‘The Sitting Duck’ Helmer Jean-Paul Salomé Talks Second Collaboration With Isabelle Huppert, Next Project, The Bureau Sales Unveils Fresh Deals (EXCLUSIVE)

David Cronenberg described his next film, The Shrouds, as a personal and partly autobiographical project, during a press conference at the San Sebastian film festival Wednesday.

When he’s not making films like “The Cabin In The Woods” or “Bad Times At The El Royale,” Drew Goddard puts his signature on TV shows of all kinds. And over the years, he’s left his mark on shows as diverse as “Alias,” “Lost,” “Daredevil,” and “The Good Place.” Now he looks to do it again with ABC and a pilot of a French detective series the network picked up the rights to last week.

The Palace has clarified the seating arrangement at the Queen's state funeral on Monday, after Prince Harry and his wife Meghan were seated behind King Charles and Camilla. Members of the royal family came together to say their final goodbyes to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey on Monday with the Queen's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in attendance.The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were seated behind King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla at the funeral, with some wondering why his brother William was on the other side.

Cameron Diaz is ready for her return to the spotlight!

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent It was a leap of faith. When Isabelle Huppert started working with Jean-Luc Godard on 1980’s “Every Man for Himself,” there wasn’t a script for her to consult. “There were only fragments of scenes, poems, songs and paintings,” she remembers. “I simply knew my name in the film was Isabelle.  But Godard was a legend at that point, having helped pioneer the French “New Wave” movement with the likes of “Breathless” and “Contempt” and then undertaken an even more daring and experimental phase in films such as “Weekend” and “Masculin Féminin.” Something about their partnership worked. “Every Man for Himself,” was a rare commercial success for the auteur, and marked a milestone in Godard’s career as the the first movie he presented in competition at Cannes and the first which was nominated at the Cesar Awards (France’s highest film honors). Huppert would reunite with Godard for his follow up movie “Passion,” another acclaimed film, presented him with an honorary Cesar Award in 1987. Godard died on Sept. 13 at the age of 91, and Huppert spoke with Variety about her artistic collaborations with the filmmaker and his legacy.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent ABC Signature, a part of Disney Television Studios, has acquired English language adaptation rights to TF1’s hit detective show “HIP (High Intellectual Potential).” The U.S. adaptation is currently in development, and a showrunner, writing team and cast will be announced at a later stage. The original series, created by Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, Stéphane Carrié and Nicolas Jean, and starring Audrey Fleurot (“Intouchables”) and Mehdi Nebbou (“Serial (Bad) Weddings”), has been one of the most successful French-language shows on French TV in the last 10 years. Produced by Mediawan-owned Septembre Productions, and Itinéraire Productions, a UGC company, the series has been sold to more than 105 territories and has garnered more than 175 million views globally to date. A Czech and Slovakian version have already been filmed for Nova and Markiza respectively and are expected to launch soon.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Franco-Swiss director and New Wave linchpin Jean-Luc Godard, who revolutionized world cinema with his ground-breaking debut, “Breathless,” and never stopped pushing the envelope of his creativity, has died. He was 91. The news was first reported in Liberation.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Pathé, which operates France’s leading cinema circuit, is planning to enter the Paris stock exchange in 2024, Variety has confirmed. The company’s president, Jérôme Seydoux, revealed the group’s long-gestated listing project in an interview with the French publication Les Echos. Seydoux said the company suffered a loss of approximately €100 million during the financial years 2020 and 2021, mainly due to the fact that theaters in France were shut down for a total of 300 days during the pandemic. While it ruffled feathers by selling “Coda” to Apple at Sundance in 2021 in a splashy $25 million deal, the company was one of the rare French studios which maintained its release plans for major local productions during the health crisis, for instance Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” with Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre Dame on Fire.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” won the Grand Prize of the Deauville American Film Festival on Saturday evening during a ceremony which was followed by the French premiere of Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling.” “Aftersun” had world premiered at Critics Week in Cannes where it won a prize. The movie marks the feature debut of Wells, a New York-based Scottish filmmaker. Headlined by “Normal People” actor Paul Mescal, the bittersweet drama follows a father and his daughter who take a holiday at a Turkish resort in the late 1990s. The movie is being represented in international markets by Charades and will be distributed in North America by A24.

Zac Efron and John Cena could be starring in a new movie together!

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent One of the film industry’s biggest growth sectors, the international location shoot scene, looks set to impact Toronto on Saturday at a Spain Film Commission breakfast. Among attractions tabled at the meet with Canadian producers will be Spain’s extraordinary landscapes and heritage sites and a new shoot incentive which ranks among the highest in the world.  From Jan. 1, 2023 Spain’s Bizkaia looks set to offer an up-to-70% tax credit for foreign and national shoots lensing in the Basque province. Notably, the incentive has no cap at all.  The tax break forms part of a ramp up of Spain’s big international shoot scene. “House of the Dragon” has returned to islet San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, “Game of Thrones’” Dragonstone. In general, foreign shoots are flocking to Spain, spending €263 million ($263 million) there in 2021, double the 2016-19 average, according to a study by the country’s ProFilm line producers assn. 

