Swedish True-Crime Series ‘The Dark Heart’ Sells To Topic & CBC Gem In North America

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefNew York-headquartered documentary distributor Icarus Films has picked up all North American rights to Hong Kong protest film “Blue Island.” The film plays this week at the HotDocs Documentary Festival in Toronto, Canada.Directed by Chan Tze Woon (“Yellowing”), the film confronts the large-scale protests in Hong Kong, describing events through a mix of documentary footage and filmed reenactments. The distributor has not yet elaborated release plans, but says that it is taking booking requests from museums, arts organizations, film festivals and theaters across North America.“A new wave of young people took back the streets, as one generation after another has done throughout Hong Kong’s history.

Lizzo is hitting the road for a North American tour!

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Hollywood actor and “Transformers” star Josh Duhamel will continue to promote his home state of North Dakota.North Dakota’s tourism agency confirmed Tuesday to The Associated Press that the star of several “Transformers” movies will be paid $75,000 to be the face of the state’s tourism campaign for the next two years.Duhamel already has earned more than $1 million since 2013 to help lure visitors to North Dakota, a state better known for its brutal cold weather than as a vacation destination.Duhamel is from Minot, a city in the north-central part of the state that’s about an hour’s drive from the United States border with Canada.Past campaigns have featured the former fashion model as just a regular guy doing everything from fishing and biking to attending college football and hockey games.

Stray Kids have announced the venues and dates for the North American leg of their upcoming world tour ‘Maniac’.As previously announced, Stray Kids will be kicking off the tour in Seoul, South Korea at the end of this month, before visiting Japan in May and the US in June and July, before returning to Tokyo at the end of the run. At the time, the group had also hinted that other cities would be added to the tour soon.Today (April 19), the boyband took to their social media accounts to share a new poster for the North American leg of the tour, along with additional details on venues, dates and ticketing.

EXCLUSIVE: Greenwich Entertainment has acquired North American rights to the gospel documentary Stay Prayed Up, which premiered to critical acclaim at the Telluride Film Festival and DOC NYC, for release in theaters on June 17.

Attorneys representing "Sweeny Todd" actor Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, "Aquaman" actress Amber Heard, accused both parties of abuse and manipulation in their opening statements Tuesday during Depp's defamation trial against Heard. Depp, 58, sued Heard, 35, for $50 million in 2019 over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post alleging she was the victim of domestic abuse.

EXCLUSIVE: Dark Star Pictures has acquired the North American distribution rights to The Passenger as part of its ongoing collaboration with Bloody Disgusting. Dark Star and Bloody Disgusting plan a theatrical release for the film on June 3, 2022 with the On Demand and DVD release to follow on June 28, 2022.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefRoku has picked up a second season of “Cypher,” an FBI-themed crime drama series, for which it was the exclusive North American carrier of the first seven-episode season.In territories outside the U.S. and Canada, the show is represented by Screen Media Ventures, which is launching it at the MipTV market this week.“Cypher” tells the story of an FBI code-breaking specialist who discovers a secret organization’s hit list and must navigate the murky waters of loyalty and betrayal among an underground ring of hackers, assassins, and government agents spanning a global conspiracy.Created by Mohamed Sayed Bisheer and directed by Majdi Smiri, the first season was shot in Los Angeles and produced jointly by Cairo-based Aroma Studios and United Brothers along with Los Angeles-based production companies AZ Films, Thriller Films and Taiwan’s Organic Media Group.

NEW YORK -- Richard Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet celebrated for his exuberant monologues of historical figures and a prolific translator who helped introduce readers to a wide range of French literature, has died at age 92.Howard, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, died Thursday at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York. His husband, David Alexander, told The Associated Press that he had dementia.Over a 50-year period, Howard’s poetry, essays and translations totaled well over 200 books and established him as a vital literary creator, commentator and interpreter.

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge users now need to update their browsers in order to protect themselves from hackers.

The true-crime phenomenon—documentaries, movies, documentaries, series, and everything in between—has obviously hit an absolute zenith in recent years. This inexorable truth would explain why HBO Max would bother rehashing the mysterious circumstances of the death of Kathleen Peterson with their new scripted series “The Staircase” from showrunners Antonio Campos and Maggie Cohen (“American Crime Story”)—there’s still so much meat on the bone.