Category: Entertainment

After drawing social media backlash for suggesting filmmakers should “stay out of politics,” German director Wim Wenders and his fellow jurors at the 76th Berlin Film Festival delivered a pointed rebuttal of sorts, awarding the festival’s top prizes to a number of overtly political films.

Top prize, the Golden Bear for best film, went to Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters, a drama following Derya (Özgü Namal) and Aziz (Tansu Biçer), two Turkish theater artists who lose their jobs due to political persecution from Turkey’s authoritarian government. Though set in Ankara and Istanbul, Yellow Letters is shot entirely in Germany, with Çatak making no effort to disguise the fact, hinting that what has happened in Ankara can also happen in Berlin.

Awarding the Golden Bear, Wenders called Yellow Letters, a drama of “the political language of totalitarianism as opposed to the empathetic language of cinema.”

Çatak is the first German director to win the Golden Bear in Berlin since Fatih Akin. Akin, like Çatak a German-born director of Turkish immigrant parents, took the top prize for Head-On in 2004.

The Silver Bear for best performance went to German star Sandra Hüller for her gender-bending turn in Rose, from Austrian director Markus Schleinzer, in which she plays a woman trying to pass as a man in 17th century rural Germany. The black-and-white feature was inspired by hundreds of comparable documented cases throughout history. It’s another stand-out role for Hüller, who was Oscar-nominated for her turn in Anatomy of a Fall, and is about to make the leap to Hollywood, starring alongside Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s hotly anticipated dramedy Digger, and together with Ryan Gosling in the sci-fi feature Project Hail Mary from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Hüller did a variation of the Adrien Brody/Halle Berry Oscar kiss, giving jury member Ewa Puszczyńska, her producer on Zone of Interest, a smooch on the lips before accepting her trophy.

The best supporting performance prize was awarded to British acting icons Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for playing an aging couple in Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea. The drama, also featuring Juliette Binoche and Florence Hunt, sees Calder-Marshall playing a woman with severe dementia, with Courtenay playing her loving husband and caregiver. Queen at Sea also won the Silver Bear Jury Prize.

The awards ceremony of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival got off to politically-changed start, as several filmmakers used the stage to denounce Israeli military actions in the Middle East and call to “free Palestine.”

Opening the gala event, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle acknowledged that this year’s edition had “felt raw and fractured,” saying grief and anger over global events belonged within the festival community and that debate was part of democracy. But as prizes were handed out, the political temperature rose. Lebanese filmmaker Marie-Rose Osta, accepting the Golden Bear for best short film for Someday a Child, condemned Israeli bombings and what she called a collapse of international law, while Abdallah Alkhatib, winning the Berlinale Documentary Award for Chronicles From a Siege, brought a Palestinian flag onstage and ended his speech with a call to “free Palestine.”

Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin, head of the short film jury, urged artists to “insist on complexity” and resist reducing festival spaces to parliamentary floors, arguing that direct statements and politically engaged bodies of work could coexist. Wenders, largely silent since the initial controversy, addressed what he called an “artificial discrepancy” between critics and organizers before announcing the competition winners, saying most of those in the room applauded the artists speaking out.

British filmmaker Grant Gee took best director honors for Everyone Digs Bill Evans, a fragmented bio-drama on the influential jazz pianist who was shattered by the tragic loss of his bassist in a car accident. Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie (Sentimental Value) plays Bill Evans, with Laurie Metcalf and Bill Pullman as his parents.

The Silver Bear for best screenplay went to Nina Roza from Quebecois director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, the story of a Bulgarian immigrant who returns to his native land to search for an 8-year-old artistic prodigy.

Anna Fitch’s formally experimental documentary Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), in which the director uses puppets, collages and scale models to recount the life of her friend, the Swiss immigrant Yolanda “Yo” Shea, won the Silver Bear for extraordinary artistic achievement.

The Grand Jury Prize went to Emin Alper’s Salvation, a drama that charts the escalation of violence in an isolated village community in the Turkish mountains following the return of an exiled clan.

Alper used his speech to express solidarity with oppressed people everywhere. “The people of Palestine, you are not alone. The people of Iran suffering under tyranny, you are not alone, the people of Kurdistan [you] are not alone,” he said. “And my people, you are not alone.”

