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Exclusive: Producer Sara McFarlane (Red White and Blue) and filmmaker Maria McIndoo have acquired the film rights to author Claire Keegan’s short story So Late in the Day.

The duo plan to adapt the work into a film, which will mark the feature debut from writer-director McIndoo. McFarlane will produce under her recently launched Essential Viewing banner. Keegan will serve as executive producer.

This project will mark the second collaboration between McFarlane and McIndoo, following their recent short film A Love Letter to M, starring André Holland and Phoebe Tonkin. A Love Letter to M premiered at the 2025 Indy Shorts International Film Festival.

“I am so excited to be working with Maria in bringing So Late in the Day to life,” McFarlane said. “There are so many things that I love about this short story: the subtlety, the nuance, that every word is written with intent and that it...

For those of us who grew up watching Dustin Nguyen on “21 Jump Street,” seeing him back on our TV screens in recent years — most recently on Apple TV+’s “Dope Thief” — has been akin to reconnecting with an old friend. So where has Nguyen been, and how did he make his way back to Hollywood?

Turns out Nguyen had been building a busy and successful film career in Vietnam, where he had born but left as a teen (with his family in 1975 after the fall of Saigon). He first returned to the country to shoot the 2007 Vietnamese language film “The Rebel”— which became a huge blockbuster there.

“People were saying, ‘hey, you should come back here and be a part of this renaissance with the movie industry,” Nguyen recalls. “I made a decision to just move and hope for the best. I opened a production company there, and I...

Based on the real-life story of the abduction of Long Ma, Sing J. Lee’s directorial debut is a winner through and through. Making a movie about true events is always tricky business and requires the filmmakers to stay true to the source and make it entertaining as well. Lee knocks it out of the park with a story that, despite involving kidnapping and jailbreak, unfolds at a slow and gentle pace. Through The Accidental Getaway Driver, he allows us to truly feel the human experience and understand why people behave the way they do.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the movie?

Long Ma, an old Vietnamese taxi driver, gets a call for a booking late at night. Despite not wanting to work anymore, hearing that he would get paid twice the usual amount, he reluctantly agrees to do one last fare for the day. Three men enter his cab,...

Ric Roman Waugh, the action director behind Angel Has Fallen and Greenland, has signed a first look deal with Lionsgate.

The producing deal aimed at the genre space will also cover Waugh’s CineMachine Media Works banner and production partner Brendon Boyea. As they cement their production ties, Lionsgate recently picked up the action-thriller Renegotiate, to be written by Mark Townend and produced by Waugh and Boyea, alongside Range Media Partners’ Brian Kavanagh Jones and Fred Berger, with Aj Bourscheid executive producing.

“When you’re surrounded by a cadre like this who respect, collaborate and care for you as their filmmaker, there’s not a place on earth I’d rather call home than Lionsgate,” Waugh said Friday in a statement. He is also in production on an untitled thriller to star Jason Statham, Naomi Ackie and Bill Nighy for Black Bear.

Lionsgate will release Waugh’s next film, Greenland: Migration,...

Let’s be honest: Gender-based lists like THR‘s Most Powerful Women in International Film should be passé by now. It is 2025, after all. But the fight for equity in the global entertainment industry is anything but over. In some places, it’s barely begun. From the backlash against Dei initiatives in the U.S. to a blistering French report exposing systemic abuse across the arts, the message is clear: Progress is under threat. Which is why spotlighting these 45 global power players feels more vital than ever. “We need to fight back with all the tools and resources we have,” says Carole Scotta, co-founder of France’s production outfit Haut et Court. Or, as Nigeria’s EbonyLife CEO Mo Abudu puts it: “Until the industry makes room for authentic voices from different cultures and backgrounds — on a systemic level — we’ll continue to miss out on powerful, transformative storytelling.” In other words,...

Exclusive: Liam Francis Quigley has joined Entertainment 360 as a literary manager.

Quigley began his career in WME’s London mailroom before joining 42 in 2017. He became a manager and worked out of the London office until moving to Los Angeles in 2021. He has continued to build an impressive list of writers and filmmakers across film and TV.

His clients include Sam Lansky, writer of Sony’s upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson; Sing J. Lee, writer-director of The Accidental Getaway Driver, for which he won Best Director at Sundance in 2023; Max Gill, supervising producer on Amazon’s Tomb Raider with Phoebe Waller-Bridge; and Ally Israelson, consulting producer on Industry and a frequent collaborator with Ilana Glazer.

