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      Pixar Lays Off 14% of Its Staff and Will Stop Making Shows for Disney+

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      The animation studio, which has struggled over the past few years, will stop making original shows for Disney+.Pixar will stop making original shows for Disney+ as part of a broader retrenchment, resulting in layoffs that will reduce its work force by 14 percent.Jim Morris, the president of Pixar, announced the layoffs in an internal memo on Tuesday that was viewed by The New York Times. He cited “the return to our focus on feature films.” About 175 employees will be let go.Questions about Pixar’s health have swirled in Hollywood and among investors since June 2022, when the Disney-owned studio released “Lightyear” to disastrous results. How could Pixar, the gold standard of animation studios for nearly three decades, have gotten a movie so wrong — especially one about Buzz Lightyear, a bedrock “Toy Story” character?Pixar’s next film, “Elemental,” an opposites-attract love story, arrived to alarmingly low ticket sales in June 2023, but ultimately generated a solid $500 million at the box office.One problem: Disney had weakened the Pixar brand by using its films to build the Disney+ streaming service. Starting in late 2020, when many multiplexes were still closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Disney debuted three Pixar films in a row (“Soul,” “Turning Red” and “Luca”) online, bypassing theaters altogether.The layoffs on Tuesday, which were reported earlier by The Hollywood Reporter, acknowledged another reality: Pixar, like other Disney-owned studios, including Marvel, lost its focus when it was pushed to create original programming for Disney+. At the time — around December 2020 — Disney was pouring money into the streaming service in a wild and ultimately unsuccessful effort to attract up to 260 million subscribers worldwide. It had 87 million at the time. It has about 154 million today.Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of Disney, has since reversed course, emphasizing cost containment and quality — less can be more, if the standards are high. He has said repeatedly over the past year that the creative teams at Disney were stretched too thin by the streaming strategy.As part of the retrenchment at Pixar, “Elio,” a movie about an 11-year-old boy who is inadvertently beamed into space, was delayed. It was supposed to arrive this March. Disney pushed it to June 2025. (Pixar’s next film in theaters will be “Inside Out 2.” It is scheduled for release on June 14.)Pixar’s original series for Disney+ included “Cars on the Road,” focused on the “Cars” characters Lightning McQueen and Mater, and “Dug Days,” a series of shorts about the dog from the movie “Up.” The studio’s last original Disney+ series, “Win or Lose,” about a coed middle school softball team, will arrive late this year.Pixar will continue to make the occasional short film for Disney+. More

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      Trump Calls ‘Apprentice’ Biopic at Cannes ‘Garbage’ and Plans to Sue

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      The director of “The Apprentice” was unfazed by the threat to the film, which covers the ex-president’s relationships with his first wife and the fixer Roy Cohn.The day after the Cannes Film Festival premiered “The Apprentice,” a biopic of Donald J. Trump, the former president hit back at the movie, calling it “malicious defamation” and threatening legal action.“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.Directed by Ali Abbasi and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) as an ambitious young man seeking to establish himself as a real estate magnate. He finds a mentor in the wily lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and a first wife in the fashion model Ivana Zelnickova (Maria Bakalova), though Trump is willing to discard both once they’re no longer of use to him.The film is hardly a flattering portrait of the former president, and includes scenes where the business mogul goes under the knife for liposuction and a scalp procedure to fix his bald spot. In its most controversial sequence, the Trump character sexually assaults his wife after she criticizes his looks. (Ivana, who died in 2022, accused Trump of rape in her divorce deposition, though she disavowed the claim later.)Cheung said the Trump team plans to file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”Though the threat could affect the release of “The Apprentice,” which currently has no distributor, Abbasi sounded unfazed at the film’s news conference on Tuesday.“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” the director said. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.” More

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      At Cannes, the Dogs Were Good Again This Year

