In 2024, anime more than ever has felt like a place to escape to. The medium, ever a canvas for the fantastical and the weirds, was defined in 2024 by high-fantasy adventures like “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” or “Delicious in Dungeon,” shows that created lavish worlds of fantasy and adventure that nonetheless felt real and intimate in how vigorously they were constructed and depicted. It’s hard not to read a bit into it how, in a year where the collective international mood was one of deep fatigue, anime seemed more interested in exploring other worlds than studying our own.

Of course, there were plenty of great anime from varying shades of genres that released across 2024. There were glitzy show business psychological dramas like “Oshi No Ko,” intimate sports romances like “Blue Box,” and occult horror sci-fi action romantic comedies like “Dan Da Dan.” What set the good shows from the great shows this year,...

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The 2025 Ace Eddie Award nominees were announced on December 11, giving a boost to buzzy contenders “Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), “Conclave” (Focus Features), “Wicked” (Universal), and “The Substance” (Mubi). The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on January 18, 2025, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

The drama nominees went to “Civil War” (Jake Roberts), “Conclave” (Nick Emerson), “Dune: Part Two” (Joe Walker), “Emilia Pérez” (Juliette Welfling), and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (Eliot Knapman, Margaret Sixel).

The comedy nominees consisted of “Anora” (director Sean Baker), “Challengers” (Marco Costa), “A Real Pain...

“The Brutalist” is about to get even bigger (though hopefully no longer). A24 and IMAX have finalized a deal to bring “The Brutalist” to IMAX screens, the studio announced Wednesday.

The film will be available for one-night early access screenings on December 18 at the AMC Lincoln Square in NY and the AMC Century City in Los Angeles, and it will then expand to IMAX screens nationwide throughout January.

A24 quite recently announced 70mm screenings of “The Brutalist,” which IndieWire understands have all nearly sold out rapidly. The IMAX screenings — unlike in the case of something like “Oppenheimer” — will not be on 70mm film prints.

“For me, there is no greater cinematic tool than Large Format Capture, and there is no greater canvas than IMAX,” Corbet said in a statement. “I am thrilled for audiences to have the opportunity to discover Lol Crawley’s exquisite Cinematography, Steve Single’s meticulous Sound Mix,...

Many of the film industry’s top talents continue to bring their skills to television, but Quentin Tarantino isn’t convinced that TV will ever be as effective of a medium as film.

“Everyone talks about how great television is now. And it’s pretty good, I gotta say,” Tarantino said during a new appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” alongside his “Pulp Fiction” co-writer and “Video Archives Podcast” co-host Roger Avary. “But it’s still television to me. What’s the difference between television and a good movie? Because a lot of TV now has the patina of a movie. They’re using cinematic language to get you caught up in it.”

Tarantino answered his own rhetorical question by telling a story about his recent experience binge-watching “Yellowstone.” He explained that while he was initially entertained by the show, he felt that its dramatic structure never built towards any kind of dramatic climax.

Disney is going back to the well of live-action remakes and is looking to “The Greatest Showman” and “Better Man” director Michael Gracey to bring its 2010 animated film “Tangled” to life in live-action.

Though rumored and fan-casted for several years now, a “Tangled” live-action film is now officially in development at Disney, and Gracey is in negotiations to direct the feature, an individual with knowledge of the project told IndieWire.

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson wrote the most recent draft of the script, and Kristin Burr is producing under the Burr! Productions banner along with producer Lucy Kitada (“The Baby-Sitters Club”).

No cast has been set just yet, and the plot details are being kept under wraps. But the 2010 “Tangled” was a re-imagining of the classic Rapunzel fairy tale in which a thief, Flynn Rider, stumbles upon her in a castle and introduces her to the wide world. Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi...

