Gina Rodriguez has (lost &) found her next project…
The 36-year-old Golden Globe-winning Puerto Rican actress and former Jane the Virgin star is set to star in Amazon Studios’ comedy adventureLost and Found.
Rodriguez will star opposite Zachary Levi, with Steve Pink set to direct. Pink and Jeff Morris wrote the script, about a headstrong lawyer and an off-the-grid renegade who reluctantly team up to find a long-lost buried treasure by the Mississippi River.
Levi is producing through his Wyldwood Studios along with Rodriguez and Molly Breeskin under their banner I Can and I Will Productions, and Pink through his Pink Machine banner.
Her past past films include Deepwater Horizon, Ferdinand, Annihilationand the Miss Balaremake.
She voices the title character in the Netflix animated action-adventure series Carmen San Diegoand is producer of the Disney+ series Diary of a Future President.
Focus Features has pre-bought world rights to under-the-radar supernatural-horror You Won’t Be Alone, which will star the 40-year-old half-Spanish Swedish actress.
Rapace will appear opposite Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta, Félix Maritaud and Sara Klimoska.
Filming has just wrapped in Serbia on the feature, which is being made by Kristina Ceyton and Sam Jennings.
Set in an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, the film follows a young witch who is left to go feral in the woods. Curious about life as a human, she accidentally kills a peasant in the village, then takes her shape to see what life is like in her skin. This ignites her deep-seated curiosity to experience life inside the bodies of others. The witch will be played by different actors and the film will include an old Macedonian dialect.
The movie marks the feature debut of Australian-Macedonian writer-director Goran Stolevski, whose short film Would You Look At Her won Best International Short Film at 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Focus will handle domestic and Universal Pictures International will handle international territories. Bankside is the sales agent and cut the deal with Focus, which has boarded early.
Said producers Kristina Ceyton and Sam Jennings: “You Won’t Be Alone is a very special project by a very special and talented filmmaker and we’re so proud and excited to be producing Goran Stolevski’s debut feature film. And to be collaborating with Focus Features and, for the third time, with Bankside Films, to bring this story to life and out into the world. Making a film amidst a pandemic has certainly been challenging, but with such supportive financiers in Screen Australia and Film Victoria, our post partner KOJO Studios, Head Gear Films, and the dedication of our amazingly committed international cast and the incredible crew here in Serbia, we feel very grateful.”
Focus Features‘ Sundance Film Festival acquisition of Annapurna/Plan B’s Kajillionaire, starring the 36-year-old Golden Globe-winning actress and formerJane the Virginstar, will now open in select theaters on September 25, a week later than originally anticipated.
The Miranda July directed film will hit PVOD around October 16. Despite that, the film’s marketing will be driven toward its theatrical release, and the movie will continue to be available to cinemas while it’s on PVOD.
Written and directed by July, Kajillionaire follows con artists Theresa and Robert, who spent 26 years training their only daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), to swindle, scam and steal at every opportunity. During a desperate, hastily conceived heist, they charm a kind stranger, Melanie (Rodriguez), into joining their next scheme, completely shaking up Old Dolio’s routine. Her unlikely connection with Melanie begins to challenge Old Dolio’s odd and stoic reality — and she finds herself suddenly caught between the only family she has ever known and the prospect of total freedom.
The film also stars two-time Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins and three-time nominee Debra Winger.
During the pandemic when the big circuits were closed, Focus Features played two titles on theatrical PVOD: Jon Stewart’s political comedy Irresistibleand the Nisha Ganatra directed music drama The High Note.
Gael García Bernal is hitting the ring to play a Lucha Libre legend.
The 41-year-old Mexican actor/filmmaker will star in Cassandro, an independent feature from Oscar winning and two-time Emmy nominee filmmaker Roger Ross Williams.
Cassandro tells the true story of Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rises to international stardom after he creates the “exotico” character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” and in the process upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.
Armendáriz at the age of 15 quit school and began training for Lucha Libre, beginning his professional wrestling career in 1988 under the mask as Mister Romano. Ultimately he would abandon the character and take on the exotico character of Baby Sharon. Exoticos are male wrestlers who dress in drag.
Ultimately, Armendáriz would take the new ring name of Cassandro, from a Tijuana brothel keeper Cassandra whom he appreciated.
In January 1991, after bad press that he was going to wrestle El Hijo del Santo in the UWA World Welterweight Championship, Armendáriz reportedly attempted suicide by cutting his wrists with a razor blade, but was saved.
The title match occurred a week later and Armendáriz credits it as the match that earned him the lucha libre community’s acceptance.
While Cassandro failed to win the UWA World Welterweight Championship from El Hijo del Santo, he managed to win his first title, the UWA World Lightweight Championship in October 1992, by defeating Lasser, becoming the first exótico in history to hold a championship in UWA.
Bernal, who will star in M. Night Shyamalan’s new secret movie from Universal, will shoot that movie first before stepping into the ring for Cassandro, which is eyeing a November start in Mexico.
Cassandro will rep the feature narrative directorial debut for Williams, who took home the Oscar for his short docu Music by Prudence in 2010, and recently was nominated at the Emmys a second time, this time in Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Special category for the HBO doc The Apollo. That movie, which made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, follows the historic and famed Harlem NYC venue and its legacy.
“As a filmmaker, my own life experience has inspired my passion to tell inspirational stories about outsiders and uplift the voices of people we don’t normally see on screen. The true story of Cassandro, Saúl Armendáriz, was one I knew I wanted to tell from the moment I met him. I look forward to being able to bring Saúl’s story to a wide audience,” said Williams.
Williams wrote Cassandro with Emmy-winner David Teague and Julián Herbert (Satelite).
