All News articles – Page 5353
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Hanway Films boards Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence
HanWay Films, the sales arm of UK producer Jeremy Thomas' Recorded Picture Company, has boarded Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, the Australian-born director's first project in his home country after 12 years in the US.Written by Christine Olsen, the adaptation of Doris Pilkington's book follows three Aboriginal girls forcibly taken from ...
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EM.TV exchanges investments for Crown Media stake
German family programming and merchandising giant EM.TV is taking an 8.2% stake in the US' Crown Media Holdings in exchange for its stakes in Crown's US pay-TV station Odyssey Network and Asian Kermit Channel.EM.TV inherited a 22.5% stake in the Odyssey Channel and 50% of the Kermit Channel in February ...
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Kinowelt enters Russia with Scriba's Gemini
German mini-studio Kinowelt is continuing its expansion into Eastern Europe by establishing a Russian distribution outfit, Gemini Kinomir, in partnership with Bodo Scriba's Moscow-based distributor Gemini International.The new company will handle Kinowelt's existing slate and take over from Gemini International as exclusive distributor of 20th Century Fox product in Russia. ...
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Patriot ends event movie roll-out in Oz
One of the last event blockbusters on release in Australia this winter, The Patriot, took $1.6m (A$2.8m) from 325 screens on its opening four-day weekend (July 20-23). This gave the Australian office of Columbia TriStar its third biggest opening weekend ever and knocked last weekend's opener X-Men off the top ...
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BSkyB ups movie spend as subscriptions top 4.5m
Movie costs at UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB rose 17% to $421m (£278m) in the year ending June 30 2000, the company announced on Wednesday as part of its annual results.BSkyB's total programming costs came in at $1.43bn (£946m), with sports costs representing 41%. The company, 37.5% owned by Rupert Murdoch's ...
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Contact 2000 co-production market set for Berlin
Three international cultural subsidy groups will host a co-production and co-financing market, Contact 2000, in Berlin, from November 24 to 26. Brussels-based Linking Market Forces (LMF), an association accredited by the EU's MEDIA Programme, along with Societe de developpement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), an agency of Quebec's provincial government, and ...
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Intertainment reports 848% jump in revenues
Germany's Intertainment has reported an 848% increase in revenues to $64.5m (DM134.4m) for the first half of 2000, while pre-tax profit improved 949% to $30.5m (DM63.6m).The company said the rapid rise was partly due to its recent move into selling film and TV rights for the whole of Europe rather ...
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Herod's Law cleans up at Mexico's Oscars
Political satire Herod's Law (La Ley De Herodes), directed by Luis Estrada, swept the 42nd Ariels, Mexico's equivalent of the Oscars, on Monday night, grabbing 10 awards from 14 nominations.The film, which openly criticises Mexico's former ruling party, the PRI, survived a censorship brouhaha last year that led to the ...
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Galaxy signs PPV deal with Buena Vista
Latin American satellite broadcaster Galaxy Latin America (GLA) has signed a 10-year pay-per-view (PPV) agreement with Buena Vista International.The accord gives Galaxy PPV rights to live-action features from Disney, Touchstone, Hollywood and Miramax. Galaxy, jointly owned by Hughes Electronics' DirecTV and Venezuelan media giant Cisneros, broadcasts to one million subscribers ...
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CSA clears Vivendi Seagram merger
French broadcast regulator, the CSA, has today given its approval to the three-way merger between Canal Plus, Vivendi and Seagram. It was previously concerned that the full takeover of Canal Plus would breach the country's regulations on media ownership.The original takeover proposal involved the creation of a new company, Canal ...
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Euro multimedia titan Villalonga tipped to quit
Juan Villalonga, the embattled chief of telecoms and entertainment giant Telefonica, has reportedly stepped down after a little more than four years at the helm of Spain's largest corporation. His resignation comes less than 48 hours after Telefonica won shareholder support for its purchase of Dutch entertainment force Endemol.According to ...
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Oz distribs warn against day and date releases
Although simultaneous global release dates are being encouraged by some US distribution executives, their Australian counterparts have cautioned against not carefully weighing up all factors when dating blockbusters, including the competition and timing of the school holidays."There is a lot of merit in tent-pole pictures going simultaneously in as many ...
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Sogecable shares up 80% since IPO
Spanish audiovisual group Sogecable's shares have gained in value by more than 80% after one year on the Spanish stock exchange.Closing share price on Friday was Euros43.02, up from Euros23.50 at the launch of Sogecable's initial public offer one year ago. Sogecable has trailed Telefonica internet subsidiary Terra this year ...
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Australia's Paper Bark develops White adaptation
Paper Bark Films producer Antony Waddington and the husband-and-wife team of director Jon Hewitt (Redball) and actor Belinda McClory (The Matrix) are co-writing an adaptation of Australian writer Patrick White's novel The Eye Of The Storm. The project has already won the support of the inaugural A$10,000 Rodney Seaborn Playwrights ...
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Israel's Wolgin prize split between Besame, Sister
Josef Pitchhadze's Besame Mucho and Dan Wolman's Foreign Sister were jointly awarded the feature prize at this year's Wolgin Awards, a competition for domestic productions which runs as part the Jerusalem Film Festival (July 13-22).An additional script award went to The Investigation directed by Marek Rozenbaum from a script by ...
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Telefonica completes Endemol buy-out
Spain's Telefonica has successfully completed its share-for-share buy-out of Dutch entertainment group Endemol with the acquisition of 97.4% of Endemol's shares.Telefonica had set 75% as the minimum amount of shares exchanged for the acquisition to be accepted.The public offer, which valued Endemol at Euros4.79bn, ran from July 3 through 24. ...
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Venice Critics' Week unveils line-up
Giuseppe Rocca's Lontano In Fondo Agli Occhi, a bittersweet love story set in the 1950s, is the only Italian film selected for the Critics' Week competition at this year's Venice Film Festival. The line-up, selected by a panel of six Italian critics, also includes Noites, directed by Portugal's Claudia Tomaz; ...
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Momentum appoints Caplan as acquisitions chief
Momentum Pictures, the UK distribution and production venture of Canada's Alliance Atlantis and Germany's Kinowelt, has appointed Sally Caplan to the newly created role of head of acquisitions.Caplan, formerly senior vice president of acquisitions for Universal Pictures worldwide, takes the title of senior vice president of acquisitions and business affairs. ...
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IN THE HOT SEAT - DIETER KOSSLICK
The following profile is taken from the weekly print version of Screen International. Also in this week's Screen:EXECUTIVE SUITE:J-Works founder Takenori SentoNEWS FOCUS:Is the internet set to revolutionise the sale of cinema tickets' Denis Seguin investigates.ROUND TABLE:Lucky Red's Andrea Occhipinti, Momentum Pictures' David Kosse and Egmont Entertainment's Peter Philipsen discuss ...
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Stuart Little scrapes into pole position in the UK
Seven months after it opened in the US (where the DVD is now available), Columbia TriStar finally gave Stuart Little its nationwide UK release last weekend. Excluding previews, it just missed the number one slot with a three-day gross of $2.1m (£1,394,384) but including paid previews of $454,718 (£454,718) it ...