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It’s a proud day for Ireland as two of its native sons, Hollywood actors Jamie Dornan and Conor MacNeill, launch the feature and television production entity Blackthorn Films.

The new venture will be based in the northern region of the country, where Dornan and MacNeill were born and raised. They met on the 2015 film “The Siege of Jadotville,” and have since co-starred in projects including “The Tourist,” “The Fall” and the Oscar-winning “Belfast.”

At launch, the pair hired producer Shauna Shivers-McAtamney to oversee Blackthorn’s film and TV slate. The company is a recent recipient of the BBC’s TV Small Indie Fund, which supports the growth of grassroots production shops across the U.K.

“Blackthorn films was born out of a shared desire to create indigenous stories from the island of Ireland that have a true global reach. The company’s aim is to produce work that flips...

March is home to Saint Patrick's Day, of course, so it's kind of a big deal. While one can certainly go out and have fun on March 17, the date should also be an important reminder of the island their families came from if they have Irish ancestry. Things were not always easy, and the films below reflect that to various degrees.

The only issue with the group below is that there are no films on Netflix currently that feature luminaries Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, or Colin Farrell. Should the streamer have added some flicks with these stars during March? Yes, but maybe they could not.

The great part is that good Irish films do not stop with just those actors. There is plenty of talent (both in front of and behind the camera) to go around. You will not be disappointed by these four films.

Four Irish films to stream...

One of the worst kept secrets in Ireland’s film and TV sector has been official confirmed by the local industry body — that the second season of “Wednesday” is now shooting in the country.

The hit Netflix show — produced by MGM Television — became a smash hit in 2023, with season one (which shot in Romania) amassing more than 250 million views and winning four Emmys. It was revealed late last year that the second outing would be shifting production to County Wicklow in Ireland.

But for Screen Ireland, which has helped welcome countless major films and TV shows — including the likes of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” — to its shores since it was re-launched in 1993 (as the Irish Film Board), “Wednesday” marks the “largest production to ever film in Ireland” in terms of production spend.

To celebrate the news, Ireland’s prime minister, Taoiseach Simon Harris, visited the set, meeting series director Tim Burton,...

Your browser does not support the video tag. Blood Of Zeus season 2 is finally on Netflix, focusing on Heron's struggles and Zeus' return. Jason O'Mara, the voice of Zeus, ties in men's health charity work with the themes in season 2. The creators of the show, Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, are praised by Jason O'Mara for their kindness.

The long-awaited season 2 of Blood Of Zeus is now streaming on Netflix. Jason O'Mara voices Zeus, who, even though he meets his demise at the end of season one, is still a very integral part of this season. Zeus' demigod son, Heron, is wracked with loss and struggles to find his place in the world as he is now an orphan. Jason has been an ambassador for The Movember Foundation, the leading global mens health charity, since 2015, which ties in perfectly with what Heron, as well as other characters, faces in season two.

In Your Lucky Day, a dispute over a winning lottery ticket leads to a dangerous hostage situation with high stakes. The film is suspenseful, intriguing, and takes viewers on an unexpected journey. Jason O'Mara, the actor who plays Captain Rutledge in Your Lucky Day, discusses his support for The Movember Foundation, a men's health charity. He emphasizes the importance of addressing mental health issues and promoting open communication. O'Mara teases the upcoming second season of Blood of Zeus and shares his experience voicing Zeus in the animated series.

In Your Lucky Day, which releases in theaters November 10th and on digital November 14th, a dispute over a winning lottery ticket shows us just how far people are willing to go for a cut of $156 million. Jason O'Mara plays Captain Rutledge, who catches wind of the winning ticket and proves he will go pretty far to get his hands on it.

Netflix is fast becoming a powerhouse in the anime space — “Blood of Zeus” is proof of it. With massive set pieces, great characters, and powerful animation to keep audiences glued to their screens, this show may just be the best anime Netflix has ever released.

Fans are really raving about this one. The show was an instant smash from the moment it dropped in October 2020, and critics rated it 100 on Rotten Tomatoes — which says a lot about the show.

You may be wondering, what’s the latest about “Blood of Zeus?” This article discusses all that and other information that may help you find out if this will be your next favorite.

