Tag: Entertainment – Variety

The vital act of storytelling drives Casey Affleck’s “Company.” Knowing those stories and the people in them also passes on lessons learned involving grief, regret and forgiveness. The film premieres in competition at Venice.

“Company” stars Nick Nolte, Adelaide Clemens, Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan and Atticus Affleck. The film jumps between 1975, 1953 and 1903, connected by stories in each era. Much of the film involves just two actors in a shot, or one actor in a beautifully composed shot.
“When Casey sets up the camera, you know by the angles that he’s shooting from that it’s going to be much more intimate,” says Nolte.

Nolte’s Tom is an old man living alone. It’s winter, and he sees a young woman passed out on the snow outside his isolated cabin. He brings Alice (Cowan) in, warms her up and she tells him a story about a couple living in a cabin quite like his in 1903.

“It was the script, and it was so delicate,” Nolte says of what drew him to the project. “It had these silences and gaps, and the storytelling was obvious. I just found that intriguing. It wasn’t like any script that normally comes in. You know, it was one of those special ones.”

Nolte didn’t want to play Tom as necessarily a hermit, though, as we do discover his story as the film unspools. “I looked at him as somebody that wanted to not be with humanity in general. He was a reclusive, and he lived in isolation, and he’d probably be a trapper.”

Affleck’s direction is quite intentional, with each scene meticulously framed and lit, allowing stillness to permeate. Nolte’s expressive eyes and face do a lot of the work in each scene as Alice talks. “It was really about listening, just really listening to the story,” he says.

In the 1903 segment, Clemens and McNairy play a couple on an isolated farm, who, like Tom, find and rescue a young person from the snow. Caleb (Atticus Affleck) intrigues Rebecca (Clemens), as he brags about his world travels and personal philosophy with a familiar mix of confidence and insecurity — she’s wary, and his presence creates delicious tension.

“As I’ve gotten older, and I’ve worked more in the industry, I’ve started to learn the power of a two shot, and I’ve also started to learn that you need really skilled professionals to execute that in a powerful way,” she says. “You need an incredible cinematographer who we have on this film, Marcell Rév — everything was so beautiful.”

Clemens says that working with Casey is “what you dream of” because he is an Oscar-winning actor himself.

“Directors will often do a two shot, but then they’ll cover it as well. But if you have two actors who are in an environment where they’re supported, then you can have a really powerful scene, and you can see our whole bodies,” Clemens says of the framing, noting that she and her colleagues had to use their whole bodies. “We tell this whole story from the shins up. It wouldn’t be executed in the way it was if we didn’t have Casey trusting us.”

Clemens brought a “Buddha-like” demeanor and maternal depth and empathy to Rebecca, whereas Atticus Affleck had to leave everyone wondering about his truth. Clemens says that while he was well-prepared for the film, and “rehearsed intensely,” his performance was natural and “didn’t feel like a performance … He was amazing.”

Have some people in Hollywood figured out how to continue to spotlight Hollywood’s greats? “I’m 86, and real limited in the kind of roles I can play now, but I find that without the work, there just isn’t any reason to keep on going,” says Nolte, who has more projects on deck. “You know your creativity is tied into it, and as long as I’m physically capable, I encourage them to consider me. I haven’t thought about retiring.”

Members of Congress are drafting legislation that would create a 20% federal film and TV incentive — with bonuses that could bring it as high as 30% — after President Trump endorsed the idea last week.

The bill is expected to be introduced this month, and perhaps as soon as the end of next week, according to sources familiar with the process. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, a Republican from East Texas, is working on the bill with Rep. Linda Sanchez, a Democrat from Whittier, Calif. Both serve on the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for tax legislation.

Rep. Laura Friedman, a Democrat from Burbank, Calif., has also been working with Rep. Brian Jack, a Republican from the Atlanta suburbs, on the bipartisan effort.

For the last year, the Motion Picture Association and entertainment unions have been advocating for an incentive that would compete with generous subsidies from the U.K., Canada, Australia and scores of other countries. Trump threw his weight behind the idea in a Truth Social post on Aug. 31, a development expected to unlock Republican support on Capitol Hill.

The draft legislation broadly aligns with the MPA’s request. The bill would offer a base credit of 20% of all labor costs, both below-the-line and above-the-line. A wide range of productions would be eligible, including reality TV and animation in addition to films and scripted TV shows, according to sources familiar with the legislation. It would not include news or sports broadcasts.

The bill would also include four “uplifts” meant to attract political support. According to a source, the bill would allow producers to claim an additional five percent if they meet one of these four criteria:

Producers could claim up to two of those uplifts, for a maximum of 30%. The federal tax credit would stack on top of state incentives, meaning that productions could see a total subsidy of 60% or more depending on where they film.

