Jodie Whittaker-Backed $31,000 Short Film Fund Sets Jury Including Whittaker’s Former ‘Doctor Who’ Co-Star

British actress Pamela Salem has died at the age of 80.

Actress Pamela Salem, known for her role as James Bond's secretary Miss Moneypenny in Sean Connery's Never Say Never Again, has died at the age of 80.

Pamela Salem, who starred in both EastEnders and James Bond, has passed away at the age of 80.The production company Big Finish Insider confirmed the heartbreaking news, saying: "We are utterly heartbroken to confirm the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Pamela Salem". Producer David Richardson added: "Pamela Salem was lovely, and we all loved her. Whenever there was a Big Finish recording for her, she'd fly in from Miami on her own steam, without fuss or fanfare.

Naman Ramachandran A key audience participation segment of the London West End adaptation of Henrik Ibsen‘s 1882 play “An Enemy of the People” left people in tears, star Matt Smith told the BBC. In “An Enemy of the People,” when Dr. Stockmann (Smith) makes an unbelievable discovery about the healing waters in his local baths, he holds the future of the town in his hands, but those with everything to lose refuse to accept his word.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Stephen King recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to question why Warner Bros. is holding back its new film adaptation of “Salem’s Lot,” based on King’s 1975 horror novel about a writer who returns to his hometown in Maine and discovers its residents are becoming vampires. The movie went into development back in 2019 and shot in Massachusetts in 2021.

Twilight sparked a level of fandom that most movies hope to achieve but never do. Years after its initial debut, we’re still talking about the franchise!

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Berlin Film Festival hosted the 10 young European actors selected for the Shooting Stars program, run by European Film Promotion, at a gala event Monday. The presentation of the Shooting Stars took place prior to the screening of Claire Burger’s “Langue Étrangère,” which plays in competition.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA) has launched a new film fund called Big Time Investment to boost production of quality Arabic movies and announced a slate of Egyptian feature films toplined by a biopic of Egyptian icon Umm Kulthum who is considered the Arab world’s greatest singer. Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, whose epic “Kira and El Gen” about local resistance to British occupation, is recent hit, will direct the film titled “El Set.” Egyptian star Mona Zaki will play Kulthum who from the late 1920s onwards became the first prominent Arab singer to disseminate her work to the masses via the new technologies of the times: radio, the phonograph, cinema and television.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Kirsten Niehuus, head of German film fund Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, is confident that the changes to film funding proposed by the German government recently will have a “very positive effect on the production scene in Berlin-Brandenburg.” The proposed changes to the funding system were presented last week to German lawmakers in the Bundestag by commissioner for culture and media Claudia Roth (see here). Speaking to Variety Saturday at a party Medienboard hosted at Berlin’s Holzmarkt, Niehuus said the changes “will mean that we would have a tax system in place that could compete, for instance, with Budapest or Prague, so that not so many German productions would go and shoot somewhere else, and more foreign productions would come and shoot in Germany.” Looking at the media landscape across Germany she notes that one major challenge is the decision by high-end outlets such as Paramount+, HBO and Sky to cancel local productions, and she noted “the streamers are not such reliable partners anymore.” She added: “So I think producers are having a really hard time at the moment.” On a happier note, the Berlin government raised Medienboard’s budget by Euros 6 million over the next two years, which will be targeted at the exhibition sector in the region, allowing for the upgrading of facilities at movie theaters.

Naman Ramachandran Its raining biopics of revered 17th century Indian ruler Shivaji Bhonsle in Mumbai. Days after Sandeep Singh’s “The Pride of Bharat – Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj” was announced, billionaire Mukesh Ambani‘s Jio Studios and actors Riteish and Genelia Deshmukh’s Mumbai Film Company have unveiled their collaboration on “Raja Shivaji.” Both films were revealed on the occasion of the 394th birth anniversary of Shivaji, Feb. 19.

David Tennant found his way into the nation's hearts as Doctor Who. The Scottish actor has been on screens for more than 20 years.

David Tennant is one of the best-known faces on British television.The Scottish actor, 52, will be helming the star-studded BAFTA ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre on Sunday, where Oppenheimer will be leading the pack with 13 nominations. David admitted he felt a bit “bewildered” when he was first asked to host, but then thought: “What a laugh, what a lark.” “It just felt like an honour and a privilege to be asked to do something so august”, he added.

“It genuinely feels like things are happening in real time.”

Popular Outer Banks star Austin North went off the rails at a hospital in Las Vegas this week, even going so far as to allegedly violently attack staffers! Whoa!!

Shayeza Walid MacArthur Fellow Annie Baker is an acclaimed playwright and theater director, winning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “The Flick,” among other accolades. Now, with the release of the delicate mother-daughter drama “Janet Planet,” both written and directed by Baker, the esteemed theater veteran makes her directorial film debut. Baker began writing “Janet Planet” in the early days of the pandemic, completing it in December 2020.

Filmmaking duo Veronika Franz And Severin Fiala, best known Goodnight Mommy, which was Austria’s 2014 entry for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the Riley Keough-led The Lodge, have signed on to direct the horror feature A Head Full of Ghosts. Production is set to begin later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Production has wrapped on indie feature Bad Man, starring Seann William Scott (American Pie) alongside Johnny Simmons (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Rob Riggle (21 Jump Street), Chance Perdomo (After We Fell), Andre Hyland (Barry), and Lovi Poe (Chelsea Cowboy).

Ed Meza @edmezavar Germany’s film and TV sectors are eagerly awaiting the biggest reform in the history of German film funding this year, and while the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz struggles to navigate a major budget crisis, leading industry representatives are confident the planned overhaul will improve business despite the hurdles. Overseen by Claudia Roth, the federal government commissioner for culture and media (BKM), the plan aims to create a more centralized film funding system to support production, distribution, world sales and cinemas.

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent has named the eight writers selected for the seventh edition of its Episodic Lab, designed to provide individualized story and career development for writers with original pilots for television. The participants and projects are Desdemona Chiang (ZHIZHA! (紙紮!)), Giovanni Maldonado Chinea & Myles Hawthorne (The Machetero), Robert Cohen & Ioana Uricaru (Overcast), Catherine Durickas (Beige Is Not Dead), Azza Malik (Dear Azza,) and Robert ToTeras (Jourdain).

Naman Ramachandran “A Head Full of Ghosts,” an adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, will be directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. The horror feature will be adapted and directed by Franz and Fiala, the filmmaking duo best known for horror-thriller hit, “Goodnight Mommy,” which was selected as Austria’s 2014 Oscar entry, and the Riley Keough-led “The Lodge,” which premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Neon in 2019. Their next film, “The Devil’s Bath,” is competing for the Golden Bear at the ongoing Berlin Film Festival.