Switzerland Showbiz Latest News and Updates

If you thought season one of Hulu’s limited series Nine Perfect Strangers gave a new definition of locked up, there’s going to be plenty of cabin fever come season 2.

Vin Diesel is set to enter production on Riddick: Furya, the anticipated fourth installment of the Riddick franchise, on August 26.

Selena Kuznikov Jeannie Epper, who was a stunt double for Lynda Carter in the original “Wonder Woman” TV series and performed stunts in many movies and TV shows, died Sunday evening at her home in Simi Valley, Calif. She was 83. Born in 1941, Epper went on to perform stunts on over 150 feature films like “Catch Me If You Can,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” “The Princess Diaries,” “Kill Bill: Vol.

ITV has decided to remove Britain's Got Talent from its schedule next weekend, in an attempt to avoid a 'ratings war' with the Eurovision Song Contest. On Saturday, May 11, the popular talent show will be replaced by the Bond film Casino Royale, with BGT set to return on Sunday night, May 12. OK! has reached out to ITV for comment.The upcoming weekend will see more auditions on BGT, following its return to screens last month.

EXCLUSIVE: A24 has acquired North American rights to Parthenope, the new film from Oscar winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, ahead of its world premiere at the 77th Festival de Cannes.

Jennie Punter Spain’s push to position itself as a premier player in the world’s film and TV industries extends to the documentary zone, as both audiences and industry delegates discovered in the impressive display of the country’s finished and work-in-progress films and co-production know-how at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival this week. According to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s Yearbook 2023/2024, Spain is the European leader in documentary production, with 153 films in 2022 (Italy was second with 137, Switzerland third with 83)—a sign that Spain’s €1.6 billion public investment in the strategic sector, intended to spur production growth for the 2021-2025 period, has taken root in the doc space.

Coming off the two-time Academy Award-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front,” German-born Austrian and Swiss director Edward Berger has gotten a lot of traction for many of his follow-up projects. The first one moving forward, however, is the Netflix film “The Ballad Of A Small Player,” which just received another infusion of talent.

Russ has added new UK and European dates to his ‘It Was You All Along’ world tour. Check them out along with ticket details below.Back in March, the New Jersey rapper first announced his upcoming ‘It Was You All Along’ tour in North American with 6LACK and Melii as support acts.

Naman Ramachandran Freely, the new free streaming service backed by Britain’s public service broadcasters (PSBs) that delivers live TV over broadband, has launched. The initiative is from Everyone TV, the organization which runs free TV in the U.K. and is jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Paramount Global’s Channel 5.

Fontaines D.C. have announced a 2024 European ‘ROMANCE’ tour.

with soccer star Ashlyn Harris in a for Glamour, the pair finally made their red carpet debut as a couple.In fact, the duo walked two red carpets on April 27, starting with their arrival at the White House Correspondent's dinner in Washington, D.C. In one red carpet photo, the pair smiled for the cameras with their arms wrapped around each other in subtly coordinated looks.

Formula 1′s Nico Hülkenberg will be making a big change going into the 2025 race season next year!

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, running from June 9 to 15. (scroll down for full list of titles and events)

Eurovision Song Contest has been unveiled ahead of the grand final next month.Lighting and Screen Content designer Fredrik Stormby from Green Wall Designs and production designer Florian Wieder are the creative masterminds who helped create, design, and deliver a large-scale and spectacular show to a global audience of over 160million for the 2024 Eurovision final in Malmö, Sweden on May 11.This year’s stage and lighting design for Eurovision will focus on the audience more than ever by having the stage placed in the centre of the arena. By doing so, viewers will be able to experience the unique 360 degree view in the Malmö Arena.The stage will also be shaped like a cross with movable LED cubes and LED floors.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Cinephil has sold Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s feature documentary “Agent of Happiness” to a wide range of key international territories ahead of the film’s Hot Docs debut this weekend. Deals are confirmed in the U.K.

