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Netflix's new World War II movie has become a big streaming hit shortly after its release in 2025. Since the 2020s, the streaming service has produced and distributed several original World War II movies. Operation Mincemeat (2021), starring Colin Firth, recounts a real British deception operation that misled Nazi Germany about the Allied invasion plans. Munich: The Edge of War (2022), starring 1917's George MacKay, reimagines Neville Chamberlain's appeasement efforts through the lens of a fictional spy thriller.

Other Netflix original movies have explored the human cost of war, most prominently 2022's German-language All Quiet on the Western Front, though set during World War I, shares many similar themes with World War II movies, portraying the brutal realities of combat. Netflix's The Forgotten Battle (2020) also highlights the pivotal Battle of the Scheldt during World War II, offering multiple perspectives from the Dutch, German, and Allied soldiers. More recently, Tyler Perry's The Six Triple Eight,...

Jackie Earle Haley has over 70 screen acting credits to his name. He was one of the Bad News Bears, he earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film Little Children, he played Rorschach in Zack Snyder‘s take on Watchmen. He worked with Steven Spielberg on Lincoln and with Martin Scorsese on Shutter Island. He has dealt with Dollman, the Maniac Cop, and the remake RoboCop, and he played Freddy Krueger in a poorly-received remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. And now, Deadline reports that Haley is set to star in the game show-themed slasher movie I’m Your Host.

Coming our way from Benacus Entertainment and Rnf Productions, I’m Your Host is directed by Dw Medoff (I Will Never Leave You Alone) from a screenplay written by Joey Miller. The story centers on four friends trapped in a sadistic game show, where they must outwit a twisted...

Exclusive: Oscar-nominated actor Jackie Earle Haley has joined the cast of game show-themed slasher horror film I’m Your Host in the lead role.

Directed by Dw Medoff and written by Joey Miller, the movie follows a group of friends trapped in a deadly game show, where they must outwit a sadistic serial killer in a terrifying race for survival.

Haley was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor in the 2006 Academy Awards for his performance in Todd Field’s 2006 satirical melodrama Little Children.

The actor went on to play anti-hero Rorschach in Zach Snyder’s 2009 DC Comics superhero film Watchmen, and Freddy Krueger in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. More recently he has been seen in thriller Degenerate and Primetime Emmy Award-winning show Genius.

Atlanta-based Benacus Entertainment is producing I’m Your Host in association with Jacksonville-based company Rnf Productions.

Producers Seth Michaels,...

"Keep your head down, Dutchman." Epic Pictures Group has revealed the official US trailer for a Dutch / German production called The Forgotten Battle, a WWII action thriller movie about a big battle in The Netherlands. It's now set for a VOD release in the US starting in August this summer - not hitting theaters at all. It's 1944, during the Second World War. The Allies have captured the port of Antwerp but the Germans still control the Scheldt estuary. A British glider pilot, a Dutch boy fighting on the German side and a Dutch female resistance member all end up involved in the Battle of the Schelde. Their choices differ, but their goal is the same: freedom. Their choices will shape destinies, impacting not only their freedom but also that of others. Starring Gijs Blom, Jamie Flatters, and Susan Radder. This already opened in The Netherlands and most of Europe in 2021, debuting online,...

Italy’s TorinoFilmLab, the international film and TV series incubator linked to the Torino Film Festival, has unveiled the nine projects selected for its 2024 SeriesLab workshop dedicated to fostering production of innovative TV shows from around the world.

The projects, which are in the early development stage, hail from 13 different countries: Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

For the second year in a row, SeriesLab is being led by Hungarian screenwriter and former HBO Hungary development executive Eszter Angyalosy.

“This year, once again, we selected nine original TV series ideas from passionate creatives with unique points of view,” Angyalosy said in a statement. She added that the projects aim to challenge preconceived notions pertaining to “genre, storytelling tradition and the mindset of their future audiences.”

Angyalosy will be working with tutors Filip Kasperaszek (Poland), Kirsten Ittershagen (Germany), Cyril Tysz...

Exclusive: Harry Potter star Tom Felton has boarded Gandhi, the Hansal Mehta-directed streaming series about the iconic Indian nonviolent resistance leader from Applause Entertainment.

Felton will play Josiah Oldfield, Gandhi’s first and best friend during a period he spent in London while studying law. Pratik Gandhi (no relation) is playing Gandhi, as we reported back in May 2022, and we can reveal his real-life partner, Bhamini Oza, will play Kasturba Gandhi, the Mahatma’s wife.

The period drama series has been billed as India’s answer to The Crown, and several scenes are being shot in London this month. As such, British actors James Murray, Jonno Davies, Molly Wright (Apostasy), Simon Lennon, Ralph Adeniyi, Libby Mai and Lindon Alexander are joining Felton in the cast.

Exclusive: Filming is underway on long-gestating European thriller series The Kollective (6 x 60′), which we can reveal will star Natascha McElhone (Californication), Celine Buckens (Showtrial), Felix Mayr (Unorthodox), Gregg Sulkin (Marvel’s Runaways), Grégory Montel (Call My Agent), Karel Roden (A Spy Amongst Friends), Cassiopée Mayance (The Clearstream Affair), Martha Canga Antonio (Lupin) and Ralph Amoussou (Transatlantic).

Produced by Submarine (Apollo 10 ½) and created by Leonardo Fasoli (Gomorrah), Maddalena Ravagli (Gomorrah) and Submarine’s Femke Wolting, the series was commissioned by The European Alliance and will be distributed worldwide by A+E Media Group, with Hulu coming aboard for U.S. distribution.

Inspired by the investigative journalist group Bellingcat, the series will span Europe from Budapest and St. Petersburg in the East to London in the West. It will follow a group of intrepid young citizen journalists who, after a sudden tragedy, find themselves sucked into a web of government lies and corruption.

Picture: Netflix

Will (also referred to as Wil) has been picked up by Netflix and is set to be released globally on January 31st, 2024. Set in Antwerp, Belgium, the new WWII movie tells the story of an auxiliary policeman working during the Nazi occupation. Here’s what you need to know about the movie, plus some first looks and a clip from the movie.

The movie was first announced to be coming to Netflix via the New on Netflix newsletter for January 2024, including the title with its original name of Wil, which has since been replaced to have two Ls in the Netflix Ui.

Based on the novel by Jeroen Olyslaegers, the movie first saw a limited theatrical release in September 2023 but has been scooped up by Netflix, where it’ll debut as a Netflix Original at the end of January 2024. Per Netflix, here’s the official logline for Will...

Nfts And Left Bank Pictures Launch UK Writers Program

The National Film and Television School (Nfts) is launching a new writers development program in partnership with Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind shows as Netflix’s The Crown. Set to launch in March 2024, the scheme will replace the Nfts’s former diverse writers development program. Six screenwriters from under-represented backgrounds will be chosen to take part in the paid, intensive 10-week program that will immerse them in a dynamic environment of creativity and collaboration. During the course, four full series ideas will be developed and pitched with the aim of creating commercially viable television drama concepts. “Together with Left Bank Pictures, we hope to carve a new path where diverse voices illuminate the way forward, ensuring the stories we tell on screen are as vibrant and varied as the world we live in,” said Nfts Director Jon Wardle. “We...

Film and TV audiences have long been fascinated by the lurid idea of a high-stakes game, one so important that, if you lose, it costs you not merely your reputation but also your life. Whether it's the lethal confrontations between rival gunslingers in spaghetti Westerns or sci-fi dystopias like Rollerball or The Hunger Games, right up to Squid Game's remarkable global success, it seems that the notion of playing for keeps is one that never fails to stimulate the popular imagination.

Such is the central plot point of Lead Heads, a new British thriller due to debut on the big screen very soon. Here's what we know about the project so far.

Plot

Plot details for Lead Heads remain scarce, but whereas Squid Game had people in desperate debt playing fatal games for the voyeuristic pleasure of bored billionaires, Lead Heads looks set to take a more pragmatic approach.

Not only is 2011's The Thing not a remake of the John Carpenter movie of the same name, but it actually perfectly ties into the 1982 sci-fi film. Directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr (The Forgotten Battle), and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, 2011's The Thing focuses on a group of scientists at a Norwegian Antarctic research station who discover an alien spacecraft buried in the ice. Much like in John Carpenter's movie, and the original 1951 film adaptation of John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There?, The Thing from Another World, the alien springs to life and begins killing people one by one.

Despite the plot similarities to both 1982's The Thing, and 1951's The Thing from Another World, 2011's The Thing is not a traditional remake of either film. Instead, it works hard to fit into the same canon as John Carpenter's film,...

After the triumph of Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” at the BAFTAs, Netflix has revealed a surge in viewership for non-English language titles.

New Netflix data shows that in the U.K., viewing for non-English language stories has increased by 90% over the last three years. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is now Netflix’s fourth most popular non-English language film ever, with over 150 million hours viewed since its release on Oct. 14, 2022. It has been on Netflix’s global Top 10 Non-English Film list for 14 weeks and has reached the Top 10 Films in 91 countries, including Germany, the U.K., U.S., Australia, France, Mexico and South Korea.

