BRANDON SKLENAR JOINS BLAKE LIVELY IN COLLEEN HOOVER'S IT ENDS WITH US MOVIE ADAPTATION! SEE COLIN MORGAN, MARK STRONG, FELICITY JONES IN SKY'S DEAD SHOT MOVIE TRAILER

 BRANDON SKLENAR JOINS 

BLAKE LIVELY IN IT ENDS WITH US MOVIE ADAPTATION

Brandon will play Atlas Corrigan

Our latest obsession, the incredibly hunky Brandon Sklenar has just joined Blake Lively in the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover's IT ENDS WITH US. The story follows Lily Bloom, who comes from a complicated past and always has known the life she wants. While living in Boston, she meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) and believes she may very well have found her soulmate. Soon, however, questions arise about their relationship, and to complicate matters her high school love interest, Atlas Corrigan (Sklenar), comes back into the picture, putting her relationship with Ryle in jeopardy.

  DEAD SHOT TRAILER WITH 

COLIN MORGAN, MARK STRONG AND FELICITY JONES

Sky has released a trailer for their new action thriller movie DEAD SHOT which arrives to the streamer May 12th. Filmed in Glasgow and originally known as Borderline, it boasts a rather stellar cast led by Colin Morgan, Mark Strong and Felicity Jones and was directed by Charles and Thomas Guard. The movie, which covers the 1970s turmoil in Northern Ireland, will have a cinematic release for the viewers in Northern America.

  THE STORY OF DEAD SHOT
When a border ambush goes wrong, a retired Irish paramilitary (Colin Morgan) witnesses the fatal shooting of his pregnant wife by an SAS officer (Aml Ameen). After outwitting the SAS, now wounded, and presumed dead, he escapes, taking his revenge to the dark and paranoid streets of 1970's London. Raw and suspenseful, DEAD SHOT is an adrenaline-fueled thriller that will leave audiences weighing up the true cost of revenge.

TV SERIES ADAPTATION OF WILLIAM DALRYMPLE'S MUGHAL EMPIRE NOVEL THE ANARCHY FINDS A SCRIBE! SEE POSTERS FOR PERIOD SET MOVIES SULIS 1907 FROM NORWAY, SHANGHAI SOJOURNERS FROM CHINA

 DALRYMPLE'S THE ANARCHY 

FINDS WRITER FOR AN EPIC TV SERIES ADAPTATION

Just when we thought this project that I announced three years ago is no longer active, Wiip and Roy Kapur Films have revealed that The Last

Jeremy Brock will pen the adaptation

King of Scotland and Mrs. Brown scribe Jeremy Brock will pen the TV series adaptation of William Dalrymple's bestseller THE ANARCHY! The massive production to be shot in UK, USA and India will tell  the story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires, the Mughal empire, disintegrated and came to be replaced by the British East India Company – a dangerously unregulated private company based thousands of miles away in a small London office just five windows wide. No news on the adaptation of Dalrymple's Koh-I-Noor book which was also announced three years ago.

 PERIOD SET MOVIE POSTERS 

FOR NORDIC SULIS 19O7

We are in the international waters today, spylings, as I have posters to present from two new period set movies. First up is SULIS 1907 from Norway, a historical drama scheduled for release October 6th. Directed by Nils Gaup and starring Otto Fahlgren, Simon J. Berger, Alexandra Gjerpen, Anders Dahlberg and Rune Temte, this period set movie starts in 1907, when the miners in Sulitjelma in Fauske in Nordland made a famous rebellion against greedy mine owners. 

 

CHINA'S SHANGHAI SOJOURNERS 

Shanghai Sojourners is in postproduction

is, meanwhile, currently in the process of post-production over in China under the helm of Leo Shi Young. It stars Xingtong Yao as a Chinese-American woman who falls in love with a Jewish exile in Japanese controlled Shanghai during World War II and must use every resource at her disposal to help him escape before the Nazis implement the Final Solution in China. Michael Koltes, Ketih Shillitoe and Thomas Dorn also star. Since it is a co-production with United States of America, the movie was shot in English.

KLINGONS ARRIVE IN STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS SEASON 2 TEASER! PLUS SEE THE CHARACTER POSTERS! SION DANIEL YOUNG, FRA FREE, MARIA DOYLE KENNEDY TO LEAD BBC SERIES LOST BOYS AND FAIRIES!

