Getting a boost during the pandemic is any film that debuted to real, live audiences at a film festival in 2020, like Sundance. That’s where writer-director Lee Isaac Chung won the jury and audience awards for “Minari” (A24) , a semi-autobiographical drama starring Steven Yeun as a Korean immigrant farmer trying to support his young family. And actress-writer-director Emerald Fennell (“The Crown) also nabbed raves for “Promising Young Woman” (Focus Features), starring Best Actress frontrunner Carey Mulligan as a woman who acts out her grievances against unsuspecting men....

That distinction goes to KD Dávila’s futuristic prison satire “Please Hold,” about a wrongful arrest that takes a young man through a Kafkaesque techno hellscape. Even without the home country advantage, the fact that “Please Hold” is a topical comedy, similar to last year’s winner in the category “Two Distant Strangers,” gives it an edge. Though hardly a guarantee, a few past Oscar winners and nominees appear on the shortlist, weighting their odds slightly....

The April 25, 2021 Academy Awards settled for a nightmarish 10.5 million total viewers and a 2.2 rating in the main demo. Fourteen-and-a-half months earlier, the pre-Covid Feb. 9, 2020 Oscars managed 23.6 million total viewers, which had previously set a record low for the annual celebration of cinema. The most-watched Academy Awards ever came in 1998, when “Titanic” won Best Picture. That broke the 1995 record of 48.3 million total viewers, when “Forrest Gump” bested “Pulp Fiction” and “Shawshank Redemption” (as well as “Quiz Show” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral”) to claim the evening’s final trophy....

Feig’s film, which starred Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Melissa McCarthy, was famously the target of a misogynistic online campaign fueled by outrage that women were stepping into the iconic jumpsuits first worn by Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Harold Ramis. As in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” the three surviving leads (Ramis died in 2014) reprised their roles, though after it opened to disappointing box office, Ackroyd told an interviewer that Feig “won’t be allowed back on the Sony lot anytime soon....

The virtual 32nd Producers Guild Awards will be held on Wednesday, March 24. Last year’s PGA Awards honored the producing teams behind “1917,” “Succession,” “Apollo 11,” “Toy Story 4,” “Ru Paul’s Drag Race,” “Chernobyl,” and more. “Our 2021 PGA Awards will look different than previous years with a shift to a virtual presentation,” stated Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher, Presidents of the Producers Guild of America, “but we’re excited by the opportunity to put on our show in a more accessible, personal, and entirely new way....

More to come, but for now here’s some implications to consider: Regal Cinemas will continue to operate. This is not the same as the more draconian bankruptcy action taken last year by Pacific Theaters, which also owned Arclight Cinemas: That meant it was out of business. This is the more traditional form of reorganization, in which the operators hope to readjust their financial obligations — debt (including film rentals), leases, contracts, and other — with the goal of staying in business....

The two have yet to make another film together, but in a recent interview with The Playlist, Denis revealed that they almost collaborated on a stage play. After speaking about her passion for working with actors, Denis was asked if she has considered directing theatre. Not only did she say yes, but she revealed that she was once developing a play that would have starred Pattinson. “Yeah, I have thought about it,” Denis said....

“It was a difficult line to tread but it’s exactly the line I wanted to be on,” Davies told IndieWire from London in a Zoom interview. “You’re talking about something that is seen as a sexually transmitted disease — it’s far more than that in real life — but nonetheless it’s seen as a sexually transmitted disease in the show in which you want to show sex being joyous. That’s a challenge, but that’s why I sit at this desk all day long....

According to BBC: “Russia’s Roscosmos space agency says Peresild and Shipenko have undergone both a medical and a creative selection process. Their special space flight training is to begin no later than June 1 and will include centrifuge and vibration tests, flights on a zero-gravity plane, and parachute training.” Peresild reportedly beat out 19 other actresses for the starring role in “Challenge.” The 36-year-old actress is an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation with credits that include “The Edge” and “Battle for Sevastopol....

