News

From director Chad Hartigan comes a romcom that challenges the expectations we have of what a romantic comedy should be. The film stars Jonah Hauer-King (“The Little Mermaid”) who pines for his longtime crush Olivia (Zoey Deutch). But trouble arises when the couple decides to have a threesome with

The post Inside the Sexy, Sweet, Funny “The Threesome” appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.

Before knees were bent to the likes of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), a greater part of Westeros first bent the knee to their forebear, the patriarch of the Targaryen dynasty, King Aegon, First of His Name. HBO built its Westeros-set franchise beginning with the critically acclaimed series, Game of Thrones, and has since followed it up with a prequel, House of the Dragon. Given the intense appeal of the lore, even more spin-offs have been considered over the years, one of them being an Aegon's Conquest series. While HBO is yet to officially greenlight an adaptation of Aegon's story, writer Mattson Tomlin — who recently just finished writing the first official draft of The Batman Part II alongside Matt Reeves — is attached to write the television series.

Riding atop the biggest dragon Westeros has ever known, Balerion the Black Dread, Aegon, with help from his sister-wives,...

"I'm not doing this is there's a side-piece baby momma, absolutely not!" Vertical has revealed the official trailer for The Threesome, a funny sex comedy from filmmaker Chad Hartigan. This first premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, with stops at many other fests, and it opens in theaters this September. A young man's perennial crush leads him into an unexpected threesome – he thinks it's his ultimate fantasy come true. (Obviously...) When the fantasy ends, all three are left with sobering real-world consequences and they must take responsibility for their actions. An impulsive night leads to a wild threesome between Olivia, Connor, and Jenny, leaving both women facing unexpected surprises, thrusting all three right into the raw and beautifully messy chaos of adulthood. The trailer reveals what's really going on in here – it's not that big of a surprise. Starring Zoey Deutch, Jonah Hauer-King, and Ruby Cruz as the trio,...

Whenever you feel like watching a thriller, German cinema is usually not your go-to option. Like any movie industry, though, Germany releases titles across every genre throughout the year. The thing is, not all of them become heavy hitters. This is not the case with Exterritorial, a new Netflix movie that has been dominating the streamer's charts over the last three months. The story centers around a woman who goes to extreme lengths in order to find her missing son. The movie is available to stream now.

Exterritorial plays a bit with the premise that several franchises like John Wick and Takenused over the last couple of decades. In it, Sara (Jeanne Goursaud) panics when her son disappears and, from the looks of it, the boy has been kidnapped. This prompts Sara to enter berserk mode and surprise everyone who thought she was a harmless housewife. As the trailer showcases,...

Tubi is adding lots of free movies and shows in June. There’s something for everyone to watch. All the titles listed below will start streaming on June 1, unless stated otherwise. Take a look and see what’s new!

Docuseries Spotlight

TMZ Presents: United States V. Sean Combs: Inside The Diddy Trial

TMZ brings you exclusive reporting on all the latest developments & drama behind the scenes from the trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. New episodes on 6/6 + 6/13.

Thriller Spotlight

Tko (6/20)

After reconnecting with his sons, a former boxer takes on a new role, being a father and a coach, when his oldest son enters the world of professional boxing.

Western Spotlight

Day Of Reckoning (6/13)

A small-town sheriff teams up with a corrupt U.S. Marshal to hold an outlaw’s wife hostage, hoping to draw the outlaw into a deadly showdown.

Series Spotlight

All In The Family (1971) Seasons 3 & 4

Community Seasons 3 & 4

Cuckoo...

Tubi, Fox’s free streaming service, has announced its list of June titles. The Tubi June 2025 slate features new Tubi Originals, TV series, and numerous action, art house, Black cinema, comedy, documentary, drama, horror, kids and family, sci-fi and fantasy, thriller, and Western titles.

As a leading ad-supported video-on-demand service, the company engages diverse audiences through a personalized experience and the world’s largest content library of over 250,000 movies and TV episodes, a growing collection of exclusive Originals, and nearly 250 live channels.

You can watch the Tubi June 2025 lineup for free on Android and iOS mobile devices, Amazon Echo Show, Google Nest Hub Max, Comcast Xfinity X1, and Cox Contour.

You can also watch the service on connected television devices such as Amazon Fire TV, Vizio TVs, Sony TVs, Samsung TVs, Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and on the Tubi site.

Tubi Originals

Docuseries

TMZ Presents: United States V.

