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Byline: Brooks Barnes John Lasseter was toppled five years ago by allegations about his workplace behavior. He's back with an animated film and a studio that could be Pixar 2.0. [...]

Byline: BROOKS BARNES BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Shawn Levy quickly made a name for himself in Hollywood. Maybe too quickly. Starting in 2002, he directed one bright, bouncy -- some [...]

Byline: BROOKS BARNES PARK CITY, Utah -- Gun violence can be an awkward subject at the Sundance Film Festival. Over the years, the event has helped popularize - some would [...]

The article focuses on AMC Theaters partnering with Blumhouse for a Halfway to Halloween Film Festival, featuring horror movies introduced by Jason Blum to promote the Blumhouse brand as a consumer-facing entity akin to Marvel and superheroes.

Marvel Entertainment has a history of entrusting its superhero blockbusters to offbeat directors, but the brothers Russo may take the cape. They came up through independent film (''Welcome to Collinwood''), [...]

''A feral swarm of mass savages.'' No, that's not Robert Redford's take on the late-night party scene at the Sundance Film Festival -- although, given some of the antics in [...]

The article reports that U.S. actors have ratified a new three-year contract with studios, ending six months of labor unrest, but some members express dissatisfaction with the deal's artificial intelligence protections, concerned about job reductions and financial impacts on performers.

LOS ANGELES THE Oscar race now comes down to one man's hand, and how he intends to play it. The best picture contest is usually well defined by early December, [...]

The article focuses on the potential resumption of contract negotiations between Hollywood studios and striking screenwriters next week, marking a crucial point in the strike, which has entered its fifth month, with both parties having been at odds over procedure and contract terms.

The article reports on Michael Shamberg, a producer of different movies, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court claiming that the academy did not adhere to its rules when its 54-member board declined to vote on by law amendments proposed by Shamberg.

The article explores the growth of the cinematic contributions of Oakland, California. It describes the production of the Oakland-set comic drama "Blindspotting," written by Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal who also star in the film. It also discusses the significance of the emergence of Oakland-rooted filmmakers such as Anthony Lucero, Nijla Mu'min and Evan Cecil, as well as the factors that contributed to the rise of creative and cultural activities in the city.

The article reports on the success experienced by Michael De Luca as the producer for popular movies including “Moneyball" and “The SocialNetwork" and “Captain Phillips". His transformation from Going from notorious partyer to a entrusted shepherd of the AcademyAwards has to be one of moviedom's bigger personal turnarounds. Mr. De Luca and Ms. Jennifer Todd were hired to produce 89th Academy Awards partly because of that kind of deep affection for cinema.

The article features Hollywood film director Shawn Levy, who started directing in 2002 and the director behind hit movies such as "Big Fat Liar," "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Night at the Museum." Topics discussed include Levy's company, 21 Laps Entertainment, producing the science-fiction drama "Arrival," directed by Denis Villenueve and starring Amy Adams. Also mentioned are Levy refusing to be pigeonholed as well 21 Laps' hit series "Stranger Things" at online streaming provider Netflix.

The article announces that the entertainment company Walt Disney Co. rehires the filmmaker James Gunn, who got fired for offensive jokes wherein Gunn had asked for public apology for his insensitive words.

The article offers information on the establishment of Foresight Solutions media relations agency Principal Communications which aims to investigate the social media backgrounds of actors, screenwriters, and directors before hiring them in response to discrimination in the industry.

The article focuses on director James Bobin of the film "Alice Through the Looking Glass" which is the sequel of the 2010 film "Alice in Wonderland" directed by Tim Burton. Topics mentioned include the suggestion to scriptwriter Linda Woolverton to add the character named Time, the interest in time where he studied at Oxford University on history, and the picture of London, England as busy an dirty when he read the script.

The article looks at siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who control the rights to the James Bond film franchise after inheriting it from their father, Albert R. Broccoli. Details on the film "Spectre" and on Barbara Broccoli's decision to cast Daniel Craig in the lead role are presented. Other topics include the expiry of their contract with distributor Sony Pictures Entertainment and Broccoli's theater production career.

The article reports on the 2018 Oscars, and mentions topics like dominance of women at the award ceremony; impact of the #MeToo movement on the event; awards won by artists like Frances McDormand; Sam Taylor-Johnson; along with views of celebrities.

