News

The outfit’s first commission is six-part BBC One thriller ’Vidree’, with feature films also in the pipeline.

Former UK Film Council executive and producer of Saving Mr Banks, Sing Street and TV series The Casual Vacancy Paul Trijbits has revealed details of his new venture with French production company Magical Society.

The former head UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund has also spoken about the demise of his former company FilmWave, saying “we had all our eggs in the Netflix basket”.

Dutch-born, UK-based Trijbits and former FilmWave colleague JJ Lousberg have partnered with Paris-based Magical Society to set...

Mediawan Kids & Family, the youth entertainment division of the European powerhouse, has acquired a majority stake in Wildseed Studios, the British production company behind “The Last Bus” and “Hungerford.”

The deal marks the first international acquisition of Mediawan Kids & Family, a leading purveyor of animated series and features including “The Little Prince” and “The Little Nicholas,” which premiered at Cannes.

Wildseed Studios was founded in 2013 by Jesse Cleverly (“Eastern Promises”), former head of co-productions and acquisitions at BBC Children’s, and Miles Bullough (“Shaun the Sheep”), former head of broadcast at Aardman Animations. The company’s track record includes a number of hits such as the Netflix live action series “The Last Bus,” the award-winning feature film “Hungerford,” the children’s animation series “Dodo” for Sky Kids and the animated comedy “Counterfeit Cat” for Disney Channel. Upcoming titles include the Sky Kids Special “Ama’s Story.”

“Wildseed Studios is a renowned and well-established U.

“The Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be” by Benjamin Massoubre and Amandine Fredon is having its world premiere at a Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20.

Several years in the making, the film brings together the world-famous French schoolboy and his creators, author René Goscinny and cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, as it goes back and forth between their world and his imaginary world.

Translated into more than 30 languages, the Little Nicholas short stories have been adapted to fiction but never to animation until now. For the creative team, it was essential to stay true both to Goscinny’s short stories and to Sempé’s drawings.

“The main challenge was to create the Little Nicholas’ world in animation and, at the same time, remain faithful to Sempé’s style – his drawings are very small, they’re made in ink, which gives them a sort of awkward but very lively energy,...

Despite school holidays, last weekend proved relatively quiet at the movies, with cinemas still shut in Sydney and other parts of the country.

Theatres will remain closed in Australia’s largest city and its surrounds, including the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Wollongong and Shellharbour, until at least July 9.

Capacity restrictions remain in place and masks are compulsory in cinemas in the rest of Nsw, as well as several other states.

Cinemas in Western Australia’s Perth and Peel, as well as Darwin and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, were also closed for part of the weekend, reopening on Saturday. Lockdown restrictions in parts of regional Queensland ended on Friday, followed by Brisbane on Saturday evening.

As such, the top 20 titles tallied just $6.8 million, down 25 per cent on the previous, according to Numero.

However, exhibitors outside of Sydney have high hopes for this weekend, with the latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,...

Universal Pictures’ ninth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise more than set the pace at the Australian box office on the weekend, raking in nearly $9 million, including an opening day total of $1.48 million.

The film’s opening overtakes Warner Bros.’ Godzilla vs. Kong as the highest of any film post-Covid, and is only slightly below that of The Fate of the Furious, which took $10 million over the Easter long weekend in 2017.

Director Justin Lin’s latest contribution to the saga has Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) leading a quiet life off the grid with Letty and his son, Little Brian, when a threat forces him to confront the sins of his past in order to save the ones he loves most.

F9 shared its opening day with Madman Films’ local documentary Valerie Taylor: Playing With Sharks, which took in $39,403 from 64 screens, or $73,474 with previews.

Sydney’s Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace...

While U.S. blockbusters deserted screens in 2020, French animated features had 10-year record-breaking performance at the local box office last year, according to a study conducted by the Cnc (National Film Board) and unveiled on the opening day of Annecy Film Festival.

As French theaters were shut down for most of the year due to the pandemic, only 25 animated films were released in local cinemas last year. But the few local animated pics that were released, such as “Bigfoot Family,” “Josep” and Joann Sfar’s “Little Vampire,” represented 32.7% of all admissions for animated films in France in 2020, the highest level within the last decade.