But one of the most eloquent speeches on the issue of politics at this year’s Berlinale came from one of the producers of Yellow Letters. Calling out the arguments that had pitted “filmmaker against filmmaker, artist against creatives,” he reminded the crowd that “we are not enemies. We are allies. The real threat among us is not among us. It is the autocrats, the right-wing parties, the nihilists of our time. Let us not fight each other. Let’s fight them.”

Tricia Tuttle ended the night on an optimistic note, saying that “hope and love” were the common themes through all the award speeches tonight. She welcomed the criticism of the festival, saying critics “just want us to be better,” adding that “all are welcome” in the Berlinale community.

Full list of winner below.

GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST FILM
Yellow Letters, dir. Ilker Çatak

SILVER BEAR GRAND JURY PRIZE
Salvation, dir. Emin Alper

SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE
Queen at Sea, dir. Lance Hammer

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Grant Gee, Everyone Digs Bill Evans

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST LEADING PERFORMANCE
Sandra Hüller, Rose

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay, Queen at Sea

SILVER BEAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY
Nina Roza, dir. Geneviève Dulude-de Celles

SILVER BEAR FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION
Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), dir. Anna Fitch

PERSPECTIVES

GFF FIRST FEATURE AWARD
Chronicles From the Siege, dir. Abdallah Alkhatib

Special Mention
Forest High (Forêt Ivre), dir. Manon Coubia

BERLINALE DOCUMENTARY AWARD

If Pigeons Turned to Gold, dir. Pepa Lubojacki

SHORTS

Golden Bear Best Short Film
Someday a Child, dir. Marie-Rose Osta

Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film)
A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere, dir. Fanny Texier

CUPRA Filmmaker Award
Jingkai Qu, dir. Kleptomania

Hilary Duff is sort of responding to Ashley’s Tisdale’s claims from her essay in The Cut, in which she explained that she had to leave her “toxic mom group.”

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published on Friday, Duff was asked about the drama that stemmed from Tisdale’s essay last month and if it led her to pause reentering the pop world. The High School Musical actress’ essay described how she ended relationships in her mom group circle because she felt left out and that it was becoming toxic.

Even though Tisdale didn’t name drop anyone, she and Duff have been photographed together as being a part of the same mom group. And after Tisdale’s essay was published, Duff’s husband and singer-songwriter, Matthew Koma, fired back by posting a photo to his Instagram Story of himself photoshopped onto Tisdale’s body with a fictional headline that reads: “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.”

“This is not new for me,” Duff told the Los Angeles Times regarding the drama. “I’ve had this since I was maybe 15 and starting to get followed around by paparazzi. Everything starts getting documented and everyone knows my life and all the players in it. So the stories that get news pickup — it’s not what happens to a normal person who maybe became an actor as an adult.”

She continued to explain that attention is now escalated by spreading information on TikTok. “It’s hard because you’re like, ‘Wait, whoa, that person kind of got it right,’ and ‘Whoa that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about,’” Duff said. “I saw something that was like, ‘None of the moms at school actually like her and neither do the teachers,’ and I was like, ‘First of all… By the way, the women at school are lovely and I’m obsessed with all of them.”

In Tisdale’s essay, she explains what led her to break up with her friend group. “I remember being left out of a couple of group hangs, and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram Story,” she wrote. “Another time, at one of the mom’s dinner parties, I realized where I sat with her — which was at the end of the table, far from the rest of the women. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me. At first, I tried not to take things personally. It’s not like people aren’t allowed to get together without me — and maybe there were perfectly good reasons that I hadn’t been invited. We were all busy, life was hectic.”

She also said she didn’t know why she was being left out, but it made her feel like she was “in high school again” and “totally lost.” Tisdale reached out to members of the group and recalled that it “didn’t exactly go over well.

“Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them. Another tried to convince me that everyone assumed I’d been invited to gatherings and just hadn’t shown up,” she wrote before adding, “You deserve to go through motherhood with people who actually, you know, like you. And if you have to wonder if they do, here’s the hard-earned lesson I hope you’ll take to heart: It’s not the right group for you. Even if it looks like they’re having the best time on Instagram.”

