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A24 has dropped an eye-catching new trailer for Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” ahead of the February U.S. release of the Oscar-winning director’s lavish love letter to his native Naples.

The U.S. trailer focuses on the film’s titular character, a young woman born in Naples – Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans” – played by newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta. In his review, Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha praised Dalla Porta for delivering “a beguiling performance,” he said, as “a woman of such stunning beauty that people stop and stare.”

Adlakha called “Parthenope” as “an exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty.” But it is also, as Sorrentino put it in an interview with Variety, a film about “missed youth” that comes as a follow-up to his autobiographical “The Hand of God” and has elicited comparisons with his 2013 love letter to Rome, “The Great Beauty,” which won the Academy Award for best international feature film.

Film Mode Entertainment has announced the acquisition of Psychopomp, a new horror thriller starring Saw mainstay Shawnee Smith and produced by Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick. The news comes with first look images and a clip previewing a family’s bizarre nightmare.

The horror film is written and directed by Paul Etheredge.

Psychopomp follows “a couple, Robin and Daniel – long struggling with infertility – as they realize their dreams of parenthood by welcoming an orphan, Kathelia, into their home. However, those dreams crack under the weight of Kathelia’s erratic behavior, which only becomes more frighting when Robin discovers she’s inexplicably pregnant.”

The film stars Olivia Macklin, Dylan McTee, Avangeline Friedlander, Shawnee Smith, Lily D. Moore, and Morgana Shaw.

“Psychopomp was born from a nightmare. On my honeymoon, I dreamed of caring for a child, even as it literally tore my new family apart,” said director Paul Etheredge.“Firstly, though,...

Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” is doing gangbuster business at the Italian box office, where the director’s lavish love letter to his native Naples has surpassed the €5 million ($5.3 million) mark less than two weeks after going on full release. These numbers have made it the country’s top local draw – excluding commercial comedies – of the year to date.

For its first theatrical outing since bowing at Cannes in May, new Italian distributor PiperFilm came up with a smart release strategy for “Parthenope” that involved marketing the film to youth audiences. “Parthenope” was teased with some midnight premieres in select Italian cinemas – between Sept. 19 and 25 – to stoke excitement prior to its full launch on Oct. 24.

On Wednesday, “Parthenope” reached $5.5 million in cumulative grosses from roughly 500 Italian screens, according to national box office compiler Cinetel. The film, which is Sorrentino’s 10th feature, could now become his personal best in terms of local returns.

When director Paolo Sorrentino’s hit series The Young Pope debuted in 2016, it took the Vatican a year to grudgingly bless his imagined and occasionally blasphemous portrayal of the pope. Not so for Sorrentino’s latest film Parthenope, which has gotten an early thumbs-down from Italy’s Catholic Church.

That has only seemed to pique interest in the film, driving it to the top of the box office here for Italian films since its release in theaters last month.

Set in Sorrentino’s native Naples, the film is a lush meditation on beauty, love and death, drawn from the Greek myth of the siren Parthenope, who throws herself into the sea after she fails to entice Odysseus with her song. Parthenope is closely affiliated with Naples, such that the city is sometimes called “Partenope” and its people “Partenopei” in Italian.

The film is by no means about the church, but toward the end,...

Laura Fernández Espeso, who took over as CEO of The Mediapro Studio (Tms), in 2020, has taken the Iberian powerhouse global. The group now has 52 offices across 31 countries, and this summer launched operations across the U.S. and Canada. “We’ve opened offices in Los Angeles after operating in Miami and New York over the last few years,” she says, Tms US & Canada fulfills our goal to create, produce, and distribute content in English, intended for audiences all over the world.”

Tms’ English-language credits to date include the Paolo Sorrentino-directed limited series The Young Pope and The New Pope, for HBO/Max, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s family adventure series The Famous Five for the BBC, as well as such features as A Perfect Day, Hunting Ava Bravo, and Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths.

Indie film is where Fernández Espeso got her start in the industry, more than 20 years ago.

New Italian distribution company PiperFilm is launching its international sales unit at Rome’s upcoming Mia Market with veteran sales agent Catia Rossi spearheading the potentially high-powered player’s sales side having secured a small but promising multi-genre film slate.

Rossi is a former head of international sales at Vision Distribution, True Colours, and Rai Com. She launched True Colours and the sales unit at Vision. She’s now joining PiperFilm as director of international sales and will be unveiling the brand new PiperFilm lineup of Italian movies to buyers in Rome.

Domestically, PiperFilm is adopting an innovative distribution model having struck an agreement with Netflix under which the streaming giant will have the first exclusive post-theatrical window for Italy on their titles, while Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia will handle the operational distribution of their lineup in Italian movie theatres.

