‘Drive My Car’: Academy Award Nominee To Premiere On HBO Max

At Contenders Film: The Nominees, Deadline presented a panel with the director and star of perhaps the most historic nominated film at this year’s Oscars, Drive My Car, which represents Japan’s first-ever Best Picture nomination. It’s an astounding feat for a three-hour Japanese-language film, about a stage director’s personal crisis interweaved with his trip to Hiroshima to direct a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

Contenders Film: The Nominees, a one-stop-shop experience featuring a smörgåsbord of Oscar-nominated talent discussing their top-tier projects, kicks off Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. PT as a virtual event, the latest in Deadline’s rapidly expanding Contenders series. Stars, creatives and craftspeople behind 24 films will take part in moderated panels discussing the roads that led them to the doorstep of the Academy Awards.

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As Drive My Car sped from a best screenplay win and stellar reviews at Cannes to four Oscar nominations (Best Picture, International Feature, Director, Adapted Screenplay), distributor credits for the three-hour Japanese drama went to Sideshow/Janus Films – the former a little known new venture from Jonathan Sehring.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticCritics matter. That’s how I interpret the love the Academy showed for “Drive My Car” this year, nominating the three-hour Japanese drama in four separate categories: best picture, director, adapted screenplay and international film, and in so doing, effectively issuing a referendum to the Spike Lee-led Cannes jury that awarded the Palme d’Or to the relatively divisive “Titane.”Sure, other non-U.S.

Drive My Car,” a three-hour Japanese film; “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” only the second Oscar submission (and first nom) from Bhutan; Paolo Sorrentino’s “Hand of God,” the Italian helmer’s second visit to the Academy Awards; Denmark’s “Flee,” an animated tale of an Afghan refugee; and Norway’s “The Worst Person in the World.”Three of the films even broke out of the international film race, with “Drive My Car” drawing noms for best pic, adapted screenplay and director; “Flee” also earned nominations for animation and doc, while “The Worst Person in the World” nabbed a nom in original screenplay.Joachim Trier, who directed “Worst Person in the World” says of the noms: “The Academy wants a broader spectrum of people from across the world looking at films and voting. It’s a more international community.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editorBTS was named the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s Global Recording Artist of the Year Award for the second consecutive year, the organization announced Thursday.BTS (consisting of members RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook) has been on IFPI’s top 10 Global Artist Chart since 2018, when the iconic K-pop band entered the list in the No. 2 spot.

EXCLUSIVE: Sonia Yuan, who stars in Japan’s first Best Picture Oscar nominee Drive My Car, has signed with Artist International Group for management.

Johnny Depp's most recent performances have included him taking on some notable projects. In Minamata he retold the story of an injustice against a Japanese community. In Waiting for Barbarians he played a cruel Colonel battling against indigenous people in an unnamed empire.

Clayton Davis Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” defied expectations last week when it nabbed Oscar nominations for best picture, director, adapted screenplay and international feature. The Japanese movie, released domestically by venerable art-house distributor Janus Films, surpassed titles with more robust campaigns, including Amazon’s “Being the Ricardos” and Netflix’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!”Even Hamaguchi was surprised by the noms.“I could have never imagined that I would be a realistic contender,” he tells Variety, speaking through Stacy Lee, a Japanese interpreter.

Sony will release it’s first movie of 2022, and second Tom Holland title after Spider-Man: No Way Home over the 4-day Presidents Day weekend, Uncharted, in what is expected to be a $70M+ haul worldwide.

Following Deadline’s story about Michael Mann’s forthcoming prequel/sequel novel to his landmark film Heat — he cowrote the book with Edgar winner-Meg Gardiner — has quickly sold rights in major markets around the world. The novel, which hits bookstores August 9, has already sold in 13 major territories including Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Brazil, Sweden, Czech Republic and the UK. The international rollout of Heat 2 is mirroring Harper Collins’ launch of Quentin Tarantino’s #1 bestselling novelization of his film Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood.

only playing in select theaters.However, just in time for the Oscars on March 27, “Drive My Car” is getting a streaming release next month on HBO Max. The service revealed Monday that “Drive My Car” will be streaming on HBO Max starting March 2, as a result of WarnerMedia OneFifty acquiring the drama for streaming.Directed and co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car” is based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami and follows a widowed actor/director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) as he makes a multilingual production of “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima while also dealing with the sudden death of his wife.

Weekend grosses popped higher for Oscar Best Picture nominees led by Licorice Pizza, Belfast and Drive My Car.

Manori Ravindran International EditorIn a year when a festival darling like Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” was able to garner four Oscar nominations, including best picture, questions for the Berlin Film Festival jury — which includes Hamaguchi — centered on the role of film festivals in connecting both arthouse and mainstream audiences.Declaring that he “felt like a kid” at the Berlinale, where his jury will be watching 18 films in all, M. Night Shyamalan sat beaming next to Hamaguchi, who is fresh off his Oscar nomination for best director earlier this week.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSteven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated remake of “West Side Story” is coming to Disney Plus next month.The movie will debut on Disney Plus in the U.S. and most international countries on March 2, 2022.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentThe Oscar nominations for “Drive My Car,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour drama about a man dealing with the death of his wife, have thrilled the director’s native Japan.News of the four Academy Awards nominations was reported by all major Japanese media, from the most serious Nikkei business daily to the sports tabloids whose usual coverage of local art films is zero.The news also lit up Twitter.“An Academy Award nomination for Best Picture is a great accomplishment. I think the melding between Haruki Murakami and Chekhov has created a universality that can be felt around the world,” said Twitter user YasioE.“I really want it to win the Best Picture award, don’t you? Judging from the state of the awards race, I think it can win it.

IMDb TV has announced that it has picked up a second season of “Almost Paradise,” the American-Filipino crime drama series starring Christian Kane.Originally a WGN America show, “Almost Paradise” stars Kane as Alex Walker, a U.S. DEA agent who is betrayed by his partner and forced into an early retirement. Walker relocates to the Philippines, where he runs a gift shop in a resort hotel, and slowly gets pulled into the criminal underworld of the island.

Beginning with our review coverage all the way back to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, through Cannes in July, Venice and Telluride in the late summer, and finally to late-breaking holiday-season releases that qualified just under the gun for Oscar eligibility, Deadline has been on the front lines of opinion for this year’s eventual 10 nominees for Oscar Best Picture.

After whittling down from 93 country submissions to a shortlist of 15, the Oscars’ Best International Feature category has its final five nominees, welcoming some familiar faces, and for the first time, an entirely new entrant.