Two months after it fired chief film critic Todd McCarthy and said it would rely more on freelancers, Variety promoted staffers Justin Chang, who’s in his late 20s, and Peter Debruge, 32, as senior film critics.
The trade announced Thursday that Chang would lead the listing trade’s coverage of Cannes, which begins next week. Veteran television critic Brian Lowry will also continue to review films.
Debruge and Chang (pictured left; photo from Variety.com) will continue their “other duties,” Variety said –assigning and editing the 1,200 or so film reviews that it runs every year.
That part of the job got harder in early March, when the struggling paper let go of McCarthy the same day it fired longtime theater critic David Rooney.
Both Chang and Debruge got in their starts at in other departments at Variety; Chang as a copy editor on the news desk, and Debruge in the features department.
