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Happy New Year! As the Deadline team gears up for another busy and discovery-filled 12 months on the global film festival circuit, here is our annual (non-exhaustive) list of U.S. and international movies we expect to see on the way. While we scored better than an 80% strike rate for 2024, this year’s list features a few returnees we still hope to see at a festival soon. As in our previous prediction lists, we’ve focused on titles that have already started filming or are in post-production and which haven’t yet been announced for a festival.

A few notes on some big and exciting projects not listed below. Apple’s Brad Pitt Formula One pic F1 has a June release date leading to some question marks over a potential Cannes pit stop, but we get the impression a Croisette launch is unlikely for this one. Meanwhile, A24 and Timothée Chalamet...

MK2 Films, the European sales, production and finance powerhouse behind movies by Justine Triet and Joachim Trier, is getting ready to ramp up its global scope and move further in the English-language space.

Following its appointment of Protagonist’s former managing director Vanessa Saal as executive consultant and U.K. lead earlier this month, MK2 Films has struck a multi-year financing deal with the investment fund manager Ipr.Vc to gain financial ammunitions and build a robust slate of projects.

The company has established itself as a leading force in auteur-driven cinema with a number of critical and commercial hits in recent years, including Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World” and Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” It just rolled off a successful Cannes with internationally-driven movies such as Andrew Haigh’s “Belly of the Beast” starring Ben Stiller and Colin Farrell,...

European sales, production and finance company mk2 films has announced a multi-year slate financing deal with investment fund manager Ipr.Vc, which will provide “significant financial backing for a slate of future projects”.

The French firm did not divulge details of the value of the deal or how many projects it was projected to include, but said Ipr.Vc’s financial support would enable it to deliver a robust slate of projects and further strengthen “its status as a leading force in auteur-driven cinema”.

“We are thrilled to work with Ipr.Vc and its experienced management team, and to have found the perfect partners to allow us to scale our efforts while maintaining the artistic integrity that defines mk2 films and our commitment to bold, visionary filmmaking,” mk2 films CEO Nathanael Karmitz and Managing Director Fionnuala Jamison said in a joint statement.

Recent mk2 films successes include Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall,...

Paris-based sales, production and finance outfit mk2 Films has signed a multi-year financing deal with investment fund manager Ipr.Vc for a slate of upcoming productions and acquisitions titles.

The collaboration will boost mk2 Films’ robust slate as it scales up its international expansion and foray into English-language projects.

Helsinki and London-based investment fund manager Ipr.Vc has raised over $200m and backed more than 50 productions across film and television.

The company founded in 2014 has long-term partnerships with several US and European producers including A24, XYZ Films and animation studio Gigglebug Entertainment.

Mk2 Films’ auteur-driven slate includes Andrew Haigh’s Belly Of The Beast,...

French production and sales outfit mk2 films has signed a multi-year financing deal with the Finnish private equity fund Ipr.Vc to bankroll a slate of new projects, the two companies unveiled on Thursday.

The new capital will come in handy for mk2, which is looking to build on recent crossover success, including its co-productions The Worst Person in the World from director Joachim Trier, and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as well as Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, both of which mk2 sold worldwide.

In Cannes this year, mk2 unveiled its most ambitious slate ever, with several English-language projects, including Belly of the Beast, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers follow-up, starring Ben Stiller and Colin Farrell, and The Zellner Brothers’ Alpha Gang starring Cate Blanchett. Among its features already in production include Trier’s Sentimental Value,...

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Rivers of Dust,” Anna Muyleart’s “Geni and the Zeppelin” and “Pearl Motel,” fromJorge Furtado, feature among potential nine brand new projects announced at the Cannes Festival by Globo Filmes, the theatrical film co-production arm of Brazilian TV giant Globo.

With Mendonça Filho deep in pre-production on political thriller “The Secret Agent,” co-produced by France’s Mk Productions, details on “Rivers of Dust,” save that he will re-team on it with Juliano Dornelles after their 2019 Cannes Jury Prize winner “Bacurau.”

Elsewhere, the new projects speak volumes of Globo Filmes’ current content focus. There’s the broad spectrum. . Titles straddle commercial plays – gay espionage operatives comedy “Special Agents” from Pedro Antônio – “A” list festival plays such as “Rivers” and Geni” and cross-over titles such as sex-laced situation comedy “Pearl Motel.”

Above all, additions to Globo Filmes’ development slate underscore two of its biggest investment priorities.

One is diversity.

Following up his documentary Pictures of Ghosts, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho has unveiled his first narrative feature since 2019’s Bacurau. He’ll next direct the political thriller The Secret Agent, set to star Brazilian icon Wagner Moura.

