Tag: Entertainment – Variety

  • ‘Heat 2’: Stephen Graham Confirmed for Michael Mann’s Sequel (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘Heat 2’: Stephen Graham Confirmed for Michael Mann’s Sequel (EXCLUSIVE)

    Stephen Graham has officially joined the cast of Michael Mann‘s long-awaited sequel “Heat 2,” Variety can confirm.

    If other reported deals close, the Emmy-winning “Adolescence” star and British acting icon would join the Amazon MGM Studios feature alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Adam Driver, Jason Clarke and Odessa Young.

    While roles haven’t been confirmed, Graham is rumoured to be playing a younger version of master thief Neil McCauley, famously portrayed by Robert De Niro in the 1995 original. Meanwhile, Bale is reportedly lined up for the role of LAPD detective Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino, and DiCaprio is expected to play Val Kilmer’s character and McCauley’s right-hand man, Chris Shiherlis

    Mann wrote the screenplay from his and Meg Gardiner’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel. The film will be released in theaters.

    Producers on “Heat 2” include Mann, Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ Jerry Bruckheimer, and UA’s Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt. Eric Roth and Shane Salerno will executive produce.

    The original “Heat,” following McCauley chasing one last score while detective Hanna closed in, was written and directed by Mann and produced by Mann and Art Linson. From Warner Bros. and New Regency, the film went on to gross over $187 million — what would be close to the $400 million range if released today — at the worldwide box office and influence a generations of filmmakers.

    The “Heat 2” book was published in 2022 and serves as both a sequel and prequel to the original, looking at both McCauley and Hanna’s early lives, alongside the story of Shiherlis after he survived the bank robbery climax.

    “Heat 2” adds some further glitz to Graham’s already glittering resume. The actor, writer and producer — who was behind both Netflix’s smash hit “Adolescence” and the Disney+ series “A Thousand Blows” through his Matriarch Productions — is currently in Venice for the premiere of Florian Zeller’s “Bunker,” in which he stars alongside Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and will soon be seen in the Apple TV series “Nocturne,” out in October.

    Graham is repped by Independent Talent, Link Entertainment and Public Eye Communications.

  • ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Season 2 Sets October Premiere Date, Drops Mysterious Teaser

    ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Season 2 Sets October Premiere Date, Drops Mysterious Teaser

    “Dexter: Resurrection” is making its bloody return on Friday, Oct. 30. 

    Paramount+ released a 40-second teaser showing Dexter in between getting an eye exam and sharpening weapons: “He’s back and sharper than ever.”

    Per the official longline for Season 2, Dexter is “caught between two killers – one notorious and the other terrorizing New York in ways no one ever anticipated – all while battling his greatest enemy yet: a midlife crisis. Harrison continues his own pursuit of justice as father and son face their darkest chapter.” 

    Michael C. Hall will reprise his role as Dexter Morgan alongside returning cast members Uma Thurman, Jack Alcott, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Kadia Saraf, Dominic Fumusa, Desmond Harrington and James Remar.

    Dan Stevens joins as the New York Ripper and Brian Cox joins as the Five Borough Killer. Nona Parker Johnson also joins as a Season 2 regular, Krysten Ritter is back in a guest-starring role and Gabriel Luna joins as a guest star this season.

    After an eight-season run on Showtime, “Dexter” ended in 2013 and respawned with the 2021 miniseries “Dexter: New Blood.” A few years later, “Dexter: Original Sin” premiered, with Hall reprising the role of Dexter as a voice actor. Then, Hall returned as the serial killer on-screen in the sequel series “Resurrection.” “Dexter: Resurrection” premiered in July to 4.4 million multiplatform viewers in its first seven days. 

    The series was developed by Clyde Phillips, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. He also created the original “Dexter” series. Hall executive produces in addition to starring. Scott Reynolds, Marcos Siega, Tony Hernandez and Lilly Burns executive produce along with John Goldwyn and Sara Colleton, Veronica West, Kirsa Rein, Tanner Bean and Katrina Mathewson. The series is produced by Paramount Television Studios and Counterpart Studios.

