Small MPU – Page 1930
-
News
Italian industry bodies threaten festival boycott over film taxes
Leading film industrybodies in Italyare threatening to pull Italian entries to the Venice, Rome and Turin film festivals if the country's new right-wing government abolishes tax credits promised in the 2008 national budget.The threat was including in a joint statement from motion picture organisation Anica, independent producers group Api and ...
-
News
Germany to get UK comedy TV adaptations
UK television comedy series Hale And Pace and drama series Reckless are being adapted by the German production arm of UK broadcaster Granada. Called Granada Produktion fuer Film und Fernsehen, the company aims to establish itself in the German market, through local adaptations of comedy and TV movies. Granada ...
-
News
Ellender named MD of Freemantle Int'l
David Ellender has been named managing director of Fremantle International Distribution, which distributes programming throughout the world. He comes to Fremantle from Universal Studios Television Distribution, where he was also managing director.At his new post, Ellender will be accountable for managing and developing all aspects of the company, including the ...
-
News
Chicago festival honours Sigourney Weaver
Signourney Weaver is to receive a lifetime achievement award during this year's Chicago International film festival, at a gala evening hosted by Bill Kurtis of A & E television. "We're thrilled to have Sigourney Weaver as our lifetime achievement award recipient," said festival director Michael Kutza. "She is truly a ...
-
News
Shortlist announced for Comedy Shorts initiative
The UK's First Film Foundation and the Paramount Comedy Channel have announced the shortlisted scriptwriters and directors in the Comedy Shorts Initiative 2001. Four scripts and five directors have been shortlisted from a total of more than 700 submitted scripts and showreels The judging panel, which currently includes Bruce Robinson, ...
-
News
UK's Scala Productions boards TSP's Seagull
The UK's Scala Productions has boarded English-language Spanish production The Seagull, in development at Barcelona start-up TSP.Spaniard Enrique Gabriel (Fading Memories) will direct the "Mediterranean adaptation" of the Chekhov play, which was co-scripted by TSP founders Eva Baro and Antoni Sole. The $12m film is being prepped for a 2002 ...
-
News
Korean debut wins Hamburg's Golden tesafilm reel
Korean director Kim Dae-Seung's first feature film Bungee Jumping Of Their Own has won the Filmfest Hamburg's 'Golden tesafilm Reel' audience award against competition from 10 other first-time filmmakers. Filmfest director Josef Wutz announced that more than 25,000 admissions were registered for the 148 screenings of the 81 films in ...
-
News
Script Factory launches UK comedy competition
Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack's Mirage Enterprises, sales and financing operation Intermedia and UK script development body The Script Factory have launched a screenwriting competition for contemporary urban comedies.Finalists will compete for a $14,700 (£10,000) development commission from Mirage and Intermedia by pitching ideas to Minghella and Pollack. The competition ...
-
Reviews
Bandits
Dir Barry Levinson. US 2001. 122 min.Following his minor, disappointing comedy, An Everlasting Piece (which DreamWork barely released last year), Barry Levinson is back on terra firma with the crime comedy Bandits, a hybrid of a movie that blends to almost satisfying results the norms of classic screwball comedy ...
-
News
My Wife Is A Gangster breaks local Korean record
South Korean comedy My Wife Is A Gangster opened to phenomenal returns during Korea's 5-day Chusok holiday, filling cinemas to 94% capacity for a nationwide gross of $7.6m, and setting a new record for being the first local release to reach one million admissions in 5 days. Released by Korea ...
-
News
Recession watch - Part II
In the second part of Screen International's analysis on the effect on the industry of the Sept 11 attacks on the US, the threat of recession on the home entertainment and film exhibition sectors is assessed.Abstracted from Screen InternationalHome entertainmentVideo was an immediate winner from the Sept 11 fallout. Not ...
-
News
Minnie Driver joins New Cardiff cast
Minnie Driver is set to join Heather Graham, Colin Firth and Mary Steenburgen in New Cardiff, a romantic comedy being produced by the UK's Fragile Films for Buena Vista International.Driver is to play Vera, a scheming woman who dumps her fiance, an artist played by Firth, by sending him an ...
-
News
Charlton Heston plays Mengele in war crime drama
Charlton Heston has joined the cast of Papa Alguem 5555, a movie about a Nazi war criminal who lives in hiding in Brazil. Adapted from a controversial novel by German author Peter Schneider, the Italian-Brazilian-Hungarian film is currently shooting in Rio de Janeiro.The movie, which is set in 1977 and ...
-
News
Mexico to produce 60 films annually from 2006
Mexico will produce up to 60 films a year starting in 2006, according to president-elect Vicente Fox. Speaking at the presentation of awards to members of the film production workers union (Sindicato de Tecnicos Manuales de la Producion Cinematografica), Fox made his first public commitment to local cinema. "Our aim ...
-
News
Kinepolis delays international expansion
Belgian exhibition giant, Kinepolis Group, is delaying its international expansion plans by one full year, according to a report in Belgian newspaper De Financieel-Economische Tijd. Planned cinema complexes in Granada and Nancy will be opened in 2003 rather than 2002 and other investment plans have been postponed from 2003 ...
-
News
Film Council and CNC launch The Short Channel
The UK's Film Council has partnered with equivalent French public support body CNC to launch a short film competition aimed at promoting creative and financial co-operation between the two territories, as well as encouraging producers to develop films with a chance of travelling.Dubbed "The Short Channel" the scheme will produce ...
-
News
Intertainment, RTV announce appointments
Stephen Brown, the head of German film rights trader Intertainment's US operations and board member responsible for business development, has been appointed as the vice president and successor to David Williamson who has left the company by mutual agreement. Williamson's responsibility for legal affairs will now be assumed by CEO ...
-
News
Interactive Dogme film heads for MIPCOM
On the eve of the Millennium, the four Danish directors behind the Dogme 95 movement spent the crucial hour between 23.30 and 00.40 making their first film together -the first interactive TV movie, simply known as D-Dag (D-Day). The movie, which had its world premiere at the Danish TV-Festival, will ...
-
News
Training Day opens to $24.2m
Warner Bros' police drama Training Day conquered the box office with ease over the weekend, ending studio fears that audiences wouldn't respond to a story about a crooked cop and validating the move of the film from its original Sept 21 release date. The film grossed a powerful estimated $24.2m ...
-
News
Cobalt to finance Chin's Cambodia-set actioner
Cobalt Media Group has teamed up with writer/producer Stephen Chin on Last Place On Earth, an action drama set in Cambodia on the eve of the UN-supervised elections which Chin wrote.Chin will also produce Last Place On Earth, with Cobalt arranging production finance and handling international sales through its London ...