Cambodia Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Angelina Jolie is opening up about her perspective on Hollywood now and saying she wouldn’t choose to be an actress if she were starting out in this era.

Refresh for latest…: As it crossed the $1B international box office milestone this past weekend, Warner Bros again owned the frame with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and its third session haul of $33.7M from 71 markets. That was good for a 47% drop from the previous weekend and lifts the overseas cume to $278.6M and global to $436.6M. Meanwhile, WB and Legendary’s other major title in the marketplace, Dune: Part Two, now has a shot at getting to $700M worldwide.

The Gospel Of The Beast, directed by the Philippines’ Sheron Dayoc, picked up the Golden Star Award for Best Southeast Asian Film at the first edition of the Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival (HIFF) in Vietnam. 

Warner Bros/Legendary Entertainment’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is out and roaring at the international box office, generating $15.9M from 49 markets through its first two days overseas (Wed/Thurs). Not included in that total is the strong China opening day today which came in at an estimated RMB 96.9M ($13.4M).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Directors Factory Philippines,” an omnibus film project initiated by the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, has completed production in the historic city of Dapitan. Operating since 2013, when it kicked off in Taiwan, the Directors’ Factory works with a new partner country each year to mentor eight budding filmmakers who are preparing ambitious first or second feature projects that they will make in pairs. The Philippines was selected in November. The four resulting co-written and co-directed short films will be screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight (aka Quinzaine des Cineastes) in May. Dapitan, a city in The Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula, known for its many shrines and as the place of exile of Philippines’ national hero, Jose Rizal.

UK director, writer and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, who won the Cannes Un Certain Regard prize last year for How To Have Sex, has been selected for the festival’s four-and-a-half month La Résidence program in Paris.

In one of the most compelling films to hold its world premiere at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, archive footage shows an apparently amiable man dressed in black sitting for an interview with a Yugoslav journalist. The year is approximately 1977.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s your first look at actor Ravi Patel (Wonder Woman 1984, Animal Patrol) suited up in Kiss Of The Con Queen, the true crime thriller inspired by the life of accused fraudster Hargobind Tahilramani dubbed the “con queen of Hollywood” after allegedly impersonating movie executives in an elaborate and high profile fraud scheme. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Escaping Man,” a Chinese drama feature about a man dragged into a kidnap plot, heads the FilMart slate of Hong Kong-based sales agency Autumn Sun Company. The protagonist is a man who spent 20 years in jail after being falsely accused of rape. After his release, he intends to confront the woman, but instead falls for her again — to the point that she is able to manipulate him into kidnapping the child for which she is the nanny.

EXCLUSIVE: Buenos Aires-based Filmsharks has sold a series of its EFM titles, including Spanish horror pic The Boogeyman: The Origin of the Myth (El Hombre Del Saco) and a new 4K remastered version of the cult Argentinian thriller Nine Queens, to multiple international territories. 

Naman Ramachandran Singapore’s Momo Film Co has unveiled a six-film slate that includes projects from recent prize-winners at Cannes and Locarno. Momo is one of five outfits selected at the 2024 Berlinale Co-Production Market‘s company matching program. Fresh off two wins at Locarno 2023 for Nelson Yeo’s debut feature “Dreaming & Dying,” Momo is continuing its relationship with the Singaporean filmmaker for his sophomore feature “The Drought,” a dark comedy-horror film set in the time of a drought.

EXCLUSIVE: Coming off five successful seasons on FX’s Mayans M.C., Clayton Cardenas has set up his next project.

Angelina Jolie has opened up about her past health complications with Bell’s Palsy, saying she first developed the condition in the lead-up to her divorce from Brad Pitt.Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in a new interview, Jolie spoke candidly about how the break up between the two actors negatively impacted her well-being, saying: “My body reacts very strongly to stress. My blood sugar goes up and down. I suddenly had Bell’s palsy six months before my divorce.”While Jolie didn’t go deeper into the topic of her Bell’s Palsy diagnosis, she said she has been feeling “bit down these days,” adding: “I don’t feel like I’ve been myself for a decade, in a way.

Angelina Jolie is ready to pack it up.

