Sebastian Stan to Produce ‘Blue Banks,’ Feature Debut of Rising Romanian Talent Andreea Cristina Bortun (EXCLUSIVE)

Music Box studios, performing acoustic versions of three of her hit songs. Baser performed "2020s", "X&Y" and "Pretty Boys", songs showcasing her witty lyrics detailing love and loss as well as her wide range of musical influences and styles.

Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) has unveiled the major competition selections for its 25th edition (June 9-18), which will be the first to be held in a fully physical format with international guests since before the pandemic. 

Last weekend was a huge one for the blue half of the city. There will have been plenty of sore heads on Monday morning after Manchester City celebrated winning their third Premier League title in a row. It is a feat only matched by Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the modern era.

A question comes up part of the way through Ric Roman Waugh’s “Kandahar” that the film can’t find an answer for: Is this a Sad Dad Gerard Butler action picture or a Gritty Dad Gerard Butler action picture? Either way, he’s a dad, but in Sad Dad Butler films, that’s a feature; in Gritty Dad Butler films, it’s window dressing. “Kandahar” isn’t quite one or the other.

Daveed Diggs queued up outside Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre, his hometown multiplex, to see “The Little Mermaid” with his father, Dountes. “It must’ve been opening weekend. The line wrapped around the block,” Diggs recalls. “I remember loving Scuttle, thinking he was just the funniest thing I’d seen up to that point, and loving the songs.” Thirty years later, Diggs is a Tony- and Grammy-winning actor, rapper and filmmaker, best known for “Blindspotting” (both the 2018 film and the Starz series) and “Hamilton,” where he delighted Broadway audiences by putting his unique imprint on Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. After playing those historical figures night after night, one might imagine he’d have no qualms about taking on another well-known character — the calypso-singing crab Sebastian in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” which opens on May 26.

NBCUniversal Launch, the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion home, has developed new unscripted inclusion initiatives to increase representation in key behind-the-camera roles and create lasting change. The Unscripted Producers Program initiatives for Formats/Competition and Unscripted Initiatives for Lifestyle/Documentary are aimed at boosting diversity by establishing a pipeline of diverse talent for unscripted series and providing participants with on-the-job experience and opportunities to grow their skill sets. Its focus is to identify and hire mid-level producers from underrepresented groups directly onto our shows. Jeanne Mau, senior vice president of TV programming diversity, equity and inclusion at NBCUniversal, spoke at the launch event sharing the company’s vision for the program which has been a goal of hers since she joined two years ago. NBCU continues to make a major investment in diversity efforts for unscripted television.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features “The Lesson,” the Israeli drama series that was named best series at the 2022 Cannes International Series Festival, is set to premiere June 21 on streamer ChaiFlicks. Created and written by Deakla Keydar, “The Lesson” is a deft socio-political drama revolving around troubled high school civics teacher Amir (Doron Ben-David, “Fauda”) and Lian, a 17-year-old student in his class.  The series, which first premiered in January 2022, was also named best drama series at the Israeli Television Academy Awards in 2023. Maya Landsmann, who plays Lian, won best lead actress at that same ceremony.

Darren Star on his latest series,, when they appeared together at the season 3 premiere, Kim Cattrall responded to ET about possibly reuniting with the creator. «We'll see,» she told ET's Rachel Smith while promoting her new film,, which opens in theaters on Friday, May 26. «We'll see what happens.» While it's certainly possible that the 66-year-old star could appear in the upcoming fourth season of the hit Netflix series starring Lily Collins as an American ingénue who moves to Paris and joins a French marketing firm, she reminded ET that she has a new series of her own coming out on the streaming platform. «I don't really know [but] I have another show coming out called ,» Cattrall said.

Written and directed by Kim Chang-hoon, his debut feature Hopeless is marked by a morose atmospheric tone that forces the audience to be spectators in the dismal lives of others. Despite the story being ripe with promise, its progress is hampered by an overlong runtime, shoddy editing, and its inability to tap into any other feelings besides discontent. The film stars Hong Xa-bin, Song Joong-Ki, Kim Hyoung-seo.

Lise Pedersen Award-winning US producer and distributor Karin Chien (“Robot Stories,” “Circumstance”), whose latest co-production, “Man in Black,” is one of two films by Chinese director Wang Bing running in Cannes’ official selection, shared her experience with the crowd during a masterclass at Cannes Docs, the Film Market section dedicated to documentary films. “Man in Black” premiered at a special screening in Cannes on May 22. Wang’s other film selected in this year’s edition is main competition title “Youth.” In the talk, moderated by Documentary Association of Europe co-founder Brigid O’Shea, Chien put on her distributor’s hat to talk about a job she said was “not pitched enough but [represented] some of the most meaningful work she [had] ever done.”

