All News articles – Page 3814
-
News
Iron Man writing duo to adapt Ludlum thriller for Universal
Universal has hired in-demand Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway to adapt Robert Ludlum's thriller The Sigma Protocol.Paul Sandberg and Marc Abraham will produce with Strike Entertainment's Eric Newman.The Sigma Protocol was the last complete book that Ludlum, whose Jason Bourne novels Universal adapted into a $950m global ...
-
News
Lionsgate delivers Transporter 3 to North America
Lionsgate has picked up North American rights to Transporter 3 in which Jason Statham will reprise his action role as the tenacious former Special Forces operative turned delivery man Chev Chelios.The Transporter films, which launched in 2002, have to date grossed more than $130m worldwide and close to $75m in ...
-
News
Rapper programmes LA Film Festival sidebar
The Los Angeles Film Festival has appointed the rapper Common as its Artist In Residence for the June 19-29 event.Common has programmed a sidebar of personally inspiring films that includes Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.The performer, who stars alongside Angelina Jolie and ...
-
News
Locarno's Frederic Maire will move to head Swiss Film Archive
The Locarno Film Festival will now have to start looking for a new artistic director after the news that the present incumbent Frederic Maire is to become the successor to Herve Dumont as head of the Swiss Film Archive from November 1, 2009.According to an agreement reached with the festival ...
-
News
Revolver joins UK's Film Distributors' Association
The UK's Film Distributors' Association (FDA) has added Revolver Entertainment as its newest member.The FDA now has 22 member companies.Revolver, which was founded in 1997, has released films including Kidulthood, Tell No One, andMy Brother Is An Only Child. Releases coming soon include Female Agents and The Wackness.Revolver chief executive ...
-
News
European Commission set to extend state aid rules until 2012
The European Commission is set to extend the current rules for state aid for film support schemes until 2012.The move is designed to allow more breathing space while it considers the long-term future of the rules. The announcement came jointly from European Commissioners Viviane Reding and Neelie Kroes, who are ...
-
News
Australia's Prodigy, UK's TFD rejoin for thriller Road Train
Producers Michael Robertson of Australia's ProdigyMovies and Paul Cowan and Chris Wheeldon of the UK's TFD will again work together on Road Train.The supernatural thriller will mark the debut of director Dean Francis, working from a script by Clive Hopkins.Prodigy and TFD also worked together on crocodile horror hit Black ...
-
News
Finnish industry starts sound awards to honour Jyrala
Film director Mika Kaurismäki, singer/actor Samuli Edelmann, producer Pete Eklund, sound designer Joonas Jyrälä and Kari Jyrälä are working together to start a new foundation to honour late Finnish sound designer Paul 'Pappa' Jyrala, who died in 2007.The new association plans to launch the Pappa Awards for New Talents. Sony ...
-
News
Astro Boy creator Tezuka's MW gets live action treatment
Legendary manga artist and animator Osamu Tezuka's MW is being adapted into a live-action film starring Hiroshi Tamaki.Based on a manga serialised in Big Comic between 1976 and 1978, MW stars Tamaki as a high level banker leading a double life as a calculating serial killer. He takes revenge on ...
-
News
Bavaria takes on new Gronenborn, Haussmann films
Bavaria Film International has picked up worldwide distribution rights to new films by Esther Gronenborn and Leander Haussmann.Gronenborn's Kaifeck Murder, which is headlined by Benno Fuermann and Cannes competition jury member Alexandra Maria Lara, is a fictional story based on a real murder case from the small Bavaria village of ...
-
News
The Works plans September UK release for Jar City
The Works UK Distribution is taking on the UK release of Baltasar Kormakur's Oscar submission and local box-office hit Jar City.The thriller is based on award-winning Icelandic novel Tainted Blood (Myrin). It stars Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson as a police inspector who has to investigate a murder that might be tied ...
-
News
Kang to head KOFIC
South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has appointed Kang Han-sup as the new chairman of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). A well-known critic, Kang has been a professor of film at Seoul Institute of Arts since 1994. His experience also includes serving on the Media Ratings Board in ...
-
News
Sex defies predictions with $56m US opening
New Line's long awaited TV adaptation Sex And The City defied low-ball predictions and elbowed Indiana Jones off the top perch to launch at number one through Warner Bros on an estimated $55.7m.If the nay-sayers had been concerned about the breadth of the demographic that would turn out to support ...
-
News
Europe goes Sex mad, but Indy still on top overseas
Knocked off its domestic perch, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull stayed on top overseas despite hot weather across Germany and central Europe as a muscular $71.5m haul from 8,439 sites in 60 territories boosted the score to $266m.This weekend's domestic champion Sex And The City came ...
-
News
Mike Leigh joins speakers at the International Screenwriters Festival
Mike Leigh joins some of the best-known names in the UK film industry for this year's International Screenwriters' Festival in Cheltenham.The event (July 1-3) has established itself in the last three years as one of the key events in the industry calendar, bringing together business and screenwriters.Leigh is enjoying another ...
-
News
Nuri Bilge Ceylan to lead Sarajevo Competition jury
The Sarajevo Film Festival has announced the feature film competition jury for its August event.Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, fresh from his Best Director win in Cannes for Three Monkeys, will serve as president of the jury.The other jury members are UK director Hugh Hudson, Croatian actress Marija Skaricic, German ...
-
News
The Match Factory announces further sales for Cannes slate
Cologne-based sales agent The Match Factory has unveiled another raft of deals for this year's Cannes slate in addition to the previously annonuced sales.By the end of the market, the animated documentary and competition film Waltz With Bashir by Ari Folman had been sold to over 40 territories, the latest ...
-
News
Films Distribution picks up Heisenberg's The Robber
Paris-based sales agent Films Distribution will handle international sales on Benjamin Heisenberg's second feature The Robber (Der Räuber) which completed a first block of shooting last week in Lower Austria and Vienna, including scenes during the 25th Vienna City Marathon.The film is based on the novel of the same name ...
-
News
Pathe sees strong Cannes Market; including a dozen Cheri deals
Pathe International has announced a slew of deals after a successful Cannes Market.Stephen Frears' Cheri, making its market premiere, sold to Italy (Rai), Latin America (California Filmes), CIS (Maywin Media), South Korea (Mars Film), Portugal (Castello Lopes), the Middle East (Teleview), Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Vizion), Greece (Audiovisual), ...
-
News
Preview: International Screenwriters Festival
In three years, the International Screenwriters Festival has claimed an important place in the industry calendar.Interview with festival head David Pearson The speakers Pitching events Sponsors Official siteFounder and festival head David Pearson, of Arturi Films,took the initiative to start the event in 2006, convinced that there needed to be ...