“I’d like to be able to raise awareness on the tactics that abusers use to control you and take away your agency,” said FKA twigs, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett. Twigs’ allegations include physical and emotional assault, including the incident that incited the lawsuit, just after Valentine’s Day 2019 when LaBeouf “was driving recklessly… removing his seatbelt and threatening to crash unless she professed her love for him.” On a drive back from the desert, the “Transformers” star “raged at her throughout the trip,” FKA twigs said in the lawsuit, “once waking her up in the middle of the night, choking her....

Christophe Gans, who directed 2006’s “Silent Hill,” based on the first game in the series, was confirmed to direct the film. He appeared in a video message during the livestream to discuss the project. In addition, Victor Hadida, who executive produced the 2006 film, will produce “Return.” Gans confirmed that the movie would adapt the second game in the franchise, which was announced to receive an upcoming remake for the Playstation 5 during the same livestream....

Francis Ford Coppola cast daughter Sofia after Winona Ryder dropped out of “The Godfather Part III” because she got sick once arriving in Rome to film the sequel. Coppola had considered several high profile actors for the part, including Madonna and Julia Roberts, but he ultimately decided to replace Ryder with Sofia, who was already visiting the set while on break from college. “Paramount had a list of many fine actresses who were older than I felt the character should be,” Coppola told The Times about replacing Ryder....

“Our six-year plan was Seasons One and Two as you saw it,” Soderbergh said. “Seasons Three and Four were going to skip forward 50 years. It was going to be right after World War II, brand-new characters, brand-new cast. And Seasons Five and Six were going to be set five minutes into the future, with a mix of actors from the previous four seasons. I was really excited to do all of that....

Netflix’s official synopsis for “Stowaway” reads: “On a mission headed to Mars, an unintended stowaway accidentally causes severe damage to the spaceship’s life support systems. Facing dwindling resources and a potentially fatal outcome, the crew is forced to make an impossible decision.” “I had never really read anything like it,” Collette recently told Entertainment Weekly about her decision to join the Netflix project (it’s her third high profile Netflix gig after “Unbelievable” and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”)....

While it’s still unclear if 2022 will provide a bounceback for the box office and its rising (and established) women talents, there are some positive indicators. According to the latest study from the Celluloid Ceiling, the longest-running and most comprehensive study of women’s employment in film, women directors were up overall in 2020 (because of the pandemic, the study did not track new numbers for 2021). Women directors achieved historic highs in 2020, with women comprising 18 percent of the filmmakers calling the shots behind the top 250 domestic features, an uptick from 13 percent in 2019 and eight percent in 2018....

It was announced Friday evening that Ghibli director Katsuya Kondo has helmed the hand-drawn short “Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies” to debut Saturday November 12 on Disney+ in celebration of the third anniversary of Disney+ and the popular “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian.” The famed Japanese animation studio had tweeted the Lucasfilm logo earlier in the week indicating that a collaboration was in the works. It was a message amplified by at least one Disney executive....

We’ve combed through this year’s lineup to select 10 exciting long-form works directed by Black folks, most making their feature debuts, which compose a diverse assortment of stories that survey academia, policing, systematic bias, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonialist themes from a uniquely Black perspective. Here are the exciting Black-helmed projects, from incisive docuseries to adventurous feature films, to look out for at this year’s Sundance. Curious about how to re-create the magic of Sundance at home?...

When asked about today’s onslaught of comic book movies, Donner said it’s staggering to see the film genre he helped introduce to the masses become the dominant form of theatrical entertainment. “When you see it done right, by my standards, it’s so fulfilling,” Donner said. “I’m very happy and proud when I see them. When it’s done wrong, it’s such a disappointment.” Donner said he’s a fan of comic book films like Jenkins’ 2017 “Wonder Woman,” which he said “had the same feeling of emotion” as his 1978 “Superman....

The Emmy-nominated “Euphoria” and “White Lotus” star shut down assumptions that a “surprise hoedown”-themed birthday party for her mother was pro-Trump with MAGA references. Sweeney, whose attorney mother Lisa Sweeney (née Mudd) turned 60 this past weekend, shared photos on social media of the birthday bash in Idaho. “No better way to celebrate my momma than a surprise hoedown,” Sweeney captioned. The select pictures showed Sweeney riding a mechanical bull with her mom, with one relative wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt in the background....