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Exclusive: The new boss of My Brilliant Friend producer Wildside is on a mission to discover the next generation of Italian talent.

Detailing the Fremantle-backed producer’s strategy for the first time since taking over, Sonia Rovai said she will not depart from the genres that the Italian outfit specializes in but will instead attempt to shift the dial by unearthing young scribes and directors.

Rovai said she is slowly building up a development slate featuring these voices, with projects that she will likely produce herself.

“We need to push to find the Italian next generation,” she told Deadline at the AVPSummit in south Italy. “So we are selecting and working on new voices and young talent.”

Rovai is “investing time” in the endeavor, she said, visiting local theaters and reaching out to those who may have left Italy to find work in nations like the UK. “To find...

Netflix has released the official trailer for Rapman’s ‘Supacell’ and have revealed that the Mobo award-winning British rapper and songwriter Ghetts will play the role of Krazy.

The series is about a group of five ordinary people who unexpectedly develop superpowers. They have little in common except for one thing: they are all Black South Londoners. One man, Michael Lasaki, must bring them all together to save the woman he loves.

Created, Directed and show ran by Rapman with Sebastian Thiel also directing, the cast includes Tosin Cole (61st, Street, Till, Ear for Eye) as Michael, Nadine Mills (Sliced and The Weekend) as Sabrina, Eric Kofi Abrefa (Blue Story, Bmf) as Andre, Calvin Demba (The Rig, Life, Micky and the Bear) as Rodney, Josh Tedeku (Moonhaven, A Town Called Malice) as Tazer, Adelayo Adedayo (The Responder, Timewasters) as Dionne, Rayxia Ojo (Harry Potter and The Cursed Child – West End Production,...

The Decameron is finally coming to Netflix. The streaming service announced the premiere date for the black comedy series set in the 14th century with the release of a trailer. The eight-episodes were ordered in August 2022.

Created by Kathleen Jordan, the series stars Amar Chadha-Patel, Leila Farzad, Lou Gala, Karan Gill, Tony Hale, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Zosia Mamet, Douggie McMeekin, Jessica Plummer, and Tanya Reynolds.

Read More…...

Netflix has pulled back the velvet curtain on the teaser trailer for the upcoming series ‘The Decameron.’

The Decameron is a soapy dark comedy that examines the all-too-timely theme of class struggles in the season of a pandemic. In the year 1348, the Black Death strikes hard in the city of Florence, and a handful of nobles retreat with their servants to a grand villa to wait out the plague with a lavish holiday. But as social rules wear thin, a scramble for survival ensues, brought to life by a cast of characters both cunning and outrageous.

The cast includes Amar Chadha-Patel, Leila Farzad, Lou Gala, Karan Gill, Tony Hale, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Zosia Mamet, Douggie McMeekin, Jessica Plummer, Tanya Reynolds

Created by Kathleen Jordan, who was very loosely inspired by the 14-century story collection The Decameron, the eight-episode series is through Jenji Kohan’s Tilted Productions. Kohan serves as an executive producer,...

Wayne Garvie, Sony Pictures Television’s president of international production, has challenged European producers to better exploit Europe’s “treasure house of global IP”.

Speaking at Italy’s Avp Summit, Garvie said Europe has a huge depth of stories from Greek tragedies, Roman emperors, Norse gods, French musketeers, Spanish conquistadors to German fairy tales. “All of them have in various forms entertained the world for thousands of years, and each generation reinvents those stories.”

However, he noted US filmmakers are traditionally better at reinterpreting European stories for international audiences, and then capitalising on their success by building worlds and franchises around their series and characters.

Sony’s Wayne Garvie has urged the European industry to echo counterparts in the U.S. by turning TV shows into franchises.

“Once the Americans have a successful returning series they do something we Europeans seem to be incapable of – turn them into franchises,” the boss of The Crown outfit’s international productions said this morning.

Turning to his native UK, Garvie said the local industry has been “brilliant at creating non-scripted franchises but really poor in drama,” floating that Doctor Who, which is co-produced by Sony-owned Bad Wolf, is “the only example I can think of.” In the U.S., on the other hand, he flagged Sony franchises such as Cobra Kai, Breaking Bad and The Boys.

“It is obviously not easy to do and you must start with initial success but once we have that why aren’t we thinking more about how to build that world out?...

