Neon Offers First Look at Pablo Larrain’s Princess Diana-Biopic “Spencer” Starring Kristen Stewart

Pablo Larraín’s latest project is earning royal raves…

Neon has released the first trailer and extended clip for the 45-year-old Chilean Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s latest film Spencer, the biopic about Princess Diana that stars Kristen Stewart.

Kristen Stewart, Princess Diana, Spencer

The film will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 3, then move on to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

There’s been a lot of attention on the prospect of Stewart’s portrayal of the iconic Lady Di (she was last in Venice playing another real-life woman in 2019’s Seberg).

The trailer footage begins with the arrival at Sandringham for the Christmas weekend and takes us through preparations for dinner while Diana is clearly stressed in a bathroom as she’s called to the table. Other images show her strutting down a long hallway dressed to the nines in a silver gown, sitting for a family portrait, paparazzi snapping cameras, and Diana also in moments of letting loose dancing and running across the estate grounds.

In the extended footage clip, Diana and Prince Charles discuss the scrutiny that’s placed on them by the media. She says, “If they’re circling, it seems they’re circling just me.” To which Charles retorts, “Perhaps that’s because I always take care to close my curtains.”

In the tense exchange, he adds, “There has to be two of you. There’s two of me… The real one and the one they take pictures of… We are given a task… But you have to be able to make your body do things you hate.” Diana: “That you hate?” Charles: “Yes… For the country, the people. They don’t want us to be people. That’s how it is. I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

They have their tiff across a distanced snooker table and also nip about the son’s taking up shooting outside, and her wardrobe. The scene culminates in Stewart’s Diana having a measured display of irritation at her husband who is railing on her, but with such a placid tone.

Directed by Larrain and written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the film takes place during the Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, when Diana decides to leave the marriage.

Jack Farthing is playing Charles, with further cast including Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris, Olga Hellsing and Thomas Douglas.

Prior to filming, Stewart admitted to nerves and excitement ahead of taking on the biopic. “The accent is intimidating as all hell because people know that voice, and it’s so, so distinct and particular,” she told InStyle. She continued, “It’s one of the saddest stories to exist ever, and I don’t want to just play Diana — I want to know her implicitly. I haven’t been this excited about playing a part, by the way, in so long.”

Neon and Topic Studios recently set a November 5 domestic release.

HBO Max Picks Up First Season of Daniela Vega’s Spanish-Language Thriller “La Jauria”

Daniela Vega is maxing out…

WarnerMedia streaming service HBO Max has picked up the first season of La Jauría, Amazon Prime Video’s Spanish-language thriller starring the 31-year-old Chilean actress and mezzo-soprano singer.

Daniela Vega

Hailing from Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín’s Fabula, which made the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman, the series tells the story of the disappearance of a young girl, who becomes the center of a police investigation into an online game that grooms men into assaulting women.

HBO Max will premiere the eight-part series on December 16.

In addition to Vega, La Jauría also stars Antonia Zegers, while Lucía Puenzo is the director. Fremantle produced the show alongside Fabula and Argentine company Kapow. Fremantle handles worldwide distribution.

Amazon commissioned a second season of La Jauría in July after premiering it across Latin America and Spain. Chilean public broadcaster TVN and the Consejo Nacional de Televisión (CNTV) are co-producers.

“It’s a gripping, compelling and timely drama that addresses important topical issues regarding the epidemic of violence against women. We are confident HBO’s audience will be moved by the standout storyline and the powerful performances,” said Sheila Aguirre, EVP of content distribution and format sales, Latin America, international, Fremantle.

Pablo Larraín to Direct Kirsten Stewart in Princess Diana Film “Spencer”

Pablo Larraín is taking on the portray of another legend…

The 43-year-old Oscar-nominated Chilean filmmaker will direct Kristen Stewart in the drama Spencer about Princess Diana

Pablo Larraín

The Steven Knight-scripted film covers a critical weekend in the early ‘90s, when Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn’t working, and that she needed to veer from a path that put her in line to one day be queen. The drama takes place over three days, in one of her final Christmas holidays in the House of Windsor in their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England. 

“I’ve always been intrigued and fascinated by the Royal Family and how things are in that culture, which we don’t have where I come from,” Larraín said. “Diana is such a powerful icon, where millions and millions of people, not just women, but many people around the world felt empathy toward her in her life. We decided to get into a story about identity, and around how a woman decides somehow, not to be the queen. She’s a woman who, in the journey of the movie, decides and realizes that she wants to be the woman she was before she met Charles.

