Nigel Havers, Sophie Davant, Warner Bros., ZDF Studios Celebrate ‘Cash or Trash’s’ 10 Years, 10 Territories ‘(EXCLUSIVE)

What’s David Robert Mitchell been up to lately? Well, since “Under The Silver Lake,” not much, but that’s about to change. Deadline reports that Mitchell has his next project lined up at Warner Bros., and the director is teaming up with Anne Hathaway and the Bad Robot crew for a new mystery project.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery received stock upgrades from two media analyst firms Friday for, among other things, making the decision to tie bonuses for CEO David Zaslav and his team to free cash flow performance. “We threw everything and the kitchen sink at a Downside Case scenario for WBD, and it still delevers to 3x by ’25E,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a research note published Friday, in which they upgraded WBD’s stock to “overweight” with a price target increase from $13 to $20 per share. “We now have conviction in FCF to limit downside, while the stock has asymmetric upside.” Meanwhile, Wolfe Research moved WBD from its “peer perform” rating to “outperform” and also upped the price target to $20. (At time of publication Friday, WBD stock was trading at $14.51 per share.)

Brent Lang Executive Editor Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Hispanic has partnered with GroupM and Cocina Media on “El Toque de Aarón.” The all-new original seriesfollows celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez and his team as they help Latino restaurants in the Los Angeles area reach new heights. Kimberly Clark’s VivaÒ Paper Towels Brand will be an integrated sponsor, with other GroupM clients featured throughout the series. Sánchez will also act as an executive producer. The six-part series unfolds in Latino restaurants with great potential, ready to seize the opportunity to optimize their business – from devising a more exciting menu to improving the overall aesthetics to streamlining their execution and raising their public profile. Sánchez will help reimagine these restaurants to bring out their true soul, with a revamped menu and a refreshed space. In each 30-minute episode, the culinary wizard will put his personal touch on each menu item, while mentoring each restaurant’s chef and sharing tips and tricks of the trade along the way. Helping to round out the renewals with much-needed renovations are designer Cris Mercado (“HGTV Star; Remodelaciones con Celebridades“) and project manager Ángel Riveros (“Hogar Star”). Complicating matters is the fact that they have only four days to achieve this mission. The clock is ticking.

A big feature of the TCM Classic Film Festival is providing world premieres of major restorations of some of those classics. This year’s 14th annual fest is no different as Turner Classic Movies has announced its opening night, April 13, will feature the premiere of a 4K restoration of Howard Hawk’s 1959 Western Rio Bravo, in partnership with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, as part of the yearlong celebration of Warner Bros’ 100th anniversary.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Prime Video have set the launch date and pricing for their ‘Warner Pass’ offer in France to March 16. Priced at €9.99 per month, the offer will be available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video Channels in France, and will boast all of HBO programs, along with 12 channels, including Warner TV, Eurosport, Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network and CNN, as well as their associated on-demand services. Subscribers will benefit from a 30-day free trial until April 3. “The launch of Warner Pass exclusively as a Prime Video channel in France is the next step in our journey to become the destination for customers in France to find the best in storytelling, premium entertainment and sports,” said Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, Prime Video French Country Director.

Tara Karajica Cinephil has sold Valerie Kontakos’ documentary “Queen of the Deuce,” which charts the rise of Chelly Wilson, the queen of the porn industry in 1970s New York, to several key territories. The film premiered at Doc NYC and is now playing in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival. Greece’s ERT, Canada’s Doc Channel, Switzerland’s Radio Télévision Suisse and Israel’s Channel 8 came on board at the funding stage. It has now been acquired by Spanish streamer FilmIn, Swedish broadcaster UR, and U.S. theatrical distributor Greenwich Entertainment. The film follows Wilson from pre-World War II Greece to New York, where she rose to become a major figure on the porn circuit in Times Square from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. She is shown to be a trailblazing, taboo-breaking entrepreneur and an unconventional matriarch. It is presented as an empowering story of survival, as well as an alternative take on cultural history at a time of the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution and the emergence of the gay liberation movement.

Charna Flam After the recent decision to reshape its directors’ training program, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced its new Access Directors Program. WBD has rebranded and expanded the directors’ program to assist and nurture television directors through workshops and shadowing, led by WBD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team. Participants will receive the opportunity to direct a full WBD television episode. In addition to workshops, directors will have the chance to work on WBD shows and participate in a virtual curriculum focused on best practices and equity mindset sessions, with the ability to shadow directors on up to two television episodes (during which participants may receive a small childcare stipend).

