NEW YORK — Carl Weathers, a former NFL linebacker who became a Hollywood action movie and comedy star, playing nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies, facing-off against Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Predator” and teaching golf in “Happy Gilmore,” has died. He was 76.

Matt Luber, his manager, said Weathers died Thursday. His family issued a statement saying he died “peacefully in his sleep.”

Weathers was as comfortable flexing his muscles on the big screen in “Action Jackson” as he was joking around on the small screen in such shows as “Arrested Development,” Weathers was perhaps most closely associated with Creed, who made his first appearance as the cocky, undisputed heavyweight world champion in 1976’s “Rocky,” starring Sylvester Stallone.

“It puts you on the map and makes your career, so to speak. But that’s a one-off, so you’ve got to follow it up with something. Fortunately those movies kept coming, and Apollo Creed became more and more in people’s consciousness and welcome in their lives, and it was just the right guy at the right time,” he told The Daily Beast in 2017.

Most recently, Weathers has starred in the Disney+ hit “The Mandalorian,” appearing in all three seasons.

Creed, who appeared in the first four “Rocky” movies, memorably died in the ring of 1984’s “Rocky IV,” going toe-to-toe with the hulking, steroided-using Soviet Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren. Before he entered the ring, James Brown sang “Living in America” with showgirls and Creed popped up on a balcony in a Star-Spangled Banner shorts and waistcoat combo and an Uncle Sam hat, dancing and taunting Drago.

A bloodied Creed collapses in the ring after taking a vicious beating, twitches and is cradled by Rocky as he dies, inevitably setting up a fight between Drago and Rocky. But while Creed is gone, his character’s son, Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed, would lead his own boxing trilogy starting in 2015.

Weathers went on to 1987’s “Predator,” where he flexed his pecs alongside Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and a host of others, and 1988’s nouveau blaxploitation flick “Action Jackson,” where he trains his flamethrower on a bad guy and asks, “How do you like your ribs?” before broiling him.

He later added a false wooden hand to play a gold pro for the 1996 comedy classic “Happy Gilmore” opposite Adam Sandler and starred in Dick Wolf’s short-lived spin-off series “Chicago Justice” in 2017 and in Disney’s “The Mandalorian,” earning an Emmy Award nomination in 2021.

Weathers grew up admiring actors such as Woody Strode, whose combination of physique and acting prowess in “Spartacus” made an early impression. Others he idolized included actors Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and athletes Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, stars who broke the mold and the color barrier.

“There are so many people that came before me who I admired and whose success I wanted to emulate, and just kind of hit the benchmarks they hit in terms of success, who created a pathway that I’ve been able to walk and find success as a result. And hopefully I can inspire someone else to do good work as well,” he told the Detroit News 2023. “I guess I’m just a lucky guy.”

Growing up in New Orleans, Weathers started performing in plays as early as grade school. In high school, athletics took him down another path but he would reunite with his first love later in life.

Weathers, who played football at Long Beach Poly High and graduated in 1966, went on to play college football at San Diego State University, where he majored in theater. He played one season in the NFL, for the Oakland Raiders, in 1970.

“When I found football, it was a completely different outlet,” says Weathers told the Detroit News. “It was more about the physicality, although one does feed the other. You needed some smarts because there were playbooks to study and film to study, to learn about the opposition on any given week.”

After the Raiders, he joined the Canadian Football League, playing for two years while finishing up his studies during the offseason at San Francisco State University. He graduated with a B.A. in drama in 1974.

SANTA FE, N.M. — Actor Alec Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to an involuntary manslaughter charge in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer during a rehearsal on a Western movie set in New Mexico.

Court documents filed Wednesday show Baldwin entered the plea in state district court in Santa Fe, waiving an arraignment that had been scheduled to take place remotely by video conference the next day.

Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

A grand jury in Santa Fe indicted Baldwin in January after prosecutors received a new analysis of that gun, renewing a charge that prosecutors originally filed and then dismissed in April 2023. Baldwin faces up to 18 months in prison if convicted.

Baldwin remains free pending trial under conditions that include not possessing firearms, consuming alcohol or leaving the country. Baldwin can have limited contact with witnesses when it comes to promoting “Rust,” which has not been released for public viewing. Baldwin is prohibited from asking members of the “Rust” cast or crew to participate in a related documentary film.

Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the gun fired.

“Halyna and I had something profound in common, and that is that we both assumed the gun was empty … other than those dummy rounds,” Baldwin told George Stephanopoulos in an interview broadcast in December 2021 on ABC News.

The grand jury indictment provides special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis with two alternative standards for pursuing the felony charge against Baldwin.

