“Asian Persuasion,” the film directing debut of three-time Tony Award- and Grammy-winning producer Jhett Tolentino, has set North American distribution and will have a sales launch at the imminent American Film Market. Hawaii-based Scatena & Rosner Films has acquired the worldwide rights to the romantic comedy. The film tells the story of a lovable underachiever who […]

The last element of a trilogy exploring subterranean spaces that began with the 2015 “Aragane” and continued with the 2019 “Cenote,” Oda Kaori’s docudrama “Underground” ventures from a subway in Sapporo to caves (locally called “gama”) in Okinawa. It also marks a new direction for the director, whose previous trilogy entries were documentaries. “Underground” is […]

Unlike its rivals, NBCUniversal long ago developed a healthy fear of zombies. Not the shambling, undead kind that lurch around trying to eat brains, but rather the media variety: “Undead” cable networks that long ago gave up all hopes of cultivating audiences around the clock and instead run only a few hours of original programming, […]

The Playmaker has closed a U.S. distribution deal for Canadian crime thriller “The G” with Dark Sky Films. Directed by Karl R. Hearne, the film follows Ann Hunter, a.k.a. The G, who battles a corrupt eldercare system. “The G” will be represented by the Playmaker at next week’s American Film Market. Inspired by real events, […]

“Black Mirror’s” Samuel Blenkin and “House of the Dragon” star Emily Carey have been cast as the leads in upcoming indie feature “Misper.” A darkly comic film, “Misper” follows Leonard Lowry (Blenkin) and his colleagues as they deal with the disappearance of their friend Elle Pritchard (Carey). “The employees of a dying seaside hotel have […]

Isabel May, best known for Taylor Sheridan’s “1883,” is in final discussions to star in “Wild World,” the upcoming revenge thriller from Emmy-nominated husband and wife duo Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly (“Queenpins.” “Beneath the Harvest Sky”). The feature — based on a script by Gaudet and Pullapilly — follows a young woman who must use her […]

Film Constellation is launching international sales on “About a Hero,” directed by Piotr Winiewicz, an AI-driven murder mystery set to open the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Variety premieres the film’s teaser here. The film is an adaptation of a script co-written by an AI trained on Werner Herzog’s body of work, with his […]

N Lite animation studio has unveiled a new partnership with Emmy-winning Japanese anime studio Gonzo K.K. (“Afro Samurai”) and Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” director Peter Ramsey to produce two animated projects: a noir thriller feature titled “Ripper” and the sci-fi adventure series “Hotaru.” Ramsey is lined up to executive producer and co-write the screenplay […]

In a cinematic first, both Queen Elizabeth II from “The Crown” and the real Queen Elizabeth feature in “Paddington in Peru.” Olivia Colman’s all-singing, guitar-wielding and “The Sound of Music”-inspired nun — who runs a “home for retired bears” — is one of the noisier (and wildly entertaining) new additions to the franchise. But the […]

PHILANTHROPY Cate Blanchett and Wyclef Jean are set to join Benedict Cumberbatch’s charity event “A Night In The Theatre.” The evening, a fundraising edition of Cumberbatch’s annual event “Letters Live,” will take place at London’s KOKO on Nov. 7. Cumberbatch was recently announced as an ambassador for the KOKO Foundation where he will focus on […]

Despite blue skies over Greece’s second city ahead of the opening ceremony, the 65th Thessaloniki Film Festival kicks off Oct. 31 under clouds of uncertainty, with the war in Ukraine raging toward its three-year anniversary and the year-old Israel-Hamas conflict spilling into neighboring countries and threatening to engulf the entire Middle East. The U.S., meanwhile, […]

Pulsar Content has boarded “Howl,” an anticipated movie executive produced by  Leonardo DiCaprio and celebrated environmental activist Jane Goodall. The Paris-based company is executive producing as well as handling international sales and will introduce the project to buyers at the AFM in Las Vegas. Unfolding through the animals’ perspective, the survival tale revolves around Harry, a recently […]

Veteran director Johnnie To discussed the challenges of filmmaking under increased regulation in Hong Kong during a conversation with Japanese filmmaker Yu Irie at the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). “There is a lot of regulation in Hong Kong, especially when it comes to expression,” To said Thursday when asked about balancing culture with freedom. […]

U.K. media regulator Ofcom has fined right-leaning broadcaster GB News £100,000 ($130,000) for “breaking due impartiality rules” during Rishi Sunak’s February live show “People’s Forum: The Prime Minister.” According to a statement released on Ofcom’s website on Thursday, an “earlier investigation found that an appropriately wide range of significant viewpoints was not presented and given […]

How does a 17-year-old singer from Greece end up sharing the screen with one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the world? For newcomer Aggelina Papadopoulou, who plays young Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” it all started with a mysterious request sent to her music school in Athens. The request asked for female singers […]

Paris-based sales agent Indie Sales has boarded “Maya, Give Me a Title,” a stop-motion project directed by Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and narrated by Pierre Niney (“The Count of Monte Cristo”). The film revolves around Gondry’s long-distance relationship with his daughter. As they live in two different countries, Gondry asks his […]

Alex Boden, producer of Max/Wowow series “Tokyo Vice,” outlined the hurdles and triumphs of filming the first U.S. studio streamer series shot entirely in Japan during a keynote at the Tokyo International Film Festival. The keynote was delivered as part of a Motion Picture Association event at the festival. Created by J.T. Rogers and starring […]

Asian film and tech leaders gathered at TIFFCOM, the market allied to the Tokyo International Film Festival, to discuss the transformative impact of generative AI on film production. They highlighted its potential for dramatic cost reductions and new investment opportunities. Kevin D.C. Chang, AI director and CEO of Metavision Co., South Korea, demonstrated how AI […]

Veteran action movie ace Sammo Hung, Japanese actor Kurata Yasuaki and action choreographer-turned director Tanigaki Kenji had a ball on Thursday in Tokyo as they took a light-hearted trip down memory lane to discuss the state of martial art action movies from Hong Kong. In a panel discussion held in the confines of TIFFCOM, the […]