China’s Film Industry Is Bouncing Back & Open For Co-Production, But Lacks Diversity – Bridging The Dragon

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Big-budget period action film “The Sand Murmurs” is set to start production in China’s remote region of Xinjiang later this month. The film is the tale of a soldier and an enemy nobleman brought together after a once-in-a-century sandstorm. After braving a near-death experience together, the pair find common purpose despite their differences. They also need to work together to find their way out across 800km of desert. The picture is directed by Wu Youyin as an adaptation of his novel of the same title. Wu previously wrote and directed “Till The End of the World,” which released in 2018.

An urgent search has been launched for a missing Lanarkshire man who vanished overnight.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Memento International has closed a raft of deals on “Fremont,” the critically acclaimed film by BAFTA-nominated Iranian-born director Babak Jalali. The movie world premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Music Box for North America in a deal negotiated by CAA. The black-and-white film, laced with wry humor, tells the story of Donya, a young woman working at a Chinese fortune cookie factory in the San Francisco bay. Formerly a translator for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, she struggles to put her life back in order. In a moment of sudden revelation, she decides to send out a special message in a cookie. Following its Sundance premiere, the film played at SXSW and is slated to compete at Karlovy Vary. Other festival lined up include Deauville, Melbourne and Athens.

The Fugees surprised concertgoers Saturday during Lauryn Hill’s headlining set at the Roots Picnic music festival. The three band members, including Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel, did a six-song set in celebation of Hill’s 25th anniversary for her landmark album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

As theatres swing back into the Spider-Verse, the highly anticipated sequel, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, captured a remarkable $17.35 million in Thursday previews, setting the stage for an expected opening weekend that’s now being predicted to exceed $120 million.

Creative Artists Agency announced on Monday that the eighth edition of CAA Moebius, their annual screening series showcasing diverse student filmmakers from around the globe, will return as a live event from June 7-8.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” grabbed top place at the mainland China box office over the weekend with an opening $17.2 million (RMB122 million) score. Giant screen company, Imax reports that $2.7 million, or more than 16% of the film’s China total, came from its Middle Kingdom venues. Chinese online ticketing agency Maoyan forecasts that “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” will earn a total of RMB241 million or $34 million at current exchange rates. “Fast X,” which had driven off with the spoils for the past two weekends, was overtaken on its third lap and achieved $7.7 million in second place, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. After 17 days in Chinese cinemas, “Fast X” has accumulated $124 million, making it the highest-grossing imported titled released this year in China ahead of Japanese animation “Suzume.”

Bridgerton star Simone Ashley and former One Direction singer Zayn Malik will appear in a new animated film together. The pair will star in 10 Lives alongside the likes of Living's Bill Nighy, comedian Mo Gilligan, Death on the Nile's Sophie Okonedo, and Ted Lasso star Jeremy Swift. The film, directed by Duck Duck Goose's Chris Jenkins, is about Beckett, a pampered and selfish cat who takes the lives he's been given for granted, as reported by Deadline.

Eva Longoria was joined by actor and founder of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival Edward James Olmos at the premiere of her new movie Flamin’ Hot at TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX on Wednesday (May 31) in Los Angeles.

LA’s Dances With Films Celebrates 26 Years of storytelling June 22-July 2 at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood. 

At Tuesday night’s world premiere of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, there was a huge sigh of relief from the mass of animators inside Westwood’s Regency Village Theater: The $100M-budgeted sequel to the Oscar-winning 2018 animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was done, having completed post-production literally just 10 days ago after a five-year trek to the screen which included a Covid delay due to the backlog in post-production houses. Starting today abroad, and into Thursday in U.S./Canada, the continuing adventures of Miles Morales will see the light of day in what is expected to be a $150M global opening.

EXCLUSIVE: Ming-Na Wen yesterday received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and today she’s teamed with Compelling Pictures on a doc series about Asian-American food culture.

AB6IX have announced the dates for their upcoming 2023 ‘The Future’ world tour.AB6IX are set to go on a 12-date world tour from July to September this year, in support of their new mini-album ‘The Future Is Ours: Lost’. The upcoming tour will feature shows in Asia and across North America.AB6IX’s ‘The Future’ world tour outside of South Korea will kick off in Macau, China on July 15.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, June 9 to 18, has unveiled the titles in contention for awards in its four main feature-length sections: main competition, Asian New Talent, Animation film and documentary. These are eligible for the festival’s prestigious Golden Goblet Awards, winners of which will be announced at the Shanghai Grand Theater on the evening of June 17. While SIFF remains the only mainland China festival to be accredited as a so-called A-list event by the International Federation of Film Producers (FIAPF), its selections are largely separate and distinct from those at other major international festivals.

Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) has unveiled the major competition selections for its 25th edition (June 9-18), which will be the first to be held in a fully physical format with international guests since before the pandemic. 

Rotten Tomatoes. Those are the scores this remake will need to keep legging out against a crowded June slate that starts next weekend with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” But here comes the bad news: “The Little Mermaid” has posted an international opening of just $68 million from 51 markets.

Chinese author Yu Hua is no stranger to Cannes. The famed postmodernist writer’s work first graced the silver screens of the Palais back in 1994 with director Zhang Yimou’s masterclass adaptation of his seminal novel, “To Live.” A searing portrait of a single family’s struggle through China’s mid-century upheaval and the Cultural Revolution, “To Live” would go on to win the festival’s coveted Grand Prix award, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and the Best Actor Award.

Sophia Scorziello editor For the first time, Edward James Olmos is detailing his difficult battle with throat cancer. The 76-year-old “Battlestar Galactica” star and founder of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival shared his recent experience in an interview with Mando Fresko on his podcast “Mando & Friends.” Olmos received his last round of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in December and is now focusing on recovery. “I sit here saying now to you, Mando and friends, that one thing that I’m very grateful for was that I was in condition to fight this,” Olmos said. “I was in good condition — and I still am. I swim a mile a day at least, sometimes two miles a day. Every day, seven days a week. And then I row and do weights.”

sting.Jane Fonda revealed Friday she “was in love with” Robert Redford, her on-screen partner for four films — but the “Ordinary People” director, 86, “did not like to kiss” and “has an issue with women.”“He’s always in a bad mood, and I always thought it was my fault,” said Fonda, 85, but added that “he’s a very good person.”The two-time Oscar winner dropped tidbits about her famous male co-stars during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. Fonda and Redford co-starred in “The Chase” (1966), “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), “The Electric Horseman” (1979) and “Our Souls at Night” (2017).“The last movie I made with him was six years ago,” Fonda said, referring to the Netflix film “Our Souls at Night.”“What was I, about 80 years old or something like that? And I finally knew I had grown up.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s RAI Cinema, which has four titles in this year’s Cannes selection, has closed a deal on Ron Howard’s next movie “Origin of Species,” a hot project at the Cannes market starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ana de Armas, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander. RAI Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco said the company – which is the film arm of Italian state broadcaster RAI – has teamed up with Rome-based Lucisano Media Group to acquire Italian rights from CAA Media Finance on Howard’s survival thriller penned by Noah Pink (“Tetris”) about a a group of eclectics who turn their backs on civilization and head to the Galapagos. In Cannes, RAI Cinema also picked up Italian rights from Gaumont on family movie “Moon The Panda,” by French humans and animals adventures specialist Gilles de Maistre, known for “Mia and the White Lion”and “The Wolf and the Lion.” De Maistre’s latest, about the friendship between a boy and a panda, is set to shoot later this month in China’s Sichuan mountains.