Period comedy The Decameron is coming to Netflix, and here’s the trailer for the brand new eight episode show.

It seems that period comedies are coming back into vogue. A few months ago we got Andy Riley’s fun Dark Ages romp Seize Them!, with Derry Girls star Nicola Coghlan, Aimee Lou Wood and Nick Frost.

Another Derry Girls alumnus, Saoirse Monica-Jackson, stars in The Decameron, which is coming to Netflix next month.

A prescient comedy, the show examines how people of that generation dealt with a worldwide pandemic, and the chasm between the rich and the poor.

The synopsis reads as follows:

You are cordially invited to a wine-soaked sex romp set in the Italian countryside… The Decameron is a soapy dark comedy that examines the all-too-timely theme of class struggles in the season of a pandemic. In the year 1348, the Black Death strikes hard in the city of Florence,...

"The Decameron" is a new 8-episode comedy TV series, created by Kathleen Jordan and set in the 14th Century, directed by Michael Uppendahl, starring Tony Hale and Zosia Mamet, streaming July 25, 2024 on Netflix:

“…in the year 1348, the ‘Black Death’ strikes hard in the city of Florence and a handful of nobles…

“…retreat with their servants to a grand villa to wait out the plague with a lavish holiday of debauchery.

“But as social rules wear thin, a scramble for survival ensues, brought to life by a cast of over-sexed characters both cunning and outrageous…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Netflix has just released the teaser trailer for the upcoming dark comedy The Decameron. The show is a limited series that is set to run for eight episodes and is slated to hit the streamer on July 25. The cast includes an ensemble of actors, which features names like Amar Chadha-Patel, Leila Farzad, Lou Gala, Karan Gill, Tony Hale, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Zosia Mamet, Douggie McMeekin, Jessica Plummer and Tanya Reynolds. The teaser cheekily calls the subject of the show “The Party of the 14th Century” with New Order’s “Blue Monday” providing background for the madness.

The official synopsis reads,

“You are cordially invited to a wine-soaked sex romp set in the Italian countryside. The Decameron is a soapy dark comedy that examines the all-too-timely theme of class struggles in the season of a pandemic. In the year 1348, the Black Death strikes hard in the city of Florence, and a handful...

Based on its premise, you might expect “The Decameron” to be a drama. The series takes place during The Black Death and follows a group of people attempting to wait out the pandemic in the countryside. But would you believe, “The Decameron” is a dark comedy sex-filled romp?

Read More: Summer TV Preview: Over 35 Must-See Series To Watch

As seen in the teaser for “The Decameron,” the series follows a group of nobles and their servants celebrating an impromptu holiday in the countryside as they avoid The Black Death.

Continue reading ‘The Decameron’ Teaser: Zosia Mamet & Tony Hale Star In Netflix’s Period, Dark Comedy at The Playlist.

Get ready to party! Netflix has revealed a wild teaser trailer for their raunchy upcoming series called The Decameron, created by TV writer Kathleen Jordan. "You're invited to the party of the 14th century." The series is very loosely inspired by the 14-century story collection The Decameron, and is described as a soapy dark comedy. When The Black Death strikes hard in the Italian countryside in 1348, a handful of nobles retreat to a grand villa with their servants. But what starts as a wine-soaked sex romp descends into a race for survival. The series examines the all-too-timely theme of class struggles in the season of a pandemic, as a cast of misfits tries to outlast the bubonic plague pandemic in 1348 Florence. "When something like a plague comes along, the ground goes even," Tony Hale explains. "So what am I investing in? What relationships am I investing in? How am I treating people?...

Get ready to dive into a whirlwind of drama, comedy, and historical intrigue as Netflix premieres the first trailer for its upcoming series, The Decameron. Set to launch in July 2024, the series blends period aesthetics with contemporary themes, bringing and this is an unusual sentence a fun and seedy take on the Black Death's devastating impact on Florence in 1348. Created and executive produced by Kathleen Jordan, and produced under Jenji Kohans Tilted Productions, The Decameron promises to be a wild ride through medieval Italy.

Netflix is dialing up the drama and dusting off the history books with its upcoming series, The Decameron, set to premiere in July 2024, and Netflix is offering a sneak peek into the soapy, raucous journey through medieval Italy. Created and executive produced by Kathleen Jordan, and brought to life under Jenji Kohans Tilted Productions, The Decameron promises to be a blend of period aesthetics and contemporary themes. The show plunges into the depths of the Black Deaths arrival in Florence in 1348, following a quirky group of nobles and their servants as they escape the city's chaos for a grand villa in the Tuscan countryside.

