Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* was released in United States theaters this past May. Directed by Jack Schreier, who is now helming Marvel’s X-Men movie, Thunderbolts* stars Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, Lewis Pullman as Robert “Bob” Reynolds/Sentry, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, HannahJohn-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
What Oscars is the MCU Thunderbolts* movie campaigning for?
On Disney’s For Your Consideration page, it’s been announced that Thunderbolts* is campaigning for the Best Picture. If it were to win, the award would go to Kevin Feige.
Thunderbolts* is also campaigning for Best Director (Schreier), Best Actress (Pugh), Best Supporting Actor (Stan and Pullman), Best Supporting Actress (Louis-Dreyfus), Best Casting (Sarah Halley Finn), Best Adapted Screenplay (Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo), Best Cinematography (Andrew Droz Palermo), Best Costume Design (Sanja Hays), Best Film Editing (Angela Catanzaro and Harry Yoon), Best Makeup & Hairstyling (Kimberly Jones and Lane Friedman), Best Original Score (Son Lux), Best Production Design (Grace Run and Gene Serdena), Best Sound (Samson Neslund, Daniel Laurie, Onnalee Blank, Michael Semanick, and Chris Giles), and Best Visual Effects (Jake Morrions, Chad Wiebe, Mat Krentz, and Nikos Kalaitzidis).
The Oscar nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2026, with the ceremony then being held on March 15, 2026.
At the same time, Marvel is trying to get Captain America: Brave New World some Oscars love, as that movie has been submitted for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects.
Thunderbolts* is now streaming on Disney+.
Originally reported by Brandon Schreur at SuperHeroHype.
Halloween weekend at the box office offered a few final scares, including a last-minute resurgence for Black Phone 2 and the reanimated corpse of BookTok powering the Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You. Behind them, Bugonia expanded to modest numbers, and One Battle After Another continued its run as the biggest points-earner of the season.
It seemed as if Black Phone 2 would end its run at the top of the box-office charts after only a week when Chainsaw Man cut it down to size last weekend. But in classic horror movie fashion, the Ethan Hawke—fronted horror sequel rose up from the grave for one last scare. Initial estimates put the Grabber’s second outing neck and neck with (and even slightly behind) the rom-dram Regretting You, but when the numbers finally shook out, Black Phone 2 took the weekend’s top spot with $8.3 million, pushing its cumulative total to $61 million. Factoring in bonus points for clearing $50 million and finishing No. 1, Black Phone 2 is now at 126 total points, second to only One Battle After Another (192 points) on the overall leaderboard. Considering that 80 of those OBAA points are from the Gotham Awards nominations last week, Black Phone 2 is the league leader thus far in terms of pure box office. That’s good news for the 1,773 of you who had enough faith in the Grabber to pick the movie up for $5.
Meanwhile, Regretting You held on admirably in its second week. It’s easy to forget now, but the 2024 film It Ends With Us wasn’t just the pretext for an extended media controversy and eventually the basis of a lawsuit involving Blake Lively and director-star Justin Baldoni. It was, in fact, a $350 million worldwide summer box-office smash, and a big factor in its success is that it was based on a hugely popular novel by Colleen Hoover. Regretting You — a romantic drama starring Allison Williams and Dave Franco that, as far as we know, has not generated any lawsuits — did not drum up nearly the kind of fervor as the previous Hoover adaptation. But at a cost of only $3, the 352 people who drafted the film have gotten decent value out of it so far.
One Battle After Another picked up another $1 million and change in its sixth week, inching it ever closer to the $75 million bonus-point threshold. That’s nice, but after last week’s Gotham-nominations haul, box-office performance is about to become a marginal portion of OBAA’s greater points portfolio. The same likely cannot be said for Tron: Ares, which needed to be a $100 million–to–$200 million blockbuster to end up as a worthwhile buy for its 896 teams. At $67 million and with dwindling awards possibilities (maybe it will show up on the Oscars’ Visual Effects shortlist), that outcome seems unlikely.
In terms of movies that are significant awards contenders, Bugonia expanded wide, pushing to $5 million cumulative and fifth place at the weekend box office. For comparison’s sake, Poor Things didn’t expand to 2,000-plus screens until its eighth week, but it still managed to clear $5 million in its third weekend, on only 800 screens, en route to a $34 million domestic take. On the other end of the Yorgos Lanthimos–Emma Stone line is last year’s Kinds of Kindness, which had made only $3.8 million after three weeks and on 900 screens. Bugonia’s box-office performance is closer to the Kinds of Kindness side of things, though the film’s awards prospects seem better.
And now for our weekly banging of the Roofman drum: After four weeks in release, Roofman sits at a respectable $21 million, putting it ahead of the following movies:
• Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere — $16M • The Smashing Machine — $11M • Bugonia — $5M • After the Hunt — $3M
Does this mean anything? Is Roofman just at the top of a list of relatively low-earning movies with prestige elements that 20 years ago would have made five times what they’re making now? Perhaps! I still say let’s put Channing Tatum in the Oscars race.
You can visit the MFL landing page to scope out the full leaderboard with information on mini-leagues — and join us on Discord for expanded stats and discussions.
Predator: Badlands: November 7 Christy: November 7 Die My Love: November 7 In Your Dreams: November 7 Nuremberg: November 7 Peter Hujar’s Day: November 7 Sentimental Value: November 7 Train Dreams: November 7 Now You See Me: Now You Don’t: November 14 The Running Man: November 14 Jay Kelly: November 14 Keeper: November 14 Arco: November 14 Come See Me in the Good Light: November 14 (Apple TV+) Left-Handed Girl: November 14 Sirāt: November 14
Gotham Awards: December 1 New York Film Critics Circle announcement: December 2 Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations: December 3 Critics Choice Awards nominations: December 5 Golden Globe nominations: December 8
Two generational talents of Japanese cinema shared the stage to discuss each other’s work at Tokyo International Film Festival, where each has been celebrated with an award. Yōji Yamada, 91, has more than 90 directing credits to his name, while Lee Sang-il’s Kokuho is the biggest Japanese live-action box office hit in decades, having passed 16 billion yen ($105 million), and is Japan’s entry for the best international film Oscar.
Mutual respect was more than evident, and the conversation flowed through analysis of their craft to gentle teasing, mostly from Yamada, at the standing-room only event.
The veteran director was the first recipient of the festival’s Akira Kurosawa Award in 2004, along with Steven Spielberg. This year, it was Lee’s turn to receive it, with Yamada given the Lifetime Achievement Award the previous day.
“They’ve introduced our films side by side, but compared with his grand epic, mine feels like quite a lightweight. I’m almost embarrassed to see them together,” said Yamada of his Tokyo Taxi, his reimagining of Christian Carion’s Driving Madeliene (2022).
Lee, whose film Kokuho translates as national treasure, replied: “If there is such a thing as a living national treasure in filmmaking, Yamada-sensei is definitely one. I just hope to absorb even a little of his dedication.”
Though there was a moderator on stage, Yamada effectively took his role for the opening stretch of the talk, asking questioning Lee on how he had portrayed Japan’s traditional kabuki theater, and the human drama between two of its practitioners, so vividly and convincingly onscreen.
Yamada began by probing into the “dramatic structure” of Kokuho, the story of two kabuki actors whose lives are bound by artistry, desire, and fate.
“Usually, when you have two male leads, a woman is between them in some sort of triangle. But here, something entirely different lies between them: homosexuality. It’s this irrational romantic force that becomes the very theme of the story. That’s what makes this film extraordinary,” said Yamada.
That dynamic tension had been created by Shuichi Yoshida, the author of the 2018 novel on which the film is based, noted Lee. The director previously adapted Yoshida’s Akunin (Villain) in 2010 and Ikari (Rage) in 2016, both to acclaim.
“The tension between bloodline and sexuality creates a fascinating duality. I didn’t want jealousy or rivalry like in Amadeus. Since both men devote themselves to the same suffering, I hoped a kind of transcendent beauty would emerge by the end,” explained Lee.
For Yamada, that avoidance of conventional melodrama was one of the keys to the film’s power.
The two leads trained for about a year and a half in total to portray the male kabuki performers of female roles, known as onnagata, noted Lee: “They even practiced on days off during shooting. Their persistence and dedication were incredible.”
Tanaka Min, who plays the elderly kabuki master in Kokuho, was cast in his first major film role by Yamada in The Twilight Samurai in 2002 (the film won a record 12 Japan Academy Awards and was nominated for the then best foreign language film Oscar).
“He’s a butoh dancer [postwar avant-garde theater] not an actor, and at first he was terrible,” laughed Yamada. “Completely wooden. But his physicality and voice had such presence that it didn’t matter. Even now he hasn’t really ‘improved’, but that’s what makes him special, like a Noh actor. You don’t need him to act; his just being there is enough.”
Pushing back against Yamada’s playful ribbing about his reputation as a demanding director, Lee said, “That presence, combined with his movement, gives him a kind of magic. I wasn’t harsh in directing him. He doesn’t change no matter what you say, so instead of forcing it, I’d suggest small adjustments in tone or gesture. His stillness speaks volumes.”
Aside from its setting in the niche world of highbrow traditional theater, another reason Kokuho’s commercial success has been a surprise is its nearly three-hour runtime. Lee revealed that his initial cut was actually four and a half hours. “All the kabuki scenes were about twice as long; That alone was an extra half hour; we had to trim a lot.”
Despite Yamada’s best efforts, after an offstage prompt, talk turned to Tokyo Taxi, and how he approached the remake.