Eurovision Song Contest 2024.According to Eurovision World, the favourites to win the competition have been revealed. Coming in first place is Switzerland’s NEMO, who currently has a 25 per cent chance at snagging the crown this year with their song ‘The Code’.Behind Switzerland in second place is Croatia, whose entry Baby Lasagna is predicted to have a 17 per cent chance of winning with his song ‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’.

Paramount+ has renewed the animated preschool series Dora for a second season.

Jane Campion will be heading to Switzerland this summer to receive an honorary award at the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, running from August 7 to 17.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival will honor Jane Campion with its Pardo d’onore Manor award. The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema will celebrate the revered auteur from New Zealand on Aug.

EXCLUSIVE: June Zero, the latest from writer-director Jake Paltrow (Young Ones, The Good Night, De Palma) and producers Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Bad Education), Miranda Bailey (Swiss Army Man, The Diary of a Teenage Girl) and David Silber (Incitement, Junction 48), is set for theatrical release in New York on June 28, Los Angeles July 5 and nationwide July 12 by Cohen Media Group.

Foxtel/Binge Topper Amanda Laing Exiting

Nas has announced details of a new UK and European tour, celebrating the 30th anniversary of his iconic album ‘Illmatic’. Find ticket details below.The dates will see the hip-hop legend embark on a number of shows across the continent later this year to mark 30 years since he dropped his iconic debut album.Set to run throughout October and November, 15 shows are lined up, and each live date will see the American rapper and East Coast legend perform the breakthrough album in its entirety.The dates kick off with the run of European shows, starting at the House Of Culture venue in Helsinki on October 22.

Lise Pedersen In an exclusive interview with Variety after picking up the top industry prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, Franco-Iranian director Mehran Tamadon outlined the intention of his upcoming feature documentary “The Last Days of the Hospital.” Set against the backdrop of France’s public health crisis and shortage of personnel, the film will show patients from a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris taking charge of their own ward. Tamadon has been running film workshops with the patients at the hospital for the past eight years, and decided it was time to make a film to denounce what he describes as “the ultra-liberal policy which plans the death of the public hospital.” “French public hospitals are not doing well, nurses and caregivers are leaving because they are mistreated and poorly paid.

Lise Pedersen Sporting a warm smile and a pair of sunglasses – “Sorry, I’ve been busy editing and my eyes hurt,” he explained – one of China’s leading indie directors Jia Zhangke, whose upcoming film “Caught by the Tides” will be vying for the Palme d’or in Cannes next month, was guest of honor at the 55th edition of Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel this week. Finished just in time for submission to Cannes, the film features his wife Zhao Tao, his muse over the last two decades, and tells the story of a couple spanning 20 years.

Lise Pedersen “The Landscape and the Fury” by Switzerland’s Nicole Vögele took the Grand Jury Prize in the International Feature Film Competition at Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel on Friday. Shot on the Bosnian-Croatian border, which is also the European Union border, the film unveils the struggle of refugees being chased away by police and navigating a terrain still contaminated with mines from the Bosnian War.

Nathan Zellner and David Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset is stomping into circa 850 theaters this weekend after debuting in 9 with a solid opening for a film many could find weird. A tribe of Sasquatch, possibly the last of their kind, live and love in the woods of northern California, where it was shot.

Kraftwerk, The National and Raye set to perform.The 58th edition of the prestigious Swiss event is due to take place on the Lake Geneva shoreline between July 5-20. Tickets go on general sale at 11am BST tomorrow (Friday, April 19) – you’ll be able to buy yours here.The aforementioned acts will all grace the Lake Stage along with The Smashing Pumpkins, Alice Cooper, PJ Harvey, Justice, Jessie Ware, Massive Attack, Air, Lenny Kravitz, Sting, Janelle Monáe, Michael Kiwanuka, Duran Duran, Paolo Nutini, Soft Cell and more.Artists for the stage’s opening day are yet to be confirmed.The Casino Stage programme, meanwhile, “blurs the lines between jazz, afrobeats, pop and rap”.