The film won’t deal with Diana’s tragic death after she left that palace life, but will examine the fraying of the relationship with her husband, and her ferocious love for her sons Prince William and Prince Harry.

“It’s about finding herself, about understanding that possibly the most important thing for her is to be well, and to be with herself and by herself,” Larraín explained. “That’s why the movie is called Spencer, which is the family name she had before she met Charles. It’s very contained, set over a few days in Sandringham. They spent Christmas there for many years and that’s where we set the movie in the early ‘90s, around 1992, we’re not specific. It’s Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day, three days, very contained. We get to understand what it is she wants and what she will do.”

“How and why do you decide to do that? It’s a great universal story that can reach millions and millions of people, and that’s what we want to do. We want to make a movie that goes wide, connects with a worldwide audience that is interested in such a fascinating life,” he adds.

Production is expected to begin in early 2021 on the film, which Larraín will also produce.

Larraín previously directed Natalie Portman in Jackie. The film follows Jackie Kennedy in the days when she was First Lady in the White House and her life immediately following the assassination of her husband, U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The film earned Portman an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Larraín’s other credits include Neruda, about poet Pablo Neruda, as well as the Spanish-language film No, Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and The Club.

Music Box Films to Release Pablo Larraín’s “Ema” in U.S. Theaters Next Summer

Pablo Larraín latest film is headed to the U.S.

Music Box Filmshas acquired the U.S. distribution rights to the 43-year-old Chilean filmmaker’s Venice Film Festival drama Ema, starring newcomer Mariana Di GirolamoGael García Bernaland Santiago Cabrera.

Pablo Larraín

Music Box plans to release the Sundance Film Festival-bound drama in theaters in summer 2020. 

Ema charts a woman’s odyssey of personal liberation after a shocking incident upends her family life and marriage to a tempestuous choreographer.

“I feel proud and excited to be working again with Music Box Films, a wonderful company for a movie like Emain the USA,” said feted Chilean director Larraín. “It’s truly amazing.” 

The distributor previously released Larrain’s 2015 film The Club.

“This is one of those films that you have to see to believe,” added Music Box Films’ president William Schopf. “Entirely singular, hypnotic, and compelling, it’s a film that absolutely seduces the senses.”

Emamarks the third collaboration between Larraín and García Bernal, after they previously worked together on No(2012) and Neruda(2016).

Karla Souza to Star in Amazon’s FIFA Gate-Inspired Drama “El Presidente”

Karla Souzawill be acting presidential…

The 33-year-old Mexican actress and How to Get Away with Murder star is set to star in Amazon’s FIFA drama El Presidente.

Karla Souza

Andrés Parra (Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal) and Paulina Gaitán (Diablo Guardian) also star in the eight-part series, which is produced by Oscar‐winning director Pablo Larrain’s production company Fabula (A Fantastic Woman), Narcosproducer Gaumont and Argentine producer Kapow.

Birdman’sArmando Bowill direct and executive-produce the series, which is inspired by the real-life characters and events behind the 2015 “FIFA Gate” corruption scandal.

The series explores the scandal from the angle of a small‐time Chilean football club president who rises from obscurity to become a key player in a $150M bribery conspiracy. Set against the backdrop of cities across Latin America, the U.S. and Europe, the series explores the sports scandal that rocked the world through the story of Jadue (Parra), a small‐time Chilean football club president who rose from obscurity to become a key player in a $150M bribery conspiracy at the hand of the infamous president of the Argentine football association, Julio Grondona.

It will air on Amazon’s SVOD service in more than 200 countries and territories.

El Presidente will show the world, with loads of irony, how the most beloved sport of all is in fact a multimillionaire business run by a ridiculous mob we have never seen before: the Football Mafia,” added Bo.

Souza’s previous credits include Everybody Loves Somebody and 31 días.

Guillermo del Toro Wins Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for “The Shape of Water”

It’s turned out to be a monster night for Guillermo del Toro

The 53-year-old Mexican filmmaker had a nearly perfect night, picking up his first-ever Academy Awards for his romantic fantasy drama The Shape of Water.

Guillermo del Toro

del Toro, who co-wrote, directed and produced the film, was named Best Director, an award he was predicted to win throughout awards season.

