“The residents of Los Angeles County should be outraged because it will be the taxpayers that are picking [up] the tab to defend this millionaire,” Patrick Steinfeld says
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Patrick Steinfeld, the lawyer representing the family of the 14-year-old girl D4vd is accused of sexually assaulting, murdering, and dismembering, is disputing the singer’s claim that he is indigent and entitled to a public defender.
In a statement obtained by Rolling Stone, the lawyer for the family of Celeste Rivas Hernandez alleges the singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, is concealing assets in companies he owns and through money he transferred to his mother, Colleen Burke. Steinfeld argues that the public should be angered that a platinum-selling artist is seeking publicly funded representation.
“It is unfathomable that our justice system qualifies David Anthony Burke as indigent when D4VD has 5+ billion streams with 16 million monthly listeners on a single streaming platform, and controls three corporations,” Steinfeld wrote in the statement. “The residents of Los Angeles County should be outraged because it will be the taxpayers that are picking [up] the tab to defend this millionaire on charges of murder, continuous sexual assault of a minor under 14 years of age, and unlawful mutilation of human remains.”
Steinfeld quoted from testimony at Burke’s preliminary hearing, where Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman questioned Benjamin Greger, a former financial manager at Burke’s management company, Mogul Vision. Greger testified that Burke took home roughly $10 million to $11.5 million in gross earnings through recording, merchandising, and music-publishing deals and that Greger discussed transferring Texas properties held in Burke’s name to his mother, Colleen Burke.
“Do you remember testifying that the reason you told her to do that was to protect his estate from any civil suit, so the victim’s family wouldn’t be able to…get…that money?” Silverman asked at the hearing in July.
“I do recall, yes,” Greger testified.
The Rivas Hernandez family attended each day of the preliminary hearing but did not speak to the media during the proceeding.
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“We as a family only want justice for Celeste and for whoever is responsible to face the full force of the law. And we thank everyone for supporting our daughter in every way,” the family said in a new statement shared with Rolling Stone this week.
Burke, 21, was arrested in April and pleaded not guilty to his charges at a rearraignment on Monday. His lawyer, Los Angeles County Public Defender Walid Kandeel, began representing D4vd immediately Monday after Burke’s high-powered private legal team, including Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski, handed the case over to him.
At the hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo asked Kandeel if his office needed more time “to see if Mr. Burke qualifies” for a public defense. Kandeel said the office was “prepared” to move forward and was seeking appointment.
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“We’re not at liberty to disclose financial information. Our office has done a thorough financial evaluation and determined that David Burke is eligible for representation by the Public Defender’s Office,” a spokesperson for the office said in a statement sent to Rolling Stone.
Judge Olmedo decided in July that there was enough evidence to send Burke to trial. Prosecutors say Burke sexually abused Rivas Hernandez for more than a year before killing her in April 2025 when she threatened to expose the alleged abuse. They claim he dismembered her in his garage using a chainsaw and hid her remains in the front trunk of his Tesla. %!s()
Zack Polanski moved a step closer in his quest to become an MP on Wednesday, with local Green party members supporting him to become the party’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection.
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The party leader in England and Wales started campaigning alongside his fellow Green, Hannah Spencer, the MP for Gorton and Denton, in the Holborn area on Tuesday, and is seriously considering putting himself forward as the party’s candidate in the seat vacated by Keir Starmer on Monday.
Green party sources said local party members would have the final say on the selected candidate, but the Guardian understands local members are supportive of Polanski running, with no clear local activist with significant support expected to oppose him. It is understood nominations will open soon and candidates will be selected by the end of next week.
Lorna Jane Russell, the leader of the Greens on the local Camden council, will not stand, having previously expressed a desire to focus on her role as the leader of the opposition at Camden Town Hall and her pregnancy.
On the anniversary of his election on 2 September 2025, Polanski said the byelection would be a “referendum on ending rip-off Britain”, adding: “I am very excited for the next chapter for myself, for the Greens and for people across the country.”
Sources inside the party in London said that the rise in membership since Polanski became leader made him the favourite for the role.
“There would be a lot of excitement about him standing,” said one Green party source. “This is the kind of seat that has always had high-profile figures and I think having someone with Zack’s profile would play very well with local party members.”