During his storied career, Francis Ford Coppola forged relationships with some of film’s most renowned cinematographers: Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Butler, John Toll and Jordan Cronenweth all shot multiple projects for him. But with Megalopolis, Mihai Malaimare Jr. becomes Coppola’s most frequent collaborator behind the camera. They first met when Coppola came to Malaimare’s native Romania to shoot 2007’s Youth Without Youth, the beginning of a low-budget experimental phase for Coppola that included the Malaimare-shot Tetro and Twixt. Even then, Coppola was already dreaming of his quixotic passion project Megalopolis, showing Malaimare concept art and B-roll of New York […]

The post “We Needed Crazier Ideas”: Dp Mihai Malaimare Jr. on Megalopolis first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

During his storied career, Francis Ford Coppola forged relationships with some of film’s most renowned cinematographers: Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Butler, John Toll and Jordan Cronenweth all shot multiple projects for him. But with Megalopolis, Mihai Malaimare Jr. becomes Coppola’s most frequent collaborator behind the camera. They first met when Coppola came to Malaimare’s native Romania to shoot 2007’s Youth Without Youth, the beginning of a low-budget experimental phase for Coppola that included the Malaimare-shot Tetro and Twixt. Even then, Coppola was already dreaming of his quixotic passion project Megalopolis, showing Malaimare concept art and B-roll of New York […]

The post “We Needed Crazier Ideas”: Dp Mihai Malaimare Jr. on Megalopolis first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The final scenes of Joachim Rønning’s “Young Woman and the Sea” are hard to spoil — the film is, after all, based on a true story — and yet, they still surprise. As the film’s own producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, sees it, that’s because the very same history that inspired the Daisy Ridley-starring feature has largely been forgotten. Until, of course: movie adaptation time.

The biographical sports drama follows swimming trailblazer Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle (Ridley), who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926. Upon the completion of her incredible athletic feat — just one of many we see Trudy tackle in the feature — she was greeted as a hero in her native New York City, care of a ticker-tape parade believed to have been attended by two million people.

“When you see that parade, you can’t believe that you’ve never heard of this athlete,...

Picture this: filmmaker Jc Chandor directing a Marvel movie with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the villain Kraven The Hunter, facing off against Spider-Man or Black Panther as written by Ryan Coogler. If you watch “Kraven The Hunter” and watch Taylor-Johnson’s commanding presence and what Chandor is capable of—as a filmmaker and a budding action director— you can imagine this idea being a worthwhile film with Kraven being a laudable successor to a ruthless and unmerciful Killmonger-type antagonist.

Continue reading ‘Kraven The Hunter’ Review: Jc Chandor & Aaron Taylor Johnson Make The Best ‘Spider-Man’ Spin-Off Film, But Sadly, That’s Not Saying Much at The Playlist.

I hate to admit it, but some part of me — certainly not my eyes or ears, but some part of me, at least — is going to miss Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which the studio is reportedly putting on pause on account of its widespread (and frequently hilarious) creative and commercial failures. Sure, that’s a pretty good reason to rethink an ill-conceived mega-franchise, let alone one that’s named after a character who basically wasn’t allowed to appear in it. And sure, releasing two films as misbegotten as “Madame Web” in the same calendar year is the kind of thing that elevates meme-worthy corporate malfeasance into a subject worthy of a bestselling book about how things went wrong.

But to behold J.C. Chandor’s monumentally goofy “Kraven the Hunter” is to appreciate how refreshing it could be to watch a superhero movie that seemed totally oblivious to the monocultural ecosystem that created it.

Sabrina Carpenter spent 2024 giving fans exactly what they didn’t know they needed — high-octane singles fueled by a singular aesthetic between camp and erotic. Forget Madonna; Carpenter might well be the modern Mae West, serving bombshell attitude while sending up the image of a sexy blonde.

Is it any wonder that Jason Sherwood landed the job as production designer of her Netflix holiday special, “A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter,” based partly on a photo of Rosemary Clooney in a black gown against a hot pink backdrop in “White Christmas”?

“ It’s Easter egged to hell and back,” Sherwood told IndieWire over Zoom. “The tiered cake is a pretty direct reference to a Busby Berkeley number that’s pretty famous. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ was on the mood boards. Almost everything has a reference to ‘White Christmas.'” Sherwood also looked to classic holiday specials from Judy Garland and Andy Williams...

When it was announced that Luca Guadagnino was going to direct a new adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, “American Psycho,” there were a ton of rumors about who would lead the cast. The prominent name that kept being rumored was Jacob Elordi. However, the winner of the role is actually Austin Butler.

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

According to Variety, Austin Butler is set to play Patrick Batemen in Luca Guadagnino’s new “American Psycho” film.

Continue reading ‘American Psycho’: Austin Butler To Star In Luca Guadagnino’s New Adaptation at The Playlist.

