City Beijing Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Dog flu is mutating into a virus that could infect humans, scientists warn.

Christopher Vourlias Paris-based sales outfit Totem Films has acquired “A Song Sung Blue,” by Chinese director Zihan Geng, and “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” from Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani. Both films will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. “A Song Sung Blue” is the feature debut of the Beijing-born Geng. The coming-of-age story follows 15-year-old Xian, who’s left in the care of her estranged father, a struggling photographer, after her mother is compelled to travel to Africa for work. Over the course of a restless summer, Xian befriends 18-year-old Mingmei, the daughter of his father’s assistant-turned-girlfriend, and soon finds herself looking up to the older girl.

Flights from Manchester Airport to mainland China will return to pre-pandemic levels from next month in what has been described as a 'significant' economic boost for the city region, it was confirmed today.

Montana’s House of Representatives today approved a bill that would ban streaming app TikTok. It now moves to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who can sign it into law.

Beijing-based sales agent Rediance has revealed first look stills for Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice, which has been selected for the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. 

EXCLUSIVE: Members of a House select committee on China met with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and later with a group of Hollywood filmmakers and executives on Wednesday, amid concerns over industry business practices in engaging with Beijing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Beijing 2022,” the official documentary about the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, has been set as the opening film of the revived Beijing International Film Festival. It is directed by noted narrative and documentary film maker Lu Chuan (“Kekexili,” “City of Life and Death” and Disney’s “Born in China”) and will have its world premiere at the festival. The festival will run April 22-29 and be based in the Huairou district which has become an out of town hub for the film industry, as well as other venues in the Chinese capital. For the past three editions the BJIFF has been held online due to disruptions caused by China’s strict anti-COVID measures.

EXCLUSIVE: M88 has inked a deal to rep brother filmmakers Aaron Tao And Winston Tao, who together go by the name TAO/S.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The odds of the U.S. banning TikTok are higher after the app’s CEO testified before a House committee, according to some analysts. During the hearing, American politicians expressed frustration over what they saw as evasive and unconvincing answers about China’s influence over TikTok — and the communist regime’s ability to track user data — as well as its efforts to curb misinformation and harmful content, particularly in relation to children who use the app. In his D.C. appearance Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the popular app, used by more than 150 million American users monthly, as committed to ensuring privacy and security. He insisted, as TikTok has claimed before, that the company has never furnished U.S. user data to the Chinese Communist Party (nor has the CCP ever made such a request). Chew talked up TikTok’s “Project Texas,” intended to bring user data fully under the aegis of U.S.-based personnel and hosted on Oracle infrastructure.

do go sideways in Adele Lim’s laugh-out-loud hilarious directorial debut “Joy Ride,” a sweet mix of a buddy comedy and a girl’s trip film that will have you laughing so much you’ll cry — and then crying for real, and laughing some more. This is such a bold and genuine movie, one that highlights the concepts of found family, maternal connections and doing what makes you happy alongside all of its unrestrained and risque fun.  The boisterous comedy follows Ashley Park’s Audrey, a Chinese girl adopted by white parents in a mostly-white suburban town.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In 1993, “The Joy Luck Club” made Hollywood history, proving to a skeptical — and let’s face it, racist — industry that there was mainstream demand for a culturally sensitive Chinese American ensemble drama. Three decades later, along comes “Joy Ride,” throwing sensitivity to the wind en route to obliterating any remaining barriers. Like “Girls Trip” with an all-Asian-American cast, the Seth Rogen-produced, hard-R road movie follows small-town besties Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) to Beijing, where they tackle everything from taboo tattoos to a devil’s threesome with all the gusto you’d hope or expect from “Crazy Rich Asians” co-writer Adele Lim’s directorial debut.

2022, “Cryptorealism is an expression of hidden meaning revealed through layer imagery, which requires active participation by the observer.”Famous collectors of Roostaei’s work include Paul McCartney, Anthony Hopkins and Hillary Clinton. His paintings are currently on display at Beijing’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Vancouver Fine Art Gallery and the Pashmin Art Gallery in Shanghai and in Hamburg.In May 2022, he sold some of his paintings to benefit the people of Ukraine.

The Scottish Parliament has "strongly advised" MSPs and staff to remove social media app TikTok from devices amid security concerns.

How could a trip to the motherland go so hilariously, disastrously wrong? The quartet at the heart of Adele Lim’s “Joy Ride” – Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu – have no idea what they’re in for at the top of the trailer, which Lionsgate released Friday ahead of the film’s premiere at SXSW.The trailer begins with the origin story of Audrey (Park) and Lolo’s (Cola) friendship, when they meet at a park as young kids. Lolo punches a white boy in the throat after he calls Audrey a racist slur, sealing the deal on their lifelong friendship.

