Rajinikanth #171 to Be Directed by ‘Vikram’ Filmmaker Lokesh Kanagaraj

DC co-Boss James Gunn took to Instagram’s Threads to field fan questions, and in the process confirmed that Xolo Maridueña will continue to play Blue Beetle, Oscar winner Viola Davis will still be Amanda Waller and John Cena will remain Peacemaker.

HBO has set an October premiere for Aka Mr. Chow, the original documentary film directed by Nick Hooker (HBO’s AgnelIi). The film debuts Sunday, October 22 at 9 PM on HBO and will be streaming on Max.

EXCLUSIVE: UTA and Anonymous Content have signed filmmaker Francis Galluppi for representation in all areas, ahead of the world premiere of his debut feature, The Last Stop in Yuma County, at Fantastic Fest.

EXCLUSIVE: Everybody mingles at Telluride. I have this abiding memory of Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at the festival’s opening-day brunch set atop a mountain in the San Juan range of the Rockies, bounding over to Cannes Palme d’Or winner Justine Triet and Sandra Hüller, her sublime lead star in the prize-winning movie Anatomy of a Fall.

Dissident Iranian film professionals are calling on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts (AMPAS) to consider an alternative film to represent Iran in the Best International Feature Film category from that submitted as the country’s official entry.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Prime Video and Gaumont (“Intouchables”) are teaming up on an uplifting mother-son drama tackling disability, directed by Ken Scott (“Starbuck”), and starring French actors Leïla Bekhti (“All Your Faces”) and Jonathan Cohen (“Sentinelle”). Scott penned and will be directing the film which is titled “Ma mère, Dieu et Sylvie Vartan” and is based on Roland Perez’s novel by the same name. The project is the first theatrical film that Amazon Prime Video is co-financing as part of the French decree that kicked off in July 2021 and stems from the implementation of the European Commission’s legislation called Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS).

EXCLUSIVE: S.S. Rajamouli is currently assembling a production team for a new movie about the birth and rise of Indian Cinema.

Pioneering British Black filmmaker Horace Ové has died, his family has announced. He was 86.

Naman Ramachandran Horace Ové, director of “Pressure” (1976), the first full-length Black British film, died on Sept. 16. He was 86.

EXCLUSIVE: Director Tarsem Singh thought of his own sainted mother as he tried to understand why a Canadian woman of Indian heritage would plot to have her daughter abducted then murdered. 

Will the Hollywood studio become extinct?

William Earl Nicolas Cage is one of the most admired actors in the world, and given the lore surrounding his unique personality and spectrum of roles, ranging from award-winning to eccentric, he’s always a point of interest in Hollywood. In the upcoming film “The Retirement Plan,” debuting theatrically on Sept. 15, Cage plays a retired government assassin with a violent set of skills, who must protect his estranged daughter and grandchild (played by Ashley Greene and Thalia Campbell) after they get tangled up with some very bad men (including Ron Perlman and Jackie Earle Haley).

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Actor Noah Centineo touched down at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend to rally support for Saeed Roustaee, an Iranian filmmaker sentenced to prison by his government over the latter’s film “Leila’s Brothers.” Over Friday cocktails at festival headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the “Black Adam” star appealed to top representatives from film festivals around the world on behalf of Roustaee, who was sentenced to six months in prison after screening his feature at the Cannes Film Festival without authorization from Iran’s culture ministry. Furthermore, he would not amend the film after the ministry requested corrections.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Canary Islands-based filmmaker Paula Bilbao, whose debut documentary “Inshallah,” about the Las Raíces migrant camp in Tenerife, won the Audience Award at the MiradasDoc festival this year, is turning to fiction in her upcoming dramedy “A Supermarket in Tigaday.” Among the projects in the development showcase at MIA’s Spanish Screenings on Tour, “A Supermarket in Tigaday” focuses on Fer, a frustrated musician, who returns home after a 20-year absence to bury his estranged father. He turns to the music of his past to deal with his grief but to his great surprise, he finds that his father is still alive and that he must prove himself to earn his inheritance, a tiny supermarket in the town of Tigaday.

In a world that prioritizes perfection, Tony Goldwyn’s Ezra stands out as a touching testament to the power of love, acceptance, and the challenges of parenthood. Weaving together familial dynamics with the understanding of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), the film offers a raw, emotional exploration of the lengths to which a parent will go to protect  their child. Written by Tom Spiridakis, the film stars Bobby Cannavale. William A. Fitzgerald, Rose Byrne, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn. and Rainn Wilson.

Naman Ramachandran Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, the filmmaker previously known simply as Tarsem, is returning to the big screen and to his roots with “Dear Jassi,” which has its world premiere Toronto Film Festival Sept. 10. The new film is set in the 1990s and based on a real-life incident.

Filipino filmmaker Jun Robles Lana is making his second appearance at Toronto International Film Festival with Your Mother’s Son, which is receiving its world premiere in the Centrepiece section. 

Emiliano De Pablos Spanish mini-major Filmax has picked up international sales rights to “Teresa,” the new feature by Paula Ortiz (”The Bride,” ”Across the River and Into the Trees”), a fictional story turning on the prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer Saint Teresa of Jesus. “Teresa” marks the big screen adaptation of Spaniard playwright Juan Mayorga’s stage play ”La lengua en pedazos,” which narrates a meeting between Saint Teresa of Jesus – also known as Teresa de Ávila – and a character called The Inquisitor. The feature is not a classic biopic, but rather a free adaptation of the text written by Mayorga – a winner of Spain’s National Prize for Dramatic Literature – which in turn, is based on “The Book of Life,” by Saint Teresa herself.

EXCLUSIVE: Jeff Nichols spent two decades considering how to approach what would become his new film The Bikeriders because he did not want to glamorize motorcycle culture.

Ethan Hawke and his daughter are really ‘comfortable’ around each other… Like, REALLY comfortable.