• Coming Soon Emma Thompson is in talks to join Disney's Cruella movie. No word on what her role is, though, since its Emma Stone playing the title character
• Playbill Leos Carax (Holy Motors) begins shooting a movie musical called Annette this summer. Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver star
• MNPP Rocketman photocall at Cannes. Fun suit, Taron Egerton
• Screen Daily how Nadine Labaki's Capernaum became a major hit in China's growing arthouse cinema market
• Variety ...and speaking of. Labaki is working on a documentary on the making of Lebanon's all time biggest hit film
More after the jump including Avengers Endgame, a reboot of Saw, recent Hollywood deaths, and the latest news from Broadway...
• The Guardian wonders if Hollywood's lust for sequels is destroying the long term health of the artform?
• IndieWire ...speaking of. The horror franchise Saw is being rebooted next year after just a two year break from its many installments from 2004-2017
• Vox explains why more and more Democrats are running for President in an already way too crowded field
• Vanity Fair Diablo Cody admits she wouldn't write her teen pregnancy/adoption hit Juno in today's political climate where the GOP continues to mount an offensive to overturn Roe v Wade
• Cartoon Brew the filmmakers behind Pokemon Detective Pikachu are talking about why their movie looks so much better than early glimpses of Sonic the Hedgehog (hint: film vs digital)
• /Film James Gunn talks about getting fired and rehired by Disney/Marvel for Guardians of the Galaxy 3
• New Toronto TIFF and Berlinale are both changing up their platform jury prize situations
• Cartoon Brew we had no idea this was a trend but now we have a third animation studio launched by the son of a billionaire (after Laika and Skydance)
• /Film the Snowpiercer TV series (adapted from the Bong Joon-ho movie) gets renewed for a second season before season 1 even launches. None of the movie cast is returning and sadly the cast doesn't seem as international but does include some promising casting decisions like Sheila Vand, Daveed Diggs, and Jennifer Connelly.
• Coming Soon trailers for all 8 new fall and midseason series from Fox
• Towleroad There's a new pirated version of Avengers Endgame going around on bittorrent that cuts the "feminism and gay s***t" -- fanboys be so fragile!
• The New Yorker beloved Premiere magazine columnist Libby Gelman-Waxner (screenwriter Paul Rudnick's "friend") has been coaxed out of retirement to talk Avengers Endgame and Game of Thrones. She's still very amusing after all these years.
The producers swear that “Endgame” is the final chapter in the Avengers saga, which seems to have lasted since the Harding Administration. The movie is sweetly nostalgic as it revisits many of the earlier installments—it’s like sharing a crocheted afghan with your nana in assisted living as she pages through her scrapbooks—that is, if your nana had constantly saved the planet from annihilation by tossing buses across Times Square.
RIP
• TFE icymi we honored 1950s-1960s movie star and songbird Doris Day
• LA Times Twin Peaks actress Peggy Lipton passed away a few days back. *sniffle* goodbye Norma Jennings and the Double R Diner!
• Deadline Actor Isaac Kappy (Thor, Terminator Salvation, Breaking Bad) has committed suicide at 42
• THR Oscar winning screenwriter of abundant classics, Alvin Sargent (Julia, Ordinary People, Sterile Cuckoo, Paper Moon) has died at 92
• AV News Tim Conway of The Carol Burnett Show has died at 85
Tony Season
• Deadline Be More Chill, American Son, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Pretty Woman all win something called the Broadway Audience Choice Award (they were all stiffed in their top categories at the Tonys so once again we see the split between audiences and critics). One Tony frontrunner got a cool honor though: Hadestown wins Favourite New Song for "Wait For Me"
• Playbill delightful actress of both stage and screen Annaleigh Ashford has a concert airing on PBS on May 17th. Jake Gyllenhaal will duet with her on one of their Sunday in the Park with George numbers. CAN'T WAIT
• Playbill My Fair Lady, will close on July 7th when Laura Benanti takes her final bow as Eliza Doolittle. The revival will tour beginning in December and transfer to the West End as well. (We liked that production enough to see it twice - such smart tweaking to address its sexism without becoming a different show entirely)