Where Can You Watch “Blood of Zeus?”

“Blood of Zeus” is a Netflix original. Therefore, you can stream all the episodes of the anime series on Netflix.

What Is “Blood Of Zeus” About?

Set in Ancient Greece, the...

In most cases, an actor being cast as a character without a name doesn’t signal great things for the career. Nobody’s queuing up for an autograph from ‘woman in lift’ or ‘angry hot dog customer 2’. Jamie Dornan’s lead role in BBC crime thriller The Tourist bucks that trend. In the six-part series, Dornan plays “The Man”, a nameless (at least to begin with) Irishman who loses his memory when his car is forced off the road in the Australian desert. With barely a clue to go on, he has to find out who he is, what’s he doing there, and most importantly, why somebody’s trying to kill him.

Dornan is great in The Tourist – intense, funny, unpredictable and convincing at every stage of his character’s gradual discovery. It’s comfortably among his best performances so far, and one of the better received projects Dornan’s starred in.

Cinema Napa Valley announced the lineup of filmmaker tributes taking place virtually at this year’s Napa Valley Film Festival from Nov. 10-14. Video tributes will play following screenings of the honorees’ work and include conversations with them.

This year, in addition to the annual Napa Valley Filmmaker Awards, the festival will debut a new series of Culinary Cinema Awards honoring achievements in storytelling devoted to food, wine, and spirits. Across both categories, the 2021 honorees include Caitriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Harvey Keitel, Marlee Matlin, Odessa Young, David Gelb, Phil Rosenthal and Jon Taffer. Each honoree will be presented with a special bottle of wine from a festival sponsor.

“Our tributes highlight those that share an unabashed passion for cinema in many forms throughout their careers,” said Cinema Napa Valley chairman Rick Garber. “We recognize and acknowledge not only their personal accomplishments and critical thinking, but also their career achievements. We embrace their artistic vision,...

Sam Keeley will play John Finlay in the upcoming Peacock series “Joe Exotic.”

Finlay was one of Joe Exotic’s husbands famously profiled in the hit Netflix docuseries “Tiger King.” It was announced last week that Nat Wolff would star as Travis Maldonado, another of Exotic’s husbands. Finlay joins previously announced series leads Kate McKinnon, who will play Carole Baskin, and John Cameron Mitchell, who will play Joe Exotic. It was also recently announced that Brian Van Holt would play John Reinke.

Keeley recently starred in the Paramount Network dramedy “68 Whiskey” and the Netflix miniseries “The English Game.” His other TV credits include “The Dublin Murders” and “Misfits,” while his feature credits include “The Cured,” “In the Heart of the Sea,” “The Siege of Jadotville,” and “Anthropoid.”

He is repped by UTA in the U.S. and 42 in the U.K.

Based on the Wondery Podcast of the same name,...

Showtime’s upcoming “Halo” series has added three more series regulars.

Danny Sapani, Olive Gray, and Charlie Murphy have all joined the show, which is based on the video game franchise of the same name and is set to begin production this month in Budapest. They join previously announced series lead Pablo Schrieber, who will play the Master Chief, as well as Natascha McElhone, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, and Kate Kennedy. The series is currently scheduled to air in the first quarter of 2021.

Sapani will play Captain Jacob Keyes, described a dedicated military man, a war hero and a caring father. He finds that working alongside his daughter and his ex-wife is usually the cause of conflict rather than comfort. Sapani’s television credits include shows like “Harlots,” “The Crown,” “Doctor Who,” and “The Bastard Executioner.” His film credits include “Black Panther,” “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi,...

Universal Content Productions (Ucp) has lined up three major stars for its upcoming “Dr. Death” series.

Jamie Dornan, Alec Baldwin, and Christian Slater will all star in the series, which is based on the Wondery podcast of the same name. Ucp in the process of shopping the series to networks and streaming services.

“Dr. Death” is based on the true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch (Dornan), a rising star in the Dallas medical community who was building a flourishing neurosurgery practice. But patients entered his operating room for complex but routine spinal surgeries were left permanently maimed or dead. As victims piled up, two fellow surgeons and a young Assistant District Attorney set out to stop him.

