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      Superman Is Driving DC Studios’ New Strategy

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      The yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that unfolds across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows, with Batman, Swamp Thing and others.Superman is returning to theaters — only now, along with saving the world, he has to prove that Warner Bros. has finally, without question, it means it this time, found a winning superhero strategy.DC Studios, a newly formed Warner division dedicated to superhero content, unveiled plans on Tuesday to reboot Superman onscreen for the first time in a generation, tentatively scheduling the yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” for release in theaters in July 2025. James Gunn, known for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is writing the screenplay and may also direct the movie, which will focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.“He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned,” said Peter Safran, chief executive of DC Studios, a title he shares with Mr. Gunn.Moreover, “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that will unfold (Marvel style) across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows and include new versions of Batman, Robin, Supergirl, Swamp Thing and Green Lantern. Those marquee DC Comics characters will be joined by lesser-known personalities from the DC library, including Creature Commandos and Booster Gold, a time traveler. One of the shows will explore Themyscira, the mythical island home of Wonder Woman.The 10 projects will roll out over four to five years — at which time a second batch of related films and shows will be announced, expanding the “Superman: Legacy” saga to nearly a decade and perhaps helping David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, to keep a promise to Wall Street about growth.“Part of our strategy is drive the hell out of DC,” Mr. Zaslav said at an RBC Capital Markets event in November. Discovery took over Warner Bros. last year as part of a $43 billion merger.If it all comes to fruition, the “Superman: Legacy” universe of projects will add to a roster of unrelated superhero movies left over from a previous Warner Bros. administration. These movies, sequels all, include “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “The Batman — Part II.”Warner Bros. bought DC Comics in 1969, and has since used DC characters to make more than 40 movies and at least 30 television shows, including cartoons. But the DC library has been widely viewed on Wall Street as underexploited because a competing comics-to-screens company, the Disney-owned Marvel, has provided an example of what is possible.Over the last 10 years, Marvel has been a blockbuster machine, delivering slates of interconnected superhero movies that have collected $23 billion at the global box office. Movies based on DC characters and released by Warner Bros. have generated about $9 billion over that period.Suffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together. In a restructuring in October, Mr. Zaslav ended the studio’s decentralized approach to superhero management — separate film and television divisions developed material independently, sometimes causing friction — and put Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran in charge of superhero films, series and animated offerings.“The stakes are massive for us, and for Warner Bros. Discovery,” Mr. Safran said.Mr. Gunn called Warner’s old system “pretty messed up.”“Nobody was minding the mint,” he added. “They were just giving away I.P. like they were party favors to any creator who smiled at them.”Superhero movies remain reliably popular at the box office, but a glut of them has prompted worries that studios are wearing out the audience.“I think it’s real,” Mr. Gunn said, referring to superhero fatigue. “You have to make the stories diverse and different. Good guy, bad guy, giant thing in the sky, good guys win — you can’t tell that story again. You need to tell stories that are more, you know, morally complex.” More

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      Cindy Williams, Star of ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ Dies at 75

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      The show, in which Ms. Williams and Penny Marshall played roommates who worked in a Milwaukee brewery, was a spinoff of “Happy Days” and became a staple of 1970s television.Cindy Williams, an actress best known for her role on the 1970s slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 75.Her death followed a brief illness, her assistant, Liza Cranis, said by phone on Monday, adding that she had died “peacefully.” No cause was given.With Penny Marshall, Ms. Williams starred in the sitcom, which ran from 1976 to 1983 and was a spinoff of the television show “Happy Days.” It followed two young single women working at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s. Ms. Williams played Shirley Feeney, an upbeat and demure complement to Ms. Marshall’s brash Laverne DeFazio.“Laverne & Shirley” ran for eight seasons and, for several years, was among the highest-rated shows in the country. Ms. Williams appeared in more than 150 episodes but left in the final season of the show, after considerable on-set tension between her and Ms. Marshall. Ms. Marshall died in 2018, also at age 75.Ms. Williams is survived by her children, Emily and Zak Hudson, who, in a statement on Monday, described their mother as “one of a kind,” noting her sense of humor and “glittering spirit.” Her marriage to the musician Bill Hudson ended in divorce.Ms. Williams signing copies of her book “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life” in 2015.Beck Starr/Getty ImagesBefore Ms. Williams debuted in the role that would most define her career, she was cast in the George Lucas film “American Graffiti,” released in 1973. For her portrayal of Laurie in the film, she earned a nomination for best supporting actress from the British Academy Film Awards. The next year, she was in the Francis Ford Coppola film “The Conversation.” American Graffiti” and “The Conversation” garnered best picture nominations at the Academy Awards.Ms. Williams also auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise, a part that eventually went to Carrie Fisher.Later in her career, Ms. Williams was a guest star on well-known television shows such as “Law and Order: SVU” and “7th Heaven” and earned several stage credits including the Broadway production of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” in which she briefly played Mrs. Tottendale.But she was best known as Shirley.