Go Radio presenter and wrestler Grado is set to tie the knot today with his fiancée Stephanie Breen.
23.05.2023 - 05:03 / deadline.com
Chinese streamer Youku is teaming with Beijing-based producer-distributor Hishow Entertainment to produce high-end drama series My Dearest Stranger, starring Wang Luodan and Bosco Wong.
The 16-part suspense drama will be directed by Golden Horse Award-winning Taiwanese filmmaker Lin Yu-Hsien Hsien (Jump! Boys, Exit No. 6).
Based on Fan Shu’s best-selling novel Secret Love and adapted by Cao Xueping (Game Changer), the series tells the story of a woman who marries the man of her dreams, but starts to suspect he has a dark side and decides to cooperate with a policeman to find out the truth.
Chinese actress Wang Luodan has credits including Cao Baoping’s The Dead End and TV series Struggle, while Hong Kong actor Bosco Wong is known for films including G-Storm and Golden Brother and TV series Triumph In The Skies.
The crew also includes production designer Liang Honghu, who worked on Oscar-nominated Hong Kong feature Better Days.
Hishow Entertainment is a leading Chinese buyer, which has distributed films in China including The Imitation Game and Zhang Lu’s Yanagawa, and moved into production in 2019. The company’s first production was 38-episode drama Game Changer, which premiered in January 2021 on CCTV-8 and Youku. It is now working on a slate of international co-productions, across series and films.
My Dearest Stranger begins production in June in Chengdu, Sichuan province.
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Go Radio presenter and wrestler Grado is set to tie the knot today with his fiancée Stephanie Breen.
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.”
Simu Liu now has his own “Barbie” doll!
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.
Ming-Na Wen received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday. The Mandalorian actress was honoured with the 2,757th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and she unveiled the plaque at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard adjacent to the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. She was supported by her The Joy Luck Club co-stars Tamlyn Tomita, Lauren Tom and Rosalind Chao, who all spoke at the event.
EXCLUSIVE: Taost Entertainment, a London-based media production startup, has picked up Chinese distribution rights to the star-studded animated feature 10 Lives.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s NetEase Games has established PinCool, a Tokyo-based game studio focused on developing titles for game consoles. That is a significant diversification, considering that PC and mobile are the major formats for games play in China. And the company says the company it will also be involved in planning and producing a range of additional forms of entertainment. The new company is headed by representative director and president Ichimura Ryutaro, a 20-year veteran of the games industry and long-time producer of the “Dragon Quest” games franchise. Beyond serving as lead producer for games such as “Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King” and “Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies,” Ichimura also led other areas of the Dragon Quest IP franchise including live events and exhibitions.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fast X” predictably won a second weekend on top of the mainland China box office, driving its total past the $100 million mark. But the disappointing start for Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” was the bigger talking point. “Fast X” earned $17.6 million in China according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was a 66% drop compared with its opening weekend, but still gave the film a $110 million cumulative after 12 days and has caused estimates to be further revised upwards. Ticketing agency Maoyan is now forecasting that the film will finish with RMB880 million ($126 million), having previously predicted RMB728 million ($104 million), and then RMB840 million.
Jessica Kiang Imagine the gleaming surfaces of Park Chan-wook’s terrific “Decision to Leave” stripped of romance, all scuzzed-up and grimy. Imagine drilling down through Diao Yinan’s Berlin-winning “Black Coal, Thin Ice” and finding unexpected seams of absurdist dark comedy. You are now somewhere in the seamy offbeat world of “Only the River Flows,” director Wei Shujun’s inventive riff on Asian-noir that gives the expanding subgenre something its Chinese contributions often lack: a pitch-black sense of humor. Wei has been laying claim to the title of laid-back joker in China’s new-gen pack since debuting with affable slacker comedy “Striding into the Wind” in 2020 (a selection in 2020’s canceled Cannes festival) and following it up with autoreflexive filmmaking satire “Ripples of Life.” Now he brings his wry sensibilities to bear on this murdery mindbender, which he adapts, with a healthy disdain for boring stuff like “linear plotting” and “resolution,” alongside Kang Chunlei, from a short story by postmodernist author Yu Hua.