Baldwin will play neurosurgeon Robert Henderson. described as quiet, deliberative and methodical, Robert believes wholeheartedly both in the system in which he rose through the ranks and that anything worth doing shouldn’t be rushed.

Exclusive: Mary Shelley and Albert Nobbs producer Parallel Films has picked up rights to spy thriller spec You Are Leaving The American Sector by Jared Cowie, whose 2014 Blacklist script Bismarck is set up at Universal with Temple Hill producing.

The spec centers on a young CIA officer stationed in West Berlin in the early 1980s who uncovers a classified military operation that threatens to tip the world into a nuclear war. The idea is based on the controversial 1983 Nato military exercise codenamed Able Archer ’83 which saw Western powers simulate a period of conflict escalation. It has been described by some historians as among the closest times the world has come to nuclear conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Parallel chief Alan Moloney will produce. Jon Kanak, who manages Cowie, will serve as executive producer. Parallel’s development slate includes Marlowe by William Monaghan and The Escapist by Sean O’Keefe.

“Where someone picks a fight with us, that gets a lot of attention.”

Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Netflix, has described the controversy over Netflix films appearing in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival as “fantastic for us”.

In a wide-ranging interview with Recode, Hastings said: “The two films, The Meyerowitz Stories and Okja, got in [to Cannes] on their own on artistic merit… they were just normal movies.

“But sometimes the establishment is clumsy when they try and shut out the insurgent and then the insurgent’s role is to play that up. Where someone picks a fight with us, that gets a lot of attention which then brings attention [to our films].

“[The Cannes row] has been fantastic for us, most importantly for Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories, which are small films and very artistic and they’ll get a lot more awareness.”

After French exhibitors complained about the inclusion of Netflix titles at the festival, Cannes said rules...

Author: Stefan Pape

Handsome Devil charmed the pants off us at the Toronto International Film Festival last Autumn, and so needless to say it was our pleasure to spend some time with the film’s leading stars; newcomer Fionn O’Shea and the consistently impressive Andrew Scott, meeting in a Canadian coffee shop near the Entertainment District.

In this John Butler film Fionn O’Shea plays Ned, an outsider who vies tirelessly to convince his dad (Ardal O’Hanlon) not to send him to a boarding school where rugby seems to come first, and education second. Picked on by many of his peers, and even the ignorant sports coach Pascal (Moe Dunford), Ned is disenchanted when his new roommate is jock – and star of the rugby team – Conor (Nicholas Galitzine), as the two polar opposites clash right from the offset. But as time progresses, and with a little help from supportive English teacher Mr.

In the age of streaming and smartphones, cinema’s power of immersion is more precious than ever

In the future, after Hollywood’s movie palaces have been reclaimed by the Mojave desert sands and the once-grand Odeons and Empires are nothing but squats for pigeons, the last cinemas standing will all be in Pyongyang, Beijing and Shanghai. Why? Because, along with Crimea and Syria, North Korea and China are the only places left in the world where you still can’t get Netflix.

Streaming sites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Mubi represent such a grave threat to cinema that even Nato has waded in — albeit the National Association of Theatre Owners, not the other Nato. Last October, the industry body condemned Netflix’s decision to bypass the long-established “theatrical window” by releasing its war thriller The Siege of Jadotville, starring Jamie Dornan, online the same day it premiered...

Mark Allison Mar 16, 2017

With Martin Scorsese's The Irishman the latest high profile movie capture for Netflix, where does this leave the multiplex?

Last month it was announced that the distribution rights to Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited mob film, The Irishman, had been purchased by Netflix. This will no doubt be a major coup for the online streaming service. The film is reuniting Scorsese with his greatest muse, Robert De Niro, for the first time since 1995’s Casino, while Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel have also been confirmed. It’s the filmic equivalent of a classic rock supergroup – like The Expendables but it might actually be good.

It won’t be the first time, however, that Netflix has attracted A-list talent. Since 2015, the company has emerged as a major player in original film production, and in doing so it has shaken the foundations of the studio driven system which we all took for granted.

