News

Sony Motion Picture Group has promoted veteran executive Louise Heseltine to senior VP, corporate communications.

Heseltine joined the studio in 2020 as VP of corporate communications for the Motion Picture Group, and worked on Sony titles including “Uncharted,” “Gran Turismo,” “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Bullet Train,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “No Hard Feelings” and most recently “Bad Boys Ride or Die” and “The Garfield Movie.”

Heseltine will report to the studio’s chief communications officer Tahra Grant, who was promoted earlier this year after longtime leader Bob Lawson was elevated to head of corp comms for the entire Sony group.

“Louise’s analytical grit and global sensibility has long supported our movie campaigns and our film business more broadly,” Grant said in a company memo. “She has navigated complicated industry obstacles with deftness and sensitivity, and is well-positioned to broaden her corporate...

Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli (Credit Greg Williams)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that its Board of Governors voted to present Academy Honorary Awards to Quincy Jones and Juliet Taylor, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Richard Curtis and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The Oscar® statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s Governors Awards event on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood.

“The recipients of this year’s Governors Awards have set the bar incredibly high across their remarkable careers, and the Academy’s Board of Governors is thrilled to recognize them with Oscars,” said Academy President Janet Yang. “The selection of Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli is a testament to their success as producers of the fan-favorite Bond series and their contribution to the industry’s theatrical landscape.

Quincy Jones, the first Black producer to be nominated for best picture, and legendary casting director Juliet Taylor will receive honorary Oscars at this year’s Governors Awards, announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Wednesday. Screenwriter and director Richard Curtis will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, while James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli will be bestowed with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. The statuettes will be presented at the 15th annual ceremony on Sunday, Nov. 17, in Los Angeles.

“The recipients of this year’s Governors Awards have set the bar incredibly high across their remarkable careers, and the Academy’s Board of Governors is thrilled to recognize them with Oscars,” said Janet Yang, Academy President. “The selection of Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli is a testament to their success as producers of the fan-favorite Bond series and their contribution to the industry’s theatrical landscape.

“Back to Black,” a new biopic about the late Amy Winehouse, has debuted its first footage.

Starring “Industry” actor Marisa Abela as Winehouse and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, “Back to Black” is executive produced by Nicky Kentish-Barnes, Ron Halpern and Joe Naftalin for Studiocanal and Alison Owen and Debra Hayward for Monumental Pictures from a screenplay written by Matt Greenhalgh (“Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”).

“‘Back to Black’ is a never-before-seen glimpse into Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame and the release of her groundbreaking studio album, ‘Back to Black,” the logline reads. “Told from Amy’s perspective, the film is an unapologetic look at the woman behind the phenomenon and the relationship that inspired one of the most legendary albums of all time.”

“I don’t write music to be famous,” Abela as Winehouse says in the trailer as the title song rings out. “I write songs...

The BAFTAs have a soft spot for home-grown talent. Earlier this year, “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” scored four bids at the British Academy Film Awards, including Best Actor (Daryl McCormack) and Best Actress (Emma Thompson). Before that, in 2022, Adeel Akhtar snuck into the Best Actor lineup for “Ali & Ava” and Joanna Scanlan won Best Actress for “After Love.”

This pattern of Brits recognizing Brits could bode well for Daniel Kaluuya this year, who makes his directorial debut with the new Netflix drama “The Kitchen.” The film depicts a dystopian London in which all social housing has been eliminated. The focus in the story are the residents of The Kitchen, a community that refuses to leave their homes despite their struggles. At the heart of the film is Kane Robinson‘s (also known as Kano) Izi, who takes Jedaiah Bannerman‘s young boy under his wing and tries...

Andrew Scott sees dead people, but he could also see an Oscar nomination come his way with his heartbreaking and tenderly emotional turn as a gay screenwriter in Andrew Haigh’s drama “All of Us Strangers.”

Loosely based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel “Strangers,” the film follows screenwriter Adam (Scott), who, after an encounter with his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), is mysteriously pulled back into his childhood home, where it appears his long-dead parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) are actually alive — and haven’t aged in 30 years.

Emmy nominee Scott (guest drama actor in 2020 for “Black Mirror”) has been seamlessly maneuvering back and forth between film and television, notably garnering massive attention for his “hot priest” role on “Fleabag.” He absorbs the underlying pain of losing parents, while also grappling with the lingering question of whether they would approve of you or not. It may sound like...

Drama

“Floodlights,” a feature-length single drama for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer tells the story of Andy Woodward, the former professional soccer player whose revelations about the sexual abuse he suffered as a youth player sent shockwaves throughout the industry. In 2016, Woodward went public about sexual abuse by his youth coach, Barry Bennell. After doing so, hundreds more men, many also victims of Bennell, found the courage to speak up about their experiences of abuse, lifting the lid on a national scandal in the U.K.’s most popular sport.

Gerard Kearns (“The Last Kingdom”) portrays Woodward and the cast also includes Jonas Armstrong (“Hollington Drive”), Morven Christie (“Lockwood & Co”) and Steve Edge (“Benidorm”).