He also reps Joel Alfonso Vargas, whose debut feature Mad Bills to Pay premiered at Sundance. Quigley executive produced that film with Killer Films, Spark and Watermark Media.

Conventional wisdom suggests that studios should not open their newest movies or tentpoles on Oscars weekend. Wouldn’t you rather wait until the weekend after the industry has finished celebrating the year’s best movies before promoting a new one?

But historically, that hasn’t necessarily been the case, especially when compared to something like Super Bowl weekend. So, with studios largely avoiding major new releases, this weekend had the unfortunate effect of being the lowest weekend at the overall domestic box office during the Oscars in at least 15 years.

Seems like the real winners were onstage on Sunday. The widest release from a major distributor this week was “Last Breath,” the deep-sea diver thriller starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu. It opened on over 3,000 theaters and pulled in $7.8 million, finishing No. 2 in the domestic top 10 behind “Captain America: Brave New World” in its third week of release. It made...

Captain America: Brave New World successfully completed its three-peat at the box office by finishing No. 1 for the third weekend in a row. However, it was a hollow victory in the overall grand scheme of things because the theater business suffered yet another stunning financial blow as Captain America 4’s $15 million domestic take led the worst weekend of 2025 yet. In total, all this weekend’s titles only managed to bring in a year-low $52.4 million.

The previous record holder for the worst weekend financially of 2025 went to the three-day period from Friday, Feb. 7, through Sunday, Feb. 9, in which all its film titles only managed to bring in $53.9 million. No. 1 Dog Man led the way that weekend with $13.8 million. Certainly, the moviegoing experience has been suffering since the onset of Covid-19. However, it seemed that the theater business had a legitimate chance to rebound after the devastating effects of the pandemic,...

Sometimes you read a story in the news, and you just know that someone is going to make a movie out of it. This was the case for the story that inspiredThe Accidental Getaway Driver, a story that starts in the neighborhood of Little Saigon in Orange County. The Accidental Getaway Driver follows an old man named Long, played by Hiệp Trần Nghĩa, who works as a driver. Late in the night, after he's already changed into his pajamas, he gets a call from a man named Tây, played by Dustin Nguyen, for a job. Promising to pay double, Long meets Tây at the ABC Supermarket on Bolsa Ave and quickly becomes tangled up in Tây and his associates' troubles.

If you’re not rushing out to catch Oscar nominees before Sunday’s ceremony there are more new films in theaters now than there have been in weeks. Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Wicked and more are still out there but screens have opened for a crop of moderate releases.

Grindstone and Roadside Attractions open dysfunctional family crime comedy Riff Raff on just over 1,000 screens. The film by Dito Monteil, which was warmly received at its TIFF 2024 premiere (see Deadline review), was adapted by John Pollono from a stage script from a 1995 production of the same name written by actor Laurence Fishburne.

The ensemble cast features Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Gabrielle Union, Lewis Pullman, Pete Davidson, Bill Murray, Miles J. Harvey and Emanuela Postacchini.

The story follows Vincent, an ex-criminal seeking a normal life and a nice weekend at a winter cabin with his wife Sandy and their son...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Utopia releases “The Accidental Getaway Driver” in theaters on Friday, February 28, 2025.

In the first third of “The Accidental Getaway Driver” you might think you’re in for the film of the festival at Sundance 2023. The setup is simple and suspenseful: Long (Hiệp Trần Nghĩa), an elderly Vietnamese immigrant who works as a driver is paid double for a late night assignment that turns out to be about keeping three escaped prisoners ahead of the law. When Tây (Dustin Nguyen), one of the convicts, points a gun at him to prevent him from bailing when he wants to get out, the tension ratchets up to the breaking point.

But “The Accidental Getaway Driver” is not the film of the festival. And though the tension ratchets up there near the beginning, that’s as high as it goes for the whole movie.

The day after she gave up control of the James Bond franchise to Amazon, Barbara Broccoli spent the evening with a Bond Girl, a Bond Girl who helped the MI6 agent defeat a billionaire technology and media mogul seeking global domination.

On Feb. 21, Broccoli attended a Film Academy screening of The Accidental Getaway Driver, the Sing J. Lee film on which she serves as an executive producer. Clad in a maroon velvet pantsuit and sneakers, Broccoli was joined at the hip that evening by the Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh, who played the Chinese secret agent and Bond love interest Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies.

In the 1997 film Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) partners with Wai Lin to battle the tycoon Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), seeking to leverage his corporate empire to control the world.

It may have been ahead of its time.