In Italy, the first PiperFilm to be released is Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,...

Justin Kurzel’s political thriller The Order will open the Zurich Film Festival in October with its star Jude Law in attendance alongside the director to receive the event’s Golden Eye Award for his performance and career.

Law plays a FBI agent who dismantles a far-right terrorist cell in the movie, which recently world premiered at the Venice Film Festival and then made its North American debut at Toronto.

The actor will be presented with the award at the Zurich gala premiere for The Order on October 3.

‘Jude Law is an absolute dream guest’, says Zurich Film Festival Artistic Director Christian Jungen. “He is not only the leading actor in the thriller The Order, which he carries from A to Z with his charisma, but also the producer.

“Although the film is set in 1983, it revolves around the machinations of right-wing extremist circles in the USA and is therefore highly topical.

Ahead of his transformation into an ageing, smelly Henry VIII in new film Firebrand, the twice Oscar-nominated actor is answering your questions

Never say Jude Law doesn’t throw himself into a role. To better inhabit late-stage Henry VIII, he of the rolls of fat, rotting leg and questionable dentistry, Law commissioned a special perfume he’d douse himself in during shooting for new film Firebrand. Its ingredients? An “extraordinary variety of blood, faecal matter and sweat”.

We have questions about this – no doubt you will, too. Perhaps you might like to quiz Law further on the Tudor monarchy or England’s move from Catholicism to the Church of England. In his review of Firebrand, our own Peter Bradshaw writes that “we at one stage get a full-on shot of His Majesty’s pale, fleshy bum as he has conjugal relations with Catherine – like the giant, shaved arse of a sheep.

Jude Law lit up the Lido with his powerful performance as an FBI agent fighting neo-Nazi terrorists in Justin Kurzel’s timely crime thriller “The Order” that elicited a seven-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere.

Prior to the screening Jude Law, looking dashing in a black shirtless suit, took selfies with screaming fans on the Palazzo del Cinema red carpet.

When the lights went up, Law was glowing as he and director Kurzel and co-stars Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett soaked up the rapturous seven-minute applause, which could have lasted longer had they not exited the theatre waving to the still cheering crowd.

Based on true events, the film is set in 1983 Idaho and sees a lone FBI agent follow a series of increasingly violent bank robberies and car heists, coming to realize that they’re the work of a group of dangerous domestic neo-Nazi terrorists,...

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to Riff Raff Entertainment, the company founded by Jude Law and his longtime creative partner Ben Jackson. The London-based production banner has a big U.S. presence and European reach (the latter thanks to a recent deal with French outfit Newen). Law and Jackson walk us through the inception of Venice competition title The Order and their greater production ambitions for the company.

High-end drama The Young Pope took the Lido by storm when two episodes of the Paolo Sorrentino-directed series starring Jude Law as the unruly fictional Pope Pius Xiii premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2016. While Law was no stranger to the festival circuit – Sleuth premiered on the Lido in 2007 and that same...

Mediawan has taken a majority stake in Our Films, the production and film financing company launched earlier this year by top Italian producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli.

Rome-based Our Films reunites Gianani and Mieli who have worked together on productions including HBO’s The Young Pope, The New Pope and My Brilliant Friend.

Recently, Mieli has produced films such as Paolo Sorrentino’sThe Hand of God and Parthenope, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones And All and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

Gianani’s recent film credits include The Eight Mountains by Felix Von Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, Italian box office smash...

Mediawan, the European parent company of Brad Pitt’s Plan B, is taking a majority stake in Our Films, a new production and film financing company led by film and TV producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli.

Launched in 2024 and based in Rome, Our Films is focused on working with established and emerging European, U.S. and international filmmakers and talent across features documentaries and series.

Mediawan, which is home to over 80 production companies, has produced projects like “Call My Agent,” “Three Body Problem,” “Bob Marley: One Love,” “Miraculous Ladybug,” “Rhythm and Flow France,” “The Agency,” “The Count of Montecristo,” “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” “Hip/High Potential,” and “One Day.”

Its investment in Our Films comes as part of the company’s strategy to create a truly pan-European studio with an increasingly growing presence, which now spans 13 countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Benelux, and the UK in Europe,...

Plan B’s pan-European parent company Mediawan has taken a majority stake in Our Films, the new production and film financing company formed by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli, the award-winning Italian producer duo behind “The Young Pope” and “My Brilliant Friend.”

Based in Rome, Our Films reunites Gianani and Mieli, who exited their respective Fremantle-owned banners, Wildside and the Apartment, earlier this year. The pair, whose flair for talent has shined through their impressive track record over the years, will continue working with European, U.S. and international filmmakers and talent across features, documentaries and series.

