AGC Studios Founder Stuart Ford Leads Indie Powerhouse Into New Era of Entertainment Business

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Recently-established Philippines-based production and financing company, Fire and Ice, has deals to provide completion funding to two films being produced by prolific Singapore-based independent producer Potocol. Under a related agreement, Fire and Ice has also struck a multi-faceted first-look deal with Potocol. The completion funding, which gives Fire and Ice a share of the film’s equity, will permit the completion of post-production of upcoming Potocol titles: “Pierce,” a sports drama by Nelicia Low, and “Last Shadow at First Light,” by Nicole Midori Woodford. Both films were recently showcased at Focus Asia’s Far East In Progress, part of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, and are expected to be completed before the end of the year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief All Rights Entertainment, the Paris-, Hong Kong- and Los Angeles based international sales company, is launching sales at the Cannes Market (Marché du Film) for “The Proud Princess.” The picture is an animation film based on the fairy tale book “Punished Pride,” written by Bozena Nemcova. Directed by Borivoj Zeman and starring Alena Vranova and Vladimir Raz, a 1952 live-action adaptation of the book is one of the most-watched Czech films of all time. The new adaptation is directed by Radek Beran (“The Little Man”) and David Lisy (“Spy Cat”). Production is by Luminar Film with Animation is handled by PFX, the Prague-based studio behind “Diplodokus,” “The Websters” and “Marnie’s World,” and is to be completed in the third quarter of 2024. Czech theatrical distribution is set to be handled by CinemArt.

reports Entertainment Weekly. “I know that that is my face,” Ford, 80, said at a Cannes press conference last week. “It’s not a kind of Photoshop magic — that’s what I looked like 35 years ago.” “Because Lucasfilm has every frame of film that we’ve made together over all of these years.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “Change is the only constant in life.” The entertainment sector is no exception to this adage. It’s an industry that has long benefited from advancements in technology that have increasingly enriched the quality of films and programs and have also condensed the filmmaking process across the entire pipeline from pre-production to distribution and exhibition.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Stuart Ford may have been named Variety’s Billion Dollar Producer, but the AGC Studios founder is already looking ahead to his next big milestone. “We’ve raised more than $1.5 billion in production financing and, the way our cinema business is evolving, who knows, in three or four years from now, I might be standing in front of you having achieved $1.05 billion at the box office,” said Ford. The executive was feted by Variety at a May 19 cocktail reception in Cannes. Many of the super-producer’s business associates and partners, as well as industry friends, dropped by the Croisette villa to toast Ford, who was given the honor by Variety’s co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh.

James Stewart once remarked that if you’re any good as a movie actor then audiences will follow you because what you’re doing is giving them “little moments of time that they’ll never forget.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief TF1 Studio/ Newen Connect has picked up international sales rights to “Sarafina!,” the iconic South African musical-dance-drama that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992. “Sarafina!” was the first major film to be made in South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela from his 27-year prison term. The film tells of the strength of the young women who made their mark during South Africa’s long journey to freedom. A restored version of the film will play in the Cannes Classics section this Sunday. It is a digitally remastered ‘producer’s cut’ which was created in partnership with Imax and includes never-seen-before footage.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Amanda Nell Eu’s “Tiger Stripes,” which had its premiere this week in Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, is being celebrated as a punchy female-driven debut feature and as the first film by a Malaysian woman director in any section Cannes. The story focuses on a small group of 11 or 12-year-old girls. When one of the friends enters puberty she finds her body changing in unexpected ways. Relations with her friends and family start morphing too. Eu’s finished film straddles the metaphorical drama and body horror genres. “Tiger Stripes” is also a triumph for the now highly-developed global network of project markets, talent development programs, script and production workshops (often labelled as ‘labs’) and grant schemes. These are intended to encourage diversity and nurture film-making talent in countries where that is a rarity or where commercial films crowd out more experimental art-house titles.

It was a great night for Disney as Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny had a smash debut in its World Premiere Thursday evening at the Cannes Film Festival where the June 30th release received a warm 5 minute standing ovation, especially for Harrison Ford in his swan song in the title role he started playing 40 + years ago. There noticeably to witness the French love and affection was none other than Disney boss Bob Iger attending his first-ever Cannes Festival (believe it or not) and even taking his own photos during the ovation for the movie. At the Carlton Beach after party I told him Deadline had just been the first to post its review, a rave (from our colleague Stephanie Bunbury) and you could see the absolute relief on his face. “You have made me very happy to hear that, ” he told me, and he meant it. All this came on the same day Disney took another shot at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by announcing the cancellation of a plan to move several thousand California employees to Florida. The Cannes respite must have been nice.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s entertainment, social media and technology giant Tencent, renewed its profits growth in the first quarter of 2023, after reporting its first decline in 2022. And group revenue beat financial market estimates as China’s post-COVID reopening boosted economic activity. Overall revenues in the three months from January to March 2023 reached RMB150 billion ($21.4 billion), an increase of 11% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Net profits in the period came in at RMB25.8 billion ($3.69 billion), a 10% year-on-year improvement.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Net profits at Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest digital music operation, grew by 89% in the first quarter of the new year, hitting RMB1.15 billion ($167 million), even as revenue progressed by only 5% to RMB7.0 billion ($1.02 billion). The group, which is backed by Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent and has stock market listings on the New York Stock Exchange and in Hong Kong, controls large equity stakes in Spotify and (in a consortium with Tencent) Universal Music Group. Its own music operations divide loosely into two clusters: mass market music streaming, with paid-for and free tiers; and “social entertainment,” including karaoke and other derivative products.