Supporters have argued that the incentive will not just help Los Angeles and New York — where the bulk of production takes place — but will also boost rural areas that currently have little filming and little or no state tax incentive.

The hope is that spreading production around will broaden support, much the way the state incentives in California and New York attracted votes from rural lawmakers by offering a bonus for filming outside of Los Angeles and New York City, respectively.

California lawmakers have also pushed for a bonus for any production in an area that was recently declared a federal disaster zone. (All of Los Angeles County would qualify due to the 2025 fires.) That is not included in the latest draft.

The tax credit could be used to offset federal income tax, or be sold to another taxpayer to offset their tax liability. It would not be refundable.

The bill has yet to go to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which will get a score on how much it would cost — though it is safe to say it will run into the billions of dollars. In his post last week, Trump argued that the cost would be “made up tenfold by the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers.”

The MPA is expected to issue a report in the coming weeks that would expound on that claim, arguing that production creates a ripple effect that benefits the local economy.

Some supporters of the measure are optimistic about getting it through Congress as part of a tax bill during the lame duck session after the November election, though it may be more likely to happen next year.

“I would be very happy for it to happen in the lame duck,” Friedman said in an interview last week. “I can’t promise that’s possible. We’re going to try not only to get this done quickly, but to have all our ducks in a row.”

Friedman said that the discussions took on a new momentum after Trump got involved.

“I can’t tell you the number of texts that have come in from people who have offered to help,” she said.

She declined to discuss the specifics of the legislation, but said she is working to build a coalition across the country behind the idea.

“Everyone in every state loves movies and television,” she said. “Everyone benefits by this product being made here.”

On my last morning in Telluride, halfway through breakfast at Butcher & Baker, Kenneth Branagh stopped at the table on his way to a Q&A for “Into the Breach,” the National Theatre documentary he produced. He had a story. A night earlier, he’d ridden the gondola up in pitch darkness with Willem Dafoe, Tom Hiddleston and Andrew Scott — four of the best actors alive, each with a film at the festival, sealed in one cable car with nothing to look at and nothing to do but talk. All anyone could hear was Dafoe. Branagh, laughing, called it “the wisdom of Willem.” A voice in the dark, no face attached.

I half-believed it until a few hours later, waiting out my flight at Montrose, when I ran into Hiddleston on his way back to the U.K. He told the same story, unprompted.

That’s the festival. The Telluriders have gone home, Venice wraps in a few days and we came down the mountain knowing more about this Oscar race than we did going up. Christopher Nolan’s mythological epic “The Odyssey” is still the one to beat. It won’t be a cakewalk. Here’s what else I carried down.

“The Debut” handed Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti their moment.

Jesse Eisenberg’s third feature behind the camera premiered Saturday night. By the next day, it was the hottest ticket in town. “The Debut” drops Moore’s Mona, a meek suburban homemaker who lands a bit part in a community theater musical, into the front of the best actress race. It’s the funniest, warmest thing she’s done in years. Giamatti, whom Eisenberg calls his “favorite actor,” plays the tyrant director shaping her. During one rehearsal scene between them — a master-class, no other word for it — the Telluride crowd applauded in the middle of the movie. You rarely see that happen once at a festival. It happened again before the credits.

Moore already has an Oscar for “Still Alice,” and she’s the one to beat. Giamatti is the sentimental story coming up underneath: twice nominated for “Cinderella Man” and “The Holdovers,” never a winner and here he is doing the loosest work of his late career in a supporting turn built to be embraced. Eisenberg wrote seven songs for the fictional show. The one they’ll push is “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out),” which Moore performs, and it’s headed for a best original song campaign.

Nathan Fielder attempts the impossible.

The festival’s best-kept secret came Sunday night, when ticket holders filed into the Werner Herzog Theatre with their phones locked away for “You Can See Everything,” the Elizabeth Holmes documentary Fielder co-directed with Lance Oppenheim, whose narrative feature “Primetime” premiered in Venice a day earlier. Holmes invites Fielder and his skeptical crew to film her in the 34 days before she reports to prison. The shoot spirals into a three-year descent. Portions are recreated with an A-list actor who is eligible for Oscar attention, though not SAG.

Now comes the hard part, which is the documentary branch, which has never embraced this kind of nonfiction filmmaking. Voters who prize the observational and the sincere tend to bristle at a movie where the filmmaker is this present and this implicated. The circus around Fielder guarantees the kind of coverage most nonfiction contenders would trade a lung for. Whether the branch rewards it is the whole question. Nobody has made a movie quite like this. Almost nobody has won an Oscar for one.

“Club Kid” has a real play for the old guard.

Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut had its North American premiere Friday, and its trajectory keeps getting more serious than anyone bet on. Firstman writes, directs and stars as Peter, a washed-up New York party promoter whose life on the dance floor stops cold when the 10-year-old son he never knew about (British newcomer Reggie Absolom) turns up at his door.