Italy’s Cinecittà Studios, which have been undergoing a radical overhaul since 2021, recently released their fiscal 2023 results, which saw the Rome-based facilities turn a profit for the second year in a row after bleeding red ink for years.

The iconic studios are being managed by Nicola Maccanico, a former Warner Bros. and Sky Italia senior exec who last year lured big shoots such as Roland Emmerich’s gladiator series “Those About to Die” starring Anthony Hopkins and Netflix’s period soap “The Decameron” to the government-run “City of Cinema.” Last year, the studios were able to maintain a 70% occupancy level despite the impact of the Hollywood strikes and are on track to keep that level this year with several big Hollywood shoots coming soon, though NDAs are keeping details under wraps.

Below, Maccanico speaks to Variety about how he’s navigating Cinecittà’s revamp and what the prospects are going forward.

Exclusive: Zosia Mamet, Michael Angarano and Tommy Martinez (Good Trouble) have been cast in Peacock’s upcoming comedy series Laid as series regulars. Mamet will play Aj, Angarano will play Richie and Martinez will play Isaac.

They join previously announced lead Stephanie Hsu in the series written and executive produced by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna.

Laid is based on the Australian series created by Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher, and produced by Liz Watts. It follows a woman who finds out her former lovers are dying in unusual ways and must go back through her sex timeline to confront her past to move forward. It’s described as a f*cked-up rom-com where the answer to “Why can’t I find love, is there something wrong with me?” is a resounding: “Yes, there is. The problem is definitely you.”

The series comes from Universal Television,...

Italian director Paolo Taviani, who with his late brother Vittorio formed the revered filmmaking duo that in 1977 won the Cannes Palme d’Or for “Padre Padrone,” has died at 92.

Taviani died on Thursday in a Rome clinic after suffering from a short illness, according to Italian media reports. “Paolo Taviani, a great maestro of Italian cinema, leaves us,” Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Taviani brothers “directed unforgettable, profound, committed films that entered into the collective imagination and the history of cinema,” Gualtieri added.

Vittorio was the youngest of the Taviani Brothers, who emerged in the 1970s as the prolific pair whose works blended neo-realism with more modern storytelling in works such as “Padre Padrone” (1977), “The Night of the Shooting Stars” (1982) and Luigi Pirandello adaptation “Kaos” (1984).

Born in the Tuscan town of San Miniato, Vittorio and Paolo Taviani soon moved to nearby Pisa where...

Exclusive: And then there were three. As Deadline reported exclusively earlier this month, the field of writers in the running to adapt Jk Rowling’s Harry Potter books into a live-action series for Max has been narrowed down to three finalists. We can now reveal their names — according to sources, they are Francesca Gardiner, Tom Moran and Kathleen Jordan. The trio will be able to hone in on their pitches for the next couple of months, with a decision on who gets the job expected in June, we hear. As Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced last week, the Harry Potter series is slated to debut on Max in 2026.

Reps for Max and the studio behind the series, Warner Bros. Television, declined to comment.

Gardiner, Moran and Jordan are among the names of writers in contention reported exclusively by Deadline over the past month.

The extensive search started off...

Tim Robinson, the comedian behind sketch series I Think You Should Leave, is starring in Friendship, along with Paul Rudd and Kate Mara. The indie comedy is marking the feature directorial debut of Andrew DeYoung, the helmer known for his work on such series as Our Flag Means Death and PEN15.

J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, the producing duo behind horror hit Barbarian, are producing the comedy, which is now in production, with Fifth Season, the financier-distribution-production outfit behind recent movies Flora and Son and 80 for Brady. Fifth Season, formerly named Endeavor Content, is also financing.

Written by DeYoung, Friendship centers on a mild-mannered man named Craig, whose life is perfectly balanced, with Subway sandwiches and Marvel movies, a job he enjoys and a happy home life with a wife and son. That life is upended with the arrival in the neighborhood by a weatherman, played by Rudd. Mysterious yet friendly,...

Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave), Paul Rudd (Only Murders in the Building) and Kate Mara (Class of ’09) have been set to star in Friendship, a new comedy from Fifth Season and BoulderLight Pictures.

