‘Dune’ VFX Firm DNEG Laying Off Dozens In London HQ

Before VFX Supervisor Daniel Rauchwerger began his work on Apple TV’s Silo, he was told the actual siulo should be treated like a character — not a massive structure where 10,000 are forced to live.

BBC Strictly Come Dancing has announced its first wave of contestants who will be taking part in the show, which begins next month.

Andrew Garfield got in a swim this week while hanging out on a yacht in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Positano, Italy.

Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood have announced a new London art exhibition.The show, which is titled ‘The Crow Flies Part One’, is due to run at the Tin Man Art gallery at Cromwell Place in South Kensington between September 6-10.It’ll feature a series of new paintings that long-term friends and collaborators Yorke and Donwood created together over the past two years.Per a description, the works began as cover artwork for ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’, the 2022 debut album from Yorke’s side-project The Smile, whose line-up is completed by Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood and Sons Of Kemet‘s Tom Skinner.“The wider series will be presented alongside a Flemish woven tapestry commissioned by the artists in London to celebrate the album’s one-year anniversary,” the official listing reads.“This exhibition marks a significant moment in a 30-year artistic partnership for Yorke and Donwood, who worked on it together in Oxford and Brighton between 2021 and 2023. It takes its name from Ted Hughes’ poem Crow (1966-69), from which the band name The Smile is also derived, and draws inspiration from the Bodleian Libraries’ collection of Islamic pirate maps and 1960s US military topographic charts.“The works comprise a mixture of gouache, tempera and powdered mushroom on canvas and feature an extensive language of signs and symbols developed by the artists and codified via supporting imagery.”Tickets for the exhibition are available free of charge – you can book yours here.Donwood has created the art for all of Radiohead’s albums and promotional materials since 1994, as well as all of Yorke’s solo records.

EXCLUSIVE: DNEG, the visual effects firm behind titles such as Oppenheimer, Dune, and Knives Out, has hired Oscar-Winning VFX vet Tim Burke as Visual Effects Supervisor.

EXCLUSIVE: UK VFX firm Misc Studios, which worked on the likes of Alex Garland movie Men and Amazon’s The Rig, has shuttered.

Follow OK! on Threads here: https://www.threads.net/@ok_mag Dozens of people gathered at the Wall of Fame in Dublin to pay their respects to the “beautiful soul” of Sinéad O’Connor. A vigil was also held vigil at the Irish Centre in London on Thursday evening, 27 July.Those gathered at the wall – part of the Irish Rock 'n' Roll Museum – in Dublin's Temple Bar spoke about the influence her music had on their lives. And they called for her death to “light an absolute fire under all of us” to tackle how mental health and children are treated in Ireland.

Barbie casting directors Lucy Bevan and Allison Jones are spilling the tea on how they landed with the perfect set of Barbies and Kens.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator and star Rachel Bloom will bring her one-woman musical comedy Death, Let Me Do My Show to Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre for a four-week engagement this fall.

Last week Gemma Collins jetted off on a sun-soaked escape with her fiancé Rami Hawash. But behind the smiles and enviable holiday snaps, she was facing another setback in her long fertility battle. The former TOWIE star took to social media to give her followers an update on her conception journey, saying she “can’t get pregnant” after previously admitting she’s desperate to have a baby.

Naman Ramachandran XYZ Films will represent documentary “London Recruits” for North American sales, it was revealed at the ongoing Durban FilmMart. Directed by Gordon Main, the film sheds light on a pivotal moment in South Africa’s history. In 1970, the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa developed a new secret weapon. Oliver Tambo hatched a plan to infiltrate young British activists into the country, posing as tourists. Their mission, in the face of brutal lockdown by the racist regime, was to help inspire ordinary South Africans to join a liberation movement that would never give up till freedom was won. To mark the partnership, Ronnie Kasrils, now 86, the former underground African National Congress (ANC) freedom fighter at the heart of the story, participated in detonating a bucket “leaflet bomb” outside the market hotel. These were the devices deployed in 1970 by amateur secret agents that Kasrils recruited in London on orders from Tambo. The devices brought messages of hope from the banned ANC to the South African population at large.

EXCLUSIVE: A3 on Friday laid off 10 people, seven assistants and three coordinators. It is the first major round of layoffs in the Hollywood representation business since the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike but won’t be the last. With Hollywood production grinding to a halt as actors joined writers in walking out after talks with studios fell through, talent agencies and management companies are mulling new staff cuts, especially those companies that rely heavily on film and scripted TV revenue.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International “Succession” star Brian Cox and “Catastrophe’s” Rob Delaney are among the confirmed speakers at a London rally in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike. U.K. actors union Equity revealed plans earlier this week for two major demonstrations on Friday in solidarity with the actors strike. Twin rallies will take place at noon local time in London’s Leicester Square and in Manchester’s Media City. Speakers so far scheduled for the London rally include Cox and Delaney as well as “The Pact” and “Alex Rider” star Rakie Ayola, Equity general secretaries Paul W. Fleming and Lynda Rooke, and Bectu boss Philippa Childs. Member of Parliament John McDonnell is also set to speak.

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively enjoyed some quality time together while across the pond. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After changing its top leadership and merging its Swedish and Norwegian production units, Viaplay, the listed Scandinavian streamer, has announced that it will lay off 25% of its workforce as it plans to focus on its core Nordic and Dutch business. Viaplay’s new CEO and president Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, who recently took over from Anders Jensen, said the layoffs resulted from “the material change in the international business plans, and the fact that not all of the content investments that we have made are paying off.” The second quarter financial results for the group, which were published on Thursday, reveal that the robust organic sales growth of 16% to $448 million was offset by combined TV, radio and AVOD sales being down 16%. Operating income and net income were also down for the group. Operating losses for the full year are predicted to be between $83 million and $102 million.

Viaplay is letting go of more than 25% of its staff as it pulls streaming out of the U.S. and UK and mulls a sale.

Naman Ramachandran German media giant ProSiebenSat.1 Group’s continuing realignment after it acquired streamer Joyn in 2022 will result in the loss of 400 jobs. “A realignment of the organization is now taking place, particularly in the entertainment segment. The aim is to achieve a more efficient structure, a competitive cost base, and processes clearly geared to digital transformation. This is a priority in order to continue investing consistently in the future of the group, especially in content and digital offerings,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday. “Against this background, also a reduction in the number of jobs in the group has become necessary: This will affect around 400 full-time positions. The job cuts will be made in a socially responsible manner through a voluntary redundancy program in order to avoid compulsory redundancies as far as possible. The company had agreed on this in talks with employee representatives,” the statement added.

New gen vs. old gen!

Will Ferrell is seen out with his entire family, but that's exactly what transpired Wednesday in London at the premiere.The 55-year-old funny man was seen out with his wife, Viveca Paulin, dressed to the nine alongside the couple's three sons — Magnus, 19, Mattias, 16, and Axel, 13. Ferrell almost looked like his character in Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated look inside Barbie Land, in which Ferrell plays a human.

Margot Robbie is continuing to slay the fashion game on the Barbie press tour and she gave us another incredible look for the European premiere!