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Autlook Filmsales has sold “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” which won the directing award for Anna Hints in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance, to more than 20 territories in North America, Europe and Australia. Deals are confirmed with Neue Visionen in Germany, Trigon in Switzerland, Against Gravity in Poland, Fidalgo in Norway, Ost For Paradise in Denmark, Vedetta in Benelux, Filmtrade in Greece and Cyprus, FilmIn in Spain, Alambique in Portugal, Filmladen in Austria, Pasaka Films in Lithuania, Artcam in Czech Rep. and Slovak Rep., Best Film in Latvia, Mozinet in Hungary, and Madman in Australia and New Zealand. The rights in U.S. have been picked up by Greenwich Entertainment and in Canada by Sherry Media Group. The theatrical release in Estonia is by ACME Film.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Middle East satellite and streaming platform OSN Group has extended its relationship with Warner Bros. Discovery forging a new multi-year licensing deal under which it will become the exclusive home for HBO content in the region. In addition to HBO shows, such as “Succession,” the renewed agreement has been expanded to cover additional content and channel offerings from Warner Bros. giving OSN premium access to recent blockbuster movie hits such as “The Batman,” “Dune,” “The Matrix Resurrections,” and “The Suicide Squad.” The deal was announced in Dubai with “Succession” star Brian Cox on hand.

Japanese streamer U-Next has renewed its content deal with Warner Bros Discovery, under which it will continue to be the SVOD streaming home of HBO programming in Japan. 

Warner Bros. Discovery has tweaked its CEO’s employment contract, granting a bigger pot of restricted stock units but linking them to free cash flow targets.

Naman Ramachandran A rerelease of “Superman the Movie” will kick off a year-long 100th anniversary celebration of Warner Bros. Studios across the U.K. and Ireland, Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed. Warner Bros. was founded by Albert, Sam, Harry and Jack Warner and incorporated on Apr. 4, 1923. The “Superman” rerelease at BFI Southbank and BFI Imax in April will coincide with the 85th anniversary of the character. The rerelease of “The Exorcist” in September will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the horror classic. An Imax version of “Elf” will be released in November. In Ireland, a restored “Cool Hand Luke” screening kicked off the celebrations on Feb. 27, in partnership with the Dublin International Film Festival. The event also featured a Q&A with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lenny Abramson, discussing the impact of the film as a key influence on his career. 

Batman fans have clamored for a while now that Willem Dafoe would be a great fit to play The Joker in a movie at some point. And Dafoe has acknowledged that interest, like in his monologue when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” last year.

Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke feels about Warner Bros. making competing projects based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Salke, who has held the top content job at Amazon since 2018, walked a Monday red carpet for the premiere of Michael B. Jordan’s “Creed III” where she spoke with Variety about last week’s news that Warner Bros. had secured film rights to some of Tolkien’s books. One of Salke’s defining moves at Amazon was to secure television rights to the same literary works, which she achieved at great expense. The first season of Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premiered in 2022 with a big global marketing push and critical acclaim — as well as a reported budget north of $450 million for the first batch of episodes. Previously, Warner Bros. pushed out two massively successful film franchises with auteur Peter Jackson beginning in 2001. Those films grossed over $5 billion at the worldwide box office and brought home a best picture Oscar for one of the entries.

stars Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline's real-life romance may not have lasted, but both actors still have hope for their onscreen characters. Stokes and Cline told ET's Cassie DiLaura that they still believe John B and Sarah will get their happily ever after. «I think they will,» Cline said about whether the characters will end up together. «I like to think so,» Stokes agreed. Season 3 tests John B and Sarah's love for one another more than ever before, and Sarah eventually cheats on John B during a whirlwind night spent with her ex-boyfriend, Topper. «I was so scared about this storyline because I felt that inherently wasn't in Sarah's nature,» Cline said. «I wanted to make it feel like ultimately she was so lost and so confused.

Seven months after landing the highly coveted top jobs at Warner Bros. Motion Picture studios, Co-Chairpersons Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were bestowed with the PGA Milestone award tonight and paid respect for their mega industry mentors, remembered emotionally their cinematic NYC and New Jersey youths, and gave a huge shoutout to their new boss, Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav.

The Wrap.“But for all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film. The opportunity to invite fans deeper into the cinematic world of Middle-earth is an honor, and we are excited to partner with Middle-Earth Enterprises and Embracer on this adventure.”The cost of the deal made between Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and Embracer Group — the current rights holders to Tolkien’s novels — has yet to be released.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO, HBO and HBO Max Content will deliver a keynote at Series Mania’s Lille Dialogues whose one-day summit looks set to take the pulse on a global content industry as content investment flattens and ask how to build a more responsible industry in the future. Marking an early opportunity to hear from streaming platforms after both Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have announced multi-billion dollar cuts in content investment, the Lille Dialogues also count on a keynote from James Farrell, head of local originals, Prime Video. Further keynotes will be delivered by top execs at France’s biggest free-to-air service, TF1, as well as its energetic public broadcaster France Télévisions and Europe’s biggest pay TV operator, Sky. Jan Mojto, CEO, Beta Film, can be expected to deliver a wide-angled vision of how stories made in Europe can find a market worldwide.

earnings call comments suggest that he is even more adamant in this direction. On Thursday, Zaslav spoke about Warner Bros.’ recent strategy to move films greenlit under previous CEO Jason Kilar’s leadership for exclusive release on HBO Max to an exclusive release in theaters before going to the streaming service.

For those headed to CinemaCon in Las Vegas this April, take notice: Variety reports that Warner Bros. will screen its upcoming DCEU blockbuster “The Flash” at the event.