International Insider: Cannes Virtual Market Verdict & Diversity’s Thunderbolt Moment

Public media station WETA Washington, D.C. and the National Alliance on Mental Illness are teaming to host a one-hour virtual town hall to launch Well Beings, a public media campaign to address the health needs of Americans with a focus on the Youth Mental Health Project.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorHappy Friday, Jake Kanter here. Here’s a rundown of the six things you need to know about the global film and TV business this week.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterHappy Friday, Tom Grater here. Here’s a rundown of the key pieces of international news from this week.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Pablo Larrain’s Princess Diana movie Spencer, which is set to star Kristen Stewart as the former royal, was a hot seller for FilmNation out of the Cannes virtual market.The New York-based firm all but sold out on the project, closing deals for the UK, France, Italy and Benelux (STX Entertainment), Germany and Switzerland (DCM), Australia/NZ (Roadshow), Latin America, Spain and Portugal (Sun), South Korea (Green Narae) and Japan (Tohokushina).Buyers

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterThe latest project from acclaimed independent filmmaker Justin Chon, “Blue Bayou,” has been acquired by Focus Features, Variety can report exclusively.The studio brokered a worldwide deal for the film’s distribution rights out of the Cannes 2020 virtual market, which was financed by MARCO and Entertainment One.

Cannes has declared its first and, if things go as planned, last virtual film market a success. Just more than 10,000 film professionals took part in the five-day event, which wrapped up June 28, according to official figures released Thursday.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentCannes’s virtual Marché du Film, which wrapped on June 26, attracted more than 10,002 participants over the course of five days. The U.S.

The global film industry is betting that eventually there'll be a box office rebound. Studios and streamers, international distributors and global sales agents were doing business at the Virtual Cannes Market, the two parallel online film markets held June 22 to 28 in lieu of the canceled physical festival, as if the future were bright.

Television trade group NATPE on Monday unveiled a new online marketplace, NAPTE Virtual, that will launch alongside its industry events this year. The virtual market is pitched as a one-stop shop for television producers, sellers and platforms, online and off.

Money.

Nancy Tartaglione International Box Office Editor/Senior ContributorSaban Films has acquired North American rights to John Berardo’s Initiation. The horror crime thriller was previously selected for a world premiere in the Midnighters section at SXSW under its original title Dembanger.

Nancy Tartaglione International Box Office Editor/Senior ContributorA pair of China-focused panels at the Cannes Virtual Market this morning provided some insight into what’s happening in the Middle Kingdom as Beijing deals with a recent reemergence of coronavirus cases and movie theaters remain shuttered. The news wasn’t terribly positive.Jerry Ye, Chairman of Huaying Tianxia (Tianjin) Film Development said there is “no timetable for reopening for cinemas just yet.

Leo Barraclough Senior International CorrespondentBeta Cinema has closed numerous deals on its Cannes virtual market slate, spearheaded by all-rights deals on Berlin competition entries “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to Le Pacte for France and “My Little Sister” to Weltkino for Germany, as well as “The Auschwitz Report” to Signature Entertainment in the U.K./Ireland.As well as the French deal, Burhan Qurbani’s new adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” was picked up by distributors in

Martin Dale ContributorOne of Latin America’s biggest genre propositions, the Latido Films-sold “Virus 32,” from Uruguayan director Gustavo Hernandez (“You Shall Not Sleep”), was unveiled Tuesday on the A Demain Cannes market platform.The $1 million pic is a 50-50 Argentina-Uruguay co-production between Aeroplano, run by Sebastian Aloi, and Mother Superior Films, run by Hernandez and Ignacio García Cucucovich.In addition to subsidy support from Argentina and Uruguay, the horror-thriller has

Carole Horst The Cannes Marché du Film, along with a sales initiative led by Hollywood agencies, is hosting the first major virtual market since the start of pandemic, starting on June 23. Distributors and sales agents are looking forward to it: the turn-up for the online Cannes Marché du Film is significant with more than 7,000 accredited participants as of mid-June.“As nobody can leave their house, a virtual market is the next best thing.

Chris Pine is set to star in a brand new thriller movie, called Violence Of Action.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterFull credit to organizers of the Cannes virtual Marche (June 22-26), who by and large pulled off with relative smoothness day one of what will be a technically challenging and largely unprecedented event.There were a few hitches here and there, however, which caused scattered moments of frustration and, in one particularly bizarre incident, some hilarity among delegates.Earlier today, Neon aces Tom Quinn and Elissa Federoff logged on for an insightful

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Andreas Wiseman, Tom Grater The unprecedented Cannes virtual market is underway and there are a surprisingly large number of pre-sale titles on offer.Big-canvas projects such as Will Smith starrer Emancipation and Michael Mann movie Ferrari will be on sale alongside action-thrillers like Gerard Butler movie Kandahar and Nick Jonas title The Blacksmith, adventure pics like Arthur The King, dramas such as James Gray’s starry Armageddon Time and genre fare like Elisabeth Moss movie Run Rabbit Run.