Movie News

“Aquaman” himself, Jason Momoa, is in negotiations to star as Frosty the Snowman in a movie for Warner Bros.

Momoa will voice Frosty in the live-action/CG hybrid. Framestore UK will do the animation.

Momoa will also produce with Geoff Johns, and Stampede’s Greg Silverman and Jon Berg. David Berenbaum, who collaborated with Berg on “Elf,” is on board to script the pic.

“We know Jason’s a true human being filled with love, compassion and a deep connection to ohana … all of which is the living spirit of Xmas and Frosty,” Silverman said.

Momoa’s “Aquaman” was a massive hit for Warner Bros., grossing $1.14 billion at the worldwide box office. The studio is developing a sequel.

“From his role as a count in a land of ice and fire to the oceanic success we all had with ‘Aquaman,’ it felt only right to realize Jason this time in snow,

Apple has won the bidding for the runaway slave thriller “Emancipation” starring Will Smith and directed by Antoine Fuqua.

Warner Bros, MGM, Lionsgate and Universal also made offers on the property starting last week at the Cannes virtual market. CAA Media Finance, which arranged the financing for the film, represents U.S. rights at the market. Film Nation Entertainment represents international sales.

“Emancipation” is written by William N. Collage and centered on a runaway slave named Peter, who escaped to the Union Army during the Civil War and outwitted bounty hunters over 10 days through the Louisiana swamps, masking his scent with onions. Army photos taken of Peter showing the scars on his back from being whipped were published in 1863 and became known as the “scourged back” photos, which became a means to illustrate the cruelty of slavery.

Production is expected to launch in early 2021. Smith will produce “Emancipation” through Westbrook Studios

Amblin Partners has closed a deal with Niki Caro to direct “Beautiful Ruins,” sources tell Variety.

The story is set in an Italian seaside village in 1962, where a charming young man runs a hotel with no guests, until one day an American starlet, fresh from the set of “Cleopatra,” appears and captures his heart. Five decades later in Hollywood, a jaded assistant to a once-powerhouse producer gets caught up in the magic of the Italian’s story, and takes it upon herself to find a happy ending.

Following the success of “1917,” which won three Academy Awards and has so far earned $375 million at the worldwide box office, Amblin announced that it would re-team with Neal Street Productions to make the film. Neal Street’s Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes and Julie Pastor will produce, with Nicolas Brown executive producing.

Based on the New York Times bestseller written by Jess Walter,

Cinemark on Tuesday announced plans to begin reopening its movie theaters on July 24 with a series of classic Hollywood movies.

The nation’s third-largest exhibitor based its plans on results from reopening five theaters in the Dallas area where the company is based.

While the reopening of movie theaters continues to shift due to state and local ordinances as well as a shifting release calendar, the first Hollywood films are currently expected to roll out on July 31 with the Russell Crowe thriller “Unhinged,” followed by the rom-com “The Broken Hearts Gallery” on Aug. 7.

As a result of the recent shifts in new theatrical releases, Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld just pushed back its theater reopening to July 31.

Also Read: Disney's 'Mulan' Pushed to Late August as New Covid Cases Continue to Rise

“Cinemark is pleased with the moviegoer response and key learnings from our initial five-theater test-and-learn phase in the Dallas area,

Monday, June 29 Robert De Niro’s ‘War With Grandpa’ Sets Opening

101 Studios announced it will domestically distribute Robert De Niro’s comedy “The War With Grandpa” on Sept. 18 in partnership with financier Brookdale Studios.

The film, directed by Tim Hill and produced by Marro Media Company, is based on the children’s fiction novel by Robert Kimmel Smith and centers on a boy being forced to give up his bedroom when his grandfather moves in. The boy, player by Oakes Fegley, schemes with friends to devise a series of pranks to drive him out, and the situation devolves into an all-out war

Marro Media Company financed the production, while Ingenious and Joe Gelchion of Tri-g provided additional financing and serve as the film’s executive producers.

Film Festival Celebrates Moms

The Center for Active Learning is launching its “Making Our Movies” Film Festival, dedicated to filmmakers who are mothers.

Anne Hathaway let slip an interesting tidbit about director Christopher Nolan: Apparently no one is allowed to sit down on his sets.

Speaking during Variety’s “Actors on Actors” interview series, Hathaway and fellow Nolan alum Hugh Jackman were talking about working with the secretive director when Hathaway revealed that along with banning cell phones, Nolan has also banned the use of chairs on his movie sets. “Chris also doesn’t allow chairs. I worked with him twice. He doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working,” said Hathaway.

“I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing,” added Hathaway.

Hathaway worked with

The company will sell ‘Nemesis’ and ‘Little Mary’ worldwide.

