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The Sundance Film Festival reliably delivers Oscar contenders every year, whether they be usually one or two standout narrative features or the lion’s share of Best Documentary Feature nominees.

2025 should be no exception.

But don’t look to all the Sundance 2025 award winners as likely Oscar contenders. Most films with Sundance jury awards, while worthy, are ultimately too small-scale to wind up in Oscar contention. Expect narrative winner “Atropia” and critical favorite “Rebuilding” to land at the Gothams or Indie Spirits. But the international award winners, for example, get a leg up on tipping their countries to submit them for International Feature Film consideration.

The lucky movies at Sundance that can fit into the right Oscar box find distributors, hire award campaigners, and wind up shortlisted or even nominated by the new year. Here is our list of potential Sundance entries, narrative and documentary, ranked by how likely they...

Park City, Utah, January 31, 2025 — Today the 2025 Sundance Film Festival awards were presented at a ceremony for the jury and audience award–winning films at The Ray Theatre in Park City, where independent storytelling was celebrated ahead of the Festival’s conclusion. The 2025 Festival, taking place now through February 2, has featured premieres, screenings, talks, events, and more in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. All feature award-winning films are available online nationwide now through February 2. Select award-winning films will screen in person for ticketholders and passholders. Tickets can be purchased at festival.sundance.org/tickets.

Grand Jury Prizes went to Atropia (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Seeds (U.S. Documentary Competition), Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), and Cutting Through Rocks (اوزاک یوللار) (World Cinema Documentary Competition). The Next Innovator Award presented by Adobe was given to Zodiac Killer Project.

Audience awards for films in competition were presented by Acura to Twinless (U.

Luther Vandross will be a name immediately familiar to some, and a voice familiar to many more. A co-production of several organisations, but ostensibly a CNN film, it's not entirely clear why it's out now. It has been 20 years since his untimely death but sometimes it seems that the reason the documentary has been made now is because this is the last chance to interview many of those he worked with. In 20 Feet From Stardom there are many stories of backing singers, including Luther Vandross, but his role(s) working for and with David Bowie are just part of his stories. Mariah Carey, whose career was nurtured by Vandross, appears, as do many of those who worked with him in his solo work and the various groups before his breakthrough success.

There are some revelations. I hadn't known that he'd appeared on Sesame Street as part of Listen My Brother.

All titles below begin streaming for free on February 1 unless otherwise noted.

Originals

Action

Earthquake Underground (2/29)

When a massive earthquake submerges several subway cars underground, a group of misfit passengers band together to get to the surface or die trying.

Vice News Presents: Mass Shooting America (2/7)

An unflinching look at the true scope and scale of gun violence in America, as told by those who’ve experienced it first-hand.

Love You To Death: Mommy’S Missing (2/14)

The case of a missing mother reveals twisted family secrets that leave a trail of flames, arrests, and deaths in their wake.

TMZ No Bs: Miley Cyrus (2/24)

Harvey Levin and his team of TMZ experts discuss Miley Cyrus’ meteoric rise to fame and debate her biggest scandals and successes.

Love You To Death: For Love Or Money (2/28)

The shooting of a beloved Cleveland firefighter leads detectives to uncover a shocking plot for money gone very wrong.

In the various conversations about pop culture you've had in your life, there's a good chance you've heard someone confidently say something like, "I miss when 'Saturday Night Live' used to be funny," or maybe, "'SNL' isn't as good as when [insert their favorite cast members] was on the show." There's an equally good chance that this person probably saw a couple rough sketches in an episode they happened to catch on a random Saturday and used that as the basis for their argument, comparing it to the sketches they've loved for years that have stood the test of time. 

But the reality is that "SNL" has always been simultaneously outstanding and bad throughout its entire run, which is a big part of why it has endured 50 years on the air and counting. More importantly, "SNL" remains a comedy institution that, at its best, brings a strange new character, infectious catchphrase,...

Nominees for the 2025 Oscars will be announced on Jan. 23 — and one category that’s notoriously difficult to forecast is Best Documentary Feature. The Academy shortlist winnowed down the potential nominees to 15 films, but this year’s precursor awards have been all over the map. We’re also dealing with the Documentary Branch of the Academy — a group that has proven to be unpredictable.

In 2024, Gold Derby’s combined odds were able to forecast just two of the five nominees: The eventual winner, 20 Days in Mariupol, and Four Daughters. Scratched from the list were the Producers Guild of America’s top choice, American Symphony, along with Beyond Utopia, which had stacked PGA, Directors Guild of America, and BAFTA nominations, and the Emmy and National Board of Review winner, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. So what have we learned?

Why we can’t count on the guilds

Last year, the...

