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      ‘All My Puny Sorrows’ Review: Every Day, a Little Death

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      A sister tries to persuade a sibling that her life is worth living.Late in the often dour family drama “All My Puny Sorrows,” adapted from a book of the same name by Miriam Toews, Yoli (Alison Pill) asks her mother, Lottie (Mare Winningham), if she’s heard of the poet Fernando Pessoa. After a moment’s consideration, Yoli, a writer herself, remarks that the poet killed himself. Lottie replies from over her tabletop puzzle, “Oh brother, who hasn’t?”It’s a droll little joke for a film in which self-destruction is common enough to be referenced lightly.The movie follows Yoli; Lottie; and Yoli’s sister, the concert pianist Elf (Sarah Gadon). When the story begins, Elf, has just attempted to end her own life. Yoli visits Elf in the hospital, where she is recovering, and the pair face off in arguments about what should happen after Elf’s release. Supported by a stoic Lottie, Yoli wants to convince Elf that her life is worth living. Elf wants Yoli to take her to Switzerland, so she can legally pursue assisted suicide.This is a family, and by extension a film, that seriously contemplates suicide — and what is felt by the loved ones they leave behind. The director Michael McGowan allows their gray Canadian malaise to extend into wan cinematography and drab scenery. The washed-out images leave the characters little opportunity for expression outside their words, and the dialogue is sometimes stilted and overly literary.What’s fortunate then for this chamber drama is the commitment shown by Pill, Gadon and Winningham as the struggling family at the film’s heart. The ensemble builds believable chemistry as intimate family members, and when their characters deliver their arguments for life or death, the stakes feel appropriately high.All My Puny SorrowsRated R for language and references to sex and suicide. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Black Site’ Review: Stranger Danger

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      A murderous detainee and a damaged C.I.A. agent face off in this uninspired action movie.Perhaps the most depressing thing about Sophia Banks’s “Black Site” — a dreary, underwritten thriller — is an ending that suggests a sequel might already be in the works. For the sake of its beleaguered star, Michelle Monaghan, I can only hope not.Playing the bereaved C.I.A. Agent Abby Trent, Monaghan strives to add depth and humanity to a character that, like almost everyone else onscreen, is barely more than a margin note. Assigned to a secret underground facility in the Jordanian desert known as the Citadel (the collective brainchild, we learn, of five English-speaking democracies), Abby oversees the enthusiastic interrogation of suspected terrorists. Just as she’s about to be recalled to D.C., a team arrives with a high-value prisoner named Hatchet (Jason Clarke), a man whose questioning Abby has reason to take very personally.Whether it’s beefy brutes force-feeding an Arab detainee, or Abby locking horns with a pair of sadistic private contractors, Jinder Ho’s screenplay crumples beneath boilerplate dialogue (“These people are dangerous!”) and hackneyed setups. When, inevitably, Hatchet escapes and begins offing his captors, the movie briefly jolts with shamefaced energy before settling into a tedious chase through a warren of gray concrete. This involves much running around in the dark with guns and flashlights, while a string-heavy soundtrack sweats to conjure an excitement that remains stubbornly elusive.Cheap-looking and unpleasant — too many scenes boast a sickly green sheen, as if viewed through a haze of nausea — “Black Site” is a pointless rehash of war-on-terror tropes. The more bodies pile up, the less reason we have to care.Black SiteRated R for potty mouths and plasma-splattered murders. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in May

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      Looking for something new to watch? Here’s a roundup of the most promising titles coming to most major U.S. streaming services (except Netflix) this month.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Bosch: Legacy’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 6It’s not often that a new TV series begins with a “previously on” recap; but so it goes for “Bosch: Legacy,” a sequel to Amazon’s long-running crime drama “Bosch,” which adapted several of Michael Connelly’s popular novels about the Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver). A flagship title for Amazon’s newly rebranded, ad-supported Amazon Freevee service (previously known as IMDb TV), “Bosch: Legacy” follows the title character after he quits the force and becomes a private investigator. While Bosch is working a case involving a dying billionaire (William Devane) who is looking for a living heir, his daughter, Maddie (Madison Lintz), follows in her dad’s footsteps and becomes a cop — although she struggles with the grind of being a lowly rookie on patrol.Also arriving:May 6“The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith”“The Wilds” Season 2May 13“The Kids in the Hall”May 18“Lovestruck High”May 19“Bang Bang Baby” Season 1May 20“Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks”“Night Sky” Season 1“Troppo”May 27“Emergency”“Kick Like Tayla”Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in a scene from “The Essex Serpent.