are still occurring regarding all the men from Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Jesse Plemons in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and Shia LeBeouf in the recently purchased “Pieces of a Woman,” if released this year.

Watch out for Lindo on the circuit.

Article by: Clayton Davis for Variety.

Veteran director Kat Coiro is in talks to join Marvel Studios’ upcoming Disney Plus series “She-Hulk” as lead director and executive producer, Variety has confirmed. She will direct the pilot and other episodes of the series, joining showrunner Jessica Gao (“Rick and Morty”).

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige first announced “She-Hulk” last year during the D23 fan expo in Anaheim, Calif., part of a robust suite of series the studio is producing for Disney’s streaming service. “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “WandaVision,” “Loki,” and the animated series “What If…?” are already in various stages of production — the former three delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with “She-Hulk,” Marvel Studios is also developing “Hawkeye,” “Ms. Marvel,” and “Moon Knight” for Disney Plus.

“She-Hulk” has long been a favorite of Marvel Comics fans since she first appeared in 1980. The story revolves around Jennifer Walters, cousin of Bruce Banner who inherits his Hulk-ing powers after she receives a blood transfusion from him. Unlike Bruce, however, when she hulks out, Jennifer remains largely the same person — just bigger, stronger, and much greener.

After launching her directing career with the 2011 comedy “Life Happens” starring Krysten Ritter, Coiro cut her teeth directing TV comedies like “The Mick,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Single Parents,” and “Dead to Me.” Her latest project — the Universal Pictures romantic comedy “Marry Me,” starring Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Sarah Silverman, and Maluma — is due to open in February 2021.

Given Coiro and Gao’s combined comedy chops, and the fact that by day Jennifer works as a lawyer, it seems that “She-Hulk” could provide Marvel Studios with a perfect vehicle for a smashing legal dramedy.

Article by: Adam B. Vary for Variety.

The feature will begin production in October in Syracuse, New York. 

Actress Natalie Morales will be making her solo feature directorial debut with Hulu comedy Plan B.

Written by Prathi Srinivasan and Joshua Levy, the story takes place after a regrettable first sexual encounter, when a straight-laced high school student and her slacker best friend have 24 hours to hunt down a Plan B pill in America's heartland.

Plan B will begin production in October in Syracuse, New York. 

Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald and Dina Hillier of Counterbalance Entertainment will produce, along with Jeremy Garelick, Will Phelps, Ryan Bennett of American High, Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon of LD Entertainment as well as Matt Lottman.

Plan B will be the latest team-up for the Syracuse-based American High and Hulu, joining Big Time Adolescence, starring Pete Davidson, and feature comedy The Binge, starring Vince Vaughn and Skyler Gisondo.

Morales' recent onscreen credits include Netflix series Dead to Me and theatrical comedy Stuber. She starred in and directed several episodes of the Duplass Bros' Room 104.  She is repped by CAA, Bleecker Street Entertainment and Goodman Genow.

Article by: Mia Galuppo for the Hollywood Reporter.

The ShowRoom Cinema in Asbury Park and the Beach Cinema in Bradley Beach got the greenlight to reopen at the end of August when New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy lifted restrictions on movie theaters. Mike Sodano, who owns both venues, says that even though he can turn on the marquee lights again after dimming them for roughly six months, he’s hesitant to start welcoming back customers.

“Movie theaters need three things to sustain themselves,” says Sodano. “They need profits, they need people and they need product. Well, this pandemic has affected all three.”

Sodano isn’t sure when he’ll begin making moves to reopen. The box office performance of Warner Bros.’ “Tenet,” the Christopher Nolan science-fiction epic that many exhibitors hoped would lure audiences back to cinemas during the coronavirus, has done little to assuage his anxiety. The film earned a meager $6.7 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic haul to a disappointing $29.5 million.

“‘Tenet’ is a big movie, Christopher Nolan is a big director, and Warner Bros. is a big studio, but there’s one thing they can’t control, and that’s their audience,” says Sodano. “I know this is a marathon and not a sprint, but when you look at those numbers, it does not give me confidence that people are ready to come back to theaters.”

