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Exclusive: HBO is in development on the comedy series Flat Tyres from Fifth Season and co-creators Thabo Rametsi and Robbie Leacock.

The series follows a hapless gang of four deluded friends as they endlessly try – and fail – to become criminal kingpins of Cape Town’s most vibrant township.

Executive producers are Nicholas Hatton and Jason Woliner for Swindle Pictures as well as Matt Sadeghian and Geordan Somerville for Brillstein.

Rametsi is a multi-award-winning South African actor, writer, director, and producer who has starred in critically and commercially successful African films including the independent feature Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mahlangu as well as Amandla and Silverton Siege for Netflix. He is known for his roles in U.S. projects including The Gamechangers starring Daniel Radcliffe, Homeland with Rupert Friend, and The Giver directed by Phillip Noyce.

Rametsi is also the co-creator of the upcoming graphic novel series Imbokodo published by...

Exclusive: Anonymous Content has hired former Bron executive David Davoli as President of International, based in New York.

Davoli will oversee the company’s international division including its various global joint ventures — Anonymous/Federation, AC Nordic, AC Brazil and Chapter One in the UK. He will be tasked with continuing to build out the international expansion.

He starts in the new role in early September and will be a member of the senior leadership team, reporting to Anonymous Content CEO Dawn Olmstead.

Most recently, Davoli was President of Television at Bron Studios, where he oversaw development, production, co-productions, financing and sales, and was the key dealmaker across all TV efforts. Among the projects he worked on were the AMC+/RTÉ Irish family crime drama Kin, starring Charlie Cox and Aidan Gillen; Ten Percent, the English-language remake to the hit French series, Call My Agent!, which aired on Amazon Prime in the UK,...

Isla Fisher (Wolf Like Me) and Greg Kinnear (Shining Vale) will topline the family comedy The Present, from director Christian Ditter (How to Be Single), which has entered production in Los Angeles.

In the film from Stuart Ford’s independent content studio AGC Studios, a brilliant boy discovers he can manipulate time using an enchanted family heirloom, then teaming up with his siblings to go back to the eve of their parents’ separation in hopes of changing the outcome. As their schemes become more elaborate, the siblings will learn about family bonds and what they can and can’t control. Fisher and Kinnear are playing the parents in search of reconciliation, with Easton Rocket Sweda (General Hospital), Shay Rudolph (The Baby-Sitters Club) and Mason Shea Joyce (Euphoria) portraying the siblings who just might be the only people who can make that happen.

Ross Butler (Shazam!) also stars in the film...

Cary Elwes (Mission: Impossible 7), Corey Stoll (Billions), Michiel Huisman (The Flight Attendant) and Alfonso Herrera (Ozark) have joined the cast of Zack Snyder’s Netflix film Rebel Moon, Deadline can confirm. The quartet will star alongside Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Rupert Friend and Stuart Martin.

The sci-fi pic is set in a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy that finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius. They dispatch a young woman (Boutella) with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make a stand.

Snyder is directing from the script he wrote with Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead) and Kurt Johnstad (300), which was based on his and Johnstad’s story. Snyder is also producing alongside Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller for The Stone Quarry, with Eric Newman of Grand Electric. Bergen Swanson...

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

And today the one-and-only Alessandro Nivola returns to the podcast, currently starring as Dickie Moltisanti in The Many Saints of Newark. The Sopranos prequel film is currently in theaters and available on HBO Max. Nivola is generous as ever with his time, discussing in depth the character discovery that went into manifesting Dickie, as well as his myriad upcoming projects, including Noah Baumbach’s White Noise (starring his children!), the upcoming David O. Russell picture, and The Brutalist, the new Brady Corbet film currently in pre-production.

We also chat about his and Emily Mortimer’s underrated show Doll & Em (which needs a streaming home people!), the Netflix thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort, and A Most Violent Year...

Michael K. Williams, who memorably portrayed Omar Little in “The Wire” and Chalky White in “Boardwalk Empire,” has died at age 54. The New York Police Department confirmed to Variety that the actor was found dead on Monday at 2 p.m. inside of his Brooklyn residence.

Williams was a regular on many acclaimed HBO series, including “The Wire,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Night Of” and “Lovecraft Country,” played Leonard on SundanceTV crime series “Hap and Leonard” and had a recurring role on J.J. Abrams’ “Alias.” He also acted in acclaimed films including “Inherent Vice,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Road.”

The actor’s work often attracted awards attention, including three Emmy nods for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or movie for his work in “When They See Us,” “The Night Of” and “Bessie.” He’s currently in Emmy contention for outstanding supporting actor in a...