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      The festival has long embraced canine stars like Messi, the hero of “Anatomy of a Fall,” while human stars are happy to take their furry friends along.On the morning the Cannes Film Festival opened, Messi, the canine hero of last year’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” was practicing climbing the stairs of the Grand Lumière Theater. The majestic entry is typically reserved for stars dressed in their finery, but the official red carpet had not yet been rolled out. Messi’s owner and trainer, Laura Martin Contini, coached him to bound up to the first landing and pose. He wasn’t quite hitting his mark, stopping just one step below, but he eventually got the hang of it. Contini rewarded him with coos of “Oui, jolie” and “Oui, bravo” and a squeaky soccer ball toy he seemed to particularly enjoy, his blue eyes growing even more intense at the sight of it.Messi was rehearsing for the opening credits of his new talk show, “Messi: The Cannes Film Festival From a Dog’s Eye View.” In the series of shorts for French TV, the star was going to interview talent (using the voice of a human actor).His presence was proof of an incontrovertible fact about the festival, now in its second week: Cannes loves dogs. You could see that as Demi Moore, star of this year’s “The Substance,” brought her Chihuahua, Pilaf, to the photo call. And you could see it as Messi went through his paces, occasionally carrying a camera in his mouth, and onlookers just outside the barricades took photos. “It’s like if I had George Clooney with me, but it’s just a dog,” said Tim Newman, a producer who came up with the idea for Messi’s program.Demi Moore brought Pilaf along during a photo call Monday for her new film, “The Substance.”Sebastien Nogier/EPA, via ShutterstockThe talk show is something of a victory lap for the pooch, who emerged as one of the biggest stars of the 2023 festival, even receiving the Palm Dog Award, given annually to the premier canine performer, though he couldn’t make that ceremony. “Last year we were not able to climb the famed steps of the Cannes arena, so this time we are returning and we are able to be at the red carpet and to support all of the dogs that will be considered for the Palm Dog,” Contini said, speaking through a translator.So why is this particular festival so friendly to pups? “Cannes is a good place for dogs to get a showcase because the French have a very sensible approach to dogs,” the Palm Dog founder Toby Rose said, explaining, “They are always pretty much without exception welcome to join in restaurants, which I know to the Anglo-Saxon American and Brits is almost heresy.” (Indeed, on the first day of my stay in Cannes this year a regal greyhound tottered in and out of a creperie while I ate.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Biopic Hits Cannes Film Festival: ’The Apprentice’

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      The film covers Donald J. Trump’s relationships with the fixer Roy Cohn and his first wife, Ivana, and tries to explain the future president, at least as a young man.Would Donald J. Trump enjoy Cannes? It’s possible, since the extravagant displays of wealth here — all the yachts and glamour — are typically his thing.But would Cannes enjoy Donald J. Trump?You might be tempted to say no, since the Cannes Film Festival draws the sort of liberal-leaning artists that reliably vote against the former president and his allies. But that clash of sensibilities lent a frisson to Monday’s premiere of “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Trump.Directed by Ali Abbasi (“Border,” “Holy Spider”) and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, this origin story of sorts begins with Trump in his late 20s as he aspires to greatness but mostly putters around collecting overdue rent for his father’s real estate company. (One angry tenant responds by hurling a pot of boiling water at him.) Trump is a man in need of a mentor, and he finds it in the lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who takes an immediate liking to this young striver. And why wouldn’t they spark to each other? On one visit, Trump hops out of a car emblazoned with the license plate “DJT” and sees that Cohn’s own plate reads “RMC.” Game recognizes game.The closeted Cohn character has complicated reasons for keeping Trump close: There’s a one-sided attraction there, and when giving Trump an expensive suit, he tells the younger man, “If you look like a million bucks, I look like a million bucks.” But mostly, he sees Trump as an appreciative vessel for his lessons in venality. Cohn teaches him how to use dirty tricks to succeed in business and imparts three rules that will become Trump’s modus operandi: Always be on the attack, deny everything and never admit defeat.But in its own way, theirs is a “Star Is Born” dynamic: As Trump rises, Cohn falls on harder times, and the protégé who was once so easily impressed now seems sickened to spend time with someone no longer on his level. By the time we reach the 1980s, Trump has married his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and broken ground on his crowning real estate achievement, Trump Tower. Still, Cohn won’t be dispatched from his high-flying life quite so easily.Is the movie sympathetic to Trump? Not exactly, though it labors to at least explain him. At first, Stan’s performance feels surprisingly toned down: Though young Trump is certainly full of himself, he seems more abashed in Cohn’s outsize presence. But as Trump gets hooked on success (and speedlike diet pills), Stan transforms into the man we know today, who leads with bluster and arrogance. “The Apprentice” suggests he’s little more than a MAGA magpie, stealing his famous “Make America Great Again” phrase from a Reagan operative and even modeling his orange complexion on Cohn, who liked to tan himself to a radioactive umber.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lily Gladstone in the Spotlight at the Kering Women in Motion Dinner

