World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
More on the British Production Slate; China’s Box Office Battle; Saudi Arabia’s Rise; Nollywood’s Next Hit & Sad News for Lucy Davis.
Morning all — and while yesterday I was rattling on about chefs in warzones and Palme d’Ors, today’s crop of news takes us somewhere rather different: British period drama sound stages, Riyadh’s box office receipts, and a Nigerian producer who apparently cannot stop announcing films. Let’s get into it. Here’s what happened in the world of movies during the last 24 hours.
British sound stages are busy at the moment:
- Sharon Maguire’s The Joy of Sex, telling the story behind the 1970s sex manual, has Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Laura Linney and David Tennant is shooting this month. I can only assume that Colin Firth has grown a beard! (If you know, you know.)
- Meanwhile Anthony McCarten’s The Price of Peace, centred on the 1945 Potsdam Conference, has Guy Pearce, Jared Harris and Merab Ninidze in the mix. Sounds interesting.
- And this months also sees the directorial feature debut of actress and former ballet dancer Sonoya Mizuno. Inspired by Mizuno’s own dance background, Stages follows a young dancer at an elite ballet school whose focus is shattered by a family tragedy just as she earns the lead in a prestigious recital. The film has assembled Julie Delpy, Takehiro Hira, Kathryn Hunter, Kate Dickie and Emma D’Arcy.
Movie news from China: While, as reported yesterday, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East — Wen Muye’s Chinese-produced drama about a debt-ridden chef opening a restaurant amid conflict, led by Shen Teng — has now properly opened in China, Spider-Man: Brand New Day pushed its 12-day China total past $185 million, closing in on the $199 million Spider-Man: Far From Home managed back in 2019. We await the opening of Christopher Nolan’s: The Odyssey on Friday, which took $6.9 million from IMAX-only previews alone, to see if Chinese audiences’ appetite for Hollywood spectacle hasn’t been entirely satisfied by the friendly neighbourhood option. China’s 2026 total now sits at $3.57 billion — still down nearly 32% on last year, though that gap’s been narrowing steadily since a March low of almost 56%, largely because nothing this year has replicated the sheer, gravity-defying scale of Ne Zha 2.
A booming new market in Saudi Arabia: Given yesterday’s item on Egyptian films finding a bigger paycheque in Saudi Arabia than at home, it feels worth circling back to the Kingdom itself. News today that its film sector has now posted $225 million in revenue, with Riyadh alone accounting for roughly $106 million of that, driven by what the Saudi Film Commission describes as a “young, affluent and digitally native audience base”. Homegrown content is quietly eating into the market too — eight Saudi films accounted for 19% of total box office revenue by mid-July. It’s still Hollywood and Bollywood doing the heavy lifting overall, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
Nollywood’s next big swing: Funke Akindele, fresh off Behind the Scenes becoming Nollywood’s highest-grossing film of the year, isn’t hanging about: she’s announced her next project, The Four, unveiling a cast that includes RMD (Richard Mofe-Damijo) and Wunmi Toriola among others. Given her track record of late, distributors will already be clearing space on the release calendar.
And one from Denmark of interest to film producers: in a landmark bit of policy news, Denmark has passed a bill introducing a 25% production rebate scheme, backed by DKK 125 million (roughly €17 million) in funding, starting from 1 January 2027. Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt called it a “landmark day for Danish film,” Denmark was one of the last major European territories without a rebate scheme of this kind, watching productions drift off to Norway and Sweden, both of which already offer their own 25% cash-back incentives. Expect Copenhagen’s studios to get considerably busier from January.
And in one final, sad piece of news, Lucy Davis – star of such classics as the original UK The Office series, Shaun of the Dead and more recently Wonder Woman has announced an incurable cancer diagnosis. My thoughts are with her this morning during this difficult time. Cancer really is a bastard.
That’s all for today. I need to go and write my review for The Ice Cream Man. (Spoiler alert: don’t rush to see it!)
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