Brent Lang Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Brent Lang Executive Editor The actors strike and a series of holiday blockbusters that didn’t shine as brightly took a bite out of Imax‘s fourth-quarter earnings. Revenues at the exhibition and technology company fell to $86 million, a 12% drop from the $98 million that the company reported in the prior-year quarter. Profits, however, were essentially flat, with Imax reporting net income of $2.5 million, a 3% decline from the $2.6 million in the prior-year quarter.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “No extraneous commotion,” Jordan Fein, the associate director of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” beseeches the small army of construction crew members who are drilling, hammering and carrying planks of wood around him, not to mention the half-dozen musicians and dancers waiting to rehearse. It’s roughly two weeks before the revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “Cabaret” opens its doors to the public, and Fein is fine-tuning the prologue, an hour-and-15-minute immersion into club culture that precedes the show. It’s a daring piece of theatrical provocation that has helped to make the Broadway production one of the season’s hottest (and most expensive) tickets.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Maya Boyd will take over the title role in Broadway‘s “& Juliet.” She joins the cast directly from the company of “Merrily We Roll Along,” where she made her Broadway debut earlier this year while simultaneously completing her senior year at the University of Michigan. But there’s something Boyd has to take care of before she assumes the lead in the new show.

Brent Lang Executive Editor From hit man to hedgehog. “John Wick” leading man Keanu Reeves will voice Shadow in “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” a source confirmed to Variety. He joins a cast that includes Ben Schwartz as Sonic, as well as Jim Carrey as the villainous Dr.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “South Park” co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are teaming with Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free on a new live-action comedy that will hit theaters just in time for our nation’s birthday. The film is slated to open on July 4, 2025 and will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. It faces some stiff competition.

Brent Lang Executive Editor There was something fitting about the setting. Paramount Pictures unveiled the first footage from “Gladiator II” on the stage of The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, a hotel that reimagines Ancient Rome in all its decadent splendor, albeit with a few more slot machines. Ridley Scott seems to be offering a bloodier version of that distant age, one that finds Paul Mescal enter the arena as a nobleman who has renounced his privilege.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” will be re-released in theaters in honor of the sci-fi epic’s 10th anniversary. The film, which earned an impressive $731 million globally when it debuted in 2014, stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon and is set in a dystopian future in which a group of astronauts must travel to the far reaches of space to find a new planet for humankind to colonize. Paramount Pictures announced the re-release during its presentation to theater owners and executives at CinemaCon, the exhibition industry conference taking place this week in Las Vegas.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Robert Eggers shared his terrifying take on “Nosferatu,” offering up the atmospheric first look at his remake of the famous vampire film to theater owners at CinemaCon this week. In the trailer, Lily-Rose Depp, playing a devout young woman, prays earnestly by candlelight. “Come to me, come to me, hear my call,” she intones before a hand reaches out to grab her neck.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Gru, the recovering supervillain turned huggable and lovable dad, is back in action. Universal premiered a new sequence from “Despicable Me 4,” the latest installment in the studio and its partner Illumination’s long-running animated franchise, at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Wednesday. It featured an aspiring villainess (Joey King) as well as a new addition to the Gru family — Gru Jr., who bears a strong resemblance to his beak-nosed namesake — as they attempted a “Mission: Impossible” style heist of a heavily fortified castle.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Michael Keaton was blunt about what audiences can expect when “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” hits screens, more than 36 years after the first film opened. “It’s really fucking good,” the actor told theater owners at CinemaCon. And based on the zany look at “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” that Keaton and Tim Burton shared, the collaborators have come up with something that could be out of this Netherworld.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Horizon: An American Saga,” Kevin Costner‘s wildly ambitious, sprawling, risky and quite possibly foolhardy two-part Western rode into CinemaCon on Tuesday. The films, which will premiere this summer, were partially financed by Costner, who mortgaged his ranch to help raise the money for the $100 million epic. “Hopefully the people come and they keep coming and they binge your theaters,” Costner told cinema operators at Warner Bros.

Brent Lang Executive Editor It’s going to take a live action version of “Moana” a little longer to swim to shore than Disney first expected. The film, originally slated to open in 2025, has been pushed back to July 10, 2026. That news came as part of a deluge of Disney release date announcements and shifting debuts.

Brent Lang Executive Editor In a competitive situation, Vendôme Pictures, the Oscar-winning banner behind “CODA,” has optioned the film and television rights to John Vaillant’s nonfiction book about climate change “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.” It comes after the book was released to much acclaim in June 2023 and went on to win the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award, andwas named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Financial Times and The Guardian, among many other prominent publications.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Christopher Durang, a Tony Award-winning playwright who specialized in a particular form of brainy and absurdist comedy, has died. He was 75. The cause was complications from a form of dementia known as logopenic primary progressive aphasia, according to his husband John Augustine.

