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Bridgerton fans have a whole new experience to look forward to on Valentine's Day.

Per Variety, the leads of the upcoming fourth season of the hit period romance are slated to host an all-new fan event taking place on February 14. Part of an annual tradition for the series, the "Season of Love" event will feature an intimate conversation hosted by Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte along with costars Luke Thompson and Yerin Ha, who will be taking the lead in Bridgerton Season 4 as Benedict Bridgerton and Sophie Baek, who will be joined by showrunner Jess Brownell.

Image via Netflix

Related Netflix Spends Big Bucks for Popular 'BookTok' Series Adaptation

Move over, Bridgerton, a new steamy literary romance is making its way to Netflix.

Further tying into the "Season of Love" event and its celebration of Bridgerton Season 4 are a whole host of new exclusive merchandise lines. These include a Bridgerton...

There’s a notion that action movies are best enjoyed on the big screens. But in recent times, Ott platforms have also stepped up their game in producing original action movies for their audience. To match and compete with massive action movie franchises like John Wick, Mission: Impossible, and others, streaming platforms like Netflix have also created projects like Extraction.

A snippet from Extraction | Credits: Netflix

Action has a wide range of themes, from thrilling heist flicks to cop thrillers to Western backdrops. Now, Netflix has produced some of the big-budget action movies, but what’s unfortunate is that it has only promoted the worst ones. Although films like Bird Box, The Gray Man, and others generated a lot of views, some underrated action dramas deserve to be credited.

In this article, we have curated a list of underrated action movies streaming on Netflix that you can watch this December...

To celebrate the release of Room at the Top, on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital from 11th March, we are giving away Blu-Rays to 2 lucky winners!

Based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, Room At The Top is Jack Clayton’s debut feature and is one of the earliest examples of the ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ that helped pave the way for the incoming ‘British New Wave’ of film-makers. Featuring the first open reference to sex as well as the earliest depiction of adultery in a British film, it was a controversial film for the era and was initially refused a certificate by the censors before eventually securing an “X” certificate.

Starring Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears and Donald Wolfit, the film went on to become a major box-office success and opened the floodgates for more adult orientated movies.

The film also gained widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for six Academy Awards,...

This article contains spoilers for Quantum Leap season 1 and the premiere of season 2.

Does a Leaper control their leaps? It’s a question that Quantum Leap, both old and new series, seemingly have answers for. In the original show, Sam (Scott Bakula) was leaping because he was conducting a time travel experiment that went, to quote the original narration for the series, “a little caca.” He couldn’t control his leaps and hoped his next leap would be the one that would finally bring him home.

In the first season of the new series, Ben (Raymond Lee) had somewhat planned his leaps in order to get to a place in time where he could save the love of his life, Addison (Caitlin Bassett.) Now though in season 2 Ben is lost in time much like Sam was in the original series… Or was he? And is Ben really lost as well?...

Leonardo DiCaprio has reaped an even dozen Oscar nominations for acting. His first bid was back in 1994 in Best Supporting Actor for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” After a gap of more than a decade (including being snubbed for “Titanic), he contended for Best Actor in 2005 for “The Aviator” and in 2007 for “Blood Diamond.” He then earned two nominations for Martin Scorsese‘s “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2014 as both producer and star. Two years later, he won Best Actor for “The Revenant.” Most recently he competed in lead in 2020 for Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Those five Best Actor nominations match the tallies of the likes of Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, and James Stewart.

DiCaprio reunites with Scorsese this year for the historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The film tells the true story of the Osage reservation in...

The Samuel Beckett biopic stars Gabriel Byrne, Aidan Gillan, Maxine Peake and Bronagh Gallagher.

The 71st San Sebastian International Film Festival will close with the world premiere of James Marsh’s Samuel Beckett biopic Dance First, playing out of competition.

Gabriel Byrne stars as the famous Irish playwright with Aidan Gillen playing James Joyce. Maxine Peake and Bronagh Gallagher co-star.

The film is the feature debut of UK TV writer Neil Forsyth whose series credits includeThe Gold and Guilt.

Dance First is produced by the UK’s 2Le, with Hungary’s Proton Cinema, Belgium’s Umedia and Constellation Productions. Film...

What happens when the world implodes at the hands of artificial intelligence?

Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator” stars John David Washington as the last hope for mankind after A.I. detonates a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles. Per the official synopsis, amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan), is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced A.I. who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war…and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory, only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an A.I. in the form of a young child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).

“Execute her, or we will go extinct,...

The glamorous life isn't so glamorous when lives are at risk.

It's been an incredibly gratifying, emotional, dramatic, and action-packed season of Station 19, and they're about to keep that same momentum and close things out in style with Station 19 Season 6 Episode 18.

And we do mean close things out in style.

The Firefighters Ball is a formal affair with our favorite characters trading in soot for suits and helmets for heels.

Seriously, everyone looks absolutely gorgeous. Why is everyone in this series so impossibly pretty?

You know it will be a good installment when they take everyone out of their usual environment and stick them in a formal affair, prompting different interactions, all kinds of drama, and so much romantic tension you can cut it with a knife.

We know that Ben is getting a commendation for his heroic save at the sober house. However, it's something that he's still...

Ron Howard has lined up an all-star cast for his next feature film, dubbed Origin of Species. Deadline reports that the survival thriller, written by Noah Pink (Tetris), will star Jude Law (Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore), Ana De Armas (Blonde), Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider), and Daniel Brühl (All Quiet on the Western Front). The project will be shopped at the upcoming Cannes market with plans to start filming in late 2023 in Queensland, Australia.

Origins of Species is said to be inspired by a true story, based on two different accounts of the same event. The filmmakers describe the movie as a "darkly comic tale of murder and survival, set around a group of eclectic characters who abandon civilization for the Galapagos. They are all searching for the answer to that ever-pressing question that plagues us all: what is the meaning of life.”

This will be the next...

Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most influential and beloved composers, has passed away at 71 from cancer. The news broke on Twitter via the composer’s recording company:

pic.twitter.com/Fq0hRyp5F4

— commmons (@commmons) April 2, 2023

Sakamoto had a long, legendary career as a composer, famously winning an Oscar for his score to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Sakamoto, who was a major celebrity in Japan, also co-starred in the film, as well as another movie he composed a famous soundtrack for, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, which starred David Bowie. In that one, Sakamoto gave a well-received performance as a Japanese Pow camp commander during WW2 who develops an unrequited romantic obsession with Bowie’s heroic Pow.

Additionally, Sakamoto also composed music for Martin Scorsese’s Silence, The Revenant, Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale, and even the recent Netflix thriller Beckett. Recently, he also wrote the theme for A24’s After Yang,...

Ryuichi Sakamoto, keyboardist for the pioneering Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra and Oscar-winning composer of films like The Last Emperor and The Revenant, has died at the age of 71.

Sakamoto’s Twitter announced his death Sunday, noting that the influential artist died on Tuesday, March 28; while no cause of death was provided, Sakamoto battled two forms of cancer over the past decade, and announced in 2021 that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer.

pic.twitter.com/mYLMEN6HrZ

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) April 2, 2023

Commmons, the record label Sakamoto founded,...

Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, real-life husband and wife, are reuniting onscreen for the second time. The Oscar-winner (Vikander for “The Danish Girl”) and the Oscar-nominee (Fassbender for “12 Years A Slave”) will star in “Hope,” a mostly Korean-language feature from Na Hong-Jin.

The picture, about a mysterious delivery made on the outskirts of a remote harbor town, is the filmmaker’s first directorial effort since “The Wailing” earned rave reviews and $49 million worldwide in 2016 from a $6 million budget, with $48 million of that coming from South Korea.

“Oftentimes,” noted Hong-Jin, “a person’s goodwill can lead to unintended catastrophe simply because of differences in perspective. My hope for this film is to cinematically capture that phenomenon in a way that has yet to be seen.”

Also Read:

How the ‘Tomb Raider’ Movie Rights Slipped Away From MGM (Exclusive)

It is presumed that the “Tomb Raider” star and the “Assassin’s Creed...

"Star Trek: Lower Decks", the animated comedy series set in the "Star Trek" universe, streams Season Two August 25, 2022 on Paramount +:

"...created by Emmy Award winner Mike McMahan, Season Three challenges the 'U.S.S. Cerritos' ensigns in ways they could never imagine, starting with a shocking resolution for season two's epic cliffhanger finale..." 

