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Zendaya's new Alex Garland film is his third since he quit directing
The untitled A24 sci-fi shoots in 2027, with Elden Ring still in post, 31 months after Garland told the Guardian he was not planning to direct again.
Marcus Dey4 min
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The day in film and television: deals, casting, production starts and the moves that reshape a slate.
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Canal+ VAT rise would cost €200m a year. Its film deal is €196m
Canal+'s July accord commits €196m a year to French and European film from 2028. The draft 2027 budget's VAT rise costs it up to €200m a year, and triggers the clause that voids the whole deal.
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Sky's £1.6bn ITV takeover is Nandy's second media warning in 107 days
Lisa Nandy's 'minded to intervene' letter on Sky and ITV comes 107 days after the one she sent Paramount. Laid next to three earlier Sky cases, the dates show which kind of review this is likely to be.
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Narnia gets 49 days in cinemas, 3.5 times what Netflix first offered
In January 2025 Netflix offered Narnia: The Magician's Nephew 14 days on IMAX screens. It now gets 49 days in every kind of cinema, with Sony handling the rest of the world, and two outlets are still printing the wrong number.
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Hello Sunshine sells for up to $50m. Its buyer put North Road at $900m
Mediawan valued Peter Chernin's North Road at about $900m in January and Brad Pitt's Plan B at about $300m in 2022. Hello Sunshine, once a $900m company, is changing hands for tens of millions.
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Tarantino's Popinjay Cavalier has 128 shows. Baron Cohen is in 112
Sacha Baron Cohen is scheduled for 112 of the 128 performances of Quentin Tarantino's first play. The 16,000 tickets under £50 are 125 a night, or 12.4% of the Phoenix Theatre run.
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David Zaslav's $606m Warner exit takes 2026's cash-out past $800m
Zaslav received $606.1m when Paramount's $31-a-share takeover closed: $224.4m for shares and $381.7m for options that vested at the close. Add the $114m, $59m and $21.7m sales made while the deal was pending and the year's total reaches about $801m.
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Skydance's Warner debt costs six times what its studios earn
Skydance closed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on 6 October and filed the bond schedule the same day. Multiply each principal by its coupon and the fixed-rate notes cost $3.22bn a year. Warner's and Paramount's film studios earned $132m between them in the most recent quarter either reported.
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The Batman Part II has slipped 868 days. Now filming has stopped
The Batman Part II is booked for 18 February 2028, which is 2,177 days after the first film opened. No Batman film has made its direct sequel wait that long, and the schedule has now moved three times before a camera stopped rolling.
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De Luca and Abdy exit Warner with one earner from six auteur bets
Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy handed six famous directors a budget and no franchise to hide behind. Those six films cost between $653m and $733m to produce and have grossed $959.7m worldwide. Only Sinners made money.
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Cinema United's $1.2bn of cinema upgrades is $36,000 a screen
Cinema United says North American exhibitors reinvested $2.7bn over two years. Its own figures show the annual total fell from $1.5bn to $1.2bn, and that $220m of the $300m drop came from outside the eight biggest chains.
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Ynon Kreiz released two films in eight years. Paramount owes 30 a year
Mattel Films existed for 2,948 days and put two films into cinemas: Barbie and Masters of the Universe. The consent decree approved on Wednesday obliges the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to release 30 a year, or pay $30m a film.
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Vashu Bhagnani's UK company owes £10m, 87% of it to a UAE firm
Pooja Entertainment UK Limited's statement of affairs, filed on 17 September, puts its debts at £10,085,267.92. A single creditor in the United Arab Emirates accounts for £8,752,652.35 of it.
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Aegon's Conquest is Game of Thrones' 12th spin-off. Two have aired
HBO and Warner Bros have put at least twelve Game of Thrones projects into development since May 2017. House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms reached a screen. The twelfth, Aegon's Conquest, is now a film dated for 1 June 2029.
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Paramount's 470m Warner warrants strike 17% above its share price
Paramount Skydance will distribute about 470 million warrants with a floor exercise price of $12.00. Its shares closed at $10.28 on Monday. The same filing says the timing of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, 'if any', is not yet certain.
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Jon Watts gets the Star Wars trilogy Lucasfilm said wasn't Episode X
Rey's return to cinemas has now been handed to four writing teams and two directors in 41 months without a day of filming, and the one Star Wars film Lucasfilm has released this decade made 32% of what The Rise of Skywalker took.
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NAZA takes 20 days from Venice to cinemas. No Other Land took 350
Yuval Abraham's Oscar-winning No Other Land needed 350 days to reach an American cinema and never found a US distributor. NAZA needed 20 days, and its team stopped asking.
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Mushtaq Khan made 11 films with the Khans. None came to the funeral
Mushtaq Khan spent 46 years in Hindi cinema and appeared in 11 films alongside Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Raza Murad, who attended the funeral, says no star came. Half the obituaries could not even agree how old he was.
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Letterboxd's $300m price is 2.6 times its listed owner's value
Tiny Ltd closed Friday at a market capitalisation of US$117m. Its 60% stake in Letterboxd is being marketed at $300m, which works out at $9.77 a member, against the $458 a head the New York Times Company paid for The Athletic.
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Paramount's Warner decree funds indie film at $1.25m a picture
The consent decree obliges the merged Paramount-Warner to release four independent films a year and attaches $5m a year to buy them. Missing a single studio release costs $30m, six times as much.
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Paramount is selling equity at $12 while its shares trade at $10.18
Paramount Skydance closed at $10.18 on Thursday. The equity syndicate funding the Warner Bros. Discovery takeover pays no less than $12.00, a gap of about $7.1bn across the full $46.95bn commitment. Elon Musk is one of the names discussed for it.
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A24's extra 10 points are worth $19.75m on Backrooms alone
A24 used to take 40 to 45 per cent of the ticket. It now asks for the low to mid 50s. On the $197.5m Backrooms took in America, those ten points come to $19.75m, nearly twice what the film cost to make.
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Lucas Museum charges $25, and the $1.3bn Getty is still free
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Exposition Park on Tuesday at $25 a head. The Getty cost more and is free. The Broad cost $140m and is free. At The Broad's first-year attendance, the Lucas gate would take 49 years to cover the build.
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Paramount's Warner settlement needs 11 more films a year than 2025
Warner Bros. released 11 films in 2025 and Paramount eight. The commitment being written into a settlement with California and 11 other states is 30 a year for three years, which is 33 films more than the current rate produces.