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Beta Film has released a swashbuckling, pulse-pounding trailer for “Rise of the Raven,” its epic 10-part drama series based on the bloody 15th-century battle that changed the course of Europe. The show will world premiere at Mipcom in the Grand Auditorium of Cannes’ Palais des Festivals on Oct. 22.

Adapted from author Bán Mór’s bestselling novels, the series tells the story of the Hungarian warrior Janos Hunyadi, who defeated the Ottoman army in 1456 at the Battle of Belgrade, halting its march across Europe and marking a turning point in the history of the continent.

The series is produced by veteran Canadian producer Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films and Beta Film, the production and distribution powerhouse behind series including “Gomorrah” and “Babylon Berlin.” The Munich-based company is also repping the show internationally as part of a packed Mipcom slate.

In a trailer shared exclusively with Variety, Hunyadi (Kádár L. Gellért) delivers...

Norman Jewison, the prolific, award-winning movie director of “Rollerball” and “In The Heat of the Night” has died:

Jewison directed numerous feature films and was Oscar-nominated 3 times as ‘Best Director’, for “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) and “Moonstruck” (1987).

Other films include “The Cincinnati Kid” (1965), “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966), “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968), “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1973), “Rollerball” (1975)…

… “F.I.S.T.” (1978), “...And Justice for All” (1979), “Best Friends” (1982), “A Soldier's Story” (1984), “Agnes of God” (1985), “Other People's Money” (1991), “Only You” (1994), “The Hurricane” (1999), and “The Statement” (2003.

Click the images to enlarge…...

Norman Jewison, the celebrated film director, has died. He was 97. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker passed away at his home on Saturday, January 20, 2024.

Jewison had a long and varied directing and producing career that was peppered with accolades. His films "Moonstruck," "A Soldier's Story," "Fiddler on the Roof," "In the Heat of the Night," and "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1987, 1984, 1971, 1967, and 1966 respectively, with "Heat of the Night" winning. Jewison also helmed dozens of other notable dramas and musicals besides, including "The Thomas Crown Affair", "Gaily, Gaily" (nominated for three Oscars), "Jesus Christ Superstar" (nominated for one Oscar), "...And Justice for All" (two), "Agnes of God" (three), and "The Hurricane" (one). 

All told, Jewison's films were nominated for 41 Oscars, winning 12. He also directed the sci-fi thriller "Rollerball," the comedy "Bogus," the romance "Only You," the Stallone drama "F.I.S.T.,...

Norman Jewison, the versatile, acclaimed filmmaker behind movies like Fiddler on the Roof and In the Heat of the Night, died Saturday at home, his publicist announced Monday. He was 97.

Jewison was a seven-time Oscar nominee and earned the Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1999. He earned both Best Director and Best Picture nods for the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof and the 1987 rom-com Moonstruck, starring Cher.

He also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for 1976’s In the Heat of the Night.

Norman Jewison is dead at the age of 97. For over four decades he sustained a career of films that became major box office hits as well as others that presented current social issues in a Hollywood context (with some combining the two). He died peacefully at his home on Saturday January 20.

“In the Heat of the Night,” which beat “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” for the Best Picture Oscar for 1967, is the most obvious example of Jewison’s talent for turning tough subjects into hit movies. It grossed (adjusted to current prices) over $200 million, with it already having become a major success before it won five Oscars. Ironically, the racially-charged story about a Northern Black detective (Sidney Poitier) investigating a murder and confronting a racist Southern police chief wons its Oscars in a ceremony delayed by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Norman Frederick Jewison was born on July 21, 1926 in Toronto,...

Busta Rhymes stopped by The Tonight Show to perform two of his songs, “The Statement” and “Legacy.” The rapper melded the songs into a seamless medley and was joined by Cie, Trillian, and Rai for “Legacy.”

Both tracks appear on Rhymes’ recent LP, Blockbusta, which dropped in November via Conglomerate Ent./Epic Records. The rapper executive produced the album alongside Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, and Swizz Beatz.

On “The Statement,” Rhymes solidifies his place in the rap landscape with fervor, spitting, “While y’all show off, we show up.” He adds,...