The move is not without risk for Polanski, with the former prime minister’s seat traditionally considered to be safe for Labour. The Green party leader may prefer to contest a seat in Hackney, where the party has recently won the mayoralty, if a sitting MP such as Diane Abbott were to step down. In a difficult political climate in the May local elections, Labour lost seats but held on to Camden council. “This is not Gorton and Denton,” said one Labour source. “The Burnham bounce will help.”
Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, said party members were already out campaigning and were confident they could retain the seat. “I know Camden through and through and I do believe that we can win this,” she said.
Siddiq added: “I think the Labour vote is resilient and I think Andy Burnham’s pledges on the doorstep are being gratefully received by people in Camden. Certainly I’ll be out campaigning every day and giving it my best shot.”
Labour will not run an all-women shortlist and will announce their candidate by next Wednesday, with applications closing on Friday and shortlisting expected by the start of next week.
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The frontrunner is thought to be Sagal Abdi-Wali, who came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia and has been the leader of Camden council since May. “She’s got a compelling personal story and can reach people from all faiths and backgrounds in Camden,” said one Labour source. “She’s also been really active in the local party for a long time. Lots of people know her and like her.”
Adam Hug, the former leader of Westminster council who lost his job leading the council when the Conservatives took control of it in May’s local election, is also a mooted name. Other possible candidates are Nash Ali, the former mayor of Camden, and Rishi Madlani, a former Camden councillor.
Abdi-Wali is close to Starmer and local Labour sources said any attempts to bring in a candidate not from the area would be met with fierce criticism. “It will be interesting to see if Burnham has the same appeal in north London as Makerfield,” said one. “A lot of the policies he’s been talking about feel more geared towards the rest of the country, not really London.” %!s()
What a difference a year makes for the summer box office, as Hollywood remembers that less can be more.
Around this time last year, studios and theater owners found themselves in spin mode. The first half of 2025 showed promise, with the popcorn-tossing success of April’s A Minecraft Movie being followed closely by Lilo & Stitch and the latest Mission: Impossible driving a record-setting Memorial Day weekend. But those warm months turned chilly, and massive tentpoles like Superman and Jurassic World Rebirth weren’t enough to keep the season from sputtering to its $3.67 billion sum, well shy of theater owners’ desired $4 billion mark. To add painful perspective, this put the summer flat with that of 2024, the strike-impacted year so bleak it spurred the “Survive Till ’25” mantra.
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Then the comeback began in earnest. Major studio executives, in talks with The Hollywood Reporter this summer, are expressing newfound positivity — and not just about the numbers themselves (up 21 percent overall year-over-year). Execs seem more aware than ever that any project, regardless of budget, can capture attention — not just the ones with the highest price tag.
Cut to this September, and Hollywood brows are less sweaty, recent Los Angeles heat wave notwithstanding. The summer delivered $4.6 billion through the last weekend in August, marking an increase of 25 percent over last summer.
Beyond sheer grosses, adding to the sense of relief was the notion that movies from all budget levels were part of the success. Peppered amid the challenges for 2025 were glimmers of hope through successes like Weapons ($270 million globally on a $38 million budget), while modestly budgeted reboots Freakier Friday and Final Destination Bloodlines also turned profits. But that summer’s coffers saw a heavy reliance on franchises: DC’s revamped superhero universe, Disney’s live-action remakes, the 30-year-plus dinosaur saga and so on.
Of course, plenty of headlines about the summer of 2026, particularly the latter half, highlighted the success of titles carrying $225-million-plus budgets. Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day marked a stunning triumph, setting records left and right on its way to becoming the second-highest-grossing movie ever domestically and, as of this week, swinging past Avatar: The Way of Water for No. 3 on the global chart. Universal’s The Odyssey became Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing title and the biggest R-rated success ever, while Toy Story 5 stands as the top-performing entry in the Pixar franchise.
But unlike in years past, these wins don’t tell the whole story. Undoubtedly, rival studios would love to use a One Wish Willow to give themselves a breakout like Focus Features’ Obsession, as its success became arguably the season’s biggest conversation starter. The movie’s path is now one of Hollywood legend: Curry Barker‘s $750,000-budgeted horror film exploded as a word-of-mouth sensation after Focus snatched it up from TIFF’s Midnight Madness, with the project surpassing $500 million worldwide after its May 15 release. Barker scored an eight-figure deal for his next feature, breakout star Inde Navarrette joined the X-Men and the industry was left wondering when this could ever happen again.
