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Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich Are Oddball CIA Agents in ‘Wild Horse Nine’ Trailer

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as loose-lipped CIA agents on a mission to test their trust and loyalty on Easter Island quickly find trouble in paradise in the trailer for Wild Horse Nine, the latest film from director Martin McDonagh.

The pair’s visit off the coast of Chile comes ahead of a planned 1973 military coup d’etat in that country, a change of power that could potentially be in jeopardy if Malkovich as wisecracking agent Chris blows their cover. That prompts Lee, played by Rockwell, at one point in the trailer to ask: “Okay, listen up. Can we just keep a low profile while we’re here?”

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Doesn’t happen, naturally, as dark pasts and a looming coup lead to blowback from their CIA bureau chief, played by Steve Buscemi, gunfire and a team of stampeding horses on a highway.

McDonagh’s skill at crisp dialogue and character in his movies is evident in the opening scene for the teaser trailer where Chris boasts of his body count as an assassin worldwide, which has Lee warning against talk of killing people on an airplane.

Wild Horse Nine also stars Parker Posey, Tom Waits and Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas as rebellious students. The movie is McDonagh’s first since Banshees of Inisherin — another dark comedy that starred Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson — and he wrote the Wild Horse Nine script and helmed the feature for Searchlight.

Wild Horse Nine is produced by Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, McDonagh and Anita Overland.

March 19, 2026
‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ Censored in India Amid Fears Theatrical Release ‘Would Break Up the India-Israel Relationship’ (EXCLUSIVE)

The Indian theatrical release of Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated feature “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which was planned for this month, is being blocked by the country’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for political reasons, according to the film’s local distributor.

“The Voice of Hind Rajab” — which tells the story of a real 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead — is being censored by the CBFC because “the film is very sensitive,” distributor Manoj Nandwana, who heads Mumbai-based Jai Viratra Entertainment, tells Variety.

Nadawana said he screened “The Voice of Hind Rajab” for the CBFC in February, when he submitted the film for censorship approval, and was planning a March 6 Indian release “because we thought it was a good date ahead of the March 16 Oscars.” Instead, the film has not been cleared for release and he was told by a CBFC member that “if it gets released it would break up the India-Israel relationship,” Nadawana said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Israel in late February, where he received a warm welcome, marking the first visit by an Indian premier in the 25 years since the two countries established full diplomatic relations. The visit, which aimed to strengthen economic and technological ties between the two countries, underscored a shift in Israel-India relations under Modi, whose embrace of Israel marks a departure from India’s foreign policy that has historically supported the Palestinians.

“I told them: the India-Israel relationship is so strong that it’s idiotic to think this movie will break it,” Nadawana added, further noting that “The Voice of Hind Rajab” has been released “in the U.S., U.K., Italy, France and many other countries that have a relationship with Israel.”

“But they want to censor it anyway,” the distributor said.

The CBFC did not respond to a request for comment from Variety.

In September, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” elicited more than 20 minutes of thunderous applause when it world premiered at the Venice Film Festival and then went on to win the fest’s Silver Lion. The film has been released in the U.S. by Willa, the production partner’s distribution arm, after other U.S. distributors passed.

This is not the first recent instance of India’s CBFC blocking a release when they deem a film to be politically sensitive. Last year, they halted the release of Indian director Sandya Suri’s Oscar-shortlisted “Santosh” despite the fact that the police procedural — which is set in a fictitious northern Indian state and has Indian caste and religion politics deeply baked into it — had previously secured script approval to shoot in India and tapped into Indian government production incentives.

March 19, 2026
‘What Happens at Night’ First Look: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawerence Reunite in Martin Scorsese’s Marriage Horror Story

Anyone wondering why Leonardo DiCaprio was sporting a mustache at the 2026 Oscars has their answer courtesy of the first look at Martin Scorsese‘s “What Happens at Night,” a haunted marriage drama that is likely to have the Oscar-winning filmmaker back in “Shutter Island” psychological horror mode. DiCaprio headlines the film in a reunion with his “Don’t Look Up” co-star Jennifer Lawrence.