    Watch the teaser here:

  • ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Unveils New Trailer, Cast Members

    ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Unveils New Trailer, Cast Members

    Toho and Gkids have released a new trailer and cast additions for “Godzilla Minus Zero,” the sequel to Yamazaki Takashi’s Oscar-winning “Godzilla Minus One.”

    The trailer opens with confirmation that Godzilla was not fully destroyed and offers a first look at a new kaiju extermination operation, alongside a mix of new and returning characters.

    Nagasawa Masami joins the cast as Makoto Aoyama, a weather forecaster assigned to the Disaster Response Bureau. Kunimura Jun has been cast as Dr. Ogata, and Maehara Ko will play Akira Hagiwara, assistant to Professor Murakami, played by Tanaka Min. Iida Motosuke returns as Akio Itagaki, the Toyo Balloon section chief who contributed to the Godzilla extermination effort in “Godzilla Minus One.” Misuhashi Kenji, Okuno Eita and Inowaki Kai round out the new cast additions, joining a previously announced lineup of returning and new faces.

    The sequel picks up in 1949, two years after the events of “Godzilla Minus One,” following the Shikishima family as they face a new catastrophe. Yamazaki returns as director for a film with more extensive effects work than its predecessor, while keeping its post-World War II Japan setting grounded in its characters.

    Shot entirely in Japan, “Godzilla Minus Zero” marks the first domestic production to carry the Filmed for Imax designation, made using digital cameras Imax has certified for high-definition capture, with sound and imagery calibrated specifically for Imax auditoriums.

    Per the film’s synopsis, Japan has spent two years struggling to rebuild after the devastation depicted in “Godzilla Minus One.” Just as the country begins to find a fragile peace, a fresh threat emerges to upend it.

    “Godzilla Minus Zero” will make its world premiere as the Spotlight Gala selection of the 64th New York Film Festival on Sept. 26. The film opens locally in Japan on Nov. 3, where it is also the centrepiece gala of the Tokyo International Film Festival, followed by a wide North American release on Nov. 6.

    Watch the trailer here:

  • About Premium Content Inks International Deals for Mystery and Romance Series, Counterfeit Art Doc (EXCLUSIVE)

    About Premium Content Inks International Deals for Mystery and Romance Series, Counterfeit Art Doc (EXCLUSIVE)

    APC Studios’ boutique distributor About Premium Content (APC) has signed a number of key international broadcast deals ahead of this year’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Le Havre on French-language scripted and unscripted series “Blue Gold,” “Seasons” and “An Artful Imbrolio.”

    The eight-part crime drama and family saga “Blue Gold” has been licensed to Walter Presents for the U.K. and Ireland, RTP in Portugal and Blue Play in Switzerland, joining U.S. streamer MHz Choice.

    Produced by Authentic Prod (“Sam,” “Montmartre”) for France Télévisions the series is written by Marie-Anne Le Pezennec (“Dolmen”) and Ludovix Lacroix and directed by Hippolyte Dard.

    Barbara Probst stars in ‘Blue Gold’

    Courtesy of About Premium Content

    Set in the 1980s in Provence, “Blue Gold” chronicles the saga of three women from three generations, Marie, Alice and Flore, and one decades-old buried secret. When a body is found and murders start piling up, Flore will have to solve the family puzzle by revealing the truth. Barbara Probst, Sylvie Granotier and Déborah Krey star.

    The four-part “Seasons,” a French-language drama series produced by Windy Production for Arte, has been picked up by RTP in Portugal and RTBF Auvio for French-speaking Belgium. It previously sold to Radio Canada’s Ici Tou.TV Extra for French-speaking Canada.

    ‘Seasons’

    Courtesy of About Premium Content

    Beginning in August 1991 at the seaside resort of Les-Sables-d’Olonne, it follows Camille, 15, as she first meets the two best friends Martin and Alexandre on the beach and crashes into their lives like a comet. Perpetually torn between the two men, Camille will live a crazy love story with them over more than 30 years.

