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AFM 2018: Veronica Ngo Actioner, FURIE, Sells To Well Go USA

Western audiences have gotten an ample taste over the years of what multi-faceted actress Veronica Ngo can do, most prolifically on camera. She kicked ass on her way into the fandom next to Johnny Tri Nguyen in films such as The Rebel and Clash before paving her way into Hollywood for a time in David Ayer’s Bright and Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and now she’s doing it again in Le Van Kiet’s latest, Furie, which began its campaign back in Cannes long before finally premiering an official trailer for its Vietnamese release in February. Alas, on the eve of the American Film Market with pre-sales underway, Well Go USA has officially acquired the rights to the upcoming action thriller with a release now being planned for early next year. The film joins Well Go USA’s continuous raft of content partly derived from Asian-driven movies, a few of […]

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NOWHERE MAN

NOWHERE MAN: Production Underway For Netflix’s Premiere Original Mandarin-Language Action Drama Series

Netflix is currently in production with Nowhere Man, hailing its first Mandarin-language Original TV series for its international audience. The streaming service teased a peak at the cast in costume for its prison-scenes in a first look photo last week featuring actors Joseph Chang, Bo-Chieh Wang, and Zhou Ming-Fu. Nowhere Man follows the death row inmate Quan who learned of his son being kidnapped while waiting for the execution in jail. To save his son and protect his family, Quan schemes a jailbreak, only to find himself in an even more dangerous collision. From time to time, Quan falls into the state of half-sleep and he will lead the viewer onto the freeway of redemption. It is a story woven with moving brotherhood, intricate gangster backdrop and breathtaking jail escape. Filming began on October 3 in Taiwan with DJ Chen writing and directing the series which also casts actress Alyssa […]

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STREAM THIS: Wilson Yip’s DRAGON TIGER GATE Is Now On Netflix. You’re Welcome!

The early two-thousandsies saw an essential shot-in-the-arm rebirth of Hong Kong action cinema with the pairing of actor Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip for S.P.L.. In its wake, it left fans fawning over one two of the genre’s greatest action matches in film history also featuring Wu Jing and a brutal finale with Sammo Hung, thus etching a major success for the actor/director duo as the first in a string of staple thrillers and adventures that would further make Yen into a cult-driven household name since falling short years earlier with crossover efforts, Highlander: Endgame and Blade 2. Going forward and taking a page from the manhua end of things, Yip and Yen reunited for Mandarin Films’ Dragon Tiger Gate, the story of three warriors – two of whom are brothers seperated by their lifestyles and ideals and forced to come to terms in order avenge their master’s death at […]

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LKFF 2018

The 13th London Korean Film Festival Announces Its Full Line-Up

If you’re in London and feeling the film festival mood, you’ll have about a month to yourself starting Thursday for the 2018 installment of the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF), now online with its full programme for the 13th edition. The festival will run through November 25, hosted this year by the Korean Cultural Centre UK along with the support of the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism, the Korean Film Council and Korean Film Archive. The UK Premiere of Jeon Go-woon’s award-winning film, Microhabitat (2018, UK Premiere) will serve as the opening gala centered on a young woman journeying across the city and back into the lives of her former bandmates after being forced from her apartment. Danish-Korean director Malene Choi’s emotively-charged adoption drama, The Return (2018) starring Karoline Sofie Lee as a young woman returning to Korea in an effort to track down her birth parents, will […]

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SNOW PONIES

AFM 2018: SNOW PONIES Revives At Endevaor, Announces Cast

It was last February that Gerard Butler was set for upcoming actioner, Snow Ponies. Having taken a back seat since then, trade news out of the American Film Market is emerging with reports that noted debut directing gig from second unit director Darrin Prescott (John Wick: Chapter, Deadpool 2, Black Panther) is making its case through next week for buyers thanks to Endeavor Content. The refurbished package is being described as a darkly comedic action comedy centered on seven hardened men trekking across a vicious landscape to deliver a mysterious package only to have their mettle tested to the extreme. With murderous bandits stalking them and brutal obstacles at every turn, they are forced to choose between survival and honor, loyalty and deceit, all the while wondering what secrets their precious cargo may contain. Snow Ponies is based on a 2006 Blacklist script by Pat Healy with a cast that […]

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Warner Bros. Officially Lands Deal To Adapt ATTACK ON TITAN, Andy Muschietti To Direct

Those with access to an anime platform can still stream the heck out of the hit anime series, Attack On Titan. I still have yet to catch the new season and I’ll likely work on that during the holidays, while it’s still worth noting that roughly a year since news of a live-action film development at Warner Bros. gave some of us whiplash, it appears all has been inked and rendered official. For this, Variety has it on good terms that Andy Muschietti, who topped the box office last year with It and is currently helming the horror sequel, will direct a new take on the property. The new move by Warner Bros. in finalizing its deal with Kodansha will mark the latest effort to bring the anime to a live-action template for the big screen following VFX wizard Higuchi Shinji’s 2015 two-parter from Toho. Mangaka Isayama Hajime bred the […]

