Venice Gap-Financing Market Includes Projects by Jim Sheridan, Annemarie Jacir, Roberto Minervini

A host of famous actors have joined forces to show their support with striking US Hollywood stars including Succession’s Brian Cox, Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis, Channel 4 sitcom star Simon Pegg and Harry Potter's Imelda Staunton.

Bad news out of the Venice Film Festival: Variety reports that Luca Guadagnino‘s “Challengers” will no longer be the opening film on the Lido this year. What’s more, MGM/Amazon Studios have pushed back the tennis love triangle drama’s US theatrical release to next spring, too.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday. “The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The 80th Venice Film Festival has revealed its selection of projects for Venice Immersive, the XR-Extended Reality section of the festival, which runs Aug. 30 – Sept. 9. The program will include VR experience “Wallace & Gromit in the Grand Getaway” and a Fatboy Slim project. Venice Immersive is devoted to immersive media and includes all XR means of creative expression: 360° videos and XR works of any length, including installations and virtual worlds. The program, which will take place on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, will present 44 projects from 25 countries, and 24 works in the Worlds Gallery section. It will comprise:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Digital media and advertising company Yahoo tapped Tressie Lieberman, a marketing veteran from the fast-food biz, as its new CMO. Lieberman, who previously worked at brands including Chipotle, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, was selected for the post “following an extensive executive search process,” according to Yahoo. She will report directly to Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone. Lieberman is Yahoo’s first executive in the chief marketing officer role since 2015, when then-CMO Kathy Savitt exited the company (prior to Yahoo’s 2016 acquisition by Verizon and its subsequent spin-out in 2021). In Yahoo’s current incarnation, marketing functions had been dispersed under the business units and now it will be centralized under the new CMO role with Lieberman.

Piers Morgan Added To RTS Cambridge Lineup

“A Haunting in Venice” trailer puts the mystery-solver in the middle of a ghost story.Based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” the post-World War II story finds Poirot tasked with determining the validity of a psychic played by Michelle Yeoh, who claims she can talk to the dead. But when someone living turns up dead at the séance, Poirot is now faced with an even bigger challenge: find out if the murderer was a ghost.Branagh stars in and directs the film just as he pulled double duty on 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and 2022’s “Death on the Nile,” with another A-list ensemble cast that includes Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan Kelly Reilly, Kyle Allen, Camile Cottin, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird and Riccardo Scamarcio.Michael Green returns to write the screenplay, and the 20th Century Studios release was produced by Branagh, Judy Hofflund, Ridley Scott, and Simon Kinberg, with Louise Killin, James Prichard, and Mark Gordon serving as executive producers.Branagh reunites with cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos on the film, but works for the first time with Oscar-winning “Joker” composer Hildur Gudnadóttir.Watch the new “Haunting in Venice” trailer above.

The chilling trailer for 20th Century Studios’ “A Haunting in Venice” has arrived.

The full length trailer for A Haunting in Venice is finally here…and this might be the scariest detective Hercule Poirot film yet.

Even though last year’s “Death on the Nile” wasn’t nearly as much of a box office hit as 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” there’s no denying that quite a lot of people enjoy Kenneth Branagh’s adaptations of Agatha Christie mystery novels. And for the third adaptation, “A Haunting in Venice,” it appears Branagh is trying something a bit different—a horror film.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Film Festival will pay tribute to late Italian icon Gina Lollobrigida, who died in January, with a pre-opening event featuring a double bill of freshly restored works in which she stars. The Lido’s annual pre-opening event on Aug. 29 will feature a 27-minute short by Orson Welles titled “Portrait of Gina.” In 1968, Welles interviewed Lollobrigida in her villa on the Appian Way as the pilot for an ABC TV series — a U.S. version of “Around the World With Orson Welles”– that ABC rejected. Welles’ portrait of the diva remained in the vaults until 1986, when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival one year after Orson Welles’ death. This piece has been defined by Welles as a “personal essay” on Lollobrigida. Interestingly, when Lollobrigida saw “Portrait of Gina” in Venice in 1986, she reportedly tried to have it banned. The short’s restoration was done by the Munich Film Museum and Italy’s Cinecittà.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Seven films have been selected for the 11th edition of Final Cut in Venice, the works-in-progress section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. Final Cut in Venice, which runs Sept. 3-5, provides support for the completion of films from Africa and five Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. It is one of the programs run by the festival’s industry section, Venice Production Bridge. Over three days, the working copies of the selected films will be presented to producers, buyers, distributors, post-production companies and film festival programmers. The first two days are devoted to screenings, and then one-to-one meetings between the producers of the projects and the professionals attending the Venice Production Bridge will take place on the third day. The program will conclude with the awarding of prizes in kind or in cash, the purpose of which is to provide support for the films’ post-production.