    Nicolas Maury (“Call My Agent”) directed, co-wrote and stars in the show, co-written by Hélène Duchateau (“The Forest,” “Unfaithful,” “The Eclipse”). The series’ stellar cast includes Stéphane Caillard (“Flo,” “Marseille”), Lucas Bravo (“Emily in Paris,” “Ticket to Paradise”), Abraham Wapler (“Andor,” “Colours of Time”), Géraldine Pailhas, Martine Chevallie and Marysole Fertard.

    APC Stories’ three-part art investigation documentary “An Artful Imbroglio” went to Filmin in Spain and RTP in Portugal. Produced for Arte, the unscripted series, which is set in Paris, Rome, London and New York, sheds light on one of the art world’s greatest mysteries.

    In the spring of 2014, a mysterious, anonymous letter triggered one of the biggest scandals in the art world: the alleged trafficking of fake old master paintings on an unprecedented scale. At the heart of this imbroglio unfolds a gallery of colorful characters, all revolving around an ultra-charismatic art dealer.

  • Venice Horizons Winner Anuparna Roy Returns to Lido With Mumbai Story of Migrants, Desire and Belonging ‘Lovers in the Blue Night’

    Venice Horizons Winner Anuparna Roy Returns to Lido With Mumbai Story of Migrants, Desire and Belonging ‘Lovers in the Blue Night’

    Indian filmmaker Anuparna Roy has been carrying Ameena’s story since childhood.

    Ameena was a bonded laborer in Roy’s hometown, and something she once said about her marriage stayed with the director long after she grew up and moved away. That memory became the seed for “Lovers in the Blue Night,” which premieres in the Horizons competition at the Venice Film Festival a year after Roy’s debut feature, “Songs of Forgotten Trees,” made her the first Indian filmmaker to win the section’s best director prize.

    International sales on the new film are being handled by Parallax.

    Roy says “Songs of Forgotten Trees” was a personal story made under difficult funding conditions, built around two women who barely leave a single house. “Lovers in the Blue Night” widens that frame to four migrants moving through Mumbai; she also describes the production itself as far more professional this time, with deadlines and limitations she is still learning to work inside.

    Asked whether she expected the new film to move into Venice’s main competition rather in Horizons, Roy says she dreamed of it rather than expected it, and that landing in the section again is no disappointment. She still considers herself a new director learning her craft alongside filmmakers she admires.

    Ameena’s arc did not stay fixed to the facts that Roy remembered. She says her early instinct was rebellious, imagining the character finding real love and leaving her marriage behind. But that path stopped looking like simple freedom as the script developed. “That is also another loop — another loop of patriarchy,” Roy says, describing what looks from the outside like an escape into a happy ending.

    That refusal to let escape read as simple freedom extends to how Roy treats her characters’ circumstances more broadly. She wanted the migrants’ hardship to shape them without defining them entirely, resisting the idea that displacement should crowd out their ordinary desires for intimacy, jealousy or tenderness. Karim, a closeted gay man married to Ameena, and his lover Sukka, a man trying to break free of caste, sit at the center of that approach. Roy says she wanted a neutral, empathetic language for both men rather than exaggerating poverty or turning their struggle into ideology.

    Roy frames love itself as a form of resistance for characters, who are punished for wanting things. “When you are lonely or displaced, even a small gesture of intimacy can begin to feel enormous,” she says, describing what she calls the illusion of love: a space where affection, longing, isolation, need and fantasy start to blur together, so that people fall for the possibility of a person as much as the person themselves.

    One choice stands out. Karim produces rat poison and kills rats in wealthy Mumbai housing societies, a job Roy based on someone she saw doing the same work in the city’s Andheri East suburb. She calls the image of him coming home from that job to kiss another man “no less than revolutionary,” and says placing the two things side by side felt deeply political to her.

    Displacement links this film to Roy’s debut. Both stories draw on floods Roy experienced growing up in a coastal region near the Bangladesh border, close to the Bay of Bengal, and both send their characters into exile from a destroyed home. Where her first film explored two women, this one turns to two men and the duality of bisexuality.

    Upcoming stories include “In the Shadow in the Light,” a romantic feature about a dysfunctional marriage modeled partly on her parents, and an untitled project about a woman’s sexual transit.

  • French President Emmanuel Macron Calls on YouTube to Finance Content and Warns of Growing Threat to Cultural Model (EXCLUSIVE)

    French President Emmanuel Macron Calls on YouTube to Finance Content and Warns of Growing Threat to Cultural Model (EXCLUSIVE)

    French President Emmanuel Macron said the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which he co-chaired with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Monday, was deliberately held at a moment of dramatic upheaval for the entertainment business, from the growing dominance of YouTube and TikTok to AI and media consolidation.

    Speaking to Variety at the event, he pointed to the growing power of YouTube, TikTok and other social platforms as one of the reasons the timing was right for the landmark gathering devoted to the future of cinema and the moving image.

    “YouTube is very efficient. It’s de facto the default platform in a lot of countries for a lot of people. And it’s quite clear that today they divert a lot of people from these platforms or the big channels where a lot of money is invested in creation,” said Macron at the Fondation Maeght, a French art foundation showcasing works of art from Georges Braque to Joan Miró, nestled amid a luxuriant forest.

    He argued that YouTube, which is currently outtalking Netflix in over 20 international markets, should increasingly be brought into the same ecosystem as other global platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney, that have been required to invest in local production.

    France and other countries need to “engage with them” in a multilateral way, he said, to try to change the platform’s approach so that it helps finance “local content,” while supporting “more creativity, more creations, more respect of the authors.”

    Macron, who’s been a driving force behind the rise of French AI companies, including Mistral, as well as the creation of the EU’s AI Act and the international summit on AI that was held last year, also said France wanted to compete aggressively in AI by expanding computing capacity, data centers and European models. But he insisted that technological ambition must be accompanied by protections for intellectual property and much greater transparency.

    Asked about his discussions about EU regulations with companies such as Google or OpenAI, Macron said that while France is eager to compete in the AI race, it’s also pushing for greater transparency and protections for creators in Europe.

    “When you have content produced by AI, you just have to know it. So transparency for us is key,” he said. “We want to flag when the content is produced with AI. Because we think it’s fair.”

    Without that, Macron warned, AI could “totally transform the relationship to truth,” feeding distrust not only in creative content but in science and democracy.

    Macron also addressed the increasing consolidation of the entertainment business and his discussions surrounding the greenlighting of the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal by the EU regulators. He said he didn’t have an active role in lobbying for the merger, but admitted that he supported “the commitments made to invest more in Europe and to create more content and to provide guarantees and commitments vis-à-vis our theaters.” Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison traveled to Paris (as well as London and Germany) in January and met with Macron, among other high-level political and industry figures.

    The French President described the merger case as fundamentally “a U.S. M&A story,” saying his priority was ensuring that a major company like Paramount Skydance maintained a strong footprint in France and Europe. While Ellison wasn’t present at the Lumiere Summit, Paramount Skydance’s Andy Gordon was there and sat at Macron’s table at lunch, alongside The Walt Disney Company’s Dana Walden, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal Entertainment’s Donna Langley, Mediawan’s Pierre-Antoine Capton and Sony’s Tom Rothman, among others.

    “What is important to us is to make sure that you will still finance creation, that you will still work with us, that you will still make more movies in France and in Europe,” he said.

    The Summit is also being held on the last stretch of his second mandate as he is due to leave office in May. With the far-right and far-left parties dominating polls ahead of the next presidential election, the French film and TV industry has shared deep concerns over the future of France’s prized cultural model that could come under threat.

    Asked what would survive beyond 2027, Macron pointed first to France’s international tax credit for international movies and TV series, which was recently strengthened with the inclusion of above-the-line costs and has helped draw a growing number of major U.S. and international productions to the country.

    “We improved tax credits, international tax credits. If somebody wants to withdraw this tax credit, it will just kill the industry and a lot of opportunities,” said Macron, who had told Variety in a cover interview in 2024 that he would fight for “Emily in Paris” Season 5 to remain in the French capital, prompting a comedic feud with the Rome mayor. Besides the sixth and final season of “Emily in Paris,” “The White Lotus” season 4 is also currently shooting in France.

    He also pointed to the investment made during his presidency in studios and production infrastructure as part of his France 2030 plan, which he said has turned France into a leading international shooting destination.

    “We want more of them to make new movies in our country. Why? Because it’s good for our ecosystem,” he said. “It will hire a lot of technicians and actors and so on. It will show our landscapes, and it will create jobs during the movie is made and it will attract a lot of people in our landscapes and our cities and so on.”

    Yet, Macron suggested the bigger battle after his departure could be over the foundations of France’s cultural policy itself.

    “Some extremes are fighting very hard against the CNC (National Film Board) and what we call this exception culturelle and the DNA of the French model,” Macron said. France’s system, developed over decades, uses levies on cinema admissions that are collected by the National Film Board and re-injected into local production, alongside other schemes supporting independent producers, filmmakers and theaters.

    “We have to be ready to resist because this model has been created during decades by a lot of artists, by the state and the different governments and it’s extremely important,” he said.

    Ultimately, Macron tied the defense of the French model not only to jobs and filmmaking but also to the country’s soft power.

    “Culture and art is part of what France is, but it’s part as well of our soft power outside,” he said. “Recognizing that art is an exception which requires specific investment of the government, diversity of people, players, authors, protection of their rights and a specific effort in terms of multilateralism is crucial.”

  • Elon Musk Documentary Teaser Asks If Billionaire Is the ‘Greatest Living Inventor’ or a ‘Fascist’ Who ‘Has Lost His Mind’

    Elon Musk Documentary Teaser Asks If Billionaire Is the ‘Greatest Living Inventor’ or a ‘Fascist’ Who ‘Has Lost His Mind’

    The first teaser trailer for Alex Gibney’s highly anticipated Elon Musk documentary “Musk” has been released.

    The film will world premiere out of competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 8 before continuing to the Toronto International Film Festival.

    In the 48-second teaser, montages of spacecrafts and astronautical devices fill the screen while voices giving varied commentary about Musk play in the background. The snippet does not give away much about the plot, but illustrates Musk’s polarizing character. 

    “He’s possibly the greatest living inventor. He is the real-life Iron Man. He is one of the greatest builders of all time,” the background voices say. As the montage progresses, the tone of the statements changes. “He is the greatest capitalist in history. He’s chaotic, random, capricious, manifestly cruel and selfish. He’s a fascist,” the backtrack continues. 

    “Elon is a nuke,” the voice in the teaser concludes as a spacecraft hits the ground and implodes, bursting into flames. 

    Gibney first revealed in March 2023 that he had begun work on the documentary and was “many months” into production. Musk responded to news of the project on his X/Twitter account by predicting it would be “a hit piece.” Gibney fired back on the same platform, asking “how would you know?”

    The film, with a nearly four-hour running time, will feature an original song from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, who wrote and performed the new track entitled “Let Me Sell You a Dream.”

    Gibney directs and produces “Musk,” joined by Jessie Deeter and Erin Edeiken for Jigsaw Productions, Dana O’Keefe for Double Agent, Joey Marra and Zhang Xin for Closer Media and Anonymous Content’s Nick Shumaker and Jessica Grimshaw. Ronan Farrow and Lawrence Wright round out the producing team.

    Watch the full teaser here:

  • ‘No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman’ Review: Iraq’s Oscar Submission Offers a Patriotic Anthem to the Kurdish Peshmerga’s Fight Against Islamic State

    ‘No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman’ Review: Iraq’s Oscar Submission Offers a Patriotic Anthem to the Kurdish Peshmerga’s Fight Against Islamic State

    The trope of the lone action hero with near-superhuman strength gets a gender switch in “No Paradise If You Are Killed By A Woman,” a visually impressive drama about a resourceful female Peshmerga sniper. Although selected as Iraq’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, the third fiction feature from Norwegian-Kurdish helmer Halkawt Mustafa (“Red Heart,” “El Clásico”) may fall between two stools for Western viewers: There’s not enough action for genre fans and the narrative’s blend of melodrama and earnestness may turn off highbrow arthouse viewers. But it’s a different story in MENA territories where Sony/Empire has already nabbed distribution rights. Regional and Kurdish diaspora audiences should appreciate the strong visual and technical craftmanship used in this harrowing tale.

