All News articles – Page 4312

  • News

    StudioCanal slate includes two from Wong Kar-wai

    2006-05-08T11:34:00Z

    StudioCanal is heading to the CannesMarket with a line up that includes two films from Cannes jury president WongKar-wai along with the latest from Mathieu Kassovitz, Emir Kusturica andDavid Lynch and a sentimental documentary about a year in the lives of newbornbabies.Along with the previously announced Lady From Shanghai, which ...

  • News

    Mission accomplished as Paramount, UIP gross $70.3m

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Paramount's Mission: Impossible III swept across the international landscapeover the weekend as it grossed an estimated $70.3m from 7,390 sites in 57territories.Combined with the $48m domestic tally, the third instalment in theaction series took $118m worldwide to register the biggest global launch for thefranchise to date.The strength of the result ...

  • News

    Mission sequel underperforms domestically with $48m

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Paramount's Mission: Impossible III was the runaway winner over the weekendas expected but the estimated $48m three-day total fell far below expectations.JJ Abrams' feature directorial debut averaged $11,872 on anextremely wide 4,054 screens yet didn't take as much as the previous instalmentin 2000, which opened on $57.8m. The 1996 original ...

  • News

    Focus acquires Kimmel biopic for US release

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Focus Features has picked up domestic rights to Sidney KimmelEntertainment (SKE) and Mark Gordon Company's biopic Talk To Me, starring Don Cheadle and ChiwetelEjiofor.Kimmel International will commence sales at Cannes later thismonth on the true story of Ralph Waldo 'Petey' Green, an outspoken ex-con whobecame an iconic radio personality and ...

  • News

    New Films Int'l taps Kessler as business affairs chief

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Craig A Kessler has joined Beverly Hills-based New FilmsInternational as vice president of business and legal affairs.Reporting to New Films executive vice president Ron Gell, Kesslerwill be responsible for negotiating production and co-productions for NFI'sexpanding slate.Kessler previously served at Doug Liman's production companyHypnotic, and prior to that he served in ...

  • News

    Star backs high-def trio from Hong Kong's Yee

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Star Chinese Movies isinvesting in three high-definition films to be executive produced byaward-winning Hong Kong filmmaker Derek Yee.The first of the threefilms, love story Pandora's Booth,started filming last week in Hong Kong. Starring Hong Kong popidols Fiona Sit and Kenny Kwan, the film is directed by Mak Kai-kwong whostarted his ...

  • News

    Motocross legend David Bailey to get big screen treatment

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Rodney Wilson's Todd Gilmer Productions has secured the liferights to Motocross and Supercross legend David Bailey.Bailey started riding at 10 and went on to win every major pro Motocrossand Supercross event in the early 1980s before he was paralysed in a freakaccident and became a triathlon champion.'Bailey's real life is ...

  • News

    Weinstein Co brings Knight Rider to big screen

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    The Weinstein Company (TWC) is bringing the 1980s hit television seriesKnight Rider to thebig screen after acquiring rights from show creator Glen A Larson.Larson will write the screenplay and serve as executive producer throughGlen A Larson Productions.Knight Rider is a revenge story about a police investigator who survives ashooting and ...

  • News

    Blessed By Fire, War Tapes triumph at Tribeca

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Tristan Bauer's Argentina-Spain co-production, the wartime drama BlessedBy Fire won the bestnarrative feature at the fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which endedyesterday, while Deborah Scranton's War Tapes won the documentary award.Jurgen Vogel won best actor in a narrative feature for Germany's FreeWill and the CzechRepublic's Eva Holubov won corresponding best ...

  • News

    Umizaru sequel floods Japanese box office

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Japanese action title Umizaru 2: Test Of Trust, about a teamof coast guard divers, has scored the biggest opening of the year for adomestic film with a gross of $8.64m (Y964m) over the two-day weekend (May6-7).Produced by Fuji TV anddistributed by Toho, the film opened on 315 screens for an ...

  • News

    Perlman, Rea, Furmann join cast of Mutant Chronicles

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Ron Perlman, Stephen Rea and Benno Furmann have joined JohnMalkovich and Thomas Jane in Ed Pressman's upcoming sci-fi project TheMutant Chronicles.Pressman Film Corp, Grosvenor Park and Isle Of Man Filmfinanced the project and Voltage Pictures is handling international sales atCannes.Shooting is set to begin this summer in London and the ...

