Cold War Interpreter of Letters Gets Big Screen Treatment with Germany’s MMC Studios and Balassa Films (EXCLUSIVE)

Refresh for latest…: Paramount/Spyglass Media’s Scream VI has slashed its way to a franchise-record opening at the global box office with $67.1M, topping Scream 3 for the best in the bunch of this long-running Kevin Williamson-created series. At the international box office, it also set a franchise-best start with $22.6M from 53 markets, a whopping 60% above the 2022 Scream. Domestic, too, was a record launch.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Mk2 films has enlisted leading distributors around the world for “Reality,” Tina Satter’s feature debut starring Sydney Sweeney, on the heels of its buzzy world premiere at the Berlinale. The movie, which bowed in the Panorama section, stars Sweeney (“White Lotus,” “Euphoria”) as Reality Winner, a 25 year-old whistleblower who spent five years in prison during the Trump administration. A former U.S. Air Force member and National Security Agency translator, Winner was convicted for leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to the media. The film is based on Satter’s 2019 stage play “Is This a Room” and contains verbatim dialogue from the unedited transcript of a FBI audio recording. “Reality” captures the tense and surreal 90 minutes of FBI’s interrogation with Winner at her home in 2017.

Paramount/Spyglass Media’s Scream VIis headed to a franchise-record opening of $50M+ worldwide from roughly 50 offshore territories including domestic.

Kim Petras‘ performance at Sydney WorldPride last weekend – check out the posts below.The German pop artist delivered a 13-track set at The Domain in the Australian city on Sunday (March 5), per Setlist.FM. She played her 2022 EP ‘Slut Pop’ in full, as well as recent single ‘Brrr’ and a solo rendition of her collaboration with Sam Smith, ‘Unholy’.As Metro reports, Auslan interpreter Marc Ethan was on hand to translate the gig.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights for German director Christian Petzold’s new film Afire, following its award-winning world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Saving Private Ryan star has been in a coma since he suffered a brain aneurysm in the early hours of February 18. Now, doctors have reportedly told his family that there is “no further hope” for his recovery, as per The Independent.Sizemore has been receiving treatment in intensive care after suffering the aneurysm earlier this month while in Los Angeles.

BBC Studios Renews Pact With ZDF

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Celebrated actor Nigel Havers and French journalist Sophie Davant will join Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) and ZDF Studios to celebrate 10 years and a now 10 territory roll-out of antique auction show “Cash or Trash.”  The property is produced by WBITVP and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios. Celebrations will take place as part of WBITVP’s Formats Showcase, held March 2 at BAFTA during this year’s London TV Screenings.  Havers (“Chariots of Fire,” “Finding Alice”) and Davant host the adaptations of “Cash or Trash,” on BBC One (“The Bidding Room”) and French public TV channel France 2 (“Affair Conclue”).

EXCLUSIVE: Five years after Netflix inked their first ever European overall series deal with Dark creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the studio has re-upped with the duo in a splashy eight-figure pact, we can reveal.

BBC Studios is gearing up for next week’s Showcase event by signing a global first-look deal with former Warner Bros. Australia TV boss Shaun Murphy.

EXCLUSIVE: In a seven-figure deal finalised over the last week, Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 Films has beaten out competitors for UK rights to Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, which A24 is releasing in the U.S. on April 21.

Katie Price has got a new kitten, despite thousands of people signing a petition to ban her from keeping animals. The little black cat made its first appearance on her Channel 4 show My Mucky Mansion on Tuesday night.The mum-of-five was seen spray painting a vase baby pink and adding little pom poms around the outside when the small kitten, who wasn’t named, crept up on the table and started walking around. She said her crafting was exactly what she was looking for, telling the camera: “If I saw this for sale online, I’d buy it, that’s the thing…” She then became worried that the cat would ruin her hard work and shooed it away, shouting: “Get off cat! I don’t want cat hairs on it!” Katie has previously come under fire from animal lovers after six of her pets died under her care.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Lie With Me,” a romance drama headlined by French stars Guillaume de Tonquebec and Victor Belmondo, has lured a raft of theatrical distributors at the Berlinale’s EFM. Represented in international markets by Be For Films and directed by Olivier Peyon, the movie is based on Philippe Besson’s book “Arrête avec tes mensonges.” The autobiographical novel was originally published in France by Editions Julliard in 2017 and won pair of awards including the Maison de la Presse prize in 2017. After selling several key territories earlier this year, Be For Films has now closed deals for the U.S. (Cinephobia Realising), Germany/Austria (24 Bilder), Brazil (Imovision), Poland (Tongariro), Greece (Cinobo) and Turkey (Bir Films).

