The Gothams’ longtime influential “breakthrough actor” award will be renamed “breakthrough performer,” even though this category has always been gender-neutral. It has gone to the likes of Elliot Page, Mya Taylor, Michael B. Jordan, and Amy Adams. Last year, it went to Kingsley Ben-Adir for “One Night in Miami.” Additional category updates for 2021 include the creation of a Breakthrough Nonfiction Series award (previously included with fiction series) and the eligibility of international documentaries in the Best Documentary Feature category....

The co-writers of the upcoming Mattel adaptation, in theaters July 21, revealed that collaborating on Netflix film “White Noise” inspired how they penned the “Barbie” script. And it’s not just big hair that both movies have in common: Baumbach helmed “White Noise,” which starred Gerwig alongside Adam Driver, while Gerwig directs “Barbie” from a script she co-wrote with Baumbach. “I wrote ‘White Noise,’ and then, once I had that in a place where I thought, OK, I’ve done a lot of the heavy-lifting, Greta and I started work on ‘Barbie,’” Baumbach told Entertainment Weekly....

“Halloween Kills” is the sequel to Green’s 2018 “Halloween,” which opened to $76.2 million (the highest opening in the horror franchise’s history) and ended its run with $159 million in the U.S. and $255 million globally. Green directed his “Halloween” reboot on a $10 million budget, making the film hugely profitable for Universal. Most importantly, the film got critics and fans back on the franchise’s good side after a series of poorly received sequels....

“Spirited Away” is often considered one of Miyazaki’s best films and, up until last year, was the highest grossing film in Japan. The story centers on Chihiro, a 10-year-old girl moving with her parents to their new home. The family loses itself in a mysterious world of fantastic spirits, ruled over by the sorceress Yubaba, who turns Chihiro’s parents into pigs. After a series of bizarre and dangerous challenges, including the loss of her identity, Chihiro must use all her wits to survive in this strange place and return to the human world....

The layoffs represent 14% of Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys’ staff, and the eliminated positions are primarily focused on reality content, though other departments including casting and acquisition will also be impacted. Such a move has been expected for quite some time, given Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s plan to combine HBO Max and Discovery Plus into a single streaming service. The two services are a natural fit, considering HBO Max’s prestigious scripted shows and Discovery Plus’ highly profitable reality content....

Netflix followed up its shocking Q1 loss of 200,000 paid global subscribers with a decline of 970,000 subscribers in the second quarter. Despite losing nearly five times as many global paid subscribers in the second quarter as it did in the first, Netflix’s Q2 results w reflected a net positive: Netflix forecast losing twice as many. Subscriber counts from other major streaming services (courtesy of their parent companies’ quarterly earnings) were also hit-and-miss, if less dramatic....

Snyder recently revealed that Warner Bros. hasn’t expressed any inclination toward making more movies with him, and to that point, it does seem the studio is taking its DC Extended Universe in a different direction: “Justice League” cast members like Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill aren’t reappearing in upcoming reboots of “The Batman” and “Superman,” respectively. However, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Snyder did reveal what the sequel films might look like for the next two parts of what he says was a planned five-film series....

“House of the Dragon” is set 200 years prior to the events of “Game of Thrones,” telling the story of a civil war that occurred in the House of Targaryen. Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint, Paddy Considine, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans star in the show, which hails from showrunners Ryan J. Condal and Miguel Sapochnik. Condal co-created the series with George R.R. Martin and wrote the series, while Sapochnik directed all episodes....

“So it’s a TV show… that’s part of a film series?” “If it’s about superheroes, why does it look like an old sitcom?” “This is streaming, right? So what’s the deal with releasing one episode per week?” In a lot of ways, “WandaVision” fits that model. It’s valuable IP, wholly owned by Disney, and serves as an essential part of the MCU’s expanding universe; it could end up being just one more piece of Peak TV’s puzzle....

And what do words like “good” or “bad” even mean anymore? Sure, “Hubie Halloween” feels like it was written in the span of a single afternoon by two middle-aged men wearing gym shorts, but at least they included a scene where Ray Liotta refers to Sandler’s dim-witted hero as “Pubie Dubois” (a cruel nickname that spreads through Salem like a novel coronavirus through the White House). Sure, this dopey story about a Halloween-obsessed scaredy cat who teaches the jerks in his town about the true meaning of bravery or whatever is just a flimsy excuse to let Sandler and his friends make each other laugh on someone else’s dime/bottomless corporate debt, but at least it allows every American to fulfill their lifelong dream of watching Steve Buscemi play a werewolf....