Lise Pedersen Two new cash prizes introduced this year in Swiss film festival Visions du Reel’s industry section, VdR-Industry, were among a flurry of awards handed out as the program wrapped in Nyon, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, created to promote the fund’s role in encouraging international co-production from the initial stages of a project, and which comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000), went to “The Last Days of the Hospital” by Mehran Tamadon (“My Worst Enemy,” “Bassidji”).

Holidaymakers across the UK may be owed a payout if their flight was either delayed or cancelled.

Swiss Films Previews, the only spread of national movies at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, the country’s leading doc festival. Presented via excerpts at a two-hour showcase on Wednesday, three further titles – “Kalari – the Martial Art of Female Power,” “The Boy from the River Drina” and “Spheres” – underscored the strength in depth of documentary filmmaking in Switzerland and at least in this year’s Previews, a leitmotif.

Public Service Broadcasting have announced details of a huge tour across the UK and Europe – set to take place later this year. Find dates and ticket details below.Set to kick off this winter, the London-based band will travel across the UK and Ireland for the first leg of the 2024 tour, before making their way over to mainland Europe for the latter half of the new dates.The shows will launch with an opening night at the Cyprus Avenue venue in Cork on October 11, followed by a stop at the Telegraph Building in Belfast the following night.

Annika Pham New York-based director/producer Katy Scoggin has worked with high-profile U.S. documentary filmmaker/journalist Laura Poitras on two shorts and three features, notably as co-producer and DP on Poitras’ Oscar-winner “Citizenfour” and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight’s “Risk.” Poitras now serves as executive producer on Scoggin’s feature debut “Flood,” one of six creative documentaries to be pitched as works in progress April 16, at the Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland. “Flood” centers on Scoggin’s journey to repair her relationship with her former missionary father, with whom she has become estranged.

Lise Pedersen Berlinale Forum entry “Shahid,” the debut feature of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor ahead of its premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, where it is competing in the more experimental Burning Lights section. Described by Kalhor as a collective work between herself and other artists, including a costume artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” shifts playfully between genres, challenging conventional filmmaking rules.

Annika Pham Talent-driven doc sales outfit Rise & Shine has boarded “Fire Fire Fire” (“Feu Feu Feu”), the feature debut of Swiss rising voice Pauline Jeanbourquin (“Dusk”), due to world premiere in the national competition strand of Nyon’s Visions du Réel docu festival. Variety has had exclusively access to the international trailer. The poetic and captivating coming-of-age story of a young girl with healing talents, is produced by high-profile Geneva-based Close Up Films, credited for the 2023 Swiss Oscar entry “Thunder” and as co-producer of the Oscar-nominated “I Am Not Your Negro.” “I enjoy working on first features, meeting a new voice, exploring and questioning what it means to direct, figuring things out together.

Lise Pedersen Zagreb-based doc specialist Splitscreen has boarded Argentinian gaucho tale “Where the Trees Bear Meat” by Alexis Franco ahead of its world premiere at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel. It is one of 15 films vying for the top prize in the main international competition. Set in the Argentine Pampas, the film follows Omar, a farmer, whose cows are dying as a result of a prolonged drought.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor In Luca Guadagnino’s latest cinematic endeavor, “Challengers,” Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist form a dynamic, throuple-esque trio, each delivering performances that scream Oscar-worthy. The real question is, will Academy voters look beyond the palpable sexual chemistry to acknowledge the film’s artistic merit? That’s a challenge for the marketing maestros. Penned by newcomer Justin Kuritzkes, the spouse of “Past Lives” writer-director Celine Song, “Challengers” weaves through a 13-year narrative, chronicling the life of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a tennis wunderkind-turned-coach, who hatches a plan for her husband Art’s (Faist) comeback.