Additionally, del Toro’s The Shape of Water took home the night’s top prize, Best Picture.

The romantic fable was conceived by del Toro as a tribute to the monster movies he loved as a child, updated to tell a story about tolerance and compassion that could speak to a contemporary audience.The film ultimately took home four Oscars, the most of any nominee.

“As a kid enamored of movies growing up in Mexico, I thought it would never happened, but it happened,” said del Toro, in accepting the Best Picture award.

del Toro, who missed out on being 3-for-3 when he lost in the Best Original Screenplay category, urged other young filmmakers to take inspiration from his win, and “use the power of fantasy to tell stories about things that are real in the world.”

The award was presented by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, who famously announced the wrong Best Picture winner last year, naming La La Land instead of actual winner Moonlight.

He’s the latest Mexican filmmaker to take home multiple awards in the same night… Alejandro González Iñárritu previously scored three Oscar wins in 2015 for Birdman: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

One year earlier, Alfonso Cuaron took home two Oscars for his film Gravity: Best Director. and Best Film Editing.

Meanwhile, Disney/Pixar’s Dia de los Muertos-themed animated film Coco won best animated feature and its featured tune, “Remember Me,” won Best Original Song.

And, the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to A Fantastic Woman, from Chile, the story of a transgender person struggling in the aftermath of the death of a lover.

The film edged out Ruben Östlund’s Swedish satire The Square and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Russian fable Loveless.

Directed by Sebastián Lelio and written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza, the film marks the first Chilean entry for the foreign language Oscar since Pablo Larraín’s No, and the first ever Academy award for Lelio, in his follow-up to the acclaimed film Gloria.

At Sunday’s ceremony, the film’s star Daniela Vega became the first openly transgender person to present an award at the Oscars.

Here’s a look at all of this year’s Academy Award winners.

BEST PICTURE
The Shape of Water

ACTRESS
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

ACTOR
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

DIRECTOR
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water 

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Allison Janney, I, Tonya

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

ORIGINAL SONG (PRESENTED TO SONGWRITERS)
Remember Me, from Coco (Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez)

ORIGINAL SCORE
The Shape of Water, Alexandre Desplat 

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Blade Runner 2049, Roger A. Deakins 

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Get Out, Jordan Peele 

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Call Me By Your Name, James Ivory 

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
The Silent Child 

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)
Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 

FILM EDITING
Dunkirk, Lee Smith 

VISUAL EFFECTS
Blade Runner 2049 

ANIMATED FEATURE
Coco

 SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
Dear Basketball 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
A Fantastic Woman (Chile) 

PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Shape of Water 

SOUND MIXING
Dunkirk 

SOUND EDITING
Dunkirk, Richard King and Alex Gibson 

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)
Icarus 

COSTUME DESIGN
Phantom Thread, Mark Bridges

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Darkest Hour, Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick

Sebastián Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” Makes Oscars Shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film

Sebastián Lelio is one step closer to a special date with Oscar

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has whittled through 92 submissions to come up with its shortlist of nine titles to advance in the Best Foreign Language Film category this year, with the 43-year-old Argentinian-born Chilean filmmaker still in the running.

Sebastián Lelio

Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, Chile’s pick to enter the race for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, joins other favorites like Ruben Ostlund’s The Square (Sweden) and Loveless from Russia’s Andrey Zvyagintsev in advancing to the next round.

Each of those was nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this week. As was Fatih Akin’s Germany terrorism drama In The Fade, which has seen its street cred solidified by the Academy with tonight’s shortlist inclusion.

The final five Academy Award nominations in the race will be announced along with the rest of the categories on January 23.

Films also making the cut include Berlinale Golden Bear winner On Body And Soul from resurgent Turkish director Ildikó Enyedi; and Venice favorites Foxtrot, from Israel’s Samuel Maoz, and The Insult by Franco-Lebanese helmer Ziad Doueiri.

The last Spanish-language film to earn a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category was Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (representing Colombia) in 2015.

The Last Spanish-language film to win the Oscar in the category was Juan José Campanella’s The Secret in Their Eyes (representing Argentina) in 2009. 

In 2012, Chile earned its first and only Oscar nomination in the category with Pablo Larrain’s No, which starred Gael Garcia Bernal.