Pic centers on Craig Waterman (Robinson), who enjoys his life. He likes New Balance shoes, Subway sandwiches, and Marvel movies. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Tami, and son, Steven. He’s happy to work at Universal Digital, a company that helps brands make their products more habit-forming. Craig sees no reason to change anything or make new friends… until weatherman Brian moves into the neighborhood. Mysterious yet friendly, macho but vulnerable, Brian (Rudd) transforms everything for Craig, but Craig’s obsessive and childlike nature threatens to ruin the friendship, and possibly everything else in his life.

Friendship is the first feature from director Andrew DeYoung, who also penned the script and is exec producing alongside Tracy Rosenblum.

New seasons of “Bridgerton” and “The Night Agent” are coming to the world’s largest streamer in 2024, but what about “Stranger Things”?

Netflix takes its position as the leader of the streaming industry seriously. It frequently makes moves that no other streaming platform does, such as releasing viewership data for 99% of its shows, and this week it took another action few competing streaming services do: unveiling its entire TV, movie, and mobile game slate for the rest of 2024.

New seasons of “Bridgerton,” “Cobra Kai” and “Squid Game” will arrive on Netflix in 2024. Movie highlights include the new “Beverly Hills Cop” starring Eddie Murphy and Tyler Perry’s horror flick “Mea Culpa.” The schedule confirms there will be no new episodes of “Stranger Things” until at least 2025. Sign Up $6.99+ / month netflix.com

What Are the Highlights of Netflix’s TV Release Schedule in 2024?

What Are the Highlights of Netflix’s Movie...

Netflix has officially announced their full TV slate for 2024…and they’re promising a ton of new content this year!

We now officially know which series will be returning this year, and we’ve gathered up everything that has been released in one easy to read list.

Keep reading to find out more…

February Releases

⬥ One Day – On Netflix February 8

⬥ Love Is Blind S6 – On Netflix February 14 (Releasing Weekly)

⬥ The Vince Staples Show – On Netflix February 15

⬥ Al Rawabi School for Girls S2 – On Netflix February 15

⬥ Ready, Set, Love – On Netflix February 15

⬥ Rhythm + Flow Italy – On Netflix February 19 (episodes 1-4) + February 26 (episodes 5-7) + March 4 (episode 8)

⬥ Avatar: The Last Airbender – On Netflix February 22

⬥ Formula 1: Drive to Survive S6 – On Netflix February 23

⬥ The Mire: Millennium – On Netflix February 28

March Releases

⬥ The Gentlemen – On Netflix this March

⬥ The Netflix Slam – On Netflix March 3

⬥ Hot Wheels Let’s Race – On Netflix March 4

⬥ Full Swing S...

Exclusive: The Harry Potter television series is moving closer to fruition.

In April, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that a series, based on the classic wizarding world, would be coming to its streaming service Max.

Deadline understands that things in Potterworld are now heating up with a marathon of pitches underway from writers vying for the right to adapt J.K. Rowling’s seven books.

Martha Hillier, Kathleen Jordan, Tom Moran and Michael Lesslie are among those who are presenting their visions to the streaming service and Warner Bros Television, sources said. It’s an interesting mix of Brits and Americans. We’ve heard that the group of writers were commissioned by Max to create pitches for a series reflecting their take on the IP.

We hear the first round of pitch meetings happened in Los Angeles this week and sources said that the top choices will go on to the next round in the UK.

At least one of the stars of Derry Girls would sign up for a reprise of the hit comedy.

Saoirse-Monica Jackson, who played lead Derry Girl Erin in the award-winning show based on the lives of four Northern Irish teenage girls (and an English male cousin), told The Belfast Telegraph she hopes she hasn’t said goodbye to her character for ever, following the show’s triumphant finale in 2022.

She said: “It felt bizarre when the show ended, because I was done with Erin, but Lisa is continuing her life.

“It would be interesting to revisit Erin down the line and see what she’s up to because your twenties are so chaotic. But that would really be down to Lisa. I’d love to work with her again.”

Derry Girls became one of Channel 4’s biggest ever comedies on its debut in 2018, and then a global hit on the Netflix platform.