Strip away the club scene and the online-comedian brand, and you have a classically built story about a man child being handed a kid. I expected that this would struggle to appeal to the older industry demographic. I was wrong. In fact, it seems to register incredibly well with older Academy voters, at least the ones I chatted with on the mountain.

Veteran actor Colleen Camp, who first came to the festival in 1977, made the case for the film’s tonal control better than any campaign deck could. “I always say, always hire somebody funny to do something dramatic, because you’ll get so many interesting things,” she said at the post-screening Q&A. “And what he [Firstman] did in this movie is even in the most dramatic moments, they’re brilliantly ironic and they’re funny.”

Firstman described how his script reversed course on him over two years of writing. “I started the script from kind of a cynical place of looking around at the scene and just not feeling good about it — looking at the excessive drug use and the sex, and being a part of it and feeling bad about myself and feeling bad about my community,” he said. “What happened was that making this film in the community — we shot at real parties, in the queer spaces in New York — my empathy really opened up in the production of the film.” That shift is on the screen, and it’s what voters will feel without necessarily being able to name it.

By the end of the panel, it came down to one word, spoken loudly by Firstman: “love.”

“La Bola Negra” commands the room.

Respect is the currency at that altitude, and Los Javis have it. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi arrived off a Cannes run that ended with the directing prize, and the Telluride word-of-mouth only got louder. Chris Pine, Sofia Coppola, Rian Johnson and their Netflix stablemate Danny Boyle (“Ink”) all turned up for the screening.

Shot on 35 mm and inspired by the unfinished Federico García Lorca work of the same name, “La Bola Negra” moves across 1932, 1937 and 2017, tracing three generations of gay men through nearly a century of Spanish history.

A subtitled Netflix title the festival can’t stop buzzing about is exactly where you want to be heading into the international feature race, and the streamer is hunting well beyond that category. And even though stars Guitarricadelafuente and Penélope Cruz weren’t on the mountain, the film played so well, it shows it can exist in the awards echo chamber, without them (which says a lot).

“Wild Horse Nine” made the two-stop drop look easy.

Of the titles that ran the Venice-to-Telluride relay this year, Martin McDonagh’s landed with the most confidence. Searchlight Pictures’ “Wild Horse Nine” bowed in Venice competition on Sept. 3 to a 13-minute standing ovation, the Lido’s first real roar of the fall. Two days later, it turned up as Telluride’s surprise patron screening, timed to John Malkovich’s Silver Medallion tribute.

Malkovich was the biggest takeaway. Twice nominated and never a winner, he called the script the kind you see “every 25 years.” The double premiere vaulted him near the front of best actor, trailing only Matt Damon in “The Odyssey” and another Telluride player, Andrew Scott in “Elsinore.” Sam Rockwell, who won supporting actor for his last McDonagh outing, is back in that conversation, with the open question of whether Steve Buscemi joins him.

“Tender Loving Care” is Mike Leigh in a minor key, and it wrecks you anyway.

If this is the last Mike Leigh film, and the final shot plays like a man who knows it might be, it’s a hell of a way to leave. “Tender Loving Care” follows two social workers and was built the usual Leigh way: no script, no plot, just months of assembling people until they exist.

Marion Bailey, who plays Birdie, figured out the assignment before the assignment existed. “I could see as he was going through, he was crossing off people and I thought, what’s the sort of person he’s looking for? And then it dawned on me — he’s looking for someone who has a sense of humor,” she said. “The ones he was crossing off my list were people who don’t have a sense of humor.” Then she added the part only a Leigh veteran gets to add: “You get a call from Mike to say, ‘Do you want to come on board? I don’t know what the part will be. I’m not sure how it’ll work out, but would you like to do it?’ Yes, please. You don’t even stop to think about it.”

The film’s dedication to Dick Pope hangs over it, and longtime producer Georgina Lowe explained how the succession happened. Lucy, who came up under Pope as a camera trainee on “Meantime” and operated on “Hard Truths,” took over the cinematography after a British Society of Cinematographers function where Pope received a posthumous lifetime achievement award. “I don’t think Mike heard this, but Pat turned to Lucy and said, ‘You should shoot the next one,’” Lowe said. “Simultaneously, Mike had thought that. It just made total sense.”

Paul Jesson gave the film its thesis in a single line, asking what a movie about caring for people means right now. “It’s also a good antidote to a world which, by and large, is being run by bullies and thugs,” he said. “The state of the world at the moment is pretty terrifying, really. A lot of people try to close their eyes, cover their ears and get on with their own private lives. And it’s hard to know what to do apart from that, other than look after the people they’re close to.” That’s the movie, and the campaign.

Everybody wrote a love letter to acting this year.