“I simply asked myself, if it were Japan, how would it go? A Japanese taxi driver and an elderly Japanese woman, their relationship would of course be different,” said Yamada.
Scenes with the taxi driver (Takuya Kimura) at home with his family, which were not part of the original, were singled out for praise by Lee for adding domestic realism.
“I really wanted to make that breakfast scene,” said Yamada. “The year before, he [Kimura] played a top Paris-trained chef. This time, he’s eating natto [fermented soybeans]. But he’s very earnest and sincere. Always early on set: a true professional.”
Next it was time for Lee to tease Yamada, asking why he always stands right beside the “Because the actors need to know I’m watching,” replied Yamada. “They can feel the director’s gaze. I don’t understand how some directors give directions from a monitor, sometimes from another room.” camera on set.
Smiling as he did so, Yamada steered the conversation back to Kokuho, asking Lee about the numbers of extras in the kabuki scenes (500), and how he had broken multiple cinematic conventions in creating his tour de force.
Answering an audience question about the potential for Japanese live-action filmmaking to emulate the international success of anime, Yamada made an impassioned plea for more government backing.
“Japanese animation is a huge global success, while our live-action films barely register. When I entered the industry 70 years ago, Japanese cinema was vibrant and internationally respected — Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu. Now, Korea and China have surged ahead. It’s painful to watch,” Yamada said. “We need not just filmmakers’ effort but national support. The Korean government truly backs its film industry. Japan should do the same. It’s a matter of cultural policy.”
The first major nominations of awards season are here and everything is still coming up PTA. Thanks to a 2023 rule change that removed a $35 million budget cap on eligible films, One Battle After Another led the Gotham Awards nominations with a record total of six nods (Best Feature, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Outstanding Supporting Performance for both Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor, and Breakthrough Performer for Chase Infiniti). The points have been tallied and added to the leaderboard, but you’ll have to wait till next week’s newsletter for a full analysis of the Gotham noms and how they will affect the league. In the meantime, let’s just say you should be feeling pretty good if you bet on Rose Byrne’s performance carrying If I Had Legs I’d Kick You into the awards conversation.
If you’re not already signed up for the MFL, it’s not too late to join — you can still build a contending team with movies that haven’t yet been released. Joe Reid’s draft guide runs through each eligible film. The final draft deadline will be Thursday, December 18. If you don’t want to miss out, draft now.
➼ The first step is to draft a team of eight eligible movies released in 2025 using a budget of 100 fake dollars. Each movie has been assigned a value based on its points-earning potential.
➼ New for This Season: In past years, we closed registration when the season started: If you didn’t sign up by that date, you couldn’t play. This year, we’re extending registration through December — with a catch:drafting after September 25 means you’ll be limited to only films that haven’t yet started accruing points (i.e. you can only draft unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards.)
➼ Starting on September 26, you’ll accrue points based on the box-office performance, awards haul, and critical reception of the movies you picked. Each week starting Tuesday, September 30, the updated leaderboard will be available on this page and in the weekly MFL newsletter.
➼ The teams that earn the most points when the game ends after the 2026 Oscars will win one or more of the great prizes below.
➼ If you want to compete against your friends, family, or co-workers, you can create a mini-league. Alternatively, you can join a mini-league associated with your favorite creator. You’ll find more details on that below.
➼ There’s a limit of one entry per email address. You can’t modify your team once it has been submitted, even if a movie you picked gets rescheduled to next year.
The Creators Division: Dozens of our favorite culture-podcast hosts and producers, Substackers, and newsletter writers are competing in a subset of the MFL. When the leaderboard is live, you’ll be able to filter to see how the various creators are faring against each other. At the end of the season, the winner will receive an ostentatious championship belt, because why not?
Mini-Leagues: You can play against a set of friends in a mini-league. Have everyone in your crew enter the same league name on the ballot when you each register, and then you’ll be able to filter the standings to see how everyone in your group is doing. There will also be mini-leagues associated with most of the participants in the Creators Division; stay tuned for more info on those groups. You can only participate in one mini-league, so that may mean choosing between your friends and your favorite creator.
Prizes
Oh, look, it’s an array of fantastic prizes. Here’s what’s up for grabs:
Grand Prizes (1st–3rd Place)
The overall winner gets to select one of the following devices:
The second-place finisher gets to choose between the remaining two, and third place will get the final item. You can’t go wrong.
Criterion Channel Subscription (1st–10th Place)
Photo: Criterion Channel
Everyone who finishes in the top ten will be rewarded for their efforts with a yearlong subscription to the Criterion Channel’s streaming library, otherwise known as Ben Affleck’s idea of heaven.
Pick Your Players
Registration is open for the 2025–26 season. Once you’ve done your research, you can select your team by clicking the ostentatiously colored button below. Now that the early draft window is closed, you’re limited only to unreleased films that haven’t started accruing points. Sign-ups will close for the season on December 18.
Not ready to draft yet? Sign up here for a reminder to build your team before the draft window closes for good.
Scoring Categories
Once your roster is selected, you will earn points in three categories:
1. Domestic Box-Office Performance
Movies will only be eligible for box-office points if they are released on or after September 26 (once the scoring window begins). Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on Box Office Mojo):
Every $1 million earned: 1 point Clears $25 million: 10-point bonus Clears $50 million: 15-point bonus Clears $75 million: 15-point bonus Clears $100 million: 20-point bonus Clears $125 million: 15-point bonus Clears $150 million: 15-point bonus Clears $175 million: 15-point bonus Clears $200 million: 25-point bonus Reaches No. 1 at the domestic box office: 20 points per week spent at No. 1
2. Critical Performance
Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on the Metacritic “Metascore”):
Metacritic points will be awarded all at once on January 6 and will not be adjusted based on subsequent score fluctuations. Only movies that have been released and have a Metascore score at the time of scoring are eligible for Critical Performance points.
3. Awards
Points will be awarded for both awards nominations and wins. See the calendar below for points associated with each event.
British actor Anthony Hopkins attends the Vanity Fair Oscar party following the 94th Oscars in Beverly Hills, California on March 27, 2022.(Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images)
During a sit-down with “The Interview,” Hopkins noted he was hesitant to tell the story out of fear of sounding “preachy or like a goody two shoes.”
“I was drunk, driving my car here in California, in a blackout – no clue where I was going,” Hopkins said.
“It was a moment when I realized that I could have killed somebody – or myself, which I didn’t care about, but I could have killed a family in a car. I realized I was an alcoholic. I came to my senses and I said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, I said, ‘I need help.’”
Anthony Hopkins recalled his journey with sobriety after 49 years of abstaining from alcohol.(Getty Images)
“I made the fatal phone call to an intergroup in LA, a 12-step program. They said, ‘We’ll send somebody over to meet you,’ and I said, ‘No, I’ll come to you.’”
When Hopkins arrived at the meeting, he heard a “deep, powerful thought” that told him, “It’s all over. Now you can start living and it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.”
Almost instantly, Hopkins said, his craving for drinking just left.
“I don’t know or have any theories except divinity, or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth – life force – whatever it is. It’s a consciousness, I believe. That’s all I know. My whole life has been like that,” he said.
Hopkins admitted he drank “to nullify that discomfort, or whatever it was in me, because it made me feel big. You know booze is terrific because it instantly feels in a different space and I enjoyed that.”
Before getting sober, he recalled thinking to himself, “This is going to kill me… I was drinking like it was going out of fashion.”
In December, the “Silence of the Lambs” star commemorated his decades of sobriety in a video shared on Instagram.
“So 49 years ago today, I stopped… and I was having so much fun, but then I realized I was in big, big trouble because I couldn’t remember anything,” he said. “I was driving a car drunk out of my skull. Then on that fatal day I realized I needed help. So I got it.”
He added, “If you do have a problem – having fun is wonderful, having a drink is fine – but if you are having a problem with the booze, there is help. It’s not a terrible deal, it’s a condition. If you’re allergic to alcohol, get some help. There’s plenty of help around.”
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’s annual gala has become one of the most sought-after invitations in Hollywood—and last night’s soiree, which raised over $12 million to support the museum’s exhibitions and initiatives, was no exception. The gala was co-chaired by Jon M. Chu, Common, Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey, Jennifer Hudson, and Academy Museum Trustee Alejandro Ramírez Magaña. The affair marks the beginning of a deluge of events leading up to the Oscars in March. But nothing can compare with a party that draws guests like Addison Rae, Ayo Edeberi, Channing Tatum, Charli xcx, Dwayne Johnson, Kim Kardashian (wearing a nude-colored face mask, all in the name of fashion), and director Ryan Coogler, just to name a few.
Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey opened the evening, introducing the Director and President of the Academy Museum, Amy Homma, who welcomed guests. The first presenter of the night was Wim Wenders, who handed director Walter Salles the Luminary Award. The Vantage Award was presented by Wicked director Chu to actor and comedian Bowen Yang. After dinner, the next presenter—recent best supporting actress Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña—presented the Icon Award to another Oscar-winning actress, Penélope Cruz. The final award, the inaugural Legacy Award, was presented by Martin Scorsese to Oscar-winning singer, songwriter, and musician Bruce Springsteen. Before the night was over, George Clooney introduced a special musical performance by The Boss, who closed out the evening singing “Streets of Philadelphia,” “Atlantic City,” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
The gala was presented in partnership with Rolex. Now in its fifth year, the Academy Museum Gala is an annual fundraiser and celebration of the museum, whose goal is to advance the celebration and preservation of cinema.