Nostalgia baiting has become so common, it’s erupted into nano-genres all its own. Take documentary filmmaking. Where once there were arguments over what was left out, what was put in, and what constituted unbiased storytelling, now the landscape is dominated by celebrity self-profiles where viewers can consider themselves lucky if the subject of the (puff) piece isn’t also a producer with final cut. What do “Beckham,” “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” and “Sly” have to do with nostalgia? Typically, to get famous enough to merit your own “documentary,” you need a body of work that people already love — hence, even series like “The Last Dance” or films like “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces” traffic in nostalgia, tempting viewers to revisit the glory days of such-and-such or so-and-so via interviews with the talking heads of today.

Enter: “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” a four-part documentary series produced by Peacock,...

To mark the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” putting together 90 minutes of live TV in six days — already a herculean feat — is not enough. In addition, the venerable variety show is flooding the zone with shows of its pop cultural might. On the heels of Jason Reitman’s hagiographic film “Saturday Night” and ahead of next month’s three-hour telecast from Studio 8H comes the four-part docuseries “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.” Executive produced by Oscar-winner Morgan Neville, the show is the latest prong in NBC’s full-court marketing press to celebrate the anarchic experiment turned established institution. But 50 years in, the legend of Lorne Michaels’ merry circus has already been celebrated, many times over. “SNL50” adds little to this half-century of anecdotes, oral histories and archival footage. Instead, it embellishes around the edges, making use of gimmicky formats and the access that comes with aiding a corporate PR push to dress up old chestnuts.

“Comedy slowly became rock ‘n’ roll,” says Joe Piscopo, a Saturday Night Live cast member between 1980 and 1984, in the opening episode of SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night.

The Peacock docuseries, which is exec produced by Morgan Neville, the man behind Fred Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 20 Feet From Stardom and the Pharrell Williams Lego doc Piece By Piece, tells the story of the venerable NBC sketch comedy show ahead of its 50th anniversary next month.

It features a slew of cast members including Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Bobby Moynihan, Bowen Yang, Cheri Oteri, David Spade, Tina Fey, Ego Nwodim, Fred Armisen, Heidi Gardner, Jason Sudeikis, Jay Pharaoh, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Lovitz, Kenan Thompson, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Tracy Morgan, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Rachel Dratch, Will Ferrell, Billy Crystal and Damon Wayans as well as writers and producers such as Alan Zweibel, Al Franken, Harper Steele,...

What’s the deal with the film Academy’s documentary branch? This season’s shortlist for the best documentary feature Oscar, released Dec. 17, was missing one of the year’s most acclaimed crowd-pleasers, Warner Bros.’ Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story — which is at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, won the top Critics Choice documentary award and is nominated for the Producers Guild’s top doc award — and also impressive documentaries about Martha Stewart (Martha), Celine Dion (I Am: Celine Dion), James Carville (Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid) and John Williams (Music by John Williams), among others.

This isn’t to say that the 15 docs that were shortlisted are lacking — to the contrary, most are excellent. But it does reconfirm the doc branch’s weird aversion, over roughly the past decade, to populist titles.

During that period, the branch declined to shortlist Good Night Oppy, a charmer about a Wall-e-like Mars...

When putting together the song, “Piece by Piece,” for the documentary about his life of the same name, Pharrell Williams saw it as a chance explore everything in his life that has led him to where he is right now. “It’s thinking about how everything collectively is your story. If you think about all of the crazy times that you have experienced in your life and all the fun times and all the sad times and all of the momentous time and all the times you were caught off guard by things that just blindsided you,” he tells Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the video interview above). He even traces it to the medium in which his story is told in the film. “They’re all piece by piece and it’s very interesting that it’s sort of synonymous with how the Lego world works.”

“Piece by Piece,...

When it comes to music at the movies in 2024, this might be remembered as the year of the weird musical – or, at least, the movies that you wouldn’t think would be musicals, but were. There was Todd Phillips’ sequel, “Joker: Folie a Deux,” which nobody figured would be full of musical numbers until it was; Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End,” with post-apocalyptic underground crooning by Tilda Swinton and others; and, of course, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” which sounded odd on paper – “a brutal Mexican cartel leader hires a high-powered attorney to engineer a gender-reassignment surgery” – even before you threw in lavish musical numbers.

But there were more traditional musicals, too: the smash hit “Wicked,” which reserved its new songs for Part 2 in 2025, along with “Moana 2,” “Mufasa: The Lion King,” and others.

And the year found lots of notable musicians writing songs for films, including Pharrell Williams and...

