Sri Lanka Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Naman Ramachandran Mani Ratnam’s Tamil-language epic “Ponniyin Selvan: 1” has scored a worldwide opening weekend of INR2 billion ($24.5 million), according to numbers released by co-producers Madras Talkies. In the process, the film has rewritten some records for Tamil-language cinema. The film released on Sept. 30 and collected $9.8 million on that day, making it the highest all-time opening day for a Tamil-language film. In the U.S., the film opened in sixth position with $4.01 million, making it the highest opening for a Tamil-language film in the territory. It also had the highest per screen average of $8,036 among films in the top 10.

Love Triangle’s Yannick Samarasinghe is a walking embodiment of the phrase “tall, dark and handsome” and even runs his own business, so he needs no help with dating.WATCH: Love Triangle | OFFICIAL TRAILER | A Stan Original Dating SeriesIn the past he’s dated models, athletes and Instagram influencers, confessing to WHO exclusively: “I’m quite a physical person and I know what I like in a woman.“I’ve always dated women that you’d expect a guy who looks like me to date, not to sound like a d—k.”But in a surprisingly candid moment, Yannick admits that focusing on looks alone has left him longing for a deeper connection with a woman.That is why a dating show where you have no clue what the people you’re matched with look like really appealed to him.Yannick admits that focusing on looks alone has left him longing for a deeper connection with a woman.“Because of the way I look sometimes I get put in a box… but there’s a lot more to me,” he says.“To build a connection not knowing what anyone looks like, that was the clincher for me to do the show.”His focus on the show was to just be himself, that way if he got a “bad edit” or was “made out to be a villain”, at least he knew he was true to himself.“If you’re a fake person trying to pretend be something you’re not and you get the bad edit anyway you’re like ‘well f—k’,” he laughs.“Because of the way I look sometimes I get put in a box… but there’s a lot more to me."“You’re probably living in a bit of a fake reality if you go on a show thinking that you have control of that.”On a more personal note, Yannick recognises that his casting in Love Triangle as a mixed-race man of Sri Lankan and Portuguese descent is a big deal in itself.“I’ve always been the token Black guy.

EXCLUSIVE: Bridgerton season two star Charithra Chandran has landed the lead in Olivia Hetreed drama Song of the Sun God, Deadline can reveal.

Paparazzi don’t tend to swarm to Levenshulme - no massive necessity, really - but back when Malanie Tillekeratne worked at Scott’s in Mayfair, she’d have to scrap her way through the scrum on a regular basis as she left work of an evening. Paps would gather at the upscale fish restaurant, where Malanie worked as a pastry chef, to catch a glimpse of some of the celebrities who would be sucking down oysters and champagne inside.

Naman Ramachandran British-Sri Lankan actor Nimmi Harasgama has returned to the U.K. stage after nearly a decade with “Silence,” a co-production between Donmar Warehouse and Tara Theatre. Harasgama, who was a member of the U.K.’s National Youth Theatre and went on to get a BA in drama and theater arts at Goldsmiths College, London University, has also trained at Groundlings Improv School and Lesly Kahn and Co Drama School in Los Angeles. The actor shot to international prominence with a brace of films by Sri Lankan auteur Prasanna Vithanage – “August Sun” (2003), for which she won best actress at Las Palmas, and “Flowers of the Sky” (2008), which premiered at Busan. After some shorts and roles in BBC series “Doctors,” Harasgama had an extended run on the U.K. stage in productions such as “The Snow Queen” (Unicorn Theatre); “Gandhi and Coconuts” (Kali Theatre Company); “Aunty Netta’s Holiday for Asylum” (Tamasha Theatre Company – Edinburgh Festival Fringe); and “Handful of Henna” (Rasa Theatre Company).

A headteacher asked more than 100 boys for naked pictures on Facebook. Nick Clayton from Holyake sent creepy messages to boys as young as 10 while working as the head of a British international school in Iraq.

Naman Ramachandran Sri Lanka’s Vimukthi Jayasundara and Guatemala’s César Díaz, winners of the Cannes Golden Camera for “The Forsaken Land” (2005) and “Nuestras madres” (2019) respectively, are among the recipients of the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) of the International Film Festival Rotterdam‘s (IFFR) HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production Support scheme for 2022. Out of 25 applications, six projects by filmmakers from Argentina, Egypt, Guatemala, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Yemen have been awarded a contribution of €60,000 ($60,854) each through their European co-producers in Austria, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Jayasundara is supported for “Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars” (France/Sri Lanka, House on Fire), set on a mysterious resort where the protagonist must quarantine and reckon with his past on his return to Sri Lanka, while Díaz gets it for “Fidelidad” (Guatemala/Belgium, Lemming Film Belgium), a love triangle set on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.

