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Exclusive: Oscar-winning producer John Battsek (One Day In September) is exiting Passion Pictures after a stellar 20-year run to launch La and London-based company Ventureland with Kerstin Emhoff, Ali Brown, and director Paul Hunter of U.S. production and commercials firm Prettybird.

Ventureland will produce a range of content across the documentary and scripted spaces but will also work in branded content, technology, music and original IP.

Battsek and Emhoff have previously teamed up to produce Emmy-winning projects Manhunt: The Inside Story Of The Hunt For Bin Laden and The Tillman Story, as well as The Final Year, Sergio and Legion Of Brothers. The duo have worked together on-and-off for more than a decade and the majority of Passion’s U.S. productions have been based out of Prettybird’s La facilities.

Battsek co-founded Passion Pictures Films in 1999 with Andrew Ruhemann and won the company’s first Oscar with One Day In September,...

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week […]

The post This Week In Trailers: Pick It Up! Ska in the 90’s, Ready for War, Knives and Skin, Citizen K, Midnight Family appeared first on /Film.

eOne has seen revenue fall and losses widen in its first-quarter results as a result of the Designated Survivor studio delivering fewer scripted series than last year.

The company reported revenues fell 7% in its first quarter, the three months to the end of June, to £173.1M (Us$218.5M) from £185.7M the previous year. Its pre-tax loss also grew from £6.8M last year to £43.9M over the last three months.

This comes after toy giant Hasbro agreed to acquire the film, TV and music studio earlier this summer in a £3.3B deal.

Growth in its music, supported by the recent Audio Network acquisition, was offset by a lower performance in film and television which was largely due to variances in the timing and mix of deliveries compared to the prior period.

The business noted that the scripted TV market remains vibrant with commissions including Deputy for Fox and Canadian drama Nurses,...

Showtime is bolstering its unscripted slate, acquiring rights to the Emmy-winning newsmagazine Vice, following its cancellation by HBO. The premium cabler has ordered a 13-episode season to premiere in the spring of 2020.

The series, which features a diverse group of award-winning journalists, has been nominated for 12 Primetime Emmy awards across its previous six seasons, with two wins including Outstanding Informational Series or Special. It’s known for its on-the-ground reportage from the front lines of global conflicts and civil uprisings in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and beyond, to critical issues such as Lgbtq rights and the climate crisis, immigration and gun control.

“As so much of television news has moved in a direction of partisan coverage and talking heads, the team behind Vice continues to delve deep into the global issues, conflicts and newsmakers affecting our everyday lives,” said Vinnie Malhotra, Executive Vice President, Nonfiction Programming, Showtime Networks. “They also do...

Three years into the Revolutionary War, a desperate George Washington hired German soldier Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben to drill discipline into his ragtag troops. Von Steuben helped win American independence, and for his service, he was granted U.S. citizenship. Ever since, immigrants have enlisted in the military as a path toward legal status, putting their safety on the line for a shot at the American dream.

The devotion was one-sided. Thanks to a mid-’90s rule change and today’s rising xenophobia, foreign veterans who commit non-violent offenses upon their return to the states are punished three times for the same crime: They’re put in jail, rejected as citizens and deported, often to a county they haven’t seen since they were kids, while being forced to leave their own U.S.-born children behind (not to mention the benefits and medical care they’ve earned).

Take the case of Miguel Perez,...