CAA Signs Margaret Zhang, Departing Vogue China Editor-in-Chief (EXCLUSIVE)

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Previews for Universal Pictures and Dreamworks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda 4” put the Chinese-themed film in fourth place at the mainland China box office, a week ahead of its official theatrical debut. Over the March 15-17 weekend, however, first and second places remained with holdover titles “The Pig, The Snake and the Pigeon” and “Dune: Part Two.” Taiwanese crime film “The Pig, The Snake and the Pigeon,” already playing on Netflix in territories outside China, topped the mainland China chart for the third successive weekend. According to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway, it earned $11.1 million (RMB79.1 million), for a cumulative of $73.2 million (RMB520 million).

EXCLUSIVE John Bradley didn’t know what he was getting into with 3 Body Problem. The Game Of Thrones star plays physicist and entrepreneur Jack Rooney in the upcoming sci-fi epic. Speaking to Deadline, he said that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss initially told him about the character they had written for him, but very little else: “David and Dan got in touch with me and said, ‘We’re doing this new thing, we’re not going to tell you what it is, but we’ve written this part for you’.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Linmon Pictures, one of the most outward-looking mainland Chinese entertainment firms, is preparing premium series “Hate Coin.” The show is being produced in association with Jonathan Wong and Justina Shih’s production company Octagon Metatainment, a Hong Kong-based multimedia studio. “Hate Coin” is based on international best-selling novel “Second Sister,” by successful Hong Kong novelist Chan Ho Kei, whose previous book “The Borrowed” was a crime story that panned five-decades. The story follows the activities of a young woman whose school-age sister appeared to have committed suicide. Suspecting foul play, the woman trams up with a manipulative hacker and cybersecurity expert to try to dig deeper. “What follows is a cat and mouse game through the city of Hong Kong and its digital underground, especially an online gossip platform, where someone has been slandering Siu-Man.

This year’s Filmart was definitely bigger and busier than last year, which was the first physical edition following the reopening of Hong Kong and mainland China’s borders after the pandemic. According to Filmart organizers, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), more than 750 exhibitors and 7,500 visitors attended this year’s Filmart, compared to around 700 exhibitors and 7,300 visitors in 2023. But despite frenetic meeting activity, the market did little to dispel fears that international sales business in the region, already in decline before the pandemic, is not yet recovering. International sales agents under the IFTA and European Film Promotion (EFP) umbrellas had packed meeting schedules.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent CAA has signed Deal Productions, a European film and TV banner co-founded by actor-turned-filmmaker Désirée Nosbusch (“Bad Banks”) and Alexandra Hoesdorff (“High Fantasy”). Based in Luxembourg, the company handles development, financing, packaging and production of independently-produced films and TV worldwide. Nosbusch, a well-known actor whose recent credits include “Bad Banks” and “Sissi,” is now making her directorial feature debut with “Poison,” a drama starring Tim Roth and Trine Dyrholm.

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Nathan Silver has inked with CAA, we have learned.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s unprecedented economic and social transformation in the latter part of the 20th century has been picked over in dozens of movies by filmmakers ranging from Jia Zhangke to Wang Xiaoshuai. But with more than one billion people affected by China’s transformation, there is no shortage of personal stories and no end of ways to tell the tale. Sophomore filmmaker Huo Meng trains his eye on one of those stories in his second film, “The Wind Is Unstoppable,” which he is just finishing off.

Chinese tech and media giant Alibaba is investing $640M (HK$5BN) into Hong Kong’s creative industries over the next five years.

The move was announced on the first day of FilMart, the annual rights market for the Asian industries, at an event attended by Fan Luyuan, chairman and CEO of Alibaba’s digital media and entertainment unit, and Kevin Yeung, the Hong Kong government’s secretary for culture, sports and tourism. Alibaba’s Hong Kong Cultural and Art Industry Revitalization Program “will focus on film production and distribution, rights acquisitions, TV series production, investments in concerts, collaboration with performance venues and talent development, etc.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Dune 2” launched in mainland China cinemas this weekend with a solid $19.9 million three-day haul. That put it in second place, narrowly behind holdover crime-drama “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon.” Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway, showed that “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon” earned $21.3 million (RMB151 million) between Friday and Sunday, for a 10-day cumulative of $54.1 million (RMB384 million).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief COVID, changing money flows and a new superpower Cold War of sorts may have, over the past few years, helped to reduce the connections between the film and TV industries of China and the rest of the world — so, will the 2024 edition of FilMart, whose organizers continue to claim bridgehead status, be the market to increase those connections? Candas Yeung, the Trade Development Council associate director who takes over as head of FilMart this year, says that visitor and exhibitor numbers have crept up again this year — to an anticipated 7,500 and 715, respectively — and that fully 40% of market participants hail from mainland China. “That’s a pretty significant proportion and they are very active in the market, both buying and selling, and making some announcements,” Yeung says.

Chinese comedy drama YOLO from Sony Pictures International had a yodeling good domestic debut, grossing $840k on 200 screens, making no. 9 on the weekend top 10. Directed and produced by and starring China’s top grossing female helmer, Jia Ling, it’s earned close to $482 million in China since opening Feb. 10 — and was the highest-grossing film over the Lunar New Year holiday.

Joe Biden said that he would sign a bill that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban of the popular app.

Veteran Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou will receive both the Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2023 Highest-Grossing Asian Film Award for his last feature Full River Red at this week’s Asian Film Awards. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou is to be honored twice over at the Asian Film Awards ceremony on Sunday. He will be presented with a lifetime achievement award and a separate prize for directing the highest-grossing Asian film of 2023.

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EXCLUSIVE: Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” Johnson has signed with CAA for representation.

Taking place alongside Filmart, the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) is one of Asia’s oldest and most established project markets, helping a string of award-winning films to get made. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwanese-produced crime action film “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon” opened on top of the mainland China box office over the weekend, ahead of a quartet of holdover titles from Lunar New Year. Sony’s ‘Madame Web’ and a rereleased “Dune” also opened, but they failed to penetrate the top five. “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon” earned $16.2 million (RMB115 million), according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Fantasporto, the Oporto Intl. Film Festival, kicked off Friday in Portugal’s Porto — city famed for its elegant Romanesque cathedral, a bookstore that inspired “Harry Potter,” and the heady alcoholic drink — with an eclectic mix of titles but an emphasis on fantasy films. Typifying the broad tastes of the festival chiefs, film critics Beatriz Pacheco Pereira and Mário Dorminsky, Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand’s satire “Testament” opened the event’s 44th edition at Batalha Centro de Cinema, and Chinese fantasy epic “Creation of Gods I: Kingdom of Storms,” directed by Wuershan, closes it.