'Starfleet' crew residing in the 'lower decks' of the U.S.S. Cerritos includes 'Ensign Beckett Mariner', voiced by Tawny Newsome, 'Ensign Brad Boimler', voiced by Jack Quaid, 'Ensign Tendi', voiced by Noël Wells and 'Ensign Rutherford' voiced by Eugene Cordero. Starfleet characters that comprise the U.S.S. Cerritos' bridge crew include 'Captain Carol Freeman', voiced by Dawnn Lewis, 'Commander Jack Ransom', voiced by Jerry O'Connell and 'Doctor T'Ana', voiced by Gillian Vigman. 

Click the images to enlarge...

Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino isn’t too concerned about the supposed death of movie theaters. With two exciting new projects in the works (plus a slew of others in the offing) coming down the pipeline, he just may be the one to save it himself. The Italian director is preparing to entice and surprise audiences with his new cannibalism romance “Bones and All,” which reunites him with his “Call Me by Your Name” star Timothee Chalamet. Chalamet stars opposite Taylor Russell in the love story, and the film is expected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September.

Before he can celebrate, however, he has one more week of shooting for “Challengers,” a love triangle set in the world of professional tennis that pairs Guadagnino with an enticing trio of up-and-comers: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and “West Side Story” breakout Mike Faist.

“I think audiences will come back for the right movies,...

"Quantum Leap", the time travel science fiction TV series, created by Donald P. Bellisario, airing for Five Seasons (1989-1993) on NBC, is being 'rebooted' with a sequel, securing a new TV series order at the network :

"...30 years after 'Dr. Sam Beckett' stepped into the 'Quantum Leap' accelerator and vanished, a new team has been assembled to restart the project in the hopes of understanding the mysteries behind the machine and the man who created it..."  

"...in the original series, physicist 'Dr. Beckett' (Scott Bakula) theorized that time travel within one's own lifetime is possible, and obtains government support to build his project 'Quantum Leap'. But years later, the government threatens to pull funding, as no progress has been made, and Beckett decides to test the project accelerator by himself to save the project before anyone can stop him. He is thrown back in time,...

Alicia Vikander opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about the importance of intimacy coordinators on set, revealing she has felt unprotected on sets in the past while doing nude scenes. The Oscar winner said that intimacy coordinators “should have existed at the beginning of my career,” and she described one instance where an actor performed a nude scene and then was left naked on set “for a couple hours” because no one showed up with a robe.

“The only thing that can’t be improvised is an intimate scene — you have to make choreography and stick to it,” Vikander said. “It’s the worst thing ever to do those scenes. I am very comfortable with my body and I’ve done quite a bit of nudity and sex scenes, but it’s never easy.”

“I’ve been in situations that were not fine, where I didn’t feel I was protected,...

A month ago, “The Power of the Dog” looked like it was powered to have a big Oscar night after nabbing a leading 12 nominations. At the time, many were forecasting at least four trophies — and above-the-line ones at that — for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jane Campion, and Best Supporting Actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee. Some thought it could also pull off a below-the-line win or two, like in Best Original Score for Jonny Greenwood or Best Cinematography for Ari Wegner, who’d be the first female winner in the category. Now, “The Power of the Dog” looks strong in just one category, Best Director, as “Coda” has pocketed some big wins the past few weeks, including at Saturday’s Producers Guild of America Awards. But could a 12-time nominee really walk away with so few wins?

It’s actually not that uncommon for a 12-time nominee...

Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom – whose films include Luca Guadagnino’s Oscar nominee for best picture “Call Me by Your Name” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” and who recently lensed Netflix thriller “Beckett” – received the third Robby Müller Award on Thursday, following in the footsteps of Mexican Dp Diego García and American director Kelly Reichardt.

The trophy is given out by International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ Society of Cinematographers and Andrea Müller-Schirmer.

“When he films empty space, it becomes clear that it was actually never empty,” argued the jury, but Mukdeeprom was also feted by his illustrious collaborators, from Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton to “Arabian Nights” helmer Miguel Gomes.

“You came to work for one year, not knowing what we were going to shoot or how, so I think you are kind of crazy. In a very good way,...

Rajesh Khanna, the Indian actor who was a phenomenon in Hindi-language cinema from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, is to be the subject of a biopic.

