Nigeria’s LaVida Studios Gets $50 Million Investment, Sets Production Slate With Dentsu’s Story Lab (EXCLUSIVE)

If you know the work of Ethan Hawke, and we mean beyond acting in movies—the novels he’s written, the stageplays he’s appeared in, the films he’s written and directed both dramas and documentaries—you know Hawke more as an ever-curious artist and adventurous one at that, omnivorous in his taste and hard to be pigeonholed. READ MORE: Ethan Hawke: The Essential Performances His latest project, “The Last Movie Stars,” is his second documentary project following 2014’s excellent, “Seymour: An Introduction,” only this time, rather than a doc feature, it’s an epic six-part documentary about movie stars and married couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, their romance, married life, stardom, kids and juggling it all.

Clairo enlisted Phoebe Bridgers for a live rendition of her 2019 single ‘Bags’ at a show in Milan on Tuesday (July 5).The show, which took place on Tuesday night (July 5), saw Clairo support Bridgers at Carroponte in Sesto San Giovanni, a commune within Milan. The show was a crossover date between Bridgers’ ongoing Reunion Tour and Clairo’s Sling Tour, the latter named for her second studio album.The pair’s duet on ‘Bags’ marks the first time the two have performed the song together.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTrinity Cine Asia has acquired upcoming Hong Kong comedy “Chilli Laugh Story” for distribution in the U.K. and North America. The work-from-home story of the director Coba Cheng’s relatives sees a locked-down family starting an online business during the pandemic.

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John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentNetflix and ‘Spencer’ director Pablo Larraín have gone into production on “El Conde,” a black comedy picturing bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire.Larraín will share screenwriting credits with Guillermo Calderón, Chile’s foremost playwright and Larraín’s writing partner on “Neruda” and Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner “The Club,” the movie which persuaded Natalie Portman to play the lead in the Larraín-directed “Jackie.”“El Conde” is produced by Juan de Dios Larraín at Fabula, the Larraín brothers’ Chile-based film-TV production house whose credits include “Spencer” and “Jackie,” all Larrain’s Chilean movies, and Sebastian Lelio’s 2018 Academy Award winning “A Fantastic Woman.” Moving from fest-winning straight-arrow arthouse fare such as “Tony Manero” to movies with a wider audience appeal from 2012 Cannes Directors Fortnight winner “No,” starring Gael García Bernal and then into English-language titles from “Jackie,” Pablo Larrain has established himself in the vanguard of Latin American cinema.Whatever the setting, his movies combine an acute sense of character and big ideas, on power dyanamics, the fate of women in traditional worlds, the lure and hell of fame and also the multiple hostages left to fortune by Augusto Pinochet’s far right and bloody dictatorship.In a review of “Jackie” Variety’s Guy Lodge hailed Larraín as “the most daring and prodigious political filmmaker of his generation,”“El Conde” looks to drive deeper into some of the themes, mixing character analysis, drama and comedy and a trenchant analysis of the makings of the modern world – not only in Chile but in global terms.The historical black comedy revolves around Augusto

WARNING: THIS IS A NSFW TRAILER.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. Television Group has announced the seven directors selected for the 2022 WBTV Directors’ Workshop.

Lady Gaga while filming American Horror Story: Roanoke.On Wednesday’s (June 22) episode of the Trailblazers Radio show, Jordan admitted that he didn’t recognise the multi award-winning singer-songwriter and actress (whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) when he was first introduced to her on the set of Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology series.“The first day, I showed up and there was a girl standing there and they said, ‘Leslie, have you met Stefani?’ And I thought she was maybe an extra. I didn’t know who she was,” he said.Jordan added that he briefly introduced himself to Gaga, who featured in season six as forest-dwelling witch, before walking away from her.“They could tell I didn’t know,” he said.

K.J. Yossman Director James Marsh is set to direct a new hybrid animated documentary feature for Submarine and Sandpaper Films.“Oasis, Saving the Baghdad Zoo” (working title), is a feature-length animated documentary partly based on “Babylon’s Ark,” the book about a year-long rescue mission of animals abandoned across Baghdad by Saddam Hussein and his son Uday.Billed as a 21st century Noah’s Ark, the film will show how a team of American soldiers, Iraqi zookeepers, and international volunteers tended to lions, camels, bears, exotic birds, monkeys, pigs and even an ocelot in the middle of a brutal war, risking their own lives in the process.