One would be based on the negligent use of a firearm. A second alternative for prosecutors is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Baldwin caused the death of Hutchins without due caution or “circumspection,” also defined as “an act committed with total disregard or indifference for the safety of others.”

An analysis of the gun conducted by Lucien and Michael Haag of Forensic Science Services in Arizona concluded that “the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver.”

An earlier FBI report on the agency’s analysis of the revolver found that, as is common with firearms of that design, it could go off without pulling the trigger if force was applied to an uncocked hammer, such as by dropping the weapon. The gun eventually broke during testing.

Morrissey and Lewis dismissed the earlier charge after they were informed the gun might have been modified before the shooting and malfunctioned.

The grand jury heard from a “Rust” crew member who was a few feet (meters) from the fatal shooting and another who walked off the set before the shooting in protest of working conditions. Weapons forensics expert Michael Haag, a Mississippi-based movie armorer and a detective with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office also testified.

Gutierrez-Reed also was charged with carrying a gun into a downtown Santa Fe bar days before she was hired to work as the armorer on “Rust.” She has pleaded not guilty to that charge, too.

The fatal shooting of Hutchins resulted in a series of civil lawsuits, including wrongful death claims filed by members of Hutchins’ family, centered on accusations that Baldwin and producers of “Rust” were lax with safety standards. Baldwin and other defendants have disputed those allegations.

“Rust” assistant director and safety coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to unsafe handling of a firearm last March and received a suspended sentence of six months of probation. He agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the fatal shooting.

“I didn’t make out or intend to do a Western,” Arcel said at a Q&A with Mikkelsen after an American Cinematheque screening in Los Feliz in January. “I was intending to do a historical epic. But, of course, it’s so obvious when you look at it, it’s totally a Western, so now I totally get it.”

Mikkelsen, one of the biggest stars in Danish cinema, who in Hollywood often appears as villains opposite heroes such as James Bond, Dr. Strange, and Indiana Jones, teased his longtime friend and director for overlooking the obvious.

“I’m surprised you didn’t see it,” he said. “Because you got landscape. You got horses. You got guns.

“‘Nah, it’s not a Western’?” Mikkelsen continued as Arcel and the audience laughed. “It’s kind of a Western. But there’s nothing wrong with a Western. It’s pioneers, stepping on ground that nobody’s stepped on before.”

In “The Promised Land,” which opens in theaters on Friday, Feb. 2, Mikkelsen plays a real historical figure: Ludvig Kahlen, a proud but poor military captain. In the 1750s, Kahlen convinced the Danish king to grant him the right to farm the remote heathlands of Jutland, an uninhabited, inhospitable region where no one before had succeeded.

The screenplay, adapted from Ida Jessen’s novel, “The Captain and Ann Barbara,” portrays Kahlen as a man so stubbornly driven by his dream that at times he becomes his own worst enemy.

In his fight to keep his land from a cruel nobleman who seeks to seize it, Kahlen risks harming the few people who care for him – the runaway servant Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) and the outcast orphan girl Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg) – whom he realizes too late he cares for, too.

“We wanted him to be an obstacle himself,” Mikkelson said. “Because you can always make a film about some bad people doing something to good people. We wanted him to be in the gray zone, and also, for that reason, we wanted him to be not necessarily super-likable until page 68.

“It was difficult,” he said of his and Arcel’s intention to let him make mistakes until deep into the screenplay. “Because we’d get fed up being him and watching him, and we’d just look at each other and say, ‘Page 68.’”

Arcel, who said he only thought of Mikkelsen, his star in the 2012 Oscar-nominated film “A Royal Affair,” for the part, knowing that the actor could pull off the transformation the story required.

“One of the amazing things about your performance, in most films where a character changes profoundly, there’s always that one dramatic sequence or moment that changes him and he suddenly realizes,” Arcel said. “There’s really none of that here. It’s very subtle. But if you look at him, the beginning of the film and the end of the film, he’s a completely different man.”

A few days after the screening, Mikkelsen and Arcel hopped on a video call to talk more about “The Promised Land,” which was shortlisted for the Oscar for best international feature, and its characters and story, the challenges and joys of working with child actors, and more.

Q: Mads, when Nikolaj called and said I’ve got this part for you, how did he pitch it? ‘You’re gonna go out and farm potatoes on the heath’ or something else?

Mads Mikkelsen: Well, actually, he did start with the potato part. And there was a long pause. He didn’t add anything. I did ask him, ‘Is there anything else happening, Nik?’ And there were a lot of things happening.

It’s not only this character trying to survive in the 1750s with his ambition. You have Ann Barbara trying to survive. You have the little girl trying to survive. And then, of course, this character being so stubborn that he is about to ruin everybody’s lives because of his own dream. I thought it was recognizable and very human to watch somebody who wanted to desperately be part of something (the landowner class) that he hates.

