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Exclusive: Arrested Industries Talent has signed The Smell of Apples co-writer Christopher Ciancimino and actress-director Bryerly Long.

The talent management division of Anthony Kimble’s Arrested Industries has been building its international talent roster since launching in February, and will represent Ciancimino and Long going forwards.

Ciancimino has over 20 years’ experience in TV and film as a writer and exec, and most recently co-wrote wrote the upcoming adaptation of the acclaimed South African novel The Smell of Apples with John Trengove for Portobello Productions.

His other credits include the Zimbabwean wine-tasting comedy Blind Ambition with co-writer Nathan Boyd for Impact X and Goodgate Media, and producing Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, John Krasinski’s directorial debut, with a cast that included Timothy Hutton, Corey Stoll, Will Forte and Julianne Nicholson. The film was produced by Woodshed Entertainment, a company that Ciancimino co-founded and that was also home to his debut feature,...

Exclusive: Anthony Kimble has opened the newest management agency on the international beat with a roster of UK and South African talent.

Arrested Industries Talent will sit within Kimble’s Arrested Industries, the content development, financing and production company he runs out of L.A., London and Cape Town. Its launch is designed to identify and curate talent from smaller markets and expand their international careers.

The agency launches with a roster comprising writer/director Christiaan Olwagen, writer/director/author Etienne Fourie, director Tina Gharavi, Edinburgh Fringe breakout Lyndon Chapman, and actors Daniel Fox, Daniel Schultz and Sam Benjamin.

Kimble will continue working with LA-based 5X Media, with Arrested Industries Talent now having a co-representation in the U.S. with the producer and management firm. 5X will represent Arrested’s talent in the U.S., while Arrested will rep 5X talent in South Africa and other territories.

“During the course...

Here’s the latest episode of the The Filmmakers Podcast, part of the ever-growing podcast roster here on Nerdly. If you haven’t heard the show yet, you can check out previous episodes on the official podcast site, whilst we’ll be featuring each and every new episode as it premieres.

For those unfamiliar with the series, The Filmmakers Podcast is a podcast about how to make films from micro budget indie films to bigger budget studio films and everything in-between. Our hosts Giles Alderson, Dan Richardson, Andrew Rodger and Cristian James talk how to get films made, how to actually make them and how to try not to f… it up in their very humble opinion. Guests will come on and chat about their film making experiences from directors, writers, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers and distributors.

The Filmmaker’s Podcast #316: How to go from short film to your...

Kyla Frye and Sam Benjamin in The Pay Day (2022). © The Pay Day Film Ltd

Comedy heist flicks can be a real treat. When blended with a rom-com, even more so. But only if you have a sufficiently twisty script, and leading actors who click on-screen. Sam Benjamin and Kyla Frye are attractive enough, but the script they co-wrote for themselves in The Pay Day does the acting side of their careers no favors in the appeal of the heist or the chemistry between the characters they play.

Jennifer (Kyla Frye) is a London tech whiz unfairly fired after performing a major overhaul of a large company’s computer system. Broke and desperate, she’s recruited (and snidely coerced) by a shady fellow (Simon Callow) to break into a very secure establishment and hack its system to get the key for recovering 500 million euros embezzled over time by a bunch of crooked politicians.

Batman’s butler is coming to HBO Max.

The streamer released the first trailer for Season 3 of “Pennyworth: The Origins of Batman’s Butler” on Wednesday, showcasing the newest chapter in Alfred Pennyworth’s story. The new season will premiere on Thursday, Oct. 6 with three episodes followed by one episode weekly through Nov. 24.

The DC origin series Jack Bannon as the titular butler, who is also a former British Sas soldier. He forms a security company in 1960s London and goes to work with young billionaire Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge) and his wife Martha (Emma Paetz) before they become Bruce Wayne’s parents. Season three of the thriller begins after a five-year time jump. Now, the civil war is over and a revolution has changed the world, ushering in a new age of super heroes and supervillains.

The cast for the series includes Bannon, Aldridge, Paetz, Paloma Faith, Ryan Fletcher,...

“Shakespeare in Love” star Simon Callow has joined the cast of indie heist movie “The Pay Day,” Variety can reveal.

Callow, who has also appeared in fare as varied as “The Witcher,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” will play an “eccentric crime boss” in the caper. He was most recently seen in “Hawkeye” on Disney Plus as Armand III.

Marking the feature film debut for Sam Bradford (“The Few”), the film tells the story of a down-on-her-luck It technician played by Kyla Frye (“Edge of Tomorrow”) who is tapped by crime boss Callow to steal millions of dollars’ worth of data in a sophisticated hack. The plan goes awry when she is thwarted by con artist Sam Benjamin (“The War of the Worlds”).

