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‘Mary Mother Of Christ’ In Lionsgate Deal

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 8:32am PDTTags: Alister Grierson, Big Deals Film, Cannes Film Festival, Lionsgate, Mary Mother Of Christ
Mike Fleming

Mary Mother Of Christ MovieSanctum director Alister Grierson will helm Mary Mother Of Christ, which its backers are calling the Biblical prequel to the story of The Passion Of The Christ, perhaps because this film’s scribe, Benedict Fitzgerald, co-wrote the other movie with Mel Gibson. Fitzgerald wrote this one with Barbara Nicolosi. Israeli actress Odeya Rush will play Mary. Julia Ormond, and Peter O’Toole are also in the cast. Lionsgate will distribute the film in North America with Hyde Park handling international sales at Cannes.

Texas pastor Joel Osteen signed on the be exec producer. Mary Aloe of Aloe Entertainment and Shawn Williamson of Bright Light Pictures are producing. Motive Entertainment, which helped sell faith-based pics The Passion Of The Christ and The Chronicles Of Narnia, will provide the same service here. Pic is Mary’s attempt to defy King Herod to save her child. Grierson is repped at CAA, Rush is repped at WME, Ormond by Gersh, and Peter O’Toole by Kenis and Co.

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Mark Duplass Joins Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 8:14am PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Duplass, Zero Dark Thirty
Mike Fleming

Mark Duplass has been set in a key supporting role in Zero Dark Thirty, the Kathryn Bigelow-directed drama about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden for Sony Pictures. Duplass, just attached to star with Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Aniston in Convention, will next be seen in Safety Not Guaranteed, Your Sister’s Sister and the Alex Kurtzman-directed People Like Us.

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Ralph Fiennes Firmed For ‘The Two Women’: Cannes

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 7:45am PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, Ralph Fiennes, The Two Women
Mike Fleming

Ralph Fiennes Two WomenFilm Base Berlin GmbH confirms in Cannes that Ralph Fiennes will star in The Two Women, an adaptation of the work by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. The 19th century costume drama is set in Russia and will be directed by Vera Glagoleva. Film Base Berlin is producing with Russia-based Horosho Production and Producer Center.

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Bobby Cannavale Joins Woody Allen Film

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 7:36am PDTTags: Bobby Cannavale, Cannes Film Festival, Lovelace, Woody Allen
Mike Fleming

Bobby Cannavale Woody AllenBobby Cannavale has been added to the cast of Woody Allen’s upcoming comedy. He joins Cate Blanchett, Bradley Cooper and Alec Baldwin. Cannavale just boarded the cast of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and will star in the Broadway revival of The Big Knife, which opens next April. Cannavale most recently completed the Jeffrey Friedman-Rob Epstein-directed Lovelace, which is being shopped at the Cannes Film Festival by Nu Image. He is repped by ICM and Peg Donnegan.

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T.I. Joins Cast Of ‘Identity Thief’

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 7:29am PDTTags: Identity Thief, T.I., Universal Pictures
Mike Fleming

Rapper-turned-actor T.I. will play a bounty hunter in Identity Thief, the Universal Pictures comedy that stars Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. T.I.’s character hunts both of them, as Bateman’s character becomes an unlikely companion for McCarthy’s character after she steals his identity. T.I. is co-starring in Kelsey Grammer’s series Boss for Starz, as well as the second season of his own VH1 series Family Hustle. On the big screen, he most recently starred in and produced Screen Gems’ Takers. He recently signed with WME and remains repped by Category 5.

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Icon UK Group Joins ‘The Butler’; Forest Whitaker And Oprah Winfrey And Intriguing Choices For Presidents

By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 7:20am PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, Forest Whitaker, Icon UK, Lee Daniels, Oprah Winfrey, The Butler
Mike Fleming

Oprah Winfrey ButlerForest Whitaker ButlerMatthew McConaughey as JFK, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and John Cusack as Nixon? As Lee Daniels unveiled The Paperboy at Cannes, Icon UK Group signed on to be part of his next film, The Butler. The picture will star Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey in the true story of Eugene Allen, the White House butler who served eight American presidents, observed the civil rights movement, and was brought back after he retired to witness the inauguration of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama.

Related: Precious Time Left For ‘Selma’ To Mobilize As Director Lee Daniels Makes ‘Butler’ Deal

The casting is intriguing. Whitaker plays Allen, Winfrey his wife, McConaughey is John F. Kennedy, Cusack is Richard Nixon, Rickman plays Ronald Reagan, Jane Fonda is Nancy Reagan, and Cuba Gooding Jr, David Oyelowo, Lenny Kravitz and Terrence Howard also star. Danny Strong wrote the script with Daniels based on Wil Haygood’s Washington Post article.

