Studiocanal Moves into Production in Italy by Forging Partnership With Elsinore Film (EXCLUSIVE)

Emilia Clarke is set to lead An Ideal Wife, the new film from Good Luck to You, Leo Grande director Sophie Hyde where she will play the Irish children’s author and Oscar Wilde’s wife, Constance Lloyd. 

is no stranger to reinvention, and for her October 24 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the singer-songwriter seems to have reinvented herself as . Swift's three-piece black-and-white chevron Dorothee Schumacher suit pairs boot-cut trousers with a tailored blazer over a mock-neck turtleneck. She paired the look with a cherry-red lip (natch), hoops, and chunky black boots. Swift's ‘fit is a note-perfect exemplar of a look Keaton perfected in the 1970s and has maintained throughout every decade since.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Cohen Film Collection is continuing its restorations of classic Merchant Ivory productions, among them 1963’s “The Householder,” the first film collaboration between Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. The classics label of Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection is lining up the restorations of four titles that also include the 1977 episodic romantic drama “Roseland,” with Teresa Wright and Christopher Walken, and two films directed by Merchant, “In Custody” (1994), featuring Shashi Kapoor, and “The Proprietor” (1996), starring Jeanne Moreau. Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist, says he chose “In Custody” – Merchant’s feature directorial debut — and “The Proprietor” in particular “because James Ivory was keen to have a rerelease of some of the films that were directed by Ismael Merchant himself.”

Italian director and screenwriter Saverio Costanzo has just wrapped his upcoming film Finalemente L’Alba, starring newcomer Rebecca Antonaci alongside international cast Lily James, Joe Keery, Willem Dafoe and Rachel Sennott.

Naman Ramachandran Bollywood action star Vidyut Jammwal (“Sanak”) is teaming with Arjun Rampal (“The Rapist”) and Jacqueline Fernandez (“Attack”) on extreme sports action film “Crakk – Jeethegaa Toh Jiyegaa!” The film, the journey of a man from the slums of Mumbai to the world of underground extreme sports, reunites Jammwal with his “Commando 3” director Aditya Datt. “Crakk” has started shooting in Poland and is scheduled to release in 2023. “Crakk” is presented by Reliance Entertainment and produced by Action Hero Films and PZ Pictures, with Jammwal and Parag Sanghvi serving as producers. It is co-produced by Adi Sharmaa and Aditya Chowksey.

Naman Ramachandran Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio will be presented with the European Film Academy’s Award for European Innovative Storytelling for his miniseries “Exterior Night.” The director will be guest of honor at the 35th European Film Awards ceremony on Dec. 10 at Reykjavik. In “Exterior Night,” Bellocchio returns to the case of the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978, a subject that he tackled in his feature film “Good Morning, Night,” for which he received the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2003 European Film Awards. The academy has also revealed nominations in several categories for the awards.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age drama The Fabelmans has been announced as the opening film of 44th Cairo International Film Festival, running from November 13 to 22.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s storied Titanus studio, producers of myriad golden era Cinema Italiano works, is getting a reboot and reviving its production side with several projects in development, including a contemporary sequel of Dario Argento’s supernatural chiller “Phenomena.”  Established in 1904 by Gustavo Lombardo, Titanus was a true Italian major, which during the 1960s forged a partnership with MGM. They slowed down considerably from the mid-1960s onwards after Luchino Visconti’s lavish Sicily-set costumer “The Leopard” (1963), starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, went way over budget. Since the mid-1980s the studio’s output has been on a much smaller scale, and primarily for TV.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Exports of Italian TV series and non-theatrical movies have more than doubled over the past five years thanks in part to the rise of local originals commissioned by streamers, just as investments in production of local scripted content are also increasing. That is the key finding of a report unveiled at Rome’s MIA market by Italy’s producers association APA, which estimates the total value of Italy’s TV exports in 2021 at roughly €100 million ($97 million). The total cost of all types of Italian TV and platform content produced in 2021 reached €1.4 billion ($1.36 billion) in 2021, which is a 37% increase compared with 2017, according to the APA report.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent On a cobblestone-paved square in the ancient town of Tivoli, north-east of Rome, in late September, a large crew is prepping to shoot a key scene in Italian period drama “La Storia,” which will be pubcaster RAI’s biggest event show next year. Based on a bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante – whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference – “La Storia” is set during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath in Italy. The eight-episode series, being unveiled by Beta Film to buyers at Rome’s MIA content market, stars Italian A-list actor Jasmine Trinca – who earlier this year was a member of the Cannes jury – as Ida, a single mother of two sons, who hides her Jewish heritage and fights against poverty and persecution.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Eric Welbers, who served as managing director of the production company NDF until the end of March, has set up the internationally focused content company Bravado Media, with headquarters in Munich. Bravado has acquired all of NDF’s shares in Italy’s Viola Film (an 80% stake), headed by Alessandro Passadore, and Belgium-based Bravado Fiction (also an 80% stake), headed by Jan Theys, and Welbers is increasing his stake in NDF Intl. Production, which he will continue to run together with Matthias Walter. The new company will make its first market appearance at next week’s trade fair for audiovisual content Mipcom in Cannes.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s David di Donatello Awards are launching an innovative ecological initiative under which they will monitor the environmental sustainability of productions in the running for the country’s top film prizes. The move is being touted as a first of this type by Davids organizers who are hoping it can become a game changer in prompting companies in Italy and across Europe to reduce the environmental impact of their film productions. To monitor the carbon footprint and other green aspects of movies submitted to the Davids, the organisation has forged a partnership with EcoMuvi, an Italian protocol that certifies a film production’s ecological sustainability from pre-product through post.