“She was sort of an optimist, kindhearted, repressed, temperamental, fun-loving person,” Ms. Williams once said of her character. “I always saw her as having this fear,” she added, noting that while Shirley’s desires were never explicitly played out onscreen, both Laverne and Shirley strove for the comforts of modern life.“That was the sadness of those characters to me,” Ms. Williams added. “What if that never happens, then where are we? And that was sort of my life, too.”Born in Van Nuys, Calif., a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on Aug. 22, 1947, Cynthia Jane Williams became interested in acting during high school and attended Los Angeles City College, where she majored in theater arts, according to biographies provided by Ms. Cranis. “I’m what you might call a ‘Valley Girl,’” Ms. Williams wrote in her 2015 memoir, “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life.”She worked at a pancake house, as well at the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Williams went on to perform in commercials for deodorant and sunglasses, some of which never aired, she said in an interview with the Television Academy. Her early television roles included parts on “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love, American Style.”“I always played the lead’s best friend, always,” she said.Then known for her seemingly guileless American sweetheart presence, Ms. Williams turned that expectation inside out with an exceptionally sly performance in “The Conversation.” In the film, the viewer pieces together her words from a surreptitiously recorded conversation, expecting her to be a helpless victim, not the calculating femme fatale that she is. More dramatic roles might have followed, but she turned to situation comedy instead.Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall were writing partners at Zoetrope, a production company founded by Mr. Coppola, where they were working on a prospective TV spoof for the bicentennial, when Garry Marshall, Ms. Marshall’s brother, asked if the two women would guest star on his show “Happy Days” as easy dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). Fonzie claimed Laverne for himself, while Shirley was meant for Richie, reuniting Ms. Williams with her “American Graffiti” co-star, Mr. Howard, who had played her boyfriend in that film.The episode of “Happy Days,” which aired in 1975, was so popular that Mr. Marshall pitched Fred Silverman, a top executive at ABC, about doing a comedy starring the two, arguing that there were no other shows about blue-collar women.The opening credits of “Laverne and Shirley” featured a school rhyme and a heartwarming mission statement that summed up the duo’s playful, hopeful ethic that anyone could relate to: They might just be young working-class women in the big city, but they are going to make their dreams come true.Laverne and Shirley’s high jinks were reminiscent of those of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy,” but, for this classic comedy duo, Shirley was (usually) the calmer and dreamier of the pair. With her breezy personality, Ms. Williams demonstrated an easy flair for portraying the awkwardness of youth in broad physical comedy.In a review of “Laverne & Shirley” in 1976, John J. O’Connor, the television critic for The New York Times, wrote: “Both title roles are played to a splendid noncondescending turn. Miss Williams and Miss Marshall touch all the best bases, a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas” here, a bit of Giùlietta Masina in “La Strada’ there, touches of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and that crowd all over the place.”Though the actresses shared the screen, Ms. Williams sometimes felt that her co-star got preferential treatment because of her connection to Mr. Marshall. For her part, Ms. Marshall felt that Ms. Williams’s husband at the time, Mr. Hudson, who wanted to be a producer, was too demanding.At the beginning of the show’s final season, viewers watched Ms. Williams marry Walter Meeney — and become Shirley Feeney Meeney. Soon afterward, however, her long run had an ignominious end, with the plot claiming Shirley had followed her new husband overseas, leaving only a note to say goodbye. In reality, the actress had hoped to work with the show to hide and accommodate her pregnancy. She later sued for $20 million; the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.“‘Laverne & Shirley’” ended abruptly for me,” Ms. Williams wrote in her memoir. “When we shot the first episode, I was four months pregnant. But when it came time to sign the contract for that season I realized that the studio had scheduled me to work on my delivery due date.”“In the wink of an eye, I found myself off the show,” she wrote. “It was so abrupt that I didn’t even have time to gather my personal things.”In 2013, Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall reunited for an appearance on the Nickelodeon series “Sam & Cat,” a modern show that riffed on the themes of “Laverne & Shirley” and starred Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande.Ms. Williams published her memoir two years later, and last year she completed a national theater tour of a one-woman show, “Me, Myself and Shirley.” In the show, she chronicled her life in Hollywood as well as her relationship with Ms. Marshall.“You couldn’t slip a playing card in between us because we just were in rhythm,” she said last year in an interview with NBC. “I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.”Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Andrea Riseborough’s Path to Surprise Oscar Nomination Is Scrutinized