Chris Evans has found his next project and he’ll be appearing alongside about half of Hollywood. The Avengers: Endgame actor has reportedly signed on to join Don’t Look Up, the ridiculously star-studded upcoming film from director Adam McKay, which is headed to Netflix.

Evans will feature alongside the likes of – deep breath now – Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Rob Morgan, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Ron Perlman, Kid Cudi, Matthew Perry, Tyler Perry and Tomer Sisley. McKay is writing, directing and co-producing alongside Kevin Messick under the former’s Hyperobject Industries production banner.

Plot details are thin on the ground, but we know the basic logline. According to Deadline, “the film follows two low-level astronomers who embark on a media tour to warn mankind of an approaching asteroid that will destroy Earth.” It’s yet to be revealed which role Evans will...

Netflix movie The Devil All the Time has released its first trailer, showcasing an impressive ensemble within a bleak piece of dramatic Gothic Americana. Indeed, the film is headlined by Marvel’s current big screen Spider-Man, Tom Holland, opposite DC’s imminently-debuting big screen Batman, Robert Pattinson, setting up a collision course of characters so seemingly epic, it might just make you forget to wish they were in their respective crimefighting outfits.

The film was directed by Antonio Campos, who worked off a script he co-wrote with brother Paulo Campos, adapting Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel of the same name. Bearing a story spanning from World War II to the 1960s, the film is set in the rural Ohio town of Knockemstiff, centering around a young man (Holland) who not only discovers a dark secret about his family, but becomes threatened by some of the corrupt locals, most notably a...

Exclusive: Greg Kinnear is set as the male lead opposite Courteney Cox in Shining Vale, Starz’s horror-comedy pilot from Divorce creator Sharon Horgan and Trial & Error co-creator Jeff Astrof. The half-hour show hails from Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate in association with Astrof’s Other Shoe Productions, Horgan and Clelia Mountford’s Merman and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.

Written by Astrof from a story he wrote with Horgan, Shining Vale stems from an idea by Kaplan. It follows a dysfunctional family that moves from the city to a small town into a house in which terrible atrocities have taken place. But no one seems to notice except for Pat (Cox), who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed – turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same.

Kinnear will play Terry Phelps, Pat’s sweet, sensitive husband. He assumed he was married to the perfect wife until...

Suspenseful, gripping, and totally terrifying are just a few ways to describe Netflix's wide selection of goosebumps-worthy thriller movies. The wildly true flick The Red Sea Diving Resort will keep you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the movie while the post-apocalyptic Bird Box will give you chills like you've never had before. Be sure to stream Velvet Buzzsaw if you like a horror-thriller (plus an A-list cast) and give Hush a watch if you are into the kind of movie that will make your heart race faster than you thought possible.

Check out some of the best thrillers on Netflix ahead, and don't be surprised if you catch yourself checking over your shoulder for the remainder of the night.

- Additional reporting by Haley Lyndes, Stacey Nguyen, Corinne Sullivan, and Ryan Roschke

Related: 29 Sexy Movies Available to Stream on Netflix For Date Night This...

Guest Of Honour director and rabbit competition winner Atom Egoyan with Anne-Katrin Titze’s Steiff Dürer Bunny at the Seven Grams Caffe in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the Canada Now Opening Night U.S. premiere on February 13, of Atom Egoyan’s Guest Of Honour, starring David Thewlis and Laysla De Oliveira with Luke Wilson and Arsinée Khanjian, 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman asked Atom about his work with longtime composer Mychael Danna and Shannon Graham.

Guest Of Honour China poster from Atom Egoyan’s phone Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Ed Bahlman: Atom, it’s a beautiful score. Can you talk a little bit how you worked with the composer?

Atom Egoyan: The composer is someone I’ve been working with since Family Viewing, Mychael Danna. He’s a very brilliant composer. Because of the relationship, a lot of the visual composing...

by Murtada Elfadl

Out this Friday is Swallow, a psychological thriller about a woman unraveling ie The Film Experience’s favorite genre. Haley Bennett stars as Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife leading a seemingly perfect life who cracks under pressure to meet her controlling in-laws and husband’s rigid expectations. Austin Stowell co-stars as the husband. Bennett won best actress in the Us Narrative competition at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and this could mark a major breakout for her after roles in The Girl on the Train (2016) and The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019).

We are debuting an exclusive clip from Swallow and to set it up here’s writer and director Carlo Mirabella-Davis:

One of the core visual themes of Swallow is the image of a cracking façade; a veneer of normalcy with a fracture slowly forming on its surface. We used this image as a central...

