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Alex Garland’s Civil War has been set for a June 7 theatrical release date in China. This marks the first time an A24 production will officially hit cinemas there. The dystopian thriller was acquired by Huahua Media in the market with Alibaba set to partner on the local release. 

Magnus von Horn’s sophomore feature Sweat earned its director a spot in Cannes’ Official Selection in 2020, after his debut, The Here After, played in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015. But the festival of 2020 was canceled in the wake of the Covid pandemic, so von Horn’s place in this year’s Competition, with his third feature The Girl With the Needle, must surely mark the Swedish director’s coming-of-age. The film, starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, riffs on one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases to weave a poetic and dark fairytale about the people living on the margins in the aftermath of the First World War. 

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Stars Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey set TV screens ablaze in the romantic period drama “Fellow Travelers.” The Showtime miniseries follows two men whose love is intertwined across several decades, spanning wars and political events. Since its debut in October, it has received widespread acclaim.

Jack Dunn Paramount+ has unveiled a teaser for its seventh “South Park” streaming special, “South Park: The End of Obesity,” which premieres May 24 in the U.S. and Canada, and May 25 in Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In “The End of Obesity,” weight loss drugs take the quiet mountain town of South Park by storm.

A woman who saw the horrors of the Second World War and now lives with advanced Parkinson's Disease has received an apology from The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after they demanded that she repay over £7,000. The elderly woman was told to return the funds she had received as part of the severe disability premium of Pension Credit from 2019 to 2022.

Michaela Zee “Terminator Zero” has set its premiere date at Netflix. The eight-episode animated series, which revolves around new characters in the “Terminator” universe, will premiere globally on Aug. 29.

K.J. Yossman Israel’s foremost documentary market CoPro has unveiled its main slate ahead of the event next month.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian-born and Texas-based director Roberto Minervini is known for making hard-hitting documentaries that dissect the backwaters of American society, such as his so-called Texas trilogy comprising “The Passage,” “Low Tide” and “Stop the Pounding Heart.” His most recent doc, “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?,” about a community of Black people in New Orleans during the summer of 2017 – when a string of brutal killings of Black men sent shockwaves throughout the country – launched from the Venice competition section in 2018. “The Damned,” which premieres on Thursday in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and is Minervini’s first fiction feature, is set during the American Civil War in the winter of 1862.

Naman Ramachandran Indian filmmaker Dr. Bijukumar Damodaran‘s next film “Papa Buka” will commence principal photography in Papua New Guinea in July. The film will follow Indian historians Romila and Anand who go to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, to write a book about the Indian soldiers who fought with the British and Australian armies against the Japanese during WWII in the country.

The immediate cost of war is front and center these days, as the grim scenarios in Gaza and Ukraine continue to play out in front of us. But in his fiction debut, documentary filmmaker Jonathan Millet takes us beyond the headlines of the now to present the little-discussed realities that face those people displaced.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Bob Yari’s startup mini-major Magenta Light Studios has found its first in-house film production in “Summerhouse,” a period drama set against the anxiety of the Vietnam War. “Bombshell” and “Halloween” star Malcolm McDowell will lead the project with Jacob Ward, an up-and-comer who made his debut in Ray Romano’s 2022 film “Somewhere in Queens.” Ed Kaplan (“2 Graves in the Desert”) will write the script and direct, with Shelly Jonson (“Greyhound,” “Captain America: The First Avenger”) as director of photography. Production will begin in Connecticut this month.

HBO is rolling out some beauteous dragon footage and a potty-mouthed Aegon in the season 2 trailer for House of the Dragon, which returns June 16.

The official trailer for House of the Dragon season 2 has debuted online!

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which premieres on Aug. 29. Amazon unveiled the trailer and the premiere date in New York City on Tuesday as part of its upfront presentation to advertisers.

Cannes Film Festival is bracing for a tumultuous 77th edition. As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, attendees and organizers anticipate protests, politically charged speeches and pins and flags that signal solidarity with Palestinian civilians, Israeli hostages and Ukrainians looking for more military assistance from the West as they try to fend off the Russian invasion. But if the festival has its way, there will be none of that.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In a new profile of “Furiosa” director George Miller published by The Telegraph, it’s revealed that Anya Taylor-Joy’s eponymous character only has around 30 lines of dialogue in the upcoming “Mad Max: Fury Road” prequel movie. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to fans of the road warrior franchise, as Tom Hardy and Mel Gibson barely had much to say in Miller’s previous “Mad Max” movies. However, Taylor-Joy did push Miller to let Furiosa get loud in the new movie.

In the fuselage of a C-47 transport plane, a group of high-ranking Nazis in uniforms stripped of their insignia are facing their captors. Among them, Hermann Göring strikes up a conversation with a U.S. military psychiatrist, Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley. “Howie here tells me you do magic,” Göring says to Kelley. Kelley nods and shows him a quick coin trick. “Very good,” Göring responds. “But I am going to show you a real magic trick someday. I am going to escape the hangman’s noose.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director With his “Mad Max: Fury Road” prequel movie “Furiosa” gearing up for both its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and its theatrical release later this month, director George Miller recently spoke to The Telegraph and reflected on the notorious feud that broke out between stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron during the grueling “Fury Road” production. Miller said at the center of the feud was the simple fact that “they were just two very different performers.” “Tom has a damage to him but also a brilliance that comes with it, and whatever was going on with him at the time, he had to be coaxed out of his trailer,” Miller said, more or less confirming reports that Hardy’s tardiness drew a wedge between him and his-costar.