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      Andrea Riseborough got the nod for the little-seen “To Leslie.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is reviewing whether her A-list campaign violated rules.When the Oscar nominations were announced last week, one of the most surprising was Andrea Riseborough’s inclusion in the best actress category.Ms. Riseborough’s portrayal of a former lottery winner battling addiction in the little-seen “To Leslie” had received scant recognition on the awards circuit. Few critics included the film on their best-of-the-year lists, and it made just $27,000 at the box office during its initial release in October.Yet just as voting for the Oscars began, a number of A-list actors started lauding Ms. Riseborough’s performance publicly. “Andrea should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram, joining dozens of actors like Edward Norton and Susan Sarandon who lavished praise on Ms. Riseborough. Kate Winslet hosted a screening of the film, and during a virtual question-and-answer session with Ms. Riseborough and the film’s director, Michael Morris, called Ms. Riseborough’s work “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life.”“The thing that feels most exciting is being acknowledged by your community,” Ms. Riseborough told The New York Times on the day she was nominated. “It’s a marker by which we measure ourselves in so many ways — by those we aspire to be like, or those we admire. So it’s huge.”But what at first seemed like a story of how a grass-roots — though star-studded — word-of-mouth campaign had managed to help a respected actress crash the Oscar party quickly drew backlash.There were soon questions of whether the efforts on behalf of Ms. Riseborough had violated Oscar rules (“Was the Andrea Riseborough Oscar Campaign Illegal?” read a headline in the Hollywood newsletter by Puck’s Matthew Belloni) and whether Ms. Riseborough, who is white, had secured a nomination that may otherwise have gone to a Black actress like Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) or Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”).“We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women,” Chinonye Chukwu, the director of “Till,” wrote on Instagram after the nominations. Ms. Chukwu did not mention Ms. Riseborough or “To Leslie” in her post.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Andrea Riseborough: A social media campaign by some famous friends netted the star of “To Leslie” her first Oscar nomination. Here is what she said about being nominated.Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said that the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take up the matter of Ms. Riseborough’s nomination during a previously scheduled meeting on Tuesday. Among the issues will be whether the campaign violated any academy rules and, if so, what the repercussions should be.At issue seems to be the efforts by the actress Mary McCormack, who is married to Mr. Morris, and her manager, Jason Weinberg, who also represents Ms. Riseborough, to get her friends and acquaintances in the entertainment industry to watch the film and talk about it. Neither Ms. McCormack nor Mr. Morris is a member of the academy, though many of the actors who praised Ms. Riseborough’s performance are.Howard Stern, Ms. McCormack’s co-star in the 1997 film “Private Parts,” praised “To Leslie” on his satellite radio show, and the veteran actress Frances Fisher repeatedly posted about it on Instagram, writing on Jan. 14 that voters should select Ms. Riseborough since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” Mentioning competitors or their films directly is verboten when campaigning. Voters are also not supposed to be courted directly, without the academy acting as a gatekeeper of sorts.The specter of rescinding Ms. Riseborough’s nomination has been raised, but one longtime academy member, who discussed internal matters on the condition of anonymity, considered that unlikely since she did not make the direct appeals to voters herself. An acting nomination has never been rescinded, though it has happened in other categories.Ms. Riseborough declined to comment. Mr. Weinberg did not respond to requests seeking comment from him and Ms. McCormack.The academy declined to comment for this article, but it released a statement that said, “We are conducting a review of the campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure that no guidelines were violated, and to inform us whether changes to the guidelines may be needed in a new era of social media and digital communication.”Oscars campaigning has been a blood sport for decades. The modern Machiavelli for the process was, after all, Harvey Weinstein, who became notorious for bludgeoning would-be voters with parties, screenings and not-so-subtle whisper campaigns.The process has become only more sophisticated. In 2019, for instance, Netflix rented two soundstages on a historic movie lot in Hollywood to push for “Roma.” The voters who attended “‘Roma’ Experience Day” received breakfast and lunch and there were hours of panel discussions with Alfonso Cuarón, the movie’s director, and his crew.But there are rules, many of them put into place after Oscar campaigning turned into an entire industry, employing scores of consultants and strategists and generating millions of dollars of revenue for the trade publications that accept “For Your Consideration” advertisements.Studios are permitted to send out only one email a week to Oscar voters, and they cannot send them directly. The emails must be routed through messaging