Across cinema history, few genres have been as enduring and controversial as those releases bold enough to directly tackle the subject of war. Perhaps this is to be expected considering the divisive nature of many of history’s most memorable conflicts – which are often still capable of inciting debate – and the implicit drama both on and off the battlefield that can be mined in a wartime narrative. While the setting and precise message of war films may differ from one filmmaker’s vision to the next, the constant theme is that such conflicts are rarely as black and white as they may seem. The Siege of Jadotville – the new film from first-time director Richie Smyth – fits that description perfectly but not in the way some viewers may expect.

Set in 1961, the film – written by Kevin Brodbin (Constantine) – stars Jamie Dornan as Commandant Pat Quinlan, an Irish soldier with no battle...

Screen Rant is reporting that Netflix has secured a theatrical distribution partnership with iPic, an upscale theater chain, to screen its films in Los Angeles and New York simultaneous with their streaming availability. The deal is part of Netflix’s plans to compete directly against traditionally distributed films—to be considered for Academy Awards, movies have to screen at least a week in Los Angeles, with documentaries requiring screenings in both L.A. and New York. This move would allow Netflix feature films to gain Oscar eligibility.

Netflix has increasingly pushed the envelope in creating prestige projects in both feature and serialized-program formats. The Siege of Jadotville (October 7) and Christopher Guest’s Mascots (October 13) will be the first movies to get the iPic treatment. Considering a monthly Netflix subscription costs about the same as a single ticket, it’s not clear how many people are going to line ...

The head of the National Association Of Theatre Owners (Nato) on Wednesday urged the industry to “tread lightly” as it emerged that the streaming giant has struck a formal day-and-date distribution arrangement with the luxury exhibition chain.

National Association Of Theatre Owners (Nato) chief John Fithian was responding to news first reported by the Wall Street Journal that Netflix has agreed to a non-exclusive deal to release its original films in iPic Entertainment venues in Los Angeles and New York on the same day they launch on the streaming platform.

It is understood the partners experimented with the simultaneous release of The Little Prince earlier this year, however this represents a longer-term deal. The arrangement starts on Friday with The Siege Of Jadotville, the Jamie Dornan starrer that Netflix announced it had acquired for the world during the Efm last year.

At that time, Netflix said it planned to stage a qualifying theatrical run for awards consideration...

In a new deal with movie theater chain iPic Entertainment, Netflix is set to hone a multi-pronged release approach whereby its original movies will premiere in theaters and online simultaneously. The deal will take effect next year, according to The Wall Street Journal, and covers 10 films that will debut in iPic's theaters in Los Angeles and New York City, with the possibility that they will also be shown in its 13 other locations across the country.

While Netflix has premiered films online and in theaters before, including Beasts of No Nation, this is its first longstanding agreement with an exhibitor, according to the Journal. The first film to bow as part of the deal on Friday is the Jamie Dornan-starring The Siege of Jadotville, followed by the Christopher Guest comedy Mascots on Oct. 13.

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“I felt like I was reading about someone who understand me. Not Huck Finn, not Tom Sawyer, but Holden Caulfield,” says Alex Wolff’s character Jamie Schwartz in the new trailer for “Coming Through the Rye.”

Written and directed by James Sadwith, who based the film on his own real life experience with J.D. Salinger, the drama is set in 1969 and follows the 16-year-old outcast who finds solace in “The Catcher In The Rye” and deeply identifies with its protagonist. He decides to adapt the book into a play but before moving forward seeks the approval of the author himself, who is portrayed by Chris Cooper.

Read More: ‘Coming Through The Rye’ Exclusive Clip: An Alienated Teen Leaves Boarding School To Find J.D. Salinger

The film made its debut last year at the Austin Film Festival and was recently picked up by Samuel Goldwyn Films and Eammon Films, who will...

Next month, Netflix offers up a big selection of films of all stripes — modern to classic, animated to live action, Best Picture winners to teen phenomenons — and we’ve picked seven that you should watch as soon as humanly possible, either for the first time or as part of a nostalgic little binge. Enjoy.

1. “Unforgiven” (available October 1)

The winner of four Oscars, including Best Picture, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film “Unforgiven” is the last Western he directed and starred in, and he made it count. About an aging outlaw tasked with one final job, the film examines the myths of the West and how they’re perverted and distorted over time, as well as the contradictions within established national archetypes. It’s arguably Eastwood’s defining masterpiece, and one of the very best films of the 90s. See it immediately.

2. “Dazed and Confused” (available October 1)

The 1993 cult classic “Dazed and Confused...

Although it won't hit Netflix until October 7th, The Siege of Jadotville is in selected Irish cinemas now, following a special screening in Dublin's Savoy cinema on Monday night. Already being highly praised by critics, this gripping true story depicts the 1961 siege of a 150-strong Irish Un Company under Commander Patrick Quinlan (Jamie Dornan) by 3,000 Congolese troops led by French and Belgian mercenaries working for mining companies. The cast also includes Mark Strong, Jason O'Mara, Guillaume Canet and Sam Keeley and comes from producer Alan Moloney (Brooklyn, Albert Nobbs, Byzantium), director Richie Smyth and writer Kevin Brodbin. Check out the trailer below and some pics from Tuesday night's special screening, which was attended by cast members and some of the veterans of the siege:...

Keanu Reeves is working on a slew of upcoming thrillers (including the highly-anticipated “John Wick: Chapter 2”) and among his list is “The Whole Truth,” directed by Courtney Hunt and co-starring Renée Zellweger, Jim Belushi and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. A new poster and trailer for the feature have just been released by Lionsgate Premiere, which you can check out below.

The crime thriller centers around defense attorney Richard Ramsay (Reeves) after he’s hired by his widowed friend, Loretta Lassiter (Zellweger), and promises to keep her son Mike (Gabriel Basso) out of prison after he’s charged with murdering his father. As he uses the evidence to get his client acquitted, he begins to realize that there might be more to this story than he originally thought.

Read More: ‘Passengers’ Trailer: Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt Fall in Love in Space, Then Everything Goes Wrong

“The Whole Truth” has already been...

The debut trailer for Netflix’s new anthology comedy series “Easy” is out a week ahead of the show’s global release. Related: Sneak Peek at Jamie Dornan In Netflix War Movie ‘The Siege Of Jadotville’ “Easy” explores a variety of characters in Chicago, as they stumble their way through love, sex, technology and culture. The show is […]...

If you want peace, as the old saying goes, prepare for war. Before returning to the fray as Christian Grey in next year’s Fifty Shades Darker, Jamie Dornan has lined up a starring role in The Siege Of Jadotville, Netflix’s new wartime drama that recounts the moment in history when 150 Irish Un troops descended onto Congo to defuse social upheaval.

The year is 1961. With tensions between the Ussr and America continuing to escalate, the Un has been established to extinguish any potential conflicts before they come to a head. The latest spike occurs in Congo, after “pro-western leader Moise Tshombe took control of the Katanga region and killed the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.” Led by Commandant Pat Quinlan (Dornan), The Siege of Jadotville then chronicles the remarkable true story of his outnumbered regiment of troops locking horns with close to 3,000 Congolese troops as they look to, well, siege control of Jadotville.

"If you continue to attack, we will continue to respond." Netflix has debuted a trailer for a new film titled The Siege of Jadotville, about the "untold true story" of "The Siege of Jadotville". The siege took place in September 1961, during the Un intervention in the Katanga conflict in Congo-Léopoldville in Central Africa when a company of Irish Un troops were attacked by troops loyal to the Katangese Prime Minister Moise Tshombe. The lightly-armed Irish soldiers resisted Katangese assaults for six days as a relief force of Irish and Swedish troops attempted to reach them. Jamie Dornan stars, with Mark Strong, Jason O'Mara, Mikael Persbrandt, Guillaume Canet & Amy Louise Wilson. This looks much better than expected. Here's the first official trailer for Richie Smyth's The Siege of Jadotville, direct from Netflix's YouTube: The Siege of Jadotville tells the true story of the 1961 siege of a 150-member Irish U.N.

It’s not yet clear whether Jamie Dornan will be able to escape the shadow of “Fifty Shades Of Grey,” or be overtaken by it. Dornan has other affairs — winning acclaim for playing a serial murderer in “The Fall” — but he’s best known as Christian Grey for sure, and that’s even before the first […]

The post Jamie Dornan Fights For Survival In First Trailer For Netflix’s ‘The Siege Of Jadotville’ appeared first on The Playlist.