If you’re a film nerd putting together a late summer reading list, look no further. There are a number of books here that could qualify as “beach reads,” chief among them a new novel from Quentin Tarantino. Others might be a tad heavy to lug to the beach, but they will be just as enticing at home. So let’s go swimming in a deep roundup of new books on filmmaking.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (Harper Perennial)

Only Quentin Tarantino could return to a film just two years later and radically change the order of things, remove numerous noteworthy scenes while expanding others, devote a shocking number of pages to Lancer plot summaries, embark on a headline-grabbing press tour, and still emerge with a book as successful as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As with any creation from Tarantino, there are moments of real reader discomfort here,...

Just like Charlotte Rampling, his co-star in The Statement, Michael Caine is addressing the diversity controversy in this year's Oscar nominations, which, for the second year in a row, chose an all-white slate in the acting categories. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, the two-time Oscar winner argued that "You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black ... You have to give a good performance" — an echo of Rampling's opinion that "perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list." Unlike Rampling, Caine did acknowledge the black actors in the Oscar conversation, calling Idris Elba's work in Beasts of No Nation "wonderful" and worthy of a nomination. When asked to give advice to actors like Elba who were shut out, the 82-year-old actor told them to "Be patient, of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar."...

Lotta love in the room Tuesday night at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York for Sony Classics co-chiefs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, recipients of Momi’s first annual Envision Award, and who were roasted, but not to the point of combustion. “They hold a record,” their arch-rival Focus CEO James Schamus began, and paused …. was he going to mention Bernard-Barker’s 135 career Academy nominations? A list of filmmakers that includes Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke and Asghar Farhadi? Their taste? Their balls? Their good looks?No -- “For flying the largest number of Oscar nominees in coach.”The Sony boys notorious frugality came in for a few potshots, but so did their devotion to filmmakers they believe in. “I’m really happy to be here,” said Norman Jewison, “considering how much money I lost these guys,” referring to “The Statement” of 2003 (“I guess Americans weren...

X-Men: First Class (2011) Film Review, a movie directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Bryne, Oliver Platt, Nicholas Hoult, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, Morgan Lily, Zoe Kravitz, and Bill Bilner.

The first act of X-Men: First Class is an excellent single-note, centralized drama while the remaining two acts of the film are a hodgepodge of answered-before-asked questions in addition to X-Men movie continuity errors, starting with the Jean Grey/Professor X/Magneto segment at the beginning of Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand (written about here: Film Review: X-Men: The Last Stand).

Keeping the above in mind, X-Men: First Class can be broken down into three parts, not to be confused with its three acts: Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender)’s back story and revenge, Professor X (James McAvoy)’s evolution, and The Hellfire Club’s mutant utopia plan.

HollywoodNews.com: Swinton was born in London, England. Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, Kcvo, OBE, Dl, who was Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire (1989–2000), is Scottish, and her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the High Middle Ages.

Tilda Swinton ◄ Back Next ►Picture 1 of 8

Tilda Swinton - "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" New York City Premiere

◄ Back Next ►Picture 1 of 8

Tilda Swinton - "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" New York City Premiere

Swinton attended two independent schools, the West Heath Girls’ School (the same class as Diana, Princess of Wales), and also Fettes College for a brief period. In 1983, she graduated from New Hall (now known as Murray Edwards College) at Cambridge with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. While at Cambridge she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.[7] She...

Film Society Of Lincoln Center announces Relentless Renegade: The Films Of Norman Jewison May 25-30

Jewison to appear in-person along with Academy Award winners Olympia Dukakis and Lee Grant

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the details today for the upcoming film series, Relentless Renegade: The Films of Norman Jewison which will screen at the Walter Reade Theater May 25-30. The series will mark the first major retrospective of the director.s work in New York featuring appearances by Jewison, along with Academy Award winners Olympia Dukakis and Lee Grant and others participating in Q&As and discussing several of the classic films helmed by the great director.

Special guest appearances include:

Olympia Dukakis - who will join Jewison to discuss the film Moonstruck (Saturday, May 28 at 5:45Pm)

Lee Grant - who will attend screenings of In The Heat Of The Night (Friday, May 27 at 6:00Pm) and The Landlord (Monday,...

Toronto -- Making a pre-emptive move on the eve of the Toronto International Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics has acquired U.S. rights to "Barney's Version," from Canada-based producer Robert Lantos.

Adapted by Michael Konyves from the novel by Mordecai Richler and directed by Richard J. Lewis, the film tells the story of a seemingly ordinary man, played by Paul Giamatti, whose life spans two continents and includes three wives, an outrageous father and a dangerous best friend.

The cast also includes Minnie Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Rachelle Lefevre and Scott Speedman.

The $30-million feature, produced by Lantos' Serendipity Point Films, screens Sunday night at Tiff as a gala presentation, following its world premiere Friday at the Venice Film Festival. It will also open the Hamptons International Film Festival on Oct. 7.

Spc has distributed such previous Lantos films as "Being Julia" and "The Statement," and "Barney's" could find itself...

Production begins this week in Connecticut on the psychological thriller We Need To Talk About Kevin, which is being directed by acclaimed filmmaker Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar) and produced by Jennifer Fox (Michael Clayton, The Informant!), Luc Roeg (Mr. Nice) and Robert Salerno (21 Grams). We Need To Talk About Kevin was written by Ramsay and Rory Kinnear based on the novel by Lionel Shriver. The film stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller. Presented by BBC Films and the UK Film Council in association with Footprint Investments Llp, Caemhan Partnership Llp and Lipsync Productions, the film is an Independent / Jennifer Fox production in association with Artina Films and Forward Films. The announcement was made today by Independent, who also holds the international rights to the film.

The film was developed by BBC Films¹ Creative Director Christine Langan (The Damned United, Bright Star) with Paula Jalfon (In The Loop,...

In The Heat Of The Night director Norman Jewison is to be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Directors Guild of America (DGA).

The Canadian moviemaker's 1967 drama starring Sidney Poitier scored five Academy Awards, and he went on to land another three Oscars for 1971's Fiddler on the Roof.

Jewison will now follow in the footsteps of legendary directors including Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock when he is awarded the DGA's highest honour in January.

DGA President Taylor Hackford says in a statement, "He is an incredible filmmaker whose calm, affable manner belies a ferocious creative fire within. Norman well deserves to stand among the giants of cinema whom we have honored in the past."

Jewison's last big screen offering came in 2003 with The Statement, starring Sir Michael Caine.

Norman Jewison, the Oscar-nominated director of In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof, and Moonstruck will add another line to his resume on Jan. 30, when the Directors Guild of America gives him its lifetime achievement award. It's a fairly exclusive honor, too -- the DGA has been around for 73 years but only gives lifetime achievement awards occasionally. Jewison is the 33rd recipient; the last one was Clint Eastwood, in 2006.

Jewison, an 83-year-old Toronto native, is a somewhat unusual choice for the DGA in that he hasn't been active lately. The most recent recipients -- Eastwood, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola -- had all been working pretty regularly at the time of their awards, but Jewison has only made three theatrical features in the last 15 years: Bogus (1996), The Hurricane (1999), and The Statement (2003).

His past work is exemplary, though. In addition to the films I mentioned,...

 The Directors Guild of America on Tuesday named "Fiddler on the Roof" director Norman Jewison the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award to be given at a gala dinner and ceremony in January.Jewison, a 83-year-old Canadian who has three Academy Award nominations for directing, joins 32 past recipients of the honor from the influential industry organization, including Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock."He is an incredible filmmaker whose calm, affable manner belies a ferocious creative fire within," DGA President Taylor Hackford said in a statement. "Norman well deserves to stand among the giants of cinema whom we have honored in the past".Jewison's films have tackled racism, corruption and falling in love, such as "Fiddler on the Roof," a 1971 musical about Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia and 1984's "A Soldier's Story", which earned one of three DGA nominations he received.&quot...

Charlotte Rampling and David Thewlis have joined the cast of Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction for Intermedia Films and C2 Pictures. MGM/Sony is releasing the film domestically, with C2 handling international. They join Sharon Stone and David Morrissey in the sequel that starts shooting this week at London's Pinewood Studios and on location in the U.K. Written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean, the London-set sequel finds Catherine Tramell (Stone) on the wrong side of the law. She meets a man who might finally be her match: The criminal psychologist (Morrissey) assigned to evaluate her by Scotland Yard. Rampling plays a psychiatrist friend of Morrissey's character, with Thewlis playing a police officer. Former British soccer player Stan Collymore also has a small role. Thewlis will next be seen in Kingdom of Heaven. His credits include , Gangster No. 1 and Timeline. Thewlis is repped by WMA. Rampling's credits include Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool, Spy Game, The Statement and The Keys to the House. Rampling is repped by Artmedia.

TORONTO -- Canadian production executive Julia Rosenberg said Tuesday that she is creating her own shingle, January Films, through a housekeeping deal with Robert Lantos' Serendipidity Point Films. Rosenberg, who worked in development for three years at producer Alliance Communications Corp. before moving with Lantos to form Serendipidity Point Films in 1998, said she will develop her own projects through the new production company. At the same time, Rosenberg said she will continue helping develop the Serendipidity Point film slate. Recent international co-productions from that production house include the Annette Bening starrer Being Julia and The Statement, which stars Michael Caine.

Actor Alan Bates, who came to fame as one of British cinema's "angry young men" of the 60s and whose heralded stage and screen career was marked by a love of acting as opposed to fame, died Saturday night in London after a long battle with cancer; he was 69. Educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Bates indeed helped launch the genre of angry young men plays by starring in John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger in 1956, which started him on a stage career that was marked by innumerable roles created by classic playwrights. His first major film role in 1960 was opposite none other than Laurence Olivier in Osbourne's The Entertainer, in which Bates and a young Albert Finney played the sons of Olivier's shabby vaudevillian. Roles in Whistle Down the Wind, A Kind of Loving and The Running Man followed, but it was Bates' two successive performances in Zorba the Greek and Georgy Girl that helped make him a film star; the former film, in which he played a repressed Englishman opposite Anthony Quinn's life-affirming Zorba, received a Best Picture nomination. Bates himself received a Best Actor nomination for John Frankenheimer's The Fixer (1968), and a year later earned more fame and a bit of notoriety for Ken Russell's erotic adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, in which he wrestled naked with Oliver Reed. Notable film roles also included Far From the Madding Crowd, An Unmarried Woman, The Rose and his turn as Claudius in Mel Gibson's Hamlet. Bates also won a Tony award in 2002 for Turgenev's Fortune's Fool and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1995 and knighted last year. Most recently, Bates was seen onscreen in the thriller The Sum of All Fears, Robert Altman's Oscar-winning Gosford Park and this year's drama The Statement. Bates, whose son Tristan died in 1990 and wife Victoria Ford died in 1992, is survived by two brothers, son Benedick, and a granddaughter. --Prepared by IMDb staff...

Michael Caine could be stepping into the formal wear of Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler, for director Christopher Nolan in Warner Bros. Pictures' upcoming installment in the Batman franchise. Emma Thomas is producing. Caine would join Christian Bale, who plays Wayne, the millionaire playboy by day who is the crime-fighting Caped Crusader by night. The script, which is kept tightly wrapped, has been written by Nolan and David Goyer. Caine has a pair of supporting actor Oscar wins -- for 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters and 1999's The Cider House Rules. He most recently starred in New Line's Secondhand Lions and will next appear in Sony Pictures Classics' upcoming The Statement. The character of Alfred, an integral part of the Batman mythos, was played by Michael Gough in the most recent movies, starting with 1989's Batman and running up to 1997's Batman & Robin. Warners declined comment. Caine is repped by ICM.

A quartet of high-profile premieres including Nigel Cole's Calendar Girls, Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog, Norman Jewison's The Statement, and Patty Jenkins' Monster will highlight this year's AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival. "We consider ourselves the festival of record for international films in Los Angeles," festival director Christian Gaines said. "And these four films all deal with international themes which are very appropriate for our festival." The North American Premiere of Calendar Girls will open the festival Nov. 6. The Buena Vista/Touchstone Pictures release, which is inspired by the true story of a group of women who bare all -- or nearly all -- for charity and become international celebrities as a result, stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters.

TORONTO -- Canadian broadcaster Corus Entertainment said Wednesday that it will invest in six feature films to be produced by Robert Lantos' Serendipity Point Films over the next four years, the first of which is Michael Caine starrer The Statement. Corus will make the investments through its pay TV service, Movie Central, which features a monthly lineup of popular Hollywood releases and homegrown pictures. The Statement, a political thriller toplining Oscar nominee Caine, is being directed by Norman Jewison from a script by Ronald Harwood, who is nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for The Pianist.