City Beijing Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Chinese streamer and producer iQiyi is joining forces with Malaysia’s GSC Movies and Singapore-based Clover Films to handle theatrical distribution of its Chinese-language films in their respective territories. 

Kris Wu has had his appeal against a rape conviction denied by a court in Beijing.Last November, Wu, 33, who rose to fame as a member of the K-pop group EXO, was sentenced by the Chaoyang District People’s Court to 13 years of jail time – 11 and a half years for rape and a consecutive 22 months for “group lewdness”.As reported by Reuters, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court issued a statement on Friday (November 24) saying: “Wu violated the will of women and took advantage of the drunkenness of multiple victims to have sexual relations with them.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief An appeal court in China on Friday confirmed the original trial verdict which ruled against Chinese Canadian rapper and actor Kris Wu (real name Wu Yifei). An appeal hearing by the Beijing No. 3 People’s Intermediate Court in July heard the performer’s appeal case away from cameras and the public and said that it would deliver its verdict later.

The former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is to be freed from jail.

Veteran film festival director Marco Mueller is working with the Macau government to launch a new film festival, Asia-Europe Young Cinema Festival, which is scheduled to take place in Macau from January 5-11. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent WestEnd Films has scored multiple sales, including to North America, on British director Patrick Dickinson’s drama “Cottontail,” which stars Japan’s Lily Franky (“Shoplifters”) and Ciaran Hinds. The film, first announced at the AFM in 2019, won the prize for best first feature last week at the Rome Film Festival, where it had its world premiere.

Naman Ramachandran Lila Aviles‘ “Totem” has won the global feature award at the annual Jakarta Film Week. The film previously won awards at the Berlin, Hong Kong, Durban and Beijing film festivals. The direction award for best Indonesian feature film went to Jeremias Nyangoen’s directorial debut “Women of Rote Island.” The film bowed at Busan earlier in October.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based sales firm Autumn Sun has acquisition worldwide rights to Chinese family-oriented animated film “I Am T-Rex,” directed by Shang Ming and Si Lin, produced by Beijing Create Dream. “I Am T-Rex” follows a young T-Rex named Didi in her coming of age journey after the death of powerful father T-Rex Rog, who is killed by a rival dino gang. She must learn the ways of the T-Rex and claim the crown again with the help of her uncle and a very caring friend.

“The pandemic has finally passed, and cinema has returned to normal, but the way people think has changed dramatically,” Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou concluded when quizzed by Deadline about cinema post-Covid 19 during a brief chat at the Tokyo Film Festival (TIFF). 

Will Tizard Contributor As the hulks of multi-million-dollar stadiums around the world attest in Haruna Honcoop’s investigative doc “Olympic Halftime,” the greatest global games have also built a reputation for massive waste and deception. “It’s always the same story,” says the director about her subject, seen this week in its world premiere screening at the Ji.hlava Intl.

Guangzhou-based director Choy Ji has filmed Hong Kong from a perspective we’ve rarely seen before in his debut feature Borrowed Time, which played at Pingyao film festival this week after screening in Busan’s New Currents competition. 

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Most contests in the 2024 Summer Olympics set for Paris, France, won’t start until next summer. NBC has been running one race for months.

Geng Zihan has just won Best Director in the Fei Mu Awards of Pingyao International Film Festival for her debut feature, A Song Sung Blue, a coming-of-age tale set in Harbin in northeast China. 

Chinese director Ning Hao has flown directly from Busan film festival in South Korea to China’s Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF) with his latest film, The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau. 

Michael Caine is ready to move on from acting.

Coco Gauff will be visiting Mexico at the end of the month. The American tennis player recently announced she’d be participating in the WTA Finals, hosted in Cancun. These matches start on October 29th, running until November 5th.

Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has been set as the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement award at the forthcoming Tokyo Film Festival (TIFF), running October 21 – November 1.