Coulson shocked fans in the Season 3 finale of “Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” when he revealed the organization had a new director—and now we can tell you just who is taking over his former position.

Jason O’Mara (Complications, The Good Wife) has joined the series stepping into the role as S.H.I.E.L.D’s new Director, playing a character whose Marvel roots go back to the 1940s.

Executive Producer and Marvel’s Head of Television, Jeph Loeb said:

"Bringing Jason into the mix as the New Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. forces everyone, particularly Coulson, to reevaluate their role in the Agency. Jason has both the physical presence and acting dynamics that will connect with and challenge even the most loyal agent."

O’Mara will next be seen in the film Jadotville, coming soon to Netflix, in which he starred opposite Jamie Dornan.

In a blink of an eye it’ll be October. The air will turn crisp, the leaves will turn beautiful shades of orange, and you’ll get to crack out your favorite sweatshirt (unless you live in Los Angeles like me, in which case it’ll be 90 and you’ll sweat involuntarily). But rather than playing outside, what you really want to do is watch Netflix. October presents a whole new list of viewing opportunities with classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Patton. If you choose to skip a day of work, what could be better than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Snow Day? And then there are no shortage of Netflix originals that are being added. The ones I’m looking most forward to are Mascots from Christopher Guest (Spinal Tap, Best in Show) and the third season of the under-appreciated Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show. For...

The first image is up from writer/director/cinematographer Sean Ellis' ("Metro Manila," "Cashback") "Anthropoid," now filming in Czech Republic. Set in 1941, the World War II picture stars Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan and centers on the real-life assassination attempt on SS general and Holocaust engineer Reinhard Heydrich. The film follows two Czech paratroopers tasked with taking out Reinhard, known in their homeland as "The Butcher of Prague." Read More: Netflix War Drama 'Jadotville' Lines Up Macho Cast "Anthropoid" is written by Ellis and Anthony Frewin ("Colour Me Kubrick") and produced by 22h22's Leonard Glowinski, Anita Overland, Chris Curling, Krystof Mucha and David Ondricek.

Which Hollywood hunk is sporting a brand new porn 'stache? It's Jamie Dornan! The 33-year-old Fifty Shades of Grey star debuted his new facial hair on his Instagram page this week. Although we're used to seeing the Irish stud with scruffy facial hair, the mustache is definitely a new look for him (so not Christian Grey's style, right?!). Dornan's first pic is an up-close-and-personal look at the perfectly trimmed mustache hair above his perfect pout. So why did Dornan decide to grow out his 'stache? No, it's not a hipster fashion move. The mustache is for his part in the upcoming movie Jadotville. The flick is about Irish Commandant Pat Quinlan who leads a stand off with troops...

Netflix left its mark at Cannes yesterday by acquiring worldwide distribution rights to Kevin James action-comedy The True Memoirs of an International Assassin. The purchase furthers the streaming service’s aggressive forays into feature distribution, especially given that the budget is said to be on the scale of other James titles, including Sony Pictures’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Zookeeper.

Under the terms of the deal, The True Memoirs of an International Assassin will be presented as a “Netflix event,” debuting exclusively on the streaming service next year and entirely circumventing a theatrical release. Major theater chains like AMC and Regal have been vocal in their opposition to Netflix failing to observe the traditional release model of a theatrical bow followed by home media release, so one can imagine those companies are none-too-happy to hear about the streaming service’s latest acquisition.

Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) is directing the comedy,...

The 68th Cannes Film Festival opens under the shadow of Netflix. Just a year ago, the digital streaming service was a major licensor of library titles but a relatively minor player in the individual movie acquisition business. But a series of deals — including the jaw-dropping $17 million pre-buy of Richie Smyth's Jadotville in Berlin and a four-picture deal with Adam Sandler — has caught everyone’s attention. As Cannes kicks off, the global film industry will be watching to see what Netflix does next. Suffice to say, chief content officer Ted Sarandos’ keynote address May 15 — at

read more...

Some very promising casting news today, as Jamie Bell, Mark Strong and Abbie Cornish have been set as the principal cast for Toa Fraser’s 6 Days, a siege thriller that the Auckland-based director will shoot this summer as the follow-up to his acclaimed drama The Dead Lands.