The end of the 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike isn’t just resuscitating the U.S. film and TV business, it’s also bringing back to life a raft of productions set in Europe. The dual writers and actors strikes, which spread over the second half of this year, took a heavy toll on the global film and TV industry and led to many series and films being delayed, postponed or recast. While European players, including financiers, producers, crew members, commissions and actors are rejoicing about the end of the historically long strike, many are also concerned about the probable bottleneck effect the backlog in production will have come next year, with many smaller indie projects fearing they will be squeezed out of the picture.

In Paris, where all shoots will be barred between June and September due to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, many delayed productions will kick off in January.

Italy’s Roberto Stabile, head of special projects, Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual-Ministry of Culture at Cinecittà, breezed through the San Sebastian Film Festival on Tuesday to tout Italy’s drive to amp up the distribution of Italian movies around the world.

In a brief presentation at the city’s Museo de San Telmo, he held forth about the plan to increase the presence of Italian audiovisual content not only in cinemas, but also on streaming platforms, online distribution and television, among others.

Backing Italy’s drive is its newish €1.2 million ($1.27 million) fund, established some years ago by the Italian Ministry of Culture with Cinecittà and the Italian Trade Agency, to boost theatrical distribution of Italian feature films around the world, and which will double to more than €2 million in order to also cover streaming and television.

The goal of the Italian film distribution fund is to push local...

Nicola Maccanico, a former Warner Bros. and Sky Italia senior exec, has been spearheading the radical overhaul of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios since June 2021, when the government-owned facilities secured a multi-million dollar loan provided by the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund to upgrade and expand the iconic facilities.

Under Maccanico’s watch, the studios – which now boast 20 state-of-the-art soundstages and one of Europe’s largest LED walls – have become a magnet for Hollywood productions, such as Netflix’s period soap “The Decameron” and Roland Emmerich’s gladiator series “Those About to Die,” which is still currently shooting.

But, of course, the SAG-AFTRA strike is starting to slow things down and could “become a big problem,” as Maccanico tells Variety below.

You were just at Venice where several films shot at Cinecittà launched, one being Saverio Costanzo’s “Finally Dawn.” How are the studios doing? Are you feeling the pain of the SAG-AFTRA strike?...

For its first-ever upfronts presentation, Netflix took a page out of broadcast networks’ traditional playbook and boasted about not just what series it has launching in the coming months, or even through the end of the year, but specifically calling out its fall 2023 slate.

A staple of upfronts week — though not as much lately, first because of the Covid-19 pandemic and now because of the writers strike — has been the unveiling of ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox’s fall lineups. This was done so advertisers knew what they were buying ads against and therefore what demos and audience size it would be most likely to reach by promoting products during those programs.

For Netflix, which doesn’t follow the September-to-May season that broadcast still lives by but now has an ad-supported tier it needs to supply with commercials, to take this approach is potentially a move for the streamer to...

As high-profile international productions continue to flock to Italy, its film commissions have joined forces, leaving producers’ old divide-and-conquer playbook in the dust.

“We believe that the success of one member is the success of all members,” says Cristina Priarone, president of the Italian Film Commissions Assn. The organization was created — alongside the Italy for Movies web site, with a searchable database — to help potential collaborators easily access information about available regional funds, and other advantages offered by different regions.

“This network has increased Italy’s talent to attract productions, welcome them at the highest level and easily move their sets from one region to another,” adds Toscana Film Commission’s Stefania Ippoliti.

In a country with a famously strong regional identity, such cooperation encourages foreign teams — already lured by Italy’s 40% tax rebates — to venture outside of their comfort zones when looking for locations.

As proven by the likes...

Rome’s Cinecittà Studios are generating a profit for the first time in years amid a radical upgrade, overhaul, and expansion of the filming facilities where Hollywood productions are now flocking on a scale comparable with its glory days.

Roland Emmerich last month started shooting his gladiator series “Those About to Die” starring Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian; Joe Wright is in the midst of production on TV series “M,” about Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. And in January cameras started rolling in the “City of Cinema” on Netflix’s period soap “The Decameron.” These are among the biggest international productions lured by the storied studios in recent years, also thanks to Italy’s 40% cash back tax rebate.

The Cinecittà revamp is being devised by CEO Nicola Maccanico who since 2021 has been implementing a plan fueled by a €300 million loan provided by the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund...

Italy’s Cinecittà studios have returned to profit one year ahead of the schedule set in its 2022 to 2026 industrial plan, aimed at returning the facility to its former glory as a major international filming hub.