Beyonce‘s mom, Tina Knowles, is showing Taylor Swift some love!

Tatiana Siegel Range Media Partners has signed Chinese actor, singer-songwriter, dancer and fashion icon Lay Zhang and will represent him globally across all areas. The 31-year-old star, who rose to fame as a former member of K-Pop boyband EXO before launching a solo career, already is a household name in Asia, boasting more than 80 million followers across social media. As an actor, he stars in the Chinese box office smash “No More Bets,” which has earned more than $547 million in China to date, becoming the country’s biggest hit of the summer.

William Earl Visual effects firm Digital Domain and Production Resource Group have teamed to expand the menu of vfx and post-production services offered by both firms. Digital Domain and PRG together aim to offer clients one-stop-shopping for high-end visual effects, holograms, virtual production and other content creation-related services. The new partners bill the deal as a “co-branded” arrangement that extends the reach of both firms.

loved life." Doctors suspect her sister had postpartum psychosis—a condition that Lavelle thinks went undiagnosed in part because Jenny was generally a genial, cheerful person, and also because of a lack of safeguards like postbirth mental health checkups.Lavelle never wants another mother to fall through the cracks. Along with her family, she's founded a group called Jenny's Light to promote mandatory mental health screening for new moms and to push for better research on postpartum disorders. The organization has already raised more than $100,000.In April, Lavelle returned to Alabama for an Olympic trial—an event she'd long expected her sister to be watching from the stands.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Entertainment, sports and brand licensing firms WildBrain CPLG and WildBrain Ltd. have brokered location-based entertainment (LBE) deals on behalf of Peanuts Worldwide for “Peanuts,” “Teletubbies” and “In the Night Garden” with China’s Max-Matching Entertainments. These are expected to lead to the opening of family entertainment centers and IP-themed hotel rooms for each brand in Beijing, in Zhongshan City, Guangdong and a third city yet to be announced.

It's one of the seven wonders of the world and a historic symbol of significance. Each year, more than 10 million people from across the globe flock to explore the mammoth structure.

assembled cameras.Social media users immediately noted the similarity to the iconic episode season two of the TV show where Mr.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief CAA China has teamed up with the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society to unveil a joint initiative that will foster Chinese-language genre film projects. The HGC initiative will operate an open call for projects from Monday until the end of October.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer officially launched in China today, grossing an estimated $5.4M. Word of mouth is strong with the Universal title carrying a 9.5 on Maoyan, the platform’s best-ever audience score for a Nolan film. The Douban critics score at 8.7 is on par with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. The weekend is shaping up to land in the $20M+ range, based on early estimates.

Time was, Hollywood filmmakers would regularly travel to China in support of their movies, attending premieres and holding Q&As to drum up buzz in the massive box office market. The pandemic halted that ritual — until this week when Christopher Nolan became the first major Hollywood filmmaker since Covid to stroll a red carpet in China as his Oppenheimer was premiered at Universal Studios’ CityWalk IMAX theater in Beijing, followed by a stop in Shanghai for more screenings and fan interaction.

The Eternal Memory,” from Fabula, scooped Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Prize; Andrés Wood’s “News of a Kidnapping” walked off with best series at the Platino Awards, the Spanish-speaking world’s nearest kudos fest to the Oscars. In all, according to a CinemaChile study released during Sanfic, one of South America’s most significant festival-industry events, Chilean films or filmmakers swept 103 prizes over the first six months of the year. That’s 128% up on same period 2022 when Chile’s was still gearing up from one of the longest COVID-19 confinement periods in the world, only lifted in February 2021.

Rafael Nadal is celebrating. 15 years ago today, the tennis player was 22 years old and became the number one tennis player in the world. Nadal acquired this ranking while playing at the Beijing Olympics, defeating the Chilean player Fernando González and taking home the gold.

Selina Wang is joining ABC News as senior White House correspondent after being based at CNN’s Beijing bureau as the network’s sole correspondent in China.