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The Shade, a supernatural horror film starring Chris Galust and Tony Award-winner Laura Benanti, has been acquired for North American distribution by Level 33 Entertainment. A family finds themselves dealing with more than grief in the new, exclusive trailer.

Writer/Director Tyler Chipman’s feature debut will have an exclusive theatrical release on several hundred screens in the U.S. and Canada this Fall ahead of its release across all digital platforms.

Look for the film to arrive in theaters on September 20, 2024.

The Shade follows, “twenty-year-old Ryan Beckman (Chris Galust) in the aftermath of the tragic loss of his father. Ryan lives with his mother Renee (Laura Benanti), and spends his days apprenticing at a local tattoo shop and looking after his younger brother James (Sam Duncan). The grieving college student struggles to hold his family together as an unspeakable darkness plagues his older brother Jason (Dylan McTee)—a collegiate...

Level 33 Entertainment has secured North American distribution rights to “The Shade,” a supernatural horror film starring Chris Galust and Tony Award-winner Laura Benanti.

The indie thriller is set for a theatrical release on several hundred screens across the U.S. and Canada this fall, followed by a digital platform rollout.

“The Shade” marks the feature directorial debut of Tyler Chipman, who also wrote the script. David Purdy produced the film for Red King Cinema.

The film explores themes of mental health, family dynamics and generational trauma. It follows Ryan Beckman (Galust), a 20-year-old grappling with his father’s recent death. As Ryan struggles to support his mother Renee (Benanti) and younger brother James (Sam Duncan), an ominous presence begins to haunt his older brother Jason (Dylan McTee), a college athlete who has unexpectedly returned home.

The distribution deal was negotiated by Purdy for the filmmakers and Andreas Olavarria, president...

Exclusive: Director Brad Furman has rounded out the cast for his indie drama People Not Places, scripted by his mother Ellen Brown Furman, with seven additions. They are Mercedes Ruehl (The Fisher King), Yul Vazquez (The Lost Bus), Laurence Mason (Tin Soldier), Obba Babatundé (S.W.A.T.), Joey Bicicchi (Tin Soldier), Colleen Camp (Amsterdam) and Olivia Jude.

Others rounding out the cast include Sam Jay (You People), Duke George, Wass Stevens (Lansky), Gregg Bello (Crown Vic) and Matthew J. Perry. As previously announced, Shirley MacLaine, Stephen Dorff, Julia Mayorga and Allegra Leguizamo also star.

People Not Places watches as Clare (MacLaine), an elderly widow living in Atlantic City, meets an erratic homeless man (Dorff) who sleeps in cars. Their shared loneliness causes them to bond, as they find the courage to face his regrettable past and her shortened future.

Furman and Jess Fuerst are producing the film...

Exclusive: Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine (Terms of Endearment) and Stephen Dorff (True Detective) have entered production in New Jersey on People Not Places, an indie drama from director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer).

Written by Ellen Brown Furman (The Infiltrator), the filmmaker’s mother, the film watches as an elderly widow (MacLaine) living in Atlantic City meets an erratic homeless man (Dorff) who sleeps in cars. Their shared loneliness causes them to bond, as they find the courage to face his regrettable past and her shortened future.

Brad Furman and Jess Fuerst are producing the film under their Road Less Traveled Productions banner. Jim Seibel and Kyle David Crosby are also producing.

Said Brad Furman in a statement to Deadline, “This is the opportunity of a lifetime, as I have been collaborating with...

Exclusive: Patricia Heaton is returning to television — and to filming in front of a live studio audience — with a guest-starring arc in the second season of Paramount+ Frasier.

On the followup to the Emmy-winning comedy, she will play Holly who is down-to-earth, unpretentious, and openly mocking of overly-intellectual types. A Boston native who tends bar at upscale restaurants and events, Holly is extraordinarily comfortable with both who and where she is in life, a quality that the always-climbing, always-reaching Frasier (Grammer) finds as alien as he does attractive.

This marks a reunion for sitcom royalty Heaton and Grammer, who headlined the 2007 Fox multi-camera comedy Back to You, created by Modern Family‘s Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd. Grammer subsequently guest starred on Heaton’s CBS show Carol’s Second Act; with the Emmy-winning stars playing exes both times.

Heaton has won two Primetime Emmys for starring in the CBS multi-camera comedy...

Principal Entertainment has brought aboard Tom Spriggs and Chris Horsman as managers who bring clients with them.

