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Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' the last major Oscar hopeful to be screened for the media, is an appropriate capper, because the tragicomic film is about excess--and everything [...]

CHINA MIGHT BE OUTGROWING HOLLYWOOD. In the past few years, Westerners have exulted in the country's box office boom, which included hefty grosses for major-studio films such as 'Iron Man [...]

True stories have always attracted the attention of Hollywood, but perhaps no year in recent memory has seen so many prominent actors playing real people. From Matthew McConaughey's turn as [...]

MADRID Spain's film biz may be in a state of crisis, but one event is bucking that trend: the San Sebastian Festival. Its 60th edition, the second under Jose Luis [...]

With the world's eyes on the Middle East, people need something to watch. A new generation of filmmakers from the region, buoyed by the recent international breakout success of Middle [...]

MADRID The title credits for Alex de la Iglesia's 'The Oxford Murders'--Elijah Wood, John Hurt, Leonor Watling--hurtle screen-forward as calculus equations mill in a maelstrom around them. 'The film's only […]

As the rest of the world whips into a futbol frenzy, distribs and exhibs must counterprogram HOLLYWOOD In six months, one of the most highly anticipated events around the globe [...]

HOLLYWOOD It's never too early to start thinking about Oscar. By summer of last year, "Erin Brockovich" and "Gladiator" had opened. Which means that by this point, we'd already seen […]

HOLLYWOOD Global box office revs are forecast to grow $6 billion between 2001 and 2010 to $24 billion, according to a report to be published this week by Informa Media […]

Summer's pre-strike crush may create winter of discontent Hollywood's creative communities may be relieved now that it appears labor peace is assured. Yet there's a forgotten victim in this strike-warped […]

NEW YORK a Jeff Friday, a co-founder of the Acapulco Black Film Festival, has launched niche distribution label Film Life, which he hopes will inject more cultural diversity into the […]

"Congloms Converge," Variety headlined its coverage of its convivial confab in Gotham for investor and media types last week. Besides that buzzword "convergence," cooperation and consolidation were also watchwords as […]

HOLLYWOOD With Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes looming, studio execs still are frantically finalizing pre-strike 'go' movies. That means they have less time and energy to [...]

Propaganda steps into the driver's seat If president Rick Hess and chief operating officer Trevor Macy have their way, Propaganda Films will finally achieve what it hasn't been able to [...]

Thirty years ago, Variety ran a front-page story reporting that the production community was up in arms about runaway production. We're sprinting into the new millennium and the problem is […]

HOLLYWOOD Certainly the dominant special effect at Nov. 16's 'End of Days' preem after-party was having star Arnold Schwarzenegger holding court at a table near the band playing in the [...]

HOLLYWOOD Fox thinks there's plenty of punch left in "Fight Club." But it didn't know for sure until the closing bell on Oct. 24. The Brad Pitt starrer, whose violent […]

BRUSSELS For the long-suffering Belgian movie industry, 1999 is increasingly looking like a banner year. First came the unexpected success of "Rosetta" at Cannes. The Belgian pic, helmed by the […]

Shakeups loom in new age of bookings AUG. 15, 2004 Using his computer keyboard and mouse, the president of top U.S. theater chain Regal/Loews-AMC books the upcoming weekend's films into [...]

THE DOMESTIC BOX office haul of 2013, which observers estimate will eclipse last year's record $10.8 billion tally, is part of a schizophrenic 12-month period punctuated by supersized hits like [...]

Writers and directors have never been shy about sending their characters into car crashes, shootouts, hostile Indian territory or bad marriages. Danger is their business. But the kind of peril [...]

Latin American filmmakers are an emerging global force, riding on a wave of genre films. So much so that Latin America's biggest movie market, Ventana Sur, which means Southern Window, [...]

ON A FRIDAY night last month at UCLA's Royce Hall, British conductor John Wilson led a 97-piece orchestra and 36-voice choir in two hours of selections from classic MGM musicals. [...]

