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Athina Rachel Tsangari, the Greek director with roots in New York and Austin, Texas, does not need any convincing when an actor or crew member proposes an offbeat idea.

Her new film “Harvest” is based on Jim Crace’s interior monologue of a novel and set in the unspecified past. It feels like the middle ages, apart from the occasional anachronism. On the ramshackle set in Scotland, most of the characters were wearing wooden clogs, but Tsangari’s lead actor Caleb Landry Jones (best known to audiences as the brother in “Get Out;” he also won a Cannes prize in 2021 for the drama “Nitram”) strolled up in contemporary hiking boots.

“I loved it,” the director tells TheWrap of Jones’ footwear. “I’m open to stuff like that. It has nothing to do with what people were wearing in medieval times, but it works. Especially in a film like this one,...

Justin Kurzel has become known for his bold and visual storytelling, with films including Macbeth, Nitram, and the blockbuster Assassin’s Creed adaptation under his belt. However, for his latest project, the director has turned to documentaries. Ellis Park follows the musician and composer Warren Ellis, a friend of Kurzel’s who is known for bands the “Dirty Three” and “Bad Seed,” as he visits an animal sanctuary in Sumatra named after him, which he helped to fund.

The sanctuary, run by Dutch-born paramedic Femke Den Hans, is simultaneously uplifting and chilling as it offers a glimpse into the fight against the illegal animal trade and the perseverant people fighting it. However, the documentary is an equally revealing look into the eclectic life and mind of Warren Ellis himself.

I sat down with Kurzel in advance of Ellis Park’s World Premiere at the London Film Festival to discuss it. We...

From Macbeth to True History Of The Kelly Gang to Nitram, across eras and genres Australian director Justin Kurzel has proven himself to be a firebrand filmmaker, capable of grabbing an audience by the throat and never letting them go through jaw-slackening imagery, tension-filled storytelling, and — to pinch a popular phrase — a seriously locked-in directorial sensibility. And his latest, true story inspired thriller The Order — in which Jude Law plays an FBI agent caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a Neo-Nazi (Nicholas Hoult) in 1980s Washington State — looks every bit as thrillingly tense as the Aussie helmsman's past works. Check out the official trailer below:

At a moment in time where the political temperature is rising once again across the pond, it looks like Kurzel's new movie — which begins with Nicholas Hoult's Aryan Nation leader Bob Mathews declaring that "in every revolution, someone has to fire the first...

"It's happening. The war has begun." Vertical has revealed an official trailer for The Order, the latest film from Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, making his first film set in America this time around. The Order premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival recently, the same place his last film Nitram premiered. A series of bank robberies and car heists frightened communities in the Pacific Northwest. A lone FBI agent believes that the crimes were not the work of financially motivated criminals, rather a group of domestic terrorists. Based on a true story, an alarming surge in violent bombings & robberies leads a weathered FBI agent into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a charismatic domestic terrorist plotting to overthrow the US government. All of this really happened, bad Americans like this do exist. Jude Law stars as the FBI agent, along with Nicholas Hoult as white supremacist Bob Mathews, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett,...

Justin Kurzel is an acclaimed Australian director known for his gritty and atmospheric films such as Snowtown, The True History of the Kelly Gang, and Nitram. In his first documentary, Kurzel shifts his focus to the musical talents and charitable efforts of Warren Ellis.

Ellis has had a long and storied career as a composer and multi-instrumentalist, notably collaborating with Nick Cave and founding the acclaimed group The Dirty Three. The film provides an intimate look into Ellis’s life and music while also chronicling his involvement with the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary that bears his name.

Through footage of Ellis both onstage and off, we learn about the experiences that shaped him as an artist. We also witness his journey to visit the amazing animal refuge of Ellis Park for the very first time. There, a dedicated team works tirelessly to rehabilitate trafficked creatures and provide them with love and care.

Plot: A burnt-out FBI agent (Jude Law) tries to shut down a right-wing militia run by a white supremacist (Nicholas Hoult) who’s planning an armed insurrection.

Review: The Order is a slickly made, true-crime thriller that tells a pretty compelling story; in the mid-eighties, a group calling themselves The Order pulled off a series of violent robberies and also bombed synagogues and porn theatres, all of which was inspired by a book called “The Turner Diaries”, which was written by the leader of the National Alliance, which was one of the most powerful Neo Nazi organizations in the United States.

In The Order, Nicholas Hoult, in a role that casts him way against type, plays Robert Jay Mathews, who put together a violent, heavily armed militia that began carrying out a series of brutal assassinations and robberies. In the film, this puts them in the crosshairs of Jude Law’s Agent Husk,...