I was so trained that you do not break your façade. You never raise your voice. If you need to, you walk out of the room, you sort your shit out, you come back, and you do your job. So whilst we were doing these scenes, there were moments when I, as Rebecca, felt I’m feeling something in my throat. I’m actually feeling sad, and if I lean into this, I’m going to burst, start crying any second. So I would turn and leave my station, and then Kathryn would come back and go, “Where did you go?” And I said, “I just walked into the room. I had a moment.” Two seconds later, before we did the take, there was a camera in there. She grabbed it and they followed me in, and I decided to do the phone call in there.
The other time it happened was sitting and looking at my [character’s son’s] dinosaur toy—that wasn’t in the script. I thought, It’s the tiny little human thing that I can bring in sneakily. I leaned away from the camera, but I didn’t realize that there was another camera that grabbed the moment—it wasn’t planned.
The film feels especially timely at the moment, in this country.
It’s important that this is not referring to any form of active presidency in the world, and it’s not just referring to America. There is no one single baddie in this film. The baddie is the system and the structure, and then you can analyze and have your own opinion. But this is a question about nuclear war and nuclear weapons.
How are you handling the time we’re in now, where there’s so much to be concerned about politically and internationally?
I don’t read the news, and I don’t say that lightly. I don’t have Instagram because I didn’t like the way it was feeding me news—it felt filtered. If I read the news, I want to choose my outlet, and I wish to choose from every angle so that I get every perspective. I find people like Kathryn, she deep dives into it and she goes to people who she believes in to give her news and information. I find it hard to give time to that, and I feel like it would break me. I know what’s happening in the world, but I’m not well-versed enough to stand on the barricades to have the arguments. I wish I could, because I’m a person with very strong moral values and opinions. I know exactly where I stand. But I feel like right now, everything that I would say would be an empty platitude in comparison to how I actually feel. I find the world a very sad and horrendous place right now.
This year’s Student Academy Awards winners were chosen from a total of 3,127 entries received from 988 colleges and universities around the globe. Gold, Silver and Bronze placements were announced in each category, and students were presented with trophies during the ceremony. First-time honors went to the University of Copenhagen, Gobelins, Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, London College of Communication and the University of the West of England Bristol.
The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to provide an opportunity for emerging talent to showcase their work within the industry. All student Academy Award-winning films are eligible to compete for the 98th Oscars in the categories of animated short film, live action short film or documentary short film. Past winners have gone on to receive 69 Oscar nominations and have won or shared 15 awards.
See below for the full list of 2025 Student Academy Award winners, listed alphabetically by category.
Alternative/Experimental Gold: Xindi Zhang, “The Song of Drifters,” University of Southern California Silver: Vega Moltke-Leth, “Without Perfection,” University of Copenhagen, Denmark Bronze: Mati Granica, “flower_gan,” London College of Communication, United Kingdom
Animation Gold: Tobias Eckerlin, “A Sparrow’s Song,” Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, Germany Silver: Lucas Ansel, “The 12 Inch Pianist,” Rhode Island School of Design Bronze: Sofiia Chuikovska, Loïck du Plessis D’Argentré & Maud Le Bras, “The Shyness of Trees,” Gobelins, France
Documentary Gold: Tatiana McCabe, “Tides of Life,” University of the West of England Bristol, United Kingdom Silver: Rebeka Bizubová, “Confession,” Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia Bronze: Jane Deng, “I Remember,” New York University
Narrative Gold: Jan Saczek, “Dad’s Not Home,” Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, Poland Silver: Meyer Levinson-Blount, “Butcher’s Stain,” Tel Aviv University, Israel Bronze: ZEFAN, “Kubrick, Like I Love You,” Columbia University
The film, a co-production between Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates, was made with the support of Tajikfilm in Tajikistan and produced in Tajik and Persian. The cast includes a group of prominent Tajik actors, namely Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammaï, Kibriyo Dilyobova, and Bezhan Davlyatov. Mokri wrote the screenplay with Nasim Ahmadpour. The producer is Negar Eskandarfar.
“A suspicious film prop, a mysterious audition, a conspiratorial road incident and multiple rabbits are woven together in this bold and beguiling drama from Tajikistan,” reads a synopsis of the movie. “A film armorer suspects a fake firearm is real. An actor arrives on set demanding a role. A car crash victim fears her accident was deliberate. Three seemingly disparate stories weave into an enigmatic whole, with flowing, expertly choreographed takes, no small amount of droll humour and flashes of magic realism punctuating Iranian director Shahram Mokri’s playful, subtly provocative meta-mystery.”
The DreamLab Films production is the fourth movie that Tajikistan has submitted for the international Oscar race. The Central Asian country has never been nominated.
Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is Mokri’s fourth feature film. His feature debut Fish & Cat (2013) won a special award in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section at the Venice Film Festival. The director went on to direct Invasion (2017), which screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, followed by Careless Crime (2020), which screened at Venice and won the jury prize at the Chicago International Film Festival.
When Kieran Culkin wished for a third child in his Oscar speech this year, his wife Jazz Charton was listening: the couple is expecting!
THR reports the 42-year-old actor and his 37-year-old wife made it official at the opening night of “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway Sunday, where Kieran placed his hand on Jazz’s baby bump.
Their family already includes their 6-year-old daughter and their 4-year-old son.
While picking up his first Oscar, for the film “A Real Pain,” Culkin famously said during his acceptance speech, “My beautiful wife, Jazz, thank you for sharing your life with me and giving me two amazing kids, Kinsey Sioux and Wilder Wolf, I love you so many and so much. And Jazz: I want more. You said maybe if I win.”
He clarified backstage that night, “A couple of months ago, I’d been asking for a while, and my wife, Jazz, said, ‘Maybe if you win the Emmy.’ And I didn’t bring it up for months, and then when I won the Globe, I said, ‘Remember what you said?’ She said, ‘What? I don’t remember,’ and then I told her and it all came back to her. So she spent the whole week being nervous, and instead of talking to her in private like a human, I just blasted her onstage, which was very rude. Anyway, that’s the whole story. The end.”
Kieran has said he actually wants not just one more baby, but two.
While another creative name for baby no. 3 seems likely, he has already ruled out naming any future children after his high-strung “Succession” character, Roman.
Australia has selected Gabrielle Brady’s Mongolian-language documentary The Wolves Always Come at Night as its submission for the best international feature category at the 2026 Academy Awards. Brady’s film will also run for consideration in the best documentary feature category.
Blending documentary and fiction, the film tells the story of Mongolian herders Davaasuren Dagvasuren and Otgonzaya Dashzeveg who make the difficult decision to leave their homelands after the arrival of a powerful and destructive sandstorm, a situation made worse by the climate crisis.
The Wolves Always Come premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival in the Platform Prize program, although there was drama at the festival after Davaasuren and Otgonzaya were denied visitor visas by the Canadian government. The film also screened in competition at the London Film Festival in 2024 and screened at Zurich Film Festival, IDFA, San Francisco International Film Festival, True/False and Sydney Film Festival.
The Wolves Always Come at Night is the world’s first co-production between Germany, Australia and Mongolia. Executive producers include Oscar-winner Dan Cogan, Deanne Weir, Stefanie Plattner, Alexander Wadouh, and Emma Hindley. The film received principal production investment from Screen Australia and significant private investment from Weir Anderson Films, alongside Storming Donkey Productions. The Wolves Always Come at Night was also financed with support from BBC Storyville, SWR Arte, and Madman Films. Cinephil is repping for worldwide sales.
Australia’s Oscar submissions are chosen by a committee of industry professionals selected by Screen Australia.
Despite English being the de facto national language of Australia, the country has been consistently submitting films into the best international feature film (formerly the best foreign language film) category at the Oscars since 1996. As of 2025, sixteen Australian films have been submitted including Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr’s Yolngu Matha and Gunwinggu language film Ten Canoes (2006); Warwick Thornton’s Warlpiri language film Samson and Delilah (2009) which was shortlisted; Kim Mordaunt’s Lao language film The Rocket (2013); and Bentley Dean and Martin Butler’s Nauvhal language film Tanna (2016), which was awarded an official nomination.
Francesco Costabile’s dark melodrama “Familia” has been designated as Italy’s candidate for the best international feature film category of the 2026 Academy Awards.
“Familia,” which weaves together elements of psychological thriller and social commentary and launched from the 2024 from the Venice Film Festival was a somewhat surprising choice. Several other candidates among the 24 titles in the running to be designated made their debut in competition at Venice this year including Gianfranco Rosi’s doc “Below the Clouds,” which won the Special Jury Prize at Venice. Other submissions in the running that recently launched from the lido and were considered frontrunners included Pietro Marcello’s “Duse,” starring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as legendary actress Eleonora Duse, and Leonardo Di Costanzo’s psychological drama “Elisa.”
Paolo Sorrentino’s Venice opener “La Grazia” was not on the list due to its scheduled early 2026 release date.
“Familia” follows the harrowing journey of Luigi, a young man grappling with a toxic family legacy and his entanglement with extremist ideologies. Based on Luigi Celeste’s autobiographical book “It Won’t Be Like This Forever,” the story delves into the destructive cycles of violence and the struggle for redemption.
“Familia” launched in 2024 from the Venice’s Horizons strand and won the section’s prize for best actor which went to Francesco Gheghi. The film’s cast also conprises Barbara Ronchi (“Kidnapped” by Marco Bellochio), and Francesco Di Leva (“Nostalgia” by Mario Martone).
Costabile previously garnered critical acclaim for his debut feature “Una Femmina — The Code of Silence” about women who’ve had the courage to break away from the grip of the Calabrian mob’s blood ties and codes.
“Familia” is produced by Attilio de Razza and Nicola Picone at Rome-based Tramp Limited. The co-producers are Nicola Giuliano at Rome’s Indigo Film and Pierpaolo Verga at Naples’ O’Groove, and in association with Medusa Film.
Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, and John and Nancy Ross hosted a screening of Marianna Brennand’s debut film “Manas” on Saturday in Los Angeles.
The film, one of those vying to be the Oscar contender for Brazil, was introduced by Roberts and Penn, who serves as an executive producer. The screening was followed by a Q&A with Brennand, the film’s director, writer and producer, and its star, Dira Paes.
Sean Penn and Julia Roberts with Marianna Brennand at the Los Angeles screening
Courtesy of Phil Faraone, Getty Images
Roberts told the audience: “I am so excited for what’s about to happen to everyone in this room because it happened to me and it will change you. This movie is life-affirming in such a sad and beautiful and magical way.”
Building on that sentiment, Penn reflected on the first time he encountered Brennand, recalling: “At the Cannes Film Festival this year, there was a Kering Foundation dinner, and a woman came up to the stage to accept the Emerging Talent Award. She gave a speech, and the authenticity of this person was the kind of power that could only make a great film.”
Julia Roberts with Marianna Brennand and Sean Penn at the Los Angeles screening
Courtesy of Phil Faraone, Getty Images
Brennand expressed her gratitude to her hosts: “Thank you, Sean, for seeing us, for recognizing the power of this story, and for speaking out… And Julia, thank you for empowering us with your presence here today. You both are immensely amplifying our voices.”
The film was born out of 10 years of research in the Amazon by Brennand, who began her career as a documentarian. It tells the story of Marcielle (Jamilli Correa), a 13-year-old from Marajó Island. Silenced in a society that ignores violence against women and children, she “confronts generational wounds and takes control of her destiny, forever altering her family’s fate,” according to a statement.
“Manas” won Brennand the best director award at Venice Days, the independent parallel section of the Venice Film Festival, and has collected a total 27 awards to date. The Brazilian film is one of six titles shortlisted to represent the country at the 2026 Academy Awards, with Penn, Academy Award winner Walter Salles, two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and “I’m Still Here” producer Maria Carlota Bruno serving as executive producers.
On his decision to join as executive producer, Penn previously stated: “In the tradition last fulfilled by Walter Salles’s ‘I’m Still Here,’ Marianna Brennand’s film ‘Manas’ continues Brazil’s most enduring cinematic legacy. Films of striking social relevance that never fall to polemic or sensationalism, but instead so trustingly fulfill their characters’ plight and courage. ‘Manas’ is deeply emotional, stirring, and God forbid… important. I felt as if I had to put my skin back on after watching it.”
James Vanderbilt’s courtroom drama “Nuremberg” may be rooted in history, but it’s also quite possibly one of the season’s most timely and awards-worthy films. Centered on the first international tribunal that put Nazi leaders on trial, the film is a riveting psychological thriller that could be a formidable player across multiple Oscar categories.
What makes “Nuremberg” particularly compelling in today’s political landscape is how it interrogates the very foundations of justice itself. At a time when democratic institutions face unprecedented challenges globally, Vanderbilt’s film recounts historical events and forces audiences to confront uncomfortable questions about how societies reckon with evil and whether justice can truly be impartial when confronting the unthinkable.
At the heart of “Nuremberg” is Russell Crowe‘s towering turn as Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command. The Oscar winner hasn’t delivered work this commanding since Ron Howard’s “Cinderella Man” (2005). Here, Crowe captures the paradox of Göring’s charisma and monstrosity, portraying a man capable of seducing the room even as his crimes repulse the world. Crowe’s German dialogue, which he learned specifically for the role, adds a layer of authenticity, with his cat-and-mouse exchanges with Rami Malek’s Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley crackling with intensity. It’s the kind of transformative, fully inhabited performance that could catapult him back into the thick of a very competitive best actor race.
The genius of Crowe’s portrayal lies in how he doesn’t take any shortcuts in portraying Göring entirely. A risky and morally complex character like this serves a crucial purpose: it reminds us that evil often wears a human face, speaks eloquently, and can even be charming. That’s also a credit to Vanderbilt’s complex script, which is based on “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai.
But Crowe isn’t the only standout. Rising star Leo Woodall, best known for “The White Lotus,” and who is currently starring in another TIFF film “Tuner,” cements himself as a force with his emotional turn as a translator caught in the tribunal’s web. Though he entered the project without speaking German, Woodall committed himself to mastering the language for the role, delivering a performance brimming with resonance and restraint. One scene he has late in the film reduces the audiences to tears, marking him as a dark horse worthy of serious supporting actor attention.
Beyond the acting showcases, “Nuremberg” has the goods to compete in several craft categories. Crisp production design meticulously recreates the claustrophobic cells and tribunal courtroom, while Dariusz Wolski’s camera work transports audiences back in time.
Adapted screenplay is another opportunity with Vanderbilt, best known for scripting “Zodiac” and “Truth,” finding a unique entry point into a well-documented chapter of history by focusing on the psychological duels between Kelley and Göring.
With Academy voters traditionally having shown an appetite in recent years for historical works that double as cautionary tales — such as “Oppenheimer” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — “Nuremberg” could also emerge as a sleeper candidate for best picture. But that will require a strong push from Sony Pictures Classics, no stranger to awards races.
The film’s timing is particularly prescient. As democracies face internal threats and international law struggles to contend with new forms of warfare and authoritarian manipulation, “Nuremberg” could be what the Oscars need at this moment.
It’s a film about the past that also has the fierce urgency of now.
Wagner Moura is no stranger to intense roles, but his latest performance in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” may be the one that defines his career, at least to U.S. audiences.
The Brazilian actor, known to American audiences from Netflix’s “Narcos,” won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of Marcelo, a technology expert swept up in the political turmoil of Brazil’s waning dictatorship in 1977. Since then, the film has been on the festival circuit, making stops at the Telluride Film Festival, and now TIFF, building more buzz and launching Moura into serious contention for best actor.
Set during Recife’s carnival, the historical political thriller follows Marcelo as he attempts to flee persecution while reconnecting with his estranged son. For Moura, the role was both a homecoming and a reckoning.
“It was liberating to do something in Portuguese again,” Moura tells Variety. “The last time I acted in my language was more than a decade ago. To return to my home, to Recife, to work with Kleber — it was like going back to the roots of why I became an actor.”
Moura and Mendonça Filho’s connection dates back nearly two decades, when the actor first encountered the director’s shorts and, later, his breakthrough “Neighboring Sounds.” Moura recalls meeting him at Cannes in 2005, when Mendonça Filho was still a critic.
“He’s my cinematic soulmate,” Moura shares. “He’s deeply political, but also deeply Brazilian. He can take influences from American films of the 1970s — the lenses, the structure — and make it something that belongs only to Brazil. That’s rare.”
That creative fusion paid off at Cannes. “The Secret Agent” was one of the festival’s most celebrated titles, winning best director, the FIPRESCI Prize and the Art House Cinema Award, alongside Moura’s own acting honor. It would be picked up by Neon, and is now getting a full-court Oscar campaign, seeking noms for international feature and even, best picture.
Though Marcelo is the central character, the film’s emotional heart lies in his fractured relationship with his son Fernando. Moura admits he approached the roles in stages, first inhabiting Marcelo fully before considering Fernando.
“I wanted people to feel like they were watching two different people,” he says. “For me, it was about imagining what it meant for a child to grow up not knowing his father. I have three sons myself. My father passed away. That father-and-son theme — that’s what moves me the most as an actor.” He compares the emotional intensity to playing Hamlet in his early 30s. “That was the greatest acting experience of my life. And this film touched the same part of me.”
If Moura’s performance in “The Secret Agent” translates into an Oscar nomination, it would mark a historic milestone. In nearly a century of the Academy Awards, only five Latino men have ever been nominated for best actor — including José Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Edward James Olmos, Demián Bichir and Colman Domingo. Moura would not only join their ranks as the sixth, but he would also be the first Brazilian ever recognized in the category, coming one year after Fernanda Torres from “I’m Still Here” became the second in best actress, following her mother Fernanda Montenegro 30 years earlier. “I’m Still Here” also picked up a surprise (and earned) best picture nomination, and went on to win international feature, the first for the country of Brazil.
Since “Narcos,” Moura has been selective about his roles in the United States. “Can you imagine the amount of offers I got to play drug dealers after that?” he says, shaking his head. “I felt a responsibility as a Latino actor not to reinforce stereotypes. I want the same kinds of roles any white American actor would be offered. That’s the real fight.”
He recalls constantly pushing for his characters to be Brazilian rather than generically “Latino.” “It’s strange — people rarely think of Brazilians when they say Latino. But I insist on it. Why not Brazilian?” Beyond acting, Moura is stepping behind the camera again. His 2017 feature “Marighella” tackled dictatorship head-on. Next up is “Last Night at the Lobster,” an English-language adaptation of Stewart O’Nan’s novel, produced by Peter Saraf (“Little Miss Sunshine”). The film, which he describes as an “anti-capitalist Christmas movie,” will star Elisabeth Moss, Brian Tyree Henry and Sofia Carson. Set in a Red Lobster franchise about to close during a snowstorm a week before Christmas, the story blends American holiday traditions with European realism.
