‘A Time Called You’ director reveals Rowoon wasn’t paid “any money” for his appearance

Naman Ramachandran Charades has sold key territories on Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach’s hand-painted animation “Chicken for Linda!” (“Linda veut du poulet!”) that won dual honors at the Annecy Animation Festival. The film follows loving mom, Paulette, who feels guilty after unfairly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her.

The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.

The Glory star Song Hye-kyo has revealed that starring the the popular K-drama series has helped bring back her “joy for acting”.Song Hye-kyo recently spoke to South Korea news outlet Sports Chosun, per SBS Star, about her Grand Prize win at the second annual Blue Dragon Series Awards in July this year and her thoughts on her The Glory tole.The actress opened up about how The Glory was a genre she has “never tired before”, but that the role eventually “brought back my joy for acting”. She added: “I’ve become more interested in working on projects that are different from what I usually do”.Song Hye-kyo also spoke about how she believes her role as Moon Dong-eun in The Glory has helped “changed the minds of those who were previously unwilling to accept me in unconventional genres”, noting how she has been “offered a wider variety of projects” after the K-drama’s success.Elsewhere in the interview, the actress was also asked what she thinks the future for her The Glory character would look like after achieving revenge.

Showtime has set a November premiere date for comedy The Curse, starring Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie. The 10-episode series will launch Friday, November 10 on streaming and on demand for Showtime and Paramount+ subscribers before making is linear debut on Showtime on Sunday, November 12 at 1 pm ET/PT. Showtime also has unveiled an expanded look at images from the series, which will have its world premiere at the 2023 New York Film Festival on Thursday, October 12, screening the first three episodes. You can see the images above and below.

Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-fi Film Club, a new documentary that will feature Parasite director Bong Joon-ho.According to Netflix, the upcoming documentary is an “ode to the golden era of Korean cinephilia” that will take a look at the “young film enthusiasts who paved the way for the Korean cinematic renaissance”The upcoming film is directed by Lee Hyuk-rae (2022’s Sewing Sisters) and will delve into the history and members of the Yellow Door Film Club, of which Oscar-winning Parasite director Bong Joon-ho was a member of.“The 1990s witnessed an explosion of film clubs on Korean campuses, providing young students with a creative outlet and a platform to study the art of cinema,” said Netflix of the film in a press release. “Yellow Door Film Club was one of them.”In the new trailer for Netflix’s Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-fi Film Club, Bong and his fellow Yellow Door Film Club are seen reuniting to speak about the club, how it came about and its influence on the South Korean entertainment industry.“At overseas film festivals in the early to mid-2000s, people would ask, ‘Where did all these directors come from?'” Bong recalls in the trailer.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Mo Abudu is an entrepreneur on a mission to make her native Nigeria a bigger player in global media. The CEO of Lagos-based EbonyLife Media is tapping into wave of interest from streamers in content from outside the U.S. and Europe to generate a flurry of deals for her production banner, known for producing the detective drama series “Blood Sisters” for Netflix.

XG is a Japanese girl group based out of South Korea.

Rowoon for Netflix’s latest K-drama, A Time Called You.A Time Called You, a remake of the 2019 Taiwanese series Someday or One Day, stars Ahn Hyo-seop (A Business Proposal) as lead male character Koo Yeon-jun. Meanwhile, Rowoon made a special appearance as Tae-ha, a friend of Yeon-jun’s.In a new interview with SBS Star, the actor spoke about how he had “always wanted to work together” with Rowoon and “recommended” the former SF9 member when production was looking for a special guest actor.

SF9, has opened up about the departure of member Rowoon.Yesterday (September 18), FNC Entertainment announced that SF9’s Rowoon would be stepping back from the boyband. In its statement, the K-pop agency said the singer would “remain as the ninth member of SF9”, although South Korean news outlets such as The Korea Herald and Korea JoongAng Daily reported that Rowoon had left the group.SF9’s leader Youngbin has since addressed the news, in a letter posted on the boyband’s official fancafe website, as seen by The Qoo.

Suga is about to start his military service.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix closed a $20 million deal on Hit Man, making the biggest deal at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and of the year for that matter. After the Richard Linklater-directed noir comic thriller debuted to raves at Venice, the film was expected to fetch the biggest deal of the fall festivals so far. Hit Man did not disappoint. Hit Man stars Top Gun Maverick’s Glen Powell and Adria Arjona (Andor) playing the most unlikely romantic partners, in performances that will boost each of their careers. Especially Powell, who co-wrote with Linklater what will be a major star turn for him. Netflix got US, UK, Australia/New Zealand, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, and Iceland. There is also a theatrical component to the deal, I’ve heard.

