‘A Woman Builds,’ Story of Female Needs, Secures Multinational Backing Ahead of Golden Horse Project Market Pitch (EXCLUSIVE)

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Some twenty aspiring film projects have been selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the Qcinema Project Market (Nov. 18-19) that this year represents and expansion of the QCinema Film Festival in The Philippines’ Quezon City. The selected titles include development projects by several of East Asia’s better known independent and art-house directors and projects.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Top Japanese star Yagira Yuga (“Nobody Knows,” “Asakusa Kid”) was front and center of streamer Disney+’s plans when it gave a green light to a second season of drama-horror series “Gannibal.” The creepy show, in which Yagira portrays a damaged police detective on the heels of a gangster-like family in a troubled village, has been a ratings winner in terms of minutes watched for the streamer. And, on Sunday, it earned Yagira win an Asian excellence prize at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards. He spoke to Variety about the newly-started production of the second season.Where does Season Two kick off? In Season One, we saw the surfacing of many secrets including those of the village and the villagers.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwanese actors King Jieh-wen and Hsueh Shih-ling and Indonesia’s Angga Yunanda are set to star in “Malice,” a multinational Asian thriller that will shoot next year. The film’s producers, actors and government backers presented the fully-assembled package to press and industry on Monday at the Busan International Film Festival. The film, pitched as “a road movie at sea,” is a dark tale of three men who put out to sea in search of a particular, large swordfish that had been rumored to have died out.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief EST N8, a recently-established finance, production and rights sales company, has added a Hong Kong remake of classic film “Tape” and the LGBT comedy-drama “ASOG” to its bulging sales slate at the AFCM market that accompanies the Busan Intenational Film Festival. “Tape” tells the story of three best friends who, following an event at a graduation party that transforms their lives, reunite 15 years later where a case of blackmail forces them to confront a terrible secret from their past. The original film starred Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard and played at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam festivals.In the Cantonese-language remake directed by Bizhan Tong, Selena Lee, Kenny Kwan, and Adam Pak play the contemporary characters while Mason Fung, Summer Chan, and Angus Yeung portray the characters’ younger versions. The script is written by Stephen Belber, Tong, Lee and Bonnie Lo, and is an adaptation of Belber’s own scripts from both the original film and stage play. The writers and director have significantly modernized the script to reflect advances in technology. Producers on the film include Tong, Lee and Belber.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnam-based sales agent Skyline Media has unveiled five new titles for sales and distribution at the ACFN market that accompanies the Busan International Film Festival. They range from horror films to gay rom com series. “The Soul Reaper” is adapted from director-producer Thao Trang’s best-selling horror novel “Lunar New Year in Hell Village” (Tet O Lang Dia Nguc), and involves the happy occasion of a wedding turn darker after the arrival of a creepy stranger.

American Horror Story actor Jessica Lange has hinted at her upcoming retirement in a new interview.Speaking to The Telegraph, Lange said that she felt creativity is becoming “secondary” now in Hollywood.“I think I’m going to start phasing out of filmmaking,” she said, adding: “I don’t think I’ll do this too much longer.”She continued: “Creativity is secondary now to corporate profits. The emphasis becomes not on the art or the artist or the storytelling.

Naman Ramachandran Celebrated Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua and emerging Philippines talent Rafael Manuel have teamed on “Filipinana,” a selection at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market this year. The film will follow 17-year-old girl Isabel, who spends her whole day teeing-up balls for golfers at a country club.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Seoul-based sales company Finecut has struck key Asian deals for the vigilante action movie “Brave Citizen.” In Korea, the film is presented by Content Wavve, one of the country’s leading OTT platforms and is headed for a Korean theatrical release on Oct. 25.Finecut has sealed deals with Kadokawa Plus for Japan, with Moviecloud for Taiwan and with Lumix Medi for Vietnam.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Jack Neo, for two decades Singapore’s most commercially successful filmmaker, is to direct and produce “Money No Enough 3,” a second sequel to his oldest film franchise. The film is the first project from HiJack Pictures, the joint venture outfit between distributor-producer Clover Films and Neo’s J Team productions that was announced last year. Neo has either directed or starred in nine of the all-time top ten local movies in Singapore. “Money No Enough 3” will reunite the three stars of the original movie, Mark Lee, Henry Thia and Neo himself.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Trinity CineAsia has picked up U.K. and Ireland rights to Chinese hit film “The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan.” The film ranked third worldwide at the box office over the latest weekend. Trinity CineAsia will give it an official release from Oct.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A trio of local films released in time for the Chuseok holiday season dominated the South Korean box office over the latest weekend. Comedy fantasy “Dr Cheon and the Lost Talisman” dominated. It earned $5.98 million between Friday and Sunday with a more than 48% market share.

