Taiwan Showcases Homegrown Talent, Potential as Co-Production Hub at TIFF Industry

Christopher Vourlias Production is underway in Romania and Hungary on the new HBO Max Original “Spy/Master,” a spy drama series set during the height of the Cold War that will star British Independent Film Award-nominated actor Alec Secăreanu (“God’s Own Country,” “RUXX”). The 6 x 50’ series, which was the winner of HBO’s national screenwriting competition in Romania, marks one of the streaming service’s final productions from Central and Eastern Europe. As Variety first reported in July, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery will no longer produce originals for HBO Max in the Nordics (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland), Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, and will also remove some content from its platform in order to free up licensing deals elsewhere.

Oscar-winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has lined up his next project – a documentary on the late groundbreaking hip hop producer J Dilla (James Dewitt Yancey).

“Lethal Weapon 5” has already had a major tragic delay, with original director Richard Donner passing away in 2021. But now lead star and new director Mel Gibson claims another issue holds up the movie: the Warner Bros.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Columbia Pictures and local developer Amazon Falls have confirmed that their Aquaverse theme park will open in Pattaya, Thailand on Oct 12, 2022. The development is the Sony Group’s first theme and water park and was delayed for roughly a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. With Thai authorities having already dismantled most of their pandemic-era measures and poised to soon drop COVID from its list of notifiable diseases (expected to happen on Oct. 1) multiple large entertainment projects are now rushing to open. Carnival Magic opened in Phuket earlier this week, while another, Bangkok World, is expected to open adjacent to the Siam Amazing Park on the outskirts of the Thai capital on Nov. 25, 2022.

9-1-1: Lone Star. Ready as ever to be getting back into the swing of things is Rob Lowe, and he brought out a dad joke to prove that he fits the parental role both on screen and off. And of course, his real-life sons couldn’t help but to call him out for it.

EXCLUSIVE: Tony Award-nominee Tovah Feldshuh (Funny Girl, The Walking Dead) has joined the cast of Amazon’s , Deadline has learned. She will portray the character of Bat Lady who is described as a wraith-like recluse who gives Mickey (Jaden Michael) an ominous disturbing piece of news.

Naman Ramachandran HBO Max in Hungary will stream a local version of hit survival reality format “The Bridge.” The competition sees participants tasked with building a 250-metre-long bridge to an island for the chance to win a large cash prize. Presented by Csaba Magyarósi, “The Bridge Hungary” is produced locally by Free Monkeys Production. This is the sixth adaptation of the format, which was created in Spain by Zeppelin, part of Banijay Iberia and has U.K., Brazil and Australia versions.. Banijay Rights struck multiple deals for the U.K. version with broadcasters in the Netherlands and across Africa and Latin America. The U.K. series also aired on HBO Max in the US, Latin America, and Asia.

Taipei Houston – the band comprising Myles and Layne Ulrich, sons of Metallica drummer Lars – have announced their debut album.The Ulrich brothers announced the formation of their band in the summer of 2021, and played their first gig together in Long Beach, California last September.On November 4, they will release debut album ‘Once Bit Never Bored’ via C3 Records. Today (September 14), it is being previewed by new single ‘The Middle’.The track follows the band’s debut single ‘As The Sun Sets’, which was shared earlier this year.Of their new band, the brothers said in a statement: “To us, Taipei Houston is about going against the grain in every aspect.

EXCLUSIVE: UTA’s unscripted television department is getting a new agent.

tickets will be available from here.The Swedish pop artist will hit the road in February 2023 in support of her fourth studio album ‘Hard’, which came out this June via RCA/Sony Music.Kicking off at Patterns in Brighton on February 2, the upcoming stint will also include stop-offs in Birmingham (February 3), Glasgow (4), Dublin (6) and Manchester (7).Styrke’s 2023 UK/Ireland tour will conclude with a performance at Lafayette in north London on February 9.Tickets are due to go on general sale at 10am BST this coming Thursday (September 15).

