City Taipei Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor“Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia,” a symphonic work by composer Him Sophy and the first major such piece to address the Khmer Rouge genocide in the country, recently was released on Entertain Impact label.Sophy, himself a Khmer Rouge survivor, places the musical ritual of a Bangsokol – a traditional Khmer ceremony that accompanies Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites – within the form of a Western requiem.“When I composed the requiem,” Sophy says, “I relived the feelings I had during the Khmer Rouge times. It was Hell on Earth.

The new “Hunger Games” movie is shaping up, with Lionsgate revealing new casting information for the upcoming “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”.

Michelle Yeoh is taking on a new role.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterThe Netflix drama series “The Brothers Sun” has set its main cast, which includes Michelle Yeoh, Variety has learned.Yeoh will star alongside series regulars Justin Chien, Sam Song Li, Highdee Kuan, and Joon Lee. Alice Jewkin, Jon Xue Zhang,  Jenny Yang, Madison Hu, and Rodney To will appear in recurring roles.The show was ordered to series at Netflix back in February with an eight-episode pickup. It is set in Los Angeles and Taiwan and features an all-Asian writers room and all-Asian cast.

Netflix’s The Brothers Sun has found its leads.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Taipei Film Festival has named prolific writer-director-producer Kevin Chu (aka Chu Yen-ping) as the recipient of its Outstanding Contribution Award. During the 1980s and the 1990s, Chu made many popular memorable commercial films and discovered several promising new actors — Chu wrote the script of “Never Too Late to Repent” and won the best screenplay award at the Asia Pacific Film Festival. After that, Chu made this directorial debut, “The Clown and the Swan,” which was a critically-acclaimed box office success in which comedy actor Hsu Pu-liao established his name.

Lise Pedersen Germany’s Deckert Distribution has picked up international rights for Taiwanese filmmaker Elvis A-Liang Lu’s sophomore feature “A Holy Family,” which world premiered in Visions du Réel’s international competition section.The film is a home-coming story about the director who returns to his village in Taiwan after a 24-year absence. His elder brother is a psychic who offers career advice to the villagers, but fails in his own entrepreneurial ventures as a farmer, and his father is a gambling addict in poor health.

Vivienne Chow Jimmy Wang Yu, once a superstar of multiple Asian martial arts genres, died on Tuesday. He was 79.News of his death in a Taipei hospital was posted on social media by Wang’s daughter Linda, herself a former Canto-pop star of the 1990s.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefWildBrain CPLG, the agency and licensing arm of kids and family entertainment group Wildbrain, is to open three new offices in Singapore, Taipei and Seoul as part of a major expansion into the Asia-Pacific. The licensing team which is part of WildBrain’s existing Shanghai operations will be expanded and renamed WildBrain CPLG China.Maarten Weck, EVP & MD of WildBrain CPLG, will lead the Asia expansion and be responsible for the management and growth of WildBrain CPLG’s team and business in the region.

Jimmy Wang Yu, a Taiwanese actor who was once one of the biggest stars of martial arts cinema, died Tuesday in a Taipei hospital from an undisclosed illness he battled for six years. He was 79 and his death was announced on Instagram by his daughter, Linda Wang.

LONDON -- Artworks by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol and other modern masters are going up for auction in a sale ordered by a U.S. court as part of a billionaire couple’s acrimonious divorce.Sotheby’s auction house announced Friday that it will offer 30 works from the Macklowe Collection on May 16 in New York.The works belonged to property developer Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda, who spent 40 years assembling a collection by some of the 20th century’s greatest artists, displaying many of them in their grand apartment in New York’s Plaza building.After they split in 2016, a judge ordered the collection sold as part of the divorce settlement.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Roku Channel has picked up sci-fi adventure series “The Pact” from Qatar-based Katara Studios and Taipei- and Los Angeles-based Organic Media Group.The Roku Channel is the home of free and premium entertainment on the Roku hardware and software platform.The six-part show will be exclusively available on The Roku Channel in the U.S., U.K. and Canada from March 26, 2022, and release to the rest of the world in July.

