Magnolia Pictures Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

EXCLUSIVE: Global communications agency DDA has hired BAFTA Deputy Chair Julie La’Bassiere into the newly created role of Chief Strategy Officer. She joins from her previous role as an awards contractor for Apple TV+.

EXCLUSIVE: London-based Alliance Media Partners (AMP) has hired Anthony Buckner as Head of Sales, Acquisitions and Distribution in the run up to the Cannes market.

Nick Tomnay got some buzz back in 2010 for his twisty thriller “The Perfect Host,” starring David Hyde Pierce as a dinner party host with an appetite for violence. But Tomnay hasn’t made another feature until now, with “What You Wish For.” And, to be expected, it’s another twisty thriller with some culinary flair.

Nicholas Tomnay got some buzz back in 2010 for his twisty thriller “The Perfect Host,” starring David Hyde Pierce as a dinner party host with an appetite for violence. But Tomnay hasn’t made another feature until now, with “What You Wish For.” And, to be expected, it’s another twisty thriller with some culinary flair.

Seattle International Film Festival has revealed its lineup for the 50th edition, which takes place May 9–19 at venues across Seattle and followed by a week of select virtual screenings on the SIFF Channel May 20–27. The program includes 261 films representing 84 countries and regions, including 92 features, 47 documentaries, five archival features, two special tributes, two secret screenings and 115 short films. The festival will open with Josh Margolin’s action comedy “Thelma” from Magnolia Pictures, which will screen at the Paramount Theatre during SIFF’s opening night on May 9.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Magnolia Pictures has released a trailer ahead of the May 3 release of “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg,” about the legendary muse to the Rolling Stones. Scarlett Johansson provides the voice for Pallenberg, based on the words of her unpublished memoir.

The Concordia Fellowship provides crucial financial and professional support to diverse non-fiction storytellers in sixth class. Concordia Studio, the company behind the acclaimed Emmy-winning documentary film, STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, directed by founder Davis Guggenheim, is awarding four filmmakers the Concordia Fellowship for 2024.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnolia Pictures and Participant have partnered to jointly acquire North American rights to “The Grab,” a new documentary from “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, follows journalists from The Center for Investigative Reporting as they work high-profile sources and utilize a cache of secret data to uncover the money and influence being used by countries, corporations and members of the uber-elite to control the planet’s most vital resources.

If you are aiming to win your Oscar pool you may feel relatively safe right about now predicting, as most are, a sweep by Oppenheimer, especially after its overwhelming showing last week winning 7 BAFTA awards, the DGA honor for Christopher Nolan the week before that, and on Saturday sweeping 3 of the 5 movie awards at SAG and winning top prize at PGA last night. However key to actually winning your pool will not be those marquee feature film categories but rather the three for shorts that run under the radar, but can spell the difference in triumphing over all others in whatever pool you enter. So who could – or should for these purposes – prevail in the Documentary, Animated, and Live Action shorts contests this year? Shorts TV in association with distributor Magnolia Pictures has, as usual. put all of them in theatrical release in theatres across the country, so if you are lucky you could have the chance to see the three different programs offered on the big screen. Some, like MTV’s The ABC’s Of Book Banning are available for free on You Tube, and some are available on the various streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon, Apple. I have seen all 15 of the films spread across these categories with 5 nominees each. Here is my take on the artistic merits of each.

The Avenue release Land of Bad, powered by Variance, grossed $1.8 million on 1,120 screens, landing in the top ten for the weekend as Variance noted strong word of mouth with Saturday grosses jumping 37% from Friday’ (not including Thursday sneaks). The estimate for the four days is $2.07 million.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, has acquired North American rights to “What You Wish For,” a new suspense-horror film written and directed by Nicholas Tomnay. The film stars Nick Stahl (Showtime’s “Let the Right One In”) and had its world premiere at Fantasia Festival. Tamsin Topolski (“Slow Horses”) and Randy Vasquez (“America Has Fallen: Election Day”) also star.

The indie box office busted out this year, hitting is stride post-Covid with an eclectic string of releases that made a splash artistically and financially.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to “Arctic Convoy,” a Norwegian naval thriller that is set in the middle of World War II. The film is from the producers of “The Wave” trilogy, so it’s a homecoming of sorts given that Magnolia released all three installments of that series.

Fresh off its fall festival circuit run, including its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, “The Promised Land” will finally arrive in US theaters next February. That’s plenty of time for audiences to catch up with the historical drama before it might vie for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in March.

EXCLUSIVE: EVO Entertainment Group will begin operating as Elevate Entertainment Group, the company said Monday. Simultaneously, EEG has acquired Austin-based arthouse chain Violet Crown Cinemas.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Fusion Entertainment has signed on to manage Joanna Arnow, an acclaimed acclaimed writer, director, actor and editor whose narrative feature debut “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” impressed audiences and critics when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight section.The film was later acquired by Magnolia Pictures. It will be released domestically in 2024 after having its U.S.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary, which was acquired by SK Global Entertainment, tells the story of Anita Pallenberg, the model and actress who rose to fame in the 1960s and ’70s after a chance encounter with the Rolling Stones. Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill directed the docu, which features the voice of Scarlett Johansson as Anita, based on the words of her unpublished memoir.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures, has acquired North American rights to “The Seeding,” a new horror-thriller. It marks the feature directorial debut of Barnaby Clay and world premiered in Tribeca Midnight “The Seeding” is about a hiker who gets lost in the desert and seeks refuge with a woman who is living alone. He soon discovers that she might not be there willingly.