services sanctioned by the academy. According to one awards consultant, who described the process on the condition of anonymity, each email blast can cost $2,000.Screenings are permitted, with “reasonable” food and drink. (The rule book doesn’t spell out the definition of “reasonable.”) Everything must be provided in the same location where the movie was shown. Lavish dinners across the street or across town are not allowed.As for individual lobbying, the academy includes only a one-line explanation of what is forbidden: “Contacting academy members directly and in a manner outside of the scope of these rules to promote a film or achievement for Academy Award consideration is expressly forbidden.”In 2010, Nicolas Chartier, a producer of “The Hurt Locker,” was barred from attending the Academy Awards after he sent emails to voters urging them to vote for his film and not “Avatar.” In 2014, the composer Bruce Broughton contacted members directly, asking them to vote for his song from the unheralded film “Alone Yet Not Alone.” He received a nomination, but the academy rescinded it. In 2017, a sound mixing nomination for Greg P. Russell (“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”) was rescinded for a similar reason. In each case, the academy declined to add a fifth nominee.Ric Robertson, the academy’s former chief operating officer and a member for 24 years, said a failure to address the issues of personally lobbying voters could lead to more concerted campaigns.“This campaign sounds like it was organic,” Mr. Robertson, who was involved in putting many of the campaigning rules into effect, said of Ms. Riseborough’s situation. “It came about because a couple of prominent people really liked the film and the performance and used their connections to promote it. Well, it could get a lot more organized next year and institutionalized at other companies.”Though “To Leslie” was unknown to many voters before numerous stars began praising it, Ms. Riseborough is a respected British actress with a chameleonic flair. She has spent the past two decades playing complicated women in mostly independent films. She has worked for directors as varied as Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman”), Tom Ford (“Nocturnal Animals”) and Mike Leigh (“Happy-Go-Lucky”). Mr. Morris previously directed her in the Netflix series “Bloodline.”And since the questions about Ms. Riseborough’s campaign have arisen, there has been a backlash to the backlash. The “unabashed solicitation of Oscar votes,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg said, “is a tradition almost as old as the academy itself.”For the Oscars, this is the latest in a string of controversies in recent years. Some were self-inflicted, like the two consecutive years the organization nominated only white actors, which spawned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and led the academy to begin overhauling and diversifying its membership. The exclusion of Ms. Davis and Ms. Deadwyler, and Ms. Chukwu’s comments after the nominations, show that the issue remains a raw one.Last year, as the Oscars were trying to recover from the pandemic, Will Smith shocked a global audience by slapping Chris Rock onstage during the telecast. Shortly after, Mr. Smith returned to the stage to accept the best actor trophy. The academy subsequently barred him from Oscar-related events, included the ceremony, for the next decade.As for “To Leslie,” which barely had the funds to pay the $20,000 fee to submit it to the academy’s portal so members could watch it, all of the attention has seemed to help, a little.Momentum Pictures, its distributor, returned the film to six theaters this past weekend, betting that Ms. Riseborough’s nomination would intrigue audiences. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it grossed around $250,000. More

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      Which Sundance Movies Could Follow ‘CODA’ to the Oscars?

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      Jonathan Majors in “Magazine Dreams” and Teyana Taylor in “A Thousand and One,” among others, could make the journey from Park City to the Dolby Theater.Over the past few decades, the Sundance Film Festival has premiered Oscar winners like “Manchester by the Sea,” “Call Me by Your Name” and “Minari,” but it wasn’t until last March — when the crowd-pleasing “CODA” won best picture — that a Sundance movie went the distance and claimed the top Academy Award.It may be a little while before Sundance pulls off that feat again, as the Oscar nominations announced last week featured no movies from the festival in the best-picture race; indeed, the only 2022 Sundance film to make a dent in the top six Oscar categories was the British drama “Living,” which earned a best-actor nod for Bill Nighy. But could the movies that just premiered at the 2023 edition of the festival, which concluded on Sunday, help recover some of Sundance’s award-season mojo?The program certainly offered a fair amount of best-actor contenders who could follow in Nighy’s footsteps. Foremost among them is Jonathan Majors. The up-and-coming actor already has a crowded 2023: He’ll soon be seen facing off against Michael B. Jordan in “Creed III” and playing the supervillain Kang in Marvel properties like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Loki.” And that slate just got even stronger with the Sundance premiere of “Magazine Dreams,” a troubled-loner drama in which Majors plays an amateur bodybuilder on the brink of snapping. Had the film been released a few months ago, Majors would have made this year’s thin best-actor lineup for sure, but the right studio buyer could take advantage of his newfound Marvel momentum to muscle this formidable performance into the next race.