TIFF’s second year during the COVID-19 pandemic opened with a bigger slate (132 features compared to last year’s 60) and “Dear Evan Hansen,” an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit. Thematically, a film about a teenager grappling with loneliness and mental health problems makes perfect sense for the festival’s inaugural film. As artistic director Cameron Bailey noted during his introduction to the film, the coming-of-age musical touches on feelings many people have experienced during the pandemic....

In a Facebook post Friday evening, Tardy said he had been offered to return for several episodes in the show’s upcoming fourth and final season. Tardy said he was disturbed when his counteroffer was rejected, as one of his white colleagues revealed they had received the same initial offer and had successfully negotiated a counteroffer. Tardy along with six other recurring cast members, banded together on August 31 to reject Lionsgate’s initial offers....

“I didn’t want Lady Jessica to be an expensive extra,” Villeneuve tells Empire magazine in a new interview. “Something I deeply love in the book is that there was a strong balance between the masculine power and feminine power.” To lean more strongly into the feminine power of the book, Villeneuve worked with his screenwriters Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts to turn Lady Jessica into more of a “warrior priestess” who is as much a mother to Paul as she is his defender and his trainer....

I mean, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. The year has been defined by the world being turned upside down, all while remaining exactly the same. Many Californians are still sheltering in place, caught between the old normal and whatever way we’re living now, but fire season comes regardless. Yes, millions of people are unemployed, driven largely by an insufficient pandemic response made at the highest levels of government, but taxes still have to be collected....

Netflix’s official synopsis for the “Fear Street” trilogy reads: “In 1994, a group of teenagers discovers that the terrifying events that have haunted their town for generations may all be connected — and that they may be the next targets. Based on R.L. Stine’s best selling horror series, the trilogy follows the nightmare through Shadyside’s sinister history.” “As a filmmaker making ‘Fear Street,’ but also just as a movie lover, I was so excited to pay homage to some of the great eras of horror movies,” Janiak said in a statement accompanying the trailer release....

Festivals will continue to play a vital role in the film ecosystem, but what has been gained and what has been lost? Let’s cut to the chase: The 2021 Tribeca Festival is not, as a tweet by Governor Andrew Cuomo put it, “the first in-person film festival to take place in North America since before COVID.” There have been many smaller festivals across the continent. Still, as Tribeca launches its 20th edition with a premiere of “In the Heights” at the United Palace in tandem with outdoor screenings at all five boroughs, it will mark the first large-scale physical event for the North American film industry since the pandemic began....

IndieWire elected to rank freshman series by the overall-viewer averages of their series premieres. These Nielsen numbers include any viewer (age 2 or older) and counts one week of delayed viewing. We’ve included ratings in the key adults 18-49 demographics but elected to rank shows by total viewers. This lets us avoid tied rankings and provides more-digestible numbers, but it disproportionately rewards older-skewing shows (i.e., CBS). In general, CBS was the uncontested king of the rankings, with three of its series topping the list, all of which were given full-season pickups on Wednesday....