   SION DANIEL YOUNG   

TO LEAD LOST BOYS AND FAIRIES NEW BBC ONE TV SERIES

From BBC comes news that Sion Daniel Young and Fra Free will lead their new series LOST BOYS AND FAIRIES as singer and artiste-extraordinaire Gabriel and his partner Andy and their journey to adoption! Maria Doyle Kennedy also stars in the series already shooting around Cardiff, where production will bring to life Gabriel’s performances at queer

Sion Daniel Young and Fra Free will take the lead roles

club-space ‘Neverland’, and chart his journey of self-discovery as he grapples with memories of his childhood, attempting to repair his relationship with his dad before becoming a parent himself. This heart wrenching, very funny and powerful series advocates for the right of gay men and women to parent a child!

 STAR TREK TEASER 

FOR STRANGE NEW WORLDS SECOND SEASON

After setting a long awaited June 15th date for the launch of the second season, Paramount Plus has released today a teaser for the return of their science fiction hit series STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. The series which is set on Star Fleet's ship Enterprise before it was captain Kirk's, will see the return of the cast from the first season: Anson Mount as captain Christopher Pike, Ethan Peck as Spock, Rebecca Romijn as the new Number One, Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas and Jess Bush as Christine Chapel and Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh. Paul Wesley will guest star again as Captain James Kirk, with Carol Kane, who will play the recurring character of Pelia, an engineer who "suffers no fools"! The good news is also that the third season has been ordered and is actually already filming. And as the teaser announces you can expect the arrival of Klingons in the new season. Ten new episodes will stream weekly!

SEE LOUIS HOFMANN, MARK RUFFALO, HUGH LAURIE IN ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE WW2 NETFLIX TV SERIES TRAILER! HUGO BECKER TO LEAD APOCALYPTIC TV ADAPTATION OF CAMUS' THE PLAGUE! THE YOUNG POE 19TH CENTURY THRILLER SERIES ON THE CHILDHOOD OF FAMOUS WRITER

  HUGO BECKER TO LEAD  

THE PLAGUE TV ADAPTATION

We are still at MipTV at Cannes, today with the news that  France’s Oble is offering to the international buyers, a four part series THE PLAGUE, a modern adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel! Although the story in the book is set in the 1940s, the miniseries is set in 2029 in a society still recovering from the waves of COVID epidemics and that is now facing a much deadlier plague. Hugo Becker will lead the cast with Frederic Pierrot and Sofia Essaidi and the shooting starts today in France.

   THE YOUNG POE  

ENGLISH SERIES FROM SPAIN

Earlier this weekend I told you that Spanish production house Mediapro, who previously did The Head series and sold it to more than 90 countries

The series is for the adult audience not kids

around the world, is preparing THE YOUNG POE English language series with an international cast. Based on Cuca Canals novels, it imagines Poe as a precocious, irrepressible, neurotic and highly Gothic 11 or 12 year-old in 1820 Boston, grounding in true events of Poe’s childhood the extraordinarily analytical and morbid mind which Edgar Allen Poe brings to his fiction! In the series, the young Poe sparks the interest of the local police through his precocious capacity to solve murder mysteries. He ends up becoming a faithful assistant to Boston’s Inspector Auguste Dupin, a kindred soul.

 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE 

NETFLIX SERIES TRAILER

It will not stream before November 2nd, but Netflix has released first trailer for their new World War II set series ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE based on the beloved bestseller. Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti and Nell Sutton), a blind French girl and her father, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo), flee German-occupied Paris with a legendary diamond to keep it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Relentlessly pursued by a cruel Gestapo officer who seeks to possess the stone for his own selfish means, Marie-Laure and Daniel soon find refuge in St. Malo, where they take up residence with a reclusive uncle (Hugh Laurie) who transmits clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the resistance. Yet here in this once-idyllic seaside city, Marie-Laure’s path also collides inexorably with the unlikeliest of kindred spirits: Werner (Louis Hofmann), a brilliant teenager enlisted by Hitler’s regime to track down illegal broadcasts, who instead shares a secret connection to Marie-Laure as well as her faith in humanity and the possibility of hope. Check out the trailer below and tell us what you think.