Gay Talese with Anne-Katrin Titze following the Doc NYC World Premiere of Dorenna Newton’s Watching Frank (with Gay on his Esquire article Frank Sinatra Has A Cold) Photo: Catherine Talese

The first time I met Gay Talese was in 2013, when we were invited along with the B-52s Fred Schneider and Killer Films' Christine Vachon to be on the inaugural First Time Fest jury by co-founders Johanna Bennett (Tony Bennett’s daughter) and her partner Mandy Ward. Over the years Gay and I have had conversations on Andrew Bolton and Wong Kar Wai’s China: Through The Looking Glass (at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute); at Lotus Club with Morgan Neville (the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet From Stardom) on The Music Of Strangers (featuring Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble); an evening with Gay on Ava DuVernay's Selma; recollections of James Baldwin and Raoul Peck...

“It’s happening,” goes a lyric sung over the opening titles of Piece By Piece. “Yes... It’s real.” Just to be sure, here is confirmation, early doors: yep, this is a real film. We’ve had Lego Movies about Batman, Ninjas, Scooby-Doo. But a music documentary Lego Movie? Made with the full participation of self-described “hybrid thinker” Pharrell Williams, Piece By Piece is a surprisingly sincere and serious film about a sincere and serious artist, some distance from the irony-led Lord & Miller Lego entries. It’s quite a handbrake turn for Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom), but it largely follows the standard talking-heads doc template very faithfully. Just in Lego.

The first act serves almost as a potted history of the vibrant ’90s hip-hop and R&b scene in Virginia: obsessed with music, Williams surrounded himself with other Virginian up-and-comers like Timbaland and Missy Elliott. Hilariously,...

Regular moviegoers — and even some Academy members — often believe that directing an animated feature means standing over an artist’s shoulder and simply saying, “Draw this.” But the six directors selected for Variety’s third annual Pixels and Pencils series at this year’s Scad Savannah Film Festival — Josh Cooley (“Transformers One”), Adam Elliot (“Memoir of a Snail”), Kelsey Mann (“Inside Out 2”), Morgan Neville (“Piece by Piece”), Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robot”) and Gints Zilbalodis (“Flow”) — want the industry to see animation directing on par with live-action work.

These auteurs reflect on their experiences shaping their films and their challenges in bringing animated stories to life.

Read: You can see all Academy Award predictions in all 23 categories on one page on the Variety Awards Circuit.

‘Transformers One’

Josh Cooley (“Transformers One”)

Cooley’s passion for the “Transformers” franchise is evident in his origin story, which explores the relationship between Autobots Optimus and Megatron.

The 68th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (Lff) is wrapping up Sunday night with Piece by Piece, the animated Lego biopic of Pharrell Williams by Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 20 Feet From Stardom) following the unveiling of this year’s various competition winners, led by Adam Elliot’s claymation feature Memoir of a Snail.

Set in Australia in the 1970s, the movie, which had already won the animation-focused Annecy Film Festival, stars Succession‘s Sarah Snook as Grace Pudel, a shy girl born with a cleft palate who grows up with her wild and occasionally pyromaniac twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) but eventually becomes a lonely hoarder of ornamental snails. Her only friend is a wild octogenarian named Pinky (Jacki Weaver). Eric Bana, Dominique Pinon, and Nick Cave provide supporting voice work. IFC Films has set an Oct. 25 U.S. release date.

Memoir of a...

Fifteen-year-old Doc NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, has revealed its influential 15-film Short List. The festival will run its main lineup of 111 features, 32 world premieres, 24 U.S. premieres, and 129 short films in-person November 13-21 in New York City’s IFC Center, Sva Theatre, and Village East by Angelika and continue online until December 1 with films available to viewers across the U.S. All the films will have theatrical screenings at the festival, often with the directors in person.

Historically, most of the Doc NYC shortlist titles overlap with the Academy’s official 15-film Oscar shortlist. With the notable exception of Netflix’s Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher,” for 12 years, the festival has screened the documentary that went on to win the Academy Award, including “20 Days in Mariupol,” “Navalny,” “Summer of Soul,” “American Factory,” “Free Solo,” “Icarus,” “O.J.: Made in America,” “Amy,” “Citizenfour,” “20 Feet From Stardom,” “Searching for Sugar Man,...

Hhmi Tangled Bank Studios, Tiger Baby, and Emaho Films have set the world premiere of Taira Malaney’s “Turtle Walker” at Doc NYC.

The documentary chronicles the life of Indian sea turtle conservationist Satish Bhaskar. Directed by Malaney in her feature debut, “Turtle Walker” explores Bhaskar’s journey along India’s coastlines in the late 1970s, where he studied and worked to protect endangered sea turtles. The film also examines the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on sea turtle habitats.

