Director Tabitha Jackson was lucky in 2020 - her hiring was big news at last year's Sundance Film Festival. Then, of course, a global pandemic hit. "To say her inaugural year heading the most influential film festival in America was rife with unpredictable challenges is an understatement." - Los Angeles Times
And what Emerald Fennell delivers - which is something different - in Promising Young Woman. "How do you write a revenge movie that feels like something real and that is based in real trauma and grief? Because I suppose the other thing with the revenge that we don’t talk about very much is revenge and vengeance aren’t good...
Or at least AMC, despite its debt load and the damage from the coronavirus shutdowns. Adam Aron: "Some of my competitors, the ones caught up in the past, are saying that I’m the worst human being alive on the planet. ... But sometimes you have to stare change in the face, recognize that it has or soon will arrive,...
The official Star Wars account (and thus, Disney) is backing its Star Wars: The High Republic Show host Krystina Arielle, a Black woman who tweeted last summer in support of Black Lives Matter. - BBC
That's a long way to say the global creator and distributor of streaming (and don't forget DVD) content wants, and needs, to diversify the voices making its content. That's where Vernā Myers comes in. - Los Angeles Times
Once thought of as a relic of yesteryear, the limited series—or miniseries, depending on which generation you belong to—has rapidly shifted back into focus. - Fast Company
Three municipalities in Georgia are suing Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming video providers for as much as 5 percent of their gross revenue in the district — joining a nationwide group of towns and counties that want these services regulated more like cable TV. It’s a small but growing front in the war over cord-cutting, challenging regulators to decide...
"With the Cannes Lions still on track to run June 21-25, it’s feasible that the Cannes Film Festival could be assembled in time to roll out in early July. One industry insider says it would take only a few days or roughly a week to set up the film festival." - Variety
Journalist Matthew Teague made his career covering war and disaster zones, but it was a longform essay for Esquire about his wife's terminal cancer that got him a National Magazine Award, legions of new fans, and a movie deal. "What he didn' account for was just how cruel Hollywood can be when a movie does come together, an experience...
"Ahead of Biden's inauguration, Vulture spoke with multiple late-night writers who either still work or previously worked for Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Samantha Bee, Jim Jefferies, and John Oliver about what it was like inside the Trump-joke trenches — and how they see the next administration affecting their jobs. … In every interview, two themes...
The UK's national broadcaster is funded by mandatory license fees, charged annually to every household that owns a television set. But as more and more Britons, especially younger ones, consume all their video via streaming on their computers and phones, fewer and fewer of them have televisions to pay license fees on. And so, says a report from the...
"Canada forcing Netflix and other foreign streamers to pour $800 million annually into local Canadian content will be a lifeline for world-beating creators, say Bill C-10 supporters." - The Hollywood Reporter
The new network's executive director sounds hopeful. "As our elders pass away, we are fighting against time to keep Inuit culture and language alive for our children and grandchildren. TV in Inuktut all day every day is a powerful way to keep a living language for future generations." - CBC
The Academy concluded that there was no way to keep the larger executive committee's deliberation process secure on Zoom or other platforms - so the "preliminary committee," a smaller group, is now the only arbiter of what movies will be nominated for Best International Feature. Unrelated (or so they claim), the shortlist has expanded from 10 to 15. -...
And casting villains, that is to say law enforcement and others deeply committed to white supremacy, as heroes. But the new documentary MLK/FBI isn't confused: it "weaves a deeply troubling portrait of King being hounded and harassed by the FBI, while the murders of his fellow activists went strangely unsolved." - Washington Post
