Author: Deadline

& SONS Section: Special Presentations Director: Pablo Trapero Screenwriter: Sarah Polley, Pablo Trapero Logline: This dramatic adaptation of David Gilbert’s 2013 novel, co-written by Oscar-winner Sarah Polley and directed by Pablo Trapero (TIFF ’15’s The Clan), stars Bill Nighy as a reclusive literary superstar who calls his sons home for an unbelievable announcement. Panelists: Pablo Trapero, Noah Jupe Premiered: Sunday, September 7 Key Quote: There’re some twists and turns in this film but I think, ultimately, it’s not about that, it’s about having a conversation about family and forgiveness, and whether people can really change, and nature v nurture, and insanely…

SACRIFICE Section: Special Presentations Director: Romain Gavras Screenwriter: Will Arbery, Romain Gavras Logline: An environmental conference is disrupted — first by celebrities — and then by eco-terrorists. Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich, Ambika Mod, Charli xcx, and Jonatan “Yung Lean” Leandoer star in Romain Gavras’ satirical thriller Sacrifice. Panelists: Romain Gavras, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Evans, Vincent Cassel, Sam Richardson, Jonatan “Yung Lean” Leandoer Premiered: Saturday, September 6 Key Quote: What I love about the two of them, and I said this to Chris from the beginning, is it reminds me of a kindergarten friendship……

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures International Productions has acquired worldwide rights to adapt Flor M. Salvador’s popular young adult Wattpad book series Boulevard with Webtoon Productions. A first film, Boulevard, is currently in production in Spain from a script by bestselling YA author Javier Ruescas (see below for the start of production announcement). The book series centers on the forbidden romance between high school students Halsey Weigel and Luke Howland. A troublemaker who also struggles from addiction, Halsey knows she should stay away from Luke, but she is inexplicably drawn to him, seeing beyond the damaged exterior everyone else is quick to…

Ovations at the Toronto Film Festival are rare, but Guillermo del Toro’s lifelong project Frankenstein certainly got one during the film’s North American premiere here Monday. Following a 15-minute ovation at its Venice Film Festival world premiere, the Netflix film’s screening today was attended by del Toro along with his stars Oscar Issac (Victor Frankenstein), Jacob Elordi (The Creature), Mia Goth (Elizabeth) and Christoph Waltz (Harlander). Producer and former Netflix film boss Scott Stuber was also in tow, along with fellow producer J. Miles Dale. The screening audience clapped for two minutes straight after the closing credits began, stopped only…

Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir’s historic drama Palestine 36 brought down the house at the Roy Thomson Hall on Friday evening as the film world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The feature explores the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in which Palestinians rose up against Britain’s colonial rule, against a backdrop of rising Jewish immigration following the country’s support for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Jacir has delivered a sweeping historical epic bringing 1930s Palestine to life and tackling a key chapter in Palestinian history not seen on the big…

It’s Saturday night at TIFF and the cast of Rian Johnson’s latest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, are readying for their premiere. Among the group gathered at the Deadline TIFF studio, only Johnson knows what the finished product looks like, since his cast are yet to see the film. The atmosphere is one of both excited anticipation and a raucous family reunion. Daniel Craig, whose Southern gentleman gumshoe character Benoit Blanc is at the center of all three Knives Out films, told Deadline: “This one owes a lot to locked-door mysteries, which are impossible crimes that don’t really…

“F*ckin’ ell, it’s tickin’,” says a soldier in David Mackenzie’s new film. Indeed, it’s all about to go off in this exquisitely plotted piece of pulp, a high-energy action-thriller that, thanks to the vicissitudes of film distribution these days, follows hard on the theatrical release of Mackenzie’s last film Relay, which premiered in Toronto this last year. Relay, starring Riz Ahmed, was also a great genre movie, if a little on the long side. There is no fat, however, on the ensemble-driven Fuze, a much more commercial prospect and a surprisingly sophisticated exercise in misdirection, in which bombshell explodes after…

Fanny Herrero accepted Deadline’s French TV Disruptor Award this week at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous gathering in Normandy, France. It’s the biggest market of the year focused on French TV programming and it was fitting the creator of French hit series Call My Agent! was on hand to receive the award. Herrero’s credits also include Standing Up, A French Village and Kaboul Kitchen. In a sit-down with Deadline she talked about her TV work, the Call My Agent! movie and her Olympic moment. Check out her interview in full, below. There’s a movie coming and Call My Agent! is international hit,…

Dakota Johnson To Receive Zurich’s Golden Eye The Zurich Film Festival will fete Dakota Johnson with its Golden Eye award for career achievement. Johnson will accept the award live on opening night and present her 2025 feature Splitsville. In Splitsville, Johnson plays the character Julie. When her friend Ashley (Adria Arjona) tells her husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) that she wants a divorce, he seeks comfort from Julie and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino). The couple shares their secret to a happy marriage: an open relationship. Michael Angelo Covino directed Splitsville. Zurich runs from September 25 to October 5. Johnson could recently be seen in…

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline can reveal an exclusive first look at Grace Van Dien (Stranger Things) in The Swallow, filmmakers Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s (Pet Sematary) backwoods horror. The movie has recently wrapped principal photography in Oregon, USA. Van Dien stars as Ziggy, who, along with her four friends, journeys out on a camping trip to a picturesque remote forest. But trespassing into an off-limits area, they awaken an uncanny terror in the woods… and a ravenous hunger from within the Earth. Soon, the ground itself is trying to swallow anything and anyone it touches and now the group have nowhere…