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Big Conn’Starts streaming: May 6The writer-director team of James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte follow up their offbeat true crime docu-series “McMillions” with another strange-but-true story: “The Big Conn,” a four-part documentary about a Kentucky lawyer who masterminded a half-billion dollar Social Security swindle. The attorney is Eric C. Conn, a media-savvy hustler who became something of a local celebrity thanks to his kooky commercials and his ability to get his clients paid quickly. All the while, he was burning through wives, running multiple barely legal vice dens and entangling the witting and the unwitting in a scheme to defraud the government. Hernandez and Lazarte capture the odd turns this tale took, with the help of the investigators and journalists involved with this case — many of whom question how and why Conn eluded justice for so long.‘The Essex Serpent’Starts streaming: May 13Based on the 2016 Sarah Perry novel, the mini-series “The Essex Serpent” stars Claire Danes as a late 19th century English widow whose scientific curiosity leads her to the countryside to investigate rumors of a lake-dwelling monster she thinks might actually be a dinosaur. Her fervor puts her at odds with two men: a progressive young doctor (Frank Dillane) and a congenial local minister (Tom Hiddleston), both of whom are skeptical of the creature’s existence but for different reasons. The screenwriter Anna Symon and the director Clio Barnard explore the eerie possibilities of their premise in a community prone to superstition and to mistrust of outsiders. The show is about the relationships between smart, well-meaning people who disagree about the very nature of the world.Also arriving:May 6“Tehran” Season 2May 20“Now and Then”May 23“Prehistoric Planet”“Obi-Wan Kenobi” (starring Ewan McGregor) tells a story set between Episode III and Episode IV of the “Star Wars” movies.Lucasfilm Ltd.New to Disney+‘The Quest’Starts streaming: May 11Although it ran for only one season on ABC in the fall of 2014, the sword-and-sorcery themed reality competition series “The Quest” is fondly remembered for its inventive concept, clever execution and lovably sincere contestants. The new Disney+ revival makes a few changes. The competitors are now can-do teenagers instead of earnestly geeky adults; and the show’s overall visual style looks more like a movie, obscuring the line between fantasy and the real-life game these kids are playing. But the basic contest remains the same. The participants are playacting as “paladins,” roaming through a fictional medieval world filled with magic and conflict, where they try to succeed at various challenges. Combine “Game of Thrones,” “Survivor” and an escape room, and that’s “The Quest.”‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’Starts streaming: May 27The latest addition to the “Star Wars” TV universe fills some of the gaps between the movie trilogies, telling a story set between Episode III and Episode IV. Ewan McGregor reprises his big-screen role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, a disillusioned Jedi Master living in hiding on the planet Tatooine, where he stews over the corruption of his student Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and keeps a distant eye on Anakin’s young son, Luke. “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was originally developed as a stand-alone film, which later evolved into this six-episode mini-series. The show should answer some longstanding fan questions about what the eccentric old hermit Kenobi was up to for all those years in exile while waiting for Luke to grow up.Also arriving:May 13“Sneakerella”May 20“Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers”May 27“We Feed People”Theo James and Rose Leslie in a scene from “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”Macall B. Polay/HBONew to HBO Max‘Hacks’ Season 2Starts streaming: May 12In Season 1 of “Hacks,” we met Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), a hip comedy writer who landed a job writing jokes for the fading Las Vegas stand-up comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and then settled into a love-hate relationship with her wealthy but demanding new boss and mentor. In Season 2, Deborah will head out on tour to get back in touch with her roots as Ava caters to her whims, pushes her to try harder and tries to avoid making her too angry. In addition to the terrific performances by the leads, “Hacks” is often a frank interrogation of the cruelties of show business, as experienced by two talented women at different points in their careers.‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’Starts streaming: May 15Audrey Niffenegger’s best-selling 2003 novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” has been adapted to the screen before, for a hit 2009 movie. But the new TV version — created by the “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock” producer Steven Moffat — has the room to sprawl out a bit and cover more of the premise’s metaphysical nuances. Theo James plays Henry, who has a genetic condition that yanks him unpredictably back and forth through time, often landing him near Clare (Rose Leslie), the woman he marries. The couple nearly always meet while they’re at wildly different places on their respective timelines, such that sometimes she knows more than he does about what’s happening, or vice versa. Moffat and his creative team lean into the humor, tension and irony of this situation while hewing to Niffenegger’s central idea that these two are inextricably linked because they are hopelessly in love.Also arriving:May 3“Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known”May 5“Las Bravas F.C.” Season 1“Queen Stars Brazil” Season 1“The Staircase”May 10“Catwoman: Hunted”May 12“Who’s by Your Side” Season 1May 26“Navalny”“That Damn Michael Che” Season 2“Tig ‘n’ Seek” Season 4Jessica Biel as the real-life murderer Candy Montgomery, in a scene from the Hulu series “Candy.”HuluNew to Hulu‘Candy’Starts streaming: May 9In June of 1980, a woman named Betty Gore was found murdered in her suburban Dallas home, with 41 ax wounds on her body. The prime suspect? One of her best friends, Candy Montgomery, who had an affair with Betty’s husband. The mini-series “Candy” begins on the day of the murder and compares the life of the charismatic, churchgoing Candy (Jessica Biel) with the depressed, exhausted Betty (Melanie Lynskey). The “Candy” creators Nick Antosca (best-known for his horror anthology “Channel Zero”) and Robin Veith (a multiple Emmy nominee for her work on “Mad Men”) cover the ensuing criminal investigation and trial while also flashing back to the years leading up the event, considering how these intertwined lives went so awry.Also arriving:May 6“Hatching”May 10“Breeders” Season 3May 15“Conversations With Friends”May 20“The Valet”May 26“A Taste of Hunger”May 27“Shoresy” Season 1May 31“GameStop: Rise of the Players”“Pistol”Ethan Peck as a young Spock in a scene from the new “Star Trek” series “Strange New Worlds.”Marni Grossman/Paramount+New to Paramount+‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 5In Season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery,” that show’s starship crew had an adventure alongside some Federation comrades, including Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Science Officer Spock (Ethan Peck) of the U.S.S. Enterprise. “Star Trek” fans raved about Mount’s commanding and charming performance, playing a key character from the franchise’s mythology; so now he and Peck’s Spock are returning in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which follows the journeys of the Enterprise in the years before Captain James T. Kirk (the hero of the original 1960s TV series) took command. “Strange New Worlds” retains the serialized elements that have become common to modern “Star Trek” series; but it also hearkens to the older shows by featuring more episodic stories.Also arriving:May 11“The Challenge: All Stars” Season 3May 15“Joe Pickett” Season 1May 20“RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars” Season 7From left, Busy Philipps, Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell in a scene from the new season of “Girls5Eva.”PeacockNew to Peacock‘Girls5eva’ Season 2Starts streaming: May 5The first season of the delightful “Girls5eva” offered a witty and insightful peek inside the modern music business from the perspective of four middle-aged singers — formerly a chart-topping girl group — who attempt a comeback at a time when MTV matters less than TikTok. As Season 2 begins, the ladies seem to be on an upswing, ready to record a new album after a breakout moment at a national showcase. But family obligations and the limitations of their aging bodies threaten to stall their momentum. Once again, the creator Meredith Scardino and her writing staff keep the jokes and the savvy pop culture references flying while always honoring the dignity and the dreams of these four friends. The women of Girls5Eva are often ridiculous, but never hopeless.Also arriving:May 13“Firestarter”May 19“Angelyne”“Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky” Season 3May 24“Sins of the Amish” More