Q: How well-known is the real Ludvig Kahlen in modern-day Denmark? Someone you were aware of or kind of a minor figure?

MM: Minor.

Nikolaj Arcel: Completely unknown, actually. There’s a plaque on the heath, but up until the moment that the film came out, I mean, obviously he’s now known. But before the film came out, it would only have been the locals in the area.

And really, you have to credit the author. She kind of found him from the annals of history, and she wrote this book about him, and that was sort of her genius, to find somebody, the first person to ever go out on the heath and succeed in planting something.

MM: I think one of the reasons he’s also not known today is that he succeeded with his Sisyphus job, which is the insane ambition of going out there, but then he abandoned it, and it was left like that for 20, 30 years. Had he kept going and built, let’s say, a phenomenal castle there, it would have been a different thing.

Q: What had to happen to turn the novel into a film?

NA: I have had a lot of experience adapting books – I think I’ve done it five or six times, or maybe more. (Among them are the original Danish-Swedish film of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” and Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower,” with which Arcel made his Hollywood directing debut.) You have to be a little tough with the book, because usually novels, especially big epic novels like this, they have a multitude of characters and a timespan in years and years.

I very quickly excised two or three or four or five characters that don’t really matter that much to the main character’s story. And when I figured that out, it was more about creating a story around (Ludvig, Ann Barbara and Anmai Mus).

The author was also very interested in nature. She’s almost Tolkein-esque in her way of describing chapter after chapter about the way that heath grows and the wind, how it feels, and things. And it’s all beautiful to read, but it wouldn’t have been very interesting in a film unless you’re Terrence Malick, which I’m not.

Q: Mads, talk a little about how you approached this character, and the subtlety with which he changed.

MM: It was in the screenplay, and that’s what Nick wanted to do as well. So we have to trust each other. That we can make that little crack happen on page 68. Meaning that before that, we will see the version that we have decided on, and we should not get desperate, while we’re shooting the film, that he doesn’t become more like a man from 2023. We cannot force our 2023 morals into the character.

Q: The scene where he has to make a hard decision about Anmai Mus is one of the toughest in the film.

NA: That day for me was a very moving day. It came kind of late in the shoot. That was the first scene where Ludvig truly sort of cracks. And then Mads’ performance, and the work that you did. I think it was three takes, really, and it made everybody cry. We were all just weeping. Not just for the brilliance of Mads, but also for what we saw was happening with Ludvig in that moment.

Q: What did you feel, shooting on the remote heath in the same location that the real Ludvig had lived and farmed?

NA: For me, it was very poignant. It was emotional. There were days where we would stand together and just look out over the heath and see the sun come up or the sun come down. That’s so rare. Anybody who’s making movies can tell you that you never shoot anything where the stuff actually happened. But this was such a rarity, and so important.

MM: I agree. It’s a magical situation to be there, like, to get a little whiff of the winds of time. Every though Denmark is a very small country, surprisingly, standing on the heath, you felt very small, very alone. If you took the crew away, you could not see the end of it. It just kept going and kept going.

Q: At the screening, Mads, you talked about how much fun you had working with Melina, who was only 6 or 7 when she played Anmai Mus.

MM: I’ve done it quite a few times, playing with kids, and I really thoroughly enjoy it. Some people don’t so much. Like, ‘Don’t ever work with animals or children.’ But I disagree. She was wonderful. If she would forget a line, and it would happen, she would come up with something completely different that would be perfect for the film sometimes. Sometimes not.

But you just have to hang in there. Because the more naturally she goes down the path, if you follow her, there’s actually a chance that you will become more natural than you normally are. And so I enjoyed her tremendously.

The crash happened Wednesday afternoon as Coward and Bertha Brooks, 78, left a doctor’s appointment, North Carolina Highway Patrol Sgt. M.J. Owens said by telephone on Thursday. Coward pulled out onto U.S. Route 19 in front of a pickup truck, which hit his car, Owens said. Coward and Brooks as well as a Chihuahua and pet squirrel were killed, he said. Coward, who lived in Haywood County, was famous locally for having a pet squirrel, he said.

Coward had a small but memorable role in John Boorman’s 1972 classic “Deliverance.” The film starred Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox as a group of businessmen canoeing down a river in remote Georgia. Their adventure turns into a backwoods nightmare when local mountain men assault them.

Coward’s character, known as the “Toothless Man” for his missing front teeth, is one of the men who hold several of the paddlers at gunpoint during the assault. Coward became the indelible face to one of the most infamous scenes in 1970s cinema, contributing the line, “He got a real purty mouth, ain’t he?”

