Deadline’s Contenders London Sets A-List Panelists For Awards-Season Showcase

There are parents that go to their kids’ soccer matches or football games and cheer them on, no matter how well they perform. Then there are parents that go the extra mile to make sure they help train their kids to be real athletes.

Every year, there’s a film that seems to sneak up on everyone during film festival season and becomes a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar race.

Y: The Last Man has been cancelled after one season, a month after it premiered.The show, which is based on the acclaimed DC comics series, was cancelled by its parent company FX on Hulu. It is currently streaming on Disney+ in the UK.Y: The Last Man takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which every mammal with a Y chromosome is wiped out bar one cisgender man (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet monkey.

The Artios Awards has its callback date, and it’s going green, so to speak. The Casting Society of America said today that its 37th annual trophy show is set for St. Patrick’s Day — Thursday, March 17.

Deadline’s movie awards-season showcase The Contenders returned in-person this past weekend with Contenders Film: London, an all-day event that put 19 of the year’s buzziest movies from nine studios in the spotlight. A total of 44 panelists from George Clooney and Jennifer Hudson to Denis Villenueve, Dakota Johnson and Jonathan Majors participated.

Cyrano star Haley Bennett joined production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer on stage at Deadline’s Contenders Film: London event to discuss the film.

Director Edgar Wright and writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns told the audience at Contenders London today that bringing their own experiences of living in London was integral to the making of their upcoming Focus Features pic Last Night In Soho.

Titane filmmaker Julia Ducournau didn’t just make history this year as the first female director to win Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or solo, she was also the first to find out she had won the prize twice during the ceremony.

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast tells the story of a fictional nine-year-old version of himself during the Troubles in late 1960s Northern Ireland. Today, he told Deadline’s Contenders Film: London event that he had long wanted to write something about the city, but was thinking “perhaps there was a story about my grandparents,” until the pandemic came around.

Siân Heder’s coming-of-age drama CODA, which was the first feature in Sundance history to win all the top prizes, has made audiences cry, but it’s also made them laugh.

Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson joined me virtually as part of the MGM/United Artists Releasing presentation at the Deadline Contenders Film: London event taking place today in front of an audience of awards voters in England and serving as a launch to this Oscar season.

Cary Joji Fukunaga, director of No Time To Die, is evidently pleased that the latest James Bond film – the last featuring Daniel Craig as 007 – was released theatrically.

Clio Barnard took inspiration from two people she met while filming previous films for Ali & Ava, which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

George Clooney has described his The Tender Bar lead Ben Affleck as “a really wonderful actor who hasn’t been given a lot of great parts to show that off.”

Denis Villeneuve told the audience at Contenders London today that embarking on an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 sci-fi book Dune was the “project of a lifetime” for him.

Fresh from blowing open the London Film Festival with his irrepressible Netflix title The Harder They Fall, director Jeymes Samuel came to Deadline’s Contenders Film: London today for a lively panel with his leading man, Jonathan Majors. Set in the American West around the turn of the last century, the film stars Majors as outlaw Nat Love.

Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch were so deep in character for Jane Campion’s upcoming Netflix thriller The Power Of The Dog that they didn’t speak to each other on set.

With Venice Grand Jury Prize winner The Hand Of God, Paolo Sorrentino wanted to make a change. “For 20 years, I did a precise kind of movie and I was a little bit tired about that… When I turned 50, I thought it was the right moment to change everything, to change the producer, the crew, the tone, the style. Even the cinema can run the risk to be a routine,” he told Deadline’s Contenders Film: London event today.

Rebecca Hall revealed a personal link to her directorial debut Passing at Deadline’s Contenders Film: London this morning. Joined on stage by stars Ruth Negga and André Holland, she explained why she adapted Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel. “My mother’s from Detroit and her father was African American and passed for white his whole life. When I read the book, it clicked into place: obviously that’s what my grandfather did — for his family, his children’s life.”

The Lost Daughter stars Dakota Johnson and Jessie Buckley have spotlighted the “raw and unnerving honesty” of Maggie Gyleenhall’s upcoming Elena Ferrante adaptation, her directorial debut.