Mark Ruffalo has shared his thoughts on James Cameron‘s letter in opposition to Netflix buying Warner Bros. Discovery, with the filmmaker instead sharing support for Paramount to acquire the company.

“So… the next question to Mr Cameron should be this… ‘Are you also against the monopolization that a Paramount acquisition would create? Or is it just that of Netflix?’” the four-time Oscar-nominated actor wrote on Threads Saturday. “I think the answer would be very interesting for the film community to hear and one that should be asked immediately. Is Mike Lee against the Paramount sale as well? Is he as concerned about that as he is the Netflix sale?”

Ruffalo concluded, “We all want to know .…Speaking on behalf of hundreds of thousands of film makers world wide.”

In Cameron’s letter, which is dated Feb. 10 but began making headlines on Thursday and was sent to to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the Avatar director voiced concerns about the future of films being released in theaters if Netflix acquires Warner Bros.

“The business model of Netflix is directly at odds with the theatrical film production and exhibition business, which employs hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Cameron wrote “It is therefore directly at odds with the business model of the Warner Brothers movie division, one of the few remaining major movie studios.”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos swiftly fired back against Cameron’s claims on Friday. “I’m particularly surprised and disappointed that James chose to be part of the Paramount disinformation campaign that’s been going on for months about this deal,” he said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s The Claman Countdown.

Sarandos also responded to Cameron’s claims that he plans to shift films to having a 17-day theatrical window. “I have never even uttered the words 17-day window. So I don’t know where it came from or why he would be part of that machine,” he added.

“Movies go into the theaters for 45 days, a healthy, robust slate of films every year, that is going to continue,” Sarandos said. “This deal is contingent on that for us to — for it to work.”

The Netflix co-CEO additionally sent Lee a letter in response to Cameron’s, where he wrote that the Titanic director “knowingly misrepresents our position and commitment to the theatrical release of Warner Bros. films.”

Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is looking back on the 2014 film The Interview with deep regret.

In a recent excerpt from Lynton’s upcoming memoir From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You, published recently in the Wall Street Journal, he opens up about how greenlighting The Interview, a dark comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco about a plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was the “biggest mistake of my career,” because it led to the infamous Sony hack.

Lynton was made aware on Nov. 17, 2014, by the head of IT reporting that 70 percent of Sony’s servers were irreparably damaged. Hackers released stolen emails that had confidential scripts and personal information. The FBI became involved with evidence suggesting that North Korea was most likely behind the attack to axe the release of the film.

The movie was pulled from the U.S.’s major theater chains ahead of its Dec. 25 release after threats from hacker groups implied that moviegoers would be in danger at screenings, The Hollywood Reporter reported at the time.

According to Lynton’s memoir, eight months after the FBI investigated the cyberattack, they knew that North Korea was behind it.

The fallout resulted in the studio having its relationships ruined with prominent industry figures, including Will Smith, Adam Sandler and Angelina Jolie. Former President Barack Obama even called Lynton to tell him, “What were you thinking when you made killing the leader of a hostile foreign nation a plot point? Of course that was a mistake.”

Lynton can now acknowledge that his biggest mistake was “my decision to greenlight a project on the fly.”

He admits that his motivation for allowing the film to be made in the first place stemmed from his “desire to belong” and from his care for the “opinions of others.”

“Just for a moment, I wanted to join the badass gang that made subversive movies,” Lynton wrote. “For a moment, I wanted to hang — as an equal — with the actors. I had grown tired of playing the responsible adult, of watching the party from the outside while I played Risk.”

He added, “My middle-school self took over, and my adult self lost the courage to disappoint the other kids. The party got out of hand, and the company, its employees, my family and I all paid dearly.”

President Donald Trump publicly encouraged Netflix to fire board member Susan Rice — “or pay the consequences.”

“Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences,” he wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “She’s got no talent or skills – Purely a political hack! HER POWER IS GONE, AND WILL NEVER BE BACK. How much is she being paid, and for what???”

The president’s post was accompanied by a screenshot of an X post made by Laura Loomer responding to Rice’s Thursday appearance on the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast. In Loomer’s social post, she wrote, “Netflix Board Member Susan Rice says corporations who took a ‘knee to Trump’ will face an ‘accountability agenda’ from elected Democrats if they win the midterms in 2026 and the 2028 Presidential election.”

In the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations’ interview with Preet Bharara, she said, “For those that decided that they would act in their perceived very narrow self interest, which I would underscore as very short-term self-interest, and take a knee to Trump, I think they are now starting to realize, ‘Wait a minute, this is not popular. Trump is not popular.’”

Bharara continued, “There is likely to be a swing in the other direction, and they are going to be caught with more than their pants down. They are going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box.”

The “accountability agenda” Loomer pulled from Rice’s interview was said as follows: “There will be an accountability agenda. You know, companies already are starting to hear they better preserve their documents. They better be ready for subpoenas. If they’ve done something wrong, they’ll be held accountable, and if they haven’t broken the law, good for them.”

Loomer also slammed the potential Netflix-Warner Bros. merger in her post, writing, “If the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger is approved, positive messaging of the Democrats’ upcoming witch hunts against Trump from Barack Hussein Obama and his anti-White racist wife Michelle would likely be blasted across all streaming services as the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions continues to grow within Netflix.”

“The Netflix-Warner Bros. merger would result in a streaming monopoly, which the Obamas will have a significant stake in,” she continued, tagging both Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr in her post. “President Trump @POTUS must kill the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger now. @BrendanCarrFCC.”

Amid Netflix and Paramount Skydance’s battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, Trump said in early February that he “shouldn’t be involved” in the fight for the company.

“I haven’t been involved,” Trump said. “I must say, I guess I’m considered to be a very strong president. I’ve been called by both sides. It’s the two sides, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.”

Currently serving as a Netflix board member, Rice formerly served as the U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013-2017 and the Domestic Policy Advisor from 2021-2023.

If Hulu’s post-apocalyptic drama Paradise has a secret weapon, it’s This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman’s skill for provoking emotion. The new second season knows just how to get a viewer in their feelings, spilling tears over characters in the pits of despair, or joy as they rediscover lost pleasures, or warmth as lonely souls find camaraderie in dark days.

As the episodes wore on, however, I found other, less pleasant emotions starting to creep in as well. Frustration at the accumulation of little plot holes. Exasperation at intriguing storylines that fizzled into dead ends. While Paradise has always been more heart than head, the latest run prioritizes the former to such a degree that the entire thing feels out of whack.

For all its ambition and enormous cast, the first season of Paradise remained anchored to a single place (a city-sized bunker underneath Colorado) and organized around a single propulsive mystery (who killed James Marsden’s President Cal Bradford?). Sure, it was never as profound as it seemed to want to be — more often, it was like one of its own lugubrious covers of ’80s pop songs, silly fun trying to pass itself off as Classy and Serious — but it had an addictive momentum.

Then the finale saw Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), our Secret Service protagonist, preparing to fly out into the outside world. The narrative possibilities on both sides of the fortress walls seemed endless. What would Xavier find out there — his wife (Enuka Okuma’s Teri)? A desolate wasteland? New friends, or new foes? While he was gone, what would become of the home he was leaving behind? And with so many intriguing narrative options, how would Paradise pick a new path to go forward?

I’ll refrain from spoiling most of those questions, but on the last front I can tell you: It…doesn’t. The seven hours (of eight) sent to critics sprawl out in every direction, scattering existing characters on disjointed journeys while adding a slew of new ones. In all, the plot in the present day covers thousands of miles, while the flashbacks — so, so many flashbacks — span dozens of years.

There are some upsides to the broadened scope. It’s thrilling to get our first extended glimpse of life on the outside in the Glenn Ficarra and John Requa-directed premiere, which chronicles the experience of a tour guide (Shailene Woodley‘s Annie) riding out the end times in Elvis’ Graceland. The episode takes the time to get to know the lonely rhythm of her days before piercing the quiet with a roving band of scavengers, led by the charismatic Link (Thomas Doherty). Woodley, always a sensitive performer, plays Annie’s swirling emotions beautifully, as she moves from panic to resignation to bittersweet pleasure at getting to interact with other humans for the first time in ages.