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      Depp’s $22.5 Million ‘Pirates’ Deal Collapsed After Op-Ed, Manager Testifies

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      Mr. Depp’s talent manager said the actor had been up to play Captain Jack Sparrow again until his ex-wife, Amber Heard, wrote an op-ed saying she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”Johnny Depp’s talent manager testified on Monday in the actor’s defamation trial that Mr. Depp lost a $22.5 million deal to star in a sixth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie after his ex-wife, Amber Heard, published an op-ed in which she called herself a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”The exact timing of when Mr. Depp was cut from the “Pirates” franchise has become a pertinent question in the trial because Mr. Depp’s lawsuit against Ms. Heard claims that her op-ed, published by The Washington Post in December 2018, “devastated” his reputation and career.Although the op-ed does not mention Mr. Depp by name, he has argued that it clearly referred to their relationship. Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp of assaulting her repeatedly during their relationship, which Mr. Depp denies.At Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, the talent manager, Jack Whigham, testified that the actor had a verbal agreement with Disney to reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in a proposed sixth film, but that in early 2019, it became clear that Disney was “going in a different direction.”“After the op-ed, it was impossible to get him a studio film,” testified Mr. Whigham, who has represented Mr. Depp since 2016.Lawyers for Ms. Heard have argued that it was not the actress’s op-ed that undermined Mr. Depp’s career but rather his own actions that led to bad publicity, seeking to prove during cross-examination of Mr. Whigham that Mr. Depp had, in fact, lost the “Pirates” job before the article was published.Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, a lawyer for Ms. Heard, pointed to a previous deposition by Mr. Whigham in which he said that it had been the fall of 2018 — before the op-ed was published — when he came to understand that it was becoming unlikely that Mr. Depp would appear in the next “Pirates” movie.Mr. Whigham testified that around that time, Disney had not yet made a decision about whether Mr. Depp would appear in the movie and it was “trending badly,” but he and the film producer Jerry Bruckheimer were still seeking to convince the company to keep Mr. Depp in the franchise.“We had hope,” Mr. Whigham said, “and it became clear to me in early 2019 that it was over.”In the op-ed, Ms. Heard asserted that her own career had been affected by becoming a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” saying that she was dropped as the face of a fashion brand and a movie had recast her role.The idea for the op-ed came from the American Civil Liberties Union, and a communications department employee from the nonprofit organization drafted the article, according to earlier testimony from Terence Dougherty, general counsel for the A.C.L.U. Initially, the op-ed draft referenced Ms. Heard’s relationship with Mr. Depp directly. But those references were later edited out after back-and-forth between A.C.L.U. personnel and Ms. Heard’s lawyers about a nondisclosure agreement associated with the couple’s divorce, Mr. Dougherty testified.Aside from discussions about the op-ed on which Mr. Depp’s lawsuit is based, much of the trial has focused on diverging accounts of physical abuse in Ms. Heard and Mr. Depp’s relationship. Mr. Depp testified that he has never hit Ms. Heard and that she was the aggressor, accusing her of punching him in the face and kicking a bathroom door into his head. Ms. Heard, who has not yet testified in the trial, has said in court papers that she never hit Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister, and that Mr. Depp tended to perpetrate violence against her when he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.Amber Heard has countersued Mr. Depp, asserting that his former lawyer defamed her by referring to her allegations as a hoax.Pool photo by Steve Helber/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Monday, Ms. Heard’s lawyers sought to undermine Mr. Whigham’s claim that Mr. Depp had a formal deal for the sixth “Pirates” movie at all.“Do you have any explanation for why there exists nothing — no piece of paper — nothing suggesting that Mr. Depp ever had a deal with Disney for ‘Pirates 6’?” Ms. Bredehoft asked.Mr. Whigham said it was not unusual for an actor to have a verbal agreement for a movie that is later put into writing.Ms. Bredehoft also pointed to other possible precursors to Mr. Depp’s reputational decline other than the op-ed, citing a headline from The Sun newspaper in Britain that called Mr. Depp a “wife beater.” That article was published in April 2018, she pointed out, and Mr. Depp sued the newspaper for it in June 2018 — both months before Mr. Whigham’s recollection of Disney’s declining interest in Mr. Depp for “Pirates.”(Ms. Heard’s potential witness list includes Tina Newman, a Disney executive.)Ms. Heard’s legal team has referred repeatedly to the defamation trial in Britain that arose from that lawsuit. But it appears that the team has been restricted from mentioning the outcome of the case, in which a judge in London ruled against Mr. Depp and found that there was “overwhelming evidence” that he had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly during their marriage. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in May

