For the past two decades, Raphael Benoliel has been Hollywood’s man in France. With more than 40 projects under his belt, the Nice-born Benoliel has turned his Firstep production banner into a kind of one-stop-shop for international shoots, amassing line producer credits on projects as varied as “Les Miserables,” “Stillwater” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Month: January 2022
U.K. broadcaster ITV is making key changes to its pre-9pm schedule, including extending the evening news and putting its two biggest soaps, “Coronation Street” and “Emmerdale,” back to back. Presented by Mary Nightingale (pictured above), ITV’s evening news programme is being extended from 30 minutes to an hour with plans to focus more on reporting
As production days notch upward across Paris, crews both local and international can sometimes find themselves competing not only for personnel and materials but also with a separate industry that predates the invention of the camera by several hundred years – the tourist trade. In 2019, France was the world’s leading travel destination, hosting 90
PROGRAMMING “Picabo,” co-directed by Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn and Hollywood producing legend Frank Marshall (the Jason Bourne, Jurassic World and Indiana Jones franchises), is among the programming revealed by the Olympics Channel ahead of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, which commences Feb. 4. The programming includes stories of winter athletes past and present. “Picabo”
Founded in February 2021, French startup Dark Matters is set to unveil Gaul’s first virtual production facility. Setting up camp 23 miles from Paris, the 180,000 square-foot studio will open its doors this coming April, offering the local industry five new soundstages equipped for both traditional production and the LED-backed virtual sets made famous by
There’s a montage early on in Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s documentary “Meet Me in the Bathroom” that is bound to give any geriatric millennial pause. The year is 1999. It’s New Year’s Eve in New York City. President Bill Clinton is speaking on television, full of optimism for the new century, while doomsday preppers
Bandicoot TV, producer of the U.K. version of smash hit music reality show “The Masked Singer,” has added Kate Stannard, Liz Holmwood and Ruchika Tagore to its management team. Stannard joins as the label’s first ever head of development, with a remit to identify, create and develop brand new formats across U.K., U.S. and international
NBC’s hit disaster action series “La Brea” will return to Australia for production of season two. The series will receive $11.5 million (A$16 million) of subsidy from the Australian federal government. The move was announced on Monday by Paul Fletcher, Australia’s federal Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. He said that the
MocapLab – one of Europe’s biggest motion capture (mocap) facilities – is implementing a major expansion plan to meet increased demand from film and TV projects, commercials, videogames and immersive media. Founded by Rémi Brun in 2007, MocapLab offers state-of-the-art motion capture services, from its facilities based on the outskirts of Paris. It has a
Newen Studios, the Paris-headquartered production and distribution group, has strengthened its strategic partnership with European producer and financier Anton as it looks to become a major player in the feature film landscape. As part of the new agreement, Anton is giving Newen Studios a global budget of €50 million ($56.6 million) to co-invest in the
Race, class and cultural divides are probed with intriguing understatement in “God’s Country.” Julian Higgins’ first feature can be taken as a drama with thriller elements or a low-key thriller with atypical dramatic nuance, working either way as a quietly effective balance between genre, social issue and character study elements. Based on a James Lee
“The Matrix: Resurrections” fell out of the top five chart positions at the mainland Chinese box office over the latest weekend. The top spots were reclaimed by local, holdover titles. China Film Co.’s patriotic pandemic drama “Embrace Again” was the top film over the latest Friday to Sunday weekend, with a weekend score of $5.3
Having been in the spotlight the vast majority of her life, both onscreen as an actor and offscreen as a Hollywood cautionary tale, Evan Rachel Wood understands how media works. She sees the potential of its manipulation, and how the consequences can careen out of control. And so Wood made the conscious choice to take
Netflix’s epic Kanye West documentary, “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” will unfold in three feature-length parts, as the subtitle promises. (The first part premiered Sunday in the Sundance Film Festival, and gets a one-night theatrical release Feb. 10; the whole thing will unspool on successive Wednesdays on Netflix, starting Feb. 16.) But however the filmmakers carve
Krystin Ver Linden’s “Alice” is a righteous fable about a Black woman (Keke Palmer) who escapes from an isolated Georgia plantation that’s enslaved her, her husband (Gaius Charles) and her family for generations, and discovers a wonderland just outside the property line: 1973 America, where she learns she’s been emancipated for a century. “I never
