Breaking Baz @ Cannes: Donna Langley, Michelle Yeoh & Greta Gerwig Capture The Castle At Kering’s Women In Motion Dinner

EXCLUSIVE: David Hare, one of the UK’s foremost playwrights and a double Oscar nominee, is in an unsparing mood about the state of UK politics. This comes as leaders of the country’s two major parties parry in the cut and thrust of the July 4 general election.

EXCLUSIVE: James Graham sets a mental timer of strictly 45 minutes for a conversation that will encompass tonight’s gala opening at London’s National Theatre — en route to a run at the Garrick Theatre — of his sublime stage adaptation of Alan Bleasdale’s landmark 1982 television drama Boys from the Blackstuff; followed by updates about the BBC TV version of his Olivier Award-winning soccer play Dear England, which will see him doing on-the-ground research at next month’s Euros in Germany; plus revelations about an epic new show he’s developing with House Productions that will explore the “mood sweeping across Europe.”

“We really led with our hearts for everything we watched,” said 77th Cannes Film Festival Jury President Greta Gerwig on what was a fiercely competitive year.

Greta Gerwig dealt with a lot of pink while directing the Barbie movie and now she’s wearing the color on the red carpet!

EXCLUSIVE: Dahlings, Oscar-nominated Maria Bakalova is channeling an essence of Ivana Trump, who she praises as a “boss lady,” when we meet on a terrace at the Palais to natter about her slyly sublime portrait of Donald Trump‘s first wife in filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s Cannes hit The Apprentice.

Angelique Jackson The first time Donna Langley came to the Cannes Film Festival she was a junior executive working on 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” “I had just been promoted and I was fortunate enough to get picked to come on this trip to be part of the support team, and it was great! It was very different to this experience, I will say,” Langley said, eliciting a laugh from the well-heeled crowd at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, held at the Place de la Castre high above the Croisette. “[But] we had the time of our lives.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival is obviously a major film festival, but it’s also a place for fashion to be showcased on the red carpet.

EXCLUSIVE: Lord of the Rings star Morfydd Clark and Under the Banner of Heaven’s Billy Howle will star in new versions of John Osborn’s Look Back In Anger and Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which will run in rep at London’s Almeida in what has been dubbed the Angry and Young season. Ahead of the season, Romola Garai will appear in Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s exceptional Noble Prize-winning novel The Years.

Tom Rothman, the Sony Motion Pictures Group chairman and CEO, wined and dined a select few at a splendidly swish soirée Friday at Mamo Michelangelo in Antibes, hosted by Charles Finch as part of his annual Filmmakers Dinner honoring 100 years of Columbia Pictures, and there was something he said about why movies matter that has stuck with me.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Paramount Global may be a direct competitor, but NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman and Chief Content Officer Donna Langley will be disappointed if the media giant goes away. “It’s sad,” Langley said at the Kering Women in Motion talk at the Cannes Film Festival, noting that a sale of Paramount means there will be fewer Hollywood studios. “These companies have been great and I’m a big believer in this competitive landscape — kind of ‘all boats will rise.

As fears stack up in the industry over a possible Sony and Paramount merger, subtracting one major motion picture studio from the industry, The Chairman of NBCU Studio Group and Chief Content Officer Donna Langley at a Cannes Kering talk weighed in on what that impact will be.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer It’s something out of a movie, the way a young Donna Langley first discovered the magic of film. The chairman of NBCU studio group and chief content officer was in her late teens, broadening her horizons in Paris away from her upbringing on the tiny Isle of Wight off the English Channel. It was there she saw films like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” Luc Besson’s “Le Grand Bleu” and retrospectives on the works of auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard.

Tatiana Siegel An iconic woman needs an apt setting. So, to mark its 100th anniversary, Columbia Pictures has teamed with the Municipality of Cannes to put the studio’s instantly recognizable Torch Lady and roster of legendary actresses on full display as part of a free photographic exhibit in the historic city’s town square, just off the Croisette and with the Palais and Mediterranean Sea serving as a backdrop.

William Earl Variety has announced the initial lineup for the Kering Women in Motion Talks at the Cannes Film Festival. This year’s talks include some of the most important women working in cinema. On May 18, Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh will interview NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley, touching on a major year for the studio that includes the upcoming feature “Wicked.” The conversation comes at a pivotal time for Langley and the studio as Universal Pictures will receive the International Achievement in Film award from Variety at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Langley is receiving the Women in Motion Award at a dinner hosted by Kering on May 19.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Cera caught Tyler Taormina’s feature directing debut Ham on Rye after a friend suggested he check it out. He was so impressed that he signed himself up as a sort of producing “cheerleader” on the filmmaker’s latest picture Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Zane portrays Marlon Brando in the upcoming film Waltzing With Brando on set in the late 1960s and early ’70s when Brando purchased the private atoll Tetiaroa in the South Pacific.

EXCLUSIVE: Meryl Streep says that a meeting is “imminent” where she’ll hear about the proposals for her to return for a third helping of Mamma Mia!

CANNES – The jury president is almost always center stage at the official jury press conference, but with a Cannes Film Festival facing a number of political headwinds this year’s ringleader was truly in the crossfire. Luckily, Greta Gerwig was more than up to the challenge.

With rumors of a #MeToo bombshell report knocking on the Cannes Film Festival’s door, this year’s jury president of the 77th edition, Greta Gerwig, acknowledged the wave that’s out there in a way that Festival Boss Thierry Frémaux didn’t want to address at his press conference yesterday.

CANNES – About 20 minutes after the global press left Thierry Frémaux‘s press conference, they received a news release that Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof had left his country without permission following confirmation of an eight-year prison sentence. Rasoulof’s latest movie, “The Seed of A Sacred Pig,” is in competition at Cannes this year.