MakerVille CEO Lofai Lo Talks Push Into Movies & Premium Series; Unveils ‘We Twelve’ Starring Mirror, ‘Three Destinies’ Produced With Johnnie To – Filmart

Behind every well-dressed celebrity is a fabulous stylist. Over the last year, Anne Hathaway has blessed Us with breathtaking fashion moments — all thanks to Erin Walsh. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce and media group, unveiled a top to bottom corporate restructuring that it says is intended to “unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness.”  The group, which has a current market capitalization of $228 billion, will split itself into six divisions of differing sizes. Each unit will have a CEO and a board of directors and can pursue independent fund-raising or even IPOs, when they are ready. At present Alibaba has its shares and ADR shares listed in Hong Kong and New York. Some parts of its media business also have their own Hong Kong share listing Alibaba Pictures. (And there is a healthcare business with yet another share quote.)

Tatiana Siegel On a chilly Oscars eve, Donnie Yen has just returned from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where he was rehearsing for the Academy Awards along with a slew of fellow global superstar presenters like Spain’s Antonio Banderas and India’s Deepika Padukone. The “John Wick: Chapter 4” scene-stealer, who hails from southern China, feels good about how the following night might unfold, namely for his friend and Hong Kong neighbor Michelle Yeoh. Her victory and that of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” would be a landmark moment for Asian representation, he says.  “I’ve known her for more than 20 years, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here — to support her and share in a possible historical moment,” he says of his “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny” co-star. “And ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ has a lot of Chinese language and it talks about the Chinese heritage, which I find out has been so accepted and embraced here. So, that really warmed my heart. I’m sure hoping for Michelle.” 

Christine & The Queens has announced a UK and European ‘PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE’ tour for 2023 – find the details below and purchase tickets here.The French singer-songwriter’s new album ‘PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE’ is due for release June 9 and will follow-up last year’s ‘Redcar les adorables étoiles’.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Fremantle is restructuring management of its Italian operations by promoting Marco Tombolini to the role of CEO Fremantle Italy. Tombolini, who since May of 2022 was Fremantle Italy co-CEO, will now “Take the helm of all areas and functions of the company, with the senior management of Fremantle Italy reporting directly to him,” a Fremantle statement said. Gabriele Immirzi – who had long served as Fremantle Italy CEO prior to sharing the CEO role with Tombolini since last May – has now stepped down but is staying in the Fremantle fold becoming co-CEO with Lorenzo Mieli of The Apartment Pictures.

EXCLUSIVE: Production has wrapped on a Bulgarian live-action short film starring Oscar-nominated Bulgarian actor Maria Bakalova. The film, titled Това, Kоето Oстава (English title: What Stays After), is directed by Dimitris Georgiev. The short is produced by No Blink Pictures, New European Wave Entertainment and Bakalova’s production company Five Oceans, co-founded with fellow actor and filmmaker Julian Kostov (Shadow and Bone, The Toxic Avenger).

Richard Kuipers The third feature directed by Vietnamese superstar Ngo Thanh Van — better known to western audiences as actor Veronica Ngo in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “The Old Guard” — lives up to its title with a furious display of female revenge set in the seedy streets of late-’90s Ho Chi Minh City. Despite a routine plot and some abrasive tonal shifts, this tale of a motherly mentor turning three damaged young women into deadly assassins is packed with exciting action and boasts fine performances from four killers bound by blood, bullets and all manner of deadly weapons. Following a series of rowdy screenings in SXSW’s Midnighters section, “Furies” will stream worldwide as the first Vietnamese Netflix original feature on March 23.   

The stars of the new Dungeons & Dragons movie are continuing their press tour across Europe!

Vivienne Chow To the 12 members of Mirror, forming a boy band and becoming Hong Kong’s Canto-pop singing sensation upon winning a reality show in 2018 was a dream come true. Five years on, the boys are dreaming bigger than ever. “Some of us really want to join Marvel,” Mirror member Edan Lui tells Variety in an interview. The statement may come across as a joke. But no, it is not, as fellow member Anson Lo, Lui’s co-star in the 2021 hit ViuTV BL drama “Ossan’s Love Hong Kong,” echoes: “We want to get on some talk shows in the U.S. as well, or any Hollywood movies, TV, live performances. Yes, please invite us.” The band’s Hollywood wishlist did not emerge just out of the blue. It came after the recording of their English debut single “Rumours,” a catchy EDM-influenced tune that has just been released worldwide Friday (March 17), along with a storied music video that follows the 12 members — Frankie Chan, Alton Wong, Lokman Yeung, Stanley Yau, Anson Kong, Jer Lau, Ian Chan, Jeremy Lee, Keung To, Tiger Yau, Lui and Lo — on a secret mission after a mysterious girl, jammed with dance sequences set in the Hong Kong streetscape.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “We 12,” a movie featuring the entire group of 12 Mirror Canto-pop stars is part of the expanding production slate of Makerville, the talent and production arm of Hong Kong telecoms and TV group PCCW. The development is paralleled by an expansion of the production operations of Viu, PCCW’s multi-territory video streamer which recently confirmed its profitability. Makerville is the talent agency behind Mirror, which was created in 2018 through the “Good Night Show – Kingmaker” talent show on ViuTV, a PCCW terrestrial channel. And it was able to put all the band members on stage Wednesday at a promotional event within the FilMart rights market in Hong Kong.