As it turned out, it did happen again — two weeks later. Sorta. Kane Parsons, just 20 years old when he adapted his YouTube series for the A24 movie Backrooms, delivered a paranoid horror film that notched nearly $400 million on a $10 million budget. Suddenly, execs were seeing solutions for how to excite the younger audiences who have come to seek entertainment options from content creators rather than cinemas.
Indeed, the previous template for summer movie success — massive budget for IP that the whole world has heard of, traditional marketing and then cross your fingers — felt stale and misguided at times. It didn’t help that multiple June releases following this playbook, including Masters of the Universe, Supergirl and the live-action Moana, all lost money and failed to ignite the zeitgeist. (In an interesting wrinkle, Mattel’s Masters of the Universe, which grossed $113 million globally on a $170 million budget, has become a big streaming title when it hit the home.) Previous summers had seen shoestring-budgeted outliers — think 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite and 2007’s Paranormal Activity — but this year’s successes reflected a steady appetite for freshness, rather than feeling like one-off palate cleansers.
“Big-budget movies built around known IP and franchises, and backed by huge marketing campaigns, have traditionally been the types of films that draw summer audiences,” says Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian. “But in 2026, moviegoers made their choices clear by showing up at movie theaters for an incredibly eclectic mix of films. The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day used their epic scope to deliver the kind of summer popcorn-movie experience we’ve come to expect, while at the same time, micro-budget films like Backrooms and Obsession threw out the rulebook and disrupted the traditional paradigm for summer success in a transformative way.”
This new path comes at a time when studios are wary of breaking the bank on original or non-tentpole concepts but still covet an increase in product. To assuage fears about Paramount Skydance’s planned $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Ellison has vowed that both studios will release 30 combined theatrical features each year. This would represent a significant uptick for both, given that Paramount delivered eight big-screen titles in 2025, while Warner Bros. had 11.
There is debate over the idea of added releases and whether they will feel like dump-offs, but this summer suggests potential. Paramount released the Miramax-produced Scary Movie in June, and the sixth title in the Wayans brothers’ spoof franchise bucked theatrical comedy trends with a $231 million global cume on its $30 million budget. Also following the mold of extending long-running franchises on the cheap were Paramount’s Jackass: Best and Last, managing a profit on a $10 budget despite plenty of recycled clips, and the $18 million-budgeted Insidious: Out of the Further, with the horror series’ sixth title not needing star power to scare up $110 million globally for Sony.
Finding the innovative ideas that Gen Z appears to crave is the trickier part. Studios have shifted priorities, with recently launched specialty labels like Warner Bros. Clockwork and Paramount Primal emphasizing edgier fare. And in the “same but different” mindset for which Hollywood is known, all eyes have turned to YouTube creators, as viral shorts and series become the new IP. Evidently, the industry is finally realizing its mistake in allowing its gatekeeping to shun projects like YouTube stalwart Markiplier’s Iron Lung, the self-distributed horror film with a $3 million budget that stunned Hollywood when it came out of nowhere to gross $51 million earlier this year.
“We don’t want to assume that now everything that hits some view count means that it’s [the next Obsession],” Focus chairman Peter Kujawski recently told Letterboxd about how to learn the right lessons from the summer. “Even some existing films that are a delight to watch at a film festival, often they struggle in the world of a commercial movie theater.”
But for now, hope springs eternal that movies of all sizes and origins continue filling seats in even the months with the highest box office expectation. As Sony film chief Tom Rothman told THR, “All the geniuses who said that theatrical movies were dead, they’re not necessarily right. The marketplace is booming right now, and I’m very optimistic.”
This story appeared in the Sept. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.%!s()
The Venice Film Festival has become synonymous with the Oscar launch. If you have a movie with awards season pretensions — think La La Land, The Shape of Water, Poor Things or The Brutalist — you take it to the Lido.
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This year feels different. Politics, not awards campaigns, has taken center stage. Venice’s 83rd edition is packed with films focused on right-wing media moguls and the crackdown on immigration, on the conflicts in Israel, Iran and Russia, on the abuses of capitalism and the rise of authoritarian power. The lineup, according to artistic director Alberto Barbera, is Venice’s “most political ever.”
