News

Adam Driver, Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway will star for James Gray in the crime drama Paper Tiger, which The Veterans is introducing to buyers at AFM next week.

Leone Film Group will fully finance the project, with Raffaella Leone producing alongside Rodrigo Teixeira under his Rt Features.The Veterans represents international sales and CAA Media Finance handles US rights.

Principal photography is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2025 on the story of two brothers pursuing the American Dream who get involved in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true.

As they try...

James Gray, the director of “Ad Astra,” has revealed his next film, an original screenplay and crime drama called “Paper Tiger.”

Gray’s latest film, his ninth feature, will star Adam Driver and will reunite him with his stars from 2022’s “Armageddon Time,” Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway.

“Paper Tiger” is described as a tense and gritty story about two brothers pursuing the American Dream, only to become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. As they try to navigate their way through an ever-more dangerous world of corruption and violence, they find themselves and their family brutally terrorized by the Russian “Mafiya.”

The film is being launched to buyers at next week’s AFM, with CAA Media Finance handling U.S. rights and Vincent Maraval and Kim Fox’s The Veterans handling international sales. The worldwide rights to the film are available.

The HBO series Industry returns for a third season on Aug. 11, with Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harington joining the cast. The series follows a cast of characters caught up in the cutthroat world of high finance in London as they determine whether they will thrive or crumble under the pressure.

Rick and Morty: The Anime will be available on Max this month for fans looking for something to tide them over until Rick and Morty season 8.

Another notable new release this month is the documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes. Formulated with newly recovered interviews and unprecedented access to the actor’s personal archive, this documentary claims to be Elizabeth Taylor’s story from her perspective.

Here’s everything coming to HBO and Max in August.

HBO and Max New Releases – August 2024

August 1

3 Days to Kill (2014)

A Bigger Splash (2016)

Amelie (2001)

Arthur (2011)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Blackthorn (2011)

Brick Mansions (2014)

Down Terrace (2010)

Forever My Girl...

The International Jury for this year’s Venice International Film Festival has been finalized after the previous confirmation of French actress Isabelle Huppert as its chair.

Now, American director and screenwriter James Gray, British director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh, Polish director, screenwriter, and producer Agnieszka Holland, and Brazilian director-screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho are the latest additions to the jury. They will join Mauritanian director, screenwriter and producer Abderrahmane Sissako, Italian director-screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore, German director-screenwriter Julia von Heinz and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

The prestigious Golden Lion for best film and other awards will be revealed during the festival’s closing ceremony on Sept. 7.

Gray made his directorial debut in 1994 with Little Odessa, which received the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His other projects include The Yards (2000), starring Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers (2008) and The Immigrant (2013). The Lost City of Z had its world premiere at the New York...

Miky Lee, vice chair of Korean media giant Cj, is set to give the USC School of Cinematic Arts 2024 commencement address, organizers said Tuesday.

As a pioneer of the Korean movie wave, Lee has championed Korean directors like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, and has executive producer credits that include Lady Vengeance, The Host, Snowpiercer, The Handmaiden and Parasite, the latter of which was the first non-English-language film to win the Oscar for best picture.

She will give the commencement address at the graduation ceremony set for May 10 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

“Miky Lee is a true pioneer and ambassador of collaborative global filmmaking, and we are so happy to have her share her insight and expertise with our graduating students,” Elizabeth M. Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, said in a statement.

Organizers also announced that the veteran Hollywood director, writer and...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: VOD...

Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

Back By Popular Demand

The Graduate,...

From November to December, it's time for what's next at Plex! Prepare for your "Killers of the Flower Moon" screening by catching one of Martin Scorcese and Leonardo DiCaprio's collaborations, "The Aviator," taking flight on the free streamer on Dec. 1.

The platform will also add romantic dramas and thrillers such as “Two Lovers” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow and double the dosage for A24 heads with “It Comes At Night” and “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”

Check out The Streamable’s top picks for Plex’s December additions and see everything getting added to the library throughout the month!

Watch Now Tba plex.tv What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Coming to Plex in December 2023? “Barking Dogs Never Bite” | Friday, Dec. 1

“Parasite” filmmaker and Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho makes his directorial debut with the 2000 black comedy that follows Yun-ju (played by Lee Sung-jae), a part-time...