“All Quiet on the Western Front” is nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture. Viewing figures for the film tripled after the BAFTA wins and Oscar nominations. For the week of Feb. 20-26, the film was in the No. 2 spot for non-English films,...

What are some of the ways that a good film score can elicit a certain emotional response in a film? What film scores did you most admire when you were starting out as a composer? These were some of the secrets revealed by four of today’s top film composers when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with 2022/2023 awards contenders: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch (“Living”), Mychael Danna (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), Danny Elfman (“White Noise”) and Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Women Talking”). Watch our fascinating full group roundtable panel above and click on each name above to view each nominee’s individual interview.

See dozens of interviews with 2022/2023 awards contenders

“The best way to elicit a feeling in the audience is to try to understand and feel that emotion yourself when you’re writing,” Levienaise-Farrouch says about the secret to evoking emotion through film music. “One of the...

Four top film composers will reveal secrets behind their projects when they join Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with 2022/2023 awards contenders. They will participate in two video discussions to premiere on Wednesday, November 9, at 6:00 p.m. Pt; 9:00 p.m. Et. We’ll have a one-on-one with our senior editor Rob Licuria and a roundtable chat with all of the group together.

RSVP today to our entire ongoing Emmy contenders panel series by clicking here to book your free reservation. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.

This “Meet the Experts” panel welcomes the following Oscar contenders:

Living (Sony Pictures Classics)

Synopsis: An English-language adaptation of the script of “Ikiru” (1952), set in London in the 1950s.

Bio: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s career has included “Tiger Orange,” “Only You,” “Rocks,” “The Forgotten Battle” and “Censor.”

Where the Crawdads Sing...

Independent to handle sales, David Parfitt to exec produce UK feature.

Independent Entertainment has boarded and will handle international sales on UK feature Black Dog, which brings together two of Screen’s 2022 Stars of Tomorrow, director George Jaques and writer-actor Jamie Flatters.

Black Dog, which wraps principal photography this week, is directed by Jaques who also wrote the script with Flatters, with Flatters starring alongside Keenan Munn-Francis, who is making his feature debut.

Jaques is producing through Athenaeum Productions alongside Ken Petrie through 27 Ten Productions, with Ian Sharp and Flatters also producing. Trademark Films’ David Parfitt, whose credits include...

Exclusive: Omar Sy’s star continues to burn bright on Netflix, as the French star’s thriller The Takedown comfortably held on to top spot in the streamer’s non-English language film chart.

The film, which pairs the Lupin star with Laurent Laffite for a buddy comedy, collected 32.37M hours of viewing.

Just ten days since launch, the film has cracked Netflix’s all-time top-ten non-English-language films after 28 days, charting in eighth place with 59.47M hours viewed. Currently sitting just behind The Forgotten Battle and Rogue Zero, it will inevitably rise by that metric.

The film hit Top 10 lists in 91 countries, and was top in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, and South Korea.

The Takedown reunites Sy and Laffite as a pair of cops with very different styles, backgrounds and careers. When the unlikely pair are reunited for an investigation, what seemed to be a simple drug deal turns out...

Through its first ten days on Netflix, the Dwayne Johnson-Gal Gadot-Ryan Reynolds $200M action heist movie Red Notice is already the streamer’s second most watched movie of all time with 277.9M hours clocked.

The Rawson Marshall Thurber directed title is honing in on being the streamer’s most-watched-movie-of-all-time, that currently being the Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box, which counts 282M hours. See the full list here.

In Netflix’s second week of its top 10 most watched film charts (English), the streamer reports that Red Notice was the No. 1 movie for Nov. 15-21 logging 129.1M hours watched. In second, was their Vanessa Hudgens franchise threequel, The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star, with 24.77M hours watched by subscribers.

A number of rival studio library hits flooded the top 10 including the Johnson-Hart movie Central Intelligence, and DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods and Trolls. Curiously absent from this...

Measurement replaces previous system reporting who watched at least two minutes of content in first 28 days.

Netflix has launched top 10 lists reporting its most popular films and shows around the world based on its new metric measuring hours viewed.

Starting today (November 16) the metric on Top10.netflix replaces the streamer’s previous measurement which recorded the number of accounts that watched at least two minutes of a piece of content in its first 28 days on the platform.

That system was frequently criticised for failing to reveal a meaningful picture of viewership, cherry picking highlights and not reporting who watched shows in their entirety.