Gianani and Mieli also have a co-production deal with Fremantle under which they will continue to shepherd a number of projects that they initiated at Fremantle, some of which are hot titles world premiering at the Venice Film Festival, such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig; Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas...

Italian distributor Piper Film, Fremantle and Pathé have dropped the international trailer for Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” ahead of the widely sold film’s international rollout following its bow in May from the Cannes Film Festival.

Praised in his review by Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha as “An exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty,” “Parthenope” is a love letter to the director’s native Naples. But also, as Sorrentino has put it, a film about “missed youth” that comes as a follow-up to his autobiographical “The Hand of God.”

The film’s titular character is a young woman born in Sorrentino’s native Naples – Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans” – played by newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta who “delivers a beguiling performance,” noted Adlakha, as “a woman of such stunning beauty that people stop and stare.”

“It’s a moving artistic quest, as a filmmaker explores, through the tale of one...

Brie Larson, Katie Holmes, Bo Derek, Harvey Keitel, Kate Beckinsale, John David Washington, Matt Bomer, and Colman Domingo are among the robust contingent of Hollywood stars set to disembark on the island of Sardinia for the upcoming seventh edition of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival.

The event, which kicks off Italy’s summer moviegoing season and combines film and TV, unspools June 20-23 in the Forte Village resort near Cagliari, capital of Sardegna (Sardinia in English). This year, the festival has upped its game making “a major effort to attract talents,” notes Tiziana Rocca, the marketing guru and former Taormina Film Festival chief who launched the Sardinia event seven years ago.

More than 70 international and italian titles comprising feature films, TV series, docs and shorts in a wide range of genres will be screening at the fest. Local premiers include Netflix’s Japanese anime film “The Imaginary” which will drop...

What a world Paolo Sorrentino creates. The Italian director called one of his movies – the one that won the Oscar for Best International Film – “The Great Beauty,” but that could have been the title of lots of them, definitely including “Parthenope,” which premiered on Tuesday in the Main Competition section of the Cannes Film Festival.

In this case, the great beauty could be the film’s title character, a stunning young woman named after a mythological siren inextricably linked with the city of Naples. It could also be the world she inhabits, a sun-drenched coastal city on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the Mediterranean. And it could just as well be the aura that Sorrentino’s movies create, languorous and exquisite and, much of the time, gloriously sad.

“Parthenope” isn’t a Sorrentino breakthrough by any means, but a recapitulation of many of his obsessions. His last film, 2021’s “The Hand of God,...

Audrey Diwan is attached to direct “The Marriage Portrait,” based on the novel by award-winning Northern Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell, best known for “Hamnet.”

Variety hears that the project will see the fast-rising French auteur team with two of Europe’s leading arthouse producers in Ireland’s Element Pictures (which has three films in Cannes’ official selection this year) and Italy’s Wildside (which has competition title “Limonov: The Ballad”). Film4 helped develop the feature.

Set in 1500s Renaissance Florence, “The Marriage Portrait” — which was published in 2022 — follows the fictional tale of young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici, a sheltered 16-year-old who has spent her life locked inside the city’s grandest palazzo. But when her husband takes her on an unexpected visit to a country villa, it occurs to her that he has a sinister purpose — he intends to kill her.

Diwan, who has just completed the post-production of her...

In a big strategic market swing, The Mediapro Studio is creating new U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles to double down on U.S. and English-language production for the U.S. and global market.

Laura Fernández Espeso, The Mediapro Studio CEO, has also confirmed Juan “Jc” Acosta, the ex high-flying Paramount exec, as head of the newly created division, The Mediapro Studio U.S./Canada.

Based out of Century City, the new U.S. operation will develop, produce and distribute for a global market English-language scripted, non-scripted reality and entertainment, documentaries and features, said Fernández Espeso, Variety’s 2024 International Media Woman of the Year.

That’s exactly the same broad-based production model that The Mediapro Studio has in Spain and Latin America, she noted.

The Los Angeles operation will incorporate existing Tms offices in Miami and New York, as well as Grup Mediapro’s new production facility at Great Point Studios in Yonkers,...

The Mediapro Studio is opening a new US/Canada headquarters office in Los Angeles and has appointed Juan ‘Jc’ Acosta as its head of operations for the market.

The new office is part of a push to increase the production and distribution of English-language content – including scripted series, reality and entertainment programming, documentaries and features – by the company, the production division of Spain’s Mediapro communications group.

The Los Angeles office will act as the centre of US operations for The Mediapro Studio, which already has staff working at the Miami and New York offices of Grup Mediapro (which also...

Euro Gang Entertainment, the company launched last year by Hollywood veterans Gianni Nunnari and Simon Horsman (“Legacy: The True Story of the L.A. Lakers”) is ramping up operations in Italy through a partnership with Rome-based Alfred Film, the young shingle co-founded by experienced producers Roberto Amoroso and Maria Theresia Braun.

