Author: HollywoodReporter

Fellini, Visconti, Loren, Heston, Hepburn, Peck, Taylor, Burton … a dream dinner party of talent graced the grounds of Rome’s renowned Cinecittà film studios during the so-called “Hollywood on the Tiber” period — named after the river that runs through the Italian capital. From the epic Quo Vadis in 1951 right through to Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther in 1963, the city was burning with big film-production energy. Hollywood studios clamored to record runaway English-language projects there, lapping up the local subsidies, lower costs and unfrozen international funds; peaking with Cleopatra in 1963 — at that time the most expensive title ever made. And now, thanks to…

A quick search for “action stars” online draws up a fairly predictable list of names — almost all male, white and towards the upper end of the age spectrum. Most noticeably, all have been doing their action thing for many, many years. Among the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, Sylvester Stallones, Tom Cruises, Jason Stathams, Jackie Chans, Liam Neesons and Gerard Butlers, there are a couple of “younger” faces towards the end of the lineup, including Chris Hemsworth and Henry Cavill, but what becomes immediately apparent is that this mostly still-busy assortment of machine gun-toting, baddie-dispatching and film-fronting heroes is looking rather ……

Naomie Harris, Gwendoline Christie and Harry Potter star Mark Williams have joined the ensemble cast of family adventure film Robin and the Hood alongside rising star Darcey Ewart (Prancer: A Christmas Tale, To Olivia). The film, which completed principal photography over the summer, comes from director Phil Hawkins (Prancer: A Christmas Tale) and was written by Stuart Benson and Paul Davidson, with the script first optioned by Silver Reel in 2021. It’s set to debut as a Sky Original in the U.K. and Ireland on Sky Cinema, with GFM Global Sales handling the film at the AFM following a deal…

Concourse Media has boarded action thriller Cabo from writer David McKenna (American History X, Blow, SWAT), with John Pogue (Eraser: Reborn) now attached to direct. Casting is currently underway and production is set to start mid mid-2024. The story follows a seemingly ordinary deckhand on a sportfishing boat in Cabo San Lucas who embarks on a mission to rescue his kidnapped nieces from a drug cartel, revealing his true self as he battles the cartel on their own turf.  Concourse Media, run by founder and CEO Matthew Shreder, is financing the picture and will produce alongside Todd Berger (Out Come…

Fall, the survival thriller that became a critical and commercial hit for Lionsgate in 2022, is set to become a franchise, with Capstone Studios having green lit two sequels. Scott Mann, who directed and co-wrote the original movie, will return to produce both sequels as well as co-write and direct the third film of the trilogy. The new films will reunite producers Mark Lane and James Harris of Tea Shop Productions (47 Meters Down), Capstone’s Christian Mercuri, David Haring (Bill and Ted Face the Music), and Mann via the Flawless banner. Dan Asma, John Long, and Roman Viaris will also return…

Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn and Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction took home the top prizes in the inaugural Audience Awards at the 2023 SCAD Savannah Film Festival. The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) announced Tuesday the audience winners, which were selected by festival attendees, alongside the juried winners of the festival’s 26th annual iteration. Oscar-winning Fennell’s Saltburn was the top pick, with the filmmaker appearing in-person to receive the Spotlight Director Award in front of a sold-out screening. American Fiction, the directorial debut of writer and producer Cord Jefferson, was the year’s runner-up and also appeared during the nearly two-week-long…

Filmmaker M Sayibu didn’t have much money to spend on his upcoming sci-fi feature The Batu Project: Adam the First, but he did have the sweeping vistas of Ghana at his disposal. The film was largely shot over 30 days in Sayibu’s native country, with the small salt mining town of Sege serving as one of its key locations, standing in for an alien planet. “There was nothing there. You are not in Ghana or on Earth anymore,” Sayibu recalls of driving outside the village to the salt flats. Adam the First takes place after nuclear war on Earth renders…

When Summit Entertainment brought Christopher Nolan’s Memento to the American Film Market in 2000, the British- born director was still a relative unknown. The screenplay he wrote for his second feature proved puzzling as it wove together two timelines, one in reverse chronological order, to tell the story of a man with short- term memory loss trying to piece together the truth behind his wife’s murder. But producer Aaron Ryder, calling it “perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen,” brought it to Newmarket Films, which agreed to finance the project on a budget that was variously reported as…

“This is the Tarantino film that Tarantino didn’t direct.” So says Mark Terry of his Grindhouse action horror movie Samurai Priest Vampire Hunter, a feature mostly shot on gritty Super 16mm and boasting “hardcore stunts, hardcore stunts, unique vampire lore, nudity, and unprecedented vampire killings.” Tarantino may disagree (or may be too busy working on what is thought to be his final film), but Terry is confident that if he “had a time machine and could show it to him in the 1970s, he would absolutely love it.” As the title suggests, Samurai Priest Vampire Hunter — selling at the AFM…

Austin Jewish Film Festival director David Finkel was hosting a visiting Israeli student in his home when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered more than 1,300 people on Oct. 7. The student learned the next day that his grandfather had been killed, and his grandmother and uncle were kidnapped. It’s just one of the many personal connections that people associated with the festival, now in its 21st year, have to the horrors of that day, and to the ongoing fighting in Gaza. There’s a cliche for times like these: “The show must go on.” But what about now? And what…