Author: Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Following an extensive auditioning process, rising star Austin Abrams has landed the lead role in 20th Century’s adaptation of the Daniel Kraus novel Whalefall, with Brian Duffield directing. Duffield will co-write the script with Kraus. The film is described as The Martian meets 127 Hours, centering on a scuba diver in search of his deceased father’s remains who gets swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out. After giving up on life, the young man is surprised to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and…

EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania actor Kathryn Newton is getting in on the bloody fun, and is joining the cast of Radio Silence’s follow-up to its near $58 million global-grossing 2019 cult Searchlight hit Ready or Not. The casting marks Newton’s second collaboration with Radio Silence after last year’s Universal horror movie Abigail. Newton joins returning star Samara Weaving in the movie directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. The original Ready or Not scribes are also back: Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy. The first film followed a young bride (Weaving) as she joined her new husband’s (Mark…

EXCLUSIVE: Director Hugo Ruiz has signed with Buchwald. Ruiz wrote and directed the film One Night With Adela, the Spanish filmmaker’s debut feature which is currently available to stream via Amazon. Laura Galán stars as Adela, a street cleaner in Madrid hellbent on revenge against those who have made her life miserable. The thriller thrives on the concept of a one-shot sequence and belongs to an eventual trilogy currently in development, where all three films take place over the course of one night. One Night With Adela also stars Gemma Nierga, Jimmy Barnatán, Raudel Raúl, Litus, Rosalía Omil, Fernando Moraleda…

It was a huge night for Anora and independent filmmaking at the 97th Oscars. Sean Baker matched Walt Disney’s record and Mikey Madison surprised many by beating Demi Moore to win Best Actress. Conan O’Brien was a popular host, funny but sympathetic, running a show that handed out a lot of awards to a lot of movies from the aforementioned sex worker comedy drama to The Brutalist, I’m Still Here, Dune: Part Two, Wicked, No Other Land, The Substance, Conclave, A Real Pain, Flow and even a couple for the embattled Emilia Pérez. There was also a lot of singing…

EXCLUSIVE: Shirley MacLaine wailed during her acceptance speech when she won her Oscar back in 1984 for Terms of Endearment, “I’m gonna cry because this show has been as long as my career!” Spare a thought for three of this year’s Best Actress nominees, Demi Moore, Karla Sofia Gascón and Mickey Madison, because for them, awards season has been running since last May when their movies, The Substance, Emilia Pérez and Anora, respectively, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. “It’s been nearly a year,” Moore tells me helpfully, when we meet at the annual Charles Finch/Chanel pre-Oscars soirée in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Her…

Angie Stone, a veteran soul and R&B singer, has died at 63 after a Sprinter van accident in Alabama. The 3x Grammy nominee’s daughter Diamond Stone announced her mother’s death Saturday on social media following the accident that occurred as she was leaving a performance early that morning in Montgomery, Alabama. “My mommy is gone,” wrote Diamond Stone on Facebook. Angie Stone’s rep Deborah R. Champagne also confirmed the death to TMZ following the accident. Born Dec. 18, 1961 in Columbia, South Carolina, Angela Laverne Brown got her start with hip hop trio The Sequence in the 1970s, before joining…

Medication found at Gene Hackman‘s Santa Fe home may provide more information on how the Oscar winner and wife Betsy Arakawa died. With conflicting missives emerging over what led to the deaths of the couple, the state of the on-going police probe will be revealed later Friday in a press conference, the Santa Fe Sheriff’s office said today. Ahead of the 3 p.m. MT presser, the Sheriff Adam Mendoza-led department has provided details on what a search warrant of the 95-year-old Hackman and the 63-year-old classical pianist’s home produced. Sought about 8 hours after the couple and one of their…

Days before the Oscars, a war of words has broken out between two key below-the-line workers over the credits on The Substance. Frédérique Arguello, who was head of the hair department on the Demi Moore-led horror movie, has claimed she was passed over for an Oscar nomination in the Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling category in favor of her assistant Marilyne Scarselli. Scarselli, alongside special makeup effects designer Pierre Olivier Persin and key makeup artist Stéphanie Guillon, are listed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the official nominees in the category, one of five overall noms…

The cause and manner of Michelle Trachtenberg‘s death will remain undetermined, according to the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Trachtenberg’s famly requested that no autopsy be conducted, according to multiple media reports. The medical examiner’s office would automatically do an autopsy if foul play or criminality was suspected, but there is none, so the office did not overrule the family’s decision. Police responded to a 911 call shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday at a luxury residential tower in midtown Manhattan where Trachtenberg was found unresponsive. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. She was 39. The…

Much of world cinema’s lost works have been victims of either technology with poor materials like nitrate film or the ignorance of a limited and often bigoted industry. Thankfully for film fans, it is becoming increasingly difficult for either to deal a death blow to a film’s trajectory.  Social and technological advancements also continue to aid our rediscovery of past great works like Zeinabu irene Davis’s debut feature Compensation, which embarked on its first wide release this past Friday just over 25 years since its festival debut.  Compensation screened at Sundance in 2000, receiving positive notices from critics like Roger…