News

Here’s a look at this week’s biggest premieres, parties and openings in Los Angeles and New York, including events for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, The First Omen and Palm Royale.

Human Rights Campaign dinner

Jean Smart and Sterling K. Brown were honored at Human Rights Campaign’s annual Los Angeles dinner on Saturday, which also featured a keynote speech from First Lady Jill Biden.

Jean Smart Tarell Alvin McCraney and Sterling K. Brown

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire premiere

Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry joined director Adam Wingard at the L.A premiere of their MonsterVerse movie on Monday.

Adam Wingard, Brian Tyree Henry, Fala Chen, Rebecca Hall, Kaylee Hottle and Dan Stevens

Palm Royale Paley Center event

On Tuesday, The Paley Center for Media hosted “Kristen Wiig and Carol Burnett: A Night with Apple TV+’s Palm Royale” at The Paley Museum in New York,...

Plot: Asphalt City follows Ollie Cross, a young paramedic assigned to the NYC night shift with an uncompromising and seasoned partner Gene Rutkovsky. The dark nights reveal a city in crisis; Rutkovsky guides Cross, as each 911 call is often dangerous and uncertain, putting their lives on the line every day to help others. Cross soon discovers firsthand the chaos and awe of a job that careens from harrowing to heartfelt, testing his relationship with Rutkovsky and the ethical ambiguity that can be the difference between life and death.

Review: Stories about first responders, specifically EMTs, are often material depicted on small-screen procedurals and dramas like 9-1-1 and Chicago Med. Doctors tend to get all the glory on the big screen, except for Martin Scorsese’s haunting 1999 film Bringing Out the Dead. Where that film went down a horror-tinged rabbit hole reminiscent of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, it managed to...

Vertical and Roadside Attractions are set to give the paramedic thriller Asphalt City (formerly known as Black Flies) a theatrical release on March 29th, and in anticipation of that release we have the Exclusive first look at a clip from the film that features the lead characters, played by Sean Penn (Mystic River) and Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One). The characters are taking a dinner break in this clip, and you can see how it plays out by taking a look at the video embedded above.

Based on Shannon Burke’s 2008 novel Black Flies, Asphalt City was directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (A Prayer Before Dawn) from a screenplay by Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown. The story follows Ollie Cross (Sheridan), a young paramedic assigned to the night shift alongside uncompromising and seasoned New York City Emt, Gene Rutkovsky (Penn). The dark nights reveal a city in crisis; Rutkovsky guides Cross,...

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s Asphalt City was originally titled Black Flies, after the Shannon Burke novel from which it’s adapted, when it premiered last year at Cannes. For a film about the difficult situations that E.M.T. workers have to deal with on New York City’s streets, Asphalt City has an appropriate directness. But it’s Black Flies that more accurately reflects the film’s lurid register. It’s a reference to an encounter that rookie E.M.T. worker Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) has on the job that echoes a childhood trauma, but the way the filmmakers shoot the moment, it’s as if they’re touting their belief in New York as a rotted corpse.

Regardless of what it goes by, the film reveals its agenda from the moment that Ollie walks to a crime scene in the projects and the herky-jerky camera approximates his addled consciousness. Gene...

"I know what you're thinking... is it worth it? It's the job..." Vertical has revealed the official trailer for an intense thriller set on the streets of New York City titled Asphalt City, made by French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, of the film A Prayer Before Dawn previously. This first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year under the title Black Flies, but got pretty dismal reviews from most critics. A young paramedic is paired with a seasoned partner on the night shift in NYC revealing a city in crisis. Discovering the chaos firsthand, he is tested with the ethical ambiguity that can often mean the difference between life & death. Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan co-star, along with Gbenga Akkinagbe, Raquel Nave, Kali Reis, with Michael C. Pitt, Katherine Waterston, and Mike Tyson as their captain. It's an intense and horrifying look at just how unsettling it is to work...

Updated with latest: The Cannes Film Festival kicked off this year with opening-night movie Jeanne du Barry, and concluded Saturday evening with Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall scooping the Palme d’Or. Deadline was on the ground to watch all the key films. Here is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year saw Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness win the coveted top prize on its way to an Oscar Best Picture nomination.

Check out the reviews below, click on the titles to read them in full, and keep checking back as we add more.

About Dry Grasses ‘About Dry Grasses’

Section: Competition

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Cast: Deniz Celiloglu, Ece Bagci, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici

Deadline’s takeaway: For Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s many fans, this is another opportunity to slip into his world, spot his sly political references and subside for a...