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Other best-actor candidates that could come from the current Sundance crop include Gael Garcia Bernal, who could earn his first nomination for playing a gay luchador in the appealing “Cassandro,” and David Strathairn, who toplines the modest, humane “A Little Prayer,” about a father deciding whether to meddle in his son’s extramarital affair. One point in Strathairn’s favor is that his film will be released by Sony Pictures Classics, which has managed to land a well-liked veteran in the best-actor lineup three of the last four years (Nighy for “Living,” Anthony Hopkins for “The Father” and Antonio Banderas for “Pain and Glory”).The top Sundance jury prize went to A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One,” which could earn best-actress attention for Teyana Taylor, who plays a defiant ex-con resorting to desperate measures to keep custody of her son. (Still, the film’s planned March release from Focus Features will require some end-of-year reminders for forgetful voters.) Also buzzed about was Greta Lee, who could be in contention for A24’s “Past Lives,” about a Korean American woman reunited with her former lover; the film was so rapturously received that a best-picture push could be in the cards.Will any of the year’s biggest-selling films crash the Oscars race? Netflix spent $20 million to acquire the well-reviewed “Fair Play,” which pits the “Bridgerton” star Phoebe Dynevor against the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” actor Alden Ehrenreich as co-workers whose affair curdles once she gets promoted. It’s not the kind of starry auteur project that usually gets a big end-of-the-year campaign from Netflix, but if this battle of the sexes becomes a zeitgeisty hit, the streamer may give it a shot. Apple TV+ paid $20 million for the musical comedy “Flora and Son,” from the “Once” director John Carney, while Searchlight shelled out more than $7 million for the Ben Platt vehicle “Theater Camp.” At the very least, these two comedies feature delightful original-song contenders.Sundance films could make the biggest splash is in the best-documentary race: All but one of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries first debuted at the January festival, and even if you stripped Sundance of its star-driven narrative films, the strength of its docs would still preserve its status as a top-tier world festival.This year, the most-talked-about docs were the award winners “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” about a storied Black poet; the Alzheimer’s drama “The Eternal Memory”; “Beyond Utopia,” which features compelling hidden-camera footage of North Koreans trying to defect; and “20 Days in Mariupol,” about the Russian siege of a Ukrainian port city. More

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      Stream These 8 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in February

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      A handful of great titles are leaving the service for U.S. subscribers soon, including a bona fide comedy classic. See them while you can.This month’s selection of titles leaving Netflix in the United States are a typical esoteric assortment of big-budget studio flicks and indie dramas, but the comedies are what really make this one stand out — including an anticapitalist satire and one of the very first stand-up spotlights the service ever funded. Let’s start there. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available):‘Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion’ (Feb. 25)There’s something vaguely end-of-an-era-ish about seeing Netflix finally bid farewell to this top-tier 2006 stand-up special from the magnificently absurd Galifianakis — one of a handful of original films and specials created at the time for its “Red Envelope Entertainment” imprint as exclusives for the service, which now rolls out an original comedy special nearly every week. So catch it while you can; it’s Galifianakis at his peak, and the special’s structure (interspersing his wildly funny live act with tortured interviews with his straight-arrow brother, also played by the comedian) is genuinely inspired.Stream it here.‘Air Force One’ (Feb. 28)Throughout the 1990s, multiplexes were positively deluged by “Like ‘Die Hard,’ but on a _____” movies, with airplane and airport settings proving especially popular (“Executive Decision,” “Passenger 57” and “Die Hard 2” among them). This 1997 thriller from the director Wolfgang Petersen got hyper-specific, imagining “Die Hard” on the president’s plane. And the venerable formula works: Harrison Ford is a credible man-of-action commander in chief, Gary Oldman chews plenty of scenery as the villain, and the silly but effective catchphrase “Get off my plane!” still demands cheers.Stream it here.‘Cake’ (Feb. 28)Back in 2014, Jennifer Aniston nearly snagged an Oscar nomination for her against-type turn in this indie drama, in which the typically light comedian went very heavy as a grieving mother attempting to piece back together her broken life. To be fair, she deserved the recognition; Aniston plays the breezy ingénue so well that it’s easy to underestimate her considerable gifts as an actor of genuine gravitas. And she’s in good company here — the stellar supporting cast includes Felicity Huffman, Anna Kendrick, William H. Macy and Sam Worthington.Stream it here.‘Coach Carter’ (Feb. 28)It’s forgivable if you assume you’ve already seen “Coach Carter,” even if you haven’t; the formula of the underdog sports movie is, to put it mildly, well-established. (Oh, so the tough-as-nails new coach meets resistance at first from the unruly, poorly performing team but slowly earns the players’ respect? And translates that camaraderie to the court? And it’s all based on a true story?!) But the filmmakers here know that you know how these movies are supposed to go, gracefully subverting those expectations, and Samuel L. Jackson is cast perfectly in the title role.Stream it here.