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The twisted tale of two best friends in Troy, Missouri — that ended in the ultimate backstabbing for insurance money — is at the heart of NBC’s new limited series “The Thing About Pam,” premiering March 8. Two-time Oscar winner Renée Zellweger made headlines for her head-turning transformation into Hupp thanks to layers of prosthetics, and the star-studded ensemble cast including Judy Greer, Josh Duhamel, Katy Mixon, and Glenn Fleshler round out the very “Fargo”-esque series....

Enter Shift72, which counts Toronto, New York, and Sundance among its upcoming clients. The New Zealand-based company has provided secure press and industry screening platforms since 2008 and has now emerged as a leading company poised to tackle the challenge of creating online festivals. However, it’s hardly alone in an industry that has just gotten started and could be here for good. In conversations with IndieWire, festival organizers discussed the frantic process of shopping for cost-effective platforms that could meet their needs on a tight schedule — especially when the market is evolving in real time....

An action-horror hybrid film with social conscience notes and a biting sense of humor, “Black as Night” stars Asjha Cooper, Fabrizio Guido, Keith David, Mason Beauchamp, Frankie Smith, and Craig Tate. The film was directed by Maritte Lee Go. Taking place 15 years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, “Black as Night” centers around Shawna (Cooper), a resourceful teenager who goes into battle against a group of deadly vampires posing a new threat that leaves its mark on the Big Easy — in the form of puncture wounds on the throats of the city’s vulnerable, displaced population....

Need a movie to watch this Halloween? “Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin” officially arrived on Paramount+ on Friday. The David Eubanks-directed horror film, about a woman searching for information on her mother’s disappearance, marks the seventh installment in the “Paranormal Activity” franchise. Emily Bader stars in the horror flick as Margot, a documentary filmmaker who heads to a secluded Amish community in the hopes of meeting and learning about her long-lost mother and extended family....

“One of the kids told me that by my age he would be dead,” Frías said in a recent interview over Zoom from his Brooklyn apartment. “It shocked me, but I understood. He and his friends had wrapped their heads around the idea of not living long, but being able to experiment with the pleasures of life.” As street life in Monterrey started to fade and immigration laws tightened their grip on the border, Frías developed a story about the lives of young men in Monterrey and the dangerous conditions that inform their everyday existence....

IATSE, the largest union representing behind-the-scenes workers in North America, issued a statement slamming the Academy’s decision to pre-record eight crafts and shorts categories and edit them into the otherwise live event. “By the nature of our jobs, behind the scenes, workers get little recognition as is, despite being the backbone of every production,” IATSE International President Matthew D. Loeb said. “The Academy Awards has been virtually the only venue where the very best on and off the big screen, above and below the line gather to honor each other’s incredible contributions through their crafts, inspiring millions who tune into the TV Broadcast in the process....

Where to Watch “Insiders”: Netflix At one point in “Insiders,” there’s a montage of people being told they’re being put through into the next “round” of a reality show casting process. Nearly every one of them asks if they can give a hug or kiss to the producer giving them the good news. (They only get handshakes.) It’s a sustained burst of happiness and relief from a group of individuals who don’t even realize that the show they think they’re auditioning for is well under way....

My first encounters with Irwin were in 1975, when I started working at an independent distribution company called Cinema 5. Irwin was on the Board of Directors of the company, a role I found out later was due to an investment he had made to provide a possible avenue for the distribution of films made by his brother Bob. I was a lowly non-theatrical salesperson, but I had contact with Irwin when he made the occasional trip to the Cinema 5 office, and more frequently at Irwin’s film lab, DuArt, where we would screen films for possible acquisition, manufacture all of our film prints, work on subtitling and dubbing foreign language films, and produce trailers and radio spots for our films....

The Oscar winner said it’s “not even close” between how the Na’vi creatures of “Avatar” look side by side with “Avengers: Endgame” villain Thanos, played by Josh Brolin. “I just want to say ahead of time that I’m not going to diss the Marvel or DC Universe,” Cameron told ComicBook.com (video below). Yet when it comes to motion capture technology, Cameron can’t help but trumpet his own team at WETA FX....

Jared Leto participated in GQ magazine’s “Iconic Characters” video series and spoke about being the only one in the world who knows the answers to big questions posed in two of his films: “Blade Runner 2049” and “The Little Things.” The “Blade Runner” franchise has launched a decades-old debate over whether protagonist Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a human or a replicant, something Leto says “2049” director Denis Villeneuve allowed him to decide for himself during the making of the 2017 sequel....