Producer Nikhil Dwiveri (“Veere Di Wedding”) has acquired the rights to Gautam Chintamani’s bestselling book, “Dark Star: The Loneliness Of Being Rajesh Khanna.” Farah Khan, who made “Main Hoon Na” and “Om Shanti Om,” starring Shah Rukh Khan, is in talks to direct the adaptation of the book. Khan will write the script with Chintamani.

Born Jatin Khanna in Amritsar, Khanna debuted in films with “Aakhri Khat” in 1966, which was India’s entry to the Oscars. From 1969 through 1974, Khanna starred in 15 consecutive hits, earning him the sobriquet ‘Superstar.’

Khanna rose to prominence with dual blockbusters “Aradhana” and “Do Raaste” in 1969. The films, in which he co-starred with Sharmila Tagore and Mumtaz, respectively, ruled the box office for weeks. For the next...

Deborah McIntosh and Alex Walton will lead WME Independent, a new division of WME that will handle domestic and international film sales and film financing consulting services. Both were most recently at Endeavor Content, which WME’s parent company Endeavor Holdings is selling a majority stake in as part of a settlement agreement with the Writers Guild of America that limits major agencies’ ability to package material.

The new group will bring film sales and film financing consulting services back inside the agency and will offer both domestic and international film sales services.

“WME Independent will serve as a critical vehicle to fuel our clients’ projects while providing the global perspective necessary to navigate today’s content marketplace,” said Dan Limerick, WME’s chief operating officer, in a statement. “Deb, Alex and their team have an undeniable track record of bringing many successful artist-driven projects to fruition, and we look...

WME on Monday launched WME Independent, a division to broker domestic and international film sales and film financing consulting services. It will be headed by Deborah McIntosh and Alex Walton, both of whom were most recently at Endeavor Content.

Those deals had for years been steered under Endeavor Content, but that entity is in the process of being sold off as a freestanding production entity. McIntosh and Walton will bring film sales and film financing consulting services back inside the agency and will differentiate itself in the marketplace by offering domestic and international film sales services.

“WME Independent will serve as a critical vehicle to fuel our clients’ projects while providing the global perspective necessary to navigate today’s content marketplace,” WME chief operating officer Dan Limerick said. “Deb, Alex and their team have an undeniable track record of bringing many successful artist-driven projects to fruition, and we look forward...

Agents Will Maxfield, Gerren Crochet, Zach Glueck, Katie Irwin, Nelson Mok, Abraham Bengio, Laurel Charnetsky on board.

Alex Walton and Deborah McIntosh will lead the newly formed WME Independent after the sales team completed its split from Endeavor Content.

The agency division will handle US / North American and international film sales – the current sales slate includes recent Toronto world premiere The Survivor starring Ben Foster and all-star noir package Sniff in a co-rep with CAA – and offer film financing consultancy services. Walton and McIntosh lead a team that comprises agents Will Maxfield, Gerren Crochet, Zach Glueck, Katie Irwin, Nelson Mok,...

Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps was the belle of the ball (or at least of Film Twitter) in late 2017 when the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” thrust her into the spotlight. This year, she has four projects floating around, including M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” which released in theaters back in July; Cannes darling “Bergman Island,” now at the Toronto International Film Festival; “Beckett,” the Netflix drama that opened the Locarno Film Festival; and Barry Levinson’s Auschwitz prisoner biopic “The Survivor,” also at TIFF.

But while PTA’s highbrow fashion drama in which she starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis turned Krieps into an actress everybody wanted to work with, she admitted in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter that it took some time to adjust to newfound fame — and inevitably, led her to turn down projects.

“After ‘Phantom Thread,’ I really wasn’t interested in Hollywood, because...

John David Washington shot to fame with his lead role in the Spike Lee biopic BlacKkKlansman, which earned the young actor a Golden Globe nomination. Following this success, he went on to collaborate with other high-profile directors, like Christopher Nolan and Sam Levinson.

Related: John David Washington's Top Movies Ranked, According To IMDb

Even though his current filmography is limited, he has delivered powerhouse performances in most of his features and his career only seems to rise further with time. Starring in the new Netflix thriller Beckett, the actor has also been cast in David O Russell's upcoming project. While films like BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie allowed him to showcase his dramatic prowess, Tenet and Beckett also prove his marketability as a star for fast-paced action films.