Netflix continues to deliver exactly what many action movie fans are looking for with its latest foray into the genre, which is streaming on the platform now. Taking its cues from the beloved Liam Neeson-led action thriller Taken, but with more twists and turns, Exterritorial follows a former soldier with a violent past who finds herself taking on the system when her son mysteriously goes missing. The reviews for Exterritorial have now started to emerge, and it certainly sounds like the streamer has another action movie hit on their hands...

Written and directed by Christian Zübert, Exterritorial stars Jeanne Goursaud (Barbarians) as Netflix's new action hero Sara Wulf, a former soldier and single mother, alongside Dougray Scott (Mission: Impossible II) in his first German-speaking role as chief of security Erik Kynch. The rest of the cast includes Lera Abova (Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin), Kayode Akinyemi (Vikings: Valhalla), Annabelle Mandeng...

“Now, let us make the fantastic assumption that Rome is not a place where people live, but a psychical entity with a similarly long, rich past, in which nothing that ever took shape has passed away, and in which all previous phases of development exist beside the most recent.”

Originally published in 1930, Freud writes these words in his “Civilization and Its Discontents,” drawing a vivid analogy between the ancient city of Rome and human psychic memory. Freud addresses Rome as an ‘Eternal City’; like memory, it would endure and adjust the juxtaposition of the old and new. Directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) plays out like a masterful cinematic extension of the theory. Each memory of the past melts into the larger canvas of the present experience. Nothing ever is spotless, for it carries the bearings of memories.

In this list,...

“The Threesome” is quick to establish its rom-com bona fides by opening at a wedding, but like much in Chad Hartigan’s sixth feature, there’s a little something more going on when it sets the stage for a marriage of sensibilities behind the scenes. The director, who is capable of both contemplative dramas (“This Is Martin Bonner”) and raucous comedies (“Morris From America”), tries to strike a balance between screenwriter Ethan Ogilby’s cringe-humor premise of an impromptu ménage à trois and the more serious relationship dynamics it suggests. The results are mixed in ways the filmmakers probably didn’t intend, but they’re at once genuinely intriguing and enormously charming given the talent involved.

Those taking the vows are friends of Connor (Jonah Hauer-King), who has hoped for some time to be reciting some of his own with Olivia (Zoey Deutch), a waitress who has long put off...

From the title alone, The Threesome implies romantic entanglements and difficult dynamics. Sure, the actual sex might be fun, but consider the larger implications of what a threesome means, if you pay too much attention to one person and disregard another, and how all of this completely alters the relationships that exist between these three people. In The Threesome, from Morris from America and Little Fish director Chad Hartigan and writer Ethan Ogilby, a threesome is more about the complex entanglements that come after this sexual escapade, and the impact of this fleeting moment — a smart choice that makes this rom-com far more than it might seem on the surface, and based on that title alone.

Grey's Anatomy introduced fans to a stellar selection of characters, each with a distinct influence on the long-running medical drama. However, many of these characters have come and gone, often leaving fans confused as to why they left and yearning for their return. One prime example of this is Dr. Nathan Riggs, who starred in the show from Seasons 12-14.

This suave and charming surgeon was certainly a hit with the staff and viewers alike, but there's no denying his dark past. From his fights with other surgeons to his intimate relationships with key peers, Riggs made quite an impression on the drama of the show. But, what happened to him, and why did he decide to leave Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital behind?

Updated by Christopher Raley on August 31, 2024: Grey's Anatomy is one of the longest running medical dramas of all time, and it shows no signs of stopping.

In almost every version of The Terminator franchise, a lone hero is sent to help a person at the time they need it most. Just like one of those heroes, Terminator Zero came into Mattson Tomlin’s life at the very moment he needed it.

Tomlin had just spent a few whirlwind years ascending the Hollywood screenwriting ladder to become one of the busiest scribes in town. Netflix turned his spec Project Power into a big budget movie starring Oscar winner Jamie Foxx. IFC released his sci-fi romance Little Fish to strong reviews. It seemed like almost every studio in Hollywood was hiring him for one project or another. And most notably, Matt Reeves tapped him to work on the script for The Batman, while also backing Tomlin’s very personal directorial debut, Mother/Android.

It was a meteoric rise, and it was all happening before Tomlin was 30.

But when...

The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 7, which premiered Sunday, July 28 on HBO.