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      The juror found herself at the center of the Kering Women in Motion dinner, a year after she was a little-known guest for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”At the Cannes Film Festival, much is made of the standing ovation. Every round of applause earns breathless headlines, with outlets racing to report which movie received the most prolonged cheers.But sometimes at Cannes, where you sit is just as important as when you leap to your feet.This is something Lily Gladstone found out Sunday night at Kering’s annual Women in Motion dinner, a star-studded bash that drew the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Julianne Moore, Isabelle Huppert and the jury president, Greta Gerwig. As one of Gerwig’s fellow jurors, Gladstone will help decide the winner of the Palme d’Or. It’s a prestigious position that also represents a full-circle moment for the actress, whose profile was turbocharged last year when “Killers of the Flower Moon” debuted at Cannes.The day after that premiere last May, Gladstone found herself at the Women in Motion dinner. At one point, she made her way to the party’s center table to greet her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio and perched next to him on an empty chair reserved for the festival’s president, Iris Knobloch.Recounting the story to me on Sunday, Gladstone grinned. “Iris and I were just laughing about that, that she had to kick me out of her chair last year and now I’m sitting next to her,” she said. In fact, this year Gladstone had been assigned what could be considered the party’s most prestigious spot, the chair between Knobloch and the Cannes artistic director, Thierry Frémaux.“I’m the Leo this year!” Gladstone said, chuckling. “I’m totally in his seat.”At this point in the festival, Gladstone and her fellow jurors have seen almost half the films in competition. “Last year, I only had to be concerned with one film,” Gladstone said. “This year, it’s 22.” And her jury experience comes after several months spent on the awards circuit for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which earned her a best actress Oscar nomination.But though Gladstone’s dance card is full — she’ll soon star in “The Memory Police,” a sci-fi film scripted by Charlie Kaufman, as well as a remake of Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” that will co-star Bowen Yang — she said that taking time out for Cannes has recharged her artistic battery.“I’m ready to get back to work and shift that gear, and immersing yourself in other people’s creativity is a great way to kick-start it again for yourself,” she said. “So I’m enjoying the hell out of it.” More

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      Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe on Yorgos Lanthimos’s New Film

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      In the new Yorgos Lanthimos film “Kinds of Kindness,” a character played by Emma Stone recounts a dream in which she was the denizen of a bizarre world. “There, dogs were in charge,” she murmurs. “People were animals, animals were people.” But being brought to heel by their canine masters wasn’t as bad as it sounds, she says: “I must admit, they treated us pretty well.”Compared with how the human beings treat each other in “Kinds of Kindness,” a dark new comedy that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is in theaters June 21, the dogs would surely be an improvement.Comprised of three separate stories with the cast members recurring in different roles, “Kinds of Kindness” begins with the tale of Robert (Jesse Plemons), a corporate underling whose every interaction in life — including what to eat, how to speak or even who to marry — is controlled by a boss (Willem Dafoe) whose decisions send poor Robert into a tailspin. The second story follows Daniel (Plemons again), who becomes convinced that his wife (Stone) is not who she claims to be and coaxes her into insane tasks to prove herself.And in the third sequence, cult members played by Stone and Plemons search for a woman able to wake the dead, though the whims of their guru (Dafoe) dictate that this mysterious woman also be a certain height and weight and have an identical twin. (Even when it comes to awesome supernatural powers, there are dealbreakers.)Dafaoe and Stone worked on Lanthimos’s “Poor Things” together, for which she won the best actress Oscar. “I still don’t know what that was,” Stone said. “That was cuckoo bananas.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesOn Saturday afternoon in a hotel here in Cannes, I met with Stone, Plemons and Dafoe to try to make sense of this triptych. According to the actors, Lanthimos isn’t keen to give too much away. “Yorgos says he likes it when people have different takes on the movie,” Dafoe said. “I think that’s the strength of it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘The Good Doctor’