In 1984, filmmaker Sydney Pollack returned to Los Angeles from an inspiring trip to the Cinémathèque Française in Paris determined to create an American corollary, a place where film lovers could watch movies, talk about them, and meet the artists who made them. He founded the American Cinematheque with Filmex programmers Gary Abrahams and Gary Essert, and 40 years later, the organization is flourishing, with nearly a thousand screenings a year spread across three L.A. venues.

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will celebrate the Cinematheque’s anniversary with a trio of films programmed by the organization’s artistic director Grant Moninger, senior Film programmer Chris LeMaire, film programmer Imani Davis, and chief projectionist Benjamin Tucker. Moninger will also appear in conversation with TCM host Eddie Muller to discuss the films and the Cinematheque’s legacy and history.

In keeping with the Cinematheque’s eclectic programming, the three films are as different from...

Austin Butler is looking to get a little crazy in Luca Guadagnino’s “American Psycho” remake.

Butler, who has made his career working with auteurs such as Baz Luhrmann, Denis Villeneuve, Ari Aster, Darren Aronofsky, and Jeff Nichols, might have his Guadagnino debut with the upcoming feature. Variety reported that Butler is in talks to star as the iconic Patrick Bateman in Guadagnino’s reimagining of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel.

IndieWire has learned that there are no casting deals are in place, however.

The Lionsgate film was announced earlier this year, with Scott Z. Burns adapting the novel for the screen.

Christian Bale led the original 2000 film alongside Guadagnino’s frequent collaborator Chloë Sevigny; Mary Harron co-wrote and directed the classic feature. Guadagnino’s version will not be a remake of Harron’s but rather a new adaptation of Ellis’ book.

Butler has a busy slate, with upcoming features also...

Miguel Gomes does not consider himself a genius like Alfred Hitchcock.

The 52-year-old Portuguese director’s ravishing, cross-continental, mostly B&W feature “Grand Tour” — a mix of drama and ethnology — won him the Best Director award at Cannes back in May and is now Portugal’s Oscar submission to the 2025 Oscars. According to Gomes, unlike Hitchcock, he cannot sit around a room and dictate innovative ideas for story arcs and shots.

Speaking with IndieWire at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, in his first time in L.A. and on the first stop of his Oscars press tour amid the film’s upcoming release in France and Italy, the gracious, soft-voiced, sharp-eared Gomes said, “I have, in my case, to open the window, let the world come in, and react to it.” Cigarette puffs later, he said, “I have to catch butterflies.”

It’s fascinating to hear a modern master...

While the Dcu kicked off with “Creature Commandos” recently, that’s far from the only DC animated project that is going strong. In fact, we’re already bracing ourselves for Season 5 of “Harley Quinn.”

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

As seen in the trailer, Season 5 of “Harley Quinn” marks a bit of a new beginning for the beloved Harley and Ivy, as they venture into the world of Metropolis.

Continue reading ‘Harley Quinn’ Season 5 Trailer: Harley & Ivy Go To Metropolis In DC’s Animated Series at The Playlist.

It was a call from David Fincher that lured Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the two frontmen of iconic ’90s-launched industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, into writing music for movies. Beginning with the Oscar-winning Silicon Valley dissonance of “The Social Network,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Gone Girl”, and “Mank” followed for Fincher, with scores for Disney/Pixar’s “Soul,” Damon Lindelof’s HBO series “Watchmen,” and Netflix’s flagship original thriller “Bird Box” in between.

Now, Reznor and Ross, based in L.A. where they Zoomed with IndieWire from their studio, are the close creative confidantes of Luca Guadagnino, having scored “Bones and All” first before the electro-amped, ’90s-club-music-inspired “Challengers” and the more woodwind-textured languor of “Queer” landed the composers back in the Oscar race. The instantly all-timer “Challengers” score — thrumming like a propulsive musical libido under the sweaty tennis court antics of Tashi (Zendaya), Patrick (Josh O’Connor...

The rollout of annual year-end guild awards nominations continues. Today? The American Cinema Editors revealed the nominees for the 2025 Ace Awards, a precursor for the Oscar and Emmys for editing. Notable nominees include “Conclave,” “Civil War,” “The Substance,” “A Real Pain,” “Challengers,” “Nobody Wants This,” “3 Body Problem,” “Fallout,” and “Slow Horses.”

