John Hopewell Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Perlimps,” Brazilian Alê Abreu’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “The Boy and the World,” has a trailer, released in the run up to the animated feature’s world premiere on June 16 at the Annecy Festival.Shared in exclusivity with Variety by the film’s sales agent Best Friend Forever, the full trailer reveals for the first time the real significance of the titular Perlimps, while showcasing its dazzling visuals.The film will screen at Annecy in official selection as a special event. If it were in competition, it would be a contender to deliver Brazil its third Annecy Cristal best feature award in decade after Abreu won in 2014 with “The Boy and the World” and “Perlimps” producer Luiz Bolgnesi also won he same award a year earlier for “Rio 2096: A Story and Love and Fury.” The trailer to the animated family tale begins with Claé bounding through an Enchanted Forest announcing excitedly that the Giants have surrounded it and there’s no time to lose.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Black Sands” producer Glassriver, one of Scandinavia’s fastest-growing production powerhouses, is teaming with a powerful writing duo, Ragnar Bragason and Snjolaug Ludviksdottir, to create “Magaluf.”Currently in development, “Magaluf” marks a high-profile projects at late June’s Conecta Fiction in Spain, where it  competes in the forum’s CoPro Series section.One of Iceland’s most consistently prized top writers and directors and creator and head writer on “Magaluf,” Bragason’s credits include movie 2013’s “Metalhead,” which wonbest Nordic film at Göteborg, and in series, “The Night Shift,” part of a larger hit dramedy franchise, and the admired international sales hit “Prisoners.” A stand-up comedian, Ludviksdottir co-writes. “She is a wonderful writer and writes three of the six episodes and on top of that ensuring that the female characters really come to life in a meaningful way,” said Glassriver co-owner Hörður Rúnarsson, a producer on the show with Arnbjorg Haflidadottir (“Black Sands”).Ludviksdottir’s credits include penning Season 2 of international hit crime series “Stella Blomqvist,” Viaplay’s first Icelandic original.Commercials and music video director Magnus Leifsson, whose debut short film “Dovetail” won Short Film of the Year at the 2019 Icelandic Film and TV awards, is attached to direct.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“1976,” the awaited first feature of Chile’s Manuela Martelli, has closed first new major territories for sales company Luxbox before its world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight later this upcoming week.The film is produced out of Chile by writer-directors Omar Zúñiga (“The Strong Ones”) and Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) at auteur-focused Chile-based Cinestación (“Too Late to Die Young”) as well as Alejandra Garcia and Andrés Wood, another celebrated Chilean director (“Violeta Went to Heaven”) at Wood Productions. Nathalia Videla Peña and Juan Pablo Gugliotta at Argentina’s Magma Cine co-produce.“1976” is set, as its title implies, in 1976, one of the bloodiest years of Augusto Pinochet’s hugely bloody dictatorship.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Bonnie is legendary for her boundless energy on the Crosiette,” AGC Studios head Stuart Ford said of his marketing head Bonnie Voland, whose 40th Cannes Festival was celebrated by Ford and friends at an elegant beachside cocktail on Friday evening.“This is my 15th Cannes with Bonnie Voland and I’m not sure I still have the energy to keep up with her,” he confessed in a speech in her honor at the cocktail.Voland has had a rich career to date, – she insists she’s certainly not done yet –  graduating as a French major at Hunter College, and working as an actress in Paris before first attending Cannes in 1982 for Passion – The Magazine of Paris. She ran the Toronto Festival press office in the mid-eighties, then worked in Los Angeles for Samuel Goldwyn, Buena Vista International and Chris Blackwell’s Island Pictures, and created her own PR agency and consultancy B.