The production company added three new movies to its 2023-2024 theatrical release schedule, including an untitled “True Haunting” movie from Screen Gems slated for January 6, 2023; a “Karate Kid” film for June 7, 2024; and a sequel to “Searching,” titled “Missing,” on February 24, 2023 starring Nia Long and Storm Reid. Dakota Johnson-led “Spider-Man” prequel film “Madame Web,” also starring Adam Scott, Zosia Mamet, Sydney Sweeney, and Emma Roberts, was delayed from October 6, 2023 to February 16, 2024....

The first show ordered under this multi-series agreement is “Silk: Spider Society,” based on the Marvel Comics superhero Cindy Moon. The show will debut in the United States on the MGM+ linear channel, currently under the name Epix. Globally, the series will stream exclusively on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories. All of Sony’s films are set in their own separate universe away from the MCU, although a few crossovers have occurred — Michael Keaton appeared as the Vulture in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Morbius,” while Hardy made a cameo in last year’s “No Way Home....

Brooklyn-based Lee, who is 63, has directed 25 features and documentaries plus countless commercials, collecting Emmys, BAFTAs, Cannes and critics awards along the way, including last year’s Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “BlacKkKlansman.” “If you love what you are doing you can delay father time,” Lee said. “I’ve got some more joints to make. This award is not just for me but for all the people in front of and behind the camera....

1. What’s Going on with The Upside Down? Once described as “home, but it’s so dark,” the nefarious parallel dimension that haunts Hawkins is still at large and seeping into our world. When the Mind Flayer took hold of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) in Season 2, it was eventually banished from Will’s body, while Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) used all her strength to close the gate between worlds. But when Hawkins residents start acting strangely in Season 3, Will senses the Mind Flayer’s presence and realizes they didn’t banish him at all, but trapped him in the outside world....

While it’s still unclear if 2022 will provide a bounceback for the box office and its rising (and established) women talents, there are some positive indicators. According to the latest study from the Celluloid Ceiling, the longest-running and most comprehensive study of women’s employment in film, women directors were up overall in 2020 (because of the pandemic, the study did not track new numbers for 2021). Women directors achieved historic highs in 2020, with women comprising 18 percent of the filmmakers calling the shots behind the top 250 domestic features, an uptick from 13 percent in 2019 and eight percent in 2018....

The Emmy-nominated “Euphoria” and “White Lotus” star shut down assumptions that a “surprise hoedown”-themed birthday party for her mother was pro-Trump with MAGA references. Sweeney, whose attorney mother Lisa Sweeney (née Mudd) turned 60 this past weekend, shared photos on social media of the birthday bash in Idaho. “No better way to celebrate my momma than a surprise hoedown,” Sweeney captioned. The select pictures showed Sweeney riding a mechanical bull with her mom, with one relative wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt in the background....

The winners were determined by votes cast by the TCA’s network of more than 250 professional TV critics and journalists in the United States and Canada. In noting that “Watchmen” received the organization’s Program Of The Year award, a TCA announcement singled out the series “for taking the established mythos of the legendary ‘Watchmen’ graphic novel to new heights with a timely story that paid homage to the original source while paving its own unique legacy....