The rapper-turned-actor’s new movie “The Underdoggs”, which was inspired by the Snoop Youth Football League (founded by Snoop Dogg in 2005), prominently features his beloved Long Beach Poly High School.

“Poly High School, the Funkhouse, this is the most prolific high school in Southern California as far as I’m concerned when you think about the greats that have come through that campus,” Snoop Dogg said during an exclusive sports roundtable at The Compound in Inglewood Monday. “Let’s go back in time, you have John Wayne, Billie Jean King, Carl Weathers, just to name a few. Tony Gwynn, shall I continue, Snoop Dogg, Willie McGinest, Cameron Diaz, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Jack Jones, we could just on and and on and on and on.

“So it’s the water and that’s the birthplace of where you want to be when you’re a kid in Long Beach. You all dream of going to Long Beach Poly High School because it’s so much greatness connected to it, not just sports but it’s home of scholars and champions and we push each other to be great because we know what our tradition is. That’s one school that understands tradition, so to put that in this movie showed that my tradition will always be upheld and kept close to my heart because that’s the school that I went to, my mother went to, my whole family, it’s generational.”

“The Underdoggs”, a rated R sports comedy starring Snoop Dogg as Jaycen “2 Js” Jennings, an ex-professional football receiver sentenced to community service after a car crash. Jennings had made a name for himself at Poly High before achieving college and pro stardom that ended unceremoniously with an inflated ego and poor sportsmanship.

However, the film also subtly layered and tackled different themes like child poverty, girls playing football, and being a superstar at a young age, personified by the children who played on Snoop’s team in the movie.

“The themes that we chose for the characters were really themes that happened in my league in real life,” Snoop said. “We had girls that played in my league, we had kids who come from poverty who lived in certain homes that didn’t want anybody to know where they lived at.

“We had superstar players on the team without fathers and direction and they just were great kids on the football field but didn’t know how to hone all that into being a great kid in general. Then we had coaches who had foul mouths but they had great messages and they had to come back down to reality because these coaches, they weren’t like an ex-football player, I would say an ex-gang member for example, who is watching his community get torn to pieces by some things that he set in motion. How can he change that, become a football coach, stop the gang violence, create an environment where the parks are free for kids to practice, game days are free for kids to play. Three days of practice, one day of games, that’s four days out the week that these kids are going to live now because we’re providing a safe haven so those coaches are like Jaycen, they have to come back to their community and fix something that they did wrong, whether it’s through the league or through them being a better person and giving an example of how you can change once you come up.”

“The Underdoggs” which has a cast full of well-known actors and entertainers like Tika Sumpter, Mike Epps, Kandi Burruss, Kal Penn and George Lopez, will premiere globally on Amazon Prime on Friday, Jan. 26.

Meanwhile, Snoop said Lopez’s character “Coach Feis” reminds him a lot of former Poly High coach Raul Lara, who won five CIF-SS titles.

“If you really think about it, George Lopez looks like Coach Lara,” Snoop said with a smile. “We’ve got old school uniforms, I tried to stay true to the essence of where I come from, the football program that raised me, Long Beach Poly, which was the best football program in the world. We had the most players in the NFL at one point until the Snoop Youth Football League came out so what I wanted to show was my upbringing and my backgrounds of where I learned to play the sport and how scholars and champions has always been a part of my life, so to instill that in the movie will show some originality and some culture, as far as where I come from.”

Snoop, who said his favorite part of being a youth football coach is the interaction and engagement with players, wants the movie to provide an important message about giving back, especially in the Black community.

“I know some friends of mine who are exceptional football players, hall of famers, who got the same flack that 2 Js got and somehow some way I watched them work their way back into the community and that’s the depiction of what this could be, an example of greatness not just the bad side but going from bad to good,” Snoop explained.

C.J. Stroud’s example

One of Snoop’s most recent youth players who turned pro is Houston Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud, the No. 2 overall selection in the 2023 NFL Draft. Stroud is a 2020 graduate of Rancho Cucamonga High School in the Inland Empire.

“C.J. is the perfect example of every kid in my league that makes it to the league, they’re usually not the best player on their team at that time but they’re the best kid on the team at that time,” Snoop shared. “They understand what’s before them and they haven’t peaked out. … C.J. was always calm, he was always a field general. He was always a leader and he led by the way he moved, the way he conducted himself. No drugs. No partying. No criminal activity, none of that, but he comes from that so how do we separate?