Other chapters introduce a group of doomsday preppers who become a found family over years stuck in a basement and a band of orphaned children whose survival instincts have been honed at the cost of their innocence. (When an injured grown-up offers to read them a story, the shyest among them responds with a question: When the man dies, can he have his jacket?) At its most effective, Paradise‘s second season evokes the haunting beauty, though not the brutality, of HBO’s The Last of Us.

It’s enough to make you want to not sweat the small stuff, like, “Would it really take three years for someone to think to raid Graceland?” Or “Wouldn’t a tech genius come up with a better computer password than a four-digit code?” Or “Why does this character’s before-times ID have only their picture but not their name, thus defeating the entire purpose of an ID?” Who cares about such nitpicky details when we’re busy tearing up at Annie feeling alive again, or Xavier’s desperation to be reunited with Teri?

But as with greenhouse gases under apocalyptic clouds of ash, it’s the cumulative effect that screws you. A few inconsistencies are forgivable. Too many of them will eat away at the structural integrity of a season — especially if its foundations are already shaky.

One of the major trade-offs of Paradise’s newly expanded scale is a loss of focus. Without a single driving mystery, subplots like Cal’s angsty son Jeremy (Charlie Evans) mounting a youth rebellion are given so little oxygen that it’s easy to forget they exist at all, while compelling characters like Annie get abruptly sidelined once their utility has run out. More time is spent reminding us that we don’t know what characters like billionaire mastermind Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) are really up to, than establishing why we’re meant to care.

Moment to moment, Paradise remains an engrossing experience, thanks in large part to the charm of its cast. But the plot makes less and less sense upon further reflection. Meanwhile, the overreliance on flashbacks to fill in character motivations and goals stalls the momentum, so that it starts to seem that Paradise is a collection of backstories loosely connected by a shared present, rather than an ongoing thriller enhanced by deeper context.

Even Fogelman’s knack for weepy emotionality turns out to have its limits. Season one managed the neat trick of humanizing the seemingly monstrous Billy (Jon Beaver) through — what else? — a tragic past. Season two tries to repeat the feat with a similarly shady character, but only manages to make her seem more alien. (This is an especially rough stretch for the female characters in general, who are treated with a “nice guy” chivalry that can look, in certain lights, a lot like condescension.)

This is a season that feels like it’s constantly in motion, yet never actually seems to get anywhere. Inadvertently, Paradise seems to have adopted the same philosophy to storytelling that Xavier’s son, as he explains in an overwritten but persuasively performed monologue, once took to his toys. “Maybe it’s not fun to play with trains that ride smoothly along their tracks,” Xavier muses of the boy’s thinking. “Maybe the thing that’s interesting about trains is the possibility that these huge metal contraptions could one day crash into one another.”

In season two, whatever destination Paradise was headed for seems to have been forgotten. Whatever bigger themes it once evoked (like the greed of megalomaniacal billionaires, or the complicity of powerful men) have fallen by the wayside. It’s just a collision of characters and ideas and subplots, resulting in the rubble — some of it salvageable and some of it less so — of something that used to run smoothly enough.

KPop Demon Hunters is unstoppable.

Netflix‘s come-from-nowhere global animation phenomenon swept this year’s Annie Awards, the animation honors handed out by the L.A. Branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood, taking 10 prizes, including best feature.

The pop musical, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, also won best direction, best music, best writing, best editorial and best voice acting for Arden Cho, who voices Rumi. It also swept the technical categories at the Annies, winning best FX, best character animation, best character design and best production design.

Netflix launched the Sony-produced KPop Demon Hunters last summer with little promotion or fanfare, but it became an overnight sensation and the streamer’s most-watched movie of all time, with a reported 481.6 million views worldwide in the second half of 2025.

KPop indie competitor at the Oscars, Ugo Bienvenu’s hand-drawn French feature Arco, won the prize for best independent feature at the Annies.

A number of past Annie Awards winners have gone on to win the best animated feature Oscar. The last Annie best feature winner to also triumph at the Academy Awards was Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio in 2023. Last year, the Annie Awards’ top prize went to The Wild Robot. The Oscars opted for Annie best independent winner Flow.

In the television categories, notable winners included Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects, which won in the best TV/media mature category; Hulu’s The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, winner of the best TV/media children honor; and Disney+’s Win Or Lose, which took the best limited series prize. Wow Lisa, a Spanish-language Chilean show, which combines 3D characters placed within scale-model, crafted backgrounds, won the Annie for best preschool series.