This summer’s big New York City performances have lugged considerable metaphorical baggage, from the giddy, vaxxed-but-maskless return of the Springsteen on Broadway concert during the pre-Delta shine of June, the resurgent Covid delays of Shakespeare in the Park and finally last night’s aborted, starry concert in Central Park, when the sky itself seemed to tell pop’s mightiest stalwarts, eh, not quite yet.

Tonight’s performance at the August Wilson Theatre of Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s thrilling Pass Over, the first Broadway play of the post-shutdown era, will, happily or not, carry some weighty burdens of its own. Forget the random media reports of the production’s maybe, maybe-not financial struggles – seriously, who isn’t struggling financially these days?

Equally unfair is asking Pass Over, or any other single Broadway production, to somehow reflect or embody all that’s happened in our world over the last 17 months of illness and death,...

Photo: ‘Beckett’ Have you ever visited another country and thought, “What if I was stuck here?” Imagine being trapped in a place foreign to you with no way to access your friends and family. It’s a scary thought, being forced to navigate and figure things out mostly on your own. Personally, I’ve barely left the United States, but one of my greatest fears is the idea of being trapped somewhere unfamiliar. And with ‘Beckett’, those fears come to life. ‘Beckett’, directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, is a film about a vacation where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. This high-octane thriller stars John David Washington in the titular role as he runs, sneaks, and fights his way through Greece just to try and get back to the United States. It’s an enjoyable action-drama that highlights the complicated nature of being stuck in a world foreign...

This Beckett article contains spoilers.

You could be forgiven, going into the new Netflix thriller, Beckett, for expecting a vibe not dissimilar to John David Washington’s last big movie, Tenet. Like Tenet, Beckett is a conspiracy thriller about someone who finds themselves out of their depth, with chase scenes and gunplay aplenty, and Netflix probably doesn’t mind you making those associations when you’re choosing what to watch. But while Tenet was a film that very much harked back to classic Bond movies, Beckett’s inspirations are quite a bit older.

Watching Beckett feels a lot like watching an old Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller. The plot, a tourist has a car accident and stumbles into a deadly conspiracy, is pure Hitchock, reminiscent of films such as The 39 Steps or The Man Who Knew Too Much. Even the soundtrack is full of jarring strings that don’t sound too...

However Disney ends up dividing the bounty from Marvel’s “Black Widow,” it is now adding to the haul with added revenue sources. After a month of exclusive Premium VOD availability through Disney+, all other platforms, like Roku and Amazon, are offering the year’s highest grossing film in theaters for the same $29.99, but without needing to subscribe to the streamer.

The vagaries of talent contracts, and how their payouts are related to reaching profit (a likely far-off point for the multi-hundred million dollar effort), remain unclear. But what is known is that along with its strong theatrical response, the money it is earning is increasing.

“Black Widow” is #1 on iTunes (usually quickest to respond to new releases) and currently #3 at Google Play. Both these rank by the number of transactions, not the revenue accrued. It is also #1 at Vudu, which charts by how much money was paid to view.

Have you ever accidentally stumbled or — in the case of the titular hero of Netflix’s Beckett — careened downhill, by way of a fatal car accident, into an international political scandal? Some things only happen to people in movies. What’s curious and invigorating, but also somewhat flawed, about Beckett is the way it maneuvers its path through the fate and psychological tumult of its central character, a man thrown into a whirlwind of grief that coincides with his accidental involvement in a scandal he knows nothing about, set in...

On this episode of The Playlist Podcast, we’re joined by filmmaker Ferdinando Filomarino, the director of the new Netflix film, “Beckett.”

For those unaware, “Beckett” stars John David Washington and Alicia Vikander and tells the story of an American couple on vacation in Greece. After a tragic accident, John David Washington’s character, aptly named Beckett, finds himself on the run from a mysterious group that is out to kill him for an unknown reason.

Continue reading Ferdinando Filomarino Talks ‘Beckett,’ “Relatable” Thrillers & The Future Of The Theatrical Experience [The Playlist Podcast] at The Playlist.

