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The True Crime Awards announced their 2024 winners at an awards ceremony held at the Hilton London Bankside last night (25th April).

The True Crime Awards, partnered by I-me, were established to celebrate the incredible content being produced across the true crime genre. The event brings together creators and producers from across the screen, podcast, and publishing sectors to recognise the time, energy, and effort that goes into their work.

Now in its second year, the awards, presented by Yinka Bokinni, shined a spotlight on the skills and expertise necessary to research and retell a true story accurately, entertainingly, and respectfully; as well as the challenges of delving into these harrowing stories – whether in the form of documentaries, podcasts, books, or dramas.

The twenty-four categories of this year’s True Crime Awards were adjudicated by a panel of over 40 industry-leading experts who were asked to consider originality, production values, research, creativity,...

Universal’s Cocaine Bear from director Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels) arrives in theaters this Friday, February 24, 2023.

In the film, a 500-pound apex predator ingests a staggering amount of cocaine, sparking a coke-fueled rampage that’ll end in a lot of bloodshed. While it appears poised to deliver a raucously entertaining time at the movies, Cocaine Bear isn’t the first horror-comedy or horror movie to feature a drug or serum-enhanced animal on a violent warpath.

This week’s streaming picks highlight five entertaining creature features centered on rampaging animals of all varieties. As always, here’s where to stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Alligator – AMC+, freevee, Roku Channel, Shout TV, Shudder

The plot, borrowing from a popular urban legend, follows a baby alligator flushed down the toilet. It winds up in the sewer, a local laboratory’s precise spot used as a...

Newen Connect is building up its English-language scripted slate with timely, high-concept titles, including “Wagatha,” a dramatic reconstruction of the viral court case involving Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy, the wives of high-profile British footballers. Newen Connect has also acquired the Australian supernatural bromance “Limbo,” and the inclusive British mystery thriller “Blindspot.”

Written by Chris Atkins, “Wagatha” (working title) charts the High Court case which stemmed from alleged leaked Instagram stories in 2019 and opposes Rooney and Vardy. Produced by Chalkboard and commissioned by Channel 4, “Wagatha” stars Chanel Cresswell, the BAFTA-winning actor of “This is England” and Natalia Tena (“Game of Thrones”). Filming just wrapped in September.

The case which has been coined #WagathaChristie in reference to the English detective novelist Agatha Christie, has already been thoroughly covered on social media and in the press, especially in the U.S., but this “TV event will go further, immersing audiences inside...

Bros: After the Screaming Stops producer Lorton Entertainment is next turning the camera to cult British singer James Blunt in a doc billed as “Spinal Tap meets Alan Partridge.”

The unnamed behind-the-scenes doc from director Chris Atkins is billed as a “brutally honest story of a painfully self-aware, endlessly touring musician, for whom persistence eventually prevails.”

The synposis reads: “This is the story of an ageing, British popstar, still fighting for relevance some 17 years after his star momentarily twinkled. No one has a more extraordinary story than James Blunt. The soldier-turned-singer has one of the most inspiring trajectories in the history of music.”

Blunt served under NATO during the 1999 Kosovo War before releasing the chart-topping single ‘You’re Beautiful’ and album Back to Bedlam, which remains one of the UK’s biggest sellers of all time. Despite the single and album’s mega-popularity, both were widely panned by music critics...

Documentary-maker Chris Atkins tells the strange story of gigantic chart hits and guerrilla pranking of the art world

British film-maker Chris Atkins is known for his excellent Bafta-winning documentary Taking Liberties in 2007 and also for his five-year jail sentence in 2016 for tax fraud involving falsified invoices: a conviction that sent a there-but-for-grace-of-God shiver through the British film world. It resulted in Atkins’s bestselling prison memoir A Bit of a Stretch, which also became a hugely popular podcast. At the time I wrote about the heavy-handed prison treatment of Atkins’s co-defendant, Christina Slater, who at the time was a new mother.

Now Atkins has hit upon the ideal subject for what I can only describe as his talent for investigative mischief: it’s the strange story of the Klf, later the K Foundation, comprising Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, the electronic-pop-duo-slash-situationist–art-collective who in the early 90s had gigantic...

