Alexander Payne Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

EXCLUSIVE: Despite all the champagne popping at Warner Bros and Universal over the bananas box office success of Barbie and Oppenheimer, distribution executives continue to sweat over a possible lengthy SAG-AFTRA strike that is already blowing up the fall release calendar. We told you first last week this was going to happen. All major motion picture studios are assessing release-date changes the longer SAG-AFTRA strike goes on. Many want their stars to promote these films.

Given the chaos wrought by the SAG-AFTRA strike, Toronto has just announced a surprisingly strong first-wave lineup.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Two labor strikes may be upending Hollywood’s awards season and the film festivals that serve as launching pads for many Oscar contenders, but the Toronto International Film Festival signaled Monday that it still plans to showcase the best in cinema, unveiling its 2023 slate of movies. Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater, Kore-eda Hirokazu and Justine Triet are among the auteurs who will be screening their latest works at the festival. Payne will be on hand with “The Holdovers,” a comedy set in a boarding school that reunites him with “Sideways” star PaulGiamatti, while Linklater is showing “Hitman,” an action-comedy with Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. Kore-eda and Triet will screen “Monster” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” both of which premiered at Cannes, where the latter won the Palme d’Or.

You gotta love when a studio decides to take a bit of a risk when it comes to marketing a film. It’s always fun when you watch a trailer and realize that a marketing team has really felt inspired when they worked on something.

Tara Karajica In his 2017 film “Downsizing” two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne presents an unbelievable antidote to the world’s growing population: the downsizing of the average human being. On Tuesday, the film opened the Evia Film Project, which focuses on green issues. “It didn’t start with the ecological element,” the director tells Variety at the event, which takes place on the Greek island of Evia, which was devastated by fires two years ago. Although six years old, the film is ageing well. It is still relevant and even mentions the pandemic in a scary foreboding, but he is not optimistic. “Things are getting worse,” he says.

Tara Karajica On Tuesday, Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing” opened the 2nd Evia Film Project, in the presence of the two-time Oscar-winning director. The green initiative was launched by the Thessaloniki Film Festival last year to offer support to Northern Evia following the devastating 2021 wildfires. The event runs to June 24 with an enhanced program. The films of this year’s edition are a mix of both classics and recent hits, feature films and documentaries. They have been selected to raise awareness, inform, incite to action, bring to light the repercussions of human-driven activities and mankind’s relation to the environment and, last but not least, praise nature’s magic.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor At the Cannes Film Festival, Italy’s 102 Distribution is selling thriller “Light Falls,” directed by Phedon Papamichael, the cinematographer on James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Papamichael, who was Oscar nominated for handling the cinematography on Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” and Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” talks to Variety about shooting “Light Falls.” The film tells the story of Clara, played by Elene Makharashvili, and Ella, played by Nini Nebieridze, two young lovers whose Greek island holiday spirals out of control when a tragic incident leads to an encounter with a trio of illegal Albanian immigrants. The thriller establishes the relationship of the young women before moving in a darker and more violent direction.

Refresh for updates The studio that owns the highest grossing movie of the year so far, Universal with its billion bound Super Mario Bros Movie, brought the stars and filmmakers to CinemaCon. Could we expect anything less?

Filmmakers and executives, creatives of music, theater and art remembered Tom Luddy as friend and mentor, tastemaker and cultural force who deployed an astonishingly vast network to nurture talent and bring people and projects together over decades.

Todd Gilchrist editor Warner Bros. will commemorate its 100th anniversary with a block of programming on Turner Classic Movies starting April 1. TCM will broadcast remastered and newly restored versions of 10 classic Warner Bros. films, each featuring an introduction from a filmmaker or film expert culled from the network’s ongoing partnership with the Film Foundation, a non-profit preservation and exhibition organization. The program coincides with the April 13-16 run of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. On April 13, a new 4K restoration of 1959’s “Rio Bravo,” Howard Hawks’ classic western starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson, will premiere on TCM and serve as the opening night film of the festival. Dickinson will attend the in-person event, while Martin Scorsese will introduce the film on TCM’s small-screen presentation. Similarly, Warner Bros. will premiere a new 4K restoration of Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden,” starring James Dean, on both the big screen and the network, the latter featuring an introduction by filmmakers Wes Anderson and Joanna Hogg.

