All News articles – Page 5363
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Filmart reports record-breaking attendance
Buyer numbers rocketed at leading Hong Kong film event Filmart which closed today (June 30), a surge pundits say highlights the recovery of the local film and TV sector.At the end of the three-day market, Filmart had registered more than 1,120 buyers, a record for the four-year-old event. Original predictions ...
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CINE EXPO: Zoradi supports old-school marketing
Mark Zoradi, president of Buena Vista International, encouraged international exhibitors to focus on traditional marketing methods in order to improve profit margins, at Cinema Expo this week. Speaking prior to BVI's product showreel and digital screening of Dinosaur, his message to cinema operators was to revitalise their use of traditional ...
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CINE EXPO: Sands to keep focus on festival circuit
Rick Sands, Miramax's chairman of worldwide distribution, has reassured the company's international distributors that it will not forsake international film festivals to launch its films, despite the pressure to shorten global release windows."There is a growing trend to accelerate the international release but we must not forget the invaluable support ...
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Baise-moi opens well but faces lawsuit
Controversial French title Baise-moi (Fuck Me) racked up 5,634 admissions from only 64 screens on its opening day in its home territory (June 28), despite the fact that France was playing Portugal that night in the semi-finals of the Euro 2000 soccer tournament.French exhibitor UGC - whose CEO, Guy Verrechia, ...
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Things You Can Tell goes straight to Showtime
Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her, the all-female tableau film which world premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and which opened Un Certain Regard at Cannes, will go straight to Showtime in North America, bypassing a theatrical release by rights-holder United Artists (UA).UA, the specialised arm ...
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Amir Malin assumes sole leadership of Artisan
Amir Malin has assumed sole leadership of Artisan Entertainment following the resignation yesterday of co-chief executive officer Mark Curcio. Malin will from now on be responsible for overseeing all areas of the company and its future growth. Bill Block will remain president of Artisan and will take on additional responsibilities ...
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Australia passes digital legislation
Australia has finalised controversial legislation restricting the number of TV channels in the digital era.Legislation passed late yesterday (June 29) - the final instalment in the laws that will determine Australia's digital TV future - confirmed the three commercial incumbents' continuing monopoly of free-to-air services for at least five years. ...
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Villalonga retains position despite investigation
Telefonica president Juan Villalonga emerged from a critical board meeting yesterday (June 28) with his position intact, despite an ongoing investigation into accusations that he benefited from insider information when he purchased options for shares of Telefonica in January, 1998.There was speculation that Telefonica's key shareholders, banks BBVA and La ...
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Olswang launches media corporate finance house
UK law firm Olswang has launched LongAcre Partners, an independent corporate finance advisor, specialising in technology, media and communications.JP Morgan Corsair II Capital Partners, the $1bn investment fund of JP Morgan, has taken a 15% stake in the operation.LongAcre's board of directors includes Olswang chairman Simon Olswang; Olswang chief executive ...
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News Corp buys stake in Indian portal
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has acquired a 15% stake in Indian technology portal ITSpace.com, managed by network computing company Microland, for an undisclosed price"We found the web-site a potentially valuable and viable business proposition for the information technology community. It is managed by the Microland Group and has strong revenue ...
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Oz investors won't let filmmakers wiggle out of it
Investors in Australian title The Wiggles Movie are considering taking legal action against production company Gladusaurus Productions, manager Movieco Australia, the promoter, and perhaps the distributor 20th Century Fox, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.The article reports that only about 13% of $964,000 (A$1.6m) in production funding has been returned ...
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Welland tackles miners' struggle for Working Title
Academy Award-winner Colin Welland has written Tower, a dramatisation of the true story of embattled South Wales miners, for the UK's Working Title Films, Ireland's David P Kelly Productions and director Marc Evans.The feature, budgeted at roughly $10m, follows the 1994 story of the last 239 miners at the last ...
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Fete du Cinema overcomes Euro 2000
Despite France's on-going success in the Euro 2000 soccer tournament, the country's annual cinema promotion scheme - the Fete du Cinema - managed to attract 3.8 million admissions over three days from June 25-27.Ticket sales were down 12% compared to last year's record 4.3 million, mostly due to a 20% ...
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Norway's Quart music fest becomes movie launchpad
Norwegian film distributors are increasingly using the country's largest music festival - the Quart festival in Kristiansand - as a promotional platform for new releases. This year the event is being used to showcase highly-anticipated Norwegian title Detector, from first-time director Pal Jackman.The Quart festival, widely renowned as Norway's most ...
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Little Crumb director to adapt Pete, The Rascal
Dutch writer-director Maria Peters, whose credits include the Netherlands' biggest local hit last year, Little Crumb (Kruimeltje), based on the novel by Chris van Abkoude, is developing another adaptation of the late writer's works.Peters is combining all eight novels in Van Abkoude's Pete, The Rascal (Pietje Bell) series into one ...
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Holst lines up adaptation as second feature
Norwegian director Marius Holst is developing an adaptation of an Ingvar Ambjornsen short story - Oyenstikkere - as a follow-up to his successful debut feature Cross My Heart And Hope To Die.Nikolaj Frobenius, whose credits include Norwegian thriller Insomnia, has written the script and Scandinavian actors Marie Bonnevie, Mikael Persbrandt ...
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Production report: EU puts Danish film on a roll
Maverick Danish director Lars von Trier may have won the Palme d'Or in Cannes for Dancer In The Dark, but two other Nordic films, Roy Andersson's Songs From The Second Floor from Sweden and Liv Ullmann's Faithless from Norway, enjoyed just as much buzz on the Croisette. Both relied on ...
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Video Networks raises $150m for expansion
UK video-on-demand company Video Networks has raised equity financing worth more than $154m (£102m) from investment partnership Digital Explosion, the company announced today (June 29).Video Networks chief executive and founder Simon Hochhauser said the new funds would be used to expand the company's Homechoice broadband video-on-demand, interactive TV and fast ...
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Tulips still blooming at Italian box office
The Danish box office is demonstrating that festival success is not the only route to success for locally-made films.Though Berlin-darling Italian For Beginners is still in 7th place after 19 weeks on release and has now scored some 830,000 admissions, other home-grown films like the comedy Flickering Lights (440,000), thefamily-film ...
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Dana Reid segues into production deal at Artisan
Artisan Pictures has signed a first look production deal with Dana Reid, a former vice president of production at Artisan, and his new company Flash Entertainment. The arrangement covers theatrical and direct-to-video productions.Reid joined Artisan in 1997 from ICM where he worked alongside agent Ken Kamins. While at Artisan he ...