Wattpad Webtoon and Italy’s Leone Film Group to Adapt Hit Teen Novels ‘The Locker Exchange,’ ‘Love Me, Love Me’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Gabriele Mainetti, known internationally for genre-bending titles “They Call Me Jeeg” and “Freaks vs. the Reich,” is shooting a kung fu movie set in Rome’s multi-ethnic Piazza Vittorio quarter. Cameras have just started rolling in Rome on Mainetti’s yet-to-be titled third feature that will see him riff on martial arts movie tropes, following his fresh takes on a 1970 Japanese cartoon series in “Jeeg,” and then on the Nazi hunter film genre in “Freaks.”   Vision Distribution will be launching sales on the film at the Cannes Marché du Film.

A roller-coaster journey. Lala Kent had plenty of thoughts about the Vanderpump Rules content filmed after Raquel Leviss and Tom Sandoval‘s cheating scandal broke — and it doesn’t seem like any of them were positive.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Emmy Award-winning director Adam Bernstein (“30 Rock,” “Fargo,” “Better Call Saul”) is set to helm new Prime Video Italy original “Costiera,” an English-language action drama set on Italy’s iconic Amalfi Coast. The high-end show is being co-produced by Amazon Studios and Luca Bernabei for Lux Vide, the prominent Italian company behind financial thriller “Devils” that is owned by Fremantle. Though production on “Costiera” is set to start on location this summer, the international cast is being kept under wraps. Under a highly innovative deal structure, Fremantle will handle global sales on “Costiera” in all territories outside of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal where Amazon is holding on to full exclusive rights.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer Luciano Sovena, who was instrumental to bringing early works by several of Italy’s now-prominent auteurs such as Alice Rohrwacher, Luciano Frammartino, and Saverio Costanzo, to the big screen, has died. He was 73. News of Sovena’s sudden death was announced on Sunday by the Rome and Lazio Film Commission Foundation, of which he was president. The cause of death was not disclosed. The foundation paid tribute to Sovena as “A great and generous professional; a friend of Italian cinema,” in a statement. It went on to note that he was “Ironic, ‘simpatico’ and open to everyone.”

Book Club: The Next Chapter stars Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen, who chatted with Metro Weekly about the new sequel to their 2018 hit comedy, written and directed by Bill Holderman.The screen legends were missing their girl Diane Keaton, who rounds out the quartet portraying four longtime best friends, who, this time out, jet off to Italy for a bachelorette adventure. Yet they still basked in the glow of their collective thrilling adventure shooting the film throughout Rome, Venice, and Tuscany.The gorgeous Italian scenery, and local color — like homegrown legend Giancarlo Giannini, featured in a supporting role — proved enchanting offscreen as well as in the film.“It was never stressful because you were always in a gondola, sort of coasting along,” recalls Bergen.

Nothing but love! Kate Bosworth revealed she had a hand in her fiancé Justin Long’s appearance on his ex Drew Barrymore’s daytime talk show.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent It’s 7:30 a.m. on a sunny May morning in Rome on a side street outside the studios of Italian state broadcaster Rai. A live audience standing behind metal fencing is watching a lithe group of nuns, one with a mustache, who slowly creep out from a row of white closet doors.  They start dancing, hugging and pirouetting to a ballad belted out by a young Tuscan pop singer. Then the dancers, dressed in Catholic sisters garb, begin playing basketball. Welcome to “Viva Rai 2!,” Italy’s answer to America’s morning shows. It’s a local ratings phenomenon conceived and conducted by volcanic Sicilian megastar Rosario Fiorello, who is breathing new life into Italian television at a time when doomsayers are sounding the death knell of public TV around the world.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Paris-based distributor ARP Sélection has snapped up the timely Sudanese drama “Goodbye Julia” for French distribution ahead of its Cannes Un Certain Regard premiere next week. The film, which is Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s feature debut, marks the first feature from Sudan to bow from the Croisette and takes place just before the 2011 secession of South Sudan. In “Goodbye Julia,” two women — one from the North, the other from the South — are brought together by fate in a complex relationship that attempts to reconcile differences between northern and southern Sudanese communities. in an interview with Variety, Kordofani expressed the hope that his film “Can be the start of a movement for reconciliation between all the Sudanese people” in the war-ravaged country.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “The Eight Mountains,” Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama about friendship, mountains and growing up, scored the top prize at Italy’s 68th David di Donatello Awards. Besides winning best picture, the film also scooped statuettes for best non-original screenplay, photography and sound. Given that the directors are not Italian, it was a particularly significant victory for “Mountains,” which was praised as “quietly magnificent” by Variety critic Jessica Kiang. The film, which is currently playing well on the U.S. arthouse circuit, tracks the decades-long friendship between two Italian boys named Pietro and Bruno — one from the city, the other a shepherd boy from the Alps.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian actor Caterina Murino, best known globally for playing Solange in James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” will be the master of ceremonies at the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Born in Cagliari, Sardegna, Murino made her big screen debut in 2002 in late Chilean writer/director Luis Sepulveda’s political drama “Nowhere” which played well in France. She returned to French film screens in 2004 in “L’Enquete Corse” opposite actors Christian Clavier and Jean Reno. In 2006 Murino gained global visibility as the new 007 Bond Girl alongside Daniel Craig with her role as the shady seductive Solange Dimitrios in “Casino Royale.” 

rom young boys bonded by their unique positions and the tragic death of their mother, to grown men with obvious tension, Prince William and Prince Harry‘s relationship has become more strained in recent years.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Damien Chazelle will preside over the competition jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival. The U.S. director is a Venice regular, having opened the Lido event on two occasions, in 2016 with “La La Land” and in 2018 with “First Man.” Damien Chazelle, welcoming Venice’s proposal stated: “For ten days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury. I can’t wait to discover a new crop of great films at the 80th Venice Film Festival.”

