Stuart Ford Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Pierce Brosnan And Amir El-Masry have signed on to star in the sports drama Giant from AGC Studios about the life of British-Yemeni boxer Prince Naseem “Naz” Hamed and his rags-to-riches ascent to a world championship under the tutelage of his Irish-born boxing trainer Brendan Ingle.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Pierce Brosnan will star with Amir El-Masry in the sports drama “Giant,” based on the true-life story of British-Yemeni boxer Prince Naseem “Naz” Hamed and his rags to riches ascent to a world championship under the tutelage of his Irish-born boxing trainer Brendan Ingle. El-Masry will play Naz and Brosnan is set to portray Ingle. The film will be written and directed by Rowan Athale (“The Rise,” “Gangs of London,” “Strange But True”), and produced by Mark Lane of Tea Shop Productions and Kevin Sampson of White Star Productions.

Glen Powell is stepping out to promote his new Netflix movie!

Peacock has set the premiere date and released the first trailer for Roland Emmerich‘s gladiator epic Those About To Die, starring Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins. All ten episodes of the series will drop Thursday, July 18 on the streamer.

EXCLUSIVE: AGC Television is dropping a hot TV project into this week’s Series Mania market in Lille.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor AGC Studios chief creative officer Lourdes Diaz has signed a new multi-year employment agreement and has been elevated to partner with a seat on the board of the independent film and television studio. The promotion comes on the back of founders Stuart Ford, chairman and CEO, and Miguel Palos, chief operating office, themselves signing new multi-year agreements late last year.

AGC Studios Chief Creative Officer Lourdes Diaz has been promoted to partner and has taken up a seat on the executive board as part of a new multi-year agreement at the indie studio. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Variety is premiering the trailer (below) for feature documentary “Transition,” which follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan. The film, directed by Monica Villamizar and Bryon, will be released in the U.S. on March 26 by Gravitas Ventures.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor AGC Studios and Meridian Pictures has sold U.S. and Canada as well as Asia pay TV rights for the Brad Anderson-directed thriller “The Silent Hour,” starring “Suicide Squad’s” Joel Kinnaman, “1917’s” Mark Strong, “New Amsterdam’s” Sandra Mae Frank and “8 Mile’s” Mekhi Phifer, to the newly revitalized Paramount label Republic Pictures. In the film, Kinnaman plays a Boston police detective who suffers an on-the-job accident that leaves him hearing impaired.

Michelle Yeoh is getting back in the action business. The “Everything Everywhere All At Once” star is lead “The Mother,” the latest turn behind the camera from French actor-director Melanie Laurent. The movie is based on the screenplay by P.G.

Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh has boarded the action thriller The Mother.

EXCLUSIVE: Vertical has snapped up U.S. rights to AGC Studios’ Poolman, the absurdist comedy caper marking the directorial debut of Chris Pine (Star Trek franchise), for release in theaters in 2024.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor AGC Intl., the international sales and distribution arm of Stuart Ford’s fast-growing independent content studio AGC Studios, has picked up world rights from Image Nation Abu Dhabi, MBC Studios and VOX Studios on Yasir Al Yasiri‘s “HWJN,” and from O3 Medya and Dhafer L’Abidine’s Double A Productions on L’Abidine’s “To My Son.” Saudi fantasy romance ‘HWJN’ will open the Red Sea Film Festival on Nov. 30, while the emotional family drama “To My Son” will premiere in Red Sea’s Arab Spectacular section.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Ron Howard is heading into production at the end of November on survival thriller Eden, which was previously named Origin Of Species.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “Tinder Swindler” studio AGC Unwritten has sold U.S. rights to Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s feature documentary “Transition” to Gravitas Ventures. The film follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan.

AGC International has nabbed international rights to Late Night With The Devil from Aussie filmmaking duo Colin and Cameron Cairnes and will launch sales at the upcoming American Film Market. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The second season of the tropical noir crime drama “Troppo” has completed production in Queensland, Australia, with Thomas Jane (“Boogie Nights”) and Nicole Chamoun (“Safe Harbour,” “On the Ropes”) reprising their roles as private investigators Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell. A director known for “The Expanse” and “Dark Country,” Jane also serves as a director for two episodes of Season 2.

EXCLUSIVE: Roland Emmerich is heading to next month’s Mipcom Cannes to present first-look footage from upcoming Gladiator epic Those About to Die.

Mister Smith Entertainment.   Indeed, as studio executives and sales agents hit the South of France, their eyes remain fixed on the labor strike roiling the entertainment industry. “The strike is a bit less an immediate all-consuming issue for independent film than it is for scripted television,” says AGC Studios executive Stuart Ford.