A change in plans. Duchess Camilla pulled out of an interview with Today‘s Jenna Bush Hager hours before Queen Elizabeth II died at age 96.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Les Films Pelleas, the Paris-based banner behind Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Fine Morning” (pictured), is set to produce Guillaume Senez (“Our Struggles”)’s next project, as well as the feature debut of Anne-Sophie Bailly whose short “The Midwife” is currently playing at Telluride. The Paris-based banner’s roster of completed roster includes Karim Moussaoui’s “L’Effacement,” and Annie Ernaux’s documentary “Les annes Super-8.” “Mona” revolves around around a woman in her 60’s who raised alone her disabled son and is at a point in her life where she aspires to start caring for herself. But when her son is unexpectedly having a baby, Mona finds herself with another heavy responsibility to bear.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iconoclast, the international production group behind Romain Gavras’ Venice competition film “Athena,” is setting a wide-ranging slate of projects with emerging filmmakers from different audiovisual fields, including Leo Berne from the artists collective Megaforce, and Elias Belkeddar and Said Belktibia from the collective Kourtrajmé. The company is also producing the next projects of Harmony Korine and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, among others. In a rare interview, Nicolas Lhermitte, who co-founded Iconoclast with Mourad Belkeddar, says the company has emerged from the pandemic with a record number of developed projects. “We took the opportunity during the pandemic to develop a lot of projects, and today we have around 30 projects in the pipeline, spanning films and series that are set up at our studios in France, the U.S. and Germany,” says Lhermitte, who adds that Iconoclast aspired to “accompany multi-disciplinary artists to venture from one field to another, films, TV series, branded content, and music videos.”

La syndicaliste red carpet at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.  The 69-year-old actress, who hails from Paris, cut a stylish figure in a black ribbed top and long skirt as she hit the red carpet.  The film, directed by Jean-Paul Salome, is 'a thriller investigation set in the world of nuclear power and politics,' according to IMDB.

Maureen Kearney’s story is unbelievable. It is a story of unbelief, in fact — of denial, cover-ups, corruption and injustice directed at a small woman who was just doing her job. She’s played with an electric stillness by the great Isabelle Huppert in Jean-Paul Salome’s Venice Film Festival Horizons title The Sitting Duck (La Syndicaliste). There are still plenty of people who openly doubt her story, including people on her own side of politics. Perhaps it would be easier all round if it weren’t true.

Naman Ramachandran Revered writer-director Paul Schrader is enjoying a late career renaissance, with “Master Gardener” being his third successive film to premiere at Venice after “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter.” The film follows Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), the conscientious horticulturist of the historic Gracewood Gardens estate, which is owned by wealthy dowager Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). When she demands that he take on her troubled biracial great-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) as an apprentice, Roth’s spartan existence turns chaotic. Schrader made Roth, a man with a past, a gardener because he felt that the profession is a “rich metaphor” for both good and evil. “On one hand, a white supremacist can say ‘We’re the gardeners, we pull out the weeds.’ On the other hand a humanist can say, ‘We’re gardeners, we help things grow.’ And both are using the gardening metaphor — one is evil and one is good,” Schrader told Variety.

Barbie Ferreira has joined the cast of the upcoming psychological thriller, Amazon Prime Video and Blumhouse Television announced on Monday. The casting news comes less than a week after Ferreira said she would not be returning for third season.  also stars Ariana DeBose, who plays an ambitious chef who «battles kitchen chaos, a dubious investor, crushing self doubts… and the powerful spirit of the estate's previous owner who threatens to sabotage her at every turn,» the film's press release reads.

Angelique Jackson Marvel Studios appears to be one step closer to finalizing plans for the highly anticipated “Fantastic Four” reboot, with news that “WandaVision” helmer Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the project, Variety has confirmed. At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige teased the movie, which is currently slated to debut on Nov. 8, 2024, revealing that “Fantastic Four” would kick off Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, news of who will play the superhero team — Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing — and their primary foe Doctor Doom remains a mystery. John Krasinski, who’s been a longtime fan favorite to play Mr. Fantastic, appeared as an alternate version of the character earlier this year in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but it’s unknown if the actor will reprise the role in this new movie.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paris-based Urban Sales has boarded Diego Lerman’s “The Substitute” (“El Suplente”) which will have its world premiere at Toronto followed by San Sebastian. “The Substitute” tells the story of Lucio (Minujín), a prestigious university professor who starts working as a substitute teacher at a high school in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, where he grew up. Through tales, novels and poetry, he tries to distract his class from the harsh reality of their everyday lives. But soon, he must step out of his professional duties when Dylan, one of his students, is threatened by a local drug kingpin. One of Argentina’s leading filmmakers, Lerman won this year’s Locarno’s Silver Leopard award for “Suddenly.” He’s best known for directing “A Sort of Family” which played at Toronto, won best screenplay at San Sebastian and was acquired by Netflix; as well as “Refugiado” and “Invisible” which played at Cannes’ Director’s fortnight in 2014 and 2010, respectively.  “The Substitute” marks his sixth feature.