When Tomorrow Never Dies was released, Amazon was an online bookstore,...

In a world of superhero movies and action extravaganzas, it's hard to find stories led by emotion and character study, and it's even harder for those films to get a wider audience to share their message with viewers. But in the case of Sing J. Lee's The Accidental Getaway Driver, it's a movie that tries to beat the odds and deliver a story with heart and a message of kindness that audiences need now more than ever. The best part is that it's a film that does it in style with a distinct visual language and powerfully emotional performances from its cast that audiences won't soon forget.

The Accidental Getaway Driver follows an elderly San Francisco taxi driver named Long (Hiệp Trần Nghĩa), who picks up a trio of men late at night on his day off. As it turns out, they are criminals who are looking for a...

Director Sing J Lee on the release of The Accidental Getaway Driver: 'I think that there's this potency of such a human story being able to be shared in today's landscape'

Director Sing J Lee's directorial feature debut, The Accidental Getaway Driver – which had its premiere at Sundance Film Festival in 2023 – is inspired by true events that took place in Southern California in 2016. The film follows Long Mã (Hiep Tran Nghia), an elderly Vietnamese cab driver who finds himself in a frightening and misadventurous episode after he responds to a late-night call. In his pyjamas and held at gunpoint, three convicts from an Orange County jail force him to drive them to a motel, where he's held hostage. As a tense waiting game unfolds, he strikes up a surprising connection with one of his captors (Dustin Nguyen).

Lee's previous credits include the 2011 short film, First The Bird Fell, about...

Winner of the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition (see video), and renowned for his work in commercials and video clips, filmmaker Sing J. Lee masterfully extracts the essence from an incredible true story, tuning into the humanity in a situation-ship that should never took place. Predominantly set in a nocturnal world, the genre-blending debut The Accidental Getaway Driver is a nuanced and playful mix that feels well-thought-out in its concept, yet its open-ended and philosophical approach imbues it with a sense of unpredictability, making it a multi-night experience that feels less constrained by a rigid plot.

In our interview, I referred to Sing J.…...

"I don't know who to trust anymore." "You have to trust yourself." Utopia has revealed an official trailer for an indie drama titled The Accidental Getaway Driver, from filmmaker Sing J. Lee. This one originally debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival a few years ago - it didn't make much of an impact and has been stuck in release limbo ever since. During a routine pickup, an elderly Vietnamese cab driver is taken hostage at gunpoint by three recently escaped Orange County convicts. After being taken hostage by the three bank robbers, Long begins to revisit his own past, marred by war, re-education camp, and estrangement from his family. Actor Hiệp Trần Nghĩa stars as Long. When he starts to develop a friendly relationship with one of the convicts, Tây (starring Dustin Nguyen), tension builds between the group, and Long is left wondering about his fate. The cast also includes Dali Benssalah,...

It’s been exactly two years since Sing J. Lee’s directorial debut wowed at Sundance, and now, audiences can finally appreciate the award-winning drama on the big screen.

Lee’s “The Accidental Getaway Driver” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where Lee won the Director award. The film centers on elderly Vietnamese immigrant cab driver Long (Hiệp Trần Nghĩa), who is enlisted by a trio of escaped convicts to shuttle them across Orange County for the night. Dustin Nguyen, Dali Benssalah, and Phi Vũ play the three criminals who take Long hostage at gunpoint.

The official synopsis reads: “Long, a Vietnamese driver in Southern California answers a late-night call for a ride. He reluctantly accepts, picking up a man, Tây, and his two companions. But the men, recently escaped convicts from an Orange County jail, take Long hostage at gunpoint, thrusting him into their getaway plan. When complications arise,...

Exclusive: The Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment reveals the inaugural class for its latest program, the Cape Showrunners Incubator, powered by Starz #TakeTheLead.

They are Kiel McNaughton, Chris Bessounian, Johanna Lee, Aaron Ho, Oanh Ly, Tianna Majumdar-Langham, Lauren Moon and Kyle Lau.

Building on more than a decade with the Cape New Writers Fellowship for emerging TV writers, the Showrunners Incubator focuses on the other end of the TV writing spectrum. Asian and Pacific Islander TV writers on the brink of showrunning are offered the opportunity to receive exclusive mentorship and real-world training and education.

Among the mentors, speakers and contributors participating are Albert Cheng, VP, Head of Prime Video U.S.; Alex Tse, showrunner, Wu-Tang: An American Saga; Jessica Gao, head writer, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law; Dana Ledoux Miller, co-showrunner, Thai Cave Rescue; Monica Macer, showrunner, Macgyver and Gentefied; Christian Bustamante, casting director, The Accidental Getaway Driver; and Talha Asad,...

Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli (Credit Greg Williams)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that its Board of Governors voted to present Academy Honorary Awards to Quincy Jones and Juliet Taylor, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Richard Curtis and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The Oscar® statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s Governors Awards event on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood.

“The recipients of this year’s Governors Awards have set the bar incredibly high across their remarkable careers, and the Academy’s Board of Governors is thrilled to recognize them with Oscars,” said Academy President Janet Yang. “The selection of Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli is a testament to their success as producers of the fan-favorite Bond series and their contribution to the industry’s theatrical landscape.

Paul Schrader hit Cannes this weekend with Competition title Oh, Canada, reuniting him with American Gigolo star Richard Gere in the role of a terminally ill documentarian who reveals secrets as his life nears its end.

Lead producer David Gonzales says the fact that the film was ready for a Cannes splash was a miracle on a number of fronts.

Development began just 18 months ago after Schrader learned that his good friend, writer Russell Banks, was suffering from cancer.

Schrader, who previously adapted Banks’ novel Affliction to the big screen, felt compelled to make a new film based on Banks’ penultimate 2021 book Foregone, which the writer had originally wanted to title ‘Oh, Canada.’

“He said, ‘This is my next film, I can see the film in my head.’ We’re going back to the end of 2022,” says Gonzales, who secured the rights.

Banks died in January 2023 as Schrader was mid-screenplay.

Paris-based distributor Arp Selection has acquired French rights for Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada ahead of its world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Oscar nominee Schrader wrote and directed the film, which reunites him with Richard Gere some 40 years after their collaboration on American Gigolo, with other members of the cast including Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli and Jacob Elordi.

Schrader has adapted the drama from late writer Russell Banks’ 2021 novel Foregone, about a renowned documentary maker with secrets from the past. It is Schrader’s second adaptation of a work by Banks, after 1997 mystery thriller Affliction, starring Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek.

“We’ve been long-time admirers of Paul Schrader’s work and devout readers of Russell Banks’ books,” said Arp Selection head Michèle Halberstadt.

“Oh, Canada is the reunion of two masters, and also a reunion between Paul Schrader and Richard Gere,...

Exclusive: Producers Esmail Corp (Mr. Robot) and K Period Media (Manchester By The Sea) are teaming up with Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon (The Age Of Shadows) on an English and Korean-language movie adaptation of novel The Hole.

Psychological thriller The Hole by Korean author Hye-Young Pyun charts the story of Ogi who wakes from a coma after causing a major car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Ogi is neglected and left alone in his bed but soon notices his mother-in-law in their abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant, and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started. As he tries to escape, Ogi discovers more about his wife and his own role in...

Featured prominently among the coverage from our media outlet, eight filmmakers in Raven Jackson (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), Savanah Leaf (Earth Mama), Sing J. Lee (The Accidental Getaway Driver), Laura Moss (birth/rebirth), A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One), D. Smith (Kokomo City), Aitch Alberto (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), and Erica Tremblay (Fancy Dance) have been selected for the 2024 Momentum Fellowship – the Sundance Institute’s incubator of sorts that helps mostly filmmakers who’ve previously delivered their feature debuts at the fest and are now gunning for the critical support for their next feature.…...

Arclight Films will represent international sales at the EFM on Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael, and Jacob Elordi.

Schrader wrote and directed the film based on Russell Banks’s 2021 novel titled Foregone and reunites with Gere, who starred in the filmmaker’s seminal 1980 mystery drama American Gigolo

Oh, Canada depicts the story of famed documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, an American leftist who fled to Canada as a young man to avoid the Vietnam War draft.

As Fife battles cancer in Montreal during his twilight years, he agrees to a final interview and makes a...

Arclight Films has boarded Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” starring Jacob Elordi and Richard Gere, and will launch sales at the upcoming European Film Market.

Along with Elordi and Gere, who worked with Schrader on his cult movie “American Gigolo” more than 40 years ago, the cast of “Oh Canada” also includes Michael Imperioli and Uma Thurman. WME Independent is co-repping domestic rights with Gonzales.

“Oh, Canada” is based on the 2021 searing novel “Foregone,” written by bestselling author Russell Banks. The film depicts the story of famed documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, an American leftist who fled to Canada as a young man to avoid the Vietnam War draft.