DiCaprio and Scorsese jointly shared a first-look photo from “What Happens at Night” on social media. The image shows DiCaprio and Lawrence’s married couple walking hand in hand amid a chilling wintery landscape. Production on the film is now underway. The supporting cast includes Mads Mikkelsen, Patricia Clarkson and Jared Harris.

“What Happens at Night” is adapted from the novel of the same name by Peter Cameron. The story centers on a married American couple who travel to a European small town to adopt a baby. Per a book synopsis: “Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves and life itself.”

While DiCaprio has a storied career being directed by Scorsese in movies such as “The Aviator,” “Gangs of New York,” “The World of Wall Street,” “Shutter Island” and more, this new movie will mark the first time Jennifer Lawrence is directed by the “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas” icon. During a conversation for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors,” Lawrence asked DiCaprio what she should know about Scorsese as a director.

“It’s a great thing, and he’s going to give you a lot of film references,” DiCaprio told her. “They usually come in the form of a DVD. And if you don’t have a DVD player, get one… he’ll have screenings sometimes for just one sequence in a movie. If there’s something that he wants you to capture from an old film or the pacing of something, you might have a screening of a whole film just for a specific scene that he wants to see. We might see some Japanese ghost films for reference, just to get the tone of it. You’re going to have an amazing time.”

Apple is backing “What Happens at Night,” just as it did Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” No release date has been set yet.

March 19, 2026
Vampire Survivors spinoff Vampire Crawlers is coming to PC and consoles on April 21

Poncle could be about to ruin the planet’s productivity all over again now that Vampire Crawlers has a release date for PC and consoles. The dungeon-crawling roguelike deckbuilder — which is a Vampire Survivors spinoff — is coming to Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch on April 21. It’ll cost $10. Alternatively, you’ll be able to check it out via Xbox Game Pass on day one.

Vampire Crawlers is on the way to iOS and Android as well. However, you’ll have to wait until sometime later this year to play it on mobile devices.

Vampire Crawlers is set in the same world as Vampire Survivors and it features many of the same playable characters and enemies. The action takes place from a first-person perspective this time around. Instead of firing weapons automatically, you play cards to use your attacks or boost your stats. Each card has a mana cost, so there’s more of a strategic element to combat. Cards can be modified and weapons can be evolved.

Poncle made Vampire Crawlers with the help of Nosebleed Interactive. It’s the first of several Vampire Survivors spinoffs that Poncle has planned. There’s also a licensed Warhammer take on the original title coming soon.

While I didn’t get deep enough into it to experiment with some truly wild combos, I enjoyed what I played of the Vampire Crawlers demo. If you need me, I’ll be busy cancelling all of my other plans for late April.

March 19, 2026
‘Neighbors’ Lands Season 2 Renewal at HBO

HBO is going back into the realm of property-line disputes and squabbles over pets with a second season of Neighbors.

The renewal comes a day before the six-episode first season’s finale debuts on Friday, and after a solid performance through its first five episodes. HBO says Neighbors has averaged 2.9 million cross-platform viewers per episode since its Feb. 13 premiere, a high number for an unscripted show there.

Creators, directors and executive producers Dylan Redford and Harrison Fishman will continue in those roles on season two of the show, which is produced by A24.

“Everyone has a neighbor story, and Dylan and Harrison have a knack for finding ones that make you laugh, cringe, and make it impossible to look away,” said Nina Rosenstein, executive vp programming, late night and specials at HBO. “At a time when even the smallest disagreements can spiral out of control, Neighbors feels both hilariously absurd and surprisingly relatable. What makes the show special isn’t just the stories and people they find, but the empathy and humanity they bring to each episode. Season two can’t come soon enough.”

Fishman and Redford told The Hollywood Reporter that they realized while making the show that the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic was a major part of the story they’re telling. “More and more we started to realize, ‘Wow, COVID really inflamed this thing,’” Fishman said. “It inflamed so much in our country, but specifically just the way that people interact and with people’s space. All the things that you learn about the country and people just through this one window — that endpoint of a neighbor dispute seems so innocuous, but it really opened the doors to learning about so many other things in our country.”

Fishman and Redford executive produce Neighbors with A24 and Josh Safdie, Eli Bush, Ronald Bronstein, and JP Lopez Ali for Central. Rachel Walden of Gummy Films produces.