Marta Balaga Berlin-based X Filme Creative Pool will adapt one of the most successful German-language podcasts, “Zeit Crime” (“Zeit Verbrechen”) into an anthology series for Paramount +. Awarded the German Podcast Prize, “Zeit Crime” is based on the criminal investigations of Sabine Rückert and Andreas Sentker. According to producer Jorgo Narjes, it currently boasts 5 million streams per month and an average of 1.5 million listeners per episode, “most of them female and in their late twenties.” So far, the podcast consists of more than 100 episodes.  Filming started this month and will continue until the end of June 2023.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent German powerhouse ZDF Studios and U.K.-based Factual Fiction are reteaming for “#DorianGray,” an updated social media spin on Oscar Wilde’s classic, “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” In Wilde’s original, first published as a novella in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, the self-besotted Dorian Gray sells his soul in exchange for eternal youth, a picture painted of him recording the decay of his soul as in outward appearance he remains physically forever young.  Currently being written by Maiya John, a young London-based screenwriter, the contemporary reimagining is described by ZDF Studios as “a suspenseful ride through the life of a teenager as they construct their identity.” 

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor A pair of Oscar bellwether ceremonies took place this weekend, heralding uncertainty and unpredictability to an awards season where no one agrees on what contenders will end up taking home Academy Awards. The DGA Awards, which has historically matched up best with the eventual winner of best director, chose the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. They’re the third directing team to win in the DGA’s 75-year history (after Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for “West Side Story” and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for “No Country for Old Men”). Only eight DGA winners have failed to walk away with the Academy Award in the same season, with the last instance being Sam Mendes (“1917”), who won at DGA but lost to Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) at the 2020 Oscars.

Marta Balaga The Polish film industry is embracing variety and high-profile international collaborations, with a slew of new co-productions already generating buzz among buyers and festival programmers. “More and more established filmmakers, who used to look for collaborators in Romania or Hungary, are now coming to Poland — mostly because we are backed by concrete institutions and because there is money,” says producer Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska of Madants, heading to Berlinale’s European Film Market with “Ultima Thule” and Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners.” “Our crews speak English and work abroad. We are visible internationally,” she adds.

Ed Meza @edmezavar German cinema looks set for a major boom this year with a strong lineup of diverse works that span historical dramas, coming-of-age tales, high-octane nostalgia, animation and sci-fi fun. The Berlin Film Festival is bowing a muscular selection of local titles, among them “Afire,” by Berlinale mainstay Christian Petzold (“Undine”), screening in competition. The films centers on a group of young people staying at a holiday house near the Baltic Sea during a hot, dry summer, exploring volatile emotions that start to sizzle when a wildfire spreads through the surrounding forest. Likewise vying for the Golden Bear is Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic “Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey Into the Desert,” starring Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”) as the radical Austrian author. The film examines her relationship with Swiss writer Max Frisch and her 1964 journey of self-discovery through the Egyptian desert.

EXCLUSIVE: Black Bear International has closed a raft of international deals on EFM titles Longlegs and Fred & Ginger, we can reveal. The two projects were among the most in-demand with foreign buyers and the deals account for the lion’s share of each film’s budget.

The 76th British Academy Film Awards will take place tonight, as stars of film from around the world descend on London to celebrate the best achievements in filmmaking from the past year. The nominations were announced by Captain America actress Hayley Atwell and Ted Lasso’s Toheeb Jimoh via a live broadcast from London on January 19.