Jennifer Lawrence steps out in a woven dress with a detailed back for the Bread and Roses photocall during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival over the weekend.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent FLX (“Quicksand”), the Nordic banner owned by SF Studios, is set to adapt the bestseller “Shadowland” (“Skuggland”) into a thriller series revolving around bullying. The show will take place at an exclusive private school in Stockholm and will follow 11-year-old Daniel, who isn’t from a rich family unlike his classmates and is constantly bullied. After a serious incident, the school can no longer turn a blind eye to the harassment. In search for vindication, Daniel’s mother, Vicki, soon sees that even the truth comes with a price. The founder of the school, a billionaire called Gunnar Grentz, rules in the background. But this incident now threatens his position.                               

Late last month the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the Taliban for systematically depriving Afghan women of their rights, demanding the country’s fundamentalist Islamic rulers provide “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women and girls” in Afghan society.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and her producing partner Justine Ciarrocchi touched down at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday to promote their label’s first ever documentary feature, “Bread and Roses” — a harrowing and emotional look at the lives of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. After two decades of American occupation, the nation fell once again to the insurgent group, which moved quickly to strip women of basic rights — simple freedoms like the ability to work, appear in public without a male chaperone and receive an education. “It all just collapsed and a matter of days,” Lawrence recalled to Variety. “I was watching this from America, where Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned. We felt helpless and frustrated with how to get these stories off of the news cycle and into people’s psyches. To help people be galvanized and care about the plight of these women.”

Christopher Vourlias Romania’s culture minister Lucian Romașcanu is confident that the country’s beleaguered cash rebate system is back on track, insisting in Cannes on Sunday that the government is committed to “repairing” a scheme that has ground to a halt in recent years. “Everyone in politics, starting with the future Prime Minister MarcelCiolacu, understands the importance of that,” said Romașcanu, outlining plans to rebuild confidence in an incentive program that faces stiff competition in the region. “There is definitely a ‘yes’ from the political world.” According to Romașcanu, the administration is now determined to clear a backlog of roughly €100 million ($108.2 million) owed to foreign productions that have lensed in the Eastern European nation since the rebate was introduced, after a host of lawsuits over outstanding payments pushed the cashback program to a breaking point.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy award-winning Indian producer Apoorva Bakshi (Delhi Crime) has boarded The Glassworker, Pakistan’s first ever Hayao Miyazaki-style animated feature, as an executive producer. 

Gregg Goldstein Weston Razooli is far more than just a writer, producer and director. He’s a world-builder, as evidenced by his feature debut, “Riddle of Fire.” The faux-’70s children’s fantasy adventure, which premieres May 20 in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight program, follows three tweens (Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters and Phoebe Ferro) on a quest for ingredients to bake a blueberry pie, all to coax the boys’ mother into letting them play a stolen video game. Danger arrives when they meet the “Enchanted Blade Gang” led by a witch (Lio Tipton). Its deadpan comedy and surreal feel — somewhere between “Escape to Witch Mountain,” “Scooby-Doo” and “Napoleon Dynamite” — make it equally appealing to kids, Gen Xers, stoners, Adult Swim watchers and fans of cult indie cinema.

Catherine Bray Festival reviews just love to hype a breakout performance, to the extent that one worries about becoming the little critic that cried breakout. But here goes: Talia Ryder, lead actor in “The Sweet East,” is a star. There’s something of Kristen Stewart about her, not merely in terms of physical resemblance, but more in her gift for not just acting but reacting. That’s fortunate, because her character is generally surrounded by extremely chatty blowhards, most of them interested only in the role she might play for them in their own lives. She lies constantly about her identity and where she’s from, and these lies go down easy because nobody is particularly invested in who she might actually be — they’re too keen to fit her into their own mythology.

Emiliano De Pablos Top Chilean fiction house Parox, producer of “Invisible Heroes,” has kick-started principal photography on international co-production “Los mil días de Allende” (“Allende, the Thousand Days”), a historical drama mini-series about the last three years in the life of Chilean President Salvador Allende. Alfredo Castro – one of Latin America’s most respected actors and a Pablo Larraín regular, star of films such as “Karnawal” and “El Club” – leads the mini-series cast as Allende; Benjamín Vicuña (“Besieged,” “Locked Up”) plays Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The four-episode, 55-minute fiction drama shoot is taking place entirely in Chile, lensing from May 15 for two months, under “Besieged” and “Inés of My Soul” director Nicolás Acuña.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sabina Smitham has joined Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin’s Blueprint Pictures, the producer of “Banshees of Inisherin,” as head of development. Reporting to head of film, Ben Knight, the new role will see Smitham manage the company’s development team and take the lead on expanding the company’s development slate. Smitham, an alumnus of the U.K.’s prestigious National Film and Television School’s master in producing program, joins from Disney+, where she oversaw the development of a range of projects for the Europe, Middle East and Africa Original Productions team. Prior to Disney she was a development producer at Faye Ward’s Fable Pictures.