It’s fall 1983 in the Pacific Northwest, a historical hotbed for white poverty and white-power mobilization. Flannels flow like wine, backcountry bowl cut-adjacent male fringes mark burgeoning leadership, and there isn’t a shiny new car for 100 miles in any direction. On both sides of the law we find ourselves in the company of brawny mustachios and brazenly retreating widows’ peaks that form trenches of balding. The tremoring strings, blue-gray haze in the coloring, and heavy fog set the stage for something awful: the brief dawn of The Order.

Terry Husk (Jude Law)––an FBI agent with ample experience infiltrating and taking down white-supremacy hate groups within the Aryan Nations from Colorado to Washington state––comes to the tiny Idaho town of Coeur d’Alene to quiet down, the sole federal agent stationed in his region. But after serious counterfeiting reports and a string of horrifyingly captured bank robberies and armored-car heists,...

If anyone had a particularly surreal Venice in 2023, it was Caleb Landry Jones.

Not only was the actor on the Lido for barely 24 hours — for the world premiere of Luc Besson’s “DogMan” in which he played a cross-dressing vigilante-thief with a pack of canines at his command — but the 34-year-old had effectively been yanked from a muddy film set on the top of a mountain in Scotland early one morning, flown to Italy, put in a shirt, ferried from press conference to red carpet, flown back to Scotland the next day and driven to the top of a mountain to shoot a crucial scene.

“I was in Venice, but all I was thinking about was this really important scene I had to do,” he says. “And I kept falling asleep in the screening and trying to wake up and Luc would be like, ‘Man, it’s ok, go to sleep,...

Justin Kurzel dives into dark true stories about violence with films like Snowtown Murders and Nitram. In The Order, he shares another disturbing slice of reality—this time from America in the 1980s. The movie follows an FBI agent tasked with hunting a dangerous new white supremacist group that’s emerged in the Pacific Northwest.

Lead by a charismatic young man named Bob Mathews, this militant fringe breaks off from a larger far-right church organization. Now going by the name “The Order,” they aim to accelerate the extremist agenda through armed terrorism instead of just words. Robbing banks and setting off bombs, their attacks escalate—soon placing them in the crosshairs of a veteran FBI investigator named Terry Husk.

Played by Jude Law, Terry has faced the KKK and mob before. But this Neo-Nazi cell will be one of his toughest targets yet to track down in the dense forests and mountains of Idaho.

Crime thriller The Order — starring Jude Law, Jurnee Smollett and Nicholas Hoult — had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival Aug. 31.

In attendance at the red carpet were the main cast, including Law, Smollett, Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Philip Lewitski and Matias Garrido, as well as director Justin Kurzel (Nitram), screenwriter Zach Baylin (King Richard) and executive producer Katherine Susman. Other cast members, like Marc Maron, Odessa Young and Alison Oliver, were not pictured on the red carpet.

Based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book The Silent Brotherhood, The Order chronicles the escalating crimes of the titular white supremacist domestic terror group of the 1980s. Depicted as a police procedural, it follows lone FBI agent Terry Husk (Law), who uncovers increasingly violent plots orchestrated by radical, charismatic leader Bob Matthews (Hoult) to lead the United States into war. Working alongside Husk in the Pacific Northwest is local detective...

"It felt like a piece of work that needed to be made now," Jude Law explained during the press conference for this film. "It's interesting looking back, but it’s always interesting finding a piece from the past that has some relationship to the present day." Indeed it is. Especially a film like this. The Order is the latest action thriller film made by acclaimed Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, director of The Snowtown Murders, Macbeth, Assassin's Creed, True History of the Kelly Gang, and Nitram previously. After making tons of a bunch of films about criminals in Australia, he's telling a story about a notorious American criminal - a man named Bob Mathews. The Order follows one grizzled, determined FBI agent, played by Jude Law, who is on the hunt for Bob after he realizes what's really going while investigating a series of bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest. It's...

There’s a scene in “The Order,” a riveting and explosive docudrama about the dawn of the modern American white-supremacist movement in the 1980s, that creeps you out in a very eye-opening way. Two leaders of the movement are meeting on an isolated country road in Idaho. One of them, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), is the white nationalist who founded the Aryan Nations, the neo-Nazi cult that has its compound nearby. He’s a racist extremist, but he has the demeanor of a courtly preacher, and he’s consciously political about the growth of his movement.

The other man, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), is a former follower of Butler’s who has split off from him, all because he thinks the Aryan Nations movement isn’t extreme enough. Matthews wants an armed uprising now, and the insurrectionary band of ruffians he leads, called the Order (he named them after the...

