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Afternoon, Cannes is over but the world of film and TV rumbles on. Here's your weekly dose of Insider news 'n' goss from Max Goldbart. |
Complaints filed: We could fill these very pages (well, digital pages anyway) with news and analysis about the so-called 'culture wars' almost every week, but the past seven days has been ripe with incident. When Karla Sofia Gascón (pictured) became the first transgender actress to win the Cannes Best Actress prize for Jacques Audiard’s gangster musical Emilia Perez
last weekend she would have felt only joy, but that joy swiftly turned sour after French far-right politician Marion Maréchal-Le Pen responded to the win on X with: "So a man has won the Best Actress prize… progress for the left is the erasure of women and mothers.” Palms could be heard hitting faces across the land. To me, the post felt as unsurprising as it was depressing, and Karla could no longer have her moment in the sun. In what has turned out to be a fast-moving story, French LGBTQ+ groups were quick to file a complaint
against Le Pen, whose aunt is popular National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, as they threw their weight behind the Spanish actress, who plays a Mexican drug lord undergoing a sex change in the movie and had dedicated the prize to “all trans people who suffer every day." There was some cruel irony embedded within that dedication. The incident is a stark reminder of what just a few words, and certainly X posts, can create in a febrile atmosphere, and Gascón has herself since filed a complaint
with the Paris Public Prosecutor for “sexist contempt related to gender identity," which carries a €3,750 ($4,066) fine. Le Pen responded by saying she would not be “intimidated by legal threats from LGBT militant activists."
Rowling's words: These issues creep into the world of film and TV with alarming regularity. J.K. Rowling, whose views on transgender rights are by now known around the world, is rarely far from them. An extract from the Harry Potter author's book, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, published by The Times, laid bare her relationships and feelings towards those closest to her
, with Rowling coming out against colleagues who have rushed to condemn her then "emailed me, or sent messages through third parties, to check that we were still friends.” One's natural inclination would be to ponder who these people might be. One of the sadder elements of Rowling's very public battles with the transgender community has been the breakdown in relations with those who shot to superstardom via the Harry Potter movies, and both Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have been involved in wars of words with her in recent weeks — something that would have been simply unimaginable when they were riding high in Potterland. Rowling's strident views have had such an impact that Tom Burke, who fronts the BBC and HBO series
that is based on Rowling's Cormoran Strike novels, revealed he requested media training from the BBC to help him handle questions on the matter. "I hate this term ‘culture war’… Maybe it’s naive of me to say that, but I don’t want to be part of it. I want to bring people together," uttered the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga star.
"Customary inflammatory language": With little beating around the bush, debates over language reached the UK general election this week. As culture war-themed topics look set to take up at least some of the airspace in the six-week-long campaign, a BBC News presenter was forced to apologize
for describing the words of Donald Trump's pal Nigel Farage as "customary inflammatory language," as he addressed the press at a gathering for Reform UK — the party he founded in its original form but is not standing for on July 4. Whether the presenter, Geeta Guru-Murthy, should be able to bend impartiality in such a way that she can make such a remark is one for more debate, but the sheepish apology was pretty swift. And it was very much foreseen by BBC News boss Deborah Turness, who wrote last week that the BBC will "inevitably make mistakes" during the [election] period... and when we do we will hold our hands up to them." Here's to five more weeks of this, and plenty more Rowling chatter to come, without doubt. I, for one, will be sticking as close
as I can to the mantra of Tom Burke.
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Inside An Indian Mythological Universe |
Being Prabhas: Hannah Abraham spent last week in India on the set and amongst adoring crowds of upcoming mythological sci-fi movie Kalki 2898 AD
from Nag Ashwin, which stars Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika Padukone. The movie is believed to be one of Indian's most expensive of all time and is distinctly "pan-Indian" — it is shot primarily in Telugu and will release simultaneously in five languages. Megastar Prabhas, who has previously been dubbed the first ever "pan-Indian" actor, told Hannah that this doesn't affect him but "it’s a good feeling to think that people around the country like me now.” This turned out to be the understatement of the millennia as Hannah visited a launch event in his home state of Telangana and witnessed him addressing a circa-15,000-strong crowd, where he spent much of his time apologizing for a promotional Instagram story teasing the identity
of “a very special person,” which prompted fans to speculate wildly about his relationship status. Vyjayanthi Movies' Kalki is a sci-fi infused retelling of the Hindu myth of Kalki and the Kali Yuga, the end of the current world age. The film launched its first teaser at the San Diego Comic-Con last year under previous title Project K, becoming the first Indian film to do so. Release date has since been delayed several times and is currently slated for June 27.