March 19, 2026
‘Stranger Things: The Complete Series’ to Release on Blu-Ray and 4K UHD in July

“Stranger Things” fans will soon be able to return to Hawkins through a whole new medium. Arrow Films and Netflix have teamed up to release “Stranger Things: The Complete Series” for Blu-Ray and 4K UHD, available for pre-order now.

Releasing on July 27 in the UK and July 28 in the U.S. and Canada, the box-set will include all episodes of the Netflix hit’s five seasons. The compilation will be available at all major in-store and online retailers.

Special and deluxe editions of “Stranger Things: The Complete Series” will also be available for purchase, featuring exclusive bonus content such as bloopers, interviews with the cast and crew and a look behind-the-scenes. The deluxe edition will also feature newly commissioned artwork, alongside a 148-page artbook, exclusive art cards, a Hellfire Club patch and dice, double-sided posters for each season and more “Stranger Things” specific tokens.

Created by the Duffer Brothers, “Stranger Things” follows a young boy’s disappearance and his friends’ determination to uncover what happened to him, encountering secret experiments, supernatural forces and a girl with mysterious telekinesis powers.

The show’s fifth and final season premiered in November 2025, with an average of 32.86 million viewers, becoming Netflix’s sixth-most popular English-language series of all time.

Dean Lawson, Arrow Films’ Director of Sales and Marketing, said: “Working with the Netflix team and the Duffer Brothers to bring the definitive physical media release of ‘Stranger Things’ to fans has been a phenomenal project for Arrow to be a part of. The show is colossal in influence and scale, is beloved globally, has transcended generations, and has been a huge part of the cultural conversation for nearly 10 years now. We at Arrow are thrilled to play a part in bringing this landmark show to physical media and believe we’ve created a box set that fans will be delighted to own, packed with bonus features, curios, and memorabilia from the world of ‘Stranger Things.’”

Fans can pre-order “Stranger Things: The Complete Series” on the Arrow Video website.

Special and Deluxe Edition prices are as follows:

Deluxe UHD Edition: $269.99 / £219.99

Deluxe Blu-ray™ Edition: $249.99 / £199.99

Special UHD Edition: $219.99 /£159.99

Special Blu-ray™ Edition: $199.99 / £149.99

March 19, 2026
A new iPhone hacking tool puts some iOS 18 users at risk

Google and cybersecurity companies Lookout and iVerify have detailed a new hacking technique that potentially puts a significant portion of iPhone users in danger, just by visiting the wrong web page. The hack is called “DarkSword” and since it specifically targets several different versions of iOS 18, it could affect “close to a quarter of iPhones,” Wired writes.

DarkSword is a “fileless” hack that leverages a collection of exploits to access sensitive data when an iPhone visits an infected website. Rather than install spyware that hangs around on a user’s phone after messages and other private information are stolen, fileless hacks like DarkSword take control of “the legitimate processes in an iPhone’s operating system to steal data,” according to Wired. Even more troubling, DarkSword deletes any evidence it was running on an iPhone after it finishes stealing your information.

The hack starts as soon as an iOS device encounters an “malicious iframe embedded in a web page,” after which it works its way through your iPhone, gathering sensitive information like passwords before deleting itself. DarkSword can abscond with things like messages and iCloud content, but it’s also specifically designed to access crypto currency wallets, Lookout says, which could indicate who was using DarkSword before it became widely available.

DarkSword has reportedly been used in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and Russia, and its origins could be tied to a different hacking toolkit called Coruna that TechCrunch reports may have been created for the US government by a company called Trenchant. Regardless of where DarkSword came from, the tool didn’t become widely available until its Russian users left DarkSword’s source code on a website for anyone to access, “complete with explanatory comments in English that describe each component and include the ‘DarkSword’ name for the tool,” Wired writes.

Apple patched the exploits that DarkSword and Coruna used in recent updates to iOS 26, the yearly software release from 2025 that followed iOS 18. DarkSword targets iOS 18 releases between iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.6.2, and according to Apple’s latest iOS usage stats for developers, around 24 percent of iOS devices are still on some version of iOS 18.

