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Five new films, including “Spiral” (Lionsgate) from the lucrative “Saw” franchise, opened wide (at least 600 theaters) stateside. That is by far the biggest studio commitment to any week in a long time, with three at one time usually the most, and four rare.

Mid-May is normally prime for movie releases. This year, it’s Memorial Day when more prime titles will open. Optimism remains for then, but for now it’s treading water time. The expected much bigger “A Quiet Place Part II” (Paramount) along with “Cruella” (Disney) on May 28 will be a much better test of how close theaters are to providing grosses commensurate with their potential.

But a Top 10 of $24 million, with an overall take of perhaps $26 million, remains anemic considering the increased number of fresh films, combined with more theaters plus a general greater sense of safety in theaters. That sense is led above all by how “Spiral” did.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is definitely having a big moment, and that may have started up thanks to her Oscar-nominated turn (Best Supporting Actress) in 2015’s “The Hateful Eight.” Now, she’ll be re-teaming with that film’s director to narrate the audiobook for his upcoming novelization of his 2019 film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The novel (and audiobook) hit shelves from Harper Collins on June 29. The 224-page book is arriving as a mass market paperback this summer, with a deluxe hardcover edition becoming available this fall. The audiobook, which is 11 hours long, is already available to pre-order.

“Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction — at once hilarious, delicious, and brutal – is the always surprising, sometimes shocking new novel based on his Academy Award-winning film,” reads the book’s synopsis. “Rick Dalton: Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours.

While Quentin Tarantino is still yet to announce his plans for his 10th and possibly final feature film, the filmmaker does have plans. Currently, he’s set to release a novelization of “Once Upon A Time In…Hollywood” this summer, expanding upon the Oscar-winning film. Quentin has talked up about the idea of retiring from film once he’s made his 10th pic to focus on writing books and working on television.

Continue reading Jennifer Jason Leigh To Narrate Audiobook Version Of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Novelization at The Playlist.

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May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and to celebrate we’re honoring the incredible work of Aapi filmmakers. The recent Oscar dominance from Aapi filmmakers is long overdue, as auteurs like Bong Joon-ho and Chloe Zhao are among those finally being recognized for exquisite work.

Many of the best recent films from Aapi directors are streaming on platforms such as Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. In fact, the last two Best Picture winners, “Parasite” and “Nomadland,” are both available on Hulu. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up for as little as $5.99 a month. Disney+ is $7.99 a month, or you can try a bundle deal with Hulu and ESPN+ for $13.99 a month.

Ten years ago “Terraria,” a simple-looking video game about digging, building, and fighting monsters, released on PC. At a glance, “Terraria,” which plops new players into a whimsical forest with a few basic tools and little in the way of direction or an overarching goal, doesn’t seem much different from the myriad other action platformers on the market. But as its legion fanbase knows, there’s significantly more to “Terraria” than meets the eye.

For the uninitiated (though at this point you’d be hard-pressed to find a video game consumer who isn’t familiar with “Terraria”), the game plays like an old school Metroidvania mixed with the sandbox design and limitless building possibilities of “Minecraft.” There’s a stunning variety of weapons, armors, building blocks and everything in between — entire systems for fishing, golfing, and home decoration exist, among other features — to loot and craft in the world,

Actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key joined “Saturday Night Live” this weekend to host the episode, and was joined by musical guest Olivia Rodrigo. One of the night’s highlight was a spoof of the beloved ESPN series “The Last Dance” about Michael Jordan and his tenure with the Chicago Bulls. (Read IndieWire’s review of the series here.) The sketch presents previously “unseen footage” from the documentary, and shows an intensely competitive side to Michael Jordan, who is played by Keegan-Michael Key. Watch below.

NBA stars Dennis Rodman and Charles Barkley also showed up, as played by Chris Redd and Kenan Thompson respectively. Heidi Gardner plays Jordan’s security guard John Michael Wozniak. The sketch centers around a coin toss that goes awry.

The lineup of hosts for this season of “Saturday Night Live” has been impressive so far, with other hosts including (and most controversially) Elon Musk, plus Academy

Nothing can stop filmmaker Ridley Scott from getting down to the business of making movies — not reshooting major chunks of a nearly-done film to cut out an alleged sex predator, not pandemics that force major productions to totally rethink how they are done, and certainly not pissed-off iconic families that don’t like that some of their buzziest tragedies are getting the big screen treatment — and that’s to say nothing of his ability to make a meal out of a hair and makeup budget.

