All News articles – Page 5228
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Walters joins Memory Of Water
UK actress Julie Walters is re-teaming with Lewis Gilbert, director of Educating Rita, the film which won her a Best Actress nomination at the 1983 Oscars.The Memory Of Water is currently shooting on the Isle Of Man before moving to Twickenham Studios in London. The film, which wraps on August ...
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New German production company attracts F.A.M.E.
German publicly listed media concern F.A.M.E. has taken a 30% stake in the newly-founded Munich-based production outfit BUETOW MAINUSCH Filmproduktion.BUETOW MAINUSCH Filmproduktion, which is currently developing a feature film project as well as a TV a series and several TV movies, has been established by Babelsberg TV's managing director Michael ...
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Scottish film chief quits threatened agency
John Archer, the chief executive of Scottish Screen, the national film agency, has quit his position after five years.Archer has been under fire since May, when it was revealed that the agency's lottery panel had awarded a £24,000 development grant to a film directed by his wife, Clara Glynn.While Archer ...
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Medusa's Bernasconi dies suddenly
Carlo Bernasconi, president of Rome-based mini major Medusa Film, died suddenly Thursday night in Milan. Aged 57, he was known to have been suffering from heart problems for some time.Bernasconi was one of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi's closest collaborators, first working with him in the construction industry in the 1970s, ...
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CinemaxX CFO quits as expansion plans collapse
Marius Schwarz, chief financial officer at German exhibition giant CinemaxX has quit following the posting of half-year company losses of $22.5m (DM52.3m)Subsequent restructuring of the company has led to the closure of the its foreign operations and the removal of its chief, Wim Oude Kotte.Stating its intention to revise its ...
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Cats And Dogs takes $9m, Scary 2 $8.75m on July 4
Warner Bros has a hit on its hands in North America with Cats And Dogs which grossed a meaty $9m on its opening day Wednesday. The family adventure, featuring digitally animated cats and dogs and the voices of Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon among others, led the field on the ...
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John Cooke quits SAG before he's even started
John F Cooke, who last week was named the new chief executive officer and national excutive director of the US actors union Screen Actors Guild (SAG), has walked away from the job.Cooke made his decision after receipt of a letter from nine members of the SAG board stating that the ...
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Vivendi, News Corp confirm Italian pay-TV merger
Vivendi Universal and News Corp yesterday confirmed that they have reached a deal for the merger of their their respective Italian pay-TV businesses TELE+ and Stream which will create a single operator called TELE+. Italian regulatory authorities have yet to okay the venture, details of which first surfaced in April.As ...
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Italy's distributors elect president
Italy's national distributors union, UNIDIM, has appointed Eagle Pictures' Giampaolo Sodano as its new president, replacing Andrea Occhipinti.In the same vein as last year's appointments, the position of vice president of the union has been split between an independent and a studio executive, with CDE's Jacopo Capanna and Richard Borg, ...
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Secret Agent to be made by Darwin, DNA
UK National Lottery franchise DNA Films has pacted with independent UK producer Lucy Darwin to develop and produce Leonardo Secret Agent, an action adventure comedy.Written by Jonny Kurzman, a former independent producer and short film-maker, Secret Agent was optioned by Darwin earlier this year. DNA will fund development, and company ...
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French cinema festival has little to celebrate
Lara Croft was the main beneficiary of the annual French promotional event La Fete du Cinema, which suffered this year from a combination of hot weather, a lack of strong titles and a strike by Gaumont cinemas' staff.Although admissions tripled during the three-day long promotion, compared to the previous week, ...
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Deauville announces festival details
The teaser campaign for the Deauville Festival of American Cinema has begun with confirmation that Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence will screen at the event.The film will be the centrepiece of a major Stanley Kubrick retrospective also featuring Killer Kiss, Eyes Wide Shut and the Jan Harlan-directed documentary Stanley Kubrick: ...
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Warner Home Video opens Hong Kong office
Warner Home Video (WHV) launched its own Hong Kong affiliate company on July 5, becoming the first Hollywood studio to capitalise on a lucrative VCD market by establishing a wholly-owned affiliate, with a 12-strong sales and marketing staff.An estimated 95% of all Hong Kong households own a VCD player - ...
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Taormina Festival plans Italian distribution boost
In a determined bid to aggressively encourage broader summer programming in Italy and boost the Taormina Film Festival's position as a European launchpad for US blockbusters, festival director Felice Laudadio has announced that he will yet again move the dates of the festival forward. This year's event runs June 29th ...
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Kinowelt eyes Czech space
Czech distributor Space Film is set to ink a deal with Germany's Kinowelt International to set up a joint venture that would cover distribution for the Czech and Slovak Republics, according to representatives of both companies. "In the Czech Republic we have a partner with whom we plan on forming ...
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UK box office down, but still looking up
Despite a year-on-year increase in UK box office receipts during four of the first six months of 2001, total revenues for the first half are down 0.9% to $439.5m (£313.8m) However, this is almost entirely due to the exceptional performance of one film last year: Toy Story 2.February was the ...
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Karlovy Vary opens 36th festival
Following the sudden cancellation of shooting on Boswell For The Defense, as revealed in Screen Daily yesterday (July 4), both Sir Michael Caine and the film's director Bruce Beresford, have decided not to attend the Karlovy Vary film festival. Caine, who was scheduled to receive an award for Outstanding Artist ...
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Shrek laughs all the way to the bank
US mega-hit Shrek took the UK box office by storm at the weekend when it opened with $6.6m (£4.7m) from 470 sites, an average of $14,023 per site. Although this figure included preview figures of $1.3m (£902,736) it wouldn't change its claim to the top spot in the UK chart ...
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Tom Sizemore joins up to Fear The X
Fresh from Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, Tom Sizemore has signed up to play the lead in the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's english-language debut, Fear The X, co-written by Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit To Brooklyn). Fear The X begins shooting in the US and Rio from November with ...
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Boswell For The Defence concludes early
Period legal drama Boswell For The Defence has ground to a halt after producers were unable to secure a final tranche of financing for the $14m film ahead of the scheduled start of photography in the UK next week.Boswell, set up between the UK's Scala Productions, German fund MBP and ...