Paul Verhoeven Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

It almost goes without saying a lot of the time, but it’s never a surprise when a filmmaker isn’t a fan of someone else remaking their work. Obviously, some of that is tied to the ego, as creative folks don’t want other people tinkering with their art.

Carolyn Giardina Visual effects veteran Tim McGovern, who received a Special Achievement Oscar for the VFX in the 1990 sci-fi classic “Total Recall,” has died, his wife Reena NeGandhi announced Saturday on social media. He was 68.

EXCLUSIVE: Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 thriller Basic Instinct is the inspiration for a new comic book series by Sumerian Comics.

EXCLUSIVE: Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment has acquired UK distribution rights to the Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller pic Dalíland alongside docs RoboDoc – The Creation of RoboCop and Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story. All three titles will debut on the Icon Film Channel.

Guy Lodge Film Critic As a female union rep in the oppressively male-dominated French nuclear industry, Maureen Kearney — the real-life heroine of Jean-Paul Salomé’s “The Sitting Duck” — is accustomed to keeping a cool head in a crisis. That doesn’t stop her male superiors from accusing her of the opposite, with then-President Nicolas Sarkozy allegedly branding her a “hysteric in a skirt”: In this men’s club, a woman’s mere presence is deemed her weakness. Yet when Kearney is raped and mutilated by unknown assailants, seemingly as a professional warning, it’s her lack of hysteria under the circumstances that is declared suspicious by men in power. As she’s first disbelieved, then charged without outright fabrication, Salomé’s film pivots from itchy whistleblower thriller to irate courtroom drama, with institutional misogyny as its binding thread.

The Weeknd is speaking out about all the criticism surrounding The Idol.

Jessica Kiang Apparently determined to prove herself francophone cinema’s most inexhaustible precious resource, Virginie Efira once again lights up the screen prior to burning it down in a role that, after Justine Triet’s “Sibyl,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” and Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children,” is of a type she has come to define: the strong-willed, smart fortysomething woman chafing against her society’s conformist expectations. Delphine Deloget’s debut “All to Play For” features one of Efira’s more straightforward incarnations of this dramatic type — fewer sly kinks, no arch winks. But she is no less riveting and lovely for it and in Deloget’s confident, gentle grip, she turns in one of her most committed performances, all the more moving for its commitment to valorizing the kind of woman seldom treated on screen with such respect and compassion. 

“When was the last truly f*cking nasty, nasty, bad pop girl?” This is the question posed in the teaser trailer to HBO’s The Idol, which promises the kind of lurid, adrenaline-pumping pop-culture exposé you’d see if Paul Verhoeven was ever allowed to make a film like Showgirls again. Said trailer also features copious quantities of cocaine, champagne and seriously dirty dancing, suggesting a warts-and-all drama about a super-ambitious Madonna/Lady Gaga type who has recently hit the big time in the dog-eat-dog world of showbiz.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer By modern standards, Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 sex noir “Basic Instinct” might not seem that scandalous. It was a much different story when the film first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, star Michael Douglas said. Considered genre-defining or high camp depending on who you ask, Douglas said the project was “unique, even for France,” during a conversation in Cannes on Wednesday. “Seeing a lot of those sex scenes on the Grand Palais’ huge screen, it was a little overwhelming for a lot of people. We had a very quiet dinner afterwards, everyone was sort of digesting it,” he remembered (the cast included Sharon Stone and Jeanne Tripplehorn).

Christopher Vourlias Heretic has acquired world sales rights to “Sweet Dreams,” the sophomore feature from award-winning Bosnian Dutch director Ena Sendijarević (“Take Me Somewhere Nice”). Set on a remote Indonesian island during the waning days of the colonial era, the film centers on Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, who sit atop the local food chain — until the night when Jan, returning from a visit to his native concubine, Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife. Desperate to hold onto her privileged lifestyle, Agathe forces her estranged son, Cornelis, and his pregnant wife, Josefien, to travel from Europe and take over the family business. Those plans are upended by a worker’s uprising, as Cornelis and his progressive ideals must confront the uncomfortable reality that his father’s will places Siti at the helm of the family estate, setting in motion a cat-and-mouse game that puts those ideals to the test.