Scott’s latest feature speaks to his uniquely go-for-broke ethos, a glitzy, glittery, and decidedly murder-centric drama based on the real-life story of Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizio Gucci. Scott has been trying to make a film about the pair’s twisted love affair since the early aughts, and after a series of setbacks, switch-ups, and snags, “House of Gucci” is primed for release later this year.

With two RIAA-certified platinum albums, it’s safe to say that Camila Cabello is one of this generation’s pop stars on the rise. Now, Cabello looks to extend her reach to the big screen, with her feature film debut in “Cinderella,” hitting Amazon Prime this September.

Read More: Camila Cabello’s ‘Cinderella’ Is Skipping Theaters & Going Straight To Amazon Prime Video

In this modern musical update to the traditional fairy tale, Cabelo stars as the eponymous young woman whose dreams of love and fortune miraculously come true.

Continue reading ‘Cinderella’ Trailer: Camila Cabello Makes Her Feature Film Debut In Updated Fairy Tale at The Playlist.

After recently downplaying the “Fantastic Four” rumor circulating online as “fan-casting,” actress Emily Blunt is also pouring a little cold water on the “Edge of Tomorrow” sequel that has been in development for ages. Doug Liman is attached to direct alongside co-star Tom Cruise, who is expected to return once Warner Bros. moves forward with it. The problem is, no one seems to be moving forward with it, and it’s been seven years since “Edge Of Tomorrow” was released.

Continue reading ‘Edge Of Tomorrow 2’: Emily Blunt Calls The Script “Amazing,” But Suggests The Sequel Is Too Expensive To Make at The Playlist.

Another day, another “Knives Out 2” casting announcement. With each one, it’s starting to feel like Rian Johnson and Netflix are trolling us with an embarrassment of talent: Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Edward Norton, and also Dave Bautista, who’s making headlines for his turn in Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead.” That film is now in theaters, and will be hitting Netflix next week. In the meantime, Bautista recently spoke to Slash Film about the “terrifying” experience of being cast in Rian Johnson’s slick sequel to his beloved 2019 whodunit.

“It feels terrifying. I’m nervous about it. I’m really nervous,” Bautista said about being cast in the movie, which is expected to begin filming in Greece later this year. “It’s one of those things where now the pressure’s on, because people are expecting things from you. I want to deliver. I take pride in that.

Lakeith Stanfield came under fire earlier this month for participating in a Clubhouse conversation that facilitated anti-Semitic remarks in a discussion about the teachings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. While he has since apologized, the “Judas and the Black Messiah” Oscar nominee dug deeper into what happened in a sit-down with The Daily Beast published on Saturday.

“I definitely don’t align myself with Louis Farrakhan, I don’t stand by him,” he said. “Any kind of hate speech, I vehemently reject. That’s not up for debate, hate is not up for debate.”

Comments made by participants in the Clubhouse room included praise of Hitler, conspiracy theories about Jewish people running the slave trade, and comparisons of Jewish people to termites.

Stanfield admitted to playing an active role in the room, as he eventually wound up moderating the discussion, but said his knowledge of Farrakhan (whose legacy

When the first volume of Netflix’s “Love, Death + Robots” dropped, different accounts were reportedly treated to divergent episode orders, possibly identifying any specific short(s) affecting the audiences’ intake – allowing Netflix to gauge the uniquely curated program’s bingeability model. Also, likely, gathering data on whether 18 shorts for a single season would be seen as an excessive/necessary endeavor (based on who watched how many vs. who dropped off after only viewing a handful).

Continue reading ‘Love, Death + Robots’ Season 2 Eschews Expressive Experimentation In Favor Of More Focused Story Curation [Review] at The Playlist.

One of the great American films of the early 2000s hits Blu-ray for the first time with Imprint’s exceptional special edition of Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies (2002), a truly unique thriller that has only improved with age. Loosely based on true events, The Mothman Prophecies follows a Washington Post reporter (Richard Gere) who finds himself at the center of a series of inexplicable supernatural events following his wife’s tragic death. Although Pellington explicitly set out to avoid making a conventional horror film – there are very few glimpses of the title creature and no gratuitous shocks – the movie […]

The post The Mothman Prophecies, Scarface, They Won’t Believe Me: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

One of the great American films of the early 2000s hits Blu-ray for the first time with Imprint’s exceptional special edition of Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies (2002), a truly unique thriller that has only improved with age. Loosely based on true events, The Mothman Prophecies follows a Washington Post reporter (Richard Gere) who finds himself at the center of a series of inexplicable supernatural events following his wife’s tragic death. Although Pellington explicitly set out to avoid making a conventional horror film – there are very few glimpses of the title creature and no gratuitous shocks – the movie […]

The post The Mothman Prophecies, Scarface, They Won’t Believe Me: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“The Bubble,” “Walk on Water,” and “Yossi and Jagger” director Eytan Fox returns to the terrain of gay introspective dramas with the new film “Sublet,” which opens on June 11 in theaters from Greenwich Entertainment. It will also be available on demand on July 9. The film offers a sort of Israeli spin on “Weekend,” with a writer arriving in Tel Aviv to reflect on life and love with a younger man. John Benjamin Hickey and Niv Nissim star. Watch the trailer below.