“We have to find something we love and we have to find people who can inspire us. Coach Soopafly in my league was the coach who identified C.J. and dealt with him personally. He deserves a lot of credit because he deals with these kids on the day-to-day basis and he coaches them up and that’s what I love about my league is that I get a lot of the credit but it’s the intricacies of these coaches who do that groundwork, who go make sure that these parents have food and money to get by and make sure that these kids are staying the course in school and making sure their grades are way above average because they know that they are up against the gun, you can’t just be average, you have to be way above average so it’s the family, it’s the unity, it’s the village that I created with Snoop Youth Football League that makes me so proud of C.J., makes me proud of Keisean Nixon, makes me proud of Romeo Dobbs, makes me proud of (Deommodore) Lenoir, makes me proud of D’Angelo Ross, proud of Jack Jones. I could go on and on when I see these babies on there, I get excited.”

Should youth tackle football be banned?

In light of the recent discussion surrounding banning tackle football in California for children under 12, Snoop said he will continue endorsing all versions of the sport.

“I think that it represents positivity, unity and what’s necessary,” Snoop said. “Some of these kids need that. This is all they have and through sports and football, you can achieve many things. It doesn’t always have to be going to the NFL. It’s more about achieving life goals.”

Deion Sanders vs. Snoop Dogg

Snoop added that his best friend and current Colorado coach Deion Sanders is an aspirational figure but despite his success as a coach and identifier of talent, he will not be trying his hand at becoming a college football coach any time soon.

“As (youth football) coaches we’ve clashed but I don’t think I can handle the pressure of what he’s dealing with up there because, remember I like to do this (mimics smoking) all the time, so unless it’s a smoke friendly school, that’s not happening,” Snoop explained. “And I’m only good as a head coach who can find better coaches to put on my staff. I’m not a greedy guy, that’s like I have to run the offense, the defense and the special teams, no. Who’s the best guy calling the plays right now that can blow out anybody on this level? Who calls plays that moves the kids around and do all this? I need him. Who is the defensive guy that can stop all of that, bring all these guys up front and then have great guys back there? I want the best coaches and then the best recruiters. Who is going to be able to go get those kids from down South to mix them with California and put them together? It has to be that. That’s a lot to put on your shoulders and say I want to run out the tunnel with these kids. You have to have all of that together before you can run out the tunnel with those kids and Prime has been priming himself for this for a long time and remember this, his babies are on that team. When my babies was on the team, I coached every level I could coach, so if they would have went to the next level and they would have asked me to come, I would have ran right with them because I’m better for my babies because I see what you can’t see as a coach but I will bring in a coach to coach them but I’m going to help my babies in areas that you can’t because I see what you can’t see in them.

“So I’ll have to say no I won’t take a job in the NCAA so ya’ll coaches don’t have to worry about Snoop Dogg coming to get y’all. Y’all cool because all y’all kids going to come play for me anyway because my NIL deals gonna be way better than y’alls. It is what it is so y’all can breathe easy. Don’t worry about it. I’m not coming to get you.”

On a lighter note, when Snoop was around the age of the players portrayed in “The Underdoggs,” in addition to playing youth sports, he said he was a paperboy who sold subscriptions to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

“By the way I used to sell the Long Beach Press-Telegram,” Snoop said. “I was one of those door-to-door guys. Hi ma’am my name is Calvin, I work for the Press-Telegram, would you like to subscribe? I was one of those guys, so good job.”

NEW YORK — After a tumultuous movie year marred by strikes and work stoppages, the Academy Awards showered nominations Tuesday on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which came away with a leading 13 nominations.

Nolan’s three-hour opus, viewed as the best picture frontrunner, received nods for best picture; Nolan’s direction; acting nominations for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt; and multiple honors for the craft of the J. Robert Oppenheimer drama.

Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” wasn’t far behind with eight nominations, including nods for best picture; Ryan Gosling for best supporting actor; and two best-song candidates in “What Was I Made For” and “I’m Just Ken.” But Gerwig was surprisingly left out of the best director field.

RELATED: Oscar nominations 2024: See the full list

Both Martin Scorsese’s Osage epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff “Poor Things” were also widely celebrated. “Poor Things” landed 11 nods, while “Killers of the Flower Moon” was nominated for 10 Oscars.

Lily Gladstone, star of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” became the first Native American nominated for best actress. For the 10th time, Scorsese was nominated for best director. Leonardo DiCaprio, though, was left out of best actor.

Those four contenders made for a maximalist quartet of Oscar heavyweights. Nolan’s sprawling biopic. Gerwig’s near-musical. Scorsese’s pitch-black Western. Lanthimos’ sumptuously designed fantasy. Each utilized a wide spectrum of cinematic tools to tell big, often disturbing big-screen stories. And each — even Apple’s biggest-budgeted movie yet, “Killers of the Flower Moon” — had robust theatrical releases that saved streaming for months later.

