City Shanghai Showbiz Latest News and Updates

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Hong Kong-based producer Tsui Hark has boarded the ship as partner and co-producer of the Chinese pirate epic Shih, Queen of the Sea. Hark will partner with Anthony McCarten, Dakota Group and Facing East.

Icarus Films has taken North American rights to Youth (Spring), the newest feature from Venice prizer winner Wang Bing, which earlier this year became one of the first documentaries admitted to Cannes’ main competition in decades. A release date has not yet been disclosed.

Disney’s giant theme park division was first out of the gate in a post-pandemic recovery, showing giant jumps in revenue and profit due to pent-up demand. But the engine is sputtering.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Meg 2: The Trench” serves up a school of prehistoric fish that chew up the seas, a snapping pack of imaginary hybrid dinosaurs that wreak havoc on land and a surprising cinema business model — the Chinese-controlled franchise intended for a global audience. And while early reviews are predictably mixed, the film’s box office debut looks promising. In China, on Friday, it bit off a $19.5 million first day and enjoyed a 50% market share.

Sophia Scorziello editor Janet Yang has been re-elected as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Her second-term re-election was made by the Academy’s board of governors who additionally elected a number of officer positions for 2023-2024. Yang is an Emmy-winning producer with credits on projects including “The Joy Luck Club,” “The People vs.

Michelle Yeoh and her longtime love, Jean Todt, have finally tied the knot after 19 years together.

Michelle Yeoh and ex-Ferrari CEO Jean Todt have tied the knot after a 19-year engagement.

Michelle Yeoh married her longtime fiancé, former Ferrari CEO, Jean Todt on Wednesday after nearly two decades together. Friend and racecar driver Felipe Massa shared the news on Instagram as a guest at the event, posting photos from the celebration.

Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh is married! The Everything Everywhere All at Once actress 60, has married her longtime partner, ex-Ferrari CEO Jean Todt, 77, after being engaged for 19 years.They wed in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday.Their nuptials were revealed in pictures shared by Brazilian racing driver Felipe Massa on social media, who wrote: "Happy marriage #JeanTodt & #michelleyeoh love you so much." He posted a snap of a card which shared the newlyweds' love story.The card read: "We met in Shanghai on 4th June 2004. On 26th July 2004, J.T proposed to marry M.Y and she said YES!' "Today after 6992 days on 27th July 2023 in Geneva, surrounded by loving family and friends, We are so happy to celebrate this special moment together!" Michelle is seen in two different wedding outfits in the pictures, as she poses with her new husband.

Michelle Yeoh and Jean Todt are finally married!

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has acquired broadcast rights to the British indie drama Kindling from debut feature filmmaker Connor O’Hara, which played in Competition at the 2023 Shanghai International Film Festival.

William Earl “Hotels on Screen” is a new five-episode video series in partnership with Variety and Hotels.com, spotlighting fictional worlds in fan-favorite TV shows and movies where real-life hotels were used as locations and sets. The series, featuring interviews with actors and artisans, aims to inspire fans and audiences to travel and explore hotels around the world. The new sponsored editorial series launches July 13, featuring the newly released film “Joy Ride” with interviews from stars Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, Sabrina Wu and director Adele Lim. “It’s exciting for us to partner with a marquee brand like Hotels.com to support artisans and actors who create content that stimulates imagination and fosters a desire in their audiences to experience these locations for themselves,” said Dea Lawrence, Variety’s chief operating and marketing officer.

erotic and shocking, the five-episode collaboration among Levinson, music superstar Tesfaye and Reza Fahim is one of the worst shows ever made.One’s degree of disdain for it, however, might depend on their awareness of its behind-the-scenes backstory. Anyone going in cold can recognize that Tesfaye, who plays a supposedly irresistible nightclub owner and talent manager, is far less compelling when acting than when performing as The Weeknd. But his meme-able lack of acting chops does not make you mad, per se.

Former Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers midfielder Aaron Mooy has announced his retirement from professional football aged just 32.

At the end of January 2020, Bolton-born performer Joe Leather was working on a show in Shanghai when he decided to come back to the UK for a couple of weeks. Little did he know that the pandemic would lead to that fortnight’s holiday becoming a little more permanent than imagined.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 28th edition of the Shanghai TV Festival wrapped up on Friday with its Magnolia Awards presented to a range of TV drama series, documentaries and animation programs. The drama awards were dominated by two shows “A Lifelong Journey” and “Bright Future.” “A Lifelong Journey,” adapted from a novel of the same name by Liang Xiaosheng, tells the story of three generations of one family in China’s Northeast as time moves from the late Cultural Revolution period through to the country’s reform and opening up. With a starry cast and broadcasters including CCTV-1 and Jiangsu Satellite TV, the show is reported to have attracted 310 million viewers at the beginning of 2022. In mainland China, it ran for 58 episodes, while in Hong Kong it played in 35 parts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The technical aspects of China’s embrace of smart broadcasting were given a thorough workout this week as part of the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival. Topics covered by keynote speakers included: future broadcasting planning; AI content generation’ big data construction; and the development of ultra-high definition broadcasting. Sun Suchuan, deputy Director-General of the Science and Technology Department of the National Radio & Television Authority explained that the national government has iterated a strategic development plan for the TV sector running until 2035 as well as medium- and long-term technological strategies.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The members of the international juries that will decide the Magnolia prizes at the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival were Thursday made to do double duty as speakers in public masterclasses that were open to a generation of aspiring documentary and animation makers. David Stephan, jury president in the animation category, along with fellow judges Spencer Ooi and Jia Fou, spoke at length about getting their starts in the business and finding inspiration. “When I studied animation, I didn’t have a textbook available. I saw extremely limited things, so I did further research to make myself understand what I was doing in such a career,” said Jia.