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"Shaping the future" of docs:
The biggest documentary-focused marketplace in the world is about to unfold in La Rochelle, France. The 35th edition of Sunny Side of the Doc, running from June 24-27, has set itself an enormously ambitious task – nothing less than “to shape the future of documentary filmmaking.” To that end, Sunny Side will convene thousands of industry professionals, including creators, producers, buyers, and broadcasters. One of the dominant themes will be artificial intelligence. Hollywood creators fear it (AI became a major sticking point in the actors and writers’ strike last year), but, interestingly, the doc community has been more receptive to the technology. Sunny Side is going to explore how AI can be used in docs going forward, both as a creative tool and a
way to save money on production costs. Our docs guru Matt Carey had more with this handy primer here.
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netflix continues on the korea path |
The ‘King’ is Korean: Last week, Netflix dropped its second What We Watched data dump, designed to provide a completist picture of how subscribers use its service (and give shareholders confidence things are rosy). Jesse crunched the numbers on the July-December 2023 period for its Asian content and it appears that the Squid Game streamer’s huge investment in Korean programs and films is paying off — certainly in terms of viewing. Using a total hours viewed metric, King the Land
, a romantic miniseries starring Lee Jun-ho and Im Yoon-ah, was the most-watched overall, accruing more than 600 million hours. Interestingly, the show was only available on Netflix in select territories, and back in South Korea it was on broadcaster JTBC and Netflix streaming rival TVING. There is a slight caveat here in that South Korean shows tend to run longer than originals from other countries such as the U.S. and UK, so minutes and hours clock up faster. However, the fact that 20 of the top 100 TV shows on Netflix by hours viewed were from Korea speaks for itself. Overall, the total hours viewed were down 12% on the previous six months at 3.24 billion, but with Squid Game
season 2 coming later this year, there’s no sign the Korean content train is slowing. Netflix is now gearing up for Park Kyung-soo’s political thriller drama series The Whirlwind on June 28, while Disney+ joined in this week with Korean spy thriller Tempest.
Japandemonium: Korea isn’t the only Asian nation we've been writing about this week. This morning Japanese local time, Jesse revealed the streamer is adapting 2011 French feature Les Émotifs Anonymes under the title Romantics Anonymous. In a rare move, the series, which stars the likes of Shun Oguri (Godzilla Vs Kong) and Han Hyo-joo (Moving
), is being made by a Korean production company, Yong Film, proving that production links between the close neighbors are deepening. Cast and crew have talked about the challenging process of melding the differing sensibilities but appear committed to creating what Han Hyo-joo thinks will be a “truly outstanding” production. Meanwhile, Disney+ set a global launch date for Japanese anime Code Geass Rozé of the Recapture (June 21), which will be on Hulu in the U.S. With the Japanese-themed Shōgun arguably the streamer’s breakout series of 2024 to date, the land of the rising sun is lighting up the world of streaming.
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when baz met james graham |
Prolific playwright: We are surprised it has taken our West End aficionado Baz Bamigboye this long to have a proper sitdown with James Graham, the prolific playwright whose Wikipedia notes that he has written around 30 plays in the past 20 years (yes, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me too). Although admitting he has sought help for workaholism in a recent BBC interview, Graham is showing no signs of slowing and took our roving International Editor-at-Large into a world that currently incorporates his Boys from the Blackstuff theater adaptation, the upcoming BBC version of his hit soccer play Dear England
starring Joseph Fiennes and, intriguingly, an early-stage series about “the mood sweeping across Europe" in development with Sherwood maker House Productions. Graham is a class act, and once had three plays on at the West End at the same time. Dive deeper for some of his methods.
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🌶️ Hot One: It's a Sin star Callum Scott Howells (right) will play flamboyant aristocrat Henry Paget in indie pic Madfabulous
🌶️ Hotter: Signature Entertainment picked up UK & Irish rights to the roller coaster thriller Thrill Ride from Film Bridge International.
🌶️ Also Hot: Sarah Phelps landed her first ever ITV drama after winning a BAFTA for The Sixth Commandment.
🦈 Shark vs catfish: Mel had the lowdown on an intriguing copyright suit in France pertaining to Netflix's Seine-set thriller Under Paris.
🤝 Done deal: Sky swooped for Max's The Penguin TV series — one of the highest profile deals to come out of the LA Screenings.
👩💻 New job: For former Blue Ant Media exec Julie Chang at the nascent Serial Maven Studios.
🏕️ Festivals latest: Io Capitano and Agnieszka Holland's Green Border have joined the lineup of this year's Refugee Week arts and culture festival.
🍿 Box office: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes topped $300M worldwide, per Nancy's latest.
🪄 Charm offensive: From Catherine Tait, the head of Canada's CBC, as she seeks help from European counterparts for a social media detox initiative.
🎥 Trail: For Moana 2, the sequel starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Auli’i Cravalho.
Jesse Whittock and Matt Carey contributed to this week's International Insider.
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