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Verizon Wireless Unveils “Viewdini” Mobile Entertainment Search Portal

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 7:03am PDTTags: Big Deals TV, Verizon Wireless, Xfinity

UPDATED: Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead says this is  ”one of our most important announcements of the year.” The service will be in the market within a month, he told attendees at The Cable Show in Boston. It initially will be available to Verizon Wireless customers with 4G LTE Android devices, but other systems will be added “soon.” Comcast Xfinity is the first partner, Mead says. The company adds that Hulu Plus, mSpot and Netflix will also participate at launch, and Verizon FiOS is “expected to be added soon.” Consumers would use Viewdini to find entertainment available for their mobile device. “We’ve been working on this for a couple of years,” Mead says. “We saw the hunger of consumers to get this information,” he added calling Viewdini “a very simple consumer experience.”

Here’s the company’s release: Read More »

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Best Buy Shares Up Pre-Market As Q1 Earnings Beat Estimates

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 4:59am PDTTags: Best Buy

You can almost hear investors breathe a sigh of relief after the troubled consumer electronics chain exceeded their modest expectations for the three months that ended on May 5. The company reported net earnings of $158M, down 25.5% vs the same period last year, on revenues of $11.6B, up 2.1%. Analysts had expected revenues to come in slightly lower, at $11.5B. The reported number would have been -4.3% were it not for an additional week included in this year’s Q1. But earnings from continuing operations — not counting restructuring charges — clocked in at 72 cents a share, beating forecasts for 59 cents. Best Buy made no change in the guidance for its performance in the current fiscal year. At domestic stores open at least a year, entertainment sales — including DVDs — fell 27.8%; the category now accounts for 9% of Best Buy’s domestic revenues, down from 13% this time last year. Consumer electronics sales were -5.4%, and now represent 34% of the domestic business. But computers and mobile phones were +3.6%; the lines account for 43% of domestic revenues. Appliances also were +8.9%. Calling Best Buy “in a turnaround,” interim CEO Mike Mikan says: “We know we have to better adapt to the new realities of the marketplace, and we are creating a long-term plan designed to make Best Buy more relevant with customers and position the company for sustained, profitable returns in the years ahead.”

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TOLDJA! Sony Pictures Classics Goes For ‘No’

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 1:31am PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, Gael Garcia Bernal, No, Sony Pictures Classics

Deadline revealed last night that Sony Pictures Classics was in talks to acquire Pablo Larrain’s No, and now they’ve formalized the deal. Here’s the official announcement:

CANNES (May 22, 2012) – Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all North American rights to Pablo Larraín’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sensation, NO from financier Participant Media in association with Funny Balloons and Fabula. NO stars Gael García Bernal (Babel, The Motorcycle Diaries), Alfredo Castro, Antónia Zegers, Marcial Tagle, Néstor Cantillana, Jaime Vadell and Pascal Montero. The film is one of the best received films in Cannes with raves from critics following the first screening in Director’s Fortnight.

Read More »

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Pixar’s John Lasseter Touts Traditional Animation at AMPAS Event

By DOMINIC PATTEN | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 10:21pm PDTTags: Brave, Disney, John Lasseter, Pixar

Pixar is “not really interested in motion capture,” Pixar boss and Walt Disney Feature Animation CCO John Lasseter said tonight at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Development Of The Digital Animator” panel in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. “We still use keyframe animation.” What Lasseter says Pixar is interested in is bringing in new blood so “this Golden Age of animation can live beyond the founders of the company.”

The event was put on by the Academy to examine and celebrate the development of computer-generated animation from its humble and simple stick-figure beginnings to Vertigo to today’s Toy Story and Brave. Taking center stage with Pixar’s boss were filmmakers and animators Rebecca Allen, Philippe Bergeron, Digital Effects NY co-founder Jeff Kleiser, animation director Bill Kroyer, David Em, Diana Walczak, How To Train Your Dragon executive producer Tim Johnson, and Star Wars and Twilight Saga visual animation director Phil Tippett,

At CinemaCon in late April, the Pixar boss had introduced several upcoming films from the studio and Disney. There’s the fantasy adventure of Brave, with Boardwalk Empire’s Kelly Macdonald voicing the lead, which is out June 22. The classic video game-based Wreck It Ralph is set to be released November 2. Monster’s University, the prequel to 2001’s Monsters Inc. with the voices of Steve Buscemi and John Goodman and more, is scheduled to come out June 21, 2013. A 3D rerelease of … Read More »

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Cannes Roundup: Kino Lorber Acquires ‘Fokkens’, Digital Domain In Abu Dhabi

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 9:54pm PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, Digital Domain, Meet the Fokkens

Meet The Fokkens
Kino Lorber has acquired all U.S. rights to Meet The Fokkens, a documentary about 69-year-old twins Louise and Martine Fokkens and their experience working as prostitutes in the red-light district in Amsterdam for over 40 years. The film is set to begin its U.S. festival run at the upcoming SilverDocs Film Festival in mid-June. Directed by Gabrielle Provaas and Rob Schröder, Meet The Fokkens is slated for a theatrical premiere at New York’s Film Forum on August 8. The film will expand to major markets in September and October.

Abu Dhabi Goes Digital
Digital production company Digital Domain Media Group and twofour54, the Abu Dhabi government-backed media and entertainment company, announced today that Digital Domain will set up an animation, vfx and motion capture studio in Abu Dhabi, as well as a school to teach the next generation of artists. The collaboration is designed to support the Emirate’s goal to become the region’s hub for media content creation.

The new Digital Domain studio will create animated feature films, produce visual and 3D effects, engage in the production of original Middle Eastern-branded entertainment for global audiences and contribute to international productions. The studio will become part of Digital Domain’s global feature film VFX and animation pipeline, connected to its studios in Los Angeles, Vancouver, San Francisco, London, Florida and Mumbai. Digital Domain’s credits include the Transformers features and the buzzed-about “performing” hologram of late rapper Tupac Shakur that was shown at the recent Coachella music festival.
Read More »

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Philippe Mora Pulls Strings On Australia-Set Sidney Nolan Puppet Pic

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 8:24pm PDTTags: Philippe Mora, When We Were Modern

Freelance journalist Don Groves is a Deadline contributor, based in Sydney

After laboring for years to make a live-action film centered on a ménage a trois involving famous Australian painter Sidney Nolan, his wife and mistress, Philippe Mora is taking an innovative approach by shooting the film using puppets. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker has started production on When We Were Modern, the saga of Nolan (seen in his self-portrait here) and his lover Sunday Reed, who was married to the surrealist artist’s patron John Reed. Clayton Watson (The Matrix Reloaded, 33 Postcards) will voice Nolan’s character, and Mora is casting the roles of John and Sunday. Mora’s Hard Drive Pictures is producing and Arizona-based Needle & Associates will handle worldwide sales.
Read More »

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Myriad Teams James McAvoy And Jessica Chastain In ‘Disappearance’ Double Feature

By MIKE FLEMING | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 6:28pm PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby
Mike Fleming

Tuesday, May 22, 2012…Cannes…. Golden Globe®-nominee James McAvoy (Atonement, X-Men First Class) will star opposite Academy® Award-nominee Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Tree of Life) in the double-feature film project for Myriad Pictures, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her.

Ned Benson (In Defiance of Gravity) wrote the two scripts and will direct both films.

The love story explores how a married couple in New York City deals with an emotional, life-altering experience, from the two different perspectives of the husband, Conor, (McAvoy), a restaurant owner, and of the wife, Eleanor, (Chastain), who goes back to college. Cassandra Kulukundis (A Late Quartet, In Defiance of Gravity) is producing. Kulukundis is also casting director (There Will Be Blood, Shattered Glass).

James McAvoy received a Golden Globe®-nomination for his performance opposite Kiera Knightley in the critically acclaimed film, Atonement. Other film credits include The Last King of Scotland with Forrest Whitaker, The Last Station with Helen Mirren and most recently in the box office hit X Men: First Class. He will next be seen starring in the new Danny Boyle film, Trance, in Eran Creevy’s, Welcome to the Punch and in Jon S. Baird’s, Filth. James is represented by UTA and United Agents.

Jessica Chastain was nominated for an Academy® Award for her performance in the 2011 critically-acclaimed drama The Help. The same year she appeared in The Debt, with Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson, and in Terence Malick’s

… Read More »

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Syfy’s ‘Sanctuary’ And A&E’s ‘Dog The Bounty Hunter’ Cancelled

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 6:27pm PDTTags: Dog The Bounty Hunter, Sanctuary, Syfy
Nellie Andreeva

Syfy has pulled the plug on drama Sanctuary after four seasons, while A&E has done the same with reality series Dog The Bounty Hunter after eight seasons. For Sanctuary, the writing has been on the wall as there had been no word on its future for five months, since the series’ fourth season finale in December. In the case of Dog The Bounty Hunter, the network and the producers had been negotiating a renewal, according to TMZ. Dog the Bounty Hunter starring Duane “Dog” Champan was a breakout hit for A&E and helped establish the network as a place for docu-reality series.

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HBO Developing Comedy Series Starring Catherine Keener And Written & Directed By Charlie Kaufman

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 4:56pm PDTTags: Catherine Keener, Charlie Kaufman, HBO
Nellie Andreeva

Catherine Keener HBOEXCLUSIVE: Frequent feature collaborators Charlie Kaufman and Catherine Keener are teaming for a TV series project. In a competitive situation, a half-hour comedy starring Oscar nominee Keener and to be written and directed by Oscar winner Kaufman has landed at HBO, which has put it on fast-track development. The untitled comedy is described as an exploration of one day in a woman’s life and how the events leading up to it can affect, or not, the reality in which she lives. Kaufman is executive producing; Keener serves as producer.