EXCLUSIVE: Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Finn Wittrock (Luckiest Girl Alive) have closed deals to star in Free Radicals, an English-language home invasion thriller based on the same-name short story originally published in The New Yorker by Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro.

who died from pancreatic cancer Thursday — appeared in a particularly memorable “Treehouse of Horror” episode of Matt Groening’s ever-clairvoyant animated series “The Simpsons.”His voice cameo popped up in the October 1998 Halloween-themed episode “Starship Poopers,” which was written by “Futurama” co-creator David X. Cohen, according to SlashFilm.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Arianna Bocco has stepped down as president of IFC Films. She will be replaced on an interim basis by Scott Shooman, who currently serves as head of acquisitions. Bocco left the company on Thursday. IFC, which is owned by AMC Networks, will conduct a search for a permanent replacement for Bocco, a longtime executive at the company and a major force in the world of independent film, respected for her keen taste and strong relationships with top talent. Bocco took the reins at IFC in 2020 after her predecessor Lisa Schwartz stepped down. But she had been at the company for more than a decade before making that leap. “IFC Films is a vibrant and vital part of our business and we will continue to acquire, produce and distribute films across our IFC Films, Shudder and RLJE Films ecosystems,” AMC Networks said in a statement. “We have full and total confidence in Scott’s ability to run the business as interim head and know that our film team will not miss a beat as it proceeds forward with a robust slate of releases and acquisitions.”

Another day, another unfortunate story of the gender wage gap…

The Laundromat and The Flight Attendant, the actress is still quite well known some of her earlier movies, particularly her Golden Globe-nominated turn as Catherine Trammel in Basic Instinct, one of the truly iconic ‘90s movie roles. Unfortunate, the 1992 erotic thriller ended up negatively impacting the custody case over her son when a judge asked the boy if he knew Stone made “sex movies.

during an appearance on this week’s episode of the podcast “Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi.”“I lost custody of my child,” Stone said. “When the judge asked my child, my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’ This kind of abuse by the system, that it was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie.”At the time it was released, “Basic Instinct” generated controversy over its frank depictions of sex and sexuality, and criticism for depictions of sexual violence and for how it portrayed same sex relationships.

Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s London-set, neo-noir thriller Femme, starring George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, world premieres in the Berlinale’s Panorama section this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Cinedigm has acquired all North American rights to four-part docuseries RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop. 

Gaumont Lands Debut Channel 5 Drama ‘Under Her Skin’

For many years now Venice has been a respectful platform for those big-name directors of the 1970s and early ’80s who are happy to go back into the fray long after those juicy studio budgets dried up: Brian De Palma, William Friedkin, Paul Verhoeven, John Carpenter and — to a lesser extent — George Romero all found a home here for their late-period passion projects. Walter Hill, now 80, joins their ranks with an improbably youthful horse opera, and while it shows up the limitations of both writing and shooting a Western in the modern age (concessions to modern sensitivities have to be made, and digital cinematography somehow just doesn’t cut it with the subject matter), it’s nevertheless a wickedly enjoyable genre romp and full of violent surprises.

Blended families, where children alternate between parents and spend their lives with an assortment of half-siblings or kids from their parents’ previous relationships, are now so normal that it’s easy to overlook how painful the blending process can be. Bitter separations, disrupted households, new beds and new people appearing in them, the resentments children feel for the grown-ups’ failures and the interloping new partners pawing at the mom or dad who is rightfully theirs: none of this is easy, even in splits later described smoothly as “amicable.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After taking a break from his filmmaking career to preside over the French film promotion org Unifrance, Jean-Paul Salomé has made a big comeback with a pair of films with Oscar-nominated French actor Isabelle Huppert. The latest one, “The Sitting Duck,” is world premiering at Venice in the Horizons section. Adapted from Caroline Michel-Aguirre’s book “La Syndicaliste,” “The Sitting Duck” tells the true story of Maureen Kearney, the head union representative of a French multinational nuclear powerhouse who becomes a whistleblower, denouncing top-secret deals that shook the French nuclear sector. One day, Kearney is found in her home, tied to a chair, the letter “A” carved into her abdomen, and a knife handle inserted into her vagina. Traumatized, she has no memory of the assault. However, after an investigation, the police accused her of staging the attack herself.

‘Love Island’ Snapped Up In Greece

EXCLUSIVE: Filming has quietly begun on Dutch comedy Happy Ending, which is being produced by Amsterdam-based production company Topkapi Films, known for movies including Halina Reijn’s Instinct and Lukas Dhont’s Girl.

