The streamer announced April 27 that writer-director Iñárritu’s upcoming film will be released globally in theaters and on Netflix by the end of the year — making this a prime awards season contender. “Bardo” is currently in post-production and is expected to wrap by the fall. Written by Iñárritu and Nicolás Giacobone (who previously collaborated on the Oscar-winning script for “Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”), “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is a nostalgic comedy set against an epic personal journey....

NBC and Peacock registered a projected TAD of “21-plus” million viewers across NBC TV, Peacock, and NFL Digital platforms, based on preliminary data shared by NBC Sports (tweet is below). Last year’s game — a thriller that saw Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the so-called America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, 31-20 — scored 26 million viewers. That was the best delivery for an NFL Kickoff Game since 2015 (27....

The film’s low profile was all but inevitable: It debuted at the 2020 Berlinale, the film festival that got in just under the wire before COVID created a global lockdown. “It was a beautiful opening night,” said Hoss. “I didn’t know what would happen to the film. We waited. We brought it out [in October] in Berlin under hygienic regulations. We had a little cinema tour through places in Germany....

A 2011 docudrama about a string of murders that plagued Australia during the ’90s, “Snowtown” had a body count of 12. I knew that “Nitram” — the unflinching portrait of a severely troubled young man during the weeks before he commits the worst mass shooting in his country’s history — would almost triple that number. And though it’s no secret that Kurzel’s film cuts away a few milliseconds before the Port Arthur massacre begins, it made me queasy to think what someone with his talent for capturing the corpse flower stench that hovers around the roots of male violence would do with this story....

“They wouldn’t let me in,” he joked on a recent Zoom call. “I didn’t know anything about theater acting, any of that, until I was introduced in the fall of 1975. I did a musical and found that I couldn’t sing. But I enjoyed being on the stage. The artistic director saw something in me.” After his fall semester musical debut, the spring semester saw Washington tackle Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones....

A raft of stars are back in the Oscar race. Producer-star Frances McDormand plays a low-income woman in a van in Chloé Zhao’s road movie “Nomadland,” which took home the Golden Lion at Venice as well as the Toronto People’s Choice award. McDormand nabbed Globe, Spirit, SAG, and Critics Choice nods, and won the BAFTA. McDormand’s only problem: she’s won two Oscars. And Viola Davis has won one (“Fences”). She landed Globe and CCA bids for her larger-than-life title role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix), George C....

On that closing line of Russell Crowe’s 2001 Best Actor acceptance speech for “Gladiator,” I fell in love with the Oscars. I was also too sick to leave the house; at 14 years old, I was recovering from double pneumonia. It was the latest in a string of lung-related health issues that eventually led to a lupus diagnosis. When I heard these words from an actor I barely knew, it made me feel like I could be a part of Hollywood....

Pressure has been on the Academy, after the ratings debacle of the pandemic Oscars last year, to lure audiences back with attractive hosts (the trio of Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall) and an entertaining, fast-paced, three-hour show. The time it takes to watch a line of craftspeople respected inside the industry but unknown to the public walk up to the stage to collect their Oscars has been an issue for anxious Oscar producers for years....

In it, Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) discuss the impending arrival of Tom Christie, with whom Jamie was imprisoned at Ardsmuir. The two weren’t exactly friends during their time together, but, as Jamie explains, when he extended an invitation to his fellow inmates to stay with him at Fraser’s Ridge, he couldn’t very well make a single exception. Claire is, of course, understanding — one of many reasons Jamie calls her his “angel....

Such is the haunting question at the center of Disney+’s “Pinocchio,” premiering September 8. Co-written and directed by Academy Award winner Robert Zemeckis, the live-action/animated hybrid retelling of the beloved classic tale stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as the titular wooden doll who dreams of becoming a real boy. Yet as “Honest” John (Keegan-Michael Key) lures Pinocchio, a talking puppet, into performing as the “eighth wonder of the world,” it’s up to Geppetto, the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo), and Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to guide the boy built with “no conscience....

