Lottery winner who scooped £2.9million jackpot now 'wishes he had never won'

What’s better than a true-crime series about a corrupt business? Well, how about when that business involves male strippers and stars none other than Kumail Nanjiani? Yeah, Hulu’s “Welcome to Chippendales” is a no-brainer.  As seen in the trailer for “Welcome to Chippendales,” Kumail Nanjiani stars as Somen “Steve” Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who comes to the US for the American dream. What starts as a modest dream to run a business turns into a desire to build an empire based on the fact that people like to see sexy dudes dancing around in bowties and cuffs.

It’s actually a true-crime drama, not another tale about hot male strippers.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age drama The Fabelmans has been announced as the opening film of 44th Cairo International Film Festival, running from November 13 to 22.

New kids on the block. The Real Housewives of New York City is getting a reboot with a cast of fresh faces for season 14 (in addition to a Legacy spinoff with OG stars), and Bravo finally confirmed which newcomers are taking a bite out of the Big Apple at BravoCon 2022.

BBC DG Tim Davie and Studios CEO Tom Fussell have said the BBC is now a “fully global operation,” as they shared a stage for the first time at Mipcom Cannes.

Manori Ravindran International Editor The David Tennant-starring “Litvinenko” has sold into AMC+ and Sundance Now in the U.S., along with a host of other buyers in 80 international markets. The drama has pre-sold ahead of its debut on ITV’s forthcoming U.K. streaming service ITVX, which launches this fall, and NENT Group’s Viaplay streaming service in the Nordics, Netherlands, Poland and Baltics. Written by George Kay (“Lupin”) and produced by Patrick Spence, ITV Studios and Tiger Aspect Productions, the drama tells the story of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian Federal Security Services and KGB officer, whose death from polonium poisoning in November 2006 triggered one of the most complex and dangerous investigations in the history of the Metropolitan Police.

New kids on the block. The Real Housewives of New York City is getting a reboot with a cast of fresh faces for season 14 (in addition to a Legacy spinoff with OG stars), and Bravo finally confirmed which newcomers are taking a bite out of the Big Apple at BravoCon 2022.

Bravo has unveiled the brand-new cast of its rebooted “Real Housewives of New York City” franchise. Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Lizzy Savetsky, Jessel Taank and Brynn Whitfield will all be joining for Season 14. The news was revealed at a “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” taping on Sunday night during BravoCon, when the ladies surprised fans by walking on stage. Andy Cohen said he wanted the new cast to better reflect New York City, and indeed it does. Lyons identifies as gay, and Taank will be the first Indian Housewife.The new cast of #RHONY is revealed at a #BRAVOCON22 taping of #WWHL. pic.twitter.com/frimsJYX9m Production is set to begin this fall and the highly-anticipated show will premiere in 2023. According to its official logline, Season 14 will follow “an all-new group of seven dynamic women who run in the same social circles, thriving in one of the most diverse and electric cities in the world. From fashion and real estate, to philanthropy and social influence, these women have made their mark in NYC and will now share their lives as they juggle careers, family life and jam-packed social calendars in the city that never sleeps.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean film “A Wild Roomer” and India’s “Shivamma” have been announced as the joint winners of the New Currents competition, the prestige discovery section of the Busan International Film Festival. “We were particularly sensitive to the lightness and subtlety of the director’s view of his characters. Through his innovative cinematography, he creates original circulations between the characters within a house, and builds a very contemporary universe,” the competition jury said of the Lee Jeon-hong-directed “A Wild Roomer.” “We appreciated the originality and intensity with which the director was able to tell this very contemporary story. Here documentary and fiction meet in an organic and spirited way of making cinema. The generosity of the actors and the scenes create a closeness with this universal story that takes place in an Indian village,” the jury said of the Jaishankar Aryar-directed “Shivamma.”