“Floodlights,” made with the full cooperation of Woodward, is written by BAFTA-winning screenwriter, Matt Greenhalgh and directed by BAFTA-nominated Nick Rowland (“Calm With Horses”). It is produced by Expectation, part of BBC Studios’ portfolio of indies...

Jamie Bell has signed on to star opposite Elisabeth Moss (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) in the Apple series adaptation of the 2013 Lauren Beukes novel “Shining Girls.”

Bell, a BAFTA Award-winner known best for his work on “Rocketman,” “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” and “Billy Elliot” will play the role of Harper in the metaphysical thriller. Harper is described as a mysterious loner with a surprising connection to Moss’ character, Kirby. Kirby is a Chicago reporter who survived a brutal assault only to find her reality shifting as she hunts down her attacker. Moura will play Dan, a veteran journalist breaking the widening story of a copycat attack.

Silka Luisa will write the adaptation and serve as executive producer and showrunner. Moss and Lindsey McManus will executive produce under their Love & Squalor Pictures banner. Leonardo DiCaprio will executive produce through Appian Way alongside Jennifer Davidson. Beukes...

by Nathaniel R

What a final month this has been in the march towards nominations. What were Oscar voters thinking during the week that stretched from the Golden Globes through the BAFTA nominations? You had to freeze the buzz right there and try and make sense of it while also trying to ignore anything that happened thereafter which can't really have an effect. Hell, you can't even really be sure that things that happened during voting truly changed things. Was there time, for instance, for voters to turn on James Franco -- he was added to the long list of men being accused of sexual misconduct that week but the story didn't get loud until the last few days of voting. Did voters even notice the BAFTA nominations and their total rejection of The Post and the minor kisses blown to both Phantom Thread and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool...

by Nathaniel R

Jamie Bell has been famous since he was 14 years old. His debut film Billy Elliott (2000) about a young boy who discovers a passion for dancing that puts him at odds with his blue-collar community, became a global sensation. The charming film earned over $100 million (on a $5 million budget), received 3 Oscar nominations multiple BAFTAs, and eventually spawned a similarly popular stage musical which took yet more prizes.

The film also earned its young star the BAFTA for Best Actor in February of 2001. And, seventeen years later, here we are again. Jamie Bell is BAFTA nominated for Best Actor for his latest movie Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool. The romantic drama, now in limited release, is about the last days of Oscar winner Gloria Grahame's (Annette Bening) life and the young unknown actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell) she falls in love with, and whose life she essentially...

“Soon to be a major motion picture.” From its publication in 1986, that was what British actor-writer Peter Turner expected of his Gloria Grahame memoir “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.” But it took three decades for the May-December romance starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell to finally hit theaters December 29.

This could have been yet another film that never got made. But James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli knew Turner back when the young actor was in love with Grahame, his fellow lodger twice his age at a Primrose Hill rooming house. “I’ve known Peter Turner for 40 years,” said Broccoli. “I met him and Gloria together. It was a special relationship. Sometime after she passed away he wrote the memoir, and gave me the manuscript. I thought it was so beautiful.”

Columbia Pictures chairman David Puttnam optioned the book shortly after its publication, but the project went into turnaround...

When Jamie Bell received the script for his awards-season entry Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool, he thought it was too good to be true. "I didn't think it was a real story," he told me at Deadline's The Contenders event earlier in the month in front of a packed house of Academy and guild voters. "I thought it was a bizarre piece of fiction, and such a bizarre idea for a film." In fact, the script was based on the 1986 memoir by Peter Turner, in which the jobbing actor…...

The thought of Alicia Vikander and Eva Green starring in the same movie is enticing enough, but the fact they’re playing sisters in “Euphoria” is almost too amazing to handle. The drama marks the third directorial effort from Lisa Langseth, the Swedish filmmaker who put Vikander on the radar of Hollywood by casting her as the lead in dramas “Pure” and “Hotell.” “Euphoria” marks a coming home of sorts for Vikander, and it should be a knockout.

Read More:Alicia Vikander Explains How a ‘Wonderfully Brutal’ Creative Bond Turned Her Into an Indie Producer

“Euphoria” follows Vikander and Green’s estranged sisters as they travel through Europe and attempt a difficult and ominous reconciliation. The supporting cast includes Charles Dance, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Stanley, and Adrian Lester. The film was shot in Munich, Germany and the German Alps.

The drama had its world premiere in the Platform section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Past Oscar years have often had an imbalance in the screenplay categories, with original being the designated place for edgy (for Oscar at least) critical darlings and adapted screenplay being the place where all the prestige Best Pictures gather to receive their admirer. But old rules are going away, "prestige" has lost meaning, and this year nearly all the critical darlings And consensus Best Picture likelies have been deemed "original" -it's seriously stacked, just look at the updated chart. 

So what gets nominated for Adapted in this vacuum? Here's an alphabetical list of 15 possibilities but beyond Call Me By Your Name none of them seem like safe bets, exactly. So which way does this go? After scratching my head I've made a guess on the chart but I'm eager to hear what you're thinking on that matter.