It is the first time the complex’s results have been in the black since it was taken back under state control in 2017, after being run into the ground under private ownership for more than two decades.

Parent body Cinecittà S.p.A announced a $1.9 million (1.8 million euros) net profit for 2022, and a doubling of turnover to $42.3 million (39 million euros) against 2021, mainly on the back of a raft of bookings for the facilities.

The company said the complex had been booked to above 75% capacity in 2022, against 31% in 2021, a trend that has continued into 2023.

Detailing the $42 million turnover, Cinecittà S.p.A said $37.4 million (34.5 million euros) was related to the soundstages, venues, and set designs, with...

By Liu Xiaoyi, Artistic Director of Singapore’s Emergency Stairs”

the article was initially published on zuniseason.org.hk, on 29/08/2022

Ever since the start of the pandemic, the discussion on “post-pandemic” has been ongoing. The yearning for post-pandemic is actually a yearning for a sense of return to “normalcy”. Human beings subconsciously believe that “normal” is better than “abnormal”. However, do the concepts of “post-pandemic” and “new normal” really exist?

In this global public health crisis, the “abnormal” strategy of performing arts and cultural exchange is to virtualize live performances and move cultural exchange and international collaboration online. In the past three years, although live performing art has not yet reached a state of collapse, its nature of real-liveness and sense of collectivity have been subversively impacted. Cultural exchange has been suspended, so a more flexible way is to turn cultural exchange into video conversations. For example, Danny Yung and...

Barry‘s upcoming fourth season just got more interesting: Veteran TV actor Patrick Fischler (Mad Men, Once Upon a Time) has joined the cast of HBO’s hitman comedy in a recurring role, our sister site Deadline reports.

Fischler will play the character of Lon Oneil, described only as “a man with a plan.” The actor is a familiar face to TV fans, having played comedian Jimmy Barrett on Mad Men and author Isaac Heller on Once Upon a Time, among dozens of other roles. His recent credits include Happy!, Impeachment: American Crime Story and The Right Stuff.

More from TVLineJeopardy!

The massive success of Netflix’s Bridgerton has reinforced just how hungry audiences are for soapy period dramas. Deadline has reported that the streaming service has given an eight-episode series order to The Decameron, a drama loosely inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of short stories of the same name.

The Decameron series comes from Kathleen Jordan (Teenage Bounty Hunters) and Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black). The series will be set in 1348, a period in which the Black Death has struck the city of Florence. “A handful of nobles are invited to retreat with their servants to a grand villa in the Italian countryside and wait out the pestilence with a lavish holiday,” reads Deadline’s description. “But as social rules wear thin, what starts as a wine-soaked sex romp in the hills of Tuscany descends into an all out scramble for survival.” The Decameron will examine the “timely themes of class systems,...

Netflix aims to once again find success with a period piece drama that they saw with the likes of Bridgerton as the streaming service has ordered a brand-new series from Kathleen Jordan, the creator of Teenage Bounty Hunters and produced by Orange Is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan. This brand-new series is known as The Decameron and is a period drama set in the 14th century.

Netflix is stepping into the 14th century with a soapy twist.

The streaming service on Thursday announced a series order for The Decameron under Jenji Kohan’s overall deal.

The soapy period drama "aims to examine the timely themes of class systems, power struggles and survival in a time of pandemic with a touch of levity, brought together by a charming and riotous ensemble of characters," the service teases.

"In 1348, the Black Death strikes hard in the city of Florence," reads the official logline.

"A handful of nobles are invited to retreat with their servants to a grand villa in the Italian countryside and wait out the pestilence with a lavish holiday."

"But as social rules wear thin, what starts as a wine-soaked sex romp in the hills of Tuscany descends into an all out scramble for survival."

Eight episodes have been ordered for the project, with Kathleen Jordan (Teenage Bounty Hunters) serving as Creator,...

If you can’t get enough of soapy dramas after binging two seasons of Bridgerton already, you won’t have to switch apps soon. Netflix has ordered another period soap drama to series. The streaming service has announced it has ordered The Decameron, from creator and showrunner Kathleen Jordan and executive producer Jenji Kohan, under Kohan’s overall deal. It will examine the timely themes of class systems, power struggles, and survival in a time of pandemic with a touch of levity, with a charming and riotous ensemble of characters. The Decameron is set in 1348, as the Black Death strikes hard in the city of Florence. A handful of nobles, with their servants, are invited to wait out the pestilence with a lavish getaway to a grand villa in the Italian countryside. However, as social rules wear thin, what starts as a wine-soaked sex romp in the hills of Tuscany...