‘Margin Call’ (Feb. 28)The writer and director J.C. Chandor’s 2011 feature debut was a high-profile affair — one of the first films to directly address the 2008 financial crisis — and it did so with offhand intelligence and admirable nuance. Chandor’s gripping script telescopes the action to a 24-hour period and the setting to a single Wall Street investment bank, as the implications and consequences of the impending crisis become clear, and the firm’s strong personalities bounce and collide. A tiptop ensemble cast brings verve to the key players, with fine performances Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto (who was also a producer), Kevin Spacey and Stanley Tucci.Stream it here.‘Scream 4’ (Feb. 28)The 2022 reboot of the “Scream” slasher-satire franchise was commercially successful enough to warrant a follow-up, due in theaters this March. But critically speaking, the magic simply wasn’t there — and probably couldn’t be, given the passing of the series’s original director, Wes Craven, and the noninvolvement of the original screenwriter, Kevin Williamson. From that perspective, the original series truly concluded with this 2011 installment, reuniting Craven, Williamson and the franchise stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, alongside a host of new and noteworthy stars (including Kristen Bell, Alison Brie, Hayden Panettiere and Emma Roberts) for a typically self-referential bouillabaisse of horror, comedy and movie mania.Stream it here.‘Shutter Island’ (Feb. 28)Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have released five feature films collaborations to date, but this 2010 thriller tends to be overlooked in that filmography — perhaps because it is the only one not nominated for the best picture Academy Award. That’s unsurprising, as this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane is a thick slice of Gothic horror, and Oscar voters are famously adverse to honoring genre material. But it’s a crackerjack example of the form; DiCaprio is hauntingly good as a U.S. Marshal investigating a mysterious disappearance on the titular psychiatric facility.Stream it here.‘Sorry to Bother You’ (Feb. 28)The hip-hop provocateur Boots Riley, best known for his work fronting the politically conscious Oakland crew the Coup, made a loud splash in his crossover to feature filmmaking with this debut effort, starring Lakeith Stanfield as a telemarketer who discovers the secret to success in the corporate world. The satire is razor-sharp (Riley’s debt to “Putney Swope” is crystal clear), and the picture’s politics are delightfully unapologetic; it is exhilarating to watch a novice filmmaker marshal the tools of the medium to craft something genuinely, gleefully subversive.Stream it here. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Fight the Power’ and ‘The Ark’

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      Chuck D hosts a documentary about hip-hop on PBS. And a new science fiction series debuts on Syfy.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 30 to Feb. 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayEAST OF EDEN (1955) 3:45 p.m. on TCM. In this classic adaptation, the director Elia Kazan brings to the screen John Steinbeck’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction, which incorporates the history of his family into a modern-day retelling of the Book of Genesis’s story of Cain and Abel. The film is set in California’s Salinas Valley on the eve of World War I and follows the ever-changing and evolving dynamics between the Trask family — a lettuce farmer, Adam (Raymond Massey), and his twin sons, Aron (Richard Davalos), the favorite, and Caleb (James Dean), the jealous rebel who yearns for Adam’s love. “This is not a simple tale of good and evil, of crime and punishment,” A.O. Scott, the New York Times co-chief film critic, described in a 2011 video feature on the film. And “this is not what you find in the Bible,” Scott said. “In place of a religious conception of human nature based on fixed ideas of good and bad, ‘East of Eden’ proposes a psychological dynamic of complicated human relationships.”TuesdayFIGHT THE POWER: HOW HIP HOP CHANGED THE WORLD 9 p.m. on PBS. From the Grammy-nominated rapper Chuck D and his producing partner, Lorrie Boula, comes a new series that examines the relationship between hip-hop and the political history of the United States. The series features interviews with Killer Mike, Will.i.am, Monie Love, Ice-T, Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte and others as it traces the genre from its start as an underground movement in the Bronx to its emergence as one of the most popular music categories in the country. Tuesday’s premiere begins with an exploration of the art form’s origins.WednesdayTiana Upcheva in “The Ark.”Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SyfyTHE ARK 10 p.m. on Syfy. This new science fiction series from Dean Devlin, a producer of the films “Stargate,” “Independence Day” and “Godzilla,” and Jonathan Glassner, a producer of the TV show “Stargate SG-1,” takes place 100 years in the future aboard a self-sustaining spaceship tasked with finding humanity a new home as Earth becomes uninhabitable. The series focuses on the human condition as a diverse cast of characters reacts to unforeseen catastrophes aboard the vessel.ThursdayJude Hill in “Belfast.”Rob Youngson/Focus FeaturesBELFAST (2021) 6:20 p.m. on FX. An Academy Award nominee and a winner of the People’s Choice Award, “Belfast” is a semi-autobiographical film from Kenneth Branagh that is based on his childhood in Northern Ireland during the conflict known as “The Troubles.” Set in 1969, the film follows 9-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill), the fictional version of Branagh, as he lives through an ethnonationalist conflict between the loyalists (mostly Protestants) and unionists (referred to as the Catholics) that he doesn’t understand. “While ‘Belfast’ is, in one sense, a deeply personal coming-of-age tale, it’s also a more universal story of displacement and detachment,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times.FridayRENT (2005) 4:05 p.m. on HBO2. Adapted from the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway musical loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Bohème,” “Rent” focuses on the trials and tribulations of a group of friends living in an unheated East Village apartment in New York during the H.I.V. and AIDS crisis. Beginning on Christmas Eve 1989 and ending a year later, the film follows Mark (Anthony Rapp), an aspiring filmmaker; Roger (Adam Pascal), an H.I.V.