The article looks at real estate developer Andrew Meieran, with a particular focus on his renovation of the Clifton's Cafeteria eatery in downtown Los Angeles, California. Details on Meieran's previous restoration projects and his development of nightlife venues are presented. His film production company is also discussed.

The article discusses motion picture executive Amy Pascal's plans to produce blockbuster films following her departure as co-chairman of motion pictures studio Sony Pictures Entertainment. Topics addressed include her plans to produce films such as Sony's "Spider-Man" motion picture series, "Cleopatra," and a remake of the film "Ghostbusters," as well as the implications in terms of a restructuring of Sony's management and production approach.

The article discusses the influence of the television industry at the 31st Sundance Film Festival held in Park City, Utah in 2015, noting that independent (indie) films and television series are seeking television distribution at the festival. Topics addressed include a screening of the television series "Animals" at Sundance, directors seeking television careers through exposure at Sundance, and the implications for Sundance's significance within the motion picture industry.

The article reports on the funding secured by film producer Jason Blum from ITV Studios, Great Britain-based film and video production company, for his several television projects such as "Secure and Hold: The Last Days of Roger Ailes."

The article discusses speculation that director Steve McQueen's film "12 Years a Slave" won its 2014 Academy Award (Oscar) for best picture by a small margin. Topics addressed include McQueen's reaction to the film's status as the first film by a black director to win best picture, screenwriter John Ridley's award for best adapted screenplay for the film, and the film's public reception.

The article presents an obituary for American film producer, actor, talent agent and concert promoter Jerry Weintraub is presented.

An obituary for film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. is presented.

The article focuses on filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who was imprisoned because of his Youtube movie trailer "Innocence of Muslims." Nakoula believes that the content of the movie is true about the Prophet Muhammad and he thought of burning himself in the public to let the people know the message of his beliefs. It adds that the movie provoked the terrorist assault on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

The article focuses on the independent film industry in New Zealand. It says that the independent film community is grateful for filmmaker Peter Jackson whose film "Lord of the Rings" trilogy gave confidence to Kiwi directors. It states that the New Zealand government has supported Jackson's movies and even rewritten labour laws to house hid Hollywood partner. However, screenwriter and director Robert Sarkies argues that the government has left smaller films to struggle.