It all kicks off with Ink, Danny Boyle’s opening-night drama about Rupert Murdoch and his 1969 acquisition of The Sun, the tabloid whose combination of sex-scandal sensationalism and right-wing populism became the playbook for the New York Post and Fox News. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, with Jack O’Connell as Sun editor Larry Lamb.
‘Musk’
Courtesy of the Venice Film Festival
It continues with Musk, Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary profile of the world’s wealthiest person, right-wing agitator and troll, which Elon Musk — sight unseen — has already decried on X as a “hit piece”; and They’re Here, a short doc “horror film” from Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), made with Rachel Lauren Mueller, which looks at ICE’s crackdown in Minneapolis and includes previously undisclosed footage.
That’s just the opening act. Politics are everywhere in the lineup, with films examining the wars and occupations reshaping the Middle East, ones tracing the authoritarian drift across the former Soviet sphere, and those focused on capitalism buckling under its own contradictions.
The Middle East material is everywhere. An Iranian doctor whose life is dismantled by the Tehran regime anchors A Bit of Light from Ali Asgari, whose Divine Comedy won the Venice Horizons Award last year. In Citizen Osama, Ahmed Hassouna profiles a photojournalist navigating survival and fatherhood in besieged Gaza. Muayad Alayan’s Conversation With the Sea follows a Palestinian man caught in Israeli bureaucracy, while Road to Jericho, a documentary from Israeli director Amos Gitai, tracks the fate of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin hamlet outside Jerusalem on the verge of being erased.
Just ahead of the festival, Venice added another politically charged documentary, NAZA, from No Other Land filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to its competition lineup.
Iranian director Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light.
Courtesy of Venice Film Festival
Farther east, the throughline is repression. Julia Loktev examines Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on independent journalists in My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, following 2024’s acclaimed My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow. Belarusian filmmaker Andrei Kutsila explores state repression in Listy (Letters From the Silenced Country), told through correspondence from five political prisoners. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa presents Imperium, about a film commissioned by the Italian Communist Party to glorify Soviet triumph that ended up exposing its contradictions instead. And Russian-born director Ilya Khrzhanovsky brings DAU, an experimental epic on Soviet life and authoritarianism already stirring controversy ahead of its competition premiere.
Then there’s capitalism in crisis. Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong (Burning) offers Possible Love, about the family of a laid-off worker and the affluent documentary filmmaker chronicling their story. Stéphane Brizé’s Un bon petit soldat stars Alba Rohrwacher as an HR executive caught between toxic management and her boss, played by Vincent Lindon. And Barbara Kopple’s out-of-competition documentary Union Town, about the growing U.S. labor movement, closes a trilogy that began with her Oscar-winning Harlan County, USA and American Dream.
‘Union Town’
Courtesy of the Venice Film Festival
Even the glossier titles this year have a political charge. Wild Horse Nine, the new dark comedy from Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Banshees of Inisherin), stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents in Chile on the eve of Pinochet’s U.S.-backed coup. In Bunker, from French playwright-director Florian Zeller (The Father, The Son), real-life spouses Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem play a publisher and architect at odds after a billionaire commissions an underground bunker built to survive nuclear war.
Venice was founded under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, and this year’s programming suggests Barbera sees that history less as an embarrassment than as a mandate. In the past, Venice has been the launchpad for some of cinema’s defining political works — Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers won the Golden Lion here back in 1966 — and art house cinema has always had a political edge.
But these days, filmmakers and industry figures say, that edge feels sharper.
“These are turbulent times, and a festival should try to reflect the polarization of the societies we observe and continue the conversation using artistic means,” says Alexander Rodnyansky, producer of Road to Jericho. “I think Barbera inherited that legacy and has continued to enrich it in a brilliant way. [Venice] is one of the very few international cultural platforms that has the ability to invite filmmakers with very different — or even opposite — political positions and cultural points of view, and put their work in conversation … It belongs to the old-fashioned tradition of a film festival that appreciates filmmakers with their own distinctive points of view — especially when it involves having the courage to stand up against the policies of their own governments.”
