Read the Screenplay for ‘Sound of Metal’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorListen to the theme song of Nicolas Cage’s new horror movie “Willy’s Wonderland” and chances are you won’t be able to get it out of your heard.Here, Variety gives you the first listen to the full creepy, yet catchy “The Birthday Song and Willy’s Jingle.”In the Kevin Lewis-directed film, Cage plays a man whose car breaks down. In order to pay for the repairs, he agrees to clean an abandoned amusement park fun house.

EXCLUSIVE: In 2014, French playwright Florian Zeller won the Molière Award for Le Pere, a play about an aging man’s bout with dementia. Seven years, a TV series and a French film adaptation later, Zeller brings his words to the big screen and to the Oscar-season awards race.

John Lee Hancock wrote the screenplay for Warner Bros’ crime thriller The Little Things in 1992, around the time he penned A Perfect World and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, both for director Clint Eastwood. At the time an in-demand screenwriter, he hadn’t been a director yet, and the script, about a pair of cops who try to catch a serial killer, went through several iterations.

Forest Road Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition vehicle (or SPAC) backed by the eponymous entertainment finance firm with a Hollywood-heavy roster of advisors has found its target, announcing plans to buy digital fitness specialist Beachbody Company and take it public.

Kelly Reichard’s First Cow, based on her frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond’s 2004 novel The Half Life, brings new life to pre-statehood Oregon and the early Americans seeking to stake their claim in the burgeoning Pacific Northwest.

For Nomadland, writer-director Chloé Zhao adapted Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century into a screenplay, got Frances McDormand to star in the movie, and hasn’t looked back since.

Sofia Richie, 22, was back in Santa Monica, CA this weekend, just days after she was seen canoodling with billionaire heir Gil Ofer, on a beach in Miami, FL. The model was joined by friend Jaden Smith, 22, as they stepped out to grab dinner at Giorgio Baldi amid the L.A. area’s new allowance of outdoor dining. In addition to looking comfortable around each other, the young stars looked stylish in their outfits.

There are very few actors working today that have the star power attached to just their name alone that will drive box office and earn the attention of just about anyone who enjoys films. There’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Tom Cruise.

EXCLUSIVE: In 2016, Cheryl Guerriero’s script about a college football star-turned-convict landed her a spot on the Black List. Nearly four years later, the writer-producer’s screenplay became Palmer, the Apple TV+ film directed by Oscar-winning The Cave helmer Fisher Stevens with Justin Timberlake starring in the lead role.

Dannielynn Birkhead is the spitting image of her late mom, Anna Nicole Smith. Audiences got to see a first-look at a new 20/20 episode that features the 14-year-old daughter of the famous TV personality and Larry Birkhead, 48, on a journey to piece together parts of Anna’s past roughly 14 years after her death. “She wanted to be a star; she wanted to be a mother; and Dannielynn is her legacy,” Larry’s voiceover can be heard saying in the preview.

EXCLUSIVE: When Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass began working on News of the World, he said he set out to create a family movie with purpose and edge. However, he didn’t expect the film’s touching on pandemics and a politically divided country to strike such a chord with current events.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros’ Judas and the Black Messiah may have been set in the late 1960s, but it could have very well taken place in 2021 as it puts a glaring spotlight on the treatment of the Black community, activism and identity.

EXCLUSIVE: For nearly 15 years, director Ramin Bahrani and novelist Aravind Adiga shared a symbiotic relationship of inspiration that culminated into Netflix’s rags-to-riches drama The White Tiger.

EXCLUSIVE: “You ready for tonight?” Malcom X asks Cassius Clay about his upcoming title bout with the dangerous Sonny Liston at the beginning of Kemp Powers’ screenplay for One Night In Miami. “I been training three years for this fight. I’m as ready as a person can be,” the soon to be Muhammad Ali replies with his well-known bombast.

Riz Ahmed-starring Sound of Metal has been released – you can read it below.Directed by Darius Marder, the film, which was released last year in cinemas and on Amazon Prime, follows Ruben, a heavy metal drummer who grapples with his immediate and intermittent hearing loss.Ahmed plays Ruben, who struggles with the prospect of becoming deaf while also confronting his past addiction to drugs, having been sober for four years.

EXCLUSIVE: Never Rarely Sometimes Always writer-director Eliza Hittman said she found inspiration for the Focus Features film in 2012, when she read about a woman who died after being denied a life-saving abortion.

The film adaptation of the best-selling novel Where the Crawdads Sing has added rising stars Harris Dickinson and Taylor John Smith to the cast.

EXCLUSIVE: Pixar’s Soul takes viewers to The Great Before, a world where souls find their quirks and passions before manifesting on Earth. The colorful realm rife with pastel-hued spirits was 23 years in the making, when director Pete Docter wondered how his son came into the world with a personality.