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel,” which plays Cannes Classics this Saturday, begins with French film great Jean-Claude Carrière in a train, singing an ancient song in Occitan, the language of Provence, where he came from.Visiting Goya’s birthplace, he’ spies a cauldron and comments that there was one like that in his own family home.Towards the end of the film, surveying “The Colossus,” Goya’s painting of a giant dominating tiny people in a valley below who flee in all directions, Carrière observes that the painting capture a sense of immigration. Unlike so many of his friends, and indeed his wife,  Nahal Tajadod, Carrière notes, he will have the privilege of being buried in the same place where he was born.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Bourne Identity” helmer Doug Liman is attached to direct the adaptation of a chapter from acclaimed nonfiction book “Rise And Kill First.” It details how Israel’s Mossad reached out in desperation to former Nazi Waffen SS lieutenant colonel Otto Skorzeny, a favourite of Hitler’s -branded by British intelligence services as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” to thwart an existential threat to Israel’s existence.The stranger-than-fiction true story is set up at New York’s Story Syndicate (“I’ll Be Gone In the Dark,” “Britney vs Spears,” “Becoming Cousteau”), headed by Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, and at Israel’s Abot Hameiri, producer of “Shtisel,” “The Attaché” and “Power Couple.” A Fremantle company, its co-founder, Guy Hameiri, assembled the world-class direction-production team. A Cannes Festival alum with 2010’s Palme d’Or contender “Fair Game,” Liman will also oversee development of the limited series.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Pink Cloud,” a flagship feature from Brazil’s new generation of female filmmakers, has closed three more major territories for Paris-based MPM Premium, sealing France (Universciné), Japan (Senlis) and Germany (Lighthouse). With MPM Premium currently in discussions for the U.K., Australia and Latin America, the sales company is edging ever closer to selling out on all major territories around the world.Territories already secured include Brazil (O2), North America (Blue Fox), Taiwan (Digi Sky Entertainment), China (Beijing Hugoeast), Korea (K Entertainment) and Russia (World Vision).Senlis will stage a theatrical release in 2023 for “The Pink Cloud.” It has been dubbed and will be released in Germany and Austria on July 22. France’s Universciné (France) has launched the film as a premium VoD Release, with a specific promotion for what Universciné calls its “exclusive” titles.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Lost And Found” has closed first sales to Italy (Eagle Pictures), France (KMBO) and Taiwan (Creative Century Entertainment) on thriller “Lost and Found,” starring Álvaro Morte, “Money Heist’s” Professor, and directed by “The Head” helmer Jorge Dorado.The caliber of the distributors – Eagle Pictures is one of Italy’s most muscular mainstream buyers, for instance – and the movie’s high-profile talent package confirm “Lost and Found” as a preeminent title in Spain’s currently most exportable product line: Upscale ambitious thrillers with a social-issue underbelly.Filmax, “Lost and Found’s” sales company, screened a promo at Berlin’s European Film Market. The first sales news comes just before the film’s first market screening at a private event at Cannes.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Island City,” the latest film from “Lower City” director Sérgio Machado, has been acquired for international sales by Edward Noeltner’s Beverly Hills-based Cinema Management Group. Given a current absence of Brazilian movies selected for the Cannes Festival, the acquisition gives CMG one of the most awaited of titles coming out of Brazil this year.It also marks latest title from Brazilian production powerhouse Gullane, whose credits include Cannes Competition players – Hector Babenco’s “Carandiru,” Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor”  – as well as Sundance winners, such as Anna Muylaert’s “The Second Mother,” and Berlin Panorama laureates, such as Luis Bolognesi’s “The Last Forest.” Exploring the foibles and failure of manhood, also the focus of “Lower City,” “Inner City” tells what CMG describes as the “captivating” tale of three brothers who end up living under the same roof as middle brother Dalberto’s sensual new wife, Anaira (Sophie Charlotte).When Dalberto (Daniel de Oliveira) has to leave, transporting a mysterious passenger up the Amazon to Peru, a despondent Anaira seeks comfort in the company of other brothers Armando (Gabriel Leone) and Dalmo (Romulo Braga).

