Aditi Rao Hydari & Paige Sandhu Feature ‘Lioness’ Set As First Official UK-India Co-Production

Naman Ramachandran India’s Rajshri Deshpande, star of Rotterdam winner “Sexy Durga” and hit Netflix series “Trial by Fire,” headlines “Privacy,” the first teaser for which has been unveiled. The film will have its world premiere at Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan). “Privacy” is a voyeuristic social thriller set in and around the slums of Mumbai. It follows Roopali (Deshpande), who works at the Mumbai surveillance command and control center as an operator. While being ambitious, she constantly fights her own guilt and resists her dark past. Things start to get complicated when Roopali ignores protocol and begins to investigate a robbery and murder that takes place on her watch. The film takes the neo-noir approach to explore themes of mental health, voyeurism and access to information.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Rajshri Deshpande, star of Rotterdam winner “Sexy Durga” and hit Netflix series “Trial by Fire,” headlines “Privacy,” the first teaser for which has been unveiled. The film will have its world premiere at Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan). “Privacy” is a voyeuristic social thriller set in and around the slums of Mumbai. It follows Roopali (Deshpande), who works at the Mumbai surveillance command and control center as an operator. While being ambitious, she constantly fights her own guilt and resists her dark past. Things start to get complicated when Roopali ignores protocol and begins to investigate a robbery and murder that takes place on her watch. The film takes the neo-noir approach to explore themes of mental health, voyeurism and access to information.

Naman Ramachandran Renowned filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (“Bandit Queen,” “Elizabeth”) is planning a sequel to his 1983 directorial debut “Masoom,” Variety can reveal. The film is titled “Masoom… The New Generation.” Details of the plot, studio and cast are under wraps at the moment. Written by Gulzar (Oscar winner for “Slumdog Millionaire”), “Masoom” was an adaptation of Erich Segal’s 1980 novel “Man, Woman and Child.” It followed a happily married couple and their two daughters whose lives are disrupted with the arrival of a boy who is the man’s son from an earlier affair. The cast included Naseeruddin Shah (“Taj: Divided by Blood”), Shabana Azmi (“Halo”), Jugal Hansraj (“NRI Wives”), Supriya Pathak (“Tabbar”), Saeed Jaffrey (“The Man Who Would Be King”) and Urmila Matondkar (“Rangeela”).

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments and surprises throughout “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” now playing in theaters. For months, the directors of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” had been working exhaustively on a critical sequence that launches the movie’s second act. For the first time in his life, the animated film’s hero — Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a.k.a. the Spider-Man of Earth-1610 — enters a different dimension: Earth-50101, a.k.a. Mumbattan, a dazzling amalgamation of New York City and Mumbai. Within minutes, Miles and his BFF from 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), encounter that world’s Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), an Indian teenager who received his powers not via spider bite, but through magic. The sequence launches them all through the vertiginously vertical metropolis, as they frantically try to stop the film’s villain, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), from using Mumbattan’s supercollider to increase his dimension-hopping abilities.

Columbia Pictures’ and Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Universe is casting its web in international box office markets with  $13.5M through Thursday. That’s 2.5x the original in like-for-likes. 

Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) has unveiled the major competition selections for its 25th edition (June 9-18), which will be the first to be held in a fully physical format with international guests since before the pandemic. 

NBCUniversal has entered into a partnership with Indian streaming service JioCinema, owned by Viacom18, bringing thousands of hours of NBCU films and series to India. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The U.K.’s London Indian Film Festival and Birmingham Indian Film Festival will work together to present a two-city, two-part panoply of feature and short films, kicking off next month with “The Storyteller.” Directed by Ananth Mahadevan, “The Storyteller” sees Adil Hussain play a Gujarati businessman who believes that once physical wealth is accumulated, happiness will follow, but this proves not to be the case. Paresh Rawal plays the titular storyteller. The film is based on a story by the late, great Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and contrasts the pursuit of material wealth with that of intellectual knowledge. Hussain, co-star Tannishtha Chatterjee and Mahadevan are expected to be on hand for Q&A sessions on June 22 at BFI Southbank and on June 23 at MAC Birmingham.

EXCLUSIVE: Ricky Gervais has directed his first BBC project for a decade as the corporation’s Comedy Director Jon Petrie unveils his debut batch of 11 Short Films since taking on the role last year.

Emmerdale icon Paige Sandhu is returning to our screens just over a year after she left the famous Yorkshire village as she has bagged a huge film role. Paige, 26, played evil Meena Jutla in Emmerdale for nearly two years and during that time she murdered Leanna Cavanagh, Andrea Tate and Ben Tucker.