EXCLUSIVE: Studiocanal has boarded Borgen creator Adam Price’s Danish workplace comedy Orchestra and will be shopping the show at Mipcom Cannes, as TV series boss Françoise Guyonnet talks The Wicker Man and breaking down barriers between TV and film.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Production is underway in Italy on the Italian instalment of Prime Video’s global “Citadel” spy thriller franchise, produced by the Russo Brothers, with Matilda De Angelis cast as the lead. De Angelis, a rising Italian star, made her international breakthrough in Susanne Bier’s “The Undoing,” alongside Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. She more recently appeared with Liev Schrieber in the Ernest Hemingway adaptation “Across The River and Into The Trees,” directed by Paula Ortiz. The “Citadel” start-of-production in Italy and casting announcement was made at Rome’s MIA content market during an Amazon Studios panel.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Netflix has announced high-profile Italian original documentary series “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi,” written and directed by Britain’s Mark Lewis, who won an Emmy for the docu-series “Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer.” The streaming giant has also dropped a trailer for the docuseries, produced by British TV production company Raw. The show will premiere globally on Netflix on Oct. 20. The series is the latest probe into a case that started on June 22, 1983, when Emanuela Orlandi, a 15 year-old girl living in Vatican City, disappeared under mysterious circumstances that are believed to have involved the Vatican. The case made headlines around the world.

Hollywood no longer holds the same allure for top Italian film and TV talent as a result of Italy’s recent renaissance as a production hub, Fremantle exec Andrea Scrosati told a panel at Rome’s MIA market on Tuesday.

Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli gave a spirited and often humorous rundown of his career as a producer working with directors such as Luca Guadagnino and Paolo Sorrentino during a keynote talk at the London Film Festival Monday.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo have started shooting in Rome on “Dostoevskij,” an eclectic detective drama involving a policeman with a troubled past. This first TV series written and directed by the D’Innocenzo brothers – who are known on the festival circuit for dark dramas “Boy’s Cry,” “Bad Tales” and “America Latina” – is an in-house Sky Studios production produced by the Comcast-owned pay-TV player with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica.  Filippo Timi (“Vincere,” “The Eight Mountains”) stars as Enzo Vitello, a sharp detective with a troubled past, who winds up on the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Global porn icon Rocco Siffredi’s life will be depicted in the Netflix original series “Supersex,” but he’s claiming that the show will not be a realistic portrayal. “This beautiful story is inspired by my life, but it is not my life,” Siffredi said in an interview published over the weekend by Italy’s FQ Magazine. “Everything you will see in ‘Supersex’ originates from me, but then the writer put a lot of herself into it.” “Supersex” is created and written by prominent Italian screenwriter Francesca Manieri (“We Are Who We Are,” “L’Immensità”). It was described in a Netflix statement last week as “a profound story” that runs through Siffredi’s life “since childhood.” The show will look at Siffredi’s family, his origins, his relationship with love and “the starting point and the context that led him to embark on his path in pornography.”

Marilyn Stasio Theater Critic In a radical departure from his usual intellectually esoteric style, Tom Stoppard’s new play is an intensely personal family drama. “Leopoldstadt,” which takes its name from the Jewish quarter of Vienna, doesn’t concern itself with quantum mechanics, metaphysical mysteries, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or Fermat’s Last Theorem — all topics the playwright has tackled in previous plays. But because it follows the disintegrating fortunes of a close-knit Jewish family (and their goyish relatives by marriage), it does deal, in its way, with chaos theory.  The set (Richard Hudson, with a shout-out to the props team), costumes (Brigitte Reiffenstuel) and especially the lighting design (Neil Austin) bathe the first scene in an aura of domestic harmony. It’s 1899 and almost Christmas in Vienna. Everyone in the tastefully furnished Merz household appears to be approaching the 20th century with glad hearts. The family trade is prospering, the men are successful businessmen and academics, the women are smart and articulate and the children are well-behaved.