Toni Servillo Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian genre specialist Stefano Sollima – who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and the TV series “Gomorrah” – is in the Venice competition for the first time with Rome-set crime drama “Adagio.” This beautifully shot picture features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). It’s the tale of three old – and once mighty – mobsters searching for redemption in a cutthroat contemporary Rome that is literally burning. They find it in the form of a 16 year old named Manuel who is being blackmailed after venturing too deep in a rotting Roman underworld world that he doesn’t understand.

Ferrari has defended the casting of Adam Driver against claims of cultural appropriation.Andrea Iervolino, an Italian-Canadian film producer on the Enzo Ferrari biopic, rebuked claims made against Driver’s casting by actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who questioned why Italian actors were not cast more often in Hollywood films.In response, Iervolino said Italy had failed in comparison to other countries in producing Hollywood stars with worldwide visibility, citing examples like Javier Bardem and Antonio Banderas from Spain, and Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel from France.Speaking at the festival (via the Telegraph), Ierovlino said: “Italian cinema needs to look beyond Italy and come up with synergies with the international film industry, which wants to invest in Italian icons. Films like Ferrari, which will be distributed in 150 countries, promote Italy and Italian genius.”The producer called on the Italian film industry to “make films based on stories that speak to the whole world, with international stars who work side by side with our own talent”.In his original comments, Favino, who stars in a movie called Comandante which opened this year’s festival, asked why actors on the level of Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty) were not cast more often in Hollywood productions.“There’s an issue of cultural appropriation,” Favino said.“Instead, the parts are given to foreign actors who are distant from the story’s real protagonists, starting with the exotic accents,” he added.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America. Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Actor-director Marco D’Amore, who played the ruthless central character Ciro Di Marzio on the Italian mob show “Gomorrah,” is directing “Caracas” a Naples-set drama in which he stars opposite Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty,” “Strangeness”). “Caracas” is a co-production between Picomedia, Mad Entertainment and Vision Distribution, which will release the film in Italy. Vision Distribution’s international unit, headed by veteran sales agent Catia Rossi, is launching sales on the film at Berlin’s upcoming European Film Market. In “Caracas,” which is based on writer Ermanno Rea’s novel “Napoli Ferroviaria,” Servillo plays Giordano Fonte, a Neapolitan author of international fame who returns to his hometown after many years. There he intersects with a former acquaintance nicknamed Caracas, a man originally from Venezuela who, having been a Neo-fascist skinhead, is now in the process of converting to Islam.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has taken international distribution rights to Roberto Andò’s “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”), toplining Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as the Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” will launch from the Rome Film Festival and concurrently have its market premiere at the Eternal City’s upcoming MIA Market, which runs Oct. 11-15. Starring alongside Servillo are popular Sicilian comedy duo Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone, who are known in Italy as Ficarra and Picone. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Stefano Sollima, who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and TV show “Gomorrah,” is back behind camera on a contemporary Rome-set crimer titled “Adagio.” Shooting started Sept. 5 on “Adagio” which features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). “I am eager and full of enthusiasm about finally returning to depict my city after all these years. Rome has changed, and so have I,” Sollima said in a statement for Variety. He went on to describe “Adagio” as a dark story of revenge and redemption, which will be the last chapter of my Roman criminal trilogy.”

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentVeteran Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio returned to Cannes this year with “Exterior Night,” a limited TV series about the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists that, prior to playing on pubcaster RAI, is now on release in two installments via Lucky Red in Italian cinemas where it’s doing quite well.Bellocchio, who previously recounted Moro’s still-mysterious abduction in the 2005 film “Goodmorning, Night” from the viewpoint of one of his captors, is taking a different narrative approach in this series consisting  of six one-hour episodes that reconstruct the 55 days of Moro’s imprisonment from different points of view, including that of his family, his fellow high-echelon Christian Democrat politicians, and the ailing Pope Paul VI, played by Toni Servillo. He spoke to Variety about what drove him to revisit Italy’s deepest recent collective trauma and why he thinks the crucial issue of whether the Italian government should have negotiated with the Red Brigades to try and save Moro remains an open question.

