Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
July 31 - August 06

APPLE TV
Apple TV celebrated the world premiere of the upcoming fourth season of its Emmy Award-winning, juggernaut comedy "Ted Lasso." at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. Red carpet attendees included ensemble cast members Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Brendan Hunt, Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely, alongside showrunner Jack Burditt and executive producers Bill Lawrence, Jeff Ingold, Jane Becker, Jamie Lee and Liza Katzer. "Ted Lasso" returns to the pitch for its highly anticipated fourth season on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, on Apple TV...

Imax China is preparing to dedicate the vast majority of its nearly 800-screen network to Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" when the film opens in mainland China on Aug. 14Nolan and star Matt Damon are set to arrive in Beijing on July 30 for what Manwaring describes as the first-ever red carpet event held for a commercial film at the China National Film Museum in Beijing, a government institution that also hosted the original Chinese launch of "Avatar" in Imax's early years in the country. Previews begin Aug. 1 and 2 in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with one screening per day ahead of the wide release. On expansion, Imax China has a backlog of just under 200 sites and continues prioritizing higher-tier cities over the lower-tier, mall-driven growth that characterized its pre-pandemic strategy, alongside upgrading older systems to laser. "Growth is a priority, and we do see the network growing in China," Manwaring says. He points to alternative content as a tool for expanding the company's addressable audience, citing survey data from NBA Finals broadcasts: "80% of the audience for that event hasn't even been to a movie theater in five years to watch a film," he says, adding that when those same attendees are asked afterward whether they'd return to watch a movie, "90-something %" say yes. "A lot of people in the across the world forgot how great it is to go sit in a really dark movie theater and be immersed into a story," CEO Daniel Manwaring says. "Sometimes, you got to use some alternative content events to bring them back."...

Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights is set to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne with an original haunted house dubbed "Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness." As part of the experience, guests will be able to climb aboard the "Crazy Train" for a terrifying trip through his disturbing world of rock 'n' roll. Developed as a living horror movie through the lens of Halloween Horror Nights, this non-traditional memorial to Osbourne, who died in 2025, will span 45 years, transporting guests on a twisted journey though the artist's solo career in unique experiences across both coasts. Halloween Horror Nights runs select nights at Universal Orlando Resort, beginning Aug. 28 through Nov. 1, and at Universal Studios Hollywood from Sept. 3 through Nov. 1. Additional haunted houses and event content will be revealed soon. Tickets are on sale at HalloweenHorrorNights.com....

Sony and Alamo Drafthouse, the upmarket cinema chain the studio acquired in 2024, are in talks with the ownership of Los Angeles' iconic Cinerama Dome theatre and adjacent ArcLight Hollywood multiplex about reopening the shuttered venues. The movie houses closed at the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Their operator, Pacific Theatres, later filed for bankruptcy. The properties are still owned by the family of Pacific's founder, William R. Forman, who built the Dome in 1963. It is now a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. The venues' zombie status had become a subject of curiosity and dissent in recent years. Petitions were circulated and protests were held over the issue, which came to be seen as emblematic of ongoing economic woes of both the film industry as well as L.A. The Cinerama Dome is known for its striking architecture, inspired by the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller. It's long been a popular industry choice for studio premieres and the lighting of its exterior served as shorthand for the romance of the town in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The ArcLight helped pioneer premium modern multiplex features, including reclining stadium-style chairs, in-house gourmet dining and reserved seating. Alamo Drafthouse, another hospitality-driven exhibitor, has recently come under fire for allowing mobile ordering of concessions, a seeming pivot away from its strict previous prohibition on phone use during shows...

The retrospective at this year's Locarno Film Festival feels particularly timely, maybe even scarily so. Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist promises to put the spotlight on "one of the most turbulent and politically charged periods in the history of American cinema," including the "Red Scare" and the infamous Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era. After all, during the period from 1947 to the early 1960s, Hollywood professionals suspected of communist ties faced a crackdown. The Swiss festival's cinematic look back will provide "a complex portrait of an era in which creatives were confronted by unprecedented abuse of state and industry power and which they met, courageously, with fierce artistic resistance," Locarno highlighted. Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist will "re-examine this repressive yet defiantly creative era, which mirrors the political attacks on free speech and artistic freedom seen again today." Produced in partnership with the Cinémathèque Suisse and with the support of UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Locarno retrospective was once again curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht. He has compiled a program of more than 50 films – fiction, documentaries, and shorts – and newsreels featuring such directors, writers, and stars as John Garfield, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright, and Charlie Chaplin. It will explore various works to shine a spotlight on a time of polarized politics, allegations of communist infiltration of Hollywood in the Cold War, and the Hollywood blacklist that upended careers and forced artists to adopt pseudonyms or go into exile overseas...

Since 1998, Coca-Cola has celebrated student filmmakers with the nationwide Coca-Cola Refreshing Films Program, a film competition in which current students or recent graduates from participating film schools across the United States submit entries of original scripts following a specific theme provided by contest organizers. The scripts are meant to highlight Coca-Cola's role in the moviegoing experience while giving entrants the chance to produce their script into a full-fledged short film in the final phase of the contest. This year, only three submissions moved on to the final round, and Full Sail teams took two of the top spots. The program connects student storytellers with real-world brand collaboration, professional mentorship, and theatrical distribution—a rare opportunity for college-level filmmakers. Across both productions, approximately 80–90 percent of the crews were made up of Full Sail University students and graduates—meaning current students got the chance to gain hands-on experience on a nationally recognized branded production while collaborating with peers, faculty mentors, and industry professionals in a fast-paced environment. From budgeting and insurance to casting, revisions, and brand approvals, both teams navigated a professional workflow that mirrors industry standards...

One year after camera giants Nikon and RED Digital Cinema merged, their first collaboration comes with the release of the Nikon ZR full-frame digital cinema camera. The ZR differentiates itself from its mirrorless competitors—whether Panasonic's LUMIX line, Sony's FX line or Blackmagic cinema cameras—with its unique ability to record 12-bit REDCODE RAW (R3D NE), internally at up to 6K and 60 frames per second. And it's available at the enviable price point of only $2,199. (By comparison, Sony's full-frame FX3 costs nearly twice as much. Surveying the camera body, its large 4-inch screen immediately stands out. The addition of an external monitor—typically a must when shooting on smaller cinema cameras—becomes less essential with the Nikon ZR. This screen brightness reaches 1,000 nits, making it easily visible when shooting outside in broad daylight. The camera menu has been reworked from Nikon's previous Z cameras and is user-friendly, aided by the size of the screen. Similar cameras with smaller screens can be cumbersome when adjusting settings. It's light at 1.9 lbs, and despite its lack of an internal fan distributes heat well. While testing the camera for an interior event, the body was warm at the end of the continuous four-hour shoot, but not overly so. Booting up in a flash, it's ready to grab candid shots at a moment's notice. Its Auto mode quickly adjusts to lighting conditions and engages autofocus without incident. Nikon's lauded In-Body Image Stabilization (IBIS) is present with 7.5 stops of range...