Movie News

Exclusive: In its second pickup at the Sundance Film Festival this year, the new Orchard Film Group under new owners 1091 Media, has taken North American rights to Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage’s Appalachian thriller Them That Follow.

The pic was bought in a competitive situation. Danielle Digiacomo, VP Film/TV Acquisitions for The Orchard negotiated the deal with CAA Media Finance.

Starring Oscar-nominated The Favourite actress Olivia Colman, Them That Follow follows members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by Pastor Lemuel (Walton Goggins) who risk their lives to attest themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter Mara (Alice Englert) prepares for her wedding to the young believer her father has singled out for her under the watchful eye of Hope (Colman), while scrambling to hide a secret that has the potential to drive her father’s church to ruin. Kaitlyn Dever, Jim Gaffigan, Thomas Mann

Channing Tatum may have made quite a splash with the announcement that he would lead a remake of the iconic 1984 comedy classic, but so far the news has created more of a ripple effect than a tsunami. The news of the remake came hot on the heels of his 2015 dance comedy “Magic Mike Xxl,” which proved audiences can’t get enough of objectifying the dancer-turned-actor. Tatum’s “22 Jump Street” co-star Jillian Bell is also attached to the gender-swapped reboot, and in a visit to the IndieWire Studio presented by Dropbox, she said the project is still chugging along.

“It’s being written currently, so we hope we get to make it within the next couple years,” Bell said, pausing briefly over her words. “I think it’s happening. I’m really excited about it.”

Read More: ‘Blinded by the Light’ Review: An Ecstatic Story About the Power of Springsteen

Ava DuVernay’s content distribution shop Array has acquired the documentary “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” out of the Sundance Film Festival.

Directed by her youngest son and archivist Hepi Mita, the film is a deeply intimate portrait of the New Zealand filmmaker — who became the first indigenous woman to write and direct a narrative feature in the 1970s. Mita became an essential voice for her underrepresented community (director Taika Waititi is a disciple) and served as a longtime advisor to the Sundance Institute.

Sold for an undisclosed amount, the film was produced by Chelsea Winstanley through her Arama Pictures. Array did not immediately comment on plans for a theatrical release, but Winstanley told Variety she was drawn to Array’s “event-based screenings.” Array took distribution territories including the United States, Canada and the U.K.

Array, which aims to promote work by women and people of color, previously

Jordan Peele is turning to a familiar face to star in his spiritual sequel to the 1992 horror classic Candyman, as Lakeith Stanfield (Get Out) has an offer and is in talks to play the protagonist, an individual familiar with the project has told Collider. Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) is directing from a script co-written by Peele and his MonkeyPaw Productions partner Win Rosenfield. MGM is slated to release the new Candyman movie on June 12, 2020. The important thing to keep in mind here is that Stanfield is not slated to take over the titular hook-handed role …

Exclusive: The Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and RZA and Shaun Redick of Impossible Dream Entertainment will produce Angel of Dust, a suspense horror thriller that Wu-Tang leader RZA will direct. Pic is inspired by true stories that happened around the hood to members of the global iconic rap group when they were growing up in and around the Staten Island Projects. A series of bizarre and horrifying events shaped their mindsets to launched the Wu-Tang Clan to become a worldwide music powerhouse. The story was created by Wu-Tang member, Ghostface Killah (aka Dennis Coles), and longtime manager, Caruso. Script is by Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith.

The Wu-Tang Clan will provide an epic new soundtrack produced by Ghostface Killah and Caruso for Angel of Dust, and RZA will also score the movie. All this happens as the group assembles today for the Sundance premiere of the Showtime documentary series,

Johnny Depp will no longer appear in Universal’s reboot of The Invisible Man, a source tells TheWrap.

Leigh Whannell, the director of Insidious: Chapter 3 and Upgrade, has signed on to direct the remake of The Invisible Man, which Universal Pictures is developing based on the classic monster movie character, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap.

Whannell will also produce alongside Jason Blum for his Universal-based Blumhouse Productions.

Also Read: Universal Landed a Wide Range of Hits, From 'Jurassic World' to 'Halloween'

Depp had originally joined the project back in February 2016 as part of Universal’s planned Dark Universe based on its classic monster movie characters. The franchise kicked off with Tom Cruise in “The Mummy” and was also meant to star Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as planned movies for “Bride of Frankenstein,” “The Wolf Man” and others.

And

NBA Star Kyrie Irving will star in and executive produce a currently untitled horror movie with Imagine Entertainment about an Oklahoma hotel that has a reputation of being haunted.