Ryan Murphy’s “Ratched” tells the origin story of Nurse Ratched, a character made famous by Louise Fletcher’s Oscar-winning portrayal in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but the debut season does not end where “Cuckoo’s Nest” begins. Far from it. Sarah Paulson, the star of Murphy’s Netflix series, tells The Wrap “the goal” for the show is to continue beyond Season 2 so it can end up in the 1970s era where “Cuckoo’s Nest” is set....

THR reports the deal gives Johnson full creative control of the “Knives Out” franchise, adding, “He doesn’t have to take notes from the streamer. The only contingencies were that Craig must star in the sequels and that each must have at least the budget of the 2019 movie, which was in the $40 million range. Sources say that Johnson, Bergman and Craig stand to walk away with upwards of $100 million each....

In a new interview with Slash Film to promote the VOD release of “The Northman,” Eggers waxed poetic about the role of artists in the modern entertainment industry, and lamented that his own ego often gets in the way of his creative process. “This sounds super uber-precious, but I think it’s hard to do this kind of creative work in a modern secular society because it becomes all about your ego and yourself,” Eggers said....

“I ended up turning a three-page battle scene into a 9-minute battle scene because I was just that excited to be bringing Boba back,” Rodriguez said in the Disney+ documentary about the making of “The Mandalorian” Season 2 (now streaming). “I told [Favreau], ‘I’ve been waiting to see this version of Boba Fett since I was a kid. Boba has to be different, he can’t just seem like another Mando....

The prestigious Water Tower Feature Film Cash Grant was awarded to “The 40-Year-Old Version” writer-director-producer-star Radha Blank, for her upcoming untitled dark dramedy. Environmental director Eleanor Mortimer also won a Water Tower grant for an untitled deep sea taxonomy documentary, which “follows biologists through the intricate process of discovering deep-sea species as they piece together the unknown ecosystems of the largest biome on the planet.” The $15,000 grants are made possible by generous support from the Laurence W....

“Well, firstly, I just want to say I understand…why people were concerned, and are concerned. I would be, too, if I heard some of those claims,” Dawson said. “But I mean, as we’re seeing right now in these past months, and just recently actually, the truth is coming out. Every single claim of discrimination has been dismissed by the person who made them, and as you’ve said, the fact that this is coming from someone I’ve known since I was a teenager, the better part of my life, and who my family was trying to help as we have many times in the past, it really just makes me sad....

Variety reported that the six-part docuseries will feature three storylines, one of which will center on Jackson using a DNA test to identify his ancestral tribe and trace his journey from the U.S. to Gabon for his induction into the Benga tribe. The other two storylines will center on the quest for a sunken slave ship and a historical investigation led by investigative journalists Simcha Jacobovici and Afua Hirsch. The series will premiere in Canada on CBC on October 18....

When you see animator Drew Christie’s work side-by-side, you start to see how they come from the same artist. One of the strengths of his contributions to various documentaries — from the sepia-toned inventions of Dr. John Brinkley in Penny Lane’s “Nuts!” to the eerie and ominous Mendocino forests in Hulu’s new series “Sasquatch” — is that each also ends up a key complement to the story being told around it....

On Sunday, the studio debuted the first trailer for “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” during its San Diego Comic-Con program inside the prestigious Hall H exhibition room. While DC Comics fans got a teaser of the film at FanDome last year, this year viewers actually got to see the film’s two antagonists, Hespera and Calypso in action. The sinister godly duo are respectively played by icon Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, with the former having a showdown with Shazam and pissed that all these new kids have the power of the gods and the latter summoning a dragon....

Sono is known for provocative indie films like 2008’s “Love Exposure,” which screened at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival and won two awards. The almost four-hour film follows the erotic adventures of a peeping tom photographer. An unnamed actress told entertainment magazine Shukan Josei PRIME that Sono told her that women have had sex with him for years to gain parts in his films, and that he is to thank for their success in the industry....