WestEnd Films Scores Sales Including U.S. on British Drama ‘Cottontail’ With Ciaran Hinds, Lily Franky (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Japanese manga series “Tiger Mask” is being adapted into a live-action feature for the international market by Italy’s Fabula Pictures and Brandon Box and Japan’s Kodansha. The popular manga, which follows a ruthless professional Japanese wrestler named Naoto Date who after making it big in the U.S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran actor Ciaran Hinds and Odessa Young have joined Euphoria star Jacob Elordi in the cast of premium Australian miniseries “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” Production is now under way. An adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Richard Flanaghan, the five-part series is love story set against the backdrop of World War II. Production is by Curio Pictures with Prime Video releasing the title in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

EXCLUSIVE: Ciarán Hinds (Belfast) and Odessa Young (Mothering Sunday) are among the cast joining Jacob Elordi in the Prime Video Australia Original series The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a TV adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name. Production on the new 5-part drama series kicked off Down Under today.

An imagined conversation between two eminent historical figures who may or may not have ever met — nobody seems to know — forms the heart of Freud’s Last Session, an intellectual fable from Sony Pictures Classics that grew out of a play and, before that, a book and an Ivy League seminar.

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Caroline Brew editor Oscar-winning filmmaker Carol Dysinger’s “One Bullet” will kick off the 30th edition of Slamdance, which will run from Jan. 19-25 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. The festival will also take place virtually from Jan.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Kelly Rizzo, TV personality and entrepreneur who is the wife of the late Bob Saget, is launching “Comfort Food,” a new weekly podcast in which she hosts intimate conversations with guests about life, love and loss — while tucking into emotionally comforting food. In January 2022, Saget died at a Florida hotel at the age of 65. The comedian, known for his starring role on “Full House,” had just kicked off a new comedy tour.

Valerie Wu Intern Cineverse’s Bloody Disgusting multimedia horror brand has announced its expansion with the creation of a publishing imprint, Bloody Press, and new forays into audio. Bloody Press will act as the publishing arm of the company, which will create audiobooks, ebooks and print books. Its first title will be an adaptation of the 2022 hit horror film “Terrifier 2″ starring David Howard Thornton as iconic villain Art the Clown.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian cinema is in the spotlight at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles where the screening series “Ennio Morricone: Essential Scores from a Movie Maestro,” programmed in partnership with Cinecittà, is currently playing to sold-out audiences. The Oct. 6-Nov.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Polish actress and singer Joanna Kulig (“Cold War,” “The Eddy”) and French icon Fanny Ardant are co-starring in “Island,” a psychological thriller by Italian-German writer director Nora Jaenike filmed on the Italian island of Elba. Filming on the mostly English-language atmospheric noir wrapped on Nov. 4 on the island, which is located off the coast of Tuscany.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent A Bahrain sovereign wealth fund is in advanced talks to invest €200 million ($213 million) in Italy’s nascent Tuscany Film Studios, which are being built by producer Andrea Iervolino just outside Florence. The technologically-advanced production complex, boasting a large set with a virtual water tank, an immersive 360 studio for live-action productions, a 250-acre backlot and a luxury hotel with a movie theater, is being built in the municipality of Impruneta in the Chianti countryside about 20 miles outside of Florence.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival has revealed details of the Red Sea Souk, the fest’s industry market that will offer meeting and networking opportunities revolving around new Arab and African product. The Souk will take place Dec. 2-5 alongside the Nov.

Bleecker Street has taken U.S. rights to Ezra, the starry family dramedy from actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn, which is coming off its world premiere in the Special Presentations section of the Toronto Film Festival. Starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Robert De Niro, and newcomer William A. Fitzgerald, the film is slated for release in theaters in 2024.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival has announced the bulk of its lineup from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), signaling that the event is forging ahead with its third edition despite the Israel-Hamas war that has caused cancellations of several movie celebrations across the Arab world. The fest’s third edition, set to run Nov.

Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent “Snow Leopard,” the last film by Tibetan director Pema Tseden prior to his death in May, was awarded the Grand Prix at the closing ceremony of the 36th Tokyo International Film Festival on Wednesday. Premiering out of competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival and later screening at Toronto, the film depicts the argument between a father and his adult son of how to deal with the title beast, which has descended from the mountains to kill sheep in their village.

Family drama Snow Leopard, directed by the late Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, has won the Tokyo Grand Prix, the top prize at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list of winners.

EXCLUSIVE: James McAvoy (X-Men franchise), Lucas Bravo (Emily In Paris), Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) and Almudena Amor (The Good Boss) have been set for thriller Turn Up The Sun! which has begun production in the UK under an Equity PACT agreement.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor International sales agency the Playmaker has signed a deal with Blue Finch Film Releasing to distribute the one-shot horror film “Home Sweet Home — Where Evil Lives” in the U.K. and Ireland. Thomas Sieben’s film, which made its world premiere in August at FrightFest in London, has its market premiere at AFM.

On the heels of the wonderful 2019 The Two Popes, in which Anthony Hopkins starred as Pope Benedict XVI in an imagined conversation with Jonathan Pryce’s future Pope Francis, Hopkins is once again involved in the same kind of cinematic historical fictional meeting as founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, who is engaged in a private debate with The Chronicles of Narnia author and theologian C.S. Lewis (played by Matthew Goode) on the existence of God. As with The Two Popes, there is no proof whatsoever that any meeting ever took place, but it clearly provides lots of material to wrap your head around. That is exactly what Mark St. Germain did in creating his 2009 play Freud’s Last Session, which was built on the 1967 Harvard lectures of Dr. Armond M. Nicholi Jr in his presentation “The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.”

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based genre special WTFilms has boarded Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s horror thriller ‘The Soul Eater’ ahead of the AFM.