Kim Se-jeong has revealed that she initially turned down an offer to appear on Produce 101.Kim Se-jeong, a former member of K-pop girl groups I.O.I and Gugudan, opened up about her time on the popular Mnet TV competition Produce 101 during a recent appearance on the South Korean radio programme, Cultwo Show.The singer revealed that she had originally “turn it down” because, at the time, she was already set to make her debut under the Jellyfish Entertainment girl group, Gugudan. “So, I thought to myself, ‘Is joining the show really that necessary?’,” she said, per SBS Star.Though her appearance on Produce 101, Kim Se-jeong eventually joined the girl group I.O.I, made up of the final 11 contestants from the show.Speaking of her experience on the programme, the singer said that “there were so many cameras around everywhere, it was hard not to be conscious of them”.“I couldn’t practice even when I wanted to, because I was scared that people might judge me through those lenses, saying things like, ‘Oh, she’s just practicing hard only because she knows she is being filmed’,” she added.In other K-pop news, former NMIXX member Jini has teased her upcoming solo EP, titled ‘An Iron Hand in a Velvet Glove’.

A Time Called You director Kim Jin-won has spoken about the changes of the new Netflix K-drama, as compared to its source material, the 2019 Taiwanese series Someday or One Day.In a new interview with The Korea Times, Kim opened up about how it felt like working on A Time Called You, which is a remake of the popular 2019 Taiwanese series, Someday or One Day.The director shared that because he is a “big fan” of the original series, a huge “difficulty” when it came to A Time Called You was “finding the balance between staying true to the original and carving out new identity”.“If it’s too similar, there comes a question on our series’ identity and on why we are making this series,” he said, later noting that he and screenwriter Choi Hyo-bi “didn’t deliberately try to make huge changes”.“As we go with the flow, we know it will have certain aspects of the characters that will naturally deviate,” Kim added. “There have been a lot of changes to the characters, rather than in the overall story.”Kim singled out changes to the character of Nam Si-heon, played by Ahn Hyo-seop of A Business Proposal fame, as the one that really affected the “overall tone of the series”.“I believed that creating Si-heon as more adult and mature would help to develop the story more smoothly,” the A Time Called You director added.

A Time Called You star Jeon Yeo-been says the memorable moment while filming the new Netflix K-drama was the kissing scene.Jeon Yeo-been recently spoke to South Korean media about her time working on A Time Called You, during which she recalled the memorable moment from the K-drama’s production.The actress said that the “first one that springs to mind” was when she and co-star Ahn Hyo-seop were filming a kissing scene on Jeju Island, which lies in the south of the Korean Peninsula.“We encountered lots of difficulties there, because there were just way too many tourists around,” Jeon recalled, per SBS Star. “When Hyo Seop and I were filming our kissing scene, the tourists screamed and were like, ‘Oh my! Oh my!’.”The actress added that the moment was “pretty distracting” and that she had to “try really hard to concentrate”.

VAV have announced their upcoming 2024 ‘Subcönscióus’ US tour.Today (September 12), organiser Studio PAV announced VAV’s upcoming 10-date tour of the US. The boybank will kick things off on the East Coast, with a show in New Jersey.Following that, VAV will head to Illinois and Florida, before playing a single show in the territory of Puerto Rico.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Yakusho Koji, the Japanese star who was named best actor at Cannes this year in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” is set as the subject of a seven-title showcase at the upcoming Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan. Among the septet are classic erotic film “Lost Paradise” from 1997, this year’s “Perfect Days” and 1996 film “Shall We Dance,” which was later remade in Hollywood. A former civil servant who first ventured into Taiga drama (long-running TV series broadcast by NHK), then played in several films by Kurosawa Akira, Yakusho became a major 1990s star in Asia as a result of “Shall We Dance?,” in which he portrayed a ball room dancer, and “Lost Paradise.” He also starred in Itami Juzo’s “Tampopo.” Directed by Morita Yoshimitsu, “Lost Paradise” is a tale of a man and a woman whose marriages no longer make them happy, but who rediscover desire in each other’s arms. Fatefully, however, their newfound joy means ever greater transgression of Japan’s strict morality laws. At the time of the release of “Lost Paradise,” the producers deliberately darkened the erotic scenes to make them less explicit and to achieve less restrictive release classifications.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “On the Go,” a spirited, freewheeling road movie capturing the first lead performance in a movie of ‘Elite’ star Omar Ayuso, has clinched its first major sales, selling to Salzgeber for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and to Cineplex for Taiwan. Paris-based MPM Premium picked up world sales rights to “On the Go” in the run-up to the Locarno Festival where it world premiered in its Filmmakers of the Present section.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kim Jee-woon’s black comedy “Cobweb,” which debuted this year at Cannes, is set for a U.S. theatrical release in early 2024.

Jung Kook of BTS will join the Global Citizen Festival lineup, making one of his first live solo appearances at the Sept. 23 concert in New York’s Central Park.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Chinese director Bi Gan, whose 2018 film “Long Day’s Journey into Night” played at Cannes, will next direct “Resurrection.” The ambitious sci-fi detective movie is to be headlined by Chinese superstar Jackson Yee (“Better Days”) and Taiwanese actor Shu Qi (“The Assassin”) who sits on this year’s Venice jury. Boasting Bi’s edgy aesthetic and narrative style, the film tells the story of a woman whose consciousness falls into the “eternal time zone” during a surgical procedure.