Bill Skarsgård has already made a name for himself as a pretty creepy man in various film and TV roles. But for the new short film, “Soul of a Man,” the actor took his knowledge of frights and applied them to his role as director.
10.02.2022 - 23:11 / deadline.com
Focus Features has dated B.J. Novak’s feature directorial debut, Vengeance, for Friday, July 29.
The darkly comic thriller follows Ben Manalowitz, a journalist and podcaster who travels from New York City to West Texas to investigate the death of a girl he was hooking up with. The ensemble cast includes Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher, Boyd Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron, and Dove Cameron.
Novak directed and wrote the Blumhouse production. Producers are Jason Blum, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath. Leigh Kilton-Smith, Christopher H. Warner and Novak are executive producers. Jennifer Scudder Trent, Jon Romano and Nicholas Kraft are co-producers. Divide/Conquer also produced the movie.
Vengeance hits theaters on the same weekend as Warner Bros./DC’s Dwayne Johnson comic book movie, Black Adam.
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Bill Skarsgård has already made a name for himself as a pretty creepy man in various film and TV roles. But for the new short film, “Soul of a Man,” the actor took his knowledge of frights and applied them to his role as director.
EXCLUSIVE: Cinco Paul is set to make his feature animation directorial debut on Winter Wonderland, the live action/stop motion animation film built around the classic holiday song. Pic is a collaboration between Imagine Kids+Family and Warner Music Group. Deadline previously reported that Paul would be writing original songs for the live action/stop motion picture.
NAACP Image Awards has officially been kicked off! As usual, this year's ceremony honoring people of color across television, music, literature and film is preceded by a week-long celebration, with five nights of virtual awards leading up to Saturday's live telecast.Hosted by returning emcee and seven-time NAACP Image Awards winner Anthony Anderson, the ceremony will include Issa Rae, Kerry Washington, LL Cool J, Morgan Freeman, Questlove, Tiffany Haddish, Zendaya and more presenting awards, while Samuel L. Jackson accepts the NAACP Chairman's Award and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project, receives the Social Justice Impact Award.The preceding non-televised nights will be hosted by actor and comedian Affion Crockett, with awards presented by Cory Hardrict, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Khleo Thomas, Lori Harvey, Wendy Raquel Robinson and more.
For several years now, Bill Murray (“The French Dispatch”) has been a good luck charm for director Wes Anderson, a perennial member of his troupe, but he’s a notoriously hard get. You need a killer script and an “in” to get him to read it.
Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterAziz Ansari has been appointed to direct an untitled comedic-drama for Searchlight Pictures. He will co-star in the movie with Bill Murrary.Ansari, who created the Netflix series “Master of None,” is making his feature directorial debut.
Aziz Ansari (Master of None, Parks and Recreation) is making his feature directorial debut with an untitled dramedy for Searchlight, based on the 2014 non-fiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by surgeon Atul Gawande, in which he’ll star alongside Oscar nominee Bill Murray (The French Dispatch, Lost in Translation), Deadline has confirmed.
If you’ve seen the trailer for the new Channing Tatum vehicle “Dog” – and if you’ve been in a movie theater over the past couple of months, you probably have – you might think you know what to expect: a big lug and a tough dog have a bunch of wacky road trip adventures, softening up to each other along the way. So it might surprise you to learn that the scene of a kind-hearted woman showing our hero how to be affectionate to the canine is carefully cut so as not to reveal that our hero is literally wielding an axe.
EXCLUSIVE: German actor Saralisa Volm makes her directorial debut with mystery thriller The Silent Forest, which is premiering tonight at the Berlin Film Festival in the Perspektive Deutsches section. Here’s an exclusive clip from the film.
sexual abuse allegations against ex-Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.“Pussy Island,” a psychological thriller recently acquired by MGM, will follow a cocktail waitress named Frida (Naomi Ackie), who sets her sights on the tech entrepreneur Slater King (Channing Tatum). She finds herself in Slater’s inner circle and she is brought to his private island that houses a secret.In a profile with Elle magazine published Monday, Kravitz shed some light on her movie, saying it was inspired by “the lack of conversation around the way women are treated specifically in the entertainment industry.” The script underwent various changes to reflect the current status of gender issues.“I started writing it pre-#MeToo, pre-Harvey [Weinstein].
K.J. Yossman “I would not have chosen to direct my first film in the middle of a global pandemic,” Graham Moore said wryly of his move from scribe to auteur.In 2015, the novelist and screenwriter won an Academy Award for his adaptation “The Imitation Game,” in which Benedict Cumberbatch played World War II codebreaker Alan Turing.
Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentVictoria Bedos, the creator and co-writer of “La Famille Belier,” the hit French movie that was remade into Sian Heder’s Oscar-nominated “CODA,” is getting ready to make her feature debut with Focus Features/Universal in France.For her directorial debut, “Leo et moi,” Bedos will once tell the bittersweet story of a teenager set against an unusual backdrop, a theme she probed in “Famille Belier.” “Leo et moi” (working title) is produced by Hélène Cases at Lionceau Films and follows 14-year-old Marie-Luce Bison, who lives with her widowed father at a group home for seniors in rural France. Universal will distribute the film in theaters in France and Focus Features has global rights.In the film, Marie, growing up as an outsider surrounded by elderly people and her distant father, isn’t like anyone else at school and the other kids notice it.
Anna Marie de la Fuente New York and L.A.-based indie distributor 1091 Pictures, known for such hit releases as Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” Spirit Awards winner “Christine” and knockout comedy “The Overnight,” has swooped on rights to all English-speaking territories for psychedelic thriller “To the Moon.” The drama, sold by Yellow Veil Pictures, marks the directorial debut of actor Scott Friend (“The Dark End of the Street”), who also wrote and plays a lead role in it.The film, which bows its first poster in Variety, premiered last year at the online film festival Nightstream, and was in selection at the 2020 U.S. in Progress industry showcase organized by Wroclaw’s American Film Festival, which later hosted the film’s international premiere.
Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“Vengeance,” a darkly comedic thriller starring Issa Rae and Ashton Kutcher, is coming to theaters this summer.Focus Features has scheduled the film to open on July 29. It will hit the big screen on the same day as Dwayne Johnson’s superhero adventure “Black Adam” from Warner Bros.“The Office” alum B.J. Novak wrote and directed “Vengeance” in his feature debut.
Will Smith would love to see David Ayer’s cut of “Suicide Squad” released.
EXCLUSIVE: Quiver Distribution has acquired Mayim Bialik’s feature directorial debut As They Made Us, starring Diana Agron (Shiva Baby, Glee), Simon Helberg (Annette, The Big Bang Theory), Oscar nominee Candice Bergen (Let Them All Talk, Starting Over) and two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman (The Meyerowitz Stories, Rain Main), slating it for release in theaters and on VOD on April 8.
EXCLUSIVE: Theo Rossi (Emily the Criminal, Army of the Dead) has set Diamondback as his feature directorial debut, and will also star in the thriller based on true events.
Chris Pine is stepping behind the camera for his next project.
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a hot one that’ll spice up the virtual EFM this week. Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios is launching sales on Chris Pine’s directorial debut Poolman, which the Star Trek actor will star in alongside Oscar nominees Annette Being and Danny DeVito.