Studios seem to agree. Last week, Warner Bros. moved “Wonder Woman 1984” from Oct. 2 to Christmas, and Universal pushed “Candyman” from Oct. 16 to an undetermined time in 2021. That followed the decision by Disney’s 20th Century to delay “The King’s Man” from Sept. 18 to Feb. 26, 2021. On Sept. 14, STX added to the list of postponements, announcing it would release the Gerard Butler disaster film “Greenland” in the U.S. at some unspecified point in the fourth quarter instead of debuting it this month.

There’s also skepticism that Disney will go forward with its plans to release “Black Widow,” the upcoming Marvel movie, on Nov. 6, or the Pixar adventure “Soul” on Nov. 20, particularly if theaters aren’t allowed to come back online in Los Angeles and New York, where they remain shuttered. That means cinemas will have to gamble that “Tenet” remains enough of a draw that it can keep the box office humming until “No Time to Die,” the next James Bond adventure, opens on Nov. 20. In the meantime, exhibitors are begging studios to take a look at the films they’ve pushed into 2021 and reconsider launching them in October or late September, which are now largely devoid of big-budget releases.

It’s easy to understand the mounting panic among theater owners. In a business that cycles through blockbusters on an almost weekly basis, nearly two months is an eternity to go without a new crowd-pleaser.

As for “Tenet,” the film may still make a profit, but it will have to claw its way into the black.

“‘Tenet’ is doing about as well as can be expected, but a lot of things are going against it,” says Eric Wold, an exhibition industry analyst with B. Riley. “Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco are closed, and a lot of people don’t want to leave the house because they’re concerned. I’m not sure we’ll see a lot of new content until more markets open up and more consumers feel safe.”

It’s a sad state of play that’s unthinkable for a Nolan enterprise, given that the filmmaker helmed megahits like 2008’s “The Dark Knight” ($1 billion worldwide) and 2010’s “Inception” ($833 million). The fact that “Tenet” has a fighting chance is largely due to foreign grosses. The film has earned nearly $200 million globally, mainly on the strength of its overseas revenues, but it will need to top $400 million to break even.

“Where people feel safe, they are going to the movies,” said Richard Gelfond, CEO of Imax Corporation. “That’s how it’s playing out with ‘Tenet.’ The international results in places like China are really good. In the U.S., people didn’t come out in the same numbers.”

For movie theaters that took the risk of reopening — implementing safety measures, orchestrating extra auditorium cleanings and hiring back staff and training them to adhere to new protocols — the dearth of studio content is a big stumbling block. Many venues say they are already operating at a loss, but they believe it’s important to start showing movies again so people will get back in the habit of going to the multiplexes. There’s a chance that some venues could reduce hours of operation, or only open certain days of the week, if attendance remains low.

“It feels like distribution has kind of abandoned the movie theaters,” says Brian Schultz, founder and CEO of Studio Movie Grill, which operates theaters in 10 states. “I understand the core economics at play here, but without new product, we can’t keep things going. Christopher Nolan put an amazing stake in the ground with ‘Tenet,’ but now other studios need to follow his lead.”

So far, filmmakers and media conglomerates are hesitant to take the baton from Nolan. And while major releases such as “West Side Story” and “Dune” still are expected to flicker across screens before the New Year, it’s unclear if the public health situation will improve dramatically in the coming months. Fall and winter will bring flu season, which could make customers who are frightened of the coronavirus even more skittish about venturing out of their homes as cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. remain much higher than in other countries.

“The theatrical business is broken right now,” says David A. Gross, head of the consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “This is an unfamiliar situation. The challenges from the pandemic are beyond the business’s control.”

Faced with this kind of existential threat, analysts expect that domestic box office will drop more than 80% year over year, a sign of just how great a toll the pandemic has taken on revenues. That’s bad news for studios, but many of them are part of sprawling media conglomerates that can withstand the financial hit. Movie theaters have had to pay rent for months while taking in virtually no revenue — and their balance sheets may not improve even when they are allowed to resume operations. Many states require operators to keep venues at 25% capacity so social distancing can be enforced. That means margins are shrinking. Cinemas make most of their money selling popcorn and soda, but fewer people in seats means less activity at the concession stand. That’s made some exhibitors apprehensive about taking the steps to welcome back audiences.

