RAI Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Naman Ramachandran Bruce Dern will star alongside Nepali cinema stalwarts Dayahang Rai and Hari Bansha Acharya in Binod Paudel’s “The World’s Happiest Man.” The story delves into the plight of Bhutanese-Nepali refugees who settled in the Ohio-Pennsylvania area and fought alienation and displacement. Paudel’s “Bulbul” was chosen as Nepal’s entry in the Oscars’ international category in 2019. He won best director at Nepal‘s National Film Awards, where he had previously won the screenplay award for “Saanghuro” (2013).

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian state broadcaster RAI is under heavy fire amid allegations that it censored a planned anti-fascist monologue by prominent writer Antonio Scurati, author of international bestseller “M: Son of the Century,” which reconstructs fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. Scurati was meant to read his monologue – written to mark the country’s upcoming April 25 national holiday that celebrates Italy’s liberation from fascism – on the talk show “Chesarà,” which aired on the broadcaster’s RAI 3 channel Saturday night.

Callum McLennan Gabriel Guevara, the breakout star of the huge hit film saga “My Fault” (“Culpa Mía”) on Amazon Prime Video, is now set to lead Atresplayer‘s new series, “Mar afuera.” This project marks a significant collaboration between Atresmedia TV and Beta Fiction Spain, taking on the adaptation of the smash Italian series “Mare Fuori,” (“The Sea Beyond”) which added 300,000 new subscribers to RAI Play when Season 3 launched, and sold to over 20 territories. The eight-episode series follows the life of Álvaro, played by Guevara, a young seventeen year old from an affluent background whose life spirals after an accident finds himself in a juvenile detention center.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Ed Westwick (“Gossip Girl”), John Hannah (“The Mummy”) and British newcomer Alanah Bloor are set to join Turkish lead Can Yaman in “Sandokan,” Lux Vide’s reboot of the cult Italian TV series about the adventures of its titular pirate who, with his motley crew, fights against colonial powers in Southeast Asia. Shooting is set to start April 22 outside Rome on this high-end reboot of Italian writer Emilio Salgari’s exotic epic.

EXCLUSIVE: It was on the set of Sky and HBO’s We Are Who We Are where Lorenzo Mieli asked Francesca Manieri, a feminist screenwriter, to pen a TV series about Rocco Siffredi, the infamous hardcore porn star. Initially, she could barely believe it. “I laughed,” she recalls. “I was sure he was joking.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario’s directorial debut “Gloria!” has scored a slew international sales ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival competition. RAI Cinema International Distribution has sealed deals to nine territories on Vicario’s vibrant musical comedy set in a late 18th century Venetian female orphanage where a young rebel named Teresa leads a group of performers to challenge classical canons and invent a precursor to pop music.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian state broadcaster RAI’s RAI Cinema film arm is launching a new standalone film sales unit at the European Film Market. The nascent sales company — which is called RAI Cinema International Distribution — aims to fill a gap within RAI’s content sales force given that RAI’s existing RAI Com sales unit is “mostly dedicated to TV product,” said RAI Cinema CEO Paolo Del Brocco.

EXCLUSIVE: The Sea Beyond stars Giacomo Giorgio and Serena de Ferrari are among several Italian actors who have boarded Rai’s ambitious opera drama Bel Canto, which went into production this week.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Beta Film has announced a half-dozen sales to European public broadcasters on high-end period drama “La Storia,” which is Italian pubcaster RAI’s biggest event show of the year and is world premiering at the Rome Film Fest. The sweeping eight-episode saga, set in Italy during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath, is based on a globally bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante, whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran RAI exec Adriano De Maio has been trying to shake things up at the Italian state broadcaster since last May, when he was appointed head of film and drama. To contend with the unstoppable disruption caused by digital and streaming in Italy’s TV landscape, De Maio is trying to steer RAI toward programming that provides more cultural enrichment, while also catering to the youth demographic that drives traffic on the pubcaster’s RAI Play streaming platform — which has more than 23 million subscribers, way more than Netflix’s Italian customer base. As RAI faces possible budget cuts due to the government’s decision to lower its license fee [RAI’s current allocation for film and TV series was not immediately available], De Maio sat down with Variety in Rome to discuss his vision for the scripted content he’d like RAI to acquire for its viewers.