Exclusive: Who Killed the Klf?, a feature documentary about the cult and mysterious band, has been picked up for world sales by Clay Epstein’s Film Mode Entertainment ahead of its debut at Austin’s Fantastic Fest this weekend.

Directed by Chris Atkins, the film looks into the band, which famously burned a million quid on the Scottish island of Jura, and later disappeared as an act and removed their music from catalogues. The pic will chronicle how the duo – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty – shot to the top of the pop charts as one of electronic dance music’s progenitors from their punk rock origins in 1970’s Liverpool.

Director Atkins worked with the pair to tell their story. Pic was produced by Nicky Bentham, with Richard Thompson of Fulwell 73 and Ian Neil serving as executive producers.

“Film Mode is thrilled to be introducing Who Killed the Klf?...

Atkins has written a book recounting his surreal experiences during his nine months at London’s Wandsworth prison.

When UK filmmaker Chris Atkins was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding Hmrc in a film-finance tax scam in July 2016, he was immediately taken to London’s Wandsworth prison, where he began his sentence. Later transferred to Ford open prison in West Sussex, he was released in December 2018, having served just shy of 30 months.

Since his release, he has seen the publication of A Bit Of A Stretch: The Diaries Of A Prisoner, recounting his surreal experiences during his nine months at Wandsworth,...

Sony Pictures Television-backed Eleventh Hour Films has optioned documentary maker Chris Atkins’s prison diaries “A Bit of a Stretch.”

The book covers Atkins’s time in notorious U.K. prison Hmp Wandsworth – one of Europe’s oldest and largest prisons – where he served a five-year sentence for a tax scheme related to funding one of his films.

“A Bit of a Stretch,” which is published today by London-based publisher Atlantic Books, includes a cast of characters ranging from cunning drug dealers to senior officials bent on endless reform, all of which illustrate the prison’s dysfunction, and the wider scale of the U.K.’s prison crisis.

Paula Cuddy, creative director of Eleventh Hour Films, said: “Hilarious, horrifying and heart-breaking. This book is a wake-up call, a shocking and surprising insight into modern prison life. I read it in one sitting. With Chris, Eleventh Hour Films is delighted...

Paulo Duarte/AP/Press Association Images

Newcastle have been dealt another demoralising blow in their efforts to sign a striker after it emerged that Bafetimbi Gomis has held talks over a move to China.

Our pursuit of Gomis is close to turning into a fully-blown transfer saga and speculation surrounding his next destination after running down his contact at Lyon has been endless with a host of clubs from the Premier League and around Europe reportedly keeping tabs on him.

However, Chris Atkins, a writer for Espn, beinSPORT and Bleacher Report, has attempted to clarify Gomis’ future in a tweet that states the 28-year-old has spoken to Shanghai Shenua over a surprise switch to China in July.

Also, I'm being told talks are taking place between Bafetembi Gomis and Shanghai Shenhua over a move next month. @FrenchFtWeekly #Exclusive

— Christopher Atkins (@ChrisAtkins_) June 17, 2014

Losing out on Gomis would send managing director...

Felipe Dana/AP/Press Association Images

As with every World Cup a handful of breakout stars emerge and this summers tournament in Brazil will be no different. A new generation of talent eager to prove their world-class credentials will descend onto the grandest audition stage professional football has to offer.

Naturally, that will attract scouts from a majority of Premier League clubs hoping to unearth a diamond in the rough and Newcastle’s talent spotters are sure to be present in South America with a similar goal.

It was Cheick Tiote’s performances for the Ivory Coast in the 2010 finals that first piqued the Magpies’ interest before they took the plunge on him. Four years down the line he’s become a pivotal figure in the St James’ Park engine room.

It’s anyones guess who will come to prominence in 2014. We’ve suggested four bright and precocious young stars...

Two separate film tax fraud cases are heading towards trial.

Chris Atkins, writer-director of 2007 BAFTA-nominated doc Taking Liberties and 2009 doc Starsuckers, and Terence Potter, co-producer of acclaimed 2005 drama Romanzo Criminale, are among 13 men and women alleged by the Crown Prosecution Service to have taken part in a £2.5m film tax fraud.

