All News articles – Page 5423
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Australia embraces DVD
DVD appears to have gained a foothold in the Australian market according to recent statistics that show that 63% of video stores were carrying DVDs at the end of 1999 compared to only 35% at the end of the previous year.In addition, a total of 529 titles were released ...
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Asian films dominate Japan's box office
In a rare box office coup, Asian films occupy three of the top five spots in the Japanese chart this week.The South Korean spy actioner Shuri (also known as Shiri and Swiri) debuted at number one with a huge screen average of $65,069 from a seven-day gross of $1,041,107 (from ...
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Artificial Eye unveils debut productions
UK specialist distributor Artificial Eye Film Company is kickstarting its long-planned move into production with Working Up To Winter, a contemporary road movie written and to be directed by Sarah Turner. The project, set to go into production this summer, was developed with support from FilmFour Lab, the experimental wing ...
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AFM Premiere Screenings unveils line-up
This year's AFM Premiere Screenings will include the world premieres of two high profile Kushner-Locke Co movies: Alfonso Arau's Picking Up The Pieces, starring Woody Allen with a cameo from Sharon Stone, and Burt Reynolds' directorial debut The Last Producer.Sponsored by internet downloading outfit SightSound.com, the Santa Monica screening programme ...
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MGM roars back to financial health, reveals slate
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has announced its strongest quarterly operating results in 12 years, signalling a financial turnaround at the company under its new management structure of Alex Yemenidjian and his second-in-command Chris McGurk EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), the cashflow measure by which Wall Street evaluates the performance of ...
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New Latin American combo goes on shopping spree
A pan-Latin American buying consortium of independent distributors is gearing up for the American Film Market, having quietly launched late last year in reaction to the increasing appetite amongst Hollywood studios to buy all rights in the region.The consortium - named Entertainment Consortium Ltd - is composed of Gussi in ...
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Summit scores foreign sales on Chuck & Buck
Summit Entertainment has lost little time concluding the first international sales on Miguel Arteta's Chuck & Buck, striking deals with theatrical distributors from Germany, France and South Africa within days of securing the international sales rights to the digital video feature at last week's Sundance Film Festival.Highlight Communications will now ...
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HAL, Miramax confirm split
Miramax Films and HAL Films, the production venture headed by David Aukin, Colin Leventhal and Trea Hoving, have disbanded their London-based partnership, Miramax announced today (Feb 1).Aukin and Leventhal are to pursue interests in the entertainment industry through HAL, the company they founded two years ago with Miramax backing. Hoving ...
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Paradise secures sales in Latin America, Europe
Cuban-Spanish co-production A Paradise Under The Stars (pictured) has secured two major sales in the wake of its successful screenings in the World Cinema section of this year's Sundance Film Festival.The deals, concluded in Park City, were for all Scandinavia to Angel Scandinavia AS and for all Latin America to ...
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Distant Horizon joins party at Shore's Wedding
South African production, financing and sales operation Distant Horizon is backing Cassandra At The Wedding, UK director Simon Shore's follow-up to his widely-acquired feature debut, Get Real.The $8.9m comedy drama, which has already secured $1.6m in national lottery funding, is the story of a woman looking to scupper her identical ...
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Canal Plus Nordic reports subscriptions increase
Canal Plus' Nordic pay-TV subsidiary has reported a 37% increase in subscriptions during 1999.The French pay-TV giant's Scandinavian service had 472,000 subscribers in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland at the end of 1999, about 100,000 more than at the end of the previous year. About 30% of the new subscribers ...
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Noosa Film Festival unlikely to return
Despite the success of last year's Noosa Film Festival in terms of profile and programming, director Luke Davis has admitted that unpaid debts and lack of sponsorship means there is unlikely to be a sequel. Davis confirmed the event has about A$300,000 in outstanding bills due to a sponsor withdrawing ...
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Lucas adds Sega to games franchise
George Lucas' games company LucasArts Entertainment is to produce a series of games for the Sega Dreamcast platform. First off will be Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer, a game derived from the pod race sequence in The Phantom Menace, which is already available for PC and Nintendo. The Sega version ...
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Alone scores double Iris in Brussels
Benito Zambrano's directorial debut Alone (Solas) was awarded both the Iris d'Or for best European film and Iris d'Argent for best actress (Ana Fernandez) at the 27th International Film Festival in Brussels.The Spanish film was produced by Antonio Perez-Perez' Maestranza Films and shot entirely in Seville on a modest budget ...
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Copenhagen to host Nordic film financing forum
London-based media consultancy MediaXchange is organising a forum, dedicated to Nordic entertainment law and finance, in Copenhagen on February 7-9.The Nordic Entertainment Law & Finance forum is aimed at entertainment lawyers, business affairs executives and producers working in film and television. Among the issues that will be covered are packaging, ...
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Oz bank Content Capital boards Monkey's Mask
Content Capital has announced it is to become a financial partner in the Australian and New Zealand release of Samantha Lang's A$4.5m lesbian detective thriller The Monkey's Mask. The move fits the company's strategy of establishing itself as a bank for the use of film-makers. The Monkey's Mask, which stars ...
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Beauty scores with limited UK release
UK cinema-goers gave a hero's welcome to the release of the Sam Mendes-directed American Beauty when it opened on 23 prints over the weekend. The limited London release pulled in £425,558 ($687,700), registering a blistering £18,503 ($29,900) screen average. The three times Golden Globe winner widens to over 300 sites ...
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William Morris closes UK theatrical activities
Charles Finch, head of motion pictures Europe, is amongst a string of departures at William Morris Agency (WMA)'s London office as the company closes UK theatrical activities.Finch is expected to set up a London-based production management company with several WMA staff including former producer Luc Roeg. Finch's start-up operation is ...
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Alliance Atlantis taps Telefilm executive
Three weeks after moving its motion picture operation from Los Angeles to Toronto, Alliance Atlantis is hiring Bill House, one of Canada's most prominent public sector film executives, to boost its feature production profile at home. In his 15 years as a production and development executive, first at the Ontario ...
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Sony, Starz Encore unveil multimedia tie-up
In a wide ranging tie-up with Starz Encore Media, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) has made one of the most dramatic moves by any studio to push its content into new on-line media.The deal which begins in 2005 spans more than 200 current feature films from the Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems ...