Author: SD

Jack King’s The Ceremony has won the inaugural £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence at the revamped Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), which drew to a close tonight (August 21). Yorkshire-born King’s feature debut follows two migrant workers who are forced to bury a colleague in the Yorkshire hills. When one demands to accord the dead man his rightful Islamic burial, nerves begin to fray, and a power struggle emerges. Cast includes Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu, Erdal Yildiz, Liam Thomas, Arnold Bakshi and Mo’min Swaitat. Producers are Hollie Bryan and Lucy Meer for the UK’s Cosmosquare Films and Strive…

Media veteran Edgar Bronfman Jr. has reportedly made an 11th-hour $4.3bn bid for Paramount Global, rivalling the previous offer from Skydance Media and RedBird Capital. With one day to go before the official August 21 close of the “go-shop” window allowing Paramount Global’s special committee to consider “superior” bids, Bronfman Jr. is understood to have offered $2.4bn for Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, owner of a controlling interest in Paramount Global. The proposal includes a $1.5bn balance sheet injection and a $400m payment to cover a termination fee Paramount Global would pay Skydance Media were it not to consummate the previously…

Osgood Perkins’s horror film Longlegs has crossed $100m at the global box office including a $72m North American gross through Neon, consolidating its status as the highest-grossing American independent film of the year to date. The film starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage has amassed $31m from international territories licensed by Black Bear Pictures. The UK, where Black Bear distributed directly, leads the field on $10m. Longlegs is yet to open in a number of major regions and territories including Latin America and Italy. Black Bear’s sister company Elevation Pictures distributed the film in Canada which accounts for just over…

“Cinema is in a very bad way – I think it’s lost its place,” Brian Cox told the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) during a surprise appearance in the festival’s industry programme. “I think it has lost its place, partly because of the grandiose element between Marvel and DC and all of that, and it’s beginning to implode. You’re losing the plot, I think. Television has really stolen the march, when you get incredible things like Ripley, like Succession,” said Cox. “In terms of the work,” continued the Succession star, referencing films in the vein of Deadpool & Wolverine, “it becomes…

Toxic (Akiplėša), the debut feature from Saulė Bliuvaitė, has won the 2024 Golden Leopard, the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Toxic follows two teenage girls from a bleak industrial town who join an extreme local modelling school. Featuring a cast of non-actors, it was selected for Les Arcs work-in-progress programme in 2023, and was also a prize-winner at Meeting Point Vilnius this year. Bendita Film Sales are handling sales. The film also won Locarno’s Swatch first feature award.  The Golden Leopard for best film includes a cash prize of CHF 75,000 ($86,650) to be shared equally between the film’s…

Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine has overtaken Joker to become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time at the global box office. The summer smash starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman added $11.9m on Thursday to reach $1.086bn, surpassing the $1.079bn achieved by the Warner Bros 2019 hit starring Joaquin Phoenix. Deadpool & Wolverine stands at $568.8m internationally and $516.8m in North America, two huge numbers which have been a driving force at the box office this summer. The UK is the lead international market outside the US on $58.7m, followed by China on $57.1m, Mexico on $39.6m, Australia on…

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has unveiled the full Industry Conference line-up running September 6-10 including the Perspectives panel series in partnership with Screen International. The festival has also announced the 10 Industry Selects acquisition titles screening for accredited industry, a roste that features Rich Flu, Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s follow-up to 2019 TIFF selection The Platform; South Korean first-time director Kim Soo-jin’s Noise, and Teemu Nikki’s previous Nordic Film Market participant 100 Litres Of Gold from Finland. The moderated Perspectives sessions will look at a range of topics including the future of film journalism, sustainable cinema, Indigenous co-productions, the African film industry, and…

Open Doors, the talent development programme of Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, is being forced to significantly reduce its year-round activities due to a 25% reduction to its budget from January 2025. Open Doors’ main funder, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), is cutting its annual budget for strategic partnerships with cultural players in Switzerland by 45% from the current $4.3m (CHF 3.7m) to $2.3m (CHF 2m) from 2025 to 2028. It is connected to the decision by Switzerland’s highest executive authority, the Federal Council, to commit $1.7bn (CHF1.5 bn) as…

Searchlight Pictures has brought on Pachinko creator Soo Hugh to write and direct a feature adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s celebrated novel Tender Is The Night. LuckyChap, Putnam Pictures, Hugh and Margo Klewans’ Moonslinger Productions are serving as producers on the project. Tender Is The Night was published in 1934 and was Fitzgerald’s fourth and final novel. It follows a glamorous and wealthy couple whose relationship unravels in a web of romantic entanglement, manipulation and deceit when they meet a young actress on holiday. Searchlight vice president Richard Ruiz will oversee the project for the studio, reporting to heads of production…

Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine delivered $54.2m in its third weekend as the newly crowned $1bn global smash surged to $494.3m in North America, staying top ahead of a spectacular $50m debut for Sony’s romantic drama It Ends With Us. It was a great weekend for the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively household that maintained an encouraging summer season and for the first time saw two films earn $50m or more in the same weekend in the traditionally slow month of August. Studios will confirm numbers on Monday. Active in 4,330 locations, Deadpool & Wolverine overtook Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on $454m…