Carole Horst “Those About to Die,”AGC Television’s upcoming gladiator series from Roland Emmerich, stars Anthony Hopkins and boasts a cast drawn from across Europe and the Middle East. It’s also financially innovative.  Rather than rely on a single, deep-pocketed streamer to write the check for the pricey series, budgeted at $145 million for the first season, AGC adopted a split rights structure: U.S. rights are licensed to Peacock, European rights to HEP, the Herbert Kloiber Sr./Constantin joint venture, and AGC International distributing in the rest of the world.  AGC chairman and CEO Stuart Ford takes pride in proving the naysayers wrong with financing for the project set in ancient Rome and based on Daniel P. Mannix’s book of the same name.

Joel Kinnaman (For All Mankind) is attached to star in They Found Us, an alien abduction thriller to be directed for AGC Studios and Temple Hill by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Neill Blomkamp (District 9), which will head into production in Australia later this year.

Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon, Peaky Blinders) and Mena Massoud (Aladdin, Jack Ryan) have signed on to star in the sports drama Giant, written and directed by Rowan Athale (The Rise, Gangs of London, Strange But True) with Sylvester Stallone and Braden Aftergood of Balboa Productions on board as executive producers.

Anthony Hopkins is stepping into the gladiatorial arena with his latest role.

The unscripted arm of Stuart Ford’s indie studio AGC Studios has named its development team.

Chloe Bailey Boards AGC Studio’s Wall Street Drama ‘Midas Touch’

AGC International has inked a raft of key international deals on the action-thriller The Silent Hour, starring Joel Kinnaman and Mark Strong.

Production is underway on filmmaker Richard Linklater’s next film “Hitman” in New Orleans, and Retta (“Good Girls”), Molly Bernard (“Younger”) and Austin Amelio (“The Walking Dead”) have been added to the ensemble opposite Glen Powell and Adria Arjona (“Morbius”).Based on an article in Texas Monthly, the screenplay hails from Linklater and “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Powell and tells the true story of “the most sought-after hitman in New Orleans, but if you pay him to rub out a cheating spouse or a sadistic boss, you’d better watch out: he works for the cops.”The official synopsis continues, “When he breaks protocol to help a desperate woman (Arjona) trying to get away from an abusive boyfriend, he finds himself living the life of one of his false personas, falling for the woman and flirting with becoming a criminal himself.”The production announcement and additional casting were announced by AGC Studios Chariman and CEO Stuart Ford, whose company will co-finance “Hitman” with leading indie financiers Shivani Rawat’s ShivHans Pictures and Monarch Media.The action comedy is produced by Linklater and Michael Blizzard for Detour Pictures, Michael Costigan and Jason Bateman for Aggregate Films, and Powell for BarnStorm Productions in association with Cinetic Media.Powell and Linklater – both Texas natives – first worked together on “Everybody Wants Some!!” (in which Amelio also starred), and this marks yet another genre shift for a filmmaker who’s made a career out of being a chameleon.

AGC International, the international sales and distribution arm of Stuart Ford’s independent content studio AGC Studios, has secured a raft of pre-sales on Richard Linklater’s Hitman and Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut The Dating Game, both of which will enter production in October.

EXCLUSIVE: Saban Films has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights to AGC International and Image Nation Abu Dhabi’s action picture The Ambush and set an October release for the Emirati production which marks its first non-English language acquisition.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has Dave Bautista circling to star in Unleashed, with TAG‘s Jeff Tomsic attached to direct a script by Blockers scribes Jim & Brian Kehoe.

Peacock has handed a gladiator drama series directed by Roland Emmerich a straight-to-series order.

The Tinder Swindler firm AGC Studios has launched an unscripted and non-fiction subsidiary that Magical Elves development chief Joel Zimmer will lead as President.

EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Guzman (9-1-1) has taken over Ross Butler’s role in the family comedy The Present, from director Christian Ditter (How to Be Single). The reasons for Butler’s departure haven’t been disclosed, but Guzman is now set to star alongside Isla Fisher, Greg Kinnear, Easton Rocket Sweda, Shay Rudolph and Mason Shea Joyce.

Wilson Chapman editorLourdes Diaz has been promoted to chief creative officer for AGC Studios, the independent content studio founded by Stuart Ford. Ford, who serves as the CEO and chairman of AGC, announced the news.“Lourdes’ creative instincts, sense of humor, work ethic, managerial skills and circle of relationships are all huge assets to the company and I couldn’t be more delighted to watch Lourdes seize the opportunity to further shape AGC’s future,” Ford said in a statement.Diaz will begin her new role effective immediately.

Lourdes Diaz, who was President of Television at AGC, has been promoted to Chief Creative Officer across AGC Studios, taking on oversight of the company’s feature film division.

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.