It seems obvious, but the value of an artist’s archive depends entirely on the artist: Once you get past the music and instruments and notebooks and start getting into things like clothing and furniture and other possessions, it usually gets a lot less interesting. But where the shoe collections of, say, Bob Dylan or Pink
Creating a new Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavor is the central challenge of a new series set to debut on Food Network as well as the streaming outlet Discovery Plus. “Ben & Jerry’s: Clash of the Cones” debuts Monday, August 16 at 9 p.m. eastern on both outlets. The four-episode series is hosted by Molly
Acclaimed dramatist and playwright Jack Thorne will deliver this year’s James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Thorne’s credits include the West End play “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child,” Netflix film “Enola Holmes” and TV series “His Dark Materials.” As a disabled professional, Thorne is a vocal champion, campaigner and ally of
Studiocanal has acquired worldwide rights to Michel Bussi’s bestselling young adult saga “N.E.O” and will adapt it as a 12-part series with Authentic Prod. “N.E.O” will be a quadrilogy, the first two of which have been published by PKJ (EDITIS Group). Set in a world where adults have disappeared, there are shelters for the two
Nadav Lapid was used to mining the past. With 2014’s “The Kindergarten Teacher,” he worked childhood poems into the script, while basing his Berlinale winning follow-up, “Synonyms,” on his early days in France after leaving Israel. But with “Ahed’s Knee,” which premieres on July 7 in competition at Cannes, the filmmaker confronted uncharted terrain: his
A beloved ceramic sugar bowl drops from the mantelpiece in “The Souvenir Part II,” and for a few seconds, it’s as if the world itself has shattered and split open. All the air is sucked from the room, replaced with a thick, still silence of devastation, apology and irrational fury. It doesn’t last: It’s just
Muriel Sauzay, Pathe Intl.’s former head, and Agnès Mentré, Wild Bunch’s former acquisition topper, have launched Maremako, a Paris-based banner banner with a special interest in adaptations and remakes. The company’s first slate includes an English-language remake of “Stalk” with Endeavor Content, in association with Drake’s DreamCrew and Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Prods.; and “French
“Mothering Sunday’s” Odessa Young has been tapped for award-winning director Thordur Palsson’s upcoming psychological horror “The Damned.” The film will see Young star as Eva, a 19th-century widow tasked with making an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a ship sinks off the coast of her impoverished Icelandic fishing village. Any attempt to
Chilean horror maestro Jorge Olguin and his producers will be at Cannes’ Marché du Film and Producers Network to seek international co-producers and distributors for his upcoming sci-fi horror film “The Shape of Fear” (“La Forma del Miedo”), described as a cross between “The Andromeda Strain” and “The Thing.” Its teaser trailer, unveiled exclusively in Variety, opens with a
London-based production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has inked the key first deals on psychological thriller “John and the Hole,” directed by Pascual Sisto, on the back of the film’s virtual market premiere at Cannes. The film was written by Nicolás Giacobone, an Oscar-winner with “Birdman,” who adapted his short story “El Pozo.” “John
When she was growing up in Croatia, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović would often spend summers on her grandparents’ island in the Adriatic Sea, an experience “that really informed my childhood,” she says. Years later, as she was pursuing a Master’s degree in film at Columbia University, a simple image came to her: the deep blue of
French-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch grew up in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, which he says is “quite violent,” during the late ’70s and early ’80s when hip-hop was emerging in France. In the mid-’90s he moved to Casablanca, where he is now based, and became involved with the sprawling shantytown of Sidi Moumen on that city’s outskirts, a wasteland where extreme poverty
Endeavor’s China offshoot announced Thursday that it has acquired the Shanghai-headquartered digital marketing agency Mailman Group and its Seven League subsidiary. Prior reports estimate the deal to be valued at $60 million. The move comes as Endeavor seeks to expand its footprint in the sports marketing space in China and the broader Asia-Pacific region. The
Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, a regular at Cannes, is currently in post-production on his next feature “Dobaaraa,” a Hindi-language adaptation of Oriol Paulo’s 2018 Spanish-language film “Mirage.” Kashyap had read the script of “Mirage” before the film was made and was taken by it. This is the first time Kashyap has done a remake. “It
Egyptian director and producer Ali El Arabi, who made a splash at virtual Sundance with doc “Captains of Zaatari,” about the soccer dreams of young Syrian refugees, is shooting another soccer-related project, this one centered on fan fever in the leadup to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. “Ashish’s Journey” (working title), El Arabi’s new
SUN VALLEY, Idaho — A funny thing happened on the way to Sun Valley this year. Despite predictions that turnout for the annual Allen & Co. conference would be lighter after last year’s COVID-forced cancellation, attendance at the three morning sessions on the first full day of the gathering was strong and included the mega-mogul
The position of Saudi women as second-class citizens receives a potent metaphoric visualization in Saudi helmer-writer Shahad Ameen’s parable-like debut drama, “Scales.” Revealing more through imagery than dialogue, the tale unfolds on a barren island where tradition dictates that each family sacrifice a daughter to the sea maidens to ensure the local fishermen a good
On Thursday, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will highlight the work of Black VFX artists through an interactive online panel discussion. Lyndon Barrois, Andrew Roberts, Audrea Topps Harjo, Lauren F. Ellis, Corey Turner, and Greg Anderson are those who will be sharing their work, obstacles and discussing their career path. Jacqueline Stewart, chief artistic
African multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Touré had become a legend by the time he died in 2006. His music was used in a song for “Black Panther,” and he was thought of as a pioneer of African desert blues. Touré’s son Vieux Farka Touré has also made waves around the world with his genre-crossing music. That
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told a judge on Wednesday that it is ready to bring Harvey Weinstein to trial within four months on charges of rape and sexual assault. Weinstein is still in prison in upstate New York, where he has been fighting his extradition since April. A judge in Buffalo, N.Y.,
I don’t know about you, but expectations have a way of interfering with my enjoyment of a film, so I try my best to set them aside and approach each new movie with an open mind. Still, I must confess that as soon as the 2021 Cannes Film Festival lineup was announced, one selection set
For years, I’ve been longing for someone to make a documentary about the Velvet Underground. They are, along with the Beatles and the Stones, one of the three seminal groups in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. So surely they deserve to be captured and memorialized in a film that does them justice. There’s a
Sometimes the peace-and-love message has to be celebrated in near-drive-by status, at least when there’s still a pandemic going on and you’re a Beatle trying not to draw a crowd. And so Ringo Starr’s annual birthday celebration happened in somewhat furtive fashion Wednesday, as he met with press and posed for photos in front of
Creative Artists Agency announced that it has signed all six members of New Edition: Ronnie DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill. The company will represent the group in all areas worldwide, including touring, theatre, literature, TV/film, production, composing and others. Since 1984, the group has released six studio albums and
Disney Streaming Services tapped Ajay Arora, previously Netflix’s director of product innovation for growth, as senior VP of product, commerce and experimentation. In the new role, Arora will oversee and build out the Disney Streaming group’s commerce and experimentation teams in San Francisco, where he will be based, as well as in New York and
When it comes to moviegoers, there are few that assemble as forcefully as the ones who pledge allegiance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet for the past two years, superhero enthusiasts have been deprived of Spandex-filled theatrical offerings as the pandemic forced studios to postpone “Black Widow,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang Chi and the
SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Stacey Bendet Eisner, CEO and creative director of fashion brand Alice + Olivia, has attended the annual Allen & Co. conference at this mountain resort for more than 10 years. But this time around, she’s coming as the leader of a tech startup. Bendet Eisner is the founder of Creatively, an
European film-TV powerhouse Studiocanal and The Picture Company are developing “Bedroom Window,” adapting the novel that inspired Curtis Hanson’s 1987 movie, with scribe Abby Ajayi set to write the script, the latest project from one of the most productive of Europe-U.S. film production alliances. Hanson’s original movie forms part of the nearly 6,000-title film library
Director Joshua Zeman never forgot the first time he saw a whale. He was a teen then, humbled by the majestic sight, reminded of the earth’s awe-inspiring power. With “The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52,” he harnesses the cavernous passion he formed for the ocean and marine life at an impressionable age and pours
Paul Verhoeven has made a career out of pushing cinematic boundaries, particularly when it comes to depicting sex or violence on screen. In films like “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls,” he battled the ratings boards, while blockbusters like “Total Recall” and “Robocop” popularized R-rated action. All that changed in the aughts, as Hollywood abandoned those projects,