Torun, Poland – While Gideon Raff’s Netflix thriller “The Red Sea Diving Resort” shot largely in South Africa and Namibia, the project was a welcomed opportunity for cinematographer Roberto Schaefer due to his own memorable travels through Ethiopia. The film, which screened in the EnergaCamerimage Intl. Film Festival’s Contemporary World Cinema section, is loosely based on an operation by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to evacuate Jewish Ethiopian refugees to Israel in the 1980s using an abandoned seaside resort in Sudan. Chris Evans, Ben Kingsley, Michael Kenneth Williams and Greg Kinnear star. “Story-wise obviously it moved me very much,” Schaefer said, speaking at the film’s screening in Torun, Poland on Thursday. “I had sort of a personal connection to it because in 1972 I visited Ethiopia with my sister and my brother-in-law. We travelled around the whole country and we went to three different Falasha villages – Ethiopian Jews are Falashas.

Greg Kinnear has joined the cast of The Stand, an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel at CBS All Access.

Kinnear will play Glen Bateman. A widowed professor when the superflu hits, Glen Bateman was accustomed to a solitary life. When he encounters other survivors, his curiosity is piqued by Mother Abagail’s visions.

Kinnear joins previously announced cast members James Marsden, Amber Heard, Heather Graham, Odessa Young, Jovan Adepo, Owen Teague, Henry Zaga, Brad William Henke, Eion Bailey, Katherine McNamara, Hamish Linklater, Alexander Skarsgård and Whoopi Goldberg.

Written by Josh Boone and Ben Cavell, The Stand is King’s apocalyptic vision of a world decimated by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil. The fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail (Goldberg) and a handful of survivors. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg,...

Netflix has rounded out the cast of its upcoming action movie “Kate,” starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with the addition of Tadanobu Asano, Michiel Huisman, Jun Kunimura, Miyavi Lee Ishihara and newcomer Miku Martineau.

Woody Harrelson is also on board to star in the film, which is directed by “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” helmer Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. Umair Aleem penned the script.

The story revolves around a female assassin, who, after being poisoned and given less than 24 hours to live, must go on a manhunt through the streets of Tokyo to take vengeance on her murderer before she dies.

The movie will be produced by Bryan Unkeless — who most recently worked with Winstead on the Harley Quinn spinoff, “Birds of Prey” — “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Deadpool 2” producer Kelly McCormick, and Patrick Newall. “Hobbs & Shaw” director David Leitch is exec producing with Scott Morgan.

Netflix landed the project in 2017 after winning an...

Exclusive: Alessandro Nivola and Gemma Arterton head a killer cast for a three-part adaptation of the 1939 classic Rumer Godden literary novel Black Narcissus, a tale of sexual repression and forbidden love. BAFTA-winning writer Amanda Coe wrote the three hourlong episodes and renowned Dp Charlotte Bruus Christensen makes her directing debut.

BBC One is producing with DNA TV and FX Productions. The exec producers are Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Coe for DNA TV and FX Productions and Lucy Richer for the BBC. Filming starts in October in Jomsom, Nepal and Pinewood Studios, UK.

Black Narcissus was previously adapted for screen in 1947 by Powell and Pressburger and subsequently won two Oscars for Cinematography (Jack Cardiff) and Art Direction (Alfred Junge).

Arterton plays Sister Clodagh, the leader of the nuns of St Faiths, who travel to Nepal to...

Future Batman actor Robert Pattinson and former Captain America star Chris Evans both had films screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and it seems the occasion provided the perfect opportunity for the most fan-pleasing photo to hit the web this weekend.

The picture comes courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, who tweeted the image along with the following caption:

“Stop us if you’ve heard this one: Captain America and Batman walk into the same party…”

Of course, the Tiff appearances from each actor had little to do with the pair’s work in superhero cinema. On the one hand, Pattinson is earning plaudits for his turn opposite Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse, the latest feature from The Witch director Robert Eggers. Evans, meanwhile, stars in the new Rian Johnson movie, Knives Out, which premiered yesterday to glowing reviews.

Batman Star Robert Pattinson And Captain America Actor Chris Evans...

Sacha Baron Cohen is infamous for his outlandish comedic personas like Borat, Bruno, and Ali G, but this fall the provocative comedian is leaving comedy behind and showing off his dramatic acting chops in the Netflix limited series “The Spy.” The 1960s espionage thriller casts Cohen as Eli Cohen, an Israeli clerk turned Mossad secret agent who goes undercover inside Syria. The limited series is based on a true story.

Netflix’s official synopsis for “The Spy” describes Cohen’s character as “a man who wants nothing more than to be of service to his country, but he does his job so well that he finds it hard to strip off his double identity.” The series co-stars Noah Emmerich (“The Americans”) as Eli’s Mossad handler, Hadar Ratzon Rotem (“Homeland”) as Eli’s wife, Nadia, and Waleed Zuaiter (“Colony”) as a military officer who thinks he’s found the perfect ally in the undercover Eli.

He started out as a TV host in the ’90s, but Greg Kinnear quickly made the transition to leading man thanks to legendary directors like Sydney Pollack and James L. Brooks investing in his acting talent. An Oscar nomination for As Good As It Gets followed, and he’s been making movies ever since, Little Miss Sunshine, Auto Focus, Little Men, to name just a few. This Summer he has three movies out — Brian Banks, The Red Sea Diving Resort (Netflix), and Phil, which he also directed. In this episode, we discuss the importance of tone, his penchant for playing […]...

He started out as a TV host in the ’90s, but Greg Kinnear quickly made the transition to leading man thanks to legendary directors like Sydney Pollack and James L. Brooks investing in his acting talent. An Oscar nomination for As Good As It Gets followed, and he’s been making movies ever since, Little Miss Sunshine, Auto Focus, Little Men, to name just a few. This Summer he has three movies out — Brian Banks, The Red Sea Diving Resort (Netflix), and Phil, which he also directed. In this episode, we discuss the importance of tone, his penchant for playing […]...

Orange Is The New Black has moved to the top of Netflix’s UK charts – two weeks after launching its seventh and final season.

Jenji Kohan’s prison drama has swapped places with Stranger Things, which has moved into second. This comes a week after Netflix said that 105M have watched at least one episode, making it the Svod’s most-watched original ever.

New titles in the top ten include Otherhood, the Patricia Arquette and Angela Bassett comedy, Chris Evans spy thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort, Tom Cruise’s American Made and cooking competition Sugar Rush, which launched its second season last week.

Elsewhere, Suits moved up to seventh from eighth last week, while Another Life went from third to fifth, Jane The Virgin went from fifth to sixth and Secret Obsession went from fourth to tenth.

Netflix’s top ten list launched three months ago with weekly updates...

Stars: Chris Evans, Alessandro Nivola, Mbulelo Grootboom, Sizo Mahlangu, Michael Kenneth Williams, Masasa Mbangeni, Setlhabi Jacob Taunyane, Ditebogo Ledwaba, Motsi Tekateka, Yossi Vasa, Greg Kinnear | Written and Directed by Gideon Raff

The Red Sea Diving Resort, directed by Gideon Raff, is the latest feature from streaming service Netflix with little to no fanfare and often arrives dead on arrival. It stars Chris Evans as Ari Levinson, an undercover Israeli operative who smuggles displaced refugees and with a team gets them to safety. On paper, The Red Sea Diving Resort is a mixture between Blood Diamond and Entebbe. The two comparable films run incredibly similar sequences of suspense and narrative threads, albeit far better executed than this sub-par Chris Evans vehicle.

Gideon Raff’s film is not lousy per se; best described merely as weak. The narrative by Raff – who also writes as well as directs this feature – has an exciting tale to tell.

Patrick Sproull Aug 2, 2019

Chris Evans’ first post-Marvel venture – the bland historical thriller, The Red Sea Diving Resort – is now available on Netflix…

For Gideon Raff’s thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort, now streaming on Netflix, the writing is on the wall from the get-go. Opening in the early 1980s, in rural Ethiopia, we find a group of Mossad agents shepherding a handful of Ethiopian Jews out of the country and to the perceived safety of Jerusalem. As the truck prepares to leave, one agent, Ari Levinson, realizes there’s a child missing and sprints back through the fields to rescue an oblivious young boy. It’s a moment of bravado that tells you exactly the kind of film The Red Sea Diving Resort intends to be.

Based on true events, The Red Sea Diving Resort dramatizes the plight of Ethiopian Jews attempting to flee their country to Israel.

If the silver screen has one true love, it’s the transformation of tough real-life events into entertaining escapades. Sometimes, it works well. Films like “Argo” treat their source material respectfully, taking distressing true stories and making thoughtful, digestible features from them. As authentic characters place themselves in peril, narrowly dodging one life-threatening jam after another, audiences watch aghast, wondering, “Would we be as courageous?”

Other times, it doesn’t work at all.

Continue reading ‘The Red Sea Diving Resort’: Gideon Raff’s Career Sinks In This Dull, Exploitative True Story [Review] at The Playlist.

Spencer Mullen Aug 1, 2019

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Red Sea Diving Resort, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and more in today's daily Link Tank!

Spider-Man: Far From Home may have hinted about the Fantastic Four in the McU.