Magnolia Pictures International, the global sales arm of the leading U.S. distribution company, is rebranding to Magnify as it plans to invest in more projects at earlier stages.

The sales arm has handled international sales on a number of award-winning indie movies, including “Tangerine,” “Swan Song” and recent Sundance breakouts, “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and “Kokomo City.” Magnify’s extensive sales library includes “We Own The Night,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Humpday,” “The Wolfpack,” and “Two Lovers.”

Under the rebranded label, Magnify will continue to handle international sales for titles acquired by Magnolia Pictures for worldwide rights, but will also board and invest in more projects at earlier stages for global sales. The editorial line of the banner will also remain focused on director-driven titles, horror, thrillers, drama, documentaries, and international feature films.

As part of Magnify’s growth strategy, industry veteran Lorna Lee Torres, now based in Madrid,...

Hulu remains one of the best value-for-money streamers out there in September, 2023, with a massive list of movie and TV additions coming to the service this month.

The big Hulu Original show this month is The Other Black Girl, and you’ll be able to binge the complete series when it arrives on September 13! The Other Black Girl is based on the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, and focuses on Nella, who is an editorial assistant and the only Black girl at Wagner Books. When the company brings new girl Hazel aboard, Nella is delighted to finally see the staff hires at Wagner becoming more diverse, but everything is not as it seems, and things soon take a sinister turn. We will be watching!

Elsewhere on Hulu, the award-winning movie The Banshees of Inisherin lands on September 4, while the season two premieres of Welcome to Wrexham...

Right on the heels of “Armageddon Time,” James Gray is teaming back up with Focus Features. The acclaimed filmmaker will direct “Ezekiel Moss,” a new feature set in the Great Depression, for the distribution company, a source confirmed to IndieWire.

According to the logline, “Ezekiel Moss” will be a ghost story set in the Great Depression and will focus on the friendship between a young boy and a drifter who arrives in his small town that may or may not have the ability to speak with the dead. Gray will direct the film from a screenplay by Keith Bunin, whose other credits include 2020’s “Onward” and Questlove’s upcoming remake of Disney’s “The Aristocats.”

Focus has reportedly been developing the project for several years; Philip Seymour Hoffman was reportedly attached to direct before his unexpected death in 2014. The movie will be produced by Likely Story for Focus, and is currently in pre-production,...

Exclusive: James Gray and Focus Features are reuniting as Gray has come on to direct Ezekiel Moss for the studio from a script by Keith Bunin. Likely Story is producing the film. Bunin recently delivered a draft that blew the studio and Gray away with the director recently committing to it. Gray and Bunin will now team to develop the full the story as they get ready for the pre-production process.

The film is a Depression-era ghost story about a young, imaginative boy living in a small town who befriends a mysterious drifter who may or may not have the supernatural ability to communicate with the dead.

The project has been something the studio has been developing for awhile with Philip Seymour Hoffman planning to direct prior to his tragic death in 2014.

Known for his critically acclaimed dramas like We Own The Night and Two Lovers, Gray recently directed Armageddon Time for Focus Features,...

It’s ironic but unavoidable that the greatest annual celebration of film should be a television special — but that’s just how it is. March often means Oscar season, a time for cinephiles to boot up that small screen you use for movies and use it to see if they win any awards during a telecast.

If you don’t have TV service anymore, Hulu has you covered with a pre-Oscars telecast as well as two red carpet specials before and after the main event. Though the ceremony itself won’t be livestreamed on Hulu, it will be added the next morning, like regular ABC programming. Awards viewership has been in general decline over the past several years, but next-day streaming gives curious viewers a chance to join the conversation and boost those Oscar ratings after the live show. It’s also a chance for superfans to pause and rewind...

"Life is unfair. Be thankful when you get a leg up." Focus Features has revealed the first official trailer for James Gray's new film Armageddon Time, an autobiographical look at his time growing up in New York City. This originally premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival a few months ago, and it just premiered at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival this past weekend. It's also playing at the New York Film Festival, which seems like it's grand "coming home" party. From acclaimed filmmaker James Gray, Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream. The film features an all-star cast starring Michael Banks Repeta (aka just Banks Repeta) as the boy named Paul, plus Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and Jeremy Strong. Reviews from festivals have been mixed, but the performances are the best part about it.