EXCLUSIVE: Actors Iko Uwais, Beulah Koale, and Kate Elliott have signed on to star in Ash, the sophomore feature from producer, rapper, and filmmaker Flying Lotus (Kuso).

Amid fickle Riviera skies and the looming potential that the WGA strike and France’s own heightened tensions over pension reforms could simmer to a boil here, the red carpet is partially rolled out and technicians have been milling up and down the Croisette today as preparations continue for the start of the Cannes Film Festival which officially kicks off on Tuesday.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Bruce Berman, a senior executive who was previously chairman and CEO of Los Angeles-based Village Roadshow Pictures, has come out of retirement to board the recently-founded film studio Through the Lens Entertainment. The company, founded by producer Aditya Chand, is headquartered in Singapore with operations in the U.S. and Japan. It aims to combine the opportunities of the East and the power and experience of the studio systems in the West, “to offer a new studio ecosystem out of Asia, that is built for the digital age.” Two film projects are already underway and a third with “Slumdog Millionaire” star Frieda Pinto is in development.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The selection of two restored films by Ozu Yasujiro for the Cannes Classics section will kick-off a six-month long celebration of the iconic Japanese auteur around the world. Cannes revealed last week that it will showcase Ozu’s 1947 “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” and his 1950 picture “The Muneteka Sisters.” The screenings mark the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth and the 60th anniversary of his death. Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, just a few months after the release of his last film “The Taste of Sake.” Major studio, Shochiku, where Ozu spent the majority of career and made his iconic movies, is planning a series of curated retrospectives, festival screenings, and special events around the world that pay homage to his enduring legacy as one of the most influential directors in cinema. These will last until the end of 2023.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sarah Snook is pregnant in real life — and in HBO’s “Succession” — but in “Run Rabbit Run,” she plays a mother and fertility doctor who is frightened by her young daughter’s inexplicable memories of a past identity. The Australian thriller from director Daina Reid and writer Hannah Kent released its first trailer as the film is confirmed to screen at next month’s Sydney Film Festival. “Run Rabbit Run” made its world premiere as the opening title of the Midnight section of the Sundance festival in January. The film will launch on Netflix on June 28. Emmy-nominated Snook stars alongside Damon Herriman and Greta Scacchi. Variety’s review from Sundance called the film an “effective if familiar mommy-issues chiller.”

EXCLUSIVE: Alison Oliver (Saltburn), Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country), Marc Maron (To Leslie) and Odessa Young (The Staircase) have closed deals to join The Order, the crime thriller to be directed for Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios by Justin Kurzel, which is heading into production on Wednesday.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Prime Video has set May 18 for the global release of its upcoming Indian anthology series “Modern Love Chennai.” This is the third Indian adaptation of “Modern Love,” the internationally acclaimed original anthology directed by John Carney, following “Modern Love Mumbai” and “Modern Love Hyderabad.” Produced under the banner of Tyler Durden and Kino Fist, with Thiagarajan Kumararaja as the creator, the six-episode anthology presents a bouquet of love stories set in the city of Chennai that explore relationships, push boundaries, and open minds.  “Love stories and rom-coms have never been my cup of tea. Thus, ‘Modern Love Chennai’ was an interesting challenge,” said Kumararaja, creator of the series and writer-director of one of the episodes. “With these stories, we have explored and celebrated the old-world charm of the city, which remains rooted in a distinct blend of tradition and modernity.” 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Pema Tseden, the Tibetan art house film director known for “Jinpa” and “Balloon,” has died. He was 53. It is understood that he was in Tibet when he died suddenly of an unspecified illness. Some unconfirmed Chinese-language media said that he had a heart attack. The news was reported by the China Academy of Art, where he taught as a professor. “Pema Tseden, a famous Tibetan director, screenwriter and professor at the Film School of the China Academy of Art, died in Tibet in the early hours of May 8 due to an acute illness. Due to the sudden incident, the school will work with Mr Tseden’s family to deal with the follow up matters. The relevant information will be announced in due course,” the Academy said in a statement.

North West and Penelope Disick are proving to be following in their mums' fashionista footsteps as they stepped out ahead of Monday night's Met Gala. Nine-year-old North – who is the eldest child of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West – and 10-year-old Penelope – whose parents are Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick– were joined by Scott, 39, as they were photographed leaving the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City.Turning heads as they exited the hotel, Penelope wore a red jacket over her shoulders, which she teamed with a Chanel bag in the same shade – worth a staggering $3000 (£2407).