Step back from the horse race and the weekend had a through-line: acting itself, in films made largely by and for the people who do it. Two of the marquee titles orbit the same building. “Elsinore” is Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson in the last year of his life, holding on long enough to play Hamlet at London’s National Theatre. “Into the Breach,” the documentary Branagh produced, tells the story of that same theater, with Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman and Ian McKellen around a table sorting out what the stage cost them and what it gave back. One film stages a great actor’s final bow. The other rounds up living legends to explain why it mattered.

“The Debut” is the same subject from the bottom of the ladder: Moore as a suburban nobody who discovers, in a community theater musical, that performing might be the truest thing she’s ever done and nearly comes apart proving it. A drama, a doc and a comedy, all circling what it costs to disappear into someone else.

The actors branch is the largest bloc in the Academy, and nothing moves a room of performers like a film that treats performance as life or death. Telluride just handed them three.

The gondola is the place to get honest polls.

Nothing tells you how ticket holders are responding to a movie like a gondola ride to or from the Chuck Jones Theatre. On a ride up Sunday morning, you get to listen to the festival unfiltered, which, of course, came with the secret screening speculation that swung from a Frank Ocean project to the eventual Fielder documentary. But then you get to hear about people’s reactions to the Bill Gates talk at Elks Park that half the car caught the tail end of, and the running argument over which “Martin McDonagh is the real Martin McDonagh.” (Whatever that means?)

One producer I chatted with had the most useful read of the weekend on “La Bola Negra,” which he claimed everyone kept calling too long. “I felt that it was long, but I was never bored,” he said. “I was pretty engaged. It felt pretty robust the whole time.” That distinction can matter most. It’s not about whether voters check their watches, but whether they mind. Turns out they don’t.

However, he was less forgiving elsewhere about “Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu’s Romanian Palme d’Or winner. “I didn’t think there was any character work between the two of them [Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve]. I didn’t get their relationship at all,” he said. “They got these incredible actors and it didn’t just match. I wanted to hear more about their beliefs. I wanted to get more into it, be challenged more. It left me a little cold.”

Interestingly, I spoke to someone else immediately after getting off the gondola who said “Fjord” is the best thing they’ve seen this year.

The pendulum can swing rapidly between voters and titles.

Other notes from the mountain

Stephen Beresford, who wrote “Elsinore,” lost his passport and couldn’t make it to Telluride. That didn’t stop his leading man from having a moment.

Andrew Scott had company for that reaction. After the screening, Oprah Winfrey, a Telluride regular this year behind Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Everest: The Other Side,” found Scott outside and cried in his arms. If you want to know how a movie is landing on the mountain, watch for who’s weeping in the lobby or outside.

(That’s also “A Long Winter” writer and director Andrew Haigh weeping alongside them)

Winfrey also threw a party, and by the chatter, all anyone could talk about was who got the invite, who didn’t and how you could possibly get one. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t one of them.

“Lonesome Dove,” which was originally adapted into an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning CBS miniseries starring Robert Duvall in 1989, is getting a new take at Netflix. The streamer announced Tuesday that it had ordered “Lonesome Dove” to series, from co-showrunners Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart.

Kazan and Stuart were also the co-showrunners on Netflix’s upcoming limited series “East of Eden.” Kazan and Stuart were hired by Teton Ridge Entertainment, which holds the rights to “Lonesome Dove,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning western novel from author Larry McMurtry first released in 1985.

Here’s the logline: “Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call renew their spirit of adventure as they face an uncertain future, embarking on one final, perilous cattle drive from the Rio Grande to the untamed wilderness of Montana in pursuit of a dream that they have perhaps already outlived. These two former Texas Rangers lead an unforgettable cast of characters across the American west in this sweeping odyssey defined by unrequited longing, unbreakable friendship, brutal frontier justice, and an unwavering pursuit of a meaningful life.”

Kazan and Stuart will serve as co-showrunners/writers/executive producers, while EPs also include Thomas Tull, Jillian Share and Jen Gorton of Teton Ridge Entertainment; Jon Jashni; Diana Ossana; and Curtis McMurtry of the McMurtry Estate.

“’Lonesome Dove’ is one of the great American stories, and there was no question we wanted to follow Zoe and Jeb wherever they went next,” said Netflix head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, Jinny Howe. “After ‘East of Eden,’ we know exactly what they’re capable of — the depth of character, the sweep of place, the emotional precision. This material deserves that level of care. In their hands, it’s going to be something extraordinary. We’re excited to partner with Teton Ridge to bring this legendary story to life.”

In a joint statement, Kazan and Stuart said that “we come to this material with love and respect, and can’t wait to hit the trail with Gus and Call and the rest of these beloved characters.” And Teton Ridge Entertainment president Jillian Share added: “‘Lonesome Dove’ is the kind of story that only comes along once in a generation. Its characters, scope and deeply human portrait of the American West have made it an enduring classic, and we see an extraordinary opportunity to bring Larry McMurtry’s world to a new generation of audiences.”

