Filming Wraps On Indie ‘Martyr Of Gowanus’ Starring Sawyer Spielberg & Holt McCallany

John Woo is giving his take on superhero movies and making it clear he’s not in favor of the films coming out of Marvel and DC Studios.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Action movie icon John Woo is not watching superhero movies, he recently told The New York Times in an interview ahead of the release of “Silent Night.” Woo, the Hong Kong director acclaimed for films such as “The Killer” (1989), “Hard Boiled” (1992) and “Face/Off” (1997), said he much prefers “real cinema” like Martin Scorsese movies. “I’ve never liked watching movies with big special effects, or anything based on comic books,” Woo told the publication. “I prefer Martin Scorsese’s movies, that kind of cinema.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Green Border,” Agnieszka Holland’s Venice Special Jury Prize-winning refugee drama, has been acquired by Kino Lorber in the U.S. (“Scrapper”) and Modern Films in the U.K. (“Drive My Car”).

Bradley Cooper spent six years developing Maestro as a film. Cooper wrote, directed and stars as Leonard Bernstein. He told Deadline’s Pete Hammond at Contenders Film L.A. that he lost all sense of time making Maestro.

When Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial outfit Maestro, an ambitious and extravagant Leonard Bernstein biopic, debuted at Venice, none of the film’s stars or crew made it on to the red carpet. SAG was 51 days deep into its strike against the studios. 

EXCLUSIVE: Ahead of the 33rd annual Gotham Awards Ceremony, taking place live and in person on Monday, November 27, 2023 in New York City, The Gotham Film & Media Institute announced the winners of its fifth annual Focus Features & JetBlue Student Short Film Showcase.

EXCLUSIVE: You and The Haunting Of Bly Manor star Victoria Pedretti, Jurassic World star Judy Greer, and Mad Men actor Rich Sommer have joined the cast of coming-of-age movie The Book Of Jobs, which is due to start principal photography tomorrow in Tulsa and Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Jaden Thompson As part of New York City Mayor Eric Adams‘ “Working People’s Tour,” Adams was joined Wednesday in Sunnyside, Queens by labor leaders and film and TV partners to break ground on a new production studio that will create almost 1,000 construction jobs and around 750 permanent, full-time jobs. The construction on East End Studios Sunnyside commences following the end of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which shut down the film and TV industry for months, and just after construction began on Sunset Pier 94 Studios in Manhattan.

EXCLUSIVE: The Jackson Hole International Film Festival will debut December 8 to 10 in Jackson, WY, via a new partnership with the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Christopher Vourlias Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal” won the Golden Alexander at the 64th Thessaloniki Film Festival on Sunday, marking the first time in 30 years that a Greek film took home the top honors at the country’s longest-running film event. Exarchou’s sophomore feature, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, was praised by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as “a poignant portrait of life amid the sequins and the seediness of a Greek resort.” The film follows a group of entertainers at an all-inclusive island resort preparing for the busy tourist season who are forced to wrestle with the dark reality that the show must go on as the sultry Mediterranean nights turn violent.

Scoring Killers of the Flower Moon was a daunting prospect for Robbie Robertson.

EXCLUSIVE: Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary Ennio, paying tribute to the late, revered film composer Ennio Morricone.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent A few days after AFM wrapped in Santa Monica, the dearth of substantial deals trickling in is pointing to a weakened film sales market which is grappling with structural changes and the reverberations of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Global industry players came into the AFM with reasonable hopes of dealmaking after a quiet Toronto festival, even if many packages were held back due to the strike.

EXCLUSIVE: Anya Chalotra (The Witcher), Chloe Cherry (Euphoria) and Ralph Ineson (The Green Knight) are set to lead the ensemble cast of indie feature Two Neighbors from debut feature director Ondine Viñao. The project has received a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement.

EXCLUSIVE: Venk Potula has been confirmed for The Black List fellow Nerris Nevarez-Nassiri’s upcoming indie musical Key Change.

EXCLUSIVE: Miriam Silverman (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), newcomer Emily Arancio, Nestor Carbonell (The Morning Show), and Holland Taylor (The Chair) have been set to star in Motherland, an indie drama from MPI Original Films that has entered production in New York under an interim agreement.

Russell Brand has been accused of sexual assault by a film extra during the making of his 2010 comedy Arthur.

EXCLUSIVE: SAG-AFTRA has granted an interim agreement to Sometimes I Think About Dying, an indie gem produced by and starring Daisy Ridley that made a big impression in its world premiere on the opening night of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble said Apple and Amazon, two behemoths of the tech world but newcomers to the wide-release movie business, are so far “very pleased” with their results.

Carole Horst Writer/director David Ferino’s feature directorial debut, “Wardcliffe,” starring Joel McKinnon Miller (“The Staircase,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Big Love”) and Shane Coffey (“Pretty Little Liars,” “Good Girls”). Inspired by real events, Ferino’s script takes place over the course of a single day as Dennis (Miller) and his son Ronnie (Coffey) quarantine together during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Decades of tension escalate to a boiling point when the two find themselves confined inside.