Submarine Deluxe, the hybrid sales, production, and distribution company, has acquired sales rights. Run by brothers and co-founders Dan Braun and Josh Braun, the company has a track record of success with documentary sales, having been involved with six of the last twelve Academy Award-winning documentaries. These include “American Factory,” “Citizenfour,” “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Man on Wire,” “The Cove,” and “Searching for Sugar Man.”

Prior to completion, “Turtle...

There’s only room for one killer clown at the top of box office charts.

“Terrifier 3” slashed its way to No. 1 in North America, collecting a stellar $18.3 million from 2,514 theaters in its opening weekend. It’s a huge start for the ultra-gory, independently made, low-budget slasher film about a demonic clown who brutalizes a small town.

Meanwhile “Joker: Folie á Deux,” which topped the box office last weekend, collapsed in third place with $7.055 million from 4,102 theaters. It could end up in fourth place, behind holdover “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” once the final numbers are tallied on Monday. The off-beat comic book musical, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a reclusive stand-up comedian and part-time clown, suffered a tragic 82% decline in ticket sales from its already disastrous $37.6 million debut. It ranks as one of the biggest-second weekend drops for the superhero genre, plunging more severely than last year’s misfires of “The Marvels” (78.1%), “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania...

Multi-hyphenate, multi-Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and producer Pharrell Williams is showing the world through his eyes in the biopic Piece by Piece. The announcement that it would be told with Lego animation took creatives and fans by surprise initially, but it no doubt piqued curiosity. Now, audiences will get to experience a legendary life in a way that dances off the screen in brilliant color. To achieve this ambitious feat, Williams employed the help of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) to help craft this vision.

When musical legend Pharrell Williams first met with Morgan Neville about using Lego to make “Piece by Piece,” a documentary about his life, the Oscar-winning director of “20 Feet from Stardom” was intrigued but perplexed.

“His pitch to me was: I really like your documentaries, and I had the idea that you would make a documentary about me, and then when you were done, you would throw out the visuals and make it again in Lego,” Neville told IndieWire. “And when he said that, I got really interested. But it just sounded like a crazy idea, and I had to think about what that would mean.”

Ultimately, it meant opening up the possibilities of what a doc and animated feature could do as a new form of cinematic expression. The refreshing result and positive buzz out of Telluride and TIFF has Oscar talk of “Piece by Piece” competing in both categories.

Two murderous clowns will face off at the weekend box office as “Terrifier 3” and “Joker: Folie a Deux” contend for the top slot on domestic charts.

Ticket sales for the “Joker” sequel are projected to drop by at least 60% to 65% in its second weekend, which would amount to $13 million to $15 million. However, that’s on the optimistic end. Box office experts wouldn’t be surprised if the off-beat comic book musical suffered a tragic 70% to 75% decline, putting revenues at $9 million to $11 million. Hobbled by poor reviews and terrible word-of-mouth, “Joker 2” opened last weekend with a disastrous $37.6 million.

Based on those projections, “Terrifier 3” has the potential to pull off an upset. The third installment in the “Terrifier” franchise is targeting $10 million to $13 million from 2,514 venues in its first weekend of release. It would be a huge start for the ultra-gory, low-budget slasher film.

Also in the mix for No.

We’re about to enter another busy weekend with way too many new releases, but “Joker: Folie à Deux” isn’t likely to win a second week either way, as another clown bursts into theaters. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Before we get to the new movies, we need to examine whether Todd Phillips‘ “Joker: Folie à Deux” can possibly stay atop the box office after such horrible reviews and a terrible opening weekend. On Sunday, Warner Bros. estimated a $40 million opening, but actually, it was lower with just $37.8 million. Its “D” CinemaScore makes it likely to drop 65% to 70% or even more in its second weekend, which would knock it down to $11.5 million or less. That sets up a scenario where DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot” can capitalize on its great word-of-mouth and general lack of family films to beat it by Sunday, even if...

Breaking into the music business, crafting insanely addictive earworm hits, recognizing genre boundaries, starting a streetwear fashion line, wearing properly sized ranger hats — Pharrell Williams has never done anything by the book. The kid from Virginia Beach, Virginia, had always felt like someone who saw (and heard) the world differently than his peers. As a youngster growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, that “he’s so… unusual” tag marked him as a bit of a misfit. By the time Pharrell started creating oft-kilter beats as half of the molten-hot...

If you’re sick of formulaic musical biopics — which is to say, almost all musical biopics — Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece” is a breath of fresh air. Pharrell Williams, an artist with more #1 hits than Will Riker and Jack Ransom in a bar fight, has a story to tell about his childhood, his career, and his creative process, and it’s not your typical rags to riches tale.

