Variety - Page 3

More than five months after a group of hackers crippled Sony Pictures Entertainment, information from thousands of leaked documents and emails is still surfacing.

Hollywood executives are opening their checkbooks–and new Super PACs–for Hillary Clinton as she makes a second run at the presidency. Ted Johnson and James Rainey report for Variety that Hollywood is far more unified behind Clinton than they were in 2008, when Barack Obama successfully split the liberal donor base. This time, heavyweights such as Jeffrey Katzenberg are joining Clinton loyalists like Haim Saban to provide the big money to fuel her 2016 campaign.

While awards season often ends with a race to the finish line for film nominees, action star Vin Diesel seems quite confident his upcoming film, Furious 7, will face no competition at the Oscars next February.

Because their “American Sniper” analysis is much more thoughtful than what we saw from Salon’s Andre O’Hehir’s lunacy Wednesday, I want to be clear that I’m no in any way lumping the LA Times’ Steve Zeitchik and Variety’s Scott Foundas

Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein penned a column for Variety titled, “Paris Attacks a Fight Between ‘Good Versus Evil.’” In it, Weinstein mentions Charlie Brown, Little Orphan Annie, and Socrates. One word conspicuously absent, though, is “Islam.” You won’t find “Muslim,”

The Interview, made available for streaming online Wednesday, has been labeled “culturally insensitive,” according to a new online survey.

A cinematographer was killed Wednesday while on the set of Jackie Chan’s new film Skiptrace.  According to The South China Morning Post, Chan Kwok-hung is believed to have drowned after a boat he was on capsized off Lantau Island, at

France sought to stamp out a new electronic cigarette containing cannabis, launched Tuesday with the claim it provides all of the relaxation but none of the mind-altering effects of marijuana. Health Minister Marisol Touraine said the product would “incite the

After crippling Sony Pictures and side-swiping all of Hollywood with a devastating and criminal hack attack, the hackers have just upped the ante considerably with the threat of 9/11-style terror attacks against any movie theatre that screens the Seth Rogen,

The historical drama Selma premiered in Manhattan Sunday night, where members of the film’s cast and crew posed for pictures donning “I can’t breathe” shirts over their formal clothing. The group then marched to the steps of the New York Public Library,

GamerGate is the biggest internet storm in a decade–a battle that has spawned an unprecedented four-and-a-half million tweets, death threats, a front-page story in the New York Times, a segment on The Colbert Report, cost Gawker Media over a million

The British Foreign Office is paying for 46 North Korean ‘journalists’ to take part in a media skills course. The FO claims that the money is being put to good use by trying to engage with North Korea, but critics

Whenever I find my faith wavering in Nigel Farage and the UKIP project, all I have to do is open my morning newspaper to be reminded why they are both so very necessary. Yesterday’s Telegraph was a case in point

Thursday, CIA Director John Brennan addressed the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA detention and interrogation procedures and set the stage for the decisions made at the time saying.  “On the morning of September 11, 2001, when the North Tower

Aviation titan Boeing Co. will lay off 561 employees across its Southern California operation centers by February of next year. According to the Los Angeles Times, 253 people at Boeing’s Long Beach facilities will lose their jobs, while an additional

AUSTIN, Texas — The San Antonio City Council is considering regulations that may force ride-sharing company Uber to cease its operations in the city, according to a letter Uber emailed to the City Council on Sunday. According to a report

In the wake of the unprecedented cyber attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio’s closely guarded secrets have continually found their way into headlines.   The latest data leak, released Tuesday, reveals email exchanges between studio co-chair Amy Pascal and

AUSTIN, Texas — In a press conference at the Capitol Monday, Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott announced key staff hires and outline his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session. Now that the elections are over, Abbott called this a time

The White House confirms that the much buzzed about Senate Intelligence Committee’s “torture report” will be released tomorrow, and that the Obama administration is preparing for violence around the world in response. Spokesman Josh Earnest explained that although it was

In response to mounting criticism of the controversial cast of Exodus: Gods and Kings, Christian Bale spoke candidly with The Hollywood Reporter.  Bale, who is playing the role of Moses, spoke about the film and the critical perception by some

Hundreds of demonstrators convened on Hollywood Boulevard at noon on Saturday to protest peacefully and stage a die-in expressing their frustrations over grand jury decisions not to indict the officers involved in recent civilian deaths resulting from a variety of different

Many celebrities didn’t wait to see what the grand jury in Ferguson, MO had to say about the death of Michael Brown. They started firing off their opinions via social media long before we learned officer Darren Wilson wouldn’t be

Embattled MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has not only gotten in trouble for bragging about helping President Obama put one over on the American people with Obamacare, he’s also been uncovered as an abortion advocate–but not a run-of-the-mill advocate of “women’s

It was the culmination of an intense burst of campaigning by left-wing pressure groups Avaaz, Change.org, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, BugLife and the Environmental Justice Foundation which erupted from nowhere last year. One minute, no one had heard of

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — In Kenya, where the police have long been known to harbor death squads, evidence mounts that many ordinary cops on the beat have turned into killers — doling out death to terror suspects, civilians, even children.

An apparently antisemitic man, who thought Paris Hilton to be Jewish, has posed death and rape threats on the Instagram accounts of both the socialite heiress and her father Rick. “KILL JEWS FOR FUN,” and “I know ur Jew family

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — After working though a buyout issue, Jim McElwain is leaving Colorado State to become Florida’s next head coach. The Gators announced the hiring Thursday at the same time McElwain started a team meeting with players and

In September, the Highland Park Independent School District (ISD) in the Dallas metro area pulled seven books off its approved high school English literature shelves, then put six back on, and has been bickering over one in particular ever since

On Monday, the same-sex couples at the center of the gay marriage legal challenge in Texas, petitioned US District Judge Orlando Garcia at the Federal Courthouse in San Antonio to allow gay marriage to begin taking place in Texas immediately. This

Tuesday, Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) said, “His [President Barack Obama] decision to take unilateral action on immigration, action he himself said exceeded his authority, makes it harder for the American people and their elected representatives to

Following a closed-door meeting described as passionate but not contentious, Republicans are poised to move forward on a two-step response to President Obama’s executive action, but they are still haggling over the details. As early as this week, the GOP

According to Variety, Relativity Media’s new drama, Black or White, starring Kevin Costner, is fighting an uphill battle for attention this awards season as the race for the Oscars heats up.  The film, which features Kevin Coster as a prosperous Los Angeles

21st Century Fox CEO and international media magnate Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter Saturday to defend his studio’s casting choices for the upcoming biblical film Exodus: Gods and Kings, after critics chastised its Caucasian line-up. 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary

Once again tempers flared as Black Friday shoppers from coast to coast headed to the stores this Thanksgiving holiday, and fists flew from California, to Indianapolis, to the East Coast. Even a few shoppers in England got into a tussle

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rejected a notion this week that a quota system should be enacted to limit the number of Hollywood films that can be viewed in theaters across Russia. A parliamentary debate for Thursday was cancelled due