“Cinema has always been anti-authoritarian,” adds Irish producer Mike Downey (Green Border), “very much in the same way that totalitarian regimes have historically used film to manufacture consent and glorify leadership. All we need to do is look at the most recent films from Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another) [and] Kaouther Ben Hania’s extraordinary The Voice of Hind Rajab to see that. As global headlines swirl with the reckless, divisive actions of leaders like Putin, Trump and Netanyahu, contemporary filmmakers are sending a clear, urgent signal: The status quo is anything but acceptable.”
‘NAZA’
Naza/The Guardian
It isn’t only what’s onscreen that has grown more political. The festivals themselves have become arenas for protest and platforms for social media activism.
At times the debates have overshadowed the films. That’s what happened at this year’s Berlinale, where arguments over the war in Gaza — and whether the festival tilted too pro-Israel or too pro-Palestinian — crowded out any real discussion of cinema.
Jury president Wim Wenders’ comment that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics” set off a furious backlash online.
Venice has had its own version of this. Last year, the world premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab had the feel of a political rally. The audience gave a festival-best 22-minute standing ovation to the ticking-clock docudrama about efforts to save a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the IDF. The crowd waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine.”
Days earlier, thousands had marched on the Lido to protest Israeli military action in Gaza, and a group of international filmmakers and artists had pressed Barbera to take a “clear and unambiguous stand” by condemning the war as a “genocide.”
He didn’t, though he expressed his “huge sadness and suffering vis-à-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine.”
Gaza protestors in Venice last year
Penelope Roxborough
Israel-Palestine will inevitably be a major talking point in Venice again this year. Just days ahead of the festival, the Venice4Palestine collective, the group behind last year’s Lido protest, published another open letter calling on festival, its parent body the Venice Biennale and the audiovisual world in general to take concrete action in support of Palestine. Signatures included Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux and directors Matteo Garrone and Isabel Coixet.
This year’s The Voice of Hind Rajab could be NAZA, from directors Abraham and Szor. The documentary builds on published revelations about, as the film’s producers put it, “the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” James Wilson (The Zone of Interest) produced, with Zone director Jonathan Glazer as an EP.
As with Road to Jericho, NAZA is a documentary from Israeli filmmakers that is sharply critical of the Israeli government.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction of the audience [to Road to Jericho],” says Rodnyansky. “Last year [we saw] huge anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Lido. So this year, I can understand that it’s not the easiest thing for the festival to program an Israeli film — but still they did it.”
Gitai, he notes, has “always been known for holding a critical stance toward the policies of his own state” while remaining, in Rodnyansky’s words, “a passionate Israeli who wants the best for his own country. Both these things are very much in his new movie.”
‘DAU’
Ilya Khrzhanovsky
Another political flashpoint in Venice this year is Russia- Ukraine. Barbera has come under fire for programming Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, with critics tying the director, the film’s financiers and Greek-Russian actor Teodor Currentzis to Putin’s Russia. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy issued a joint statement warning that showing the film “at the time when Russia is continuing its war of aggression against Ukraine … sends a deeply worrying signal.”
Barbera has pushed back, calling the criticism a “smear campaign against a film that its accusers have evidently not even seen yet.” But the framing has already stuck, and both DAU and the war in Ukraine are likely to be major talking points on the Lido this year.
“As the political climate we live in has become increasingly polarized, we can see the film festivals are now being caught in the crossfire,” says Marijke de Valck, an associate professor of film and media studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “But I see the fact that film festivals are being targeted by certain activist groups as a clear sign that the work that they do, providing an open space for discussion and debate, is actually very important.”
Venice’s embrace of the political moment extends beyond the official selection. The Venice Critics’ Week sidebar this year includes Our Share of Sand, an examination of inequality and environmental exploitation in India from director Shalini Adnani; the dystopian drama The H@llow Man from Tunisian director Kamel Laaridhi, which looks at authoritarian control through technology; and London, a queer drama about disability, sexuality and self-determination from Brazilian directors Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli.
‘Our Share Of Sand’
Fifth Mirror Pictures/Suitable Pictures/Heretic
“I didn’t feel we were in the position this year to choose a rom-com,” says Critics’ Week artistic director Beatrice Fiorentino. “I feel we are in the middle of a global crisis. There are so many aspects — of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, all the isms, and fascism, which is coming back — that avoiding politics would be anti-historical. I don’t want to pretend everything is fine.”
