Switzerland Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Joshua Alston Showtime’s buzzy, bloody drama “Yellowjackets” finds itself in a most precarious position going into its second season. Trying to top a successful first season is always a challenge, particularly when the maiden voyage earns six Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Drama. But the inherent pressure to maintain the momentum is acute for “Yellowjackets,” a puzzle-box show that teases supernatural elements. Recent television history is littered with the wreckage of similar shows that started out tense and intriguing, then collapsed once it became clear that the storytellers built an ornately beautiful box but forgot to put anything rewarding inside it. Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, along with showrunner Jonathan Lisco, solved that issue by stuffing their puzzle box to the brim with two harrowing serialized stories. In one story, members of a high school girls’ soccer team survive a plane crash en route to a tournament only to face an unforgiving, wintry wilderness and what could be a malicious supernatural entity pushing them toward madness. In the other story, set 25 years later, the Yellowjackets who survive the woods are freighted with trauma, and desperate to conceal the grave choices they made as kids.

Leeds attacker Wilfried Gnonto has opened up on the feeling of scoring against Manchester United at Old Trafford after getting on the scoresheet earlier in the season.

Norway’s Casper Ruud and Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti helped groom puppies while volunteering during the Miami Open Unites campaign on Monday (March 20) in Miami, Fla.

Manchester City are reportedly one of three English sides interested in signing Leeds United ace Wilfried Gnonto in the summer transfer window.

Eddie Redmayne, fresh from The Good Nurse, is set to play another killer.

Selome Hailu Eddie Redmayne has been cast in “The Day of the Jackal,” Peacock and Sky’s upcoming reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s novel and Universal’s film of the same name. He will also executive produce the thriller series. Redmayne will play the Jackal, who is hired by the OAS, a French dissident organization, to kill then-president of France Charles de Gaulle. Redmayne recently starred opposite Jessica Chastain in Netflix’s “The Good Nurse.” He is also known for playing Stephen Hawking in James Marsh’s 2014 biopic “The Theory of Everything,” which earned him the Oscar for best actor. Redmayne’s other prominent credits include “The Trial of The Chicago Seven,” “The Danish Girl,” “Les Miserables” and the “Fantastic Beasts” films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Streaming platform Paramount+ has set a release date for Korean series “Yonder” that is one of the first titles flowing from Paramount Global’s alliance with CJ ENM. The show will premiere on April 11 in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France.  Set in 2032, “Yonder” is a science fiction-drama series about a man who receives a message from his deceased wife inviting him to a mysterious space. The space is designed for the dead to be able to live on by uploading memories of their lifetime from their brain. The show raises questions about life and death and what it means to have eternal happiness as humanity faces a world altered by advancements in science and technology.

The Miami Open tennis tournament kicks off this week and Denmark’s Holger Rune and Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas were just two of the ATP stars who volunteered during the Miami Open Unites campaign on Monday (March 20) in Miami, Fla.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Ruben Igielko-Herrlich, a veteran film marketing executive, died March 7 in Beverly Hills. He was 62 and had been fighting glioblastoma brain cancer for four years. He co-founded PropagandaGEM, a global entertainment marketing group, in 1991 with his friend and business partner Anders Granath. The company expanded to encompass 10 offices across Europe, Asia, South America, and the U.S. Under his leadership, Propaganda created brand integrations such as “The Matrix” placing Nokia’s flip phone into the hands of Keanu Reeves and the iconic “Mission Impossible” chase scenes with Tom Cruise behind the wheel of a BMW.

first reported the story. It is not known if they had any other involvement in the series, nor are the show’s other directors known.The series, which Lucasfilm announced at the May 2022 Star Wars Celebration, will be set during the New Republic era and will center on the perilous journey home for a group of children lost in the galaxy.

Ruben Igielko-Herrlich, a veteran film marketer who co-founded the global entertainment marketing group PropagandaGEM, has died of brain cancer. He was 62.

