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The full company for the first-ever stage adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s internationally acclaimed book The Hunger Games and Lionsgate’s hit motion picture of the same name has been revealed. The company for The Hunger Games: On Stage includes: Mia Carragher (Katniss Everdeen), Euan Garrett (Peeta Mellark), Joshua Lacey (Haymitch Abernathy), Tristan Waterson (Gale Hawthorne), Tamsin Carroll (Effie Trinket), Stavros Demetraki (Caesar Flickerman), Nathan Ives-Moiba (Cinna & Mayor), Sophia Ally (Prim Everdeen & Ensemble), and Ruth Everett (Mrs. Everdeen & Ensemble). The cast is completed by Aiya Agustin (Tribute - Rue), Geo Bailey (Swing), Alexandra Barredo (Ensemble), Imogen Brooke (Ensemble), Liana Cottrill (Tribute - Clove), Kyerron Dixon-Bassey (Swing), Lewis Easter (Tribute - Marvel), Felix Garcia Guyer, Marcellus Hill (Tribute - Thresh), Matthew Ives (Swing & Swing Captain) Jessica Lee (Tribute - Tippet), Mariana Lewis (Tribute - Glimmer), Kiera Milward (Swing), Felipe Pacheo (Tribute - Cato & Fight Captain), Redmond Rance (Tribute - Stele...

The Hills of California, the new Jez Butterworth play directed by Sam Mendes that began previews at the Broadhurst Theatre on September 11 and opens this Sunday, September 29, has received a two-week extension to its limited engagement.

The New York premiere production will now run through Sunday, December 22.

The Hills of California’s Broadway cast features the play’s acclaimed leading London cast members – Laura Donnelly, Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, Nancy Allsop, Sophia Ally, Lara McDonnell and Nicola Turner. The full company also includes David Wilson Barnes, Ta’Rea Campbell, Bryan Dick, Richard Lumsden, Richard Short, Liam Bixby, Ellyn Heald, Max Roll, and Cameron Scoggins.

The Hills of California marks Butterworth’s newest play since the multi-award winning The Ferryman, also directed Mendes.

Producers Sonia Friedman Productions, No Guarantees Productions, Neal Street, Brian Spector, and Sand & Snow Entertainment, with Stephanie P. McClelland, announced the two weeks extension today.

A new Broadway season has begun, and there are currently nine productions of plays set to open this fall. Could we see any of them contend at next year’s Tony Awards? Below, find the plot of each play as well as the awards histories of its author, cast and creative team, plus the opening and (where applicable) closing dates.

“The Roommate” (opens September 12; closes December 15)

In this new play by Jen Silverman, Sharon has never had a roommate before. But after her divorce she needs a housemate to pay the bills. That’s when Robyn arrives. The story follows an unexpected, life-changing friendship that’s both funny and deeply moving between two very different middle-aged women as they navigate the complexities of identity, morality and the dream of reinvention.

The production stars Golden Globe winner Mia Farrow and three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone. It is directed by three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien.

The subscription-based nonprofit Manhattan Theatre Club has joined producers of the previously announced Broadway production of Jez Butterworth’s The Hills Of California and will offer the play to subscribers as part of Mtc’s 2024-25 season.

Producers Sonia Friedman Productions, No Guarantees Productions, Neal Street, Brian Spector, and Sand & Snow Entertainment, with Stephanie P. McClelland announced the September arrival on Broadway of The Hills of California. At that point, no mention was made of Mtc, or of the show being offered as part of Mtc’s subscription series.

The Hills of California is now on sale to Mtc subscribers as the third production in the company’s Broadway 2024-25 season.

Sam Mendes will direct the first Butterworth play since 2018’s acclaimed The Ferryman. Other Butterworth Broadway productions include Jerusalem in 2011 and The River in 2014.

The Hills of California begins previews Wednesday, September 11, at the Broadhurst Theatre and opens Sunday,...

From her work in the 2 Days series to her performances in Three Colours to the Before trilogy, which she co-wrote with Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy often imbues her characters with a tinge of heartfelt lunacy, going on creative, insightful, and downright hysterical outbursts regarding some sociopolitical scheme or the real reasons people fall in and out of love. In her latest film, My Zoe––which she wrote, directed, and leads––she takes these career-long ideas to deliver one of her most passionate performances and ambitious scripts to date.

My Zoe is essentially two films, its first 40 minutes taking the form of marriage melodrama on par with the best scenes in Noah Baumbach’s recent work. Delpy’s craft excels when she puts two people in a room—not just conversing but destroying each other, throwing verbal daggers with intent to kill. Delpy plays Isabelle, a scientist...

My Zoe Blue Fox Entertainment Reviewed by Tami Smith, Film Reviewer for Shockya Grade: B+ Director: Julie Delpy Screenwriter: Julie Delpy Cast: Julie Delpy, Richard Armitage, Sophia Ally, Daniel Bruhl, Saleh Bakri, Linday Duncan Release Date: February 26, 2021 My Zoe, which takes place in the near future, tells the story of Isabelle (Julie Delpy), […]

The post My Zoe Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Julie Delpy mashes family drama with sci-fi thriller in a film hamstrung by its earnest absurdity

However sincerely intended it is, there is something jarringly misjudged and misconceived (and not especially well acted) in this peculiar Europuddingy film from writer-director Julie Delpy. It starts out as a wrenchingly painful human drama. But having clumsily invoked the most intimate of family tragedies, it lurches into a preposterous melodrama from a Huxley-esque dystopia.

The setting is the present or near-future (some tech innovations tip you off) and Delpy plays Isabelle, a French scientist living in Berlin with her six-year-old daughter Zoe (Sophia Ally), whose custody arrangements she is negotiating with her angry British ex-husband James (Richard Armitage). He’s an abusive and controlling figure who never supported her career and accused her of neglecting their daughter.

Exclusive: UK distributor Signature has picked up five movies including recent Frank Grillo crime-thriller Body Brokers and noughties Brit comedy Scenes Of A Sexual Nature.

Also new to the slate are Korean crime caper Lucky Grandma, Julie Delpy tear-jerker My Zoe and true-story drama Miss Virginia.

Body Brokers, starring Grillo, Melissa Leo and Michael K Williams, charts the true story of a multi-billion-dollar drug and alcohol treatment scheme where former drug addicts and dealers become millionaires as fly-by-night ‘body brokers’, recruiting other addicts to seek treatment and selling these patients off to facilities at the highest price. Set for release in 2021, the film was picked up from Voltage Pictures.

Miss Virginia stars Orange Is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba as a struggling inner-city mother who sacrifices everything to give her son a good education. Acquired from Moving Picture Institute, the film is due to be released across platforms in October.

There are two films in Julie Delpy’s ambitious, sharply-made but unbalanced “My Zoe.” There’s the scabrous relationship melodrama, about bitter exes sharing custody of a beloved child, which contains the story’s most potent emotions. And there’s the sci-fi-inflected ethical-dilemma grief movie, which houses its most provocative ideas. Both have much to recommend them, not least Delpy’s lithe filmmaking, polished over her now seven features to a consummate, unobtrusive sheen. But the transition between the two halves or, more appropriately, the cloning of the second from a tissue sample of the first, plays awkwardly, and suggests that Delpy’s screenwriting, while studded with moments of shrewd insight, as yet lags some way behind her standards as director and actress.

Shot in bright, fresh tones by “Jackie” and “Captain Fantastic” Dp Stéphane Fontaine, the film’s near-future setting is subtly indicated by tech only slightly advanced from...