Variety reports the late 1970s-set film will follow Moura as Marcelo, “a university professor in his 40s who is on the run. He travels from São Paulo to the seaside city of Recife during Carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son. But he soon finds out he has been tailed and spied on by neighbors in his new refuge, leaving him no possible escape from the tentacles of corruption.” Maria Fernanda Candido (The Traitor) is also among the ensemble of the film, which is aiming for a 2025 premiere and will mark the director’s most ambitious work yet.

The director actually revealed the project last year, saying, “The plot takes place...

Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”) is set to direct “The Secret Agent,” a gripping political thriller headlined by “Civil War” star Wagner Moura. The film is set in the late 1970s during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

MK2 Films, the sales banner behind the Oscar-winning “Anatomy of a Fall,” will introduce the project to buyers at the Cannes Film Market. Now in pre-production, “The Secret Agent” is being produced by Brazil’s Cinemascopio and Mk Productions, whose credits include Oscar-nominated films such as Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World” and Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War.”

Moura, who broke through internationally with his Golden Globe-nominated performance as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series “Narcos,” will star as Marcelo, a university professor in his 40s who is on the run. He travels from São Paulo to the seaside city of Recife during Carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son.

A teenager in 70s New Zealand dreams of starting a band in Jonathan Ogilvie’s nostalgic comedy, which opens Rotterdam’s international film festival

Jonathan Ogilvie is the New Zealand film-maker who made the gangster drama The Tender Hook (2008) and also Lone Wolf (2021), a postmodern spin on Conrad’s The Secret Agent. Now he hits a lighter, gentler and much more personal note in this coming-of-age comedy, which opens the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) – a nostalgiafest romance from the 70s post-punk era about a kid in New Zealand mooching around in his uncool school uniform, hanging out in the local record shop (which still has its prog-era name of Middle Earth Records) and dreaming of starting a punk band called the Daleks – though wondering if just Daleks sounds cooler — and obsessing about an unattainably sexy girl who sneers at him.

It will have all of us of a certain...

The science fiction thriller "Lone Wolf" is adapted from Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel "The Secret Agent", written and directed by  Jonathan Ogilvie starring Hugo Weaving, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Josh McConville and Chris Bunton:

"..in the future, the city of Melbourne is marked by state corruption and constant surveillance, a group of small-time activists hatch a plan to commit an act of urban terrorism. But an unforeseen outcome and the involvement of police and state officials complicate this seemingly innocuous PR stunt, as disempowered individuals struggle against a system that protects itself at the expense of its own citizens..." 

Click the images to enlarge... ...

Writer-director Jonathan Ogilvie’s Lone Wolf takes audiences to a near-future Melbourne marked by state corruption and constant surveillance. There, a group of small-time activists hatch a plan to commit a “victimless atrocity”.

Tilda Cobham-Hervey stars as Winnie, a young woman who, along with her brother Stevie (Chris Bunton), ends up being caught-up in a web of intrigue involving a bomb plot, inept anarchists, ambitious police and a corrupt politician.

Hugo Weaving, Stephen Curry and Josh McConville also star.

An adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel ‘The Secret Agent’, Lone Wolf is produced by Mat Govoni and Adam White.

The post ‘Lone Wolf’ (Trailer) appeared first on If Magazine.

When Australian films Friends and Strangers and Lone Wolf screened at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam this week, it was the culmination of a decade’s worth of work between their respective directors.

James Vaughan’s Friends and Strangers became the first Australian film to be shown as part of the event’s Tiger competition when it was screened on Wednesday, while Jonathan Ogilvie’s Lone Wolf had its world premiere as part of the Big Screen Competition the preceding day.

According to Vaughan and Ogilvie, both films took about five years to make.

Filmed in 2019 with mostly first-time actors, Friends and Strangers follows 20-somethings Ray and Alice as they navigate a series of increasingly awkward and comedic situations, from limp romantic encounters to bungled opportunities for professional growth.

Vaughan, who makes his feature debut with the film, said while the pandemic had delayed the film’s entry into the festival circuit,...

“Mock if you will,” Christian Evangelist Florence Scanwell (Dorothy Atkinson) chided the bordello workers in Hulu‘s progressive period series Harlots. “There is honor in righteous poverty.” The creative team will be finding new places of employment. Harlots has been cancelled at the streaming service, according to THR, nine months after its third season came to a close.

