News

Buenos Aires-based Film Sharks Int’l. has sold the streaming rights to Spanish sci-fi dystopian comedy “Some Time Later” (“Tiempo Despues”) to U.S. Spanish-language Ott platform Pantaya, HBO Max Central Europe and Amazon Spain.

The absurdist comedy is the swan song of beloved Spanish director Jose Luis Cuerda who died from a stroke early last year at age 72.

Talks are underway with a pan-regional Latin American buyer, said Film Sharks CEO Guido Rud, who has managed to set up a stand at Cannes’ Marché du Film after narrowly catching the last flight out of Buenos Aires just as Covid-afflicted Argentina began to close its borders again.

“Some Time Later” is set in the year 9177 when the entire cosmos has been reduced to a single high rise which houses the elite, led by a power-mad king, while scattered around it are grimy suburbs where everyone else resides in barbaric neo-medieval squalor.

Guido Rud’s FilmSharks International has snagged worldwide sales and remake rights to the Spanish movie spinoff of wildly popular French fictional comedy TV series, “Camera Café,” where a camera planted in a coffee machine captures the shenanigans and gossip chatter among office workers.

“Camera Café: La Pelicula” (“Camera Café” The Movie”) is an Atresmedia Cine, Estela Films and Warner Bros. co-production with the participation of Movistar Plus, which pre-bought Spanish pay TV rights. The comedy is the directorial debut of actor-writer-humorist Ernesto Sevilla (“Torrente 4”) and is also the feature debut of the film’s writer Raul Cimas, who has co-penned some Paramount Comedy Channel series with Sevilla.

The movie takes place in a dysfunctional office ten years after an economic crisis devastated the workplace where the most skilled people were fired. The least competent workers remain in charge and they will stop at nothing to keep their jobs.

Warner is opening ’The Way Back’ starring Ben Affleck in Germany.

As cinemas begin to reopen again in many territories, Screen is tracking which films are being released in key territories each week.

UK and Ireland, opening Friday July 24

Without major studio tentpoles driving audiences to cinemas, takings in the UK and Ireland remain low compared to pre-lockdown and were up just 1.8% last weekend despite a 27% increase in reopened sites.

But a raft of independent features and the re-release of a fantasy blockbuster may translate into a stronger weekend, as exhibitors hope to see audience confidence grow in returning to cinemas.

Madrid — Spanish writer-director José Luis Cuerda, a masterful modern practitioner of Spain’s central comedic tradition, died Feb. 4 in Madrid from a stroke. He was 72.

He will also be remembered for discovering Alejandro Amenábar, especially producing his first feature, “Thesis.”

Born in Albacete, central Spain, but moving to Madrid, Cuerda made his feature debut in 1982 with relationship dramedy “Pares y nones.” It was with his second film, 1987’s “The Enchanted Forest,” however, that Cuerda really found his own voice and a place in Spain’s central comedic film tradition, working with screenwriter Rafael Azcona, Luis Berlanga’s regular scribe, and adapting a novel of a writer, Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, who had been brought to the big screen before by two Spanish comedic giants: Edgar Neville and Fernando Fernán Gómez.

Azcona’s humor mixed acidity, the episodic structure of Spanish sainete theater sketches and the social critique of Italian neorealism. Cuerda took this and,...

Separate straight licensing deals for Some Time Later, Dalia And The Red Book 3D.

Guido Rud’s Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has reported brisk business in the run-up to Toronto, led by a Us remake rights deal through its division The Remake Co. on Argentinian hit I Married A Dumbass (Me Casé Con Un Boludo).

Btf Media, a production company with offices in the Us, Mexico and Argentina, has taken remake rights to Juan Taratuto’s romantic comedy (pictured), which has generated more than two million admissions in South American theatres through Buena Vista International. Rud struck earlier remake deals on...

Chile’s ’No Filter’, Argentina’s ’A Boyfriend For My Wife’, Thailand’s ’Bad Genius’ among big draws

Remake rights have been doing a roaring trade in Cannes. South Korea’s Company L has acquired Chilean hit No Filter while the Philippines’ Glimmer Entertainment has bought the Argentinian rom-com A Boyfriend For My Wife.

Both deals were done by Guido Rud’s Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks, one of the world’s most active purveyors of remake rights. Spain’s Latido Films has assembled an inaugural remakes sales slate where titles include the Argentinian thriller 4x4, a hit at Ventana Sur last December,...