Naman Ramachandran The writing team of Iran’s Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar, who won best screenplay at Cannes for “3 Faces” (2018) directed by Panahi, have reunited for “The Witness.” To be directed by Saeivar, the project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). Saeivar made his feature debut with “The Alien” (2020), which was a Berlinale selection and won prizes at the Beijing, Hong Kong, Duhok, Taormina and International Crime and Punishment film festivals. Saeivar’s sophomore feature, “No End,” debuted at Busan in 2022 and won him best director at Goa and a brace of awards at Vesoul recently.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese director Zhang Hanyi takes an unexpected turn with his latest feature film effort, “The Walking Bird,” which makes its appearance as an in-development project at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), which takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.  His previous film, 2017’s “Dragonfly Eyes,” was one of the most unusual and stylish films of the year from anywhere in the world. It told a disturbing (fictional) narrative through extraordinary found-footage obtained from hundreds of real-world CCTV cameras, and won the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical Jury prizes at the Locarno Festival that year.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is reportedly lining up Sir Dave Brailsford to lead the overhaul of Manchester United should his bid for the club be successful.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based indie sales agent Autumn Sun comes to FilMart with a bulging slate of new film titles from around Asia — including two animated features from mainland China. Autumn Sun, headed by sales veteran Elliot Tong, is giving a market premiere to “Planet Cat,” an animated feature by Song Yuefeng (“Ping Pong Rabbit,” “Throne of Elves”) about a chance meeting between a stray cat and a girl in a city at night. The film is produced by Nuctopus Studio and Dreamers Studio and previously won a development prize at the Beijing International Film Festival. The feature is now in post-production and a promo reel is being screened at the market.

EXCLUSIVE: Conqueror Entertainment, the L.A. and Beijing-based production outfit launched by former Legendary Entertainment executive Vasco Xu, has set a Chinese-language adaptation of leading sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s Supernova Era as one of it first projects. 

A little less than five years after a tax-evasion scandal saw Chinese star Fan Bingbing disappear from public view for several months, the actress today addressed the Berlin Film Festival press corps in support of her latest movie, Green Night. 

Jessica Kiang The unusual design of the White Pagoda, a 13th-century Buddhist temple in the Xicheng district of Beijing, makes it hard to see its shadow. This has given rise to the local legend that its shade can actually be found some two thousand miles away in Tibet, the temple’s spiritual home. The landmark is a constant presence in Chinese director Zhang Lu’s tender, brimming “The Shadowless Tower,” which fixes its setting in the very heart of the Chinese capital, a city rarely portrayed as fondly as it is here. But the pagoda can also be seen as an evocatively imperfect metaphor for a lifestage: that tipping point in the middle of one’s time when, with the past and future weighing equally on either side, you can feel disoriented and suddenly directionless, as when the sun is directly overhead and you cast no shadow. 

The Manchester Museum opens its doors again for the first time in nearly two years this weekend, complete with a brand new extension, new permanent galleries, golden mummies and its famous dinosaurs.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sakra, a big-budget martial arts fantasy directed and starring Donnie Yen, is heading for a North American theatrical and digital release. Rights to the film were acquired by WellGo USA which is a major stateside purveyor of Chinese and other Asian titles. The company has set dates in April for a theatrical outing, shortly followed by a release to digital platforms, according to an emailed conversation with its president and CEO Doris Pfardrescher. Other details of its release and marketing campaign have yet to be finalized. The film, a mainland China-Hong co-venture, was released in theaters in several territories in Southeast Asia in late January in time for the Lunar New Year holiday peak season. In China, it did not join the New Year scramble for screens and instead was released straight to streaming.

At its third annual developer conference on Wednesday, NBCUniversal introduced a range of new products and capabilities aimed at enhancing the media company’s appeal to advertisers. Among them: a new “content quality index” partnership with MarketCast; an expansion of in-scene advertising capabilities; and the certification of 29 new measurement partners.

Subscribers to the Disney+ streaming service in Hong Kong won’t see yet another episode of The Simpsons, the latest one for referring to forced labor in China.

The furor over a Chinese spy balloon that flew over U.S. airspace has further chilled D.C.-Beijing tensions, but the entertainment industry already has been swept up in the heightened atmosphere of American hawkishness.

Taipei-based international sales company Distribution Workshop will be selling Lunar New Year hit Hidden Blade, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Wong Ching-po’s highly-anticipated new film, The Pig, The Snake And The Pigeon, at the upcoming European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin. 

The controversial Chinese balloon that traversed the United States has been shot down.