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Apple TV+ unveiled the trailer for “High Desert,” the new eight-episode dark comedy starring Patricia Arquette, who also serves as executive producer, Matt Dillon, Christine Taylor, Weruche Opia, Brad Garrett, Bernadette Peters, Rupert Friend and Keir O’Donnell. Directed by Emmy Award winner Jay Roach, created by Nancy Fichman, Katie Ford and Jennifer Hoppe, and executive produced by Ben Stiller, the half-hour series will make its global debut on Apple TV+ with the first three episodes on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, followed by new episodes weekly, every Wednesday...

Following the record-breaking performance of Avatar: The Way of Water, fans can soon re-immerse themselves into James Cameron's visually groundbreaking world with the launch of a brand-new art exhibit showcasing an inside look at the production of the film. Titled "The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water - An Immersive Experience," the exhibit will launch on April 22, fittingly on Earth Day, and will run until April 23 from 10 AM to 6 PM at the Lighthouse Artspace in Los Angeles. The exhibit will feature a plethora of behind-the-scenes content alongside props and costumes from the film. Adding to the experience, the art exhibit will also feature life-sized statues of everyone's favorite characters from the franchise, which will tower over fans as they fully immerse themselves further into Pandora. Additionally, the exhibit will also showcase stunning scenes from the film, such as the Metkayina Clan village, whose introduction served as the central focus of the story...

French film legend Catherine Deneuve will be front and center at the Cannes Film Festival as the subject of the official poster for its 76th edition. The shot of a young Deneuve in 1968 standing on the Pampelonne beach, near Saint Tropez, as the cameras roll on La Chamade by director Alain Cavalier is the iconic photo for the poster this year. The French romantic drama had Deneuve playing Lucile, the mistress of a wealthy man who misses the material comforts of life when she leaves him for a younger lover. “Her heart beats frantically, hurriedly, passionately. Like the heart of cinema that the Festival de Cannes celebrates every year,? Cannes organizers said of the poster in a statement...

As part of its ongoing celebration of the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studios, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has commissioned short film adaptations of six classic movies from its vault. These 20-minute shorts, which will be available to stream on Max later this year, will update the films through today’s more diverse and inclusive understanding of the world, with what WBD’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team calls “representative casting, storytelling and narrative.” Six filmmakers have already been chosen by a committee that includes WBD senior vp DEI in North America Karen Horne alongside individuals from Warner Bros. Pictures, Visual Communications, Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Urban World, Sundance Indigenous Lab, Outfest and ReelAbilities Film Fest. The filmmakers, who will receive a budget through which they can derive their own compensation, will begin production this summer and be mentored by a group of established producers and directors, including Greg Berlanti (The CW’s Arrowverse), Angel Manuel Soto (Blue Beetle), Blitz Bazawale (The Color Purple), Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), Danis Goulet (Night Raiders) and James Lebrecht (Crip Camp). Ali Afshar (American Wrestler: The Wizard, Holiday Harmony, A Christmas Mystery) will serve as a consulting producer on all of the projects...

French Fashion House Saint Laurent Film Division Saint Laurent Productions will debut at Cannes with Pedro Almodóvar’s latest short, 'Strange Way of Life,' and with projects with David Cronenberg and Paolo Sorrentino in the works. And the luxury brand’s film production arm also has two projects involving David Cronenberg and Paolo Sorrentino in the works. “These directors never fail to open my mind and, in a way, the singular, radical vision they bring to cinema has made me the person I am today,” Vaccarello said in a statement. The late French designer Yves Saint Laurent launched and ran the luxury couture house with his business and life partner Pierre Bergé. The upcoming movies from Saint Laurent Productions will feature costumes by Vaccarello for his fashion house...

The Writers Guild of America has voted in favor of a strike, with the organization's members voting near-unanimously for the measure. The WGA revealed that 97.8 percent of its members who voted were in favor of a potential strike if an agreement cannot be reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the majority of film and TV production in Hollywood. That doesn't mean a strike is happening (we'll get into that shortly), but it means the membership of the WGA is fully prepared to do so. The goal of the WGA in the negotiations is to secure better pay for streaming shows and to raise the floor for base pay. In traditional TV, syndication and other revenue streams helped writers get by well after a job concluded. Royalties have changed radically thanks to the advent of streaming. Other factors, such as declines at the box office and a decline in the home video market, have also impacted pay...

In 2021, director Morgan Neville made headlines when he revealed that he and his team had built an AI model of the late Anthony Bourdain's voice for his documentary "Roadrunner," and Neville had secretly slipped AI-generated narration into the doc alongside narrations that Bourdain himself actually read aloud. In 2022, actor James Earl Jones, who has provided the voice of Darth Vader since the original "Star Wars" in 1977, made his own headlines when he allowed a start-up company called Respeecher to use artificial intelligence to generate new vocal performances using his early archival recordings as source material, letting Lucasfilm retain a consistency to Darth Vader's iconic intonations instead of recasting the role. Jones, now 92 years old, reportedly provides.Try as it might, there are some things technology simply cannot do as well as a human. In Jon Favreau's 2003 Christmas classic "Elf," there's a scene in which Will Ferrell's character, Buddy the Elf, chugs a two-liter bottle of Coke and, a couple of minutes later, lets out a comically long belch. After a failed attempt to use computers to produce the burp, the production hired Maurice LaMarche to provide the vocal effect...

LEGO is bringing us yet another building brick version of the X-Wing starfighter that has been part of the franchise since the first film debuted back in 1977. Frankly, we've lost count of how many different LEGO versions of the starship we've gotten, but this one promises to be the best version yet because it's an Ultimate Collector Series build.  Meanwhile, fans of "Return of the Jedi" will get two new LEGO dioramas that recreate two of the most famous scenes from the original trilogy's conclusion: the speeder bike chase through the forests of Endor and the lightsaber battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the Emperor's throne room on the second Death Star...