Netflix’s Beckett stars John David Washington (the eponymous Beckett) as an average, not-so-in-shape guy. Some nefarious people, however, want to kill this normal guy for reasons unknown. And so we follow Beckett across Greece as he flees his potential killers. The chase has Beckett getting shot, running […]

The post The Wildest Stunt in ‘Beckett’ Was Done by John David Washington Himself appeared first on /Film.

Beckett, the latest thriller to premiere on Netflix, is different from the typical man-on-the-run film. The lead character, Beckett (John David Washington), is truly an average guy. At the beginning of the movie, Beckett faces personal tragedy, and the tone is more drama than a thriller. Things take a turn, however, and he soon finds […]

The post How the Director of ‘Beckett’ Upends His Netflix Thriller With a Personal Touch [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

A Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller about a man, played by John David Washington, on the run in Greece is an enjoyable homage to 70s conspiracy movies

The *throws hands in the air and gives up* title of the new Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller is a telling sign of a film that no one knows quite what to do with. When Netflix picked it up late last year, it was switched from Born to Be Murdered (which sounds like a Lifetime movie starring Tori Spelling) to Beckett (which sounds like a comedy about either a wise-cracking detective or a mischievous dog or a wise-cracking detective who is also a mischievous dog), both rather awful and both rather far from what the film really is: a curious combination of propulsive on-the-run action and naturalistic Euro drama, too mainstream for the arthouse crowd and too arthouse for the mainstream, now hoping to find its...

As the 2021 Locarno Film Festival rounds its final bend, sales deals were still coming through.

In one such pact, San Sebastian New Directors title “That Weekend” has been snapped up by leading Italian sales-production shingle The Open Reel. A debut feature from director Mara Pescio, the film tells the story of Julia who returns to the neighborhood she left years ago to recover money she hid in her home. The reunion prompts a life-changing confrontation with her daughter.

The film is an Argentina-Brazil co-production hailing from Maravillacine, Murillo Cine, Santiago Carabante and Persona Non Grata Pictures. Variety previously spoke with Pescio about her making her directorial bow.

In other late Locarno dealing, Compañia de Cine, a Buenos Aires-based boutique sales operation, announced it had taken world rights to “Mostro,” which world premiered Aug. 11 in Locarno Cineasti del Presente.

Also, Mad Solutions signed all sales and distribution rights for Arab-speaking countries...

New Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, who is the former head of the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, is starting to put his stamp on the Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema with a lineup comprising comedies and genre films alongside more straightforward auteur cinema, driven by a desire to make the selection “more audience friendly,” as he puts it. Nazzaro spoke to Variety about some of the choices that reflect this new course. Excerpts.

Since taking the reins you’ve repeatedly talked about taking the fest in different directions. How is that reflected, now that the lineup is out?

My idea is that a festival can be quite highbrow and entertaining at the same time. That is why in this year’s lineup we have three comedies –– or sort of, it depends on your idea of humor –– we also have some “genre” films, and also some straightforward auteur films.

No matter who you believe, whether it’s the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) saying theaters are being destroyed by streaming or perhaps studios trying to explain how streaming and theatrical release models will benefit everyone involved, the truth is that the theatrical experience is changing in a big way. And some, like John David Washington, are concerned about the survival of the big screen experience.

Read More: ‘Black Widow’ Has Historically Bad Box Office Drop As Theater Owners Blame Disney+ Access

Speaking at the Locarno Film Festival (via Variety), where his new film, “Beckett,” is having its world premiere, John David Washington talked about the feature and why the festival experience has him worried about the future of the industry.

Continue reading John David Washington Talks The “Survival Of The Theatrical Experience” While At ‘Beckett’ Premiere at The Playlist.

The opening night of the Locarno Film Festival was led by a pair of rousing call to arms for the theatrical experience.

Early on it was rain, rather than Covid-19, which threatened to put a dampener on proceedings, as sodden conditions in the famous Piazza Grande forced the world premiere of “Beckett” indoors. However, ironically, the comments made by the Netflix film’s lead John David Washington felt even more powerful in front of a vast, crowded indoor theatre.

Asked how he found playing the film’s central character, an American tourist who gets caught up in a deadly manhunt, Washington had a blunt, yet thoughtful response.

“Stressful,” Washington began, to a titter from the crowd. “I just connected with the story. When I think about Beckett, I think of survival and that’s very personal to me. Part of the reason we’re all here tonight is survival of the theatrical experience,...