“Piece by Piece” is an animated documentary, which is not a brand-new concept but it hasn’t been done to death either. Morgan Neville, who won an Oscar for the music documentary “20 Feet from Stardom,” sat Pharrell Williams and his friends, family and artistic collaborators down for extended interviews, and then animated their story using the same style as the various “Lego Movies” everyone loves so much. It’s a charming approach, even if it’s also a huge commercial for toys.

Grammy-winning musician Pharrell Williams will share his life story in a unique new documentary called “Piece By Piece.” Unlike traditional biographical films, this one will animate Williams’ journey using Legos. The documentary is set for release in theaters on October 11.

Lego agreed to make the film even though it differs from their usual projects. “When I was young, that’s my origin story,” Williams said of growing up in a marginalized community. His gratitude showed for Lego giving a yes to his story. The company is known for animated Batman and Lego Movie films but took a chance on Williams’ personal recounting.

The concept emerged as Williams disliked the traditional documentary format. He wanted Morgan Neville as director for Neville’s storytelling skills. Neville is an acclaimed filmmaker recognized for works like “20 Feet from Stardom” and a Steve Martin documentary. Williams praised Neville as “really good at it.”

Using...

Andy Warhol imagined a future where everyone would be world-famous for 15 minutes — a prediction that has effectively come to pass, courtesy of TikTok and reality TV. So here’s a revised forecast: We now live in a time when everyone can (and a great many will) have documentaries made about them.

That may already be true for musicians, so it will surprise no one to learn that it’s “Happy” hook factory Pharrell Williams’ turn. What you probably didn’t see coming was the form, which is every bit as playful as his music. In “Piece by Piece,” no sooner does Williams sit for his interview with director Morgan Neville than the rapper-producer-entrepreneur muses, “What if we told my life with Legos?” You know, a fully animated brickfilm, à la “The Lego Movie,” whose real-life subject would be repped by a CG plastic toy, with inked-on cheekbones and the best virtual lighting money can buy.

Predicting the winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar becomes a lot easier on December 17 when the academy announces the 15 films that make the shortlist. Those semi-finalists will be culled from the more than 100 titles that qualified this year for consideration. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Documentary Feature.)

To winnow those down to a manageable number, the academy adds newly eligible documentary feature to a virtual screening room available to all 500-plus members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. Each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

All of these ballots are collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members are then encouraged to watch films on that list which they haven’t seen yet before casting another preferential ballot with their top five choices.

Several years ago singer/songwriter/producer/musician/fashion icon/designer Pharrell shared an idea with Morgan Neville. Neville, the Oscar-Winning documentarian behind 20 Feet From Stardom, has helped redefine the way a non-fiction film can tackle a subject as nebulous as musical creation and the culture that surrounds it. From artists as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, Johnny Cash, Keith Richards and Muddy Waters, he also has crafted films about such iconoclastic figures as Anthony Bourdain, Orson Welles and Mr. Rogers that go well beyond simple hype, diving deeply into both their works and their character, and finding through the means of cinema something more rich than a biography, more lush than a simple portrait, and more profound than a mere puff piece.

Pharrell Williams was always happy. He wasn’t always humble.

Since earning his first music credit on Wreckx-n-Effect’s 1992 ass-shaking anthem “Rump Shaker,” the producer/songwriter/rapper/singer/composer/fashion designer/movie producer/father has spent the past three decades on top of the world. You could easily write a thesis on how his inventive, colorful beats and creative lyricism — some as one-half of The Neptunes — have contributed to the pop culture landscape. He helped Britney Spears transition from teeny bopper to racy pop star; gave swag to Nsync and later Justin Timberlake, aiding in his successful solo sprint; had everyone getting undressed at the club with Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” and the boys — and girls and everyone else — running to the yard with Kelis’ still tasty “Milkshake.” Along the way, he gave Snoop Dogg his first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in “Drop It Like It’s Hot,...

Music biopics have made an unexpected comeback in the last few years, with the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Bob Marley: No Love all proving unexpectedly big box office hits. And the genre shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, as the likes of Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and all four Beatles are set to get the cinematic treatment soon. Yet this year and next, we will see possibly the most unexpected entries in the genre rapper and producer extraordinaire Pharrell Williams is getting not one but two biopics in as many years.

On paper, this seems excessive; while Pharrell has been undeniably influential throughout the 21st century, is his reputation really important enough to warrant two biopics back-to-back? Yet a closer look at both projects shows that the two may not actually be that similar and, crucially, that both sound just crazy enough to separate themselves from...