Christopher Vourlias Four African episodic screenwriters will take the stage Tuesday at Series Mania to pitch the genre-flavored series they currently have in development, a crop of shows that reflect the rich and fertile landscape for African series creators looking to tap into the global TV market.  The shows are created by the first graduating class of the AuthenticA Series Lab, a training program for African episodic screenwriters launched last year by Realness Institutein partnership with Geneva-based philanthropic organization The StoryBoard Collective and Series Mania. The four participants have spent the past six months in a collaborative environment that included both online workshops and residencies in South Africa and Switzerland, while attending masterclasses with leading industry professionals and working with a mentoring team comprised of creative producer Mehret Mandefro and story expert Selina Ukwuoma.

Ben Croll Montreal-based Also Productions, the rising premium outfit behind the Series Mania title “Disobey” and the popular police drama “The Sketch Artist,” will next hit international waters with the facts-are-stranger-than-fiction geopolitical thriller “Chain Reaction.” Based on the best-selling book from investigative journalist Vincent Larouche, the development project will untangle a multinational web that connected Quebecois businessmen to Swiss bankers to FBI agents to former Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, telling the unbelievable true story of a corruption scandal that nearly brought down the Canadian government. “The Sketch Artist” head writer André Gulluni will freely adapt Larouche’s page-turning exposé, which revealed the misdoings of SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based construction company alleged to have bribed and defrauded the Libyan government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The ensuing (and cascading) financial scandal would soon rope in everyone from top politicos to Texas-based associates of Pablo Escobar.

With 50 miles of beautiful walks and 22 miles of breath-taking coastline, along with cycle routes and street-art trails, Wirral is a place made for discovery.

Stormy Daniels’ hush money investigation. Fallon made light of the situation and said the former president may be preparing to skip town.“I read that law enforcement agencies are preparing for the possibility that, as early as next week, former President Trump could be indicted,” Fallon said, evoking thunderous applause from his audience.

Louise Thompson shared a candid post ahead of a weekend of solo parenting as she admitted feeling “delighted but anxious” at the prospect of looking after Leo alone for a few days.The Made In Chelsea star, 32, has experienced a tumultuous start to parenthood, spending the weeks after her son’s birth in hospital facing life-threatening health issues. She has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and drug-induced lupus. In January, she found herself back in hospital after haemorrhaging and losing three pints of blood.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Xavier Henry-Rashid’s London-based sales agency Film Republic has closed deals for multiple territories on “F*cking Bornholm,” a tart comedy of social discomfort. The film had its international premiere in the main competition section of Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it won the Europa Cinemas Label award. In his review, Variety’s Guy Lodge commented that Polish writer-director Anna Kazejak‘s “precise, piquant film deserves wider festival exposure and discerning distributor interest.” It has now been acquired by Iceland’s Bio Paradis, Arsenal for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Lithuania’s Garsas, Slovenia’s RTV, Israel’s Yes and Sweden’s Lucky Dogs. The international trailer has its debut below.

Manchester City will face Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Manchester City have secured their spot in the last eight of the Champions League for a sixth successive season and today will discover their quarter final opponents.

Madeleine McCann, has been contacted by an American family who think the 21-year-old could be their missing daughter. This comes after psychic medium and private investigator Dr Fia Johansson claims to have evidence "that shows Julia was definitely trafficked to Poland". The Polish woman is currently living in a Californian safehouse after she received death threats, writes Lancashire Live.

Madeleine McCann, has been contacted by an American family who think the 21-year-old could be their missing daughter. This comes after psychic medium and private investigator Dr Fia Johansson claims to have evidence "that shows Julia was definitely trafficked to Poland". The Polish woman is currently living in a Californian safehouse after she received death threats, writes Lancashire Live.

SonyLIV’s Rocket Boys, about Indian scientists Dr. Homi J. Bhabha and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed web series in India last year, winning multiple awards for its performances, writing and direction. 