“As Fife battles cancer in Montreal during his twilight years, he agrees to a final interview,” the film’s synopsis reads. “Intent on revealing his long-guarded secrets and demystifying his mythologized life, Fife’s shocking confession unfolds amidst the presence of his wife,...

Considering the recent success of films like “Minari”, “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, and “Past Lives” the necessity for such a list became dire, even though film critics and programmers around the world are still fighting about the genuine origin of the movies that are Asian-themed, but are either produced by companies from countries outside Asia, or by individuals of Asian descent. In that fashion, we also decided to include co-productions where the non-Asian element is quite intense either in terms of production or crew. The +1 is obviously there due to the particular director, although the film is Hollywood in every other aspect.

Without further ado, here are the best Asian Diaspora Movies of 2023, in reverse order, and, as always, with a focus on diversity in style, directors, and country of origin. Some films may have premiered in 2023, but since they mostly circulated in 2023, we decided to include them. When...

Photo credit: ©BAFTA/Vivek Vadoliya, 2023

BAFTA Breakthrough is a wonderful Netflix-supported initiative that celebrates the very best of young talent. In its 10th year, the alumni boasts the likes of Florence Pugh, Tom Holland and Letitia Wright – and this year comes a whole host of exciting new names. One of which caught our eye especially, which is Vivian Oparah, who shone in Peckham-set rom-com Rye Lane, which enamoured viewers with its spring-time release. We discuss what it means to her to be named as a BAFTA Breakthrough artist, and naturally we look back to Rye Lane, to talk about shooting the film, and the lasting, indelible impact it has left. She also looks ahead to a future that we’re gonna consider pretty damn bright.

Watch the full interview with Vivian Oparah here:

See below for the full list of this year’s stars:

UK Breakthroughs (20):

Adjani Salmon,...

A galaxy of 42 emerging creative talents from across the U.S., U.K. and India have been unveiled as the 2023 BAFTA Breakthrough cohort.

The selected talents have worked on some of the most lauded projects over the last several months including “The Last of Us,” “1923,” “Blue Jean,” “Rye Lane,” “Rocket Boys” and “Joyland.”

Breakthrough is BAFTA’s flagship new talent initiative in partnership with Netflix, drawn from creatives working in film, games and television. Awarded to those in the midst of, or on the cusp of their breakthrough moment, the year-long initiative includes one-to-one meetings and career guidance, full voting membership, access to BAFTA events and screenings, as well as networking events, both in the U.K. and internationally.

This year’s cohort comprises creatives spanning craft specialisms from hair and make up, production, editing and games design, to performance, directing and cinematography and is from diverse ethnic backgrounds and abilities.

Six of the 20 UK talents have previously been named Screen Stars of Tomorrow.

Actors Bella Ramsey and Vivian Oparah, and filmmakers Adjani Salmon and Raine Allen-Miller are among 32 talents selected for the 10th anniversary edition of the Bafta Breakthrough programme.

The 2023 edition of the talent-spotting scheme includes 20 UK names, and 12 individuals from the US.

Scroll down for the full 2023 Breakthrough list

Those selected from the UK include Game Of Thrones and The Last Of Us star Ramsey, Dreaming Whilst Black creator Salmon, and Allen-Miller and Oparah, director and star of Rye Lane.

Also included are Blue Jean writer-director Georgia Oakley...

Actress Tessa Thompson has officially joined the Sundance Institute’s Board of Trustees.

The “Creed” actress and producer, along with documentarian Pete Nicks and producers Nina Fialkow and Kimberly Steward, comprise the new additions to the Board. Per an official press release, the foursome are now among the “leaders who guide and steer the entire organization and also act in an advisory capacity.”

Thompson said in a statement, “Both the Sundance Film Festival and the Institute have served as an artistic home for me throughout my career. I’m proud to expand this journey by joining the board to eagerly serve a community that has been so incredibly impactful to me and countless others.”

The new trustees will closely work with Board Chair Ebs Burnough and CEO Joana Vicente to usher in the next wave of rising filmmakers.

“As Sundance Institute continues to respond to the needs of independent artists,...

The Asian Film Festival of Dallas (Affd) announced the film lineup for this year's 22nd edition of the film festival.Taking place July 13-16, Affd's Opening Night selection is Tae-Jim Ahn's The Night Owl, the Closing Night selection is Park Dong-hee's Drive, Special screenings with filmmaker Q&a's include Linh Tran's Waiting for the Light to Change and Sing J Lee's The Accidental Getaway Driver.