Read More: “The Substance,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and “The Penguin” top 2025 Make-up and Hair Stylist Guild Nominations

In the film Drama and Comedy film categories, the fields were filled out by “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Perez,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Anora” and “Wicked.” Notable omissions included “The Brutalist,” “Sing Sing,” “Blitz,” “Nickel Boys,” “A Complete Unknown,” “September 5,” and “Nosferatu.” It may seem like there is a disconnect, but fun fact, the last three films to miss out on an Ace and still win Best Picture are “Coda,” “Spotlight,” and “Driving Miss Daisy.”

In the television Drama and Comedy categories,...

“Dream Productions” is less of a TV series and more of a distress signal. Tasked with making an entire show out of whatever scraps were left over from the studio’s film department, the team behind Pixar’s first — and second-to-last — animated series concocted a spinoff to “Inside Out” about chipper, dedicated directors who, despite doing their best day after day, live under constant threat of demotion or outright termination if the dreams they create aren’t immediate and lasting hits. Sure, these diligent artists learn a few personal lessons along the way — “acknowledging fresh point of views” chief among them — but by the time you get there, it’s no surprise the show’s climax involves a crazed studio head producing a literal nightmare designed to ruin a little girl’s life.

Even if the vast majority of franchise TV extensions from Disney+ didn’t already consist of third-rate...

There’s still quite a bit of speculation regarding who will become the next James Bond. The presumptive favorite, at least for now, is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who has been the subject of a ton of rumors and reports. So far, the producers of the franchise have yet to name a replacement for Daniel Craig. But they have said it would definitely be a man. And that’s something one former Bond Girl can support.

Continue reading Gemma Arterton Doesn’t Think James Bond Should Be A Woman: “You Just Have To Respect The Tradition” at The Playlist.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Emilia Pérez.Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (2024) leads the Golden Globe film nominations with ten, including for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. On its heels are Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024) with seven nominations and Edward Berger’s Conclave (2024) with six. The January 5 ceremony will be hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser. The year-end list season has begun in earnest. Check out Adam Nayman’s list of the top 10 films of the year at The Ringer, plus Bilge Ebiri’s and Alison Willmore’s respective rankings over at Vulture, which also hosts John Waters’s picks. Meanwhile, Sight and Sound and NME have shared their contributor-solicited lists as well.A new...

Getting the cast and crew of a film or TV show from Point A to Point B can be one of a production’s biggest challenges — especially if air travel is involved.

Filmmaking is a global business, now more than ever. United serves more international destinations than any other U.S. airline, and the most passenger destinations served of any airline in the world. Specifically for the entertainment industry, United for Business enhances the travel experience for production studios. Discounts are available for your television, movie, or touring productions for flights on United and on select flights operated by their joint venture partners. Rewards can include complimentary travel on United, MileagePlus® Premier® status, United Club access, and more, and can accrue to your production company based on flown tickets.

As cameras and other film equipment can well exceed the usual baggage weight limits, United for Business’s entertainment solutions offer flat fees for film,...

Sony’s most recent attempt to mine the depths of the ‘Spider-Man’ mythos for interesting characters, “Kraven the Hunter,” is arriving later this week. And with it, according to a new report, is the end of Sony’s ‘Spider-Man’ spinoff universe. At least for the foreseeable future.

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

According to a new report from The Wrap, Sony’s “Kraven the Hunter” marks the last “Spider-Man” spinoff film the studio has in development.

Continue reading Sony Reportedly Ending Its ‘Spider-Man’ Spinoff Universe at The Playlist.

Bring on the discoveries. Look back at last year’s Sundance program and a number of once-unidentifiable titles morphed, after upbeat reviews and publicity and box-office or streaming, into high-profile breakouts and Oscar contenders — from “Love Lies Bleeding,” “Kneecap,” “A Different Man,” “Thelma,” and “A Real Pain” to “Sugarcane,” “Will & Harper,” and “Black Box Diaries.”

That’s why agents, casting directors, producers, filmmakers, and executives attend the annual January festival: to be there when new talent pops up. Or, when they pop up again: Bill Condon debuted “Gods and Monsters” in 1998, and he’s back this year with his musical adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna. That means we’ll be seeing Lopez descend upon Park City with her entourage. She was at the festival in 2015 for “Lila & Eve.” This year’s edition is lighter on A-list names than years past, leaving...

