Author: Deadline

If Desert Warrior was one of Saudi Arabia’s big cinema swings, then it looks to have been a swing and a miss, based on the movie’s early box office takings. Starring Captain America’s Anthony Mackie and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, Desert Warrior endured a troubled five-year trek to the screen, but finally debuted in theaters last weekend across the U.S. and Middle East. Set up at Riyadh media giant MBC Group and acquired by Vertical, the movie has suffered bruising headlines based on its performance in the U.S., where it had grossed $596,000 on 1,010 screens as of Thursday, and…

EXCLUSIVE: Richard Gere (Pretty Woman) and Diana Silvers (Booksmart) have been set to star in Oscar winner Edward Zwick‘s romantic drama Asymmetry, which is based on Lisa Halliday’s acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name. Halliday collaborated with Zwick (The Last Samurai) and Marshall Herskovitz on the screenplay, with Zwick and Herskovitz of the Bedford Falls Company producing alongside Clay Pecorin of Rainmaker Films and FilmNation Entertainment. FilmNation and Rainmaker are co-financing. FilmNation will launch international sales at the upcoming Cannes market and co-rep domestic rights with CAA Media Finance Group. Asymmetry, per the logline, tells the story of a young editorial assistant in New York,…

Prime Video is about to set sail on a summer full of new projects in the young adult and romance spaces. Several splashy book adaptations, films and shows coming to the streamer in the next couple of months were teased in a sizzle reel of first look footage this morning. Highly anticipated films that got first look footage include The Love Hypothesis, based on the book by Ali Hazelwood; Clashing Through The Snow, starring Christopher Briney and Michelle Randolph; The Devil’s Mouth, starring Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Gavin Casalegno and more; and The Last Sunrise based on Anna Todd’s novel…

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar and Olivier winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) is set to star in and make his feature directorial debut with Nice Fish, alongside five-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), Jim Lichtscheidl (A Serious Man), and Isabella LaBlanc (True Detective: Night Country). Tamara Birkemoe, CEO of Palisades Park Pictures, is launching international sales on the project at the upcoming Cannes Film Market. CAA Media Finance will represent North American rights. Nice Fish first originated as a successful stage play, later earning an Olivier Award nomination. The production was largely a collaboration between Rylance and prose poet Louis Jenkins,…

Neon has acquired North American rights to Bong Joon Ho‘s debut animated feature, Ally, slating it for release in 2027. The project will mark the studio’s first with the filmmaker since his 2019 phenomenon Parasite, the first South Korean film to win an Oscar, which was also the first film to win both Best Picture and Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, additionally snagging the awards for Director and Original Screenplay, and grossing over $53 million in North America. Ally follows a curious and endearing piglet squid of the same name that lives in the uncharted depths of the…

EXCLUSIVE: 24-year-old multi-hyphenate Jillian Moray has wrapped on Pismo, a coming-of-age comedic drama marking her feature directorial debut, in which she stars opposite Nuha Jes Izman (Yellowjackets), Madeline Popovich (Murdaugh: Death in the Family), Lindsey Normington (Anora), Jack Irv (The Sweet East), and Kentucker Audley (Strawberry Mansion). Shot on 16mm, with Pismo Beach, CA as its setting, Pismo follows three best friends as they reunite for a party-filled weekend, only to have their night spiral into danger and self-discovery, drawing focus to the sexual pressures teenage girls face. Alexis G. Zall (Coin Heist), Ashlin Teague (Lady in the Lake), Holly…

The director of The Devil Wears Prada 2 admits that he did want to sprinkle a little Nate into the much-anticipated sequel. David Frankel told Entertainment Weekly that he considered “sneaking” Adrian Grenier in for a surprise cameo. Unfortunately for Nate fans, “it was just too late in our production schedule to make it happen.” Frankel wouldn’t share how he had hoped to incorporate Andy’s old chef-lover into the sequel that reunited Anne Hathaway with Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. But he added that “I’m thrilled that he [Grenier] did a Starbucks commercial, which was really funny and…

EXCLUSIVE: Helena Bonham Carter will not be starring in Season 4 of HBO‘s The White Lotus. The two-time Oscar-nominated actress has departed the upcoming France-set installment of Mike White‘s popular murder mystery series. The news comes a little over a week after production on the new season started on the French Riviera. “With filming just underway on Season 4 of The White Lotus, it had become apparent that the character which Mike White created for Helena Bonham Carter did not align once on set,” an HBO spokesperson said in a statement to Deadline. “The role has subsequently been rethought, is being…

EXCLUSIVE: Ireland’s Bow Street Academy acting school is heading to LA’s West Hollywood with Bow Street Academy Los Angeles, its first overseas campus. At the center of the expansion is Gerry Grennell, the veteran and respected performance coach who has collaborated with stars including Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Oscar Isaac. Grennell also collaborated extensively with the late Heath Ledger across multiple projects, including The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain. Grennell is joined at the LA school by co-founders Kirsten Sheridan and Shimmy Marcus. Sheridan is the Oscar and Golden Globe–nominated writer,…

Studiocanal has teamed with Flora Films on The Road Home starring Emmy, Grammy, Tony winner and three-time Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo (Wicked, Harriet), multi-award winning South African actor, writer, director and producer Thabo Rametsi (Silverton Siege), and Academy Award Nominee Guy Pearce (The Brutalist). Oscar winner Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls, Kiss of the Spider Woman) will helm from an original screenplay by Michael Bronner (The Mauritanian, United 93), from a story by Michael Bronner and Zakes Mda. Exiled from his native South Africa, trumpeter Hugh Masekela (Rametsi) is pulled between two worlds when the Anti-Apartheid Movement, led by his mentor fierce anti-apartheid…