Movies

Thirty-nine recipients of the 72nd Annual Peabody Awards will be honored May 20 at the Waldorf-Astoria in Gotham. The Peabodys, bestowed by the U. of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, cite the best in electronic media.

Telefilm Canada has signed up to back Vancouver-based CineCoup Film Accelerator’s million-dollar indie filmmaking competition. Telefilm has committed to providing a million dollars and guaranteed theatrical distribution to the winner of CineCoup’s reality-style competition, where 10 filmmaking teams submit a two-minute video to CineCoup’s social media platform. Fans will vote on their favorites, and the... Read more »

Cohen Media Group has acquired movie rights to Edward Ball’s “The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures.” Story, published earlier this year, focuses on the relationship between motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge and industrialist and politician Leland Stanford, who hired Muybridge to prove the theory that a horse... Read more »

Jia Zhangke’s Palme d’Or contender “A Touch of Sin,” the critics’ favorite among Cannes competition films through Saturday, is igniting more than a touch of Riviera sales business. Five territories have been sold and another 16 are under discussion or in the final stages of negotiation, sales company MK2 announced Sunday on the Croisette. Territories... Read more »

Keenan Wynn, Shelley Winters, Gary Merrill and Michael Rennie in Phone Call from a Stranger (Jean Negulesco - 1952)

Fox International Prods. Germany has set production on a pair of movie projects — teen comedy “Playing Doctor” and children’s drama “Riko, Oskar and the Pasta Detective.” The company noted it’s moving ahead on the two movies following the  success of its “Breakup Man,” which it touted as the top grossing German film this year... Read more »

Dominated by Caracol and RCN TV, Colombia’s television duopoly can be credited with spurring the film production surge of the past decade as TV-trained talents applied their experience to bigscreen projects.

A look at the films and filmmakers heading to Cannes.

IFC Midnight has acquired North American rights to action-thriller “Raze,” starring Zoe Bell, Rachel Nichols, Tracie Thoms and Sherilyn Fenn. Deal was announced at Cannes, where Celluloid Dreams is selling international rights. Directed by Josh Waller, “Raze” made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. Cinipix financed with Kenny Gage and Andy... Read more »

Marc Forster’s Brad Pitt starrer “World War Z” is to open the 35th Moscow film festival, which runs June 20-29. Leonid Vereshchagin, producer general of the fest, also unveiled on Saturday in Cannes the first 10 films in competition. He was joined at the Cannes event by Kirill Razlogov, the fest’s program director, and Andrey... Read more »