Nick Offerman recently appeared on the “Talk Easy With Sam Fragoso” podcast and blasted Ben Shapiro‘s “rampant homophobia” after seeing a video for the first time of the Daily Wire co-founder and political commenter’s attacking Offerman’s gay role in HBO’s “The Last of Us.”

“The entire episode has no zombies, no real threat, and it is about two gay dudes who meet and have a relationship, in which one grows strawberries for the other, and then they die,” Shapiro said, noting Offerman “likes to nail dudes” in the episode. “There’s gay Ron Swanson, and it’s complete with sex scenes and the whole thing. And gay Ron Swanson decides that he is also going to commit suicide at the same time because of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ or ‘Romeo and Romeo’ in this particular case.”

“Holy shit… that’s crazy,” Offerman responded to the video. “That’s the most Ben Shapiro I’ve ever seen, and there’s a very good reason for that. I mean, I don’t know what to say. I’m embarrassed for his reading comprehension. I think he got eight things wrong in his recap, besides his rampant homophobia.”

Offerman starred opposite Murray Bartlett in “The Last of Us” episode “Long, Long Time,” which took a break from the main storyline of the show’s first season to spotlight the love story between two men over 20 years as the world succumbs to a zombie virus. The episode earned near universal acclaim from critics, but that didn’t stop homophobic trolls from taking issue with the show for spotlighting a gay romance.

In an interview with Variety earlier this year, Offerman said he tunes out toxic online backlash to his work because “you can’t navigate life steering by Twitter trolls, the sadness of Elon Musk and his minions,” adding: “I navigate my life by the writings of Wendell Berry and the values my mom and dad gave me. I willfully ignore the overall public zeitgeist. Something from this article might put me on some Ben Shapiro list, where a bunch of jerks literally will just call me ‘f****t’ or worse on my social media. It’s a pattern. It’s laughable and sad, but it’s also just humiliating.

Offerman won an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in “The Last of Us.” During his acceptance speech at the latter awards ceremony, he took aim at the toxic trolls outraged over his decision to play a gay character.

“Thanks to HBO for having the guts to participate in this storytelling tradition that is truly independent,” he said. “Stories with guts that when homophobic hate comes my way and says, ‘Why did you have to make it a gay story?’ We say, ‘Because you ask questions like that. It’s not a gay story it’s a love story, you asshole!”

Watch Offerman’s full interview on “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso” in the video below.

AMC+ revealed the first look for the fourth and final season of “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.” The final season premieres in 2027.

Daryl Dixon’s journey, which began in 2010, is finally coming to an end in the concluding season of the series, a spinoff from the original “Walking Dead” series. The new season sees Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) cross the badlands of Spain. They are joined by Captain Alejandro Perkins (Jimmy Smits), a former U.S. Navy officer and medical doctor who found a unique way to survive during the apocalypse.

Also starring are Romain Levi, Eduardo Noriega, Óscar Jaenada, Candela Saitta and Hugo Arbués.

The series is executive produced by showrunner David Zabel, Scott M. Gimple, Reedus, McBride, Greg Nicotero, Brian Bockrath, Angela Kang, Jason Richman, Dan Percival and Steve Squillante.

The spinoff series launched in 2023, following Daryl on an unexpected journey across Europe. Along with its sister spinoff “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” the series has continued the franchise since the original show’s conclusion in 2022 after 11 seasons.

See the teaser trailer below.

Also in this week’s TV News Roundup:

CASTING

Alvina August has joined the cast of “The Rookie” spinoff series, “The Rookie: North.”

August joins previously announced cast members Jay Ellis, Chris Sullivan, Froy Gutierrez, Karen Fukuhara, Mya Lowe, Janet Montgomery and Malik Watson. No details of August’s character have been revealed. 

The spinoff follows Alex Holland (Ellis), who, after a violent home invasion, faces a midlife crisis that forces him to confront a lifetime of his shortcomings. His solution? Join the Pierce County Police Department in Washington as its oldest rookie. 

August recently starred in Season 3 of “Invasion,” as well as “Nancy Drew” and “Lucky Hank” alongside Bob Odenkirk. Her additional credits include “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” “The Boys,” “The Good Doctor,” “Suits” and “Supernatural.” August is represented by Buchwald and Performers Management.

*

Ana Brenda Contreras and Erick Elías will lead the cast of “Emergencias. Unidad de Vida,” a new Telemundo medical drama. 

The series follows Gabriela Serrano, who is an ambitiously talented medical resident returning to her hometown, where she must confront her family’s complicated past while navigating a hospital that’s future isn’t guaranteed. 

