News

Universal’s Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy leads new releases in UK and Ireland cinemas this weekend after grossing just shy of £2.1m in previews on Thursday (February 13).

Taking advantage of Valentine’s Day, the fourth instalment in the British romantic comedy franchise screens in 733 venues from today. The £2.1m Thursday total is on par with 2008’s Sex And The City as the highest-grossing single-day preview for a romantic comedy in the territory.

Renee Zellweger returns to screens as the titular Bridget Jones, now a fifty-something widow who decides to head back to work and begin dating again. Hugh Grant...

It’s been a banner year for animated movies, with artists using the medium to tell stories about robots, cats, snails and the full spectrum of human emotion. These films are just as bold and boundary pushing as the dramas, musicals and historical epics that are seen as top contenders for Oscars. Yet they aren’t getting the same level of attention from the pundit crowd.

Well, if there was ever a time for things to change, it’s now. Heavyweights DreamWorks Animation and Pixar have launched awards campaigns for “The Wild Robot” and “Inside Out 2,” which are virtual locks to nab best animated feature nominations. But, these movies also aim to break into major categories, notably best picture. And you know what? It shouldn’t be an either/ or scenario. Why not both?

Notably, “The Wild Robot” just won the Scad Savannah Film Festival Audience Award, beating out 122 narrative feature films,...

As a broad spectrum of short films draw attention at film festivals and screening events, identifying frontrunners becomes increasingly difficult. Listed below are some of the noteworthy films that may win hardware during awards season, distinguishing themselves with exceptional artistry, festival recognition

or audience popularity.

Animated Shorts

“Self”

Written and directed by Searit Kahsay Huluf — one of Variety’s 2024 Animators to Watch — “Self” is the 11th film in Pixar’s SparksShorts series, a program designed to enable studio employees to develop their own short projects. Huluf ’s film combines CG and stop-motion animation to tell a story of self-discovery about a wooden doll that’s desperate to fit in with its peers. In addition to working with her Pixar colleagues, Huluf collaborated with Oscar-winning animation and VFX company Tippett Studio for help on the film’s stop-motion sequences, resulting in a unique blend of the two animation styles.

“In...

It doesn’t happen often that a long feature animation polarises film critics to such an extent as Yoko Kuno & Nobuhiro Yamashita‘s “Ghost Cat Anzu” did after its world premiere in the Directors Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Its animation style was called anything from bleak or ugly to unique & beautiful and the plotline was criticized for being undercooked, and even all over the place. But the film continues to travel the world regardless. Its second significant station was at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival, followed by the beloved genre Ff Fantasia, where it won the Audience Award Gold for Best Animated Feature.

Finally catching up with “Ghost Cat Anzu” at the Viennale, the annual feast for cinephiles in the Austrian capital Vienna, a place that didn’t pay too much attention to the animation in its 62-year-long history had a special taste to it,...

The Virginia Film Festival is kicking off its 37th year with a lineup featuring a couple of Cannes winners that are now taking the fall festival circuit by storm.

Located in Charlottesville, and set for October 30 through November 3, the festival has chosen Sean Baker’s “Anora” as its Opening Night Film. The dramedy, which stars Mikey Madison as a Brooklyn sex worker who enters into a whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was a runner-up for the coveted People’s Choice Award at TIFF. In addition to special guests from the cast set to be in attendance, Tom Quinn, Founder and CEO of Neon, the film’s distributor, will be on hand to receive the inaugural Impresario Award on behalf of the company.

For the Centerpiece Film, the festival has programmed Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” which has had...

Good afternoon Insiders. We’ve been all over Europe this week, so here’s Max Goldbart, back in the London-shaped saddle, to walk you through the major stories of the past seven days. Scroll on. And sign up here.

Animation Nation

Annecy proves its place: The weather may have been unseasonably chilly and drizzly at France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival this past week, but spirits weren’t dampened. With Despicable Me 4, which made its French premiere at the festival on Thursday night ahead of its July 3 launch in the U.S., predicted to hit a $100 million opening, animation is one of the bright spots at an ailing global box office right now. Annecy’s 16,000 attendees were treated to sneak peaks of some of the most anticipated animated studio movies and series of the year including Transformers One, The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim and Moana 2,...

Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee lend their voice talents to Adam Elliott’s ambitious animation that has a strong personal touch

Like Britain’s Nick Park at Aardman, Australian stop-motion film-maker Adam Elliott has shown a natural talent for screenwriting comedy – and for fusing that with the simplicity and directness of his animation style itself, creating a distinctive kind of lovability and pathos and importantly an instinct for the underdog and the outsider. He makes mainstream animation look a bit neurotypical. His 2003 short Harvie Krumpet was an Oscar winner, and Elliot has come to the Annecy animation film festival for the premiere of what’s probably his most ambitious feature-length work yet. It is charming and beguiling, with a strong new personal and even autobiographical strain and, as in the past, he has persuaded A-list voice talent to get involved.

Sarah Snook voices Grace Pudel, who as the story begins...

Anton Capital Entertainment has secured more than €100 million ($108 million) in new financing to bankroll film and television projects as the Sébastien Raybaud-led group sets off its next stage of expansion.

The company said the facility, supplied by a group of institutional investors, led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, will allow Anton to boost its production of large-scale commercial European English-language projects, specifically genre films from action and thrillers to elevated horror and sci-fi.

“We have an amazing development and production team in place focused on creating high quality, premium entertainment,” said Raybaud in a statement. “Our goal is to produce films and series across all commercial genres on a global scale,. This exciting investment from BlackRock allows us to greenlight more ambitious projects, and expand these partnerships with exceptional film and TV producers.”

Anton’s target is to produce ten features a year. Upcoming films include actioner...

Writer-director S. Craig Zahler (“Bone Tomahawk”) is set to reunite with his “Dragged Across Concrete” and “Brawl in Cell Block 99” star Vince Vaughn and Oscar winner Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”) for upcoming crime thriller “The Bookie & the Bruiser.”

Anton will introduce the film to international distributors at the upcoming Marche du Film in Cannes. UTA Independent Film Group and Range Media Partners arranged the financing and will be representing the North American distribution rights.

Set in 1959 New York, “The Bookie & the Bruiser” follows a pensive, Jewish fellow named Rivner and an oversized Italian-American tough named Boscolo from the Lower East Side, both of whom served overseas during WWII and returned changed men who no longer fit inside the lives they’d left behind. Uninterested in taking orders from bosses or playing by the rules of polite society, the two friends partner up as a bookmaker and an enforcer and...