“It’s about empathy and generosity. There’s no magic from Santa Claus. The magic comes from people,” Moura says.
The themes of “The Secret Agent” — memory, truth and resilience — resonate beyond Brazil. Moura sees echoes between his country’s recent struggles and the United States’ own democratic challenges. “Brazilians know what dictatorship is. Americans don’t,” he says bluntly. “That’s why we were efficient in defending democracy when our institutions were attacked. Here in the U.S., people sometimes take democracy for granted. That scares me.”
He worries about truth itself becoming malleable. “Facts don’t exist anymore. There are only versions, narratives. That’s dangerous.”
With “The Secret Agent” opening in Brazil this November through Vitrine Filmes, Moura stands at a new crossroads in his international career. Still, he remains grounded. “It’s about sticking to your values in tough times,” he shares. “That’s what this film is about. That’s what I want my sons to remember.”
Welcome back, friends and fools, to year FIVE of the Vulture Movies Fantasy League. We are about to turn the corner into a fall movie season that is packed with box-office behemoths, visionary auteurs bringing their latest films into the bosom of awards season, and a whole lotta questions about whether a vampire movie about race in America can play the long game all the way to Oscar gold.
If you’ve played the Movies Fantasy League before, the game hasn’t changed much; if you’re new, welcome to the circus. You can check out the rules for how to play on our MFL hub, but here is the nutshell summary: You select a roster of exactly eight films within a budget of 100 imaginary dollars. Once the scoring phase of the game begins, the films you’ve drafted will accumulate points for achieving milestones in box-office take, precursor awards/nominations, critical approval, and more. The movies we expect to do best will cost more, so your first task will be to manage your budget wisely.
In order to help you make wise choices, we have assembled the following draft guide. Below, you will find a listing for every movie that’s eligible to draft in the MFL this year. You can see how much they cost, the talent behind them, what film festivals they’ve played, and when they will debut to the public, either in theaters or on streaming (if they haven’t already).
Movies begin to accumulate points on kickoff day, September 26. Any movie that opens on that day or after is eligible to earn box-office points. Anything that has already opened, or will open before the 26th, is box-office ineligible and will be denoted as such in the guide. Between September 26 and the final deadline on December 18, you’ll still be able to draft a team, but during that span, you will only be able to draft films that haven’t started accruing points. That means you’ll be limited to unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards. So you’ll have to decide carefully when you want to draft your roster. We’ll remove movies from this guide when they’re no longer eligible to be drafted to avoid any confusion and disappointment.
It’s going to be an exciting few months, so why waste any time — read ahead and start researching!
Director: Jon M. Chu Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh Release date: November 21
Our top point-earner from last season, Wicked, was priced to sell at $20, mostly because there was still a lot of uncertainty around whether the film would bomb with critics (and subsequently awards voters). It didn’t, though, so last year’s success means a trip back to Oz for your fantasy squad won’t come cheap.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Ryan Coogler Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo Release date: Already released
Sinners is pretty much the only known quantity from the first half of 2025 that you can feel confident will be a major part of this year’s Oscar race. And while you won’t be able to benefit from the film’s hefty box office, the confidence of being able to select a film that you already know critics and audience loved could be worth the price tag.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro Release date: September 26
Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t whiffed with the Academy since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love (though it’s worth noting that 2014’s Inherent Vice only got a screenplay nomination). Academy members seem to be big PTA fans. Combine that with DiCaprio as a former ’60s radical, plus Oscar winners like del Toro and Sean Penn and breakthrough-ready talent like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, and things are looking good. Plus, Warner Bros. is said to have pumped up to $175 million into this project, so you better believe it’s going to push hard to get a return on that investment.
Director: Noah Baumbach Film festivals: Venice, Telluride, New York Stars: George Clooney, Adam Sandler Release date: November 14
Baumbach had his big Oscar breakthrough with Marriage Story several years ago; now he’s back with a very Oscar-friendly story about an aged movie star (Clooney) and his loyal agent (Sandler). Oscar narratives abound: Clooney has big “we’re so back” potential, while the already-percolating Supporting Actor campaign for Sandler feels like it’s been in the works for 25 years. This has every indication of being Netflix’s top-tier awards push.
Director: Joachim Trier Stars: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York Release date: November 17
While it fell short of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Sentimental Value did emerge from the festival with buzz as the most likely of the Cannes competition titles to follow the path to Oscar victory recently traversed by recent Palme winners Anatomy of a Fall and Anora.
Director: James Cameron Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña Release date: December 19
The first Avatar made $2.9 billion worldwide and got nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The second Avatar made $2.3 billion worldwide and got four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture but not Best Director. Even with that rate of diminishing returns, the third Avatar should still bring in plenty of points. The question is whether this third one can deliver something that puts Cameron back in the Oscar conversation.
Director: Guillermo del Toro Stars: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi Film festivals: Venice, Toronto Release date: October 17
Del Toro has been hot with Oscar ever since The Shape of Water took Best Picture eight years ago. His strange but artful Pinocchio adaptation turned out to be a huge MFL bargain a couple years ago after it ran the table in the animation categories all season. The question is how much Netflix as the distributor will cap Frankenstein’s value. It’s giving del Toro’s film the rare three-week theatrical run as opposed to the customary two, but that doesn’t mean you should expect much in the way of box-office points. Still, given del Toro’s reputation — and the recent performance of other high-end gothic horror like Nosferatu — this should be a strong player across at least the craft awards (production design, costume, cinematography, visual effects) all season.
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Stars: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone Film festivals: Venice, Telluride Release date: October 24
With The Favourite and Poor Things, Lanthimos has directed two previous films to double-digit Oscar nomination totals, including Best Picture/Best Director nominations and Best Actress wins for Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. Whether he can do the same with a film from writer Will Tracy (Succession, hooray!; The Menu and The Regime, hmmm) remains to be seen. Plemons and Stone reunite after Lanthimos’s perplexing Kinds of Kindness, but Focus Features is putting out all the indicators that this has big Oscar ambitions.
Director: Scott Cooper Stars: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong Film festivals: New York Release date: October 24
Last year, Searchlight pushed the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown all the way to major Oscar nominations and a near Best Actor win for Timothée Chalamet. This year, 20th Century Studios wants in on that action with its Bruce Springsteen biopic starring TV’s most intense performer, Jeremy Allen White. Cooper has already put a guitar in one actor’s hands and directed him to an Oscar — Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart — and Strong is already starting to build Supporting Actor buzz after his nomination last year.
Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard Stars: Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin Release date: November 26
Last year, Moana 2 opened on Thanksgiving weekend and racked up $225 million right out of the gate, despite pretty much everyone agreeing the film wasn’t good. The original Zootopia cleared the original Moana’s domestic take by nearly $100 million. That math could really end up working in your favor.
Director: Benny Safdie Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt Film festivals: Venice, Toronto Release date: October 3
Of the two Solitary Safdie Sibling movies this year, this is the one about MMA fighting. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt reunite from their Jungle Cruise days to play real-life Ultimate Fighting Champion Mark Kerr (him) and his loyal, understandably concerned wife (her). If Blunt ends up with two Oscar nominations to her name for playing the Wife, that’s going to be wild, but that’s a conversation for another day. This movie is going to be either too middlebrow for awards appeal or the sentimental fave of awards season. (And I could see A24 making it a bit of a box-office hit, too.)
Director: Luca Guadagnino Stars: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri Film festivals: Venice, New York Release date: October 10
Guadagnino struck out, Oscar-wise, with his two features last year, Challengers and Queer. But this year, he returns with Oscar winner Julia Roberts, Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield, and Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri in a hot-button drama about scandal and the generation gap in academia. Will this be Tár lite or something altogether trashier? It remains to be seen.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Edward Berger Stars: Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton Release date: October 15
Berger has directed two straight films to Oscar nominations in All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave; he’s trying for his third with this story about a maxed-out gambler (Farrell) who finds himself on the skids in Macau. The trailer looks intense, and Farrell’s part seems juicy. Don’t expect box-office points, however, as Netflix is giving this its customary two-week qualifying theatrical run, where box-office receipts are not usually reported.
Director: Hikari Stars: Brendan Fraser, Akira Emoto Film festivals: Toronto Release date: November 21
One big-time potential crowd-pleaser candidate for awards season is this film from Japanese director Hikari (Netflix’s Beef). It centers on Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job as a stand-in for various roles in real people’s lives. Lost in Translation meets a softer version of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps? Could really connect with people.
Director: Chloé Zhao Stars: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal Film festivals: Telluride, New York Release date: November 27
Zhao joins the laundry list of Oscar-winning directors releasing films this fall, though she’s looking to bounce back from her Marvel misadventure Eternals. Here, she’s adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, a fictionalized account of William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne, in the aftermath of losing their young son, Hamnet. Yes, that name does look and sound awfully similar to Hamlet. Shakespeare has done well at the Oscars in the past — just ask Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench how they got their trophies — and both Buckley and Mescal are young actors who have been recently admitted into the fold by Oscar voters (she was nominated for 2021’s The Lost Daughter, he for 2022’s Aftersun) and are seeking their first wins. That recipe could add up to a contender.
The year’s second solo Safdie is also a sporting affair, though in this case it’s about ping-pong champion Marty Mauser (Chalamet) and his exploits at the table-tennis … uh, table. This one looks quirkier than Josh’s more blunt instrument (no pun intended, Emily), but Chalamet has scored at the December box office two years in a row now (Wonka in 2023, A Complete Unknown last year). Maybe the prince of Christmas will deliver again.
