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Nick Cannon will direct and star opposite Chris Brown in “She Ball,” the story of how a women’s streetball league saves a community center.

As reported by Variety, Cannon said “the film’s main objective is to empower women!” However, in addition to casting Brown, whose much-publicized history of physical abuse towards women includes a 2009 felony after assaulting Rihanna, the film’s creative team appears to be comprised of men.

In addition to Cannon as writer, director, producer, and star, the film is produced by Demetrius Spencer of One Media Worldwide and Ball Up, the entertainment studio behind the women’s streetball league. Also cast are Evan Ross, Rebecca De Mornay, and Cedric the Entertainer.

Read More:‘King Of The Dancehall’ Review: Nick Cannon’s Love Letter To Contemporary Jamaica Can’t Stay On The Beat

“She Ball” stars Cannon as the father to a seven-year-old daughter and the...

Nick Cannon is dancing his way to YouTube. 

The singer and actor's Ncredible Productions has partnered with YouTube Red, the streamer's $10-per-month subscription service, to release his musical drama King of the Dancehall later this year. 

King of the Dancehall, which Cannon wrote, directed, executive produced and stars in, had its world premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In the film, Cannon plays a Brooklynite who moves to Jamaica and falls for a local girl who introduces him to the world of Jamaican dancehall. Whoopi Goldberg, Busta Rhymes, Louis Gossett Jr., Kreesha Turner and newcomer Kimberly Patterson...

In Walter Hill’s bizarre gender-bending B-movie “(re)Assignment,” Michelle Rodriguez plays a gun-toting hitman transformed into woman against his/her will by a revenge-seeking Sigourney Weaver. Why would you not want to see this?

Here are a few reasons.

Hill may have directed some of the more endearing action showdowns over the last 30 years, from “The Warriors” to “48 Hrs.,” but “re(Assignment)” is an amateur work. Cheesy without being self-aware, hobbled by rampant transphobia that the screenplay’s too dumb to address, this inane burst of campy stupidity can’t get beyond the sheer absurdity of its very existence.

RelatedThe 2016 IndieWire Tiff Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

However, the outrageous scenario isn’t the film’s biggest problem. As Dr. Rachel Kay, Weaver is a dime-store Hannibal Lecter who spends most of the movie in a straightjacket, mechanically recalling her scheme to a stone-faced psychologist (Tony Shaloub,...

There have been few first features in recent years as charming as Adam Leon’s “Gimme the Loot,” and now that quality is starting to look like a motif. “Tramps,” Leon’s follow-up to his prize-winning debut, delivers another brisk and scrappy tale of lovable young hooligans on the cusp of a busy inner city world and searching for their place within it. “Tramps” doesn’t break new ground or offer much in the way of surprise developments; its cutesy setup adheres to familiar rules. At the same time, Leon’s sophomore effort has more polish to its entertainment value, matched by playful energy indicative of a mature storyteller in tune with his material. It’s certainly one of the better American romcoms in recent memory, although the competition’s not especially fierce.

Leon’s a knowledgable cineaste who draws from the right stuff with the shrewd hand of a...

One part treatise on the power of dance, one part paint-by-the-numbers rom-com, one part crime drama and entirely, unexpectedly bonkers, Nick Cannon’s latest directorial outing “King of the Dancehall” giddily and greedily blends tropes and tricks into an amusing if deeply uneven romp set to the throbbing tones of Jamaican dancehall music. Cannon pulls quadruple duty on the film, serving as director, screenwriter, producer and star in a feature that happily blends together plotting that wouldn’t be out of place in either a “Step Up” feature or a shoddy “Scarface” knockoff. And while the sum of its parts are never as energetic as its base components, there’s an unmistakable charm to whatever the hell it is Cannon is trying to do here.

As Tarzan Brixton (don’t worry about the name, it will be endlessly mocked and never explained), Cannon stars as a Brooklyn boy only recently...

First things first: Bill Nighy is an international treasure (but you already knew that). Singlehandedly capable of transforming a comedy from wan to winsome, the droll patron saint of mediocre British movies has only become more welcome as he’s grown more ubiquitous. “Their Finest” is as wan (and winsome) as anything he has ever made, but Nighy — playing a pompous wartime actor who serves as a glorified prop in his country’s interchangeable propaganda films — has never been better. Alas, the lanky British baritone has no business being the standout of a story that exists in order to celebrate the value of female storytellers; Bill Nighy is many things, but a woman isn’t one of them.

A characteristically lush period rom-com from “An Education” director Lone Scherfig, “Their Finest” winds back the clocks to a time when movies were a matter of life and death. We open in...

