Legendary, Sony Pictures to Launch Global Film Distribution Partnership

The problem with owning one superhero character and the universe they live in—in this case, Sony Pictures owning Spider-Man and everything within the Spider-Man universe, and that’s it—is it leaves you with a lot of limitations. That said, something like “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” really showed how you could expand things with a lot of flavor, style, and attitude with the right creative team.

David Fincher To Receive Honorary Cesar AwardDavid Fincher is to receive an Honorary Award at this year’s Cesar Awards. The primary French awards show will fete the Gone Girl filmmaker at its 2023 ceremony on February 24 at the Olympia in Paris. The awards body described Fincher as an “outstanding technician” and “a true visionary.” Awarded since 1976, previous Honorary Cesar Award winners include Robert Redford, Penelope Cruz, and George Clooney. The nominees for the 48th César Awards will be announced on January 25.

Every month, the Criterion Collection adds a few more excellent titles to its esteemed library and restores ones that already CC titles for a rerelease or two. And in March 2023, it’s none other than David Lynch‘s “Inland Empire“ that frontlines the new release.

EXCLUSIVE: Perfectman Pictures, the production company founded by creator, showrunner and producer Alexi Hawley, is expanding with the hire of Rachel Abarbanell as Senior Vice President and a new project in development at ABC.

EXCLUSIVE: In Kapital Entertainment’s first foray into features, Aaron Kaplan’s indie studio has received a green light for One Mile and a sequel, starring and produced by Ryan Phillippe. Shot back-to-back, both films will be distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Looks like a good old fashion cash grab celebrity endorsement has become a bit more fraught when it comes to the digital marketplace nowadays.

One of the more prestigious stops on the Oscar-season circuit is always the annual AFI Awards Luncheon, and on Friday the American Film Institute revealed its list of Top 10 Movies and TV Programs for 2022 (see this post for TV list). Major studios dominated the movie list for a change, including some box office blockbusters. Streamers were AWOL for the first time since their emergence.

Remo Williams, the cop sentenced framed and sentenced to death before becoming a trained assassin, is heading to the small screen.

In She Said, Maria Schrader’s telling of the Harvey Weinstein take-down by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, we see the birth of a historic moment: The turning of #MeToo from a movement into an unstoppable train of change. Based on Kantor and Twohey’s book, and from a screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the reporters painstakingly gather evidence from silenced survivors, many of whom consulted on, and in some cases starred in, the film. For Zoe Kazan, alongside Carey Mulligan as Twohey, playing Kantor meant understanding her humanity, the practical nuts and bolts of reporting life, and the weight of what it is to bring others’ devastating personal truths to light. In conversation with Antonia Blyth, Kazan and Kantor discuss the portrayal of women at work to change the world.

Saudi Arabia’s Cultural Development Fund is poised to launch a new $233m ($879m Saudi Riyal) film industry financing program in the first quarter of 2023, which will be open to both local and international entities.

EXCLUSIVE: Canadian streamer Crave has inked a long-term deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), taking first window rights to blockbuster films following their theatrical and home entertainment runs.

EXCLUSIVE: New Sony Pictures Television President Katherine Pope has made several hires and promotions as she continues to build her executive team.

EXCLUSIVE: Names of programming executives impacted by today’s layoffs across Paramount Global’s CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios are starting to emerge. As expected, all of them are on the Paramount TV Studios side, largely as a result of Paramount+’s scripted originals team being folded into that studio.

EXCLUSIVE: Sony’s 3000 Pictures has finalized a deal that will see Oscar winner Ang Lee direct Bruce Lee, a film that will star the filmmaker’s son Mason Lee in the role of the iconic martial artist. Dan Futterman, whose work includes Capote and Foxcatcher, is working on a script that has seen previous versions by Jean Castelli, Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, and, most recently, Wells Tower.

The Motion Picture Sound Editors said today that Gwendolyn Yates Whittlewill receive its 2023 MPSE Career Achievement Award during the group’s 70th annual Golden Reel Awards in February.

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, and catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group and Legendary Entertainment have made a new multi-year worldwide film distribution partnership. The deal replaces the former pact which Legendary had with Warner Bros, however, both studios will continue to remain in business on select existing titles, read the upcoming Dune: Part Two which is shooting for a Nov. 3, 2023 release, as well as the Monster-verse movies. We told you back in August that Legendary was looking to move off its Warner arrangement.

A group of leading Indian filmmakers and producers discussed strategies for bringing local audiences back into cinemas following the huge rise in OTT consumption in India, at a panel at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.