The Euro Gang deal with Alfred currently comprises three feature films and an English-language TV series that will shoot in Italy and elsewhere, according to a statement.

Founded in 2020, Alfred Film – which is named in homage to Alfred Hitchcock – is focused on commercially-driven quality projects such as their mainstream comedy “Tre di Troppo,” directed by and starring Italian comedy draw Fabio De Luigi, which grossed €4.7 million ($5 million) at the local box office and is the third highest-grossing Italian film of 2023.

Amoroso is a former creative director at Sky Italia, where during a long stint at the pay-tv platform he was...

Last year, actress Penélope Cruz set up a joint production venture, Moonlyon, with Madrid-based The Mediapro Studio at the urging of its CEO, Laura Fernández Espeso, a rising star in Spain’s fast-expanding media sector.

“It’s been an amazing connection from the first,” Cruz says, about her working relationship with Fernández Espeso, Variety’s International Media Woman of the Year.

It was no surprise to anyone that Cruz chose Fernández Espeso as her partner: Lifting up female talent in Western Europe and beyond has been a huge part of Fernández Espeso’s mission since she took the reins of the busy production studio five years ago. At her direction, the company, which has 30 production houses, has capitalized on the growing demand for TV series that can travel across the world. Fernández Espeso has steered the effort for the company to make its productions more saleable by lensing in English.

Sterlin Harjo’s FX pilot The Sensitive Kind has added 8 actors to star alongside executive producer and lead Ethan Hawke.

They are Keith David (American Fiction), Siena East (Sex Lives of College Girls), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Big Love), Tim Blake Nelson, Scott Shepherd (Killers of the Flower Moon), Tracy Letts (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty), Kyle Maclachlan (Twin Peaks) and Macon Blair (Oppenheimer).

The Sensitive Kind is a Tulsa noir about a guy (Hawke) who knows too much. Roles for the newly added cast are being kept under wraps.

Harjo also serves as writer and director on the pilot, which he and Hawke executive produce with Garrett Basch. The project falls under Harjo’s overall deal with the studio behind the pilot, FX Productions. The order for The Sensitive Kind comes on the heels of Reservation Dogs ending its award-winning three-season run on FX.

Netflix has greenlit the limited series “Black Rabbit” starring Jason Bateman and Jude Law.

The series was originally announced as being in development at the streamer back in October 2022. With the greenlight announcement, it is also confirmed that Cleopatra Coleman (“Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire”), Amaka Okafor, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, and Dagmara Dominczyk will all star in the series alongside Bateman and Law.

The official logline for the series states, “When the owner of a New York City hotspot (Bateman) allows his turbulent brother (Law) back in his life, he opens the door to escalating dangers that threaten to bring down everything he’s built.”

Zach Baylin and Kate Susman created the series and serve as executive producers. Bateman will direct the first two episodes and executive produce along with Michael Costigan under their Aggregate Films banner. Law and Ben Jackson will executive produce via Riff Raff Entertainment.

Well-established Italian producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli — who left their Fremantle-owned banners, Wildside and The Apartment, respectively, earlier this year — are returning to the growing TV and film powerhouse with their new scripted outfit.

The duo — who co-founded “The Young Pope” and “My Brilliant Friend” production house Wildside in 2009 before Mieli exited to set up The Apartment, which was behind the recent hit “Priscilla” — are yet to reveal details of their new company. But the pair have now signed a co-production deal with Fremantle that will see them collaborate on several projects.

Among those in production and post-production from the two producers are Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov -The Ballad,” “Queer” by Luca Guadagnino starring Daniel Craig, the new film by Gabriele Mainetti, “Maria” by Pablo Larraín starring Angelina Jolie, plus the TV series “M. The Son of the Century” by Joe Wright and “Il Mostro” by Stefano Sollima.

Exclusive: Sebastian Roché (1923) is making his K-drama debut in Netflix’s Queen of Tears premiering March 9. He will portray Dr. Braun, a German doctor who has an interesting relationship with the two leads.

From Studio Dragon, Showrunners and Culture Depot, the series follows Hong Hae-in (Kim Ji-won), the third-generation heiress to Queens Group and the queen of department stores, who has been married for three years to Baek Hyeon-u (Kim Soo-hyun), Yongdu-ri village chief’s son and the prince of supermarkets. As the couple weathers a marital crisis, they discover a miraculous new beginning that rewrites their love story.

Additional cast includes Park Sung-hoon, Kwak Dong-yeon, Lee Joo Bin with a guest appearance by Song Joongki.

