Busan Market Head Oh Seok-geun Announces Plan to Resign

Korea’s Busan International Film Festival issued a heartfelt statement today, promising to “do our best for the successful hosting” of this year’s edition of the October festival, which has been in turmoil for the past few months following a series of high-profile management exits.

What would a “Star Wars” film or TV show look like if everything was peaceful and there was no actual war to speak of? That’s the question that apparently caused quite a bit of discussion during the development of the upcoming “Star Wars” series, “The Acolyte.”  In a new interview with EW, showrunner Leslye Headland explained how “The Acolyte” fits in the grand timeline of “Star Wars” stories.

Marta Balaga At Frontières Market and Forum, it’s all about the exploding heads.  “Big, bloody and messy explosions of heads. Old-school style explosions à la ‘Scanners’,” enthuses director Olivier Godin, who will bring neo-noir comedy “Anna Will Talk to Us” to its official selection, about a book that literally blows people’s minds. The much-anticipated event, back for its 15th edition, is bound to satisfy the oddest of tastes, delivering the likes of “Animal Realm” – “Full on Wuxia. Total cyberpunk. Stop-motion animation in full action,” teases director Caochong Maing – or vampire story “Drawn” in which the bloodsuckers don’t actually drink blood.

It’s a Wednesday lunchtime and the rain is coming in sideways. Nevertheless, here at a world-famous market in Greater Manchester, the winding pathways and narrow streets between stalls are packed out - it takes more than a bit of bad weather to deter these seasoned shoppers.

While the 70-day-old WGA strike has been an “annoyance” for entertainment companies, in the view of one Wall Street analyst, the SAG-AFTRA walkout will be “much more disruptive.”

contract negotiations between thousands of actors and film studios crumbled.During a Thursday press conference announcing the official start of the first actor strike in decades, “The Nanny” star was asked about the bashing she received for taking a “selfie” with Kim Kardashian during a Dolce & Gabbana event. “That wasn’t a selfie,” Drescher said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean star Park Eun-bin is confirmed to lead Netflix’s upcoming series “Castaway Diva,” set to premiere in late 2023. Park previously starred in “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” the hit series that featured in Netflix’s non-English global top ten chart for 21 weeks and reached the top ten titles in 57 countries. In the new series, Park brings to life the character of Seo Mok-ha, an aspiring singer turned castaway who, after being stranded on a deserted island for 15 years, commences her journey to become a diva. Joining her are renowned actors Kim Hyo-jin, Chae Jong-hyeop, Cha Hak-yeon, and Kim Joo-hun. Kim Hyo-jin portrays a once-popular singer who is the idol of Seo and who seeks a new lease of life after encountering her fan from the island.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer “Go as a River,” the emotional and epic debut novel from author Shelley Read, has landed with content producers Fifth Season and Mazur Kaplan for a film adaptation. Fifth Season, formerly known as Endeavor Content, will produce the project alongside Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan. Released in 2023, the book became an instant national bestseller and topped the Sunday Times list in the United Kingdom. Compared to American sagas like “The Four Winds” and “Where the Crawdads Sing,” the backdrop for Read’s work is the wild beauty of mid-century Colorado. The coming-of-age story follows a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, “Go as a River” is not only a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but of finding courage, friendship, and, finally, home―where least expected. 

Multi-million pound proposals to transform Ashton-under-Lyne’s market square which include a huge new ‘feature canopy’ have been formally lodged.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The great Choi Min-sik was on hand to take early headlines at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan). Described somewhat blandly as “a highly reliable performer” by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), Choi is not only the star of Korea’s top grossing film of all time “The Admiral: Roaring Currents,” he continues to be available for work of all different levels. He appears in no less than ten titles that played at the festival this week. The festival also does reliable — in its own way – as it plays up to its “stay strange” mantra, cooperates with other festivals of a similar fantasy leaning and sidesteps the political infighting that currently bedevil Korea’s best-known festivals.

Manchester United's pursuit of a new striker continues but a tight budget and concerns over Financial Fair Play leave Erik ten Hag with a major problem.

Naman Ramachandran Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £7.1 million ($9 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. The release marked the fifth biggest opening weekend for a film in 2023 in the territory, including previews, with a market share of 43%. In its fifth weekend, Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” racked up a further £1.5 million in second place, taking its total to £25.9 million. Universal’s “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” debuted in third position with £885,056. In its sixth weekend, Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” earned £837,859 in fourth place for a total of £25 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Bucheon film festival’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films project market wrapped up three days of meetings and pitching sessions on Monday with a prize ceremony that disbursed cash, post-production support and invitations to related genre film events. “The Passport,” a Tamil- and English-language Malaysian project about an Indian rockstar who is forced to confront cultural expectations and her interactions with an imaginary friend, won the headline Bucheon Award for director Ananth Subramanian and producer Bel Choo Mun. It was both a popular choice among other NAFF participants and the unanimous decision of the jury. The numerical winner was “Please Bear With Me,” which saw director Gabriela Serrano and producer Gale Osorio from the Philippines collect three prizes. The project is a sci-fi and social issues mash-up about a call center operative who gets paid in dream-time and uses it to relive her glory days as a pop star. A clearly-surprised Serrano used her second visit to the stage to explain the film’s origins as a deep frustration with seeing Filipina women stuck at the bottom of society and yet apologizing for their ambitions.

New Feature projects by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, Ireland’s Aisling Walsh and Jim Sheridan as well as Romanian filmmaker Anca Damian have been selected for the upcoming edition of the Venice Gap-Financing Market.

Oh Seok-geun, director of Busan International Film Festival’s industry platform, Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), has resigned from his post, the latest in a string of resignations to rock the festival. 

H&M's Market Street store has temporarily closed its doors ahead of a major refurbishment. The retailer has confirmed that the Manchester store will be closed for five months while it undergoes an 'amazing rebuild and transformation', enhancing the existing offer for Manchester shoppers.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Lee Yong-kwan, one of the original founders of the Busan International Film Festival, says he is stepping down as the event’s chairman – this time with immediate effect. He says the move is intended to defuse a morass of factional infighting and political interference surrounding Asian’s most prominent film festival. A festival spokesman told Variety that the board of directors “has decided to persuade the chairperson to return. So, the resignation has not been accepted yet.”

A festival celebrating East and South East Asian food, cinema and culture is heading to Manchester in September. The event will happen at the Grub food and drink market on Red Bank, and will mark the third annual East and South East Asian Heritage Month.

Tom Schwartz and his Stars on Mars castmates didn’t actually leave Earth for the Fox reality show, but he still felt like he’d gone to outer space.