Imagine Entertainment has preemptively optioned an upcoming Players’ Tribune article, an oral history of experiences from NBA stars who have stayed at the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City. The hotel is frequented by traveling NBA teams, but some players refuse to stay there because of its reputation. The hotel was opened in 1911 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The film will be produced by Imagine Entertainment chairman Brian Grazer and Bobby Cohen. The Players Tribune and Sanjay Sharma will executive produce along with Irving, who recently starred in the sports comedy “Uncle Drew.” He played for six years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and is currently in his second season with the Boston Celtics.

“Having had my own

“The Report,” a politically charged thriller about the CIA’s use of torture, has sold to Amazon Studios following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Variety has learned. The price is in the $14 million range and the pact is for global rights.

The film focuses on Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) and tracks his investigation into the spy agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism if ever there was one that covers everything from water-boarding to sleep and sensory deprivation. Jones prepares a devastating 525-page report that helps shift public support against the CIA’s use of these methods in the years following 9/11. “The Report” earned raves and Oscar buzz for its performances, particularly that of Annette Bening as Senator Dianne Feinstein. The real Jones earned a standing ovation when he appeared in Park City, Utah for the premiere. Scott Z. Burns, who wrote the scripts

“Black Panther” took home the top award for best performance by a cast in a motion picture at the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night. On the TV front, “This Is Us” nabbed the ensemble award for drama, while “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won the comedy prize.

The 25th annual ceremony highlights performances across film and television. Among individual acting awards, Rami Malek was recognized for playing the iconic Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Glenn Close won for “The Wife.” Amazon’s comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” walked away with a leading three awards, including best actress for Rachel Brosnahan and best actor for Tony Shalhoub.

Exclusive: Neon and Hulu have won a bidding between four studios to land rights to release the dark comedy Little Monsters for U.S. report. Four suitors battled all night for this one, an Abe Forsythe-directed genre film that stars Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England and Josh Gad. Deal went for mid-seven figures for the U.S. rights.

The film is being called Zombieland meets Kindergarten Cop and the deal making got hot and heavy while Nyong’o was beaming at the Screen Actors Guild Awards as Black Panther won top prize. The plan behind the partnership is still being worked out but it will amount to a hybrid that combines a theatrical release with massive cross promotion on the Hulu platform, where the film will land.

Apparently, no dealmakers slept last night in Sundance as deals popped all over the mountaintop, including Amazon Studios’ $14 million world rights deal to the Scott Z.

Neon has picked up rights to “The Lodge,” a creepy cabin tale about a damaged woman and the children she is caring for after it thrilled audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The film follows twos siblings who are snowed in with Grace, the younger woman that their separated father plans to marry. Just as the kids begin to warm to their stepmother-to-be, events intercede and threaten to dig up psychological demons from Grace’s childhood as a member of a religious cult. It has been a hit with horror fans since it debuted last week in Sundance’s Midnight section. In a rave, Bloody Disgusting’s Meredith Borders writes, “Every choice in [‘The Lodge’] – every frame, every performance, every sound and edit — is crafted for utmost discomfort, making for a relentless onslaught of unease.”

The movie is eying a theatrical release at some point in 2019. The deal is in the $2 million range,

Just five years into her career, British actress Florence Pugh has already turned plenty of heads, most notably with her awards-worthy 2016 breakout “Lady Macbeth” and recently with her work in the “Little Drummer Girl” series. So while it may be a touch too soon to anoint the still-evolving actress as entering a new stage in her work, her charming performance in “Fighting With My Family” is the kind of unexpected turn that does just that. Based on the real-life experiences of WWE Divas champion Paige, Stephen Merchant’s film is tasked with bridging the divide between relatable family dramedy and the kind of glossy, authorized look inside a multi-million dollar sports entertainment brand that includes not one, but two instances of Dwayne Johnson (who produced the film) ambling into frame to save the day.

Flipping between scenes of hard-luck domestic upheaval and the overproduced stage show that is the WWE isn’t a natural fit,

There’s a delightful gag in the final act of Jamie Travis’ 2012 comedy “For a Good Time, Call” — incidentally, a former Sundance entry — in which the leading ladies profess their platonic affection for each other in ways most closely associated with romantic proclamations. Sophie Hyde’s “Animals” takes that idea and slingshots it a decade into the future, centering her film around the seemingly unbreakable bond between Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat), best friends who probably made similar promises in the early days of their own friendship. The film even opens with Laura lovingly reciting the story of how they first met, a tale that’s both sweet and indicative of the pains to come.

Based on Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel of the same name — the novelist has also penned the screenplay, and her affection for her characters shows — “Animals” picks up ten years into Laura and Tyler’s friendship,

Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) has executed 12 death row inmates, and each one seems to get harder. During the lethal injection that opens writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s “Clemency,” the paramedic can’t find a vein, the widow-to-be is sobbing through her prayers, the anti-capital punishment protestors are chanting outside, and when the stent fails and the prisoner goes into convulsions, Bernadine is forced to close the curtain on the family and journalists observing the man’s final moments. It’s all awful and bitterly ironic, from the crucifixion position of the doomed man to the way Bernadine leans over at the last minute to ask if she can get him anything. To make sure the audience, too, is in agony, Chukwu silences everything but the sound of fumbling death: buckles, strangled breathing and the beeps of the heart monitor until it’s clear the man is dead.