The Sundance Institute announced today the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Among the films are new pictures from returning filmmakers Cherien Dabis, Bill Condon, Amalia Ulman, Ira Sachs, and Amir “Questlove” Thompson, while in the U.S. and World Dramatic Competitions, all 20 filmmakers are making their first appearance at the festival. Additionally, 41% of the entire feature film program across the festival consists of films by first-time directors. Those statistics, says Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programing, in an interview with Filmmaker, are “a reminder of how much […]

The post 2025 Sundance Film Festival Announces 93 Projects Across Its Feature Film and Episodic Programs first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Sundance Institute announced today the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Among the films are new pictures from returning filmmakers Cherien Dabis, Bill Condon, Amalia Ulman, Ira Sachs, and Amir “Questlove” Thompson, while in the U.S. and World Dramatic Competitions, all 20 filmmakers are making their first appearance at the festival. Additionally, 41% of the entire feature film program across the festival consists of films by first-time directors. Those statistics, says Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programing, in an interview with Filmmaker, are “a reminder of how much […]

The post 2025 Sundance Film Festival Announces 93 Projects Across Its Feature Film and Episodic Programs first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sundance, as ever, is coming, and fast. Today, the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, with more announcements expected in the coming weeks. While the festival may be moving in 2027, for 2025, it will be out in full force in its traditional home of Park City, Utah.

This year’s lineup includes a number of returning names, including Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley. But there are also a hefty number of newbies joining these ranks, as the 2025 program is composed of 36 of 87 (41 percent) feature film directors who are first-time feature filmmakers. Mostly, new work will be on offer, as the film and episodic slate includes 89 (or 96 percent) world premieres.

There is a brutal beauty to “The Brutalist” score, as composed by Daniel Blumberg.

The now Golden Globe-nominated score will be released as a full album this Friday, December 13. Prior to its unveiling, IndieWire shares two of the score’s key themes, “Erzsébet” and “Construction.”

Writer/director Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” centers on Adrien Brody’s immigrant architect László Tóth, who arrives in the U.S. after WWII. László’s marriage to his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) is rebuilding stateside, just as he begins construction on a massive complex commissioned by wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce).

Composer Blumberg wrote the music, which will be released by Milan Records. Blumberg worked closely with Corbet across the seven-year gestation period for the film, resulting in almost two hours of original music, including for the 15-minute intermission. Per an official press statement, Corbet and Blumberg “identified early...

While The Black List has long been the go-to platform to discover indie scripts and hot new voices, the acclaimed organization is now launching an inaugural Adaptation List to spotlight the novels that industry insiders most want to see adapted for the screen.

These days, novel adaptations have been heating up Hollywood, thanks in no small part to the rise of BookTok. Beloved BookTok authors like Emily Henry and Colleen Hoover have already been slated to have their respective books brought to film and TV, while Taylor Jenkins Reid has been building a franchise of interconnected stories, including “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” “Malibu Rising,” and “Daisy Jones and the Six.”

The Black List founder Franklin Leonard and Creative Director of Fiction Randy Winston surveyed 84 publishing industry editors and literary agents, who selected the 61 novels that they believe are poised for adaptations. All novels had to be published after 2005, when The Black List launched.

The annual To Save and Project festival has unveiled its 2025 lineup. Presented by the Museum of Modern Art and Chanel, the 21st annual event is the definitive international festival of film preservation. The latest edition is dedicated to celebrating newly preserved and restored films from archives, studios, distributors, foundations, and independent filmmakers from around the world.

The 2025 To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation will take place from January 9 to January 30, and include more than 25 feature films and shorts programs in newly preserved or restored versions.

Frank Borzage’s “7th Heaven” (1927) will open the festival, as presented in a new upgrade from MoMA’s previous restoration. Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 World War I comedy “Shoulder Arms” will close the festival with a reconstruction of the seldom-seen original version presented as a work-in-progress.

Highlights also range from Yevgeny Chervyakov’s long-lost Soviet film “My Son (Moy Syn...

If it’s early December, it’s time for the unveiling of the annual Sundance Film Festival. The 2025 edition is potentially the second to last installment with any presence in Park City, Utah. If that is the case, the festival programmers are working to bring some familiar filmmakers back into the fold. January’s festival will see new films from Justin Lin, Elegance Bratton, Bill Condon, Ira Sachs, Andrew Ahn, Amy Berg, Questlove, Clint Bentley, Eugene Jarecki, Ryan White, and Clint Bentley, among others.

