“Risk,” Laura Poitras’s film sbout Julian Assange, has been sold to Showtime. The cable network showed a promo for it after the finale of Homeland. More to come.

This is the film we saw in Cannes last year that showed how Assange escaped into the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It also shows him being interviewed by Lady Gaga. Now maybe it will include footage of him shtupping Pamela Anderson on Ecuador’s dime.

I asked several times in the last year what had happened to “Risk.” There was no answer. Then tonight it turned up on the Showtime promo. What a weird way to announce a film.

In Cannes we did get to meet Assange’s weird assortment of cult like followers. One day when he goes to jail perhaps they’ll go with him. Who knows?

What seems to be the case is that there’s no theatrical release for this film. Poitras released “CitizenFour” through Radius-Weinstein and won an Oscar. But the Radius people have vanished, and I guess there were no takers. Still, Showtime can make a big deal of this.

Showtime, by the way, means Les Moonves of CBS approved this. I’m fascinated by Moonves’s interest in progressive politics. Good for him. Waiting for “Homeland” tonight I watched “Circus” and was totally captivated. (But I am sorry about Peter Quinn.)

The box office waits for a very Good Friday this coming Friday, and not the Friday we just had. The weekend was tepid to say the least, with “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Boss Baby” still on top, and not much else happening.

There are plenty of duds, from “Life” to “CHiPS,” to “T2: Trainspotting” and “Ghost in the Shell.” The misery is pretty much spread around the studio system. Only Disney is crowing, and Fox can enjoy “Boss Baby” for what it is.

And so we wait. “Fate of the Furious” comes this Friday, as foes “Lost City of Z.” They should be audience pleasers if not great movie making. They may give a jolt to the April box office. We really don’t get a blockbuster til May 5th and “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2” — which is Disney again. And then Disney comes back again May 26th with “Pirates of the Caribbean: Here Wee Go Again.”

The only potential bright spot for adults is Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn in “Snatched” on May 12th from Fox. Let’s cross our fingers on that one!

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary, Ezra Edelman, has been slightly rebuked by the Academy. New rules announced today would have made it impossible for his multi part project, OJ: Made in America, from being nominated.

The Academy now says multi part films or limited series will not be eligible at all to compete for an Oscar. This is a big deal because the doc community was upset over “OJ.” For one thing, it was made for ESPN, for TV, and many felt it shouldn’t have been in the running for that reason alone.

Whoops! So sorry then to Ava Duvernay and the others who worked on single films as in past years and then got knocked out by OJ. It’s not going to happen again.

The Academy also says that prior to nominations, if you want to serve food to an Academy member in conjunction with a movie, there’d better be a screening attached to it. This is more of the campaigning rules which frankly, I think, have contributed to the low ratings of the Oscar show. After the nominations are announced, the Academy now frowns on all campaigning.

This means all parties cease, as does publicity. Next year, this means that between January 23rd and March 4th there will be silence in the press regarding the Oscars. It’s a big mistake. Without the press stoking the Oscar campaigns during those six weeks, there will be even fewer viewers for the big night. These are the Oscars– they’re supposed to be fun. It’s not a federal election.