ITV

Category: Movies

  • Walt Disney Studios to release Zokkomon on 22 April

    MUMBAI: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures‘ Zokkomon is slated for release on 22 April.


    Zokkomon is an action adventure film about an ordinary boy who overcomes extraordinary challenges. Kunal, played by Darsheel Safary, is the orphaned boy who discovers how cruel life is when he is abandoned by his heartless uncle.
     
    Left to fend for himself, Kunal discovers the hero within and begins his epic journey of adventure and transformation to become Zokkomon.


    Directed by debutant Satyajit Bhatkal, the film stars Darsheel Safary in the lead role along with Anupam Kher and Manjiri Phadnis who made a name in Aamir Khan‘s Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na.

  • Asha Bhosle to make her acting debut in Marathi film Maaee

    MUMBAI: Veteran songstress Asha Bhosle is going to make her acting debut in Maaee (Mother).


    The Marathi film is produced by Subhash Dawar of Alliance Entertainment and Nitin Shankar of Rhythm D‘vine Entertainment.


    “Acting is something that I hadn‘t done so far. I‘ve done enough of playback singing in my career and when this opportunity to act in Maaee came my way, I thought why not give it a try. The first thing what excited me about the project was the script. When I heard it, I was sure that I wanted to be a part of the film. It‘s a fictional story about a mother-daughter relationship and Padmini Kolhapure is playing my daughter,” said Bhosle in a statement.


    Directed by Mahesh Kodiyal, the film is said to have struck an inedible chord with Bhosle, resulting in giving a nod to the venture.
     

  • Tribeca, Sundance developing distribution network

    MUMBAI: Tribeca Enterprises and the Sundance Institute have been experimenting with various ideas to develop a credible distribution network for independent films, exploring all kinds of possibilities offered by the emerging and fast evolving digital technology.


    Tribeca Enterprises plans to create its own movie distribution arm called Tribeca Films to take its films to American audiences. On the other hand, Sundance nstitute is also putting in place a year-round strategy for the digital distribution of independent films that will involve its partners.


    The Sundance programme will focus on facilitating distribution while filmmakers retain ownership of their work while Tribeca Films will also acquire films for distribution like any other conventional distribution company.


    These are attempts to fill in the void left behind by the disappearance of specialty film distribution arms of major studios that did not find it worthwhile to pump in money in their subsidiaries.


    Tribeca and Sundance will use their brand name to keep the cost of marketing and promotion down. There are still a great number of cynics who are not sure if these efforts will work or not.


    People think that the Tribeca model may work since it is backed by American Express and LodgeNet, a VoD service that reaches out to about 1.8 million hotel rooms in North America.

  • Brazilian Jose Padilha set to direct Robocop remake

    MUMBAI: Jose Padilha, who directed the Brazilian cop film Elite Squad is in negotiation to direct a remake of Robocop.


    The remake is a big priority of the newly reconstituted directors of MGM. Other directors on the list included Robert Rodriguez and David Slade who helmed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.


    Robocop could well go on to be the Hollywood debut of Padilha. The 1987 original, directed by Paul Verhoeven, featured a cop who is brought back from the brink of death in the form of a cyborg with no memories of his prior life. Till now, the film has had two sequels.


    Padilha was attached at one stage to direct “The Sigma Protocol,” an adaptation of a Robert Ludlum novel, but has since moved on.
     

  • Mastang Mama releasing in July

    MUMBAI: Nikhil Panchamiya’s Mastang Mama will release in the month of July.


    Directed by Vikram Singh, the film has Tanay Chheda, the young boy who jumped into films by playing the teenaged Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire and won further laurels by playing the autistic child in My Name is Khan.


    In Mastang Mama, Tanay essays the role of a mischievous ‘nephew’ (bhanja) who always pokes fun at his maternal uncle (mama) played by Ruslaan Mumtaz in the film. The film chronicles the misadventures of both Tanay and Ruslaan. It is a humorous take on their dysfunctional relationship.


    Starring Kulraj Randhawa, Gulshan Grover and Asrani in prominent roles, the film is currently in its post-production stage.

