French Director Adrien Beau’s Venice-Bound ‘Vourdalak’ Promises Offbeat Tale of the ‘Original Vampire’

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paris-based outfit Urban Sales has locked several deals on “Pictures of Ghosts,” the latest film by celebrated Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Aquarius”, “Bacurau”) ahead of its North American premieres at Toronto and New York film festivals. The movie world premiered at Cannes in the Special Screenings section. Weaving archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, the film has sold to the U.S.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iranian director Saeed Roustaee has been sentenced to six months to prison for showing his latest film, “Leila’s Brothers,” at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, according to an Iranian report. The Islamic Revolutionary Court convicted both Roustaee and Javad Noruzbegi for “contributing to the propaganda of the opposition against the Islamic system,” according to the Iranian daily Etemad.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Focus Features has boarded Goran Stolevski’s anticipated next project, “Housekeeping for Beginners,” ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in the Horizons section. Focus will be distributing the film in the U.S. with Universal Pictures handling international distribution (excluding Eastern Europe).

Danielle Campbell and Colin Woodell are engaged!

Tatiana Siegel Despite its status as the highest-grossing indie film since 2019’s “Parasite,” “Sound of Freedom” has been dismissed as a QAnon fever dream by large swaths of the mainstream media. But that derisive label is “so ridiculous” to the film’s writer-director Alejandro Monteverde, who began working on the project in 2015, two years before QAnon emerged. “The origin [of the film] has been avoided, purposely or accidentally, in the media,” Monteverde said.

More than 22 years later, Aidan and Carrie are still looking good — they even wore their Sex and the City outfits to remind Us.

“The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear” (Citadel), it could have called for its own exorcism. The same kind of crazed scenes were happening nationwide at almost two dozen theaters where thousands would turn out for the premiere of what was being billed as one of the most frightening horror movies ever made — and accurately so.As Segaloff puts it, when the film opened, “the bedlam began.”At the Savoy Theater in Boston, “People were running up the aisles and into the lobby, some of them making it out to the street before vomiting, while others did it en route.”“I couldn’t imagine people being affected like that.

(Warning spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”)During Season 1 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” fans are introduced to Belly, her brother Steven, and their close family friends Jeremiah and Conrad. They also get to see the sweet relationship between the siblings’ mothers, Laurel and Suzannah. The moms are front and center and their story was woven through the fabric of the episodes.

Hunter Ingram SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the fourth and final season of “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” now streaming on Disney+. The Wildcats of “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” have taken their final bow. The Disney+ extension of the popular movie musical trilogy concluded this week with an eight-episode fourth season that found its cast performing a stage — or rather, basketball court — production of 2008’s “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.” Members of that film’s original cast returned to East High to shoot the fictional “High School Musical 4: The Reunion.” Although the original films have had a presence since the pilot episode — the series is set at the high school where the films were shot — the final season is the show’s most meta endeavor yet.

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh Produce Media, the podcast company behind series such as Jon Hamm-fronted The Big Lie, is launching a new dystopian sci-fi series starring Helen Hunt, Beau Bridges and Julia Rehwald.

Christopher Vourlias Beta Film has acquired international distribution rights to “I Know Your Soul,” a new series from Oscar nominee Jasmila Žbanić (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”) that premieres Out of Competition next month at the Venice Film Festival. The six-episode limited series is led by European Film Award-winning actress Jasna Đuričić, who plays Nevena Murtezic, a prosecutor in the process of divorce and single mother to a teenage son.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Now on its fourth year, the Santiago Film Festival’s Morbido-Sanfic Lab features an ever more diverse selection from Ibero-America. As Morbido founder-CEO Pablo Guisa said of this year’s edition: “It has projects from multiple countries, several produced or directed by women as well as one LGBTQ-themed project and, for the first time, a documentary.” Vampire creatures abound in this crop.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Amazon Prime Video France has signed a multi-year deal with leading French independent distributor Metropolitan FilmExport to bring over 100 movies to local subscribers. Metropolitan FilmExport ranks as one of France’s top purveyors of U.S. franchise films, such as “Lord of the Rings,” “Hunger Games,” and “John Wick.” As such, this deal positions Prime Video in France as a home for premium content for wide audiences.

Donald Glover played the role of Lando Calrissian in the 2018 Star Wars prequel movie Solo and now he’s set to write a Disney+ limited series about the character.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is refusing to row back on his decision to invite controversial movie-biz bigwigs Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson to the late summer event, which will take place despite the potential disruption by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. “Luc Besson has been recently fully cleared of any accusations. Woody Allen went under legal scrutiny twice at the end of the ’90s and was absolved,” Barbera said in a new interview with Variety.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Matteo Garrone, who is a two-time Cannes jury prizewinner with “Gomorrah” in 2008 and “Reality” in 2012, is set to be in competition in Venice for the first time with his immigration-themed drama “Io Capitano.” Shot over 13 weeks in Senegal, Italy and Morocco with a cast of non-professional actors, the Italian auteur’s new film – the title for which translates to “I Captain” – narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe. It depicts their plight through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.

Walk around or near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and chances are you will see the name David Rubenstein.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While Greta Gerwig’s girl-power blockbuster “Barbie” is ruling over the French box office, another much younger female-led franchise, “Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir” has managed to pull approximately €8 million ($8.9 million) at the local B.O., from more than 1.1 million tickets, since bowing on July 5. Budgeted around $80 million and directed by Jeremy Zag, “Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir” ranks as one of France’s most ambitious animated films to date. Featuring eight original songs, a queer storyline and a postcard-worthy Parisian backdrop, the musical film broke ground as the first female-powered superhero movie set in the French capital. Even as it faces stiff competition from “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” “Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir” has enough legs to match or surpass recent non-U.S. animated hits such as “Ballerina,” which sold 1.8 million tickets in France. It garnered 318,144 admissions on its opening day in theaters, a record for a French animated film. In Germany, the movie sold 586,148 tickets in three weeks and is currently the leading family title at the box office.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Decades before Christopher Nolan set his sights on a movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, a science-obsessed BBC executive ventured to America in 1979 to make a $1.5 million TV show about the father of the atom bomb. Peter Goodchild began his career at the BBC in radio drama, but eventually migrated to the storied “Horizon” science unit to put his chemistry degree to some use. The division began experimenting with factual dramas in the 1970s, and after delivering a hit series on French-Polish physicist Marie Curie, Goodchild set his sights on the New York-born Oppenheimer. “I’d seen a play on J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Hampstead Theatre Club way back in 1966,” the 83-year-old tells Variety from his home in Exeter, southwest England, where his Zoom background reveals a room teeming with books on heaving shelves.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The double SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes are worrying exhibitors in France, where the box office is driven by Hollywood blockbusters. In an interview with French news channel BFM Business, Richard Patry, who presides over the National Federation of Cinemas, predicts “the strike might go on for a long time” because it’s aimed at streaming services. “Many U.S. films have already started to be delayed, and it worries us a lot for 2024,” Patry said. The dearth of U.S. releases during the pandemic hurt the French box office, which was down by about 30% in 2022. Even if French movies have a large market share domestically, U.S. blockbusters typically drive an upward trend. Case in point: the French B.O. finally recovered this year and has been up 33%, bolstered by a spike in anticipated American movies, which skyrocketed from 29 in 2022 to 51 in the first five months of 2023, according to Comscore France.