Queen of Tears is written by Park Ji-eun. Jang Young-woo and Kim Hee-won direct.

Roché can currently be seen in Paramount’s Taylor Sheridan series 1923 starring opposite Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. He...

Over the past few years Italian cinema has been making strides in the global arena and 2024 looks likely to bolster its international standing. New works by top auteurs Paolo Sorrentino and Luca Guadagnino will be launching from the festival circuit just as a fresh crop of directors comes to fore, starting with Margherita Vicario, whose first film “Gloria!” scored a Berlin competition slot.

Below is a compendium of new Italian movies set to hit this year’s fest circuit.

“Another End” – Gael García Bernal and Renate Reinsve (“The Worse Person in the World”) star as lovers caught in an unusual bind in Italian director Piero Messina’s sci-fi film “Another End” which is competing in Berlin. This second feature by Messina – whose first feature, “The Wait,” launched with a splash in the 2015 Venice competition – is set in a near-future when a new technology exists that can put the consciousness of...

Sarah Doole, the respected British drama exec whose credits included The Young Pope, My Brilliant Friend and Deutschland 83, has died of cancer. She was 63.

The announcement was made by Anton, the Paddington producer-financier that Doole joined last year to run its London-based TV operation. She was previously CEO of It’s a Sin producer Red Production Company and, before that, Director of Global Drama at Fremantle.

Fremantle Group CEO Jennifer Mullin said: “Those who had the pleasure of working with Sarah will know that she was a true creative, and a driving force. Her passion and her energy had no limits. She helped lay the strong foundations of our Global Drama business and was a brilliant leader. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time.”

Anton TV head Sangeeta Desai added: “Since her death, tributes have poured in from across the globe and I am overwhelmed...

Barcelona-based Grup Mediapro has promoted Laura Fernández Espeso to the post of general manager with oversight over not just The Mediapro Studio, where she currently serves as CEO, but the whole of the Group. The appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2025.

As Grup Mediapro’s No. 2, reporting to Mediapro co-founder Tatxo Benet, Group Media President and CEO, Fernández Espeso will oversee a company now streamlined in five business units, two new, focused on the Group’s principle revenue drivers.

Fernández Espeso replaces Juan Ruíz de Gauna who has had a stellar career occupying senior management positions from an early age at key companies re-shaping Spain’s modern media landscape as ongoing deregulation kicked in, at Antena 3 TV, Prisa’s Sogetel, Sogepaq and Idea, then Via Digital, Telefonica and from 2002 at Mediapro and its commercial broadcaster La Sexta.

Apart from Fernandez Espeso, other long-serving Mediapro execs have been promoted at the giant multimedia communications group.

Prominent Italian producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli are exiting their Fremantle-owned companies — Wildside and The Apartment, respectively — in an industry shakeup expected to lead them to jointly form a new independent scripted content outfit.

Gianani and Mieli co-founded Wildside in 2009 and turned it into the powerhouse behind major global dramas such as Rai/HBO’s “The Young Pope” and “My Brilliant Friend,” to name a few. Wildside was aquired by Fremantle in 2015.

Mieli subsequently went his own way and set up The Apartment in 2020 under the Fremantle umbrella. Recent The Apartment titles include Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” and Pablo Larrain’s upcoming Angelina-starrer “Maria” about iconic soprano Maria Callas, amid a rich international slate.

A Fremantle Italy spokesperson confirmed the ongoing exits of the two top producers, adding that the separations are not acrimonious and that Fremantle is discussing “the ways in which we will will continue to work together.

Two of Italy’s top producers – The Apartment’s Lorenzo Mieli and Wildside’s Mario Gianani – are leaving their Fremantle-owned companies.

Between them, Mieli and Gianani’s companies have produced many of Italy’s most acclaimed features of recent years.

A Fremantle spokesperson confirmed their departures, describing the moves as amicable, and told Screen: “We are finalising a way to continue to work together in a different structure.”

Gianani’s Wildside is behind 2023 Italian box office smash There’s Still Tomorrow, as well as festival hits The Eight Mountains, Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn and Disney+ series The Good Mothers.

Two of Italy’s top producers – The Apartment’s Lorenzo Mieli and Wildside’s Mario Gianani – are leaving their Fremantle-backed companies.

Between them, Mieli and Gianani’s companies have produced many of Italy’s most acclaimed features of recent years.

A Fremantle spokesperson confirmed their departures, describing the moves as amicable, and told Screen: “We are finalising a way to continue to work together in a different structure.”

Gianani’s Wildside is behind 2023 Italian box office smash There’s Still Tomorrow, as well as festival hits The Eight Mountains, Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn and Disney+ series The Good Mothers.

Before getting out of the business of producing scripted content, Cinemax's lineup of shows was truly phenomenal.