"The Fantastic Four are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe … at some point. But their first introduction may have been through Spider-Man, which is a perfectly appropriate gateway due to the Fantastic Four’s and Spider-Man’s long and storied history together in the Marvel Universe."

Read more at Inverse.

Here's why were happy that Helmut Zemo will be joining Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

"After months of rumors, it was confirmed at San Diego Comic Con that Daniel Brühl’s character from Captain America: Civil War, Helmut Zemo, would be joining the Marvel Studios Falcon & The Winter Soldier Disney+ series. This is a brilliant addition to the show. Zemo is...

Netflix’s The Red Sea Diving Resort is live on the streaming service today. We weren’t at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival to see the world premiere, but we do think that it’s important to take a look at the very real events that inspired the film before we take a look at Chris Evan’s […]

The post The Amazing and Timely True Story Behind Netflix’s ‘The Red Sea Diving Resort’ appeared first on /Film.

Producer, writer, and director Gideon Raff is, perhaps, most well-known for creating the hit Israeli show “Prisoners of War,” and producing and writing several seasons of its American counterpart “Homeland.” A veteran of both television and film, Raff’s latest feature-length effort, “The Red Sea Diving Resort,” tells the important story of a group of Mossad agents, who embark on a covert operation to, with the help of local Kabede Bimro (Michael K.

Continue reading ‘The Red Sea Diving Resort’: Director Gideon Raff On His Killer Netflix Cast & More [Interview] at The Playlist.

In the early 1980s, a clandestine unit of Mossad agents bought and reopened a deserted beach resort on the shores of war-torn Sudan, and used it as a cover through which to smuggle thousands of persecuted Ethiopian Jews to the safety of Jerusalem. When this story was declassified a few years ago, it made for a remarkable new chapter in the history of the Jewish diaspora — one that hinges on ancient Hebraic themes of exile, the divine value of a single human life, and the pursuit of a promised land where all of God’s people might live in peace.

Now that it’s been adapted to the screen as a generic Netflix thriller that emphasizes Israeli heroism over Ethiopian suffering (not to mention the bravery required for them to leave their homes and reach the coast), this story only makes for a dull footnote to the history of white savior movies.

“There’s so much to see and do in Arous,” read the brochure for a Sudanese vacation spot where visitors could go scuba diving amid reefs “made famous by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Hans Hass.” Never mind that Sudan was in a state of civil war and no place for tourists in the early 1980s. European tourists came anyway, oblivious to the fact that the exotic getaway — rechristened “The Red Sea Diving Resort” for the Netflix film of the same name — was a front for a Mossad-run rescue mission: Israeli agents used Arous to smuggle Ethiopian Jews out of refugee camps to the coast, where offshore boats could ferry them to Jerusalem.

The true story of this operation is so wild you couldn’t make it up — the kind of recently declassified real-life operation that savvy producers could conceivably pitch as a cross between Ben Affleck’s “Argo” and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich.

Now that Chris Evans has officially put Steve Rogers's shield to rest and exited the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor has time for a whole host of other roles. In addition to the upcoming Knives Out, you'll be able to catch him in Netflix's The Red Sea Diving Resort at the end of the month. And, lucky for you, we now have our hands on a brand-new trailer for the latter.

The film, written and directed by Gideon Raff, is based on the real-life rescue missions that helped save thousands of refugees in Ethiopia from genocide. The way the team of undercover international agents and incredibly brave Ethiopians who helped carry out their mission is almost too wild to believe - the group uses a deserted holiday resort in Sudan as a front to smuggle people to Israel, saving them from certain death.

Chris Evans stars as the charismatic leader of the team,...

Haley Bennett (Girl on the Train, The Red Sea Diving Resort) and German star Matthias Schweighofer (The Manny, Kursk) are in talks for key roles in Resistance, writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s upcoming biopic of legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau.

Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) has already been cast in the lead.

The film, which Warner Bros. has now acquired for Germany, will follow the life of Marceau and his key involvement in the French Resistance during World War II. Schweighofer is set to play notorious SS commander Klaus Barbie, who was personally assigned by Adolf Hitler to dismantle the Resistance, while ...

Haley Bennett (Girl on the Train, The Red Sea Diving Resort) and German star Matthias Schweighofer (The Manny, Kursk) are in talks for key roles in Resistance, writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s upcoming biopic of legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau.

Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) has already been cast in the lead.

The film, which Warner Bros. has now acquired for Germany, will follow the life of Marceau and his key involvement in the French Resistance during World War II. Schweighofer is set to play notorious SS commander Klaus Barbie, who was personally assigned by Adolf Hitler to dismantle the Resistance, while ...