Manori Ravindran International Editor88Rising co-founder Jaeson Ma and Anonymous Content executive producer Eric Tu are joining forces to launch EST Studios, an independent finance, production and sales outfit geared towards the Asian marketplace.Launching just ahead of the European Film Market — which officially kicks off Feb. 10 — the company specializes in premium film and episodic content.Ma (pictured, left) will serve as the company chairman and co-CEO, with Tu (right) serving as co-founder and co-CEO.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterNetflix has ordered the drama series “The Brothers Sun” from co-creators Brad Falchuk and Byron Wu, Variety has learned.The streamer has given the series an eight-episode order. It follows a Taipei gangster, Charles Sun, who’s settled into his life as a ruthless killer. But when his father is shot by a mysterious assassin, Charles must go to L.A.

Netflix is heading into the world of Taipei gangsters.

FromSoftware’s hotly-anticipated open-world action RPG Elden Ring will take around 30 hours to complete, the game’s producer has said.Speaking at Taipei Game Show 2022 (as spotted by VGC), Elden Ring producer Yasuhiro Kitao said that “the idea is that the main route should be able to be completed within around 30 hours”. However, Kitao also noted that this would “differ significantly” from player to player.Players who were hoping to pour hundreds of hours into Elden Ring, fear not – the emphasis seems to be very much on only the “main route” through the game’s story – which boasts a mythology and background created by George R.

EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Will Yun Lee and Mark and Christine Holder’s Seoul Street has acquired rights to Silver Phoenix author Cindy Pon’s bestselling sci-fi novels Want and sequel Ruse for development as an international television series.

EXCLUSIVE: Cindy Cheung (The Sinner, Awkafina Is Nora from Queens) will star alongside Ashley Liao, Ross Butler, Nico Haraga and Chelsea Zhang in Loveboat, Taipei, a YA romance, which is currently in production in Taipei.

Rebecca Davis editorChina has released the list of nominees for its upcoming Golden Rooster Awards, a set of government-approved film industry prizes that it wants to be seen as rivaling the Taipei-based Golden Horse Awards, historically considered as the “Chinese-language Oscars.”The winning Roosters will be announced amidst a film festival running Dec. 28-30 in the port city of Xiamen in coastal Fujian province, just a short boat ride away from Taiwanese soil.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“The Falls,” Taiwan’s Oscar contender and a timely drama about the trauma of home quarantine, emerged as the unsurprising winner at the Golden Horse Film Awards in Taipei on Saturday.And, in a bold decision that has the potential to enrage Mainland Chinese authorities, the prize for best documentary feature was awarded to “Revolution of Our Times.” The film chronicles the brutality of the political crackdown on the streets of Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020.“The

Rebecca Davis editorTrinity Cine Asia has acquired “The Battle at Lake Changjin” from Taipei-based sales firm Distribution Workshop and is set to release the war epic in the U.K. and Ireland on Nov.

EXCLUSIVE: Ashley Liao (Physical, Fresh Off the Boat) and Ross Butler (Netflix’s To All The Boys franchise, Shazam!) have signed on to star in Loveboat, Taipei, a romance film from ACE Entertainment and 1 Productions Film Co., which will enter production in Taipei later this month.

Richard Kuipers Five bored young billionaires become vampires in “Dead & Beautiful,” a middling horror-thriller and social satire that opens with an intriguing premise but never probes its cashed-up characters deeply enough to create gripping drama from the heightened hedonism or existential crises they experience after acquiring new powers.

Rebecca Davis editorFilm scholar and former director of Taiwan’s Film Archive Huang Jianye is set to chair the jury for the 58th iteration of the Taipei-based Golden Horse Awards, the festival said Wednesday.The awards are now heading into the third year without participants from China after a controversial awards speech in 2018 included mentions of Taiwanese independence.