In one of Alicent Hightower's few scenes in House of the Dragon's latest episode, the dowager queen strips from her blue cloak to a white slip dress on the shore of the Kingswood water. She allows herself to be whisked away in the water, floating as a messenger raven flies above her. The scene paints Alicent as an ethereal figure not unlike Ophelia who glows in the foggy scenery. Though not quite on the same life-threatening verge of the Shakespearean heroine, the imagery and its symbolism are implicitly close. This is one of the most aesthetically appealing scenes in this episode, but it also doesn't say much that House of the Dragon hasn't already said in similar scenes.

The penultimate episodes of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones are known...

Dr. Nathan Riggs left Grey's Anatomy in Season 14 to start a new life in California with Megan and their son. Riggs had an intense conflict with Owen Hunt due to Megan's disappearance, causing turmoil in the hospital. Actor Martin Henderson's impact on the show is powerful, and he became a quick hit with fans.

Grey's Anatomy has introduced fans to a stellar selection of characters, each with a distinct influence on the long-running medical drama. However, many of these characters come and go, often leaving fans confused and yearning for their return. One prime example of this is Dr. Nathan Riggs, who starred in the show from Seasons 12-14.

This suave and charming surgeon was certainly a hit with the staff and viewers alike, but there's no denying his dark past. From his fights with other surgeons to his intimate relationships with key peers, Riggs knew how to make an interesting first impression.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that frequent collaborators Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan – who have worked on Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever together as director and cast member, and have other collaborations that Coogler didn’t direct – have been developing a new project in secret. Coogler has written the script for this project, which is being described as both a genre picture and a period piece that Coogler will be directing and Jordan is attached to star in. The project is set up at Warner Bros., is expected to have a budget of around $90 million, and is scheduled for a theatrical release on March 7, 2025. We still don’t know exactly what this movie is going to be about… but Deadline reports that Jack O’Connell is in talks to play the villain in it.

O’Connell’s previous acting credits include Eden Lake, Harry Brown,...

Olivia Cooke now comfortably sits in the pop-culture consciousness as Queen Alicent Hightower from House of the Dragon. Given the weight of the franchise and Olivia’s flawless performance, it’s difficult to imagine her as anyone but the mean, green Queen. But while she may not have been as well known before House of the Dragon, she was definitely churning out some very impressive work. Prior to the show, she exhibited her acting prowess and range in movies like Ouija, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Ready Player One. But there is one movie of hers that often gets overlooked by her fans and critics alike because of its small budget and unfortunate timing, and that is Chad Hartigan’s Little Fish.

Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger will star on Broadway this spring in a world premiere production of Paula Vogel’s new Mother Play, to be directed by Tina Landau.

The Second Stage Theater production will begin a limited engagement at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Wednesday, April 3, with an official opening on Thursday, April 25.

Mother Play by Pulitzer Prize winner Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) is described by Second Stage as “a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.”

The synopsis: “It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis is supervising her teenage children, Carl and Martha, as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path.

Stars: Johnny Berchtold, Kyle Gallner, Lupe Leon, Liza Weil, Billy Slaughter, Jordan Sherley, Morgana Shaw, Kanesha Washington | Written by Jack Stanley | Directed by Carter Smith

Not to be confused with the Spanish road trip horror of the same name, The Passenger, the new film from Carter Smith, opens with a woman, blood spurting from her eye socket crawling towards a young boy. It’s a nightmare and Randy is woken from it to start another tedious day at Burgers, Burgers, Burgers. He should have taken it as an omen and stayed home.

As they’re getting the diner ready to open one of the other employees starts harassing him, something that seems to be a regular occurrence. Benson watches in disgust before walking out to have a smoke. Then, as if something just snapped he pulls a shotgun from his car and goes back inside killing everyone except Randy whom he takes hostage.

What would your life be like if you didn’t go to work the day an accident would otherwise change everything? How much of your future might shift if you decide to simply alter your schedules to better accommodate picking up your child from school? One question seems bigger than the other, yet the second may actually impact what occurs next more. Because you can’t know for certain. And there aren’t any do-overs. Perhaps it’s better that way, to accept and move on rather than risk an even worse fate. Or is it?

That’s what writer-director Jared Moshé seeks to contemplate with his grounded science fiction drama Aporia. In it exists a woman named Sophie (Judy Greer) who has recently watched her life fall apart. Her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi) was the victim of a drunk-driving collision eight months prior, and the void left has all but shattered their family.

Will Cate Blanchett fulfill the awards prophecy of winning an Academy Award every nine years? The two-time Academy Award winner of “The Aviator” (2004) and “Blue Jasmine” (2013) is a favorite to possibly win her third for Todd Field’s psychological drama “Tár,” in which she plays a lesbian conductor who begins to lose her grip on power and reality.