Director Adam Wingard (“Godzilla vs Kong“) and writer Simon Barrett’s “The Guest” starring Dan Stevens is easily one of the better modern attempts to recreate the tone of a 1980s action sci-fi hybrid film. “The Guest” certainly has DNA from filmmakers like John Carpenter, James Cameron, Paul Verhoeven, and Chuck Russell (“The Blob,” “Dream Warriors“) all mixed in to create something that harkens back to an era when major studios backed high concept R-rated genre projects.

Ben Croll To the degree that a global sales division can shape its own image, Pathé’s international arm has built and bolstered its current brand around strong IP, recognizable faces and unbelievable but true stories.To see those elements in play, one need only look to last year, when projects including Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” and Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” lifted from world and film history as they showcased stars such as Virginie Efira, Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, while collectively finding homes in more than a hundred international territories. (In the U.S., for example, “Benedetta” sold to IFC Films, while “Eiffel” went to Blue Fox Entertainment.)To witness those same imperatives, but supercharged, one need only glimpse Pathé’s 2022 slate, which goes long on hometown IP and star power.

Jamie “James Bond” Dornan?

Benedetta on Good Friday.The film, directed by Paul Verhoeven, is based on the real-life 17th-century nun Benedetta Carlini, and is released this Friday (April 15).“This movie is a fraud and nothing more than a blatant attack on the Catholic faith,” Damien Murphy, a spokesman for the Irish Society for Christian Civilisation told Belfast Telegraph.Despite the film being released across Ireland and the UK this Friday, Murphy pointed at the Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, saying: “To launch this film on Good Friday is a calculated insult to Christians everywhere.“And shame on the Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast for permitting this showing at any time, but especially on this highly significant religious occasion.”The petition, addressed directly to the film’s producer and to MUBI, the distributor, reads: “I strongly oppose and condemn your distribution and promotion of Paul Verhoeven’s film Benedetta. It offends God, and countless Catholics all over the world.”They go on to hit out at the fact that the film “blasphemously” features “several Jesus-on-nun intense ‘make outs’”, “a statuette of Mary Most Holy used as a sex-toy”, and “voyeuristic lesbian nuns’ ‘pornography’”.

Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven has always tested the boundaries of good taste when it comes to sex and violence in his movies. With a career that spans six decades, the director has seen his share of controversies around his use of erotic scenes, including the period lesbian nun film “Benedetta” which recently sparked a lot of outrage from the religious crowd.

James Bond franchise for not including any sex scenes in No Time To Die.The Benedetta director shared his thoughts on the 007 films following the news that Daniel Craig will be retiring from the role, saying many Hollywood studio films today are sexless.“It’s about crashing and blowing up,” Verhoeven said of franchises like 007, in an interview with The Sunday Times.“Sometimes these movies are fun, but the narrative tells you nothing about us now. I don’t see any other thought in Marvel or Bond movies.”Verhoeven shared his thoughts on what his own Bond film would look like, saying “I’d go back to reality” with “cars that don’t leap up into the sky.”The filmmaker went on to criticise No Time To Die for scrapping any intimate scenes between Bond, after praising the ones in Craig’s debut as 007 in Casino Royale.“There was always sex in Bond!” Verhoeven said.

Paul Verhoeven is expressing his feelings about the newest films in the James Bond franchise or Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Zack Sharf James Bond producers have yet to announce which actor will replace Daniel Craig as the new 007 following “No Time to Die,” but filmmaker Paul Verhoeven is probably more interested in whether or not sex scenes will come back to the long-running spy franchise. Verhoeven, who has crafted memorable sex scenes in films such as “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls,” expressed frustration to The Sunday Times over many of today’s Hollywood studio releases being completely sexless.“It’s about crashing and blowing up,” Verhoeven said about studio films these days.

EXCLUSIVE: Film distributor and streaming service Mubi is ramping up its plans in the podcasting space.

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Zack Sharf With the 94th Academy Awards set for later this month on March 27, it couldn’t be better timing for some of the biggest nominees to hit streaming platforms in March. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” boasts 10 Oscar nominations, the second most-nominated movie of the year, and it’s finally returning to HBO Max this month to stream after originally debuting on the streamer for 31 days last fall.

Sharon Stone is spilling details about the infamous white dress she wore in "Basic Instinct." The actress revealed in an InStyle essay she was part curator of her wardrobe for the film, handpicking the number she wore for a scene in the 1992 film in which she sits cross-legged on a couch while smoking a cigarette. "The costume designer, Ellen Mirojnick, took me to Rodeo Drive and said, ‘You can pick out any one thing that you want for your character,'" Stone wrote in the magazine’s latest issue.