ASIFA-Hollywood presented its lifetime achievement honors, the Winsor McCay Award, to Dutch writer and director Michaël Dudok de Wit (The Red Turtle), The Lego Movie and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs writer-directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and writer-director Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, Wild Robot).

Sandy Rabins, an animation and live action producer, who was a driving force behind ASIFA-Hollywood’s AnimAID, which provided assistance and support for those in the animation industry who were affected by the L.A. wildfires, received the June Foray Award for “significant and benevolent impact to the animation community.”

The Ub Iwerks Award for technical advancement affecting the animation industry went to Japanese company Wacom, manufacturer of the Cintiq graphics tablet, which has become the industry standard for professional 2D animation, storyboarding and concept art.

Animation fair LightBox Expo received a special achievement award for bringing “the creative animation community of filmmakers together with animation students and fans.” The ASIFA-Hollywood Merit Award is given by the board of directors to individuals for current and on-going service to the organization and the animation industry went to Jeffrey New and Haley Mirren Douthit.

Full list of 2026 Annie Award Winners:

BEST FEATURE
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST FEATURE – INDEPENDENT
Arco
Remembers, MountainA France, France 3 Cinéma

BEST SPECIAL PRODUCTION
Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical
WildBrain Studios in association with Apple

BEST SHORT SUBJECT
Snow Bear
The Art of Aaron Blaise

BEST SPONSORED
Olipop Yeti
Screen Novelties & Passion Pictures

BEST TV/MEDIA – PRESCHOOL
Wow Lisa
Episode: Rainy Day
Punkrobot

BEST TV/MEDIA – CHILDREN
The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball
Episode: The Rewrite
Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe

BEST TV/MEDIA – MATURE
Common Side Effects
Episode: Pilot
Green Street Pictures, Bandera Entertainment and Williams Street Productions

BEST TV/MEDIA – LIMITED SERIES
Win Or Lose
Episode: Home
Pixar Animation Studios

BEST STUDENT FILM
A Sparrow’s Song
Tobias Eckerlin
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH

BEST FX – TV/MEDIA
Edward Ferrysienanda, Kevin Christensen, Guy Schuleman, Benedikt Roettger, Kevin Tarpinian
Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age
Episode: The Big Freeze
BBC Studios Natural History Unit
FX: Framestore

BEST FX – FEATURE
Filippo Macari, Nicola Finizio, Simon Corbaux, Naoki Kato, Daniel La Chapelle
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix
FX: Sony Pictures Imageworks

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION – TV/MEDIA
Alli Sadegiani
Win Or Lose
Pixar Animation Studios

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION – FEATURE
Ryusuke Furuya
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation, Netflix

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION – LIVE ACTION
Kayn Garcia, Jean-Denis Haas, Meena Ibrahim, Nathan McConnel, Nick Tripodi
How To Train Your Dragon
DreamWorks Animation
FX: Framestore

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION – VIDEO GAME
Mike Jungbluth, Sebastien Dussault, Vincent Schneider, Remi Edmond
South of Midnight
Compulsion Games

BEST CHARACTER DESIGN – TV/MEDIA
Robert Valley
Love, Death + Robots
Episode: 400 Boys
Blur Studio for Netflix

BEST CHARACTER DESIGN – FEATURE
Scott Watanabe, Ami Thompson
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST DIRECTION – TV/MEDIA
Vincent Tsui
Common Side Effects
Episode: Cliff’s Edge
Productions

BEST DIRECTION – FEATURE
Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST MUSIC – TV/MEDIA
Ramin Djawadi, Shane Eli, Johnny Pakfar
Win Or Lose
Episode: Episode 6, Mixed Signals
Pixar Animation Studios

BEST MUSIC – FEATURE
KPop Demon Hunters Music Team
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – TV/MEDIA
Gigi Cavenago
Love, Death + Robots
Episode: How Zeke Got Religion
Blur Studio for Netflix

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – FEATURE
Helen Chen, Dave Bleich, Wendell Dalit, Scott Watanabe, Celine Kim
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST STORYBOARDING – TV/MEDIA
Edgar Martins
Love, Death + Robots
Episode: How Zeke Got Religion
Blur Studio for Netflix