This year's Special Guest Programmers contributing films alongside Lead Programmer Paul Theiss are Anderson Le and Mae Hoang. The film festival will add a display of traditional Chinese lions, cinematic toys, and a mural created for this edition of the film festival for moviegoers to see and take selfies with at the Angelika Film Center, an Opening Night Kaiduan Kickoff Party at Beyond the Bar (101 S. Sherman Street) on Wednesday, July 12, and once again, will present a Saturday evening Red Carpet event for filmmakers and press.

The first trailer for The Dive teases an underwater thriller that is sure to leave audiences breathless. Released courtesy of Rlje Films, The Dive is centered around just two characters, Louisa Krause (Billions) and Sophie Lowe (Blow the Man Down) who find their perfect diving trip quickly turning into a life-and-death disaster. You can check out the first trailer for The Dive below.

The Dive begins as you would expect, with the perfect day for a dive. Clear sight, stable weather and an incredible, reclusive spot. Drew and May, sisters and experienced divers who share a close and complex bond, are excited as they marvel at this undiscovered underwater world. Their sense of wonder is interrupted when May is abruptly hit by a rock, which knocks off her goggles and leaves her shaken, but with only a small scratch.

However, the sisters’ relief is short-lived: the stone came from a landslide above the surface.

Cthulhu Dreamt: "Cthulhu Dreamt is a multimedia storytelling experience, taking shape as a tabletop role-playing game, a soundtrack, a novel, and more. You can immerse yourself in the story through music, prose, a connected Arg—and then you can live the story!

The game is accompanied by an original and stream-safe soundtrack written and performed by members of Cthulhu Dreamt including Fable Factory founder Reed Reimer. The soundtrack also includes tracks that were performed by orchestras from Russia and The Czech Republic. The music was written to be an audio story experience, which can be enjoyed with the game or stand-alone, and will include loopable versions.

This game is built on an original D12 system designed by Adam Baffoni and written by Jaron R. M. Johnson, one of the lead designers of Monsters of Murka. It includes:

- a fully playable campaign and the game rules in one book

-...

At Sundance, tender hostage drama “The Accidental Getaway Driver” was all the buzz – and director Sing J. Lee was at the center of it all. Lee’s first feature was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the festival’s US Dramatic Competition, and also scored him the prestigious Directing Award for his debut.

I catch him on the ground before the accolades. Amid the festival hubbub, talking to Sing J. Lee washes one over with a sense of calm. He greets us in a sharp black turtleneck, groomed beard, and a British accent — a memento of his childhood in the UK. Our allotted twenty minutes spill over into an hour as the conversation spans across continents and oceans. Over the tiny tea table between us, I realize that the complexities of his own biography is inextricably tied to the production of “The Accidental Getaway Driver.”

“I can...

Exclusive: Apple has rounded out the cast for its crime drama series Sinking Spring with the addition of Golden Globe winner Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible franchise), Dustin Nguyen (The Accidental Getaway Driver), Nesta Cooper (See), Idris Debrand (Dear Edward), Liz Caribel (Pussy Island) and Will Pullen (A Little Prayer).

The actors join an ensemble led by 2023 Academy Award nom Brian Tyree Henry (of the Apple drama Causeway) which also includes Michael Mando, Marin Ireland, Kate Mulgrew and Amir Arison, as previously announced.

Related Story ‘Presumed Innocent’: Chase Infiniti, Lily Rabe, Nana Mensah, Matthew Alan & Kingston Rumi Southwick Cast In Apple TV+ Series Related Story 'The Blacklist' Star Amir Arison Joins Ridley Scott's Apple Series 'Sinking Spring' Related Story Marin Ireland Joins Apple's 'Sinking Spring' TV Series

The eight-episode series created by Top Gun: Maverick scribe Peter Craig, entering production this week in Philadelphia,...

Dali Benssalah, the rising French actor who’s just joined the FX limited series “The Veil” and stars in the Sundance prize-winning film “The Accidental Getaway Driver,” has joined UTA.

Benssalah’s career has taken off since starring in Rebecca Zlotowski’s politically-minded series “Savages” in 2019. He went on to deliver an acclaimed performance as the lead role in Romain Gavras’ gripping thriller “Athena,” which competed at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Prior to “The Accidental Getaway Driver,” which won best director at Sundance, Benssalah starred opposite Daniel Craig in the James Bond film “No Time to Die.”

Speaking to Variety, Benssalah said he was introduced to UTA during a trip to Los Angeles where he was presenting “Athena” as part of the American French Film Festival (previously Colcoa) in November.