Continue reading Sundance Lineup 2025: New Films Featuring Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Bowen Yang, Josh O’Connor, Benedict Cumberbatch at The Playlist.

With the end of a tumultuous Season 5 looming, we now know what the future of the “Yellowstone” franchise will look like. “Yellowstone” appears to be ending, but a new spinoff is going to take over.

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

According to Deadline, Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser have both signed on to star in a “Yellowstone” spinoff series that will pick up after the events of Season 5.

Continue reading ‘Yellowstone’ Spinoff Moving Forward With Kelly Reilly & Cole Hauser at The Playlist.

Acclaimed documentarian Morgan Neville is honoring the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” will docuseries “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.”

The four-part documentary, which will be premiering on Peacock, revisits the legacy of “SNL” with more than 60 SNL alumni interviewed onscreen. The show’s most iconic moments from fan favorite sketches like “More Cowbell” to the pivotal Season 11 that catapulted the series to fame will be captured in the docuseries.

Academy and Emmy Award winner Neville executive produces the series, which is directed by a slew of award-winning helmers.

“I’ve been obsessed with ‘Saturday Night Live’ as long as I can remember,” Neville, who recently directed the Steve Martin documentary and Pharrell Williams’ Lego feature “Piece By Piece,” said in a press statement. “For ‘SNL50,’ I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite independent filmmakers to tell some deeper stories of ‘SNL.’ Taken together, these standalone...

The Oscars will finally stream live on an SVOD platform, and it only took us 97 years to get here.

The 2025 Academy Awards will stream live on Hulu in addition to airing live on ABC. It’s actually the first time the Oscars have streamed live on Hulu for all subscribers, despite it being the second Academy Awards for which Disney owned Hulu outright.

Hulu first launched in 2008 as broadcast’s answer to Netflix’s pivot to streaming. It was originally a joint venture for ABC, NBC, and Fox programming (CBS sat this one out), but Disney eventually bought its partners out.

The reason we can’t say the Oscars are streaming live for the first time ever, full stop, is because that wouldn’t technically be true. In a way, the awards have streamed on Hulu before — on Hulu + Live TV.

Hulu + Live TV is the vMVPD offering that essentially replicates a traditional cable package.

It looks like Steven Soderbergh is going to start 2025 as he does most years—working on a brand-new film. This time, the prolific filmmaker is working on a dark comedy, “The Christophers,” and he’s seemingly found his new cast.

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

According to Deadline, Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, and James Corden have signed on to star in Steven Soderbergh’s new film, “The Christophers.” The film tells the story of the estranged children of a famous artist.

Continue reading ‘The Christophers’: Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel & James Corden To Star In Steven Soderbergh’s New Film at The Playlist.

Like many a romantic lead before him, when Jonathan Bailey first appears as Prince Fiyero in “Wicked” it’s on a horse, ready to be a savior to some damsel. For story purposes, it’s a good thing that Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) isn’t immediately impressed. But right from his “Hello,” no one would have blamed Elphaba if she ran off with him right then and there.

“[Jonathan’s] the most charming man I’ve ever met,” “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu told IndieWire. “The fact [is] that everybody — we didn’t even intentionally do it — but all the extras, all the background people, all the students were in love with him, and you could see it in their eyes.”

Fans likely aren’t too surprised: The worldwide blockbuster may have introduced Bailey to an even larger audience, but he’s been building a strong relationship with viewers for a while. The Olivier...

How far will you go for that unforgettable moment? Two people are about to find out in “You’re Cordially Invited.” The comedy sees dueling wedding parties at odds for that all-too-perfect venue. What ensues is a battle between the father of the bride and the sister of the bride from rival parties. ‘Invited’ hails from writer and director Nicholas Stoller, who previously developed 2023’s TV revival of “Goosebumps” with Rob Letterman and is known for directing comedies like “Saving Sarah Marshall,” “Five Year Engagement” and “Neighbors.”

Read More: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2025

The film features two established comedy talents in leading roles.

Continue reading ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ Trailer: Reese Witherspoon & Will Ferrell’s Rival Wedding Comedy Premieres January 30 at The Playlist.

The 2025 Ace Eddie Award nominations are here, recognizing outstanding editing in 14 categories across film, TV, and documentaries. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Saturday, January 18, 2025, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Among the nominees are buzzy titles including “Emilia Pérez,” “Anora,” “Wicked,” and “the Substance,” while TV faves including “Baby Reindeer,” “Nobody Wants This,” and “The Bear” also made the cut.

