AMC Entertainment Names Keri Putnam, Former Sundance Institute Head & Miramax Exec, To Board Of Directors

EXCLUSIVE: Former Netflix exec Janice Lee has joined Fifth Studio as Vice President, Film Development and Production, with longtime team member Kara Duncan being promoted to the same role. The news comes as the global film and TV studio, formerly known as Endeavor Content, kicks off the year with four films heading to Sundance and another two soon heading to theaters.

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and NBA star Stephen Curry were the latest entertainment and sports celebrities to make an appearance at the White House daily briefing, this time to give brief remarks on gun violence prevention and the recent release of Brittney Griner.

“You must show what’s unseen, but you cannot show too much either,” Mother Chiyo (Keiko Matsuzaka) explains to apprentice maiko Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) about the delicate balance of expressing the story of a traditional mai dance. This same ethos permeates throughout the soft tone of the new Netflix series “The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House,” from acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda.

EXCLUSIVE: Paul Ben-Victor (Plane) and Mercedes Varnado (The Mandalorian) are the newest additions to the cast of the action-thriller The Collective from Yale Entertainment. They join a cast that also includes Lucas Till, Ruby Rose, Tyrese Gibson, and Don Johnson, as previously announced.

“You must show what’s unseen, but you cannot show too much either,” Mother Chiyo (Keiko Matsuzaka) explains to apprentice maiko Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) about the delicate balance of expressing the story of a traditional mai dance. This same ethos permeates throughout the soft tone of the new Netflix series “The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House,” from acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda.

EXCLUSIVE: Jax Media’s Tony Hernandez and Lilly Burns are leaving Imagine Entertainment where they have been Presidents for the past year.

Globally renowned for his patient, observational style and intimate attention to the lives of outsiders, Kore-eda Hirokazu has spent decades interrogating the nature of family bonds and their moral configurations, often examining the everyday lives of civilians in his native Japan while lingering on those who exist outside its status quo. His cinema is distinguished by its calm yet compassionate insight, looking past perceived social norms to illuminate the messier realities of family in a society that still conforms such relations to bloodline, age, gender, and class status — despite the inability of such traditional mores to measure the true health of a family unit.  Kore-eda’s latest film, “Broker,” is the first he’s made in South Korea, furthering the director’s travels abroad after his 2020 French melodrama “The Truth.

EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment has hired longtime Turner casting executive Alexis Booth as head of casting. Her first day is today.

While Warner Bros. Discovery seems to have abandoned their plan to make movies directly for HBO Max, at least in the superhero genre, 20th Century Studios apparently has no such similar worries with doing the same for Hulu.

It was another difficult year in 2022, and the sadness extended to many beloved and groundbreaking people in the show business and media worlds who died during the past 12 months.

Adam Aron said today he’s asked the theater chain’s board of directors to freeze his compensation for 2023 given the decline in AMC stock.

Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee claimed that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger would have “friction” while working on the 2005 movie.

Shares in top exhibitor AMC Entertainment fell 25% ahead of today’s market opening after the company said it plans to pursue a reverse stock split and has raised $110 million from the sale of “APE” shares.

As the hunt for the another Squid Game continues, we’re seeing new consolidation in the South Korean content sphere.

Austria, “Corsage”Belgium, “Close”Cambodia, “Return to Seoul”Denmark, “Holy Spider”France, “Saint Omer”Germany, “All Quiet on the Western Front”India, “Last Film Show”Ireland, “The Quiet Girl”Mexico, “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”Morocco, “The Blue Caftan”Pakistan, “Joyland”Poland, “EO”South Korea, “Decision to Leave”Sweden, “Cairo Conspiracy”

AMC Entertainment said it held talks with lenders about potentially acquiring theaters from the portfolio of bankrupt rival Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas.

AMC has picked up another location, announcing today the acquisition of a the former ArcLight theater located at The Hub on Causeway, a large-scale mixed-use development at North Station in Boston. The 13-screen cinema is new — it opened in December 2019 and closed three months later due to Covid-19.

Robert Munoz has been tapped as Amblin Partner’s Chief Financial Officer. He will oversee finance and accounting for the studio, reporting directly to Amblin’s co-COO Chris Leotis.

EXCLUSIVE: Talent management firm One Entertainment is joining forces with Talent Management and Production Company Circle of Confusion. The two will merge under Circle’s banner.