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“There is a new studio Star System…but instead of focusing on acting talent (as it did in the 1930s), it prioritizes those with the skills to create new stories, produce new shows and manage the evolution of new character IP…in other words, to make content that will succeed by the measures important in the new world order,” Ampere Analysis’ Guy Bisson announced at MipTV in a presentation. By that measure, few figures were as important at this month’s buoyant French TV festival Canneseries than German author Ferdinand von Schirach and Constantin TV’s Oliver Berben. Broadcast on ZDF and produced by Berben, 2013’s ”Crime Stories” and 2015’s “Shades of Guilt,” both based on von Schirach best-selling short story anthologies, scored up to 5 million viewers per episode and exceptional market shares of 17%-18%. Inspired by a von Schirach stage play ”The Verdict” punched almost 7 million viewers and a market share of over 20% on a Monday evening.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Bosé,” the highly anticipated Paramount Plus Original, has wrapped production. The announcement comes as Paramount Plus has also confirmed the remainder of the internationally recognised cast of the six-part series, a biopic of Spanish singer-songwriter Miguel Bosé.Two behind-the-scenes images, shared in exclusivity with Variety, also hint at the production ambitions of the series, one of the biggest Spanish-language series to date at Paramount Plus, which turns on one of the most resonant figures in recent times in Spain.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentA Canneseries main competition contender, “The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen” begins with a voiceover from Connie Nielsen (“Gladiator,” “Wonder Woman”) reading, in beautifully cadenced Danish, a letter ‘Out of Africa’ author Karen Blixen writes to her mother in 1931.In it, she expresses the joy Africa has given her, that the family farm she ran has gone bankrupt, and she will soon take her life.Exquisite shots of Africa play out, meanwhile, on the screen.It this mix of lush period detail and big production value and a harder economic edge and sustained portrait of a woman’s sentiments and soul –  through read letters, dialog confession and Nielsen’s central commanding central performance – that sets “The Dreamer” apart. Developed from a concept by Nielsen, “The Dreamer” begins when Blixen near ends, economically and emotionally bankrupt after her farm fails and her soulmate, as she calls English aristocrat Denys Finch Hatton, dies in an air crash at Kenya’s Voi Airport.Her suicide fails.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“You’re a horse person?” a Belgian stable owner asks Johanna, a young Finnish journalist delving into the discovery of a microchip in a baby’s meat patty at a Helsinki daycare center. Only creator-director Auli Mantila’s own horse affiliations as a qualified farrier may explain in part one of the most singular of entries at this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize: “Transport.”This is Scandinavian crime drama, but “ordi-noir,” Mantila told the Nordisk Film & TV Fond newsletter, in that it “happens in broad daylight, involves people with no special talent or trauma, and takes place in locations anyone could just walk in.”It also addresses a massive but little explored subject, turning on pan-European food fraud which embroils three women: Marianne, a by-the-book bank loans exec forced to money launder earnings of a sinister food import company; an insurance investigator checking the disappearance of a border control veterinarian; and the indefatigable Johanna.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Fitness advice, gig economy, binge watching Danish crime series, sustainability, sex when the kids watch cartoons, mobile bank ID, personal development 5:2 diet, anti-aging cream, Adobe updates, climate friendly travel, body activism,” Anders rants quietly to the camera, as he walks from his car to home in the equivalent of white picket fence Sweden at the beginning of Swedish Discovery Plus Original “Gotebia,” a half-hour dramedic psychological thriller.“Exterior renovations, Roblox, mini Rodini hats, dinners from Fedora. Shared family calendar.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“17 KHZ,” (Mediacrest)Cut off in a border region, five people from different generations and countries confront Tiamat, a conspiracy of young teens who have ermined that the inly way to stop climate change is to eliminate all adults. That, for Tiamat, however, is not the end of their plan, just a beginning.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Hernan” co-creator and lead writer Francisco “Curro” Royo, one of the premier show runners in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, has signed with The Gersh Agency and set up his own production company, Dystopia Media.Royo will be represented at Gersh Agency by partner Roy Ashton.Already readying its first slate of projects in development, Dystopia Media, which will be based out of Madrid, underscores the growing market muscle and ambition of Spain’s foremost screenwriters.“The next step is for writers and show runners to become producers,” said Royo, pointing to the example of Spain’s Alex Pina and Ramón Campos.“Money Heist” co-creator Pina set up his own label Vancouver Media in 2016, going on to co-produce “Money Heist” and sign an overall deal with Netflix in 2018.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Fear Index,” starring Josh Hartnett, and the third season of iconic Israeli series “False Flag” will both screen at the Berlinale Series Market Selects, whose lineup was unveiled Tuesday.The latest from “The Crown” producers Left Bank Pictures, Sky Original “The Fear Index” is billed as a fast-paced, gripping Frankenstein-style parable on the dangers of AI. Based on the Robert Harris novel of the same title, its international sales will be handled by NBCUniversal Global Distribution.Sold by Keshet International, “False Flag” is one of milestone titles that turned Israel’s series into a global brand, with Fox International taking the world on season one at 2015’s Mipcom in its first global acquisition of a foreign-language series.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Flee” and “Pride” producer Vice Studios looks set to build its presence in Latin America with a new order from Netflix, “La Divina Gula,” as well as the appointment of “Last One Laughing: Mexico” executive producer Edgar Jaramillo as senior director of unscripted for the region.The latest move from Vice Studios, the global production arm of Vice Media Group, forms part of a drive to expand its offering across both unscripted and scripted content