Thousands of people have marched through the centre of Belfast as part of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Sky Italia is launching a high-profile documentary series with international ambitions titled “The Overlooked Serial Killer,” reconstructing a true-crime case that has gripped millions of Italians. The documentary investigates the connection between Elisa Claps, an Italian teenager who disappeared in 1993, and Heather Barnett, a British woman whose mutilated body was found in Bournemouth in 2002.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Broadcasters in France, Germany and Italy have joined forces on “The Emperor’s Stone: The Search of La Buse’s Treasure,” a family adventure series which will be produced under the Alliance, a partnership formed in 2018 by leading European pubcasters to finance ambitious, internationally-driven series. Commissioned by France Télévisions, ZDF and RAI, “The Emperor’s Stone: The Search of La Buse’s Treasure” won the call for projects launched in 2022 by the Alliance.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Bille August, the two-time Palme d’Or winning director of “Pelle the Conqueror,” is directing a sprawling English language series adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” starring an international cast led by Sam Claflin (“Peaky Blinders”). “The Count of Monte Cristo” marks the first series which is entirely produced within Mediawan and represented by its distribution arm Mediawan Rights.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian distribution and production company Notorious Pictures is expanding into the TV series sphere by snapping up rights to buzzy literary property “Forbidden Notebook,” a 1952 novel by Italian-Cuban writer Alba de Céspedes that has been recently rediscovered and successfully republished in English. De Céspedes has been described by the New York Times as “a bestselling novelist and political activist in her native Italy” admired for her sensitive depictions of women whose recently rediscovered work “has lost none of its subversive force.” She is considered a source of inspiration for Elena Ferrante, the Italian writer with legions of fervent fans around the world and whose four “Neapolitan Novels” have been adapted into the long-running “My Brilliant Friend” TV series by Italy’s RAI and HBO.

Naman Ramachandran Nabin Subba‘s “A Road to a Village” is a stark look at the damaging effects of galloping modernization in rural Nepal. The film had its world premiere at Toronto and is playing at the Busan International Film Festival in the ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ strand. Subba is a renowned chronicler of societal change in Nepal and his previous work includes “Numafung” (2001), which won an award at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema, “Goodbye Kathmandu” (2017) and documentary series “Dalan” (2008).

Naman Ramachandran A first clip has been unveiled for Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s return to feature film direction, “Dear Jassi.” Dhandwar, the filmmaker previously known simply as Tarsem, returned to the big screen and to his roots with the film which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, where it won the 2023 TIFF Platform Award in an unanimous decision. Written by Amit Rai (“OMG 2”) and based on the reporting of journalist Fabian Dawson, “Dear Jassi” is a modern-day tragedy inspired by the tragic true story of Jaswinder “Jassi” Kaur and Sukhwinder “Mithu” Singh Sidhu, told in a Punjabi folk style. In 1996 Punjab, India, Canadian-born Jassi (Pavia Sidhu) falls in love with Mithu (Yugam Sood), a rickshaw driver beneath her social status.

AI is at the center of a new Italian primetime comedy show.

Naman Ramachandran Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, the filmmaker previously known simply as Tarsem, is returning to the big screen and to his roots with “Dear Jassi,” which has its world premiere Toronto Film Festival Sept. 10. The new film is set in the 1990s and based on a real-life incident.