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      Here are the most promising new and returning titles for U.S. subscribers this month, including a new season of “Stranger Things.”Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Clark’Starts streaming: May 5The maverick Swedish filmmaker and music video director Jonas Akerlund (“Spun,” “Lords of Chaos”) brings his visual panache and his affection for incorrigible rogues to the six-part biographical drama “Clark.” The series is based loosely on the life of Clark Olofsson, the man credited with inspiring the term “Stockholm syndrome” after he bonded with his hostages during a bank robbery. Akerlund uses zippy editing, varied color schemes and dynamic camera moves to emphasize the rush Olofsson got from theft, assault and drug trafficking. Bill Skarsgard (“It”) plays the title character, capturing both his puckish charm and his terrifying willingness to hurt and deceive people.‘Along for the Ride’Starts streaming: May 6Based on a Sarah Dessen young adult novel, “Along for the Ride” follows a socially awkward high school graduate named Auden (Emma Pasarow) who spends the summer before college living with her father and stepmom at the beach. There, she meets a mysterious and brooding boy, Eli (Belmont Cameli), who like her suffers from insomnia and shares her interests in reading and wandering along the shore. The writer-director Sofia Alvarez works this teen romance plot into a larger story about Auden’s efforts to escape the shadow of her domineering mother (Andie MacDowell) and learn how to take more chances.‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 13Next to the detective Harry Bosch, the scrappy defense attorney Mickey Haller is the crime novelist Michael Connelly’s greatest creation: a champion of the innocent who empathizes with his clients in part because he, himself, is often just a few bad breaks away from calamity. Matthew McConaughey played Haller in a well-received 2011 film, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” based on Connelly’s first book about the character. Season 1 of this new TV series is based on the novel “The Brass Verdict,” and it hews a bit closer to the source material — beginning with the casting of the Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo to play a man who is described as half-Mexican in the original stories. In this first set of episodes, the lawyer inherits a colleague’s practice. While working mostly out of his flashy car, Haller has to prepare a new celebrity client’s murder defense in under a week.‘Senior Year’Starts streaming: May 13Rebel Wilson stars in this high school comedy, which like her 2019 film “Isn’t It Romantic?,” repurposes the conventions of a popular movie genre. In “Senior Year,” Wilson plays Stephanie Conway, who has been in a coma since 2002, when she was the captain of her school’s cheerleading squad. In her mind, no time has passed, so Stephanie decides to re-enroll and get her degree — although she soon finds that because so much has changed about adolescent cliques and pop culture over the past 20 years, she is now more misfit than teen queen. Directed by the TV sitcom veteran Alex Hardcastle, “Senior Year” is a fish-out-of-water story about a woman coming to terms with her past and her future.‘Stranger Things’ Season 4, Volume 1Starts streaming: May 27When last we left the “Stranger Things” crew, the adventurous Hawkins, Ind., teenagers and their perpetually worried parents and guardians had survived a huge escalation of the inter-dimensional war against their tiny town. Season 3 of this nostalgia-steeped science-fiction adventure ended with several characters leaving town after the Soviet Union exacerbated a crisis involving the alternate reality known as “the Upside Down.” The pandemic-delayed Season 4 — arriving three years after Season 3 but advancing the plot only six months — will move into the second half of the 1980s. This season’s episodes will be lengthier and larger in scale (they’ll also drop in two parts, the second landing on July 1) as the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, start bringing the scattered pieces of their story together in preparation for a big Season 5 finish.Also