Joining Contreras and Elías are Geraldine Bazán, Ana Belena, Rodolfo Salas, Elizabeth Gutiérrez, Laura Flores, Mónica Dionne, David Palacio and Luis Ernesto Franco. The series also features Gloria Aura, Jerónimo Cantillo, Elena Medina, Miguel Ferreira, Paola Fernández, Pepe Gámez, Vince Miranda, Roberto Mateos, Gloria Peralta, Emma Ramos, Sebastián Silva, Johann Vera and Sara Linares. Arturo Peniche will also make a special appearance.

“Emergencias. Unidad de Vida” has officially begun production in Miami. The series is a Telemundo Studios production written by Carlos Eloy Castro and directed by Nicolas Di Blasi and Luis Sierra, with Javier Pons, Jacky Castro and Martha Godoy as executive producers.

FIRST LOOKS

Prime Video released the first official images of “Boys of Tommen” at the two-day Obsessed Retreat: Class of ’26 event in The Alps, Germany. 

The romantic drama series based on the New York Times bestselling series by Chloe Walsh stars Nancy Surridge as Shannon Lynch, Conor Sánchez as Johnny Kavanagh, James O’Donoghue as Joey Lynch and Sophie McGibbon as Aoife Molloy. 

The official logline reads: “‘Boys of Tommen’ follows the forbidden love story of Johnny Kavanagh, the star rugby player on the verge of a pro career, and Shannon Lynch, the talented but painfully shy new girl at the prestigious private school of Tommen College in Ballylaggin, Ireland. Both teenagers are hiding secrets; Johnny, a potentially career-ending injury, and Shannon, a troubled and violent homelife. Through their secret and highly charged connection, the two teens from opposite worlds battle against the odds and find a way to save each other.”

The series is produced by global independent studio Wiip in association with Amazon MGM Studios, with Metropolitan providing local production services. Adapted by Poppy Cogan, Season One will be based on the first two novels in Walsh’s series, “Binding 13” and “Keeping 13.” Cogan serves as an executive producer alongside Walsh, Wiip’s Paul Lee, Hope Hartman and Sean Flanagan, Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey Marty Bowen, James Seidman and Annika Patton and Drama Republic’s Greg Brenman and Deena Butt. Carla Stronge serves as casting director. Brendan Canty (Christy) is directing the series, while Ingrid Goodwin serves as the series producer.

The FX drama “Snowfall” was one of the sneak success stories of the Peak TV era. Co-created by a marquee film director in “Boyz N the Hood” auteur John Singleton, “Snowfall” thrived where many series of similar origin failed. But it did so quietly: “Snowfall” didn’t win awards or mint breakouts beyond lead actor Damson Idris, but after premiering in 2017 — before the launch of Apple TV or Disney+, and an eternity ago in Hollywood years — the crime show steadily grew for six seasons before concluding in 2023, a rarity for an original drama these days.

Three years later, “Snowfall” has received another accolade that testifies to its under-heralded success: a spinoff. Beginning in 1990, four years after the final episodes of its parent show, “The Drop: A Snowfall Saga” retains the South Los Angeles setting, but shifts its focus from the drug trade amid the rise of crack cocaine to the music industry amid the rise of gangsta rap. Instead of a West Coast version of “The Wire” or “Narcos,” “The Drop” is more like a fictionalized version of N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton.” (There’s a nod to the late group member Eazy-E in the opening minutes.)

While “The Drop” doesn’t craft its protagonists into figures as compelling as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube or Snoop Dogg, the world they navigate is instilled with a vivid sense of place. It’s rare for productions to film in L.A. these days, let alone celebrate the city to the extent “The Drop” does. That’s a quality worth admiring, even if the series can be uneven in its early episodes.

The connective tissue between “Snowfall” and “The Drop” is heroine Wanda (Gail Bean), a recovering addict set on improving her lot in life, and her ex-boyfriend Leon (Isaiah John), a reformed dealer initially tangential to the plot until Wanda ropes him into her master plan. (“The Drop” creator Malcolm Spellman, previously of the Disney+ Marvel series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” never worked on “Snowfall.”) Wanda’s vision is to creatively matchmake her 19-year-old cousin Lamarr (Asante Blackk), a budding producer, with buzzy rapper Artillery (Simmie Sims III, himself an MC who performs under the stage name Buddy), whose latest underground single controversially crows over a police officer killed in the line of duty.

Watching Wanda scramble her way up the industry ladder, managing her charges and sweet-talking gatekeepers, gives “The Drop” its skeleton. “Atlanta,” another FX show about the rap game and its pitfalls as experienced by two cousins, almost took its main characters’ upward trajectory for granted, letting their ascendance play out in the background while episodes focused on smaller scenarios. “The Drop” takes a more linear approach as Wanda lobbies money man Darryl (Brandon Mychal Smith) for a job as an A&R executive and label boss Jenny (Isidora Goreshter) to put Artillery’s song on the radio. When Wanda applies the principles of drug distribution —  let customers sample the product for free, and they’ll pay for more if it’s good — to putting out a tape, it’s a clever callback to “Snowfall.”