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“I’m afraid nobody will like me at my new school,” says the protagonist of “Mean Boys” at the beginning of its railer.Growing up is never easy. But it’s especially challenging if you’re old man’s God, you’re a teen Jesus, and you’ve got to control your good works at your new school or you could be identified as the Messiah and be carted off for a premature crucifixion.So, in a attempt to fit in – and a homage to cult U.S.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Spencer” director Pablo Larraín has thrown his weight behind Chilean Oscar entry “White on White” (“Blanco en Blanco”), hailing it as a “really interesting, strange and highly violent film.”“White on White” also addresses issues that are “highly unsettling and complex and which haven’t been resolved or at least discussed at sufficient length,” Larraín adds.His words come from a conversation, which he moderates, with “White on White’s” director

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Now, we’re producing over 100 projects, we’ve calculated we’ll be working on nearly 130 projects next year to supply both our platform networks,” The Walt Disney Company LatAm’s Leonardo Aranguibel commented at a Ventana Sur panel on Tuesday.How can Disney try to ensure quality at such a massive production levels? “We look for the best talents, not only in front of the cameras but also behind,” Aranguibel answered.Most streaming platform execs

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“La Reina del Sur” star Kate del Castillo is set to play the lead in “A Beautiful Lie,” a modern take in Spanish on Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.”Del Castillo will also executive produce the series out of her Cholawood Productions label, along with two other forces on the upscale Spanish-language TV scene, premium U.S.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“A Dead Man Cannot Live” begins with Tano, played by the lanky, weathered, deep-voiced Antonio Dechent, one of the finest actors of his around-60 Spanish generation, sitting at a bar rail, and thinking back on better times.Even the Costa de Sol narco business is going to ruin. Tano’s boss, Manuel, is senile, his son and heir, the inappropriately named Angel, totally out of control.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Why don’t you come around for dinner?,” Barcelona lifeguard Gerard Casals (Dani Rovira) asks his boss, Oscar Camps (Eduard Fernández), at the beginning of “Mediterráneo: The Law of the Sea.”“I’ve got other plans,” says Camps.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Camila Comes Out at Night,” which plays in main competition this weekend at San Sebastián, begins with teen Camila in a museum, gazing at a ancient photo.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Forget My Name,” “Life” and “Stolen Kids” proved some of the big winners at the 2021 Conecta Fiction awards ceremony in Pamplona, northern Spain on Wednesday night as the Europe-Latin America co-production forum reached its climax.A female spy drama-thriller charged emotionally by an effective mother-daughter relationship, “Forget My Name” won one of the most enticing awards on offer: A development contract with Spanish public broadcaster RTVE.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Fauda,” “False Flag” and “No Man’s Land” producer Maria Feldman is teaming with Israeli director Dror Shaul on “The Collective,” an epic drama series set against the background of the early history of one of Israel’s best known institutions: the kibbutz.Created, written and to be directed by Shaul, “The Collective” is set up at Feldman’s New York and Israel-based Masha, out of which she co-created and produced for Hulu and Arte the Fremantle-sold

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Martyrs Lane,” the third feature from Ruth Platt (“The Lesson”), hits Fantasia with a double momentum: Bullish word of mouth, and a recent sale to AMC Networks genre streamer Shudder for North America, U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.Produced by London’s Ipso Facto Productions, whose credits take in “Irina Palm” and Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Valhalla Rising,” the LevelK sales title is a ghost story but, like the best of that kind, much

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentChilean director Domingo Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young,” “Thursday Till Sunday”) is re-teaming with Sao Paulo-based RT Features (“Call Me by Your Name,” “The Lighthouse”) to make her third feature, “Niebla.”CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and will represent sales rights.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“She was the air I breathed.” Emmy Award winning animator Joe Mateo takes that heartfelt concept and in “Blush,” his directorial debut, delivers what must rate as one of the most personal yet still resonant films at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival.The inaugural short from Apple Original Films and David Ellison’s Skydance Animation, bowing a multi-year partnership between the studios, “Blush” world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Remember, you have been trained for this,” says a veteran cop to the rookies sitting in the back of a van as they approach a post-soccer match brawl at a local park.But in “Huss” nothing in her police academy lessons prepares Katarina Huss for her months as a trainee on the mean streets of Sweden’s Göteborg: Abduction, battery, corruption, betrayal, manslaughter and attempted murder.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Vanishing,” “Yoga Village,” “Science Fiction” and “Transfariana” took top Visions du Réel industry awards at an online ceremony webcast from Switzerland on Tuesday night.Seventeen awards went in all to a total 16 recipients with major winners addressing some of the most relevant issues of the current times — gender abuse and plurality, lockdown, China — filtered through often highly personal prisms.Such is the case of “The Vanishing,” from

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Codigo Implacable,” the first project from a co-development and co-production between Sony Pictures Television and The Mediapro Studio, has gone into production in Colombia.Based on a project originally entitled “35 Years and Counting,” which was announced at the 2019 L.A.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Natural Light,” a portrait of the attrition and atrocity of war set at a benighted village in occupied Western Soviet Union in 1943, has clinched its first sales as Paris-based Luxbox rolls out the Berlin Competition player at the European Film Market.Nour Films, whose past pickups include Berlin Golden Bear winner “Touch Me Not,” has closed rights to France.Nour will open “Natural Light” “with great conviction and pleasure” on at least 60 prints

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Cargo” begins with a lovely sequence shot of a woman, Kiki, in Eritrea, turning off the lights at her family home, tucking up her little daughter, Liah, getting into bed with husband Aman, Liah clambering in after her, and falling asleep breathing in her family, smiling slightly, happy.It’s the last time that Kiki may have any piece of mind in Finnish director Matti Kinnunen’s “Cargo,” the first high-end series from Fremantle Finland, made for

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent2021’s totally online NATPE Virtual Miami is just but half over. Some inkling of how it might shape out, however, is fast falling into place.Basically, streaming stole the show.