MARTINBOROUGH, New Zealand THERE is no Pandora. But Pounui Ridge, roughly 20 miles from this Wairarapa Valley wine town, comes close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LAS VEGAS - If the pressure is on Pixar to prove that its creative spark remains intact after the critical crash that was ''Cars 2,'' then the Disney-owned animation studio appears to be rising to the challenge. In a presentation to theater owners here on Monday, John Lasseter, Pixar's chief creative officer (and the director of ''Cars 2''), said the studio has added a movie about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos to its slate. The film, which does not yet have a title or a release date, will be directed by Lee Unkrich, who won an Oscar for ''Toy Story 3.'' Mr. Lasseter gave no additional details, but did show a colorful (early) logo with skulls and Mexican marigolds. Pixar likes to keep details of its upcoming movies close to its vest, partly because of competitive concerns; a typical Pixar film takes four years to complete. But Mr. Lasseter did dole out a few more morsels: a previously announced movie pondering what would happen if dinosaurs never became extinct got a title -- ''The Good Dinosaur'' -- and a release date of May 2014; and the next (still untitled) film from Pete Docter (''Up'') will debut in June 2015 and will still take audiences on a journey inside the human mind as previously disclosed. A prequel to ''Monsters Inc.,'' called ''Monsters University,'' is slated for 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''Iron Man'' is going to China. In the latest in a string of partnerships between Hollywood and Chinese media companies, Disney-owned Marvel Studios said on Monday that it would team with DMG Entertainment to co-finance and produce ''Iron Man 3.'' Disney, which acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009, plans to release ''Iron Man 3'' - starring Robert Downey Jr. as the superheroic industrialist Tony Stark - in May 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES -- Flattery will get you everywhere. ''The Artist,'' a love letter to Hollywood, got hugs, kisses and the best-picture Oscar on Sunday at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony here. The film also took the awards for best actor and best director, in a minisweep that found the movie industry paying tribute to not just the movie but to its own roots as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quvenzhane Wallis, 8, cemented her status as the It Girl of this year's Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night, as ''Beasts of the Southern Wild,'' starring Ms. Wallis as a poor Louisiana girl named Hushpuppy, took the festival's top grand jury prize. ''Beasts of the Southern Wild,'' directed and co-written by Benh Zeitlin, (and headed to theaters courtesy of Fox Searchlight), also won a prize for cinematography. ''I hope this movie is a flag that goes up to tell producers to allow filmmakers to be as wild as they could be to direct a film,'' Mr. Zeitlin said as he accepted the award in Park City, Utah. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES STRAIGHT actors who wanted to pay for sex in the 1990s had Heidi Fleiss. Gay ones during the late 1940s and beyond apparently had Scotty Bowers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES -- Spike Lee is on the spot. Next week Mr. Lee, the celebrated director of movies like ''She's Gotta Have It'' and ''Inside Man,'' will find himself in a situation he has never been in before: at the Sundance Film Festival, crossing his fingers along with more than 100 other directors hoping for a bite from a distributor. For sale: ''Red Hook Summer,'' a look at Brooklyn gentrification and a follow-up of sorts to Mr. Lee's ''Do the Right Thing.'' Mr. Lee financed it himself, at a price he declined to disclose. ''It had been too long since I'd done a film, and I couldn't wait on Hollywood anymore,'' he said in an interview. ''Too many meetings, too many false starts, too many stuck projects.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES - It's not unusual for the subjects of documentaries to dislike what they see on screen, sometimes resorting to defamation lawsuits. A Florida time-share developer, David Siegel, is taking the unusual step of suing not over the content of a film about his family but over a written description of it. Mr. Siegel, a focus of ''The Queen of Versailles,'' about his construction of a 90,000-square-foot megamansion and close encounter with the recession, has filed a defamation suit in United States District Court in Orlando, Fla., against the Sundance Institute, the film's director, Lauren Greenfield, and her husband. At issue is a description of the film in a Sundance-issued news release in November. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

NICASIO, Calif. BEFORE you interview Hollywood bigwigs, especially stars and star directors, a SWAT team of publicists and assistants often descends to offer advice. Don't mention this, feel free to ask that, only eat the blue M&M's. That kind of stuff. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pixar Animation Studios, battered a bit by critics of late for its embrace of sequels like ''Cars 2,'' announced two new original films over the weekend, although details were spare and both are still untitled. The first one is slated for Christmas 2013 and will tackle dinosaurs - specifically, what would have happened if they had not vanished. Bob Peterson, a two-time Oscar nominee for his screenwriting work on ''Up'' and ''Finding Nemo'' (and the voice of Roz the taskmaster slug in ''Monsters Inc.''), is directing this film. Pete Docter, who directed ''Up,'' will tackle the second project, which is headed toward 2014 and is set inside the human mind. (Hey, a lot of people thought ''Up'' sounded ridiculous, too.) The announcements were made at D23 Expo, a biannual event in Anaheim, Calif., dedicated to all things related to the Walt Disney Company. The three-day gathering, attended by about 40,000 fans, is designed to stir up the company's fan base by unveiling details about new films, television shows, merchandise and theme park attractions. The Pixar news was greeted with rapture, but the reaction was tepid to exclusive footage from ''John Carter,'' an expensive fantasy set for March release about a Civil War veteran mistakenly transported to Mars. That film, which depicts sharply unattractive aliens, represents the live-action directing debut of Andrew Stanton, an Oscar winner for ''Wall-E'' and ''Finding Nemo.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES - One of Hollywood's top film financiers and producers is making a big push into China. Legendary Entertainment, which is affiliated with Warner Brothers and has backed hits like ''The Dark Knight'' and ''The Hangover,'' completed a deal on Thursday with the Huayi Brothers Media Corporation of Beijing to form a new movie and television company. Their ambitious goal is to make English-language films and TV shows in China that can be exported to the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES -- It was 17 degrees and sleet was falling in Spokane, Wash., last November when Tony Krantz called ''action'' on the set of ''The Big Bang,'' a neo-noir thriller starring Antonio Banderas. Actually, because Mr. Krantz was suffering from acute bronchitis, the order came out more like a croak. ''I just kept thinking, 'Oh my God, this is one of the greatest moments of my life,' '' he recalled in a recent interview. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