Clients making the transition with Spriggs include 1883 breakout Isabel May and her Una Vaca Productions, Deniz Akdeniz (High Potential), Darren Mann (1923) as well as Anna Akana who is currently touring her one woman show It Gets Darker. Also joining Spriggs is Kevin Coughlin & Ryan Grassby, the writing team behind the upcoming Never Let Go for Lionsgate and 21 Laps, director Randall Okita (Menace), Joshua Caldwell (Mending the Line) and BAFTA winner and Oscar Nominee Lesley Paterson (All Quiet On the Western Front) and her writing partner Simon Marshall. Spriggs was executive producer of Menace, The King Tide, Castle In The Ground and Mean Dreams.

Horsman returns to Principal where he began his career as a representative. After years of being a talent agent at both ICM and CAA where he worked on teams with clients including Chris Rock,...

Netflix’s 3 Body Problem delivered its second straight No. 1 showing among streaming titles, leading the rankings for the last week of March. The acquired series top 10 had several new entrants, thanks in part to a change in how Nielsen reports the numbers.

The ratings service says it made an “enhancement” to its Streaming Content Ratings, which is the basis for the weekly top 10 lists, that results in a number of programs being added to the Scr product. (They weren’t previously “due to business agreements which preceded the rankings, coupled with the associated technical aspects of measurement.”) The affected programs stream mostly on Hulu and Peacock after airing on linear networks.

The upshot is that former Fox series The Resident (1.48 billion minutes on Hulu and Netflix) and animated mainstays Family Guy (837 million minutes on Hulu) and American Dad (619 million on Hulu) all made their first appearance in the top...

Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Mena Suvari, Emile Hirsch, Dylan Flashner, Tristan Thompson, Michaela Sasner, Jeremy Tardy | Written and Directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil

Prey! is not to be confused with the Predator film of the same name, Dick Maas’s lion loose in Amsterdam thriller, the 2007 film about a family of tourists stalked by lions or any of the seemingly endless list of action films and slashers bearing that title. This Prey! is about a pair of American missionaries Andrew and Sue living in a village somewhere in Africa.

Andrew is already having a bad day. He’s a doctor and had a young boy die on the operating table because the medical supplies they were expecting hadn’t arrived on time. It gets worse when he’s told he and Sue need to make a fast exit, Boko Haram soldiers are heading towards the village.

Elsewhere, Grun is about to fly Tyler,...

“Do your recon,” Brian Cox says to Sinqua Walls in the 2022 film Mending the Line. “More great literature has been written about fly-fishing than any other sport.” So begins a reluctant friendship between two military men that grows while they wade in Montana’s shallow waters waiting for pike to bite.

From director Joshua Caldwell (Infamous), the film centers around a Marine living with trauma (Walls) who learns to face his struggles head-on as he fosters an unlikely friendship with an older veteran (Cox).

Stream it now.

Colter (Walls), a sergeant in the Marines, has just returned from Afghanistan, where he was wounded right before his tour ended. He’s tormented by flashbacks and nightmares about what happened to his fellow Marines and racked with guilt that he was unable to prevent casualties among them. Now, after passing through a few rehab facilities, he’s desperate to return to active...

As random and arbitrary as Netflix's Top 10 can appear, it starts to become more predictable upon closer inspection. Like the media rental stores of ancient times (which were essentially the streaming services of their epoch), new Netflix originals inevitably rank high before dwindling off in the same way that Blockbusters would initially stock their shelves with roughly 10,000 copies of the latest tentpole. Along those same lines, viewers frequently play catchup right before a show returns by marathoning its previous season(s), which is how a cult Syfy comedy series like "Resident Alien" ends up charting seemingly out of the blue.

Then there are the under-the-radar titles that find their way onto Netflix only to be discovered anew by its users, much like a customer perusing the aisles of their local video rental shop and stumbling upon some previously ignored movie featuring one of their favorite actors. So it is...

Two new biopics about 20th-century Black icons entered the home viewing charts this week: “Bob Marley: One Love” (Paramount), the film about the legendary reggae artist nearing $100 million in theaters, and “Shirley” (Netflix), about the first Black Congresswoman and one-time presidential candidate, led newcomers in a week that mostly repeated top titles.

“One Love” is #1 at Fandango, which ranks by revenue. The VOD platform won’t be able to provide its whole top 10 until Monday, but the company confirms that placement. Somewhat surprisingly, “One Love” is #3 at iTunes, behind “Anyone but You” (Sony) and “The Beekeeper” (Lionsgate), now both at $5.99 to rent after earlier strong PVOD performances at $19.99.