The year 2023 was an embarrassment of riches when it came to animation. Movies like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” became massive commercial successes and crossed the billion-dollar mark at the box office, while movies like “Nimona” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” hit big with audiences and critics. There were films that boasted wildly different aesthetics and showed the power of the animation medium, like “Blue Giant” and “The First Slam Dunk.” We also saw the return of legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, who gave us his most personal film to date with “The Boy and the Heron.”

That’s a lot for 2024 to live up to — luckily, it seems the year will bring with it a healthy mix of big studio franchises and more grown-up animated fare. There are still big and highly anticipated animated movies slated to be released in 2024. “Inside Out 2,” Pixar’s mega-blockbuster Oscar favorite,...

Netflix has shared a first look at What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, a five-episode documentary series that will launch on the streaming service on September 18.

In What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, the tech visionary and global health and climate philanthropist invites viewers to join him on a learning journey to explore pressing issues facing our world today.

Across five episodes, Gates delves into the promise and risks of artificial intelligence; the pervasive challenge of misinformation and the underlying complex of defining truth in an era of social media; the scale of the climate crisis, and the potential of cutting-edge technologies to solve it; the injustice of income inequality and the opportunities to tackle poverty; and how science and innovation is leading to cures for deadly diseases.

Featuring insights and commentary from some of the world’s most renowned scientists, politicians, thinkers, journalists, medical professionals,...

Though no one can see the future, scholars and experts can help us make sense of the defining issues of our time. The right questions can lead us to understand the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead — just ask Bill Gates. “I have always loved learning,” the tech visionary and global health and climate philanthropist told Netfix. “Whether at school, Microsoft, or now, as a philanthropist, I consider myself a student.” In What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, a five-episode series premiering Sept. 18, Gates tackles far-reaching topics from artificial intelligence to income inequality with curiosity and an open mind.

“Bill is one of the most curious people I’ve met, and the amount of learning he still does on a daily basis is truly inspiring,” said Oscar winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom), who serves as the series’ executive producer. With insights and commentary from some of...

Legendary musicians Pharrell Williams and Robbie Williams — unrelated despite their shared surname — are each choosing to tell their life stories through unconventional mediums.

Pharrell’s story is brought to life in Focus Features’ “Piece by Piece,” directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, known for his documentary “20 Feet from Stardom.” The film uses Lego bricks to depict Pharrell’s early life, focusing on his roots in Virginia Beach and his rise to fame as one half of the hip-hop and R&b production duo The Neptunes.

Pharrell was on the ground in Colorado for the Patron’s Brunch on Friday morning, mingling with high-profile guests, including some AMPAS voters. “I’m so excited to be at a festival that doesn’t show many animated movies, but they chose mine,” he told Variety.

Following the press orientation at the Werner Herzog Theatre, it was announced that “Piece by Piece” would be...

The 51st Telluride Film Festival officially kicked off Friday afternoon with the world premiere of Piece by Piece, an animated documentary about the innovative singer, songwriter and record producer Pharrell Williams, as the Patron Preview screening at the Werner Herzog Theatre. And the consensus of those in attendance was that the film is a truly original, outside-the-box, rollicking good time.

Directed by the great Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom), the taut 93-minute film — at the request of Williams, who experiences sounds visually, something known as synesthesia — employs Lego animations to illustrate Williams’ journey from the projects of Virginia Beach to the heights of showbiz, and the bumps he has experienced along the way. (Neville had never previously worked with animation.)

Williams is not only the film’s subject — and opens up as never before during interviews with Neville in which they are both Lego-ized — but also one of its producers.

Picturehouse has announced the acquisition of all distribution rights for Nicholas Ma’s documentary “Leap of Faith.”

Picturehouse has set a theatrical roll out nationwide beginning Oct. 4, partnering with organizations around the country for conversations surrounding the film. The film will feature in-theater appearances from Nicholas’ father, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, in St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and Boston.

“In 2016, 1 in 6 people stopped talking to a family member. It’s even worse now. How do you continue to love each other while you disagree? Over the course of a year, 12 diverse Christian leaders struggle to find hope and fellowship at a series of boundary-breaking retreats in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Brought together by Michael Gulker of The Colossian Forum, five women and seven men explore some of today’s most contentious issues. The divisions between them become apparent and test both their common belief in the universal importance of love and kindness...

Netflix is once again exploring Bill Gates’ brain, but this time from a different angle. The streamer has picked up the five-part docuseries “What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates,” which follows the tech icon, billionaire and health and climate philanthropist as he explores some of the world’s most pressing issues.

Oscar winner Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) is exec producer on “What’s Next? The Future With Bil Gates,” which premieres Sept. 18.

The project comes five years after Netflix’s docuseries “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates,” which told the origins story of Gates and how he rose to become co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft and founder (with his ex-wife) of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This time out, the show’s logline promises to show Gates as he “delves into the promise and risks of artificial intelligence; the pervasive challenge of misinformation and...