Based on true stories of real women, Harlots was neither clichéd nor glamorous. It depicted sex work as legitimate. The sex wasn’t gratuitous, it was perfunctory, and there is no judgment of it. The series was written, directed and produced entirely by women. Co-creators Moira Buffini (Jane Eyre) and Alison Newman were Executive Producers alongside Alison Owen, Debra Hayward and Alison Carpenter. Season 3 was written by Buffini, Jane English, Vivienne Harvey and Jessica Ruston, and directed by Robin Sheppard, Chloe Thomas and Debs Paterson, with Pat Tookey-Dickson producing.

Harlots was set in 1763 London.

Distributor negotiated deal with Amp International.

Gravitas Ventures has picked up Us rights to the comedy-drama Ana starring Andy Garcia, Dafne Keen and Luna Lauren and has set a January 2020 theatrical and on-demand release.

Charles McDougall directed the story about an auto dealer facing bankruptcy during the recession in Puerto Rico who discovers a nine-year-old girl sleeping in the back of one of his cars.

When the pair embark on a journey across the Caribbean island to find Ana’s father, they face an expedition filled with mystery and danger. Gravitas Ventures has set a January 3, 2020 release date.

Luillo Ruiz...

AMC Networks’ Acorn TV, the streaming service for British and international TV, is growing its international team with the appointment of Kerensa Samanidis to the newly created role of General Manager of Acorn TV International.

The former FilmStruck executive is now based in Acorn’s London office and has recently been a consultant for Acorn TV. As General Manager, she will be responsible for the overall development, management and operation of the premium TV streaming service for all markets outside of the Americas.

She will oversee strategy, programming, product, marketing and distribution. Last year, Acorn TV expanded into territories including Mexico, Spain, Scandinavia, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. Samanidis will report to Matthew Graham, General Manager of Acorn TV.

Samanidis was previously General Manager of FilmStruck International where she oversaw the launch of the service across Europe before it was shuttered last year.

Rakhee Birdi has also joined the company...

LevelK has acquired world sales rights to “Lone Wolf,” an Australian thriller starring Hugo Weaving (“The Matrix”) and Tilda Cobham-Hervey (“Hotel Mumbai”) in the run up to Cannes.

Written and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, “Lone Wolf” is set in contemporary Melbourne and tells the story of Winnie, a young woman who runs a struggling political bookshop with her boyfriend Conrad and takes care of her disabled brother. But Winnie’s efforts to hold everything together get thwarted when Conrad becomes entangled in an act of terrorism. “Lone Wolf” is based on Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel “The Secret Agent.”

Ogilvie’s previous films include “The Tender Hook,” an AFI award-winning film with Rose Byrne and Weaving; as well as “This Film is a Dog” and “The Despondent Divorcee” — both of which played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

“‘Lone Wolf’ is an incredibly timely story on two counts,” said Ogilvie.

Alfie Allen‘s post-Game of Thrones life will be full of Harlots: The actor has joined the cast of Hulu’s 18th century-set period drama.

Allen will appear in Season 3 alongside Ash Hunter (The Secret Agent) as the Pincher brothers — Isaac and Hal, respectively — who serve as foes for the women of Soho. Allen’s character “is driven by his ambitions to achieve wealth and power,” per the official description. After returning from the Seven Years’ War, “Isaac wants to take over London. The brothers lease a tavern together, the Saracen’s Head, which serves as a front for their ever-growing pimping business.

The female-dominated Hulu series Harlots is returning this summer — and its third season will feature a few new male stars.

On Wednesday the streamer announced that the latest season of its 18th-century sex-work drama will premiere on July 10, and feature two new characters, the Pincher brothers, portrayed by Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones, John Wick, The Predator) and Ash Hunter (Hamilton West End, The Secret Agent).

Allen will play Isaac Pincher, described as an ambitious and unpredictable Seven-Year-War veteran who has returned to London and co-established a tavern, called "Saracen’s Head," that is a front for ...

Jacki Weaver.

Comedy feature The Chain Breakers, to star Jacki Weaver, Jack Thompson, James Cromwell, Denis Waterman and Shane Jacobson, is one of seven projects to have recently received production funding from Screen Australia.

Written by Luke Preston and directed by Mark Lamprell, the film follows four Vietnam vets, famous for escaping a Pow camp, who find themselves in a new hell: The Hogan Hills Retirement Home for Returned Veterans. Each has an unrealised dream they want achieve, and so they band together to escape again. Produced by Antony I. Ginnane and David Lightfoot, the film is billed as a cross between Grumpy Old Men and The Great Escape. It will be distributed via R & R Films, the new venture between Richard Becker and Robert Slaviero.

Among the other projects to have shared in the $7.5 million of funding from the federal agency is Lone Wolf, writer-director Jonathan Ogilvie’s...

Hulu has come on board Anna Friel-fronted British drama Butterfly after a deal with Fremantle. The U.S. streaming service will launch the three-part mini-series on January 18.