NEW HISTORICAL WW1 SWISS ALPS SET DRAMA DAVOS WITH DOMINIQUE DEVENPORT AND DAVID KROSS TO LAUNCH AT MIPTV! SEE NEW PICTURES!

   DAVOS SWISS ALPS  

SET NEW COSTUME DRAMA TO LAUNCH AT MIPTV IN CANNES

Dominique Devenport and David Kross

As you probably remember, your most trusted spy was among the first ones in the world to inform you, last winter, about the new six part German and Swiss costume drama DAVOS set in the popular Swiss Alps winter resort.  Now, Variety reports that leading European distributor Global Screen will launch this premium quality spy drama over at MipTV in Cannes where it will be offered to the international buyers. The World War I story set in then neutral Switzerland will follow a female main protagonist Johanna, played by empress Sisi Dominique Devenport, a nurse who gets embroiled in a plot involving international spies. She intends to find her illegitimate daughter and agrees to a dangerous deal with the German secret service. Jeanette Hain, David Kross, Anna Schinz, Hanspeter Müller-Drossaart and Sunnyi Melles will also star in the series which was shot earlier this winter. Among the known broadcasters, we know it will air on Swiss channel SRF and German national broadcaster ARD during the 2023-2024 winter television season!

WHAT IS THE STORY OF DAVOS?

World War I is ravaging Europe. By contrast, Davos, the aristocratic spa town in the Swiss Alps, seems like an oasis of peace. But behind the scenes, neutral Switzerland takes center stage in a relentless battle between the secret agents of the world powers. Young nurse Johanna Gabathuler unexpectedly gets caught between the fronts: to win back her illegitimate child, she starts to work as a spy for the German secret service – and suddenly becomes the tipping point in a risky plan that decides over war and peace. 

OTHER MIPTV PERIOD SET SERIES

Spain is bringing  THE YOUNG POE, an English language drama about Edgar Allan Poe as a kid in 1820's Boston, and also LAS PELOTARIS, a rollicking tale of three pioneering female pelota players in the 1920's. Poland

Hunting Moths will be offered to buyers in Cannes

is bringing their hit series MOTH HUNTING set in a 1905's high end Warsaw brothel! It is currently breaking viewing record in Poland with the first episodes viewed by over 2,5 million people.

SEE CHRISTIAN COOKE AS KASPAROV IN REMATCH HIGH END SERIES WITH TOM AUSTEN, SARAH BOLGER, LUKE PASQUALINO, AIDAN QUINN, TRINE DYRHOLM! MALPRACTICE ITV SERIES TRAILER WITH NIAMH ALGAR, JAMES PUREFOY

 1ST REMATCH SERIES IMAGE 

WITH CHRISTIAN COOKE

From Arte France and our dear Federation Studios, comes first image of Christian Cooke in new six part series REMATCH a psychological thriller set in the crossfire of the 1997 historical battle between world chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue, a high-

We watched Christian Cooke in Barkskins and Ordeal By Innocence

pressure confrontation between man and machine, a war of minds, both on and off the chess board. Our favourite hunks Tom Austen and Luke Pasqualino also star next to Sarah Bolger, Trine Dyrholm and Aidan Quinn. The series was shot last winter in Budapest and Montreal.

  MALPRACTICE TRAILER  

FOR NEW ITV MINI SERIES

Starting Sunday April 23rd on ITV and their streamer ITVX is new 5 part series MALPRACTICE about Dr Lucinda Edwards (Niamh Algar) a smart, battle-hardened doctor, but we meet her on a nightmare shift that ends in the death of an opioid overdose victim, Edith Owusu. Despite the support of her medical supervisor, Dr Leo Harris (James Purefoy), Edith’s grieving father Sir Anthony Owusu (Brian Bovell), demands an enquiry into Lucinda’s actions on the fateful night. Leading the medical investigation are Dr Norma Callahan (Helen Behan) and Lucinda’s former colleague, Dr George Adjei (Jordan Kouamé). While George feels this was an unavoidable tragedy, Norma is suspicious of Lucinda’s behaviour and decisions in the lead up to Edith’s death. As the pressure of the investigation intensifies, Lucinda’s relationship with husband Tom (Lorne MacFadyen) starts to fracture, and her confident professional exterior begins to crack. Is Lucinda hiding something? Through the cat and mouse thriller of the medical investigation, Malpractice tells the story of a damaged doctor caught up in a dangerous conspiracy. 