Director: Joachim Rønning Stars: Jared Leto, Greta Lee Release date: October 10
Red flags exist if you’re looking for them. Rønning’s most prominent titles are a middling collection that includes the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the second Maleficent, and Young Woman and the Sea. 2010’s Tron: Legacy made decent money but left a lot of its audience nonplussed. But there’s a lot to be said for a visual spectacle (visual effects and sound awards feel like they’re in play), and it’s going to play in Imax for a couple weeks, which should help box-office totals.
Director: Jafar Panahi Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Ebrahim Azizi Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York Release date: October 15
Four of the last five winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes have gone on to become Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, with two of them (Parasite and Anora) winning. So there’s definitely reason to be optimistic about It Was Just an Accident. Even if the film isn’t as broadly appealing as recent Palme winners, there’s a good chance it follows the awards trajectory of previous Cannes hits like The Zone of Interest.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson Film festivals: Venice, New York Release date: October 24
Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) returns to global politics, only this time, the crisis is fictional. The film depicts a U.S. White House scrambling to deal with an impending missile strike on America. It’s been a while since Bigelow was a major player on the Oscar scene, but working off of a script from the screenwriter of Jackie (and, um, The Maze Runner), interest will be piqued.
Director: Bradley Cooper Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern Film festivals: New York
Bradley Cooper’s stand-up comedy movie? Bradley Cooper’s divorced-guy movie? Bradley Cooper’s SmartLess movie? (Sean Hayes also co-stars.) Whatever this movie turns out to be, Cooper always makes awards season more interesting.
Director: Bill Condon Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, Tonatiuh Film festivals: Sundance Release date: October 10
Jennifer Lopez doing a full-blown musical from the director of Dreamgirls sounds like it could be a dream come true … or a fantastic nightmare. Either way, it will be a spectacle. In the old days, Lopez would be assured of a Golden Globe nomination no matter how it turned out. The Globes have gotten more buttoned-up lately, though, so we’ll see how it goes.
Director: Derek Cianfrance Stars: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst Film festivals: Toronto Release date: October 10
There was a while there in the 2010s where Channing Tatum was doing daring work with directors like Bennett Miller, Quentin Tarantino, the Wachowskis, and the Coens. Then he seemed to retreat into safer rom-com fare. Perhaps teaming up with the director of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines for a film about a thief hiding out in the walls of a Toys “R” Us will get critics and audiences excited once again.
Director: James Vanderbilt Stars: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe Film festivals: Toronto Release date: November 7
Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s Zodiac, among others, but the only film he’s directed was the real-life journalism drama Truth that premiered in Toronto before fizzling in awards season. Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself for this biographical drama/psychological thriller about the trials of Nazi officials after World War II. Malek, who hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since he won for playing Freddie Mercury in 2018, plays a psychologist who examines the Nazi officials before trial. Crowe, who hasn’t been nominated since 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, plays Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg Stars: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi Release date: November 7
After making the direct-to-Hulu Predator-universe movie Prey feel like a legitimate blockbuster a few years ago, Trachtenberg gets to take the next film in the series to theaters where it belongs. With a plot that pairs an outcast Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi) with an unlikely ally in Fanning’s Thia, Badlands could be the horror-inflected large-format movie that succeeds in the window between Tron and Wicked.
Director: Clint Bentley Stars: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones Film festivals: Sundance, Toronto Release date: November 7
The buzziest film out of Sundance this year was this lyrical period piece from Bentley, co-writer of last year’s Sing Sing. (That film’s director, Greg Kwedar, co-wrote Train Dreams as well.) Netflix promptly bought it up, which means you shouldn’t expect box-office points, but this kind of movie is an awards play anyway. And Train Dreams could definitely be this year’s indie darling.
Director: Emma Tammi Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard Release date: December 5
Two years ago, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s took me by surprise, and I dramatically underpriced it before it exploded for $137 million domestic on the backs of its legion of video-game fans. Not this year! If you want those box-office points, you’re gonna have to pay for them.
Director: Rian Johnson Stars: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close Film festivals: Toronto Release date: December 12
Rian Johnson’s two previous Benoit Blanc mysteries were great fun, and both got Best Original Screenplay nominations … and nothing more. That might just be the level for these movies … unless cast members like Close or O’Connor make a particularly attractive case for a supporting performance campaign. There’s also the fact that, with Netflix distributing this one as it did with Glass Onion, you won’t be getting box-office points.
Director: Craig Brewer Stars: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson Release date: December 25
Jackman and Hudson — who both have put their musical skills to work onscreen before — play a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act. Brewer is a talented filmmaker (Hustle & Flow; Dolemite Is My Name) who could absolutely make a Christmas crowd-pleaser like this sing. Doesn’t this sound like a perfect holiday-weekend family-movie compromise? I’d also be willing to bet good money on Globe nominations for one or both of Jackman or Hudson.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Joseph Kosinski Stars: Brad Pitt, many cars Release date: Already released
After premiering at the end of June, Kosinski’s follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick has been a bit slept on for just how big a blockbuster it was (a quiet $600 million worldwide). You won’t be able to reap any points for those dollars, hence the bargain price. But this movie will certainly contend for at least some of the technical Oscars come year end.
Director: Kate Winslet Stars: Kate Winslet, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough Release date: December 12
Oscar winner Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with this story of four adult siblings who have to rally around their ailing mother at Christmastime. A star as big as Winslet having her first go at directing a movie is always going to be a big deal, and Netflix releasing this at Christmastime (it hits the platform on Christmas Eve) indicates that it thinks it will be a crowd-pleaser.
Director: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans Stars: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo Release date: Already released
Netflix’s big success story of this year so far has been how well it’s done to ride the wave of KPop Demon Hunters. The songs are hits, the sing-along version of the movie was No. 1 at the box office, and it’s probably going to be a major contender for the Oscars for Best Song and Best Animated Feature.
Director: Mary Bronstein Stars: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald Film festivals: Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, New York Release date: October 10
Byrne won the lead acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, which if nothing else is an indicator of just how impactful her performance is as a mother well past the end of her rope. There’s a pretty wide range of outcomes for this one, but look to the indie awards to give this movie some early points.
Director: Richard Linklater Stars: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley Film festivals: Berlin, Toronto, New York Release date: October 17
Ethan Hawke reteams with Linklater for this biopic of famed songwriter Lorenz Hart, who faces one long night of reckoning after the opening of his ex-professional-partner’s musical Oklahoma! Andrew Scott’s performance as Richard Rodgers won a prize at Berlin, and you have to figure one of these years, Scott is going to break through with an Oscar nomination.
Director: Lynne Ramsay Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson Film festivals: Cannes Release date: November 7
Lynne Ramsay has been a critics’ darling her whole career, but that’s never translated into mainstream appreciation. But she’s never worked with Jennifer Lawrence before, either. The film’s Cannes reception was a bit inscrutable, but Lawrence playing a young mother battling psychosis is a tempting bit of awards bait.
Director: Edgar Wright Stars: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin Release date: November 7
An adaptation of the Stephen King novel and a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, The Running Man looks to be a great showcase for Glen Powell’s ever-blossoming star power, as well as a get-right opportunity for Edgar Wright after Last Night in Soho disappointed.
Director: James L. Brooks Stars: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis Release date: December 12
The legendary James L. Brooks hasn’t directed a movie since 2010’s disappointing How Do You Know. Fifteen years later, Brooks is back with a story about a young idealist trying to balance a professional life in politics with her wacky family. Whether Brooks can recapture the magic of Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment is one of this fall’s big questions.
Popcorn emoji (🍿) denotes a film that is eligible for box-office points based on its release date.
