Motion Picture: Disney+ Expanding To 42 New Countries; Yara Shahidi In Upcoming 'Sitting In Bars With Cake'; Morgan Freeman In Scif-Fi Thriller '57 Seconds'
Morgan Freeman - Getty Images /
Action/Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Hollywood walk of fame star actor Morgan Freeman and The Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson are going to be co-starring in a time-traveling science fiction flick called 57 Seconds. Rusty Cundieff (Tales From The Hood, The Chappelle Show) will be directing the film, from a screenplay by Macon Blair. Hutcherson is a tech blogger who discovers that his mentor Freeman has a ring that lets him travel 57 seconds into the past. Fuelled with revenge for his sister’s death he will use this ring to take down a pharmaceutical company. The film is still in its early stages of production and has of yet no release date.
The Korean sales company Contents Panda has acquired the distribution rights for Gentleman. It is the first feature film fully produced by the local streaming service wavve. The action-thriller starring Korean newcomers Ju Ji-Hoon, Sung-Woong, and Chou Sung-Eun will be on a detective who is suspected of kidnapping and will have to team up with a prosecutor to prove his innocence. Through their investigation, they will tap into a much larger conspiracy. Gentleman is set to release in May.
Yara Shahidi - Rich Fury
Comedy: Yara Shahidi, the star of Grown-ish and Black-ish, has landed her first leading role in director Trish Sie’s rom-com, Sitting In Bars With Cake. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film is based on Audrey Shulman’s own experience that she turned into a blog and eventually into a novel. The film will deliver what the title promises: Yara is a young woman who discovers that baking cakes for friends and bringing them to bars serves her as an unexpected guy magnet.
Bleeker Street
Industry Update: American television network and online streaming service Showtime has struck a deal with indie production company Bleecker Street to gain exclusive rights of all their upcoming films and shows for the next three years. According to Variety, the announcement was made last week by Showtime’s VP of content acquisition Kent Sevener, and Bleecker Street CEO Andrew Karpen. The production company will have to release their upcoming films on Showtime’s streaming service after their release in theaters.
Disney+ is going to launch in 42 new countries, finally branching out to the Middle East and Africa. The streaming service platform launched in 2019 in the US and has since then expanded mostly to Canada and European countries such as Spain, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The streaming service now counts 118 million global subscribers. If this number seems staggeringly high, wait and see until after the summer when the film production goliath expands to South Africa, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and many more.
French-African production veteran Pape Boye is steady on his way to start up his own production company called Black Mic Mac. He is now teaming up with French audiovisual and technology company Logical Pictures Group which will help him bring his Paris-based outfit to the next level. Black Mic Mac’s mission will be to package international productions and find sales of scripted film content by African talents and producers.