Here’s a movie Focus Features is excited about for next awards season, and it wouldn’t be shocking to see it world premiering at a big film festival some time this year: Alexander Payne’s New England prep school comedy The Holdovers. The Universal label just dated the pic for November 10 with a wider break on Wednesday, November 22 ahead of Thanksgiving. 

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Alexander Payne’s comedy “The Holdovers” is landing in theaters in time for Thanksgiving. Focus Features will begin rolling out the film on Nov. 10 in select markets before expanding nationwide on Wednesday, Nov. 22, ahead of Turkey Day. It’ll play in theaters alongside Disney’s animated adventure “Wish,” which debuts on the same day, as well as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Universal’s “Trolls 3,” which open the week prior. “The Holdovers” reunites Payne with Paul Giamatti for the first time since their 2004 Oscar-winning film “Sideways.” In the upcoming movie, Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly instructor at an elite New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the students with nowhere to go. He eventually forms an unlikely bond with a damaged, brainy troublemaker (played by newcomer Dominic Sessa) and the head cook (portrayed by Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Lionsgate is set as the distributor for the action-comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, helmed for Miramax by Guy Ritchie. The film starring Jason Statham (F9), Hugh Grant (Glass Onion), Aubrey Plaza (The White Lotus), Josh Hartnett (Lucky Number Slevin), Cary Elwes (Rebel Moon) and Bugzy Malone (The Gentlemen) will be released in the U.S. on March 3. 

Few ’90s comedies are as beloved as Alexander Payne‘s cult classic “Election.” Now, Deadline reports that Payne and Paramount Pictures have a sequel to the film in the works over at Paramount+, with Reese Witherspoon also on board to reprise her iconic role as Tracy Flick. READ MORE: Reese Witherspoon Says There’s A “Deep Desire” For More ‘Big Little Lies’ In The Future Like the 1999 film, “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” is based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, whose sequel to his 1998 book came out in June.

Paramount Pictures has announced that Tracy Flick Can’t Win — a sequel to Alexander Payne’s cult classic 1999 comedy Election — is being made for Paramount+. Payne is returning as director, with the original film’s lead Reese Witherspoon to produce and reprise her starring role.

EXCLUSIVE: Ezra Emanuel has been promoted to Production Executive at Miramax. Emanuel previously served as Bill Blocks executive assitant, serving as the day-to-day point man. In his new role he will be reporting to head of production Andrew Golov and Miriam Brin, SVP of Production, helping to source both TV/Film projects for Miramax and assisting all projects to their completion and sale.

EXCLUSIVE: Echo Lake Entertainment has signed actress Alisa Wainwright (Raising Dion) for management in all areas.

Veteran studio executives Peter Kujawski and Jason Cassidy will receive an Industry Tribute at the 32nd annual Gotham Awards ceremony, taking place live and in person at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Monday, November 28.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Hong Chau has joined the cast of the anticipated new film from “The Favourite” and “The Lobster” director Yorgos Lanthimos. Chau, who has been prolific in recent years, joins a stacked ensemble featuring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. Plot details are (frustratingly) under wraps from the Greek master of subversion, who has also given us “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “Dogtooth.” Lanthimos directs from a script he wrote with Efthimis Filippou (reuniting after both “Lobster” and “Sacred Deer”). Searchlight Pictures is financing and distributing the project with Element Pictures and Film4. Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element, Kasia Malipan and Lanthimos are producing. Principal photography begins this month in Chau’s native New Orleans.

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Steckler is exiting his post as President of Film Production at Imperative Entertainment to focus on producing under his newly launched shingle Enhanced Hammer. In addition to leading his production company, he will act as a consultant to Imperative Entertainment on select projects. Steckler arrived at Imperative in July 2019.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Neon has acquired the North American rights to the thriller “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” out of the Toronto International Film Festival, where it world premiered in the auteur-driven Platform section. Based on Andreas Malm’s manifesto tackling the climate crisis, the film is directed by Daniel Goldhaber (“CAM”); produced, co-written and stars Ariela Barer (“Runaways”, “Atypical”); co-written by Jordan Sjol and edited by Daniel Garber (“CAM,” “Some Kind of Heaven”). “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” follows a group of young environmental activists who set out to sabotage an oil pipeline in a timely thriller that’s described as “part high-stakes heist, part radical exploration of direct action as climate activism.”