UK-based Parkland Pictures has acquired worldwide sales rights to two titles from nascent genre producers Shogun Films, following on from last week’s virtual Cannes market.

The first, Nemesis, was due to film in the UK in March before the Covid-19 crisis; it will now commence production in August.

Last week Screen announced that Bulldog Film Distribution has pre-bought the UK rights to the title, which is a gangland home invasion thriller.

James Crow will direct from Adam Stephen Kelly and producer Johnathan Sothcott’s script, with the cast including Billy Murray,

From their time in Spandau Ballet to acting in The Krays, the Kemp brothers have remained supernaturally close. With a new mockumentary about their lives, they talk about childhood poverty, meeting Ronnie Kray and surviving fame

I’m trying to think of a more surreal experience than interviewing the Kemp brothers by Zoom – maybe seeing them together in real life?

Gary only asked Martin to be in Spandau Ballet because his younger brother (Gary is 60; Martin is 58) was the most handsome person he knew, and it remains the case that Martin looks the more polished and defined, like a CGI’d Gary. They sound the same, yet, even without looking, you can always tell who is talking. There is something practised yet intimate about their fraternal dynamic; always at pains not to exclude the outsider, they bring you in by constantly ribbing each other. “Martin, I’m sorry, you’ve come on,

Speakers include Ukca CEO Phil Clapp, Everyman Media Group CEO Crispin Lilly and Glasgow Film CEO Allison Gardner.

The latest in our ScreenDaily Talks webinar series is taking place on Thursday July 9 at 15:00 BST and will explore the reopening of cinemas in the UK.

Click here to register

The discussion will come less than a week after cinemas began reopening their doors, following more than three months of closures due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and will address the major challenges faced by exhibitors.

The panel will include Phil Clapp, CEO of the UK Cinema Association, who led the

Bookmark this page for all the latest festival date changes.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused disruption worldwide to the regular festival calendar.

To help keep track of the changing schedule, Screen is keeping this page updated with the latest film festival and market dates, postponements and cancellations.

The events that are still set to run in some capacity are listed first, while those that were cancelled or ran online earlier in the year are further below.

To submit details of a change to your festival dates/status, please contact us here.

2020 festivals calendar - latest Ongoing Taipei Film Festival

Dates:

CinefestOZ, West Australia’s prestigious mini-festival, has confirmed that it will go ahead with live audiences at the end of August. It will be the first in the country to do so since the easing of restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The festival will run August 25-30 with at least 40 live events and screenings, in the Margaret River area, along with a selection of online screenings. A full program will be unveiled on July 31.

For the first time in the festival’s 13-year history, CinefestOZ will also include a short film competition. Available prizes include best short film, best indigenous short film, best West Australian short film, best West Australian female short filmmakers, best lead actor, best director and audience choice. The festival’s feature film prize is one of the richest, worth $69,000. Last year’s winner was John Sheedy’s locally-made “H Is For Happiness.”

The lifting

A tech-whiz schoolboy discovers how to communicate with wisecracking the family hound in this lightweight adventure

They say an actor should never work with animals or children. But a kid and a talking dog are the best things about this otherwise pretty hopeless attempt at a Jason Bourne-style adventure for under-nines, set in the cool world of tech. Gabriel Bateman is very likable as a teenage science whiz, but he has his work cut out in scenes opposite his screen mum and dad – a pair of terrifically wooden performances by Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel.

The late Richard Benner’s 1977 “Outrageous!” blazed trails as both a hit Canadian export and positive screen depiction of gay life, two relative rarities at the time. Even then, some gay viewers found the funny-sad friendship between a hairdresser/professional drag queen and a young schizophrenic woman a bit old-fashioned. But everybody was won over by Craig Russell’s stage impersonations of Hollywood stars — schmaltz and camp being a reliable combination for gay cinema with crossover ambitions.

That formula has scarcely altered 43 years later for “Stage Mother.” It’s the latest from Thom Fitzgerald, whose 1997 “The Hanging Garden” was also shot in Nova Scotia, and helped herald a new, perhaps more politically bold and artistically adventuresome generation of gay Canadian filmmakers. His more recent work has fitted into a time-tested mould of sentimental seriocomedy, however. This tale of a small-town Texas matron who inherits her estranged son’s San Francisco drag bar offers up smiles,

“Beavis and Butt-Head” is coming back. Heh heh heh.

Comedy Central has announced a new deal with original series creator Mike Judge to reimagine MTV’s classic animated comedy. The network has ordered two seasons of the new series, which promises “meta-themes relatable to both new and old fans – Gen X parents and their Gen Z kids.” The deal also includes additional spin-offs and specials but specifics about those projects — as well as the release date for the upcoming two-season revival — are still under wraps

As with the original series, Judge will write and produce the series as well as voice the two dim-witted protagonists.