Don’t Worry Darling seems to be destined for infamy – and the film isn’t even out yet.

The psychological sci-fi thriller, starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, premiered this week at the Venice film festival, amid mounting reports of behind-the-scenes turmoil.

From a rumoured “falling out” between the film’s director and its star, to a dispute over a controversial cast departure, Don’t Worry Darling has truly endured the promotional campaign from hell.

Click here for a timeline of the behind-the-scenes controversies that have surrounded the film.

However, Don’t Worry Darling isn’t the only film to have its launch thrown into disarray by a wayward promotional campaign.

Whether we’re talking huge studio blockbusters or buzzy indie gems, sometimes all it takes is for one errant interview to spark a wave of bad – or merely strange – publicity.

Here are five of the most disastrous film campaigns in the history of cinema.

Eddie Redmayne To Be Honored With Zurich’s Golden Eye

British actor Eddie Redmayne will be feted with the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Eye Award for his career achievements at its upcoming edition running from September 22 to October 2. The actor will receive the honor ahead of the European premiere of Tobias Lindholm’s serial killer thriller The Good Nurse on September 25.

Citing Oscar-winning Redmayne’s diverse credits including Fantastic Beasts, Trial Of The Chicago 7 and Theory Of Everything, Zff artistic director Christian Jungen described the actor as one of “contemporary cinema’s most versatile actors” adding, “he furnishes his characters with a rare human depth and captivates us with his extraordinary powers of expression.”

Redmayne was previously at Zurich in 2007 in the that’s opening film Savage Grace, in which he co-starred opposite Julianne Moore. He will also participate in a Zurich Masters session during this trip to the Swiss festival.

Past is present, and nailing those specifics turns James Gray’s heartfelt 1980 Queens family drama into something universal. Gray’s fifth Cannes entry and best film to date, “Armageddon Time” is carried by Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Sir Anthony Hopkins as the parents and grandfather, respectively, of sixth-grade rebel Paul Graff as the younger filmmaker.

At a sunset dinner in Antibes ahead of the Thursday night premiere, Focus chairman Peter Kujawski told the “Armageddon Time” team, “This is the last night the movie is yours.” The movie played like gangbusters at the Palais and is generating upbeat reviews. Filmgoers beyond Cannes could embrace this likely Focus fall release (it’s a natural for the New York Film Festival), which like most Universal movies these days, from “The Northman” to “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” will hit PVOD three weeks after theaters, followed by Peacock. With the right handling, it...

James Gray makes a fifth trip to the Palme d’Or competition with Armageddon Time – his eighth feature film. Following The Yards (2000), We Own the Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008), and The Immigrant (2013), this new project features newcomer child actors Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb who are surrounded (and supported at least in theory) here by a world of adults: supervisors, teachers, parents, grandparents and other people in positions of authority. Supporting players include Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins and corporal punishment for your own good father played by Jeremy Strong.

A set in the 1980’s coming-of-age story about parental support and the explicit lack of, this features Queens, the middle class during the Ronald Reagan era — Gray’s most personal story yet.…...

Writer-director James Gray has been to the Cannes Film Festival in competition on four previous occasions with We Own the Night, The Yards, The Immigrant and Two Lovers but has yet to walk away with a prize. Maybe the fifth time will be the charm? It certainly would be deserving as Gray comes back to his beloved New York City roots with the highly autobiographical and intriguingly titled Armageddon Time.

Lest you think that with that title this is more akin to his previous film, the Brad Pitt-starring sci-fi Ad Astra, think again. It couldn’t be farther apart and reps a return to his more frequent thoughtful character-driven family drama explorations rather than space, though that figures in at least one way. With Ad Astra and the exceptional and haunting jungle epic The Lost City of Z (my favorite of all his films and one of the best...

