World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
A big rumble in DC, Stacy Keach is mourned, La Bola Negra’s UK record, the AFM’s first day & Leonardo DiCaprio turns 52.
Morning, all. I’m sorry to begin with sad news, as the film and theatre worlds have lost the actor Stacy Keach. There’s a shake-up at DC Studios. After yesterday’s UK chart, there’s also a record for the film that won the London Film Festival’s Audience Award, and plenty of casting news from the first day of the American Film Market.
Stacy Keach, 1941–2026: The actor died on Tuesday at his home in Magdalenka, Poland, aged 85, his wife, Małgosia Tomassi Keach, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. He had been battling heart disease and heart failure for a long time. Born in Savannah, Georgia, he trained at Yale and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, became a leading classical stage actor, played Hamlet, and earned a Tony nomination for Indians in 1970. His film breakthrough came in 1972, when he played the washed-up boxer Billy Tully in John Huston’s Fat City, and in the same year he appeared in The New Centurions and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. His other films included Up in Smoke, as the Cheech and Chong foil Sergeant Stedenko, The Long Riders, American History X and The Bourne Legacy. He was best known to television viewers as the private eye in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and later in Titus, Prison Break and Blue Bloods. He had one of the great gravel voices of American acting, and he is survived by his wife, his children, Karolina and Shannon, and his brother, the actor and director James Keach. Rest in peace.
Jostling at the top of DC Studios: James Gunn and producer Peter Safran are stepping down as co-CEOs and chairmen of DC Studios following a major leadership shake-up by new parent company Skydance. Their departure takes effect on December 1, 2026, four years after they originally took over the studio. Former Marvel Studios executive Jeremy Latcham has been named president and chief creative officer of DC Studios, reporting to Skydance film heads Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein. Both Gunn and Safran will not completely leave DC; they will remain involved in a creative capacity to finish post-production on Superman: Man of Tomorrow and other select projects. We’ve reported before on corporate musical chairs following Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. While Gunn’s 2025 Superman reboot performed strongly at the box office, other releases like Supergirl underperformed badly, prompting a strategic reset under the new ownership. Gunn noted in a social media statement that he was relieved to step away from the corporate demands of being a studio head to return to “pure filmmaking”. That’s probably good news for us film-goers that he will be focused more on the content than the numbers.
La Bola Negra breaks a UK record: Altitude’s La Bola Negra, which won the London Film Festival’s Audience Award, has had the biggest opening ever for a Spanish-language film at the UK-Ireland box office, according to Screen Daily. It took £536,000 including previews, ahead of the £433,000 of Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver in 2006, with £354,000 from 130 cinemas at the weekend, a strong £2,723 average. Volver remains the highest-grossing Spanish-language film in the territory, with £2.8 million, and La Bola Negra has a chance of passing it over its run. It follows a record-breaking start for the film in Spain, where it’s Spain’s highest-grossing local film of the year, with $43 million worldwide, and it’s Spain’s Oscar entry. As the Spanish say “El Plan is working”!
The American Film Market, day one: The American Film Market opened in Los Angeles on Tuesday in a more optimistic mood than usual, with a new summit and a lot of talk about a proposed US federal tax incentive for film production, which the industry hopes will bring productions back to the US. Indie sellers are also pointing to hits including You Can See Everything, Obsession and Buddy as proof that audiences will come out for the right film. Meanwhile, the deals poured in. Alexander Skarsgård, Hunter Schafer, Maya Hawke and Harry Melling are to star in The Confessions, with Ari Aster producing. Armando Iannucci will direct James McAvoy, Alicia Vikander and Taron Egerton in a conspiracy thriller that he has also written, and Louis Partridge and Anson Boon star in the coming-of-age film Andy & Orson, which has just finished filming. Daisy Ridley, Darren Criss, Travis Fimmel and Judy Greer have joined Catherine Zeta-Jones in Tate Taylor’s marriage counselling thriller Cupid, and Charlotte Hope stars with Damian Hardung in the crime-thriller Human Remains.
Birthdays: Leonardo DiCaprio, who won an Oscar for The Revenant, turns 52 today, and Demi Moore, star of Ghost, The Substance and the current I Love Boosters, turns 64. Also celebrating is Calista Flockhart (62), who starred in The Birdcage and is married to Harrison Ford.
That’s all for today.
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