Three years after “Boys State” won the Emmy for Best Documentary Special, its first companion film, “Girls State,” is competing for the same honor. While it has solid potential to directly follow “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” as the third Apple TV+ special to take this prize, it will have to stand out from a crowd of strong contenders, including the same platform’s “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces.”

Unlike most Primetime Emmys, Best Documentary Special is a non-competitive area award that is bestowed upon any nominee that earns the approval of 90% of the members of the TV academy’s documentary peer group. This means that the five programs in the 2024 lineup are not vying for a single trophy and could all potentially prevail. However, if no nominees hit said 90% threshold, only the highest-rated one will win.

In order to determine which of this year’s nominees...

This year’s BFI London Film Festival is going from the Blitz to the, well, bricks.

Having already announced that Steve McQueen’s WWII drama “Blitz” will open the 68th edition of the festival, it’s now been revealed that “Piece by Piece,” Pharrell Williams’ animated Lego biopic, will close the event.

Directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”), the film — getting its U.K. debut in London after world premiering at Toronto Film Festival — explores the life and work of Williams, who decided that his story should be told via Lego (apparently as a metaphor for the creative way in which he sees the world). Alongside Williams, the Focus Features film stars Jay-Z, Missy Elliot, Gwen Stefani, Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dogg, all rendered in Lego, and chronicles Williams’ life from humble beginnings in Virginia Beach to his early career as a producer in the Neptunes and performer in N.

It’s one of the most unexpected and unusual ideas for a film in recent memory – but since Pharrell Williams has rarely played by conventional rules, it somehow makes sense. The music legend – producer, rapper, frontman of N.E.R.D, beatmaker to Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani and plenty more – is telling his story in a biopic titled Piece By Piece. And that biopic happens to come in animated Lego form. Yes it’s your, um, typical animated Lego Pharrell Williams biopic. Watch the trailer here:

Let’s lay any cynicism aside for a minute: this could be a fascinating and unique film, a distinctly Pharrellian way to tell the story of a musical icon who made it his signature to pick apart melodic bricks and rebuild them in his own image. And amid a deluge of straight-up play-the-hits music movies, it’s refreshing to see a different...

Pharrell Williams is revisiting the building blocks of his life — literally.

Williams’ biography is captured by Lego animation for feature film “Piece by Piece,” directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, who also gets Lego-fied for the meta film. As do Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, and Snoop Dogg.

Billed as an “unparalleled motion picture experience,” the animated biopic stars Williams as a Lego version of himself as he tells his own life story. Grammy-winning and Academy Award-nominated musician Williams announced the project on Instagram in January 2024, captioning, “Who would’ve thought that playing with Legos as a kid would evolve into a movie about my life. It’s proof that anyone else can do it too… #PieceByPiece.”

“Piece by Piece” has been in the works since early 2019, when Williams reached out to Neville with the concept.

“When I had this crazy vision to tell this story through Lego bricks,...

The trailer for Focus Features’ upcoming movie “Piece by Piece” begins with a Lego-fied Pharrell Williams sitting down for an interview about his life.

“You know what what would be cool is if we told my story with Lego pieces,” Lego Pharrell tells the similarly-bricked director Morgan Neville (the Oscar-winning documentarian behind “20 Feet From Stardom”), who chuckles politely and asks, “Seriously?” Pharrell replies: “Just be open.”

The colorfully and creatively reimagined scene is pretty close to how the conversation played out nearly five years ago, Neville says, as he and Williams sign on to a Zoom chat to discuss how this innovative project came together.

“That’s how the conversation went down in my head,” he tells Variety. “I didn’t know what it was going to be, but it was going to be interesting and I was completely in.”

And the result is unlike anything he’s ever done — or seen — before.

Your browser does not support the video tag. Screen Rant presents the trailer for I Need Your Love, a new music comedy series premiering at Tribeca Film Festival. The series dramatizes the life of real-life singer and artist Camille Trust. For more music industry insights after watching I Need Your Love, check out the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, the show Dave, or the film Inside Llewyn Davis.

Tribeca Film Festival 2024 will introduce the world to the semi-autobiographical musical comedy series I Need Your Love, and Screen Rant has a first look at the trailer. The five-episode series was created by singer and artist Camille Trust and Walker Kalan, and written and directed by Kalan. It is based on Trusts own life, with the synopsis promising that most of it actually happened.

Screen Rant is happy to present a first look at the trailer for I Need Your Love. The...