If you think heavily armed white supremacists are some kind of new threat to America, you should take a look at The Order, a gripping, superbly made historical thriller about a neo-Nazi gang that terrorized the Pacific Northwest nearly four decades ago, robbing banks and armored cars to fund their plans for a full-scale insurrection.

A nail-biter from start to finish, Australian director Justin Kurzel’s bleak and brawny true story stars Jude Law as an FBI agent trying to take down the film’s titular faction, which he tracks over several years, from one hold-up and killing to the next. Backed by a cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett, The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore. After launching in Venice’s main competition, it will hopefully find supporters stateside, with Law’s...

If three makes a trend, then take “The Order” as a proof of fact: Nobody delivers true crime quite like Justin Kurzel. Following 2011’s “Snowtown” and 2021’s “Nitram,” the filmmaker’s latest factual thriller confirms the Australian auteur as an expert of the form, a skilled technician at ease and at the peak of his abilities when conveying ambient unease. Premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival, “The Order” might be the filmmaker’s most accomplished work to date, offsetting a kind of broody fatalism against natural splendor, and punctuating the bloody affair with an action beat.

While both “Snowtown” and “Nitram” played as slow builds towards specific tragedies – tallying the institutional and personal failings that led to the Snowtown murders and the Port Arthur massacre – this latest film hews a more rolling timeline, tracking a white-supremacist splinter group responsible for a handful of murders and a string of heists,...

Justin Kurzel directs with a scalpel that cuts everywhere except the heart. The Australian filmmaker, who memorialized two mass killing events in his own country with his coldly compelling debut “The Snowtown Murders” and 2021 Cannes winner “Nitram,” peeks this time into the American psyche behind similar happenings with his latest, “The Order.” But he needs fresher material, as this based-on-a-true-story portrait of a radicalized white supremacy faction being hunted by the FBI in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s feels too close to Kurzel’s previous outings, which also include the Aussie bushranger historical biopic “True History of the Kelly Gang.” He already depicted a white, manifesto-wielding killer the last time. And that other time. And the time before that. While it’s one thing for a director to present variations on a theme throughout their career, it’s another when they stop surprising us or finding a new way into the same story.

Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, and director Justin Kurzel, were among the team at The Order‘s Venice press conference this afternoon where they discussed the crime-drama’s resonance with extremism today.

The Order charts how a series of bank robberies and car heists frightened communities in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. It alights on a lone FBI agent (Law) who believes that the crimes were not the work of financially motivated criminals, but rather a group of dangerous domestic terrorists, namely the white supremacist gang known as The Order (led in the film by Hoult). The film explores the ensuing battle between law enforcement and the far-right group.

Hoult told the press how he and Law – adversaries in the film – didn’t speak or interact with each other for the first four weeks of filming in a bid to build distance between them. He was...

The world still has “a lot of work to do” to combat far-right ideologies of the kind shown in Venice title The Order, according to its lead actor Jude Law.

“You could’ve said 10 years ago that perhaps the world was in a slightly different state,” said Law. “In fact we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

In Justin Kurzel’s Venice Competition entry, Law stars as Terry Husk, an FBI agent in Idaho in 1983 who investigates a series of bombings and robberies, which he learns may be linked to a far-right uprising.

The film is written by Zach Baylin,...

Straight off the plane from New York, where he is mid-production on the Netflix series “Black Rabbit,” director Justin Kurzel debuted his new documentary “Ellis Park” at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

“Ellis Park” follows the eventful life of composer Warren Ellis and the wildlife sanctuary he co-founded on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Combining Ellis’ irreverent humor and unbounded creativity with the moving story of the sanctuary’s role as a home for animals rescued from the black market, “Ellis Park” is set to be one of the most impactful Australian documentaries of recent years.

Following the film’s premiere at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, Kurzel said making the documentary has profoundly influenced his forthcoming productions. Alongside “Black Rabbit” these include “The Order” — a wintry thriller starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, and Marc Maron set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival — and the series...

Online physical media retailer Waxwork Records is releasing the original soundtrack to “Monkey Man.”

Composed by Jed Kurzel, the music from Dev Patel’s directorial debut will be available Aug. 16 in a double-lp set featuring red, black and metallic gold a-side and b-side colored vinyl. Gatefold packaging features new artwork from illustrator Sajan Rai, and includes liner notes written by both Patel and Kurzel.

Kurzel’s previous credits include “Alien: Covenant,” “Overlord,” “Assasin’s Creed,” “The Pope’s Exorcist,” “The Babadook’ and his brother Justin’s 2021 film “Nitram,” the latter of which scored Caleb Landry Jones a best actor award at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

The vinyl will be available for purchase starting at 9:00am Pt Aug. 16 on the Waxwork Records website.

