MUMBAI: Universal Pictures has signed director Judd Apatow for a three film deal.
Incidentally, Apatow‘s latest film Funny People that released on 31July stars Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen.
Apatow has directed three films for Universal so far namely The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Funny People.
MUMBAI: Chinese hackers have crashed the website of Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia‘s biggest film festival. The move has escalated tensions over a visit to Australia by exiled leader Rebiya Kadeer of the Uighur minority.
Online bookings for the Festival had to be shut down after the site crashed with phony purchases that resulted in the entire programme being sold out.
A Chinese citizen living in the United States had alerted organisers of the viral campaign that originated from a Chinese website titled ‘A Call to Action to All Chinese People‘.
The site explained how to set up a fake profile for buying tickets and aimed to crash the festival‘s site in protest against its screening of Ten Conditions of Love and its hosting of the documentary‘s subject.
MUMBAI: Will Yun Lee will star in two indie films Oka! Amerikee and Hollywood Untitled.
The former is based on the true story of Louis Sarno, an American ethno-musicologist who lived among the Bayaka Pygmies in Central Africa for 25 years recording their music in which Lee will play Yi, a Chinese businessman, alongside Kris Marshall and Isaach de Bankole, Hollywood United, written and directed by Mun Chee Yong will star Lee as a young man struggling with the after-effects of waking up from a coma caused by a car accident.
The film is being produced by Brett Heneberg, Delon Tio and Shannon Makhanian.
MUMBAI: DMG, a Chinese-American media company and Summit have got the Nicolas Cage thriller Knowing into one of the 20 annual theatrical film slots for foreign-made movies that is controlled by the China Film Group (CFG).
The move is a coup for both DMG and Summit, as the quota system in the country favours films coming out of the big Hollywood studios like Transformers, Terminator Salvation, Ice Age and Harry Potter.
Though Summit does not have offices in China but its partner DMG — an advertising firm with 16 years‘ experience in China and offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Los Angeles — used its knowledge of the Chinese marketplace and bureaucracy to position the film in one of the coveted spots.
For most U.S. movies released in China, their distributors receive a flat fee between $10,000 and $75,000. Under the CFG, studios receive a percentage of the gross, usually about 13%. With the Chinese box-office growing at a speedy clip.
DMG hopes Knowing will be released on 1,000-plus screens in the fall. Industry observers in Beijing are uncertain, however, as the Communist Party will celebrate 60 years in power on 1 October.
MUMBAI: The second annual West Hollywood International Film Festival will run from Wednesday to Saturday at various West Hollywood theatres.
The festival kicks off at the Pacific Design Center with the short film Words Unspoken starring Renee O‘Connor, and the documentary Annul Victory about the ongoing battle waged by gay and lesbian couples in their quest for civil rights.
MUMBAI: Hollywood studios are seeking a new injunction against The Pirate Bay, alleging that the file-sharing site is still carrying on infringement on copyrighted material.
It is reported that thirteen studios have come together to seek an injunction against the service, the founders of which were found guilty earlier this year of copyright infringement.
Last April, a Swedish court sentenced Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström to a year in prison and levied a fine on the site. The court, however, did not order the closure of The Pirate Bay.
Last month, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X said that it would buy off Pirate Bay and turn it into a legitimate content download destination.
MUMBAI: The organisers of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) fear more repercussions after all Chinese entries pulled out in protest over an appearance by exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.
Six Chinese films were withdrawn, leaving organisers with a logistical headache and worried that Chinese movie makers will boycott the festival in future years. MIFF spokeswoman Louise Heseltine said that it was very disappointing that the films, which had been lined up could not be shown.
She said the festival also had lost sponsorship from Hong Kong and Taipei. “Chinese independent filmmakers who want their films screened in the future will be concerned that they will get into trouble,‘‘ Ms Heseltine said.
Kadeer – who Beijing blames for inciting recent ethnic violence in western China was granted a visa on last Wednesday for her third visit to Australia. The prominent Uighur businesswoman from Xinjiang in China‘s northwest is the subject of a documentary by Australian filmmaker Jeff Daniels.
The controversial documentary chronicles Kadeer‘s story of rising from poverty to becoming the seventh richest person in China and an advocate for the independence of her oil-rich Uighur homeland.
Chinese film makers started withdrawing their work after the festival refused a request from the Chinese consulate in Melbourne to pull Daniels‘ film about three weeks ago.
The festival‘s website was also hacked into.
MUMBAI: Donal Logue is set to star in Terriers, FX‘s comedic hour-long pilot from The Shield creator Shawn Ryan and Ocean‘s Eleven writer Ted Griffin.
The project centers around Hank (Logue), an ex-cop who partners with his best friend to launch a P.I. business where the duo, both with maturity issues, solve crimes while trying to avoid danger and responsibility.
Hank is an affable, talkative fellow who‘s not always the best liar but is adept at adopting different personas to find out information. He is alarmed by what he perceives as signs of his encroaching senility.
Griffin has written the script for Terriers.
Logue, who most recently co-starred on NBC cop drama Life and in the 2008 Fox film Max Payne.
MUMBAI: Disney‘s 3D action film G-Force has taken an opening of $ 32.2 million at the North American box-office knocking Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince out of the top spot in its second weekend.
G-Force released across 3,697 theatres. Averaging $8,697 per-theatre, the PG-rated action-adventure about guinea pig government spies connected with family audiences and took advantage of higher-priced tickets from its 1,600 3D locations.
G-Force releases in India in English and other regional languages on 9 October.
MUMBAI: For four decades, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has fed film aficionados a steady diet of movie classics — retrospectives that included works from Roman Polanski, Cary Grant, Ernst Lubitsch and, in a current series, James Mason. But the museum‘s weekend film programme was losing both money and its audience, seeing which LACMA has decided to pull the plug on its cinematic centerpiece.
Before there were local film festivals nearly every week and mass merchants such as Target stocking art-house hits like A Room With a View and Gosford Park on their DVD shelves, LACMA‘s series was one of the few places area movie lovers could find Hollywood classics and foreign-language standouts. Screenings often included appearances by and conversations with distinguished filmmakers and legendary actors and actresses.
The museum said that it was not abandoning its commitment to films and filmmakers but instead wanted to rethink its approach to the art form, and would look for potential donors to underwrite an unspecified future film program that is curated like any other part of the museum‘s exhibits.
“It‘s not that people don‘t love film here, but it‘s hard,” said the museum‘s director Michael Govan adding, “We are getting diminishing audiences. This is a good time since we are shrinking to spend time thinking and rethinking. We do have to stem our losses.”
Govan did not say when the museum‘s revamped film programming would debut but suggested that there could be some new film programming next spring. The last weekend screening, The Classic Films of Alain Resnais will be held from 2 to 17 October.