The charges against the 13 relate to two film partnerships that allegedly submitted false tax returns so its members could claim relief on losses.

Seven of the 13 individuals are investment bankers.

A provisional trial date of July 13 has been set.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, five film professionals are due to stand trial in September in connection with another film tax scam.

Salt co-directors Robert Bevan and Cyril Megret, executive producers Keith Hayley and Charles Savill, formerly of Little Wing Films (as was Bevan), and Norman Leighton are alleged by the Crown Prosecution Service to have taken part in a tax relief fraud that cost the public...

Buried deep within Chris Atkins' Starsuckers, gems of reportorial excellence gleam brightly. Atkins and his team employed hidden cameras to capture representatives of British tabloids agreeing to break agreed-upon industry standards for the sake of celebrity "scoops." It is eye-opening to see how willing the tabloids are to sacrifice profesional integrity. To get to that point, however, one must sit through a banal, self-congratulatory, self-righteous "exposé" boldly declaring that celebrities, fame-seekers, and the media in general are all evil, and you are, too, even if you deny any interest in celebrity culture, because you can't be trusted, either. Atkins builds his case one random brick at a time, using an irritating voice-over narration to represent the media: 'We do this, and we do that, and...

Today's extract from the updated edition of The phone-hacking scandal: journalism on trial* is by Chris Atkins, the man who made the Starsuckers documentary. His team fed fake celebrity stories to the tabloids, six of which ended up in print.

This is somewhat longer than usual, but the devil really is in the detail of the exchanges at the Leveson inquiry when reporters were questioned about their actions. Atkins begins with the performance of Gordon Smart, who runs The Sun's showbusiness pages, entitled Bizarre...

Two of our fake stories appeared without checks in Smart's column - one about film director Guy Ritchie injuring himself while juggling cutlery, and another claiming singer Sarah Harding [of Girls Aloud] was a secret fan of quantum physics.

Smart started off bullishly at the inquiry by defending his column: "I'd like to think that most of the time we get it right. Very occasionally we get it wrong.

The story of the L.A.P.D. and Mickey Cohen will be the center of Ruben Flesicher's noir-pic "The Gangster Squad" later this year but there's another major production which is using the events as its story: Frank Darabont's teaming with TNT for "L.A. Noir."

The "fast-paced crime drama" already has "The Walking Dead" star Jon Bernthal and former "Heroes" star Milo Ventimiglia as a cop/lawyer pair of buddies from WWII on opposite sides of the war but the show has now added character actor Neal McDonough who'll play police chief William Parker (a role portrayed in 'Gangster Squad' by Nick Nolte). Darabont adapted John Buntin's non-fiction novel "L.A. Noir: The Struggle For The Soul Of America's Most Seductive City" and will direct the pilot episode with Michael De Luca and Elliot Webb producing.

"Sons Of Anarchy" creator Kurt Sutter has teased the prospect of...

Reports that a woman was claiming Downing Street's new cat as her own lost pet have been revealed as a hoax. Larry the ratcatcher was unveiled at Number 10 earlier this month, but according to various news reports a woman named Margaret Sutcliffe claimed that the feline was Jo, a pet she had adopted as a stray. According to the hoax - originated by Starsuckers director Chris Atkins - Sutcliffe's nephew Tim started a Facebook (more)...

Variety are reporting that more than one month after the UK film council was disbanded by our new coalition government, a proposal is being drawn up for a new plan of action for Britain’s movie business. The abolition sparked controversy both locally and globally, to the extent that Clint Eastwood wrote a letter of protest to chancellor George Osborne.

While the 10 year old Film Council attracted much acclaim, producing many successes, it has regardless been criticised for becoming internally focussed and taking few risks with less surefire projects. Set up by Tony Blair’s government in 2000, the council’s increasingly obsessive drive to reclaim funds and alienate breakthrough talent lacked the commercial appear to draw box office success.

That said, included in the list of 900 projects the UKFC funded are hits which include Gosford Park (which earnt $87.8 million at the box office), Bend it Like Beckham ($76.6 million) and this...