The network brought great shows like Strikeback, Warrior (now on Max), and Banshee to life.

These shows were well-written, with great characters and stories. The action was top-tier, making action buffs weak on the knees with every sequence.

Banshee's narrative, storyline, direction, and enigmatic characters stood out. The show is one of the most underrated shows from the 2010s.

After seeing its lead male actor's phenomenal skills in a currently airing show, I was compelled to check up on the cast and see what they've been up to in the years since the show ended.

Antony Starr -- Lucas Hood

Relatively unknown at the time, New Zealand actor Antony Starr embodied the role of Lucas Hood.

Fresh out of jail after a robbery, becoming a regular citizen was the least of...

In a milestone move, the board of Mediapro Group, has approved the departure of managing partner Jaume Roures, the best known face of the company who, since co-founding Mediapro in 1994, was instrumental in building the company into Spain’s biggest independent international film-tv player.

Taxto Benet, the other head of Mediapro, remains as company president and CEO; all other key figures at Mediapro remain in their posts, including Juan Ruíz de Gauna, director general, Laura Fernández Espeso, CEO of The Mediapro Studio, and Carme Anglada, head of communication.

Roures’ exit comes at request of Mediapro majority shareholder Southwind Group, which controls over 80% of the group and minority shareholder Wpp, according to a written statement issued Friday by Mediapro.

Announcing that “the void that Jaume leaves in the group is immense,” Benet also underscored Friday that “the inspiration and legacy that Jaume leaves behind are an irreplaceable part of Grup Mediapro...

The Mediapro Studio will shoot from November Season 3 of “The Head,” its biggest international hit, filming in the Sahara Desert with John Lynch (“The Fall”) and Katharine O’Donnelly (“Mary Queen of Scots), attached once more to star.

Olivia Morris also returns to her role as Rachel Russo, the morally conscionable daughter of ambition-crazed biologist Arthur Wilde, played by Lynch.

“The Head” Season 1 took place at an Antarctic research station cut off in winter, Season 2 on a hulking freighter at mid-Pacific’s Point Nemo, the most distant place on earth from nearest land.

“The locations for this series have been a fundamental part of the show itself, always in an inaccessible place,” Laura Fernández Espeso, The Mediapro Studio CEO, told Variety before talking at a Mipcom Media Mastermind Keynote on Tuesday.

“This time we’ll be shooting in the desert: ‘The Head 3’ will take place in an unknown place in the Sahara desert,...

The company has also unveiled an Israel-based €150m fund for film and scripted TV projects.

With five films playing in competition, European production and distribution group Fremantle is enjoying a strong presence at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Fremantle’s Ireland-uk label Element Pictures is behind one of the hottest films on the Lido this year, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, while Italian label Wildside produced Saverio Costanzo’s big budget Finally Dawn.

Another Fremantle Italian production label The Apartment, meanwhile, is involved in three films in competition – Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla , Stefano Sollima’s Adagio and Piero Castellito’s Enea.

Gary Oldman has joined the cast of Paolo Sorrentino’s new film that is currently shooting in Naples.

Details about Oldman’s role in the still-untitled Italian-language drama are being kept under wraps.

Sorrentino’s 10th feature is about a woman named Partenope “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth,” as the auteur – who won an international Oscar in 2013 for “The Great Beauty” –put it in a statement to Variety in June, when the shoot started.

In Greek mythology, Parthenope, as she is known in English, is the name of a siren who having failed to entice Odysseus with her songs, cast herself into the sea and drowned. Her body washed up on a symbolic foundational rock where Naples lies. Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans.”

“Her long life embodies the full repertoire of human existence: youth’s lightheartedness and its demise,...

Being an independent producer was never easy. But these days, it’s near impossible. Even before the dual writers and actors strikes, changes in the international film and TV market had made life tough for the indies. Old models of art house moviemaking have been ravaged by a combination of decline in the specialty box office, the collapse of ancillary revenue for home entertainment and TV licensing, and the more recent pullback by streaming companies, who have begun to back fewer, and more mainstream, movies.

But one indie production company has gone from making just a handful of movies a year to dozens, finding a way to turn the turbulent new reality into a business model for making cutting-edge art house cinema that, shockingly, can actually turn a profit. It’s the company behind five of the most hotly anticipated titles at the Venice Film Festival this year: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things,...

Olivia Macklin and Dylan McTee are set to lead Paul Etheredge’s paranormal parenting thriller “Psychopomp” alongside Shawnee Smith, Avangeline Friedlander and Lily D. Moore.

The horror will spotlight Macklin and McTee as a couple who foster a “mute orphan” (portrayed by Friedlander). The child, however, has endured a calamitous past that will haunt the family.