Anaconda $5 🍿 Him $5 🍿 Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie $5 🍿 Now You See Me: Now You Don’t $5 🍿 The Housemaid $5 🍿 Zero A.D. $5 🍿 Dust Bunny $3 🍿 Regretting You $3 🍿 Sisu 2 $3 🍿 Soul on Fire $3 🍿 Eternity $2 🍿 Good Fortune $2 🍿 Trap House $2 🍿
Black Phone 2 $5 🍿 Keeper $5 🍿 The Strangers — Chapter 2 $5 🍿 Bone Lake $2 🍿 Shelby Oaks $2 🍿 Silent Night, Deadly Night $1 🍿
Anemone $5 🍿 A Private Life $5 🍿 Eleanor the Great $5 🍿 Father, Mother, Sister, Brother $5 🍿 Hedda $5 🍿 No Other Choice $5 🍿 Peter Hujar’s Day $5 🍿 The Lost Bus $5 The Mastermind $5 🍿 The Secret Agent $5 🍿 The Testament of Ann Lee $5 🍿 Christy $5 🍿
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey $5 Black Bag $5 Eddington $5 Highest 2 Lowest $5 Materialists $5 Nouvelle Vague $5 🍿 Pillion $5 🍿 The History of Sound $5 The Life of Chuck $5 Caught Stealing $3 Friendship $3 Misericordia $3 Sorry, Baby $3 Steve $3 🍿 Dead Man’s Wire $3 🍿 Cloud $2 Eephus $2 Pavements $2 Splitsville $2 On Swift Horses $1 Preparation for the Next Life $1 Sacramento $1 The Friend $1
Captain America: Brave New World $3 The Monkey $3 Honey Don’t! $3 One of Them Days $2 The Naked Gun $3 The Phoenician Scheme $3 Weapons $3 Drop $2 Presence $2 The Old Guard 2 $2
28 Years Later $5 A Minecraft Movie $5 How to Train Your Dragon $5 Lilo & Stitch $5 Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning $5 Superman $5 Mickey 17 $3 Warfare $3 Thunderbolts $3 The Fantastic Four: First Steps $3 Jurassic World Rebirth $3 The Long Walk $3 100 Nights of Hero $2 🍿
Predators $5 Come See Me in the Good Light $3 🍿 Cover-Up $2 🍿 Sally $3 2000 Meters to Andriivka $2 Diane Warren: Relentless $2 Prime Minister $2 Selena Y Los Dinos $2 🍿 The Alabama Solution $2 🍿 The Perfect Neighbor $2 🍿 Apocalypse in the Tropics $1 Deaf President Now! $1 Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore $1 Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 $1 🍿 The Voice of Hind Rajab $1 🍿 Zodiac Killer Project $1 🍿 Architecton $1
Elio$5 The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants $5 🍿 Arco $3 🍿 Ne Zha II $3 Scarlet $3 🍿 A Magnificent Life $2 🍿 Dog Man $2 In Your Dreams $2 🍿 Smurfs $2 The Bad Guys 2 $2 The Twits $2 🍿 Pets on a Train $1 🍿
Caught by the Tides $3 Sound of Falling $3 🍿 Sirāt $3 🍿 Parthenope $2 On Becoming a Guinea Fowl $2 The President’s Cake $2 🍿 Left-Handed Girl $2 🍿
Couture $2 🍿 In the Hand of Dante $2 🍿 Last Days $2 🍿 Late Fame $2 🍿 Rebuilding $2 🍿 Atropia $1 🍿 Love Me $1 Lurker $1 Plainclothes $1 Poetic License $1 🍿 Relay $1 Rose of Nevada $1 🍿 Sacrifice $1 🍿 The Captive $1 🍿 The Christophers $1 🍿 The Thing With Feathers $1 🍿 Tuner $1 🍿
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale $3 Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie $3 The Ballad of Wallis Island $3 The Man With the Bag $3 🍿 The Roses $3 Ballerina $2 Hurry Up Tomorrow $2 Snow White $2 The Accountant 2 $2 The Legend of Ochi $2 The Wedding Banquet $2 Alto Knights $1 Bring Her Back $1 Companion $1 Death of a Unicorn $1 Echo Valley $1 Fountain of Youth $1 Freakier Friday $1 Havoc $1 I Know What You Did Last Summer $1 I Wish You All The Best $1 🍿 Magic Farm $1 M3GAN 2.0 $1 Nobody 2 $1 Novocaine $1 Opus $1 Sarah’s Oil $1 🍿 Spinal Tap II: The End Continues $1 Straw $1 The Assessment $1 The Conjuring: Last Rites $1 The Electric State $1 The Surfer $1 The Thursday Murder Club $1 Wolf Man $1 The Woman in the Yard $1
Oh. What. Fun. $3 🍿 All of You $1 🍿 Swiped $1 🍿 Ruth & Boaz $1 🍿 The Woman in Cabin 10 $1 🍿
Elon Musk infamously threw Donald Trump under the bus in June when he insisted that the president was “in the Epstein files,” a reference to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But a newly released interview with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell might put the spotlight back on Musk when it comes to all things Epstein.
Maxwell, who’s in prison for sex trafficking a minor, was recently interviewed by Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal attorney and now a top official at the U.S. Department of Justice. Redacted transcripts of the interview, along with audio recordings, were published to the DOJ website on Friday.
Brin’s birthday bash
Blanche asked Maxwell about several powerful people, according to the transcripts, including Elon Musk:
TODD BLANCHE: Okay. So I want to just — we went through several individuals yesterday and I want to go through just a couple of more names and ask if you — if you know them. And if you do know them, how you know them. Do you know Elon Musk? GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I do. BLANCHE: And how did you meet Mr. Musk? MAXWELL: I met him in — I don’t remember the year, but it’s going to be in 2010, ’11, something like that, I think, if my memory serves. And I was at an event for Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. And Sergey had arranged for — it was for his birthday. And we were — or a bunch of us, I don’t even remember how many we were, but not many of us. Maybe — I don’t know. If I say 40, I could be wrong. If it was 30 or 50, I don’t remember. I’m sorry. Went to another friend’s island. Somebody called Mr. Pigozzi in the Caribbean and — not with Epstein, he was not there, to celebrate Sergey’s birthday. And we were there together for, I want to say, three or four days, something like that in my memory. And Mr. Musk was present for that. BLANCHE: And that was the first time you met him, as far as you know? MAXWELL: As far as I remember, yes.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Epstein advised Sergey Brin on tax matters in 2007. But Musk and Brin have their own drama. In 2022, Musk denied having an affair with Brin’s then-wife Nicole Shanahan, who would go on to become Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign. Brin divested from all of Musk’s companies after the alleged tryst, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The photograph
Blanche then went on to ask Maxwell about Elon’s brother Kimbal, who was reportedly set up with a girlfriend by Epstein many years ago, according to a report from Business Insider in 2020.
BLANCHE: Did you meet — did you know his brother, Mr. Musk’s brother? MAXWELL: I don’t know if I’ve ever met him. I know that he has a brother and I don’t think I met him. BLANCHE: Aside from that time in — around 2010, on the island in the Caribbean for a couple days, did you — have you seen — do you know Mr. Musk beyond that time? MAXWELL: We met at — I was at the Oscars and we met at the Oscars. BLANCHE: What year was that, earlier or later? MAXWELL: It was post that event, I believe. BLANCHE: And do you know whether Mr. Epstein knew Mr. Musk? MAXWELL: I believe they did. And the only reason I say that is not from my memory, but because I saw — I think I saw — my memory is that in discovery, they were communicating on email. BLANCHE: So you have no personal knowledge of that? MAXWELL: I have no — BLANCHE: It’s just what you’ve — what you’ve seen from the press or from discovery? MAXWELL: And I believe his brother as well, actually. BLANCHE: Excuse me? MAXWELL: Mr. Musk’s brother as well. But I don’t — my — like I said, my memory is not — it’s not as good as I would like it to be. And I just want to say that.
Maxwell seems to be referring to a Vanity Fair Oscars party on March 2, 2014, where she and Musk were photographed together. Musk has previously suggested she photobombed him during that event.
Writing in a tweet from 2020, Musk insisted, “Don’t know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”
But the fact that Maxwell claims they met years earlier, in 2010 or 2011, seems to be new information, provided Maxwell is telling the truth. Prosecutors alleged that she perjured herself, but dropped those charges after she was convicted of sex trafficking.
The President and that other birthday
This new interview will obviously be highly scrutinized, given the number of people who are named. But it’s also important to keep in mind what kind of incentives are at play for Maxwell, Blanche, and Trump. Not only was Blanche Trump’s former attorney, but he was also pretty damn chummy with Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus. Blanche appeared on Markus’s podcast twice, according to ABC News.
Trump has been cagey when asked about Maxwell, even giving a bizarre answer to questions during his first term when she was first sent to prison. During a White House briefing in July 21, 2020, Trump said, “I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach, but I wish her well, whatever it is.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach, but I wish her well whatever it is.” (July 21, 2020)
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times recently reported on a birthday album made for Epstein in 2003 that included friendly letters from men like billionaire Leslie Wexner, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and President Trump. The letter included a line that the two men “have certain things in common,” and reportedly states that “enigmas never age,” ending with the line “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
A photo of the letter hasn’t been made public, but fake versions of the letter have gone viral online. Trump was friends with Epstein for at least 15 years before they had some kind of falling out. Trump defenders insist it was because Epstein was being a “creep” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, while others believe it had more to do with a real estate deal where the men were competing to buy a property.
It’s extremely unusual for a high-ranking official at the DOJ to personally interview someone in prison. But these are extremely unusual times.
Deep into an evening spent on the set of the Sundance series This Close, Shoshannah Stern and Marlee Matlin started chatting while waiting to resume filming on a long dinner scene. The pair had already bonded as deaf actors. Stern, who also served as the show’s co-creator and executive producer, had found great inspiration in her Oscar-winning co-star. She can’t recall what they were talking about, exactly, but at a certain point, she noticed Matlin staring at her.
“She’s looking at me and she says, ‘You need to direct,’” Stern says.
What was going on in Matlin’s head at that moment?
“It was late at night, and I kept thinking as I was watching her that she’s been around this industry for a while—and it just popped into my head,” she says. “She doesn’t give up easily when it comes to writing. She doesn’t give up easily when it comes to acting. She sets her mind to it. So why not go beyond that, and go up beyond to direct?”
Around this time, producers had approached Matlin interested in making a documentary about her life. She stipulated that she would participate only if Stern—who, again, had never directed before—helmed the film. Years later, Stern’s Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is critically acclaimed, award-winning, and now playing in select theaters. (It is also available for digital rental or purchase.) The film offers a nuanced portrait of a Hollywood icon through Stern’s bold use of craft and narrative.
Still, that night on the This Close set, Stern didn’t feel remotely ready to take such a project on. She had built her own acting career, playing roles on major series like Weeds and Grey’s Anatomy, before finding her voice as a screenwriter. “I literally had never thought about [directing] before,” Stern says, speaking in American Sign Language beside an interpreter. “I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think I would be allowed to.”
When I later relay this Matlin over Zoom, her face falls. “I’m basically experiencing PTSD as a result of those words being used. A lot of kids who are deaf experience those same words,” Matlin says. “I’m glad that she was able to change her mind about feeling ‘not allowed’ to say, ‘Fuck off. Fuck off.’”
