Vatican Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Agnieszka Holland is headed to the Vatican for a screening of her migrant crisis drama Green Border, following its selection for its 27th Tertio Millenio Film Festival in November.

Italy has submitted Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano as its candidate for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

Sylvester Stallone walked the red carpet at TIFF 2023, on hand to promote “Sly”, a new documentary about his life and stunningly successful Hollywood career that’s closing out this year’s festival.

Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” stirred up no end of controversy when it was released in 1988, met with protests and condemned by religious groups, while a terrorist attack in a Paris theatre showing the film injured 13 people.

Madonna has thanked Pepsi for “finally” airing the banned advert she starred in over three decades ago.The pop icon teamed up with the soft drink company for the commercial back in 1989. However, the campaign was axed due to the controversy surrounding the video for Madge’s then-new single, ‘Like A Prayer’.In keeping with the religious connotations of the song, its music video includes a scene featuring burning crosses, and sees Madonna kissing a Black saint.

Sylvester Stallone has met The Pope, and found out that the global religious figure is a huge fan of his films.The legendary actor visited The Vatican yesterday (September 8) for an audience with Pope Francis alongside Stallone’s wife, daughters and brother.In a video shared to social media, Pope Francis is seen telling Stallone that he’s a huge fan of his movies, to which the actor replied: “Well, thank you very much for taking time from your busy day. We appreciate this very much.”“I am honoured,” Francis replied.

Sylvester Stallone visited The Vatican on Friday September 8, where he discovered, to his surprise, that Pope Francis is a huge fan of his films.

posted to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, by Vatican News shows Stallone, 77, and Francis, 86, shaking hands before he introduces the head of the Catholic Church to his family.Sylvester first introduces his wife, Jennifer Flavin, and then their three daughters, and the couple’s three children — Sophia, 27, Sistine, 25, and Scarlet, 21, as well as their son, Frank Stallone.“Three, so many!” Francis jokes about the many Stallone women. “Thank you very much for taking time from your busy day,” Sylvester added.

Sylvester Stallone and his family had a special encounter with Pope Francis while visiting Vatican City.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Pope Francis is apparently a huge Sylvester Stallone fan. The “Rocky” star visited the Vatican on Sept. 8 and met the Pope alongside his wife, Jennifer, and his three daughters, Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Now on its ninth feature entry in just a decade, the “Conjuring” franchise has proved something of a powerhouse in the continued growth of horror as one of the most reliably popular (not to mention cost-effective) mainstream film genres. Their mythologies may be garbled and silly, the scares mostly “jump” ones, yet these movies provide a kind of creepy comfort food — familiarly formulaic jolts unlikely to trouble any non-child viewer’s sleep later on — whose satisfactions are amplified by the good actors and superior atmospherics deployed.

Anna Tingley The $2 billion-grossing “Conjuring” universe will grow by one more film this Friday with the release of “The Nun II,” which will see Taissa Farmiga reprise her creepy role as Sister Irene. The original “Nun” movie, which followed Sister Irene as she fended off the possessed demon nun Valek in 1952 Romania, debuted in 2018 and earned $366 million worldwide on the way to becoming the top-grossing in the “Conjuring” franchise to date. If you’re looking to binge the whole “Conjuring” series ahead of the newest installment, you’ll be able to find every film in the franchise on a streaming platform. You can also stream the entire “Conjuring” series for free by signing up for a free trial of Prime Video’s Max add-on.

King Charles has stripped Anthony Bailey of his OBE as his bitter divorce from Princess Marie-Therese von Hohenberg rumbles on. Anthony was awarded the OBE by the late Queen in 2008 for services to inter-religious relations and charity. Over the years, the businessman was branded Mr Fixit and was known by a number of famous faces and Royal Family members.

Gwendlyn Brown is living la dolce vita as a newly married woman! The 21-year-old daughter of Christine Brown and her ex, Kody Brown, took to Instagram over the weekend to share photos from her honeymoon with wife Beatriz Queiroz. The star is enjoying her time in Italy shortly after celebrating her nuptials last month.

Russell Crowe makes a splash in the horror genre in The Pope’s Exorcist.Directed by Julius Avery, the supernatural horror film stars Crowe as real-life figure Father Gabriele Amorth, a Catholic priest who claimed to have performed thousands of exorcisms over his career.A synopsis reads: “The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.”Other cast members include Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe and Franco Nero.In the film’s final act, Amorth and Father Esquibel (Zovatto) discover the demon possessing young Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) is Asmodeus, the king of hell. The demon’s aim is to possess an exorcist, so that it can release other demons and take down the Church.During the exorcism of Henry, Amorth offers himself to be possessed by Asmodeus – falling in line with the demon’s plan.

Selena Gomez had an epic 31st birthday over the weekend and more photos have come out of the fabulous event. The star-studded party saw three Latina powerhouses come together as Gomez, Christina Aguilera, and Karol G were all in attendance. On Tuesday, the “Hips Don’t Lie singer,” shared photos posing with her fellow Latinas.A post shared by Christina Aguilera (@xtina)Aguilera was all smiles as she hugged the two women.

A new chapter of “The Exorcist” has arrived and it is definitely not for the faint hearted. Ellen Burstyn reprises her role as Chris MacNeil in “The Exorcist: Believer,” a sequel directed by David Gordon Green.