D. Smith Filmmaker D. Smith’s debut documentary “Kokomo City” presents a raw depiction of the lives of four Black trans women — Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music On the heels of the sale of their award-winning rock documentary “Immediate Family” to Magnolia Pictures, film producer-musicians Greg Richling and Jonathan Sheldon have announced the launch of their production company Pfonetic and are unveiling a slate of music-driven film and television projects. The roster includes a long-in-the-works authorized documentary on the enormously influential but unsung producer Tom Wilson, who produced Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” and the first Velvet Underground album and recordings by John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, Sun Ra and many more — which is now titled “Like a Rolling Stone,” fittingly enough.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to “Immediate Family,” director Denny Tedesco’s follow-up to his acclaimed documentary “The Wrecking Crew.” That earlier film, which Magnolia also released, followed the first wave of studio musicians in the ’60s. “Immediate Family” takes up the story where “The Wrecking Crew” ended, taking a deep dive through some of the most famous and influential session musicians from the 1970s.

“There’s something I have to tell you:” As an 18-year-old undergraduate at Harvard, Ted Hall was recruited to help Robert Oppenheimer and his team develop a weapon that would alter the course of human history. When the Atomic Bomb was detonated twice the following year, over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hall did not share in his colleagues’ enthusiasm for the Manhattan Project.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures, has acquired North American rights to “Sleep.” The horror-thriller, which sounds designed to make you rethink your thoughts about sleepwalking, recently had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival’s critics week. It was directed and written by Jason Yu, who worked with Korean filmmaking legends Bong Joon-ho and Lee Chang-dong before making his feature directing debut with “Sleep.” Magnet will release the film early next year. The director’s previous collaborator, Bong, called “Sleep,” “the most unique horror film and the smartest debut film I’ve seen in 10 years.” So that’s some high praise from the director of “The Host” and “Parasite.”

holds a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average critic score of 7.5/10. “As a distributor, it’s always exciting to find a new, fresh and hilarious voice,” Magnolia Pictures co-CEOs Eamonn Bowles and Dori Begley said in a statement. “We’re beyond excited to be able to present Joanna Arnow to audiences.” “I am so happy to be bringing this self-deprecating deadpan comedy to audiences with a partner like Magnolia Pictures,” Arnow said. “Magnolia has such a wonderful lineup of powerful, unique independent films, and we are thrilled to be included among them.” Written, directed, edited by and starring Arnow, “That Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” is produced by Pierce Varous and Graham Swon.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Joanna Arnow’s “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.” The film, which recently world-premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section and is executive produced by Sean Baker, is a comedy about a 30-something New York woman, who is played by Arnow. It follows her as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship and low-level corporate job, and chronicles her quarrelsome Jewish family.  Critics liked Arnow’s witty and fresh take, with Variety calling it one of the festival’s true discoveries and hailing the filmmaker as “a raw, intimate and more importantly extremely funny new talent.“ The film is Arnow’s narrative feature film debut following shorts including “Bad Dancing,” which won the Berlinale Silver Bear, “Laying Out,” and the feature doc “I hate myself:).” 

EXCLUSIVE: The Gotham Film & Media Institute has today named the student filmmakers selected to participate this summer in the fifth cycle of its Gotham EDU Film and Media Career Development Program, a six-week initiative helping to launch students into the media workforce.

Two from Magnolia Pictures, the story of an iconic record album design firm back and a sighting of Brian Cox usher in a specialty weekend with smoke clearing over New York City. Acrid plumes from Canadian wildfires have smothered the key arthouse market over the past few days in an unusual air quality event that had Mayor Eric Adams urging people to home.

Baseball may be America’s most enduring professional sport, often referred to as a national pastime. And in his latest documentary, “MLK/FBI” director Sam Pollard examines an often overlooked chapter in baseball’s history: the Negro League.   READ MORE: Tribeca 2023 Festival: 20 Films To Watch “The League,” ready for its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month, celebrates the all-black league in all of its facets: from the entrepreneurs that created it to the legendary players like Satchel Paige, Buck O’Neil, as well as Hall of Famers like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, who made it what it was.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Magnolia Pictures and MK2 Films have acquired rights to Roaul Peck’s documentary about renowned photographer Ernest Cole. The untitled documentary chronicles the life and work of Cole, the first Black freelance photographer in South Africa, whose early work revealed to the world the shocking, brutal realities of Black life under apartheid. Magnolia will release the film in North American theaters, while MK2 will handle the rollout internationally. “Ernest Cole’s long and, at times, painful and tedious journey in America brings me back to a period of my life when my political commitment and artistic stamina were forged,” Peck said in a statement. “I profoundly feel, cherish and treasure his human eye on the facts of life and his piercing acuity over our terrible contradictions.”

A Compassionate Spy” and will release it later this year. Directed by two-time Oscar nominee Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”), “A Compassionate Spy” tells the story of Ted Hall, who at the age of 18 was the youngest physicist to work on the Manhattan Project with Robert Oppenheimer.