Both Fandango and Google Play chart by transactions. But normally a film with the success in theaters that “Bob Marley” had would debut at #1. It’s unclear, with data beyond relative rankings absent, whether this might be just because the reduced price...

Mending the Line, a recent drama starring Brian Cox and Sinqua Walls, just made its Netflix debut, leaving many wondering about where its true story originated from.

Telling a post-war military story, the movie was written by Stephen Camilo. It debuted in various film festivals in 2022, before seeing a theatrical release the next year.

The movie has themes of survivor's guilt and Ptsd directly alongside the power of strong bonds and hope.

Read full article on The Direct.

With “Succession” now over, it’s time for Brian Cox to find a new major role. Recently, he’s kept busy with smaller indie pics like “Mending The Line,” “Prisoner’s Daughter,” as well as “The Independent” on Peacock. And in the next couple of years, he’ll star in The Russo Bros.‘ “The Electric State” on Netflix and provide voice work for “The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim.” But EW reports there’s something on Cox’s acting wishlist before he “snuffs it,” as he puts it on Variety’s “Actors On Actors” interview: he really wants to work with Meryl Streep.

Continue reading Brian Cox Explains Why He Told Meryl Streep That He “Never Liked” Her Because He’s “Jealous” Of Her Talent at The Playlist.

Utopia’s Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) grossed an estimated $10k from one engagement at NYC’s Film Forum, where it was the top-ranking pic. Celebrated filmmaker and photographer Anton Corbijn’s first feature documentary is the story of Hipgnosis, the iconic album art design studio that was a force in the music industry behind some of the most recognizable covers of all time. It features new interviews with Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Noel Gallagher and others.

Turnout was backed by a multi-generational crowd of music, design and cinema enthusiasts, Utopia said, with multiple sold-out shows and in-person appearances by Corbijn along with Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey “Po” Powell. Head of marketing and distribution Kyle Greenberg said the doc drew drom the distributor’s traditional Gen Z fans, along with older demos “that grew up with that music and those albums.”

“Kids are discovering new music all the time.

Combat veterans, famously, don’t tend to talk much, if at all, about their experiences of war. At least not to civilians, and maybe not even to their closest relatives. Knowing this, those of us who aren’t veterans tend to have ideas about the things they aren’t discussing. Things like violence and fear and the chaos and insanity of battle. That’s surely a part of it, but in a way it’s also the heightened cinematic version, the one we’ve all gotten from war movies. What it leaves out are the torn-up emotions of soldiers, the lifelong imprint left upon them not just by the cataclysm of war but by their relationship with their fellow soldiers — the loyalty and love, the complex code of liberation and guilt at having survived.

“Mending the Line” is a drama about two veterans and their relationship to the combat experience,...

Two from Magnolia Pictures, the story of an iconic record album design firm back and a sighting of Brian Cox usher in a specialty weekend with smoke clearing over New York City. Acrid plumes from Canadian wildfires have smothered the key arthouse market over the past few days in an unusual air quality event that had Mayor Eric Adams urging people to home.

Friday the sky was visible and air fresher, a boon for all — including the ongoing Tribeca Festival, which opened Wednesday night and will be unspooling 100+ features and events through June 17.

New openings: From Magnolia, Dalíland by Mary Harron starring Ben Kingsley as the iconic artist in 20 markets (including Quad in NYC and Nuart in LA) and on VOD. Written by John C. Walsh. With Christopher Briney, Barbara Sukowa, Ezra Miller, Andreja Pejic. Premiered as TIFF’s closing night film, see Deadline review here. Follows the later years...

Exclusive: Blue Fox Entertainment has taken U.S. rights to the sci-fi comedy Relax, I’m from the Future, starring Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) and Gabrielle Graham (Possessor), from Wango Films. The film written and directed by Luke Higginson will be released in theaters nationwide this fall.

Based on a same-name 2013 short from Higginson, Relax follows Casper (Darby), a charming, but embarrassingly underprepared time traveler, now trapped in the past. When he befriends Holly (Graham), a jaded drifter, she helps him exploit his trivial knowledge of the future for a series of quick payouts, oblivious to the consequences they have set in motion. When tracked down by a more competent time traveler, Casper and Holly are forced to figure out what they mean to each other and whether the future they’ve threatened is even worth saving. Will they embrace their fate, or do they have the courage to change it?...

