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said upon introducing the awards ceremony. “This year’s festival expressed a powerful convergence; we were present, together, as a community connected through the work. And it is work that has already changed those who experienced it,” festival director Tabitha Jackson added.

TheWrap-Up,” host Sharon Waxman and special guest co-host and TheWrap assistant managing editor, audience, Adam Chitwood, take a look at the latest Hollywood headlines, including Disney’s response after the studio was called out for its upcoming live-action remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” by “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage.Then, Sharon and Adam are joined by TheWrap senior TV reporter Tim Baysinger who shares the significance of the recent astronomical Sunday night football ratings for the two NFL playoff games last weekend, the first of which saw Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs come back against the Buffalo Bills to tie the game in the last 13 seconds, before ultimately winning in overtime. TheWrap Awards editor Steve Pond then arrives to talk all things Sundance 2022, including the film that sold out of the festival for a reported $15 million.And, for this week’s interview segment, Sharon shares her discussions with the stars and filmmakers of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” (featuring Emma Thompson), and Eva Longoria Bastón and Oscar de la Joya, the director and one of the subjects of “La Guerra Civil.”In her interview with Emma Thompson, who plays a retired school teacher who hires a younger sex worker (Leo Grande, played by Daryl McCormack) to experience adventure and some good sex, opens up about aging in Hollywood, and doing a full-nude scene at 62.

Kevin Macdonald (The Mauritanian, Whitney) has been set to helm The Iceman, which will star Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale) as the larger-than-life extreme athlete Wim Hof.

Apple has closed the biggest deal of the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival, securing worldwide rights to the Cooper Raiff-directed Cha Cha Real Smooth for around $15 million. The streamer has been the front runner for the picture since it premiered January 23 in the US Dramatic Competition category.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has closed a deal around $7.5 million for U.S. rights to Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. the Sophie Hyde-directed film that stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack (The Wheel of Time & Peaky Blinders). Deadline reported yesterday  that Searchlight was poised to win the film that was bid on by several distributors, and the plan is to wage an awards season campaign for Thompson in a standout turn. Searchlight will release through Hulu, in a deal similar to the preemptive one it made for another Sundance film, Fresh. Hyde directed 52 Tuesdays and Animals. The film is scripted by Katy Brand, whose credits include Nanny McPhee Returns, which starred Thompson, and Walking On Sunshine.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has emerged as the favorite to acquire Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, the Sophie Hyde-directed drama that stars Emma Thompson as a widow who decides to seek out something that has eluded her over a 31-year marriage: a proper, mind-blowing, toe-curling orgasm. Negotiations are underway and will hopefully climax into the first narrative film deal at 2022 Sundance, after a weekend of foreplay but no consummation beyond the docu Fire of Love.

$25 million Apple paid for “CODA,” the $15 million Netflix paid for “Passing” or documentary-record $15 million Searchlight/Hulu paid for “Summer of Soul.”  There’s still plenty of time for dealmaking, but not much time for new films to grab the spotlight: All of the festival’s movies were programmed to launch in the first five days, with Monday’s lineup – which included “Emily the Criminal,” “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” “Dos Estaciones,” “The Janes” and “Am I OK?” – scheduled as the last of this year’s premieres.

Stripping down in her sixties. Emma Thompson got real about embracing nude scenes for her new movie, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. 

“I’ve always been a card-carrying, kind of militant feminist about women’s bodies and what’s been done to them, what we’re told is expected of ourselves, what we’re told to do to ourselves,” Thompson said at TheWrap’s virtual Sundance studio. “I think one of the rare triumphs of this story and of this movie is that it presents the untreated body for one of those very rare moments.”The film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, stars Thompson as Nancy Stokes, a retired widow whose passionless marriage has come to an end and who now wants to explore the sort of intimacy that had been denied to her for decades.

Emma Thompson is opening up about going nude in her new movie.