Bernal is a two-time Golden Globe nominee and winner for the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. He was part of the SAG ensemble nominated cast of Paramount’s Babel, and a BAFTA nominee for Focus Features’ 2004 The Motorcycle Diaries.
The filmmakers are reportedly in talks with Amazon to acquire Cassandro once complete, but that deal is contingent on several factors before it’s a negative pick-up.
Focus Features has released the first trailer for Kajillionaire, Miranda July’s Sundance comedy about a family of grifters starring the 36-year-old Puerto Rican actress and former Jane the Virgin star.
“Most people wanna be kajillionaires,” Dad says in the clip. “That’s the dream. That’s how they get you hooked — hooked on sugar, hooked on caffeine. Ha, ha, ha, cry, cry, cry. Me? I prefer to just skim.” His daughter looks up and says, “So do I.”
Here is your logline: Con artists Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) have spent 26 years training their only daughter, Old Dollo (Evan Rachel Wood), to swindle, scam and steal at every opportunity.
“She learned to forge before she learned to write,” Pops boasts of Old Dollo. “Actually, that’s how she did learn to write.”
During a desperate, hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger (Rodriguez) into joining their next scam, only to have their entire world turned upside down.
July wrote and directed Kajillionaire as her first feature since 2011’s The Future.
The trailer features “Mr. Lonely,” a song performed by Angel Olsen & Emile Mosseri, the latter being the film’s composer.
Produced by Plan B and Annapurna Pictures,Focus Features plans to release the film in theaters in September.
Amber Garza’s words will be coming to life on the big screen…
Focus Features and Will Packer Productions are developing When I Was You, a feature adaptation based on the forthcoming book from the Latina author.
Described as a female-driven thriller, When I Was You centers on Kelly Medina, whose obsession starts on an ordinary fall morning when she gets a call from her son’s pediatrician. It’s a cruel mistake; her son left for college a year ago. The receptionist quickly apologizes: another Kelly Medina, who’s half her age, is a new patient.
For days, Kelly can’t stop thinking about the woman who shares her name, lives in her same town, has a baby, and her whole life ahead of her. When Kelly just happens to bump into the single mother outside that pediatrician’s office, it’s simple curiosity getting the better of her. When they become friends, Kelly can’t help but find a renewed sense of purpose taking care of this young woman and her adorable baby boy. And when one Kelly disappears, well, the other one may know why.
The book is slated for release, via MIRA, in August 2020. Will Packer and James Lopezwill produce the film project under the Will Packer Productions banner.
Garza’s works include The Girl Frozen in Time, The Last Time I Saw Her, and theProwl trilogy.
Rosie Perez is preparing for the Dead days of summer…
Focus Features will release Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, starring the 54-year-old Puerto Rican actress,wide on June 14 this year.
Billed as “the greatest zombie cast ever disassembled”, The Dead Don’t Die boasts an all-star cast of Perez, Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane and Tom Waits.
Jarmusch writes and directs the film his third with Focus Features. The studio previously released the filmmaker’s highest-grossing pic in his canon, 2005’s Broken Flowersstarring Bill Murray which made $13.7M.
Focus Features and Universal Pictures Internationalwill distribute the film worldwide.
Focus Features has released a trailer for Everybody Knows, a Spanish-language film starring the 44-year-old Spanish actress and her actor-husband Javier Bardem.
The film, Asghar Farhadi’s follow-up to his Oscar winner The Salesman, the film centers on Laura (Cruz) on her travels from Argentina to her small hometown in Spain for her sister’s wedding, bringing her two children with her. Amid the joyful reunion and festivities, the eldest daughter is abducted. In the tense days that follow, various family and community tensions surface and deeply hidden secrets are revealed. Ricardo Darín co-stars.
Focus Features scored a rights deal in May after the film had its world premiere as the opening film at the Cannes Film Festival. It now will have a platform release beginning February 8.
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will have a thrilling Valentine’s month…
Focus Features has set a February 8 limited release date for Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi’s psychological thriller starring the 44-year-old Spanish actress and her 49-year-old Spanish actor husband.
The film, which also stars Ricardo Darín, opened the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Written and directed by Farhadi, the Spanish-language film first will get a brief Oscar-qualifying run starting on November 30.
It follows Laura (Cruz) on her travels with her two kids from Argentina to her small hometown in Spain for her sister’s wedding. Amid the joyful reunion and festivities, the eldest daughter is abducted. In the tense days that follow, various family and community tensions surface and deeply hidden secrets are revealed.
At the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, Farhadi talked about his inspiration for the movie. “It comes from a trip I had to Spain with my family 15 years ago, he said. “My daughter was very small at that time, and she saw photos of a girl on the wall in the street. She asked my interpreter, ‘Who is she?’ and he explained to us that there had been a kidnapping. My daughter was afraid for the whole trip. And from that time, I was thinking about this situation, in which a family would lose one member. … It was with me for a long time.”
Great Scots! Ismael Cruz Córdova has landed a new role…
The 30-year-old Puerto Rican actor has joined the cast of Working Title and Focus Features’ period drama Mary, Queen of Scots.
Josie Rourke is directing the film from a script by Beau Willimon, with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie starring.
The story explores the turbulent life of the charismatic Mary Stuart (Ronan), Queen of France at 16 and widow at 18 who defies pressure to remarry. Instead, she returns to her native Scotland to reclaim her rightful throne, but Scotland and England fall under the rule of the compelling Elizabeth I.
Cordova will play the role of Rizzio, Mary’s confidant.
Production is underway in England and Scotland.
Cordova recently had a standout performance as the troubled boxer Hector Campos on Season 4 of Showtime’s Ray Donovan. He recently wrapped his role as the male lead opposite Gina Rodriguez in the Catherine Hardwicke-helmed remake Miss Balaand also appeared in Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