Three of the hardest-working women in Hollywood have no plans of slowing down anytime soon. ET's Matt Cohen sat down with Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen to talk about their forthcoming sequel, , and their longstanding evolution in the film industry. The famed actresses are reprising their roles in the  universe — with the sequel coming to theaters May 12 — but this time, they are off to Italy on an incredible journey on and off the pages! Set in both Rome and Venice, Bergen says filming in Italy was «heaven.» «We had a great time and we would have dinner after work.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Laetitia Casta will soon appear on the big screen as the former wife of an abusive southern Italian man whom she is accused of murdering in the thriller “A Dark Story,” directed by Italy’s Leonardo D’Agostini. In “Dark Story” the French star, whose recent credits include “The Crusade” directed by her husband Louis Garrel, plays Carla (first look image above), the ex-wife of Vito Semeraro, a banker who beat her when they were together and is the father of her three children. She is accused of murdering him a few years after they split up.  Italian sales company True Colours is launching sales in Cannes on this psychological noir that marks the sophomore feature by D’Agostini whose 2019 debut drama “The Champion” – a soccer dramedy about a young male soccer star and a shy academic who becomes his tutor – sold widely via the same outfit. Andrea Carpenzano (“The Champion,” “Boys Cry,” “Chiara”) stars in “Dark Story” alongside Casta.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Dubai-based podcast company Kerning Cultures Network is producing “The Lebanon Heist,” an original investigative probe into the root causes of Lebanon’s devastating financial crisis. Launching in October, the six-part podcast will be produced in English and Arabic, delving into the crash that led to millions of Lebanese citizens being robbed of their life savings, and exploring the role of Riad Salamah, the country’s current central bank governor, who is considered to be at heart of the collapse. He is accused of having embezzled and laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. Salameh, who denies wrongdoing, is being investigated in Lebanon and several European countries for allegedly siphoning off more than $300 million from the central bank with his brother throughout more than a decade.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent Paris-based producer Marianne Slot, who has been instrumental to bringing works by auteurs such as Lars Von Trier, Lucrecia Martel, and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso to the big screen, is being honored by the Locarno Film Festival. Slot will receive the Swiss festival’s Raimondo Rezzonico prize for a producer who epitomizes the indie ethos. She will be bestowed with the award on Aug. 5 with a tribute that will include a screening of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s environmental-themed black comedy “Woman At War,” followed by an on-stage conversation on Aug. 6. Born in Denmark, Slot set up the Paris-based production company Slot Machine in 1993. She has been Von Trier’s French producer since 1995, starting with “Breaking the Waves.” Over the years Slot has shepherded works by a slew of indie auteurs at various stages of their careers. Besides Martel and Erlingsson these include Bent Hamer, Małgorzata Szumowska, Paz Encina, Emma Dante, Marian Crişan, Juliette Garcia, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Sergei Loznitsa, and Naomi Kawase.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Shooting has kicked off in Rome on limited series “The Leopard” based on the classic Sicily-set novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that marks Netflix’s most ambitious Italian original to date. Production on the lavish period piece will take place in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Syracuse, Catania as well as the Italian capital over the next four months. The historical tapestry with elements comparable to “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown,” and potential to make a global mark, is a modern take on the sensual Sicilian saga famously adapted into a film by Luchino Visconti starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. The film, now an Italian cinema classic, won the 1963 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent London-based Sideways Film has taken world sales on British director Carey Born’s “Cyborg: A Documentary” about a man who was born color blind and has an antenna embedded in his head to help contend with this condition. Filmed in the U.K., Spain, Denmark, Australia and across the U.S. in New York, Los Angeles, San Jose and New Jersey, the doc about the world’s first officially recognized cyborg premiered last month at the CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen and was selected by the fest to screen online on its PARA:DOX platform. “Cyborg” centers on “cyborg artist” Neil Harbisson who was born with a rare condition called achromatopsia, which means he sees only in black and white. In 2003 Harbisson had an illegal operation. A so-called “eyeborg” antenna was implanted in the back of his head enabling him to “hear colour” as waves that are translated into sound frequencies and transmitted to his auditory cortex. Since then Harbisson started touring the world talking about being a cyborg.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Luca Guadagnino will next direct the William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer” with Daniel Craig playing the renowned counterculture author’s alter ego, an outcast American expat who lives in Mexico, and “Outer Banks” star Drew Starkey starring as a younger man with whom he becomes madly infatuated. “Queer” will also topline Lesley Manville (“The Crown”), frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman; and Henry Zaga (“The New Mutants”), according to inside sources. The boldly ambitious indie film is set to start shooting this month at Rome’s refurbished Cinecittà Studios where the Mexico City-set movie will be filmed in its entirety.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi, Iran’s best-known director, was at the Zurich Film Festival last September when protests following the death of Mahsa Amini erupted in his home country. Since then, the auteur of “A Separation,” “The Salesman” and “A Hero” has not returned to Iran. He’s been working on a new film in Los Angeles and Europe. Interestingly, he says he plans to go back to his country before he shoots this film, even though he is not 100% sure they will let him out again. It’s clearly a risk that the enigmatic Farhadi is willing to take. Farhadi was in Turin on Monday to give a masterclass at Italy’s National Museum of Cinema, where he also received a lifetime achievement award. In a rare interview, he took questions via e-mail from Variety.