Lise Pedersen Swiss sales agent Lightdox has acquired international rights for “The Other Profile” by French director Armel Hostiou (“Day,” “Stubborn,” “The Invisible Pyramid”), which is nominated for the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival’s top Dox:Award. The film’s starting point is when he discovers the existence of a Facebook doppelganger whose friends are mostly women based in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This other Facebook profile organizes auditions for an upcoming film to be shot in the DRC. After notifying Facebook about what clearly seems to be identity theft, Hostiou receives an answer informing him that it is not a fake profile and cannot be shut down, leading to what he describes as a “Kafkaesque” situation.

EXCLUSIVE: Writer, producer and director Florian Sigl, the filmmaker behind the recent movie version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, has signed with CAA for representation.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says Erling Haaland will not be the telling difference in ending their European hoodoo this season - highlighting the importance of a watertight defence instead.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has revealed the first titles of its 54th edition, which runs April 21 to 30. The event will open with the world premiere of “Nightwatchers” by Juliette de Marcillac, which was filmed at night in an idyllic Alpine resort a stone’s throw from the French-Italian border. As night falls family ski days give way to a game of chase between the police and the volunteers who help migrants. Mostly doctors, they roam the mountain slopes at night, watching for the arrival of migrants who have just completed long, life-risking journeys. Police surveillance is permanent and denunciation is commonplace, pushing the exiles ever higher up the mountain.

Holly Willoughby was left recoiling in a mix of horror and disgust as one of the show's latest guests made an admission. Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield were back at the helm of the ITV daytime show and had another jam-packed show on their hands.

Deep Purple – past and present – have spoken about an incident with the Swiss police while they were recording their now-iconic hit ‘Smoke on the Water’.Speaking to Classic Rock Magazine per Music News, founding drummer and longtime member Ian Paice revealed that while the band were jamming to the track in Switzerland, they experienced a “pretty hostile” situation with the local authorities.The band were jamming in a mobile unit in Switzerland in 1971 after the Montreux Casino had been burned down by a fan with a flare gun. The Swiss police reportedly began knocking on the band’s door as they were creating “a hell of a racket”.Paice revealed: “There was no sound-proofing and we were recording at night.

Manchester United takeover talk continues to abound after the club's 0-0 Premier League draw with Southampton.

Tara Karajica Cinephil has sold Valerie Kontakos’ documentary “Queen of the Deuce,” which charts the rise of Chelly Wilson, the queen of the porn industry in 1970s New York, to several key territories. The film premiered at Doc NYC and is now playing in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival. Greece’s ERT, Canada’s Doc Channel, Switzerland’s Radio Télévision Suisse and Israel’s Channel 8 came on board at the funding stage. It has now been acquired by Spanish streamer FilmIn, Swedish broadcaster UR, and U.S. theatrical distributor Greenwich Entertainment. The film follows Wilson from pre-World War II Greece to New York, where she rose to become a major figure on the porn circuit in Times Square from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. She is shown to be a trailblazing, taboo-breaking entrepreneur and an unconventional matriarch. It is presented as an empowering story of survival, as well as an alternative take on cultural history at a time of the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution and the emergence of the gay liberation movement.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Chloé Zhao has known “Everything Everywhere All at Once” directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — aka, the Daniels — for about a decade. They met when they were fellows at the Sundance Directors Lab. “They were making ‘Swiss Army Man,’” Zhao recalls. “To be able to reunite with them and see that they have been able to stay as authentic as when I first met them 10 years ago and the world embracing them, it’s so beautiful to watch.” I recently caught up with Zhao, who became the second woman ever and first woman of color to win best director at the Oscars for “Nomadland” in 2021, ahead of this year’s big night. She’s teamed up with Johnnie Walker on First Strides, an initiative that has provided more than $1 million to women’s organizations such as IFundWomen and She Should Run since its launch a year ago. The Johnnie Walker program is part of Friday’s Women in Film pre-Oscars event in Hollywood, providing free 30-day trials to MUBI to encourage people to watch more women-made films. “I joined Johnnie Walker to not only celebrate but to create support for women filmmakers and women-made films,” Zhao said.

