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The new FX limited series American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez features a strong ensemble cast led by Josh Andrs Rivera as the titular protagonist. Created by Stuart Zicherman, whose previous television credits include The Americans, The Affair, Sweetbitter, and Alaska Daily, American Sports Story re-examines one of the most chilling off-the-field true stories in the history of the National Football League. The series is set up as an anthology, similar to American Horror Story, with each season chronicling a different real-life narrative from the broad world of professional sports. Ryan Murphy is an executive producer on the new TV franchise.

The true story of Aaron Hernandez had previously been chronicled in the 2020 3-part Netflix documentary series Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez. American Sports Story will become the first series to tackle the difficult subject matter in a dramatized format for entertainment purposes. American Sports Story season 1 will span...

The Deliverance director Lee Daniels says he caved to some of Netflix's requests for tension in the film. However, the filmmaker made sure not to include too many jump scares.

Daniels explained the dilemma during an interview with The Film Stage. "I have [the] final cut at Netflix because otherwise I wasn't interested in doing the film," the director said. "But they wanted - 'they' meaning Netflix - wanted jump scares every second. And I did not know how to do that. And I said, 'Listen, man, I can't do this. I don't know how it does not compute.' My favorite movies were The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby and The Omen."

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Instead of jump scares,...

Exclusive: Black Box Management has signed Nick August-Perna, the filmmaker behind the buzzy true crime doc Tell Them You Love Me, which topped Netflix’s film charts in its February debut.

Hitting #1 on Netflix’s Top 10 Movies, the film tells the true story of Anna Stubblefield, an esteemed professor involved in a controversial affair with Derrick Johnson, a non-verbal man with cerebral palsy. Their relationship eventually led to a criminal trial challenging perceptions of disability and nature of consent.

Black Box and August-Perna are teaming to produce a scripted remake of the film, the hope being to replica the success of much-discussed true-crime projects like I, Tonya, The Act, and The Girl from Plainville.

In a statement to Deadline, Black Box’s founding partners Mike Dill and Lowell Shapiro shared, “When we first saw Nick’s incredible film Tell Them You Love Me, we knew that he was someone we had to represent.

In the delightfully brash satire “Triangle of Sadness,” screenwriter Ruben Östlund gave himself the daunting task as director to make the film’s three distinct parts feel unique without sacrificing the cohesiveness of the whole. It is a challenge the first-time Best Director Oscar nominee accomplished with aplomb, as the Best Picture contender takes viewers on an unexpected, visually stunning odyssey of privilege and disaster.

In Part One, Östlund skewers beauty and class as two models Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean) have an argument about the bill for a lavish dinner, which unfolds across at least four different locations. The director masterfully captures the claustrophobia of having a disagreement in an enclosed space as his camera pans seamlessly between the two in a cab as they go from restaurant to hotel without ever cutting. He also relieves a lot of that tension when their bickering erupts in the hotel elevator,...

Executive most recently worked in sales at Voltage Pictures.

Danielle Gasher has left her sales role at Voltage Pictures and joined Gravitas Ventures as senior director of acquisitions.

Gasher will report to founder and CEO Nolan Gallagher and jointly lead the acquisitions department with Bill Guentzler, identifying titles for the new Gravitas Premiere label and ongoing slate of more than 250 films a year.

The Gravitas Premiere label will orchestrate wide theatrical releases on approximately four cast-driven films a year with significant P&a support. The first title, Mack & Rita starring Diane Keaton and directed by Katie Aselton, debuted exclusively in...

Anna Kendrick is set to make her directorial debut with the true crime thriller The Dating Game from Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios.

Kendrick will also produce and star in the flick, which is from a Black List script by Ian MacAllister McDonald and is based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of Cheryl Bradshaw, who was a bachelorette on the hit 70s TV matchmaking show The Dating Game and chose handsome and funny bachelor number one, Rodney Alcala. But behind Alcala’s charming façade was a deadly secret: he was a psychopathic serial killer

“I’ve loved this script from the moment I read it,” Kendrick said. “And while I was obviously thrilled to be playing the character of Sheryl, I felt so connected to the story, the tone, and the themes around gender and intimacy, that when the opportunity came up to direct the film, I jumped at it.

Anna Kendrick will make her directorial debut with true-story thriller “The Dating Game,” which she’ll also star in and produce.

The “Up in the Air” actress will play Cheryl Bradshaw, who was a contestant on the popular matchmaking show “The Dating Game” in 1978. She ended up choosing Rodney Alcala, who seemed like the perfect bachelor – until he turned out to be a psychopathic serial killer.

Kendrick will direct from Ian McDonald’s screenplay. The script was included in the 2017 Black List, a collection of the best unproduced scripts of the year.

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McDonald will also serve as an executive producer. AGC Studios is fully financing and co-producing the film. Other producers are J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules for BoulderLight Pictures, and Roy Lee and Miri Yoon for Vertigo Entertainment. Kendrick will produce on behalf of her Let’s Go Again banner,...

