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Netflixhas landed the rights to a popular romance novel series, planning to turn the wild premise into a television series. The genre is a reliable hit for the streamer, with Bridgerton often getting the biggest headlines because it generates the highest numbers. However, relatively quieter series such as Virgin River and Sweet Magnolias are consistent performers with a loyal audience.

Virgin River is confirmed to return for season 7 and Sweet Magnolias season 4 will be back in February. Both shows are lighter and more grounded, avoiding getting too dark and generally remaining on the optimistic side of the ledger. That won't be the case with the latest romantic saga that Netflix is hoping to adapt.

Netflix Plans To Adapt Twisted Love The Novels Are Written By Ana Huang

Ana Huang's Twisted Love novels are being adapted into a television series. The high-stakes premise centers on Alex Volkov. Described as having the face of an angel,...

Netflix has picked up the rights to adapt Ana Huang’s romance novel “Twisted Love” and its sequels into a TV series in a seven-figure option deal.

Per the logline for the project, “A steamy new adult series that follows the lives of four best friends and their brooding love interests, riddled with dark secrets from their pasts, as they overcome the obstacles keeping them apart to fall in love.”

If ordered to series, the “Twisted” adaptation would mark the latest in a line of romance book-to-screen titles at Netflix, which has made great success with its “Bridgerton” and “Virgin River” franchises.

The “Twisted” novel series — which began with “Twisted Love,” released in 2021, followed by “Twisted Games,” “Twisted Hate” and “Twisted Lies” — has sold more than 12 million copies to date. The debut book spent 60 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold translation rights in 34 countries.

The “Twisted...

After yesterday’s rumors and confusion, we now know that Hong Kong director and cinematographer Corey Yuen has died. Interestingly, according to the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, Yuen passed away in 2022, but the media kept his death a secret at the request of his family. While the Federation did not reveal a date of death, we know the Righting Wrongs, The Transporter, and Doa: Dead or Alive director died of complications from Covid-19. On Monday, news about Mr. Yuen’s death was revealed on Chinese-language social media by action legend Jackie Chan, who trained alongside Yuen under Sammo Hung Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, and Yuen Biao at the Peking Opera School.

Corey Yuen started as an actor, contributing to 114 projects and playing roles in films like The Jade Raksha, Long ya Jian, Ai Nu, Brutal Boxer, and more. He worked alongside cinema’s greatest martial artists, including Chan, Michelle Yeoh,...

As we wind down this year’s Oscar season, we at Gold Derby are already looking forward to next year’s. Clearly, we can’t get enough. But next year’s Academy Awards season could also concern this year’s as the Oscars afterglow effect could be in full force. Actors can often garner a quick follow-up nomination after breaking through in the nominations list the year prior. Eddie Redmayne accomplished this when he followed up his 2015 Best Actor win for “The Theory of Everything” with a 2016 Best Actor bid for “The Danish Girl.” Similarly, Octavia Spencer was nominated for Best Supporting Actress two years in a row — in 2017 for “Hidden Figures” and in 2018 for “The Shape of Water.” So, which of these year’s acting nominees could return next year? Let’s take a look.

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper has an exciting project that should be out in time for next year’s Oscars.

Television drama matured in the early 1960s with gritty often controversial series shot on location including “The Naked City” and most notably “The Defenders,” which aired on CBS from 1961-65, winning 13 Emmys during its run including three consecutive Best Drama Series awards.

The legal drama starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed as father-and-son attorneys picked up its first four prizes at the 14th Primetime Emmy Awards on May 22, 1962. It also won for Marshall; helmer Franklin J. Schaffner (who went to pick up an Oscar for directing 1970 Best Picture Oscar champ “Patton); and Reginald Rose for writing.

Rose of “12 Angry Men” fame based the series on his two-part 1957 “Studio One” drama “The Defender” with Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner as the father-son attorneys and Steve McQueen as the defendant. For Rose, “The law is the subject of our programs, not crime, not mystery, not the courtroom for its own sake.

Eric Clapton teamed up with anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to bemoan Covid-19 mandates and Rolling Stone’s scathing articles about him in his first interview in a while — outside of statements posted to Telegram.

Posted last week on Kennedy’s The Defender site, the interview features Clapton talking about how the last few years have been a “buzzsaw” for him, both from a commercial standpoint as well as personally.

“Over the last year, there’s been a lot of disappearing, a lot of dust around with people moving away quite quickly,...