The 10 films nominated for best picture were: “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “The Holdovers,” “Maestro,” “American Fiction,” “Past Lives,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.”

The nominees for best actress are: Annette Bening, “Nyad”; Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”; Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”; Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”; Emma Stone, “Poor Things.”

The nominees for best actor are: Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”; Colman Domingo, “Rustin”; Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”; Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”; Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction.”

The nominees for best director are: Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”; Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”; Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”; Martin Scorsese “Killers of the Flower Moon”; Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest.”

The nominees for best international film are: “Society of the Snow,” (Spain); “The Zone of Interest,” (United Kingdom); “The Teachers’ Lounge” (Germany); “Io Capitano” (Italy) ; “Perfect Days” (Japan).

The nominees for best animated film are: “The Boy and the Heron”; “Elemental”; “Nimona”; “Robot Dreams”; “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

Among the nominated films is the Ukraine war documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” which is a joint production between The Associated Press and PBS’ Frontline and will compete in the best documentary category.

Oscar season has reunited “Oppenheimer” with its summer box-office partner, “Barbie.” Gerwig’s feminist blockbuster is easily the biggest hit of the year with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales.

Historically, blockbusters have helped fueled Oscar ratings. Though the pile-up of award shows (an after-effect of last year’s strikes ) could be detrimental to the Academy Awards, the Barbenheimer presence could help lift the March 10 telecast on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel is returning as host, with the ceremony moved up an hour, to 7 p.m. Eastern.

___ For more coverage of the 2024 Oscars, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards

As expected, the Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer” had a strong showing, leading Oscar contenders with 13 nominations. The fantasy film “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, followed with 11, while the Martin Scorsese drama “Killers of the Flower Moon” got 10 nominations.

The summer blockbuster “Barbie” earned eight nominations.

The Oscars will take place on March 10, hosted for a fourth time by Jimmy Kimmel.

See below for a full list of nominees.

Best picture

“American Fiction”

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“Barbie”

“The Holdovers”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Past Lives”

“Poor Things”

“The Zone of Interest”

Best actor in a leading role

Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”

Colman Domingo, “Rustin”

Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”

Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”

Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”

Best actress in a leading role

Annette Bening, “Nyad”

Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”

Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”

Emma Stone, “Poor Things”

Best actor in a supporting role

Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”

Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”

Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”

Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”

Best actress in a supporting role

Emily Blunt, “Oppenheimer”

Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”

America Ferrera, “Barbie”

Jodie Foster, “Nyad”

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”

Best director

Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”

Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”

Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”

Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”

Best cinematography

“El Conde”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

Best international feature film

“The Teachers’ Lounge,” Germany

“Io Capitano,” Italy

“Perfect Days,” Japan

“Society of the Snow,” Spain

“The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom

Best adapted screenplay

“American Fiction”

“Barbie”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

“The Zone of Interest”

Best original screenplay

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“The Holdovers”

“Maestro”

“May December”

“Past Lives”

Best live action short film

“The After”

“Invincible”

“Knight of Fortune”

“Red, White and Blue”

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

Best animated short film

“Letter to a Pig”

“Ninety-Five Senses”

“Our Uniform”

“Pachyderme”

“War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”

Best animated feature film

“The Boy and the Heron”

“Elemental”

“Nimona”

“Robot Dreams”

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best documentary short

“The ABCs of Book Banning”

“The Barber of Little Rock”

“Island in Between”

“The Last Repair Shop”

“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”

Best documentary feature film

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”

“The Eternal Memory”

“Four Daughters”

“To Kill a Tiger”

“20 Days in Mariupol”

Best original song

“The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot”

“I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie”

“It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony”

“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” “Killers of the Flower Moon”

“What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie”

Best original score

“American Fiction”

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

Best makeup and hairstyling

“Golda”

“Maestro”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

“Society of the Snow”

Best costume design

“Barbie”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Napoleon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

Best editing

“Anatomy of a Fall”

“The Holdovers”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

Best sound

“The Creator”

“Maestro”

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”

“Oppenheimer”

“The Zone of Interest”

Best production design

“Barbie”

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Napoleon”

“Oppenheimer”

“Poor Things”

Best visual effects

“The Creator”

“Godzilla Minus One”

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”

“Napoleon”

The-CNN-Wire & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

NEW YORK — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97.

Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available.

Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level. As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,” he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes.

“Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels.”

He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman.

James Baldwin condemned the film’s “appalling distance from reality,” and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten “Black rage and despair.” But The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was among the critics who found the movie powerful and inspiring and in a year featuring such landmarks as “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jewison’s production won the Academy Award for best picture while Steiger took home the best actor Oscar. (Jewison lost out for best director to Mike Nichols of “The Graduate”).