Inexplicably, though, “The Drop” neglects key players in the music business story for family strife that can’t match the intrigue of the rap game. Artillery, who’s being hunted down by vindictive cops, rightly accuses Lamar of caring more about sourcing vocals than his physical safety. But “The Drop” is guilty of the same tunnel vision; besides Artillery’s gang affiliation with the Bloods, whose escalating conflict with the Crips makes everyday life increasingly violent even for civilian bystanders, we learn almost nothing about him as a person in the first five episodes. Instead, “The Drop” is focused on how the death of Lamar’s mother, once a musician herself, affected him and his older brother, James (Peyton Alex Smith). The siblings were raised by their grandparents, laundromat owner Big Daddy (Mykelti Williamson) and his wife, Gerty (Nicki Micheaux), the latter of whom is firmly against Lamar and her niece Wanda chasing the dream she still blames for the family’s loss.

“The Drop” spends an entire episode teasing out the backstory behind this shared wound. While a well-liked actor from another prestige cable show makes an appearance as Lamar and James’ late mother in a pleasant surprise I won’t spoil, nothing revealed about the household’s family dynamics is as intriguing as the period detail in the flashbacks. An opening scene of a tent revival in 1950s L.A. gives way to the Afros and wide lapels of the 1970s, skipping through generations of Black migration, religion and musical tradition. There’s no reason “The Drop” couldn’t use other storylines as a vehicle for such anthropology, especially with underdeveloped figures like Artillery or Jenny — an L.A. native waging an uphill battle to modernize her dad’s company — standing on the sidelines.

That the scenery can be so much more intriguing than the action in the foreground is a recurring problem with “The Drop,” but also a testament to its strengths. Like any story about fictitious talents, “The Drop” can strain to position its original music as a world-altering invention; Wanda posits that a single heavily sampling Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” is the kind of uniting force that could end gang warfare, an eyebrow-raising idea. But I had no trouble believing the palm-lined streets, Craftsman houses and sunbaked concrete were the same ingredients that gave rise to a massively influential art form. If “The Drop” can get its plot to the level of its immersive production, it’ll be something to see.

“The Drop” premieres on FX and Hulu on Sep. 8 at 9pm ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Tuesdays.

Focus Features has confirmed the cast for Academy Award winner Sarah Polley‘s “The Bell Jar,” starring Billie Eilish.

Eilish, a two-time Oscar-winning singer-songwriter, makes her film acting debut playing Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of Sylvia Plath’s classic novel. Plath’s semi-autobiographical story follows as the aspiring young writer landes a magazine internship in New York City and chronicles her struggles with ambition, identity and mental health amid the stifling societal expectations for women in the 1950s.

Production has wrapped on the film, which Polley (“Women Talking”) directed from her own adapted screenplay. The filmmaker assembled an acclaimed supporting cast to join Eilish, including Oscar- and Emmy-nominee Carey Mulligan, whom Variety exclusively reported signed on to play Esther’s mother, Mrs. Greenwood.

Also confirmed to star are Gotham Award winner Danielle Deadwyler s Dr. Nolan, Esther’s psychiatrist; Actor Award winner Ike Barinholtz as Lenny, a wealthy NYC radio host; and “Heated Rivalry” breakout Connor Storrie as Marco, whom Esther is set up with on a horrifying blind date. Dylan Hawco (as Buddy Willard, Esther’s first boyfriend), Lili Taylor (Jay Cee, editor of Ladies’ Day magazine), Ella Beatty (Joan, an old acquaintance who ends up at the same mental hospital as Esther) and Maggie Kuntz (Doreen, Esther’s best friend in New York and a fellow intern) are also featured in the ensemble cast.

“The Bell Jar” is produced by Plan B, Studiocanal and Joy Coalition. Focus will distribute the film, with a release date to be announced.

Polley is represented by WME, GGA, and Circle Management + Production and Eilish is represented by WME, Sandbox Entertainment, High Rise PR and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc.

Mulligan is represented by Julian Belfrage, CAA, and Jackoway Austen et al; Deadwyler is represented by Paradigm, Play Management and Ziffren Brittenham; Barinholtz is represented by UTA, Artists First, and Jared Levine from Morris Yorn Barnes Levine Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner & Gellman; and Storrie is represented by CAA, Linden Entertainment, Shelter PR, and Yorn Levine.

Hawco is represented by GGA, Gersh and Circle Management + Production; Taylor is represented by Independent Artist Group, Untitled Entertainment and Schreck, Rose, Dapello, Adams, Berlin & Dunham; Beatty is represented by Entertainment 360 and CAA; and Kuntz is represented by Verve and The Rozenzweig Group.