BEST STORYBOARDING – FEATURE
Anthony Holden, Young Ki Yoon
The Bad Guys 2
DreamWorks Animation

BEST VOICE ACTING – TV/MEDIA
Dan Mintz (as Tina Belcher)
Bob’s Burgers
Episode: Don’t Worry Be Hoopy
20th Television Animation

BEST VOICE ACTING – FEATURE
Arden Cho (as Rumi)
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST WRITING – TV/MEDIA
Joe Bennett, Steve Hely
Common Side Effects
Episode: Pilot
Green Street Pictures, Bandera Entertainment, and Williams Street Productions

BEST WRITING – FEATURE
Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

BEST EDITORIAL – TV/MEDIA
Tony Christopherson, Joie Lim
Common Side Effects
Episode: Raid
Green Street Pictures, Bandera Entertainment, and Williams Street Productions

BEST EDITORIAL – FEATURE
KPop Demon Hunters Editorial Team
KPop Demon Hunters
Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix

WINSOR McCAY AWARD
Michaël Dudok de Wit
Christopher Miller
Phil Lord
Chris Sanders

JUNE FORAY AWARD
Sandy Rabins

UB IWERKS AWARD
Wacom

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
LightBox Expo

ASIFA-HOLLYWOOD MERIT AWARD
Jeffrey New
Haley Mirren Douthit

Broadway is cancelling most evening performances on Feb. 22 as New York City is set to experience a blizzard and receive between 16 and 24 inches of snow. 

Productions with matinees that begin at 3 p.m. ET Sunday or earlier, however, will proceed as scheduled. The cancellation is expected to impact productions such as Oh, Mary!, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Chicago, The Book of Mormon, Wicked, & Juliet and All Out: Comedy About Ambition.

Operation Mincemeat was initially expecting to go forward with its 7:30 p.m. ET performance, but canceled it midday Sunday. The show was set to be the final performances of original cast members David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Natasha Hodgson, Jak Malone and Zoë Roberts. The cast has opted to livestream a concert of all the musical numbers from the show starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.

The cancellation comes after New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency in New York City and surrounding areas. The National Weather Service has issued a Blizzard Warning beginning 1 p.m. ET Sunday through 6 p.m. ET Monday, as the city is expected to experience snowfall rates of up to two inches per hour, powerful wind gusts and whiteout conditions. Some nearby counties have issued travel bans for the evening, and New York City has issued a ban on non-essential vehicles after 9 p.m. ET, which would also impact Broadway attendance.

The cancellation of Broadway shows on Sunday came via the Broadway League, the industry’s trade association of producers and theater owners, though the decision was made by the individual shows. Broadway faced a large amount of uproar from cast and crew members about a month ago, when New York City was under a similar state of emergency due to snow, but there was no industrywide cancellation of shows. This meant cast and crew had to commute in amid the snowstorm. The move to cancel across the industry is rare, as it can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue for each show.

Some shows are making the most of the inclement weather. Bug, a play starring Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood, is selling $45 tickets for all remaining seats of the 2 p.m. matinee.

2/22 10 AM PT: The story has been updated to reflect that Operation Mincemeat has now canceled its evening performance.

It was the weekend of the haves and the have-nots at the domestic box office.

In the “haves” column are holdovers GOAT, from Sony Pictures Animation, and Warner Bros.’ Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi starrer Wuthering Heights. On Saturday, early estimates showed the two in a close race for first place with a projected $13 million to $15 million each.

But GOAT, thanks to pent-up demand among families, mowed down the competition to top the North American chart with an estimated $17.2 million from 3,842 theaters for a domestic cume of $58.3 million. Globally, it cleared the $100 million mark as its foreign tally rose to $44 million from 41 markets (it is rolling out much more slowly overseas, where it has yet to open in 30 percent of the marketplace). The pic is another win for Sony Animation, home of the hit Spider-Verse universe and Oscar nominee KPop: Demon Hunters.

Filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s unconventional adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights is also a win. It earned an estimated $14.2 million from 3,682 locations to come in second domestically, but won the weekend overseas among Hollywood fare with $26.3 million from 77 markets for an impressive global haul of $152 million, including $60 million domestically and $91.7 million internationally.