“This act of love turns to horror when they find themselves besieged by a terrifying entity intent on destroying this newfound family from within,” reads the film’s official logline.

Macklin is best known for her role as Madre in the television miniseries “The Young Pope.” Additionally, she has starred in “Pretty Smart” and “Christmas Always Finds Its Way.” She’ll be seen next in Richard Lagravense’s “A Family Affair” led by Joey King, Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron.

McTee hails from Mike Pr. Nelson’s “Wrong Turn” and the TV series “Roswell,...

Sky Italia celebrated its 20-year anniversary on Tuesday by announcing a rich slate of upcoming originals, including a second season of the Italian adaptation of “Call My Agent,” which will see “The White Lotus” star Sabrina Impacciatore joining the cast.

Impacciatore’s agent is Gersh and her management is Mgmt.

The Sky Italia originals slate comprises previously announced high-end drama “M. Son of the Century” by British director Joe Wright, alongside less lavish shows in various stages – most of which have international potential. It underscores how the Italian unit of the Comcast-owned pay-tv service continues to be a major Italian industry driver.

While Sky’s German unit, which is believed to be up for sale, has put production on pause, Sky Italia is cranking out Italian originals through the platform’s Sky Studios unit at a steady pace, showing no signs of a slowdown.

“We are at the level...

Roughly two years after his return to Naples for “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino is heading back to his hometown for another movie steeped in the lore of his native southern port city.

The still untitled film is about a woman named Partenope “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth,” the Oscar-winning auteur has revealed to Variety.

In Greek mythology, Parthenope, as she is known in English, is the name of a siren who having failed to entice Odysseus with her songs, cast herself into the sea and drowned. Her body washed up on a symbolic foundational rock where Naples lies. Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans.”

Shooting on Sorrentino’s new film is set to start “at the end of June” and will take place in Naples and on the island of Capri.

Here is the film’s full director’s statement,...

Roman Polanski’s “The Palace” has been set for release in Italian theatres in September, prompting speculation that the controversial director’s black comedy set in a posh hotel in the Swiss Alps resort of Gstaad on the eve of the new millennium could be launching from the Venice Film Festival.

Italy’s Rai Cinema, which is a main backer of Polanski’s new film, has slated a September 28 local release date via its 01 Distribuzione unit for “The Palace,” which has an ensemble cast including Mickey Rourke, John Cleese and Fanny Ardant. Other key cast members include German actor Oliver Masucci (“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”); Portugal’s Joaquin De Almeida; the U.K.’s Bronwyn James (“The Dig”) and Italy’s Fortunato Cerlino (”Gomorrah”).

The Palace/Courtesy Rai Cinema

Besides announcing the release date, production company Eliseo Entertainment and Rai Cinema have also issued a dippy decadent poster...

James Cromwell has done Ewan Roy proud. Fresh off his character’s scene-stealing speech on Sunday night’s episode of “Succession,” the actor who plays Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) humble and morally conscious brother thanked the show’s writers for his big moment and expressed solidarity with the WGA strike.

“It begins with the words,” Cromwell wrote on Twitter. “Nothing happens without them. Sometimes, the writing achieves transcendence, but, in every case, it’s seminal. I got to a give a brilliant speech recently, which not only explicated my and my brother’s characters, it illuminated an entire narrative. This is what great writers do. And they need to be compensated in accordance with their contribution.”

Cromwell went on to say that “at the very least” writers “need to be able to provide for themselves and their families.”

“In this era of corporate greed and union busting, management seems to hold all the cards.

The Holy Grail, a character in “Mrs. Davis” observes, might be the “most overused MacGuffin ever.” From “Monty Python” to “Indiana Jones,” the mythical chalice is an easy shorthand for a magical object that motivates heroes and antagonists alike. Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin), a nun who spends her days mak- ing strawberry jam at an abbey outside Reno, is the latest protag- onist to set her sights on the Grail. She’s been assigned this quest by an artificial intelligence known as Mrs. Davis, which marries the menace of Skynet with the affable mien of Alexa. For reasons both principled and personal, Simone despises Mrs. Davis, but she’s been extended an offer she can’t refuse: If she finds the Grail and destroys it, Mrs. Davis will destroy herself. As the same supporting player notes: “Algorithms love clichés, and there’s no cliché bigger than the quest for the Holy Grail.

Exclusive: Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) is due to start filming a new movie in June, we can reveal.

Set between the picturesque Italian island of Capri and Sorrentino’s city of birth, Naples, the movie will reunite the filmmaker with The Apartment producer Lorenzo Mieli after their collaborations on Oscar nominee The Hand Of God and series The New Pope, The Young Pope and Sei Pezzi Facili. Script comes from Sorrentino.