So what film will win the coveted Golden Lion at the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival this year? Well, there’s no front-runner right now because festival director Albert Barbera hasn’t even anvnounced the in-competition line-up yet. But now we know who will choose the winners alongside jury head Damien Chazelle.

wouldn’t they do that?”  As of press time on Thursday, the studios’ festival gameplan is still unclear. Sources indicate there are ongoing discussions about pulling films from fall festivals entirely and moving their release dates. Alternately, if festival premieres are maintained, they’ll likely happen without the support of their actors. For Venice — a festival recognized for its mega-watt star power and glitzy red carpets — this is going to hurt.  “The titles around Venice are star-driven,” said one senior PR source. “You need the actor shots for Venice because there are famous photos of them coming in on the boats, and it’s such an important platform for future awards titles. A lot of the competition titles are director-driven, so it wouldn’t necessarily affect the films’ awards future, but it would lose some of that glamor,” the PR added.   A U.S.-based industry veteran predicted optimistically that, unlike the WGA strike, the actors strike could be resolved in as early as a few weeks, but that “it’s still going to be a total shit show at Venice and Toronto.”    “I wouldn’t want to be Alberto Barbera trying to put together the lineup right now,” they noted.   For Venice, it’s shaping up to be a wait-and-see situation. “We hope that, in the interests of the entire audio-visual industry, the parties will reach an agreement quickly,” the fest’s parent organization, the Venice Biennale, said in a statement. But the prospects that the SAG-AFTRA strike will subside before the Lido launches are grim. 

She’s not always been the luckiest in love, but perhaps inspired by her recent theatre stint in Shirley Valentine, Sheridan Smith may be embracing a new romance in her life – and she’s actually in Greece. Perfect, right?The actress shared a snap on her Instagram last week of her cosying up to stuntman Alex Anlos while filming new Paramount TV show The Castaways.

The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the names who will join Damien Chazelle on the main Competition jury of its 80th edition, running Aug 30 — Sep 9.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Jane Campion, Laura Poitras, Mia Hansen-Løve and Martin McDonagh are among high-caliber members of the Venice Film Festival’s main jury. The prominent directors, most of whom are Venice regulars – Poitras last year scored the Golden Lion with documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” – will be joined on the Venice jury panel by Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (“Wajib”); Chinese star Shu Qi (“The Assassin”); Italian director Gabriele Mainetti, who was at Venice last year with “Freaks Out”; and Argentinian auteur Santiago Mitre whose “Argentina, 1985” also launched from the Lido last year. They will join Damien Chazelle who – as previously announced – will serve as president of the Venice competition jury. 

Nicole Kidman is diving into «new territory» with creator Taylor Sheridan's latest Paramount+ series, Special Ops: Lioness.Inspired by a real-life U.S. military program, the series follows the life of Joe (Zoe Saldaña) while she attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA's spear in the war on terror.

Running for 12 seasons across as many years, there’s no denying that The Big Bang Theory is a fan-favorite TV show that still has a dedicated following in 2023.

After delivering a blisteringly saucy trailer, Luca Guadagnino’s latest film “Challengers” will set the Venice Film Festival ablaze as their opening night film, screening out of competition, TheWrap has confirmed. The film follows Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a successful tennis champ drawn to two men, played by Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.