Among those who encouraged Jewison while making “In the Heat of the Night”: Robert F. Kennedy, whom the director met during a ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho.

“I told him I made films and he asked what kind I make,” he recalled in a 2011 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So I told him that I was working on ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and that it’s about two cops: one a white sheriff from Mississippi and the other a black detective from Philadelphia. I told him it was a film about tolerance. So he listened and nodded and said ‘You know, Norman, timing is everything. In politics, in art, in life itself.’ I never forgot that.”

He received two other Oscar nominations, for “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck,” the beloved romantic comedy for which Cher won an Academy Award for best actress. He also worked on such notable films as the Cold War spoof “The Russian Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” the Steve McQueen thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair” and a pair of movies featuring Denzel Washington: the racial drama “A Soldier’s Story” and “The Hurricane,” starring Washington as wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

A third project with Washington never made it to production. In the early 1990s, Jewison was set to direct a biography of Malcolm X, but backed out amid protests from Spike Lee and others that a white director shouldn’t make the film. Lee ended up directing.

Five Jewison films received best Oscar nominations: “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Russian Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “Fiddler On the Roof,” “Moonstruck” and “A Soldier’s Story.”

Jewison and his wife Margaret Ann Dixon (nicknamed Dixie) had three children, sons Kevin and Michael and daughter Jennifer Ann, who became an actress and appeared in the Jewison films “Agnes of God” and “Best Friends.” The Jewisons were married 51 years, until her death in 2004. He married Lynne St. David in 2010.

Jewison, honored by Canada in 2003 with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, remained close to his home country. When he wasn’t working, he lived on a 200-acre farm near Toronto, where he raised horses and cattle and produced maple syrup. He founded the Canadian Film Centre in 1988 and for years hosted barbecues during the Toronto Film Festival.

The Toronto-born Jewison began acting at age 6, appearing before Masonic lodge gatherings. After graduating from Victoria College, he went to work for the BBC in London, then returned to Canada and directed programs for the CBC. His work there brought offers from Hollywood and he quickly earned a reputation as a director of TV musicals, with stars including Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte. Jewison shifted to feature films in 1963 with the comedy “40 Pounds of Trouble,” starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette.

His other films included “F.I.S.T.”, a flop with Sylvester Stallone as a Jimmy Hoffa-style labor leader; “…And Justice for All” (1979), with Al Pacino fighting a crooked judicial system; and “In Country,” featuring Bruce Willis as a Vietnam War veteran. His most recent work, the 2003 thriller “The Statement,” starred Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton and flopped at the box office.

“I never really became as much a part of the establishment as I wanted to be,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “I wanted to be accepted. I wanted people to say ‘that was a great picture.’ I mean I have a big ego like anyone else. I’m no shrinking violet. But I never felt totally accepted — but maybe that’s good.”

The late AP Entertainment Writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will face criminal tax proceedings after failing to declare an item upon arrival to Germany, a Munich Customs press officer told CNN Wednesday.

“He did not declare a product. A product that was imported from non-EU countries in order to remain in the EU. And this process applies to everyone,” the press officer Thomas Meister said.

Meister said the former California governor and movie star was released and traveled on after being held for more than two hours.

“Arnold was detained for three hours today at Munich airport for traveling with a watch he owns, that he might be auctioning at his charity auction tomorrow in Kitzbuhel (in Austria),” a source close to the actor told CNN.

The source said the item in question was a watch from Swiss luxury brand Audemars Piguet.

Schwarzenegger was never asked to fill out a declaration form and he answered “every question from customs officers honestly,” the source said.

The actor agreed to pre-pay potential taxes on the watch and the officers failed to use a credit card machine for an hour until they gave up and brought him to a bank and asked him to withdraw cash from an ATM to pay, according to the source.

The ATM they brought him to had a limit too low and the bank was closed.

When he returned, a new officer brought a new credit card machine that worked, the source added.

The-CNN-Wire & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The festival’s global outreach is one of the few good things to come out of the 2020 pandemic. A limited number of tickets go on sale on January 11 and this year’s lineup will feature premieres, shorts and all the films in competition, from “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a documentary about a couple who scale a super skyscraper to “Didi,” Sean Wang’s coming-of-age story about growing up Taiwanese-America in Fremont. 

John Nein, Senior Programmer and Director of Strategic Initiatives, spoke recently by video about this year’s Sundance and how it has changed over the 40 years since it began. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

Q. What are some highlights this year?

“Love Me,” starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, is about a buoy that falls in love with a satellite. You’re like, ‘How is that going to work as a film?’ but it’s an incredibly fresh, smart and charming way of exploring being in consciousness in a very formally inventive way.