1ST LOOK AT CATE BLANCHETT IN PERIOD SET MOVIE THE NEW BOY! SEE THE MIRACLE CLUB TEASER WITH MAGGIE SMITH, KATHY BATES, LAURA LINNEY, STEPHEN REA!

 1ST CATE BLANCHETT PIC 

IN THE NEW BOY MOVIE

From Australia comes the first image of Cate Blanchett in THE NEW BOY movie which premieres at Cannes. It is a 1940's set story of a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy who arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery, run by a renegade nun (Blanchett), where his presence disturbs the delicately balanced world in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival. 

  THE MIRACLE CLUB  

1ST TEASER WITH MAGGIE SMITH, KATHY BATES AND LAURA LINNEY

Sony Pictures has released the first teaser for new movie drama THE MIRACLE CLUB with Maggie Smith, Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Stephen Rea! Lourdes, a picturesque French town and a place of

The movie will arrive this summer

miracles, a magnet for 6 million visitors each year from across the globe. Ballygar, Ireland, 1968: a boisterous hard-knocks community in outer Dublin that marches to its own beat, frenzied, fast and loose, and yet also deeply soulful; rooted in traditions of loyalty, faith and togetherness. And the opportunity to rise above one’s daily struggles is frankly a pipe dream, especially for women. There’s just one dream for the women of Ballygar to taste freedom and escape the gauntlet of domestic life: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French town of Lourdes. With a little benevolent interference from their local priest, close friends Lily, Eileen, and Dolly get their ticket  of a lifetime. Having never left Dublin, let alone Ireland, the journey provides our heroines the chance to let their hair down, celebrate life and some independence. It's also a chance to reflect on their own lives, with each of the women in search of their own personal miracles. But when they are joined by Chrissie, recently returned from a decades-long exile in the USA, deep wounds from the past are re-opened, and bitter truths exposed. As they confront one another and embrace their past, these women realise that the miracle they have all been looking for is right in front of them. Check out the first teaser below and tell us will you watch it this summer?

 

SEE TEASER FOR KATE WINSLET'S THE REGIME MINI SERIES WITH HUGH GRANT, MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS! WARLOCK EFFECT PERIOD SET MAGICIAN THRILLER TV SERIES!

   THE WARLOCK EFFECT TO 

Warlock Effect will become a TV

BECOME TV SERIES

When it comes to new book adaptations, the news of the day is that Hartswood Films has bought TV rights on THE WARLOCK EFFECT Cold War thriller about a magician who flees Nazi Germany and is lured into espionage, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman! Their debut book, which is effectively out in the bookshops since Thursday, centers on Ludvik Weinschenk, a boy who escapes tyranny in Germany to become the most famous magician in 1950s Britain under the stage name Louis Warlock. His talent for deception attracts the attention of the British secret service and he is thrown into the world of espionage on a mission across Europe. 

 

   THE REGIME TEASER  

KATE WINSLET IS IN POWER

HBO Max, soon to be known as just Max and including also Discovery offer, has released first teaser trailer for new limited series THE REGIME which will start its tyrannical rule sometime next year with Kate Winslet in the lead role and Matthias Schoenaerts and Hugh Grant in supporting roles. Martha Plimpton, as you can see in the teaser, plays a confused US emissary. Known previously as The Palace, THE REGIME is directed by the amazing Stephen Frears, and tells the story of a year inside the palace of a modern European regime as it starts to unravel.

 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT DOCUDRAMA AT WORKS AT NETFLIX! ADRIEN BRODY, GUY PEARCE, JOE ALWYN, ALESSANDRO NIVOLA, FELICITY JONES TO LEAD BRUTALIST PERIOD SET BIOPIC! 1ST FREUD'S LAST SESSION PIC WITH ANTHONY HOPKINS, MATTHEW GOODE

 ALEXANDER THE GREAT  

DOCUDRAMA AT NETFLIX

It has not been confirmed yet officially by Netflix itself, but rumour has it that they have a 100 men strong team currently over in Morocco, actually since last summer, shooting a new hybrid docudrama on ALEXANDER THE GREAT which will feature both scripted and unscripted elements. Tony Mitchell is the show runner for Tailfeather Productions and Lion TV.