Waxwork Records is one of the physical media industry’s premier manufacturers of vinyl soundtracks. Starting with Richard Band’s music for “Re-Animator” and John Harrison’s score for “Day of the Dead,...

Venice Film Festival competition title “Harvest,” directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, is one of three films at the festival to be represented for sales by the Match Factory as well as being produced or co-produced by the company.

The other two are “Edge of Night,” the debut feature by German-Turkish director Türker Süer, screening in Horizons Extra, and “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” an animated film by the Quay Brothers, playing in Venice Days.

Tsangari, the director of “Attenberg” (winner of Venice’s best actress award in 2010) and “Chevalier” (2015), returns to Venice competition with “Harvest.” Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.

In Tsangari’s tragicomic take on a Western, townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

The film...

Exclusive: Caleb Landry Jones extends a gnarly bejewelled hand as he arrives on the set of Luc Besson’s gothic drama Dracula: A Love Tale.

The Three Boards and Nitram actor is unrecognizable after four hours in make-up. His already tall frame augmented by platform shoes, he towers over Besson, the cast and the crew.

“How are you?” asks Jones, staying in character with a thick Transylvanian accent and syntax, adding in response to a comment on his appearance: “They done incredible… this man back here, he make everything.”

Jones has appeared at the end of a tour of the extensive Dracula: A Love Tale set in the vast Darkmatters studio southwest of Paris, conducted by Besson. Above is a first behind-the-scenes look at the actor as the blood-smeared Count.

Deadline is not invited to sit in on filming. Besson likes intimate shoots without distractions, sitting beside his cinematographer and close to his actors,...

After “Nitram” wowed critics at the Cannes Film Festival three years ago, with Caleb Landry Jones winning Best Actor for his role, many expected Justin Kurzel‘s would return to the Croisette with his next film, “The Order.” But Deadline reports that Kurzel’s upcoming true crime movie won’t hit the festival circuit yet, if it even is at all.

Continue reading ‘The Order’ First Look: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult & Tye Sheridan Star In Justin Kurzel’s Upcoming True Crime Thriller at The Playlist.

Redhead Caleb Landry Jones got lucky on his first audition, at age 17. His father took a day off from work and drove him from Garland, Texas, to Dallas for a try-out, then to Austin for a callback with the Coen brothers, for a role as “the boy on the bike” in eventual Best Picture Oscar-winner “No Country for Old Men” (2007). Little did Jones know, as he launched his acting career, that he would join the ensemble on “X-Men: First Class” (2011) or win Best Actor at Cannes for playing a mass murderer in “Nitram” (2021), or that one critic would dub him “a menacing oddball character actor.”

When I read that quote to Jones over Zoom, he paused for a moment and said, “That sounds Ok to me. I heard ‘actor,’ so that sounded good.”

The Coens did Jones a huge favor, he said. “Javier Bardem. Not a bad person to see...

To celebrate the release of Dogman starring Caleb Landry Jones – out 11th March on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital – we have a Blu-ray up for grabs!

The latest film from Luc Besson – the visionary filmmaker The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita and the Transporter series – Dogman won the Graffetta d’Oro for Best Film at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. It’s extraordinary, intense and heartfelt – everything you’d expect from the unique and uncompromising mind of Besson.

Caleb Landry Jones (Cannes winner for Best Actor for Nitram) stars as Doug, a troubled man who finds salvation through his canine friends. The cast also includes Jojo T Gibbs (Fresh), Christopher Denham (Billions), Clemens Schick (Das Boot), and Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon). Featuring an emotive score by Besson’s longtime collaborator Éric Serra (Léon), and exquisitely filmed by Colin Wandersman (Pandemonium), Dogman features production design by César award winner Hugues Tissandier (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec...

To celebrate the release of Dogman starring Caleb Landry Jones – out 11th March on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital – we have a Blu-Ray up for grabs!

he latest film from Luc Besson – the visionary filmmaker The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita and the Transporter series – Dogman won the Graffetta d’Oro for Best Film at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. It’s extraordinary, intense and heartfelt – everything you’d expect from the unique and uncompromising mind of Besson.

Caleb Landry Jones (Cannes winner for Best Actor for Nitram) stars as Doug, a troubled man who finds salvation through his canine friends. The cast also includes Jojo T Gibbs (Fresh), Christopher Denham (Billions), Clemens Schick (Das Boot), and Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon).

Featuring an emotive score by Besson’s longtime collaborator Éric Serra (Léon), and exquisitely filmed by Colin Wandersman (Pandemonium), Dogman features production design by César award winner Hugues Tissandier (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec...

Caleb Landry Jones is “DogMan,” whatever that moniker means.