You won’t

If you think the health care system is flawed in America, “Midnight Family” provides a stark snapshot of how truly broken things are in Mexico City, where fewer than 45 public ambulances serve a population of 9 million. Luke Lorentzen’s documentary takes up residence alongside the Ochoa family, who earn a living — just barely — by operating one of the metropolis’ numerous privately owned ambulances, ferrying the injured to hospitals in hopes of being monetarily rewarded for their efforts. Portraits of institutional dysfunction don’t come much more urgent, and quietly bleak, than this, which should help the film attract serious attention following its Sundance Film Festival premiere.

Though medically unstable Fer is the nominal head of the Ochoa household, it’s his mature 17-year-old son Juan who — despite his youthful complexion (replete with braces) and habit of hugging a giant stuffed animal during interviews — who’s the clan’s real father figure.

Though Sundance is always awash in empowerment tales both fictive and non, this year the climate of political discord seems to have inspired an even larger batch than usual, particularly those that address misogyny. And there’s unlikely to be another such title in 2019 that thinks so far outside the creative box to score its points as “Judy & Punch,” Aussie thesp-turned-writer-director Mirrah Foulkes’ first feature.

Located somewhere on the fanciful continuum between Wiccan fable and Monty Python farce, this is a tale of domestic-violence revenge set in a satirical-whimsical land of never-was. The core narrative is rather simple, and the political metaphor not especially subtle. But the overall concept, from Foulkes and her trio of story collaborators, has a bracingly original air, from the film’s period anachronisms to its impressive design elements. Slick as a mid-budget mainstream popcorn fantasy (though in spirit anything but), it’s a sure bet for lively distribution bidding; still,

Outside of Donald Trump himself, Steve Bannon has been the most divisive figure to gain power in the wake of the 2016 election, but his abrupt popularity has sown as much confusion as contempt. After he was ousted as the White House chief of staff following a barrage of bigotry — from the Muslim ban to Trump’s “both sides” rhetoric about the Charlottesville riots — Bannon’s alt-right proselytizing has been characterized as flaming out or revving its engines, depending on the day.

It’s no surprise that his central role in Trump’s presidency has spawned more than one documentary, and they’ve both come to market just a few months apart: Errol Morris’ “American Dharma” probed Bannon’s mindset in the form of an eerie psychological profile; now comes Alison Klayman’s comparatively straightforward “The Brink,” a fly-on-the-wall showcase of Bannon’s post-Trump crusade over the past year.

Both movies

Distributor acquired doc Halston earlier in festival.

The Orchard film group, recently acquired by 1091 Media, has picked up North American rights to Them That Follow in Sundance.

Oscar-nominated Olivia Colman stars alongside Kaitlyn Dever, Alice Englert, Jim Gaffigan, Walton Goggins, Thomas Mann and Lewis Pullman in writer-directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage’s debut feature.

Them That Follow takes place in the Appalachian foothills as a pastor’s daughter engages in a forbidden relationship that challenges her community of American Pentecostal snake handlers.

Bradley Gallo produced with Michael A. Helfant for Amasia, and Gerard Butler, Alan Siegel and Danielle Robinson for G-base.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for “The Good Doctor” Season 2, Episode 13, “Xin.”]

“The Good Doctor” continues to explore how people with autism may perceive relationships differently, in particular romantic and/or sexual ones. In the episode “Xin” written by Brian Shin, Lana (Vered Blodsten) is admitted as a patient for surgery, while her roommate Javi (Alex Plank) visits to bring her favorite foods and other items from home. He insists they are not boyfriend and girlfriend, even when later Lana reveals that they’ve had sex, but describes it in the most practical and unromantic terms.

IndieWire spoke to Melissa Reiner, who is the autism consultant for “The Good Doctor,” for insight into this storyline as well as a central ongoing relationship on the show.

“There’s so little exploration in the sexual life of someone with a diagnosis,” said Reiner, who also runs Ask Melissa Now. “From the research I’ve done and from the

Park City – Pete Davidson turned his world upside down when he started dating and, for a short time, became engaged to pop superstar Ariana Grande almost a year ago. Davison probably hates this mention in the first paragraph in a review of his new film, “Big Time Adolescence,” but the point is that because of that tabloid mess his talent has sort of been forgotten over the past year.

Continue reading ‘Big Time Adolescence’: Pete Davidson Pops In Familiar Coming Of Age Tale [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.