WHILE THE REST OF THE lest generates awards season talk, Toronto's Midnight Madness plays to what's hot at the current box office. With films such as 'Mama,' 'The Conjuring' and [...]

One of the rising stars of emerging-market economies, Turkey is a sprawling territory that spans Europe, Asia and the Middle East, nicknamed both the New Tiger and China of Europe. [...]

Digital distribution and compressed windows may not seem like the sexiest topics, but these two phenomena have bolstered an indie film world undercut by the crash of the DVD market. [...]

Rotterdam is reinforcing its relationship with the Dutch film industry this year, giving a higher profile onscreen and highlighting domestic projects at its venerable co-production forum, CineMart. The move recognizes [...]

LONDON The decision by leading U.K. arthouse distrib Artificial Eye for the first time to send out screeners of its top foreign titles means that BAFTA's foreign film race is [...]

The San Sebastian Film Festival presented its Spanish pic lineup July 27 in Madrid at the most crowded press conference for the local film biz in recent memory. Fest director [...]

With the big six Hollywood studios making fewer pics and focusing more and more on tentpole franchises, the independent sector has a clear-cut opportunity to expand. And as buyers and [...]

An abundance of quality dramas has reignited discussion about whether TV has artistically eclipsed movies, with influential Vanity Fair critic James Wolcott recently suggesting television is' 'where the action is, [...]

Video on demand remains in arrested development outside the U.S., to the frustration of many foreign distribs who are pinning their hopes on digital sales to replace their crumbling DVD [...]

International B.O. is firing on all cylinders, and with summer just around the corner, the Hollywood majors are getting ready to stake out their tentpoles in hopes of collecting the [...]

It was business as usual at the 2011 international box office. And business is booming. Last year, total overseas B.O. skyrocketed to approximately $23.5 billion through Dec. 31, up about [...]

The biopic has been a Hollywood staple since the early days of cinema, but this year's crop seems particularly bountiful, spotlighting the struggles of creative artists (Melies, Shakespeare, Marilyn Monroe), [...]

With a $283 million worldwide opening weekend, 'Twilight's' vampires have once again reminded us that there's plenty of life in the undead. While Anne Rice's books helped Hollywood focus on [...]

LONDON For decades, success in the U.S. market has been seen as a kind of measuring stick by many European creatives. Making it big in the lucrative English-language market seemed [...]

Many headed for Park City hope that the blizzard that has buried the indie biz has passed and that the forecast will be clear skies. Some of the trends that [...]

PARIS When Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's 'A Screaming Man'--with more than half its budget financed by Gallic coin--became the the first film from Chad to screen in Cannes' Official Selection in May, [...]

European exhibs celebrated record box office grosses last year--revenue rose 12% to more than $8 billion--thanks in large part to 3D hits like 'Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs' and [...]

BEFORE ITS CANCELLATION, the syndicated movie-review show 'At the Movies' did offer one important evolution, shifting (albeit out of necessity) from a simple 'thumbs up' or down to three options: [...]

With many screenings sold out, including those for the opening docs--helmer Thomas Balmes' 'Babies,' about a year in the life of four newborns in different parts of the world, and [...]

Studios have gone back to the future as they develop their upcoming slates, eyeing a slew of hits from the 1980s to remake, reboot or reimagine. The irony is that [...]

No one loves a good mystery more than mystery authors, but the suspense is killing some of the them: When will Hollywood finally make a movie out of their books? [...]

As with most European countries, financing from television nets plays a dominant role in German cinema. The partnership is a simple economic reality. But does it tamp down ambition? And [...]

Two film communities seek out different sides of Morocco--and gravitate to different hubs within the territory. Foreign helmers prefer Ouarzazate and Marrakech for their desert no man's lands and Arabian [...]

Production seems to be crawling, the public is demanding to be fed showbiz news, laid-off workers are feeling the need to be cra dled and rocked .... Everything in the [...]

TALK TO ANY CEO THESE DAYS and you get the same message: A major period of consolidation looms for the entertainment industry. But some voices in the wilderness are starting [...]