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Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
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What Are The Critics Saying About ‘28 Years Later'?
Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, and producer Andrew Macdonald launched 28 Years Later, the latest addition to their seminal zombie franchise, last night in London. In the pic, written by Garland, it's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory. And now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well. More from Deadline International Insider: '28 Years Later' Arrives; Landmark Netflix-TF1 Deal; NHK At 100 Danny Boyle Says He Would Never Make Oscar-Winner 'Slumdog Millionaire' Now Amid "Cultural Appropriation" Concerns '28 Years Later' $5M+, 'Elio' $2.5M-$3M Previews - Thursday Night Box Office The film stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and Jack O'Connell. The buzz has been big on the threequel. Late last year, Sony reported that an early trailer for the flick, in its first week of release, became the most watched horror trailer in 2024 at 60.2M global views and the second biggest trailer of all-time behind It Chapter Two (96M views). But what are the critics saying about the film? Deadline's Damon Wise said the film is 'by far the most political of the three films' and offers a 'particularly scathing' commentary about 'Brexit Britain and its little-islander mentality.' 'Alex Garland's script makes great play of how life in Britain has become stunted,' Wise wrote. 'Flirting with folk horror, he makes the islanders little better than the infected, inviting comparisons with The Wicker Man as they carouse in the community center while a faded portrait of Her Majesty the Queen looks down.' Aussie film magazine Filmink said 28 Years Later boasts 'uniformly excellent' performances with 'Taylor-Johnson and Comer both doing fine work, and Ralph Fiennes absolutely wonderful as poetic, death-obsessed Doctor Ian Kelson.' 'However, it's young Alfie Williams who steals the show, giving us a likable and nuanced young tacker to root for and hope that he manages to survive,' the magazine concluded. Empire Magazine described the film as a 'pure horror experience' full of 'ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline.' 'The film's opening half, in particular, is phenomenal — an electrifying exercise in terror, amplified by Young Fathers' astonishing score,' the magazine wrote. In a review titled '28 Years Later Is Totally Nuts,' Vulture said the film 'carries on the tradition of using genre as a Trojan horse to explore the sensation of life today.' But the outlet notes that some 'horror fiends will find themselves disappointed with a movie that's too weird, too somber, too unresolved to deliver on the promised thrills.' Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson wrote that he found himself 'confused by the film's unexpected tone, but also captivated by it.' 'Knowing that another film in the series has already been shot goes a long way toward softening the blunt impact of the film's sudden, ambiguous ending,' Lawson wrote. Time Magazine also zeroed in on the film's ending. 'There's much that's terrifying and wonderful about 28 Years Later, but the ending is jarring and dumb, in a kick-ass heavy-metal way, and it breaks the mood,' Stephanie Zacharek wrote for the magazine. 'It's as if Boyle had gotten cold feet about ending the movie on too solemn a note. But this ending, no matter how you feel about it, is really just a beginning. Boyle and Garland have two follow-up movies in the works. The next, already filmed, is directed by Nia DaCosta, of Candyman and The Marvels; Boyle will return for the third.' Genre site Fangoria, however, said the threequel was 'the best film in the franchise.' '28 Years Later, by comparison, incorporates the world-building of its predecessor but retains the intimacy of the original film,' the magazine wrote. 'Garland's script rightfully observes that a few expository intertitles do more than enough to establish the world into which the audience and the film's characters are plunged into, and then dials into the lives of a family that's doing its best to navigate an unimaginable situation both environmentally and interpersonally.' The film is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with 95%. Sony will release the film is in theaters on June 20. Best of Deadline 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More 'Stick' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The Apple TV+ Golf Series 'Stick' Release Guide: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
ECAM Forum Coordinator Alberto Valverde on an Expanded Second Edition: ‘The Winning Teams From Cannes Are Also in Madrid'
After last year's golden blueprint which set the roadmap for coming years, the second ECAM Forum Co-Production Market, unspooling June 10-13 in Madrid, will drive deeper into its international reach and industry talks as part of its mandate to strengthen the ties between the Spanish talents and its blooming industry with the rest of the world. Lured by upbeat industry buzz from the first edition and Spain's sustained film-TV golden age, industry players and projects are almost twice as many this year to bid for a spot at the industry platform spearheaded by Madrid's prestigious ECAM film school. More from Variety 'To the North's' Mihai Mincan Talks ECAM Forum Bound Coming-of-Age Mystery 'Milk Teeth,' Sound Designed by Oscar-Winner Nicolas Becker (EXCLUSIVE) Madrid's ECAM Forum Ups International Scope With 23 Feature Projects for Second Edition Bertrand Bonello to Be Honored at Madrid's Second ECAM Forum Co-Pro Showcase (EXCLUSIVE) More than 700 accredited delegates ,compared