“La Bola Negra” has mucho heat. The generational queer drama swept the Cannes Film Festival off its feet in May, nabbing a $5 million sale to Netflix and earning helmers Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo the jury prize for best director. After lighting up last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival, the Penélope Cruz-starrer is on its way to Toronto for yet another grand premiere.

That’s plenty of bragging rights for an Oscar hopeful, but there’s one more bona fide that has raised eyebrows in the industry: “La Bola Negra” will receive the longest theatrical rollout that Netflix has given any of its films to date. The project has set a 46-day release for Oct. 16, before landing on the Netflix platform on Dec. 2.

For years, the streamer has engaged in splashy limited releases to hype awards contenders and appease filmmakers who still yearn for the magic of movie theaters. But something about the “La Bola Negra” plan is hitting differently with sources — to say nothing of Netflix’s designs for 2027. That’s when Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” will enjoy a wide release (including Imax screens) for almost 50 days, while the company’s animated “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” will play wide for 47 days at Christmas. The feeling shared by numerous power players interviewed by Variety is that Netflix — the great Hollywood disruptor — is inching closer to embracing the roughly 130-year tradition of theatrical exhibition. It will also be showing its hand for the first time by reporting box office grosses for a slew of upcoming releases, Variety has learned.

“The real question is ‘What does Netflix want to be now?’” posed one high-level executive at a legacy film studio. “Having almost bought Warner Bros. Discovery, you get the sense that they can’t put some of that toothpaste back in the tube.”

The executive is referring to Netflix’s willingness to own and operate a theatrical distribution entity — as it showed in attempting to acquire Warner Bros. and HBO, until David Ellison’s Paramount swooped in with a larger offer. In a subsequent interview with Bloomberg, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted that he could “see us doing things that we haven’t done before” with movie theaters, but insisted the company was streaming first, as always. For years, Sarandos pooh-poohed the idea of a robust theatrical window, even calling it an “outdated concept” compared with his on-demand and bingeable business model. The numbers seem to back him up. Streaming originals made up 12 of the top 20 most-watched general audience movies around the world this year, per a 2026 report from Nielsen. Thats’ up from seven last year, and includes Netflix’s Matt Damon-Ben Affleck project “The Rip” and “War Machine.”

The cinema owners, in turn, have done their share of resisting Netflix titles, namely over the company’s refusal to give them a standard period of exclusivity before moving to streaming. COVID- 19 dashed all theatrical hopes when cineplexes were shut down, and the exhibitors have been clawing their way back to normalcy (playing films for 45 days on the big screen before moving them to other windows is the current industry standard). For one of the most deep-pocketed tech monoliths in the world to reconsider, even lightly, its position on theatrical would be a boost, one veteran film distributor says.

“The exhibitors would absolutely welcome this. Imagine if Netflix of all places threw its weight behind a real theatrical marketing campaign, and not some awards play,” the source said. Though Netflix would be welcomed to the theatrical sandbox, its competitors are insistent that it play by the rules. That means reporting box office grosses, something the data-shy Netflix has never engaged in (to the chagrin of studio and indie distributors). But Netflix will report box office grosses for six upcoming films, two company insiders said: “Narnia” and “Charlie,” as well as “La Bola Negra,” David Fincher’s “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” “The Mosquito Bowl” and “Ink.”

As Netflix and fellow streamers like Apple and Prime Video rose to prominence — largely by overpaying talent with back-end buyouts based on hypothetical box office projections — the establishment fought back by saying the only way to create lasting value for a company’s film library was to eventize each release with major marketing dollars.

Netflix seemed to agree with this, to an extent. Take the eye-popping $450 million it spent in 2021 to acquire the two sequels to Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” ensemble murder mystery. Part of that deal, Variety reported at the time, entailed tens of millions of dollars in marketing spending to make the films feel as big as theatrical debuts. Netflix fulfilled its promise to spend big, but many industry observers said the company left a ton of cash on the table by skipping cinemas. The same was said in 2024 of the Jason Bateman thriller “Carry-On,” the third-most-watched film ever on the service.

Theatrical distribution at Netflix has been headed by Spencer Klein since 2019. The former 20th Century Fox steward, who booked releases for juggernauts like the “Deadpool” and “Planet of the Apes” franchises, also dates movies on the service and manages Netflix-owned theaters in New York and Los Angeles. He also guided Netflix to its first No. 1 box office weekend in August 2025, with a sing-along version of its animated Oscar winner “KPop Demon Hunters.” Klein is respected among his peers and will be watched closely as “Narnia” and “Charlie” start ramping up.

Those inside Netflix, per individuals with close knowledge of the company, are downplaying the significance of this theatrical flirtation. Extending big-screen runs, as the company line often goes, is part of a bespoke process where the film team decides “what’s right” for each movie.