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A podcast about answering the call to protect the birds and places we love Threatened transports you to some of the most beautiful and remote places around the globe, where birds are calling humans to take action. These stories about the enduring connections between birds, people, and landscapes are for the bird-curious, conservation-conscious, and travel-starved. Join host Ari Daniel for an escape to the natural world -- and a glimpse into the lives of people working to protect it.

Season 4 will launch Tuesday, January 17th with a new episode every week – in both English and Spanish. These four episodes examine the one-of-a-kind ecology of Puerto Rico and the birds of Puerto Rico that are facing significant challenges. In season 4 of Threatened, we’ll meet the people and communities in this Caribbean island who are acting on behalf of birds and banding together to protect them.

Episodes include:

The Puerto Rican...

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Californication and The X-Files star David Duchovny will star alongside Oakes Fegley (The Fabelmans, Pete’s Dragon, The War With Grandpa) and T.R. Knight (Grey’s Anatomy, The Flight Attendant) in Irving Franco’s Adam the First, which Archstone Entertainment will be introducing to buyers at the American Film Market.

Franco (Cheerleader) wrote and directed the film, which follows Adam, who, when his foster parents are suddenly murdered, sets out on a cross country adventure to track down a series of men who could be his estranged father, each one with a different life that could become his.

Adam The First is produced by Nathan Marcus, Jonathan Rubenstein, Ari Daniel Pinchot and Bernie Stern. Executive producers include Scott Martin, Michael Slifkin, and Jack Sheehan of Archstone.

“Adam The First is masterfully crafted and beautifully shot,” said Martin. “It is engaging from start to finish,...

Exclusive: Crystal City Entertainment, the production and finance company with credits such as The Ides of March and Lee Daniel’s The Butler, has secured the film and TV rights to Donald Ray Pollock’s second book, The Heavenly Table.

Set in 1917, the story follows three young, dirt-poor sharecroppers who, after their father dies, hatch a plan to rob a bank and cast off their miserable existence. Things go terribly sideways and the brothers, armed only with a cache of blunt farming tools and a 12-gauge shotgun, ride north on a bloody crime spree.

Crystal City is currently in search of a screenwriter to attach to the project.

Pollock, a recipient of the 2009 Pen/Bingham Fellowship, made his literary debut in 2008 with the critically acclaimed story collection, Knockemstiff. Published in 2016, The Heavenly Table followed Pollock’s 2011 novel, The Devil All The Time, which is being adapted into a Netflix feature...

Exclusive: The video game franchise Backyard Sports will be turned into a feature film by Cross Creek Pictures and Crystal City Entertainment. The feature version of the Day 6 Sports Group property will be produced by Cross Creek Pictures president Brian Oliver and Crystal City president Ari Daniel Pinchot. Backyard Sports lets gamers play with professional athletes, who are morphed into kids, to participate in games played in the yard. The game features stars from sports…...

Open Road Films and Crystal City Entertainment/Boundary Stone Films have struck a multi-picture development financing pact for all of Open Road’s own productions over the coming years. Two-to-four films a year are expected to be developed through the deal, with each film getting a wide domestic release via Open Road Films. Open Road International and its partner, Film Nation, will handle foreign sales The announcement was made Thursday by Open Road Films CEO Tom Ortenberg and Ari Daniel Pinchot, Jonathan Rubenstein, Mark Schacknies and Khris Baxter, the managers of Crystal City Entertainment/Boundary Stone Films. Also Read: Open Road,...

Fresh off of his stint as the co-lead in "The Fault In Our Stars," Ansel Elgort has been tapped to play Van Cliburn in the biopic of the same name, according to Deadline. The film is based on the Howard Reich book on the famed musician, with Elgort playing the pianist in 1958, the year that the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition was launched in Moscow. The Texas-born savant wowed audiences during the Cold War when America's tensions with Russia ran high. Van Cliburn was credited with easing that strain and went on to become one of the most in-demand performers of all time, starting his own International Piano Competition in his home state in 1962. Cliburn died in February last year. Elgort comes from a ballet performance background but he also, indeed, plays piano. He most recently appeared as Augustus Waters in "The Fault In Our Stars," which paired him back up with Shailene Woodley,...

Van Cliburn

Ansel Elgort ("Fault in our Stars," "Carrie") has signed to play the title role in the biopic "Van Cliburn" for Temple Hill and Crystal Entertainment. Ari Daniel Pinchot, Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen will produce.

Van Cliburn was a 23-year-old lanky pianist from Texas who emerged from out of nowhere to win the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. It was the first time the tournament was held, and was organized by the Ussr in an effort by Kruschev to lord Soviet superiority over the Us during the height of the cold war. [Source: Deadline]

Brilliance

Talks between Jared Leto and Legendary Pictures for the "Dallas Buyers Club" star to take over from Will Smith in Julius Onah's "Brilliance" have reportedly broken down. Leto, who met with Onah last Monday, reportedly turned down the role last week and puts him back in the running for Marvel's "Doctor Strange...

Exclusive: Ansel Elgort, hot off the male lead of Augustus Waters in The Fault In Our Stars, has signed to play the title role in Van Cliburn, a feature that is being mounted by Temple Hill partners Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen along with Crystal City Entertainment in association with The Johnson Group. Godfrey and Bowen, who worked with Elgort on The Fault In Our Stars, will produce with Ari Daniel Pinchot and Robert M. Johnson is exec producer. Andrew Stern will write the script. The film is based on the Howard Reich book Van Cliburn, and Elgort will play […]...

That's right — "Lee Daniels' The Butler" has 39 credited producers to its name, and it isn't just Lee Daniels 39 times. We're not sure if this is a record, but we are sure that it's a lot of f**king producers.

So what, exactly, did each producer do for the movie? In a NextMovie exclusive, we've obtained a verified* list of the various roles each producer filled during the production of the film. Needless to say, each was wholly necessary to the quality of the end result.

*Note: By "verified" we mean "not verified."

Horatio Bacon: Responsible for convincing director Lee Daniels to not film the movie in 3D.

Julia Barry: Responsible with supplying the production office with the proper Nerf guns for anticipated downtime.

Len Blavatnik: Responsible for assaulting any "nerd" who insists on putting another "s" after the apostrophe in the film's title.

Charles Sauveur Bonan:...

The Weinstein Company has picked up distribution rights to his star-studded period drama The Butler, directed by Precious helmer Lee Daniels.

Based on the screenplay by Danny Strong (who just won an Emmy last night for Game Change) and Daniels, The Butler is inspired by Wil Haygood’s Washington Post article about an African-American man who served as a butler (Forest Whitaker) to eight Presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the White House for over thirty years.

Obviously, Harvey Weinstein has liked what he’s seen of the footage. The film, which has been shooting down in New Orleans for weeks, also stars Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, Minka Kelly, Lenny Kravitz, Melissa Leo, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber and Robin Williams.

Hit the jump to check out the...