    The narrative centers on Vyan (striking London-based Kurdish thesp Avan Jamal, impressive), a 24-year-old Kurdish émigré to Norway who is visiting Iraqi Kurdistan with her parents and younger sister Helin in 2014, when Islamic State (IS) launches an attack. Their parents are murdered and Vyan and Helin are sold as IS sex slaves. Ever resilient, Vyan manages to kill the man who bought her and make her way to Peshmerga territory. There, she joins an elite unit of female fighters as a sniper.

    As Vyan’s poetic voiceover narration states, Peshmerga means “before death” and its fighters enter combat out of strength, not out of fear. Certainly, Vyan is fearless. She reckons that she has killed more than 100 of the enemy in three years. Given that, as the title notes, IS fighters believe that there is “No Paradise If You Are Killed by A Woman,” it’s no wonder they have placed a million-dollar bounty on her head.

    After heroically preventing an IS suicide truck bomber in an armored vehicle from attacking her unit’s base, the heavily wounded Vyan returns to Norway to recover. There, a government official (Thorbjørn Harr) offers her a difficult choice: accept a new identity and government protection (they fear the fact that she is an IS target could endanger other Norwegian citizens) or be prosecuted for fighting for another country. Luckily, Norwegian civilians don’t have to worry. A phone call to the family’s old landline confirms that Helin remains trapped in Mosul, in the clutches of an IS fighter known as the Swedish sniper. Loyal Vyan prepares for what may be her final mission: to singlehandedly rescue her sister.

    The last half of the film feels as if it could easily be adapted into a tense video game as it follows Vyan silently creeping through tunnels and crawling through the aftermath of IS carnage. It certainly gives a more detailed picture of how a sniper operates, and the lonely patience required for the job, than Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” ever did. Vyan uses logic and the help of friendly Kurdish commander from the Iraqi government forces in Mosul to locate the IS snipers preventing civilians from leaving the devastated city.

    Research for multi-hyphenate Mustafa’s 2015 TV project “The Women ISIS Fears” and his time as a war photographer seeing strong female fighters inspired “No Paradise,” which he dedicates to his daughters. Like the helmer’s previous features, it proudly incorporates Kurdish customs and traditions, from the “singing” that Vyan’s rifle performs to the traditional tunes sung by her Peshmerga captain and the Kurdish commander in Mosul.

    Highlights of a polished technical package include the prowling camerawork of Norwegian DP John Erling H. Fredriksen and the film’s use of actual Mosul locations. The shocking ruins of what was once a thriving population center attest to a brutal military campaign to liberate the ancient city from IS. Also worthy of special mention in a film where the main character spends much of her time in silence is the tension-building sound design by Mattias Eklund and Jan Kasskawo.

  • Macklemore Says His Call to ‘Free Palestine’ Is Not a ‘Criticism’ of Jewish People: ‘None of Us Will Be Free Until We Are All Free’

    Macklemore Says His Call to ‘Free Palestine’ Is Not a ‘Criticism’ of Jewish People: ‘None of Us Will Be Free Until We Are All Free’

    Macklemore is speaking out about his call to “Free Palestine,” which the rapper made while opening for Ed Sheeran on Friday night at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

    “To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you,” Macklemore said on Saturday night (via Newsweek). “My message is for peace; love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.”

    He added, “So I say free Palestine, I say free Lebanon, I say free Cuba, I say free Congo, free Sudan, I say free all people in America living in fear of this terrorist organization, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free.”

    During his Friday night set, Macklemore told the audience that he wanted the people in Gaza and the West Bank to know that he had not forgotten them: “I believe that every human being walking on this earth deserves exactly the same freedom.” The statement caused the Israeli American Council to release a petition that demands that the four-time Grammy winner be removed from the rest of Sheeran’s Loop tour.

    The petition reads, “This was an Ed Sheeran concert – not a political rally, not a protest, and not an activist event. The issue is not whether Macklemore has the right to hold political views. The question is where the line should be drawn when an opening act uses a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda.”

  • ‘Plaza Catedral’ Director Abner Benaim, Chile’s Daniela Vega and Alfredo Castro Board Fiction Series ‘School of the Americas’ (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘Plaza Catedral’ Director Abner Benaim, Chile’s Daniela Vega and Alfredo Castro Board Fiction Series ‘School of the Americas’ (EXCLUSIVE)

    Panama’s Abner Benaim has boarded as a co-director of the fiction series “School of the Americas” (“Escuela de las Américas”), which will star two of Chile’s most internationally renowned thespians: Daniela Vega, who headed the Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman,) and Alfredo Castro, a Pablo Larrain regular who’s also starred in a slew of Latin American projects.

    The project has been selected for the Co-Production and Financing Forum at Madrid-based confab Iberseries & Platino Industria which takes place Sept. 29-Oct. 2.

    Benaim was an obvious addition to the project given its subject matter and setting. “School of the Americas” begins with an exhumation at the site of the 1983 El Jazmín massacre, which yields a graduation photograph of four commandos with their faces scratched out and a pendant stamped Fort Gulick, the U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone, site of the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas.

    Panamanian-American human rights investigator Inés Vega recognizes the massacre’s signature: counterinsurgency doctrine taught at the School. When someone tries to kill her, the cold case turns personal. Tracking four graduates across three continents, she uncovers what the School really taught – and who is still protecting its legacy.

    Benaim joins co-director Oscar Godoy who also has close ties to Larraín, having been first AD on Larraín’s “The Count,” “The Club,” “Neruda,” “No” and “Tony Manero.” Godoy was recently second unit director on Fabula’s “Someone Has to Know,” which ranked among Netflix’s global top ten for non-English-language series.

    His feature “Ulysses” screened at a string of festivals, starting with the San Sebastián Film Fest and culminating at Chile’s Santiago Film Fest (Sanfic) where it won Best Chilean Film.

    Benaim, Panama’s most internationally renowned filmmaker, has represented his country three times at the Oscars, starting with his documentary “Invasion,” about the U.S. 1989 invasion of Panama, followed by “Yo No Me Llamo Rubén Blades” and “Plaza Catedral,” the latter making the Academy shortlist and earning Benaim a Premios Platino nomination for screenplay. His debut feature “Chance” remains the highest-grossing Panamanian film ever released.

    Its producers Seedling Media Productions (Panama) and La Panda Productions (U.S./Spain) are targeting 2028 for principal photography to begin, provided all the financing is in place.

    “The School of the Americas was a real school, located in the Panama Canal Zone; for half a century, it taught officers from across Latin America. We are not making a series about monsters — monsters are an alibi. We are making one about a curriculum: the fact that this was written down, graded and taught, and the men who graduated went home and became somebody’s father. Violence isn’t born. It’s taught,” said La Panda’s Guillermo Escalona, co-creator and executive producer alongside Brittany DeVries of Seedling Media.

    Escalona, a Spanish-American screenwriter-producer based in Los Angeles, co-founder of La Panda Productions, is the co-creator and co-writer, along with Rhayuela’s Federico Durán, of the late Colombian filmmaker Jaime Osorio Márquez’s posthumous feature “The Awakening.” The supernatural action thriller was completed by Durán and José Luis Rugeles (“Alias Maria” “Rebellion”) after the director’s death following which it world-premiered at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in April, with Latido Films handling sales.

    Based in Panama, Seedling Media Productions, founded in 2013 by DeVries, has a varied list of credits that include fiction and documentary features. Among them are crime thriller “Chacalería,” “I Really Love My Husband,” shot in Panama and premiered at SXSW in 2025 and documentaries “Dear Panamá,” “A World Without Orphans” and “Lost Kites,” winner of the Best Documentary Feature at the London Independent Film Awards.

    Currently, Seedling is producing “Against No One” (“Denuncia Contra Nadie”), a co-production with Guatemala supported by the Ibermedia Co-Production Fund.