Eric Fellner: Last News

Sally El Hosaini’s Netflix movie The Swimmers will be making its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival as the opening-night film on September 8 at Roy Thomson Hall.

Naman Ramachandran Sally El Hosaini’s refugee drama “The Swimmers” will open the 47th Toronto International Film Festival.The film follows the journey made by swimming sisters Yusra and Sarah Mardini who fled as refugees from war-torn Syria all the way to the 2016 Rio Olympics.In 2015, after their house was destroyed in the Syrian Civil War, the Mardini sisters decided to flee the country. They made their way to Lebanon and then Turkey, where they arranged to be smuggled into Greece by dinghy.

EXCLUSIVE: We have learned that filmmaker Sally El Hosaini has signed with CAA.

Wilson Chapman editorLena Dunham’s medieval kids comedy film “Catherine Called Birdy” is set to make its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival this September.Based on the 1994 children’s novel by Karen Cushman, “Catherine Called Birdy” is set in England during the year 1290, and focuses on Lady Catherine (Bella Ramsey), the youngest child of Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott) and Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper). When Catherine’s parents attempt to fix their financial woes by marrying her off to a wealthy man, she counteracts by scaring off her potentials suitors, resulting in tension between the spirited and independent young woman and her traditional parents.The cast also includes Lesley Sharp, Sophie Okonedo, Joe Alwyn, Isis Hainsworth, Dean-Charles Chapman and Paul Kaye, with Dunham appearing in a supporting role.

EJ Panaligan editorA+E Networks and The History Channel have partnered with the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet Fund, which was established to support a specialized academy founded in 2021 by George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Bryan Lourd of Creative Artists Agency, to provide educational resources for students from underserved communities in Los Angeles. The academy will welcome its inaugural class this fall.As part of the partnership, A+E Networks President and Chairman Paul Buccieri has joined the Roybal Advisory Board, whose members include Clooney, Heslov and Lourd alongside Kerry Washington, Eva Longoria, Mindy Kaling, Don Cheadle, Nicole Avant, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Jim Gianopulos.

The History Channel/A+E Networks has announced a multi-year partnership with the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet Fund – a fund created by George Clooney, Grant Heslov and CAA’s Bryan Lourd – to support the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet school in Los Angeles.

Ticket To Paradise – check out the trailer below.Directed and co-written by Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), Ticket To Paradise follows two divorced parents (Clooney, Roberts) who travel to Bali after learning their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), is planning to marry a local she has just met.As shown in the trailer, they decide to work together to sabotage the wedding to stop Lily from making the same mistake they made 25 years ago.This is the first time Clooney and Roberts have starred in a rom-com together, after previously sharing the screen in Ocean’s Eleven and 2016’s Money Monster.Along with Clooney, Roberts and Dever, the cast includes Billie Lourd (Booksmart), Maxime Bouttier and Lucas Bravo (Emily In Paris).Roberts and Clooney are also producers on the film, alongside Deborah Balderstone, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Marisa Yeres Gill, Lisa Roberts Gillan, Sarah Harvey and Grant Heslov.Ticket To Paradise is scheduled to be released in cinemas on October 21, 2022.Roberts is known for starring in romantic comedies, including 1990’s Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill and Runaway Bride.

Naman Ramachandran The world premiere of “Matilda the Musical” will open the 66th BFI London Film Festival.The Netflix adaptation stars Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough and Sindhu Vee and introduces Alisha Weir as Matilda.Screenwriter Dennis Kelly adapted the Tony and Olivier award-winning Royal Shakespeare Company theater production for the big screen, with original music and lyrics by Tim Minchin. Directed by Tony award-winning director Matthew Warchus, who also developed and directed the stage show for both London’s West End and Broadway, the film is produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title and Jon Finn and Luke Kelly of The Roald Dahl Story Company.

Wilson Chapman editorJulia Roberts is making her triumphant return to the rom-com. The iconic actor stars in the first trailer for “Ticket to Paradise,” a new film that reunites her with her “Ocean’s Eleven” co-star George Clooney.Directed by Ol Parker (“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”), “Ticket to Paradise” stars Roberts and Clooney as two long-divorced parents who impulsively married each other. When their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) heads on a post-graduation trip to Bali and decides to marry a local, the two fly out to Indonesia to talk her out of making the same mistake they once did.

Wilson Chapman editorOne of Roald Dahl’s most beloved characters is heading back to film. Netflix has released the first teaser for “Matilda the Musical,” set to debut on the streamer this December.“Matilda the Musical” is based on the stage musical from Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly, which premiered on the West End in London in 2011 and received 12 Olivier Awards.

Netflix released a first-look teaser for its upcoming holiday season special Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, with Alisha Weir as the title character, a little girl with an extraordinarily vivid imagination. The film adaptation, written by Dennis Kelly, adapted from the Tony and Olivier award-winning Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of the stage’s Matilda The Musical, also stars Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull), and Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough and Sindhu Vee.

EXCLUSIVE: In a highly competitive situation, Apple has landed Blitz, the sought-after new feature from Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen featuring the stories of Londoners during World War II’s Blitz, which he will write, direct and produce. The film is is set to begin filming later this year. 

K.J. Yossman The BBC has set a release date for “Everything I Know About Love,” the adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s book of the same name.The full season will debut on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on June 7.The seven episode season, which was written and created by Alderton, was directed by China Moo-Young (“Pennyworth”).

Amazon today unveiled the first clip from its Lena Dunham film, Catherine Called Birdy, also announcing that it will hit theaters on September 23, in advance of its Prime Video debut on October 7.

EXCLUSIVE: New Line has picked up the rights to Rebecca Serle’s New York Times bestselling novel In Five Years for HBO Max and set No Good Deed scribe Aimee Lagos to adapt. Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce.

EXCLUSIVE: Eric Fellner, Working Title co-chairman, and the creators of the hit Billy Elliot musical, have given their support to a non-replica production that will run at UK regional theatre, The Curve, Leicester, from July 7.

After watching his brother and long time collaborator Joel Coen direct The Tragedy of Macbeth to critical acclaim, Ethan is now eyeing his own directing assignment as sources tell Deadline he has come on to direct an new untitled pic for Focus Features and Working Title. He co-wrote the film with his wife Tricia Cooke though plot details are being kept under wraps right now.

Naman Ramachandran The BBC has revealed the first images from the keenly anticipated series adaptation of “Everything I Know About Love,” based on journalist, author and podcaster Dolly Alderton’s internationally bestselling memoir of the same name.Images have been revealed of Emma Appleton (Maggie), Bel Powley (Birdy), Marli Siu (Nell), Aliyah Odoffin (Amara) and Connor Finch (Street).“Everything I Know About Love” won a 2018 National Book Award for autobiography and was shortlisted for the 2019 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.The romantic comedy drama about female friendship provides an unflinching account of surviving your 20s.The seven-part series for BBC One will be directed by China Moo-Young (“Intergalactic,” “Harlots”) and produced by Working Title Television (“We Are Lady Parts,” “Hanna”), which is part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. Set in a 2012 London house-share, with flashbacks to suburban adolescence in the early 2000s, the series is a deep dive into bad dates, heartaches and humiliations and asks whether platonic love can survive romantic love as the protagonists grow up.The series is executive produced by Jo McClellan for the BBC, Dolly Alderton, and Surian Fletcher-Jones, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title Television; and produced by Simon Maloney.

Joe Wright’s Cyrano twirls onto 797 screens, the highest-profile specialty release in weeks (as the market awaits Focus Features The Outfit with Mark Rylance and Sony Pictures Classics Mothering Sunday). But the well reviewed period musical romance from UAR starring Peter Dinklage is landing in a tough place. Industry estimates anticipate a low single digit opening given the inconsistent reception for movie musicals and the fact that its key older demos, especially women, have been the slowest to return to theaters.

EXCLUSIVE: Coming off his dual performance in The Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark, Ray Liotta is set to join Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in The Substance. Revenge helmer Coralie Fargeat is directing her original script for Universal Pictures and Working Title.

British writer and director Nida Manzoor, whose credits include creating the Channel 4 series We Are Lady Parts, has wrapped production in London on her debut feature Polite Society.