Exclusive: Following the success of Shonda Rhimes-produced steamy Regency romance Bridgerton, Netflix is betting on another soapy period drama produced by a top showrunner from its roster of overall deals, Orange Is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan. The streamer has given an eight-episode series order to The Decameron, from Kathleen Jordan, creator of Netflix’s Teenage Bounty Hunters, and Kohan who executive produced the teen drama alongside her.

Created by Jordan, who serves as showrunner, The Decameron is set in 1348 when the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in human history which killed as many as 200 million people, strikes hard in the city of Florence. A handful of nobles are invited to retreat with their servants to a grand villa in the Italian countryside and wait out the pestilence with a lavish holiday. But as social rules wear thin, what starts as a wine-soaked sex romp in the hills...

As Italy marks the centennial of Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s birth with a series of special events, the Academy Museum is honoring the influential film director, poet, writer and intellectual, whose 1975 murder remains a mystery, with a complete retrospective.

Titled “Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini,” the Los Angeles tribute in the Academy’s Renzo Piano designed temple of cinema opened Feb. 17 with Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti on hand.

Ferretti, in a moving tribute, said he owed his career to Pasolini, having worked on nine of his films, starting with Pasolini’s first work “The Gospel According to Matthew” and ending with his incendiary condemnation of the Italian upper classes “Salò – or the 120 Days of Sodom,” released in Italy just a few weeks after Pasolini’s murder on Nov. 2, 1975, at age 53, in the seaside town of Ostia outside Rome.

The Academy’s complete retro of Pasolini’s...

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Above: Poster by Frank Stella for the 9th New York Film Festival.Compared to the 32 films in the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival, not to mention the seemingly hundreds of others playing in sidebars, the 1971 edition of the NYFF, half a century ago, was a lean affair. With only 18 films, down from 78 just four years earlier, the ninth edition of the NYFF was, according to its director Richard Roud, a “belt-tightening festival, a year of consolidation.” In fact, the financially strapped festival almost didn’t take place that year. A New York Times article published midway through the event mentions that “outside the 984-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, there is only one poster announcing the festival [one assumes it was the beautiful Frank Stella poster above] that is quietly and modestly taking place inside.” A far cry from the glorious phalanx of digital billboards currently beaming outside Alice Tully Hall and the Elinor Bunin Center.The...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching, why it’s worth checking out, and where you can stream it.) The Movie: The Little Hours Where You Can Stream It: Hulu, Paramount+ The Pitch: Based on one of the tales found in 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio‘s The Decameron, The Little […]

The post The Daily Stream: ‘The Little Hours’ is a Sweet Slice of Blasphemy appeared first on /Film.

128 titles will screen the festival’s new Harbour section as well as Bright Future, Cinema Regained and the short and mid-length film sidebars.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled the line-up for its special one-off summer event that is due to take place from June 2-6 as part of the festival’s 50th edition celebrations.

The five-day programme follows the first part in early February which took place online after a physical edition was ruled out due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It presented 60 films across IFFR’s Tiger Competition, Big Screen Competition, Ammodo Tiger Shorts and Limelight sections.

This second part will showcase 139 feature,...

The festival’s celebrations for the 50th anniversary are split in two parts – 1 to 7 February and 2 to 6 June – connected by a series of events in between. IFFR 2021 wants to be a hybrid festival that adapts to the current crisis and continues to offer an exciting programme for local and (inter)national audiences, as well as industry professionals.

2 – 6 June

Taking place on a special spring date that honours the festival’s very first edition in 1972, the second part of the festival hopes to be a festive celebration that invites larger audiences. The IFFR’s Anniversary Programme will taps into the rich history of IFFR by inviting luminaries of the last five decades to enter a dialogue with fresh names and faces. IFFR will also present Harbour in June, the newest and largest programme representing the multidimensional nature of Rotterdam, and the Bright Future programme dedicated to emerging film talent.

There is...

