Jesse Eisenberg Reveals Advice for Lex Luthor Successor Nicholas Hoult Ahead of 'Superman: Legacy'

Kieran Culkin is opening up about what was happening with Jesse Eisenberg at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival!

Sundance Film Festival premiere. It’s an interesting home for the documentary, because Reeve experienced his greatest commercial success playing the Man of Steel in the first four Superman movies, which Warner Bros. produced.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The 2024 Sundance Film Festival Awards are underway in Park City, Utah, where a new crop of indies will do battle across multiple categories, including the coveted U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.

Pending Woody Allen’s final and absolute cancellation, few directors have emerged to take his place as an erudite and literary artist whose work combines snappy wordplay, base sex jokes and a philosophical willingness to stare into the abyss. Jesse Eisenberg staked a tentative claim to that throne with his 2022 debut When You Finish Saving the World, an amiable but scrappy political satire about a left-wing mother and son, but his follow-up makes a stronger case, being much more adult, less broadly scripted, and as depressing as Woody Allen circa Stardust Memories (which his sophomore film as director obliquely resembles, with its talk of chance, fate and irony).

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has just closed a deal in the $17 million range for worldwide rights to It’s What’s Inside, the thriller written and directed by Greg Jardin that has been one of the Sundance Film Festival’s buzziest titles. It’s the second 8-figure deal of Sundance, after the Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain sold to Searchlight for $10 million.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic More actors than ever are now stepping behind the camera to take a shot at directing. To me, they always end up falling into one of three categories. There are the ones who simply aren’t very good at it.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” one of the buzziest movies to premiere so far at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has sold to Searchlight in a huge $10 million deal. Given the warm reception in Park City, the film sparked a bidding war among several distributions to land global rights. Eisenberg directed “A Real Pain” in addition to starring alongside Kieran Culkin.

EXCLUSIVE: The dealmaking has begun. Searchlight Pictures closed the first major deal on the ground at the Sundance Film Festival — $10 million for WW rights for A Real Pain, directed and written by Jesse Eisenberg. He stars with freshly minted Emmy winning Succession star Kieran Culkin as mismatched cousins David and Benji. They reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their grandmother, but older tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family’s history. The film will get a big theatrical release later this year.

So many celebrities have descended on Paris for the most fashionable time of the year – Fashion Week!

PARK CITY – There are multiple meanings to the title of Jesse Eisenberg’s latest directorial effort, “A Real Pain.” There is the pain that cousins Benji Kaplan (Eisenberg) and David Kaplan (Keiran Culkin) are experiencing over the passing of their beloved grandmother and there is the pain Benji is feeling over a horrifying incident in his cousin’s life. The most pressing example, however, is in David’s soul.

Stephen Rodrick Jesse Eisenberg‘s “A Real Pain” stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched New York Jewish cousins. They’re on a trip to Poland in search of the life that their recently dead grandmother lived before the Holocaust. Benji is a buttoned up neurotic on OCD medicine while David is a charming fuckup with no prospects but a mouth that is equally hilarious and malignantly obnoxious.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Sasquatch Sunset” is the kind of movie you need to see to believe. Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough star in the absurdist comedy, which premiered on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival and follows a family of Yetis over the course of a year. The film, with zero dialogue or narration but plenty of grunts, captures an immersive, “true” depiction of the daily life of the Sasquatch.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter It took a lot of time — and hair — to transform Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough into Bigfoot. They spent several hours in the makeup chair to don the elaborate prosthetics needed to play two of the eponymous creatures in “Sasquatch Sunset,” a surreal comedic drama that premieres on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jesse Eisenberg is officially giving his Lex Luthor advice to Nicholas Hoult, and it’s blunt: “Don’t watch me!” During an interview at the Variety Studio presented by Audible while attending the Sundance Film Festival, Eisenberg suggested Hoult should forge his own path and not pay attention to Eisenberg’s own work as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s DC Universe. “Whenever you play a role you feel connected to it,” Eisenberg added to Variety‘s Matt Donnelly about playing the DC villain for a short time.

After “Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom” ended the DCEU with a whimper (albeit a successful whimper relative to the DCEU’s other three 2023 releases), it’s time to look ahead to James Gunn and Peter Safran‘s franchise reboot. And the DCU can’t be a middling, clunky, and visually uninspired as the DCEU right? Well, let’s wait and see on that, considering audiences must wait until July 11, 2025 for Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy.”   READ MORE: ‘Superman: Legacy’: María Gabriela De Faria To Play Villain The Engineer As ‘Supergirl’ Finds New Writer But Variety reports (via Entertainment Tonight) that new Lois Lane Rachel Brosnahan at least promises Gunn’s film will have more life and humor than many of the DCEU entries.

Is the era of the superhero movie over? After the MCU‘s rough year last year a string of poor showings to end the DCEU‘s run, it’s up for debate. But the worst may be yet to come for the genre next decade, even if James Gunn and Peter Safran‘s DCU franchise reboots goes well.

William Earl Variety is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this year with its annual Interview Studio, presented by Audible, the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling. Throughout the festival, videos from the interview studio will be distributed across Variety.com as well as Variety and Audible’s social media channels (Instagram: @audible, @Variety; Twitter: @audible_com, @Variety; TikTok: @audible, @VarietyMagazine).

Rachel Brosnahan is dishing on her upcoming superhero movie role!

Abbott Elementary” star and creator Quinta Brunson took home the Emmy for best actress in a comedy series on Monday night. “I don’t even know why I’m so emotional. I think, like, the Carol Burnett of it all,” Brunson said, beginning to choke up at the top of her acceptance speech.

Dr Fleishman is in the house!