For a film in which John David Washington lurches, staggers, stumbles, shambles, flounders, falters, wobbles, scrabbles and totters across an entire Greek province, getting shot, stabbed, cuffed (often in the very same already broken arm), punched, beaten, chased and stung by bees, is in two-car crashes but also gets hit by a car, escapes in the trunk of a car, gets in a taser fight in a car and eventually falls from a great height onto a car, “Beckett” sure is dull.

Continue reading Netflix’s ‘Beckett’ With John David Washington, Alicia Vikander & Vicky Krieps: A Wrong-Man Thriller That Never Gets It Right [Locarno Review] at The Playlist.

When the pandemic first started raging across the globe last year, it was natural to appreciate the movies that allowed us to travel the world from the relative safety of our own homes; now that this crap been making life miserable for a full 18 months, it’s become even more natural to appreciate the movies that make us never want to go anywhere ever again. Enter: Netflix’s tense and prescient “Beckett,” which — despite being shot during the summer before Covid — follows the recent likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old” and HBO’s “The White Lotus” with another welcome reminder that vacation is actually a total nightmare that will kill you a lot faster than sitting on your couch.

In a certain light, “Beckett” might even be the most nightmarish of the lot, as this paranoid thriller from Luca Guadagnino protégé and frequent second unit director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino...

John David Washington shot “Beckett” before last summer’s “Tenet” put the actor on a short list of potential action figures. But when it comes to this considerably more modest, Greece-set manhunt movie — which kicks off the Locarno Film Festival before releasing via Netflix on Aug. 13 — it helps to look at Washington (son of Oscar winner Denzel) as a different kind of character: not your conventional Hollywood hero so much as an average guy caught up in a deadly conspiracy.

Washington plays the eponymous American tourist, who’s roughly the kind of out-of-his-league everyman that Alfred Hitchcock gravitated toward in classics such as “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “North by Northwest.” But director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino isn’t operating by that playbook as much as audiences might think, which might disappoint those who find the movie on Netflix and expect a straightforward thriller. The suspense is much subtler,...

Admiration for the 1970s conspiracy thrillers of Alan J. Pakula, John Frankenheimer and Sydney Pollack is baked into Beckett, though little of the craftsmanship that made the best of those movies thrum with danger and tension. Directed with a workmanlike lack of style by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino and written by Kevin A. Rice without the required ambiguities to feed the protagonist’s paranoia, this pedestrian wrong-place-wrong-time manhunt through Greece never really sparks. And the jury that’s still out over whether John David Washington is movie-star material gets shaky evidence to support that case.

Filomarino has served regularly as second unit director on the ...

John David Washington knows how to play hurt.

Before following his Oscar-winning father Denzel into the acting business, the Tenet, Ballers and BlacKkKlansman star spent his days getting knocked around the football field as running back, briefly in the NFL for the St. Louis Rams, where he was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2006, and then, from 2009 to 2012 for the Sacramento Mountain Lions in the short-lived United Football League.

It’s an experience that Washington was able to draw on for Beckett, his new film, which opens the Locarno International Film Festival on Wednesday ahead of its global bow on Netflix on Aug....

Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino first made a splash in Locarno in 2010 when his atmospheric short “Diarchia,” starring Louis Garrel, Riccardo Scamarcio and Alba Rohrwacher, scooped the Leopard of Tomorrow prize and went on to earn an honorable mention at Sundance. His feature debut, “Antonia,” was an intimate portrait of Italian poet Antonia Pozzi who, like the director, grew up in upper crust Milanese society. He’s back with “Beckett,” the English-language thriller that will open the Swiss fest toplining John David Washington as an “American tourist hunted by unknown people” amid political turbulence in Greece. It’s a Netflix Original that will drop globally on the platform on Aug. 13. Cito Filomarino spoke to Variety about his transition into directing genre fare for a global audience

It doesn’t happen often that an Italian director goes from making an art movie about a poet to a manhunt thriller with a Hollywood star.

The Locarno Film Festival, long known as a safe haven for indie cinema, is taking a turn into genre territory while remaining true to

its origins.

“People know what the mission is for Locarno,” says the fest’s new artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, referring to the prestige of the event — the 74th edition runs Aug. 4-14 — that is known worldwide as a festival of discovery.