arriving:May 4“The Circle” Season 4“El Marginal” Season 5“Meltdown: Three Mile Island”“Summertime” Season 3May 5“The Pentaverate”“Wild Babies” Season 1May 6“Marmaduke”“The Sound of Magic” Season 1“The Takedown”“Welcome to Eden” Season 1May 10“Outlander” Season 5May 11“42 Days of Darkness” Season 1“Operation Mincemeat”“Our Father”May 12“Savage Beauty” Season 1May 13“Bling Empire” Season 2May 14“Borrego”May 16“Vampire in the Garden” Season 1May 17“The Future Diary” Season 2May 18“Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror”May 19“A Perfect Pairing”“The Photographer: Murder in Pinamar”May 20“Love, Death + Robots” Season 3May 23“Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045” Season 2May 25“Somebody Feed Phil” Season 5 More

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      In Bid to Boost Peacock, Universal Sending 3 Movies Straight to Streaming

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      The move is not only an attempt to attract subscribers but an acknowledgment that releasing some films theatrically has become more of a gamble.Donna Langley, the head of Universal’s Motion Picture Entertainment Group, stepped on the stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas last week and reaffirmed her commitment to movie theaters.“Theatrical will always be the cornerstone of our business,” she told the crowd of theater owners gathered for the annual CinemaCon industry convention, adding, “Cheers to that.”It was not just lip service. With more than 25 films set for release in 2022, Universal has at least 10 more than any other major Hollywood studio. It will release a combination of blockbusters (“Jurassic World Dominion”), family fare (“Minions: The Rise of Gru”) and original bets (Jordan Peele’s “Nope” and “Beast,” starring Idris Elba), operating on the premise that a movie’s value begins with its debut in theaters.Yet on Monday, as part of a presentation for advertisers, Kelly Campbell, the president of NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock, will announce that three new movies produced by Universal Pictures will head straight to the streaming service when they debut in 2023.They include a biopic about LeBron James based on his memoir, “Shooting Stars”; a remake of John Woo’s 1989 crime drama “The Killer,” starring Omar Sy; and “Praise This,” a music-competition feature set in the world of youth choir.For Peacock, which last week announced that it ended the first quarter of the year with more than 13 million paid subscribers and 28 million monthly active accounts in the United States, representing a growth of 4 million users, the additional film content is crucial to its strategy. It needs to find a way to compete with the bigger services like Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max, at a time when streaming subscriber numbers seem to be plateauing.Ms. Langley greenlit all three pictures, and had to make the calls to tell the filmmakers about the change in distribution strategy.“I think everybody sort of woke up and smelled the coffee during the pandemic and recognized that not all movies are created equal,” Ms. Langley said in an interview, adding that the filmmakers were still interested in partnering with the studio, even if it meant going straight to Peacock. “It’s a big deal for Peacock to have these movies. They are events for them. And we got yeses, so I think it was a satisfying rationale.”“Theatrical will always be the cornerstone of our business,” Donna Langley, the head of Universal’s Motion Picture Entertainment Group, told theater owners last week.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe three movies also reflect the type of audience Peacock seems to be attracting so far: younger and more diverse than those who gravitate toward the other legacy businesses run by Comcast, Peacock’s parent company.“What you’ll see with these films is that they are broadly appealing, but also track towards that young, diverse audience that represents the streaming audience of today, the generation of consumers who are choosing streaming as their primary source of entertainment,” Ms. Campbell said in an interview.Despite lagging behind some of its streaming competitors, Peacock has experienced success this year. February was a high point, when viewers could see the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, the simultaneous release of the Jennifer Lopez-starring film “Marry Me” in theaters and on the service, and the debut of “Bel-Air,” a dramatic reimagining of the 1990s hit television series “The Prince of Bel-Air” that starred Will Smith. (Season two is in development.)