-positive recovering addict; Benny (Taye Diggs), a roommate turned landlord; and Maureen (Idina Menzel), an activist and Mark’s ex-girlfriend, on their journeys through love, addiction and disease. “The movie applied a cinematic sheen to the scenes of this seedier New York,” the Times critic Maya Phillips wrote in a 2020 essay. Still, she wrote, “the message of ‘Rent’ isn’t just a glib carpe diem but a resounding declaration of ‘stand with your community despite’ and ‘make art despite.’”SaturdayFrom left, Corin Rogers, Joseph Carter Wilson, Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in “Cooley High.”Olive FilmsMALCOLM X (1992), COOLEY HIGH (1975) and SOUNDER (1972) at 4:30 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TCM. During its Black History Month Saturdays, Turner Classic Movies is celebrating with eight works of Black cinema. Its roundup is a collection of both obscure and highly regarded films that work together to represent a range of actors, directors and stories. The three films playing on Saturday are representative of that collection, starting with a biographical drama on the life of Malcolm X (played by Denzel Washington) from Spike Lee, who used Malcolm X’s autobiography and an unfinished screenplay by Arnold Perl to inform the film. Next are two coming-of-age films, starting with “Cooley High,” which “documents perhaps that last moment in modern American history — 1964 — when it was possible for young Blacks to see their color as simply one of the components of their personalities,” Jack Slater wrote in his 1975 review of the film for The Times. The film, based on the experiences of its writer, Eric Monte, and produced by Michael Schultz, who today is credited as one of the longest-working Black directors in history, is set on Chicago’s Near North Side and follows the high jinks of a group of friends in their last year of high school. The night is rounded off with the Oscar-nominated classic “Sounder,” a Depression-era movie that centers on two Louisiana sharecroppers, Nathan (Paul Winfield) and Rebecca (Cicely Tyson), their three children and the family dog, Sounder.SundayAMERICAN PAIN 9 p.m. on CNN. This special, directed by the documentary filmmaker Darren Foster (“Science Fair”), traces the rise and fall of two of America’s most prolific opioid kingpins: the identical twins Chris and Jeff George, who trafficked more than $500 million in opioid pills. Through F.B.I. wiretap recordings, undercover videos and jailhouse interviews, the documentary explores the lives of the George twins and how they helped fuel one of the worst drug epidemics in U.S. history. More

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      Gregory Allen Howard, Screenwriter of ‘Remember the Titans,’ Dies at 70

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      After the success of the movie, he established a brand for writing Hollywood movies about inspiring episodes in Black history.Gregory Allen Howard, who wrote the scripts of several Hollywood movies about inspiring episodes in Black history, most famously “Remember the Titans,” died on Friday in Miami. He was a day shy of his 71st birthday.His death, at a hospital, was caused by heart failure, his spokesman, Jeff Sanderson, said.“Remember the Titans” (2000) has joined the list of American films that find social significance in sports triumphs. Denzel Washington stars as Herman Boone, a Black coach leading a high school football team during its first season after racial integration. With the help of a white assistant, played by Will Patton, along with Black and white high school players who become devoted to each other, Mr. Boone launches the team on a glorious season, culminating in the state championship.The movie was an immediate sensation, premiering at the Rose Bowl and the White House. President Bill Clinton led people involved with the production in a school chant. Just a year later, The New York Times was calling it “one of the most successful sports films of all time” and a leading exemplar of “a genre that could be called the macho weepie.”On Nov. 4, 2008, after Barack Obama ended his presidential victory speech in Chicago with the words “May God bless America,” he was answered by the swelling, uplifting horns of the “Remember the Titans” instrumental theme.Mr. Howard was the prime force behind the movie. After moving to Alexandria, Va., he found himself struck by a prevailing atmosphere of racial harmony there. When he asked around about its source, he was continually told about the football team of T.C. Williams High School, which became integrated in 1971 and went on that year to win the state championship. He began buying life rights, including those of the real Herman Boone, and working on a screenplay.Mr. Howard at the premiere of “Harriet” in 2019. He said he had spent 25 years fighting to make the movie.Leon Bennett/WireImage, via Getty ImagesIn a review, the Times film critic A.O. Scott described “Remember the Titans” as “corny,” adding that it was “unabashedly, even generously so.” The movie is widely reported to have earned more than $100 million worldwide over its roughly $30 million budget.Mr. Howard continued working in the vein of inspirational Black history. He wrote the story for “Ali,” which had four other screenwriters. It premiered in 2001 and starred Will Smith as Muhammad Ali. In a review in The Times, Elvis Mitchell called “Ali” a “near great movie.” But despite hype, it lost money at the box office. Beginning in 1994, Mr. Howard tried to get a movie made out of a screenplay he wrote on