  • News

    Weitz returns to directing chair on New Line's Compass

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Anand Tucker has exited the job of directing New Line's children'sfantasy epic The Golden Compass, and he has been replaced by the project's original directorChris Weitz.Weitz relinquished his director's role in December 2004 citingtechnical challenges but stayed on as screenwriter.Now he gets a second bite of the cherry following the ...

  • News

    Hopkins' Dead Sheep wins international prize at Hot Docs

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    The awards for the 2006 Hot Docs Canadian InternationalDocumentary Festival were handed out in Toronto on May 5, with best Canadian documentarygoing to Shelley Saywell's Martyr Street.Best International Documentary went to Ben Hopkins' UK title 37Uses For A Dead Sheep,while best documentary short was awarded to Ibtisam Ma'arana's Badal from ...

  • News

    States and Stories take top prizes at Korea's Jeonju festival

    2006-05-08T00:00:00Z

    Canadian director DenisCote's Drifting States and Stories From The North, from Thaidirector Uruphong Raksasad, picked up the top prizes at South Korea's Jeonju InternationalFilm Festival (April 27 - May 5).Drifting States was awarded the Indie Vision Woosuk Award for films by first andsecond-time directors while documentary StoriesFrom The North took ...

  • News

    Transylvania festival to open with A Fost, Sau N-A Fost'

    2006-05-05T12:18:00Z

    Cannes Directors Fortnighttitle Corneliu Porumboiu's A Fost, Sau N-A Fost' will open the fifth Transylvania International Film Festival(TIFF) on June 2.The film is one of twoRomanian titles which will rush home from Cannes to compete for the grand prize at the ten-dayfestival in Cluj Napoca, Romania.Catalin Mitulescu's debut film Cum ...

  • News

    Munich to honour Makhmalbafs, Figgis and Levinson

    2006-05-05T11:32:00Z

    Thisyear's Munich Film Festival will be dedicating its retrospective to the Makhmalbaf family and a tribute to UK filmmaker Mike Figgis, while the 2006 CineMeritAward for his services to cinema will be presented to veteran US director BarryLevinson.Accordingto the festival organisers, this will be the first time that the films ...

  • News

    The Works to handle sales for Falardeau's Congorama

    2006-05-05T10:36:00Z

    UK-based sales company The Works International has takenrights to Philippe Falardeau's Congorama, premiering as theclosing-night film in Directors Fortnight at Cannes. The film stars previous Cannes bestactor winner Olivier Gourmet alongside Paul Ahmarani. Congorama followsa Belgian man (Gourmet) who discovers he was adopted and stumbles intomisadventures when he goes to ...

  • News

    Hyde Park to start Death Sentence for Fox

    2006-05-05T10:15:00Z

    Ashok Amritraj's LosAngeles-based Hyde Park Entertainment will fully finance and produce thethriller Death Sentence under itsfive-year first-look deal with 20th Century Fox.Fox willdistribute domestically and Hyde Park International will commence overseassales at Cannes on thefirst project to be greenlit under the deal,announced last summer.Saw creator James Wan is directingbased on ...

  • News

    Gold Circle recruits Samuell for My Sassy Girl remake

    2006-05-05T10:09:00Z

    BeverlyHills-based Gold Circle hashired Belgian filmmaker Yann Samuellto direct the remake of South Korean romantic comedy hit My Sassy Girl.Jae-Young Kwak's 2001 filmwas a huge success in South Korea and the English-language versionis being fast tracked for an autumn shoot.Theproject marks Gold Circle's firstcollaboration with Maverick Films and its ...

  • News

    StudioCanal deal will help Optimum become bigger

    2006-05-05T09:00:00Z

    Furtherdetails have emerged of how UK distributorOptimum Releasing is going to expand following its acquisition by French major,StudioCanal. Optimum'smanaging director Will Clarke refused to say how much StudioCanalpaid for the company he founded in 1999, but rival distributors werespeculating that it could have been as much as $31.7m (Euros 25m). ...