Italy’s Indiana Production Execs Talk Joining Vuelta Group as Production Starts on Gender Swap Comedy ‘Romeo is Juliet’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian genre specialist Stefano Sollima, who is known for gritty TV series “Gomorrah” and Hollywood movies “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” and “Without Remorse,” is shooting Netflix original limited series “Il Mostro” about the string of sex-related murders that took place outside Florence from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. “Il Mostro,” which translates as “The Monster,” is the moniker given to the alleged serial killer who committed eight double murders, preying on couples parked in cars in secluded places around Florence. The still unsolved case marks one of the longest investigations into the most brutal serial killings in Italy’s history.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Rome’s MIA Market, dedicated to international TV series, animation, feature films, documentaries and more, kicked off Monday in the Eternal City’s 17th century Palazzo Barberini. There were some 2,300 registered industry execs on day one – roughly 300 of which are buyers – more than 120 selected projects on display, and plenty of panels.

MPs and peers from all sides have called for an “immediate stop” to the use of live facial recognition surveillance by police and private companies. Former Brexit Secretary David Davis MP, Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey, Green MP Caroline Lucas and former shadow Attorney General Baroness Shami Chakrabarti are among the 65 members of the House of Commons and House of Lords who campaign Big Brother Watch say have backed their call for a halt to the technology’s use.

In this week’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo pops in a tape to discuss “V/H/S/85” with director Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange,” “Sinister,” “The Black Phone”). The sixth installment of the beloved horror anthology series follows five sinister found footage tales that delve into the grim underbelly of 1980s America.

“This is the perfect opportunity for us to make reality ‘real’ again,” says Peter Tierney, the commissioner who has spent the past two years overseeing ITV‘s rebooted Big Brother.

International execs from Unifrance, MK2 and TrustNordisk kicked off the annual Zurich Summit on Saturday to discuss the importance of film festivals when promoting a title and if fests are drifting away from what works in cinemas. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. actor Elena Kampouris (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3”) is set to star in the Sicily-set “Here Now,” a romantic thriller marking Italian director Gabriele Muccino‘s return to English-language filmmaking.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Underscoring its historical importance, a further production marking the 50th death anniversary of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende could well be in the works. The historical drama, provisionally titled “The Meeting,” details a historical encounter between the doomed president, whose downfall heralded the rise of the infamous military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian star Luisa Ranieri, who played the emotionally troubled Aunt Patrizia in Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” has joined the cast of the Johnny Depp-directed film “Modì,” about Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. The film has started shooting in Budapest. Ranieri is starring in “Modì” alongside fellow Italian Riccardo Scamarcio, who plays the bad boy painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France and became famous for the groundbreaking modern style of his portraits and nudes.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent French multi-hyphenate Lou Doillon, who is Jane Birkin’s daughter, is set to star in Italian comedy “Quasi a casa” directed by Carolina Pavone, a former assistant director on several Nanni Moretti films. Shooting is underway in Rome on the sophisticated comedy, in which Doillon — a model, actor and singer-songwriter, like her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg — plays an eclectic, successful singer who strikes up a turbulent friendship with a younger female musician who idolizes her.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Sophia Loren is recovering from emergency surgery for a fractured hip following a fall on Sunday in her home in Geneva, Switzerland, according to Italian press reports. Italy’s most famous living movie star, who turned 89 on Sept. 20, suffered multiple fractures after accidentally falling at home on Sunday morning.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian multi-hyphenate Ilaria Borrelli’s Arabic-language feminist drama “The Goat” – featuring Mira Sorvino and John Savage, alongside a stellar Egyptian cast – is set for back-to-back launches at Egypt’s upcoming El Gouna Film Festival, followed by the closing film slot at the Rome Film Festival. A rare, if not unique, case of an Arab production directed by an Italian, “The Goat” stars young Egyptian TikTok star Jessica Hosam as an 11-year-old pregnant orphan named Hadya who after being forced into marriage becomes the target of a western corporation that seeks to control the only water source in her village.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Fandango Sales has taken international distribution rights to quirky comedy “Volare” about the fear of flying that marks the directorial debut of actor Margherita Buy. Buy is known internationally for frequent roles in Nanni Moretti movies, most recently in “A Brighter Tomorrow” that launched from Cannes. Her smart concept movie is being lead-produced by Simone Gattoni for Kavac Film, the company founded by veteran auteur Marco Bellocchio.

Recently launched European distribution and production studio Vuelta Group has added to its stable with Italy’s Indiana Production and France’s Pan.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Vuelta Group, the rising Paris-based European film studio which recently launched with the high profile acquisitions of France’s Playtime, Germany’s SquareOne and Scandinavia’s Scanbox, is expanding its footprint in Italy and France. Spearheaded by media finance veterans (and childhood friends) Jerome Levy and David Atlan-Jackson, Vuelta has bought Indiana Production, a leading Italian company founded by Benedetto Habib and Marco Cohen, which had Giorgio Diritti’s “Lubo” playing in competition Venice and just revealed its big-budget Netflix series project “The Leopard” and Sky’s “Unwanted.” Vuelta has also taken a stake in France’s Pan (formerly called Pan-Europeenne), the well-established production and distribution banner headed by Nathalie Gastaldo, Philippe Godeau and Camille Gentet, whose credits include the hit franchises “Largo Winch” and “Legendaries.” Vuelta Group bowed last year with more $100 million provided by a U.S.

EXCLUSIVE: Former Disney TV studio executive and CAA agent Elizabeth Newman has joined Literate as its first new partner since the television-focused boutique management and production company was launched in early 2018 by founding partners A.B. Fischer and Dennis Kim.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Netflix on Tuesday unveiled four new Italian originals – two feature films and two series – that confirm its continued investment in Italy as local subscribers grow. The new projects also bolster the fact that the bulk of the streamer’s Italian productions are not high end and have a primarily local focus.

After being hit with backlash for taking her daytime talk show into production in the midst of the ongong WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Drew Barrymore has decided to shut down production altogether.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter As a strike-impacted fall season launches later this month, Fox boasts one of the only full nights of scripted programming in primetime — thanks to its Sunday night “Animation Domination” lineup. Besides the returns of “The Simpsons,” “Bob’s Burgers” and “Family Guy,” that sked includes the long-awaited debut of Dan Harmon’s new entry “Krapopolis.” The animated series, set in ancient Greece, was first commissioned at Fox way back in June 2020, when Harmon signed a broadcast network-only exclusive direct animation deal. It was formally ordered to series in February 2021, and was originally intended to debut in 2022 — before being pushed to May 2023, and now, September 24.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer and director Ginevra Elkann, whose delicate first feature “If Only” opened the 2019 Locarno fest garnering critical praise, is at the Toronto Film Festival with her tonally different follow-up, “I Told You So.” The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome. As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest.