World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Pattinson and Hoult join the Bond screen tests, Ramayana’s Diwali weekend, Nollywood’s ₦1 billion streak, Tokyo’s winners & Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina is mourned.
Sunday means our weekly lap of the world’s other film industries, but first, the Bond casting story has taken a surprising turn.
Pattinson and Hoult join the Bond screen tests: Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult have been added to the list of actors who screen-tested for the next James Bond, according to Deadline, which says they joined Jack Lowden, Josh O’Connor and Callum Turner in the final screen tests. The Hollywood Reporter says Pattinson’s test took place in London on the weekend of 24 October, while he’s filming The Batman Part II, as I mentioned when it paused in October. Hoult plays Lex Luthor in DC’s Superman films. Both reports are unconfirmed, and there’s no timeline yet, although most expect a decision by the end of the year. The Sun has claimed that O’Connor has won the part, which NME has described as a rumour. It’s the first Bond film since Amazon bought the franchise’s creative rights from the Broccoli family in February 2025.
Ramayana’s Diwali weekend: Nitesh Tiwari’s epic Ramayana: Part 1 had a big start in India, but its first Friday saw a 26% drop. According to Sacnilk, it took ₹48.05 crore net on Friday (about $5 million), taking its India net total to ₹112.90 crore (about $12 million), and its worldwide gross to ₹221.05 crore (about $23 million) after two days. The makers claimed that its opening day gross worldwide was ₹155 crore, against Sacnilk’s estimate of ₹127.5 crore. Hindi accounts for about 73.5% of its India net. The film is the first of a two-part retelling of the epic, with Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, and Diwali weekend should show whether it can bounce back. I’ll bring you the full opening-weekend numbers tomorrow.
Nollywood’s ₦1 billion streak: In Nigeria, Agbara Nla: The Return was number one for a fifth consecutive weekend, with ₦27.4 million (about $21,000) from 4,781 admissions, taking its total to ₦450.1 million (about $338,000) from 75,444 admissions and closing in on the all-time Nollywood top ten. Cinemas as a whole took about ₦130.7 million (about $98,000) over the weekend, and October ended with ₦1.19 billion (about $895,000), the 11th consecutive month above ₦1 billion since December 2025.
The Far East: Tokyo’s winners: The 39th Tokyo International Film Festival closed on Wednesday, with the Tokyo Grand Prix going to Milcho Manchevski’s Sister Brother Manhole Cover, a co-production between North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Italy and the UK, which comes with a $19,000 prize. Sun Xun’s animated feature Magic Atlas, a Singapore production, won the Special Jury Prize, and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso took Best Director for Double Freedom. The Kurosawa Akira Award went to Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, whom I mentioned at the Cate Blanchett screening, and Japan’s Mipo O. The festival showed 204 films to 69,072 people.
New productions: Idris Elba will star in and direct the action-comedy In Laws, which A Higher Standard is launching for sales and which starts shooting in Spain in March 2027. Simon Pegg has also joined Paul Giamatti in the horror Boutique, and Jeremy Renner is set to battle London gangs in the action-thriller 12 Bullets, from the John Wick producer Thunder Road and Sky.
Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina, 1938–2026: The Soviet and Russian actress died at the age of 88, her daughter Olga told the Russian news agency TASS, of heart failure. Born in Leningrad, she became a star in the early 1970s in films directed by her husband, the writer and director Vasily Shukshin, including Pechki-Lavochki and Kalina Krasnaya (known in English as Red Snowball Tree). Her other films included Leonid Gaidai’s The Twelve Chairs, You Never Even Dreamed Of… and Vivat, Midshipmen!, and she took her double surname after Shukshin’s death in 1974. She appeared in more than 80 films, and was named a People’s Artist of the RSFSR. Rest in peace.
Birthdays: Parker Posey, star of Party Girl and the current Wild Horse Nine, turns 58 today, and Aidan Gillen, who appeared in Calvary and the Game of Thrones series, turns 58.
That’s all for today.
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