Brent Lang Executive Editor In April 2020, “The Stranger,” the story of a driver who picks up the rideshare passenger from hell, debuted on Quibi with the world in lockdown. Like most of the bite-sized pieces of entertainment that premiered on the service it came and went without much fanfare, a fate that ultimately was shared by Quibi itself.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Road House,” the Jake Gyllenhaal-led remake of the Patrick Swayze cult favorite, appears to be a hit on Prime Video. Amazon MGM Studios, which operates the streamer, announced that the action film has attracted over 50 million worldwide viewers on the service over its first two weekends. That makes it the studio’s “most-watched produced film debut ever on a worldwide basis.” There are a number of caveats in that statement.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is looking mighty as it heads into its opening weekend, earning an impressive $10 million in Thursday previews. The muscular results come despite the fact that the film suffered meh reviews — critics faulted the latest clash of the primordial beasts for hectic pacing and overstuffed plotting. Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, for instance, dismissed the film as “overly busy boilerplate” (though he liked the finale).

Brent Lang Executive Editor With his victory on Monday at the Critics’ Circle Theatre awards, Andrew Scott has made history. The British performer, recognized as best actor for his one-man West End show, “Vanya,” previously was named best actor at the 2024 Critics’ Circle Film Awards for his performance in “All of Us Strangers.” He’s the first person to win lead actor Critics’ Circle prizes in both film and television in the same year. “It’s a thrilling delight,” Scott says.

Brent Lang Executive Editor One night, not so very long ago, Walton Goggins and Nadia Conners were getting ready to host a cocktail party for about 150 people when an elderly woman showed up outside their Los Angeles home. She was confused and disoriented, asking Conners to help open the garage door because her clicker wasn’t working. “She thought she was home,” remembers Conners.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “City of Dreams,” an upcoming drama about a young Mexican boy who gets smuggled across the border, is lining up some heavy-hitting producers as Roadside Attractions looks to debut the film over Labor Day. Sean Wolfington, the executive producer of “Sound of Freedom” and most recently “Cabrini”; Luis Fonsi, a five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and producer; and songwriter Linda Perry have joined the producing team for the film. It’s a group that also includes Oscar-nominated “Roma” star Yalitza Aparicio.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Musical theater artist and historian Ben West is writing a new book, “The American Musical: Evolution of an Art Form.” The book will be released by Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, on April 1, 2024. This comprehensive history of an American theatrical tradition offers a detailed and definitive portrait of the musical’s artistic evolution over the course of seven distinct eras. The company says it offers a unique perspective gleaned from research at more than 20 different archives across the United States.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Salem’s Lot,” the long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King’s 1975 bestselling novel about vampires, will debut on streaming instead of premiering in theaters. New Line, the studio behind the horror film, officially announced that “Salem’s Lot” will appear on Max in 2024. Variety previously reported that the movie was forgoing a traditional theatrical rollout in favor of a streaming bow.

Brent Lang Executive Editor When the Providence Place Mall was constructed in the late ’90s, it was touted by Rhode Island leaders as a sign of urban renewal for its struggling capital city. For eight artists, it became something else — home.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Mari Yamamoto will star opposite Brendan Fraser in Hikari’s “Rental Family.” The film follows a down and out actor living in Tokyo, who is hired as the token American guy for a Japanese rental family company providing professional stand-in services. The Searchlight Pictures‘ release will commence principal photography next week in Japan.

Brent Lang Executive Editor In what is shaping up to be a muted weekend at the box office, Sony and Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba -To the Hashira Training” earned $1.8 million in Thursday previews, while Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company’s inspirational drama “Ordinary Angels” picked up a paltry $285,000. The weekend’s other new release, Focus Features’ comedic thriller “Drive-Away Dolls,” didn’t report preview grosses, which does not augur well for its commercial prospects. Despite the influx of movies, “Bob Marley: One Love” is expected to retain its spot at No.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Who should play the Fab Four? After director Sam Mendes announced Tuesday that he plans to make four separate movies about the Beatles, one from the perspective of every member of the most famous band in history, every actor with a serviceable Liverpool accent and the ability to carry a tune is burnishing their resumes and hoping to score an audition. But John, Paul, George and Ringo were icons for a reason.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Lionsgate has acquired domestic rights to the Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lily James and Himesh Patel comedy “Greedy People.” The film explores what happens when the eccentric residents of a small, picturesque island town are faced with a sensational murder and the discovery of $1 million next to the body. This sparks a series of increasingly bad decisions that do a number on the peace and tranquility of the community.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Without Valentine’s Day date nights to bolster grosses, ticket sales for “Bob Marley: One Love” fell sharply on Thursday. The drama about the reggae legend earned $3.8 million in its second day of release, a 73% drop from its debut that brings its stateside total to $17.9 million. The Paramount release is hoping to hit the right notes over Presidents Day.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Alex Cox is getting back behind the wheel. The “Repo Man” director is revisiting the off-kilter world of extraterrestrials and car repossession that he mined so memorably in the 1984 cult classic in a new sequel that is being introduced to buyers at the Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market. Entitled “Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer,” the film is being backed by Buffalo 8 Productions, a film and media company best known for the critically acclaimed work on Netflix series “The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes.” Cox wrote the script along with directing the film.

William Earl Katcy Stephan has been promoted to film reporter for Variety. Stephan joined Variety in 2021 as social media editor. Under her leadership, Variety’s cumulative social footprint across major platforms has nearly doubled, reaching 12 million total followers as of this month across TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms.