Tag: Entertainment-Variety

Heretic has boarded international sales on “Forever Your Maternal Animal,” the new film from Valentina Maurel, set to premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Benelux distribution is set with Cinéart, while JHR Films will release the film in France.

The film reunites Heretic with the director after the company represented her debut feature, Locarno competition title “I Have Electric Dreams.”

“Forever Your Maternal Animal” follows Elsa, who returns to Costa Rica after years of studying in Europe and reconnects with her younger sister, who has drifted into an increasingly elusive and introspective world, as their parents retreat into their own private preoccupations.

“The film lingers in the shifting space between closeness and estrangement, where reality dissolves into memory, desire and the quiet pull of what remains unspoken,” according to a statement.

Maurel, of Franco-Costa Rican origin and based in Costa Rica, holds a degree in filmmaking from INSAS in Brussels. Her graduation film “Paul Is Here” won first prize at the Cinéfondation selection of the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. Her short “Lucía en el limbo,” shot in Costa Rica, was selected for Critics’ Week at Cannes in 2019, screened at the Toronto Film Festival, and won first prize at the Guanajuato Film Festival. Her debut feature “I Have Electric Dreams” premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022.

Ioanna Stais, Heretic’s head of sales and acquisitions, commented: “Valentina (Maurel) is a unique voice in contemporary cinema, and we are proud to continue our journey with her on ‘Forever Your Maternal Animal.’ Having been with her since ‘I Have Electric Dreams,’ we deeply value her artistic vision and the emotional precision she brings to every frame. This new film further confirms her as a filmmaker of exceptional sensitivity and strength, and we are thrilled to bring it to international audiences.”

Stephan Depotter, co-CEO of Cinéart, commented: “Valentina Maurel demonstrates her exceptional talent once again with ‘Forever Your Maternal Animal.’ I greatly admire the way her direction brings out such authentic and nuanced performances from the cast. I was particularly impressed by Maurel’s ability to communicate complex emotions and themes with remarkable subtlety — often conveying so much with just one look or a single frame.”

Jane Roger, co-founder of Paris-based arthouse distributor JHR Films, added: “Together with my partner Arnaud Dommerc, we were immediately struck by how ‘Forever Your Maternal Animal’ confirms Valentina Maurel as a singular voice on family and desire – at once clear-eyed and deeply sensitive. We are delighted to bring this new film to French audiences.”

“Forever Your Maternal Animal” is produced by Wrong Men and Geko Films in co-production with Pimienta. The film is produced by Benoît Roland and Grégoire Debailly with co-producer Nicolás Celis. The production is a collaboration between Belgium, France and Mexico.

Prime Video has committed to seven Filipino Prime Original series through its first-ever local slate event in the Philippines, forging content partnerships with networks ABS-CBN and GMA across genres spanning political thriller, family drama, psychological suspense, romance, crime and comedy.

The late also covers licensed Filipino films and a raft of Korean series running through Q4 2026.

Now streaming since March 20, crime drama “The Silent Noise” – produced by ABS-CBN Studios – centers on Eli, a deaf 10-year-old in the coastal town of Escondido who tries to make sense of his teacher’s sudden death as police investigation turns suspicion toward his own family. Angelica Panganiban and Zanjoe Marudo lead the cast, alongside Zaijian Jaranilla, Mutya Orquia, Joem Bascon, Mylene Dizon and KD Omalin.

The first new original out of the gate is romance “Love Is Never Gone,” set for May 8. Produced by Dreamscape Entertainment and ABS-CBN Studios, the series stars Joshua Garcia and Ivana Alawi as two people from different circumstances whose lives collide unexpectedly in Morocco, with their bond tested by distance, personal history and the choices each must make. Jameson Blake, Jane Oineza, Michael de Mesa, Epy Quizon and Dina Bonnevie also feature.

Psychological drama “The Loyalty Game” follows in July, with Janine Gutierrez, Jericho Rosales and Sofia Andres starring in a story of a seemingly solid couple whose relationship buckles when a third party enters their lives and pushes the limits of trust in ways none of them anticipated. The series is produced by Star Creatives and ABS-CBN Studios.

September brings two titles. Family drama “Honor Thy Mother” – produced by ABS-CBN Studios and GMA – reunites Sharon Cuneta and Barbie Forteza as a mother and daughter who, after years apart, find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter contest for what each believes is rightfully hers. Old wounds resurface as they weigh whether to confront the past together or let it drive them further apart. John Estrada, Tonton Gutierrez, Khalil Ramos and Mercedes Cabral also star.

Cross-cultural drama “Kopino,” produced by Dreamscape Entertainment and ABS-CBN Studios and arriving in November, follows a woman who becomes drawn into the lives of Kopino children – Korean-Filipino children often abandoned by their foreign fathers – and the man connected to their history. The series explores themes of identity, accountability and the long reach of choices made across borders. Paulo Avelino, Kim Chiu and Jo Byeong Kyu star.

Political thriller “Behind Closed Doors,” produced by GMA and set for release later in the year, casts Marian Rivera as a radio announcer whose secret relationship with the Philippine President – portrayed by Dingdong Dantes in a special participation – is exposed when she becomes the prime suspect in his assassination. Jillian Ward plays his daughter. Comedy competition series “LOL: Last One Laughing Philippines” also returns for a second season with Vice Ganda as host; premiere date and cast are to be confirmed.

“We’ve seen Filipino audiences embrace global Prime Video hits like ‘The Boys’ and ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ which shows the appetite for premium storytelling,” said David Simonsen, director of Prime Video Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. “Now we’re bringing that same commitment to quality with local originals featuring Filipino talent.”

Chaitanya Divan, head of content acquisition at Prime Video Southeast Asia, added: “Working closely with ABS-CBN and GMA, we’re supporting local storytellers to bring their visions to life – stories that speak to our local Filipino audiences while showcasing the incredible Filipino talents.”

Licensed Filipino film additions include GMA Pictures comedy “Samahan ng mga Makasalanan,” due in April, starring David Licauco, Sanya Lopez and Joel Torre; horror anthology “Gabi ng Lagim” (June), framed through the storytelling of Jessica Soho and featuring Arthur Acuna, Elijah Canlas and Jillian Ward; legal drama sequel “Bar Boys: After School” (July), with Carlo Aquino, Rocco Nacino, Enzo Pineda and Kean Cipriano; and queer drama “Open Endings” (July), with Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Janella Salvador, Klea Pineda and Leanne Mamonong. The Bayaniverse historical trilogy – “Quezon” (May), “Heneral Luna” and “Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral” – rounds out the licensed film slate, with “Quezon” starring Jericho Rosales as Manuel L. Quezon in a dramatization of the future president’s political ascent through the American occupation era.

On the Korean side, the broader 2026 lineup opens April 17 with “Absolute Value of Romance,” in which high school student Yeo Eui-ju moonlights as a web novelist whose new teachers become unlikely inspiration; it stars Kim Hyang Gi alongside Cha Hak-yeon and Kim Jae-hyun, and is produced by Coupang Play, Mediacorp, Good Wave Inc. and Borderless Film. Workplace romance “See You at Work Tomorrow!” (June), adapted from a Kakao Webtoon and starring Seo In-guk and Park Ji-hyun, follows a burnt-out product planner who has sworn off relationships until her most dreaded colleague changes course. Produced by Studio Dragon and Kross Pictures.

Titles also include “A Love Other Than Yours” (September), in which Seo Kangjun and Ahn Eun-jin play a couple a decade into their relationship who make a dangerous pact to confront temptation when new romantic interests enter both their lives, with Lee Joo Ahn and Jo Aram also starring, produced by Unichem; “Final Table” (working title, coming soon), with Ahn Hyo-seop as a chef based abroad who enters a high-profile Korean culinary competition representing the restaurant Familia, produced by SLL, B.A. Entertainment and DZoongFilm; and “Nine to Six” (Q4), in which Park Min Young plays a driven legal team deputy manager whose orderly career is upended when she finds herself drawn to both a warm-hearted junior colleague Han Sun-woo (Yook Sung Jae) and the seemingly flawless General Manager Park Hyun-tae (Go Soo), produced by Samhwa Networks.

Further Korean titles include spy romance “Love in Disguise” (October), with Yim Siwan and Seorina, produced by CJ ENM Studios and Pitapat Studio; historical action series “Sacred Jewel,” set during the 13th-century Mongol invasions and starring Ahn Bo-hyun, Lee Sung-min and Claudia Kim, produced by SLL and Celltrion Entertainment; and supernatural rom-com “Human X Gumiho,” with Gianna Jun as a 2,000-year-old gumiho disguised as a top actress opposite Ji Chang Wook, produced by HighZium Studio and Contents Planner. Anime additions include “The Ghost in the Shell” and “From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordman Season 2.”

Prime Video is available in the Philippines at PHP149 ($2.49) per month.

Vietnamese romantic drama “Meet Me at the Eclipse” (Hẹn Em Ngày Nhật Thực) will open theatrically across North America on May 8, distributed worldwide by Mockingbird Pictures, following a dominant run at the Vietnamese local box office that has seen it clear $4 million and climb into the record books.

Directed by Lê Thiện Viễn and produced by Lý Minh Thắng under Cánh Đồng Film, the film opened in Vietnam on March 27 and has held the top spot on the national chart for three consecutive weeks. It now ranks as the second highest-grossing original screenplay romance in Vietnamese box office history, behind only “Mai,” the 2024 hit directed by Trấn Thành.

The film uses a 1995 solar eclipse as its central metaphor, tracing the journey of a woman who discovers a cache of unsent love letters and travels back to her rural hometown, where a reunion with her first love forces a reckoning with the past she never fully closed. The theatrical strategy for North America is being overseen by Thanh Tran of Mockingbird Pictures, with engagements confirmed at AMC, Regal Cinemas, and Cinemark locations.

A day earlier, on May 7, the film will also open theatrically in Australia and New Zealand. Mockingbird is in advanced negotiations for releases in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, with dates yet to be confirmed for those territories.

Phong Duong, business director of Mockingbird Pictures, noted: “Our ambition is to position Vietnamese and Southeast Asian cinema as a sustained presence on the global stage – not through isolated breakout titles, but by building a long-term ecosystem where local stories can travel, resonate, and thrive across international markets.”

Over the past decade, Mockingbird Pictures has built a substantial distribution operation in Vietnam, putting out more than 60 films in cinemas each year while maintaining a digital slate of over 100 titles annually across streaming platforms, among them Netflix. The company has increasingly extended that reach into international sales, with a growing focus on cross-border theatrical releases.

Cannes is set to welcome a Japan IP market at this year’s festival.

Cannes market, the film festival’s business hub, is collaborating with Tokyo International Film Festival Content Market (TIFFCOM) on the strategic gathering, which will run from May 15 to 17.

The news comes as Japan readies to take the spotlight at this year’s market after being named the 2026 Country of Honor.

The Japan IP market, which will take place on the Art Explora catamaran at Cannes’ Vieux-Port, is set to be a high-level networking platform for international companies to meet with their Japanese counterparts and discuss a selection of leading IP across cinema, animation and publishing originating from Japan. There will be opportunities to set up one-on-one business meetings, pitch sessions and a curated program of presentations and conferences.

The event will also include a focus on the relationship between France Japan, highlighting the creative and industrial partnership between the two countries.

Among IP holders set to attend are Amuse Creative Studio, Kadokawa Corporation, Nihon Bungeisha, Nippon Animation, Shochiku, Shufu To Seikatsu Sha and Toei Company.

Keynote seminar “The Future of Japanese IP in Global Adaptations,” presented by “One Piece” exec producer and Filosophia CEO Tetsu Fujimura, is set for May 15 at 10am. Pitch sessions will take place on May 16 and one-to-one meetings throughout the three days of the IP market. Pre-registration is required.

“We are thrilled to demonstrate how the Country of Honour program can create new opportunities for collaboration, and the launch of the Japan IP Market with TIFFCOM is a perfect illustration,” says Marché du Film exec director Guillaume Esmiol. “Japan is renowned as the birthplace of some of the world’s most powerful IP, from manga and anime to novels, remakes and video games. This new initiative will create further opportunities to foster international collaborations. At the same time, it reinforces the growing importance of the IP market at the Marché du Film, which has been a key strategic focus for several years.”

TIFFCOM CEO Yasushi Shiina said: “The Japan IP Market is an important step for Japanese intellectual property on the global stage. We are very pleased to launch this platform with the Marché du Film, especially with Japan as Country of Honour this year. This is the ideal environment to highlight and showcase the extraordinary adaptability and creativity of Japanese content across multiple formats and markets. By bringing together key players from Japan and around the world in Cannes, we aim to create new opportunities for business and international growth.”

Warner Bros. added a slew of titles to its release calendar in 2027 and beyond, including a “Weapons” prequel about Aunt Gladys and the Margot Robbie-led “Ocean’s” prequel.

New additions to the schedule are “The Revenge of La Llorona” (April 9, 2027), “Ocean’s” prequel (June 25, 2027), “Evil Dead Wrath” (April 7, 2028), “Gladys” (Sept. 8, 2028), “Final Destination 7” (May 12, 2028),  Zach Cregger’s next thriller “The Flood” (Aug. 11, 2028) and an untitled Baz Luhrmann film about Joan of Arc (Nov. 22, 2028).

Warner Bros. announced the news at CinemaCon, the annual gathering of movie theater owners that’s currently taking place in Las Vegas. Warner Bros. is in the process of being sold to Paramount Skydance, which means that production timelines may be altered, and release dates could shift around if the merger goes through. However, Paramount’s CEO, David Ellison, has pledged to release 30 films a year once the two media giants become one, meaning they’ll need a lot of new material to fill out their theatrical slates.

Mike De Luca noted the overall box office is down from pre-pandemic years because the number of major studio releases has declined by 23%. “You don’t need a crystal ball to wonder what admissions might look like that missing volume was made up for and restored,” he said.

Warner Bros., meanwhile, has increased its output since De Luca and Pam Abdy took over as co-chairs in 2022. The studio released six films that year and was able to bump up that number to 11 in 2025. The bosses said they plan to unveil 14 movies in 2026 and 18 movies in 2027.

“Look, we know they’re not all going to work,” Abdy acknowledged from the stage. “There’s no version of this business that’s risk-free. But our job is to step up, make bets and own it when it doesn’t work.”

In “Mother Mary,” the title character (Anne Hathaway), a global pop superstar who you could say is based on a lot of people but is most directly and obviously a riff on Lady Gaga (maximalist dance pop; extravagant postmodern wardrobe; air of transgressive Catholic rapture), has a close encounter with Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), the British fashion designer who created Mary’s visionary costumes. She was her hand-in-distressed-glove collaborator — and the two were closer than that. But they’re estranged now, and haven’t seen each other for 10 years. So cataclysmic was their breakup that in all that time, Sam has never once listened to Mother Mary’s music.

But now, out of the blue, Mary shows up at the English country manor that’s the headquarters of Sam’s fashion empire. She’s there because, in her words, “I need a dress.” A visionary dress. A dress for the big summing-up-of-her-career concert that she’s about to give. The two go into the large stone barn out back where Sam does her designing, and there, by themselves, they talk: about their partnership and their past, about their wounding breakup, about the complicated brew of love and bitterness that still holds their dual spirits together.

The talk stretches on for a while, and since the two actors are vivid and on point, we’re fine with settling into one of those movies that’s essentially a two-hander — in this case, broken up by flashbacks to Mother Mary onstage, where she performs before her adoring throng. I’ve always been partial to movies about conversation, because I think it’s one of the most pleasurable activities there is, and the fact that “Mother Mary” strikes such a familiar chord — Mary and Sam unpeeling their history like an onion, circling around it until they reach its inner core — is not, in my book, a strike against the movie.

That will come later. 

At no point do Mary and Sam say they were lovers. The film’s press material coyly describes them as “friends.” And maybe they were just friends — friends intimate enough to be spiritual lovers. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. “Mother Mary” is not a roman à clef. The character of Mother Mary may be a fictional gloss on Lady Gaga, but it’s not as if she’s supposed to be Gaga. And at this point, there wouldn’t be anything revolutionary in portraying a famous pop star with a private life that’s bisexual. That’s not the point of the movie.

What is the point? For a while, we think “Mother Mary” is going to be a talky, angsty, back-and-forth relationship drama, mixed in with heady footnotes on fame and creativity. Mary, named for a Beatles lyric, has composed a new song, which she says “might be the best song ever written in the history of songs.” It’s called “Spooky Action,” which is a reference to Einstein’s principle of “spooky action at a distance” — the idea that separated particles, even when they’re light-years apart, can have an effect upon each other. That’s a rather ponderous metaphor for what in another movie might come down to, “I still think about you.”

But never mind. Hathaway, in disheveled straight blonde hair parted down the middle to its thick dark roots, does a convincing job of showing us that Mary, while devoted to her art (and her fame — the two can’t be separated), is a mere mortal who wears her onstage persona like a cosmic costume. Her trademark is to sport some version of her signature halo, a circular head piece attached to the neck, and this connects to the religious nature of her stardom — that she’s no mere celebrity, and not just an artist either, but a kind of pop demigod channeling our collective fantasies of saintliness and sin.

The film shows us that Sam, the offstage muse, is an awesome creator as well. Her visionary designs forged Mother Mary as an image (Mary once paraded down a red carpet wearing honey), so she shares in her identity. Coel, as she proves in the marvelous new Steven Soderbergh movie “The Christophers,” is a great debater — she knows how to use those penetrating large eyes, and her profile that’s like a Picasso come to life, to project an insinuating perception, the sense that she’s reading her antagonist like a psychic. In this case, Sam views Mary with ultimate wariness and knowledge, still smarting from the scars of abandonment and what they revealed.

But all of that — spoiler alert! — winds up being very much beside the point. David Lowery, the writer-director of “Mother Mary,” is a hard filmmaker to pin down, but he is, among other things, a reliably highfalutin trickster-showman who likes to tease the audience with a nearly avant-garde sense of play. I’ve liked some of his films, like “The Old Man & the Gun” and “The Green Knight,” even if the latter fused its intoxicating roots-of-King-Arthur mythology with too much head-scratching magical realism for my taste. In “Mother Mary,” the director gives in to that side of himself completely. This is the David Lowery-est David Lowery movie ever made. Which is to say that by the end of it, you may be scratching your head to the point of wanting your money back.

Mother Mary dances on the barn floorboards, and Sam says things like “You give people the gift of giving a shit about you.” But what the movie really comes down to is a séance. And the stabbing of flesh. And a ghost. Yes, a ghost. In the form of a floating piece of red material that looks like a blanket made of organza. Is this the ghost of their relationship? Or a real ghost? That’s a question that will be debated by moviegoers for maybe four seconds. Because “Mother Mary,” as it takes the leap into Gothic metaphysical fantasy, becomes almost completely incoherent, and stays that way. It’s like an exorcist movie where the devil is a piece of bolt fabric. 

The movie does have a few additional in-concert scenes, but the songs, written and produced by Jack Antonoff and Charli xcx, just sound like a bland version of what they’re supposed to be. To my ears, the music conjured Taylor Swift trying to be Enya. If this were a sustained two-hander, it might have been the story of a beloved pop superstar and her genius designer, and how they forged a connection that was creative and spiritual and romantic. It might have been about how they broke up (because the pop star became too big and thought she could do it on her own), and about how that breakup was a betrayal (because it was based on the pop star’s narcissism). Instead, “Mother Mary” turns into the most befuddlingly pretentious movie about a pop star since Brady Corbet’s “Vox Lux.” It heads down a blind alley of cosmic meaning that, in the end, means nothing.

Donald Trump‘s social media post attacking Pope Leo XIV as “weak” left late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel in disbelief during their respective April 13 episodes. Both men regularly bash Trump during their monologues, but the president’s tirade against the Pope left them puzzled to the point of near-speechlessness.

“According to one Italian religious historian, not even Hitler or Mussolini attacked the Pope so directly and publicly,” Colbert told his viewers before quipping: “It’s never great when someone says, ‘You should really be more discreet and respectful. You know, like Hitler.’”

Pope Leo has publicly opposed the war in Iran as well as Trump’s immigration policy, which prompted Trump’s meltdown. The president posted on Truth Social: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy … I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”

The post prompted Kimmel to ask: “What does the pope have to do with crime? He’s not Batman, he’s the pope. This is what happens when you sell Bibles instead of reading them… We have a fight between the president and the Pope. The world has become a real life episode of ‘South Park.’”

Trump courted even more backlash when he followed up his tirade by posting an AI-generated image of that many interpreted to depict Trump as Jesus Christ. The backlash was widespread and instant, with Trump later removing the post from his Truth Social account and claiming that he thought he was depicted as a doctor.

“So, Donald Trump wants us to believe that he thought this was a doctor,” Colbert fired back, calling it “quite the excuse” from the president and adding: “If I’m in a doctor’s office and that man walks in, I’m thinking I died.”

Trump’s excuse also caused disbelief from Jon Stewart, who asked during his April 13 episode “The Daily Show”: “Do you even care about lying to us anymore? Is this over? Has this relationship gone stale? Your lies used to have a real spark… And now the best you’ve got is, ‘Eh, no, I wasn’t Jesus. I’m a doctor!’ You need to go back and find your happy place and fast.”