The David di Donatello Awards were held in Rome on Tuesday evening, the first time Italy’s equivalent to the Oscar has had a fully in-person ceremony in the pandemic era. Taking top honors was Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God which scooped Best Film and Director as well as Best Supporting Actress for Teresa Saponangelo and a tie for Best Cinematography. In the latter category, The Hand Of God shared the win with Freaks Out, a fantasy drama that likewise debuted in Venice.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentPaolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” and Gabriele Mainetti’s “Freaks Out” lead the pack at the David di Donatello Awards this year with 16 nominations each.Here’s the complete list of nominees:PICTURE “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Leonardo Di Costanzo “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino “Ennio,” Giuseppe Tornatore “Freaks Out,” Gabriele Mainetti “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Mario MartoneDIRECTOR “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Leonardo Di Costanzo “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino “Ennio,” Giuseppe Tornatore “Freaks Out,” Gabriele Mainetti “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Mario MartoneDEBUT DIRECTOR “The Bad Poet,” Gianluca Jodice “Maternal,” Maura Delpero “Small Body,” Laura Samani “Re Granchio” (The Legend of King Crab), Alessio Rigo De Righi, Matteo Zoppis “Una Femmina” (The Code of Silence), Francesco Constabile PRODUCER “A Chiara,” Jon Coplon, Paolo Carpignano, Ryan Zacarias, Jonas Carpignano (Stayblack Productions) — RAI Cinema “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Carlo Cresto Dina (Tempesta), Michela Pini (Amka) RAI Cinema “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino, Lorenzo Mieli “Freaks Out,” Andrea Occhipinti, Stefano Massenzi, Mattia Guerra (Lucky Red) — Gabriele Mainetti (Goon Films) — RAI Cinema “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori (Indigo Film) RAI CinemaACTRESS Swami Rotolo, “A Chiara” Miriam Leone, “Diabolik” Aurora Giovinazzo, “Freaks Out” Rosa Palasciano, “Giulia” Maria Nazionale, “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter)ACTOR Elio Germano, “America Latina” Silvio Orlando, “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage) Filippo Scotti, “The Hand of God” Franz Rogowski, “Freaks Out” Toni Servillo, “The King of Laughter”SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s True Colours has taken international sales on “Perfect Strangers” director Paolo Genovese’s new movie, a comedy drama titled “The First Day of My Life.”The Rome-based sales company will be launching pre-sales at the upcoming online EFM market on Genovese’s latest concept pic, which has echoes of Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”Based on Genovese’s novel of the same title, which was a bestseller in Italy, “The First Day of My Life” revolves around four characters on the brink of taking their lives who make a pact with a stranger with supernatural powers, played by “The Great Beauty” star Toni Servillo. The mystery man gives them a chance to travel forward in time to see for a week how their friends and relatives would react to their deaths and what the world would be like without them.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentProminent Italian thesps Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) and Silvio Orlando, who plays Cardinal Voiello in “The Young Pope,” had never had a chance to share the screen before director Leonardo Di Costanzo cast them – respectively as a prison guard captain and an incarcerated Mafia boss – in his prison drama “The Inner Cage.”This naturalistic film is shot in an ancient rural prison on the island of Sardinia with real ex convicts and former

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentThe Venice Film Festival is exerting a positive impact on the Italian box office where Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) got a boost over the weekend from its Lido launch that landed the Toni Servillo-starrer in the number two spot after Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”Italy’s box office results this past weekend saw “King of Laughter,” in which Servillo plays Neapolitan theater luminary Eduardo Scarpetta, score

The Great Beauty and The Hand Of God star Toni Servillo plays Neopolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in The King Of Laughter (Qui Rido Io), Mario Martone’s latest Venice Film Festival competition premiere. An affectionate, theatrical portrait set in the early 20th century, it culminates in an historic court case, but the build-up is leisurely to a fault.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“I’ve never liked artists who have more fun offstage than onstage,” says Italian comic star Eduardo Scarpetta (played by Toni Servillo) in “The King of Laughter.” If that was indeed Scarpetta’s belief, he would have thoroughly approved of Mario Martone’s big, brash, garishly frosted celebration cake of a biopic, in which everyone involved seems to be having the very best of times, tumbling onto screen with the breathless energy of a community theater crew given a very

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFilm Movement has acquired U.S.

“I don’t like reality anymore. Reality is lousy,” teenager Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti) says mournfully at a crucial, spiritually lonely moment in Paolo Sorrentino’s evocative new coming of age story, “The Hand Of God.” Sitting on a mountain, looking to the sky, the heavens, for answers, Fabietto should know.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentTrue Colours has taken international sales on Italian auteur Mario Martone’s new film “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) starring Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as popular and prolific early 20th century Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta.Martone’s latest three works “Leopardi,” “Capri Revolution” and “The Mayor of Rione Sanità” all launched from the Venice competition.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian actor Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) is set to star in “Il ritorno di Casanova,” a drama about what happens to a great lover when he gets older, to be directed by Oscar-winner Gabriele Salvatores (“Mediterraneo”).Loosely based on Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler‘s novella “Casanova’s Homecoming,” in which the Venetian libertine is having trouble contending with the fact that he’s over 60, “Ritorno di Casanova,” which translates as

Denzel Washington has topped The New York Times’ prestigious “25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far)” list.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian A-listers Alba Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) and Silvio Orlando (“The Young Pope”) are set to star in a high-profile prison drama to be directed by Leonardo di Costanzo, who is best known for social-realist drama “The Intruder.”Di Costanzo crossed over from documentary to feature filmmaking first with “The Interval,” which went to Venice, and then with “The Intruder” which in 2017 made a splash in Cannes.