| | | | | | More to come as Sundance preps for its final bow in Park City, but this edition of The Weekender turns to three Hollywood Reporter insiders on what to watch for this year. Plus: Must-reads from the latest glossy magazine. — Erik Hayden
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Park City's Last Dance Before trekking to Utah, senior writer Chris Gardner sets the scene: Time to lay out the parka, grab a beanie and dust off the snow boots — Hollywood is heading to Sundance. The beloved indie festival will have a final bow in Park City, Utah (Jan. 22-Feb. 1) before the circus leaves town for Boulder, Colorado in 2027 and beyond. The fever is high ahead of opening night on Thursday, and, yes, we're already fielding requests to get on the list for TAO Park City (where Jennifer Lopez performed last year after the world premiere of Kiss of the Spider Woman ). Just like Main Street, expect the list to be over-crowded as stars soak in every last drop of what Park City has to offer. The stage is set for a starry edition with the likes of Natalie Portman, Channing Tatum, Dave Franco, Chris Pine, Jenna Ortega, Courtney Love, Rob Lowe, Ethan Hawke and Seth Rogen all debuting in new films this year. Sundance is putting an emphasis on the rearview with a nostalgia-inducing slate of programming for its Beyond Film series that will feature filmmakers like Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, Daniel Kwan, Nicole Holofcener, Barbra Kopple and more in conversation about their festival films of years gone by. A marquee event will go down on the first Friday with Celebrating Sundance Institute: A Tribute to Founder Robert Redford at Grand Hyatt Deer Valley where Chloe Zhao, Nia DaCosta, Geeta Gandbir, Ed Harris and Gyula Gazdag will be honored. |
On the biz side, senior writer Mia Galuppo shares what to expect:
To get a sense of this year’s attendance on the mountain I did a casual Friday afternoon peruse of OpenTable and Resy and you are no longer be able to get a reservation for a restaurant within a three miles radius of Main St. anytime between the 5pm to 9pm hours. But who needs to eat when a steady diet of cinema is on offer?
Yes, gone are all the all night bidding wars — replaced by the leisurely bidding mid-afternoon strolls — but deals will no doubt be made. Some of the splashier offerings are directed by Olivia Wilde (The Invite) and Gregg Araki (I Want Your Sex), both of which star Wilde. Horror-thrillers, the genre billed as the savior of specialty market for the past several years, will have a strong showing with Midnight movies like Buddy and Leviticus. And Extra Geography, a heartwarming world dramatic competition title, is seeming to be getting a solid amount of interest. New distributors like Row K and the recently launched Warner Bros. label started by the trio of Neon execs are giving people hope that films will have places to land.
Charli XCX is in multiple places in the line-up and I do not envy the already sleep deprived assistants having to explain “brat” to their bosses. Of course, companies can’t afford to send their assistants to Sundance this year, so they will have to do their explaining over text. Good luck to all involved!