Oscars 2023, it’s been reported that Everything Everywhere All At Once is now the world’s most-awarded movie ever.Everything Everywhere All At Once is nominated in 11 categories including Best Picture and Best Director at the 95th Academy Awards, which take place this weekend (March 12).But ahead of that, research done by IGN suggests that Everything Everywhere All At Once is already the world’s most-awarded movie ever, a title previously thought to be held by Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King.The absurdist, multiversal comedy-drama has racked up 158 accolades from major critic organisations and award bodies, compared to Return Of The King which achieved 101.According to IGN, they also looked at nominations but only included “award-giving bodies that recognised both films,” with only 45 out of 152 including both films in their selections.“Narrowing down their totals to just these 45 organisations, Everything Everywhere All At Once still has Return Of The King beat when it comes to awards (138 to 127) and nominations (295 to 189).”Everything Everywhere All At Once was released last April. In a review, NME wrote: “By weaving together so much action, drama, comedy, sci-fi and general invention, directing duo Daniels repeatedly set high bars for their movie to clear.”Most of the time they do so easily – a wild joke will turn into a wilder running gag, or the actors will deliver a touching scene while voicing a pair of inanimate objects.

 are well aware, there was no woodland fairytale to follow. The first full trailer for season two of the hit drama, which follows a high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes and the present-day lives of those who survived their 19-month sojourn in the woods, is officially here—and things are looking bleak.In the sophomore season’s present-day storyline, stars , Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Tawny Cypress are still carrying the “darkness” the teenage versions of themselves—played by Sophie Nélisse, Samantha Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, and Tawny Cypress, respectively—grappled with decades earlier. There are also several new arrivals to the show this year, including Lauren Ambrose as adult goalie Van, who is played in the past by Liv Hewson; Jason Ritter (Lynskey’s real-life husband) in an undisclosed role; and Elijah Wood as Walter, who connects with Ricci’s Misty over their shared passion for citizen detective work.Then there is the entrance of adult Lottie Simone Kessell (played by Courtney Eaton in the past), whose delicate mental state amidst withdrawal from antipsychotic medication emboldens her to become an Antler Queen.

The weekend is finally here, which means a host of exciting new films and shows are dropping on streaming services. If you’re looking forward to a lazy couple of days in front of the TV but are at a loss for what to watch, we know just the thing.

Ben Croll Capping a milestone Cartoon Movie showcase that saw Europe’s animation sector in rude and robust form, the sprawling team behind continental co-production  “No Dogs or Italians Allowed” shared the Producer of the Year prize, “Oink” auteur Mascha Halberstad claimed the Director trophy and Paris-based KMBO took top honors in Distribution at this year’s 25th edition of Cartoon Movie, which ran over March 7 – 9 in Bordeaux. An audience and jury favorite at last year’s Annecy Animation Film Festival, and winner of the most recent European Film Award, the stop-motion feature “No Dogs or Italians Allowed” comes courtesy of director Alain Ughetto and a whopping five production countries. France’s Les Films du Tambour de Soie, Vivement Lundi, and Foliascope joined Italy’s Graffiti Film, Switzerland’s Nadasdy Film, Belgium’s Lux Fugit Film, and Portugal’s Ocidental Filmes to bring this claymation immigration saga to life. Most parties were on deck to collect a Producer of the Year prize split seven ways.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Mk2 films has enlisted leading distributors around the world for “Reality,” Tina Satter’s feature debut starring Sydney Sweeney, on the heels of its buzzy world premiere at the Berlinale. The movie, which bowed in the Panorama section, stars Sweeney (“White Lotus,” “Euphoria”) as Reality Winner, a 25 year-old whistleblower who spent five years in prison during the Trump administration. A former U.S. Air Force member and National Security Agency translator, Winner was convicted for leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to the media. The film is based on Satter’s 2019 stage play “Is This a Room” and contains verbatim dialogue from the unedited transcript of a FBI audio recording. “Reality” captures the tense and surreal 90 minutes of FBI’s interrogation with Winner at her home in 2017.