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UK sales, finance and production company Protagonist Pictures has made a suite of promotions and hires across its sales and marketing teams.

Joseph Hewitt has been tapped from fellow UK sales agent HanWay Films as senior marketing and distribution manager. At HanWay, Hewitt worked on films including Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio, Ron Howard’s Pavarotti and Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt.

Alexandra Da Silva has been promoted from sales executive to sales manager, looking after new title sales in Eastern Europe, Asia and select European territories. She reports to acting senior vice...

In recent years, the film and TV business has been living under an ever-mutating version of the apocryphal Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times,” and the American Film Market — which runs from Nov. 5-10 at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas — has not been immune. But not all the effects have been negative.

During the peak years of the streaming business, when Netflix, Amazon, Apple and most of the major legacy studios were trying to build out exclusive content catalogs for their VOD platforms, the hottest titles often sold their global rights long before they reached AFM. In other instances, studios would insist that their domestic VOD release come first, undermining the value of international theatrical sales. The first was a net good for people making the projects. Neither was good for smaller buyers or AFM.

“The relevance of the market was reduced when sales agents and...

Brian Cox’s feature directorial debut “Glenrothan” — billed as his “love letter to Scotland” — has wrapped production, with a first look revealed showing the “Succession” star alongside Alan Cumming in a room full of whisky barrels.

Alongside revealing a first look from the feature, Protagonist Pictures has come aboard for worldwide sales and is set to screen exclusive footage for buyers at the upcoming American Film Market.

Lionsgate, which co-developed the project with London based studio Nevision, has taken U.K. rights on the family drama, which shot in Scotland.

In “Glenrothan,” Donal (Cumming) reluctantly returns to the Scottish Highlands after 35 years in Chicago to make amends with his estranged older brother, Sandy (Cox). Sandy needs Donal to take over the family’s whisky distillery or he will be forced to sell and give up on the family’s legacy. But their reunion forces the brothers to confront the past...

Playing former President Donald Trump isn’t so “dramaturgically” interesting to Brian Cox.

Following last Sunday’s jaw-dropping “Succession” twist, Cox spent much of the week taking a media victory lap to discuss his five-year run playing media mogul and terrible parent Logan Roy. While he took every opportunity to praise Jesse Armstrong’s writing and explain the lengths he went to keep the twist a secret, the outspoken actor also found time to take a few shots at Trump.

In an interview with Deadline, Cox voiced his thoughts about the similarities between Roy and Trump. While “Succession” proved that Cox can play an aging right-wing demagogue as well as anyone, he said that he doesn’t find Trump nearly as interesting as Roy. The Scottish actor explained why he wouldn’t ever be interested in playing Trump if the opportunity presented itself.

“You know, somebody said, would you ever want to play Donald Trump,...