Starz Drama Series ‘The Venery of Samantha Bird’ Pauses Production With Two Episodes Left To Shoot

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Mainland Chinese star Wang Luodan (“The Dead End,” “Struggle,” “The Continent”) and Hong Kong-born Bosco Wong (“Lives of Omission,” “Triumph In The Skies”) head the cast of “My Dearest Stranger.” The high-end suspense drama series is a production fronted by mainland Chinese distributor-producer Hishow Entertainment, which announced the production at the Cannes Market, adjacent to the Cannes Film Festival in France. Based on the best-selling novel “Secret Love,” by Fan Shu and adapted by renowned screenwriter Cao Xueping (“Game Changer”), “My Dearest Stranger” tells a compelling story of Yu Xiao, a housewife who realizes her seemingly perfect husband may have a dark side. Yu decides to cooperate with policeman Song Cheng to find out the truth, while trying to keep her own secrets from the world.

Chinese streamer Youku is teaming with Beijing-based producer-distributor Hishow Entertainment to produce high-end drama series My Dearest Stranger, starring Wang Luodan and Bosco Wong. 

EXCLUSIVE: Henry Ford’s failed industrial town in the Amazon Rainforest is the backdrop of a supernatural Brazilian TV drama.

Hüller, who was shortchanged back in 2016 when George Miller’s jury was inexplicably resistant to “Toni Erdmann,” ought to be in line for some serious attention from jury president Ruben Östlund’s panel this year for her richly textured performance, even without factoring in her disturbing work in “The Zone of Interest.”Check out TheWrap’s Cannes magazine here and all of our Cannes 2023 coverage here.

Godard speaks! Again. Quite rightly there’s a lot of hoopla about the world premiere of a 20-minute trailer the late cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard made for a feature film that will never exist: Phoney Wars. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kaouther Ben Hania, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Man Who Sold His Skin” whose latest film “Four Daughters” is competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will next direct “Mimesis,” an epic love story set in Tunisia. While the plot is under wraps, the story is set in two different periods, the 1990s and the 1940s, paying tribute to cinema and Arab-Muslim cultural heritage. It’s being produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha at Tanit Films, who produced Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” and her previous film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” which world premiered at Venice where it won best actor for Yahya Mahayni and was nominated for best international film at the Oscars in 2021.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International In Britain, schoolchildren learning about Tudor history are taught a handy rhyme to remember the order of King Henry VIII’s six wives: “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” Hollywood has for decades been transfixed by the “beheaded” and “died” bits — essentially, the stories about women suffering — but what moviegoers are rarely reminded of is the wife who outlived Henry. In Karim Aïnouz’s hotly anticipated “Firebrand,” it’s the notorious Tudor king’s final companion, Katherine Parr, who finally takes center stage. “What’s mostly been dramatized are the wives who didn’t make it,” says Swedish star Alicia Vikander, who plays the surviving queen opposite Jude Law’s ailing monarch. “[When I read the script] I immediately thought, ‘Huh, isn’t it interesting that most people know more about the other wives.’ It’s almost like people are drawn to quite grim stories.”

Jessica Kiang It is unlikely that this Cannes will yield many characters as strikingly well-drawn as Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani), the star of Marie Amachoukeli’s small but acutely affecting Critics’ Week opener “Ama Gloria.” Over the course of an efficient 84 minutes, Cléo changes and resists change, she learns and rejects life lessons, she befriends and betrays. She is funny, somber, silly, conniving, shockingly selfish and shiningly pure, sometimes all in the space of an afternoon. She is six years old.  Cléo, a bundle of personality under a tangle of hair and pair of thick glasses, lives in Paris with her affable widower Dad, Arnaud (Arnaud Rebotini), but is raised mostly by her beloved Cape Verdean nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). Their relationship is close as a goodnight kiss, and obviously mutually adoring — witness the exchange of incandescent smiles when Cléo sees Gloria waiting at the school gates. So it’s a heavy blow to both when Gloria has to return to Cape Verde following the death of her mother. Gloria’s own daughter Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela) is already a young woman, and pregnant with her first child. But her son César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) is still a kid, and now needs the motherly supervision that Gloria has spent many years lavishing on Cléo. 