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but we hear the project will deal with “the human condition”.

Naples and its surrounding area were the setting for the director’s most recent film, 2021 drama The Hand Of God.

Contrary to a handful of online reports in the past week, we hear the film won’t be based on myths surrounding The Siren of Parthenope or star Gomorrah actor Giampiero De Concilio.

There’s no word yet...

Andrea Scrosati, who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle, isn’t too worried about various types of turbulence that are currently creating anxiety in the U.S. media market such as draconian cost cuts being made by juggernaut groups and the impending prospect of a Writers Guild of America strike.

Speaking in Italy at a film and TV conference organized by the Idm-Film Commission Südtirol titled “Less is More – What to Do When the Streaming Boom is Over” Scrosati noted that the effect of market consolidation in the U.S. and fear due to plunging stock market results that is prompting cost cuts at Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery certainly means that “some of the big buyers are in a conflict.”

Which, in turn, “makes it more complicated sometimes to have discussions.”

But, he said, “The amount of content that is required by consumers across the world is not going to change.

Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of U.S. media giant Comcast, is traditionally a buyer and a builder, not a pump-and-dumper. Over the years, he has grown Comcast through bold M&a moves, snatching up NBCUniversal in 2011, DreamWorks Animation in 2016, and, in the company’s most recent mega-buy, paying around $39 billion for European pay-tv giant Sky, which operates three language divisions: English (for the U.K. and Ireland), German (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and Italian.

With every deal, the goal was always to make Comcast bigger and better able to respond to or lead industry trends. Not all acquisition plans worked out. Roberts tried, unsuccessfully, to buy the Walt Disney Co. and, later, former Sky owner 21st Century Fox. Disney, of course, ended up snatching up large parts of Fox in 2018. In almost every case, Roberts and Comcast have preferred to hold and further build and grow businesses, trusting they will...

New Disney+ original series “The Good Mothers,” which provides a fresh female take on the Calabrian mob, marks a case of truly organic collaboration between the U.K. and Italy to ensure that a great story didn’t risk losing an iota of authenticity.

The show, which is competing in the “Berlinale Series” section, depicts the Calabrian mob through the prism of three daring women inside the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime clan who collaborated with a female prosecutor and withstood the consequences of their attempt to escape its iron grip. It is produced produced by Juliette Howell, Tessa Ross and Harriet Spencer for London’s House Productions, which originated the project, and by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Rome’s Wildside, a Fremantle company, which helped to firmly root the story in its Calabrian context.

“Good Mothers” is based on a book by U.K.-based journalist Alex Perry and...

Sky has unveiled its Italian “Call My Agent” adaptation set in Rome featuring high-caliber Italian guest stars such as Paolo Sorrentino – in a side-splitting turn – and actor Matilda De Angelis.

The six-episode season is produced by Palomar, the Italian company controlled by France’s Mediawan which originated the hit show set at a Parisian talent agency.

In episode two Oscar-winner Sorrentino waltzes into the Rome agency called CMA with a “brilliant” new idea for a third instalment to his “The Young Pope” TV series.”

It’s “The Lady Pope” for whom the God-like director wants 1980s Italian disco queen Ivana Spagna to be cast in the titular role. And also Denzel Washington as the female pope’s chamberlain, and Madonna as her mother.

The gag was thought of by Sorrentino who spoofs himself with biting irony.

In real life De Angelis recently scored the lead role on the upcoming Italian...

Anthony Hopkins has boarded Roland Emmerich’s gladiator series “Those About to Die.” The Oscar winner will play Emperor Vespasian in the Peacock drama, which is being produced by AGC Television and is written by Oscar-nominated “Saving Private Ryan” writer Robert Rodat.

Peacock handed a straight-to-series order for “Those About to Die” last summer. Set in the “complex and corrupt” world of gladiatorial competition, the show follows an ensemble of characters from all parts of Roman society who collide in the arena.

Hopkins is the first major cast member announced for the project. He will play Vespasian, a Roman emperor and rural upstart who claimed his throne after victory in a bloody ten-year civil war. An official synopsis describes the ageing Vespasian as “despised by the Patricians jockeying for position in the Empire and looking to supplant his heirs to the throne the first chance they get.”

In addition to directing,...

Peacock will air series in the US. High End Productions holds European rights, AGC controls remainder of the world.

Anthony Hopkins has joined Roland Emmerich’s gladiator series Those About To Die for AGC Television.

Hopkins, who currently stars in Armageddon Time, will portray what is described as the “pivotal role” of the pivotal role of Emperor Vespasian in the epic drama that will air on Peacock in the US.

Production is scheduled to commence at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios in March. Robert Rodat, whose credits include Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot, wrote the screenplay to the series which takes place in the complex,...