Nic Steele, the founder and owner of Eclipse Theatre in Las Vegas, originally considered reopening when “Tenet” hit screens. But after he crunched the numbers, he decided that he couldn’t make it work. His theaters couldn’t be profitable unless at least half the seats in his auditoriums were full, something that’s impossible given current public health rules. Also, rehiring people, training them and buying supplies to keep his venues free of COVID-19 will add to his costs, making profitability more problematic if revenues are lower.

“If you open too soon and there’s no product out, or just an OK-performing movie every few months, you’re sitting there with a lot of fixed costs and no revenue coming in,” says Steele. “Your cash-burn rate is going to eat up reserves. Whether there’s one guest or 50 guests, a lot of the fixed costs are the same.”

 Theaters that have taken the plunge report mixed results. Studio Movie Grill, which operates in states such as Texas and Florida, has reopened 19 of its 31 theaters, but it’s been a struggle to draw crowds. Schultz says his most fervent customers have returned, but that his locations are still receiving calls from potential ticket buyers who aren’t sure if cinemas are back in business. 

“There’s a lot of confusion,” he says. “It’s been a slow process, and we have to keep countering the message that movie theaters are shut down.”

Schultz hopes that studios and exhibitors can join together to tout theaters’ new safety precautions and to embark on a campaign to get audiences to visit their local cinemas again. But there’s one major stumbling block: content.

“I want people to know that we’re ready for them to come back to the movies,” says Schultz. “But everything depends on how we all act. If guests come back in droves, then studios will start releasing movies again. If studios start releasing more movies, then audiences will return to theaters. It’s a Catch-22.”

Article by: Brent Lang and Rebecca Rubin for Variety.

New York’s LGBTQ film festival NewFest will honor “Ammonite” director Francis Lee with its inaugural World Queer Visionary Award.

“Ammonite” star Kate Winslet will present Lee with the kudos ahead of the movie’s opening night drive-in screening at the Queens Drive-In at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Oct. 16.

The 32nd edition of NewFest, held virtually for the first time, will run through Oct. 27.

The complete lineup will be announced on Sept. 23. Intros for the films are being shot at numerous LGBTQ landmarks in New York City. “The idea behind recording intros in front of LGBTQ landmarks in NYC was to capture the energy of the city and the incredible queer legacy that exists here,” NewFest executive director David Hatkoff tells Variety. “We want to acknowledge and celebrate our community’s history, as well as shine a spotlight on queer gathering spaces, community organizations, and LGBTQ-owned businesses that have been impacted by the pandemic.”

Variety caught up with Hatkoff earlier this week to talk about this year’s festival.

How did the World Queer Visionary Award come about and why is Francis Lee so deserving of the honor?

LGBTQ visibility and advocacy remain essential to the global conversation around human rights, and NewFest has always made it a priority to reflect the international nature of New York City by featuring stories from around the world. Francis’ debut film “God’s Own Country” was our International Centerpiece at the 2017 Festival, and he’s delivered another stunner this year with “Ammonite,” making him the perfect inaugural recipient for this honor.

Why was it important that NewFest take place this year, even if it has to be virtual? How important is it for audiences to continue to see LGBTQ representation in cinema?

NewFest was founded more than 30 years ago in direct response to the AIDS crisis. With our country battling a pandemic, reckoning with racial injustice, and dealing with an economic downturn ahead of a hugely consequential election for LGBTQ+ lives and rights, maintaining a safe space where queer stories are told and shared has never been more important. Going virtual has given us an incredible opportunity to make sure these stories can be viewed from anywhere in the United States.

Is there a theme to this year’s festival?

With full awareness that the festival is taking place in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, we aim to capture through film, conversation and celebration the spirit of pride and protest that inspired the founding of NewFest. The poster design for this year’s festival, illustrated by queer NYC artist Marcos Chin, reflects this sentiment — that queer stories will not be silenced.

The drive-in opening night is obviously something new.

In a year when the festival will be available virtually in people’s homes throughout the country, we are thrilled to have found a way to begin the festival with an in-person event. One of the most special things about NewFest is the way it brings members of our community together to celebrate our stories, so we felt a drive-in was the best, and safest, way of kicking off 11 amazing days of local and international queer content with our NYC audiences.

Article by: Marc Malkin for Variety.