Apple TV+ series “Shantaram.” “I love longform storytelling, and when I finished ‘Sons of Anarchy’ I knew at some point that I wanted to get into another television show,” Hunnam, 42, told The Post. Hunnam starred as swaggering biker Jax Teller on “Sons of Anarchy” (2008-2014). Since then, he’s focused on the big screen in movies including “The Lost City of Z,” “The Gentlemen,” “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Triple Frontier.” “I think it was probably about three years after ‘Sons’ finished that I was given this book [that ‘Shantaram’ is based on],” he said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kamila Andini’s “Before Now and Then” (aka “Nana”) topped the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, with nods in four categories including best film and best director. The film, about a gentlewoman’s memories of escaping from a Communist purge, narrowly headed three films with three nominations each: “Poet” (aka “Akyn”) by Kazakhstan’s Darezhan Omirbayev; “This Is What I Remember” (aka “Esimde”) by Kyrgyzstan’s Aktan Arym Kubat; and Philippines director Lav Diaz’s “When The Waves Are Gone” (“Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon”). APSA casts its net wide, seeking honors for cinematic excellence from 78 countries and territories defined as Asia Pacific. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at HOTA on Australia’s Gold Coast on Nov. 11, 2022.

Manori Ravindran International Editor New York’s South Asian International Film Festival has appointed Chayan Sarkar as its new president. A filmmaker, entrepreneur and festival director, Sarkar is also the founder of the Indian International Film Festival of Queensland in Australia. He takes over from SAIFF founder Shilen Amin, who will step down as president, but will remain a member of the festival’s board of directors. Sarkar joins SAIFF as the festival enters its 19th year as a leading film festival in the U.S. for new cinema from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and within the Indian diaspora. In recent years, SAIFF has become increasingly influential as a platform for South Asian cinema, both in the U.S. and internationally. Fourteen of India’s submissions for the international feature film Oscar have had their North American premieres at the festival.

Cherokee Nation has announced Tava Maloy Sofsky as the tribe’s new film commissioner. In the new position, Sofsky will serve dual roles as both film commissioner for the Cherokee Nation and as the tribe’s film office director.

Naman Ramachandran Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming Jin, whose work has been showcased at the Busan International Film Festival from his first feature “Monday Morning Glory” (2005), is back with his latest feature “Stone Turtle.” The film, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at Locarno earlier this year, follows a woman living in the peninsular Malaysian east coast, who gets entangled with a stranger who claims to be a turtle researcher, in a dangerous dance of duplicity and deception. “Stone Turtle” originated from the time Woo spent at the east coast of Malaysia a few years ago, where he met some turtle egg poachers and villages that subsisted on this trade. He learned a lot about the region’s history, culture and way of life and this became his impetus for creating the protagonist of the film.

Naman Ramachandran A heavyweight producers panel discussed the modalities of producing independent films in Southeast Asia at a mylab panel on the sidelines of the Busan International Film Festival on Thursday. Panelists included: Liza Diño, former chair of Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) who had greenlit several films during her tenure; Indonesia’s Yulia Evina Bhara, producer of Venice-winner “Autobiography” that’s also playing at Busan; Thailand’s Donsaron Kovitvanitcha, producer of Locarno and Busan title “Arnold is a Model Student,”; and Malaysia’s Haris Sulong, producer of “Beautiful Mind.” The discussion was moderated by Variety Asia editor Patrick Frater.

Malaysian-Filipino café Yes Lah has received a deluge of online support after it appealed to followers to be kind online. Owners of the café, which opened recently in Didsbury, made the comments after receiving negative reviews online.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iceland’s leading production company Sagafilm Nordic has teamed with Swiss banner C-FILMS on “Codeword: Rubicon,” an espionage thriller series inspired by the infamous CIA operation involving the firm Crypto AG. Created by Hungarian director-writer Balazs Juszt(“I Love You, Too”), the eight-episode series has been commissioned by broadcaster Swiss Television (SRF). The show chronicles the story of how Crypto AG, a Swiss family-owned company manufacturing code-making machines founded in 1952 by a Swedish mathematician was secretly owned and operated by the CIA in partnership West German Intelligence services. From decades, the Swiss company sold equipment to more than 120 countries, including Iran and nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican, according to the Washington Post. The role of the U.S. and West German intelligence was revealed by the Crypto Leaks.