Whether you want the inside skinny on Logan Roy, Hannibal Lecktor, Winston Churchill or King Lear, the mighty Scottish actor will be here to tell all

Brian Cox needs no introduction – other than the usual one establishing which Brian Cox we’re talking about. This one is the 76-year-old Dundee-born actor, who started his career as a classically trained Shakespearean thespian, who played opposite Laurence Olivier in King Lear in 1983. His performances in Rob Roy and Braveheart shot him into the mainstream. Roles soon followed in The Long Kiss Goodnight and Super Troopers. Turns out Treadstone was all his fault in 2002’s The Bourne Identity. And if he’d been a bit nicer to the apes in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, perhaps they wouldn’t have taken over the world. Silly Brian.

Cox can still boast he was the original Dr Hannibal Lecter (or Lecktor), in Michael Mann...

"If you're gonna fish, don't do it alone." Blue Fox Ent. has revealed an official trailer for an indie film titled Mending the Line, directed by Joshua Caldwell. This premiered at a few festivals in 2022, and is opening this summer. Mending the Line is a story about finding something to make living worthwhile. John Cotler, a wounded veteran, returns home still carrying the demons of war, hauntingly disturbed by the everyday expectations of friendships and love interests. In Livingston, Montana, he meets Ike, a surly, headstrong fly-fisherman more than twice his age, and Lucy, a talented photographer turned librarian who reads aloud to veterans, both struggling in their own way. Colter wants only to re-enlist, to have something to die for. But the real challenge is finding something to live for. Brian Cox stars with Sinqua Walls, Perry Mattfeld, Chris Galust, Patricia Heaton, & Wes Studi. This looks better than it sounds,...

Exclusive: Blue Fox Entertainment has acquired North America rights to the indie drama Mending the Line, starring Golden Globe winner Brian Cox (Succession) and Sinqua Walls (White Men Can’t Jump), slating it for release in theaters nationwide on June 9th.

The story follows Colter (Walls), a marine who has just returned home after being wounded in Afghanistan on his last patrol. His doctor (Patricia Heaton) at the Va hospital introduces him to a Vietnam War veteran (Cox) who has been treated at the facility for decades and teaches him to fly fish, hoping it will help the young man deal with his physical and emotional trauma.

Mending the Line opened the 2022 Woodstock Film Festival and later played the San Diego Film Festival, where it won the Valor Award, given to a military-themed film that conveys the impact of war while unfolding the emotional layers and the human condition of fighting a war.

Exclusive: UTA has signed rising star Sinqua Walls for representation in all areas.

Walls is so far best known for starring opposite Anna Diop in Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, which was picked up for distribution by Amazon Studios and Blumhouse after becoming the first horror film to win Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, going on to be named as one of the National Board of Review’s Top Ten Independent Films of the year.

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He’ll next be seen starring opposite Jack Harlow in 20th Century Studios’ anticipated reboot of the classic sports comedy White Men Can’t Jump, which debuts on Hulu May 19th.

The actor...

Exclusive: Patricia Heaton (Carol’s Second Act) has signed on to star in The Beldham, a new psychological horror-thriller about mother-daughter relationships, marking the feature directorial debut of actress Angela Gulner (Glow).

Others set for the Gulner-penned indie, which is currently in production in Oklahoma, include 2x Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Corbin Bernsen (City on a Hill), Katie Parker (The Midnight Club), Emma Fitzpatrick (Take Back the Night) and Hannah Reese (Baby Money).

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The film has Heaton playing Sadie, a fierce caregiver determined to protect her family from a monstrous presence that threatens to tear them all apart. Mark Meir...

Uplifting drama about recovering war veterans partnered with US Marine Corps Entertainment Media Liaison Office, US Department of Defense.

Blue Fox Entertainment will kick off international sales talks at AFM on the uplifting drama Mending The Line starring Succession’s Brian Cox alongside Sinqua Walls and Patricia Heaton.

Joshua Caldwell (Infamous) directed the drama about a young soldier (Walls) returned from Afghanistan who befriends a Vietnam War veteran (Cox) at the same medical facility who teaches him fly fishing as a way of dealing with physical and emotional trauma.

Stephen Camelio (The Push) wrote the screenplay and Perry Mattfeld and...

Jeremy Strong as Irving Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff in ‘Armageddon Time’ (Photo Courtesy of Focus Features)

Writer/director James Gray’s Armageddon Time will open the 2022 San Diego International Film Festival on October 19th and writer/director Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light has been selected as the festival’s closing night film. The 21st annual SDiFF’s lineup will also include the San Diego premiere of Taurus as well as screenings of Close, Good Night Oppy, and The Banshees of Inisherin.