the life of Harriet Tubman. In 2019, A.O. Scott described the final product, “Harriet,” as “accessible, emotionally direct and artfully simplified.”In an essay for The Los Angeles Times that year, Mr. Howard described the release of the film as the culmination of an “epic 25-year journey.” He said that he could not list “the number of doors slammed in my face, the number of passes, the number of unreturned phone calls, canceled meetings, abandonments, racist rejections, the number of producing partners who bailed.”But over time the movie industry became more interested in a Tubman biopic, he continued: “#OscarsSoWhite, DiversityHollywood and the other pushes and protests for inclusion and diverse storytelling had moved the needle: The climate had changed,” he wrote.Michael Bentt, left, and Will Smith in the movie “Ali.” Mr. Howard wrote the story for the film.Peter Brandt/Getty ImagesGregory Allen Howard was born on Jan. 28, 1952, in Norfolk, Va. He was raised by his mother, Narcissus (Cole) Henley, and his stepfather, Lenard Henley, a chief petty officer in the Navy. (His father was Lowry Howard.)From the time he was 5 to 15, his family moved 10 times, finally settling in Vallejo, Calif. In 1974, he graduated from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in American history. In later years, he frequently referred to his studies in college as inspiring the historical subject matter of his screenplays.After briefly working on Wall Street, Mr. Howard moved to Los Angeles and tried to become a screenwriter. He did not have much success and moved to Alexandria, wondering if a change in scenery might help while also contemplating giving up and studying to become a teacher.“When you hear no that much, you just begin to think, ‘I guess they’re right,’” he told The Times in 2000.After being inspired by the story of T.C. Williams High School, he pitched “every financing entity in the movie business,” he told The Times, until the producer Jerry Bruckheimer finally took on the project.In the mid-2010s, Mr. Howard’s website reflected a sense that his career had stalled. “The sad truth is it’s almost impossible to get movies made,” he wrote. “It’s a miracle that I’ve been involved in two, ‘Ali’ and ‘Titans.’”But by 2020, things had changed, with “Harriet” released the previous year and Mr. Howard working on several new projects also related to African American history and culture, he told The Washington Post.Mr. Howard is survived by a half sister, Lynette Henley, and a half brother, Michael Henley. Herman Boone died in 2019.Mr. Howard, who was an offensive lineman on his own high school varsity football team, attributed the success of “Remember the Titans” to the popularity of the sport and the place it holds in the memories of American men.“You’re talking about millions of guys,” he told The Times in 2001. “It’s a bonding experience like you can’t believe, and for a lot of men it was the last time they were important or heroic. It touches a nerve of a time when I was last innocent.” More

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      Sylvia Syms, Versatile British Actress, Is Dead at 89

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      In a career that began in the 1950s, she had roles that ranged from the lead in the movie “Teenage Bad Girl” to Margaret Thatcher and the Queen Mother.Sylvia Syms, a British actress whose many roles in a career of more than 60 years included Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Queen Mother, died on Friday in London. She was 89.Her death, at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors and entertainers, was announced by her family.Sylvia May Laura Syms was born in London on Jan. 6, 1934, to Edwin and Daisy (Hale) Syms. She was educated at convent schools and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began her acting career onstage in the George Bernard Shaw play “The Apple Cart” in 1953.She became a stalwart of the British cinema soon after she played the title role in the 1956 movie “Teenage Bad Girl.” Among the many films in which she appeared in the late 1950s were the World War II adventure “Ice Cold in Alex” (1958), starring John Mills, in which she played an army nurse, and “Expresso Bongo” (1959), a satire of the music business. In that movie she portrayed the stripper girlfriend of a sleazy talent manager played by Laurence Harvey.In 1961 she was the wife of a closeted lawyer played by Dirk Bogarde — a role several other actresses had turned down — in the thriller “Victim,” the first British film to deal openly with homosexuality.Ms. Syms never achieved the level of stardom that some had predicted for her. One reason is that she rarely worked in Hollywood (although she did have a prominent role in Blake Edwards’s 1974 Cold War drama “The Tamarind Seed”). Another, according to The Daily Telegraph, is that her ability to disappear into the roles she played kept her from being, in her words, “instantly recognizable as me.” But she remained busy well into her 80s.Her notable later roles included Margaret Thatcher — in the 1991 television film “Thatcher: The Final Days” and later on both TV and stage in “Margaret Thatcher: Half the Picture” — and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in Stephen Frears’s Academy Award-winning 2006 film “The Queen.” In that movie Helen Mirren played her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.The next year, Ms. Syms was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire by the real Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.From 2007 to 2010, Ms. Syms had a recurring role as a dressmaker on the long-running BBC soap opera “EastEnders.” Her last role was in an episode of the historical drama series “Gentleman Jack,” a BBC-HBO co-production, in 2019.Ms. Syms’ marriage to Alan Edney ended in divorce in 1989 after 33 years. She is survived by her daughter, the actress Beatie Edney, and her son, Ben Edney.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More