, recalibrating moment to moment in accordance with Nancy’s every whim. The performance disarmingly conveys that his character is emulating a romantic leading man for work, and that a sex worker’s interpretation of that role would naturally be unpolished compared with that of a trained actor. The hotel room set partly recalls “The Father” and “The Souvenir Part II,” simultaneously naturalistic and — one senses movie magic at work — not at all claustrophobic.

Even in its truncated virtual Covid-afflicted form last year, the Sundance Film Festival was remarkably able to debut several movies that a year later we are still talking about in the Oscar conversation including CODA, Jockey, Passing, Flee, and Mass. Maybe this success was due to the fact they all had one word titles, but more realistically it was because despite all the drawbacks, the fest honchos picked very well and now awards voters are enjoying the riches.  As I have been seeing one film after another in this year’s (virtual) fest I find myself looking for that breakout movie or performance which with the right distribution we will be talking about still a year from now. There have been some promising performances so far from the likes of Julianne Moore, Bill Nighy and a couple still to come later, but the wow factor really hit me in seeing Emma Thompson in the British film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, premiering today at Sundance, where to put it mildly, she knocks it out of the park. This is Thompson at her best, a witty, dazzling. and above all brave performance that will undoubtedly be talked about. Her co-star Daryl McCormack  in this two-hander is equally good in the movie which centers on a 60ish widowed mother of two and religious studies teacher who hires a sex worker for a tryst in a hotel room. It is much more complicated than that, in this story of two disparate souls who come together, one full of anxiety and past regrets, the other professional to his core but with a guard he will not let down and a line he will not cross.

Amy Nicholson In the opening sequence of Sophie Hyde’s riveting “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a suave young man (Daryl McCormack) steps out of an ice cream parlor, catches a mint candy in his mouth, and swings around a street pole like a hipster Gene Kelly. The Irishman is confidently cool — and not quite himself. He’s getting into character as Leo Grande, a charming sex worker who sells the Leo Grande Fantasy: a “service,” he calls it, where he gives paying customers exactly what they need, be it physical release, conversation or, for one client, dressing like a cat.

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards, Features EditorOn the surface, a film set primarily in one hotel room with a pair of actors might seem simple. But in the case of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” which premieres Jan. 22 at the Sundance Film Festival, limiting the location gave the film an opportunity to explore what star Emma Thompson calls “the emotional landscape.”Thompson plays Nancy, a widow and former teacher who has stepped outside her comfort zone for the first time in her life and hired a sex worker, the titular Leo Grande, played by “Peaky Blinders” actor Daryl McCormack.

Naman Ramachandran “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” starring Oscar and BAFTA winner Emma Thompson and emerging star Daryl McCormack, has been acquired by Lionsgate U.K.

Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders, A Very English Scandal) has been cast opposite Emma Thompson in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, director Sophie Hyde’s next feature after Animals.

Pat Saperstein Deputy EditorEmma Thompson was characteristically frank about Hollywood’s double standard during a recent interview with the CultureBlast podcast.

Dame Emma Thompson is fighting sexism in Hollywood. The "Love Actually" actress spoke about how it's more acceptable for older men to be with younger women in TV series and movies than vice versa.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Announced deal-making out of the virtual AFM has been deafeningly quiet so far, but Cornerstone Films was among sellers to clock up strong pre-sales, we can reveal.We’ve heard from buyers that two of Cornerstone’s light-hearted Brit pics were among their favourites: Emma Thompson sex therapy comedy Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and Helena Bonham Carter-Pierce Brosnan rom-com Not Bloody Likely, exploring the story behind the 1914 West End production

Emma Thompson is set to star in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a comedy about sex, desire and fulfillment from Sophie Hyde, director of 2019 Sundance hit drama Animals. Based on the original screenplay by British Comedy award-winner Katy Brand (Katy Brand's Big Ass Show, Rose D’Or winner Psychobitches), the film will center on Nancy Stokes (Thompson), a 55-year-old widow who is yearning for some adventure, some human connection, and some sex.