Charlie Kaufman HBOOver the last decade, Keener had been frequently pursued to do TV series, something she had declined to do until now. For her first series starring vehicle, she opted to team with a writer-director whom she has worked with before and who knows her well. Keener starred in Kaufman’s feature directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. She appeared in two movies written by him – Synecdoche and Being John Malkovich – and also did a cameo in the Kaufman-penned Adaptation. Keener also is set to co-star in Kaufman’s next movie, Frank Or Francis, opposite Steve Carell and Jack Black. Both Keener and Kaufman earned Oscar nominations for Being John Malkovich. Gersh-repped Keener also was nominated for Capote; WME-repped Kaufman was nominated for Adaptation and won a best screenplay Oscar for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Read More »

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Bill Murray Gives Nickel Tour Of Wes Anderson’s ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ Set: Video

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 4:55pm PDTTags: Bill Murray, Cannes Film Festival, Focus Features, Moonrise Kingdom

Bill Murray somehow fits perfectly — like an old slipper — on the set of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, the Focus Features drama that just opened the Cannes Film Festival and comes out in the U.S. on Friday. He and Anderson are old pals, with the actor having worked on every Anderson-directed film except his first one Bottle Rocket (“I still haven’t seen that one,” Murray deadpans during his video tour of the production). While it’s not the elaborate video diary of Peter Jackson on The Hobbit set, it strikes the right tone for the latest Anderson effort, which received a standing ovation at the Palais during its Cannes premiere that brought Murray to tears.

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Will ‘Paperboy’ Heat Domestic Buying At Cannes? Will SPC Say Yes To ‘No’?

By MIKE FLEMING | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 4:38pm PDTTags: Gael Garcia Bernal, No, Sony Pictures Classics, The Paperboy
Mike Fleming

Gael Garcia Bernal NoSo far, the domestic deals at the Cannes Film Festival have been for the most part sluggish, but that might perk up a bit tomorrow. There’s first showing of the Lee Daniels-directed The Paperboy, which is high on buyer wanna-see lists, with a ballsy performance by Nicole Kidman. The other film I’m hearing has action is the Pablo Larrain-directed No with Gael Garcia Bernal. Word is that Sony Pictures Classics is into it. That film, which premiered last Friday in Directors’ Fortnight, is about an ad exec who comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile’s 1988 referendum. The deals will have to get rolling considerably for the festival to have a chance at matching last Cannes. Numerous buyers battling the dreary weather feel that the high number of films brought to Cannes has slowed the pace, and there hasn’t been much so far that distributors feel they absolutely had to have. The worthy ones will get deals after the festivals, but some of the packages that didn’t excite buyers probably won’t make it to the start line.

Related: The Scene In Cannes: Wet But Undaunted

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Millennium Films Buys Spec Thriller ‘Playing Dirty’: Cannes

By MIKE FLEMING | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 4:05pm PDTTags: Cannes Film Festival, Gregory Small, Nu Image/Millennium, Playing Dirty, Richard Blaney
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Nu Image/Millennium has acquired Playing Dirty, a spec script written by Richard Blaney and Gregory Small. Mandalay Pictures’ Cathy Schulman and Adam Stone will produce, and they closed the deal with Millennium’s Mark Gill.

Millennium and Mandalay recently collaborated on the indie hit Bernie. In Playing Dirty, a young law student learns to let loose and explore his adventurous side after meeting a sexy and mysterious stranger. After some exhilarating nights of debauchery, car chases and threesomes, things go awry when the student finds himself the target of her psychotic plans. Blaney and Small previously wrote Someone In The Dark, a teenage Body Heat which is at DreamWorks with Carlos Brooks attached to direct. Original Artists made the deal for the writers, who are also repped by 59 Management. The film will be fast-tracked by Millennium, which has several plum titles at Cannes with the Lee Daniels-directed The Paperboy premiering tomorrow, as well as the Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgard pic Lovelace.

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WME-Connected Raine Group Played Unsung Role In Yahoo-Alibaba Deal

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday May 21, 2012 @ 4:03pm PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Jeffrey Sine, The Raine Group, Yahoo

A Hollywood-connected name was missing from yesterday’s press release announcing Yahoo’s $7.1B agreement to sell half of its stake in Alibaba Group — equal to 20% of the Chinese e-commerce operation — back to the company. The deal also affects Japan’s Softbank, which owns 29% of Alibaba. It was advised in the deal by Jeffrey Sine, co-founder of The Raine Group, a merchant bank with close ties to WME. Sine’s accustomed to multibillion-dollar media transactions: At Morgan Stanley, he advised Time Warner when it bought AOL and Turner Broadcasting, and Viacom when it bought CBS.

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