UPDATED at 7:30 p.m. with a statement from Disaster Artist Producers Rabbit Bandini, Point Grey & Good Universe, who deny all of the allegations. A former student of James Franco’s at UCLA is suing the actor’s Rabbit Bandini Productions and Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures, claiming breach of contract stemming from an…

Harvey Weinstein, the ultimate impresario of the Oscars campaign, has again reshaped the Academy Awards — though in a way that he could hardly have anticipated while at the zenith of his power and influence. The allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Weinstein sparked a #MeToo movement that has removed…

USC Libraries has unveiled the finalist for its 30th annual Scripter Awards, which honor adapted screenplays as well as the author of the original works. This year, there were ties in both the feature film and TV categories, meaning seven screenplays made the list on the movie side and six on the TV side. Finalists…

James Franco has been accused of sexually inappropriate and exploitative behavior by five women, days after he denied reports on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Five women have made allegations against The Disaster Artist star, who won a Golden Globe for his performance, in an article by the Los Angeles Times…

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this occasional column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business. BART: With the Golden Globes fiercely embracing the Big Issue (empowerment) and the Big Speech (Oprah), that gives the Oscar…

UPDATED with video: How often does a guy win best actor for playing a really bad actor — or at least a really bad performance in a really bad movie? At the Golden Globes tonight, James Franco took the Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical trophy for his role as Tommy Wiseau, the “multihyphenate” behind The Room — a film…

Clearly it was always going to be a Star Wars weekend, but some Specialties braved going against the herd. Neon/30West's I, Tonya won gold in its second frame, grossing over $176K with an added run. James Franco's The Disaster Artist went over a thousand locations grossing $2.6M, while Fox Searchlight more than…

Neon and 30West skated into the awards race with a box office win this weekend, opening I, Tonya in four locations grossing $245,602, easily capturing the weekend's highest per theater average and landing in the top ten averages of the year. The film didn't have a lot of newcomer competition in the Specialty arena…

 4th update, Sunday AM, Writethru: Second weekend of December, the same as the first; more or less, that is. For the second weekend in a row, the major studios are holding back any new wide releases, and they’re letting their holdovers do all the work before Disney’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi arrives on Thursday night…

Seth Rogen has canceled a SiriusXM press tour scheduled for Tuesday in protest of the radio network’s re-hiring of right-wing former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. "I was supposed to do a press tour on @SiriusXM on Tuesday but I'm no longer doing it because I can't bring myself to appear on the same service that has…

In its initial 2003 theatrical release, Tommy Wiseau’s $6M indie The Room was considered a dud, making just under $2,000. But The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s feature bio-satire about the making of the midnight cult classic, is poised to be anything but a belly flop. In its 19-theater opening last weekend, The Disas…

Millennials, that largely hard-to-crack demo that studios fear slips from their fingers in exchange for older males, plan to see at least two movies over the year-end holiday stretch, potentially even four movies. Such are the results from a recent Fandango poll of 1,500 moviegoers between the ages of 18 and 34, with…