‘Wonder Women’ Filmmaker Anjali Menon Sets Partnership With South Indian Content Specialist KRG Studios (EXCLUSIVE)

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesia’s MD Pictures has announced that its horror prequel Badarawuhi Di Desa Penari is the first production in Southeast Asia to be filmed with Imax-certified digital cameras.

William Earl The Miami Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 41st edition, including “Thelma,” starring June Squibb, opening the event and Tony Goldwyn‘s “Ezra” as closing night selection. Goldwyn will be honored at the festivl with the Art of Light award along with Alison Brie, while Greg Kwedar, director of “Sing Sing,” will receive the Impact Award.

Tom Hanks will host and narrate a 20-part documentary series about World War II on the History Channel.

Naman Ramachandran Bollywood A-list star Rani Mukerji was in refreshingly candid form at Mumbai’s FICCI Frames media industry conference, proffering frank opinions on the Indian theatrical business. The usual Hindi-language domination of the all-India box office was reversed for a period in 2021-22, when films from the south of India, including “RRR,” “Kantara,” “Ponniyin Selvan” and “Vikram” dominated, and the northern counterparts from’ Bollywood’ struggled to become hits. Since then, the north-south competition has evolved again.

Tributes have flooded in for Dave Myers following the death of the Hairy Bikers star - and the latest episode of the final "magical" series he made with best friend Si King is airing as planned on Tuesday night (March 5). Myers, one half of the motorcycle-riding cooking duo, died last week after a battle with cancer.

France’s Canal+ has upped a buyout offer for African TV and streaming giant MultiChoice to around $1.77B.

Christopher Vourlias The sixth edition of the Joburg Film Festival wraps Sunday, putting a bow on a week that saw many in the host nation reflecting on South Africa’s long journey in the three decades since the end of apartheid. But among the filmmakers and executives taking part in the second JBX content market the focus was squarely on the future, as Africa’s streaming wars and an eye toward global dealmaking highlighted how the tide has begun to shift in how the world perceives the continent.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a big one that multiple studios are bidding on right nowfrom Platinum Dunes: Wolf Night.

Naman Ramachandran BBC Studios has bought British broadcaster ITV‘s 50% stake in streamer BritBox International for £255 million ($322 million), the companies revealed on Friday. The streamer was founded in 2017 as a joint venture between BBC Studios, which is the commercial arm of the British broadcaster, and ITV. “The transaction will provide net proceeds including loan repayments and accrued dividends and after tax of around £235 million,” the companies said.

K.J. Yossman Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel “Anxious People” is set to be adapted into a feature film by “The Little Mermaid” screenwriter David Magee.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent A rare flagship indie producer left on the French market, Bruno Nahon‘s Paris-based company Unité is preparing to conquer international audiences with “Rematch,” a period psychological thriller chronicling the historical battle between world chess champion Garry Kasparov (Christian Cooke, “That Dirty Black Bag”), and IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. The sprawling show, directed by Yan England (“The Red Band Society”) and co-created with Nahon and André Gulluni (“Sam”), was commissioned by Arte in France and has already been sold by Federation Studios to major outlets around the world, including HBO Europe for Spain, Portugal, the Nordics, Iceland, Baltics, Central Europe, Greece and the Netherlands.

When director Amber Fares came out with her documentary Speed Sisters, about the Middle East’s first all-women race car driving team, the New York Times praised it as “unconventional in form as well as content.”

Aimee Lou Wood Comedy ‘Daddy Issues’ Rounds Out Cast

The House Hunters franchise is expanding with a new spinoff. HGTV has ordered House Hunters: All Stars, set for premiere on Thursday, March 21. The 12-episode series will feature some of the network’s top real estate experts helping prospective buyers find dream properties in their own hometowns.

EXCLUSIVE: Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios announced the launch of The Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios Storytellers Lab, an initiative designed to create partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to cultivate diverse creator pipelines within the entertainment industry.

Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos will reteam with Element Pictures on a remake of South Korean fantasy comedy “Save the Green Planet,” Variety has learned. Lanthimos — whose latest film, “Poor Things,” is nominated for 11 Oscars and just won five BAFTAs (including best actress for Emma Stone) — is expected to start shooting the movie in the U.K. and New York this summer.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief France’s Isabelle Huppert, one of the leading actors of her age, has crafted a unique relationship with Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo. Hong’s “A Traveler’s Needs,” which premieres this week in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, is the third time that Huppert has starred in one of his unique pieces of minimalist cinema. She says she hopes the partnership can go much further. Huppert plays a footloose and intense French woman at large in Korea and vaguely making ends meet as an untrained language tutor with eccentric methods.

A youthful crowd of industry professionals filed into a bustling room at the Gropius Bau Saturday afternoon for the inaugural AfroBerlin symposium here at the Berlin Film Festival. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief On Saturday, audiences in Berlin will see the world premiere of “Above the Dust,” a Chinese-made drama that plays somewhat incongruously in the Generation Kplus section, which screens films for or about children. Whether the film plays again, and where, is moot.

Marc Malkin Senior Editor, Culture and Events Joey King says she and Gypsy Rose Blanchard have recently been in touch. “She and I have privately talked a little bit, which has been really nice,” King told Variety on an upcoming episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. King portrayed Blanchard, a woman sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder for the death mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard in Hulu’s limited series “The Act.” Blanchard was recently released from prison on parole in late December after serving eight years for the 2015 crime.