Five bored young billionaires become vampires in “Dead & Beautiful,” a middling horror-thriller and social satire that opens with an intriguing premise but never probes its cashed-up characters deeply enough to create gripping drama from the heightened hedonism or existential crises they experience after acquiring new powers. Slickly photographed in a neon-drenched Taipei and featuring an attractive young cast, this riff on the eternal tale by Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek scores early points by drawing parallels between mythological vampirism and the modern metaphorical vampirism of rich elites before losing its sting and meandering toward an unsurprising “surprise” conclusion. After notching appearances at festivals including Rotterdam, Sitges and Fantastic Fest, “Dead & Beautiful” releases Nov. 4 in North America and the U.K. on genre streaming platform Shudder.

These rich young things deal with the burden of being unbelievably wealthy and incredibly bored by taking turns to arrange pranks and experiences that...

“Free Guy” (Disney/$5.99) continues to do theaters a huge service. Despite its 45-day exclusive theatrical window, the year’s top grossing domestic non-franchise film keeps adding to its at home revenues. Or maybe that window is part of its charm? With three weeks at #1 on the VOD charts, word of mouth drove its success and it’s close to a five-time multiple theatrcial gross from its opening weekend. In the year-plus we’ve been checking these out, no other title has accomplished this.

With this week’s drop to standard pricing, the volume of new business for the Ryan Reynolds comedy must be considerable: The Vudu chart calculates by total revenue and favors premium VOD titles, but the now-cheaper $5.99 “Free Guy” topped five titles that cost $19.99.

Among debuts, “Copshop” (Open Road/$19.99) with Gerard Butler bested “Dear Evan Hansen” (Universal/$19.99) for initial response. Action-thriller “Copshop” placed on two charts, while “Hansen...

The Forgotten Battle Trailer — Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.‘s The Forgotten Battle (2020) movie trailer has been released by Netflix. The Forgotten Battle stars Gijs Blom, Jamie Flatters, Susan Radder, Jan Bijvoet, Tom Felton, Coen Bril, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Scott Reid, Marthe Schneider, Justus von Dohnányi, Joep Paddenburg, Mark van Eeuwen, Pit Bukowski, and [...]

Continue reading: The Forgotten Battle (2020) Movie Trailer: A Dutch Boy, English Pilot, & Zeeland Girl’s Lives Become Intertwined During WWII...

Producers are busy but there are questions over how films will be released.

As Dutch filmmakers prepare new projects to whet the appetite of the international film industy, the Netherlands Film Fund is keeping an eye on the future with the launch of a range of initiatives to support diverse and emerging talent.

Bero Beyer, CEO of the Netherlands Film Fund (and former artistic director of International Film Festival Rotterdam), believes new talent can be overlooked by crisis support schemes.

“We should not forget the next generation of filmmakers and those who have not gone through the route of film academies,...

In today’s Global Bulletin, Amazon Prime Video and IMDb TV announce new casting for Season 2 of “Alex Rider,” investment is approved for Bottle Yard Studios in the U.K., the BIFAs announce Tom Felton will host this year’s online ceremony, Nent Studios UK sells three formats in Vietnam and Cruchnyroll picks up “Tsukimichi – Moonlit Fantasy” for streaming outside of Asia.

Casting

Eleventh Hour Films has announced expanded casting for Season 2 of its popular Amazon Prime Video and IMDb TV series “Alex Rider.”

Adapted from Anthony Horowitz’s popular YA series, “Alex Rider” tracks a teenager in London who has been clandestinely trained as a spy since childhood. Season 2 will adapt “Eagle Strike,” the fourth book from the popular series.

“Die Another Day” and “Lost in Space” actor Toby Stephens joins the cast as tech billionaire Damian Cray, while Rakie Ayola (“Noughts and Crosses”) will play CIA deputy director...

Dutch filmmaker Paula van der Oest, director of Oscar-nominated “Zus & Zo,” has wrapped production on “Love in a Bottle,” starring James Krishna Floyd (“No Man’s Land”) and Hannah Hoekstra (“Hemel”).

The film follows two people in two different countries — both in quarantine during lockdown — who have a love affair through Facetime. Floyd plays a damaged British man who lives mainly through his computer who falls for a charismatic Dutch perfume maker (Hoekstra) whom he met at an airport just before the pandemic struck.

“Love in a Bottle” was shot in two locations in Amsterdam during lockdown, and is one of the few films to shoot two locations simultaneously with two crews, in order to come together for one resulting film. Levitate Film (“The Forgotten Battle”) produced.

Van der Oest’s regular cinematographer Guido van Gennep lensed the film and employed new techniques in order to complete the project.

“We were literally shooting with these iPhones,...