HBO programming chief Casey Bloys hit the pause button on fans’ hopes for a “Sopranos” spin-off. Series creator David Chase inked a five-year, first-look deal in October 2021, following the premiere of prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark” on HBO Max. “I don’t think David has any interest in revisiting ‘The Sopranos.’ And I would agree with him,” Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter February 16. “It’s a perfect series that I don’t think needs revisiting....

Co-executive-produced with Ronan Farrow as part of his HBO deal, with Loki Films producing, the movie has the working title “Endangered” and follows several journalists around the world. Amid working on the project, Ewing also premiered her narrative debut, “I Carry You With Me,” at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. That film, which Sony Pictures Classics is planning to release theatrically in 2021, tracks the real-life experiences of two gay men in Mexico who traverse the border at different times to reunite in America....

Friday saw the premiere of the documentary “In Her Hands,” a portrait of former Afghan female mayor Zarifa Ghafari, which the company produced with Netflix. The movie, co-directed by Afghan filmmaker Tamana Ayazi and Oscar nominee Marcel Mettelsiefen (“Watani: My Homeland”) screened the same day as the release of the unscripted AppleTV+ miniseries “Gutsy,” which features the two Clintons in conversation with other famous women. The connection between those two projects hints at the overall focus of BrightLights as its executives make the rounds at TIFF....

Ikoko co-wrote the script, her first, with seasoned scribe Claire Wilson, and the pair are each nominated for BAFTAs in Outstanding Debut and Original Screenplay. Praised at home and abroad for its honest treatment of sisterhood among teenage girls of color, the film follows a British-Nigerian adolescent nicknamed Rocks (Bukky Bakray) forced to take on adult preoccupations when her mother suddenly abandons her and her younger brother. Amid such precarious circumstances, she finds encouragement and affection in her group of loyal girlfriends....

“I think the thing for me and Adam is that each project is a tonal experiment. And this was definitely the most challenging,” Britell said about his Oscar contender. “It had to be a mixture of tones, incredibly comedic and at the same time it had to be about the existential crisis of the planet. How do you marry all these elements together and make it feel like a cohesive whole?...

To better understand the role of the festival calendar and its impact across the calendar year, consider the contrast between the past two years of Best Picture nominees. Last year’s big winner, “Nomadland,” began its successful run by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the only large-scale international festival to take place in 2020. A whopping four other Best Picture contenders — “Promising Young Woman, “Minari,” “Judas the Black Messiah,” and “The Father” — began their life cycles at Sundance, which took place just two months before the March 2020 shutdowns....

With this in mind, Sling TV, a top live OTT streaming service, is offering some of their best deals ever. Sling is an ideal way to access live sports, news and top TV shows — from “Killing Eve” on BBC America to “Better Call Saul” on AMC — but without the high price tag. What is Sling offering? Right now, Sling is offering subscriptions to new users for only $10 for your first month....

The film’s X-ray insight into brittle bourgeoise fear is still lucid enough to get under your skin, especially when Trocker seizes on the feeling that we’ve seen this before and begins to weaponize it against us. Klemens Hufnagl’s floating camera wends its way through an empty Belgian vacation home somewhere near the German border; the place is eerie and expectant, acclimating us to a film preoccupied with blind spots in domestic bliss....

Panah Panahi took the second option for his acclaimed debut, but “Hit the Road” is hardly an anomaly. “In a sense the car becomes a second house for us Iranians,” Panahi said in a phone interview with IndieWire ahead of his movie’s U.S. release. “There is a level of security inside the car. That’s why you see so many road films.” Still, you’ve never seen a road film quite like “Hit the Road....

“Morimoto’s Sushi Master” stars Masaharu Morimoto, a Japanese chef and restaurateur best known for his appearances on the original Japanese cooking competition show “Iron Chef” and its American adaptation on the Food Network. Morimoto will serve as the head judge for the new six-episode series, which sees eight chefs competing in various challenges to master the art of sushi making. Actress Lyrica Okano from Hulu’s “Runaways” hosts the series, which features Santa Fe’s Coyote Café head chef Dakota Weiss and New York Times food columnist Kenji Lopez-Alt as additional judges....