Angelique Jackson The hottest sales title at the Toronto Film Festival is officially off the market, with Focus Features landing worldwide distribution rights to Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” in a deal worth roughly $30 million. Paul Giamatti stars in the Christmas-themed film that reunites the actor and director for the first time since their Oscar-winning 2004 hit “Sideways.” It will hit theaters in Christmas 2023. In “The Holdovers,” Giamatti portrays Paul Hunham, a universally disliked professor at a prep school called Deerfield Academy. With no family and nowhere to go around the holidays in 1970, he stays on campus to supervise students who couldn’t go home. After a few days, only one person is left: a troublemaking 15-year old named Angus, a good student whose bad behavior always threatens to get him expelled. Along with the school’s head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam, the three form an unlikely bond as they spend Christmas together during two very snowy weeks in New England. The cast also includes Carrie Preston, Gillian Vigman and Tate Donovan. David Hemingson wrote the film’s script script.

Deadline first reported the sale and said it was for $30 million, but the individual told TheWrap that it could even be north of that figure.The film, which reunites the team from Payne’s “Sideways,” screened on Sunday at TIFF in which all major streamers and studios attended.

EXCLUSIVE: The biggest deal ever made at Toronto will be on a film that is not in the Toronto Film Festival roster. I’m hearing that Focus Features is tying up a $30 million worldwide rights deal with Miramax’s Bill Block and CAA Media Finance for The Holdovers, after a discreet screening here for buyers held Sunday. Focus will give the film a theatrical release, and Middle East is the only turf not covered in the deal. The film marks the reteam between director Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti, who teamed memorably in the 2004 wine-tasting road trip comedy Sideways, a film that won Payne and Jim Taylor Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay. David Hemingson wrote The Holdovers script.

As they say here north of the border: Time to drop the puck on the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) and Cliff “Method Man” Smith (Power Book II: Ghost) have signed on to star alongside Kerry Washington and Omar Sy in Lionsgate’s action-thriller Shadow Force, from director Joe Carnahan (Copshop).

Guy Lodge Film CriticA cemetery is not an auspicious choice of rendezvous point for an estranged father and son arranging what might be one last meeting in “A Perfect Day for Caribou,” but the dry joke of Jeff Rutherford’s tender, affectingly reserved first feature is that things get more melancholic still when they leave its glum confines. Set over the course of a single day on the fringes of some dead American anytown, this at once quiet and talkative two-hander covers no especially new ground, but strides known territory with a keen eye for lonesome landscapes, and an ear for the eternal communicative impasse felt by men who know each other all too well and not at all. Sturdy, thoughtful performances from Jeb Berrier and, in particular, rising star Charlie Plummer should hook distributor interest in this low-key indie following its premiere in Locarno’s newcomer-oriented Cineasti de Presente strand.

EXCLUSIVE: Quiver Distribution has acquired North American rights to the dramedy Small Town Wisconsin, starring David Sullivan (Sharp Objects), Bill Heck (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Kristen Johnson (3rd Rock from the Sun), Tanya Fischer (Life on Mars) and Cooper J. Friedman (9-1-1: Lone Star), slating it for wide release in theaters and on digital platforms on June 10th.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy winner Carrie Preston (The Good Fight) has signed on to star alongside Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in the Miramax film The Holdovers, from two-time Oscar winner and seven-time nominee Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants).

READ MORE: Jules Hudson's very private life with wife Tania and why he hated being in London In April 2018, Sandra began a leading role in the BBC series Killing Eve , playing British intelligence agent Eve Polastri. Sandra explained that she did not initially realise that she would be considered for the lead in the series. Speaking to Vulture , she said: "I did not assume the offer was for Eve.