Naman Ramachandran “Lioness,” an official Indo-U.K. co-production being made under the 2008 bilateral treaty, will star Aditi Rao Hydari (“Jubilee”) and Paige Sandhu (“Emmerdale”), it was revealed at the Cannes India pavilion on Tuesday. Written and to be directed by Kajri Babbar (“Khoj”), the film is inspired by the research of Peter Bance, the historian who wrote about Princess Sophia Duleep, one of the key leaders of the suffragette movement in the U.K., the Princess of Punjab, granddaughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. The film will tell the story of two British Punjabi women living in the U.K., a century apart. While Sophia’s story is rooted in history, the second story is a fictional tale of Mehak Kaur an educated, married immigrant woman living in 1990’s Southall.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy award-winning Indian producer Apoorva Bakshi (Delhi Crime) has boarded The Glassworker, Pakistan’s first ever Hayao Miyazaki-style animated feature, as an executive producer. 

The producers of NTR30, the working title of an upcoming project from RRR star N.T. Rama Rao Jr. (aka NTR Jr), have confirmed that the film’s title will be Devara, and have shared a first look of the film. 

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is mostly encouraging. The fifth Harrison Ford-starring Indy flick doesn’t open theatrically until the week of June 30, but Cannes audiences got the first look. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” debuted at the 2008 Cannes Festival, however, that was days away from its Memorial Day weekend launch.

Naman Ramachandran Indian auteur Aribam Syam Sharma’s “Ishanou,” which screened at the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes in 1991 is returning to the Croisette in a restored version. The Manipuri-language film is the only Indian film at the festival’s Cannes Classics section this year. “Ishanou” (“The Chosen One”), follows Tampha, a young woman with a loving husband and a small daughter, who leads a tranquil existence in the Manipur valley and is occupied with the mundane details of life. Suddenly she begins to behave in a strange manner, talking to flowers, becoming afflicted with dizzy spells and wandering out of the house in the dark of the night. The family tries to find a cure for her malady and finally realize that she does not have a sickness, but rather is responding to the call of a deity who has chosen her.

For foreign audiences, Indian cinema long has been closely associated with Bollywood — sprawling, colorful spectacles that feature songs and dance routines — and often one of the three Khans (the unrelated trio of Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh). But there has been a shift across the past year as focus turned from Mumbai, which had suffered a string of misses until Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan took off on a tear early this year, toward Southern India.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Richa Chadha and the U.K.’s William Moseley will headline the cast of India-U.K. co-production “Aaina.” The film, set between London and India, is a drama about the impact of the cycle of violence, both within cultures and on human beings in the form of PTSD. It marks the feature directorial debut of Markus Meedt, who previously directed several acclaimed shorts, including “Shelter” and “Anonymous” and episodes of mini-series “Let’s Get Macho.” Chadha starred in “Gangs of Wasseypur” and “Masaan,” both of which debuted at Cannes. She was most recently in Disney+ Hotstar series “The Great Indian Murder.” Moseley made a mark as a child actor in the Narnia franchise. He was one of the leads in “Land of Dreams,” which debuted at Venice, and was also in Indian film “Margarita With A Straw,” which had festival play at Toronto, Busan and London.

Naman Ramachandran Indian multiplex chains PVR and Inox, which merged earlier this year, have launched a combined distribution arm PVR Inox Pictures, formerly PVR Pictures, “to increase investments in content acquisition to streamline high quality content for the Indian market, generate further opportunity for underrepresented storytellers and independent creators, and deliver a robust content slate to the Indian audience.” PVR Inox operates a network of 1689 cinema screens in 361 properties across 115 cities in India and Sri Lanka, and holds 43% share of multiplex screens in India. PVR Inox Pictures is the largest independent distributor of foreign language films and a prominent distributor of Indian films, in India.

Naman Ramachandran Global family entertainment streamer Da Vinci and Bear Grylls‘ production company BecomingX have debuted the first trailer for docuseries “Becoming Xtraordinary.” The series features interview-driven stories of success from Julia Roberts, Roger Federer, Courteney Cox, Channing Tatum, Olympic gold medallists, Nobel laureates and more. Co-produced by Chrome Productions, “Becoming Xtraordinary” comprises three seasons of 10 episodes each, all presented by Grylls and guided by in-studio hosts Mwaksy Mudenda (“Blue Peter”) and YouTuber Evan Edinger. The first season will premiere on May 28 and will be available across Da Vinci’s linear and video-on-demand platforms, including various FAST channels on Local Now, Sling Freestream, TCL Channel, Free TV, Rakuten TV, LG Channels, Netgem and VIDAA.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Endeavor has big financial plans for the rest of the year as the company announced Tuesday it will declare its first dividend and begin its first stock buyback program as it awaits its acquisition of WWE and sale of IMG Academy. Endeavor delivered solid first quarter results on Tuesday, powered by growth in its owned sports properties unit which is about to grow substantially as Endeavor closes its $21 billion takeover of WWE later this year. Endeavor’s events and experiences unit also was in positive territory for the quarter. But the hangover of the January 2022 sale of the Endeavor Content production unit put a dent in the representation unit’s quarterly numbers.