Author: SD

The UK government has unveiled a £75m funding package for the UK film and TV industry, with the UK Global Screen Fund and the National Film and Television School (NFTS) among key recipients of the cash. Titled the ‘Screen Growth Package’, the £75m funding will form a key pillar of the government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan to be announced next week. The UK Global Screen Fund (UKGSF) will see its funding rise to £18m annually for the years 2026-2029, up from £7m currently. The UKGSF was launched in 2021 as a way to boost international development and distribution opportunities for…

Tensions between distribution and exhibition The annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona brings the film distribution and exhibition sectors together, with a focus on common goals and shared success. However, with global box office still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, film distributors and cinema operators continue to offer different perspectives on the halting recovery. Film studios need to offer strong, balanced, year-round slates, serving all audience segments – and encourage cinemagoing by giving venues a consistent, reliable, exclusive theatrical window, say exhibitors. Okay, but cinemas need to catch up with consumer demands and expectations by making their venues fit for…

EXCLUSIVE: Picturehouse Entertainment has acquired UK and Irish distribution to Ugo Bienvenu’s Annecy award-winning French animation Arco from Goodfellas.  The 2D computer animation was premiered as a Special Screening in Cannes in May before going on to win the top prize in Annecy last week.   Set in 2075, Arco follows a 10-year-old girl called Iris who witnesses a mysterious boy in a rainbow suit fall from the sky. He comes from an idyllic far future where time travel is possible and Iris must help him return to his time. Natalie Portman is among English-language voice actors and also has a producer credit. …

Warner Bros may have been in existence for more than 100 years, but it is the company’s spirit of renewal that was celebrated in its slate presentation at the CineEurope convention in Barcelona yesterday (June 17).  The session, introduced by newly promoted president of global theatrical distribution Jeff Goldstein, spotlighted the new creative leadership at Warner Bros Pictures Animation – whose first release is The Cat In The Hat, out next February – and at DC Studios, which has dubbed this summer “the summer of Superman”.  Goldstein’s promotion into his new global role following a lifelong career at Warner Bros…

Tom Cruise will receive an Honorary Award at the 16th Governors Awards on November 16, the Academy said on Tuesday. The leading man and producer is one of four honourees alongside fellow Honorary Award receipients Debbie Allen and Wynn Thomas, and this year’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award honouree Dolly Parton. Cruise’s star power, stuntwork and dedication to the theatrical model have kept him in the limelight for decades and he famously played a large part in kick-starting box office during the pandemic when Top Gun: Maverick opened in late spring 2022 and went on to gross $1.5bn worldwide. Films in which Cruise…

UK-Ireland top five, June 13-15  Rank Title (origin) DistributorJune 13-15  Total Week 1 How To Train Your Dragon  (US)   Universal  £5.7m  £8.1m  1  2   Lilo & Stitch  (US)  Disney  £1.5m  £33.2m  4 3   Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning  (US)  Paramount  £1.2m  £22.6m  4 4   The Salt Path  (UK)  Black Bear  £590,102  £6m  3 5   Ballerina  (US)  Lionsgate  £580,303  £2.6m  2 GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.36 Universal’s How To Train Your Dragon topped the UK-Ireland box office this weekend with £5.7m – the biggest opening of the four-film franchise.…

Oscar winner Gary Oldman will receive a knighthood and Bafta fellow Samantha Morton an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours list. Oldman, 67, is honoured for his services to drama. He won the lead actor Academy Award in 2018 for playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and his celebrated roles include Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films, and spy master Jackson Lamb in the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. The British star broke out in 1986 with his portrayal of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in Sid And Nancy. He portrayed Dracula for Francis Ford Coppola in the 1992…

Ugo Bienvenu’s French feature Arco won the Cristal award for best feature film at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Produced by Felix de Givry for France’s Remembers and Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas for US firm MountainA, the film is co-written byt Bienvenu and de Givry. Scroll down for the full list of feature winners Arco depicts an eponymous rainbow who crash lands on near-future earth from the year 3000. A little girl who witnesses his fall helps him to return home. It debuted as a Special Screenings title in Official Selection at Cannes last month. The Jury…

EXCLUSIVE: Organisers at Frontières Co-Production Market have received a record 180-plus project submissions for the upcoming 2025 edition in Montreal (July 23-26) that runs in conjunction with Fantasia International Film Festival (July 16-August 3). The four-day event brings new projects from around the world led by a healthy Canadian contingent that includes Karl Lemieux’s supernatural horror Le Majestic from Metafilms, whose Peak Everything premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last month; Anouk Whissell’s psychological horror Holi Womb, about a spa with a horrifying past; and Austin Birtch’s creature feature Mystery Of The Mothman, centred on a Vietnam veteran caught up in a…

The Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) has become the first Hollywood awards group to come out strongly against generative AI, blocking any project that uses the technology from consideration for its Golden Reel Awards. “We support and prize technological advances that assist artists in their creations,” the group said on Thursday. “However, standards for the legal and ethical use of Generative A.I. have yet to be established and are far from being accepted broadly. What we choose to promote as award-worthy points to how much we value the human endeavour of artistic creation.” MPSE continued: “Because of these concerns and…