Neatly and purposely divided into three acts — a black screen signals the lag time between each, should the viewer not be ready for the required understanding that things are about to change, and that it’s best to prepare now — Julie Delpy’s fascinating “My Zoe” uses its classic formal structure to tell a thoroughly modern tale. While Delpy’s directorial output thus far has mostly consisted of fizzy rom-coms like her “Two Days” features and the odd historical drama (“The Countess”), “My Zoe” finds the filmmaker and star moving fast into fresh territory.

First, though, there’s Delpy’s Isabelle and the eponymous Zoe, her apple-cheeked daughter. Isabelle and Zoe’s dad, James (Richard Armitage), are in the final throes of their divorce, with Zoe’s custody arrangement the last box to check off. Despite telling the film firmly from Isabelle’s vantage point, Delpy the writer and director doesn’t take sides,...

It’s no coincidence that so many of the best horror movies—“The Exorcist,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Babadook”—focus on parents because there is nothing more terrifying than being one. An early scene in Julie Delpy’s “My Zoe” captures that constant, low-key fear as vividly as I’ve ever seen. Isabelle (Delpy), a divorced mother, is working; her daughter Zoe (Sophia Ally) is spending the day with her father, James (Richard Armitage).

Continue reading ‘My Zoe’: An Exciting New Direction For Writer/Director/Star Julie Delpy [Tiff Review] at The Playlist.

Filmmaker and actress Julie Delpy knows what people expect of her. The star and co-writer of Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy and the director of such bubbly romantic dramedies as “2 Days in Paris” and its sequel “2 Days in New York” may have made her acting debut for no less than Jean-Luc Godard, but she’s been kept in a certain kind of industry bubble for the last two decades.

She’s done with that now. For her latest directorial outing, passion project “My Zoe,” Delpy moves away from romances and chatty comedies into something both wholly unexpected and more personal than anything else she’s ever made. When Delpy describes the feature, a thriller debuting in Tiff’s filmmaker-centric Platform section this week, she uses the kind of descriptors that wouldn’t fit anything else she’s made during her three-decade-long career. Words like “harsh,” “unforgiving,” and “not very kind.

The fall movie season may be associated with awards season buzz, but for the past five years, the Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform section has provided a welcome alternative. The juried program is a tightly curated selection of international films, with a blend of debuts and established filmmakers moving in new directions. In a typically sprawling Tiff lineup, it’s the clearest path to discovery.

It’s also the place where buyers will want to spend a lot of time this year. All 10 films in this year’s Platform section are entering the festival without North American distribution. “I think these are all juicy for buyers,” Tiff co-head Cameron Bailey said.

But don’t expect a lot of obvious commercial material. Instead, this year’s Platform could be a referendum on just how much buyers are willing to jump on unexpected crowdpleasers, riskier options, and foreign-language offerings.

Distributors head...

Her seventh feature film since 2002’s Looking for Jimmy, Julie Delpy went into production My Zoe back in May in Berlin and Moscow. Of her filmography as a director, only 2012’s 2 Days in New York preemed in Park City, while her last film 2015’s Lolo was a Venice Film Festival entry. Richard Armitage, Gemma Arterton, Lindsay Duncan, Daniel Brühl and Delpy herself star and Dp duties went to Stéphane Fontaine.

Gist: Isabelle (Julie Delpy), a scientist and divorcée who has difficult contact with her ex-husband James (Richard Armitage) due to their co-parenting of daughter Zoe (Sophia Ally).…...

Delpy also stars in the drama, which she wrote and directs.

The first image from the set of My Zoe, the forthcoming drama written and directed by Julie Delpy (the Before trilogy) and starring Gemma Arterton (Their Finest) and Daniel Brühl (Rush)

Principal photography on the film started on May 24, shooting in and around Berlin and Moscow.

Delpy plays Isabelle, a scientist and divorcée who has difficult contact with her ex-husband James (Richard Armitage) due to their co-parenting of daughter Zoe (Sophia Ally). After a tragedy befalls the family, Isabelle takes matters into her own hands, turning to a couple...