Fronted by the Marcella star, Butterfly is penned by The Secret Agent writer Tony Marchant. It tells the story of the complex relationship between separated parents, Vicky, played by Friel and Stephen, played by Emmett J. Scanlan, and their division in opinion over how to support their youngest child, Max, played by Callum Booth-Ford. From a young age, Max has identified as a girl but has tried to suppress these feelings in an attempt to earn Stephen’s approval.

The show is produced by Red Production Company and Adam Kemp’s Aenon for ITV. Nicola Shindler, Caroline Hollick and Adam Kemp are executive producers on the show, which launched in the UK in October.

Caroline Kusser, Svp, Distribution Us, International, Fremantle said,...

Acorn TV launched in 30 new markets Tuesday, the biggest wave of international launches to date for the AMC-owned streaming service, which focuses on British and English-language drama.

The platform is now live in Australia and New Zealand, India, Spain, the Nordics, the Benelux countries and South Africa. The international rollout started in June, when Acorn TV launched in a plethora of markets in Latin America. More territories in that region were added as part of Tuesday’s wave.

AMC Networks has just closed a $65 million deal to buy Acorn TV parent company Rlj Entertainment, but the international rollout plans were being put into place ahead of that.

Rights deals mean that not every show from the service in the U.S. will be immediately available in every territory. Matthew Graham, Svp and Gm for Acorn TV, told Variety that the “strategy has been to start with a focused offering...

Acorn TV is going global. The Svod service is launching in thirty new countries including Australia and India.

The service launched in the U.S. and Canada in 2011 before rolling out to twelve Latin American countries in 2018, will now be available across Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Antigua, Barbuda and Belize.

Available for $4.99 per month, the service is launching with a raft of UK titles including Martin Clunes’ Doc Martin, Daniel Craig’s Sword of Honour, The Bletchley Circle, Lynda La Plante’s The Commander and Above Suspicion, The Secret Agent, Traffik, Benedict Cumberbatch’s The Last Enemy as well as Irish drama Jack Taylor, Australian cop drama East West 101 and documentaries including Britain...

24: Legacy alum Raphael Acloque has been cast as one of the leads opposite star Sophia Bush in CBS’ drama pilot Surveillance, from Matt Reeves, David C. White, Patricia Riggen and 20th Century Fox TV, which will co-produce with CBS TV Studios.

Written by White, with Riggen set to direct, Surveillance is described as a complex and timely spy thriller centered on the head of communications for the Nsa (Bush), a charming operative who finds her loyalties torn between protecting the government’s secrets and her own.

Acloque will play Jack, a smart, calculating and resourceful journalist with an alternative news website. He’s a vocal critic of the Nsa, determined to expose corruption and abuse within the agency and the intelligence community at large. Catalina Sandino Moreno also srars in the pilot.

Reeves executive produces via his 6th & Idaho production company alongside Riggen; White co-executive produces.

Acloque next will...

Son of Saul director László Nemes deftly conjures the death throes of the Austro-Hungarian empire in an atmospheric mystery drama

László Nemes, Hungarian director of the Oscar-winning Holocaust tragedy Son of Saul, now comes to Venice with this lucid nightmare of a film about pre-first-world-war Budapest. It’s a very mysterious and even bizarre film in many ways, shot in what is becoming Nemes’ signature style: long takes, a persistent closeup on the lead character’s face, and a shallow focus that allows the surrounding reality to intrude only intermittently. The dialogue is often spoken in a subdued murmur, as if each speaker is in possession of a secret.

Sunset is an occult mystery drama about the fin-de-siècle anxieties of the dying Austro-Hungarian empire. It takes place in Budapest in 1913, with a distinctly disturbing coda in the wartime trenches, a setting that is itself ambiguously real or imagined. All the...

I don't know what the future holds for Virtual Reality films, but there are production companies and studios that are playing around with the possibilities. There is a market for Vr films, it's just really small right now because no one knows what it could be.

There's a new Vr film project that's been announced called Lone Wolf. It's a terrorist thriller and Hugo Weaving is set to star in it alongside Hotel Mumbai actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

The film is a modern-day adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel The Secret Agent. The story explores themes of fanaticism and terrorism, and it "involves a cluster of anarchists, one of whom is also a police informant, who receive a proposal to attack the Sydney Opera House."

According to Variety, Weaving plays a police minister involved in the conspiracy, and Cobham-Hervey as one of the cell members.

The film is being produced in...

