‘Priscilla’ Gets SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement Ahead Of Venice Film Festival World Premiere

Decades after he began his career, experiencing all of the ups and downs, it’s clear that filmmaker Paul Schrader is seemingly doing some of the best work he’s ever done late in life. “First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” and “Master Gardener” are all films that prove Schrader still has a distinct voice in the filmmaking community.

It’s interesting how the Venice Film Festival has gone from one of the festivals of the fall festival season to arguably the best film festival in the world now, even overshadowing Cannes in recent years thanks to the fact that Netflix now avoids the Croisette for the most part because of France’s theatrical laws and save their Oscar contenders for the Lido. Venice has had an amazing run, arguably since 2017 when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” won the top prize and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which has happened one more time since with “Nomadland” and several key Oscar contenders since).

SAG-AFTRA’s presence at TIFF continued into Saturday with a special picket outside Amazon offices here in Toronto with Canada’s commercial actors union ACTRA, who’ve been in a 501 day contract lockout with the country’s advertising agency’s org.

OK, so there was one good deal point –one– to come out of the AMPTP talks with the WGA, as SAG-AFTRA National Executive director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland admitted at TIFF today: It was the streamer’s transparency on viewership numbers.

Amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” has an interim agreement set in place.

SAG-AFTRA’s National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator in a pitstop at TIFF revealed that the Taylor Swift: Eras Tour concert film, which is poised to open to $70M-$100M has a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.

Ava DuVernay touched down at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday evening with her new film Origin, which world premiered in Competition and received a more than eight-minute ovation in its debut screening.

Richard Linklater brought his Hit Man to the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, world premiering the comedy thriller out of competition to a six-minute ovation inside the Sala Grande.

The tears flowed for Priscilla Presley following the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s biopic, “Priscilla”, in Venice on Monday.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Neon has acquired worldwide rights to Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The movie, starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, will also screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Origin” will be released in theaters later this year.

Total admissions to theatres at this year’s Venice Film Festival have hit 114,851, up 18% on last year, according to figures published by the Biennale this week, as the film event passes the midway point. 

The devil is in the details. Pink-nailed toes scrunching on a pink carpet; a packet of false eyelashes; piles of chips in a Vegas casino; the pills. Always the pills: squeezed in a palm that opens to reveal its little white prize; lined up in bottles on the bedside table; slipped into a pocket on the way to school. “Maybe the pills are too much,” ventures Priscilla Beaulieu to her boyfriend Elvis Presley, after one of his flares of temper where she just manages to dodge his fist. “I have doctors looking after me,” he growls. “I don’t need a second opinion.”

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

Five years after his triumphant A Star is Born world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Bradley Cooper is back on the Lido with Maestro. Except, the director and star is only here in spirit owing to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari received a 7 1/2-minute standing ovation Thursday night after the lights went up on the film’s world premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival.

Megalopolis, the long-awaited passion project from Francis Ford Coppola, is the latest film to land an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA. The film finished production earlier this year so it is unknown what the agreement would be used for but with festival season ramping up it could potentially be getting one in order to be sold on one of the markets or potentially screen an upcoming festival and in need of one for publicity purposes.

The Venice Film Festival is now underway, albeit without a lot of actors on the Lido thanks to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. But Variety reports that “Ferrari” star Adam Driver is at the festival to support Michael Mann‘s latest film (as it’s not part of the AMPTP), and he didn’t hold back about certain companies refusing to meet guild demands.

George Clooney and his wife Amal looked loved-up as they arrived in Venice ahead of the 80th International Film Festival on Tuesday.

EXCLUSIVE: Isabella Gomez (One Day at a Time, The Goldbergs) is set to star in the indie horror film The Mannequin, from writer-director John Berardo (Initiation).

Priscilla has been granted a very special SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.