News

Screen International is keeping track of the key packages launched before and during the 2025 European Film Market, which runs February 13-19.

Refresh the page for latest updates. Listed in alphabetical order.

Arctic Skies

Morfydd Clark and Ariyon Bakare star in this UFO thriller, to be shot at Steven Knight’s Digbeth Loc. Studios in Birmingham. Writer-directors Elliot and Zander Weaver. Their Elliander Pictures are producing with Lowkey Films.

Int’l sales: Independent Entertainment

Bad Boy

From the producers of Longlegs and M3gan comes a serial killer project financed by C2 in which a dog is the hero. Ke Huy Quan...

Voltage Pictures will launch worldwide sales at EFM next month on the action thriller Safe House starring Lucien Laviscount from Emily In Paris and Hannah John-Kamen from upcoming Marvel Studios tentpoleThunderbolts.

Jamie Marshall directs from a screenplay by Leon Langford about six government agents sequestered in a covert location after a terror attack on Los Angeles. As they attempt to navigate their way through a web of paranoia, they come to suspect the perpetrator may be one of their own.

The cast includes Lewis Tan from the Mortal Kombat franchise and Deadpool & Wolverine, Holt McCallany from Paramount’s upcoming Memorial...

Directed by Terry Miles (Dawn Rider), 2024’s Calamity Jane is a far cry from the 1953 movie musical of the same name starring Doris Day. If you’re a cinephile and happened to experience the earlier film about the infamous female gunslinger, you already know that that Jane didn’t go on a killing spree.

That’s not the case in Miles’ version, which is penned by Leon Langford and Collin Watts. This Jane is jonesing for blood. As played by Emily Bett Rickards, Jane wants vengeance. She breaks out of the jail cell Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozon) confined her in and goes on a rampage. Rozon, who’s captured our interest in SurrealEstate, Wynonna Earp, and Schitt’s Creek, smiles when the 1953 film version is brought up.

“I've actually seen it way back in the day,” Rozon said, “but I don't remember too much about it. I got to play Doc Holliday...

Stars: Natalie Whittle, Adam Burch, John J. Pistone, Mindy Montavon, Herod Powers, Taylor Gore Scorse, Garret Camilleri, Shaun Boylan | Written by Leon Langford, Collin Watts | Directed by Richard Greenwood Jr.

After a violent home invasion cost her a child a year ago, traumatized mother Ava agrees to a rustic getaway on the 4th of July with her husband Neil and son Dakota in hopes of putting back the pieces of their lives and, more importantly, being away from any memories, any reminders about what happened a year ago. However, after arriving at the cabin rental they realize they’re double booked with a family with very different political beliefs. As tensions boil over the weekend as they confront grief, race, and the divide within the country – they soon realize there’s something else out here trying to drive them apart. They must band together to drive off a sinister group...

A full Free Movie of the Day is posted on the JoBlo Horror Movies YouTube channel every other day during the week – but on Fridays things get even freakier and a little more fun. Get your weekend started the right way by indulging in Friday Fright Nights! Every Friday, we’ll be taking a look at another genre movie you can watch in its entirety, free of charge, either on the YouTube channel linked above or in the video embed here.

The Friday Fright Night feature we have for you this week is This Land, a horror film that gets its title from the folk song “This Land Is Your Land”, which Woody Guthrie first wrote back in 1940, when he was tired of hearing the Kate Smith rendition of “God Bless America” on the radio all the time. And as you might expect from a film that has a title origin story like that,...

Stars: Kevin Dillon, Anna Harr, Lydia Hull, Mel Gibson, Eddie Steeples, Shannen Doherty, Sam Asghari | Written by Collin Watts, Leon Langford | Directed by James Cullen Bressack

Hot Seat, is the new thriller from director James Cullen Bressack, working from a script by Collin Watts and Leon Langford. And, at least on the surface, it seems to have taken its cue from his other recent thriller, Fortress, one of whose plot threads involved a former hacker forced to break into a financial company’s systems.

Here, that goes from subplot to the main storyline as reformed hacker Orlando Friar’s day goes from bad to worse. After he’s called in on his day off, which also happens to be his daughter Zoey’s birthday his wife Kim serves him with divorce papers. But the worst is yet to come. Almost as soon as he gets to work his computer is...

Exclusive: Kevin Dillon and Sam Asghari have boarded the Emmet/Furla action thriller Hot Seat. Deadline previously reported that Mel Gibson would star in the film. The Lionsgate company Grindstone Entertainment will handle North America distribution, and Highland Film Group is repping foreign sales. James Cullen Bressack will direct. He just helmed Fortress with Chad Michael Murray and Bruce Willis, which is in post.

In Hot Seat, an ex-hacker is forced to break into high-level banking institutions by an anonymous man who planted a bomb under his chair at his office. Gibson plays the man who must try to penetrate the booby-trapped building to get a man (Dillon) off the hot seat.

Randall Emmett and George Furla are producing Hot Seat with Bressack. The pic is based on a story by Leon Langford & Collin Watts. Gary Raskin and Alastair Burlingham will be exec producers and are co-financing. Lionsgate is releasing...

Exclusive: Mel Gibson is back in hero mode for Hot Seat, a thriller he’ll star in with production to begin November 1 in New Mexico. The Lionsgate company Grindstone Entertainment will handle North America distribution, and HIghland Film Group is handling foreign sales. James Cullen Bressack will direct. He just helmed Fortress with Murray and Bruce Willis, which is in post.

Randall Emmett and George Furla are producing with Bressack. The pic is based on a story by Leon Langford & Collin Watts. Gary Raskin and Alastair Burlingham will be exec producers and are co-financing. Lionsgate is releasing through Emmett and Furla’s long term deal there.

In Hot Seat, an ex-hacker is forced to break into high-level banking institutions by an anonymous man who planted a bomb under his chair at his office. Gibson plays the man who must try to penetrate the booby-trapped building to get the young man off the hot seat.

“Charm City Kings” producer Caleeb Pinkett has teamed up with production company Rebel Maverick for a film based on Alyssa Keli Rose’s Medium article “The Dunbar Heist,” Variety has learned exclusively.

Pinkett, the brother of Jada Pinkett Smith, will produce the project with Clarence Hammond and Dougie Cash. Rebel Maverick’s Matt Nicholas and Nastassja Kayln will also be producing, with Jane Kim Yang overseeing for their company. Norman Towns (“Insecure”) brought in the project and will be executive producing.

Nicholas and Kayln are adapting the script with screenwriter Leon Langford.

The 1997 robbery took place at the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles — five men stole $18.9 million in under 30 minutes. Allen Pace III, a fired employee of the Dunbar depot, was the mastermind who planned the robbery for two years and recruited four of his closest friends. After four years of thwarting law enforcement, the scheme fell apart after one of the robbers,...