Paramount’s Untitled ‘Avatar’ Film to Be Animated in Australia by Flying Bark

Eagle Pictures Seals Italy Distribution & Production Deal With Sony

We knew it was coming in December and now we know when. 1923, Taylor Sheridan’s anticipated Yellowstone prequel series will debut Sunday, December 18, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Canada, and will premiere the following day on Monday, December 19 on Paramount+ in the UK and Australia. Premiere dates for other Paramount+ international markets will be announced at a later date.

is no stranger to reinvention, and for her October 24 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the singer-songwriter seems to have reinvented herself as . Swift's three-piece black-and-white chevron Dorothee Schumacher suit pairs boot-cut trousers with a tailored blazer over a mock-neck turtleneck. She paired the look with a cherry-red lip (natch), hoops, and chunky black boots. Swift's ‘fit is a note-perfect exemplar of a look Keaton perfected in the 1970s and has maintained throughout every decade since.

This week’s guest is Joel Edgerton.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dollhouse Pictures, production company founded by Krew Boylan, Rose Byrne, Jessica Carrera, Shannon Murphy and Gracie Otto, is to produce “Devotion,” a book-to-film adaptation of Hannah Kent’s bestselling novel of the same title. The production is in partnership with production and finance firm Storyd.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australian teen drama series Heartbreak High will return for Season 2 on streaming service Netflix. Produced by Fremantle Australia and NewBe, season 2 of “Heartbreak High” will see a reunion of the previous cast. They have assembled in Sydney, Australia and the nearby Gadigal, Dharug, Dharawal and Ku-ring-gai lands, for pre-production and filming. The show is a reimagination of an iconic piece of Australian television that first played between 1994 and 1996 on Network Ten. A second run played from 1997 to 1999 on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a version that was part-funded by the BBC.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment is taking ElectricNow, its AVOD channel and app, into international markets for the first time. The rollout outside the U.S. starts in early November with outreach into Australia. Los Angeles-based indie, Electric Entertainment has previously licensed its content to local distributors and channels at international markets. When it launched the OTT channel in 2019 it did not seek to build global operations, which would have entailed undoing, or waiting for the expiry, of some of those deals. The company , headed by Devlin and partners Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson, says that ElectricNow will soon be rolled out in other English-language territories, Canada and the U.K, but did not specify a timetable.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s SLR Productions has announced production on season two of the award-winning original CGI animated series, “Space Nova” for ABC ME. The 15 x 22-minute season has received significant production funding from both Screen Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation as well as development funding from ABC ME and Create NSW. “Space Nova” will be co-produced with Giggle Garage in Malaysia and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios, with ACTF representing the series across Australia and New Zealand. Targeting a six- to ten-year-old global audience, the first season sold to broadcasters or streamers in Germany, the U.K., Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the U.S, Singapore, East Asia, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese filmmaker, Bi Gan, best-known for his single-take feature “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” has seen his “A Short Story” picked up by Kino Lorber for distribution in North America. A fairy tale that follows the relationship between man and cat, the film had its world premiere in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and now has its North American premiere in the Currents section of the New York Film Festival. Kino Lorber plans to qualify “A Short Story” for the 96th Academy Awards, showing it theatrically nationwide in early 2023 in tandem with a theatrical re-release of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” “Kino Lorber rarely acquires short films, but Bi Gan has packed more cinematic delight into the fifteen minutes of ‘A Short Story’ than many feature length films deliver in two hours,” said Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell. The deal was brokered by Les Films du Losange.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kamila Andini’s “Before Now and Then” (aka “Nana”) topped the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, with nods in four categories including best film and best director. The film, about a gentlewoman’s memories of escaping from a Communist purge, narrowly headed three films with three nominations each: “Poet” (aka “Akyn”) by Kazakhstan’s Darezhan Omirbayev; “This Is What I Remember” (aka “Esimde”) by Kyrgyzstan’s Aktan Arym Kubat; and Philippines director Lav Diaz’s “When The Waves Are Gone” (“Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon”). APSA casts its net wide, seeking honors for cinematic excellence from 78 countries and territories defined as Asia Pacific. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at HOTA on Australia’s Gold Coast on Nov. 11, 2022.

Manori Ravindran International Editor New York’s South Asian International Film Festival has appointed Chayan Sarkar as its new president. A filmmaker, entrepreneur and festival director, Sarkar is also the founder of the Indian International Film Festival of Queensland in Australia. He takes over from SAIFF founder Shilen Amin, who will step down as president, but will remain a member of the festival’s board of directors. Sarkar joins SAIFF as the festival enters its 19th year as a leading film festival in the U.S. for new cinema from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and within the Indian diaspora. In recent years, SAIFF has become increasingly influential as a platform for South Asian cinema, both in the U.S. and internationally. Fourteen of India’s submissions for the international feature film Oscar have had their North American premieres at the festival.

A starry group of global talent has been set to join Paolo Sorrentino on the main jury for the 19th edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival which runs from November 11-19 in the Moroccan city. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The Marrakech International Film Festival will make a big comeback this year with a star-studded jury, including Oscar Isaac (“Scenes from a Marriage”), Vanessa Kirby (“The Son”), French actor Tahar Rahim (“The Serpent”), Australian director Justin Kurzel (“Nitram”) and Danish director Susanne Bier (“The Undoing”). Lebanese director and actor Nadine Labaki (“Caparnum”), German actor Diane Kruger (“Inglorious Basterds”) and Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi (“Marock”) complete the high-profile jury. As previously announced, Paolo Sorrentino, the Oscar-winning director of “The Great Beauty” and “The Hand of God,” will preside over the jury, which spans 10 countries from four continents.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Rithy Panh, director of “Rice People” and “S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” is an icon of art-house cinema, at once political, unique, and charming. The iconic image may be another of his confections – a palatable work built on uncomfortable facts. On the incomplete evidence of a 50-minute on-stage dialog at the Busan International Film Festival on Sunday, Panh comes across as simultaneously contrarian and principled. A curmudgeonly veteran and yet a filmmaker still curious to learn. “If there were no Khmer Rouge maybe I would not be a filmmaker,” he said of the Communist insurgents, who won the Cambodian civil war in 1975 and whose brutality and atrocities he has spent a lifetime documenting and exposing.

4 min read It has been 1272 days since the last Mr Gay Pride Australia was crowned, but now, after being cancelled due to the pandemic, finalists for the next competition have finally been announced.