Thriller’s director, actor, producer to attend TIFF buyer presentation.

Anna Kendrick is joining the ranks of directors and will make her feature directorial debut on AGC Studios’ thriller The Dating Game.

AGC Studios is fully financing and co-producing the feature while the producers are J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules for BoulderLight Pictures and horror veteran Roy Lee and Miri Yoon for Vertigo Entertainment.

Kendrick is also producing and will star as the lead in The Dating Game, which is based on Ian McDonald’s The Black List screenplay and tells the true story of Cheryl Bradshaw, a bachelorette on...

Ruben Östlund might like his fish in a barrel but he’s a ruthless shot. Following a Palme d’Or win for The Square, the Swedish filmmaker returns to Cannes in competition, and if the contemporary art scene had taken the brunt of that sometimes brilliant, sometimes baggy film (the rare example of an art satire that actually worked), his latest has both the fashion world and the 1 solidly in its sights. With a title derived from an industry term for the worry lines on a person’s forehead, Triangle of Sadness is a film as vast as the sea itself, Östlund’s first real epic. It is his White Lotus, his “wafer-thin mint,” and his Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie rolled into one: a scatological rinsing of wealth and hubris from a filmmaker who, with each passing effort, only further cements himself as contemporary cinema’s auteur of such things.

Exclusive: Will Peltz (Unfriended), Sarah Dumont (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) and Sydelle Noel (Glow) have signed on to star alongside Frank Grillo, Jaime King, Katherine Hughes and Josh Plasse in the horror-thriller Man’s Son, with Voltage Pictures coming aboard to launch international sales ahead of the upcoming Marché du Film.

The XYZ Films title from director Remy Grillo centers on a young couple (Hughes and Plasse) hoping to create an aesthetically pleasing audition tape for an up-and-coming Charles Manson film. When they choose an eclectic desert Airbnb as the perfect backdrop, the dark events of the audition material slowly slip into their reality, until they find themselves intertwined in an occult, sinister plot led by King and Grillo’s characters.

Plasse and Brev Moss wrote the script, which is inspired by modern occult activity in the California desert, with production to kick off in Yucca Valley, California this month.

ICM Partners represents US rights.

Voltage Pictures continues to grow its virtual Cannes market slate and has acquired international sales rights to art heist thriller American Night Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emile Hirsch, Paz Vega, and Jeremy Piven.

Alessio Della Valle wrote and directed the story about a New York mob boss (Hirsch) with aspirations to become an artist who crosses paths with an art dealer (Meyers) when Andy Warhol’s ’Pink Marilyn’ is stolen.

Meyers and Piven are shown in the first-look still from the film.

Fortunato Cerlino, Michael Madsen, Annabelle Belmondo and the pop star Anastacia round out the key cast on American Night,...

Virtual Cannes market sales roster includes After We Fell, The Yacht, The Refuge.

Heading into the virtual Cannes market Voltage Pictures has appointed Patricia Arias vice-president of international sales and distribution with immediate effect.

Arias most recently served as VP of Film Mode Entertainment and reports to Voltage president and COO Jonathan Deckter.

She joins as the company continues to assemble a heavyweight sales roster that features After We Fell, the third instalment in the hit After YA franchise starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Josephine Langford.

Market titles include recent additions The Yacht, a heist thriller starring Ruby Rose, Patrick Schwarzenegger,...

UK director Ben Jagger directed and co-wrote feature based on Nanami Kamon’s Japanese novel.

Voltage Pictures has added another commercially appealing title to its Cannes market slate, boarding worldwide sales on English-language J-horror Room 203 from Japan’s Ammo Inc. and California-based Ammo Entertainment.

UK director Ben Jagger’s feature is adapted from Nanami Kamon’s Japanese novel and follows two female roommates tormented by vengeful spirits dwelling in their gothic-style apartment which contains an ornate centrepiece.

John Poliquin (Shudder’s Spiral), Jagger and Nick Richey (Low Low) co-wrote the screenplay. The cast features Francesca Xuereb, Viktoria Vinyarska and Eric Wiegand.

The new company will focus on French genre feature films and series.

France’s Wild Bunch International (Wbi) and Capricci are joining forces to create a new production company called Wild West which will be focused on French genre feature films and series.

Its remit will encompass genre “in its broadest sense” and span horror, fantasy, sci-fi, crime, thriller and superhero films.

The joint venture will officially kick off its activities with a special event in the French city of Bordeaux next week (June 9 and 10) at which it will present its first slate of films. Alongside this physical event, there...

Saban Films holds US rights.

Voltage Pictures has added a hot title to its upcoming virtual Cannes market slate, boarding international rights to music video director Declan Whitebloom’s action heist thriller The Yacht starring Ruby Rose, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Frank Grillo.

Production wrapped recently in Mississippi and Voltage president and COO Jonathan Deckter and his team plan to show a promo when they kick off talks with buyers later this month.

Saban Films has acquired US rights to The Yacht, which is described as being in the vein of Die Hard and Panic Room and centres on a tenacious...