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is jam-packed with buzzy world premieres, from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” Todd Haynes is also back to unveil “May December,” featuring the A-list pairing of Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, while Disney is bringing Harrison Ford to the Croisette for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” New films from Pedro Almodovar, Jessica Hautner, Jonathan Glazer, Catherine Corsini, Hirokazu Kore-eda and more are also set to make their debuts at Cannes this year.

Cannes is often seen as a launching pad for Oscar season. Warner Bros. in 2022 kicked off its lengthy awards run for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” on the French Riviera, with the film going on to land eight Academy Award nominations, including best picture. Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness” also picked up Oscar nods for best picture, director and original screenplay. Two international film nominees,...

One of the last two film items added to the competition this year, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies makes it three for three on the Croisette for the French filmmaker. Sauvaire was in the Un Certain Regard section with 2008’s child soldier drama Johnny Mad Dog and in 2017 he showcased his prison fight film A Prayer Before Dawn as an out-of-competition showing. This stars Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Gbenga Akkinagbe, Raquel Nave, Kali Reis, Michael Carmen Pitt, Katherine Waterston, and Mike Tyson.

Upstart paramedic Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) courses through adrenaline-fueled nights in an ambulance for the New York City Fire Department in Brownsville, Brooklyn while spending days studying for med-school exams in a Chinatown hovel.…...

Beware of black flies, they are the first to smell death. That is what rookie Fdny paramedic Ollie Cross is told by a colleague as he ventures into an abandoned apartment where a swarm is buzzing around a decaying dead body in a bathtub. It is clearly a metaphor for the job of first responders like Ollie and his partner Gene Rutkowsky who are also the first to “smell death,” repeatedly, on a job that takes its toll not just on those in need of medical help, but also on those who provide it.

Premiering in competition Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, Black Flies stars Sean Penn as a grizzled veteran paramedic known as “Rut” now on the nighttime beat with rookie partner Cross, played with conviction by Tye Sheridan, as they answer the call in the largely rundown neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn. It is the classic Hollywood...

Sean Penn’s recently launched production company Projected Picture Works has signed on to produce the political thriller Killers & Diplomats alongside Mill House Motion Pictures.

The film from writers Michael Nourse and John Tyler McClain, whose screenplay was featured on the 2021 Black List, is based on an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Raymond Bonner. Based on a true story, it picks up after four American missionary women are raped and murdered in 1980 El Salvador, following a young U.S. diplomat who cracks the case by cultivating an improbable source — risking everything to gather the key evidence.

Pic was developed by Mill House Motion Pictures’ Jordan Foley and Jonathan Rosenthal, who will produce alongside Penn and his fellow Projected Picture Works founders, John Ira Palmer and John Wildermuth. Ray Bonner will exec produce alongside Yeardley Smith and Ben Cornwell of Paperclip Ltd. While it’s not yet clear who will direct the film,...

Exclusive: Raquel Nave has signed with Paradigm—having recently wrapped a breakout role in the dramatic thriller Black Flies from Open Road and Sculptor Media. The film from director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (A Prayer Before Dawn), based on Shannon Burke’s novel of the same name, has Nave starring alongside Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Katherine Waterston, Michael Pitt and Mike Tyson.

Black Flies is about the paramedics who save our lives—and the toll it inflicts on theirs. It is a view of life on the streets and one medic’s struggle to maintain his desire to help, despite his growing fear that nothing he can do will make a difference. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance and the choices of two men caught in the middle. Its protagonist, Cross (Sheridan), is ready to do good. In preparation for his dream of medical school, he hits...

Exclusive: The distributor has acquired from Visit Films Etienne Faure’s coming-of-age drama that screened in Panorama in Berlin earlier this year.

Brooklyn Bizarre (formerly Bizarre) follows a runaway French teenager who arrives in New York and takes shelter at an eccentric underground cabaret bar.

Pierre Prieur stars alongside Raquel Nave, Rebekah Underhill, and Adrian James. Faure wrote the screenplay.

“Brooklyn Bizarre is an exciting and completely original film that we are proud to present to a North American audience,” said Breaking Glass co-president Richard Ross.

“It’s certainly a cautionary tale for those who find pleasure in picking up beautiful young mysterious strays – be very careful of a possible dark and troubled past,”

Breaking Glass plans a VOD and DVD release for December 1.