Hugo Weaving, who previously starred in technology trend-setting film “The Matrix,” will head the cast of full-length virtual reality feature “Lone Wolf.” He is joined by “Hotel Mumbai” actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

The Australian film is to be directed by Jonathan Ogilvie as a modern-day adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel “The Secret Agent.” Exploring themes of fanaticism and terrorism, the story involves a cluster of anarchists, one of whom is also a police informant, who receive a proposal to attack the Sydney Opera House. Weaving plays a police minister involved in the conspiracy, with Cobham-Hervey as one of the cell members.

The film is set to go into production later this year after completing funding of its $2 million budget. Executive producer is Lee Hubber. An Australian theatrical release in 2019 is set through distributor Label. International sales are to be handled by Level K, a Danish sales firm which has previously represented other Australian film titles.

Exclusive: Shoot is underway in Puerto Rico on comedy-drama sold by Amp International.

Principal photography is underway on Puerto Rican-set comedy-drama Ana, starring Logan breakout actress Dafne Keen and Andy Garcia.

Screen can reveal the first look at the duo who play a street-smart urchin and a financially destitute car salesman whose friendship blooms after a chance encounter. The pair embark on a road trip to try and save him from bankruptcy…or worse.

The filmis written by Cris Cole (Mad Dogs) and directed by Charles McDougall whose credits include House Of Cards for Netflix, The Secret Agent for BBC, Secrets and Lies for ABC and The Office for NBC.

The film is produced by Luillo Ruiz’ (The Men Who Stare at Goats) The Pimienta Film Company. Executive producers Cyril Mégret and Walter Josten of Blue Rider Pictures are financing alongside Ruiz. James Norrie of Amp International is also an executive producer.

Ruiz, Cole and...

Simon Brew Nov 29, 2016

Dr Henry Wu will be making his third appearance in a Jurassic Park movie, with Jurassic World 2...

This article contains a spoiler for the end of Jurassic World

Thus far on the casting for 2018’s Jurassic World movie, we know that Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt are back to lead the cast, whilst Toby Jones and Rafe Spall signed up for duties a few weeks’ back (more on their casting below).

Interestingly, we now learn that B D Wong is also set to return, to reprise the role of Dr Henry Wu. That gives a hint as to what direction the sequel is heading, as it's likely that Wu's actions and beliefs are a crucial ingredient in what comes next.

Producer Frank Marshall confirmed the news, telling CinemaBlend that “when they take off in helicopters, you know they’re probably going to come back”. That refers,...

Laurence Bowen’s London-based Dancing Ledge Productions has entered into a deal with publisher HarperCollins to adapt the novels of Alistair MacLean as event TV series. The first project under the pact is San Andreas, a thriller set on board a torpedoed Ww II hospital ship. Tony Marchant (The Secret Agent) is adapting. HarperCollins owns the rights to bestselling author MacLean’s novels which also include The Guns Of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare. Each…...

The BBC said today that Toby Jones will play the villain in Season 4 of Sherlock. The veteran actor, who starred on the British series The Secret Agent and Detectorists, plays a scientist on Fox’s Wayward Pines and voiced the elf Dobby in a pair of Harry Potter films, will join the mystery drama in the second of its three new 90-minute episodes. No details about the character were released, but co-creator, writer and Ep Steven Moffat said, “Delighted to have Toby Jones on…...

Nobody plays flawed heroes like actor Toby Jones, from Capote to Hitchcock to Captain Mainwaring. But they’re winners in his eyes, he tells Simon Hattenstone

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Toby Jones was the little fella destined for a life in clowning, or fringe theatre, or radio drama. Maybe even the occasional walk-on part in an art house movie. Take his first couple of film roles in the early 1990s: “the valet” in an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and “man at tea bar” in Mike Leigh’s Naked. That was Toby Jones. Or, even better, the scene-stealer in the Richard Curtis comedy Notting Hill – the man who stalked Julia Roberts. You don’t remember that? Well, that would be because it was cut out of the movie. But, hey ho, that was his destiny. Jones did what he always did: made the best of it,...

Tony Sokol Sep 26, 2019

"Science Fiction Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show references lots of movies. We unpack it all...

I have watched, well, not exactly watched, but experienced The Rocky Horror Picture Show over 100 times. I’ve only watched it about 30 times. I saw it in the movies and on HBO about five times before I couldn’t take it anymore and troweled makeup on, ripped up some fishnet stockings and took to a stage myself. Figured I was a natch, had the same hair as Tim Curry and did his voice in a passable mimic, not that I'd need it.

I performed in a Friday night cast 72 times from when I was 15 to when I was 17. I started as Dr. Frank N. Furter and when I was replaced by a woman in lingerie, as opposed to a guy in drag, I played Janet for a while. The...