News

Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Trailer. (Photo Credit – Youtube)

The final 3 Body Problem trailer is now out. The Netflix series is one of the biggest releases in the first half of 2024. Based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem novel, Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are the creators of the sci-fi thriller series. The show stars Benedict Wong, Jess Hong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzalez, Alex Sharp, Rosalind Chao, John Bradley, Jonathan Pryce, Ben Schnetzer, Liam Cunningham, Marlo Kenny, Sea Shimooka, Saameer Usmani and Eve Ridley.

The first trailer dropped in January this year, leaving viewers perplexed and excited about the show’s riveting plot. All we could understand was that today’s scientists have to deal with an unknown threat. A lot of scientists have been dropping dead altogether. But what exactly happened to them? What is causing this terror among humans, especially scientists?

Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Trailer.

In continuing their shared dedication to truth, and giving flowers to those that seek it, Rolling Stone and Variety will hold their annual Truth Seekers Summit, presented by Showtime Documentary Films, on August 2, 2023, in New York City. Celebrating the art of documentary and investigative storytelling across all platforms–from podcasts to newscasts to film–the event will have keynote and panel discussions with the leading documentary filmmakers, journalists and cultural trendsetters whose passion for authenticity has a lasting impact and effects change.

Headlining the Summit will be Rachel Maddow, host...

Peter Nicks’ Anthem and Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough’s The Body Politic are among the non-fiction highlights in this year’s DC/Dox documentary film festival in Washington, D.C. next month.

The event also will include the world premieres of Nick Capote’s Between Life & Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story, from MSNBC Films, and an episode of Dawn Porter’s Showtime series Supreme.

The full slate — read it here — includes 31 features and 21 shorts from eight countries. The event, to be held from June 15-18, also will feature the opening night event screening of Joan Baez I Am A Noise, with Baez scheduled to attend, and closing night Space Race, with astronauts Ed Dwight and Leland Melvin.

The festival launched last year after the AFI announced that it would merge AFI Docs, which had long been held in the D.C. area in June, into its annual AFI Film Festival, held in November in Los Angeles.

Dawn Porter is a filmmaker whose latest project “The Lady Bird Diaries,” an all-archival documentary about Lady Bird Johnson, former First Lady of the United States, will debut at the SXSW Film Festival. Her four-part docuseries “Supreme” explores the history of the United States Supreme Court and the legal battles that have shaped America. Porter’s other projects include the next installment of the civil rights series “Eyes on the Prize” for HBO.

Throughout the month of February, Variety will publish essays from prominent Black artists, artisans and entertainment figures celebrating the impact of Black entertainment and entertainers on the world at large.

During Lyndon B. Johnson’s five years as President of the United States, Lady Bird Johnson recorded 123 hours of audio recordings meant to reflect on her time as First Lady. In my latest film, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” we find an astute political observer and strategist who...

I think we can all agree that the 2005 redesign of the Daleks was a huge success, right? Nobody had any issues with them surely? Apart from Raymond Cusick, who originally designed them in 1963, and noted in Doctor Who Confidential ‘To them rivets and bolts are archaic.’ So obviously you can’t please everyone.

Last Thursday, which was approximately four years ago, the Radio Times was released with a new Dalek design on the cover. The slightly taller and thinner black Dalek is based on the Reconnaissance Dalek from the 2018 special ‘Resolution’, something which executive producer Chris Chibnall says is a plot point, describing the 2020 special as a sort of sequel to that episode. It looks better in the trailer than it does in a static image, and it’s been implied that the new design is a variant rather than the standard model.

The Daleks have had numerous variants and...

Al Kasha, the Academy Award-winning composer who, along with songwriting partner Joel Hirschhorn, won Oscars for the soft rock disaster movie classics “The Morning After” and “We May Never Love Like This Again,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 83.

His death was announced by spokesperson Deborah Radel. A cause of death was not disclosed.

Dominating music charts – and Oscar’s Best Original Song category – in 1973 with “The Morning After,” from The Poseidon Adventure, and again in ’75 with “We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno, Kasha and Hirschhorn returned to film songwriting with 1977’s Disney classic Pete’s Dragon. The duo was Oscar-nominated for that song score and the song “Candle On The Water,” sung by Pete’s Dragon star Helen Reddy.

For his Broadway stage work, Kasha received Tony Award nominations for the scores of 1981’s Copperfield and 1982’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Both Broadway productions were short-lived,...

In 2005, Andrew Fried met a group of young men who he’d seen perform a somewhat unclassifiable stage show. They took elements of Second City/Ucb-style comedy, starting with gathering suggestions from the audience; scraps of paper with words were dropped into pails stationed at the front of the theater. Then they’d create on-the-spot, off-the-dome M.C. spiels around whatever they pulled from the bucket. Imagine battle raps, but friendlier and covering everything from comic books to daily commutes. The dual brainchild of two former Wesleyan students, Anthony Veneziale and Thomas Kail,...

For years, the Freestyle Love Supreme experience was a “completely ephemeral” one, as founding member Thomas Kail puts it. Only those in the small, usually 99-seat, theaters who witnessed one of the hip-hop improv group’s shows live shared in the unique memory and magic of what they delivered. But through Andrew Fried’s documentary “We Are Love Supreme,” debuting on Hulu July 17, some of those performances have been given more permanence.

