Lucasfilm just won’t let this project die. A few months after Steven Knight exited Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Star Wars movie, revolving around Daisy Ridley’s Rey, a new writer has been found.

Last June, Warner Bros. announced, via TikTok, that a sequel to “Practical Magic” was officially in the works. The 1998 film, directed by Griffin Dunne, starred Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, and Dianne Wiest.

In the early aughts, right after the success of Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” there was a boom of documentary filmmakers who tried to rip off Moore’s intrusive, put-yourself-into-the-story brand of filmmaking .

Brad Pitt has found his next film. He’s set to star in David Ayer’s “Heart of the Beast,” an action adventure film for Paramount Pictures (via Deadline). A peculiar vehicle for Pitt, 61, who was supposed to star in Tarantino’s now-shelved “The Movie Critic.”

The best film hitting theaters today is Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence” [B+] — an eerie family drama that defies horror conventions. It’s yet another worthy addition to Soderbergh’s eclectic and endlessly fascinating filmography.

As expected, reviews for “Flight Risk” aren’t good, in fact they’re terrible. It has a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes and 36 on Metacritic. Lionsgate waited until the very last minute to lift the embargo on this one.

Here’s Puck’s Matt Belloni tackling the hypocrisy of Blake Lively’s attempts to slap a gag order on Justin Baldoni, and his team:

Lionsgate, which is distributing Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael” biopic, announced in November that the film was being delayed from April to October. What the studio didn’t specify, for obvious reasons, was why they pushed the film back by almost seven months.

Somewhat good news for Kevin Costner‘s “Horizon: Chapter 2.” It’s set to have its U.S. premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on  February 7. Costner will be in attendance for the post-screening Q&A.

With ‘Emilia’ now the frontrunner to win Best Picture, having earned a whopping 13 Oscar nominations this morning, the detracting brigade has come out in full force this afternoon to yet again bash the film.

Kael’s theory posited her first reaction as the “truest one,” with all senses reacting together to something wholly fresh that was being seen on-screen. After that, the film lost its spontaneous value.

The Academy’s failure to recognize Denis Villeneuve has prompted Josh Brolin to go on his Instagram and vent about the snub. Unsurprisingly, he ain’t happy with the outcome.

Apart from some minor quibbles I had with the final stretch, “Companion” works. It’s amazing the kind of things you can do with sci-fi on a budget that’s reported to be under $10M. No, really, this film has creativity to spare.

What a coincidence that Eric Roth is telling the Final Draft podcast that he’s currently writing a screenplay for Scorsese. Is it “Devil in the White City”? What else can it be?

Yesterday came the news that Robert Eggers’ next film would be “Werwulf” which has already set up a December 25, 2026 release.

The biggest surprise of the morning must be Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” getting nominated for Best Picture. Wow. The film’s lead actress (Fernanda Torres) is also in the Best Actress category.

Martin Scorsese is set to direct “The Devil in the White City” with Leonardo DiCaprio to star in the lead role. 20th Century has come onboard the project. There is currently no script, and we don’t really know if it’ll be Scorsese’s next project, but it’s happening!

On 09.03.24 I listed 11 films that were still missing from the movie year calendar. Two of them have now shown up in today’s announcement of the 2025 SXSW Film lineup.