  BRUTALIST MOVIE DRAMA  

ADS ADRIEN BRODY, JOE ALWYN, GUY PEARCE, ALESSANDRO NIVOLA, FELICITY JONES

It will be a stellar cast: Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Felicity Jones will lead Brad Corbet's period set movie THE BRUTALIST which chronicles thirty years of an artist’s life. When visionary architect László Toth (Brody) and his wife Erzsébet (Jones) flee post-war Europe to rebuild their legacy in America, a mysterious and wealthy client (Pearce) ends up changing their lives forever. The biopic is already shooting in Hungary!

  FREUD'S LAST SESSION  

FIRST IMAGE WITH ANTHONY HOPKINS AND MATTHEW GOODE

Speaking of a thespian cast, check out Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode in the first image from FREUD'S LAST SESSION movie! Set on the eve of the Second World War, it depicts a meeting between Freud and Narnia writer C.S. Lewis, at the psychoanalyst’s London home, during which they debate the existence of God. The film also explores Freud’s unique relationship with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) and Lewis’ unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother. The stellar cast also has Orla Brady, Jeremy Northam and Stephen Campbell Moore.

SEE EXCLUSIVE 1ST IMAGES OF YULIYA PERESILD AS TZARINA ELIZABETH OF RUSSIA IN NEW HISTORICAL MOVIE THE EMPRESSES! RYURIK EPIC SAGA ON RUSSIA'S 1ST DYNASTY

  FIRST YULIYA PERESILD 

IMAGES AS EMPRESS ELIZABETH

Here is an exclusive for you today, my spylings: you are the first one to see, outside of sweet mother Russia, the first images of wildly gorgeous Yuliya Peresild as empress Elizabeth of Russia. The images are from the

Yuliya Peresild as Elizabeth of Russia

upcoming new historical movie THE EMPRESSES (Императрицы) directed and penned by famous Andrey Kravchuk who previously gave us glorious epic movies The Admiral, Viking, Union of Salvation and Peter I: The Last Tsar (with this film effectively being the sequel or a continuation of that one). As you know Elisabeth or Elizaveta was the daughter of Peter the Great, but it took her almost two decades to inherit her father's throne as the period after his death was marked by a long turmoil which saw four people ruling Russia, among them three women, including Elisabeth's mother Catherine I who was the first ever empress of Russia.  After ascending to the throne finally in 1741 at the age of 33, Elisabeth ruled the vast empire for almost two decades and was then succeeded by her daughter in law Catherine the Great. Scheduled to premiere on October 26th, the film also stars Ivan Kolesnikov as Peter I, Igor Gordin, Anna Ukolova, Eduard Orlov and others.

 

   THE STORY OF THE FILM

After the death of Peter the Great, the era of palace coups begins - a time of intrigue and a struggle for power. Little Elizabeth already knows that the world is not a wish-granting factory. She is not destined to become the queen of France, because after the death of Peter I, Louis XV breaks all past agreements. And for the throne of the Russian Empire there is a real struggle, and no one even jokingly considers the candidacy of the young princess. The movie will show how the empire changed along with the change of heads of state. Why did it turn out to be an impossible task for many to continue the work of Peter I? What price will Elizabeth Petrovna, the youngest daughter of the great monarch, have to pay to take her place in history? And what can a woman on the throne give Russia? The title of the film is in plural because it will also cover the rule of Catherine I (Kseniya Utekhina) and Anna Ivanovna. After the rule of Peter the Great, Russia was ruled for 70 years by women, even though before him there were no females at the throne. Stay tuned as I will be covering more international period set projects in the upcoming weeks.

 

  RYURIK EPIC SERIES  

ON FIRST RUSSIAN DYNASTY

Ryrik will be an eight part historical saga

Speaking of wonderful Andrey Kravchuk, he is currently also preparing eight part historical series RYURIK (Рюрик)! The story begins in the IX century at Lake Ladoga just across from Scandinavia at dark and troubled time of mages and witches, callous gods and ancestral curses, princes and knights, betrayal, feasts and bloody wars. Such time calls for a true hero, Rorik, the slave who grew up in exile without a father, in poverty and contempt, the descendant of the Vikings and the initiator of the first great Russian royal dynasty. The boy destined to become the ruler and influence the history of the world.