Sundance: RLJE Films Buys ‘Dual’ With Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul

Margaret Qualley (Maid, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood) has signed on to exec produce and star in The End of Getting Lost, an Amazon Studios thriller from Mustang director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, which also has Paul Mescal (The Lost Daughter, Normal People) in talks to co-star, Deadline has confirmed.

FX has rounded out the cast of the Peter Tolan comedy pilot Belated. Joining lead Kal Penn are Ellie Taylor, Kaden Kearney, Amir Bageria and EaeMya ThynGi.

AMC+ and RLJE Films have acquired worldwide rights to the holiday comedy Christmas with the Campbells, starring Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect franchise), Justin Long (He’s Just Not That Into You), Alex Moffat (Saturday Night Live), Julia Duffy (Newhart), George Wendt (Cheers) and JoAnna Garcia Swisher (Sweet Magnolias). The film produced by Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show will simultaneously hit theaters and AMC+ in the U.S. in late fall.

A new daytime drama is airing on BBC One from today.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterIFC Films and the AMC Network-owned digital platform Shudder purchased North American rights to “Watcher,” an eerie thriller that premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.IFC Midnight, the company’s genre division, plans to release the film in theaters and on VOD (beginning with the horror-centric streamer Shudder) in 2022. The exact date has not been set yet.Chloe Okuno directed “Watcher,” a suspenseful story about a young woman who moves into a new apartment with her fiancé gets the creepy sense that she’s being observed.

A drama about an undocumented nanny in New York City, a documentary about three exiled dissidents from Tiananmen Square and another doc about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Winners were announced Friday evening in a virtual ceremony.

A drama about an undocumented nanny in New York City, a documentary about three exiled dissidents from Tiananmen Square and another doc about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Winners were announced Friday evening in a virtual ceremony.“Nanny,” from writer-director Nikyatu Jusu and starring Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan, won the Grand Jury Prize in the drama category for its depiction of a Senegalese immigrant working for a wealthy family in New York City.

Angelique Jackson Showtime Documentary Films has acquired “2nd Chance,” about the life and legacy of Richard Davis, from director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ramin Bahrani (“The White Tiger,” “99 Homes,” “Chop Shop”).The feature length-documentary centers on Davis, the charming and brash inventor of the modern-day bulletproof vest, who shot himself 192 times to prove his product worked.Written, directed, and produced by Bahrani, “2nd Chance” is produced by Daniel Turcan & Johnny Galvin of Vespucci, Charles Dorfman and Jacob Grodnik. The film is executive produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (“The Act of Killing,” “The Look of Silence”), Myles Estey, Bahareh Azimi and Marlon Vogelgesang.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe sense of a city as a complex, ailing ecosystem is rendered with unusual vividness in “All That Breathes.” Shaunak Sen’s documentary has no formal interviews, onscreen text or omniscient narrator to provide relevant stats on Delhi, where air pollution is reportedly twelve times worse than in Beijing, which ranks second on the global list. Instead, the environmental impact is felt on the microcosmic level of two resident brothers dedicated to urban bird rescue.

38 years ago this week, Frankie Goes To Hollywood rose to Number 1 with their debut single Relax.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorNetflix shares — after dropping 30% over the past week — rose more than 4% in after-hours trading Wednesday after Bill Ackman, head of the Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund, disclosed that his firm had bought more than $1 billion worth of the streamer’s stock.Starting last Friday (Jan. 21) and over the next several days, Pershing acquired more than 3.1 million shares of Netflix, “making us a top-20 shareholder in the company,” Ackman wrote in a letter to the hedge fund’s investors.Click here to sign up for Variety’s free Strictly Business newsletter covering earnings, financial news, and more.The hedge fund scooped up the stake in Netflix after the stock took a nosedive following its fourth-quarter 2021 earnings report, in which it forecast a much smaller-than-expected subscriber gain in the first quarter of 2022 — fueling investor fears that the category leader was losing steam.

IndieWire.“My biggest challenge was first of all getting out there — that was a challenge, but I’ll save that for another day,” he said. “But I got out there [and] just dealing with the jet lag at all.

The 2022 virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival is in full swing, and among the films making a debt at this year’s fest is “Dual”, a dark comedy starring Karen Gillan (“Doctor Who”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”) and Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”).

“Have you ever felt vertigo looking into the sky?” Nadeem Shahzad asks over voiceover roughly fifteen minutes into “All That Breathes.” The accompanying shot looks straight up into a sunny yet smog-streaked sky as a swirl of black kites swoops and careens overhead. The birds are numerous, too many to count, but their movements are mesmerizing.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“Living,” an acclaimed re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s classic meaning-of-life story, has been sold to Sony Pictures Classics follow its premiere at Sundance Film Festival.Sony Pictures Classics, the indie division of Sony Pictures, has acquired rights in North America, Latin America, India, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Germany, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and airlines worldwide. A release date has not been announced yet.“Living” was directed by Oliver Hermanus and written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro.

RLJE Films last night acquired U.S. rights to Riley Stearns’ thriller Dual in a competitive bidding situation, striking a low-mid seven figure deal for the film, which recently premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Dual,” the latest film from director Riley Stearns that stars Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul, has sold its U.S. rights to RLJE Films, a division of AMC Networks, for a deal that landed in the low to mid 7-figure range.

“Have you ever felt vertigo looking into the sky?” Nadeem Shahzad asks over voiceover roughly fifteen minutes into “All That Breathes.” The accompanying shot looks straight up into a sunny yet smog-streaked sky as a swirl of black kites swoops and careens overhead. The birds are numerous, too many to count, but their movements are mesmerizing.

$25 million Apple paid for “CODA,” the $15 million Netflix paid for “Passing” or documentary-record $15 million Searchlight/Hulu paid for “Summer of Soul.”  There’s still plenty of time for dealmaking, but not much time for new films to grab the spotlight: All of the festival’s movies were programmed to launch in the first five days, with Monday’s lineup – which included “Emily the Criminal,” “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” “Dos Estaciones,” “The Janes” and “Am I OK?” – scheduled as the last of this year’s premieres.