After offering up a reduced, slightly belated 2021 edition, the Cannes Film Festival is back in its usual plum May spot, and with an enviable lineup to match. This year’s festival includes new films from some of cinema’s biggest names, including David Cronenberg, Kelly Reichardt, Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, the Dardenne brothers, James Gray, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ruben Ostlund, Park Chan-wook, and more.

There are big studio efforts on offer, along with singular indies from a range of rising stars and new features from some of our favorite auteurs.

Digging through the Cannes lineup is always a treat, but this year’s selection feels particularly rich and rewarding. You can’t go wrong with this one, but that didn’t stop us from trawling this year’s picks to unearth the 18 titles we’re most excited about seeing, the creme de la creme of a festival that strives to only program the best.

Cannes Film Festival will announce the official selection for its 75th edition on April 14.

There are still two months to go until the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival kicks off, returning to a more habitual May 17-28 slot after being cancelled in 2020 and then moved to July in 2021 due to the pandemic, but prediction season is in full swing.

Expectations are high that the festival, its Marché du Film, and the parallel sections will roar back into life this year after 2021’s jubilant but smaller summertime edition. Speculation around which films are likely to make the cut ramped...

The Cannes Film Festival is hoping to attract the likes of Baz Luhrmann, George Miller and David Cronenberg for its 75th anniversary. The milestone edition of the sun-dappled celebration of all things cinema may even land a megastar in the form of Tom Cruise, who festival organizers are banking can be convinced to unveil “Top Gun: Maverick,” giving Cannes the kind of blowout premiere that makes the French festival an unforgettable experience.

The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 17 to May 28, and the full selection will be revealed in the third week of April. Of course, things can shift, and movies that were expected to hit the Croisette may end up taking a detour, either because they won’t be finished in time or because their teams rethought their rollout plans. That said, Variety has collected intel from a bevy of well-informed sources to come up with the most deeply...

Wake up, Neo.

It’s December 2021 and to celebrate HBO Max is bringing back a classic sci-fi franchise for one last ride. The list of new releases on HBO Max this month is highlighted by The Matrix Resurrections on Dec. 22. This is the long-awaited return to the reality-bending saga from The Wachowskis. Writer/director Lana Wachowski returns as do stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as Neo and Trinity, respectively. This time around it’s 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions and “Neo lives a seemingly ordinary life as Thomas A. Anderson in San Francisco where his therapist prescribes him blue pills. Neither he nor Trinity recognize each other. However, Morpheus offers him the red pill and reopens his mind to the world of the Matrix.”

While The Matrix Resurrections is the big draw this time around, HBO Max has some other intriguing originals to speak of. The David Thewlis and...

Saw franchise co-creator Peter Block among producers.

Priscilla Ross Smith’s genre sales agency The Coven has finalised a raft of key international deals following the virtual AFM led by the UK on Tribeca and Stiges horror mystery We Need To Do Something.

Blue Finch has acquired UK rights and Front Row has picked it up fort Middle East. In other significant deals the film closed in Russia/Cis (Exponenta), Malaysia and Singapore (Suraya), Scandinavia (Lucky Dogs), and Poland (Media4Fun). IFC distributes in North America.

We Need To Do Something premiered at Tribeca Festival in June and stars Sierra McCormick...

“A Tale of Love and Desire” is the story of a young Arab man in Paris whose first love is accompanied by the discovery of a very different Arab culture than the one he knows, one that is sensual and liberating.

The film screens as part of the Zurich Film Festival’s New World View section, which this year is celebrating a new generation of Tunisian filmmakers.

In making her sophomore feature, Leyla Bouzid says she wanted to tell the story of a young man experiencing his first love and first sexual experience. The idea, she says, was “to propose another vision of masculinity, another kind of story that has not been presented in other films. It’s something that is absent from our cinema.”

Simply broaching the subject is difficult due to modern social customs. “Filming the body of a young Arab man, even if he’s French, how that is seen by others,...

Exclusive: International production veterans Shebnem Askin and Michael Rifkin have been appointed Co-Heads of Sony Pictures International Productions. Reporting to Sanford Panitch, President, Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, the pair takes over from Laine Kline who stepped down earlier this year.

Spip is the local-language production arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group and is active in more than 13 markets around the world including France, the UK, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, India, Korea, China, Taiwan, Germany and Japan and is a market share leader in Spain and Russia.

Local-language pictures are an important aspect of the business, key to individual market box office and with the ability to make all boats rise. Some of Sony’s recent notable co-production releases include 2019’s Padre No Hay Mas Que Uno which grossed $15.9M in Spain to become the highest grossing Spanish film that year. The sequel, Padre No Hay Mas Que Uno 2,...

Muriel Sauzay, Pathe Intl.’s former head, and Agnès Mentré, Wild Bunch’s former acquisition topper, have launched Maremako, a Paris-based banner banner with a special interest in adaptations and remakes.

The company’s first slate includes an English-language remake of “Stalk” with Endeavor Content, in association with Drake’s DreamCrew and Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Prods.; and “French Love,” a anthology series with Noemie Saglio (Netflix’s “The Hook Up Plan”) showrunning and Richard Grandpierre’s Eskwad producing. “Stalk” follows a teenage hacker who gets hazed in his freshman year at a prestigious engineering school and sets off to take his revenge by cyber-stalking his tormentors.

“French Love,” meanwhile, will be based on the highly popular Elle magazine weekly column “C’est mon histoire” (It’s My Story). The column, which boasts one of the highest readerships of French women’s magazine segments on love stories in France,...

James Gray shooting The Immigrant with Joaquin Phoenix

Focus Features has finalized their worldwide deal on James Gray’s Armageddon Time. The coming-of-age film is written and set to be directed by Gray, based upon his childhood experiences set in a pre-Reagan era America. The film lines up an acclaimed ensemble cast including four Academy Award® winners Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, Donald Sutherland, Anne Hathaway and Cate Blanchett.

Production is set to begin in 2021 in New York. Rt Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira will produce along with Gray and Anthony Katagas, with Lourenço Sant’Anna and Rodrigo Gutierrez executive producing.

Says Gray, “It’s really a dream come true for me–to do this kind of personal story, and to do it for such a wonderful partner in Focus Features. I could not ask for a better home for this film.”

Gray has previously helmed Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt, as well as Little Odessa,...

While everything in the filmmaking world, as in most industries, is up in the air right now, if all goes according to plan, James Gray will embark on the production of his next film Armageddon Time early next year. A return to smaller-scale filmmaking after his space epic Ad Astra, the film is inspired by his mid-80s upbringing in Queens’ Kew-Forest School, and also involves its principal as well as board member Fred Trump. Led by Robert De Niro, Cate Blanchett, Donald Sutherland, Oscar Isaac, and Anne Hathaway, Focus Features recently picked up the worldwide rights for around $15 million and now we have new details––including two classics that are serving as inspiration.

“It’s very simply kind of a memoir about when I was twelve and in the fall of 1980 in New York about my best friend and my relationship with him and when I moved from public school to private school,...

Neil deGrasse Tyson tried and failed this week to call out a mistake in Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” but he next took a swing at the science behind James Gray’s “Ad Astra.” Gray’s science-fiction drama stars Brad Pitt — as the son of a legendary astronaut — who ventures through the solar system toward Neptune to discover the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The film opened last fall to critical acclaim and $132 million at the worldwide box office — leading to a Sound Mixing Oscar nomination. As this is a film from the director of “Two Lovers” and “The Lost City of Z,” “Ad Astra” often prioritizes character drama over science, so it’s no surprise to hear some of Tyson’s criticisms. The astrophysicist has the biggest issues, in particular, with the moon sequence in “Ad Astra.”

“The film ‘Ad Astra’ showed an excellent lunar landscape,” Tyson wrote on Twitter.

Feted film professionals will each deliver a masterclass at talent development event.

Directors James Gray and Jessica Hausner and Hollywood sound designer Mark Mangini have been confirmed as the first three ‘Masters’ at the 2020 edition of Qumra, Doha Film Institute’s annual talent incubator event, which runs from March 20-25 in Qatar.

The three Masters will each deliver a masterclass and also offer one-on-one advice to assigned participants during their time at Qumra.