On this week’s episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, we sit down with Blanchett to discuss her work stunning transformation into Lydia Tár. In addition, she talks about working with co-star Nina Hoss and more. Listen below:

From Focus Features, “Tár” is set to a rhythmic beat of classical orchestration, marking writer and director Todd Field’s return to the director’s chair, 16 years after “Little Children” (2006) and 21 years after his debut “In the Bedroom” (2001).

The drama landed six Oscar noms — best picture, director, actress, original screenplay, cinematography and film editing.

A few weeks after Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the Best Actress Award in Cannes for her performance as journalist Arezoo Rahimi in crime thriller Holy Spider, the Iranian-French actor flew to Melbourne, Australia, to take part in what was set to be another urgent story from an Iranian filmmaker: Noora Niasari’s debut feature Shayda.

The film, which is described as a “love letter to mothers and daughters everywhere” and opened Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition last week, sees Amir-Ebrahimi star as Shayda, a brave Iranian mother who finds refuge in an Australian women’s shelter with her six-year-old daughter (played by Selina Zahednia) after fleeing an abusive relationship.

Based on Niasari’s own mother, who fled an arranged marriage to raise her daughter in Australia, Shayda takes place over the Persian New Year, when the mother-daughter duo take solace in Nowruz rituals and new beginnings but when her estranged husband reenters their lives,...

Five years ago, Noora Niasari asked her mother to write a memoir in order to fill in the gaps of some fuzzy childhood memories. The Iranian Australian director had been just five years old when her mother fled an abusive relationship and left her entire community to raise Niasari on her own in a foreign country.

An early draft of “Shayda,” which opens the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance on Friday, was based on that memoir and tracks Niasari’s mother’s life from her arranged marriage in Iran as a teenager to finding independence in Australia with her child. The resulting film stars “Holy Spider” breakout Zar Amir-Ebrahimi as Shayda, and Selina Zahednia as her daughter, Mona.

“There are a lot of fictional elements within the current version of the film, but it’s very much grounded in the emotional truth of our experience,” the Melbourne-based Niasari tells Variety.

If my shortlist for this piece is any indication, Hollywood adjusted to Covid just fine. I’ve put aside an average of 60-70 posters every year since I’ve been doing Posterized until barely hitting 40 in 2020. It wasn’t a dearth of quality work, but the fact that there were so many fewer releases to choose from. And since I base these columns on current-year US runs rather than when one-sheets start making their rounds, my pool of candidates was greatly reduced.

So either 2021 work was off-the-charts or the hybrid theatrical-streaming schedule found itself whole once again, because I was back to around 65. It helps too when you get new players on the scene, alt-posters too good to dismiss, and social-media controversy courtesy the collision of nudity and art that put more international designs into our American consciousness.

There are a couple below where the domestic marketing team decided to...

As Martin Scorsese once said, “Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there’s a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they’re put together. It’s been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that’s true.” Indeed, the right piece of music–whether it’s an original score or a carefully selected song–can do wonders for a sequence, and today we’re looking at the 25+ films that best expressed this notion this year.

From seasoned composers to accomplished musicians, as well as a smattering of soundtracks, each musical example perfectly transported us to the world of the film. Check out our rundown of the top 25, which includes streams to each soundtrack in full.

25. The World to Come (Daniel Blumberg)

24. Little Fish (Keegan DeWitt)

23. Crestone (Animal Collective)

22. Shiva Baby (Ariel Marx)

21. Summer of 85 (Jb Dunckel...

Ending a year begun saving her baby from a gremlin in deliberately outrageous “Shadow in the Cloud,” Chloë Grace Moretz again suffers peril-fraught maternity as half of the title equation in “Mother/Android.” This sci-fi thriller, launching on Hulu Dec. 17, offers a more sobersided survival tale set in an imminent future where humanity’s artificial helpmates have turned against their creators. It’s a familiar dystopian premise that plays out in narrative terms redolent of myriad recent movies like “A Quiet Place.”

Still, at least to a point, it’s lent sufficient engrossing urgency by Mattson Tomlin in his commercial-feature directorial debut. He wrote two other fantasy-tinged tales released last year, “Little Fish” and “Project Power.” This project is ostensibly more personal, inspired by the Romanian biological parents who apparently gave him up as an infant amidst the turmoil of that nation’s 1989 revolution. But “Mother/Android” falls short when it...

"They won't stop 'till we're all dead." Hulu has unveiled an official trailer for an intriguing sci-fi indie film titled Mother/Android, made by the screenwriter on The Batman and Little Fish. Mattson Tomlin has directed a few films before but this one is produced by Matt Reeves, and is both written and directed by Tomlin. Mother/Android is set during "an unexpected war with artificial intelligence." Georgia and her boyfriend Sam go on a treacherous journey to escape their country, which is caught in an unexpected war with A.I. Days away from the arrival of their first child, the couple must face No Man's Land, a stronghold of the android uprising, in hopes of reaching safety. Starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Algee Smith, with Raúl Castillo, Oscar Wahlberg, Kate Avallone, Owen Burke, and Steven Robertson. It looks like the same plot as Children of Men, but about androids taking over instead.

The fight for human survival at the end of the world clashes against an uprising of artificial intelligence in the upcoming Hulu original film, “Mother/Android.” The science-fiction thriller is written and directed by Mattson Tomlin, making his directorial debut after writing other near-future dystopian tales including the romance “Little Fish” and the Netflix action hit “Project Power.” The film stars Chloë Grace Moretz (last seen as a World War II pilot in “Shadow in the Cloud”) and Algee Smith (of “Euphoria” and “The Hate U Give”). Below, watch the trailer for the film below, which drops on Hulu’s streaming platform December 17.

Here’s the official synopsis courtesy of Hulu: “Set in the near future, “Mother/Android” follows Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith) through their treacherous journey of escape as their country is caught in an unexpected war with artificial intelligence. Days away from the arrival of their first child,...

L.A.’s Rich and Successful Film Festival launches Sept. 4, starting at 1 p.m., at the Lumiere Music Hall in Beverly Hills.

The festival spotlights work by independent filmmakers who live in Los Angeles County. Indie production company Sogbots, which is presenting the fest, said there were more than 100 submissions, and there will be 14 films shown.

Principals at the Echo Park-based Sogbots are Noah Edward Morse, Nir Liebenthal, Dylan Trupiano and Jeremy Roth-Rose.

As Roth-Rose tells Variety, “When we moved to L.A. after college, we found it was too easy to get lost and not know where or how to meet other filmmakers. We decided a film fest would be a great opportunity to A) meet other filmmakers and B) connect filmmakers of all levels to each other.

“In our programming process, we intentionally selected films that represent the spectrum of production budgets — from handheld iPhone videos to high-budget films shot on industry-standard equipment.

Photo: 'Conversations With Friends'/Hulu Fans of ‘Normal People’ Should Prepare Themselves In the early months of the torturous year, we can remember as 2020, I along with many other twenty-something-year-olds was desperately looking for new reading material during the early weeks of quarantine. Eventually, a good friend of mine recommended the book ‘Normal People’ and to my benefit, the television series was premiering only a week after. To get myself caught up in time before the show premiered, I devoured the book in an entire sitting and subsequently binged the whole mini-series in a span of 48-hours upon release on April 29, 2020. Related article: Hulu’s ‘Normal People’ Achieves a New Standard for On-Screen Chemistry Related article: ‘Little Fish’: A Pandemic Allegory That Was Never Really a Pandemic Allegory The now critically-acclaimed and award-winning series, ‘Normal People’ based on Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name, focuses on the...

Photo: ‘Little Fish’/Hulu If I told you that there was a film new to Hulu about a global pandemic causing loneliness and featuring mask-wearing, crowded hospitals, and going to a water park because it was its last day before closure would you believe me if I said the film was shot in 2019? Or that it is based on a short story written ten plus years ago but includes a demonstrator insisting the government created the virus, restrictions on who can get the cure when it finally becomes available, and border closures? If you answered no, you’re not alone, I could hardly believe my eyes when I read about the background of ‘Little Fish’, a film directed by Chad Hartigan which was set to premiere at Tribeca 2020 before its cancellation. Related article: Netflix’s ‘Oxygen’: Breathe, Remember Related article: ‘Pam & Tommy’: All the Hidden Details on...

Jennifer Peedom and Rowan Woods will lead this year’s Screenworks Directing Intensive, a two-day workshop to be held in late July.

Put on with support of the Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg), the duo will advise up to 12 selected regional screen directors from Nsw and Queensland on technique, skills and project development for drama and documentary.

“We’re so excited to have Jen and Rowan on board for this directing intensive,” says Screenworks CEO Ken Crouch.

“Both have excelled in the field of directing – Rowan in drama and feature films and Jen in documentary filmmaking – and they will bring extraordinary advice and mentoring to the twelve regional screen directors who are selected to take part in this workshop. We’re very grateful to the Australian Directors Guild for recommending them as tutors.”

To be eligible, applicants must demonstrate some experience directing content for screen and must be living in regional Nsw or regional Queensland.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Greenland (Ric Roman Waugh)

At first glance, Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland appears to be a spiritual sequel to Geostorm. Also starring Gerard Butler, that 2017 film is a silly, diverting disaster-action epic. Greenland is decidedly more nuanced, cerebral, and, frankly, memorable. Butler plays John Garrity, a structural engineer determined to mend his fractured marriage. As he tries to make good with his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) ahead of a neighborhood barbecue, reports of incoming debris from a nearby comet get more serious. John, unexpectedly, gets a “Presidential Alert” on his phone, informing him, his wife, and their son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd) have been selected for government-sponsored shelter. It...

Though Marvel has decided to consolidate all of its cinematic universe offerings onto Disney+, some outliers still live on for other streaming services. In May 2021, Hulu is set to premiere the latest non-canon Marvel series.

The animated comedy Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. is set to premiere on May 21 and stars Patton Oswalt as the titular Marvel villain. Oswalt’s Modok is every bit the devious floating head that he’s depicted as in the comics. He’s also your every day family man and the show will take on the format of a workplace sitcom. Sounds kinda fun! It’s no wonder that M.O.D.O.K. is the last Hulu Marvel show standing.

In non-Marvel offerings this month, Shrill will debut its third and final season on May 7. This comedy based on Lindy West’s memoir and starring SNL‘s Aidy Bryant has been a consistently bright presence on the streaming scene since...

Following on from their collaboration on Stateless and the upcoming ABC drama Fires, Liz Watts has signed an overall television deal with Matchbox Pictures.

The deal will see the NBC Universal-owned company work with Watts to develop and produce high-end television projects for the Australian and global market.

Watts was an executive producer on Matchbox’s Stateless for the ABC/Netflix, and is also serving as executive producer on Fires, a six-part anthology co-created by Tony Ayres and Belinda Chayko, drawing on the experiences of those who had their lives devastated by last summer’s bushfires. The series is expected to into production later this year, from scripts penned by Chayko, Jacquelin Perske, Mirrah Foulkes, Steven McGregor and Anya Beyersdorf.

Matchbox MD Alastair McKinnon said: “Liz’s incredible skill set and wealth of experience across film and TV make her the perfect addition to the exceptional talent we have at Matchbox.

Mercedes de la Cruz (Lonestar Christmas) is set as a lead opposite Janel Parrish and Marco Grazzini in Right In Front Of Me, Hallmark Channel’s upcoming rom-com. Written by Julie Sherman Wolfe and directed by Linda-Lisa Hayter, Right In Front Of Me revolves around Carly (Parrish), the owner of a bridal styling business, gets a second chance at romance with her college crush but isn’t sure how to impress him until her new friend Nick starts giving her advice. Soon she learns who the right man for her really is. The movie, part of Hallmark Channel’s “Spring Fling” programming event this spring, premieres Saturday, April 17. De La Cruz plays Carly’s assistant and friend Jennifer, an efficient woman with a keen sense of humor who is well aware of Carly’s previous romantic disasters. De La Cruz most recently co-starred in Lonestar Christmas for Lifetime. She also appeared in Supernatural,...

Nearly a year after closing its physical location, New York City’s IFC Center is preparing to finally reopen on Friday, March 5. The theater has announced a range of new safety measures along with new releases and several screening series. The arthouse venue first shut its doors on March 13, 2020 as early lockdown measures called for the closure of a variety of cultural institutions. In late February, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York City movie theaters had permission to reopen at 25 percent capacity and with a maximum of 50 people allowed per screen. Other areas of the state reopened months ago.

While the state has enacted a number of guidelines for reopening theaters, IFC Center has added additional safety measures, including mandatory mask-wearing at all times, no concession sales, and no eating and drinking allowed in theaters. Its five screens will also feature reserved seating (with six feet between...

“I Care a Lot,” a twisty thriller about a scam artist who preys on senior citizens, has been the most watched movie on Netflix since it debuted on the service on February 19. In the old days success was measured in box office grosses, but in the new Hollywood it’s gauged in terms of streams. And by that rubric, “I Care a Lot” has achieved breakout status.

The film, which snagged Rosamund Pike a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as the amoral hustler who triggers an avalanche of betrayal, cons, and bloodletting when she ensnares the mother of a gangster in one of her schemes, also caps a surprisingly busy pandemic run for Black Bear Pictures. The company developed, financed, and produced the movie, one of nearly a half dozen pictures it has offered up to audiences who have spent the last year largely stuck inside thanks to Covid.

