Michelle Momplaisir: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to Girls Like Girls, a film that will mark the feature directing and screenwriting debut of pop star, actress, and novelist Hayley Kiyoko.

Naman Ramachandran Focus Features has acquired worldwide distribution rights, excluding Poland, Greece, and France, to “Hot Spot,” a near-future thriller about artificial intelligence from director Agnieszka Smoczyńska. The film, which wrapped production in Greece on Nov. 22, marks Smoczyńska’s second collaboration with the studio following “The Silent Twins.” Set in a society ruled by sentient AI, the film follows a private investigator who stumbles upon a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord while investigating a murder case.

Focus Features has acquired the sci-fi thriller Hot Spot, the second English-language feature from veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska. 

EXCLUSIVE: Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher), Liza Soberano (Alone/Together), Joe Chrest (Stranger Things) and Henry Eikenberry (The Crowded Room) will star alongside Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse in the horror-comedy Lisa Frankenstein, which actor-filmmaker Zelda Williams is directing for Focus Features, in her feature debut.

Robin Williams' only daughter has been tapped to direct , a Focus Features film starring Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse, ET confirms.In the film, which is set in 1989, an unpopular high schooler accidentally re-animates a handsome Victorian corpse during a lightning storm and starts to rebuild him into the man of her dreams using the broken tanning bed in her garage.Academy Award winner Diablo Cody wrote the script, and will serve as a producer on the project alongside Mason Novick. Jeff Lampert will be an executive producer for the film, while Focus Features’s Vice President of Production and Development, Michelle Momplaisir, will serve as the creative executive on the project.Williams tweeted about the news on Wednesday, writing, «Zomb-com incoming! I repeat, zomb-com incoming!»«I know Hollywood gets a bad rep for regurgitating sequels and remakes and reboots over and over and over… and yeah, it totally does that!» she added in a follow up tweet. «But it’s also finally letting me make the most bonkers, wonderful zombie script I’ve ever read, and for that, I will be forever grateful!»In a third tweet, Williams addressed the fact that will mark her feature-length directorial debut, writing, «For anyone coming here to be like 'THIS is your first feature?!', it wasn’t meant to be. I had three films fall apart before this, because movies often do.

EXCLUSIVE: Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse are set to star in Focus’ Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa Frankenstein directed by Zelda Williams from a script written by Oscar winner Diablo Cody. Principal photography is slated to begin later this summer.