The clumsy, drunken lunge and uninvited cheek-kiss that precipitates the action in wildly uneven French-Canadian comedy “Babysitter” is oddly appropriate for a film that can also feel like the victim of misguided, intrusive, if hardly malevolent exuberance. Far less coherent than her more focused and confident debut “A Brother’s Love,” Monia Chokri’s second feature is
Among Meat Loaf’s critical defenders — which, as you may have realized if you’ve paid much attention over the years, is a very niche market in the world of rock tastemakers — there’s a word that comes up over and over again, employed as a sort of backhanded compliment: “ridiculous.” I’ve used it myself, and
BBC Studios has unveiled the line-up for its annual Showcase and it includes creatives such as “Happy Valley” creator Sally Wainwright and the hosts of “Top Gear.” The three-day event, which will again be virtual for 2022, will be fronted by talent including “Strictly Come Dancing” co-host Claudia Winkleman, Clara Amfo and Anita Rani, as
He’s a cha cha real smooth talker. He’s 22, tall and handsome with a beard, but not a scruffy hipster beard — more like a post-millennial, post-ironic traditional beard, which sets off features that are finely chiseled in a Middle American corporate way. (When he grins, he looks like Donny Osmond.) He’s just out of
The fight for women to be recognized for their directorial achievements stretches back for decades, but, too often, the screenwriters aren’t given that same spotlight. However, this year presents a unique situation where female filmmakers have also penned the top awards contenders for adapted screenplay. These leading contenders include Jane Campion (“The Power of the
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” was gifted a sixth successive victory at the South Korean box office in a weekend with no releases of commercially significant films. “Spider-Man” played out to a lowball $1.23 million haul between Friday and Sunday. That was only 18% down on its previous weekend score and lifted its running total since
Brad Pitt has teamed up with Emmy-award winning music producer Damien Quintard to relaunch the historic Miraval Studios, where Pink Floyd, Sting, The Cure and AC/DC recorded their albums. It is being redesigned as an exclusive film and music production and post-production facility in a beautiful setting. The studio is located in a majestic vineyard
French VFX powerhouse MacGuff – with headquarters in Paris and offices in L.A. – is using proprietary artificial intelligence tools, in particular Face Engine and Body Engine, in a broad range of VFX projects. Current projects in the pipeline include Season 2 of “Lupin” for Netflix, “Hôtel du temps” for France Télévisions, and Christian Carion’s
How to take on the hypocrisy of megachurch culture on a micro budget? That’s the quandary at the center of the Ebo twins’ “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” An easy-target satire of a disgraced Southern Baptist pastor and the First Lady who stood by his side amidst scandal, packed as a Christopher Guest-style mock
In the same way that children at slumber parties share ghost stories after dark, a group of young boys regale each other with tales of horror in their shared dorm, as a kaleidoscope lamp casts strange, shifting patterns over their faces for extra atmosphere. These aren’t supernatural chestnuts or spooky urban legends, however, but grim
Unstoppable force meets immovable object in “To the End.” Rachel Lears’ documentary inspires in its portrait of youthful activists organizing to push impactful climate-change policies into American political reality — and exasperates in the resistance with which that urgent quest is greeted on both sides of the entrenched-power aisle. Covering several years of fast-moving events,
Gustav Möller, whose feature debut “The Guilty” won Sundance’s Audience award in 2018, is back with “The Dark Heart,” a gripping series based on Joakim Palmkvist’s bestselling true-crime thriller novel. Represented worldwide by REinvent International Sales, the five-part series is world premiering virtually at Sundance festival in the Indie Episodic section. The series was penned
Over recent years France has established itself as a key hub for VFX work, driven by the talent and creativity of local players and extensive public support schemes. In 2020, the VFX sector was given a further boost by the change to France’s Tax Rebate for International Production (TRIP) scheme, which now offers a 40%
Jennifer Hudson’s name is already written in the Academy Awards history books. At 25, she became the youngest Black woman to ever win an acting Oscar for her turn as Effie White in “Dreamgirls” (2006). She’s also the first to do it for a debut role. Her work in the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect” has
National Geographic Documentary Films has acquired “The Territory,” a timely look at indigenous-led land defense in the Amazon rainforest, following its premiere at the virtual Sundance Film Festival. The company plans to release “The Territory” theatrically later this year before the film heads to its streaming platforms. Alex Pritz directed “The Territory” in his feature
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