“It was like we were writing poetry and lighting it on fire. And later we ended up writing a couple of novels and people liked our novels,” Kail, who also executive produced the documentary, says of the difference between Freestyle Love Supreme’s shows and “In The Heights” and Hamilton.” “We thought, ‘Well, what if we go back and show them some of the poetry we wrote?’ It informed and infused the novels.”

As Freestyle Love Supreme founding...

The idea of multiple alternate realities looks to be the comic book genre’s new favorite storytelling device, with both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and their rivals at Warner Bros. and DC getting in on the act. Even after the recent delay of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to March 2022 as part of the sweeping changes made to Phase Four, the Sorcerer Supreme is still set to get the jump on Michael Keaton’s return as Batman in The Flash, which isn’t scheduled to hit theaters until three months later.

2022 looks to be the year of the multiverse, and there have already been countless faces both old and new linked with a potential cameo appearance in Doctor Strange’s long-awaited second solo outing, After Scott Derrickson quit or was fired depending on who you believe, Marvel lucked out in hiring Sam Raimi as his replacement, with the...

Marvel really loves setting up universe-altering events, whether that’s in the comic books or the movies. In the latest Marvel Comics event called Empyre, an alien invasion is gearing up to destroy Earth. And the cover art for the series could be teasing Captain Marvel’s death, depicting a casket with the inscription of Carol’s last name – Danvers – on it.

If there’s one thing the comics and the McU have established, it’s that the Kree and Skrull hate each other. But this time around, they’re teaming up under the leadership of the Young Avengers’ Hulkling. The two factions have come to the conclusion that they share a common enemy, humanity. So, they’re now coming for us.

Captain Marvel will be playing a pivotal role in the series, after learning that she’s half-human/half-Kree and gaining a new place in the Marvel hierarchy. She...

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda became a cultural sensation with Hamilton and In the Heights, he was part of a scrappy hip-hop/improv fusion troupe in New York City called Freestyle Love Supreme along with director Thomas Kail and performers Christopher Jackson and Anthony Veneziale. Director Andrew Fried began filming the troupe in the summer of 2005 when Freestyle Love Supreme was beat-boxing on NYC sidewalks, eventually following the group to their much-anticipated reunion tour in 2019. Cinematographer Bryant Fisher elaborates on the limitations of shooting live performances on We Are Freestyle Love Supreme. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]...

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda became a cultural sensation with Hamilton and In the Heights, he was part of a scrappy hip-hop/improv fusion troupe in New York City called Freestyle Love Supreme along with director Thomas Kail and performers Christopher Jackson and Anthony Veneziale. Director Andrew Fried began filming the troupe in the summer of 2005 when Freestyle Love Supreme was beat-boxing on NYC sidewalks, eventually following the group to their much-anticipated reunion tour in 2019. Cinematographer Bryant Fisher elaborates on the limitations of shooting live performances on We Are Freestyle Love Supreme. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]...

Before turning “Hamilton” and “In the Heights” into musical phenomenons, Lin-Manuel Miranda could have been found on stage, spouting off-the-cuff rhymes with his improv group, “Freestyle Love Supreme.”

After performing across the globe, the troupe — founded 15 years ago by Miranda, his frequent collaborator Thomas Kail and emcee Anthony Veneziale — made its Broadway debut last October in a four-month stint at the Booth Theater. It was a rap-filled evening that’s pretty far removed from the Disney musicals and Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals that dominate the Great White Way.

The group’s latest return to the stage also marked the culmination of a project that’s been years in the making: “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme,” a documentary chronicling their evolution from their beginnings at the Drama Bookshop in New York City to the Main Stem. The movie, directed by Andrew Fried, will have its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival.

While Avengers: Endgame brought a fair amount of closure to some of the biggest plot threads and character arcs of the McU, the film also left us with a whole load of loose ends, many of which will presumably be addressed in the Marvel franchise’s next phase or two.

For example, according to a new fan theory that’s been making the rounds lately, the various time travel missions that unfold in the movie’s middle stretch may have directly set up the events of the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

As you’ll likely recall, the so-called “Time Heist” conducted by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes led to the creation of several new realities, since each trip to New York, the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Asgard and Morag essentially caused another split in the timeline.

From here, the theory argues that these different...

Welcome to “Playback,” a Variety / iHeartRadio podcast bringing you exclusive conversations with the talents behind many of today’s hottest films.

We’re changing things up this week with comic book legend Rob Liefeld. Liefeld’s creation, Deadpool, exploded onto the superhero scene in his first standalone film in 2016, and the sequel is packed with even more of the writer-artist’s characters, from Cable to Domino to Shatterstar. It seemed like a good opportunity to chat with someone on that side of the fence about the modern comic book movie landscape. But while the current trend is ongoing and borderline saturated, Liefeld recalls a time when studio chiefs dismissed comic book popularity in film as something reserved for Batman.

Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.

Click here for more episodes of “Playback.”

“I was sitting with the president of Paramount, John Goldwyn is his name,...