All articles by Jeremy Kay – Page 1423
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Neverland gets international debut in UK
All eyes will beon Russia this weekend as various distributors inundate the lucrative marketwith Shark Tale, Home On The Range, Princess Diaries 2 and Anacondas.Shark Tale, the number one international pictureand a key factor in this week's IPO in the US of DreamWorks' animation unit,opens in Russia through UIP on ...
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First Independent picks up two from Park for US
Gary Rubin's FirstIndependent Pictures has picked up US rights to Gary Sinyor's comedy Bob TheButler and Richard Jobson's actiontitle The Purifiers from Park Entertainment.Bob The Butler stars Tom Green as an accident-prone man who throughvarious mishaps becomes a butler and befriends a family. Brooke Shields andSimon Callow also star.Steven Manners ...
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Warner Int'l promotes Zeitz to vice president
Jeff Zeitz has been namedvice president of business systems planning at Warner Bros PicturesInternational.Zeitz will continue toreport to executive vice president of operations and finance Angelina Speareand will be responsible for daily oversight of the system's initiatives and identifybusiness opportunities.He will continue tocollaborate with senior management to establish project priorities ...
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Talent from Maria, Woodsman among Gotham Breakthrough nominees
Mos Def andCatalina Sandino Moreno are among Breakthrough Actor Award nominees and RodneyEvans and Nicole Kassell are in the running for Breathrough Director Awardhonours in IFP/New York's upcoming 14th Annual IFP Gotham Awards on Dec 1.Formerly knownas the Open Palm Award for Outstanding Directorial Debut, the BreakthroughActor Award features five ...
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Kimmel signs sales partnership with Capitol
Sidney Kimmel's Los Angelesand New York-based production company Sidney Kimmel Entertainment has signed anon-exclusive foreign sales partnership with Capitol Films in time for AFM.Capitol will represent NickCassavetes' drama Alpha Dog,starring Emile Hirsch, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone, aswell as the Julianne Moore/ Billy Crudup romantic comedy Trust The ...
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MGM Channel launches in Taiwan, will launch in Malaysia
Marking theone-year anniversary of the launch of MGM Channel for the Greater China andSoutheast Asia market, MGM announced yesterday (27) it has launched in Taiwanwith Malaysia to follow in "coming months".The announcementmeans MGM Channel now operates in seven countries in the region, including HongKong, Singapore, Indonesia, Macau and Thailand.The MGM ...
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Teen horror novel Scared Stiff comes to the screen
LosAngeles-based production house Puzzle Box Productions is teaming up withauthors Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner to adapt their Scholastic Booksteen horror bestseller Scared Stiff for the big screen.The story involves a brotherand sister who live above their parent's mortuary business and work together tostop the corpse of a vengeful mass ...
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Eddie Michaels relaunches LA PR firm as Insignia
LosAngeles-based publicity firm Eddie Michaels & Associates relaunches asInsignia Public Relations and Media Strategies today (28) with company founderEddie Michaels announcing three key promotions.Zachary Rosenfieldhas been named a principal of the firm and will continue to work closely withMichaels in managing strategic media campaigns for the firm's productioncompany, producer, and ...
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Lightning takes international rights on Mexican
LosAngeles-based sales and distribution company Lightning Entertainment has pickedup international rights outside the US and Mexico from Televisa Cine to the hitMexican satire A Day Without A Mexican.Sergio Arau's picture will make its market debut at theAFM in Santa Monica next week. It arrives on the back of a successful ...
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DreamWorks Animation raises $812m in IPO
In the first initial publicoffering by a major studio in seven years, DreamWorks Animation raised $812myesterday (26), far higher than analysts expected.While the projected range of shares was $23 to $25 per share, theIPO priced shares at $28 per share, according to reports.Riding high on the recent success of Shrek ...
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AFM name 31 films for Premiere Screenings
EddieO'Flaherty's boxing drama Fighting Tommy Riley and Nickolas Perry and Harry Thomason'spolitical documentary The Hunting Of The President are among a line-up of 31 independentfeatures selected for the AFM's Premiere Screenings Programme.The titles wereannounced yesterday (26) by Jonathan Wolf, executive vice president of theIndependent Film & Television Alliance and AFM ...
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MGM bullish with third quarter figures announcement
Powered by a 30% increase inworldwide video shipments of titles like Barbershop 2 and Agent Cody Banks 2, and the Jul 1 launch of the MGM Channel in Spain,MGM top brass remained upbeat as they announced third quarter operatingfigures.Third quarter revenues were$401.3m for the period ending Sept 30 2004 compared ...
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AWP takes the world on Satan's Little Helper
Los Angeles-basedinternational production and distribution company American World Pictures hasacquired worldwide rights to Satan's Little Helper, the first horror picture in more than 20 years bycult filmmaker Jeff Lieberman.The Halloween-themed picturemade its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year and centres on anaive child who becomes the unwitting ...
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Latvian, Croatian films tie for best film prize in Denver
Rich Devaney's debut feature and inner city drama BrooklynBound won the Emerging Filmmaker Award andDanny Schechter's WMD: Weapons Of Mass Deception took the Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentaryat the 27th Starz Denver International Film Festival.LailaPakalnina's Latvian school-set drama Python tied for the Krzysztof Kieslowski Awardfor Best Feature Film with ...
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Bush's Brain to screen pre-election on Sundance
Bush's Brain, the profile of George W Bush's chiefpolitical strategist Karl Rove, will screen on the Sundance Channel on the eveof the presidential election on Nov 1.Directed andproduced by Joseph Mealey and Michael Paradies Shoob, the documentary is basedon the bestselling book by journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater.Bush's Brain ...
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Reynolds, Reeds leave Curb to start Fabrication
KjehlRasmussen's fledgling Hollywood-based distributor Fabrication Films has pickedup its first two features for worldwide distribution and will bring them to theAFM in Santa Monica next week.The company,which plans to distribute six to nine titles a year including US theatricalreleases, has acquired all worldwide rights to Jay Anania's mystery Her NameIs ...
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BVI's King Arthur rules in China
King Arthur, which has been a star performer forBuena Vista International (BVI) this year, scored the distributor's thirdbiggest ever debut in China at the weekend.The epicadventure opened on an estimated $870,000 on 335 screens, ranking behind PearlHarbor and Pirates OfThe Caribbean in theall-time opening pantheon.Overall thepicture grossed $1.5m for a ...
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MGM teams with NTV-PLUS in Russia channel
MGM Networks hasannounced a deal with Russia's largest Pay-TV provider NTV-PLUS to localise anddistribute a Russian-language version of the MGM channel to NTV-PLUS'direct-to-home subscribers.The agreementfollows the launch in 2002 of MGM Channel in the former Soviet Union countrieson a number of cable and MMDS systems."We have beenassiduously trying to expand ...
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I, Robot takes Italy by storm with $2.8m opening
I, Robotis fast approaching the $200m milestone for Fox International following astrong Italian debut that raised the international running total to $193m.The sci-fi thriller grossed an estimated $2.8m on 456 Italianscreens for an unconfirmed first place.After an excellent run in Japan that saw it stay top for fiveconsecutive weeks, I, ...
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Myriad acquires world on Holland's Beethoven
Los Angeles-based Myriad Pictures has acquired worldwide rights toAgnieszka Holland's love story Copying Beethoven, starring Ed Harris and Diane Kruger.The story centres on a love affair between the composer and hisyoung assistant as he completed work on his last major piece, Symphony No.9.Michael Taylor and UK-basedDavid Pupkewitz serve as producers ...