Joe Otterson TV Reporter HBO roared back to the top of the Emmy Awards, with the premium cabler and its streaming counterpart, HBO Max, topping the total awards haul for 2022. HBO/HBO Max picked up 38 Emmys in total, doubling their 19 wins in 2021. HBO took home multiple awards in the limited series category thanks to “The White Lotus'” 10 wins, with Mike White winning for both best writing and directing. Those wins were coupled with “The White Lotus” stars Jennifer Coolidge and Murray Bartlett’s wins for best supporting actress and actor in a limited series. To close out the night, “The White Lotus” ultimately won best limited series while “Succession” won best drama series.

Naman Ramachandran Sri Lanka’s Vimukthi Jayasundara and Guatemala’s César Díaz, winners of the Cannes Golden Camera for “The Forsaken Land” (2005) and “Nuestras madres” (2019) respectively, are among the recipients of the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) of the International Film Festival Rotterdam‘s (IFFR) HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production Support scheme for 2022. Out of 25 applications, six projects by filmmakers from Argentina, Egypt, Guatemala, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Yemen have been awarded a contribution of €60,000 ($60,854) each through their European co-producers in Austria, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Jayasundara is supported for “Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars” (France/Sri Lanka, House on Fire), set on a mysterious resort where the protagonist must quarantine and reckon with his past on his return to Sri Lanka, while Díaz gets it for “Fidelidad” (Guatemala/Belgium, Lemming Film Belgium), a love triangle set on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.

The Black Tape Project, an unconventional sartorial initiative dreamt up by self proclaimed body tape “pioneer” Joel Alvarez. The so-called “King Of Tape” premiered his latest line of tape-based swimwear at the Angel Orensanz Center in Manhattan Sunday night, mesmerizing audiences with his minimalist designs.This latest display went even skimpier than usual — with the spartan black-and-white swimsuits barely concealing the models’ nether regions like live action censor bars.One of the models bodies’ was crisscrossed with spike-studded black tape — a salacious take on the dog collar design– with black X’s acting as pasties.

Christopher Vourlias It was as early as 2010, as he likes to tell it, when Polish animator and visual artist Tomasz Bagiński lobbied his friend Andrzej Sapkowski to make a movie. Sapkowski is the author of “The Witcher” series of fantasy novels, and Bagiński — already Oscar-nominated for his short film “The Cathedral” — had dreams of taking the series to the big screen. Among the project’s early boosters was Platige Image, the Polish animation, VFX and post-production studio that Bagiński joined in 2004. When Netflix swooped in to acquire the rights to “The Witcher” in 2017, the company was tapped to executive produce alongside L.A.-based Hivemind. The Polish studio also became one of several houses to handle special effects for the series, earning an Emmy nomination for its VFX work on what has gone on to become one of Netflix’s biggest international hits.

Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliff) is a curly-haired, awkward kid with no friends and no excitement in his life. Until one day when he ends up at a turnt-up polka party where he wow’s the party crowd by shredding on the accordion. His parents, Mary and Nick Yankovic (Julianne Nicholson and Toby Huss), disapprove of him playing, and his relationship with them becomes strained.

's latest episode will be reworked by HBO after eagle eyed fans spotted a significant visual effects error, sharing the moment far and wide on social media. In the prequel's third episode, titled «Second of His Name,» King Viserys (Paddy Considine) — who is missing two fingers on his left hand — is seen wearing highly visible green tape around those digits to have them digitally removed in post production. The mistake will be corrected, according to, with an edited version of the episode going to streaming platforms this week. Not the green screen glove on Viserys’s missing fingers

Emiliano De Pablos Seismic shifts in the world’s entertainment industry have thrown a global spotlight on Spain’s film and TV industry as never before. Foreign productions are flocking to Spain, spending €263 million ($266 million) in 2021, double the 2016-19 average, according to a ProFilm study. International inward investment in national productions has also grown on an unprecedented scale. All the big streamers have beached in Spain. Reed Hastings cut the tape on Netflix’s first European Production Hub, in Madrid’s Tres Cantos, in 2019. Viacom Intl. Studios (VIS) EMEA and Asia and AMC Networks Intl. Southern Europe have set up production operations in Spain. Other players — Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and Starzplay — run offices in the country.