Venice Opener ‘Comandante’ Scores U.S. Distribution (EXCLUSIVE)

Zack Sharf Digital News Director John Williams recently told The Times UK that he’s not ruling “anything out” when it comes to staying retired from film scores. The five-time Oscar winner turns 92 years old on February 8. Back in June 2022, Williams teased his retirement by telling the Associated Press that his work on “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” would probably be his last.

Jon Burlingame Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX series “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” boasts one of the greatest casts of the TV season. But it has also broken new ground on the music side: a father-daughter team providing the musical score.

American Symphony, the Obamas-executive produced documentary about Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste, scored a remarkable hat trick today as the Oscar shortlists were revealed, but a couple of documentary icons were left on the bench.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Roberto Benigni, whose film “Life Is Beautiful” won three Oscars in 1999, has come out of the woodwork to support Matteo Garrone’s Golden Globe-nominated “Io Capitano,” which is Italy’s current Oscar candidate for best international feature film. The revered yet reclusive Italian actor/director, whose most recent big screen role is playing Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s hit 2019 live-action adaptation of “Pinocchio,” is clearly a big fan of “Io Capitano” (the title translates to “Me Captain”). The movie narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe.

Naman Ramachandran Fremantle has acquired the international distribution rights for Sky original documentary “Zuckerberg: King of the Metaverse” from Rogan Productions. The feature documentary unveils Mark Zuckerberg’s journey from Harvard student to founder and CEO behind one of the biggest social media platforms in the modern world – Facebook, which is now Meta.

Naman Ramachandran Bohemia Media will release “Memory” across U.K. and Ireland cinemas from Feb. 9, 2024.

The Buffalo Bills took the Dallas Cowboys to task on Sunday, easily topping Week 15 of the NFL regular season.

Marta Balaga European TV powerhouses ZDF Studios and France TV Distribution are partnering as producers on Berlin-based Boogie Entertainment’s new crime drama “Blood Red Thread.” Set in the “glamorous and cutthroat” world of fashion, the six-part series – also described as “stylish, witty and outrageous” – will expose various challenges the industry is facing, all the while following businessmen who rule the boardroom and clash with “divas of design,” both battling for power. Filming will take place in the U.K., France and Germany, with delivery scheduled for August 2025.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabian thriller “Mandoob,” about a struggling man who becomes an illegal booze runner, beat “Wonka” over the weekend to top the Saudi box office chart while also scoring the biggest opening to date for a local film in the territory. The groundbreaking Saudi movie, which world-premiered positively in Toronto in September – and more recently bowed regionally at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah – tallied 114,000 admissions and a $1.58 million gross box office intake following its Dec.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Discovery-owned Eurosport has acquired streaming rights in 54 countries to Olympic refugee documentary “We Dare to Dream” by Waad Al-Kateab, the Oscar-nominated Syrian director of “For Sama.” “We Dare to Dream” is the story of the refugee Olympic team that competed at the 2020 games in Tokyo, which featured stateless athletes from Iran, Syria, South Sudan and Cameroon who swim, run and fight their way to safety in host nations across the world. It’s told through the personal prism of Al-Kateab while she is coming to terms with the reality that she can never return to Aleppo, where she shot “For Sama.” The doc premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June and had an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run at New York City’s IFC Center in October.

Jon Burlingame Ninety-four songs and 149 scores have been deemed eligible in the music categories for the 96th annual Academy Awards, Variety has learned. Voting began this morning, with 390 members of the Academy music branch eligible to vote in this year’s competition.

tackled the sensational congressional hearings of December 5, when New York’s Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents of MIT, Harvard and UPenn — who all refused to condemn students calling for the genocide of Jews on their campuses. A worthy topic, but a disastrous, embarrassing rendering: “SNL” came out swinging — on the side of antisemitism.The sketch’s target wasn’t the university presidents, who failed so spectacularlyat the Capitol Building that Liz Magill of UPenn has already quit and critics are clamoring for Harvard’s Claudine Gay and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth to tender their own resignations.Instead, “SNL” writers turned their poison pens on Stefanik, who actually trounced the three in a public beating like we haven’t seen since Ivan Drago killed Apollo Creed onscreen back in ’85.

Fans were absolutely shocked to learn that the hit ABC drama Station 19 will be coming to an end after the upcoming seventh season.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based Women Make Movies (WMM) has acquired U.S. rights for Palestinian Oscar entry Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem.

Peacock has renewed its action-comedy series Twisted Metal—and no, we’re not clowning around.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “The Summer With Carmen,” Zacharias Mavroeidis’ queer comedy, has been acquired in major territories since world premiering at the Venice Film Festival. The movie, which is represented by Be For Films and had its North American premiere at AFI, recently won three prizes at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. It will be released next year by Cinobo in Greece, Epicentre in France and Xenix Filmdistribution in Switzerland.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Iraqi director Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji — who in 2022 won the Red Sea Film Festival‘s top prize with “Hanging Gardens” — will next direct black comedy ”Madness and Honey Days,” in which an audacious theatre director offends Saddam Hussein on stage and winds up in a psychiatric hospital to avoid a punishment of tongue-cutting followed by the death sentence. Segueing from “Hanging Gardens,” in which a 12-year-old boy finds a discarded American sex doll amid the Baghdad trash and then becomes caught in military crossfire, Al-Daradji is continuing to work with tropes that stem from the absurdities and atrocities of his home country’s recent past.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Dubai-based distributor Front Row Filmed Entertainment has acquired Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region distribution rights to groundbreaking Saudi drama “Norah,” which world premiered in competition at the Red Sea Film Festival. Directed by pioneering Saudi director Tawfik Alzaidi, making his feature film debut, “Norah” is set in 1990s Saudi Arabia, when conservatism was at its height and all forms of art and painting were banned for religion-related reasons.

Caroline Brew editor Alecia Christina Dixon-Kurschner, a television distribution executive, died on Nov. 23 after a battle with ovarian cancer. She was 60.

Alecia Dixon-Kurschner, a TV distribution executive who held senior positions at MGM, Miramax and Starz before becoming an independent consultant several years ago, died of ovarian cancer at her home in the Minneapolis suburb of Excelsior, Minnesota, Nov. 23. She was 60.