Pedretti, Deadline reports Earlier, May 1: Hulu is likely hoping that Dee Rees’ “Saint X” miniseries will be its next hit adaptation of a buzzy novel, but the show’s production is off to a rough start. Deadline has reported that the series was forced to shut production down last week after several crew members walked off set in the Dominican Republic last Friday due to a pay dispute. The report indicates that several members of the show’s American crew felt their contracts were being violated due to a disagreement about overtime compensation....

The Oscar-winning director returned to his home nation of Mexico to film upcoming feature “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” after leaving for Los Angeles exactly 20 years ago. The Netflix film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will play in movie theaters in Mexico starting October 27 before debuting in North American theaters November 4. Netflix will release the title for streaming December 16. The special theatrical run in both nations “is something I really appreciate,” Iñárritu said during a Venice Film Festival press conference (via Deadline)....

Here’s the official synopsis: Garner is a two-time Primetime Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her turn as the foul-mouthed, tenacious Ruth on Netflix’s “Ozark,” which returns to the streamer on January 21 for Season 4, just a few weeks before “Inventing Anna” premieres. The rest of the cast includes Anna Chlumsky, Arian Moayed, Katie Lowes, Alexis Floyd, Anders Holm, Anna Deavere Smith, Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, and Laverne Cox....

WarnerMedia announced in May it was moving forward with the Snyder Cut and giving Zack Snyder the chance to make his version of “Justice League.” Snyder left the comic book tentpole in post-production due to a family tragedy, leaving Warner Bros. to bring in Joss Whedon to complete the project and oversee reshoots. Whedon’s theatrical cut was panned by critics and overhauled Snyder’s darker take on the material with more humor and a lighter tone....

“The only thing I’m asking is that I get to ride a sandworm,” he said, laughing. “Denis told me he’s going to try to make that happen.” Indeed, in Frank Herbert’s source novel, Stilgar is described as riding one of the enormous desert-dwelling beasts that travels beneath the sand. “That does happen in the book, by the way. Stilgar teaches Paul [Atreides] how to take the desert power, which is to domesticate those huge animals in order to use their force, their strength, and their huge size against the Harkonnen....

Following the toxic workplace allegations and HR complaints against star Jeff Garlin, “The Goldbergs” appears to have opted to use a stand-in for Garlin’s character. However, longtime fans are calling out the shoddy post-production attempts at smoothing over the behind-the-scenes drama. See a clip below. With those episodes now airing, fans have taken to social media to criticize the sloppiness of the special effects, especially when it came to a Goldberg family wedding scene during Episode 15 of Season 9....

Nichols discussed his “Alien Nation” plans during a recent interview on the Team Deakins podcast, where he stated he was working on adapting the 1991 sci-fi film into a 10-episode television show. Nichols noted that he was approached by Fox to remake the film but said Disney killed the project in 2019 after the company acquired the competing studio. “I then had this idea of how I could take that title, but a situation that has nothing to do with the original movie, necessarily, and I got really excited about it…I spent three years building out an entire alien civilization, and this situation, and this setup, and all these characters and it’s really what I’ve been doing for a long time,” Nichols said, per SlashFilm....

Cumberbatch has credited director Jane Campion with creating a healthy environment that allowed the actors to explore their characters in unique ways. Now Jesse Plemons has added to the film’s behind-the-scenes mythology. Plemons plays George Burbank, Phil’s brother, who is a constant target of the rancher’s bullying, along with his wife and son. In a new interview with the Netflix publication Queue, Plemons revealed that Campion began the rehearsal process by having the two lead actors dance together....

Rashad ushers both said cute grandkids and the audience through the tale, which opens with the literal cracking of a book, a glittering affair entitled “The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle.” The story picks up in a Victorian era-ish small town, bursting with color and whimsy and pure joy, most of it centered around Jeronicus’ magical toy store, Jangles and Things, which offers a “gadgets and gizmos aplenty” situation that rivals anything “The Little Mermaid” ever dreamed of....

“It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgement based on what essentially amounts to polluted air,” Depp said. “It’s so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe.” Depp continued, “It takes one sentence and there’s no more ground, the carpet has been pulled....