  • Vidhu Vinod Chopra begins work on stalled film

    MUMBAI: After thinking of restarting his ambitious stalled English film Broken Horses, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has decided to get the film out of the backburner. Chopra had announced the film in September 2009.


    Initially busy to complete his film 3 Idiots then and later with his protégé Rajesh Mapuskar‘s film Ferrari Ki Sawaari, Chopra was not able to find time to get Broken Horses, which he is writing as well as directing.


    Now Chopra has decided to devote all his attention to Broken Horses. Last year, the producer-director had spent time in the US working on the script and scouted for locations.


    The producer-director is now in Los Angeles for the pre-production work and would be stationed there till mid-March to finalise arrangements for shooting of the film. T
    Slated to be shot in New Mexico from September, the film is currently in the casting process.

  • 4-team Celebrity Cricket League to start in June

    MUMBAI: Looks like cricket will hog the limelight the whole year. Soon after the World Cup and the fourth season of the IPL ends, the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) that seeks to combine the two religions in India – Cricket and Cinema – would start in the first week of June.


    For the first time in the country, CCL will create a platform where film fraternities of the South and Bollywood will battle each other to be one up on each other through cricket.


    The first season of CCL will comprise four teams – Bollywood, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film industries – playing six league matches culminating in an explosive final.


    As a curtain raiser of the mega event, Bollywood XI and South Superstars XI will clash in a day and night encounter at VDCA cricket stadium in Vizag on 5 March.


    While the Bollywood team (Mumbai Heroes) will be led by Sunil Shetty with Salman Khan as the icon player, the Kannada team will be led by Sudeep. Surya will lead the Tamil team and Venkatesh will be the skipper of the TeluguTeam.

  • Beauty personified Jane Russel no more

    MUMBAI: Jane Russell, who personified beauty and sexuality in the times of World War II and also reigned during the era of Hollywood moguls passed away due to respiratory failure on 28February in California. She was 89.


    She is survived by her three children, Thomas K. Waterfield, Tracy Foundas and Robert Waterfield, and six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.


    Russell lived a full life, from her days as a wartime pin-up girl to her Hollywood career and to her retirement years, where she was a philanthropist and active churchgoer. She reflected the post-war era of prosperity and more free-wheeling lifestyles as Hughes promoted her relentlessly throughout World War II.


    Though she was widely known as a wartime pin-up queen, she ruled in Hollywood under the tutelage of billionaire Howard Hughes who was determined to make Russell a star of the first order in Tinseltown.


    Among her films were His Kind of Woman with Robert Mitchum, Double Dynamite with Frank Sinatra and The Las Vegas Story with Victor Mature.
     

  • Anne Carey in a tie up with Epoch Films

    MUMBAI: In his drive to expand the production company‘s film and TV operations, Anne Carey has entered into a strategic partnership with Epoch Films.


    The producer, who recently made Adventureland, The Savages and The American, will have a new development fund at her disposal to find projects and develop them into an expanded slate along with Epoch founding partner Mindy Goldberg.


    Epoch produced the 2005 comedy Junebug and the 2008 romantic comedy Gigantic. The company is developing Low Down with commercials director Jeff Preiss, an Epoch partner, and Little Children producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa.


    Carey is also producing projects outside of the Epoch partnership, including Then We Came to the End, which Lynn Shelton will direct from a screenplay by Joshua Ferris; Last Night at the Lobster and The Listener.

  • Academy library calls for screenplay of Guzaarish

    MUMBAI: The Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (Oscars) has called for the screenplay of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Guzaarish to be kept as part of its permanent script collection.


    Touching on the sensitive subject of mercy-killing, Guzaarish opened to rave reviews and was praised for its finer nuances, right from the script to the thought behind it, the characters and actors playing them and even to the music and cinematography.


    According to Bhansali the film makes one aware about the beauty of life and what we have and how we should cherish what we have.


    This year Guzaarish has won several awards like the Star Screen awards, Filmfare awards, Zee Cine awards and Stardust awards. The film, however, bombed at the box office.