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With “M3GAN 2.0” scheduled for release this summer, I figured we might get an early tease of what’s to come in the sequel — or, if we were really lucky, a reward-the-faithful switcheroo, the way Ari Aster did by sneak-premiering “Beau Is Afraid” to Alamo Drafthouse audiences who thought they’d bought tickets to a fan screening of “Midsommar.”

Alas, this was a just straightforward re-release of the original PG-13 cut, with one enticing twist: Meta had picked “M3GAN” to launch the company’s new Movie Mate technology, wherein audiences are encouraged to use their smartphones to interact with a M3GAN-themed chatbot during the movie.

That’s basically my worst nightmare — but one that might potentially enhance what was to be my first viewing of a horror flick that directly engages with the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. So why not give it a try?

I bought a ticket for a seat in the back row, because even if “second scree

Leni Riefenstahl had several successes at the Venice film festival. In 1932, the festival’s inaugural year, the German film-maker’s mystical mountain drama The Blue Light made the official selection. In 1934, she picked up a gold medal for Triumph of the Will, her chronicle of the Nazi party congress in Nuremberg. In 1938, 10 weeks before Kristallnacht, she won best foreign film with Olympia, a two-part documentary of the summer Olympics in Berlin that was commissioned and financed by the Nazi government, overseen by the Reich ministry of propaganda and enlightenment, and released on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

After the war, and until the day she died, aged 101, in 2003, Riefenstahl insisted that her films were only ever about award-winning art. Through the postwar decades, and over the course of four denazification proceedings, the film-maker presented herself as an apolitical aesthete. She had no interest in “real-world issues”. She was motivated only by beauty, creative opportu

The actor, who was once the face of The Six Million Dollar Man, still has charm and presence that made him a household name in the ’70s.

Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf

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        Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

    Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room, where a few of the Führer’s most vocal supporters had gathered: Himmler, Göring, Leni Riefenstahl and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. We talked about some of the beautiful art on the walls that had been taken 
  

“It’s really hard out there for an original movie,” he said, urging everyone who liked the Universal Pictures release to “scream it from the rooftops” and on social media.

“Drop” opened this weekend to an estimated $7.5 million domestically, one of two new movies based on fresh ideas that fizzled at the box office. The other was Disney’s “The Amateur,” a spy thriller adapted from a little-known 1981 book, which opened to an estimated $15 million.

After years of gripes from average moviegoers and Hollywood insiders alike about the seemingly nonstop barrage of sequels, spin offs and adaptations of comic books and toys, the film industry placed more bets on original ideas.

The results have been ugly.

Nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment. Before this weekend’s flops were Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” Paramount’s “Novocaine,”

Quelle surprise ...

Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav's pay package rose just over 4% to $51.9 million in 2024, according to the company's 2025 proxy statement filed Friday.

Zaslav had a 2023 pay package worth $49.7 million, up 26.5% from the year prior. Zaslav's compensation totaled $39.3 million in 2022, after he received an astonishing $246.6 million (which included $203 million in stock-option grants) in 2021.

For 2024, Zaslav's base salary was $3 million. He received stock awards worth $23.1 million, bonus compensation of $23.9 million and "all other" compensation of $1.9 million.

Cash bonuses and stock awards for Zaslav and WBD's other named executive officers are tied to free cash flow targets.

“A Minecraft Movie” leveled up at the box office, collecting a blockbuster $157 million in its opening weekend. It’s not only the biggest domestic debut of the year but the best in history for a video game adaptation.

Heading into the weekend, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s PG fantasy comedy, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, was projected to take in $70 million to $80 million, with some bullish analysts suggesting a final number closer to $90 million.

Thanks to pent-up demand for a family film, broad appeal and goodwill toward the 2011 video game, however, “Minecraft” squashed expectations in the U.S. and abroad. At the international box office, the tentpole added $144 million for a global start of $301 million. The film cost $150 million to produce before global marketing expenses.

On March 21, the same day Columbia University conceded to President Trump’s policy demands as a condition for restoring $400 million in federal funding, a timely screening of a new documentary dissected the 2024 student protests for Gaza at Columbia that sparked an international phenomenon. The Encampments (2025), produced by BreakThrough News and Watermelon Pictures, extricates the movement from the grips of mainstream media narratives and places it back in the hands of its organizers, including Palestinian graduate student and lead co-negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, who is currently detained and facing possible deportation.

Directed by BreakThrough News journalist Kei Pritsker and filmmaker Michael T. Workman, with rapper Macklemore and BreakThrough Editor-in-Chief Ben Becker among the film’s executive producers, the 76-minute documentary follows the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at Columbia University over the two-week period. The film specifically highlights the voices of Khalil, co

The refusal of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) leadership to come to the immediate and unconditional defense of award-winning Hamdan Ballal (Palestinian co-director of No Other Land), savagely attacked by Israeli settlers and soldiers Monday, has provoked a significant crisis in the filmmaking world.

A full two days after the beating and arrest, and only in response to criticisms from No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham, the Academy leadership broke its silence on the brutal episode and issued a perfunctory comment. That elicited an angry international reaction.

The size and character of the angry opposition to the Academy management’s kowtowing to the Zionist lobby and the Trump administration demonstrate the depth of the worldwide opposition to the mass murder and accompanying criminality going on in Gaza and the West Bank.

Warner Bros has completed the sale we told you about a couple weeks ago for their previously shelved Coyote Vs Acme movie.

Ketchup Entertainment today confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to the live-action/animated hybrid film that brings Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote to the big screen. We had the deal pegged in the $50M range and the film is expected to get a theatrical release in 2026.

Last night, I heard a full album of Lady Gaga singing jazz with Tony Bennett on a live stream. She's really fucking good and apparently aspired to that in the first place. Now this? Funny how people go through formative periods before landing.