Experts say Prince Harry and Meghan Markle could have avoided security troubles and what they claim was a "near catastrophic car chase" by staying at a hotel in New York City Tuesday night. A spokesperson for the royal couple told Fox News Digital the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were involved in a chase "at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi" that lasted over two hours.  The NYPD told Fox News Digital the photographers "made their transport challenging" but they arrived at their destination safely.

The CW that audiences see when they tune in this fall won’t look like the CW of years past – but it also won’t look like the CW that new owner Nexstar actually intends to offer consumers moving forward.In a move similar to its broadcast competition, the CW released a fall schedule meant to be practically immune to the effects of the ongoing writers strike. It’s an acquisition-heavy lineup that’s a mix of comedies (Canadian sitcoms including “Children Ruin Everything” and “Run the Burbs”), dramas (former AMC series “61st Street”) and unscripted fare (the salvaged HBO Max hit “FBoy Island”). The only potential hiccup would be a strike-related production delay for “All American,” one of two CW shows that new network president Dennis Miller and entertainment president Brad Schwartz have decided to keep moving forward.As much as Schwartz doesn’t like the perception that there is anything wrong with an acquisition, he and Miller told Variety that isn’t the center of their scheduling strategy, but rather a path they had to take this first year because of production uncertainties.Here, Variety speaks with Schwartz and Miller about the network’s plans for adult dramas, programming to Black audiences following the success of “All American,” going hard on unscripted with “FBoy Island,” and the path to making the former Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery-owned channel profitable for Nexstar.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Appealing a conviction for two murders he insists he didn’t commit — while candidly, even proudly, admitting to multiple armed robbery charges — French activist turned criminal Pierre Goldman refuses to call any witnesses in his defense. “I’m innocent because I’m innocent,” he says flatly, rejecting the idea that testaments to his character and conduct have anything to do with it, and professing himself “disgusted” by courtroom pomp and theatricality. Except Goldman knows the power of fiery rhetorical speechifying when it suits him: In “The Goldman Case,” Cédric Kahn’s formally restrained but ultimately electrifying dramatization of a trial that gripped and divided France in 1976, that canny inconsistency is but one unexpected fold in a courtroom drama that finds equal intrigue in legal order and human chaos.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter ABC has ordered the drama “High Potential” starring Kaitlin Olson to series. The announcement was made ahead of the Disney upfront presentation in New York on Tuesday afternoon. The series order represents the first such order to come from ABC’s pilot crop this season. According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, the network’s other five pilots remain in contention at this time. The project now known as “High Potential” was originally ordered to pilot at ABC in September 2022, with Olson boarding the show in February. It is based on the French series “Haut Potentiel Intellectuel (HPI).”

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Principal photography has wrapped in Spain’s La Rioja region on Isabel Coixet’s romantic drama “Un Amor,” a tale of obsessive passion that forces the film’s protagonist to reconsider the woman she thought she was. The 2023 Goya actress winner Laia Costa (“Lullaby”) stars opposite Hovik Keuchkerian (“Money Heist”); Film Constellation handles world sales. A sales promo will be unveiled for buyers in Cannes.  Based on the best-selling novel by Sara Mesa, selected by influential Spanish newspaper “El PaÍs” as Spain’s 2020 Book of the Year and translated into 13 languages internationally, “Un Amor” turns on Nat (Costa), 30, a translator who escapes the big city to start anew in the countryside.

The writers strike may bring about a disturbance in the force. The current work stoppage already has disrupted the production of several TV series; Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian may join the last.

Bad Sisters has won the coveted Drama Series prize at the BAFTA TV Awards.

Showtime’s The Chi is the latest series whose production has been disrupted by the ongoing writers strike. According to sources, the hit drama, which is based in Chicago, filmed Friday morning before moving to another location, which had a picket line already in place.

Add another Starz series to the list of shows suspended as a result of the writers strike.

As “Yellowstone” prepares to end with its next series instalment in November, Luke Grimes promises viewers that the final episodes will be packed with juicy drama and themes of love and family.

Loot is the latest series to have production shut down.

Paramount+ has released first-look photos and an official title for Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming espionage thriller Special Ops: Lioness (fka Lioness), starring Nicole Kidman, Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira and Morgan Freeman.