Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple & More Join Gore Verbinski’s Sci-Fi Film ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Film’s biggest night is (almost) here. The 96th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 10 at a new time, 7 p.m.

In what’s becoming tradition, Vanessa Hudgens will host The Oscars Red Carpet Show again this year. It marks the third year in a row the actress and singer will front the official lead-in. She’ll be joined by Dancing with the Stars vet Julianne Hough this year as co-host.

K.J. Yossman Julianne Moore, Michael Douglas and Emma Thompson are among a slew of celebrities putting their names to a campaign for nuclear disarmament. Ahead of “Oppenheimer’s” expected domination at the Oscars this Sunday, Moore, Douglas, Thompson and other celebrities have backed the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s “Make Nukes History” campaign.

UPDATED, 10:00 AM: The Academy said today that Emily Blunt, Cynthia Erivo, America Ferrera, Sally Field, Ryan Gosling, Ariana Grande, Ben Kingsley, Melissa McCarthy, Issa Rae, Tim Robbins, Steven Spielberg, Mary Steenburgen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlize Theron, Christoph Waltz and Forest Whitaker will present at the Oscars on Sunday. See the rest of the envelope openers below.

Stars like Katie Holmes, Alan Cumming, and Rose Byrne are all joining Broadway’s best talent in supporting the Roundabout Theatre Company!

Academy Awards are right around the corner. The event will be hosted on March 10th, with the first round of presenters being announced. The line up has a mixture of actors that include Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o.

Charles Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan called Robert Oppenheimer “the most important person who ever lived.” It’s hard to know how he would have responded. Pleased with the recognition, modest demurral, or a caustic retort? What we do know: he certainly felt his work and the significance of it — and felt the weight of it. As he described it: “We knew the world would never be the same.” He spent the rest of his life trying to share that insight with the world.

Almost every person of Arab, Muslim and Jewish heritage working in TV and film has experienced a deterioration in their mental health following Hamas’ October 7 attack and the subsequent humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a leading charity has reported.

Elsbeth is coming this week!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed the first group of presenters for the 96th annual Oscars on March 10. The envelope please…

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Zendaya, Michelle Pfeiffer and Oscar winners Nicolas Cage and Al Pacino are among the first group of presenters for this year’s 96th Oscars ceremony. Also presenting are last year’s four acting winners — Brendan Fraser from “The Whale” and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis from the best picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Oscar winners Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight” and “Green Book”), Jessica Lange (“Tootsie” and “Blue Sky”), Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”) and Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) also are set to take the stage. Raj Kapoor serves as the Oscars’ executive producer and showrunner, alongside executive producers Molly McNearney and Katy Mullan.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Juno Temple confirmed to Variety On the Carpet presented by DIRECTV while at the 2024 SAG Awards that “Venom 3” is finally nearing the end of filming. The “Ted Lasso” star is one of the new additions to the “Venom” franchise alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clark Backo in the upcoming third movie, which is being directed by Kelly Marcel and features a story that leading man Tom Hardy co-created. “We’re coming close to an end at the moment,” Temple said.

A major awards show on a Saturday night is a rare occurrence, but the 2024 SAG Awards are here to shake up awards season a little bit!

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Kirsten Niehuus, head of German film fund Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, is confident that the changes to film funding proposed by the German government recently will have a “very positive effect on the production scene in Berlin-Brandenburg.” The proposed changes to the funding system were presented last week to German lawmakers in the Bundestag by commissioner for culture and media Claudia Roth (see here). Speaking to Variety Saturday at a party Medienboard hosted at Berlin’s Holzmarkt, Niehuus said the changes “will mean that we would have a tax system in place that could compete, for instance, with Budapest or Prague, so that not so many German productions would go and shoot somewhere else, and more foreign productions would come and shoot in Germany.” Looking at the media landscape across Germany she notes that one major challenge is the decision by high-end outlets such as Paramount+, HBO and Sky to cancel local productions, and she noted “the streamers are not such reliable partners anymore.” She added: “So I think producers are having a really hard time at the moment.” On a happier note, the Berlin government raised Medienboard’s budget by Euros 6 million over the next two years, which will be targeted at the exhibition sector in the region, allowing for the upgrading of facilities at movie theaters.

Ed Meza @edmezavar An unsung master of movie magic, Solon Luigi Colani has worked on some of the biggest Hollywood movies ever shot in Germany and beyond, among them works by Quentin Tarantino, Ron Howard, George Clooney, Denis Villeneuve, Paul W.S. Anderson, Gore Verbinski and the Wachowskis.

EXCLUSIVE: The EFM packages aren’t done just yet. Pirates Of The Caribbean director and Oscar winner Gore Verbinski has pulled together a strong cast for his fun-sounding next movie, titled Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

EXCLUSIVE: Production has wrapped on indie feature Bad Man, starring Seann William Scott (American Pie) alongside Johnny Simmons (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Rob Riggle (21 Jump Street), Chance Perdomo (After We Fell), Andre Hyland (Barry), and Lovi Poe (Chelsea Cowboy).

“Invincible” returned to Prime Video last November for the first part of its second season and immediately became one of 2023’s highest-rated animated series. Despite only being four episodes, and premiering less than two months before the end of the year, the first half of “Invincible” Season 2 won Rotten Tomatoes‘ Golden Tomato Award for Best Animated Series and currently holds an 100% rating on the review-aggregation website.

While the movie industry seemingly buckles, Disney’s seemingly cutting back on any physical media anymore, and Best Buy is apparently ending its run of selling DVDs and Blu-Rays, companies like the Criterion Collection are staying the course. As usual, the boutique, cinephile-friendly company always aims to release and rediscover classic movies in the annals of film history, and they’re doing much the same with their May 2024 announcements.

The stars of Madame Web stepped out together for the L.A. premiere!