‘Full Circle’: Steven Soderbergh’s Botched Kidnapping Series Is A ‘Traffic’-esque Throwback [Tribeca]

Any parent’s worst nightmare would be that something bad happens to their child. That’s why kidnapping films and TV series have always struck a chord because the tension and emotions experienced by the parents attempting to find their missing kid are universal.

McKinley Franklin editor Jim Gaffigan will debut his next Amazon Original comedy special, “Dark Pale,” on Prime Video on July 25. “Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale” is Gaffigan’s 10th comedy special, which will be available to stream in over 240 countries and territories. “Sometimes when people find out I have five kids, they think I’m good at parenting,” Gaffigan quips in the trailer for “Dark Pale. “Which is kind of like assuming people with lots of cats are not crazy.” Gaffigan is a seven-time Grammy-nominated comedian, actor, writer and producer who is known for his stand-up specials and roles in movies such as “Chappaquiddick,” “American Dreamer” and “Troop Zero.” As recently announced, he is set to embark on a five-city arena tour with Jerry Seinfeld this fall ahead of his Barely Alive Tour, which kicks off on Aug. 25 in Las Vegas.

If there’s a silver lining to your favorite show taking three years off between seasons, it’s that I’ve had plenty of time to get people into “Warrior.” I’ve always pitched Max’s period action series as a West Coast version of “Gangs of New York,” one that weaves together historiography and spectacle in equal measures and features some of the most talented Asian-American actors in the industry today.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Sometimes dreams do come true. When Disney legend Andreas Deja was 11 years old, “The Jungle Book” played at his hometown in Germany and after watching it, he was hooked. He remembers how it cast a spell on him and how he knew right there and then that he wanted to take part in the Disney magic. With the help of his English teacher, he wrote to the Mouse House and to his surprise received a reply. Deja relates: “It basically said that if I was serious about the animation done at Disney, I first had to become an artist in my own right.” From that day on, he began his deep dive into the world of animation, poring over magazines, newspapers and books and later enrolling in art school. While at school, he wrote to Eric Larson, one of the legendary Nine Old Men of Disney lore, who after looking at Deja’s work said he thought he “had what it took.”

The 2023 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival closed out last night with a conversation between two of the best filmmakers of their generation, David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh. The Q&A covered all sorts of topics, but Fincher dropped an intriguing nugget in the midst of it.

As part of the 2023 Tribeca Festival, David Fincher candidly discussed his career, filmmaking process and philosophy with Steven Soderbergh before a capacity crowd in the Indeed Theater at Spring Studios for an hour on Thursday evening. The two have known one another for 31 years, and have been in frequent contact for 20, showing each other rough cuts for feedback.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Shooting for me is a lot of indigestion,” David Fincher told the audience at the 2023 Tribeca Festival during a spirited conversation with fellow director and longtime friend Steven Soderbergh. The “Fight Club” and “Mank” Oscar nominee was asked by Soderbergh which part of the filmmaking process he loves the most. Fincher said it’s certainly not the physical shooting of a movie. “I love rehearsal,” Fincher said. “I love talking to people about the intention and going over every single word and what the script means and listening to people read it. I love the casting process. I love designing the movie and sitting with the production designer and the DP and talking about what do we want to say, where do we want people’s attention, and what do we have to underline.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Zazie Beetz, Dominque Fishback, Dianna Agron and more stars braved the New York City rain Monday evening to attend the 16th annual Tribeca Artists Dinner. Hosted by Chanel at SoHo restaurant Balthazar, the event was thrown in tribute to the 10 women visual artists who contributed their work to projects featured in the 2023 Tribeca Festival, organized by festival chiefs Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. This group of honorees included Ana Benaroya, Beverly Fishman, Christie Neptume, Lisa Lebofsky, Natia Lemay, Patricia Encarnacion, Renee Cox, Sheree Hovsepian, Shinique Smith and Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz. “When you’re 22, you’ve gotten out of those teenage years. And this year is quite spectacular. So many of our programs have matured,” Rosenthal told Variety of this year’s Tribeca Festival while on the red carpet, shielded from the downpour. “The other thing is that, the past two years whether we were just coming out of the pandemic and did a hybrid festival, and then last year there were still COVID restrictions. This feels like it’s the Roaring Twenties. People are back and ready to party — partying in the streets and coming to screenings and it’s just been fantastic.”