PARK CITY, Utah -- Somewhere in the 600 or so miles between this mountain town, host to the Sundance Film Festival, and the movie factories of Hollywood, female filmmakers seem to vanish. Of the top 100 movies at the 2010 box office, three were made by women: ''The Last Song'' (No. 51), ''Nanny McPhee Returns'' (96) and ''Ramona and Beezus''(100.) Meanwhile, 27 of the 117 features playing at this year's festival have female directors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES -- The lineup of films competing in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival is heavy on off-the-wall stories, light on war documentaries and -- for better or worse -- nearly devoid of one of the festival's signature ingredients of late: stars. As both a pre-eminent showcase for American independent cinema and a freewheeling bazaar for movie executives Sundance is carefully scrutinized for signals about where creative, low-budget movies are headed. If these filmmakers represent the future, what's on their minds? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES -- Is Tyler Perry capable of highbrow cinema? The studio behind his 10th movie is determined to make audiences and Oscar voters look beyond his track record and answer yes. Mr. Perry is the most successful black filmmaker ever. His nine pictures -- from the comedic romp ''Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion'' to the melodramatic ''Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?'' -- have brought in over $530 million at the North American box office. He also has an enormous business in stage shows and two television series on TBS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES -- Young movie producers are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. Sometimes they find a hit movie before they fade back into obscurity. If they're lucky, they might land two. But three No. 1 films over six months? That gets you noticed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOS ANGELES -- Sonia Nassery Cole knew that shooting a movie on location in Afghanistan could get her killed. The most vivid reminder came a few weeks before filming, she said, when militants located her leading actress and cut off both of her feet. But Ms. Cole, an Afghan expatriate with a flair for the dramatic and a history of not taking no for an answer, had her mind made up. Unable to find another actress to take the part -- the film is overtly critical of the Taliban -- Ms. Cole, 45, decided to play the role herself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cinephiles will undoubtedly hold their noses in horror over ''Marmaduke,'' a forthcoming live-action adaptation of the newspaper comic. Middlebrow drivel! Cinematic sewage! The producer John Davis has heard it all before, and then some. After all, ''Marmaduke'' is cut from the same cloth as ''Garfield,'' his critically reviled comic-strip adaptation from 2004. His response? ''Garfield,'' made for a comparatively inexpensive $58 million, when adjusted for inflation, sold more than $230 million at box offices around the world and spawned a sequel and several direct-to-DVD spinoffs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES FOR decades, movie producers had one of the cushiest gigs in Hollywood. Studios kept stables of them around -- all expenses paid -- to shepherd movies through their various stages: inception, the nitty gritty of filming, post-production and publicity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

''The Hurt Locker,'' a little-seen war film with big backing from the critics, pushed past ''Avatar'' and other crowd-pleasers to win the best picture Oscar at a Sunday night ceremony here, while its director, Kathryn Bigelow, became the first woman to win the directing award. ''Avatar'' and ''The Hurt Locker'' had come into the night as favorites, but the smaller film took the prize from the bigger in the end. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On Wednesday the Web started to percolate with word that the artist Banksy had hit the Sundance Film Festival. Yes, the graffiti art that popped up in Park City, Utah, over the last couple of days was his handiwork. But this time the art was just a sideshow to a film directed by Banksy, ''Exit Through the Gift Shop,'' a surprise addition to the festival lineup, which kicked off on Thursday. ''Exit Through the Gift Shop,'' scheduled to have its premiere on Sunday night, is about an eccentric French shopkeeper and amateur filmmaker who was so obsessed with Banksy that he wanted to make a documentary about him. But the British-born Banksy turned the tables and made a film about the effort to film him. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can Sundance's new director redefine not just the festival but also the entire independent film industry? The Sundance Film Festival kicks off its 26th installment on Thursday, and people are chattering about all the usual things, from which films are hot acquisition targets (''Blue Valentine'' is a good bet) to whether this would finally be the year that the celebrity sideshow dies down (unlikely). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]