Based on a true story, the thriller centers on the storming of the Iranian Embassy at Princes Gate in London, in April of 1980. Six armed gunmen took over two dozen people inside the embassy as hostages during their campaign for Arab national sovereignty in the Khūzestān Province of Iran. The hostage-takers demanded the release of Arab prisoners from jails in the province, located in the south of Iran, as well as their own safe passage out of England, which the British government refused to grant. The ensuing six days saw tensions rise and hostages die violently, culminating in a raid by a group...

Right now we are looking at a very manly cast for Netflix's drama of Irish Commandant Pat Quinlan, played by hunky Dornan, as he leads a stand-off with troops against French and Belgian mercenaries in the 1960s Congo. TV's Jason O'Mara, who led Fox's beleaguered "Terra Nova" and appeared on "The Good Wife" and elsewhere, has just been added to the ensemble. Directed by first-timer Richie Smyth and written by Kevin Brodbin (whose story credits including "Constantine" do not bode well), this muscly drama enters production this April in Ireland and South Africa, and will stream across all territories in 2016. Netflix snapped up "Jadotville" out of this year's Berlinale. Read More: "Fifty Shades" Star Jamie Dornan Joins "Anthropoid" Netflix is reportedly spending $450 million on original content this year, and it shows. Its feature film slate includes Duplass grabs out of SXSW "6 Years" and "Mason Family...

With Jamie Dornan, Guillaume Canet and Mark Strong already aboard, the cast for Richie Smyth’s Jadotville is growing. Jason O’Mara will appear alongside the rest.The film is set in 1961 and follows the real-life events around the siege of an Irish Un battalion by 3,000 Congolese troops under the command of French and Belgian mercenaries paid by big mining companies. Dornan is set as the Irish commander, Patrick Quinlan, with Canet in charge of the French contingent. Strong’s role has yet to be revealed, but O’Mara will be Company Sergeant Jack “Sarge” Prendergast, Quinlan’s right-hand man.Netflix has swooped in to pick up the rights to distribute the pic, locking down a deal at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, with Kevin Brodbin writing the script.O’Mara was last seen on the big screen in Lake Bell’s comedy In A World…. More recently he’s been appearing on TV,...

Exclusive: Jason O’Mara (Sons Of Liberty) has been cast alongside Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades Of Grey) in Richie Smyth’s Jadotville. O’Mara will play Company Sgt. Jack “Sarge” Prendergast, Dornan’s right-hand man. The film is based on the 1961 siege of an Irish Un battalion by 3,000 Congolese troops led by French and Belgian mercenaries working for mining companies. Irishman O'Mara can be seen this summer starring in USA Network's Complications. The 10-episode original…...

Maybe the major theater chains’ fear of Netflix was justified. The streaming service has become a formidable force in film acquisition over the past year, snagging buzzy awards pics like Beasts of No Nation and big names like Adam Sandler for various projects. Now, Netflix has struck again, making a deal with comedian Ricky Gervais to release his upcoming film Special Correspondents.

Eric Bana stars in the satirical comedy as a radio news reporter who fakes wartime correspondence from within his Manhattan apartment, setting up stages in order to pretend he is embedded abroad. Gervais wrote the film, directs and co-stars.

Netflix plans to release the pic for subscribers sometime next year. Announcing the deal, Gervais said:

Having shaken up the TV industry, Netflix is about to do the same to Hollywood. It’s great to be part of the changing future. Ted Sarandos is the new Godfather of entertainment...

Mark Strong, erstwhile Floating Head of this parish and guest of this past weekend’s Jameson Empire Awards, has added another film to his typically busy roster. He’s set to co-star with Jamie Dornan in the war thriller Jadotville.The film is set in 1961 and follows the real-life events around the siege of an Irish Un battalion by 3,000 Congolese troops under the command of French and Belgian mercenaries paid by big mining companies. Dornan is set as the Irish commander, Patrick Quinlan, with Guillaume Canet in charge of the French contingent. There’s no word yet on whom Strong will play. Netflix nabbed the rights to distribute the film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, signalling the streaming service’s ever-increasing push into original content. “The story of how Pat Quinlan led his troops against an overwhelming force without losing a single man is one of the great stories of the 20th century,...