Q&A: Almodóvar on unearthing the past in 'Parallel Mothers'

Recently seen in two of the biggest films of 2021, Oscar contenders “Nightmare Alley” from director Guillermo del Toro and Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” in-demand Oscar-winning Australian actress Cate Blanchett has now been selected to lead a new film from Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. READ MORE: The Essentials: The Films Of Pedro Almodóvar Variety reveals that Blanchett has joined “A Manual For Cleaning Women,” one of two English-language projects Almodóvar has been developing and talking up in the past few months.

Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up) will produce and star in A Manual for Cleaning Women, the first English-language feature from Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (Parallel Mothers, Pain and Glory), Deadline has confirmed.

Pedro Almodóvar’s  opened to an estimated $41,076 this weekend on three screens for a PSA of $13,692 over three days. Distributor Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker calls that cume conservative, anticipating $42-$43K for the Penelope Cruz-starrer that he said has been attracting a diverse new audience to Almodóvar, including younger moviegoers.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentPedro Almodóvar has written and directed 23 feature films since 1978; each one carries his unique style, yet he manages to keep surprising audiences.

Adult demos slow to embrace cinemas may be even slower this holiday weekend amid a barrage of breathless Omicron headlines — that aren’t all bad. It spreads fast but seems less virulent than previous strains, and may burn out faster.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorPenélope Cruz first met Pedro Almodóvar when she was cast in his 1997 film, “Live Flesh.” Almodóvar had originally wanted her to star in “Kika,” but Cruz was too young for the role. The director promised her he would write a character for another movie, and he did.

James Franco is opening up about his battle with sex addiction.

Two women meet in a maternity ward and their lives become inextricably linked in Pedro Almodóvar’s gentle but penetrating “ Parallel Mothers.”It’s a film that on one level plays like a melodrama, with wild twists and turns fitting of soap opera cliffhangers. But there is something deeper going on too, underneath the beautiful surface and base pleasures of plot and simply watching Penélope Cruz through Almodóvar’s loving lens.

Twilight has been in the news so much lately with Kristen Stewart‘s awards season run for Spencer, as well as the movies arriving on Netflix in July 2021 (and already getting ready to be removed in January 2022…)

Lorene Scafaria Guest ColumnistFor Variety‘s Writers on Writers, Lorene Scafaria pens a tribute to “Parallel Mothers” (screenplay by Pedro Almodóvar). Pedro Almodóvar is in control.From the opening image of “Parallel Mothers,” Almodóvar calls attention to the artifice of filmmaking. On the set of a photo shoot, the props and lights and craft service and crew are all in view as Penélope Cruz’s Janis gives her subject precise direction.

Over the past year, The Playlist has covered hundreds of prestige films and TV series. We’ve even gone ahead and broke them down and ranked them in our various Best of 2021 lists.

Wizards Of The Coast have announced a collaboration with Post Malone in a year-long celebration of Friday night Magic.The partnership begins with the return of Friday Night Magic, a series of beginner friendly Magic: The Gathering tournaments across over 8000 stores worldwide which take place, as the title suggests, every Friday.On speaking of the decision to pair up with the Grammy-nominated artist head of franchise marketing for Wizards Of The Coast, publisher of Magic: The Gathering, Nathan

Clayton Davis In Variety‘s Up Next, we asked four Oscar winners to pick the one person who represents the future of Hollywood.Pedro Almodóvar describes his scripts as making a dish. “They need a lot of cooking time in the oven,” he says.

NEW YORK -- During a tribute to her career at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), Penelope Cruz recalled the Betamax videotape store that opened in her neighborhood, in a suburb of Madrid, when she was a child and that made her discover cinema.It was there where she rented all the films of Spanish movie director Pedro Almodóvar, she said.“I watched, and I laughed, I cried, and I learned," she said at a star-studded benefit Tuesday evening at the museum.

Jon Burlingame editor“Parallel Mothers” is Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias’ 13th film for director Pedro Almodóvar and, says Iglesias, “the best experience working for him” to date.The Madrid-based composer is a three-time Oscar nominee, but none of those films (“The Constant Gardener,” “The Kite Runner,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) were by Almodóvar, his filmmaking partner since 1995.He has six Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscar, for Almodóvar films, including art-house hits “All