Now in its sixth year, the event supports the development of a selection of projects awarded grants by the Doha Film Institute (Dfi) as well as their attached directors and producers.

The Brad Pitt sci-fi blockbuster “Ad Astra” is set to take off in Chinese theaters Dec. 6, more than two months after its U.S. launch.

Directed, co-written and produced by James Gray, the thriller also stars Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland and Ruth Negga. Pitt plays an astronaut who goes off in search of his lost father, who manned an expedition 30 years previously and whose work may now be threatening the fate of the universe.

The movie was co-financed by China’s Bona Film Group, which holds Greater China rights. Bona was also the backer of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which also stars Pitt, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. “Once Upon a Time” was scheduled to hit Chinese theaters in late October, but its release was indefinitely postponed after Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon complained to Chinese authorities about her father’s portrayal in the film.

(Welcome to Role Call, where we examine two performances from an actor – their first defining role and their most recent/last – to get a sense of who they are.) Joaquin Phoenix has been playing the Joker for a long time. As the awkward romantic Leonard Kraditor in Two Lovers. As the lonely, optimistic Theodore Twombly in […]

The post Tracking Joaquin Phoenix’s Long Road From Sidekick to Leading Man appeared first on /Film.

Could Brad Pitt get two Oscar nominations for the price of one this year? He earned praise earlier this summer for Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and now he’s in another acclaimed film: “Ad Astra,” in which he stars as an astronaut on a mission to find his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones). It opened September 20.

As of this writing “Ad Astra” has an impressive MetaCritic score of 80 based on 50 reviews counted thus far — 46 of them positive, 4 somewhat mixed. Eight of those reviews rate it a perfect 100. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, which rates films on a pass/fail scale, the film is 81% fresh based on 187 reviews counted — 151 positive and 36 negative. The Rt critics’ consensus says, “‘Ad Astra’ takes a visually thrilling journey through the vast reaches of space while charting an ambitious course for the heart of the bond between parent and child.”

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Note: This interview contains minor spoilers for the film — continue at your own risk, or read on with fresh eyes after seeing the movie for yourself! James Gray brings family into every genre piece, whether it’s his early crime films, a love triangle (Two Lovers), or his two recent period films. And I’m not talking the Fast & Furious sense of “family” being a word to...

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James Gray never gets the acclaim that he deserves. For years, the filmmaker has been doing high quality work that repeatedly gets the short shrift. Especially with Two Lovers, the lack of love is just absurd. This week, however, he’s finally going to be on the radar of the masses, as his largest movie to date is opening in Ad Astra. With some of his most emotional directing, alongside a phenomenal Brad Pitt lead performance, this is damn near a masterpiece. Without question, this is one of the best works of 2019 so far. Furthermore, it’s not at all like you probably imagined it would be when the project was first announced. It’s something different, and truly, something more. The film is a science fiction drama mixed with a mystery, though that’s an incredibly reductive description. Set in the not at all distant future, humanity has made technological gains,...

20th Century Fox has released a special preview of the intense, action-filled “Moon Rover” sequence from Ad Astra, coming to theaters on September 20, 2019. Starring Brad Pitt, Ad Astra is a paranoid thriller in space that follows Roy McBride (Pitt) on a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

Director James Gray and director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema researched actual images of the Moon from the Apollo lunar missions to ensure an authentic look that will surely be breathtaking on the big screen.

Ad Astra stars Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland.

Watch the special extended clip now.

CNET says: “Pitt stunningly embodies the astronaut stepping into the crushing vacuum of space and the even more desolate vacuum left by a missing father. Pitt is masterful in conveying both supreme,...

A year after the walls of the Sala Darsena thrummed to Damien Chazelle’s Ryan Gosling-led voyage to the moon, First Man, Venice braced for another space journey. For a festival that’s traditionally allocated the coveted opening slot to big studio productions and grand epics, it felt somewhat surprising to see the 76th official lineup kick off with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth and not what was trumpeted as the year’s biggest epic among its twenty-one Golden Lion contenders, Ad Astra. James Gray’s latest—and largest commercial undertaking to date—found a slot in the second festival day. A Brad Pitt vehicle, it was the sort of blockbuster-to-be that would leave the streets around the Sala Grande’s red carpet swamped with fans fishing for autographs and pictures.Quite a departure from Gray’s previous earthling offerings—if you can attach a leitmotif to a protean...