But Nazzaro, an Italian film critic and former chief of the Venice Critics’ Week, now intends “to broaden the moral imagination of this mission,” as he puts it, by digging deeper into genre cinema, and “also into the [festival’s] relationship with the U.S. studios and what people would consider as [pure] entertainment.”

Significantly, this year’s Locarno opener is Netflix Original “Beckett,” a thriller toplining John David Washington as an American tourist who becomes the target of a political assassination while vacationing in Greece, and...

The summer may be winding down everywhere else, but Netflix is heating up with a host of big- and small-screen debuts, as well as its regular new rotation of existing TV shows and films.

Later this month, the streamer is set to launch the much anticipated dark fantasy The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. Produced by The Witcher executive producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the animated spin-off film serves as an origins story for Geralt’s mentor and fellow witcher Vesemir.

Around the middle of August, John David Washington’s new thriller Beckett, which also stars Tomb Raider and The Green Knight actress Alicia ...

The summer may be winding down everywhere else, but Netflix is heating up with a host of big- and small-screen debuts, as well as its regular new rotation of existing TV shows and films.

Later this month, the streamer is set to launch the much anticipated dark fantasy The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. Produced by The Witcher executive producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the animated spin-off film serves as an origins story for Geralt’s mentor and fellow witcher Vesemir.

Around the middle of August, John David Washington’s new thriller Beckett, which also stars Tomb Raider and The Green Knight actress Alicia ...

Netflix has released a new trailer for Beckett. The upcoming action/thriller is led by John David Washington, who is coming fresh off of last year's Tenet. Now, he's returning to the action world in a movie produced by Call Me By Your Name director, Luca Guadangnino, with Ferdinando Cito Filomarino making his feature directorial debut. This time around, Washington is playing an American tourist in Europe who unwittingly ends up at the center of a dangerous conspiracy and on the run for his life.

The trailer opens with a seemingly happy couple on vacation. Doing some sightseeing and a bit of romance. It all seems fine and well until their car goes off the road. John David Washington's character then finds himself on the wrong side of a suspicious situation. His girlfriend is missing. His account of the events doesn't line up with what authorities have discovered. He then...

August on Netflix tends to be a lot like August at the movies: A sweaty grab bag of fluff, comfort food, leftovers, and “that could be interesting” question marks. Netflix Original “He’s All That” certainly falls into the first category, though we’re crossing our fingers that Mark Waters’ dubious sequel to a teen movie classic is more than just another example of a streamer exhuming whatever IP it can. Also waiting in the wings is the Jason Momoa action vehicle “Sweet Girl,” which stars the once and future Aquaman as a big daddy hell-bent on punishing the pharma execs he holds responsible for his wife’s death.

So far as still-unseen Netflix Originals go, August’s most promising new title is Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s “Beckett,” which stars John David Washington as an American tourist who’s framed for a crime while on vacation in Greece. That will premiere...

Exclusive: With their action thriller Beckett set to land on Netflix on August 13, Deadline sat down with star John David Washington and director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino to chat about putting together the story of an American on the run amidst political unrest in Greece.

Washington has had a remarkable 12 months, finding himself at the center of the streaming versus theatrical debate that exploded during the pandemic. Last summer, he was the lead in Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s time-bending action pic that was dubbed as cinema’s savior when it was released as theaters tentatively emerged from the first wave of lockdown closures. Later in the year, he starred opposite Zendaya in Malcolm & Marie, the entirely lockdown-shot feature that released on Netflix in January.

Below, we discuss how those experiences contrasted, and we also dig into his wider career, which saw him play pro football before transitioning into acting. His...

Locarno’s annual budget will rise to $1.88m from 2022 for four years.

The Locarno and Zurich festivals are the big winners of the festival funding payout by Switzerland’s Federal Office of Culture (Bak) for the four-year periood from 2022 until 2025.

Between them, Locarno and Zurich will receive 400,000 Swiss Francs (Chf) more each year than the amounts they had been granted for the period from 2017-2021.

In total, the annual support for Locarno is increasing from $1.64m to $1.88m while the Zurich Film Festival will see its funding next year rise from the current $272,000 to $478,000.

Locarno kicks off this year on...