However, Apple simultaneously released iOS 26 and iOS 18.7 on September 15, 2025. So even if people didn’t want to upgrade to iOS 28, a secure patch has been available for six months. Despite the fact that Apple’s stats indicate that about 24 percent of iPhone users are still on iOS 18, the actual number of potentially vulnerable phones is much lower. Still, it’s a good reminder to stay on top of software updates if only for the security features if nothing else.

Update, March 19, 2026, 10:10AM ET: This story has been updated to note that while this vulnerability targets iOS 18, Apple released iOS 18 updates over the last six months that are secure against this attack.

March 19, 2026
BREAKING: Investigation Launched Into Fed Chair Nominee Kevin Warsh Over Epstein Files

March 19, 2026
Alexa+ launches in the UK

Amazon’s next-generation smart assistant has entered its Early Access program in the UK, marking Alexa+’s European debut following rollouts in the US, Canada and Mexico. Starting March 19, invitations to start using the smarter, more conversational Alexa will be sent out to “hundreds of thousands” of willing participants, Amazon said in a press release, adding that Alexa is the most popular voice assistant in the UK.

As well as its more natural communication, agentic capabilities, contextual awareness and ability to remember previous conversations across devices, Amazon that users across the pond are getting an “authentically British” AI-powered assistant. It understands slang terms like “cuppa” and might even accuse you of taking the mick in the middle of a conversation. Can we rule out some cringe-inducing cockney impersonations? Absolutely not. It also distinguishes between, for example, how people in the UK say the date — “the 1st of April” — versus how it’s said in the US.

Amazon said that engineers, linguists and speech scientists have worked together at the company’s Cambridge-based Tech Hub to ensure the voice assistant understands British users, with naturally flowing conversations being a crucial part of the Alexa+ experience.

On the agentic side of things, the current lineup of UK partners will include OpenTable and, soon, JustEat, alongside existing partnerships with services like Spotify, Philips and Apple Music. Amazon also sources news from the likes of The Guardian and Future Publishing.

UK-based customers who purchase a new supported Echo device will automatically qualify for Early Access, and if you already own one you can register here to receive an invite. You can also try Alexa+ on select Fire TV devices and in a web browser.

During the Early Access period, which ran for nearly a year in the US before its nationwide rollout last month, Alexa+ will be free, and will remain free for Prime members. On its own it will cost £20 per month. As a reminder, Prime costs £9 per month in the UK (£95 annually) so it makes no sense whatsoever to pay more for Alexa+ exclusively when it’s included in the main membership anyway.

March 19, 2026
Major League Baseball signs prediction markets pacts with CFTC, Polymarket

The U.S. federal regulator of prediction markets has secured a formal information-sharing arrangement with Major League Baseball in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s first such deal with a professional sports governing body, according to a Thursday statement.

The “landmark” collaboration will allow the U.S. derivatives regulator to swap information with the organization that oversees professional baseball, even as the CFTC is still immersed in a legal debate with several U.S. state gaming regulators on who should have jurisdiction over bets on sporting events. The new memorandum of understanding will allow the federal agency to get a better handle on shielding the markets and their users from “fraud, manipulation, and other abuses,” according to a statement from CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.

“The MOU is a collaborative step towards promoting the integrity and resilience of the prediction markets relating to professional baseball,” he said.

“Protecting the integrity of the game on the field is our top priority,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a Thursday statement. “By engaging in this community, we are able to work together to create clear boundaries with the goal of mitigating risk while providing fan engagement opportunities.

At the same time, popular platform Polymarket announced that MLB had named it the league’s official “exclusive prediction market exchange partner.”

The prediction markets — led by such companies as Polymarket and Kalshi — have erupted into sports, politics and other current events, leaving state and federal regulators trying to address their growing popularity. Though the CFTC had previously resisted the sector’s arrival and challenged some of its activity on legal grounds, the agency’s new management set by President Donald Trump embraced the technology.

To that end, Selig has been waging a rhetorical battle with state regulators, claiming that his agency’s authority supersedes the states’ reach on sports gambling.

Manfred told ESPN he saw the federal regulator having jurisdiction as marking the chief distinction that sets prediction-markets activity apart from state-based sports gambling regulations.

“The fact that you have a federal regulatory scheme makes our life a lot easier as opposed to … take for example, sports betting, where you’re going state by state,” he told the news outlet.

March 19, 2026