Archstone Launches Sales On Superhero Indie Film ‘The Hyperions’ With Cary Elwes As ‘Professor Ruckus Mandelbaum’ — Cannes

Dade Hayes Finance EditorFox Corp.’s Tubi is widening the streaming audience for The Joy of Painting, the hushed classic hosted by the late Bob Ross.Thirty of 31 seasons, totaling almost 400 episodes, will be on Tubi by the end of the month. The first season of the show, which launched in 1983, is not part of the launch.Cinedigm’s Docurama Channel, which is already on Tubi, will feature the Painting episodes.

Artem Chigvintsev and Nikki Bella are expecting a baby boy very soon. The first time father is excited and stressed according to his friend and Dancing With the Stars choreographer Gleb Savchenko.

Jill Goldsmith A restart for film and television is bearing down but looming uncertainty around COVID-19 insurance has the business on edge.Pandemic insurance disappeared in March. Three months later there’s still no viable alternative to put many independent producers back on a path to completion bond backed financing.

Fernando Sulichin is used to doing things differently. The veteran producer and CEO of New Element Media has established a reputation for working with maverick auteurs — Oliver Stone, Sean Pean, Abel Ferrara, Michael Winterbottom, Larry Clark, Harmony Korine — and finding creative ways to get films made that don't fit the industry's cookie-cutter models.

Leo Barraclough Senior International CorrespondentFilm and theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, whose film “Leto” played in competition in Cannes in 2018, was found guilty of embezzlement by a Russian court on Friday, according to news agency TASS.Serebrennikov, a vocal critic of the Kremlin, was accused of being the leader of a group that embezzled 129 million roubles ($1.87 million) in state funds, a charge he denied.

Screen Media Ventures President David Fannon will be attending this year’s Cannes markets by way of Connecticut. He is, like so many of the now homebound buyers and sellers that plan on making the most of the Virtual Cannes Market, working from home offices, basements and kitchen tables.

Christopher Vourlias While international audiences have gotten used to Russian auteurs on red carpets from the Croisette to the Dolby Theatre, where directors such as Andrey Zvyagintsev (“Leviathan,” “Loveless”) and Kantemir Balagov (“Beanpole”) have scooped up prestigious awards and Oscar nods, more and more Russian filmmakers are focused on making a splash in the global market.Buoyed by high-octane actioners and genre titles with slick special effects, international sales for Russian films

Andreas Wiseman International EditorFilmmakers Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah (Bad Boys For Life) have been set to direct Rebel, a coming-of-age story about a family torn apart over a little boy’s future.Wild Bunch International is handling international sales and will introduce the project to buyers at the virtual Cannes market.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorFilm and TV productions are getting back underway in Italy after the coronavirus-enforced shutdown.The third season of Netflix and Cattleya’s crime series Suburra restarted filming last week and is due to wrap this week.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Ruth Wilson (The Affair), Cush Jumbo (The Good Fight), and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) are in negotiations to star in Greatest Days, the film adaptation of the hit stage musical The Band, about record-breaking UK pop group Take That.Sierra/Affinity has come on board to handle international sales on the film and will be introducing it for the first time at this week’s Cannes virtual market.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Gerard Butler is set to star in action pic Kandahar, which Capstone and CAA will launch sales for at the Cannes virtual market.John Wick and Sicario firm Thunder Road is among producers with Ric Roman Waugh directing.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: Film Constellation has boarded sales on Girls Can’t Surf, a feature doc from Christopher Nelius (Storm Surfers 3D, Tough Conversations).Set during the 1980s in the world of professional surfing, it tracks a band of renegade female surfers who took on the male-dominated sport to achieve equality.Surf greats featuring include Jodie Cooper, Frieda Zamba, Pauline Menczer, Lisa Andersen, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha, and Layne Beachley.Director Nelius

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winner Mark Rylance is set to make his big-screen comedy debut in The Fantastic Flitcrofts, a golf movie written by Paddington 2 scribe Simon Farnaby.Bridge Of Spies and Dunkirk actor Rylance will play Maurice Flitcroft, a dreamer and unrelenting optimist, who managed to gain entry to The British Open Golf Championship qualifying in 1976 and subsequently shot the worst round in Open history, becoming a folk hero in the process.Craig Roberts,

Christopher Vourlias The Key Buyers Event: Digital Edition, a virtual platform for Russian content hosted by film promotion body Roskino, wrapped this week with a slew of sales and an affirmation that global players are increasingly looking to tap into the Russian market.The online market welcomed some 600 international participants from 70 countries, with the largest number of buyers coming from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Japan and China.

Good Morning Britain, Ross Kemp opened up about her progress.In the emotional interview, Ross told Susanna Reid that he has not been able to see Barbara since lockdown began in the UK.The British actor and filmmaker admitted that there has been a ‘marked decline’ in her health. ‘The nature of the disease is that she initially knew exactly who I was and in three minutes she turned to me and asked me who I was.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Mark Wahlberg canine adventure pic Arthur The King has moved from Paramount Players to Lionsgate for domestic and will enter the Cannes virtual market on the slate of eOne-backed international sales firm Sierra/Affinity.The film re-teams Wahlberg with his Contraband and 2 Guns director Baltasar Kormakur and is likely to be among the most in-demand projects at the virtual event, not least because international buyers will have the security of knowing

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentAs the world slowly recovers from the coronavirus crisis and theaters start reopening, sales agents and distributors, whose business traditionally drives the independent film sector, are facing an uncertain future while trying to make the best of this year’s abbreviated festival circuit.