The indie actor, who has appeared in the acclaimed likes of “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” and “Nitram,” leads controversial French director Luc Besson’s latest feature. Per the elusive logline, “DogMan” tells the story of a man who, following a traumatic childhood, finds salvation and justice through his connection with dogs.

Yet, there’s more to the twisted crime thriller than just that: Jones plays Douglas Munrow, a victim of childhood abuse who relives his past while being interviewed by a psychiatrist (Jojo T. Gibbs) after Douglas is accused of murder. Turns out Douglas’ childhood was far from fetching, with his only source of love being the dogs his father (Clemens Schick) would lock him in cages with.

As an adult, Douglas balances performing in drag as iconic stars like Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe with a crime spree.

Exclusive: One of the last big European Film Market pre-sales projects to be revealed is one of the most intriguing as SAG winner Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri) has been set to star with two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) in Dracula – A Love Tale, a big-budget reimagining of the Dracula story from Lucy filmmaker and Taken creator Luc Besson.

Based on Bram Stoker’s iconic novel, sources close to the production confirm to us that the project will be Besson’s next movie and mark his own take on the vampire classic about the dark Prince who is condemned to eternal life.

We hear this has an origin story element to it exploring in a little more depth the gothic romance between Prince Vladimir and his wife whose loss turns him to forsake God and become a vampire. Buyers familiar with Besson’s script tell...

Nicole Kidman has signed up to work with Macbeth and Assassin’s Creed director Justin Kurzel on a particularly dark-sounding family drama called Mice. More here:

Justin Kurzel and Nicole Kidman are two of Australia’s greatest gifts to the world of cinema, so it’s exciting to learn that the duo will be teaming up to make Mice, a drama which follows the fortunes of a family dealing with the aftermath of a series of devastating events.

From 2015’s Macbeth through to 2021’s Nitram, Kurzel’s filmography largely continues to impress with each film he makes, and Kidman’s CV simply speaks for itself. Mice is based on Gordon Reece’s 2011 debut novel, and is said to follow a mother and daughter who ‘are pushed to their limits, confronting their moral convictions and the line between right and wrong in the face of bullying, violence and fear.’

We don’t...

Veteran Irish actor Ciaran Hinds and Odessa Young have joined ‘Euphoria’ star Jacob Elordi in the cast of premium Australian miniseries ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’.

Production is now under way. An adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Richard Flanaghan, the five-part series is a love story set against the backdrop of World War II, reports Variety.

Production is by Curio Pictures with Prime Video releasing the title in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In other territories, it is distributed by Sony Pictures Television. Flanaghan’s novel, published in 2013, chronicles a century dominated by war, with the forced labour on the Thai-Burma Railway as its dramatic heart.

As per Variety, the story is told by an Australian doctor who was taken prisoner during World War II and became an unlikely and uncomfortable hero after the war’s end.

The series has been in development for several years...

Veteran Irish actor Ciaran Hinds and Odessa Young have joined ‘Euphoria’ star Jacob Elordi in the cast of premium Australian miniseries ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’.

Production is now under way. An adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Richard Flanaghan, the five-part series is a love story set against the backdrop of World War II, reports Variety.

Production is by Curio Pictures with Prime Video releasing the title in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In other territories, it is distributed by Sony Pictures Television. Flanaghan’s novel, published in 2013, chronicles a century dominated by war, with the forced labour on the Thai-Burma Railway as its dramatic heart.

As per Variety, the story is told by an Australian doctor who was taken prisoner during World War II and became an unlikely and uncomfortable hero after the war’s end.

The series has been in development for several years...

Veteran actor Ciaran Hinds and Odessa Young have joined Euphoria star Jacob Elordi in the cast of premium Australian miniseries “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” Production is now under way.

An adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Richard Flanaghan, the five-part series is love story set against the backdrop of World War II. Production is by Curio Pictures with Prime Video releasing the title in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In other territories, it distributed by Sony Pictures Television.

Flanaghan’s novel, published in 2013, chronicles a century dominated by war, with the forced labor on the Thai-Burma Railway as its dramatic heart. The story is told by an Australian doctor who was taken prisoner during World War II and became an unlikely and uncomfortable hero after the war’s end.

The series has been in development for several years and was previously announced on the slate of Fremantle.

Exclusive: Distributor-producer Lucky Red is one of Italy’s most respected independent film and TV companies. Run by former actor Andrea Occhipinti since 1987, the firm has released more than 500 titles and produced more than 50 films.

The company has worked with filmmakers including Paolo Sorrentino, Lars Von Trier, Wong Kar Wai, Ang Lee, Park Chan Wook, Michael Haneke, Francois Ozon, Hayao Miyazaki, the Dardenne brothers, Wes Anderson, Paolo Genovese, Denis Villeneuve, Paul Thomas Anderson, Pablo Larraín and Asghar Farahdi.