K.J. Yossman The Ukrainian edition of “The Bachelor” is set to return with 28-year-old war veteran Oleksandr Budko as the lead. Produced by Starlight Media (an STB channel) and Warner Bros.

Jamie Lang The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has become an increasingly important marketing opportunity for major U.S. studios to show off their upcoming animated offerings. This year, Warner Bros.

Emergency services swarmed a Greater Manchester street after a Second World War grenade was discovered at a house. Residents were urged to stay inside their homes within a 100m cordon around the scene in Lowton, near Wigan.

Naman Ramachandran Tarf Media has acquired worldwide sales rights, excluding North America, for “Lonesome Soldier” and will represent the film at the Cannes Film Market. The film is directed by Nino Aldi (“Who Killed Copper Dunn?”), stars John Ashton (“Gone Baby Gone”), Allison McAtee (“The Haves and Have Nots”), Steve Monroe (“Promising Young Woman”) and Patrick Y. Malone (“The Tomorrow War”) and introduces actor-writer Alexander Randazzo.

Magnify has acquired global and U.S. sales rights (excluding Canada and Benelux) to “Wildhood” director Bretten Hannam’s supernatural thriller “Place of Ghosts,” which is set to go into production in August 2024. Lorna Lee Torres, Magnify’s senior VP of sales, and Austin Kennedy, director of global sales, will be launching the project in Cannes.

Hunter Ingram SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned,” the Season 2 premiere of “Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire,” now streaming on AMC+. On the set of AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire,” showrunner Rolin Jones and star Jacob Anderson had a nickname for Anderson’s character, Louis de Pointe du Lac. “We used to call him Cuddles the Vampire,” Jones tells Variety with a laugh. But notice the past tense.

Alison Herman TV Critic In a sea of rote, listless IP, the first season of AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire” felt like manna from heaven — or blood to a thirsty nightwalker. Yes, the show was part of a reverse-engineered attempt at an Anne Rice cinematic universe. But in the hands of showrunner Rolin Jones, “Interview With the Vampire” set itself apart from both Rice’s original and the 1994 film adaptation, all while maintaining the story’s Gothic romanticism.

Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” debuted on May 19, 1999, few movies before (or since) were greeted with more fevered anticipation. Not only was the movie the first new “Star Wars” movie in a generation, but it was touted as the first of a prequel trilogy charting the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Knight fated to turn to the dark side as Darth Vader.

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor, Variety.com The reigning Queen of Comic-Con and the ultimate science fiction superstar, Sigourney Weaver, might be gearing up to conquer yet another interstellar franchise. Weaver is in talks to join the cast of the Star Wars film, “The Mandalorian & Grogu,” Variety has confirmed.

A month after Disney and Lucasfilm filed paperwork to have Gina Carano’s wrongful-discharge and sex-discrimination suit tossed out, the fired Mandalorian star has kicked back to keep her Elon Musk-backed legal action off the mat.

Sigourney Weaver is in talks to return to space for a key role in the next Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian & Grogu.

Joel Edgerton has been in Star Wars and the series Obi-Wan Kenobi, so he is versed in sci-fi.

Selena Kuznikov Andy Serkis is joining the cast of Oren Moverman’s World War II psychological thriller “The Man With the Miraculous Hands” starring Woody Harrelson. Vendôme’s Philippe Rousselet and Jerico Films’ Eric Jehelmann will produce while Vendôme’s Fabrice Gianfermi and Jeremy Plager serve as executive producers.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sam Claflin (“Daisy Jones & the Six,” “Peaky Blinders,” the Hunger Games franchise) and Rupert Friend (“Asteroid City,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Homeland”) will star in the World War II action thriller “Perdition” from writer-director Henry Dunham (“The Standoff at Sparrow Creek”). Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee will produce for Thunder Road Pictures, whose credits include the John Wick franchise, with Claflin executive producing.

‘No travel’ warnings have been issued by the UK Foreign Office for 24 countries, which effectively means they are off-limits to UK travellers. On the list are some expected destinations as well as countries which may come as a surprise.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kinology (“Dracula, a Love Story”) has boarded international sales to “The Big War,” an epic €30-million live action-CGI characters hybrid movie which will mark the directorial comeback of “La Haine” filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz. The ambitious feature is adapted from “La Bête Est Morte,” an iconic two-part graphic novel illustrated by Edmond Calvo during War World 2 in Nazi-Occupied France and published after the country was liberated.

EXCLUSIVE: Sources tell us that 20th Century Studios‘ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is off to a good start with previews around $6.5M. That’s comprised of Thursday night money which began accruing at 3PM and around $1.6M from Wednesday fan shows that began at 7PM.

Jon Burlingame The music from “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “The Last of Us,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “American Symphony” and “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” received Composers’ Choice Awards Thursday night from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Daniel Pemberton won Film Score of the Year for the animated “Spider-Man” sequel; David Fleming took Television Score of the Year for HBO’s “Last of Us”; Siddhartha Khosla received Television Theme of the Year honors for Hulu’s “Only Murders”; Jon Batiste earned Documentary Score of the Year for “American Symphony”; and Gordy Haab won Video Game Score of the Year for EA’s “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.” The Composers Choice Awards are voted by members of the ASCAP composer and songwriter community and are unique among awards given by performing-rights organizations.