Paolo Taviani, of revered filmmaking duo the Taviani brothers, is back behind the camera — this time without his brother Vittorio, who died in 2018.

Taviani is shooting “Leonora Addio,” a surreal drama that takes its cue from a short story by great Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello. It’s a long-gestating project that Paolo says he and Vittorio had long intended to film together.

Italy’s Fandango Sales has taken international distribution for the film and will be kicking off world sales outside Italy during the Toronto International Film Festival’s online film market this month.

Co-produced by Donatella Palermo’s Stemal Entertainment and Rai Cinema with France’s Les Films d’Ici, “Leonora” started principal photography at the end of July at Cinecittà Studios and will also be shooting in Sicily. Production is expected to wrap in October and Taviani said he expects to complete the film by year’s end.

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By Giacomo Selloni

There are so many clichés in the film world. So many of today's films are formulaic. Heck, before there even was a film world there was theater. That Shakespeare guy, even he reworked older stories. For example, Romeo and Juliet. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Othello comes from the Hecatommithi, a collection of tales published in 1565 by Giraldi Cinthio. Cinthio in turn had been influenced by the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. Shakespeare's source for Macbeth is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles from 1587, a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland. And so on and so on.

Angelfish, writer and director Peter Lee's first...

What will theater look like after the pandemic? How will stage artists address the societal upheavals wreaked by Covid-19? Everyone’s asking, no one knows, but Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Nelson and New York’s Public Theater offered up a much-needed and beautifully executed bit of hope last night with the era-suiting livestreamed world premiere of What Do We Need To Talk About?

The fifth and latest installment of writer-director Nelson’s series of dramas known collectively as the Apple Family Plays, What Do We Need… debuted Wednesday on YouTube and the Public’s website, picking up seven years after the last play, Regular Singing. While the first four installments were performed, with minimalist sets, as family dinner conversations on stage at the Public, What Do We Need… was presented entirely as a Zoom chat, with the homebound cast, performing live and in character, enacting the type of socially distanced...

Do you know that romantic-comedy cliché in which the mousy young woman whips off her glasses — and suddenly the brainiac “ugly duckling” blossoms into a beautiful swan that turns heads and gets the guy? That’s not what happens to the title character of Horse Girl, though for the first 15 minutes or so of Jeff Baena’s movie, you assume some variation of this is lurking just around the corner. Our heroine, Sarah (Alison Brie), is single, sweet but slightly socially awkward, and works at an arts & crafts store. In her off hours,...

For auteurists in New York there can hardly be a better series playing right now than "Trilogies" at Film Forum: a four-week extravaganza of 78 films comprising 26 mini director retrospectives from Angelopoulos to Wenders and 24 other auteurs in between. Many of the groupings in the series are actual sequential trilogies, like Kobayashi’s The Human Condition or Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, while others more loosely stretch the term, such as Lucrecia Martel’s "Salta Trilogy" or Hou Hsiao-hsien’s "Coming of Age Trilogy," very welcome though those are.Very few of the trilogies in the series, however, have posters that were conceived as trios themselves, the French posters for Kieslowski’s Three Colors, above, and Albert Dubout’s cartoony designs for Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles Trilogy being the major exceptions. There are two terrific matching posters by Jan Lenica for the first two films in Mark Donskoy's Maxim Gorky Trilogy,...

As I have mentioned in various articles over the years, I have watched (and enjoyed) a number of extreme (I really want to say f*cked up) movies, from worm eating splatters to koala executives and everything between (if you can imagine what could be between those two). I have to say, though, “Ghya Chang Fou” is one of the weirdest, most extreme and most unique films I have ever seen.

The movie begins with a procession of people walking through some dark alleys holding balloons , in a style much like a circus troupe. Soon the group arrives to a majestic old building, where a table is set for them to sit. What follows is: they sit, eat and drink, reveal they are celebrating the Communist revolution, they talk and argue about the history of Communism, they get drunk, time and reality lose their meaning, violence, quite graphic depiction of sex,...

Odc Theater is proud to present former Resident Artist Catherine Galasso in Alone Together, the third installment of her multi-chapter performance series, Of Iron and Diamonds, inspired by Boccaccio's 14th-century collection of tales, The Decameron. A collaboration with San Francisco-based composer Dave Cerf, Alone Together runs December 6 - 8, Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are 30, and may be purchased online at odc.dancetickets or by phone at 415-863-9834.