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The post-war feminist feature marks the directorial debut of Italian actor Paola Cortellesi.

The highest-grossing film at the Italian box office in 2023 will likely end up being Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But a local back-and-white feature will lead the way when it comes to admissions.

There’s Still Tomorrow, a post-war feminist drama comedy that marks the directorial debut of popular Italian actress Paola Cortellesi, has taken $34m (€30.9m) since its release by Vision Distribution on October 26 – behind the $35.3m (€32.1m) grossed by Warner Bros tentpole Barbie following its release in July.

But when it comes to admissions, There’s Still Tomorrow...

Veteran Italian auteur Silvio Soldini is set to direct “The Tasters,” which will reconstruct the true untold story of the women conscripted to be Adolf Hitler’s food tasters.

The Nazi-era drama — which will mark Soldini’s first foray into German-language cinema — is based on the bestselling book “At the Wolf’s Table,” by Italian author Rosella Pastorino, about a group of women who were recruited by the SS in 1943 to make sure that food to be served to Hitler was not poisoned. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters start to split into two factions: those loyal to Hitler, and those who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives everyday for the Führer. “At the Wolf’s Table” has been translated in 46 countries.

Vision distribution is launching international sales in Cannes on “The Tasters,” which is eying a fall- winter 2023 production start. The...

When Italian sales company True Colours launched from Rome’s Mia market five years ago, international prospects for cinema Italiano titles that were not directed by a handful of name auteurs, such as Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino, had gotten rather dim.

Italian cinema was being sold around the world mostly by foreign sales outfits that had become the preferred global channel for many of Italy’s producers, partly because they provided minimum guarantees that helped close their budgets and that local sellers could not afford. The problem was that lots of exportable Italian product was being overlooked.

“There was a gap,” says veteran distributor-producer Andrea Occhipinti, head of Lucky Red. As a producer, Occhipinti adds, he was unhappy with how his movies were being handled internationally by non-Italian companies. So in 2015 Lucky Red joined forces with production company Indigo Film (“The Great Beauty”) and they formed True Colours.

Cattleya, the Italian company behind hit series “Gomorrah” and Amazon’s upcoming “ZeroZeroZero,” is making its first foray into the detective genre with “Petra,” featuring a hard-boiled female inspector played by actress Paola Cortellesi.

The four-part Italian-language series is being produced as an original for Sky Italia.

Production has kicked off in Genoa with Italy’s Maria Sole Tognazzi (“A Five Star Life”) directing the adaptation of prominent Spanish writer Alicia Giménez-Bartlett’s book “Death Rites,” a bestseller in Italy and Spain which has also been published in the U.S.

Cattleya and Sky’s TV adaptation of “Petra” transposes the setting to Italy. It sees titular character Petra Delicado, a twice-divorced sleuth chained to a tiresome desk job among sexist colleagues, suddenly thrust onto the front line to solve violent crimes with newly assigned partner Antonio Monte, an old-school cop close to retirement. Her sidekick is played by Andrea Pennacchi,...

Box office returns in Italy suffered their worst result in a decade last year dropping about 5% to €555 million ($631 million), but the market is reacting and 2019 looks set for a turnaround.

Several remedies are considered crucial to getting local audiences back into movie theaters, the main ones being filling the gap in strong releases during summer which has historically been left wide open disrupting regular moviegoing and also causing a glut of titles the rest of the year; upgrading the country’s screens; and providing more really gripping Italian product which in 2018 made up a healthy 22% of total grosses even though no homegrown pics made it into the country’s top ten chart.

Though exhibitors have been hurting, the year kicked off with distribution and production company Notorious Pictures — the name is a homage to both the Hitchcock film and rock band Duran Duran — announcing it is branching out into exhibition...

Box office returns in Italy dropped about 5% to €555 million ($631 million) in 2018, posting their worst result in a decade as Hollywood blockbusters drew in fewer Italian moviegoers than usual.

