Lorenzo Mieli: Last News

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Luca Guadagnino will next direct the William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer” with Daniel Craig playing the renowned counterculture author’s alter ego, an outcast American expat who lives in Mexico, and “Outer Banks” star Drew Starkey starring as a younger man with whom he becomes madly infatuated. “Queer” will also topline Lesley Manville (“The Crown”), frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman; and Henry Zaga (“The New Mutants”), according to inside sources. The boldly ambitious indie film is set to start shooting this month at Rome’s refurbished Cinecittà Studios where the Mexico City-set movie will be filmed in its entirety.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – has now changed historical sides.  Wright is at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios shooting high-end TV drama “M. Son of the Century” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. A timely tale because, as he puts it: “Populist leaders are sprouting up all over the world.”  Aesthetically, the show will be “quite outlandish” with deeply saturated colors, punctuated by a “kind of techno score,” the director said during a recent set visit. Though “It’s not told in a vérité style,” Wright pointed out that “All the facts of what happened, they’re all there.” 

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) is due to start filming a new movie in June, we can reveal.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Fremantle is restructuring management of its Italian operations by promoting Marco Tombolini to the role of CEO Fremantle Italy. Tombolini, who since May of 2022 was Fremantle Italy co-CEO, will now “Take the helm of all areas and functions of the company, with the senior management of Fremantle Italy reporting directly to him,” a Fremantle statement said. Gabriele Immirzi – who had long served as Fremantle Italy CEO prior to sharing the CEO role with Tombolini since last May – has now stepped down but is staying in the Fremantle fold becoming co-CEO with Lorenzo Mieli of The Apartment Pictures.

Spencer‘s Pablo Larraín has set the biopic Maria on the life of American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas as his next feature, bringing Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie (Those Who Wish Me Dead) aboard to star.

Italian actor Luca Marinelli, who was seen recently in Cannes Jury Prize winner The Eight Mountains, will play Benito Mussolini in Joe Wright’s upcoming series M. Son Of The Century.

Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli gave a spirited and often humorous rundown of his career as a producer working with directors such as Luca Guadagnino and Paolo Sorrentino during a keynote talk at the London Film Festival Monday.

Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli, whose recent credits include Luca Guadagnino’s Bones And All, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God and HBO’s hit TV version of My Brilliant Friend, has unveiled plans for a limited series adaptation of Italo Calvino’s classic Italian novel The Baron In The Trees.

Michaela Zee editorLuca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” has released its official trailer. Starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, the coming-of-age film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.Based on Camille DeAngelis’ novel of the same name, “Bones and All” follows teenage cannibals Maren (Russell) and Lee (Chalamet) as they travel through the backroads of America. Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Francesca Scorsese, Anna Cobb and Mark Rylance also star in the film adaptation.“There is something about the disenfranchised, about people living on the margins of society, that I am drawn toward and touched by. I want to see where the possibilities lie for them, enmeshed within the impossibility they face,” Guadagnino said in a statement about the film. “The movie is for me a meditation on who I am and how I can overcome what I feel, especially if it is something I cannot control in myself. And lastly, and most importantly, when will I be able to find myself in the gaze of the other?”

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its full industry lineup, which will include keynote conversations with the Italian producer and CEO of Apartment Pictures Lorenzo Mieli and Fionnuala Jamison of MK2 Films.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Florian Zeller, the French filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning “The Father” and “The Son,” is set to make his TV debut with the adaptation of Stefano Massini’s play “The Lehman Trilogy.” Zeller will write, direct and co-produce the series under his newly formed Blue Morning. Lorenzo Mieli at The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle company, and Domenico Procacci at Fandango are executive producing the series. The pair previously teamed on the acclaimed series “My Brilliant Friend” based on the Elena Ferrante novels. Massini’s epic drama charts the history of one of the global financial institutions that helped spark the 2008 recession. The original production inspired Sam Mendes to stage an English-language version of Massini’s five-hour play. Adapted by Ben Power, the production won five Tony Awards earlier this year, including prizes for Sam Mendes’ direction and for the lead performance of Simon Russell Beale.

Angelique Jackson Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s 1985 bestselling memoir “Elvis and Me” is set to get the big screen treatment, courtesy of Sofia Coppola. Coppola wrote and will direct the feature film, titled “Priscilla,” with Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown,” “Bad Times at the El Royale”) attached to star as Presley and Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria,” “Saltburn”) as Elvis. The film will shoot in Toronto this fall. A24 will distribute the project in North America, with Vision Distribution handling distribution in Italy — where it will later become a Sky exclusive. Stage 6 Films/Sony Pictures International Releasing will distribute in the rest of the world.