“The Veil” is the first role he landed under his new UTA representation. The series, which will air exclusively on Hulu,...

Based on a true story, The Accidental Getaway Driver follows the story of a Vietnamese driver, Long, when he becomes the unwilling getaway driver to three escaped convicts from Orange County jail. Tensions continue to rise when the four are forced to hide out in a motel and their pasts are slowly revealed.

In an exclusive interview with uInterview, Dustin Nguyen, who played Tây, one of the convicts, revealed what interested him most about the project.

“The story itself is quite compelling, being a real story, but the heart of the story about loneliness and the need for belonging and a search for what is home, resonated with me very strongly when I read the original story that broke in GQ Magazine and I could relate to a lot of those themes,” Nguyen said. “And more importantly, after 30 some years of working in the business, this is the first Vietnamese...

Having amassed an impressive CV of high profile music videos and commercials with A-list talent, director Sing. J Lee makes his feature debut with The Accidental Getaway Driver, a narrative based on true events. Not the only film at Sundance this year based on an article from a major publication, Lee’s film takes as its inspiration a 2017 GQ article that recounted the night an elderly Vietnamese-American cab driver picked up three customers who, unbeknownst to him, were recent escapees of the Orange County Men’s Central Jail. As the evening quickly devolved into danger and chaos, the driver was held hostage, […]

The post “On the Last Day We Needed That Driving Scene”: Sing J. Lee on The Accidental Getaway Driver first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Having amassed an impressive CV of high profile music videos and commercials with A-list talent, director Sing. J Lee makes his feature debut with The Accidental Getaway Driver, a narrative based on true events. Not the only film at Sundance this year based on an article from a major publication, Lee’s film takes as its inspiration a 2017 GQ article that recounted the night an elderly Vietnamese-American cab driver picked up three customers who, unbeknownst to him, were recent escapees of the Orange County Men’s Central Jail. As the evening quickly devolved into danger and chaos, the driver was held hostage, […]

The post “On the Last Day We Needed That Driving Scene”: Sing J. Lee on The Accidental Getaway Driver first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Josh Charles, Dali Benssalah, and Yumna Marwan have been cast in the upcoming FX limited series “The Veil,” Varety has learned exclusively.

The series, which will air exclusively on Hulu, was originally picked up to series in August 2022 with Elisabeth Moss in the lead role.

Per the official logline, the series “explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Asia to Europe. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it.”

Exact character details are being kept under wraps, but Charles will star as Max, Benssalah as Malik, and Marwan as Adilah.

Charles most recently starred in the critically-acclaimed HBO series “We Own This City” from David Simon and George Pelecanos. His other recent credits include “Away” at Netflix and “In Treatment” at HBO. He is perhaps best known for his roles in “The Good Wife,...

This year, women directors – and their women-centric subjects – swept the awards at Sundance Film Festival. Three women directors – Madeleine Gavin, Maryam Keshavarz, and Noora Niasari – won Audience Awards for their films on North Korea (“Beyond Utopia”), intergenerational motherhood (“The Persian Version”), and custody in diaspora (“Shayda”). Portraits of masculinity were also celebrated as well. First-time feature filmmaker Sing J. Lee won the Directing Award for his touching portrait of masculinity and fatherhood in “The Accidental Getaway Driver,” while Sauvnik Kaur’s intimate documentary on brotherhood “Against The Tide” took home a Special Jury Award. After two years of isolation and virtual festival-ing, it seems that stories of tenderness appealed over aggressive storytelling at Park City this year.

“This year’s Festival has been an extraordinary experience,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “The artists that comprise the 2023 Sundance Film Festival have demonstrated a sense of urgency and dedication to excellence in independent film.

Collateral meets The Desperate Hours against the backdrop of issues of Vietnamese immigration and assimilation in this Orange County-set thriller that marks the feature directorial debut of music video director Sing J. Lee. Below, editor Yang Hua Hu discusses his work in cutting this Sundance 2023 premiering thriller, in which an elderly Vietnamese cab driver is taken hostage by three recently escaped prisoners. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? […]

The post “The Awkwardness in the Air is the Spirit We Want to Capture”: Editor Yang-Hua Hu on The Accidental Getaway Driver first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Collateral meets The Desperate Hours against the backdrop of issues of Vietnamese immigration and assimilation in this Orange County-set thriller that marks the feature directorial debut of music video director Sing J. Lee. Below, editor Yang Hua Hu discusses his work in cutting this Sundance 2023 premiering thriller, in which an elderly Vietnamese cab driver is taken hostage by three recently escaped prisoners. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? […]

The post “The Awkwardness in the Air is the Spirit We Want to Capture”: Editor Yang-Hua Hu on The Accidental Getaway Driver first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Big sales were hardly in short supply at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with Netflix going wild for “Fair Play,” AppleTV+ shelling out for “Flora and Son,” and Searchlight Pictures snapping up “Theater Camp”, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of superior films still looking for homes.

