World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Megalopolis’s second coming, Skydance’s international exodus, Busan’s market opens & Peggy Sue Got Married turns 40.
Morning, all. After yesterday’s packed Friday of new releases, and the sad loss of Nana Patekar, Saturday is a slightly gentler affair, though the Skydance saga keeps rolling on.
Francis Ford Coppola brings Megalopolis back: For the first time since its 2024 launch, Coppola’s self-financed sci-fi epic Megalopolis (my worst film of 2024) will return to US cinemas in a limited engagement on October 24th, with simultaneous screenings from New York to Hawaii at Reading International cinemas, including the Village East in New York. Audiences will be able to text in questions before, during and after the film, and Coppola will answer the best ones live in a Q&A moderated by his son Roman. Each audience member will also receive a printed letter containing his director’s statement and the screenings will include the film’s famous 4th-wall-breaking “Live Element”. It will return to cinemas periodically, including every New Year’s Day. As if the world didn’t have enough problems already!
Skydance’s international exodus: As I mentioned on Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery’s international president Gerhard Zeiler was expected to leave to pursue politics in Austria. He has now made his exit official, telling staff he will leave at the end of next week. He had signalled interest in leading Austria’s Social Democrats, before pulling back and backing another candidate, and promised that people would be hearing a lot from him. Paramount’s head of global content distribution and international, Kevin MacLellan, is leaving too, which leaves quite the hole at the top of the merged company’s international arm. In happier news for the newly merged company, Channing Dungey will take on Paramount’s Media Networks, including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET, on top of Warner Bros. TV and the US networks, though her official title is still TBD.
Busan’s market opens its doors: The Busan International Film Festival moves into business mode today. The Asian Contents & Film Market runs from today until Tuesday, with 64 programmes across seven categories, and Thailand as its first-ever country of honour. The spotlight is on generative AI and microdramas, the short-form series that are quietly taking over Asian screens. On the festival side, today’s master classes feature the Japanese animation legend Rintaro and French director Bertrand Mandico.
Forty years of Peggy Sue Got Married: Staying with Coppola, in happier cinematic times for me, his time-travel comedy-drama opened in US cinemas 40 years ago today. Kathleen Turner plays a woman who faints at her 25th high school reunion and wakes up back in 1960, with Nicolas Cage as her husband and a very young Jim Carrey in the supporting cast. Turner earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and the film also picked up nominations for cinematography and costume design. It’s also a rare time-travel film that needed nothing more than a fainting spell, which requires rather less paperwork and naphtha than a DeLorean.
Birthdays: Two much-loved actors turn 80 today: Charles Dance of Game of Thrones, Gosford Park and Rumours, and Ben Vereen of All That Jazz. Also celebrating are E.T.‘s Peter Coyote (85) and Bradley Whitford of Get Out (67).
That’s all for today.
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