AFM: Regardless of Strike Slowdown, Market Boasts New Initiatives With James McAvoy, Naomie Harris, Man Pearce

1 month ago 3 min read

The continued actors strike has solid a pall over this 12 months’s American Movie Market, which runs via Sunday, with far fewer initiatives on provide on the AFM‘s new headquarters within the Le Meriden Delfina lodge.

Producers and gross sales brokers have complained in regards to the difficulties in attaching identify expertise to initiatives till the actors union, SAG-AFTRA, reaches a brand new take care of the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers (AMPTP) representing the streamers and main studios.

However the indie enterprise finds a approach. Certainly, regardless of the strike-induced slowdown, quite a lot of star-studded packages have launched at AFM this week.

The Syndicate is pitching the brand new thriller Flip Up the Solar! from Welsh filmmaker Jamie Adams (Black Mountain Poets) starring James McAvoy alongside a European solid that features Lucas Bravo (Emily in Paris), Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale) and Almudena Amor (The Good Boss). The thriller, through which two {couples} by accident guide the identical countryside mansion for a weekend break, solely to find issues will not be as they appear, has already begun taking pictures within the U.Okay. underneath an Fairness-PACT settlement.

Man Pearce and DeWanda Smart are hooked up to star in Movie Bridge Worldwide‘s new supernatural thriller Killing Religion, from writer-director Ned Crowley (Center Man). Pearce will play an atheist physician who agrees to escort an anguished mom (Smart), satisfied her daughter is possessed by the satan, on a journey throughout a treacherous desert within the hope she will be able to discover a remedy for her. Tim Roth is in closing negotiations to co-star, taking part in a preacher.

Killing Religion has secured a SAG-AFTRA interim settlement to permit the undertaking to start filming in New Mexico in January. Movie Bridge has already closed a number of worldwide pre-sales on the movie, together with with Signature Leisure within the U.Okay., Umbrella Leisure in Australia and New Zealand, and Falcon Movies for the Center East and North Africa, amongst different offers.

In the meantime, GFM International Gross sales launched Robin and the Hood, a brand new household journey comedy from director Phil Hawkins (Prancer: A Christmas Story) which stars James Bond alum Naomie Harris as an unscrupulous land developer. Sport of Thrones actor Gwendoline Christie co-stars as an environmental activist. Mark Williams, who performed Arthur Weasley within the Harry Potter movies, performs the city mayor. Robin and the Hood accomplished principal pictures over the summer season. The movie will launch within the U.Okay. and Eire as a Sky Authentic on the Sky Cinema channel.

Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly is in closing negotiations to hitch Samuel L. Jackson and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Future actor Boyd Holbrook in Final Meals, a brand new drama from Tony-winner Kenny Leon (The Wiz Dwell, Netflix’s American Son). David Strathairn (Nomadland) can be in negotiations to hitch the undertaking, which is able to see Jackson play Walter, a disgraced former White Home chef who, 30 years later, finds himself cooking final meals for loss of life row inmates. Having secured a SAG-AFTRA interim settlement, Final Meals is about to start taking pictures in Atlanta on Nov. 28. The Answer is dealing with worldwide gross sales on the movie with CAA Media Finance and Sentient repping home rights.

And the late, nice American author Joan Didion is getting the artistic biopic therapy, courtesy of Matthew Wilder, the director of American Martyr and Your Title Right here and screenwriter on Paul Schrader’s Canine Eat Canine and Robert Schwentke’s John Malkovich-starrer Seneca. The still-untitled work, which David Michaels’ Enfant Horrible is producing and promoting, is described as set in a dreamlike day within the lifetime of Didion in Nineteen Sixties California when the younger journalist swirls between encounters with the jailed Manson Household killers, Black Panther protestors and Nancy Regan. The plan is to shoot the film in Los Angeles subsequent 12 months.