In the opening sequence of “Ad Astra,” Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), a veteran U.S. astronaut, is doing what he does at the top of a space antenna, an elaborate piece of technological scaffolding so tall that it juts right up from the earth into the outer void. (It’s enough to make that famous 1932 photograph of construction workers eating lunch while sitting on a skyscraper girder not look vertigo-inducing.) Suddenly, there’s a mysterious power surge, which sends dozens of astronauts tumbling off the antenna. Roy bounds down a few levels to shut off the power, then makes his own escape, leaping off the structure and plunging to the earth below — an ultimate sky-dive that takes him from the blackness of space to the blueness of the atmosphere, until the earth begins to rear up and, at long last, he pulls his parachute strap.

It’s a bedazzling and terrifying sequence,...

What’s bigger than space? In a fitting twist on filmmaker James Gray’s special brand of massive, large-scale filmmaking, his long-gestating space epic “Ad Astra” is set for an IMAX release when it rolls out in theaters next month.

The film marks star Brad Pitt’s second buzzy role this year, following his turn in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which offered him a markedly different leading man role. In Gray’s film, Pitt is cast as something new for the longtime actor: a space explorer, albeit one with a strange mission that doesn’t follow the typical narrative expectations of the genre.

Gray himself has said his intention with “Ad Astra,” which seems to be something of a mix of “Interstellar” and “Gravity” with one heck of a question mark at its heart, was to feature “the most realistic depiction of space travel that...

Mary Pickford Award honouring a female emerging talent to be announced shortly.

Joaquin Phoenix will receive the Tiff Tribute Actor Award at the Toronto International Film Festival’s inaugural Tiff Tribute Gala on September 9.

Phoenix, who has earned Oscar nods for The Master, Walk The Line, and Gladiator, stars in Warner Bros’ awards season prospect Joker, which will receive its North American premiere at Tiff following the world premiere in Venice.

The Golden Globe-winning star of Walk The Line has earned acclaim for other lead or key roles in films such as Inherent Vice, To Die For, The Sisters Brothers,...

French actor Louis Garrel has been married twice, first to Iranian talent Golshifteh Farahani, and now to model-cum-actress Laetitia Casta. He has also directed two features, the first a free-wheeling love-triangle comedy called “Two Friends” in which Garrel plays the cad who comes between his best friend and the object of his obsession (played by Farahani), and the other the relatively low-key drama “A Faithful Man,” centered on a different sort of triangle, in which two women (one played by Casta) compete for Garrel’s affections.

That description grossly oversimplifies both movies, and yet, their personalities could not be more different, hardly even the work of the same filmmaker, which must say something about Garrel’s state of mind in these two marriages. If “Two Lovers” was a lively New Wave lark, exploding with color and energy, then “A Faithful Man” is its sober, cerebral opposite, gray and stylistically restrained,...

Oscar season is getting a double dose of Brad Pitt thanks to his leading turns in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and James Gray’s “Ad Astra.” Tarantino’s movie arrives this summer, while Gray’s long-awaited space drama hits theaters in September after numerous delays because of the movie’s extensive post-production. “Ad Astra” marks a reunion between Gray and Pitt after “The Lost City of Z,” which the actor produced (but did not star in) under his Plan B banner.

In “Ad Astra” Pitt gets in front of the camera as Roy McBride, an Army Corps engineer who embarks on an ambitious space mission to find out the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of his father. Clifford McBride, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was an astronaut who set out on a journey to Neptune looking for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence but never returned. The supporting cast includes Liv Tyler,...

Vinessa Shaw has signed with Buchwald, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.

She most recently starred in two horror thrillers, 2018's Family Blood and 2017's Clinical, which are both available on Netflix. Prior to that, she recurred on the second season of Showtime's Ray Donovan in 2014 as journalist Kate McPherson, co-starred opposite Michael C. Hall in the 2014 Sundance crime thriller Cold in July and played Jude Law's wife in Steven Soderbergh's 2013 ensemble drama Side Effects.