Michael (Hickey), a travel columnist for The New York Times , goes to Tel Aviv to write an article after suffering a tragedy. He is still grieving and the loss has caused problems between him and his husband. He just wants to do his research and go home. But when he sublets an apartment from Tomer (Nissim), a young film student, he finds himself drawn into the life of the city.

Robert De Niro may have suffered a leg injury during the making of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but for one, it was thankfully not on set, and for another, the Academy Award winner took it like a good sport.

During a recent sit-down with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn alongside Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal ahead of the festival, De Niro detailed what went down that caused the injury earlier this week.

“I tore my quad somehow,” he said. “It’s just a simple stepping over something and I just went down. The pain was excruciating and now I have to get it fixed. But it happens, especially when you get older, you have to be prepared for unexpected things. But it’s manageable.”

De Niro’s injury happened in Oklahoma, leading him to fly back to New York City on May 13, where he sought medical attention.

Early word is in for “I, Tonya” director Craig Gillespie’s flamboyant spin on the origin story of iconic Disney villain Cruella de Vil, and the film looks to be a winner. Emma Stone is being praised for her wicked twist on the “101 Dalmatians” villainess. Emma Thompson is also being singled out for her turn as Baroness von Hellman, the head of a swank fashion house and also a renowned haute fashion legend. Check out first reactions below.

Disney’s synopsis for “Cruella” reads: “In 1970s London, young fashion designer Estella de Vil becomes obsessed with dogs’ skins, especially Dalmatians, until she eventually becomes a ruthless and terrifying legend known as Cruella.”

Like many indie filmmakers, Gillespie turned his indie film success into a Disney tentpole directing gig. The filmmaker last worked with Disney on two projects: “The Finest Hours” and “Million Dollar Arm,” although neither title found great box office success.

“The Woman in the Window” is many things. But this star-studded, twisty Hitchcockian thriller was never intended to debut on May 14 on Netflix with a 40 Metascore. That was hardly the original plan for this handsome, well-appointed New York whodunit, cast with Oscar perennials like Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, and Julianne Moore, which was targeted for primetime October 4, 2019 release.

In many ways, “The Woman in the Window” is a revealing glimpse of studio filmmaking for smart adults that is vanishing into the rearview. Here’s what we know about what was then — and what is now.

Then: Fox 2000 picked up book rights.

Elizabeth Gabler, who ran the prestige label Fox 2000 from 2000-2019, is known for chasing top commercial literary properties such as Oscar-winning global hits “The Devil Wears Prada” ($326 million) and “The Life of Pi” ($609 million). She closed a deal with publisher William Morrow in September 2016 for screen rights to “The Woman in the Window,

We’ve all heard someone say it before: the book was better. For the most part, it’s true. The best literary adaptations reimagine their source material to create a new cinematic experience; at worst, they’re so doggedly faithful to the text that the end result turns out to be a slog. Neither is especially the case for Joe Wright’s new Netflix thriller, “The Woman in the Window,” a film that has loop-de-looped through so many ups and downs, from uneasy test screenings and rewrites and re-shoots to a big-money handoff from now-defunct Fox 2000 to the cushy streamer, it never stood a chance of coming out the other end as anything less than mangled.

The movie stars Amy Adams as an agoraphobic, wine-slurping child therapist who, too paralyzed by emotional trauma to step outside her Harlem brownstone, spies what might be a murder across the street involving the new couple in the neighborhood,

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“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” is back! Season 2 of the fan favorite series premiered on Disney+ on Friday, just in time for the weekend. The new season finds East High’s Wildcats preparing to face off against their North High rivals in a prestigious theater competition. Naturally, the Wildcats want to blow the competition out the water with their rendition of “Beauty and the Beast” but who will come out on top? You’ll have to watch to find out.

Loyalties will be tested and ballads will be belted out this season, including two new solos from Nina (Olivia Rodrigo) and Ricky (Joshua Bassett). Rounding out the cast are Matt Cornett,