As previously announced, the Ace Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award will go to “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu for distinguished achievement in the art and business of film, while career achievement awards go to film editors Maysie Hoy, Ace, and Paul Hirsch, Ace.

Below is the full list of 2025 Ace Eddie Awards nominees.

Best Edited Feature Film

Civil War

Jake Roberts, Ace

Conclave

Nick Emerson

Dune: Part Two

Joe Walker, Ace

Emilia Pérez

Juliette Welfling

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Eliot Knapman, Margaret Sixel,...

One of the most talked-about films in development right now is Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles project. Unlike typical musical biopics, Mendes’ Beatles project is actually split into four films, each focusing on a member of the band. While no casting has been confirmed, so far, we have seen reports claiming which actors are going to be playing the members of the band. And according to Ridley Scott, we can now confirm who’s playing Paul McCartney.

Continue reading Ridley Scott Confirms Paul Mescal Is Starring In Sam Mendes’ Beatles Film Series at The Playlist.

After receiving a nomination at the 82nd annual Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language, Janus Films has released the trailer for Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio.”

Read More: The 20 Best Films Of 2024

Written and directed by Delpero, the film stars Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, and Martina Scrinzi. It received critical acclaim during its respective festival runs at Venice and Toronto and is Italy’s Official Submission for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Continue reading ‘Vermiglio’ Trailer: Maura Delpero’s Golden Globe-Nominated Film Is Coming This Christmas at The Playlist.

We’re gonna be frank here. If Danielle Deadwyler doesn’t earn a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in Malcolm Washington’s big-screen adaptation of “The Piano Lesson,” we will not be happy. And, trust me, we won’t be the only ones.

Read More: “The Piano Lesson” Review: Danielle Deadwyler Isn’t Here For Sibling Foolishness [Telluride]

Deadwyler has already gone through what many would consider a heartbreaking awards season run.

Continue reading Danielle Deadwyler: August Wilson’s Plays Are How I Learned To Be An Actor at The Playlist.

The Apprentice.The Apprentice (2024), released to theaters just in time to herald Donald Trump’s reelection to the American presidency, emerges from the same impulse that has motivated much national news coverage of Trump since the 2016 presidential campaign. The screenwriter, Gabriel Sherman, as a political journalist for New York magazine and Vanity Fair, is among those who fed the seemingly endless appetite for Trump content that emerged during his first campaign a decade ago, serving up a buffet of can-you-believe-this stories to be breathlessly recirculated within the liberal outrage echo chamber. Implicit in such coverage is the notion that any Trump supporter must be laboring under some fundamental misapprehension, and that if the plain truth about his history and character could only be stated loudly and frequently enough, it would universally be understood to be disqualifying.The film, like the last three Democratic presidential campaigns, airs the same dirty laundry...

Ahead of its 30th anniversary, Slamdance is still making the same first impression.

Shaggy yet shiny, the indie film festival was forged in the shadow of Sundance after its founders were rejected from the prestigious Park City showcase during the mid-nineties. Now, the Slamdance Group aims to be ahead of the game — having already moved from Utah and made its West Coast debut at the Director’s Guild of America on December 9 with the first-ever Indie Awards.

“I don’t feel like it’s being dramatic or over-dramatizing it to say that independent film is at stake,” said Slamdance Festival Director Taylor Miller during her opening remarks. “There is so much going on that this is the best place to be and to have these awards. Los Angeles is where so much is changing week in and week out.”

Also known as The Indies, the event was designed to “not...

Prep school vampires. Bronx bomber vampires. CitiBike vampires. JFK Tsa vampires. “What We Do in the Shadows” isn’t leaving any New York (or vampire) subculture behind in Season 6; this in turn has given costume designer Laura Montgomery the gift of delivering new twists for the FX series’ final run around Staten Island.

The biggest lift of the season was probably Episode 9, “Come Out and Play,” the show’s loving tribute to “The Warriors” and confirmation of the hidden, evil agenda of every Brooklyn barista/artist-and-writer vampire. Montgomery and her team needed to dress the episode’s huge background cast with enough distinctiveness that each group read quickly and comedically as part of the show’s quick-panning, constantly readjusting mockumentary style.