Here’s this year’s complete shortlist:

Chile, A Fantastic Woman, Sebastián Lelio, director;
Germany, In the Fade, Fatih Akin, director;
Hungary, On Body and Soul, Ildikó Enyedi, director;
Israel, Foxtrot, Samuel Maoz, director;
Lebanon, The Insult, Ziad Doueiri, dirctor;
Russia, Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev, director;
Senegal, Félicité, Alain Gomis, director;
South Africa, The Wound, John Trengove, director;
Sweden, The Square, Ruben Östlund, director.

Larrain Attached to Direct Annapurna Pictures’ “The True American”

Things could be ringing True for Pablo Larraín

The 40-year-old Chilean filmmaker, the Oscar-nominated director behind such titles as Jackie and Neruda, is attached to direct Tom Hardy in Annapurna Pictures’ The True American.

Pablo Larraín

The project is based on Anand Giridharadas’ nonfiction book of the same name, which is set in Texas in the days following 9/11. It follows the story of Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant and Bangladesh Air Force veteran who narrowly survived a killing spree that took the lives of two other immigrants. Employed at a Dallas-area convenience store as he established himself in America, Bhuiyan worked to have his attacker, self-styled “Arab-slayer” Mark Stroman, spared from execution.

This is a project that has been kicking around for a few years now, with Kathryn Bigelow attached to direct at one point, but now it’s moving forward with Bigelow taking a producer role on the film.

Larraín is fast becoming one of the most sought after international directors after his recent effort Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as the former First Lady in the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was nominated for three Oscars.

His Spanish-language film Neruda, a twist on the biopic genre about the eponymous Nobel Prize-winning poet, was made in Chile and debuted at the Cannes Film Festival while his 2012 political satire No was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas was published in 2014 by W.W. Norton & Company.

Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman”

Sebastián Lelio’s latest project is expanding globally…

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North American, Australian and New Zealand rights to the 42-year-old Argentine-Chilean filmmaker’s A Fantastic Woman, ahead of its world premiere in competition Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sebastián Lelio

Written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza, the Spanish-language film stars Daniela Vega as Marina, a waitress and singer, and Orlando (Francisco Reyes), an older man, who are in love and planning for the future. After Orlando suddenly falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to confront his family and society, and to fight again to show them who she is: complex, strong, forthright, fantastic.

The Chile-U.S.-Germany-Spain co-production is produced by Fabula’s Juan de Dios Larraín and Pablo Larraín with German banner Komplizen Film.

Lelio’s previous film, Gloria, won Best Ibero-American Film at the 1st Platino Awards.

Garcia Bernal Picks Up FIPRESCI Prize at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

Gael Garcia Bernal is a diamond in the desert…

The 38-year-old Mexican actor picked up the FIPRESCI Prize for best actor at the 27th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival for his performance in Pablo Larrain’s Neruda.

Gael Garcia Bernal

Garcia Bernal portrays Oscar Peluchonneau, the fascist Chief of the Policía de Investigaciones, in the film about poet and Communist Senator Pablo Neruda.

Neruda, which was selected as the Chilean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards, also picked up the fest’s Cine Latino Award.

The John Schlesinger Award, presented to a director of a first or second feature documentary, was awarded to Cristina Herrera Borquez for No Dress Code Required, which looks at a same-sex couple as they fight for the right to marry in their hometown of Mexicali, Baja California.

The fest, which ran through January 16, announced its juried award winners at a luncheon Saturday at the Hilton Palm Springs.

Here’s the complete list of winners:

FIPRESCI Prize for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
Toni Erdmann (Germany), directed by Maren Ade

FIPRESCI Prize for the Best Actor in a Foreign Language Film
Gael García Bernal in Neruda (Chile)

FIPRESCI Prize for Best Actress in a Foreign Language Film
Isabelle Huppert in Elle(France)

New Voices/New Visions Award
Winner: White Sun (Nepal/U.S./Qatar/Netherlands), directed by Deepak Runiyar
Special Mentions: Kati Kati (Kenya/Germany), directed by Mbithi Masya and Mellow Mud (Latvia), directed by Renārs Vimba

The John Schlesinger Award
Winner: No Dress Code Required (Mexico), directed by Cristina Herrera Bórquez
Special Mention: Beauties of the Night (Mexico), directed by Maria José Cuevas 

Cine Latino Award
Winner: Neruda (Chile), directed by Pablo Larraín
Special Mention: Everything Else (Mexico), directed by Natalia Alamda

HP Bridging the Borders Award
Winner: Mercenary (France), directed by Sacha Wolff