Olivia Cooke had no formal training and claims to have no real process. Is she just a natural? A freak of nature? How else to explain the incredible range and astounding talent of this rising star? I first took note of her work in the black comedy Thoroughbreds, and then Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and the British mini-series Vanity Fair. She is on fire now with three new films, Little Fish, Pixie, and last year’s Sound of Metal. I ask her to break down one amazing scene in the latter, and she talks about the advantages of its immersive […]

The post Back to One, Episode 142: Olivia Cooke first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Olivia Cooke had no formal training and claims to have no real process. Is she just a natural? A freak of nature? How else to explain the incredible range and astounding talent of this rising star? I first took note of her work in the black comedy Thoroughbreds, and then Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and the British mini-series Vanity Fair. She is on fire now with three new films, Little Fish, Pixie, and last year’s Sound of Metal. I ask her to break down one amazing scene in the latter, and she talks about the advantages of its immersive […]

The post Back to One, Episode 142: Olivia Cooke first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“They say you can’t forget feelings,and I still believe that.”

In Little Fish, newlyweds Jude (Jack O’Connell) and Emma (Olivia Cooke) find themselves amidst a global pandemic where memories begin to fade without warning. When Jack’s memory starts to deteriorate, the two will stop at nothing to hold on to the life they know and remember the love they share.

Writer/director Chad Hartigan is best known for his award-winning feature films This Is Martin Bonner and Morris From America. Hartigan won the John Cassavetes Award at the 2014 Independent Spirit Awards, as well as the “Best of Next” Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, for This Is Martin Bonner. Hartigan won the Waldo Scott Screenwriter Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival for his film Morris From America. Little Fish marks the third collaboration between childhood friends Hartigan, composer Keegan Dewitt (Hearts Beat Loud) and cinematographer Sean McElwee...

Studio Ghibli released Earwig and the Witch on February 3 in 430 theaters and dropped the animated feature from the legendary studio on HBO Max on February 5. The Goro Miyazaki-directed film with the voice talents of Richard E. Grant, Kacey Musgraves, and Dan Stevens earned an estimated $99,941 on its opening weekend to bring its cume to $132,768

Also in its first week out is the Rlje Films horror The Reckoning which earned an estimated $72K while Vertical Entertainment’s Son of the South took in $35K on its opening weekend.

In the day and date space IFC Films’ Little Fish grossed an estimated $28K in its theatrical debut while 101 Studios’ Dara of Jasenovac earned an estimated $15K in its first weekend out in theaters. Meanwhile, Magnolia’s Two of Us and A Glitch in the Matrix both earned an estimated $3K in its limited theatrical release.

In its second weekend out, Bleecker Street...

February is shaping up to be something special. In response to a pandemic-extended awards season, the sort of films that used to crowd the release calendar just before New Year’s in an effort to Oscar-qualify while also still maintaining some measure of last-minute/latest-thing freshness are now arranging to come out over the coming weeks.

Think of that as a teaser of such upcoming films as “Minari” and “Nomadland” more than a reflection of this week’s lineup, although a couple of this week’s releases feature elements the marketing departments would be happy to hear described as “Oscar worthy.”

The first is Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut, in which he plays a gay man dealing with his father’s dementia (featuring a raging performance by Lance Henriksen). The second is Sam Levinson’s resourceful two-hander “Malcolm & Marie,” made during the pandemic and featuring two terrific, on-fire performances...

With Sundance Film Festival now in the rearview, it’s time to look at the worthwhile new releases of February. Featuring the roll-out of Oscar hopefuls, imaginative sci-fi features, and more, it’s a compelling line-up. We’ll also note that French Exit, which was considered for the list, will only get a small NY/LA release this month before returning in April, so we’ll feature it then.

13. A Glitch in the Matrix (Rodney Ascher)

Room 237 director Rodney Ascher has returned, this time to explore the very fabric of reality, or lack thereof. John Fink said in his review of the recent Sundance premiere, “I often wonder what influential film theorist Andre Bazin would make of VR and simulations, especially when this year’s Sundance has virtualized the festival experience in a way that benefits from a longer runway than most cultural events pivoting likewise. It’s only fitting...

With Covid-19 still raging around the world, a melancholy love story about a 2021 viral pandemic that ravages people’s relationships, romances and sense of self is perhaps not the easiest sell at the moment. Such timeliness proves both a blessing and a curse for “Little Fish,” writer-director Chad Hartigan’s heartfelt tale about a couple struggling with a global epidemic of memory loss. A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s , although its theatrical and VOD prospects may be undercut by the fact that, in this present environment, its thematic concerns hit quite close to home.