William Earl Kidoodle, the children’s streaming service that bills itself as a safe environment for young viewers as well as advertisers, has received a $62 million investment from Canada’s TriWest Capital Partners.The deal values the 10-year-old digital media firm based in Calgary at $465 million. Kidoodle offers a bundle of subscription streaming channels that feature content hand-selected to be appropriate for impressionable young minds.

K.J. Yossman Amazon Prime Video has set an exclusive three-picture feature deal with Nigerian studio Nemsia Films.The first title to be announced under the deal is “Breath of Life,” written and directed by BB Sasore, Nemsia’s co-founder, and produced by Eku Edewor.

Jonathan Bailey and Rege-Jean Page have reunited!

Edgar Ramirez is stepping out during Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week!

EXCLUSIVE: The Sundance Institute has set the participants and projects for its Documentary Edit and Story Lab, which this year returns to Utah’s Sundance Resort after a two-year hiatus. The list consists of filmmaking partners Jude Chehab and Fahd Ahmed (Q), Jalena Keane-Lee and Diana Diroy (Standing Above the Clouds), Alessandra Sanguinetti and Soledad Salfate (The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer) and Edwin Martinez and Inés Vogelfang (The Monster and the Storm). The Institute also today named Diroy, Stephanie Andreou, Julie Gaynin, Alma Herrera-Pazmino and Luna X. Moya as the artists selected for the second edition of its Art of Editing Fellowship.

Naman Ramachandran Global short film network ShortsTV has launched its SVOD service on Amazon Prime Video Channels in the U.S.The service is available as an add-on subscription to Prime members at $1.99 per month after a seven-day free trial. Available at launch are 500 short films, including “The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers,” starring Kiera Knightley and Rupert Friend; “Nancy, Sid & Sergio,” starring Charlie Cox; “Silent Things,” starring Andrew Scott, “Interstate,” starring Gina Rodriguez; and “Hotel,” starring Art Malik.In addition, alongside ShortTV’s annual theatrical release of Oscar nominated shorts, Prime members will also get access to these, as well as original shows taking audiences behind the scenes on the road to the Oscars, including leading film festivals and award shows including the BAFTAs, and interviews with award-winning filmmakers.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior CorrespondentWayfarer Studios — the independent production studio from filmmaker, author and “Jane the Virgin” actor Justin Baldoni — has received a $125M investment to boost strategic growth and further the company’s production of film, television, documentaries, podcasts and new media projects, Variety has learned exclusively.The private investment comes from Wayfarer Studios’ co-founder Steve Sarowitz, the entrepreneur, billionaire philanthropist and chairman of software company Paylocity, along with his wife, Jessica Sarowitz. Wayfarer was founded in 2019 by Baldoni and Sarowitz, who has served as an active advisor since the company’s inception.Wayfarer Studios’ mission is to bring people together and highlight connection through storytelling.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThis year marks the 30th anniversary of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Brother’s Keeper,” which, as Berlinger says, is “one of the granddaddies of the true-crime docu movement.”It’s true that the 1992 film about the bizarre murder trial of Delbert Ward, who was accused of the “mercy killing” of his brother in rural upstate New York, was an early entrant in our collective societal obsession with the unscripted true-crime format, which in recent years has crossed over to the scripted side.As one of the founding fathers of the format that has piqued our interest in true crime to the point where limited series including “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” “The Staircase,” “The Dropout,” “Inventing Anna,” “Dr. Death,” “A Very British Scandal,” and several more are all competing in the same Emmys’ cycle, Berlinger has some unique insight into the nonfiction-to-dramatized evolution.

Although set in the Republic of Ireland, this slight but surprisingly powerful film will hit a raw nerve in countries all over Europe in the wake of the Ukrainian refugee crisis. More specifically, it will likely have an impact on the U.K. arthouse circuit, after the British government’s recent, controversial decision to launder asylum-seekers via a scheme deporting them to Rwanda for processing.