Berlinale Film ‘Curveball’ Debuts Clip, ARRI Media Intl. Boards Film (EXCLUSIVE)

New German mini-major Leonine is teaming up with Christian Alvart's Syrreal Entertainment on Santiago, a modern-day adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' revenge classic The Count of Monte Cristo. The series, which is part of a co-development deal with Syrreal, is the first major TV project from Leonine.

The myth of Undine, the water nymph who has to kill her lover should he ever betray her, gets a 21st-century German makeover courtesy of Christian Petzold in his Berlin competition titleUndine. The major innovation is that the story doesn’t just concentrate on the betrayal of Undine that might cost her man so dearly — she gets a new and true love story that allows her to feel what it is like to be truly loved.

Berlin’s European Film Market has gotten off to a slow start — but there are signs of life. Leonine, the new German studio formed last year by KKR’s acquisition and merger of German indies Tele Munchen Group and Universum, picked up German-speaking rights for the Gerard Butler action thriller Remote Control from STXinternational in a mid-seven-figure deal, the largest reported pact of the EFM so far.

Director Vadim Perelman and frequent Berlinale film star Lars Eidinger on Saturday championed their new Holocaust-set “Persian Lessons” as a timely, very German tale of how that dark history is closer to us than it seems, made uniquely possible by the fact that most of the film’s production team is not German.

True-life stories of international intrigue are usually dramatized first in their native countries and then later adapted into American films. The reverse has proven true for the dramatic events depicted in Michael Bully Herbig's film about a daring 1979 escape by two families from East Germany via hot air balloon.

By Tom Grater

A mass shooting in the West German city of Hanau has raised security concerns for the Berlin Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday.

The singer performed alongside Idina Menzel at the 92nd Academy Awards

"Honeydew" will be presented to buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin, Germany next week. The film comes from director Devereux Milburn and producers Dan Kennedy and Alan Pierson. Also starring Malin Barr and Barbara Kingsley, "Honeydew" is described as a "feverish horror" set in New England, where strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

For nearly 30 years, German DJ and producer Paul van Dyk has been a purveyor of the truest trance sounds. He was one of the first international superstar DJs, and he remains a force on and off the decks.

Passion Distribution have announced a slate of international pre-sales for Pioneer Productions’ forthcoming documentary, “#Trump: How Social Media Changed the Presidency.”

Picture Tree Intl. has secured global sales rights of Berlin comedy “Nightlife,” directed by Simon Verhoeven, following his last film “Welcome to Germany,” which was Germany’s comic relief to the refugee crisis. The film sold to more than 60 territories and screened at more than 50 festivals worldwide, while being the No.1 box office hit in Germany in 2016.

In the run to the Berlin Film Festival, MovieChainer, the cloud-based app allowing right-holders to model and track the legal and financial structure of their film projects, has added German sales powerhouse The Match Factory and France’s Memento Film Distribution, to its client roster.

The pair sang with nine other Elsa singers

Wasn't it sick when Eminem turned Dido's "Thank You" into a dark and twisted horror story? "Stan" has gone on to be a cultural phenomenon of its own, but Felix Jaehn and fellow German dance duo Vize think "Thank You" still has more to give, so they turned it into a dark club banger.