Rosalía is an unstoppable force that has taken the world by storm, but still, she manages to add another jaw-dropping feat to her impressive repertoire — and we don’t mean musically. The Spanish singer got her hands on the keys to the Vatican Museum!After wowing the crowds at the Nyon Festival in Switzerland, the “Tuya” songstress decided it was time for a well-deserved Italian escapade. The star took to Rome and couldn’t resist the allure of the Vatican Museum’s wonders.

reported in Le Parisien and BFM television that Birkin had been found dead at her home in Paris. The actress suffered a mild stroke in 2021, but her cause of death has not yet been revealed. .“Because she embodied freedom, because she sang the most beautiful words of our language, Jane Birkin was a French icon.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic With Jane Birkin’s passing, France loses both an icon and one of its greatest enigmas. To focus on France is not to diminish the fact that Birkin’s death will be mourned around the world. Alongside Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Hardy and Catherine Deneuve, Birkin was one of the last surviving 1960s femmes who sparked global interest in French culture. Except that Birkin wasn’t French. She was born in London and clung to her English accent all her life. Birkin was perfectly fluent, but cultivated a faux-naïf way of speaking her adopted language that reinforced her persona as the eternal child. For the French, it was all part of her singular charm, established decades earlier… and which she sometimes struggled to escape.

pic.twitter.com/aRkuxR2TcmWhile Birkin's cause of death is not yet known, according to multiple reports, the actress had been plagued with health issues in recent years, including a stroke in 2021 and a broken shoulder blade earlier this year, forcing her to cancel a handful of concerts in May.ET has reached out to Birkin's rep for comment.Born in London in December 1946, Birkin found a home in France at the age of 20, after moving to Paris to work on the movie . While on the set of the 1968 film, she met and started a relationship with the film's star, French actor and singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.The pair would go on to collaborate on the actress's most well-known song, «Je T'Aime… Moi Non Plus,» which translates to «I Love You… Me Neither.» The sensual song was considered risqué for its time and was banned by the BBC and condemned by the Vatican.Birkin and Gainsbourg were together for 12 years, welcoming a daughter Charlotte, before splitting in 1981.

Jane Birkin, the famed British singer and actress that transformed French culture, has died at 76 in Paris. Remembered as a style-icon, the iconic Hermès Birkin bag, introduced in 1984, was named after the artist.  The French Culture Ministry tweeted that Birkin had died on Sunday, crediting her as a "timeless Francophone icon." France's Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, shared her grief on social media, writing "Jane B was mischief, impertinent elegance, the never-outdated emblem of an entire era, a murmuring voice that remains our idol," in a tweet translated to English.

has died at 76 following health concerns that forced the musician to cancel a series of concerts in May, per a report from .The British icon—who spent the majority of her time in France and had a major influence on French style and culture—rose to fame as an actor, starring in films such as La Piscine (1969) and Death on the Nile (1978), earning three Cèsar Award nominations throughout her decades-long film career. Birkin was also known for pushing boundaries, with her breathy vocals on Serge Gainsbourg's hit 1969 duet “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus” causing enough controversy that the song was banned from the radio in multiple countries and denounced by the Vatican. “We never thought for a moment that the song would become such a symbol of freedom—all over the world,” Birkin told in 2018.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Pope Francis and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky are sharing the Cinema for Peace Award, an honor recognizing their “contributions to the freedom of Ukraine and humanitarian efforts to protect civilians and children.”

a starry world premiere in Rome on Monday evening, drawing a packed gala screening in the Auditorium della Conciliazione, a stone’s throw from the Vatican. The classy event was held in tandem with the Rome Film Festival’s independently run Alice in the City section, dedicated to films for youth audiences. The film’s local distributor is Eagle Pictures, which has a local distribution partnership with Paramount. A substantial amount of the hotly anticipated action film was shot in the Italian capital. “Dead Reckoning Part One” follows the events of “Fallout,” where Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his crew of secret agents saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse amid a series of double-crosses. The 2018 release was the highest-grossing entry in the franchise yet, earning nearly $800 million at the global box office.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic You might think Shia LaBeouf portraying a 20th-century Italian saint under the direction of perpetual bad-boy expat Abel Ferrara is a pretty strange prospect. But that’s just the iceberg tip of the oddities in “Padre Pio,” which, despite the American star’s casting in the title role, often appears uninterested in its own venerated ostensible subject.  Instead, much of this awkward English-language period piece focuses on peasants’ struggle to overthrow padrone control just after the First World War. Depicting that conflict often feels beyond the modest production’s scale — and, in any case, is never meaningfully connected to the angsty histrionics of LaBeouf, who seems to be in his own separate, indulgent, semi-improvised movie. Though coherent relative to Ferrara’s last narrative feature, the impenetrable espionage tale “Zeroes and Ones,” this eccentric misfire will likely puzzle fans of his past cult favorites, while flummoxing Catholic viewers who expect straightforward religious uplift. Gravitas Ventures is releasing to 50+ U.S. markets. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Marco Bellocchio’s drama “Kidnapped” that reconstructs the true tale of a Jewish boy who was kidnapped and forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th century Rome, has opened strongly in Italy following its Cannes launch. The revered Italian auteur’s film about Edgardo Mortara, who in 1858 was taken away from his family in Bologna to live in the Vatican – after it surfaced that the boy secretly been baptized a Christian – has also sparked debate and prompted the Vatican to comment the abduction for which Pope Pius IX has been held responsible. “Kidnapped” over the weekend bowed in third place at the Italian box office, placing itself after “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X” and pulling a handsome more than €550,000 ($587,000) intake to date from roughly 300 screens.

Martin Scorsese has announced the next movie he will soon begin working on!

Martin Scorsese is making another film inspired by religion.

Move aside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro – Pope Francis is famed director Martin Scorsese’s latest collaborator. On a European tour to promote his films, Scorsese announced his intention to make another movie about Jesus while at the Vatican. "I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus," "Scorsese said per reports confirmed by his representative.