to 400+ in 2024, are expected to fill the halls of its Matadero and Cineteca Madrid venues; 70 international guests, vs. 50 in 2024, will sample 47 films in development and post-production, as well as shorts and series in development. Among 15 programming reps from Toronto, Locarno, Rotterdam, Thessaloniki, London to Marrakech fests are first-time attendees Christian Jeune from the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlinale's Michael Stuetz. On the sales front, the dozen registered companies range from Le Pacte, Goodfellas, Co-Production Office, Film Boutique and Charades to Spain's art-film specialist Bendita Film Sales. At press time, all titles were available for pick up including the next bets by hot talents Mihai Mincan ('To the North') and Francisca Alegría ('The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future') and the anticipated debuts by Nadine Luque, Claudia Estrada Tarascó and Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe. Highlights of this year's beefed-up program of talks and industry events include a masterclass with French auteur Bertrand Bonello, a presentation of the Göteborg Film Festival's industry reference Nostradamus report by Johanna Koljonen, conversations with top Spanish writers, poets and philosophers over The State of Things and Finde, a first industry meeting on financing, investment for indie producers co-organized by Madrid Audiovisual Cluster. To consolidate ECAM's international ties, new partnerships were sealed this year with Conecta Fiction & Entertainment, which runs a week later in Cuenca, near Madrid, and with ACAU and Proimagenes Colombia, the film-TV state agencies in Uruguay and Colombia. ECAM Forum closes Friday June 13 with an awards ceremony. In this interview, ECAM Forum coordinator Alberto Valverde unpacks his 2025 program. How does it feel to stage ECAM Forum a few weeks after a stellar year for Spanish films and co-productions in Cannes? It was an exceptional year for Spanish cinema. Having two filmmakers [Oliver Laxe and Carla Simón] in main competition, a spot usually taken by Pedro Almodovar, was historical. Their respective films 'Sirât' and 'Romería' are international co-productions that illustrate the reason why we exist. Indeed last year the two producers of 'Sirât'– Andrea Queralt and Xavi Font – came to ECAM to present a new project in the middle of shooting their film in Morocco. Xavi submitted Álvaro Pulpeiro's 'Petróleo' at the Films to Come and Andrea came with Silvina Schnicer's 'La Quinta' for The Last Push. Then Elástica's María Zamora, producer of Romería, was here as well. The winning teams from Cannes are also here. In recent years we've witnessed how the Spanish audiovisual industry has morphed and internationalized, with established and new talent working at home and globally. Before launching ECAM Forum, we've been in constant dialogue with all these Spanish players and talent, precisely to connect them to the world and foster new collaborations. Last year you had an almost clean sweep with seven out of eight works in progress going on to premiere at A festivals. That was quite a coup… Yes, we are over the moon. We want to consolidate our works in progress as a relevant space to discover gems for the year ahead, and those results help a lot. It was rewarding talking to the teams behind the works in progress and knowing it was key for them to secure certain premieres and selections that literally were signed during ECAM Forum. Last year's Last Push titles included very different films, from the fragile ones like the winning documentary 'Gods of Stone' to the more solid ones like 'Los Tortuga'('The Exiles') that both ended having nice premieres [respectively in Rotterdam and Toronto] and reached world audiences, literally the number one objective of our work. Could you reiterate what made your 2024 inaugural event a blueprint for the editions to come and outline the key novelties this year? One of the best things last year was to get the feedback from international guests who were dazzled by the quality of the projects. Then on the Spanish side, professionals were equally impressed by the top names in the international delegation. This year the list of international delegates will be even stronger, for instance with the presence of Christian Jeune from Cannes and Michael Stuetz from the Berlinale. The challenge for the first five editions is perhaps to be coherent with the size of our event, the type of projects and professionals invited. We want to maintain the same high quality, attention and care that goes into the selection and overall organisation. Then obviously as this is the second year, we're expanding a bit the scope of our activities, partnerships and ambitions. The event is growing but we still want it to be sustainable for the next editions. How many delegates will attend this year from how many territories? The numbers reflect the increased interest in our event. This year we have 730 accredited professionals, versus around 400 in 2024. It's been an exponential growth from last year. Then we had about 50 international guests in 2024 and this year we're hosting 70 people. From Spain, we're inviting around the same number, about 70 key decision-makers. So we have about 140 invited guests for the meetings. Countries represented (between 18-20) span from Spain to Canada, U.S., France, Romania, Estonia and Latin America. It was perhaps unintentional – based on the projects selected – but we will have a strong European and Latin American presence this year. With a more ambitious program, what type of budget do you have and can you comment on the significance of your new institutional partnerships? I won't detail our specific budget but it hasn't changed drastically. Our