Latest in The Contenders

UPDATED with latest: There was a glut of great TV, movies and music to celebrate in 2021, but 2022 isn’t allowing much room for celebration. Many awards events were canceled, moved or modified as New York and Los Angeles smashed daily Covid records due to Omicron. The winter months are proving challenging for red…

Deadline has launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: New York, its movie awards-season showcase that took place Saturday at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. A total of 23 Oscar-buzzed films were on display across the day of panel presentations, a one-stop shop for Academy and guild voters as they…

The Many Saints of Newark writer David Chase and stars Ray Liotta and Alessandro Nivola discussed the Sopranos prequel Saturday at Contenders Film: New York. Speaking with Deadline's Mike Fleming, Chase and Nivola zeroed in on the explosive rage of Nivola's character, Dickie Moltisanti, while Liotta had a different…

Oscar Isaac had been waiting a long time to work with filmmaker Paul Schrader, and in The Card Counter, he found a much-longed-for opportunity to portray an antihero directly in the mold of the writer-director's signature works including Taxi Driver, Light Sleeper and First Reformed. "My relationship with Paul has…

Stillwater director/co-writer Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon joined Deadline’s Contenders New York event today to discuss the film and what they were looking for in the Bill Baker character. “I think this movie sort of subverts, in many ways, what we expect from an American hero abroad, both in terms of cinematic…

Stephen Karam's 2016 Tony-winning play The Humans has been hailed by critics for holding a great mirror to New York City’s hard-scrabble inhabitants in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. However, the A24 film version, Karam’s feature directorial debut, arrives in theaters and on Showtime at an intriguing time…

The heroine of Zola – the unique, Twitter-chain inspired film about a hastily arranged raunchy road trip – was drawn in part from The Wizard of Oz, director Janicza Bravo said during a panel at Deadline's Contenders Film: New York event Saturday. The pic is about a girl who craves adventure, leaves a boring pale life…

The Coen brothers' longtime composer Carter Burwell said Saturday that scoring Joel Coen's Shakespeare adaptation The Tragedy of Macbeth was much different from their other movies. Usually the siblings' scripts have room for music. "They write the script with space left for me to work with — Shakespeare didn't do…

For her film CODA, filmmaker Siân Heder found that delving deep into the cultural differences between the deaf and hearing communities to be wildly informative in creating a fresh cinematic experience. "I was very excited kind of by the specificity and yet the universality of the story," Heder said during the Apple Ori…

"It started with Ben, with the script being so well written, the characters having the same essence but needing different things," said Swan Song star and producer Mahershala Ali said of playing two roles in the Apple Original Film. "It was always clear to me whose shoes I was in," he added about the characters of…

Actress Olga Merediz stopped by Deadline’s Contenders: New York on Saturday to talk about reprising her role as Abuela Claudia from Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Broadway musical In the Heights for Jon M. Chu’s Warner Bros film of the same name. The Tony nominee called the film “a joy ride” and noted…

Aunjanue Ellis, who plays Venus and Serena Williams' mother, Oracene, in King Richard, said her character deserves more credit, including from herself. The film tells the story of how the Williams sisters’ father, Richard Williams (Will Smith), designed a plan for their tennis success. Ellis spoke with Deadline's Joe…