Last weekend, Wuthering Heights prevailed over GOAT in winning the long Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day frame with $32.8 million for the three-day weekend proper and $37.5 million for the four days (it was the ninth WB release to open at No. 1, possibly a record feat). It also did better than expected at the foreign box office, launching to $45.5 million from 77 marketsfor a global start of $83 million.

GOAT opened to $35 million domestically over the four-day holiday in North America, including roughly $26 million for the three days. Overseas, it launched in its first 42 territories.

Among a crowded herd of newcomers this weekend, Lionsgate and Kingdom Story’s faith-based sequel I Can Only Imagine 2 easily came in third with an estimated $8 million from 3,105 cinemas after earning a coveted A+ CinemaScore from audiences. While that’s a solid start, it’s roughly half as much as the original 2018 film opened to in the pre-pandemic era.

Baz Luhrmann‘s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is off to a rousing start in its limited debut in 325 Imax screens after earning glowing marks from both critics and audiences. From Neon, the concert doc took in an estimated $3.3 million domestically to crack the top 10 chart before it expands nationwide. It made an additional $1.1 million in select Imax screens offshore. Luhrmann — who also directed the acclaimed biopic Elvis starring Austin Butler — painstakingly restored 59 hours of unseen footage from the Warner Bros. archives, including discarded material from two ‘70s concert films.

Elvis Presley in Concert came in only a tad behind A24’s Glen Powell-starrer How to Make a Killing despite playing in far fewer cinemas. Billed as a black comedy, How to Make a Killing debuted to an unimpressive $3.5 million from 1,625 locations after getting dinged by many critics. Margaret Qualley, Ed Harris and Topher Grace also star in John Patton Ford’s reimagining of the classic British film Kings and Coronets.

And New Regency’s long-gestating Psycho Killer is DOA with an estimated $1.6 million start from 1,100 theaters. The slasher pic, which is helmed by veteran producer Gavin Polone in his feature directorial debut, couldn’t crack the top 10 after getting beat out by Avatar: Fire and Ash, which earned an estimated $1.8 million in its 10th weekend.

Psycho Killer‘s current critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is zero from 21 reviews, including this review from The Hollywood Reporter. The audience score isn’t much better (33 percent). Disney is distributing the film via 20th’s long-standing relationship with New Regency.

Among holdovers in the upper reaches of the chart, Amazon MGM Studios’ Crime 101 came in fourth in its sophomore outing with $6.2 million from 3,161 locations for a domestic tally of $24.7 million and $46.3 million globally.

20th Century’s R-rated Send Help continued to display staying power in its fourth weekend, earning $4.5 million from 2,800 locations to round out the top five for a domestic total of $55.5 million.

Angel Studio’s Kevin James-vehicle Solo Mio tumbled to No. 8 behind Elvis, earning $2.6 million from 2,300 theaters for a 10-day domestic tally of $21.8 million.

Disney’s film empire has two other films in the top 10, including Zootopia 2. The mega-animated hit celebrated yet another milestone this weekend when passing up Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch to become the No. 2 domestic release of 2025 with a domestic total of $423.9 million through Sunday. And James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash is on the verge of jumping the $400 million mark domestically for 20th Century as it finishes its 10th weekend with a global haul of $1.47 billion, including $399.4 million in North America. Like the Avatar threequel, Zootopia 2 opened over the Christmas holidays on its way to becoming the year’s top Hollywood release worldwide, as well as the top-grossing animated film of all time, not adjusted for inflation.

At the specialty box office, Focus Features’ Oscar contender Hamnet is approaching the $100 million mark globally. While finishing Sunday with a respectable domestic total of $23.1 million, it is waxing poetic overseas, where it continues to roll out timed to the upcoming Academy Awards. Through Sunday, it has grossed nearly $65 million at the foreign box office for a global total nearing $88 million. Universal International is handling the film in most markets and is responsible for a lion’s share of ticket sales, or $63.8 million. To date, it is pacing ahead of previous best picture nominees Conclave and Poor Things at the same point in time, while already surpassing the lifetime international gross of The Favourite.

Feb. 22, 8 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.

This story was orignally published February 21 at 9:54 a.m.