Candace Kanavel, a 27-year-old officer with the Tempe Police Department, has not only made her mark as a dedicated SWAT hostage negotiator and crisis intervention expert but has also donned the crown as Miss Arizona in May, marking a remarkable fusion of two seemingly contrasting worlds.Candace Kanavel’s journey from the police force to the beauty pageant stage has captured the attention and admiration of many, shedding light on her remarkable ability to balance two roles. As a Japanese American, she brings a unique perspective to her law enforcement career and her foray into pageantry.While her roles as a SWAT hostage negotiator and a beauty queen can be worlds apart, Kanavel insists they share a common thread.

American Horror Story: Delicate.In the horror anthology show’s twelfth season, the reality star plays Siobhan Corbyn, who is the publicist and best friend of actress Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts).This season is the first without series co-creator Ryan Murphy as showrunner, with Halley Feiffer taking over. It’s based on author Danielle Valentine’s book Delicate Condition, which follows a woman who is convinced a sinister figure is trying to stop her from becoming pregnant.After the first two episodes debuted this month in the US on FX, fans have largely shared their surprise at Kardashian’s acting skills.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief TIFFCOM, the rights market that sits alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival, is celebrating its return to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, with a move to another venue and the launch of the new Tokyo Story Market. The three-day market (Oct. 25-27) will relocate from Ikkebukuro to the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center (aka Hamamatsucho-Kan) in Hamamatsucho district.

Actor-turned-broadcaster Laurence Fox has been suspended by UK news channel GB News over on-air comments he made about a female journalist.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 2023 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion, the project market that accompanies the Golden Horse film festival and awards in Taiwan in November, has laid out a huge 64-title selection for its 2023 edition. These include 39 film projects at various stages of development and financing; a further seven works in progress; and the 18-previously announced series at project stage.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute. But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career. Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/NFAJ Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29. Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku, with all the advantages and disadvantages such an arrangement brought. While Ozu is best known for his stripped-down dramas, often centered on family relationships, sometimes troubled or contentious, involving parents and young or grown-up children, many hinging on questions of marriage, generational misunderstandings or the loneliness of the elderly, the director’s register may not entirely have been of his own choosing. “The apparent consistency of the post-war films surely owes as much to this production situation as to Ozu’s aesthetic choices,” wrote critic Tony Rayns in a recent Sight & Sound portrait.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese comedian Shinagawa Hiroshi has been set as the director of “Among the Dead,” the first project flowing from the co-production and co-financing venture between U.S.-based People of Culture Studios and Japan’s Yoshimoto Kogyo. The previously-announced project is an English-language, found footage zombie movie in which, following an apocalypse of the undead, one emotionally unstable man abandons friends and family to go live among the few remaining zombies before they’re all gone. The screenplay was written by father/daughter duo, Andy Cosby (“Hellboy,” “2 Guns” “Eureka”) and Charlie Danger Cosby, collectively known as Midnight Pizza. Other writing credits go to Brian Caldirola, Patrick Hasson and Juan Carlos Saizarbitoria. Shinagawa is one-half of the comedy duo Shinagawa Shoji, alongside Tomoharu Shoji, and has a considerable acting filmography in his own right including “Kantoku Kansen,” “Deadman Inferno,” “One Third,” and “Drop.” Shinagawa additionally served as director, writer, and starred in the 2011 comedy-drama “Slapstick Brothers,” which won a Citizen’s Choice Award for feature film and an award from the Japanese Academy for rookie of the year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan’s Dean Fujioka (“Fullmetal Alchemist,” “The Man From The Sea”) and the U.K.’s Callum Woodhouse (“All Creatures Great and Small,” “The Durrells”) are set to star in “Orang Ikan,” a WWII-set creature horror film. The picture is scripted by Singapore and Indonesia-based Mike Wiluan (“Buffalo Boys,” HBO series “Grisse”) who will also direct the picture from next month. International rights to “Orang Ikan” have been picked up by London-based SC Films International, which will give the project its sales launch at the Busan festival and accompanying market next month. Set in the Pacific, 1942, a Japanese ship transports prisoners of war to occupied territories as slave labor.

Angelica Ross says that Ryan Murphy accepted her pitch of doing a season of American Horror Story starring four black women, but then ghosted her and never responded to follow-ups about the project.