It has also released more obviously commercial titles such as Angel Has Fallen, Hustlers, Den Of Thieves and Hereditary, and had fruitful theatrical partnerships with companies such as Netflix, Universal and Studio Ghibli.

Since shortly before the pandemic, Lucky Red, which hasn’t been afraid to ruffle the occasional feather, has also increased its activity in TV and exhibition.

We sat down company founder Occhipinti and his longtime lieutenants Stefano Massenzi (Head...

Caleb Landry Jones is set to star in U.K. drama Harvest from Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier) and produced by Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien’s Sixteen Films, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

News of the film answers a major question hanging over the Venice Film Festival, where Landry Jones touched down this week as the lead in Luc Besson’s dark thriller Dogman. At the film’s press conference on Thursday and in later interviews, Landry Jones spoke throughout with a thick Scottish accent, with Besson saying that he was method acting for a new role. “It’s not his normal voice,” the director explained. “He needs to stay in character.”

THR can now reveal that this role is for Harvest, Tsangari’s first feature since her multi-award-winning comedy-drama Chevalier.

Based on the award-winning 2013 novel of the same name by Jim Crace, the feature is to be...

“Dogman” director Luc Besson might be a newcomer to Venice, but following his film’s warm reception on Thursday, he’s likely to come back.

Though Besson’s Golden Lion contender polarized critics, with Variety’s Jessica Kiang sparing few words by calling it a “numbskulled nonsense movie,” audience members at the film’s gala premiere opted to spread the love at its world premiere, showering the film and filmmakers with six minutes of sustained applause. That tied the six-minute ovation Venice audiences gave Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” earlier in the evening on the second night of the prestigious festival.

If Besson offered no closing thoughts, the director nevertheless appeared visibly moved, beaming under the spotlight and embracing his cast with bear hugs. Besson shared a particularly tender moment with star Caleb Landry Jones, with whom he developed and honed the central role over the course of a full year before the cameras ever rolled.

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Briarcliff Entertainment will release “Dogman” in select theaters on Friday, March 15 before expanding on March 22.

Caleb Landry Jones graduates from menacing oddball character actor to sympathetic show-stopping lead in Luc Besson’s “Dogman.” But the French genre filmmaker’s first feature effort since 2019 assassin thriller “Anna” — and his second since 2017’s catastrophic space opera “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” — unfortunately doesn’t deliver the goods to match Landry Jones’ giddily unrestrained turn as a traumatized dog collector turned drag cabaret act turned … well-heeled shooter and avenger of capitalist greed and domestic abuse?

That’s nothing against the 33-year-old American actor’s Method-level dedication to the role. Landry Jones has stamped himself as indie film’s consummate weirdo, playing charmingly raffish outsiders or scary psychos. His Douglas in “Dogman” is a little bit of both,...

Exclusive: Caleb Landry Jones has built an eclectic resumé since he first appeared as Boy on Bike in 2007’s No Country for Old Men. His diverse credits include X-Men: First Class, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Get Out and Nitram, Justin Kurzel’s 2021 mass murder drama which earned Landry Jones a Best Actor prize in Cannes.

He’s now here in Venice with Luc Besson’s DogMan, playing a tormented young man who was abused as a child and who finds salvation through the love of his dogs. The performance is already drawing plenty of praise from industry and journalists we’ve spoken to.

When I caught up with him recently, it was from the set of an independent film he’s shooting in Scotland. The Texas native isn’t exactly a method actor, he tells me in the Q&a below, though he did conduct the entire chat with...

Luc Besson, the onetime A-list director who rose to the top of the box office with his kinetic action films, had his career derailed by rape allegations leveled against him in 2018 by Sand Van Roy, an actress on his film “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” The ensuing legal battle consumed five years of Besson’s life, but after being cleared last June of all charges by the Cour de Cassation, the French equivalent to the Supreme Court, he’s re-emerging at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the indie drama “Dogman.”

But will the industry work with Besson? That’s one of the questions that we discuss during a lengthy interview at the Plaza Athénée Hotel in Paris on the eve of his big premiere. Besson is evasive about the matter, preferring to talk up his latest effort, the story of a bruised man who faces...

Susan Sarandon, playing the U.S. Secretary of State Alaska Adams, gets the better of Bryan Brown, as the Australian prime minister, in a fast-paced verbal duel that represents the first footage from the Sean Penn-produced satirical comedy series “C*A*U*G*H*T.”

An elite team of Aussie soldiers is sent to an island nation to retrieve a secret file that has gone astray. Mistaken for Americans, they are captured by freedom fighters and produce a hostage video that goes viral. When the soldiers achieve celebrity status on social media, they realize that being caught might just be the best thing that could’ve happened to them.