Ruth Negga employs a couple of handy metaphors when talking about her turn as Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols’ biographical drama, “Loving,” from carrying a precious vase to safety alongside her co-star Joel Edgerton to launching off a trampoline under the guidance of Nichols. But each metaphor – thoughtfully considered and very charming, much like the Ethiopian-Irish actress herself – help drives home one single thing: The delicate, brave nature of taking on such a meaningful and important role.

Nichols’ film eschews the standard high-drama biographical movie formula, instead focusing on the more intimate aspects of the love story that would go on to change the face of marriage in America. While many Americans are at least aware of the existence of the landmark Loving v. Virginia case, few know the details – how the Lovings were ambushed and raided after their 1958 marriage, charged with a slew of crimes, forced to leave their...

IndieWire’s Springboard column profiles up-and-comers in the film industry worthy of your attention.

Dash Shaw isn’t kidding around — and neither is the title of the first-time filmmaker’s Toronto International Film Festival debut, “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea.” The animated feature really is about a sinking high school, and it’s really told from the perspective of a Shaw surrogate, an outcast high schooler also named Dash Shaw (gasp). The graphic novelist and short story writer turned screenwriter and director lends his unique vision — both in terms of actual visuals and his funny, self-deprecating view of the world — to the story, which blends the charm of a solid teenager-centric film with any number of high-stakes, high-seas adventures (Tiff rightly refers to it as “John Hughes fused with ‘The Poseidon Adventure'”) to make something that is truly unique.

Read More: Tiff 2016: 9 Breakthrough Names To...

Earlier this year, the concentration camp Auschwitz was wiped off the face of the Earth. A superpowered Holocaust survivor who goes by the name of “Magneto” went to the hallowed massacre site, and — blind with rage after suffering a tremendous personal loss — used his mutant abilities to dismantle the single most important landmark of his people’s suffering. It was a striking moment, in part because it seemed wildly out of place in a movie about a group of teens who dress in purple spandex and fight each other with magic, and in part because Magneto’s rash show of rage wasn’t played as a revenge fantasy so much as an act of historical rejection.

There’s a good reason why, in real life, Auschwitz is a museum and not a landfill: It protects against those who say the Holocaust could never happen again, and — increasingly — to serve as...

Mateo Gil’s latest sci-fi film “Realive” asks the question: “What would it be like to be resurrected after being dead for over 50 years?” The film follows Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes), a successful man who has recently been diagnosed with a fatal, fast-spreading cancer. He decides to cryonize his body in the hope that he will be brought back to life when they have found a cure. Six decades later, the Prodigy Health Corporation resurrects Marc, and he becomes the first human to survive the process, but his reanimation doesn’t go smoothly and he soon finds himself longing for his past self. The film also stars Charlotte Le Bon (“Bastille Day”) and Oona Chaplin (“Quantum Solace”). Watch an exclusive trailer for the film below.

Read More: Meet the 2011 Tribeca Filmmakers | “Blackthorn” Director Mateo Gil

Gil is likely most famous for co-writing Alejandro Amenábar’s 1997 film “Open Your Eyes,” which...

A 20-strong group of Jamaican film professionals is in town, while the festival’s industry centre is also hosting a Jamaica stand.

Renee Robinson, former industry programmer at Toronto International Film Festival, is back at the festival in her new role as film commissioner of Jamaica.

Jampro, Jamaica’s national investment and export agency, is spearheading a 20-strong delegation of Jamaican film professionals coming to Toronto. There is also a Jamaica stand at the industry centre in the Hyatt Regency for the first time.

Robinson said the size of this first Toronto delegation is notable. “It’s an indication that Jamaica is ready to be a global film player,” she told Screen. The delegation includes the filmmakers selected for the Propella! short film development initiative, plus other experts including Kamal Bankay of Creative Marketing Associates, Paul Bucknor of Firefly Films, Carleene Samuels of Creative Source Productions, Damien Baddy of Lookyah and Delano Forbes of Phase 3.

Nick Cannon’s Us-Jamaican...

Few film festivals in the world double as an acquisitions marketplace quite like the Toronto International Film Festival, which will screen more than 300 movies between September 8 and September 18. Most of these films have yet to land a U.S. distributor, and only a select group of titles will secure a distribution deal before the end of the fest.

Which movies are likely to be swarmed by buyers at Tiff 2016? Here are nine hot titles from the lineup that could be prime targets for acquisition execs.

“The Bad Batch”

Writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s follow-up to her hit debut “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” is billed as a “dystopian love story in a Texas wasteland.” The film follows a young girl named Samantha (Suki Waterhouse) who’s been banished from civilized society and ends up escaping from a community of cannibals. Produced by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, the film stars Keanu Reeves,...