So far, however, political cinema hasn’t translated into sales. The Voice of Hind Rajab was last year’s Venice sensation and won the Silver Lion, yet it didn’t trigger a U.S. bidding war. It eventually self-released through Willa, the distribution arm of one of its production partners, echoing the path taken by No Other Land. That Berlin- and Oscar-winning documentary about the Israeli military’s destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank struggled to find a traditional distributor before self-releasing in a rollout coordinated by Cinetic Media and Michael Tuckman Media.
Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump drama The Apprentice hit similar resistance at Cannes in 2024, with major distributors wary of the legal and political risk, before landing at Briarcliff Entertainment.
‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Venice Film Fesitval
Selling the politics of a film can be a challenge, notes Nicolai Korsgaard, sales director at TrustNordisk, which is handling world sales for May el-Toukhy’s Venice competition title Woman Unknown. “We’ve found focusing on a director, or genre elements, is more effective.”
Even films without an obvious political hook can get caught in the crossfire. Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a dramatization of the boardroom turmoil at OpenAI and Sam Altman’s brief ouster, was dropped by Amazon MGM shortly after Amazon deepened its strategic relationship with OpenAI. Neon later acquired worldwide rights, pulling the film back into this year’s awards conversation after its absence from Venice had become one of the summer’s biggest industry talking points.
“Some films are sidelined or shelved by mainstream buyers wary of political controversy or PR risk,” Downey says. “Usually it’s business, not conspiracy.”
Political documentaries and provocative biopics, he argues, increasingly depend on independent distributors willing to absorb both the commercial uncertainty and the potential backlash. “Political films win prizes at festivals, but that rarely translates into box office. Social relevance is all well and good, but these movies struggle commercially due to niche appeal, limited marketing and the old chestnut of audience preference for escapism.”
None of that seems likely to deter Venice. This year’s lineup suggests Barbera sees the festival’s activist history not as a footnote but as an ongoing mission. “Everything is political,” Fiorentino says. “We are people, workers in a society and in an industry. I will not hide my head in the sand.”
Patrick Brzeski contributed to this report.
This story appeared in the Aug. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. %!s()
Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, and Vanessa Redgrave have joined the growing A-list voice cast of indie animated feature The Turning Door.
Swedish composer Anna von Hausswolff (Iconoclasts, Sound of Falling) also joins the cast of the upcoming family fantasy animation epic directed by filmmaker and artist Nicholas Ashe Bateman (The Wanting Mare), along with newcomer Pippa Kelly, who plays the lead, the young heroine Ariadlyn.
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The film’s plot, according to an official summary, follows Ariadlyn, a little girl who finds a “mysterious box hidden in her parent’s closet. As it grows into an open door, she falls through to another world called The Turning. There, she must embark on a grand adventure of old magic, strange creatures, new lands, alchemy, dreams and songs, all to return home and save her parents.”
They join previously-announced cast including Alicia Vikander, Jamie Dornan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bill Nighy, and Gillian Anderson.
Cast members will perform original songs and music for the film written by Bateman and Claire Givens (Mother Mary, People Museum).
“After many years of writing and dreaming about making parts for great actors, I am almost unable to express the gratitude, excitement and wonder I have for the profound gift of our cast,” Bateman said in a statement. “These are iconic artists. They bring their perspectives; their grand lives and views of the world, their immeasurable talents, towering performances, and a shared desire to make hopeful pictures for young people….These are happy dreams, and the happiest: we get to hear them all sing!”
The film is produced by Christine D’Souza of After Hours , Hunter Hall and Nicholas Ashe Bateman of Maere Studios, and Laura Rister for Esme Grace Pictures. Production is currently underway.
Mister Smith Entertainment is handling international sales for The Turning Door and co-repping domestic rights with After Hours. After introducing it to buyers at AFM last year, the company will be continuing to pitch the project to distributors at TIFF: The Market in Toronto later this month.
Bardem is repped by WME, Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher, Cotillard repped by CAA, Redgrave repped by Gavin Barker Associates and Arcierei Talent. Anna Von Hausswolf repped by Outro and Clinton Music. Pippa Kelly by Thompson and Borland, and Bateman by Houston Costa and Danie Streisand at UTA and Granderson Des Rochers. %!s()