On the bright side, Italian films gained traction last year, scoring a 22% market share, up from 16% in 2017, marking the second-best showing in the past four years, according to box office analyst Robert Bernocchi. He said that this surpassed the results for homegrown pics in Spain and Germany, which clocked in at about 17% and 18%, respectively.

U.S. films in 2018 nabbed a total of €330 million ($375 million), accounting for 60% of Italy’s market share. That’s a solid result, but roughly six percentage points lower than in 2017, fueling the country’s overall box office drop. The year’s top grosser was Fox’s international hit “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which has pulled in more than €21 million ($23 million), and counting.

Italian ticket sales in 2018 were just shy of 86 million,...

Nicola Maccanico has been appointed as its new executive vice president of programming.

In a major reorganisation of Sky Italia, the company has announced that Nicola Maccanico has been appointed as its new executive vice president of programming.

The new role sees Maccanico oversee all films and TV shows produced and broadcast on Sky’s channels except sports and news.

Maccanico joins from Vision Distribution, the distribution company owned by Sky Italia in collaboration with five Italian production companies. He will retain the role of Vision’s CEO until a new one is appointed.

Sky’s previous chief of programming was Andrea Scrosati,...

Though Italy’s box office for the first eight months of 2018 is down, Italian movies account for a quarter of grosses, up from 17% a year ago, a clear sign of local production vibrancy amid alarming theatrical erosion.

Outside the country, Italian cinema is steadily gaining more international traction after the four Oscar nominations (and one win) scored earlier this year by Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” followed by two Cannes competition prizewinners, Alice Rohrwacher’s “Happy as Lazzaro” and Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” and strong presences at the Venice and Toronto festivals.

The drop in Italian moviegoers amounts to a 7% drop so far this year. That follows a dramatic 12% box office plunge in 2017 and is forcing producers and distributors to come up with some innovative strategies.

Case in point is Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s Silvio Berlusconi-themed “Loro,” which was edited into a longer version divided into two installments,...

Comic-Con isn’t the only movie convention generating buzz this week. Fledgling Italian distributor Vision, the potent collaboration between Sky Italia and leading local producers Cattleya, Wildside, Lucisano Media Group, Palomar and Indiana Production Company, revealed an impressive upcoming movie slate this week at Italian trade event Cinema Days.

Among buzzy projects revealed on the lineup was crime pic La Paranza Dei Bambini (literally Kids Gang), Gomorrah writer Roberto Saviano’s adaptation of his best-selling novel about youth gangs in Naples.

In the book, a new kind of gang rules the streets, the Paranze are groups of teenage boys who divide their time between Facebook or Call of Duty, and stalking the streets armed with pistols and Ak-47s in order to mark out their mafia bosses’ territories.

It tells the story of the rise of one such gang and its leader, Nicolas, known to his friends and enemies as...

Film stars Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea.

Euforia, Valeria Golino’s second film and return to Un Certain Regard, has stirred up interest here for True Colours who have closed deals with Paname for French-speaking territories, Strada for Greece, Stars Media for former Yugoslavia, and Bravos Pictures for China.

Talks are ongoing on the Ht Films and Indigo Film drama for the Us, UK, Australia, Japan, Spain and Taiwan. 01 Distribution has planned an autumn release for the story starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea as estranged brothers forced to cohabit for a few months in Rome.

After a solid $3.8m (€3.2m) Italian box office run,...

Film stars Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea.

Euphoria (Euforia), Valeria Golino’s second film and return to Un Certain Regard, has stirred up interest here for True Colors who have closed deals with Paname for French-speaking territories, Strada for Greece, Stars Media for former Yugoslavia, and Bravos Pictures for China.

Talks are ongoing on the Indigo Film and Ht Films drama for the Us, UK, Australia, Japan, Spain and Taiwan. 01 Distribution has planned an autumn release for the story starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea as estranged brothers forced to cohabit for a few months in Rome.

After a solid...