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For animation vet Simon Otto (the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise), directing Netflix’s “That Christmas” was like making the ultimate Richard Curtis film — with Richard Curtis. The fact that it was animated was a breakthrough for both; Otto had never directed a feature before and Curtis was new to the medium. Their collaboration resulted in a whimsical holiday treat.

“That Christmas” explores how a blizzard turns the holiday upside down in the hamlet of Wellington-on-Sea, with Brian Cox’s Santa as narrator. Curtis adapted his YA novels with Peter Souter, but worked closely with Otto in getting the most out of his story for animation. It was produced by Locksmith Animation, with Dneg doing the animation.

“It was a journey for both of us,” Otto told IndieWire. “The idea of ‘Love Actually’ for kids was thrown around. It has flavors of it, but it’s not ‘Love Actually.

Marcelo Caetano’s São Paulo-set “Baby” maps an odyssey of a boy in quest of intimacy and connections which he couldn’t have in the ambit of family structures. The eighteen-year-old Wellington has just got out of a juvenile detention center. The details of the crime aren’t disclosed to us. His past registers amorphously.

It hangs over him but the film, with immense humanity and respectfulness, doesn’t let his jail stint limit the trajectory of his future. He drifts into the circles of the forty-two-year-old Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), whom he encounters at a porn cinema. The man proposes Wellington try out sex work. Ronaldo suggests he be an escort. Wellington is armed with all the youthful good looks. He is naïve and eager, not yet scorched by duplicitous men all swarming around him.

Yes, the world is pitiless, bleak, and full of sharks like a drug dealer Torres,...

Berlin-based sales agency M-Appeal has sold the distribution rights for Marcelo Caetano‘s “Baby,” which world premiered May 21 in Cannes Critics’ Week, to several territories.

The buyers are Palace Films for Australia and New Zealand, Swallow Wings Films for Taiwan, and Salzgeber for Germany and Austria.

The Brazilian film, based on a screenplay by Caetano and Gabriel Domingues, centers on 18-year-old Wellington, who has been released from a juvenile detention center. He finds himself alone and adrift on the streets of São Paulo, without any contact from his parents and lacking the resources to rebuild his life. He encounters Ronaldo, a mature man, who teaches him new ways of surviving. Gradually, their relationship turns into a conflicting passion.

The cast includes João Pedro Mariano, Ricardo Teodoro, Ana Flavia Cavalcanti, Bruna Linzmeyer and Luiz Bertazzo.

The production companies are Cup Filmes, Desbun Filmes and Plateau Produções in Brazil, Still Moving in France,...

The trailer (below) has debuted for Marcelo Caetano’s “Baby,” which has its world premiere in Cannes Critics’ Week. Berlin-based sales agency M-Appeal has acquired world sales rights.

The Brazilian film, based on a screenplay by Caetano and Gabriel Domingues, centers on 18-year-old Wellington, who has been released from a juvenile detention center. He finds himself alone and adrift on the streets of São Paulo, without any contact from his parents and lacking the resources to rebuild his life. He encounters Ronaldo, a mature man, who teaches him new ways of surviving. Gradually, their relationship turns into a conflicting passion.

The cast includes João Pedro Mariano, Ricardo Teodoro, Ana Flavia Cavalcanti, Bruna Linzmeyer and Luiz Bertazzo.

The production companies are Cup Filmes, Desbun Filmes and Plateau Produções in Brazil, Still Moving in France, and Circe Films and Kaap Holland in the Netherlands.

The producers are Beto Tibiriçá, Ivan Melo and Caetano.

Miss Scarlet and the Duke will return to PBS for a fifth season, the network has confirmed. But the new episodes will be missing a key cast member. Series star Stuart Martin, who plays William “The Duke” Wellington, will not appear in season 5.

‘Miss Scarlet and The Duke’ renewed for season 5 Stuart Martin as William ‘The Duke’ Wellington in ‘Miss Scarlet and The Duke’ | Masterpiece Related

‘Miss Scarlet and The Duke’: Stuart Martin Wants ‘Just One Kiss’ for William and Eliza

On Feb. 29, PBS announced that Miss Scarlet and The Duke had been renewed for season 5. Unfortunately, the news came with a twist that’s sure to disappoint fans of the period detective drama.

“We’re headed back to Victorian London as Kate Phillips returns as Eliza Scarlet for a fifth season of investigations and adventures. However, Stuart Martin, aka ‘The Duke,’ will not return,” Masterpiece PBS announced on Instagram.

In a stunning cinematic universe where sand dunes rise like mountains and the fate of galaxies hangs in the balance, Denis Villeneuve’s first voyage into the Frank Herbert’s “Dune” saga clinched six of its 10 Oscar nominations. Yet, in a twist as dramatic as Dr. Wellington killing Duke Leto, Villeneuve found himself overlooked in the best director category — a snub that left fans (and pundits) in disbelief. I dare the Academy’s Directors Branch to make such an omission once again.

As “Dune: Part Two” unfolds, we dive back into the treacherous universe alongside Paul Atreides, played by the ever-charismatic Timothée Chalamet. Seeking vengeance for his father’s death (Oscar Isaac), Paul’s journey intertwines with new allies and enemies, portrayed by a constellation of stars including Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Javier Bardem and Christopher Walken.

Villeneuve, a contemporary maestro of the screen, has spent over...

After strategically withholding Napoleon from the festival circuit, Ridley Scott went guerilla instead, launching his controversial military epic into cinemas like a carefully-thrown hand grenade. The tactic worked, overriding critical reviews that tore apart its history, its script and even its star, Joaquin Phoenix, to give Scott a $200 million worldwide gross. Overlooked in the fallout was a terrific performance by Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington, the stiff-upper-lip Brit who proves to be Napoleon’s nemesis at the Battle of Waterloo. Here, the laconic British actor reflects on the influences that fed into his portrayal of the Iron Duke.

Deadline: How did you get involved with the Napoleon project?

Rupert Everett: It just came up out of the blue. I love Ridley Scott, so I was thrilled to take part, really. I’m a fan of the Duke of Wellington too, so it was exciting.

Deadline: What was your take on Wellington?...

When you go to a movie called “The Modelizer,” you assume certain things about your protagonist: that he’ll be a smooth-talking, pricelessly well-dressed cad, one who values women too much for certain assets (their looks) and not enough for others (everything else), and that the film will be engineered to give him a comeuppance. All that is true of “The Modelizer.”

What you don’t expect is that the movie, in this case, is going to take all that sexist-swinger-as-master-of-the-universe stuff and put it on one-percent-of-the-one-percent steroids. “The Modelizer” is set in Hong Kong, which the movie keeps reminding us is the most expensive city in the world. The hero, Shawn Koo (Byron Mann), is the scion of an outrageously wealthy Chinese real-estate family; they own one-third of the property in Hong Kong. Shawn, who sees each of his parents once a month and serves as their company’s managing director,...