Stern grew up in the Bay Area to a fourth-generation deaf family. Her mother was a stage actor. As a kid, she wanted to follow in those footsteps. This was before the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, though. “There were almost no captions on TV—so you’re hungry for information, you’re hungry for stories. That makes you very curious,” Stern says. “I’m always asking my friends who can hear, ‘What’s the other table talking about?’ They’re usually like, ‘I don’t know, I’m not listening.’ I would never stop listening, if I could.”
We’re pretty much by ourselves on this warm July day, however, sitting in a quiet vegan restaurant near her Los Angeles home. After she orders her lunch, Stern tells me about the challenges she faced in chasing her dreams. While she planned to study theater at college, her education was supported by the Vocational Rehabilitation program, which helps many deaf people in the transition out of high school. It requires program approval for any major. “You don’t really have freedom. They said, ‘No, [theater] is not a reasonable major to have. You’re not going to be a contributing member of society if you major in theater,’” Stern says. She chose English, while still acting in plays at Gallaudet University whenever she could.
During the winter break before her final semester, she went home and told her parents she was going to quit acting for good. The next day, she got an email from Warner Bros. with an audition offer.
The secretary for Gallaudet’s theater department had recommended Stern to the casting agents on the sitcom Off Centre, created by the Weitz brothers of American Pie fame. “She gave them my email address. I didn’t have an agent—I didn’t have anything. I was a college student,” Stern says. She booked the cheapest flight she could down to LA and completed the audition. Then she booked the part, and has essentially been in Hollywood ever since.
Even when auditioning for deaf parts throughout the aughts, Stern was often the only deaf actor in the room. This was decades out from Children of a Lesser God, Randa Haines’s searing 1986 take on the romantic drama that made Matlin the first-ever deaf actor to win an Oscar. (Troy Kotsur became the second for CODA, which also starred Matlin, in 2022.) Stern bristles when hearing that movie called “groundbreaking,” to say nothing of other milestones achieved by her and her peers before and since. “Stories about deaf people can be groundbreaking. They can,” Stern says. “But I would like to think that it’s because they push perspective, they push the form, they push understanding, they push the nuance.”
With abortion on the ballot in several states in Tuesday’s election, writer and director Nazrin Choudhury’s Oscar-nominated short film Red, White and Blue about a single mother searching for access to an abortion feels as timely as ever. The British-born multi-hyphenate doesn’t always see it that way.
“The upcoming election, in which abortion is such a key topic, means that people talk about this being such a timely subject. ‘It was so timely.’ Sadly, it feels like it’s timeless to me,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.
“We seem to keep needing to tell this story. I keep trying to say ‘Oh, let’s try and make it so that my story becomes redundant, and we don’t have to make films like this,’” she continues. “But we have to tell stories of ordinary human beings and Americans at that.”
Red, White and Bluepremiered for free on YouTube this week, Majic Ink Productions and Level Forward announced on Monday. “We are getting enormous response and feedback from it,” Choudhury explains.
The film, starring Brittany Snow and Juliet Donenfold and executive produced by Samantha Bee, follows a young single mother from Arkansas, portrayed by Snow, who is forced to cross state lines to find access to an abortion.
The film has been screened throughout the country strategically since its 2024 Oscar nomination, according to a release, with the aim of reaching voters of all political leanings. Getting the film out into the world ahead of Election Day took a village of professionals in film, public relations and more coming together to make it happen.
‘Red White and Blue’ poster.
Courtesy of Majic Ink Productions
On Wednesday, students and faculty from the University of Pennsylvania participated in a national student-led screening and moderated discussion event featuring Choudhury, Black Voters Matter’s LaTosha Brown, Professors Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw of Crooked Media’s Strict Scrutiny podcast and more.
“This event had been planned for a while and was deeply meaningful because I have teenagers who will inherit this legacy,” the writer and director says, explaining that it meant so much to be “in community” with students at UPenn and NYU through a live stream there.
“I think it’s really important because this is the generation that is going to inherit all of our mistakes. I think we need to break the cycle because what happens is we always leave it to them. They have to deal with the messes of their elders,” she explains.
For Choudhury, making this film was both important and deeply personal. She explains that she made the film on her own, asking her children if she could dip into the college savings she had been accumulating. The filmmaker says the team has taken Red, White and Blue to church communities in places like Arizona and Wisconsin. As Choudhury describes it, “Places where you think people would be resistant to having this conversation,” however, she has found people are not unwilling to open up dialogue about abortion.
“Our primary goal has been just to try and figure out which communities to take it to doing these benefit screenings, and then yes, in this final push where our futures as women will be decided at the ballot box” Choudhury begins.
“When the VP, Kamala Harris, says women are bleeding out… as someone who myself was bleeding out, but luckily not in a parking lot, I was in a hospital being taken care of,” she continues. “I just really wanted to make sure that when we landed this film, it was with maximum power, potency and urgency.”
The short film will stream on YouTube through election week. Each view of the film generates a donation to the film’s Purple Parlor Fund, which benefits non-partisan organizations in reproductive rights, justice and the film’s impact campaign.
New technologies led by artificial intelligence and virtual production are profoundly changing visual effects but are still “another paintbrush” in the service of storytelling, says VFX veteran George Murphy.
“Virtual production is not just a tool for VFX; it’s a storytelling tool that allows actors to feel fully immersed in the scene, instead of having to imagine everything against a blank screen,” Murphy tells The Hollywood Reporter, in an interview at the Tokyo International Film Festival ahead of appearing on the Motion Picture Association panel, Filmmaking 2.0: The Evolution of Real-Time VFX for Traditional Filmmakers.
Murphy, a VFX supervisor and creative director at DNEG in London, made his entry into filmmaking with Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991), a production hailed for its seminal VFX, in particular the use of projected matte painting. Computerized effects were very much in their infancy when he joined Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He was part of a small team that pioneered digital compositing for films and he quickly recognized the potential of these ground-breaking tools to transform filmmaking.
“At ILM, we worked with Unix scripts and early computer graphics programs, but it was clear that these tools could create more believable, integrated images than anything before,” he says.
Murphy’s background was in another visual medium. “I started out fully intending to be a freelance photojournalist, covering the real world,” he recalls. “In an odd way, it was those skills in capturing reality that prepared me for fabricating worlds that don’t exist.”
Creating those worlds and making them look believable won him an Oscar and BAFTA for Forrest Gump, and has seen him supervise effects on productions including Planet of The Apes, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Matrix sequels and Black Sails.
One of the biggest game-changers in recent years has been the development of virtual production, says Murphy. This technology, popularized by The Mandalorian, allows filmmakers to create virtual environments on LED screens in real time, replacing traditional green-screen backdrops.
Murphy experienced the power of this technology firsthand on the set of Murder on the Orient Express back in 2016, where a train car was surrounded by LED screens displaying high-resolution footage of the world speeding by. “The actors didn’t have to pretend they were looking out at a snowy mountain scene. They were immersed in it, and that makes a huge difference in their performance. Things that were going past would actually catch their eyes,” he notes, saying it led to a more authentic feel and therefore immersive experience for the audience as well.
Responsive tools like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and Unity have also revolutionized the VFX workflow. “These tools allow us to create, edit, and test our work in real-time, which wasn’t possible a decade ago. You can see the result instantly instead of waiting hours for a render,” Murphy explains.
He likens this change to moving from analog to digital photography: “The whole process has become much more flexible and collaborative, allowing us to explore creative choices and see what works best in the moment.”
With AI advancing at a bewildering pace, it is quickly finding a place in the VFX toolkit. For Murphy, AI offers both opportunities and challenges. He points out that AI can streamline labor-intensive tasks like rotoscoping (manually isolating elements within a scene) or tracking (following a moving object or character in footage).
“With AI, we can now accomplish in minutes what used to take hours or even days,” he says. “It frees up artists to focus on the more creative aspects of their work”
Nevertheless, he believes that for all its power, machine learning isn’t a substitute for the creativity and ideation of a filmmaker, for now at least. “AI can process huge amounts of data, and it can imitate styles based on what it’s seen. But it doesn’t experience emotions, so it can’t capture the essence of human storytelling. That’s something only artists who have lived and felt can bring to a project,” he suggests.
Another exciting development for Murphy is the expansion of storytelling across different media and platforms. During his work on The Matrix sequels, he witnessed the potential of what he calls “story worlds.” The Matrix franchise extended its narrative through video games, animated shorts, and comics, allowing fans to explore the story beyond the main films. Murphy sees this approach as crucial for the future of entertainment, as audiences look for ways to engage more deeply with stories.
This “multiverse” approach to storytelling has become increasingly popular, especially with the rise of streaming and interactive platforms. Murphy believes that as technology advances, audiences will be able to interact with story worlds in new ways—perhaps even experiencing them in virtual reality or augmented reality. “We’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible,” he says. “Once VR becomes more accessible, the way we tell and experience stories is going to change fundamentally”
Looking forward, Murphy is enthusiastic about the possibilities that technology opens up but also concerned about the potential loss of craftsmanship.
“There’s an artistry to physical effects, to building something by hand, and that’s still incredibly valuable. It gives you a grounding in reality that’s essential, even in digital work,” he explains, adding that many of the best physical model makers went on to VFX careers.
Ultimately, Murphy believes that technology should serve the story, not the other way around, and remains optimistic about the future of filmmaking.
“These tools are just new brushes in our paintbox,” he says. “They allow us to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But the artist’s hand will always be there, guiding the story and making sure it resonates with the audience.”