Though the 91-year-old actor was credited with voicing the iconic villain in the Disney+ limited series “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the show’s release was accompanied by speculation about whether he actually recorded any new dialogue for the show. As it turns out, he didn’t, though he still participated in the project. A new story in Vanity Fair reveals that Jones allowed the show’s producers to recreate his voice using a combination of archival footage and AI technology....

But Momoa’s turn as Duncan also allows the actor to tap into a deep reserve of camaraderie with Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, who looks to Duncan with boyish admiration and as a mentor figure. That kind of saucer-eyed reverence Paul has for Duncan was just like the feeling Momoa had toward his fellow actors, a stacked cast including Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, and Dave Bautista....

The CIA film, helmed by Kathryn Bigelow, was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, with Chastain recognized in the Best Actress category. The Megan Ellison and Annapurna Pictures-produced film was not marketed as a female-fronted war drama, according to Chastain. “I wasn’t even on the poster,” Chastain said in a C magazine cover story. “It wasn’t marketed that way at all.” Instead, the discourse surrounding it went to the glorification of American torture methods....

One of the loudest voices against the casting has been “Encanto” star John Leguizamo, who took to Instagram to slam the casting decision. “How is this still going on?” Leguizamo wrote. “How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement, which would b wrong! I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!...

“Who would’ve thought that [I] would be the sort of psychologist or uncle or advisor to an 18- or 17-year-old Indian American girl going through high school,” McEnroe said in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight. “So I got to credit Mindy Kaling.” The decision to cast McEnroe in her semi-autobiographical series was a nostalgic one for Kaling, who grew up in a tennis-loving household. “It turned out her father was a big tennis fan and must’ve talked about me a lot when she was growing up,” he said....

Waters awarded the top honor of 2022 to François Ozon’s “Peter Von Kant,” calling the Rainer Werner Fassbinder-inspired feature “by far the best movie of the year” in a list shared with Artforum. “Fassbinder’s classic lesbian melodrama is appropriated and remade as a gay Frenchman’s love letter to the original version,” Waters wrote. “Hilariously stilted, often overwrought, but always highly entertaining, this cock-eyed tribute will make you swoon when Hanna Schygulla finally makes an appearance and Isabelle Adjani soon follows....

“That’s a lesson that I did not understand until it happened,” Chu said. “I was like, ‘This is a book that exists and I’m making this book into a movie.’ I can’t add a new character into this book.” Chu pointed to one scene in which Rachel (Constance Wu) and Peik Lin (Awkwafina) get lost on their way to a party, only to find themselves surrounded by armed guards sporting large rifles....

“Avatar 2” is set to reunite Winslet with her “Titanic” director Cameron. Details of Winslet’s character have remained under wraps, although the set photo below makes it appear that she will be playing some kind of underwater creature with giant wings. Winslet is one of the new faces to the “Avatar” franchise in the sequel. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, CCH Pounder, Stephen Lang, and Sigourney Weaver are all original “Avatar” stars returning for “Avatar 2....

The Academy Award and Emmy winner revealed that she was asked about her weight ahead of auditions when starting out in Hollywood. “When I was younger my agent would get calls saying, ‘How’s her weight?’” Winslet told The Sunday Times, adding that she cared more “about being that actor who moves their face and has a body that jiggles.” The “Avatar: The Way of Water” star noted that the media cycle has changed so much in recent years that tabloids are more unrelenting than ever....

“If people want to pull up stuff, go back to the same tweets of old, go ahead. There is nothing I can do,” Hart told The Sunday Times. “You’re looking at a younger version of myself. A comedian trying to be funny and, at that attempt, failing. Apologies were made…I understand now how it comes off. I look back and cringe. So it’s growth. It’s about growth.” Hart continued, “I personally don’t give a shit about [cancel culture]…If somebody has done something truly damaging then, absolutely, a consequence should be attached....