main key partners are the same: ECAM Foundation Comunidad de Madrid. Then Matadero, Film Madrid, Madrid Film Office, Cineteca, the rights collection agency Dama and AC/E, the international promotional body of Spanish cinema, are other partners. We're continuing our collaboration with Filmin, Rotterdam, Series Mania and have new strategic partnerships with Conecta Fiction & Entertainment and the key audiovisual agencies ACAU in Uruguay and Proimagenes in Colombia. For the ECAM school and Foundation, facilitating those collaborations are just natural to exchange talent and create a bridge between Europe and Latin America. We hope to announce new partnerships this fall. This year you've opened your Pitch sessions to international projects. What extra challenges did you meet in your selection process? Our main goal is to promote Spanish cinema internationally and attract international talent to work with Spain. We understand that presenting a selection, and making exciting international talents coexist with promising Spanish projects is a better way to promote their films. It's great to have Spain's Maria Herrera, Alba Esquinas and Elena Molina with Maryam Tafakory [from Iran], Francisca Alegría [from Chile] or Mihai Mincan [from Romania]. Opening to international projects was a challenge as we tried to attract distinctive voices and talents but we did! We are extremely happy with the selection and could easily have picked another 15 projects that couldn't make the cut. We had to make some difficult decisions. I'd like to add that in the short section, last year we had only six national projects. This year we have 11 projects – six from our own training program and five international shorts through new partnerships with Chile Shorts, Bogo Shorts in Colombia, La Femis in France, DISFF in Greece, and FAMU in the Czech Republic. How would you define the 2025 feature length slate in terms of themes, unique auteur-viewpoint and diversity? The selection covers a rich variety of narrative and aesthetic approaches, with a presence of comedies, genre and science fiction approaches, documentaries, and classic fiction works. The projects demonstrate a passion for challenging the boundaries of genres and storytelling, a strong commitment to creative risk and authorship. We love to see a lot of first and second films with super strong visions, that are backed by producers with certain experience, both national and international. I genuinely think it's a super exciting slate with new voices to discover. It is also a more diverse selection when it comes to representation both in the narrative and creators themselves, so, yes, it's a step forward. Something quite remarkable when we look at the Films to Come, is the fact that the 15 projects came out of three different selection processes, and when we ended up with the final list, we realised all were directed by women (with one co-direction). Could you comment on your industry talks and high-brow cycle of conversations? The industry talks targeting the 700+ accredited professionals, focus on the challenges in the audiovisual industry right now, and many sessions offer practical tools and tips, about financing, co-production promotion. Our goal is to strengthen Spanish cinema and we're happy to bring top speakers from Spain and the rest of the world. We're also glad to present the Nostradamus report to our audience, straight after Cannes. The report is key to look at where we're going, how each sector in the industry is integrating the challenges, both within and outside the sector. Then the three Conversations about The State of Things [in Spanish language] is a particularly beautiful strand that we've designed over several months with my colleague Brais Romero and Luis E. Parés from Cineteca Matadero. We tried to map out important topics that touch us as individuals, not only in the industry but as a society, via inspirational talks with filmmakers, writers, poets, musicians, philosophers. It's a beautiful mix of strong voices in Spain. We look forward to hearing their take our world today, the value of creating images. Then one angle to be tackled is nostalgia and its danger. The comfort and inherent creative laziness that goes with sticking to formulas, well know concepts – be it in literature or will be interesting also to hear Bertrand Bonello who masterfully has been avoiding nostalgia, its comfort and safety in his work. Another novelty this year is the new FINDE industry meeting about Financing, Investment and Independent Filmmaking, co-organised with Madrid Audiovisual Cluster. Could you summarise what it's about? This is an extension of ECAM's educational curriculum. We wanted to offer practical tools to hone the skills of our emerging talent in financing. We see producers surrounded by great talent and yet struggling to finance their projects. So hopefully this will be an illuminating session. We've designed this initiative with French producer based in Madrid Sophie Erbs and Teresa Azcona, director of Madrid Audiovisual Cluster. We see this is a pilot year and we will evaluate afterwards the program's formula. On a personal level, how does it feel to run the hottest new Spanish co-pro market? It feels soooo good. Last year, we had a blank canvas which needed to be painted. We didn't know if it would be abstract, or not. This year, we reaped the good seeds from the first edition, and our team is stronger. The whole is even more coherent because we had more time to design our program. But our focus is still to have a great time through a very friendly, focused professional event, with a high standard of projects and guests. Best of Variety What's Coming to Netflix in June 2025 New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts?
