News

Matt Dillon, Alice Diop and Karla Sofia Gascon will bring their springtime spirit to this month’s Nouvelles Vagues Film Festival, now running from June 18 – 23 in Biarritz. Launched last year with the support of Chanel, the nascent festival invites both established and emerging talents to share an expansive vision of youth, hosting a competition dedicated to young adult stories overseen by a jury all under the age of 35.

“Across all sections, this festival shines the spotlight on younger generations and celebrates young characters on screen,” says programing director Lili Hinstin. “We wanted to look to the future through the prism of the next generation, and to interrogate the questions and contemporary issues important to them.”

To that end, this sophomore edition kicked off with the world premiere of “Night Call,” a Brussels-set thriller, taking place over the course of one heated night, foisting an unsuspecting locksmith into a criminal underworld...

The Stars-Hana fund, which combines Peter Luo’s Stars Collective, the Hana Investment firm, and Starlight Media, was assembled to “invest in film, TV, comics, games, collectibles, consumer goods, AI, and new tech over a three-year period.” Now Deadline reports that Stars-Hana will be creating video games based on Stars Collective film IP – and this includes several projects that are being produced by horror icons James Wan and Sam Raimi!

Stars-Hana is teaming up with game companies like Tencent, DreamSky Technology, Hyjz, and Forevernine to develop video games based on the following properties:

The Garfield Movie, starring Chris Pratt

Every House Is Haunted, from Sam Raimi and Roy Lee

The Burden, from James Wan and Sam Raimi

Hunting Season, from James Wan and Don Murphy

James Wan’s The Call of Cthulhu, Mass Extinction and Gmo

The Goxfather with Jon M. Chu

Memory Lost in Space, based on the novels...

Exclusive: Film projects with genre supremos James Wan, Sam Raimi and Roy Lee attached as producers are set to be turned into video games by ambitious new Sino-American fund Stars-Hana, which we revealed in October.

The fund combines Peter Luo’s Stars Collective, Chinese firm Hana Investment and Starlight Media: the three partners hosted a launch event in LA last month. The idea is to invest in verticals including film, TV, comics, games, collectibles, consumer goods, AI and new tech over a three-year period.

Today, the three companies have revealed first details of the slate, which includes ambitions to create video games based on Stars Collective film IP.

The fund is partnering with game companies including Tencent and Tencent-owned DreamSky Technology, as well as Hyjz and Forevernine, to develop games based on the following projects, some of which have been announced and some we are revealing for the first time today:

The Garfield Movie,...

Filmmaker incubator Stars Collective, launched in 2020 by the China-backed but Beverly Hills-based producer Peter Luo, unveiled two new Asia-led movie projects Wednesday at the American Film Market in Santa Monica. They include the first installment of a still-untitled new horror franchise starring popular Thai actress Kitty Chicha (Girl from Nowhere, The Serpent) and The Evil Sea, a crime thriller based on a real-life maritime incident, to be written and directed by filmmaker Frank Shang.

Stars Collective describes the new horror franchise as being based on female ghost stories inspired by Asian folklore. In the yet-to-be-titled first film, a bullied high school orphan (Chicha) must confront a twisted tale of love and revenge when she stumbles upon a mysterious katana haunted by a vengeful geisha spirit. Amid unexplained deaths among her bullies, she unravels the haunting’s truth.

The Evil Sea centers on an incident from 2011 involving the Chinese fishing vessel...

Morrison

2022 came and went and Phuttiphong Aroonpheng‘s sophomore film Morrison was mysteriously been left off the bingo card. The Thai-French production starring Hugo Chulachak Chakrabongse, Chicha Amatayakul and Joe Cummings, this went into production sometime in 2020 with CG Cinéma producing. Aroonpheng had quite the first feature debut in Manta Ray – which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018 and where it won Best Film in the Orizzonti section.

Gist: Jimmy, a 40-year-old former pop-star turned engineer, is sent to the region of his childhood to supervise the renovation of an old hotel. Once settled, Jimmy finds out the once flamboyant hotel has become a ruin, a maze of narrow corridors and a relic of a bygone era, which still bears the scars of the American occupation.…...

Exclusive: Raj Raghavan is on board at ColorCreative Management as Head of Talent, Partner and Manager.

Leaping over to Issa Rae’s Hoorae founded banner from Echo Lake Management, the ex-CAA agent will report directly to ColorCreative boss Talitha Watkins in his new gig.

“We are excited to partner with Raj Raghavan to build out the ColorCreative talent division,” said ColorCreative president Watkins to Deadline today. “Raj’s entrepreneurial spirit, impeccable taste, and stellar reputation for excellence in representation align with our core values.”

“I have been a fan of Issa Rae ever since I watched the first episode of Insecure,” added Raghavan. “I’m thrilled to join the ColorCreative team and be part of the mission of bringing stories to life from the freshest, coolest, and most unique voices. And I’m beyond excited about working with my good friend Talitha Watkins again.”

Watkins and Raghavan were colleagues at CAA for years.

The Serpent Trailer — Netflix‘s The Serpent (2021) TV mini-series trailer has been released. The Serpent trailer stars Tahar Rahim, Jenna Coleman, Billy Howle, Ellie Bamber, Amesh Edireweera, Tim McInnerny, Mathilde Warnier, Apasiri Kulthanan, William Brand, Kenneth Won, Fabien Frankel, Adam Rothenberg, Ilker Kaleli, Chicha Amatayakul, Ellie de Lange, Armand Rosbak, [...]

Continue reading: The Serpent Trailer: Tahar Rahim & Jenna Coleman star in Netflix’s Con-man / Serial Killer 2021 TV Mini-series...

Victoria’s Jenna Coleman, Dunkirk’s Billy Howle and Nocturnal Animals’ Ellie Bamber are to lead BBC/Netflix drama The Serpent.

The trio join Tahar Rahim, who plays Charles Sobrhaj, one of the most elusive criminals of the 20th century. Filming has begun in Thailand on the eight-part Mammoth Screen-produced series.

Coleman will play Marie-Andrée Leclerc, Sobhraj’s partner and frequent accomplice, with Howle and Bamber cast as Herman and Angela Knippenberg.

Charles Sobhraj (Rahim) was the chief suspect in the unsolved murders of up to 20 young Western travellers across India, Thailand and Nepal’s ‘Hippie Trail’ in 1975 and 1976. Psychopath, con man, thief and master of disguise, having slipped repeatedly from the grasp of authorities worldwide, by 1976 serial killer Sobhraj was Interpol’s most wanted man and had arrest warrants on three different continents.

When Herman Knippenberg (Howle), a junior diplomat at the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok, unwittingly walks into...