‘The Holdovers’ Director Alexander Payne Wants “Theatrical Real Estate Dedicated To More Human Films” – Contenders Film L.A.

Amazon/MGM’s Saltburn, the dark-comedy sendoff of British upper class, expanded nicely in a big jump from seven screens to 1,566, nabbing a spot in the top ten. The film by Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) grossed $1.73 million for the three-day weekend and $2.7 million for the five-day Thanksgiving frame thanks to a strong core group of theaters.

In case you were wondering, there was no beef between Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne. The actor and filmmaker collaborated on 2004’s “Sideways,” an art-house breakout that earned over $100 million worldwide and five Oscar nominations including Best Picture (Payne and Jim Taylor won for Adapted Screenplay).

The gods of I.P. demand that a good franchise cannot die.

In a super weekend for specialty, Saltburn had a lofty open on seven screens and The Holdovers a nice $2.7 million in a major week-three expansion that put it at no. 6 at the domestic box office. Actors are once again out promoting their films and indie/original fare continues to benefit from fewer studio releases in the aftermath of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Roger Ross Williams, the director of Cassandro, opened up about why it was important to portray a positive queer story in the biopic based on a real-life gay amateur wrestler that turned Mexican lucha libre on its head.

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from the plot of John Wick: Chapter 4. 

“I definitely didn’t want to try and make a puff piece Barbie. I wanted us to run at the scary things as much as we celebrated the wonderful things,” executive producer and star Margot Robbie said during a panel for the movie at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles panel on the film. “That’s exactly why I went after Greta [Gerwig], because I was like, ‘She would do that.'”

Colman Domingo plays civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, in the Netflix film Rustin. Domingo said he felt a responsibility to introduce Rustin to modern audiences.

Maggie Betts, writer-director of The Burial, spoke about her film’s Oscar-winning stars Saturday at Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event. Jamie Foxx plays a lawyer representing a funeral home owner (Tommy Lee Jones) in a lawsuit against a big corporation. Betts learned she had to give Foxx space for his process.

Kelly Fremon Craig, the writer, director and producer of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, opened up about what inspired her to reach out to Judy Blume to adapt the beloved coming-of-age novel into a film.

The biggest story of the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin was Black track and field star Jesse Owens winning four gold medals and putting the lie to Adolf Hitler’s theories of race supremacy. A less-heralded U.S. gold medal triumph over host country Nazi Germany glides onto screens this Christmas with The Boys in the Boat from MGM Amazon Studios, directed by George Clooney.

The Peasants would already be a daunting project in the best of times. Like their previous film, Loving Vincent, directors Hugh and DK Welchman oversaw a team of animators painting each frame of the film based on live-action reference material. Hugh, who came to Los Angeles from Poland just for his 12-minute Contenders panel, said The Peasants also had to work around COVID and the Ukraine War.

An imagined conversation between two eminent historical figures who may or may not have ever met — nobody seems to know — forms the heart of Freud’s Last Session, an intellectual fable from Sony Pictures Classics that grew out of a play and, before that, a book and an Ivy League seminar.

Dumb Money producer Aaron Ryder talked Saturday about why he wanted to bring to screen the story of GameStop’s short squeeze of 2021, a financial fluke that has gone down in history as a triumph for the little guy against the behemoths of Wall Street.

As far as movies with history go, The Color Purple — about Celie, an abused teenage Black girl in the early 20th century — is as storied as they come. Based on Alice Walker’s seminal Pulitzer-winning 1982 book, it has been a 1985 Steven Spielberg pic, a Broadway musical in the mid-2000s and a Tony-winning revival play.

If you watch Paul Giamatti in the new movie The Holdovers, you might be left wondering: is that his real eye?

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor It could have been easy for Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s role in “The Holdovers” to be yet another stereotypical trope for Black women that Hollywood has lazily thrown out throughout history. If that had been the case, the actress tells Variety that would have passed. “When I meet with these studio execs and they ask ‘What is it you would like to do next?’ she says.

Marvel‘s upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty has just lost it’s director!

Festival and specialty fare crowded the top ten this weekend with Priscilla (A24) and The Holdovers (Focus Features) expanding to hit nos. 4 and 6 respectively. Yash Raj Films’ Bollywood thriller Tiger 3 is at no. 8, and world of mouth continued to buoy Radical (Pantelion/Participant) with Eugenio Derbez, rounding out the list at no. 10.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In the most shockingly funny moment of Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Miles Raymond, the desperate English teacher and wine aficionado (that is, alcoholic with good taste) played by Paul Giamatti, has just learned that his book was turned down by the publisher he had his hopes pinned on. It’s more than a rejection; it’s the death of his dream. Miles is in the middle a chi-chi Napa Valley wine tasting, and suddenly he’s in dire need of a drink.