EXCLUSIVE: Berlinale Series Head Julia Fidel is exiting after four years in post.
CANNES (Reuters) - Renowned Italian director Nanni Moretti both directs and stars in "A Brighter Tomorrow," which premiered worldwide on Wednesday and is his ninth film to compete for the Cannes Film Festival's top prize. So far he has come home with the Palme d'Or only once - more than 20 years ago, with "The Son's Room" in 2001.
China’s film market is recovering, now the country’s cinemas and borders are open, and more films are being released, but producers and investors are playing it safe with a limited range of movies, said speakers at Bridging The Dragon’s annual Cannes Marche panel.
Lise Pedersen Award-winning US producer and distributor Karin Chien (“Robot Stories,” “Circumstance”), whose latest co-production, “Man in Black,” is one of two films by Chinese director Wang Bing running in Cannes’ official selection, shared her experience with the crowd during a masterclass at Cannes Docs, the Film Market section dedicated to documentary films. “Man in Black” premiered at a special screening in Cannes on May 22. Wang’s other film selected in this year’s edition is main competition title “Youth.” In the talk, moderated by Documentary Association of Europe co-founder Brigid O’Shea, Chien put on her distributor’s hat to talk about a job she said was “not pitched enough but [represented] some of the most meaningful work she [had] ever done.”
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Mainland Chinese star Wang Luodan (“The Dead End,” “Struggle,” “The Continent”) and Hong Kong-born Bosco Wong (“Lives of Omission,” “Triumph In The Skies”) head the cast of “My Dearest Stranger.” The high-end suspense drama series is a production fronted by mainland Chinese distributor-producer Hishow Entertainment, which announced the production at the Cannes Market, adjacent to the Cannes Film Festival in France. Based on the best-selling novel “Secret Love,” by Fan Shu and adapted by renowned screenwriter Cao Xueping (“Game Changer”), “My Dearest Stranger” tells a compelling story of Yu Xiao, a housewife who realizes her seemingly perfect husband may have a dark side. Yu decides to cooperate with policeman Song Cheng to find out the truth, while trying to keep her own secrets from the world.
88rising has announced the first slate of artists for its fifth annual Head In the Clouds festival in Los Angeles.Head In the Clouds LA is set to take place on August 5 and 6 at Brookside at The Rosebowl. This year’s edition will be headlined by DPR Ian, DPR LIVE, Jackson Wang, NIKI, Rich Brian, Rina Sawayama, XG and YOASOBI, plus special guest Zedd.In addition, the festival will also feature performances by South Korean singer-songwiter Baek Yerin, Thai musician Phum Viphurit, Thai rapper MILLI, Chinese singer Akini Jing and J-pop girl group Atarashii Gakko.
Chinese director Wang Bing is more than content to take his time. His documentary Youth (Spring), which premiered in competition at Cannes last Thursday, runs three-and-a-half hours long. His second Cannes film, Man in Black, runs considerably shorter at a mere 60 minutes, but it too unfolds patiently.
Godard speaks! Again. Quite rightly there’s a lot of hoopla about the world premiere of a 20-minute trailer the late cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard made for a feature film that will never exist: Phoney Wars.
Wang Bing’s documentary, Youth (Spring), one of two in the main Cannes competition in nearly 20 years, takes an interesting stance in its portrayal of the garment workers living in harsh conditions in China’s clothing capital of Zhili City.
Jessica Kiang It is somehow emblematic of modern China — at least of its seamier side, as frequently explored in director Wang Bing’s unsparing documentaries — that the street on which his long, oppressive new film “Youth (Spring)” takes place should be called “Happiness Road.” A collection of clothing manufacturing workshops, arranged like a mall around a rubble-strewn central thoroughfare 150 miles and a world away from Shanghai, this semi-derelict location is so poorly described by its name that one could suspect its planners of having a little joke. Except that here in Zhili City, irony — like leisure time, fresh air and natural light — is a luxury few can afford, least of all the teens and twentysomethings spending 15-hour workdays on site before retiring to equally rundown flophouse dormitories.
Check the label on that garment hanging in your closet. If it reads “Made in China,” there’s a chance it was stitched together by one of the characters in Wang Bing’s documentary Youth (Spring), or someone like them.