“C*A*U*G*H*T” explores themes of identity, fame, and the absurdity of the viral age. “Why can’t we comedically deconstruct the intellectual ideas that humanity is facing right now?” says Kick Gurry who directs, produces and stars in the six-part series.

A couple weeks ago, we got our hands on the trailer for Dogman, the latest film from Luc Besson – whose previous credits include The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, The Family, Lucy, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson’s most recent film was the 2019 assassin thriller Anna. Dogman will be having its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival (which is set to run from August 30th through September 9th), and is set to receive a theatrical release in France on September 27th. With those dates drawing near, a poster for the film has arrived online, and you can check it out at the bottom of this article.

Dogman is described as being the incredible story of a child, bruised by life, who finds his salvation through the love of his dogs. According to Deadline, the Dogman himself is...

New films by top U.S. directors including David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Michael Mann, Bradley Cooper and Wes Anderson will be launching from the Venice Film Festival alongside a robust roster of European, Latin American and Asian auteurs, in a clear sign that disruption caused by two ongoing labor strikes in Hollywood is less than some expected.

Though Venice was forced a few days ago to pull its originally planned opener, Zendaya-starrer “Challengers,” due to promotional complications from the SAG-AFTRA strike, the fest’s complete lineup, announced on Tuesday, has certainly not suffered a mass exodus of Hollywood titles. On the contrary, the Lido’s firepower as an awards season pistol seems to have outgunned the probable scarcity of stars that will be on the red carpet for U.S. films, though even this aspect remains to be seen.

“This past week has been a bit turbulent...

Luc Besson is back in the director’s chair.

The French filmmaker, who was recently cleared of all charges in a 2018 rape case, helms upcoming drama “DogMan” which will premiere during this year’s fall festival circuit. “DogMan” is described as an incredible story of a child, bruised by life, who finds his salvation through the love of his dogs. The feature is Besson’s latest film since 2019’s “Anna.”

Caleb Landry Jones plays Douglas, a man who was abused as a child by his father and found solace in the friendship of dogs. Douglas later transitions to a woman and further explores his love of canines. Jojo T. Gibbs also stars alongside Cannes Best Actor winner Jones, who took home the prize in 2021 for “Nitram.”

Director Besson wrote “DogMan” and is producing the film under his Lbp EuropaCorp banner. Paris-based Kinology will handle international market sales, with Apollo Films releasing the film in France.

A trailer has just been unveiled for Dogman, the latest film from Luc Besson – whose previous credits include The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, The Family, Lucy, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson’s most recent film was the 2019 assassin thriller Anna. Dogman is expected to make its world premiere on the festival circuit this fall, and you can watch its trailer in the embed above.

According to Deadline, Dogman is described as being the incredible story of a child, bruised by life, who finds his salvation through the love of his dogs. The Dogman himself is said to be “a fragile yet resilient protagonist who bends societal rules as he makes his own way.”

Caleb Landry Jones of Nitram, Get Out, and American Made plays the lead character – and for most of the trailer, it looks like Dogman is...

EuropaCorp has dropped the trailer for Luc Besson’s anticipated comeback movie “Dogman” starring Caleb Landry Jones, a Texas-born musician and actor best-known for his Cannes-prizewinning role in “Nitram.”

The movie, represented in international markets by Kinology, is rumored to be selected in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The film tells the story of a child, bruised by life, who finds salvation through his love of dogs. It marks Besson’s first film since 2019’s “Anna.”

In the trailer, which Variety had seen exclusively before the Berlinale, Landry Jones stars as Douglas, a man who was abused as a child by his violent father and viciously thrown to the dogs. Instead of attacking him, the dogs came to protect him and became his allies. On a journey to heal from childhood trauma and physical injury, Douglas seeks to find his own path, even if it means bending societal rules...

Roughly a month before Venice Film Festival’s 2023 lineup announcement, the buzz around the competition is heating up with several star-studded films by heavyweight directors in the mix, including Pablo Larrain (“El Conde”), Michael Mann (“Ferrari“), Sofia Coppola (“Priscilla“), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”) and Michel Franco (“Memory”).

These titles are believed to have been officially invited to the Lido in competition, according to sources.

Larraín’s follow-up to “Spencer,” “El Conde” depicts dictator Augusto Pinochet as a Vampire with a cast led by Chilean star Alfredo Castro.

Another film with a genre element, Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” is a surrealist science-fiction romance based on an adaptation of Alasdair Grey’s novel of the same name, and starring Emma Stone as Belle Baxter, a Frankenstein-like woman who is brought back to life after her brain is replaced with that of her unborn child. Stone stars opposite Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley.