This year’s festival will honor Taurus star Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly) with the Spotlight Award. Baker, who made his acting debut in the Showtime series Roadies, will be presented with the honor following a special Spotlight Screening of Taurus from writer/director Tim Sutton on October 23rd.

“This year, our slate has been curated from over 3000 film submissions from 82 countries with compelling Social...

HBO Max is putting together an all-star cast for the upcoming original film “The Parenting.”

On Wednesday, the streamer announced that Brian Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Edie Falco and Dean Norris had been cast to star in the horror-comedy, which focuses on a young queer couple who rent a countryside cottage to host a weekend getaway with their parents, only to discover that it is inhabited by a 400-year-old poltergeist. The roles that Cox, Kudrow, Falco and Norris will be playing have yet to be announced.

“The Parenting” is directed by Craig Johnson, and written by Kent Sublette. Chris Bender and Jake Weiner produce the film for Good Fear Content. New Line Cinema co-produces the film. A release date has yet to be announced.

Cox is a recent Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe winner for his role as Logan Roy in the HBO hit “Succession,” which aired its third season last year.

New Line Cinema has cast the ensemble comedy The Parenting for HBO Max with a murderers’ row of TV stars including Succession‘s Brian Cox, The Sopranos’ Edie Falco, Friends alum Lisa Kudrow and Breaking Bad‘s Dean Norris.

Craig Johnson is directing from Kent Sublette’s script, which follows a young couple, Graham and Josh, who host a “meet the parents” weekend at a cozy rental house in the country, only to find it is already haunted by a 400-year old poltergeist. Chris Bender and Jake Weiner are producing for their Good Fear Content label.

Cox plays Logan Roy in the Emmy-winning HBO series Succession, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and SAG Award. His memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, was recently published in the UK and U.S., and he has starring roles in the upcoming films The Independent, Prisoner’s Daughter, and Mending the Line.

Exclusive: Emmy and Golden Globe winner Brian Cox (Succession) has been tapped as the narrator for Sacrilege: The Unholy Radicalization of Europe, a documentary from director Barry Avrich (Oscar Peterson: Black + White) and his Melbar Entertainment Group that recently wrapped production.

Avrich’s latest explores how Europe became a global centre of extremism, offering illuminating perspectives and personal stories of how radical Islam, political errors, and the failure of immigration and integration government policies changed the course of the continent forever. The film was shot on location in Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Nice, and Malmo, and features unprecedented access to former Isis radicals, as well as victims of terrorism, radicalization experts, journalists and clerics such as the Chief Rabbi of Denmark and Nice’s top Imam.

Avrich produced Sacrilege alongside Melissa Coghlan and Mark Selby, also serving as the film’s executive producer. Melbar is looking to release the feature in late fall,...

Exclusive: Wes Studi (Hostiles), Patricia Heaton (The Middle), Perry Mattfeld (In the Dark), Chris Galust (Give Me Liberty) and Irene Bedard (The Stand) have joined the cast of Mending the Line.

They’ll appear in the film, which is currently in production in Montana, alongside previously announced cast members Brian Cox (Succession) and Sinqua Walls (Resort to Love).

The drama directed by Joshua Caldwell (Infamous) centers on a Marine injured in Afghanistan who makes his way to a Va hospital in Montana. There, he meets a damaged Vietnam vet who teaches him fly fishing as a means of coming to terms with his physical and emotional trauma.

Stephen Camelio penned the script for the feature, and is producing alongside Caldwell, Artimage Entertainment’s Carl Effenson, August Point Productions’ Kelly McKendry and Ckm Entertainment’s Scott MacLeod.

Cox and Walls are exec producing with Mark Comora, Kyle David Crosby, Roger Goff,...

Exclusive: Brian Cox and Sinqua Walls have signed on to star and exec produce Mending the Line. The drama will be helmed by Joshua Caldwell (Infamous), which begins production later this month in Montana. Stephen Camelio penned the script.

The story follows a young soldier (Walls), injured in Afghanistan, who arrives at a Va hospital and meets a Vietnam veteran (Cox) at the facility who teaches him to fly fish, hoping it will help the young man deal with his physical and emotional trauma.

Carl Effenson (Mudbound) of Artimage Entertainment, Kelly McKendry of August Point Productions and Scott MacLeod of Ckm Entertainment are producing alongside Caldwell and Camelio. Mark Comora, Kyle David Crosby and Roger Goff also will serve as executive producers.

“With Mending the Line, Stephen has scripted a beautiful story about overcoming trauma and the healing power of fly fishing — a subject matter very close to my own heart,...