Beguiled Blade Runner 2049 Call Me By Your Name  The Disaster Artist Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool...

Adult Swim has released a new “Rick and Morty” short film just in time for Thanksgiving, and it might just be the most emotional thing the show has ever done. Entitled “The Poop In My Pants,” the short tells the emotional life story of the fan-favorite character Mr. Poopybutthole, who first made his “Rick and Morty” debut in the Season 2 episode “Total Rickall.”

Read More:‘Rick and Morty’ Creators Are Giving One Fan the Chance to Record Season 3 DVD Commentary With Them

The short finds Mr. Poopybutthole reading a photo album that takes the viewer through the ups and downs of his life. The clip is similar to the opening of “Up” and packs an unexpected emotional wallop.

“Rick and Morty” recently wrapped up its third season as the most watched show in Adult Swim history. The video may run less than two minutes, but you might need a tissue.

"Tell me how I look?" "You look beautiful." Sony Pictures Classics has debuted the new official Us trailer for the festival favorite Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which has played at the Telluride, Toronto and London Film Festivals to some great reviews. The film tells the story of Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame, as played by the ever-so-talented Annette Bening. It mainly focuses on her passionate romance with a much younger movie star named Peter Turner, as played by Jamie Bell, and it's based on Turner's actual memoir. The full cast includes Julie Walters, Vanessa Redgrave, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Graham, and Frances Barber. Grahame starred in The Big Heat, It's a Wonderful Life, In a Lonely Place, and Oklahoma!, and won the Oscar for her role in The Bad and the Beautiful. This still looks great, worth a watch this fall. Bening and Bell leading the way with outstanding performances.

Annette Bening is to take the lead alongside Bill Nighy in Hope Gap.

Announced on the eve of the American Film Market, the film is the second feature as director from Oscar-nominee William Nicholson (Everest, Gladiator, Shadowlands, Les Miserables), and will see Oscar-nominated Bening (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, American Beauty) and BAFTA-winning Nighy (Their Finest, Love Actually) playing a couple who have been married for 29 years. When their son, Jamie, comes to visit for the weekend at their seaside home, Edward informs him that he plans to leave Grace. The next day. Just another breakup. Hope Gap tracks the unraveling of...

An Oscar movie could hit theaters at any time during the year -- as far as the rules are concerned, it only needs to be released between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 to be eligible -- but everyone knows that all of the true contenders arrive in the last quarter of the year.

I suppose some Academy-worthy movies have already been released: Dunkirk, right? The Big Sick and Get Out less likely, but perhaps! I guess some people believe Wonder Woman could really get a Best Picture nomination.... So, instead of considering this our first round of Oscar predictions, think of it as a Ones to Watch list to prepare you as studios start showing off their films that could earn noms at next year's Academy Awards. (Which are still five months away, Fyi, on March 4, 2018.)

Best Picture

The Contenders: The surest things at this point appear to be The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's already...

"Gloria Grahame has the face that you remember," said director Paul McGuigan, "but she doesn't necessarily have the name that you remember." This is likely to change after the release of his Toronto Film Festival hit Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool, which details what happened when the iconic star of Hollywood classics such as It's A Wonderful Life, In A Lonely Place and The Big Heat found herself performing onstage in shabby British repertory theatres during the 1970s…...

"Could you take me to Liverpool? I could get better there..." Lionsgate UK has unveiled the first trailer for a film titled Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which just premiered at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend to great reviews. It will play at Tiff next and the London Film Festival, too. The film tells the story of Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame, as played by the ever-so-talented Annette Bening. It mainly focuses on her passionate romance with a much younger movie star named Peter Turner, as played by Jamie Bell, and it's based on Turner's actual memoir. The full cast includes Julie Walters, Vanessa Redgrave, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Graham, and Frances Barber. Grahame starred in The Big Heat, It's a Wonderful Life, In a Lonely Place, and Oklahoma!, and won the Oscar for her role in The Bad and the Beautiful. Based on the early buzz, this is...

The Venice Film Festival opened last night with Alexander Payne's Downsizing and continues today with Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, so, in other words, the fall festival season is fully upon us. And both those films will be making their local debuts at the upcoming London Film Festival. As previously announced, Andy Serkis' Breathe, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Battle Of The Sexes and Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri are the headlining galas, but the Payne and the del Toro are both getting gala presentations, too, as are the following (per Screen International): Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name; Alexander Payne's Downsizing; Paul McGuigan's Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool; Guillermo del Toro's The Shape Of Water; Dee Rees' Mudbound;...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired rights in North America, Eastern Europe, Germany and Asia Pay Television to Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.

Paul McGuigan directs the adaptation, starring Annette Bening, Vanessa Redgrave, Jamie Bell and Julie Waters. It makes its world premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Based on Peter Turner’s memoir, the film follows the playful but passionate relationship between Turner (Bell) and the eccentric Oscar-winning actress Gloria Grahame (Bening) in 1978 Liverpool. What starts as a vibrant affair between a legendary femme fatale and her young lover quickly grows into a deeper...