Saul Zaentz: Last News

These aren’t fun times for billionaires, even though their number keeps proliferating along with their numbers — there are now at least 17 documented “super billionaires” with assets of more than $100 billion. Still, Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships are being torched, Jeff Bezos’ newspaper is under siege, and Mark Zuckerberg is trying to suppress a new book titled Careless People.

Amazon Prime since 2022 has been doing its own attempt to capture the magic of J.R.R. Tolkein’s wildly popular “Lord Of The Rings” universe with The Rings Of Power, setting it apart from Peter Jackson‘s LOTR and Hobbit trilogies, but still suggesting it is a distant cousin of those films. Now however Jackson himself is behind another incarnation, along with key LOTR contributors Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens who all won a boatload of Oscars and film immortality in the early part of this century with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy of films, each nominated for Best Picture, and finally sweeping it all in 2003 with 11 Academy Awards for LOTR: The Return Of The King. This was followed by a Hobbit trilogy. and that appeared to be it for the Middle Earth adventures of Jackson and company, but now they have found a way back in for producing partner New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation by turning Japanese as it were, at least in turning to the world of Japanese Anime and one of its singular current talents, director Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus; Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV Series).

Ernst Goldschmidt, the sales agent who co-founded Orion Pictures and oversaw distribution of some of the previous century’s biggest movies, has died aged 92.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Michael Douglas will receive the Honorary Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Cannes revealed on Tuesday that the “Basic Instinct” star will return to the Croisette this month for the festival, and will be honored as part of the May 16 opening ceremony. Douglas’ first time in Cannes was the 32nd edition of the festival in 1979, with James Bridges’ “The China Syndrome.” He returned for “Basic Instinct” in 1992 and again in 1993 for “Falling Down.” He was most recently in Cannes for Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind the Candelabra.”

Where do great movies come from? When Netflix started creating its own shows a decade ago, Ted Sarandos and his colleagues put that question to select creatives around town. It was a smart exercise – but most respondents insisted there was no answer.