BFI festivals director Tricia Tuttle is stepping down from the role after 10 years. This month’s edition of the London Film Festival will be her last in the post. Tuttle has, for the last five years, led as director the BFI London Film Festival as well as BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. She was
Month: October 2022
Mani Ratnam’s Tamil-language epic “Ponniyin Selvan: 1” has scored a worldwide opening weekend of INR2 billion ($24.5 million), according to numbers released by co-producers Madras Talkies. In the process, the film has rewritten some records for Tamil-language cinema. The film released on Sept. 30 and collected $9.8 million on that day, making it the highest
Infilmpact and ODA Film have set a new feature documentary about the ongoing invasion in Ukraine titled “The War Behind Closed Doors.” The project is officially supported by the Ukrainian State Film Agency (USFA). “The War Behind Closed Doors” tells the story of March 31, 2002, when Ukrainian armed forces liberated Kyiv from the Russian
Disney’s 20 cable and broadcast TV networks were restored Sunday night to the lineups of Dish Network’s services following a nearly 48-hour blackout, after the parties reached a “handshake agreement” on a new distribution deal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution said the pact covering Dish TV and Sling
Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh has been upped to deputy CEO of the Canal+ Group. The New Zealand-born executive has been with the company since 2008, when she first joined Studiocanal. She has previously held the positions of head of international sales and managing director of Studiocanal U.K. In 2019 she became CEO of Studiocanal, which
Veteran media executive Fotini Paraskakis is launching Empire of Arkadia, an Asia-focused content company. The firm expects to unveil its debut slate in time for MIPCOM later this month. Paraskakis is joined in the venture by Japanese media executive Shigeko (Cindy) Chino and former Discovery APAC and EMEA president, Arthur Bastings. The trio describe Empire
Simon Cowell has securitized the Got Talent franchise in what’s been described as a “groundbreaking” $125 million deal. The securitization relates to the intellectual property behind the franchise, including both the U.S. and British versions of the show, “America’s Got Talent” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” As part of the deal, the assets to the franchise
The first two seasons of “The Mole” came at a remarkable moment for the genre of reality TV. Premiering in 2001, the series was made during that brief and delicate time when competitors on mainstream broadcast unscripted series hadn’t yet figured out how to slip into the roles with which we’re familiar. Tasked with determining
FORMULA ONE SHIFTS GEARS Fresh from a soggy Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday, TV coverage of Formula One motor racing is set to shift broadcasting partner in Asia-Pacific. Sports Business reports that pay-TV broadcaster beIN Sports is finalizing a multi-year deal beginning in 2023 reaching across most of its Asia-Pacific footprint, but excluding Australia, where
Comedy action film “Confidential Assignment 2: International” remained at the top of the South Korean box office for the fourth consecutive weekend. Its enduring success came despite a slew of new releases intended to catch the National Foundation Day holiday weekend traffic. Between Friday and Sunday “Confidential Assignment 2” garnered $2.19 million from 304,000 ticket
Patriotic action film “Homecoming” dominated cinemagoing in China over the weekend with a nearly $60 million haul. But the National Day holiday season is in a deep slump compared with recent years. Directed by Rao Xiaozhi, the film is yet another tale of a heroic rescue of Chinese citizens in danger in foreign lands. In
Sacheen Littlefeather, the activist for Native Americans who declined Marlon Brando’s Oscar for “The Godfather” on his behalf at the 1973 Academy Awards, died Sunday at 75, the Academy of Motion Pictures said. She had been suffering from breast cancer. In June, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences apologized to Littlefeather for her
Japanese indie sales firm Free Stone Productions has added a quartet of new titles to its line-up in time for the rights markets in Busan and Tokyo. The company is unable to travel to the Busan International Film Festival and will meet with clients virtually at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market. The TIFFCOM market,
Hollywood gathered Sunday to pay tribute to Bert Fields, the legendary lawyer who was in the middle of high profile battles spanning several decades. Fields died in August at the age of 93. Among those paying their respects were Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dustin Hoffman and Michael Ovitz, who each recalled him as a loyal friend. Elaine
Billy Eichner has shared his thoughts regarding the meager box office opening for his LGBTQ romantic comedy “Bros,” writing that “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up.” In a thread posted to his official Twitter, Eichner, who wrote, produced and stars in “Bros,” asserted that he is “very proud”
Country singer-songwriter Hardy and his touring team are recovering from a bus accident that occurred early Sunday morning. The singer took to social media to update fans, revealing that all four people who were on the bus, including himself, “were all treated for significant injuries.” Michael Wilson Hardy was on the road after completing two
Two MTV Documentary films vying for Academy Awards attention — Ondi Timoner’s “Last Flight Home” and Tanaz Eshaghian’s short “As Far as They Can Run” — garnered the top nonfiction honors at the 23rd annual Woodstock Film Festival. “Last Flight Home,” about Timoner and her family’s last days with her father, won the best documentary
Terry Bradshaw took a moment on this week’s “Fox NFL Sunday” broadcast to address concerns regarding his health status, revealing that he has undergone two surgeries within the last year after being diagnosed with bladder cancer and a form of skin cancer. “Last week on the show, I ran out of breath… A lot of
There’s a famous photograph by Henry Diltz of Joni Mitchell playing guitar in Mama Cass Elliot’s Laurel Canyon backyard, with David Crosby holding up a joint in back and Eric Clapton sitting cross-legged watching transfixed. There, in the foreground, is Cass’ nine-month-old daughter Owen, teething on a film canister. “I often wonder what I was thinking,”
Very few modern bands have a “Mr. Brightside.” Even fewer are able to whip it out in the first five minutes of a show and continue to entertain an arena for another 90 minutes. And even fewer are those who can hold their own in a three-song duet with Bruce Springsteen as he beams with
Just a few hours before Ringo Starr’s scheduled tour stop on Saturday night at Michigan’s Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, the former Beatle announced he would not be able to perform due to an unspecified ailment. In a statement shared by the venue, Starr’s team confirmed that the 82-year-old did not have COVID but
Paramount’s “Smile” debuted to a sizzling $22 million this weekend, easily topping the domestic box office. The horror film beat out the weekend’s other new wide release, Universal’s LGBTQ romantic comedy “Bros,” which landed in fourth place with a paltry $4.8 million bow. “Smile” ranks as one of the better original horror openings of the
Sean Penn, who was recently close to the front lines of the war in Ukraine, is playing a fictionalized version of himself in satirical Australian series “C*A*U*G*H*T.” The show is an original production for Australian streamer Stan and has now started production in Sydney’s Fox Studios. The six-part series follows four Australian soldiers sent on
“Adipurush,” one of the most anticipated Indian films of 2023, unites the talents of Prabhas (the Baahubali franchise) and Om Raut, who directed Ajay Devgn-starring “Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior,” the biggest Indian box office hit of 2020 with a $50 million gross. “Adipurush” is Raut’s take on Indian mythological epic “Ramayana,” by Valmiki, where Rama,
Nicole Kidman’s AMC ad has achieved a new level of pop culture prominence. The so campy, you have to love it ode to the power of cinema has been meme’d, made into t-shirts and inspired audiences to stand and salute since it first started airing over a year ago. And now, “Saturday Night Live” has
A total of 164 feature films will play at this year’s London Film Festival, alongside an abundance of shorts, TV series and an expanded program of XR (extended reality) works — and that’s in a comparatively slimmed-down era of curation for a public-facing festival that has long aimed to bring the best of the global
In Leni Lauritsch’s gritty sci-fi thriller “Rubikon,” the final frontier could well be humankind’s last refuge. The film, which stars Julia Franz Richter, Georg Blagden (“Versailles”) and Mark Ivanir, screens in the Zurich Film Festival’s Focus Competition. Set in a dark future in which a polluted and barely sustainable Earth is plagued by corporate armies
Vijay Sethupathi (“Vikram”), Aditi Rao Hydari (“Hey Sinamika”), Arvind Swami (“Thalaivi”) and Siddharth Jadhav (“Tamasha Live”) will star in film “Gandhi Talks.” While plot details are under wraps, the film is described as a dark comedy. A teaser for the film was released on Oct. 2, 2022, the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. The film
After a summer filled with cast exits and goodbyes, “Saturday Night Live” opened its 48th Season by poking fun at both frequent target President Trump and its own rebuilding period. The sketch starred the premiere’s host Miles Teller and cast member Andrew Dismukes as sports stars and brother’s Peyton and Eli Manning, in a parody
“Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial” sounds like the tawdriest of TV-movies, with any vestige of shame left on the cutting-room floor. It definitely is that, yet it’s worth noting that this exact sort thing has been around for decades. It just didn’t used to come off the assembly line quite so quickly. In the ’70s,