Callum McLennan Underscoring its growing ambitions in features, MoreThan Films has secured the international sales rights for “Muyeres,” a Spanish film directed by Marta Lallana, which won over the  weekend at the Shanghai International Film Festival its jury Grand Prix and best cinematography plaudit for Toni Vidal.  MoreThan Films has shared “Muyeres”’ international trailer in exclusivity with Variety.  “Muyeres” is a hybrid documentary telling a story of Carmina and Irene, the last guardians of an oral folk tradition on the brink of extinction, set in the northern Spanish region of Asturias. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat), a leading operator of satellites, has moved into content distribution with the acquisition of Hong Kong- and U.K.-based TV distributor Lightning International. The diversification was described by AsiaSat as “a strategic move to expand the company’s services and extend its clients’ reach to global audiences through traditional and new distribution platforms including OTT and FAST.” AsiaSat is known to be acquiring 100% of Lightning International, but other deal terms were not disclosed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Barbarian Invasion” director Tan Chi Mui from Malaysia scored a top result from the SIFF Project Market. The market is a component event of the Shanghai International Film Festival, which wrapped up over the weekend. Tan’s “All About Yuyu” was named as the “recommended project for creativity” at the project market’s closing event. The project, which is already being structured as a Malaysia-China coproduction, is a story that combines contemporary wuxia (heroic martial arts) with youth elements. “I want to make a modern wuxia film to recapture the magical feeling I had when watching films during my childhood,” she told local media.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After a golden age in the 1980s, Chinese filmmakers were quietly discouraged from dabbling in the sci-fi genre – it isn’t real science and authorities did not want youngsters to get confused. That stance changed during the last decade and the Shanghai International Film Festival has just hosted its first sci-fi week, comprising nearly a dozen film screenings and a trio of panel discussions featuring the new luminaries in the sector. Reasons for the revised position of China’s authorities are not hard to understand. Not only was Hollywood getting away with dominating a genre that was popular with Chinese audiences, China in the 21st century has become a global technology powerhouse. Its space program, in particular, is now among the most advanced, capable of a normalized rocket launch schedule, international co-operation and lunar and interplanetary missions.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese drama feature “Yoko” won the Golden Goblet best picture award at the Shanghai International Film Festival. The jury Grand Prix was awarded to Spain’s “Muyeres” with China’s Liu Jin winning the best director prize.The trio also collected additional prizes making them the only multiple winners in a ceremony that sprinkled its awards widely. “Yoko,” directed by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi, who earlier this year saw melodramatic “#Manhole” play in Berlin, takes the structure of a road-movie and is a journey of self-discovery of a woman who had been socially isolated in her apartment for many years. Portrayed by global star Rinko Kikuchi (”Babel,” “47 Ronin”), the woman is forced to confront the real world, and herself, when she takes a 658 kilometre cross-country journey to her father’s funeral. Without a cell phone or the money for public transport, she finds herself having to hitch hike. Kikuchi also earned the best actress award.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Eastern Grace Film, a new production company that teased its debut production “The Sand Murmurs” earlier this month, has gone one step further. It used the Shanghai International Film Festival to unveil a slate of nine new film productions. The company is an indirect subsidiary of Baination Pictures, a Beijing-based film and TV group that is listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. Eastern Grace is headed by president Wilson Jiang, a veteran film distributor in China.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Sunday,” by Uzbekistan-based director Shokir Kholikov, was Thursday named best film in the Asian New Talent section of the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival. The Asian New Talent Awards are called Golden Goblet Awards, but are separate from the festival’s official competition section, and favor new and emerging talent. The main competition jury will hand out its Golden Goblets on Sunday. The best director prize in the Asian New Talent section was shared by two helmers: China’s Luo Dong won for “May.” So too did Kazakhstan’s Aisultan Seit for “Qash.” Luo previously attended the Shanghai festival’s project market ten years ago and has since completed one other film.

A derelict Chinese restaurant in Wigan is set to be demolished to make way for a new affordable apartment block for people with disabilities and extra care needs.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hungarian director and screenwriter Ildikó Enyedi brought some art-house royalty to the Shanghai International Film Festival this week with a masterclass that focused on her process and the struggle to maintain a unique voice. At one point in her on-stage discussion with Chinese director Zheng Dasheng, she called filmmaking “essentially a sole desperate cry, hoping to be heard by others.” Enyedi’s voice has certainly registered and been heard at Europe’s major film festivals. She won the Camera d’Or in Cannes in 1989 for best debut feature “My 20th Century,” saw her 1994 film “Magic Hunter” play in competition in Venice and she won the top prize Golden Bear in Berlin in 2017 with “On Body and Soul.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Big-budget period action film “The Sand Murmurs” is set to start production in China’s remote region of Xinjiang later this month. The film is the tale of a soldier and an enemy nobleman brought together after a once-in-a-century sandstorm. After braving a near-death experience together, the pair find common purpose despite their differences. They also need to work together to find their way out across 800km of desert. The picture is directed by Wu Youyin as an adaptation of his novel of the same title. Wu previously wrote and directed “Till The End of the World,” which released in 2018.

Former Manchester United loanee Odion Ighalo has been named in the Saudi Pro-League team of the season ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo, who misses out entirely.