Latest in Booksmart

When Olivia Wilde went in to pitch herself to Annapurna to direct Booksmart, she didn’t refer to other teenage movies of yore, i..e the John Hughes or Amy Heckerling canon, rather the Denzel Washington LA noir Training Day.  The reference spoke to the intensity she aimed to incorporate in what could be seen on its…

A column chronicling events and conversations on the awards circuit. “Thankful” reads the heading of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ latest email to members, the most recent in a series of messages being sent this month to urge members to see all the “great films, performances, and achievements of the…

Saturday Night Live took a swing at the recent controversy surrounding a poorly thought out airline edit of Olivia Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy Booksmart. The film got a shout-out in “Airline Pilots,” a skit that starred Mikey Day and the night’s guest host Harry Styles as co-pilots whose raunchy conversation from the…

Delta Air Lines will stop showing edited versions of the films Booksmart and Rocketman on its in-flight offerings, and is working with its vendor to get editions that restore deleted same-sex love scenes. The issue of the edited versions came up when a fan tweeted the information to Olivia Wilde, the director of Booksm…

The movie business famously creates curious bedfellows: Consider Olivia Wilde and Charles S. Cohen. Wilde is the gifted actress whose buoyant first-time directing venture, Booksmart, is trying to break the indie film business out of a dismal slump. Cohen is the billionaire investor and art film connoisseur who, as the…

6TH UPDATE/Tuesday AM: Disney’s Aladdin will final its Memorial Day weekend opening between $116M-$117M after a robust estimated $25.7M Monday, +15% from Sunday. This comes from estimates this morning. Should Disney call Aladdin at $117M+ for the Friday through Monday stretch, then the Guy Ritchie-directed musical…

They have been calling it a “female Superbad,” and it’s an apt comparison in terms of the raunch factor in this completely female-driven coming-of-age comedy. But beyond the gross-out gags, there is something else going on here: Booksmart is for the smart girls — the ones who left high school and never forgot the one…

Disney’s live-action take of their 1992 half-billion grossing animated hit Aladdin finally takes flight over the Memorial Day weekend frame, and while we’ve typically trumpeted the lofty-end of projections for most global launches, especially Disney’s, we’re going low on this one with $73M-$75M domestic (including…

Olivia Wilde’s femme teen comedy Booksmart had a blitzkreig social media push today to a potential 221M followers prior to the pic’s early access paid sneaks tonight at 800 locations. That combined reach is comprised from social media pushes on EW, Ellen DeGeneres’ channels as well as Annapurna’s and Booksmart’s…

United Artists Releasing will offer exclusive early access to Annapurna's Booksmart, director Olivia Wilde's critically acclaimed film, exclusively to its Instagram community. It will mark the first time that Instagram has promoted a movie sneaks program, and the company became excited about the pic after UA screened B…

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent is looking to enrich and inspire the industry with its latest lineup of keynotes, films and panelists for its 14th annual Film Independent Forum. Keynotes will be delivered by Late Night filmmaker Nisha Ganatra and Len Amato President of HBO Films. The Forum will kick off with a screening…

Many will compare Olivia Wilde’s teenage comedy Booksmart to Superbad. Both tell the story of two friends who are about to graduate high school that want to end their senior year with an awesome night of partying — but that’s where the comparisons end. In Wilde’s feature directorial debut, we follow two young women…