“The American Society of Magical Negroes” is a first film and it’s exceptional and a smart satire, the likes of which you do not very often.

“Freaky Tales,” from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, is a mashup of genres set in Oakland in 1987 with this supernatural force that empowers the underdogs of Oakland against the wrongdoers of society. 

And it’s great to have Steven Soderbergh back in the lineup with “Presence,” a hypnotic, poetic film, a ghost story told from the point of view of the ghost. 

“Mother of All Lies” is the most extraordinary documentary I’ve seen all year, about the bread riots of Casablanca in the 1980s; the filmmaker created a diorama miniature model of the street on which she lived to engage her family and neighbors in this history that they do not want to talk about. 

And “Agent of Happiness” is a documentary about the Bhutanese government’s effort to assess the happiness level of people in their society, but it turns into a sort of love story.

Q. How has the festival evolved over the years?

Nonfiction was always on par with fiction films from the beginning, but Sundance has become a more international festival, moving from having sidebar sections to an international competition. And I do think that the festival wants to evolve with the changing landscape of opportunity for independent artists. The New Frontier program looks at art and technology and the cross-pollination of artists there. And now we are recognizing that there are people working in episodic series doing interesting things. [Jane Campion and Gerard Lee]’s “Top of the Lake” premiered at Sundance. 

Q. Are there themes in the lineup reflective of where filmmaking or society is now?

We don’t program for themes, but you step back at the end of that process and you look at what you’ve programmed and you can see the number of films that are about AI, whether it’s “Eternal You,” “Love Machina’ or “Love Me,” which I think is going to be one of the bigger films that comes out of the festival. You can also see so many people at this moment in time interested in family, connection and loss, which makes sense coming out of the pandemic in these uneasy times. 

Q. When you’re looking through the 4,000 films submitted, what are you looking for? 

There’s a notion that you are broadening the sense of storytelling, with people whose perspectives are different, with underrepresented voices, and a certain authenticity. We also look for subject matter that we’re not accustomed to seeing in mainstream media. Yet how we pick things is more amorphous: It’s just the idea that something somehow feels fresh; it feels like you haven’t had this experience watching a film before.

It’s hard to put into words but that’s one reason we have more than a dozen programmers who sit around a table and talk for eight to 10 hours every week about the films. Our group is more diverse than it was 20 years ago and our approach is unique in the world of film programming. There are many, many instances where maybe only two or three people are really passionate about a film but they can convince the rest of us. 

Q. Are there films that surprise you once they’re shown at the festival?

You never know how the press, industry, jury or audiences, are going to respond to something. Last year, “Past Lives” had unanimous support in our group. We all loved it, but it’s a small drama mostly in Korean; it’s very subtle and character-driven and it’s hard to put your finger on about how that film affects you. You go into the festival not knowing how it will perform and then you see it become one of the most talked-about films of the year and a potential contender for awards. 

Q. Does the success of “Past Lives” give you hope, not just for the festival but for movies in general at a time when it has gotten so difficult to get smaller movies made and sold? 

These are challenging times for small films and the world of distribution and exhibition. Filmmakers and the industry see certain festivals, including Sundance, as being pivotal to their future. The notion of curation is key to how people engage with what is out there in a world that is quite full of content and a festival can put a spotlight on that work and the voice of a filmmaker and give it a certain context. That’s key to this notion of sustainability for a certain kind of film. 

Q. There have been some major sales at Sundance recently, with “Palm Springs” surpassing $17 million and “CODA” hitting $25 million. Is that a good sign?

It’s important because it is one of the ways in which the health of the industry is assessed, but I think that it’s important to look beyond the headlines and the big sales. The health of the industry is more tied to finding smaller sales for a lot of films. The concern is about the ability of those films to be successful in distribution because that is tied to the question of whether people will continue financing them. That’s why “Past Lives” is encouraging. It represents a kind of film that conventional wisdom keeps telling us is not supposed to work and yet it’s a very successful film and shows that when a film is executed well, it does have market potential. We want to challenge some of the notions of what can and can’t work in the marketplace. The audience for these films is there. We just have to find a better way of getting the films to them. 

Q. Is that why you’re continuing the online version of Sundance?

Yes. The audience to whom many of these films speak is not necessarily the audience that comes to Park City so the question is how can it enter the consciousness of the general public and how can we create opportunities. One virtue of the festival is the notion of discovery – audiences go into something they don’t quite know about to give it a shot and end up liking it and talking about it with their friends. We’re enabling that further by letting people view our films through the online platform.