WSJ Magazine in a cover story, which published Tuesday. “We’re seven very different people, which is our strength.”She added: “We had to heal. There are things we needed to heal from.”“I don’t really have … a social life,” Jolie went on.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Angelina Jolie told The Wall Street Journal Magazine that she probably would not become an actor if she was just starting out in the industry in 2023. She’d consider acting on the stage, perhaps, but certainly not a life and career in Hollywood. “I wouldn’t be an actress today,” the Oscar winner said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Cannes’ Directors Fortnight section has joined forces with The Philippines for the latest edition of its Directors Factory professional training program. Operating since 2013, when it kicked off in Taiwan, the Directors’ Factory works with a new partner country each year to mentor eight budding filmmakers who are preparing ambitious first or second feature projects that they will make in pairs. The four resulting co-written and co-directed short films will be screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight (aka Quinzaine des Cineastes) in May. Four pairs were selected in Manila in October: Eve Baswel (Philippines) and Gogularaajan Rajendran (Malaysia); Maria Estela Paiso (Philippines) and Ashok Vish (India); Arvin Belarmino (Philippines) and Lomorpich Rithy (aka YoKi) (Cambodia); Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan (Philippines) and Tan Siyou (Singapore). They have now begun writing their screenplays and are expected to shoot their films March in Dapitan, a city in The Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula, known for its many shrines and as the place of exile of Philippines’ national hero, Jose Rizal. These days it is a hub for domestic and international tourism. Post-production of the four titles will then be hosted in Quezon City, which seeks to become the new film capital of the Philippines and where many of the country’s post-production houses are already based. The program is operated and co-produced by Epicmedia Productions of The Philippines and Dominique Welinski, founder and curator of DW (France).

French studio Federation’s new theatrical sales arm Ginger & Fed and Paris-based genre specialist WTFilms have unveiled a slew of AFM deals for apocalyptic thriller Survive.

William Earl Variety will host its annual Business Managers Breakfast, presented by City National Bank on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnam-based sales agent Skyline Media has closed multi-territory deals for two of its current titles “The Soul Reaper” and “Vietnamese Horror Story.” The deals follow Skyline’s recent trip to Busan’s ACFM and come ahead of its participation as exhibitor at a string of further final quarter sales events – Tokyo’s TIFFCOM, Santa Monica’s American Film Market and Taipei’s Taiwan Creative Content Fest. Folk horror film “The Soul Reaper,” currently in the final stages of post-production, was licensed to GaragePlay for Taiwan and to Westec Media Limited (WML) for Laos, Cambodia and nine other Southeast Asian territories. The film, adapted from Thao Trang’s best-selling horror novel “Lunar New Year in Hell Village” (aka “Tet O Lang Dia Nguc”), is set to be released in Vietnam cinemas on 08 December. GaragePlay is one of Taiwan’s leading distributors, and recently handles releases of “Suzume,” “John Wick: Chapter 4” and “Someday or One Day.” WML is the biggest content distributor in Cambodia and has distributed more than 1,000 titles theatrically since its establishment.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator” was a resourceful sci-fi endeavor with an $80 million production budget, but its visuals are on par with epic blockbusters that cost three times that amount. Rather than shoot on a studio backlot, the filmmaker behind “Godzilla” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” opted to shoot in eight different countries, including Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Japan. For an all-out climatic action sequence set in Thailand, a village comes under attack by the U.S.

Instagram video. Jesse Lopez, 31, who allied with fellow castaway Cody Assenmacher in Season 43, shocked everyone when he brutally backstabbed Assenmacher. The political science Ph.D.

Gareth Edwards directed his first movie, the 2010 indie “Monsters,” it could scarcely have been a more DIY endeavor. He had less than $500,000 to tell an intimate story about two Americans contending with giant aliens rampaging through Mexico, so his crew consisted of just his actors (Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able), a sound tech, a line producer, a translator and a driver.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean tech firm CJ 4DPLEX has struck a deal with Thailand’s Major Cineplex to add two ScreenX locations in Cambodia and Thailand. One will be located at the AEON Mall Mean Chey, have almost 500 seats and have a 75-foot-wide central screen, making it the largest ScreenX auditorium in Southeast Asia. The other will be at Bangkok’s ICONSiam Mall location, debuting on July 27. ScreenX is a multi-projection system with an immersive 270-degree field of view. That creates a virtual reality-like setting with cinema quality resolution. Major’s first ScreenX launched in 2022 at its Siam Paragon location in central Bangkok.