Written by Mattson Tomlin (based on a short story by Aja Gabel), Hartigan’s followup to “Morris From America” fixates on the budding amour between veterinarian Emma (Olivia Cooke) and photographer Jude (Jack O’Connell). Their meet-cute occurs against the backdrop of a spreading disease known as Nia (Neuroinflammatory Affliction) which, without warning and at varying speeds,...

A sad, gorgeous film about love amid a pandemic, Chad Hartigan’s Little Fish features not our real disease (it was in the can before Covid-19) but an invented one in which healthy people lose chunks of their identities — bit by bit or all at once. Think Alzheimer’s, but a more aggressive and unpredictable affliction, and one that hits a shocking percentage of the world’s population. Crucially for this story, it strikes the young as well as the old, so a couple who are barely past their wedding day (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) can have their beautiful ...

A sad, gorgeous film about love amid a pandemic, Chad Hartigan’s Little Fish features not our real disease (it was in the can before Covid-19) but an invented one in which healthy people lose chunks of their identities — bit by bit or all at once. Think Alzheimer’s, but a more aggressive and unpredictable affliction, and one that hits a shocking percentage of the world’s population. Crucially for this story, it strikes the young as well as the old, so a couple who are barely past their wedding day (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) can have their beautiful ...

Following his breakout film, the affecting character study This is Martin Bonner, and his follow-up, the vibrant fish out of water tale Morris In America, director Chad Hartigan had a prescient, ambitious vision for his next feature. Set during a global pandemic in which a growing portion of the population is affiliated with memory loss, Little Fish tenderly follows the relationship between a couple (Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell) as they must face this scary new world and the personal strife they are forced to reckon with. As Hartigan elegantly jumps between the past and the present to show all facets of the bond at the film’s center, he contends with the universal fear of having those closest to you drift away.

Written by Mattson Tomlin, based on Aja Gabel’s short story, the logline of tackling a global pandemic may seem it could be conveyed with immense scope,...

Black Bear Pictures and Plan B Entertainment have acquired the feature film rights to Richard Powers’ upcoming novel, “Bewilderment,” in a highly competitive situation.

There were multiple bidders circling the project, a degree of interest that’s probably due to the fact that Powers’ previous novel, “The Overstory,” won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and was critically adored. The film version of “Bewilderment” will be financed by Black Bear Pictures, which will also develop and produce the picture alongside Plan B Entertainment.

The novel is set in the near future amid Earth’s slow deterioration. It follows a widowed father of a most unusual and troubled nine-year-old boy, as he turns to an experimental neurological treatment in order to save his son. Powers’ book is due to be published in Fall of 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company — its publication is expected to be one of the year’s big literary events.

“Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” has found more Targaryens.

The HBO series has added three more key players to its cast: Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy and Matt Smith.

Cooke, known from Amazon’s “Sound of Metal,” is set to star as Alicent Hightower, the daughter of Hand of the King Otto Hightower who was raised in the Red Keep, close to the king and his inner circle. Described as “the most comely woman in the Seven Kingdoms,” Hightower has both “courtly grace and a keen political acumen.”

Cooke has several other upcoming projects slated for 2021, including feature “Pixie” opposite Alec Baldwin and sci-fi thriller “Little Fish” opposite Jack O’Connell. She also appears in this year’s “Naked Singularity” opposite John Boyega.

D’Arcy will star as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, the king’s first-born, pure Valyrian-blooded child who is a dragonrider. Some say Rhaenyra was “born with everything…...

HBO has set three more House of the Dragon leads as Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith and Emma D’Arcy have joined Paddy Considine in the straight-to-series Game of Thrones prequel from George R.R. Martin, Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik.

I hear the series has five lead characters: King Viserys Targaryen (Considine), Alicent Hightower (Cooke), Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (D’Arcy), Prince Daemon Targaryen (Smith) as well as Lord Corlys Velaryon, known as the Sea Snake, who becomes Hand to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen during the Dance of the Dragons.

That last key role is still being cast; I hear Danny Sapani (Penny Dreadful) is in currently in talks for it.

Additionally, HBO has tapped Clare Kilner, Geeta V. Patel and Greg Yaitanes to round out the series’ directing team.

Based on Martin’s Fire & Blood, the series, which is set 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones, tells the story of House Targaryen.