The actor is set to play former Chanel artistic director and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in an upcoming biopic. Leto will produce the film with Emma Ludbrook through their production company Paradox. Lagerfeld died in February 2019 at age 85. Lagerfeld’s former fashion house chief executive Pier Paolo Righi, senior vice president of image and communications Caroline Lebar, and Lagerfeld’s personal assistant and bodyguard Sébastien Jondeau will all serve as executive producers and provide insight on the late designer....

Judging from the way “Respect” played Saturday night at the Bruin Theatre in Westwood to (masked and vaccinated) members of the Screen Actors Guild nominating committee, the studio made the right choice to favor an exclusive theatrical release. Broadway director Tommy has mounted a solid crowdpleaser, written by Tracey Scott Wilson, that will satisfy generations of Franklin fans. And ageless 39-year-old singer-actress Hudson, who plays Franklin from her teens through her acclaimed 1972 gospel concert “Amazing Grace,” is on her way to a second Oscar nomination....

“I’m not a person who says age is just a number or whatever. It was gonna be harder — physically. And I was gonna look different than a 25-year-old guy,” Cho continued. “At some point, the opportunity is ‘Yes or no — do you wanna do it?’ And I did wanna do it. So I wasn’t gonna stop myself from doing it.” For anyone who believes Cho is too old to lead “Cowboy Bebop,” the actor maintained the series benefits from him being an older actor....

As “Tenet” continues to slowly build an audience in the U.S. (the film’s domestic box office stands at $36 million after three weekends), leading star John David Washington is already looking ahead to the next installment. While neither Warner Bros. nor Christopher Nolan have announced plans to develop a “Tenet 2,” Washington tells Esquire he’s ready for more big-budget espionage action and says “Tenet” ends with the perfect set-up for a sequel....

Just under a month after Disney publicly condemned the law’s passage, DeSantis argued that Disney aimed to “inject sexuality into the programming that is provided to our youngest kids,” and Florida will no longer allow Walt Disney World its tax incentivized, self-governing district, which had been set up in 1968. During “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” host Oliver summed up the legal proceedings as a band-aid punishment for Disney flip-flopping over “Don’t Say Gay....

The rollout is led by four high-profile studio films: Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Joker: Folie à Deux,” MGM’s “The Thomas Crown Affair” remake starring Michael B. Jordan, Netflix’s “Rebel Moon Part 2,” and another untitled project from Netflix. The state is also awarding tax breaks to 14 independent films, including a currently untitled project from Sofia Coppola. “No other city has more resources than L.A. when it comes to our industry,” said Todd Phillips, who is returning to direct the highly anticipated “Joker” sequel....

This weekend did not offer that evidence. The top 10 titles took in around $10 million, with somewhere under $12 million all told. This weekend saw perhaps 3 percent more theaters open over last weekend, which totaled a little over $11 million. All told, a little over 75 percent of all U.S. complexes are open; the total percentage for North America is a bit higher since nearly all Canadian theaters are now open....

“I’ve always not quite known what NoBudge is,” Audley said with a laugh during a recent interview with IndieWire. “I think there’s part of me [for whom] it’s really appealing to just say, ‘It’s a streaming site.’ It’s a very clear-cut service. This is what it does. This is how you interact with it.” With today’s launch of NoBudge2, Audley and his online labor of love officially join the streaming fray....

Ahead of the third film “Clerks III” launching in theaters for a two-night-only special event, Smith admitted he “never understood” why “Clerks” resonated with audiences since debuting in 1994. The film spurred sequel “Clerks 2” in 2006; the third feature was in development since before 2013. “I’ll tell you, for years, I never understood why people liked ‘Clerks’ so much,” Smith admitted to Forbes. “It’s in black and white, it’s got nobody famous in it and stuff, looks like it was made by children, and it was....

The filmmaker’s “Strange Adventures” DC comic book anthology series has been axed by Warner Bros. Discovery and will not be moving forward at HBO Max, whose representatives confirmed the news to IndieWire. Smith was set to co-write and direct an episode of “Strange Adventures” as part of the anthology series around lesser-known DC characters. Smith recently shared on his “Hollywood Babble-On” YouTube show that HBO Max scrapped the series, executive-produced by Greg Berlanti....