Searchlight Pictures has snapped up E. Nicholas Mariani’s 2018 Black List script The Defender, which George Tillman Jr. will direct with three-time Emmy-winning actor Sterling K. Brown to star as heroic lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones.

Jones was a courageous attorney who risked his life and career to defend 87 men wrongfully accused of murder in the wake of the Elaine, Ar massacre of 1919, when a group of Black sharecroppers meeting in a church about unionization were attacked by a posse organized by white landowners.

Brown will produce with 21 Laps’ Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen. Mariani and Danielle Reardon will executive produce with Dantram Nguyen, Katie Goodson-Thomas and Richard Ruiz overseeing for Searchlight. Ben Wilkinson, VP Business Affairs and Legal Counsel, negotiated the deal for Searchlight along with WME and CAA on behalf of filmmakers.

Tillman Jr. produced and directed the movie The Hate U Give for Fox 2000 Pictures, based on Angela Thomas’ novel.

Searchlight Pictures has acquired script rights to “The Defender,” starring Sterling K. Brown as the pioneering lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones, who risked his life and career to defend the Elaine Twelve — a group of 12 Black sharecroppers sentenced to death for allegedly being involved in the murder of a white man during the Elaine Massacre of 1919 in Arkansas.

George Tillman Jr. (“The Hate U Give”) is attached to direct, with 21 Laps’ Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen on board to produce. The three-time Emmy-winning actor will also produce the project under his Indian Meadows banner, founded in 2018 with the mission to “champion diversity through the development and production of entertaining, educational and inclusive projects.”

Penned by E. Nicholas Mariani, “The Defender” tells the true, yet little-known, story of the courageous attorney’s fight to defend eighty-seven men wrongfully accused in relation to the Elaine Massacre. Mariani’s script was a 2018 Black List selection,...

Searchlight Pictures has acquired the script rights to The Defender, with George Tillman Jr. attached to direct and Sterling K. Brown to star in the lead role of Black American defense lawyer and activist Scipio Africanus Jones.

The real-life drama will portray Africanus Jones, the courageous attorney who after the Elaine, Arkansas race riot and massacre of 1919 risked his life and career to defend 87 men wrongfully accused of murder. The project, picked up after a competition, was written by E. Nicholas Mariani and was part of the 2018 Black List selection.

Brown stars in NBC’s This Is Us drama and recently ...

Searchlight Pictures has acquired the script rights to The Defender, with George Tillman Jr. attached to direct and Sterling K. Brown to star in the lead role of Black American defense lawyer and activist Scipio Africanus Jones.

The real-life drama will portray Africanus Jones, the courageous attorney who after the Elaine, Arkansas race riot and massacre of 1919 risked his life and career to defend 87 men wrongfully accused of murder. The project, picked up after a competition, was written by E. Nicholas Mariani and was part of the 2018 Black List selection.

Brown stars in NBC’s This Is Us drama and recently ...

According to IMDb.com, “Icarus” is the sixth film that Dolph Lundgren has directed and also starred in since he left the golden hills of Hollywood for indie moviemaking. I’ve dabbled in some of his past directorial efforts, like “The Defender” and “Command Performance”, but have never actually, well, finished them, making “Icarus” his first movie as director that I’ve actually sat all the way through. “Icarus” certainly remains faithful to Lundgren’s Hollywood action movie roots, albeit on a much smaller scale. There’s no getting around it: Lundgren is far removed from his “Rocky 4” and “Masters of the Universe” days. Then again, considering the craptacular nature of those movies, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Extended gunfire, explosions, and an impressive bodycount are the order of the day in “Icarus”, though with full command of his movies, Lundgren is now able to inject some...

Dolph Lundgren will star in and direct Millennium/Nu Image's Command Performance, an action thriller he co-wrote with Stave Latshaw.

Lundgren has spent the past few months in postproduction on his previous directing and acting vehicle, Sony's Missionary Man, prepping it for a debut at next week's AFI Dallas festival. He is coming off a starring turn in another Millennium/Nu Image actioner, Direct Contact.

Lundgren, a one-time karate champ who was discovered modeling in New York, burst onto the international stage in 1985 sparring opposite Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV. While his Hollywood star dimmed during the '90s, he has continued to work steadily, making movies that are seldom seen in the U.S. but still pack 'em in around the world.

Not that all the films have been that great, as even Lundgren will attest.

"While the quality has been up and down, I think things are going a little better now that I am directing," said Lundgren, who began helming with 2004's The Defender after the hired megaphoner fell ill.