V Channels And Blairwood Entertainment Partner On Genre Film Slate — Cannes Market

Charna Flam Chef Andrew Zimmern’s Intuitive Content announced a co-production deal with branded production house HotDish Productions, to develop long-form branded content. Intuitive Content president Patrick Weiland and HotDish’s co-founders Amy Currie and Joshua Stenseth announced the partnership this week. “We’re whipping up a recipe that fuses our expertise in documentary-style filmmaking with HotDish’s specialization in branded capabilities,” said Weiland in a statement. “We’ve worked with brands like Marriott and Rémy Cointreau on branded content projects in the past, and we see our partnership with HotDish helping us to really expand our storytelling in the marketplace”.

We already know that Blumhouse loves a franchise. The micro-budget horror film company is always keen to turn a successful one-off film into a long-running feature franchise.

Marta Balaga Projeto Paradiso has announced in Cannes that Daniel Bandeira has won the Pop Up Film Residency Paradiso. The program is created exclusively for Brazilian professionals. Bandeira, currently developing “Red Express,” is also behind “Property”, which premiered at the Berlinale’s Panorama back in February. Born in Pernambuco, he has been a filmmaker since 2001, making his feature debut with “Peer Pressure.”  The three-week Pop Up Film Residency – carried out in partnership with Matthieu Darras of Tatino Films – will take place in the Faroe Islands in Denmark, with Jón Hammer of Kyk Pictures joining as local partner.

EXCLUSIVE: Indie distributor Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired Holistay, a horror genre feature from first-time director Mary Gallagher.

Christopher Vourlias A record number of African films are premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — including two titles in the main competition and four more in Un Certain Regard — promising a robust turnout on the Croisette from a continent that doesn’t often find itself being feted on world cinema’s grandest stage. Perhaps a more noticeable shift, however, has been taking place in and around the Palais des Festivals, where participants at the Cannes Market are opening their arms — and their checkbooks — to an industry just beginning to realize its potential. Witness the delegation of international film financiers, including Creative Wealth Media’s Jason Cloth and Convergent Media Capital’s Michael Cleaver, gathered on a recent, rainy morning to talk shop at a full house at the Pavillon Afriques. Or check the scene at the Palais des Festivals nearby, where three representatives of the Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) assembled at the Africa Pavilion (no relation) to discuss the bank’s billion-dollar fund for the cultural sector.

EXCLUSIVE: Metro International has sold UK and Irish rights to Carol Morley’s Typist Artist Pirate King to Modern Films. Deal was finalized this week in Cannes.

EXCLUSIVE: UK company Architect was recently founded by sales executives Calum Gray and Max Pirkis, together with Patrick Fischer and Richard Kondal of financier Creativity Capital.

EXCLUSIVE: Daisy Jelley, one of the stars of buzzy Cannes Film Festival debut How To Have Sex, Normal People and Red Election star Clinton Liberty, and The Witcher and Willow actress Niamh McCormack are among the rising Irish and British actors aboard for vampire horror Feed, which is being launched for the Cannes market.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s your first look at Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Vincent Cassel (La Haine) in action-thriller Damaged, which wrapped this spring in Scotland.

Anna Marie de la Fuente The Eternal Memory Chile, U.S. DIRECTOR: Maite Alberdi Alberdi’s follow-up to Oscar- nominated “The Mole Agent” snagged Sundance’s top doc award and a worldwide distribution deal with MTV at Sundance. Co-produced by Fabula, it centers on a loving elderly couple struggling with the man’s fading memory.  The Cardinal (“El Cardenal”) Chile, Argentina, Brazil

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features Boy George, lead singer of Culture Club, was synonymous with 1980s pop culture. Following a string of ubiquitous international radio hits such as “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” and “Karma Chameleon,” the Grammy-winning singer embarked on a solo career, with his recording of “The Crying Game” punctuating Neil Jordan’s Academy Awarding-winning film of the same name. A steady fixture on reality shows as host of “The Voice Australia” and “The Voice U.K.,” Boy George is hitting the big screen, playing himself in Arclight Films’ comedy adventure “Arthur’s Whiskey,” starring Oscar-winner Diane Keaton, David Harewood (“Homeland,” “Blood Diamond”) and legendary Scottish recording artist Lulu. Arclight Films is handling worldwide rights to “Arthur’s Whiskey,” directed and co-written by Stephen Cookson. Arclight Films is selling the pic at the Cannes market. 

EXCLUSIVE: Normal People and Where the Crawdads Sing star Daisy Edgar-Jones is the latest star attached to Oscar winner Ron Howard’s next movie Origin Of Species, which is a hot project at the Cannes market.

EXCLUSIVE: UK production company Mad As Birds (MAB) — best known for pics such as Six Minutes to Midnight, POMS, The Vanishing, and The Almond And The Seahorse — has landed a major cash injection from a private investor as it sets out a diverse slate of projects for the Cannes market.

EXCLUSIVE: New Europe Film Sales has unveiled fresh deals for Danish director Ulaa Salim’s sci-fi drama Eternal.

EXCLUSIVE: Palisades Park Pictures (PPP) will be representing global sales for action-thriller Duchess from director Neil Marshall (Hellboy).

Diane Lane (Man Of Steel), Kyle Chandler (The Wolf Of Wall Street), Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid’s Tale), Zoey Deutch (Zombieland Double Tap), Phoebe Dynevor (Bridgerton), Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters), and Daryl McCormack (Good Luck To You, Leo Grande) have been set as the starry cast of thriller Anniversary.

Naman Ramachandran Juno-winning and Grammy-nominated Canadian pop singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes’ original song “Something Big” will feature on the soundtrack of upcoming 3D animated family feature, “Butterfly Tale.” Montreal and Madrid-based international sales and distribution company Pink Parrot Media will represent the film at the upcoming Cannes film market. “Butterfly Tale” is set along the diverse, picturesque, and ever-changing backdrop of the great Monarch butterfly migration. It tells the tale of Patrick, a gutsy and loveable yet inept, one-winged butterfly who stows away in a milkweed trailer in order to be part of the journey of a lifetime. With his best friend, a goofy caterpillar named Marty, and Jennifer, a butterfly who is afraid of heights, Patrick becomes an unlikely hero. But first, he must face his fear, embrace his uniqueness and triumph over adversity while battling changing weather patterns, humans and three evil birds bent on revenge.

EXCLUSIVE: Cinephil has come aboard to represent worldwide sales rights to Polish director Maciek Hamela’s In The Rearview, which will make its debut in the Cannes Film Festival next week as part of the ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) program. 

EXCLUSIVE: Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley is going sky-scraping again as we can reveal she is set to star in vertiginous action-thriller Cleaner from Casino Royale and GoldenEye filmmaker Martin Campbell.

EXCLUSIVE: As all of the Cannes packages start to trickle through ahead of the big event on the Croisette next week, an early frontrunner in the hot package game is Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Negga starrer Night Boat to Tangier. Oscar-winning director James Marsh is directing the project, based on the novel of the same name from Kevin Barry’s New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year.