Chris Atkins made Starsuckers, the movie that exposed the gullibility and journalistic shortcomings of tabloid newspapers by feeding them fake celebrity stories.

Noting how The Sun's showbiz gossip columnists - such as Piers Morgan, Andy Coulson and Dominic Mohan - moved on to edit newspapers, he tells today's Independent on Sunday:

What happens is, in the two or three years working on the celebrity desk, their desire for the truth as a concept is surgically extracted from their brains. They stop caring what the truth is. Then they get to write about WMDs.

CelebrityThe SunPiers MorganAndy CoulsonDominic MohanIndependent on SundayRoy Greenslade

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Oh, how fandom can mislead you. With The Extra Man coming out this week, I thought: "Perfect! I can write a Their Best Role piece of Kevin Kline!" I've loved the man since I first saw him on stage in my youth, and since he's so tied to theater, Kline's credits are quite manageable. He has less than 40 cinematic (live-action) roles to his name. But it isn't so easy to pick a best role for Kline. Though his roster remains relatively small, it is jam-packed with memorable characters, whether we're talking about excellent films that he had an excellent part in, or easily forgettable films where he was the lone beacon of light.

Though not a big-screen role at first, it all started with Joseph Papp's production of Pirates of Penzance. With Kline as The Pirate King, the production became so popular that it was taped and released, jumped to Broadway,...

By Natalie Peck

A great big two fingers up to celebrity-obsessed media has come recently in the form of Starsuckers, from the director of BAFTA nominated documentary Taking Liberties, Chris Atkins. The film attempts to mix anthropological examination with some hilarious hoaxes, intent on exposing the way the media exploits the human desire for fame. The film orders itself into lessons, instructing the audience in a self–consciously patronising way on how we are regularly duped by large corporations and media organisations into consuming celebrity culture to a worrying degree.

After completing Taking Liberties, Atkins was told that not having any famous people in the documentary (besides Tony Blair) could hinder the marketing of the film.

Bob Geldof has reportedly sent a hand written response to a film director who he believes has unjustifiably attacked his charitable music campaigns. In the 6,000-word letter, Geldof told Starsuckers helmer Chris Atkins that he has used his fame to persuade world leaders to take global poverty seriously, contrary to anti-poverty demonstrators who he described as being "a bit lame" and almost entirely ineffectual. The film, which will be broadcast on More 4 on Tuesday, is a polemic against media and celebrity and alleges that money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts was misspent and led to deaths. According to The Guardian, it also criticises the Live 8 concerts as overshadowing efforts by campaigners from the Make Poverty History coalition. Geldof denies the allegations made in the film and his lawyers have written to the film-makers and are also in contact with (more)...

Singer pens letter to director of documentary that criticises his rock concert campaigns

The singer and activist Bob Geldof has launched an impassioned defence of his lifetime's charitable work, claiming he has used his fame to persuade world leaders to take global poverty seriously and mocking anti-poverty demonstrators as "wankers dressed as clowns".

His comments were penned in a 6,000-word letter to the director of a documentary that makes stinging and, Geldof believes, entirely unjustified criticisms of his rock concert campaigns.

In an attempt to persuade the director to retract the allegations from the film, which will be broadcast next week, Geldof wrote a meandering and at times emotional explanation of his work.

In the letter, seen by the Guardian, Geldof claimed to have had significant influence over world leaders, including Tony Blair, in the run-up to the 2005 G8 summit, and contrasted the achievements of his Live 8 campaign with...

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands -- Scottish moviemaker Richard Jobson has secured £392,200 ($740,193) from the U.K. Film Council's new cinema fund for his next film, A Woman in Winter, the council announced here Thursday. Written and directed by Jobson, Winter stars British newcomer Jamie Sives (Mean Machine), French actress Julie Gayet (Clara et Moi), Jason Flemyng (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy). The script tells the story of an astronomer in Edinburgh, Scotland, who embarks on a passionate and destructive love affair with a French photographer. The movie will be shot using HD digital technology and will be produced by longtime Jobson collaborator Chris Atkins (Sixteen Years) and Tartan Films chief Hamish McAlpine. No further budget details were available.