Sofia Coppola has set her sights on her next film as the Oscar-winner is set to direct the feature film Priscilla, which is based on the memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley with Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi set to play Priscilla and Elvis Presley. Published in 1985, Presley’s intimate account of her life with Elvis became a New York Times Bestseller and an international sensation. Coppola adapted the script as well.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Stefano Sollima, who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and TV show “Gomorrah,” is back behind camera on a contemporary Rome-set crimer titled “Adagio.” Shooting started Sept. 5 on “Adagio” which features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). “I am eager and full of enthusiasm about finally returning to depict my city after all these years. Rome has changed, and so have I,” Sollima said in a statement for Variety. He went on to describe “Adagio” as a dark story of revenge and redemption, which will be the last chapter of my Roman criminal trilogy.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – is set to change historical sides and direct TV drama “M,” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. The high-end series, which is based on Antonio Scurati’s Premio Strega-winning and international bestselling novel “M. Son of the Century,” traces the birth of Fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach that has sparked debate about the Fascist dictator’s legacy in Italy and abroad. “The writer understood and put on paper, with facts and documents and everything, that Mussolini is the guy – him and only him – who created what we now know as populism and Fascism,” said the show’s producer Lorenzo Mieli, speaking in Venice, where he is among producers of Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All.”

Michaela Zee editorTimothée Chalamet’s cannibal love story “Bones and All” has released its first teaser trailer, courtesy of the Oscar nominee’s Twitter page. The film marks the actor’s reunion with director Luca Guadagnino, whose 2017 film “Call Me by Your Name” earned Chalamet his first Oscar nomination.

Timothée Chalamet has taken to Twitter to unveil the first teaser for the cannibal romance Bones and All, reuniting him with his Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentThe mob in Italy, besides being an endemic plague, has always been grist for the film and TV mill, with gritty Naples-set show “Gomorrah,” the country’s top TV export, being one recent example.But a major change is underway in how Italian producers and talents are tackling organized crime tropes that were once exclusively imbued in patriarchal pathos. Mob stories coming out of Italy are primarily a woman’s thing these days.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian playwright Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” which just won five Tony Awards including the prize for best play, is set to become a high-end TV series to be produced by Italy’s Fandango and The Apartment, the outfits behind HBO’s Elena Ferrante adaptation “My Brilliant Friend.”The TV project, originated by Italian producer Domenico Procacci’s Fandango, to adapt into a series the epic drama written by Massini that charts the history of one of the financial institutions that helped spark the 2008 recession, has now been boarded by producer Lorenzo Mieli’s shingle The Apartment, the Fremantle-owned company behind Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-nominated “The Hand of God” and his “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope” shows. Fandango and Mieli previously collaborated on “My Brilliant Friend” for HBO and Italy’s RAI.Having Fremantle’s The Apartment on board gives “The Lehman Trilogy” TV series adaptation considerably more heft, though a commissioning broadcaster or streamer remains to be found.Mieli in a statement called “Lehman Trilogy” – which besides best play won Tony Awards for Sam Mendes’ direction and for the lead performance of Simon Russell Beale, among other prizes – “a marvelous and contemporary text” on the “intrinsic failures of a certain form of capitalism.”The chief of the Fremantle-owned company also noted that it’s rare for an Italian play to be celebrated outside national borders.

Manori Ravindran International EditorAngelina Jolie will write, direct and produce the film “Without Blood,” starring Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir.Jolie is making the film with super-indie Fremantle, with which she struck a three-year international filmmaking agreement in March. Principal photography has begun in the Puglia (Apulia) and Basilicata regions of southern Italy, as well as in Rome.The film is based on the international-bestselling novel by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco, and set in the aftermath of an unidentified conflict.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentPaolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” and Gabriele Mainetti’s “Freaks Out” lead the pack at the David di Donatello Awards this year with 16 nominations each.Here’s the complete list of nominees:PICTURE “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Leonardo Di Costanzo “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino “Ennio,” Giuseppe Tornatore “Freaks Out,” Gabriele Mainetti “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Mario MartoneDIRECTOR “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Leonardo Di Costanzo “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino “Ennio,” Giuseppe Tornatore “Freaks Out,” Gabriele Mainetti “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Mario MartoneDEBUT DIRECTOR “The Bad Poet,” Gianluca Jodice “Maternal,” Maura Delpero “Small Body,” Laura Samani “Re Granchio” (The Legend of King Crab), Alessio Rigo De Righi, Matteo Zoppis “Una Femmina” (The Code of Silence), Francesco Constabile PRODUCER “A Chiara,” Jon Coplon, Paolo Carpignano, Ryan Zacarias, Jonas Carpignano (Stayblack Productions) — RAI Cinema “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage), Carlo Cresto Dina (Tempesta), Michela Pini (Amka) RAI Cinema “The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino, Lorenzo Mieli “Freaks Out,” Andrea Occhipinti, Stefano Massenzi, Mattia Guerra (Lucky Red) — Gabriele Mainetti (Goon Films) — RAI Cinema “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter), Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori (Indigo Film) RAI CinemaACTRESS Swami Rotolo, “A Chiara” Miriam Leone, “Diabolik” Aurora Giovinazzo, “Freaks Out” Rosa Palasciano, “Giulia” Maria Nazionale, “Qui Rido Io” (The King of Laughter)ACTOR Elio Germano, “America Latina” Silvio Orlando, “Ariaferma” (The Inner Cage) Filippo Scotti, “The Hand of God” Franz Rogowski, “Freaks Out” Toni Servillo, “The King of Laughter”SUPPORTING ACTRESS