HamptonsFilm’s 16th annual SummerDocs series will feature three Sundance favorites: “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” “War Game,” and “Super/Man:The Christopher Reeve Story.” HamptonsFilm and Hamptons Intl. Film Festival artistic director David Nugent and chairman emeritus Alec Baldwin will lead conversations with attending filmmakers and guests.

The series will kick-off on July 5 with Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story.” Following a successful Sundance debut, Netflix acquired the worldwide rights to the docu about daredevil couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus from Moscow, as they take their relationship to terrifying new heights in a wild scheme to climb the world’s last great skyscraper and perform a death-defying stunt on its spire. Following the screening, Bukhonina will take part in a Q&a.

Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s “War Game” will screen on July 20 followed by Q&a with both filmmakers. The docu, which debuted at Sundance 2024, imagines a nation-wide insurrection,...

Los Lobos, the iconic East Los Angeles band that elevated that helped bring Chicano music to the masses over the last 50 years, is the subject of the feature-length documentary with the working title “Los Lobos Native Sons,” currently in production and slated for a 2025 release. The film features testimonials from George Lopez, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits, Dolores Huerta, Bonnie Raitt, Flaco Jimenez, Cheech Marin, a trailer below.

Formed more than 50 years ago in East Los Angeles, the group is unique and versatile, able to play roots rock, Musica Mexicana, soul, folk and a galaxy of other styles. The film is co-directed by veteran filmmaker, producer, and editor Doug Blush and photographer/filmmaker Piero F. Giunti, and produced by Robert Corsini and Flavio Morales.

Blush says, “Los Lobos, as much as any modern band, has expanded and re-defined what’s possible in American music, and in their phenomenal half-century and counting,...

Streaming now on Apple TV+, and by the way one of the best services you can rent each month as they have the fantastic Masters Of The Air, For All Mankind, Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, the Emmy Award-winning comedy “Ted Lasso” and historic Oscar Best Picture winner Coda, is “Steve! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces”

Steve Martin is one of the most beloved and enigmatic figures in entertainment and the doc dives into his extraordinary story from two distinct points of view, with companion documentaries that feature never-before-seen footage and raw insights into Steve’s personal and professional trials and triumphs. “Then” chronicles Steve Martin’s early struggles and meteoric rise to revolutionize standup before walking away at 35. “Now” focuses on the present day, with Steve Martin in the golden years of his career, retracing the transformation that led to happiness in his art and personal life.

Steve! (martin) a...

Unlike many celebrity-driven documentaries, Morgan Neville’s “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces” about the writer and comedian wasn’t deliberately made as a marketing device tied to a new TV series or movie. The two-part docu is also not your traditional career-encompassing overview of Martin’s life. Instead Neville, who garnered an Oscar in 2014 for “20 Feet From Stardom,” created feature-length installments called “Then” and “Now” that are told from two points of views using two different formats. “Then” chronicles Martin’s early struggles and meteoric rise to revolutionize standup before walking away at age 35. “Now” focuses on Martin’s present day life, retracing the transformation that led to newfound happiness in his art and personal life.

Neville began filming “Steve!” in spring 2021 after meeting Martin for lunch to discuss the possibility of making the docu. “We had a great conversation,” says Neville. “I think one of...

From “The Jerk” to “Only Murders in the Building” and every stage and screen in between, it’s impossible to contain Steve Martin’s life and career into just one documentary. Apple TV+ will take a look at the five-decade career and seven-decade life of the comedy legend with two wild and crazy docs, tracing the path through all its highs and lows, then and now. Directed by Oscar winner Morgan Neville, “Steve! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces” will premiere on Friday, March 29 on Apple TV+. You can watch Steve! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces with a 7-Day Free Trial of Apple TV+.

How to Watch ‘Steve! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces’ Premiere When: Thursday, March 28, 2024 Where: Apple TV+ Stream: Watch with a 7-Day Free Trial of Apple TV+. 7-Day Free Trial$9.99+ / month apple.com About ‘Steve! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces’ Premiere

Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville takes an extended...

Morgan Neville is an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winning documentarian who has a knack for going deep inside the worlds of various entertainment and media figures in memorable films like the Academy Award winner 20 Feet From Stardom about backup singers; Won’t You Be My Neighbor about Fred Rogers; The Best Of Enemies focused on the rivalry of William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal; Roadrunner which delved into the world of Anthony Bourdain; and films on everyone from Orson Welles to Keith Richards and many others. But in getting Steve Martin to finally commit to a documentary on his life and extraordinary career as groundbreaking stand up comedian to movie star, author, playwright, and musician, Neville got even more than he could have imagined. After HBO’s Defending My Life, Rob Reiner’s recent terrific documentary on a similar comic and film genius Albert Brooks, this insightful and fascinating...