starring Kirsten Dunst.  Other credits include Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” HBO’s “True Detective,” “The Newsroom,” “Carnivale,” “True Blood” and “Six Feet Under”; Showtime’s “Homeland,” “Ray Donovan,” “The Tudors,” “Dexter,” “Weeds,” “Queer as Folk” and “The Borgias”; AMC’s “The Walking Dead”; FX’s “American Horror Story: Asylum” and “American Horror Story: Coven”; and the Emmy-nominated TNT miniseries “Into the West.”Additionally, he wrote and directed three award-winning feature films, including Samuel Goldwyn Films’ “Fugitive Pieces” starring Stephen Dillane and Rosamund Pike, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival; “The Five Senses” starring Mary Louise Parker, which premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight; and “Eclipse” which played both the Berlin and Sundance festivals.His upcoming work includes Netflix’s sci-fi adaptation of Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” trilogy from “Game of Thrones” writers David Benioff and. D.B.

EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights for Belgian director Bas Devos’s film Here which won best film in the Berlin Film Festival’s Encounters section last month as well as the Fipresci prize.

Marta Balaga Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, behind “Compartment No. 6” and “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”– both awarded in Cannes – will now turn his attention to new series “Yours, Margot,.”  The upcoming series is one of the 10 projects chosen for Series Mania and Beta Group’s Seriesmakers. Based on Meri Valkama’s novel, “Compartment” will be produced, just like his previous films, by Helsinki-based Aamu Film Company, with “Compartment” scribes Andri Feldmanis and Livia Ulman also on board. This time Kuosmanen dissects the experiences of Vilja, who spent her childhood in East Berlin, following her foreign correspondent father. After his death, she finds old letters to “Erich,” all from mysterious “Margot.” Now, as an adult, she decides to return to Berlin and track her down. 

Naman Ramachandran Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service has acquired Makbul Mubarak’s award-winning debut feature, “Autobiography,” for the Southeast Asian region. The film, which is being sold by Alpha Violet, follows young Rakib (Kevin Ardilova), whose father is in prison and whose brother works abroad. He works as the housekeeper in a mansion in a rural Indonesian town belonging to retired general Purna (Arswendy Bening Swara). Purna returns to the town to start his mayoral election campaign and Rakib, whose clan has worked for the general’s family for centuries, serves as his assistant. An act of vandalism during the campaign triggers an escalating chain of violence.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Despite a barnstorming address celebrating the re-opening of Hong Kong and China by Bona Film Group COO Jiang De Fu, it is clear that the film industry in China is still suffering its own version of long-COVID, with box office tracking at around half of 2018 levels. “The Chinese box office was RMB60.7 billion ($8.89 billion at current rates of exchange) in 2018. And 83 films made over RMB100 million. 16 films that made over RMB1 billion. Post-pandemic, in 2022, China’s box office was RMB29.9 billion. [Just] 41 films made over RMB100 million. [And] 8 films made over RMB1 billion. We are now only at 50% of the level in 2018,” said Jiang aty a presentation on the first day of Hong Kong’s FilMart.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America. Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Vivienne Chow Hong Kong’s Canto-pop sensation Mirror will make its global debut with a first English-language single “Rumours.” The track is a mature EDM tune that aims at a wider global audience than the boy band’s previous Cantonese-language hits. The single, to be released on March 17, will be streamed across all digital platforms. It will be accompanied by a newly-shot music video that captures the beauty of the band’s Hong Kong hometown, the 12-piece act told Variety.  “It’s been like a dream come true for us to release a song in English,” Mirror member Anson Lo (“Ossan’s Love Hong Kong”) told Variety in an exclusive English-language interview with the group.

In an opening monologue in which he slammed the IFC channel and the ending of “Tár,” host Hasan Minhaj reserved his most stinging jokes for an online entertainment industry website. “I can’t wait to hear about all these jokes on Deadline,” Minhaj cracked at the beginning of the 38th Film Independant Spirit Awards.The “Daily Show” comedian continued, “There’s nothing I love more than dog s— clickbait journalism. I love how you guys make every headline sound like porn.”He asked, “Seriously, how did we let Deadline become the most important website in our industry? It has the web layout of a Craigslist ad and it governs our lives.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

Manchester City Centre came to a standstill today as there was a huge turnout in solidarity with Ukraine one year and one day after the country was invaded by Russian forces. The positivity and togetherness on show through music and chants were emotionally charged as people still feel the pain of parts of their country being under occupation.