The 2023-24 theater season at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum will be halted in July due to what its operators are calling the aftereffects of the Covid pandemic, an economic “crisis unlike any other in our fifty-six-year history.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that Swiss-based, Chinese-owned Infront Sports & Media would handle broadcast right sales in much of Asia for the next series of Summer and Winter games. The deal covers 22 territories including Afghanistan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – but not China, Japan or South Korea, and runs 2026-2032. That means it will cover the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and the Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032 Summer games. The 2030 Winter Olympics, which have yet to be allocated a host, and all Youth Olympic Games during this period will also be covered.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In a move certain to shock Los Angeles theatergoers, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) announced Thursday that it is canceling plans for a 2023-34 season at the Mark Taper Forum, one of the most important homes for new plays in the city, if not the country, due to severe financial concerns. The organization’s two other theaters, the Ahmanson and Kirk Douglas Theatres, will continue with their seasons as usual, with 2023-24 programs to be announced shortly, the announcement said. The programming suspension at the 736-seat Mark Taper will begin after a current world premiere musical, “Transparent,” wraps up its run on June 25. Two other shows that had already been announced will have their runs canceled or postponed. The world premiere of “Fake It Until You Make It,” set to begin Aug. 2, is being called off, although the org said “we plan to feature it) in a future season.” Meanwhile, a touring production of “Cambodian Rock Band” set for the Mark Taper has been canceled outright.  

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Filmmaker Victoria Bousis has partnered with Unique Network to enhance the immersive film experience of her award-winning film “Stay Alive, My Son.” Inspired by true events and based on the memoirs of Pin Yathay, “Tu Vivra, Mon Fils” (“Stay Alive, My Son”), Bousis says she wanted to “leverage technology to break the rules of traditional storytelling and educating audiences about Cambodia’s history.” The film, which will screen at Siggraph in August and is currently on the festival circuit, uses augmented reality and a virtual world that audiences experience through a VR headset.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Major Cineplex, Thailand’s largest movie industry conglomerate, has announced that it has completed a deal to sell M Pictures Entertainment, one of the country’s leading film distributors. The buyer is local music star Khanngoen Nuanual. The deal was first announced in February and has now been completed, according to a regulatory filing. Both Major Cineplex and M Pictures are companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Major Cineplex said that Nuanual had purchased 1.2 billion shares, representing 92.5% of the company, at THB0.54 apiece, implying a total transaction valued at THB650 million ($18.8 million). The filing added that Nuanual is now obliged to make a tender offer to the remaining minority shareholders and that this step is expected to be completed by the end of July.

At one time, the Welsh village of Talysarn was home to workers and industrial buildings from the old Cambrian slate mines, mines which put roofs over the heads of countless thousands of people in the 19th century and which still last to this day.

Uk director Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex won the top prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard on Friday evening.

EXCLUSIVE: EST Studios has entered into a partnership with New York and Bangkok-based N8 Studios to represent a slate of Asian films at global markets including the Marche du Film at Cannes. 

A foot injury wasn’t going to keep Yubin Shin from walking the red carpet at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival!

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been banned from leaving Iran to serve as a member of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard jury, according to a report. News of the travel ban for the director who was recently released from Tehran’s Evin prison after being arrested last July for criticizing the government on social media, has been reported by the Farsi-language news service of Radio France Internationale (RFI). The report said Rasoulof had been asked to be a member of the Un Certain Regard jury but has been forced to decline. The Cannes Film Festival did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cannes film festival. He will be joined by French director and screenwriter Alice Winocour, German actress Paula Beer, French-Cambodian director and producer Davy Chou and Belgian actress Émilie Dequenne.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor U.S. actor John C. Reilly will serve as president of the jury of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes Film Festival. “Salem,” directed by Jean-Bernard Marlin, has been added to the lineup. The other members of the jury will be French director and screenwriter Alice Winocour, German actor Paula Beer, French-Cambodian director and producer Davy Chou, and Belgian actor Émilie Dequenne. The Un Certain Regard section showcases art and discovery films by young auteurs. In a statement, Reilly said: “I have had so many life changing moments at the Festival de Cannes (from my miraculous first trip with Paul Thomas Anderson to celebrating my 50th birthday from the Palais stage!) so to be chosen as the president of Un Certain Regard jury is truly such an incredible honor.”