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lachlan Murdoch On Launch Plans, Subscriber Outlook For New Fox Streaming Platform
Lachlan Murdoch said Fox is targeting a fall football season launch for its new streaming platform run by Pete Distad with modest initial subscriber projections in the 'mid-single digit millions.' He announced last month the streamer would launch by year end, saying it would be 'holistic' of all the company's content including Fox Sports and Fox News. More from Deadline 2025 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, In Fox News Interview, Reacts To Trump Confrontation: "We Have To Be Very Honest And Very Open" Denis Leary Harbors Hope For Next Generation Of Comedians: "You Think You've Seen Everything & Then You See Someone Else Coming Who Makes You Laugh Your Ass Off" In comments at the Morgan Stanley media conference, the Fox CEO was again extremely careful to stress that the goal is not to cannibalize linear television and Fox will not advertise it on linear television but is meant purely to capture those who cut the cord or have never subscribed to cable. More details like the name and price are still to come. 'We brought Pete in and Pete's focus at Venu and now at our venture is new subscribers that are outside of the bundle,' Murdoch said. Distad had been CEO of Venu Sports, the streaming joint venture of Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. Advances under Venu, which was sued but shuttered before it went to court or launched, have been key in allowing the new service to get up to speed relatively quickly. Murdoch also offered another tidbit on its original streaming service, Fox Nation, designed to bring longer form content to the Fox News 'superfan' – it's got 2 to 2.5 million subscribers. He also said he expects to simulcast more NFL games on Tubi after a blockbuster Super Bowl for the ad-supported streamer. 'That's a huge opportunity for us.' 'This year, despite not the best game, we achieved record ratings, 126 million viewers. Tubi generated about 24 million viewers, and about 15.5 million concurrent views watching the stream.' Key, he said, is that each viewer – former and new – of the game had to register and 'about 40% of the audience on Tubi has not used Tubi before.' Philadelphia routed Kansas City 40-22 in a lopsided Super Bowl 59. Best of Deadline How To Watch Sean Baker's Oscar-Winner 'Anora': Streaming, For Rent And More Every Oscars Best Animated Feature Winner Since 2002 How To Watch The Oscars Online And On TV Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hulu's Oscars Live Stream Cuts Out Right Before Night's Final Two Big Awards
Hulu subscribers trying to keep up with Anora's roll though many of the major Oscars categories Sunday missed out on the evening's climax, when the film won Best Picture and Sean Baker became the only other person besides Walt Disney to win four Oscars in one night. Why? Because the Disney-owned service's stream ended before the show's telecast on Disney-owned ABC did. Disney gave Deadline the following statement: 'This evening, we experienced technical and live stream issues on Hulu which impacted some Oscars viewers. We apologize for the experience and will make a full replay of the event available as soon as possible.' More from Deadline Hulu Says Oscars Livestream Glitch Fully Resolved, Thanks Frustrated Viewers For 'Hanging In There' – Update 'Anora' Takes Best Picture Oscar As Sean Baker Wins Four To Tie Record; Lead Acting Prizes To Mikey Madison & Adrien Brody: Full List Rachel Sennott Has Fun With Oscars Pre-Show Misidentifying Her As Rachel Zegler The result was that viewers on Hulu missed the night's final two awards in which Anora's Mikey Madison upset Demi Moore to win Best Actress, and Baker — who was also editor, screenwriter and producer on the film — won his fourth statue of the night when Anora took Best Picture. The issue may lie with the ceremony's length. At 3 hours and 47 minutes, it was long even for the Oscars. Hulu may have only planned for a 3-hour and 30-ish-minute ceremony, which would explain the 15 minutes or so cut off. Subscribers began posting shots of their TV screens online. Okay so my stream of the Hulu broadcast cut off BEFORE it was finished. Missed Best Actress & Best is bad.I've tried to be fair but I honestly think the Oscars broadcast has been a disaster for Hulu. — Matt Davis (@MattDavisTweets) March 3, 2025 It wasn't the first glitch of the night for the Hulu faithful. An earlier outage, which affected a swath of users just as the first-ever Oscars to be livestreamed was beginning, hampered Disney's effort to provide a younger-skewing digital complement to its main broadcast on ABC. While the snag was fixed with nearly half of the show left, it was only the beginning of the night's troubles for the service. At 6:21 p.m., the streamer's support page on X told complainants, 'Thanks so much for hanging in there! Our team took the necessary steps to resolve this, so you should be all set after rebooting your device. We appreciate your patience!' An hour later came the announcement, 'Our team has identified the issue and users affected should be able to log back in again soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.' Thanks so much for hanging in there! Our team took the necessary steps to resolve this, so you should be all set after rebooting your device. We appreciate your patience! — Hulu Support (@hulu_support) March 3, 2025 Best of Deadline How To Watch Sean Baker's Oscar-Winner 'Anora': Streaming, For Rent And More Every Oscars Best Animated Feature Winner Since 2002 How To Watch The Oscars Online And On TV
