Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Retaliating against the organizers for screening a documentary about exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, that Australian director Jeff Daniels worked on for seven years, last month Chinese hackers attacked the website of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

And now after the Kaohsiung Film Festival announced that it would screen the documentary, The 10 Conditions of Love, Chinese forces in Taiwan have issued a series of threats.

It is said that Chinese tourists cancelled thousands of room reservations in Kaohsiung because of the Dalai Lama‘s trip there and are threatening to do so again if the documentary is screened.

MUMBAI: Warner Bros. Entertainment has promoted Akihiko Washington as executive vice president, worldwide human resources of.

Washington now serves in a bigger role, he being responsible for managing the company‘s worldwide human resources operation, which includes organizational readiness and development, recruitment, compensation and benefits, employee training and development, shared services, work-life initiatives and employee communications.

He will also continue to work with Time Warner‘s human resources staff to facilitate career development programs across all Time Warner divisions to ensure that the company has an extensive, well-trained talent pool across various business categories at all times.

Said Warner Bros chairman and CEO Meyer, “In many ways, human resources is the lifeblood of an organization, responsible for attracting, developing and retaining the best talent in the business, and Kiko has been integral to the success we‘ve had in that area and, consequently, as a company overall.”

“Throughout his tenure at the Studio, Kiko has been a key member of our senior management team who has helped to move our businesses forward. He has also kept our human resources and employee programs among the best in the industry, and we look to his leadership to keep our workforce at the forefront of the many businesses in which we operate,” averred Warner Bros president and COO Alan Horn.

MUMBAI: Lionsgate has acquired worldwide distribution rights of writer-director Stephen Gaghan‘s next film.

Gaghan, who last wrote and directed Syriana will produce and direct the untitled action thriller that deals about an elite deep cover operative who becomes a Brooklyn beat cop and fights a global organization. Gaghan is co-writing the screenplay with Shannon Burke.

Lionsgate executive Wolfgang Hammer brought the project to the studio and will oversee with production president Alli Shearmur.

Gaghan won an Oscar for his screenplay for Traffic. He also wrote and directed Abandon and worked on the scripts for Rules of Engagement, The Alamo and Havoc.

Lionsgate most recently released Gamer and Tyler Perry‘s I Can Do Bad All by Myself which has so far grossed $37.7 million at the box-office.

MUMBAI: Archie has got a hiring agent that will make his passage to the Hollywood and TV world easier. In what could be the golden goose run for comics, 70-year-old Archie Comics has signed up talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

The timing could be just perfect for Archie who recently proposed to rich girl Veronica, setting aside next door girl Betty. Hollywood‘s appetite to convert comics into movies seems to have grown, evident from Disney‘s recent announcement to gobble up Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion.

The deal will go beyond Archie‘s companions like Jughead. Archie Comics also has properties like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats.
Hollywood studios are keen to extend comic brands into film properties as they target teen and college age male demographics.

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Entertainment will release Michael Jackson‘s This Is It on 28 October.

This Is It will be available worldwide for a limited two-week engagement from 28 October.

Of the planned 25 global premieres, more than 15 will be co-ordinated simultaneously across the globe on 27 October.

Said Sony Pictures chairman worldwide marketing and distribution Jeff Blake, “Michael Jackson has an army of fans everywhere around the world. By rolling out this film with simultaneous premieres and special advance screenings on 27 October, we are giving audiences an incredible opportunity to join together in celebration of Michael Jackson‘s incredible career.”

More than 15 cities, including New York, Rio De Janeiro, London, Berlin, Johannesburg, and Seoul will host events simultaneously and three hours after the worldwide celebration of the motion picture, the first public screenings of the film will begin.

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has acquired two titles that were recently shown at the toronto Film Festival. It has taken all US rights of Samuel Maoz‘ Golden Lion winner Lebanon and North American rights of Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low.

SPC and Celluloid Dreams negotiated the deal for Lebanon, which premiered on the Lido and takes place largely inside a tank, where four soldiers are stranded inside enemy territory on the first day of the Lebanon War in June 1982.

“Lebanon is of those important films that will last forever in the marketplace,” SPC said in a statement. “We are honoured to be bringing the film to the American public.”

The distributor also acquired rights to Get Low from CAA. Dean Zanuck and David Gundlach produced the co-production from Zanuck Independent, David Gundlach Productions, Lara Enterprises and TVN. K5 is handling international sales.

MUMBAI

: Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has acquired two titles that were recently shown at the toronto Film Festival. It has taken all US rights of Samuel Maoz‘ Golden Lion winner Lebanon and North American rights of Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low.

SPC and Celluloid Dreams negotiated the deal for Lebanon, which premiered on the Lido and takes place largely inside a tank, where four soldiers are stranded inside enemy territory on the first day of the Lebanon War in June 1982.

“Lebanon is of those important films that will last forever in the marketplace,” SPC said in a statement. “We are honoured to be bringing the film to the American public.”

The distributor also acquired rights to Get Low from CAA. Dean Zanuck and David Gundlach produced the co-production from Zanuck Independent, David Gundlach Productions, Lara Enterprises and TVN. K5 is handling international sales.

MUMBAI: UK-based distributor Protagonist Pictures has signed a pioneering “manufacture on demand” DVD deal with Amazon.com-subsidiary Createspace for the US.

It will make more than 50 vintage titles from Film4 catalogue available to American consumers. The deal will include titles such as Shekhar Kapur‘s The Bandit Queen, Pat O‘Connor‘s A Month InThe Country, Mike Leigh‘s Life Is Sweet, Mike Newell‘s SourSweet and Alan Clarke‘s Rita, Sue and Bob Too. They will be packaged as part of a branded Film4 Collection.

Nada Cirjanic, head of library sales at Protagonist, said, “We have a huge library. This is a really cost-effective and viable way of reaching potential buyers. This is a way for us to do the best we can for all the films in our library that are cleared and available for use.”

The DVDs will sell at between $15 and $20. To recoup its set-up costs, Protagonist said it only needs to sell around 20 copies of each film.
Till date, about 40 per cent of the Film4 library, which dates back to the launch of the channel in 1982, has been remastered.