Marc Forster Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

In an age of streaming and Covid concerns when many older skewing dramatic films find their way safely into homes, Sony rolled the dice on the Tom Hanks drama A Man Called Otto with the title out-performing its MLK 4-day $8M third weekend wide expansion projections with $15.3M.

EXCLUSIVE: Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey is set to reprise her role as an avenging mother in action-thriller Ballistic.

EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate‘s follow-up to the $315M global grossing feature Wonder, White Bird: A Wonder Story, will be returning to the theatrical release calendar with a new date of Oct. 4, 2024.

EXCLUSIVE: Kingdom Story Company, the production shingle behind Lionsgate‘s cash cow Jesus Revolution among other hits, has appointed Kevin Downes as CEO and Andrew Erwin as Chief Creative Officer ahead of its 2024 theatrical film slate with the studio.

Christopher Nolan is opening up about rumors that point to him taking over the James Bond film franchise and directing the next chapter of the franchise.

Director: Marc Forster.Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Ludi Boeken, Fana Mokoena, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ruth Negga, Peter Capaldi, Moritz Bleibtreu, Abigail Hargrove, Sterling Jerins, David Morse.Running Time: 116 minutes.Certificate: 15.Synopsis: United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is at the forefront of a race against time to stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies, governments and threatening to destroy humanity itself.Attempting to breathe new life into the zombie realm with his adaptation of Max Brooks’ 2006 book, Marc Forster has directed a relatively fun ride that will struggle to appease fans of the supernatural due to a steadfast commitment to family values and blatant lack of gore.Strongest when itching towards 28 DAYS LATER territory in its far quieter final third, WORLD WAR Z spends most of its time floating somewhere between disaster movie and family drama. Hopping from continent to continent may not leave us dizzy, but events never reach tangible levels of worldwide panic when personal elements cause such an infuriating distraction.

David Fincher is opening up about the scrapped World War Z sequel and revealing that it was going to be like HBO’s The Last of Us.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Marc Forster has frequently demonstrated an ability to tastefully moderate the more manipulative or saccharine aspects of popular but somewhat blunt-edged source material, in bestseller screen translations like “The Kite Runner” and “A Man Called Otto.” That knack comes in handy once more with “White Bird,” a graceful adaptation of a YA graphic novel by R.J. Palacio.

EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate is pushing the theatrical releases of this August’s White Bird: A Wonder Story and next year’s Dirty Dancing sequel from director Jonathan Levine due to the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, we hear.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and Swedish actor Alicia Vikander will be honored at the 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where they will receive the President’s Award, and present their latest films. The festival will open with “Firebrand,” in which Vikander has the leading role of Katherine Parr. McGregor will present “You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder,” in which he stars alongside his daughter Clara McGregor. McGregor’s role in Danny Boyle’s dark comedy “Shallow Grave” (1994) earned him an Empire Award for best British actor, and their next joint film, “Trainspotting” (1996), was an international sensation. McGregor and Boyle teamed up again for the 1997 romantic comedy “A Life Less Ordinary,” in which McGregor appeared alongside Cameron Diaz.

A new trailer for the upcoming war-drama “White Bird”, starring Helen Mirren, has been unveiled, nearly one year after Lionsgate debuted the official trailer.

Do you think cinematic universes and franchises are only reserved for superheroes, Vin Diesel, and horror films? Well, you’re mistaken. The latest growing franchise is growing out of the hit feel-good drama, “Wonder.” Now, we have the first sequel/spinoff, “White Bird.” As seen in the trailer for “White Bird,” the film follows the story of a young boy, Julian, who was last seen bullying the protagonist of “Wonder.” After being expelled from his former school, Julian’s grandmother sits him down to tell him her story of growing up in Nazi-occupied France.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “A Man Called Otto,” a heartfelt drama starring Tom Hanks as a cranky widower, has notched an important box office milestone, crossing $100 million globally. The film’s tally stands at $100.4 million, including $61.2 million in North America and $39.2 million internationally. Overseas, the top-selling markets are the United Kingdom ($6.28 million), Australia ($5.17 million), Mexico ($5.06 million), Spain ($2.6 million) and Germany ($2.5 million). In pandemic times, the $100 million benchmark is notable because only a few movies aimed at older audiences, such as Baz Luhrmann’s kaleidoscopic biopic “Elvis,” Tom Cruise’s sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” Brad Pitt’s action-comedy “Bullet Train,” have managed to connect the box office since COVID.

EXCLUSIVE: In a seven-figure deal finalised over the last week, Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 Films has beaten out competitors for UK rights to Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, which A24 is releasing in the U.S. on April 21.

EXCLUSIVE: Range Media Partners has signed iconic actress, producer and director Halle Berry, who to this day, remains the only Black winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Marc Forster, who directed “A Man Called Otto,” built his American version of the Swedish story with different creative elements from three Hanks family members, including Tom Hanks starring as the central character and his son Truman portraying the younger version of Otto.“Ultimately when you’re dealing with flashbacks, the ins and outs [need to] feel very seamless and feel like you’re still in present-day with Otto, with Tom Hanks. When you go into the flashback with Truman and Sonya (Rachel Keller), it [needs to feel] like you’re not being taken out of the movie,” he said.