British singer-actor Luke Evans and Taiwanese female actor Gwei Lun-mei will co-star in “Weekend Escape Project,” an action thriller being produced in Taiwan by EuropaCorp.

The film marks a further comeback for EuropaCorp after a four-year hiatus that followed the personal travails of its founder, Luc Besson, and financial difficulties at the company. EuropaCorp was taken over by its junior lender, Vine Alternative Investments, in 2020, as part of a restructuring deal.

Besson and Virginie Besson-Silla are producing the movie for EuropaCorp. Kinology is handling international sales.

Directed by George Huang, the film (aka “Weekend in Taipei”) is set to start shooting on July 3 in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. Production is expected to take three months and take in locations including the Ximending district, Zhongshan Hall, the Dome and Taipei City Hall.

In February, Besson-Silla scouted locations for the film with director Olivier Megaton (“Transporter 3”) and met with Taipei mayor Wayne Chiang.

After securing major distribution deals at the EFM, Luc Besson’s next film “Dogman” starring Caleb Landry Jones, is now eyeing a launch in the festival circuit this fall, Variety has learned.

The movie’s French release, initially planned for April 19, has been pushed to the fall to allow distributors to prepare a coordinated global release after a launch at an A-category festival. It would mark the first Besson-directed movie to open at a festival in decades. His wild space opera movie “The Fifth Element” was the opening night movie of the 50th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1997.

Besson’s first film since his 2019 actioner “Anna,” “Dogman” is rumored to mark a return to form for the French director. Based on the trailer which we saw before the Berlinale, the film will be closer to some of his early work, notably “The Professional” and “Nikita” which were character-driven movies with a darker edge.

Luc Besson’s ”Dogman,” starring Caleb Landry Jones, wowed buyers at the Berlin’s European Film Market, where it was screened for select buyers.

“We hosted only one private screening of the completed film and buyers were stunned, they all came out saying that it was Luc Besson’s best film to date, his most mature movie and some even called it a masterpiece,” said Gregoire Melin, founder of Kinology, which is handling sales on the film.

On the heels of the screening, Kinology closed deals with some of the biggest distributors in key international territories, including Italy (Lucky Red), Germany and Austria (Capelight Pictures), Spain and Latin America (Sun Distribution Group), Scandinavia (Svensk Filmindustri), Benelux (Belga Films), Switzerland (Elite Film), Middle East (Front Row), Poland (Monolith), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aqs) and former Yugoslavia (Blitz).

Kinology is in active talks to close deals for the U.

One of the hottest packages at the EFM has been taken off the table for international.

Sources tell Variety that Prime Video is close to snapping up multiple international rights, excluding the U.S., to Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” which stars Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in a story about the titular white supremacist organization that operated in the 1980s. The deal, which is in the eight-figure range, is believed to be in advanced negotiations.

The project is penned by Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated writer Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), who based the screenplay on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book “The Silent Brotherhood.” Published in 1989, the book details the activities of the radical-right hate group The Order, which was one of the most sinister organizations to emerge in America since the Ku Klux Klan.

In the film, Law plays a lone FBI agent stationed in Idaho who starts piecing...

Fresh from her critically acclaimed lead performance in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody and having filmed major roles in Bong Joon-ho’s much-anticipated Mickey 7 and Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut Pussy Island last year, Naomi Ackie has landed another starry feature.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the British actress — also a 2023 BAFTA rising star nominee and BAFTA TV award winner back in 2020 — has joined the A-list cast of Morning, the upcoming sci-fi feature from Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Macbeth, Assassin’s Creed). Announced last year, the film will also star Oscar and BAFTA winner Laura Dern (Marriage Story, Little Women, Big Little Lies) and Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place I & II, Honey Boy), with Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Imitation Game) appearing in a supporting role. Cumberbatch and Dern also exec produce.

Morning is described as a story about “human connection,...

Australian director Justin Kurzel is no stranger to true crime after 2011’s “Snowtown,” 2019’s “True History Of The Kelly Gang,” and his most recent film, “Nitram.” Deadline reports Kurzel returns to the genre again for his next project, “The Order,” with Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult to star.

Read More: ‘Renfield’ Trailer: Nicholas Hoult Is In A Toxic Relationship With Dracula, Played By Nicolas Cage In New Horror Comedy

Based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt‘s book “The Silent Brotherhood,” “The Order” will follow the real-life white supremacist group and their string of domestic terrorist acts in the 1980s Pacific Northwest.

Continue reading ‘The Order’: Jude Law & Nicholas Hoult To Star In Justin Kurzel’s Upcoming True Crime Film at The Playlist.