Author: Hollyood rep

Obsession and Backrooms are breaking records and making history at the box office, and producers Jason Blum and James Wan say the films are reminiscent of the 1970s era of young filmmakers breaking into the horror genre. The horror leaders opened the Produced By Conference at Universal Studios lot Saturday, where they sat down with PGA President Stephanie Allain to discuss the state of cinema, movie theaters’ recovery from COVID and their future goals for Blumhouse–Atomic Monster. “Since COVID, there’s been this lethargic feeling around theatrical, and is it relevant anymore and is it going to survive?” Blum said. “And…

If you think that film from Kazakhstan equals Borat, the fictional character created by Sacha Baron Cohen, you may want to think again – and come out to the Screen Festival at SXSW London 2026 for the latest cinematic evidence. After all, Kazakhstan is back in town and ready to make a splash. Anna Bogutskaya, the head of screen at SXSW London, and her team have booked an eclectic mix of theatrical and series offerings. But Kazakhstani cinema features more prominently than most would expect from the Central Asian country with a population of about 21 million. “We’ve got two features from…

International buyers are mad for Hope. Na Hong-Jin’s sci-fi monster movie, a highlight of the Cannes Film Festival this year, has all but sold out worldwide, securing pre-sale deals in 200 territories worldwide. Studio divisions Focus Features and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions picked up the film for select international territories, with Focus, together with UPI France, acquiring rights for France, Benelux and South Africa; and SPWA taking Portugal, Scandinavia, Iceland, Israel and the Middle East. Other major international territorial deals include with Japan’s Gaga, CIS’ The World Pictures, Eastern Europe’s Unicorn Media and India’s Star Ent. Neon acquired Hope for…

After proving to be a winner in stand-up, Nate Bargatze hopes to win over audiences with his first movie. Bargatze, who is one of the world’s top-selling stand-up comedians, makes his feature debut with The Breadwinner, which Sony releases in theaters Friday. Mandy Moore, Colin Jost, Zach Cherry, Martin Herlihy, Kumail Nanjiani and Will Forte also star in director Eric Appel‘s film that centers on a dad (Bargatze) taking care of his three daughters while his wife (Moore) pursues a business opportunity. During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Bargatze talks about having a horse on set, suggesting to theater owners…

The fully AI-generated feature film Dreams of Violets from directors and producers Ash and Pooya Koosha has been officially programmed into the Tribeca Film Festival for a world premiere. The artificial intelligence-generated movie will debut on June 10 at the AMC Flat Iron Theatre in New York City. “The Tribeca Festival has long championed artists who push the boundaries of storytelling and explore new creative frontiers. Dreams of Violets from first-time filmmakers Ash and Pooya Koosha is a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human…

It takes some time to work out exactly who Jamie (Andrew Rannells) and Diane (Allison Janney), the two lost and lonely leads of HBO’s Miss You, Love You, are to each other. She might be his mother, but then she asks his name when he enters her home. He could be some sort of consultant, except he seems no more confident than she does when she asks how “this” is supposed to work.   As it turns out, it’s not just us: Diane and Jamie don’t really know who they are to each other, either. They are strangers, linked socially…

German teenager Franny (newcomer Naomi Cosma) arrives in New Mexico to spend the 2001-02 academic year at a high school in Las Cruces, living with a local family, just before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in writer-director Katharina Rivilis’ wispy but engaging debut feature. Even if you didn’t know that this was inspired by Rivilis’ own teenage experience as an exchange student back in the day you would probably guess from the way nothing really happens, apart from friends getting made, places being seen and hearts being negligibly fractured. Nevertheless, as befits a film partly backed by Wim Wenders’ Road…

Japanese genre maven Kiyoshi Kurosawa is mostly known outside his homeland for eerie, visually inventive films like Cure, Pulse and Loft that brought the J-horror trend into the arthouse. But he’s also made psychological thrillers (Creepy), serial killer flicks (Serpent’s Path), science-fiction movies (Before We Vanish), a darkly comic anti-capitalist actioner (last year’s Cloud) and at least one great drama (Tokyo Sonata). The auteur can now cross another genre off his bucket list with The Samurai and the Prisoner (Kokurojo), a stately and rather stagy historical mystery set during the 16th century, at a time when warring clans fought and…

Mubi has made its first major buy of this year at the Cannes Film Festival, swooping in to acquire Lukas Dhont‘s Coward ahead of the awards ceremony Saturday night. The arthouse streaming picked up all rights to the film, a WWI drama about queer love in the midst of the horrors of war, for North America. Mubi already secured rights for Coward across most of its international footprint ahead of Cannes. It snatched up rights across the U.K./Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand. The company released Dhont’s previous film, Close, which premiered in Cannes in…

Nearly two decades after winning the Palme d’Or with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), an abortion thriller set in Communist-era Romania, Cristian Mungiu is back in Cannes with another challenging, potentially hotly divisive film about the clash between progressive and conservative values and what it means to live in a free society. In Fjord, a Romanian Evangelical family, headed by father Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and mother Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), moves to Norway, only to be confronted by local welfare authorities, who view their traditional child-rearing methods — including occasional corporal punishment — as child abuse. The legal…