“We are thrilled to be working with Mike Judge and the great team at 3 Arts again as we double down on Adult Animation at Comedy Central” Chris McCarthy, president of Entertainment & Youth Group, said in a statement. “Beavis and Butt-Head were a defining voice of a generation,

The tirelessly joke-packed 1980 film might have dated in some ways but its relentless desire to amuse still makes it an undeniable winner

Even in the anarchic heyday of the Marx brothers at Paramount Pictures, when they turned out vaudevillian free-for-alls such as Horse Feathers and Duck Soup, or Mel Brooks parodies like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, audiences had never encountered the sheer volume of gags that hit them in Airplane!, which are so relentless that the bad ones don’t have time to develop an odor. There are puns, pratfalls, provocations, foreground/background dynamics, double entendres, references to film and TV and popular commercials, random acts of silliness and absurdity, and every possible strain of what would later be categorized as a “dad joke”. Even at 40, when a handful of the references and bits have grown whiskers, Airplane! still absolutely kills. Rarely has a film so eager to please

Beijing has moved quickly to impose controversial new national security legislation on Hong Kong that severely curtails the territory’s previous freedoms and could mean life in prison for violators — local and foreign alike.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam called the law “a crucial step to ending chaos and violence that has occurred over the past few months,” saying criticism amounted to “vicious attacks.”

Within hours of the law coming into effect late Tuesday night, its presence was quickly felt. Among 370 arrests of protesters on Wednesday, 10 were detained under the auspices of the Nsl — including a 15-year-old girl who was waving a Hong Kong independence flag.

Hundreds came out Wednesday on July 1, the 23rd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British rule to China, to protest the legislation — a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that crowded the streets a year earlier in protest of a deeply unpopular extradition bill.

The daughter of a dead tycoon is cheated of her rightful millions and bequeathed a mysterious inhabited bunker in this implausible caper

It’s bold of Lily Collins, daughter of Phil Collins, to star in a psychological thriller called Inheritance. She stars as Lauren Monroe, dynasty scion and – despite looking all of 12 years old – the district attorney for Manhattan. Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford plays her congressional candidate brother, giving the early scenes a Boss Baby feel, as these two stomp around town dishing out orders with zero personal authority. Adorable. When their tycoon father dies, Lauren is shafted out of her fair share of his millions and instead bequeathed a secret bunker on the family grounds. This might have been valuable New York real estate, were it not for the mysterious man (Simon Pegg in a comically dishevelled wig) who has been kept prisoner there for decades.

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The most obvious point of comparison for “Suzi Q,” a new documentary about the pioneering 1970s rocker Suzi Quatro, is “Bad Reputation,” a two-year-old doc about Joan Jett. That’s not least of all because Jett is a frequent on-camera presence in the new movie, and comes off as such an acolyte of the woman who broke glass ceilings slightly before her, that you can almost imagine there’s some kind of “All About Eve” story in the wings. There doesn’t seem to be, although Quatro does mention with a hint of rue that when the other singer’s smash “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” came out, people mistakenly congratulated her. In some sense, Quatro was Jett before Jett was really Jett — laying down the leather law when no female rocker had yet managed the combination of sex appeal and pure machisma.

Ultimately, though, Quatro comes off quite differently

“Ray Donovan,” “Everybody Hates Chris,” and “The Affair” are among the popular ViacomCBS titles that will be available on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service when the platform launches nationally on July 15.

NBCUniversal announced its upcoming streaming service has inked a content licensing agreement with ViacomCBS on Wednesday. Other ViacomCBS-owned television shows that will be available on Peacock will include “Undercover Boss,” “The Game,” and “Real Husbands of Hollywood,” while “Charmed” will become available in October.

Peacock will also receive a slew of ViacomCBS films available for limited periods throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023, including the classic “The Godfather” trilogy, “Catch Me If You Can,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “American Beauty,” “Patriot Games,” “Last Holiday,” “Fatal Attraction,” “The Firm,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” among others. NBCUniversal did not specify exactly when those films will be available on Peacock.

While the addition of popular and critically acclaimed titles such as “Ray Donovan” and “The Godfather

The First International Film Festival this week announced that it will occur with in-person screenings from July 26 to August 3 in China’s Qinghai province — implying that cinemas will be open in at least parts of the country by the end of the month.

This would make it among the first festivals in the world to occur since the novel coronavirus, and one of few that has not had to cancel or change its originally planned dates. First follows at least two other in-person events: Taiwan’s Taipei Film Festival (June 25 to July 11) and France’s Fid Marseille (July 7-13).

China’s showcase Shanghai Intl. Film Festival was postponed from its original June time slot. It is believed to be looking for a late July revival, but those plans have not been made public.

First’s official selection of 13 feature films, eight documentaries and 13 shorts will compete for a series of ten awards.