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a free, 24/7 confidential service that can provide people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, or those around them, with support, information and local resources. Simply dial 9-8-8.

On a winter Thursday still ruled by James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, Sony’s Tom Hanks drama A Man Called Otto and Lionsgate’s Gerard Butler action pic, Plane, sought to get an early start with respectively $635K and $625K each.

Editor’s note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will factor in this year’s movie awards races.

When you have an international best seller that was on the NYT list for 42 weeks and then made into a multi-Oscar nominated Swedish film that became the third most successful in the history of that country Ingmar Bergman called home, you might wonder what the need was for an American english language remake? The answer is a chance to give Tom Hanks a role he can run with, and most importantly to bring a very human, often funny, character-driven story back to light in a time that needs it more than ever.

At first glance, Tom Hanks’ new film, “A Man Called Otto,” comes off a bit too morbid for most. After all, not many people are going to want to dive headfirst into a film that tackles suicide.

Deadline on Thursday launched its streaming site for Contenders Film LA3C: Conversations With Contenders, the awards-season event that took place Saturday as part of the lineup of the LA3C culture and music festival in downtown Los Angeles.

It’s been a productive and exciting time for Rita Wilson — the esteemed actress, producer and singer-songwriter who has returned this awards season with her third Oscar-qualifying original song. 

Following in the footsteps of a massively successful novel, and then the Oscar-nominated 2015 Swedish blockbuster A Man Called Ove, Tom Hanks stars in the English-language remake, A Man Called Otto. It was reinvented to take place in Pittsburgh but still features a central character who is about cranky as they come — a lonely widower who basically wants to end it all but who, with the help of a group of memorable neighbors and one colorful cat named Schmagel, finds hope and heart and a reason for living.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran actress, producer and singer-songwriter Rita Wilson has today announced the launch of Artistic Films — a film production company that will look to tell inspirational stories of hope that resonate with audiences across wide demographics.  

What happens when Tom Hanks joins forces with director Marc Forster for the first time? Enter “A Man Called Otto,” a movie that blends Hank’s usual on-screen persona with the lighter fare in Forster’s filmography. READ MORE: Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars 2023 Predictions & Contenders Based on Fredrik Backman‘s 2012 novel “A Man Called Ove” and its 2015 Swedish film adaptation of the same name, “Otto” sees Hanks as a widowed grouch who’s ready to give up on life until a young family moves next door and shakes up his life.

EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Longmuir has been named EVP of Business Affairs at Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions.

Nasim Cambron has been appointed as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Publicity for Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group. She will assume the post on November 7, reporting to Lionsgate Motion Picture Group’s Co-President of Marketing, Keri Moore.

Over his long career, Tom Hanks has established a rock-solid screen persona as an affectionate, good-natured father figure. The culmination of this squeaky clean image was perhaps his Oscar-nominated performance as TV host and legendary mensch Fred Rogers in 2019’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” But more recent films like “News of the World,” “Finch,” and especially this year’s “Elvis” have seen Hanks embrace darker, more emotionally ambiguous characters.  That trend continues with “A Man Called Otto,” an upcoming comedy-drama from director Marc Forster in which Hanks plays the lead, an aging curmudgeon contemplating suicide.

“Babylon” to a wide release ahead of Christmas Day on Dec. 23.

Sony is pushing their Spider-Man family title Madame Web from July 7 to Oct. 6, 2023. That first weekend of October has been a gold mine for the Culver lot where they own the month’s second and third biggest openings with Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($90M) and Venom ($80.2M).

“The Graveyard Book,” based on Neil Gaiman’s bestselling book of the same name (which was a spooky reworking of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”), is back from the great beyond. The Disney project, which has been developed by various filmmakers since 2009, has a new director in Marc Forster (“Quantum of Solace,” “World War Z”), TheWrap has confirmed.Forster’s producing partner Renée Wolfe will produce through their 2Dux2 banner along with Gil Netter.

EXCLUSIVE: Walt Disney Studios adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is gearing up as Marc Forster is set to direct the pic. His producing partner Renée Wolfe will produce through their 2Dux2 banner along with Gil Netter. Ben Browning is also producing. David Magee was recently tapped to adapt the script.

Clayton Davis Whether it’s Frank the Tank, Buddy, Ron Burgundy, or a one-scene wonder like Chazz Reinhold, Will Ferrell is a comedic wizard. With a keen ability to physically embody the varying energies of the characters he inhabits, his talents have been unparalleled throughout his career, perhaps even undervalued.

The world of “Wonder” is back to share an empowering message of courage.

2017’s “Wonder,” about a boy with Treacher Collins syndrome trying to fit in at a new school, tugged at a lot of people’s heartstrings. And it did well at the global box office, too, earning $306 million on a $20 million budget.