Naman Ramachandran Bangladeshi filmmaker Nuhash Humayun’s “Moving Bangladesh” has received NT$2.5 million ($89,800) from the Taipei Film Fund. With this, the TIFFCOM selected project has achieved 60% of its $659,000 budget and aims to raise the rest in Tokyo.In “Moving Bangladesh,” sick of being stuck in traffic — and in life — a struggling middle-class Bangladeshi entrepreneur creates a motorcycle-based ride sharing app that may change transport in developing cities such as Dhaka.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefAward-winning Taiwan actors Ding Ning and Tsao Yu-Ning have joined the cast of “Pierce” a sports drama film hailing from Jeremy Chua’s Singapore production firm Potocol.Ding, who won a Golden Horse Award for her supporting role in “Cities of Last Things,” and Tsao, who won at the Taipei Film Festival for his supporting role in another sports drama, 2014 baseball tale “Kano,” respectively play the mother and elder brother of a promising young fencer.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich’s sons have formed a new two-piece band named Taipei Houston.The band – consisting of Layne Ulrich on bass and vocals, and Myles on drums – took to Instagram yesterday (September 1) to share a snippet of a new song entitled ‘Respecter’.‘Respecter’ features reverberating vocals sandwiched between heavily distorted bass and tight, snappy drumming reminiscent of Lars’ early days in Metallica.

Rebecca Davis editorTaiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang’s short “The Moon and the Tree” will world premiere at the upcoming Taipei Film Festival. The 23rd iteration will be held in-person from Sept.

Diablo II: Resurrected open beta.The open beta begins simultaneously in all regions at 5 PM GMT August 20, which works out as 10 AM PDT, 1 PM EDT, 6 PM BST and 7 PM CEST.

Richard Kuipers Audiences will be rooting for a working-class family to get away with manslaughter in “Sheep Without a Shepherd,” a gripping Chinese crime thriller set in small-town Thailand. Centered on an ordinary guy whose extraordinary film knowledge holds the key to keeping his family out of jail, this cleverly scripted item marks an auspicious feature debut for Malaysia-born, Taipei-based director Sam Quah.

Jamie Lang In today’s Global Bulletin, Eurovision impresses in its post-COVID return; the Walt Disney Company appoints Winradit (Win) Kolasastraseni as its new GM for much of Southeast Asia; the Producers Guild of India launches a vaccination drive for industry members; Bangladesh’s International Academy of Film and Media kicks off its first online script lab; Cartoon Network MENA gets kids involved in the fight against climate change; the Taipei Film Festival is postponed after an uptick in

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCinemas in Taipei and surrounding areas have been ordered to close for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.Taiwan authorities issued an order on Saturday morning putting the capital city on a level three alert.This requires the shutdown of cinemas, sports venues, libraries and other entertainment spots. Family get-togethers will be limited to five people indoors and ten outdoors.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTaiwan production and facilities company Awesomeworks Production has opened a specialist studio in New Taipei City, dedicated to the filming of medical and hospital scenes.The facility is intended to improve the production infrastructure for local productions and to help attract international filming to the island.

The Slamdance Film Festival unveiled winners for its 27th edition Thursday, with the compact drama Teipei Suicide Hotel directed by KEFF taking both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for narrative features and the best actor prize during a virtual awards ceremony.

Also Read: Ava DuVernay's Array Acquires Slamdance Winner 'Residue'This year’s Slamdance was the 27th edition of the festival, which ran virtually earlier this year, and the festival’s prizes were presented in a virtual ceremony on Thursday.“We congratulate the winners of Slamdance 2021 and everyone of our filmmakers who together attracted a record breaking festival audience for their brilliant independent work,” president and co-founder Peter Baxter said in a statement.

Vivienne Chow “My Missing Valentine,” a fantasy comedy drama directed by Chen Yu-hsun, won the top prize at the 57th edition of Golden Horse Awards. It collected four further prizes, including best director and best screenplay on Saturday at an in-person ceremony in Taipei.Best actress and best supporting actress awards both went to the 81-year-old veteran Chen Shu-fang for her performances in “Little Big Women” and “Dear Tenant” respectively.