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      The ABC comedy wraps up its third season. The medical show airs its series finale.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, May 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondaySTAX: SOULSVILLE, U.S.A. 9 p.m. on HBO. Satellite Records in Memphis (now Stax Records), which opened its doors in 1957, helped start the careers of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave and more. This documentary series uses archival footage and interviews to look back on the relationships shared by musicians, songwriters and producers and highlights the work they all did in pushing the racial barriers of the time.SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE 9 p.m. on Fox. All season the judges Allison Holker, Maksim Chmerkovskiy and JoJo Siwa have been sharing feedback with the dancers in this competition show with episode themes including Broadway, music videos and movies — and now it is time to crown a winner.TuesdayTHE ROOKIE 9 p.m. on ABC. This show, staring Nathan Fillion as the oldest rookie in the Los Angeles Police Department, is wrapping up its 6th season this week. The penultimate episode left things on a cliffhanger, with Dr. London on the run, potentially endangering her immunity deal. Will we have to wait a year for loose ends to be tied up?Freddie Highmore in “The Good Doctor.”Disney/Jeff WeddellTHE GOOD DOCTOR 10 p.m. on ABC. Over the seven seasons of this show, we have really seen Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) go on a full journey. He started as a nervous young surgeon and has blossomed into a top guy in his field, a husband and a father. Highmore told Deadline that he hadn’t expected the show to run seven seasons, “but one of the things that I have always appreciated about the show — and saw as potential from the very beginning — is the opportunity for Shaun to evolve and learn and grow and change,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Cannes Film Festival, Discoveries From Andrea Arnold and Rungano Nyoni

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      Though the history-inflected “Furiosa” and “Megalopolis” were the hottest tickets, films by Andrea Arnold and Rungano Nyoni proved to be discoveries.It must say something about the anxious state of the movie world that two of the hottest tickets at this year’s Cannes Film Festival draw inspiration from ancient Rome. In George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” Chris Hemsworth zips around a wasteland like a heavy-metal charioteer, while in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” Adam Driver plays a guy named Cesar. That each movie offers a vision of a culture in decline seems too on the nose for this festival, where attendees celebrate the art amid nervous chatter about the state of the industry.This year’s festival opened Tuesday under gray skies, as if nature itself were mirroring all the gloom and doom. Yet while the opening-night movie, the unfunny French comedy “The Second Act,” was a dud, the hourlong ceremony that preceded it was unexpectedly touching. The show’s focus on women that night was instructive, and it suggested that Cannes, a festival that has long promoted the cult of the male auteur, is trying to do a better job of righting a historical gender imbalance. Mind you, the number of female filmmakers who get a chance to strut the red carpet remains low: There are only four in the main competition.Louis Garrel, left, and Vincent Lindon in “The Second Act,” from Quentin Dupieux.Chi-Fou-Mi/Arte France CinémaYet things do seem better here, and at least the festival is keen to show its support for women filmmakers. During the ceremony, which was hosted by the French actress Camille Cottin (“Call My Agent”), an emotional Juliette Binoche presented Meryl Streep with an honorary Palme d’Or, and the festival went bonkers over Greta Gerwig. She’s heading this year’s competition jury, which includes two other women filmmakers: the Turkish screenwriter Ebru Ceylan and the Lebanese director Nadine Labaki. When it came time for Gerwig to appear, the festival played a highlight reel of her work and, in giant letters beamed on an even more giant screen, announced that she had “conquered the world in three films.”It was corny, but, reader, I teared up. Among other things, the love for Streep and Gerwig was a break from the drumbeat of bad news about the American movie business. Heading into 2023, Variety had predicted an “extremely bumpy” year for Hollywood; 12 months later, it changed the diagnosis to “rocky” and a conveniently concise headline explained why. “Strikes, Box-Office Bombs and ‘Huge Leadership Vacuum’: Hollywood Says Goodbye to Worst Year in a Generation.” Even Jerry Seinfeld, in an interview with GQ, said “the movie business is over.” I’d already booked my Cannes hotel and flight, so I went anyway.That’s because while the American entertainment business is in the midst of another of its recurrent crises, this hasn’t stopped artists around the world from making movies. The festival as well as several other programs outside the official selection are presenting more than 100 new movies this year from celebrated veterans and untested directors alike, some who may soon dazzle us. In other rooms in and around the Palais — the hulking center where I spend most of my time here sitting in the dark — an estimated 14,000 industry representatives, including buyers and sellers, have some 4,000 finished movies and projects on the table in what is the world’s biggest international film market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More