Alison Herman TV Critic The hit British film “The Full Monty” — for a brief period in 1997, the most lucrative release in U.K. history — was, in some ways, the original “Magic Mike.” The comedy chronicled six unemployed ex-steelworkers in post-Thatcher North England as they formed a stripping troupe. (The name referred to the strippers’ willingness to bare all, genitalia included.) By treating sex work as a symbol of larger economic malaise, “The Full Monty” anticipated the approach Steven Soderbergh would take stateside over two decades later.  “Magic Mike” has since ballooned into a full-blown phenomenon spanning a trilogy of films, a reality show and a globally successful stage revue. “The Full Monty” has, until now, resisted such expansion. (There have been a handful of stage adaptations, though nothing on the scale of “Magic Mike Live.”) But on June 14, FX will stream all eight episodes of a TV sequel, also called “The Full Monty,” on Hulu. The show carries the same set of core characters a quarter century into the future — minus the nudity, but retaining the same bittersweet mix of working class social realism and irreverent humor to take the edge off. Even affable British indies, it would seem, are not immune from the modern IP boom.

One of the most talked-about scenes in Netflix’s hit drama BEEF came at the end of episode three when the Oscar-nominated actor Steven Yeun revealed his impressive chops as a singer and guitarist with an acoustic cover of the early ’00s alt-rock hit “Drive” by Incubus. Viewers of the show only got a brief snippet of Yeun’s version, but now a studio version is out via BEEF: The Bonus Tracks, a new collection of music from the show.

EXCLUSIVE: Eddie Alcazar’s Sundance-lauded feature Divinity will premiere internationally at the Taormina Film Festival on June 29th in Italy. Writer and Director Alcazar and stars Bella Thorne, Karrueche Tran and Moises Arias are set to appear at the Teatro Antico for the celebration.

Claire Danes is showing off her growing baby bump!

Hollywood’s biggest names never miss an opportunity to dazzle Us with their fierce fashion sense. Tracee Ellis Ross, Claire Danes, Brittany Snow and more stars turned heads on the red carpet at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. 

Of all the filmmakers working today, you have to put Steven Soderbergh in a class all of his own when it comes to experimentation in visual storytelling. Sure, folks like James Cameron are pushing technology to the limits, but Soderbergh is equally as experimental when it comes to story, structure, and delivery.

Even the best intentions sometimes can turn into a nightmare, and this is a situation that Dolores Roach finds herself in after serving an unjust prison sentence in the new Prime Video series, “The Horror of Dolores Roach.” READ MORE: Steven Soderbergh’s Max Limited Series ‘Full Circle’ Headlines 2023 Tribeca Festival’s TV Lineup As seen in the trailer for the series, “The Horror of Dolores Roach” follows the story of the title character, who finally gets out of prison after 16 years, only to find herself needing to find a job to escape her current situation.

Claire Danes is glowing.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Steven Soderbergh starts things off with an apology. His assistant is on vacation, and he was certain that our interview was scheduled to start a full 15 minutes after it was supposed to commence. That resulted in a mad scramble of calls text messages to track down the filmmaker. “I was just sitting here staring off into space,” he says. It must have been a rare moment of calm for the always-on-the-move director, who a has averaged at least one movie or series a year since reemerging from a short-lived retirement in 2017. And he’s back again this summer with “Full Circle,” a six-part miniseries that premieres at the Tribeca Festival before launching on Max on July 13. It’s a morally complex story about a botched kidnapping that causes several characters’ lives to intersect in surprising ways. It’s also a fascinating portrait of modern-day New York City, one that showcases a privileged Manhattan family (Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant play the guardians of a business that revolves around Dennis Quaid’s celebrity chef), as well as a pair of Guyanese kidnappers who are deployed by CCH Pounder’s shadowy business woman to exact revenge. “Full Circle” is the kind of knotty thriller that Soderbergh, a master of the genre, does such a great job of setting and then unwinding. To say more would be to spoil its pleasures.

For many, who perhaps came to know him later, Rock Hudson was known as one of the first Hollywood stars to die of AIDS in the mid-1980s. The shocker of it all was that, throughout his legendary career, mainly in the 1950s and ‘60s was that he was one of Hollywood’s most iconic leading men— the embodiment of romantic masculinity and heterosexuality.

For many, who perhaps came to know him later, Rock Hudson was known as one of the first Hollywood stars to die of AIDS in the mid-1980s. The shocker of it all was that, throughout his legendary career, mainly in the 1950s and ‘60s was that he was one of Hollywood’s most iconic leading men— the embodiment of romantic masculinity and heterosexuality.

While the initial pitch for “Warrior” billed it as “based on the writings of Bruce Lee,” the martial arts action series has grown into something special thanks to the incredible, underrated cast and the smart writing. Now, “Warrior,” as it approaches its third season, is one of the best series on Max and should be required viewing for those looking for something a bit more unique on streaming.