Of the still-for-sale titles that premiered at this year’s festival, there’s plenty to intrigue all sorts of buyers, from those looking for films with excellent performances that could inspire major awards pushes (like the Jonathan Majors-starring “Magazine Dreams”), those in search of the next big director, hungry genre hounds (see: “Divinity”), and even documentary lovers looking for films with incredible real world impact.

And while it’s still early days, given the incredible assortment of films still looking for homes, we can’t help but tout their allure to all interested buyers. These aren’t just...

by Jason Adams

Blessedly patient with its could’ve been wacky and wild premise, writer-director Sing J. Lee’s The Accidental Getaway Driver opts to be a methodical mood piece. This based-on-a-true-story tale is about an elderly Vietnamese driver named Long (Hiep Tran Nghia) who takes the wrong phone call at the wrong time and gets dragged into a crime-drama he has no place being in the middle of. You can see the 90s Jackie Chan high-concept version of this story staring in, but Lee’s film aims for and hits something much deeper. Something that speaks to assimilation and generational divides in hushed tones, and with a genuine tension that remains unshowy at every turn. I loved it...

The Accidental Getaway Driver Review — The Accidental Getaway Driver (2023) Film Review from the 46th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Sing J. Lee, written by Christopher Chen and Sing J. Lee and starring Hiep Tran Nghia, Dustin Nguyen, Dali Benssalah, Phi Vu, Gabrielle Chan, Vivien Ngo, Sharon Sharth, Travon McCall, Edward [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: The Accidental Getaway Driver: Sing J. Lee’s Film is a Dark Story of Redemption with Fine Acting [Sundance 2023]...

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival, the festival’s first in-person competition since 2020, has revealed its award winners.

The big winners included Maryam Keshavarz‘s The Persian Version, which earned both the Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, and A.V. Rockwell‘s A Thousand and One, which took home the Grand Jury Prize in the same category.

The Persian Version explores an Iranian-American family’s past as its patriarch gets a heart transplant while A Thousand and One centers around a mother who kidnaps her son from the foster care system in order to find a path toward redemption.

Other winners include Festival Favorite Radical directed by Christopher Zalla and Grand Jury Prize winner for U.S. Documentary, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.

The festival has highlighted 101 different features and 64 shorts. These films were selected from a total of 15,856 submissions. Most of...

Top L–R: A Thousand and One, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, The Eternal Memory, Scrapper. Center L–R: Kokomo City, Radical, The Persian Version, Beyond Utopia. Bottom L–R: Shayda, The Accidental Getaway Driver, 20 Days in Mariupol, When You Left Me On That Boulevard Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute As the Sundance Film Festival draws to a close in Utah - after celebrating its first in-person event since 2020, the awards have been announced ahead of the final weekend of screenings. The US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize went to A Thousand and One, written and directed by Av Rockwell, which sees a mum kidnap her son from foster care.

It was a good day for the UK too as Charlotte Regan's debut Scrapper - about a girl and her estranged dad - won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.

Poet profile Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,...

Festival runs through January 29.

A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand And One took the 2023 Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic prize and Charlotte Regan’s UK entry Scrapper earned the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2023 Sundance awards ceremony on Friday.

Audience award winners included Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version in U.S. Dramatic Competition, Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia in U.S. Documentary, Mstylav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol in World Cinema Documentary, and Noora Niasari’s Shayda in World Cinema Dramatic.

Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente said the selection “demonstrated a sense of...

A Thousand and One took the jury prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, with Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project taking the top prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition section.

A Thousand and One is directed by A.V. Rockwell and follows a mother who kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from the foster care system, a secret that threatens their way of life as Terry gets older. The Focus Features title stars Teyana Taylor, Josiah Cross and Will Catlett.

“When I was writing this film, I was thinking about mother and son relationships. I was thinking about Black women and Black men relationships. I was thinking about marginalized people and their relationship to their homes,” said Rockwell, accepting the award. “Thank you to everyone for seeing all of those groups and for seeing me.” A tearful Jeremy O. Harris, who was a part of the dramatic jury,...