“The show is 22 minutes long and [the costumes are] purely a visual gag when you’re calling out all these vampires,” Montgomery told IndieWire. “Because we had to dress crew, [we had] Location Support On Camera vampires,...

Leos Carax’s ability to create some of the most striking and memorable images in modern cinema is beyond question, but his reasons for stringing those images together are often murkier. The idiosyncratic auteur is closer to an abstract artist than a conventional storyteller — a trade-off that has added far more to his career than it has subtracted. That tension fueled his magnum opus “Holy Motors,” which follows a man whose inexplicable need to create and perform prompts him to spend his days cycling through an endless roster of clients who ask him to don different disguises. It’s also what made him the ideal director-for-hire for the beautifully incoherent Sparks brothers musical “Annette.” And it’s why one could argue that his style is better suited to museums than traditional filmmaking.

The Centre Pompidou apparently thought so when it commissioned Carax to make a short film that used images...

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The 12th annual Muahs Guild Awards nominations were announced on December 10, dominated by horror contenders “The Substance”(Mubi), “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.), and the surprising “The Deliverance” (Netflix), which led with three nominations apiece. The awards will take place Saturday, February 15, 2025, at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel.

“The Substance,” Coralie Fargeat’s body horror fairy tale, earned nominations for Best Contemporary Makeup, Best Special Makeup Effects, and Best Contemporary Hairstyling. Prosthetics makeup designer Pierre Olivier Persin conjures a series of bizarre transformations for Demi Moore’s Elisabeth, who...

There was a moment on the set of director Matt Reeves’ film “The Batman” that “freaked everyone out,” recalled prosthetic makeup designer Michael Marino. That haywire instance was Colin Farrell walking around and saying hello to the cast and crew as the Penguin.

“Everyone started talking about how they wished there could be more scenes with him, but the script was locked,” Marino told IndieWire. Well, it turned out that Reeves was already in discussions with HBO brass about an Oswald Cobb origin story that would bridge the gap between “The Batman” and “The Batman Part II” (currently slated for an October 2026 release).

“The Penguin” made its HBO premiere in the fall of 2024 with Lauren LeFranc developing and running the compelling series, which tells the story of how Oswald (Farrell) seized power via an intimate character study that’s more crime drama than comic book. Expanding the Gotham world required...

Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi, whose heartfelt documentaries “The Mole Agent” and “The Eternal Memory” earned her Academy Award nominations, agreed to step into the world of scripted fiction when Netflix and Pablo Larraín’s production company Fabula sent her the 2019 book “When Women Kill” (“Las Homicidas”) by Alia Trabucco Zerán.

The resulting screen adaption, “In Her Place” (“El lugar de la otra”), puts Alberdi back on the awards trail as Chile’s Oscar entry for the Best International Feature Film.

The original book details four real-life cases of women who committed murder but were pardoned during a time when the death penalty was still implemented in Chile. “It was the first nonfiction book by a writer who usually writes fiction. And this is my first fiction set in a non-fiction world,” Alberdi told IndieWire in Spanish via video call. “The crisscrossing was interesting.”

More than the specifics of the stories,...

The Producers Guild Awards has awarded a documentary motion picture honor for 17 years. And, often, the PGA nominees do not line up with their peers in The Academy. That looks to be the case again as the PGA released its 2025 noms which include “Porcelain War” and “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.”

Read More: “The Substance,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “The Penguin” top 2025 Make-up and Hairstyling Guilds Awards Nominations

The other four nominees are “Gaucho Gaucho,” “Mediha,” “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa,” and “We Will Dance Again.

Continue reading ‘Porcelain War’ & ‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’ Earn PGA Awards Documentary Nominations at The Playlist.

Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles has been wrestling with languages his whole life. He grew up in Rio de Janeiro and Paris and studied at USC, becoming fluent in his native Portuguese and French plus English. When he followed up his Oscar-nominated and Golden Bear-winning “Central Station” (1998) with “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004), he became fluent in Spanish.

“I couldn’t possibly do ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ without having an in-depth understanding of Spanish,” said Salles on Zoom, “because directing actors has so much to do with precision, with the capacity to find that one word that can trigger something fresh and new. Whenever you have to rationally extend yourself, create a sentence, as opposed to that specific word that untaps something, you miss an opportunity.”

But after struggling with his 2012 English-language adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” a beloved novel, he did not make another feature film for 12 years. “I’m...