Naman Ramachandran Leading Indian AVOD platform MX Player has set a multi-year partnership with Lionsgate to bring premium Hollywood content onto the service. Via this agreement, MX Player consumers in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives will now have access to more than 50 Hollywood blockbuster films dubbed in the Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages in a year. Titles available in September include “Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,” “Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2,” “War” and “Destruction: Las Vegas.” Mansi Shrivastav, senior VP, content acquisitions and alliances, MX Player, said: “Our partnership with Lionsgate allows us to bring some of the most popular and commercially acclaimed Hollywood films to our viewers in their local languages. This partnership also enables us to attract new users to the platform while consolidating our existing audience base. We are thrilled with this alliance and look forward to working closely with the team at Lionsgate to make more Hollywood content available for users in the region.”

A Scots Instagrammer who is facing deportation from Sri Lanka for sharing images of the country's revolution online has appealed the cancelling of her visa.

M.I.A. has shared a snippet of a new single called ‘Popular’ – check out the post below.The English-Sri Lankan musician posted the clip of the song on her official Instagram page yesterday (August 10). In the caption, she wrote: “MIA IS DEAD AF, THE FUTURE IS HERE ITS MAI BITCHES [sic].”M.I.A.

Rebekah Vardy vs Coleen Rooney libel trial will be made into a Channel 4 docudrama, the broadcaster has confirmed. Earlier this year, the legal battle gained significant media attention after Vardy took Rooney to court for defamation when Rooney accused Vardy of leaking her private social stories to the press in 2019.

As the summer holidays begin today Jet2 will operate its ‘busiest ever weekend’ as thousands of Brits jet off abroad. Almost 150,000 customers will be travelling to popular holiday destinations including the Canary Islands and Turkey with the airline this Saturday and Sunday.

Sri Lanka weathers the worst economic crisis in its history.The island nation known as the pearl of the Indian Ocean — where films like “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Tarzan, the Ape Man” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai” were shot on location — has been through some extraordinary times in recent weeks.In the last year, the government’s economic mismanagement has precipitated a foreign currency and agricultural crisis that has led to shortages of medicine, fuel and basic food staples amid a 50% rise in inflation. The country declared bankruptcy earlier this month.

Bobby Brazier - the son of late Big Brother star Jade Goody - is set to make his acting debut in EastEnders. The 19-year-old will take on the role of Freddie Slater, the son of Maureen "Little Mo" Slater, and is currently filming scenes scheduled to air this summer.

Long queues at the Port of Dover are causing delays for families embarking on summer getaways at the start of the school holidays. Ferry operators warned passengers to expect delays of several hours at the border, advising people to have travel documents ready for inspection in an effort to assist border checks and reduce queueing time.

TUI has announced it has cancelled more holidays to Sri Lanka following government advice amid ongoing political and economic instability in the country. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) has advised against all but essential travel to the South Asian country due to the political unrest of the past three months.

Netflix's The Gray Man in Berlin. The actor, 41, stood out from the crowd in a vibrant red blazer at the star-studded event held at the Zoo Palast cinema. He donned a white shirt and black tie underneath, while completing the ensemble with a pair of trousers and smart shoes.

Love Island star Jay Younger has been questioned by fans while he was in the villa - but not for his flirting skills this time. Viewers have flocked to the star's social media comments to figure out what his upper arm tattoo means. And his family, who are currently running his social media accounts, were happy to oblige over on TikTok.

A Sri Lankan restaurant in Hale has been named ‘best fine dining restaurant’ at the annual Asian Restaurant Awards. Sigiriya, in Hale Village, scooped the gong at the ceremony at the Hilton in Manchester this week.

This year’s Love Island singleton lineup is peppered with males who have plenty of tattoos. While Luca Bish set tongues wagging with his array of inkings and Andrew Le Page’s tatt was read into by experts to have a very sweet meaning, Islander Jay Younger also spots a piece of body art with an emotional meaning. Jay, 28, joined the series as a bombshell and called himself an “Italian main course”.

TUI has cancelled more holidays and flights to Sri Lanka due to ongoing political and economic instability.

M.I.A. has shared a brand new track, called ‘The One’. Listen to the new song below.The English-Sri Lankan musician has also confirmed her new album, ‘MATA’ in on the way.

It can be a real pain when you turn up to your hotel room just to find you can't charge your phone, laptop or toothbrush because you forgot to pack the correct plug adapter. To help you avoid this annoyance, we've made a list of every country and the type of plug needed so you won't be caught out again.

TUI has cancelled further holidays to Sri Lanka, with all holidays up to and including June 12 being affected. The announcement comes as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office continue to warn against all but essential travel to the country.

