Rotterdam Tiger Award Winner Paz Encina Reveals Slate of New Projects (EXCLUSIVE)

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentHulu has acquired U.S. rights to “Fireheart,” Anton’s ambitious animated family feature directed by Laurent Zeitoun (“Leap!”) and Theodore Ty (“Kung Fu Panda”) with a voice cast headlined by Olivia Cooke, William Shatner, Laurie Holden and Kenneth Branagh.The deal was negotiated with Hulu by CAA Media Finance and Anton’s Cécile Gaget on behalf of the producers. “Fireheart” will debut on Hulu’s streaming platform in the U.S.

The final episodes of Netflix‘s hit Ozark will premiere on April 29 and the streamer dropped a first look teaser above.

Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.MOVIES— The Ryan Reynolds action comedy “Free Guy,” one of the few big-budget original movies to come out in theaters last year, arrives Wednesday on Disney+. And in Shawn Levy's genially self-aware film, which racked up $331 million at the box office, originality is very much at the heart of a story about a nonplayer videogame character (Reynolds) who breaks free of his coding.

Leigh Francis’s deliberately repulsive alter ego Keith Lemon is one of the silliest, most tedious people on television. So he is an entirely appropriate host on E4’s very silly, and rather tedious, new show, The Real Dirty Dancing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“The Novelist’s Film,” which Wednesday earned Korean director Hong Sang-soo the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, has scored multiple rights deals. With Seoul-based Finecut handling the rights sales, the film was licensed to Ama Films for Greece and Cyprus, Mimosa Films for Japan, L’Atalante Cinema for Spain, Arizona Films Distribution for France and to The Cinema Guild for the U.S.Finecut also did European Film Market business with “Contorted,” an unorthodox horror about a family tragedy.

The Boys universe gets eight distinct new looks in the latest glimpse at Prime Video’s spinoff animated series The Boys Presents: Diabolical.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentEdouard Weil and Alice Girard, the producers of Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” and Valerie Lemercier’s Celine Dion movie “Aline,” won the Toscan du Plantier Award at a fancy Paris ceremony hosted by the Cesar Academie. Weil and Girard, who run the Paris-based production banner Rectangle Productions, were selected by 1,557 voters, including all the artists and crew members who have been nominated at the Cesar Awards since 2008, as well as the 164 members of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema.Besides “Happening” and “Aline,” Rectangle Productions delivered several other critically acclaimed films within the last year, including Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s “Bloody Oranges,” Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex” which played at Cannes.

Sony will release it’s first movie of 2022, and second Tom Holland title after Spider-Man: No Way Home over the 4-day Presidents Day weekend, Uncharted, in what is expected to be a $70M+ haul worldwide.

Christopher Vourlias Germany’s Sola Media has closed a wave of international sales for the animated feature “Finnick,” produced by Riki Group, which will be released by Sony Pictures Russia in Russia and CIS on March 24.The CGI-animated comedy follows the adventures of 13-year-old Christine, who befriends the young prankster Finnick – one of the furry and usually invisible beings known as Finns. The odd couple has to team up as detectives to solve the mysterious events happening in their city.The Stuttgart-based sales agency has inked deals with Eagle Pictures (Italy), Independent Films (Benelux), Koch Films (German/Austria/Switzerland), Vertigo Releasing (U.K.), Tanweer (Greece), Selmer Media (Scandinavia), Myndform (Iceland), Rialto (Australia and New Zealand), and Black Sheep Films (South Africa), and holds exclusive distribution rights in multiple additional territories.

Luc Montagnier was a virologist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for co-discovering HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.Montagnier was the founder of the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute, a renowned facility where infectious diseases are studied. After founding the unit in 1972, he worked as its director, and it was in that capacity that he was sent a tissue sample that would lead to his crucial discovery.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorDutch-Caribbean teen documentary “Shabu” has debuted an exclusive clip, ahead of its screening at Berlin Film Festival on Monday. Reservoir Docs is handling world sales, except for Netherlands, Belgium and France.The film, directed by Aruban-Dutch filmmaker Shamira Raphaëla, world premiered at IDFA, winning the best youth documentary award, and also played at Rotterdam Film Festival.

Christopher Vourlias “Gotham” star Ben McKenzie and “Instinct” actress Bojana Novakovic are attached to star in the new J-horror film “Bloat,” Variety can reveal.Produced by Bazelevs, the production banner of Screenlife pioneer Timur Bekmambetov (“Unfriended,” “Searching,” “Profile”), “Bloat” is a co-production with Russian streaming platform Okko, French production and sales house Pulsar Content (“The Deep House”), and Japanese production company flag Co., Ltd.Filming has already started in New York and will continue in Japan. Pic marks the first time Okko has co-financed an international production.

The first teaser for Conversations with Friends has just debuted online!

Marta Balaga In “Excess Will Save Us” – named this week joint winner of Rotterdam Film Festival’s Special Jury Award – Morgane Dziurla-Petit returns to Villereau, a village in the north of France where nothing ever happens. Or, according to some of the locals, everything does – from freak accidents to terrorist scares and the curious case of disappearing pigeons.“Laughter is what brought me to making this film. It’s the way we communicate with each other in my family and in the village.

It’s her party! Kanye West helped Julia Fox ring in her 32nd birthday with a New York City soiree.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema announced a major expansion with seven new theaters including three new regions, Chicago, Birmingham, and St. Louis, and expansions in Washington, D.C. and New York City — with a kung fu-themed Staten island location opening this spring. The move also includes locations in Colorado and Texas.

Kanye “Ye” West paused on working on his latest album,, for a special birthday celebration with girlfriend Julia Fox. The GRAMMY-winning rapper and his lady, who turned 32 on Wednesday, celebrated her birthday with several of Fox's close friends at NYC French Eatery, Lucien.  West, 44, was captured smiling as he sat next to the birthday girl as she opened presents.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorWorld sales company Global Screen has released the first-look image of “Recipes for Love and Murder,” which has been chosen for Berlinale Series Market Selects lineup at the European Film Market. Acorn has the rights to the series for the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.The 10-part South African and U.K.