“Retention on our service after airing all of this special content in such a concentrated period of time was well above our expectation,” Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, said in an earnings call last week. “We have seen a 25 percent increase in hours of engagement year-over-year.”When the pandemic upended the theater business, Universal Pictures experimented with a variety of distribution methods for its movies. There was the purely theatrical like “Fast 9: The Fast Saga,” which earned $173 million when it was released last summer when coronavirus cases were lower. And there was “Sing 2,” which earned over $160 million domestically after being released in December, before going to premium video-on-demand just 17 days after its debut in theaters. The company has also experimented with simultaneous release, debuting “Halloween Kills” and the sequel to “Boss Baby” in theaters and on Peacock during the height of the pandemic. The company will do so again in two weeks with the remake of the Stephen King horror film “Firestarter.”“There’s no one size fits all,” Ms. Langley said. “It really is about looking at the individual movies on the one hand and then also at our growth engine Peacock, and doing what’s best in any given moment, depending on what’s going on in the marketplace. I’m hopeful that this stabilizes over time as the theatrical landscape stabilizes. But until then, we do have this optionality.”Like every other studio executive, Ms. Langley is involved in the complicated calculus of determining what movies fit where in a world where the theatrical box office is down 45 percent from what it was in 2019. It is “a box office that is in decline,” Ms. Langley said, with theatergoing expected to still be down at least 15 percent from its prepandemic level in 2023.In speaking specifically to the three films she chose to put straight on Peacock, she described them as “movies we love that a decade ago would have been no-brainers” to make and release in theaters.But audiences have more choice now about when and where they watch films, and it can be more difficult to convince them that a film is worth seeing in a theater.“We still want to make these movies because we believe in the stories, we believe in the storytellers and we think that these are great pieces of entertainment,” she said. “We have the ability to be able to avail ourselves of our streaming platform. And we think that they are events, actually, to be released into the home, very specifically for the Peacock audience.”Peacock is buying the films from Universal Pictures, a portion of the $3 billion it intends to spend on content in 2022, ramping up to $5 billion in the next couple of years.Ms. Langley says that while 2023 will feature three straight-to-Peacock films, she hopes release seven to 10 films that way in the coming years, films that will all be developed and produced by the same Universal creative team that is behind the “Jurassic Park” and “Fast and Furious” franchises.“Peacock’s future depends on having good content and our future depends on having flexibility in our distribution models,” Ms. Langley said. “So our agendas, ultimately, are aligned. So, yes, there’s debate about any one particular title or something they might want that we can’t deliver or vice versa but that’s the stuff of working inside a big corporation.” More

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      Bill Murray Speaks About Misconduct Allegations

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      “I did something I thought was funny, and it wasn’t taken that way,” he said in a television interview on Saturday.The actor Bill Murray said that a movie in which he was set to star was suspended because an attempt at humor had been taken amiss by a female co-star, addressing publicly for the first time an episode that has gotten widespread attention.“I did something I thought was funny, and it wasn’t taken that way,” Murray said in an interview on Saturday with CNBC’s Becky Quick, during coverage of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting.Murray, who is 71, labeled the episode a “difference of opinion” and did not apologize. While limiting his discussion of what happened to generalities and without going into detail, he spoke contritely about unwittingly “insensitive” behavior.“I’ve been doing not much else but thinking about it for the last week or two,” he said. “The world’s different than it was when I was a little kid. What I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now.”The movie, “Being Mortal,” based on a 2014 book of the same title by the writer and surgeon Atul Gawande, is being made by Searchlight Pictures, which Murray said is conducting an investigation into the episode.Murray was the movie’s intended lead, and it was also to star Aziz Ansari, who had been directing it and who wrote the script. Seth Rogen and Keke Palmer had also been cast in the film.The episode involving Murray happened on April 15. Production was halted that day, someone working on the movie told The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, because details of the matter were being kept confidential.Murray did not name the female colleague who had objected to his behavior, but he said the two of them were in touch and that he felt optimistic about resolving the issue.