Joining Callow are Ellen Thomas, Vincent Jerome, Marcus Onilude, Rae Lim, Farrel Jo Hegarty, Miles Mitchell, Kara-Dee Rai, Jacob Anderton, Frankie Clarence and Dominic Ryan.

Stars: Stu Bennett, Vinnie Jones, Jessica-Jane Stafford, Lee Charles, Joe Egan, Katrina Durden, Greg Burridge, Josh Myers, David Schaal, Bentley Kalu, Sam Benjamin, Mark Griffin, Lainy Boyle, Jean-Paul Ly, Leon Sua, Phoebe Robinson-Galvin | Written and Directed by Ross Boyask

It hasn’t taken long for writer/director Ross Boyask to follow up 2018’s Vengeance (aka I Am Vengeance) with a sequel, probably because that film struck a massive chord with genre fans across the globe – respecting the action genre’s vast, and may I say beloved, past, whilst delivering a modern take on the traditional Dtv action film; and, of course, featuring Stu Bennett in a compelling lead role. I’m guessing that the fact Bennett was on UK screens as part of World of Sport wrestling And had a huge name presence thanks to his former WWE career didn’t hurt either.

However Vengeance proved that Bennett was so...

Ok, a quick show of hands: How many of you actually knew there was a movie titled “I Am Vengeance” released in 2018? Wow, that many? Well, that’s probably why we now have a sequel, “I Am Vengeance: Retaliation,” even though it isn’t likely to reach beyond the niche audience of undiscriminating action fans who eagerly viewed its predecessor on digital and home video platforms.

Much like the original 2018 opus, “Retaliation” plays like a throwback to the era when similar low-budget fare routinely strained shelves at Blockbuster outlets, and provided gainful employment for such cult faves as Jeff Speakman, Gary Busey, Cynthia Rothrock and direct-to-video icon Wings Hauser. Here, the main attraction is Stu Bennett (aka WWE wrestler Wade Barrett), a taciturn tough customer who once again inhabits the lead role of John Gold, a British special forces soldier turned freelance mercenary turned self-employed vengeance seeker.

In “I Am Vengeance...

The theatrical release of Justice League may have clocked in at exactly 120 minutes after Warner Bros. instructed Joss Whedon to keep the running time under two hours, but the Snyder Cut is set to be a whole lot longer. Zack Snyder estimates that only 25% of his footage made it into the version of the movie that initially hit theaters, and with so many subplots and supporting characters left on the cutting room floor, there have been rumors that the reassembled cut of the Dceu’s all-star movie could be up to four hours in length.

With Darkseid, Martian Manhunter, Iris West, Ryan Choi and Aquaman’s Vulko all set to find themselves added into the mix, without even mentioning a drastically different arc for Henry Cavill’s Superman and a reported increase in screentime for Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, the Snyder Cut of Justice League is almost guaranteed to be...

New U.K. production company Three Little Birds Pictures has been launched by actor-director Philip Barantini, financial controller Samantha Warham and talent representative Sara Sehdev.

The London and Liverpool-based company’s first co-production, Barantini-helmed “Boiling Point,” stars British talent including “The Irishman” and “Save Me’s” Stephen Graham, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge’s” Hannah Walters, “The A Word’s” Vinette Robinson, “Pennyworth” and “Jamestown’s” Jason Flemyng, “Gangs of London’s” Ray Panthaki, and “Curfew’s” Malachi Kirby.

The feature, about a talented head chef wrangling his team on the busiest day of the year, was one of the last productions to finish shooting in the U.K. prior to the coronavirus lockdown. It is based on the Bifa-nominated short of the same name, and is produced with Ascendant Films, Burton Fox Films and Graham/Walters’ company Matriarch.

Projects in development for Three Little Birds Pictures include “Children of the Wild,...

Kevin Conroy, the legendary Batman voice actor, has joined the cast of a British sci-fi superhero series called The Few.

The award-wining web-series was created by actor Sam Benjamin and director Sam Bradford (Double Cross).

Kevin Conroy will take on the role of a special guest star character “with a dark past called Bobby ‘Shakespeare’ Smith, who has a run-in with the show’s Northern English vigilante ‘The Rogue Detective’ played by Sam Benjamin.”

The upcoming season is called The Few: The Dark Future and it will continue “a story which last year won 13 international awards, following three diverse working class Londoners who acquire superpowers when they enrol in a lucrative medical trial.”

Kevin Conroy also joins Kyla Frye (Edge of Tomorrow), Vincent Jerome (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), Kim Vithana (Coronation Street), Sonny Louis, and Fabrizio Santino (Hollyoaks).

Creator and star Sam Benjamin had this to say in a...