Bayona’s “A Monster Calls” Wins Big at Spain’s Goya Awards

J.A. Bayona is celebrating a monster night…

The 41-year-old Spanish filmmaker took home the Best Director prize at the Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Awards ceremony over the weekend, while his film A Monster Calls proved to be the night’s big winner with nine awards.

J.A. Bayona

Bayona’s tale of a boy who faces his mother’s illness with the help of a monster had received 12 nominations.

Bayona, won the Best New Director award in 2008 for his name-making film The Orphanage, celebrated each award for A Monster Calls as if it were his first successful film, instead of the third in a highly acclaimed trilogy centering on the mother-child relationship. He dedicated his award to all who suffer from cancer and to his father, who taught him the transformative power of culture.

Meanwhile, Raul Arevalo’s directorial debut Fury of a Patient Man took the top award, Best Picture, while the 37-year-old Spanish filmmaker won the best new director and best original screenplay prizes.

Pedro Almodovar was on hand to celebrate his lead actress Emma Suarez’s special night, as she walked away with two Goya statuettes for her roles in his films Julieta and La Proxima Piel. But Almodovar, who will be the first Spaniard to chair the Cannes Film Festival jury in May, didn’t win in any of the six other categories in which his film competed.

Here’s the complete list of winners:

Film
Fury of a Patient Man

Director
J.A. Bayona for A Monster Calls

New Director
Raul Arevalo for Fury of a Patient Man

Original Screenplay
David Pulido, Raul Arevalo for Fury of a Patient Man

Adapted Screenplay
Alberto Rodriguez, Rafael Cobos for Smoke and Mirrors

Original Score
Fernando Velazquez for A Monster Calls

Original Song
“Ai, Ai, Ai” by Silvia Perez Cruz for Cerca de tu Casa

Lead Actor
Roberto Alamo for May God Save Us

Lead Actress
Emma Suarez for Julieta

Supporting Actor
Manolo Solo for Fury of a Patient Man

Supporting Actress
Emma Suarez for La proxima piel

New Actor
Carlos Santos for Smoke and Mirrors

New Actress
Anna Castillo for El Olivo

Production Design
Sandra Hermida Muniz for A Monster Calls

Photography
Oscar Faura for A Monster Calls

Editing
Bernat Vilplana, Jaume Marti for A Monster Calls

Artistic Director
Eugenio Caballero for A Monster Calls

Wardrobe
Paola Torres for 1898. The End of the Philippines

Makeup and Hair
David Marti, Marese Langan for A Monster Calls

Sound
Marc Orts, Oriol Tarrago, Peter Glossop for A Monster Calls

Special Effects
Felix Berges, Pau Costa for A Monster Calls

Animated Feature
Psiconautas, los ninos olivdados

Documentary Feature
Fragil Equilibrio

Ibero-American Film
El Ciudadano Ilustre by Gaston Duprat, Mariano Cohn

European Film
Elle by Paul Verhoeven

Fiction Short
Timecode by Juanjo Giemenz Pena

Documentary Short
Cabezas Habladoras by Juan Vicente Cordoba

Animated Short
Decorado by Alberto Vazquez

Honorary Goya
Ana Belen

Focus Features to Release Bayona’s “A Monster Calls” in October

It looks like J.A. Bayona will have a Monster October…

Focus Features will release the 41-year-old Spanish filmmaker’s fantasy drama A Monster Calls on October 21, one week later than originally planned.

J.A. Bayona & A Monster Calls Cast

Written by Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls follows a boy who seeks the help of a tree monster so that he can cope with his single mother’s terminal disease. The monster tells him stories to help him cope with his life, though he has difficulty understanding the point of the bizarre tales. The boy doesn’t get along with his grandmother, which is unfortunate because he will have to live with her when his mother passes away.

J.A. Bayona & A Monster Calls Cast

Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell, Lewis MacDougall and Liam Neeson star.

Bayona’s previous feature The Impossible played during awards season 2012 and focused on a family in peril during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand.

Focus Features to Release the Bayona-Directed “A Monster Calls” In October 2016

Juan Antonio Bayona’s Monster project will call on American audiences in October 2016…

Focus Features has announced plans to release A Monster Calls, the film directed by the 37-year-old Spanish filmmaker, on October 14, 2016.

Juan Antonio Bayona

Based on the award-winning children’s fantasy novel by Patrick NessA Monster Calls centers on a young boy who attempts to deal with his mother’s illness and school bullies by escaping into a fantastical world of monsters and fairy tales.

Ness wrote the novel based on an original idea by the late Siobhan Dowd, and he and illustrator Jim Kay won Britain’s prestigious Carnegie Medal and Greenaway Medal in 2012, presented to the year’s best children’s literature in the United Kingdom.

A Monster Calls

Ness is adapting the screenplay from his novel.

Bayona’s last project, The Impossible, earned him a Goya Award for Best Director in February 2013.

Bayona to Direct the Film Adaptation of “A Monster Calls”

Juan Antonio Bayona has landed a monster project…

The 37-year-old Spanish filmmaker, whose most recent film The Impossible earned him five Goya Awards, including Best Director, will next direct the film A Monster Calls.

Juan Antonio Bayona

It’s a film adaptation of the children’s fantasy novel of the same name by Patrick Ness from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd.

Set in present-day England, it centers on a boy who struggles to cope with the consequences of his mother’s terminal cancer; he is serially visited in the middle of the night by a monster who tells stories. Dowd suffered from terminal cancer herself when she started the story and died before she could write it.

A Monster Calls

The film adaptation is already on course to begin production this fall for a 2016 release.

Ness adapted the script his Carnegie Medal– and Greenaway Medal-winning work.

The film is being financed by River Road Entertainment and Participant Media. Meanwhile, Focus Features has committed $20 million to release A Monster Calls.

While Bayona is separately attached to helm a sequel to the zombie saga World War Z this film will come first.