“We like each other’s work, and we like each other, I think,” he said. “What would make me the happiest would be to put my boots on and for both of us to go back into work.”Searchlight sent the cast and crew a letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, that attributed the suspension of filming to a complaint but did not identify its nature or who made it. The person working on the movie said the cause was an allegation of “inappropriate behavior.”Murray is known for playing gruff but lovable characters in blockbuster comedies like “Caddyshack” and “Ghostbusters,” and he is a member of a troupe of actors associated with the director Wes Anderson, having been the lead in Anderson’s 2004 film, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”The suspension of the filming of “Being Mortal” has brought attention to past criticisms of Murray’s on-set behavior.The actress Lucy Liu has described Murray insulting her during the filming of “Charlie’s Angels” (2000), and the actor Richard Dreyfuss has said Murray threw an ashtray at him when they worked on “What About Bob?”(1991).In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Anderson said Murray developed strong chemistry with a range of fellow actors.In the CNBC interview, Murray said, “If we can’t really get along and trust each other, there’s no point in going further working together.” But, he added, “I think that’s a sad puppy that can’t learn anymore. I don’t want to be that sad dog, and I have no intention of it.” More

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      Catherine Spaak, Darling of Italian Cinema in the ’60s, Dies at 77

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      Born in France, she moved to Italy as a teenager and began a long acting career, which extended to Hollywood in the movie “Hotel.”Catherine Spaak, a French-born actress who made her name crossing genres in Italian, French and occasionally American films, acting alongside stars like Jane Fonda and Rod Taylor, died on April 17 in Rome. She was 77.Her son, Gabriele Guidi, confirmed her death.Born outside Paris, Ms. Spaak went to Italy as a teenager and began a long film career there. Her first major role in a feature film was as a 17-year-old student who has an affair with a middle-aged man in “Sweet Deceptions,” from 1960 (originally “Dolci Inganni”).Four years later she appeared as a Parisian shopgirl in “La Ronde,” a French drama about marital infidelity directed by Roger Vadim, in which she acted alongside Ms. Fonda (who went on to marry Mr. Vadim). The film, a remake of Max Ophuls’ 1950 version based on an 1897 Arthur Schnitzler play, was released and dubbed in the United States as “Circle of Love.”Ms. Spaak became an onscreen sex symbol as a young actress, winning the attention of many international magazines, including Playboy. With her long, straight hair and blunt-cut bangs, she also became something of a style-setter in the 1960s.Her first film role in the United States came in “Hotel” (1967), an adaptation of the Arthur Hailey novel, starring Mr. Taylor. She played the mistress of an investor (Kevin McCarthy) who wants to buy a landmark New Orleans hotel. Variety called her performance “charming and sexy.”In 1968 she had top billing, alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant, in “The Libertine” (originally “La Matriarca”) playing “a restless young widow” who “skips in and out of various sexual encounters,” as Howard Thompson wrote in an unenthusiastic review in The New York Times.She had another leading role in 1971, in Dario Argento’s murder mystery thriller “The Cat O’Nine Tails,” performing alongside Karl Malden and the television star James Franciscus. In 1975 she took on a different genre playing a prostitute in “Take a Hard Ride,” an Italian-American “spaghetti western” that also starred Jim Brown and Lee Van Cleef.Ms. Spaak pursued a parallel singing career in the 1960s and ’70s, recording a handful of albums. She was often likened to the French chanteuse Françoise Hardy, some of whose songs Ms. Spaak covered.Later in her career she hosted a popular Italian talk show called “Harem.”Catherine Spaak was born on April 3, 1945, in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Paris area, to Charles Spaak, a screenwriter, and Claudie Clèves, an actress. After moving to Italy as a teenager, she remained there for the rest of her life and became a naturalized citizen.She was married four times. Her first husband was the Italian actor and producer Fabrizio Capucci; her second, Johnny Dorelli, was also an actor, and he and Ms. Spaak recorded music together, including the album “Promesse … Promesse …” (1970). She later married Daniel Rey, an architect, and, in 2013, Vladimiro Tuselli.In addition to Mr. Guidi, she is survived by a daughter, Sabrina Capucci, and her sister, Agnes Spaak. More