Shaw previously starred opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow in James Gray's Two Lovers and appeared opposite Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in ...

Vinessa Shaw has signed with Buchwald, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.

She most recently starred in two horror thrillers, 2018's Family Blood and 2017's Clinical, which are both available on Netflix. Prior to that, she recurred on the second season of Showtime's Ray Donovan in 2014 as journalist Kate McPherson, co-starred opposite Michael C. Hall in the 2014 Sundance crime thriller Cold in July and played Jude Law's wife in Steven Soderbergh's 2013 ensemble drama Side Effects.

Shaw previously starred opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow in James Gray's Two Lovers and appeared opposite Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in ...

The answers we seek are just outside our reach.

20th Century Fox has released the official trailer and poster for Ad Astra. Starring Brad Pitt, the film follows an astronaut as he travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father. The mission unravels a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet.

Directed by James Gray, Ad Astra stars Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland.

Ad Astra arrives in theaters everywhere on September 20, 2019 from The Walt Disney Studios.

Watch the official trailer.

I love that this is being released close to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon mission. Gray has previously helmed Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own The Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z.

The film is co-written by Ethan Gross who worked for three seasons on the Fox science-fiction series Fringe,...

We still don’t know what exactly to expect from James Gray’s sci-fi drama “Ad Astra” when it premieres September 20, but we do know what Gray’s lining up next. Variety reports that the “Two Lovers” and “The Immigrant” filmmaker is set to write and direct “Armageddon Time,” an autobiographical drama about growing up in mid-1980s Queens, New York. But wait, there’s more: “Fred Trump, the Queens-based real estate developer who sired Donald Trump, and the current president will appear as characters, although the events will unfold long before there was ever a Trump in the White House.”

Rt Features, the production company responsible for “Ad Astra,” is also working with Gray on this next venture. “It’s a personal story for James,” the company’s Rodrigo Teixeira told Variety. “You have the whole world of the Trumps dealing with that school and the students who go to that school.

Brad Pitt’s science-fiction adventure movie “Ad Astra” has quietly vanished from the release schedule, three weeks prior to its previously announced May 24 opening date.

Fox had originally dated “Ad Astra” for Jan. 11, 2019, then decided in late 2018 to move it back four months to the Memorial Day weekend on May 24. Disney closed the deal for the 20th Century Fox film assets in March and has not done any promotion for the movie since then — no trailer or stills have been released. “Ad Astra” was not included in early tracking numbers released Thursday for the Memorial Day period, expected to be dominated by Disney’s live-action “Aladdin.”

Pitt is expected to be at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” in which he co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio. The screening will likely be on May 21, the 20th anniversary of “Pulp Fiction.”

The studio had no comment Thursday.

For the upcoming 91st Oscar telecast, after all the noise about the worst ratings in history, the Academy had to replace producers Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Todd. The duo did well enough their first time around (the Best Picture snafu was not their fault) to warrant returning their second, and put on a decent show within the usual constraints of a ceremony that must showcase 24 award winners.

For Oscars 2019, new producer Donna Gigliotti, who won an Oscar for Miramax’s surprise winner “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, will pioneer new Academy rules allowing several of the tech Oscars to be handed out during the commercial break and then edited into the live show. (No one will miss their time in the spotlight; there will be a lot less walking.)

New Yorker Gigliotti will work closely with co-producer Glenn Weiss, who will also direct. If he looks familiar, he’s the unflappable...

For the upcoming 91st Oscar telecast, after all the noise about the worst ratings in history, the Academy had to replace producers Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Todd. The duo did well enough their first time around (the Best Picture snafu was not their fault) to warrant returning their second, and put on a decent show within the usual constraints of a ceremony that must showcase 24 award winners.

For Oscars 2019, new producer Donna Gigliotti, who won an Oscar for Miramax’s surprise winner “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, will pioneer new Academy rules allowing several of the tech Oscars to be handed out during the commercial break and then edited into the live show. (No one will miss their time in the spotlight; there will be a lot less walking.)

New Yorker Gigliotti will work closely with co-producer Glenn Weiss, who will also direct. If he looks familiar, he’s the unflappable...