Naman Ramachandran The late Govindan Aravindan’s 1978 masterpiece “Thamp̄” (“The Circus Tent”) is one of two Indian films at this year’s Cannes Classics selection, alongside Satyajit Ray’s “Pratidwandi” (“The Adversary”) from 1970.“Thamp̄” was painstakingly restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), an organization founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (“Celluloid Man,” “CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel”) in 2014. Dungarpur facilitated the restoration of Uday Shankar’s landmark film “Kalpana” (1948) by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, the restored version of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

CANNES, France -- Cristian Mungiu's Cannes Film Festival entry “R.M.N.” is set in an unnamed mountainous Transylvanian village in Romania, but the conflicts of ethnocentricity, racism and nationalism that permeate the multi-ethnic town could take place almost anywhere.Of all the films competing for the top Palme d'Or prize at Cannes, none may be quite as of the moment as “R.M.N." The movie, using a Romanian microcosm, captures the us-vs-them battles that have played out across Europe and beyond, wherever immigration and national identities have collided.Mungiu, the celebrated Romanian filmmaker of the landmark 2007 abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," has long been accustomed to his films being written off as grim portraits of a faraway Eastern Europe. It's a caricature he rejects, especially when it comes to “R.M.N.”“Whenever journalists interpret that it’s yet again another somber painting of this country, well, it’s not about that country — or not only about that country,” Mungiu told reporters Sunday.

this long in an industrial bakery watching the two managers fill out EU grant applications?Soon enough the corners come together and the shape becomes more clear as the part-Roma, part-German Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns to his native Transylvania town either to make amends with his estranged wife Ana (Macrina Barladeanu) or, failing that, to rekindle the flame with former mistress Csilla (Judith State). By way of filial duties, Matthias also has to deal with an ailing father (whose need for an MRI — RMN in Romanian — gives the film its title) and a son too shell-shocked by that unknown forest sight to speak.But the film is just as much Csilla’s story, following the native Hungarian as she carves out a comfortable middle-class existence, devoting herself to her EU-assisted startup and sacrificing whatever personal projects she might have in order to gain affluence in a post-industrial town whose long-shuttered mine has left both water source and the hearts of the men who lost their jobs poisoned for good.Even as the “who” comes sharper into focus, we still can’t quite crack the “why.” Why do we follow Matthias through a seemingly aimless series of encounters as he and his fellow townsfolk debate the finer points of Romanian history? Why do we spend so much time with Csilla as she posts a series of job listings (“Don’t mention the salary,” advises her boss) on every door in town?  And why the urgent need to underline every character’s particular ethnic background?The answer — call it a skeleton key — comes at the one-hour mark upon the arrival of three Sri Lankan migrants to fill the still-vacant posts.

Longtime Cannes Film Festival favorite Cristian Mungiu has returned to the competition once again with a potent look at multi-ethnic strains and divides in a small Transylvanian town in R.M.N. As ever, the writer-director works intimately and close to the ground with his handful of characters who struggle to keep themselves and their barely-getting-by community afloat in changing times. It’s a kind of close-up-and-personal look at contemporary issues in an area not often dramatized or in the news, which adds to the film’s fresh and urgent feel.

Anne Hathaway is channeling one of her most iconic characters. On Thursday, the 39-year-old actress stepped out for a screening of her new flick, , at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and gave off serious Mia Thermopolis vibes.Hathaway stunned on the red carpet in a custom, white Giorgio Armani Privé gown that included a train and oversized bow.

Armageddon Time. It was, surprisingly, the star’s and the actor certainly dialed up the glamour for her inaugural arrival, leading many fans to notice a striking resemblance to one of her previous characters, Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi of Genovia in The Princess Diaries.Anne Hathaway at Cannes Film FestivalFor those who don’t remember the 2001 Disney classic, Anne Hathaway plays an awkward teen who finds out from her estranged grandmother (Julie Andrews) that she is the sole heir to the fictional European kingdom of Genovia.

A grandmother is devastated after missing out on her £1,200 holiday to Spain after her flight was delayed for 13 hours. Lesley Horner, 62, arrived at the airport early for her flight to Palma in Majorca and was expecting to arrive at her final destination Cala D'or on the island in time for lunch.

Naman Ramachandran Australian film “The Laugh of Lakshmi,” by renowned theater director turned filmmaker S. Shakthidharan, will be one of the first films to make use of the newly announced Indian filming incentives.The film, a dance drama, is the story of a mother and a son separated by war.

TUI has cancelled holidays to Sri Lanka amid a ‘deteriorating’ political and financial situation over in the country.

A British holidaymaker is fuming after having to abandon his holiday in Malta to fly back to the UK to pick up his missing luggage. Keen scuba-divers, Kevin Openshaw and David Ayre, had booked a two-week diving holiday in Malta through EasyJet and were looking forward to spending a week diving off Malta's shoreline and exploring some of the deeper wrecks from the Second World War.

TUI has cancelled all holidays to Sri Lanka departing up to and including 31 May 2022. This comes as the Foreign Office updated its travel advice for Sri Lanka, urging Brits not to go to the country unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Elizabeth Hurley enjoyed a sun-soaked break as she posed in a black bikini in her latest post to fans.The former supermodel and actress, 56, dazzled fans with a short clip which showed her lounging in a black two-piece bikini as she lay by an infinity pool. Stretching out by the pool, the mum of one wore her hair loose and covered her face in a pair of oversized sunglasses as she enjoyed some down-time after filming.