EXCLUSIVE: Italian production and distribution stalwart Lucky Red is teaming with local pubcaster Rai on drama series Belcanto, about the roots of opera in Italy.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Giuliano Montaldo, the prolific Italian director, actor and film industry executive, whose works comprise powerful political drama “Sacco and Vanzetti” about the Massachusetts trial and execution in 1927 of accused Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

Marta Balaga Maura Delpero’s second feature “Vermiglio, the Mountain Bride” – which is being presented at the Venice Production Bridge, the industry program of the Venice Film Festival, this week – has tapped Giuseppe De Domenico as its lead. The Italian actor, known for “Zero Zero Zero” and Prime Video’s “Bang Bang Baby,” will play Pietro, a young soldier who in 1944 arrives in a small mountain village in Trentino, northern Italy. As declared by the film’s tagline, change is around the corner: “Last year of World War II.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “The Sea Beyond,” the Naples-set prison drama that has become a pop culture phenomenon in Italy, has been bought by U.S. streamer MHz Choice for North America.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Eleonora Andreatta, Netflix’s VP of Italian originals who oversees the streaming giant’s local output of series, movies, and non-scripted shows, will receive the ITTV International Award during the Venice Film Festival from the Los-Angeles based Italian Television Festival. Affectionately known as Tinny, Eleonora Andreatta has long been a fundamental figure in Italian scripted content production.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Franco-Tunisian film and TV entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar is expanding the scope of his Italian operations by buying local unscripted production outfit Blu Yazmine, while also entering talks to build a large studio complex in Rome. Though Ben Ammar’s ambition to build sprawling new filming facilities in the Italian capital are in advanced talks but not fully concrete, the purchase of a majority stake in Blu Yazmine via his Rome-based Eagle Pictures has been closed.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent An underhanded move by members of Italy’s right-wing government to try and take over the management of Rome’s Centro Sperimentale Film School is prompting an uproar by its students and a strong show of support from the country’s top directors. Earlier this week, students of the Centro Sperimentale — which is the oldest film school in the world, and among the finest — staged a demonstration in front of the country’s parliament just as a piece of legislation that would change the school’s management was swiftly being approved by a parliamentary committee.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Beta Film has sold more than 100 hours of drama series to PBS Distribution-backed Walter Presents for the U.S., and Channel 4-backed Walter Presents for the U.K. Five seasons of Italy’s gritty crime series “Rocco Schiavone” as well as Canadian mystery dramas “The Wall – The Chateau Murder” and “The Wall – The Orchard” will be available in both territories.

State Italian broadcaster Rai has axed a factual organized crime series by Gomorrah creator Roberto Saviano out of the blue, prompting accusations of political interference.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Matteo Garrone, who is a two-time Cannes jury prizewinner with “Gomorrah” in 2008 and “Reality” in 2012, is set to be in competition in Venice for the first time with his immigration-themed drama “Io Capitano.” Shot over 13 weeks in Senegal, Italy and Morocco with a cast of non-professional actors, the Italian auteur’s new film – the title for which translates to “I Captain” – narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe. It depicts their plight through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.

Deadline can reveal a first clip for Italian director Saverio Costanzo’s new film Finally Dawn (Finalemente L’Alba) following the announcement on Tuesday of its world premiere in Competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival.

Julia MacCary editor Through TikTok’s rise and the now-looming threat of its being banned — many states have some kind of ban on the app already — the social platform has undeniably made people laugh and, inadvertently, ushered in a new generation of comics. Providing short-form video content where the talent is at the steering wheel, they are free to post as much as they want (within the app’s guidelines), and their reach is subject only to the ever-present yet still unknown algorithm. For some TikTok stars, the app has allowed them to chase their artistic dreams. For others, it has helped them unlock a dormant skill and uncover a new path into the industry. DeMarcus Shawn (@artbydemarcusshawn) started making TikTok videos after he left his job at Starbucks. As his TikToks gained traction amid the pandemic, his search for a new job ended and TikTok became his career, he tells Variety over coffee in Chicago after kindly greeting a fan who recognized him. Being a public figure is still a weird feeling he admits, having now amassed a following of over six million on the platform.