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And chief film critic David Rooney shares his most-anticipated titles: Rolling up every January when we’ve barely shaken off holiday lethargy and are wading through a sparse crop of first-quarter releases, Sundance marks the first important glut of new movies each year, many of which we hope to be still talking about at awards time 12 months later. That means expectations are high, and invariably, by around Day 2 if no major breakout title has emerged, people start making gloomy pronouncements about it being an underwhelming edition. That was certainly what happened early in the 2025 Sundance, but by the end of the festival, a generous handful of critical favorites had emerged. On the narrative side, that included Peter Hujar’s Day, Train Dreams, Twinless, Sorry, Baby, Lurker and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, while The Perfect Neighbor, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, The Alabama Solution and 2000 Meters to Andriivka were among the doc standouts. But unlike, say, Cannes or Venice, which tend to load up on heavy-hitter auteurs, much of the Sundance lineup is built on relatively unknown quantities, making it harder to gauge buzz titles in advance. That said, I’m eager to see Edward Lovelace and James Hall’s Courtney Love bio-doc, Antiheroine; Beth de Araújo’s Josephine, starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan as parents of an 8-year-old daughter traumatized after witnessing a violent crime; The Invite, a chamber piece about marital strife revealed over a disastrous dinner, starring director Olivia Wilde alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton; and I’m always psyched to see what Gregg Araki is up to — in a movie titled I Want Your Sex, also starring Wilde, this time opposite Cooper Hoffman , that promises at least to be a change from the usual Sundance staples of addiction, dementia and Midwest ennui. The full Sundance lineup is here. Now, on to the magazine must reads... |
After the Knife Salman Rushdie reveals how he survived the attack that nearly killed him and gives his first interview ahead of the Sundance premiere of Alex Gibney’s intimate doc, which reframes his story as one of survival, partnership and defiance. But he still doesn't want to be a symbol. Steven Zeitchik's feature. |
Pilot Revival The 30 Rock joke about NBC exec Jack Donaghy reviving the network by making it "1997 again through science or magic" aired in 2011. Now, the real NBC is embarking on a somewhat unlikely revival of a TV tradition that was alive and well both in the Must-See TV era: pilot season. Rick Porter's report. |
Make It Reign George R.R. Martin gets candid about his efforts to rule his expanding media empire, his buzzy new show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and the long-delayed saga he’s still determined to finish — if he can: "I’m rewriting. I’m struggling. Maybe I’m overoptimistic about how quickly I can write these things." James Hibberd's cover story. |
Now, This Is War After multiple rejections, David Ellison could hit the nuclear button in his quest to wrest Warner Bros. from would-be-buyer Netflix. If it happens, there are reasons to think that if it runs to its conclusion, it could become the most explosive proxy battle in Hollywood history. Alex Weprin's report.
+ Trump bought corporate bonds issued by Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, valued as high as $1 million each in the days after the megadeal was announced. The news. |
Strike, Out? Six months. A 17 percent dip in entertainment employment in the L.A. area. Billions in estimated economic activity lost to the state of California. Could it happen again? Three years after the double writers and actors strikes rocked Hollywood, it’s a question many in the industry are reluctantly being forced to consider once more. Katie Kilkenny's report. |
Late Night Blues As Jimmy Kimmel Live! slashes its musical guest count, following other shows, recording artists are getting fewer and fewer chances in legacy media — especially TV — to find promo opportunities: "We’ve really lost the middle class in music." Ethan Millman's report. |
Killing It As podcast My Favorite Murder turns 10, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark open up about hard lessons learned, filming their HBO series on tour and navigating a bloated podcasting ecosystem: “Sometimes I don’t understand what the fucking appeal is here.” Mikey O'Connell's interview. |
Spotlight Kiernan Shipka grew up inside one of the most canonized dramas of the modern TV era. For seven seasons on Mad Men, she played Sally Draper, the watchful daughter taking in the adult mess around her. Now, nearly two decades later, she's back on Sunday night TV, participating in the drinking, the lies and the infidelity on HBO's Industry. Seija Rankin's profile. |
Flashback "The Time Mickey Rourke Put a Gun on the Coffee Table" A writer revisits a long, revealing, startling exchange and what it might explain about the actor’s all-too-familiar troubles. This was when the star was making the promotional rounds for The Wrestler and attempting — once again — to claw his way back. Chris Nashawaty's column. |
Directors Roundtable Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Ryan Coogler, Yorgos Lanthimos, Joachim Trier and Chloé Zhao — who have 22 Oscar nominations and three best director Oscars between them — discuss the lengths they go to get the job done, ignoring the rule book and bringing back people from the dead. Scott Feinberg's feature. |
Anatomy of a Contender Inside the making of Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett indie Is This Thing On?, which turns divorce, late-life reinvention and open mic confessionals into an unexpectedly emotional (and funny) love story. Seija Rankin's feature. + Predicting This Year's Oscar Noms Using Just Math. Ben Zauzmer's charts. |
Backstage Pass Photographer Guy Aroch hustled around The Beverly Hilton to capture the stars (Snoop Dogg, Emma Stone, Renate Reinsve), the presenters (Adam Scott, Colman Domingo) and the winners (Teyana Taylor, Rose Byrne) at the Globes. All 54 exclusive photos. |
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