WGA Awards Film Nominations: ‘West Side Story’, ‘Dune’, ‘Licorice Pizza’, ‘French Dispatch’ & More

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterMere months after Tom Holland ignited box office charts with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the 25-year-old British actor is swinging back to movie theater marquees with “Uncharted.”Ahead of its domestic debut on Feb. 18, Sony’s big-screen adaptation of its popular video game series opened at the international box office to a solid $21.5 million from 15 overseas markets.“Uncharted” had the biggest start in the United Kingdom, landing in first place with $6.4 million.

Death on the Nile (★★☆☆☆) miscalculates from the start, marching into a mystery Christie herself showed no interest in exploring: the origins of Hercule Poirot’s trademark mustache.Director and star Kenneth Branagh, helming his second Christie adaptation following the 2017 hit Murder on the Orient Express, digs into a black-and-white, WWI-set prologue that firmly establishes Belgian sleuth Poirot as the film’s romantic hero.Christie’s sturdy plots and colorful characters certainly invite inventive reinterpretation, but it feels misguided making this or any Poirot story more about the man solving the mystery, than about the mystery that Poirot must solve.The sprightlier 1978 version of Death on the Nile, directed by John Guillermin and scripted by Sleuth playwright Anthony Shaffer, struck a more satisfying balance between the famous detective and the cast of suspects all harboring motives for murder.That whodunnit boasted a lineup of eccentric legends — Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, David Niven, and, of course, Peter Ustinov as Poirot — inhabiting Dame Agatha’s larger-than-life characters while swooning about in Anthony Powell’s Oscar-winning ’30s-era costumes.The result was gloriously camp, as much as it was wickedly intriguing.

The long-awaited movie Death on the Nile has finally arrived in theaters and audiences checking out the film this weekend will probably wonder if they should stick around for an end credits scene.

produced another PR liability for the studio in the interim. That said, “Death on the Nile” is projected by independent trackers for an opening between $11-13 million. That would be less than half of the opening of its predecessor, “Murder on the Orient Express,” which opened to $28.6 million in November 2017 and in its previews made $1.6 million.

The stars of Death on the Nile are gearing up for the release of their new movie!

Euro Box Office Stats For 2021

Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog was the big winner at Sunday’s London Critics’ Circle Awards, scooping four prizes including Film of the Year. Scroll down for the full list of winners.

Naman Ramachandran Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” won four major awards at the 42nd annual London Critics’ Circle Film Awards on Sunday.“The Power of the Dog” won film of the year, Campion director of the year, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee, actor and supporting actor of the year, respectively. This is Campion’s second film to take the Circle’s top honor, 28 years after “The Piano” won in 1994.Olivia Colman’s performance in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” which was snubbed at the BAFTA nominations, earned her the actress of the year award.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema announced a major expansion with seven new theaters including three new regions, Chicago, Birmingham, and St. Louis, and expansions in Washington, D.C. and New York City — with a kung fu-themed Staten island location opening this spring. The move also includes locations in Colorado and Texas.

Clayton Davis The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will reveal its nominations tomorrow and we’re expecting anarchy, at least in the acting categories.Beefing up its membership considerably over the last few years, and instituting jury methods to the voting process in performance and director categories last year, yielded an unexpected field of contenders that may or may not have a rippling influence on the Oscars race.Notable actors are looking for boosts from the British voting bloc, including Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “Tick, Tick … Boom!”) and Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”).Following the results of a diversity review, the group threw the awards season for a loop with surprise selections like Radha Blank and Adarsh Gourav last year. The top two vote-getters from Round One are automatic nominees, but we don’t know who those individuals are, nor is it clear if the jury knows either.Some leading contenders eyeing their first BAFTA nomination are Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”), who, despite two Oscar wins with eight total noms, has never been recognized by his colleagues across the pond.

The 2021 auditions are over, and the Casting Society of America has unveiled the feature nominees for its 37th annual Artios Awards.

Naman Ramachandran DAZN chair Kevin Mayer and Rene Rechtman, co-founder and CEO of Moonbug Entertainment, will deliver a joint keynote at this year’s in-person MipTV (Apr. 4-6). Mayer also serves as co-chair and co-CEO of Candle Media, which purchased Moonbug, the company behind the wildly popular children’s show “CoComelon” in Nov.

Refresh for latest…: Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home scaled fresh heights this session as it reached an amazing new milestone by crossing the $1B mark at the international box office. The offshore cume through Sunday is an estimated $1.003B for a global total of $1.74B.

Kirsten Dunst (“The Power of the Dog”) and Jamie Dornan (“Belfast”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here.Since their first meeting, Jamie Dornan and Kirsten Dunst have followed similar trajectories. They initially played off one another in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” — his eligible Swedish count set off sparks with her teen queen of France.

Willem Dafoe has been a major Hollywood star since the late 1980s, thanks to attention-grabbing early roles in such films as “Platoon”, “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Mississippi Burning”.

12 nominations:“Dune”: DGA, PGA, WGA, ACE, ASC, ADG, CAS.

The television writers earned their kudos earlier this month, but today it was time for the film scripters to land some union recognition. The Writer’s Guild of America capped off their 2022 WGA Awards nominations process honoring “Being the Ricardos,” “Don’t Look Up,” “The French Dispatch,” “King Richard” and “Licorice Pizza” for Original Screenplay.

Clayton Davis The Writers Guild of America Awards announced its 2022 nominations, where huge boosts were given to films such as “Being the Ricardos,” “Don’t Look Up,” “The French Dispatch,” “King Richard” and “Licorice Pizza” in original screenplay.Adapted screenplay includes “CODA,” “Dune,” “Nightmare Alley,” “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and “West Side Story.” Missing from the lineup are “C’mon C’mon” from Mike Mills and “The Tragedy of Macbeth” from Joel Coen.On the adapted screenplay side, notable awards contenders that were ineligible included “Benedetta” (IFC Films), “Cyrano” (MGM/United Artists Releasing), “Drive My Car” (Janus Films/Sideshow), “The Lost Daughter” (Netflix), “Passing” (Netflix), “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (Sony Pictures) and “Zola” (A24).

Because the WGA created its award to be a prize for its members and those who write under its jurisdiction, a Writers Guild nomination is a less accurate predictor of Oscar success than noms from the other three major Hollywood guilds, the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild and Directors Guild.WGA rules restrict eligibility to screenplays that were written under the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement or under a collective bargaining agreement from one of 11 affiliate guilds around the world. As usual, that rule disqualified a number of top screenplays this year, including “The Power of the Dog,” “Cyrano,” “Passing,” “The Lost Daughter,” “Drive My Car” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in the adapted-screenplay category and “Belfast,” “A Hero,” “The Hand of God,” “Parallel Mothers” and “Prayers for the Stolen” in original screenplay.“Belfast,” “The Power of the Dog” and “The Lost Daughter” in particular are strong favorites for Oscar nominations.In the documentary category, only three screenplays were nominated: “Being Cousteau,” “Exposing Muybridge” and “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres.”Winners will be announced at the WGA Awards on March 20, one week before the Oscars.The nominations: ORIGINAL SCREENPLAYBeing the Ricardos, Written by Aaron Sorkin;Amazon StudiosDon’t Look Up, Screenplay by Adam McKay, Story by Adam McKay & David Sirota; NetflixThe French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, Screenplay by Wes Anderson, Story by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola & Hugo Guinness & Jason Schwartzman;Searchlight PicturesKing Richard, Written by Zach Baylin; Warner Bros.

It was a day when four Hollywood guild honors had their say and the editors cut themselves into the picture with the 2022 ACE Eddie Awards nominations. On the film side, 10 nominees were recognized in two categories.