“Bigfoot Family” was directed by Ben Stassen and Jérémie Degruson. The 3D-animated film is the sequel to “Son of Bigfoot,” and was written by Bob Barlen and Cal Brunker (“Escape From Planet Earth”). “Josep,” meanwhile, is directed by Aurelien Froment (known as Aurel) and charts the life of Josep Bartolí,...

Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival has unveiled much of its feature lineup including early highlights from several sidebars for this year’s online 25th edition, with the full program to be announced in July.

Fantasia’s preliminary lineup is highlighted by a glut of world and premieres including Edoardo Vitaletti’s “The Last Thing Mary Saw”; fest regular Richard Bates Jr.’s “King Knight”; Mikhael Bassilli and Luc Walpoth’s “Baby Money”; Canadian actor-turned-director Mark O’Brien’s debut “The Righteous”; “Hellbender” from John Adams, Toby Poser, and Zelda Adams; and the highly anticipated directorial debut of former Fantasia winning writer Travis Taute’s (“Number 37”) “Indemnity.”

Available to audiences across Canada, Fantasia will run Aug. 5-25 and present screenings, panels and workshops on its digital platform, hosted for the second year running by Festival Scope and Shift72. Event organizers are also closely monitoring the health and safety guidelines laid out by public officials in Montreal,...

Organisers consulting with local Montreal authorities on possibility of limited range of physical events.

Top brass at Fantasia International Film Festival have announced the first wave of films including a focus on Japan for the virtual edition of the 25th anniversary festival that runs August 5-25.

The festival will screen for Canadian audiences on a platform created by Festival Scope and Shift72. Organisers are taking advice from local health authorities in Montreal on the possibility of adding a limited range of physical events.

Japanese selections include Tsutomu Hanabusa’s manga adaptation Kakegurui 2: Ultimate Russian Roulette about a deadly school...

This number will increase as Cannes, Venice and other summer festival titles are added to the mix alongside studio releases.

French cinemas reopen this Wednesday (May 19) after lying dark for six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the country’s 100-plus distributors rushing to set theatrical dates for an estimated backlog of 400 stalled films.

As a result, French cinemagoers will have access to the richest and most diverse offering of films in the world over the coming months, spanning festival titles, local mainstream comedies and dramas, world cinema and studio blockbuster fare, as the summer advances.

As of May...

Exclusive: Shout! Studios and Studiocanal have made an exclusive deal to distribute the new animated family feature Little Vampire in North America. Directed by Joann Sfar, the Annecy International Animated Film Festival winner is a production of On Animation (The Little Prince) and Sfar’s Magical Society. Deal was made by Melissa Boag, Shout’s Senior Vice President of Family Entertainment, Jordan Fields, Vice President of Acquisitions at Shout! Studios, and Loubna Berrada, VP International Sales for StudioCanal.

“We are beyond happy to have found the perfect home for The Little Vampire in North America with Shout! Studios. We know our Little Vampire and his endearing friends will be in great hands with the Shout! team, and we can’t wait for US and Canadian audiences to see the film which focuses on values which are particularly essential these days: tolerance, kindness,...

France’s exhibitors and distributors are aiming for a quick restart when theaters are allowed to reopen, whenever that may be.

During the first lockdown, which lasted nearly three months, many French distributors took the streaming route, opting to release their films on transactional VOD services and in some cases, sell rights to SVOD platforms such as Amazon or Netflix. But this time around, key distributors like Gaumont, Studiocanal and Le Pacte, who had movies playing when theaters shut down on Oct. 29, told Variety that they’re planning to re-release their pics when cinemas reopen, even if a date is still unknown.

Among the films that will return to theaters are Gaumont’s “Bye Bye Morons,” a black comedy directed by Albert Dupontel; Le Pacte’s “DNA,” directed by Maiwenn; Studiocanal’s “Little Vampire,” an animated feature by Joann Sfar; and comedy “30 Jours Max” from Tarek Boudali.

“We will...

Several major distributors return to UK cinemas this weekend.

France, opening Wednesday, October 21

A dozen new films opened in France this week into a complex reality for the country’s distributors and exhibitors following the introduction of a night-time curfew for Paris and eight other major cities on October 17. It was announced yesterday (Oct 22) that the measure will be extended to more than half the country this Saturday (Oct 24) following a further surge in cases over the past week.

Prior to the announcement, a dozen distributors had taken the plunge to release films on Wednesday against already difficult odds. In the backdrop,...