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AFM 2018: Dev Patel To Debut Direct His Next Starring Actioner, MONKEY MAN

Well this sounds exciting. Actor Dev Patel may have fallen short of his action star posterity with a certain live-action adaptation of a Nickleodeon IP, but that hasn’t hindered his favor since breaking through nearly a decade ago with Slumdog Millionaire. Nor does that change the fact that he’s a first-dan black belt in TaeKwonDo and if he’s been keeping up the craft, that ought to make him an action star contender in his own right. Indeed, the star of Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie and Garth Davis’ 2016 drama, Lion, is pivoting toward directing with his own debut, Monkey Man. Trade news has all but confirmed that Patel will both direct and star in the project for which Endeavor Content will be on hand at the American Film Market through next week to rep worldwide sales on and present to buyers. As Brian Welk of The Wrap notes, Patel developed the […]

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UNSTOPPABLE: Don Lee Punches And Pile Drives Old Friends To Save His Wife In The Official Teaser

Wanna see a movie starring Don Lee as a badass former gangster-turned-normie forced back into the old life to rescue his captive wife? Take a gander at Well Go USA‘s latest steal with Unstoppable, serving up punches to the face fitting for the actor as he continues to flex his action star muscle in films like Train To Busan, Champion and Along With The Gods: The Last 49 Days. The title alone is indicative of what’s to come because that’s pretty much what Lee at this juncture. Well Go USA published the teaser at their official website for the film’s November 30 theatrical release with Kim Min-Ho directing in his feature debut, and a cast also including Song Ji-Hyo, Kim Sung-Oh, Kim Min-Jae, Park Ji-Hwan, Bae Noo-Ri and Lee Sung-Woo also starring.

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EVE

Jessica Chastain’s EVE Adds Joan Chen And Geena Davis

With Simon Kinberg’s 355 still waiting in the wings, actress and producer Jessica Chastain has already advanced as of late last month with the production of Eve. The character driven action drama which sees Chastain as an assassin on the run from her former employers, is now adding actresses Joan Chen (Tigertail, Netflix series Marco Polo, Lust Caution) and Academy Award-winner Geena Davis (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Thelma and Louise). Eve hails from Voltage Pictures and Chastain’s Freckle Films production banner with Tate Taylor (The Help, The Girl on the Train) in the director’s chair. Currently rounding out the cast are Golden Globe-winner Colin Farrell (The Lobster, Seven Psychopaths, Minority Report), Academy Award-winner Common (The Hate U Give, Selma) and Academy Award-nominee John Malkovich (Deepwater Horizon, In the Line of Fire, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile). Voltage is fully financing Eve as and will handle international sales. Nicolas Chartier […]

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THE PAPER TIGERS

UNFOLDING ‘THE PAPER TIGERS’: Catching Up With Filmmaker Bao Tran

For what it’s worth, director Bao Tran’s 2015 short, The Challenger, was just the shot in the arm needed to help grow his brewing vision for a larger feature narrative. That evolution will next arise as The Paper Tigers which now has a new campaign pending as of Monday to accrue the necessary support needed before rolling cameras some time in the first or second quarter of next year. Tran is joined by producers Michael Velasquez, Al’n Duong, Dan Gildark, and cult cinema favorite, Yuji Okumoto, along with a cadre of ripe, experienced talents as of late for a recently-filmed ten-minute pitch that Tran and Duong brought to the Frontières forum earlier this year to present the film to buyers. Essentially having shot two proofs this time around, I sought an opportunity to try and share an update from the director about his endeavors. The official website is still up […]

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Military Drama SGT. WILL GARDNER Hails A January Release From Cinedigm

Cinedigm has acquired U.S. rights to Sgt. Will Gardner. Actor Max Martini (Redbelt, 13 Hours, Captain Phillips) takes on multiple facets this time starring, as well as directing from his own script. He produces as well with Michael Hagerty, under their Mona Vista Productions banner. Sgt. Will Gardner sees Martini in the title role, an Iraq War veteran who suffers from PTSD and the lingering effects of a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which he sustained years earlier when he and his platoon, led by his fellow soldier and best friend, Tops, came under attack. Enduring painful flashbacks to his harrowing combat days and humiliating setbacks in the present, Will sets out on a spirited motorcycle journey across America in hopes of reconciling with his young son and former wife. Along the way, he encounters other veterans and a young woman who will push him to confront some of his most […]

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THE WANDERING EARTH: Mankind Tries To Move A Planet In The Official Trailer

Aiming for bigger and better is still the pattern for China these days and director Frant Gwo is making his case with an adaptation of Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin’s short story, The Wandering Earth. A new teaser trailer is online delving aplenty into the post-apocalyptic veneer of Gwo’s sci-fi foray that also saw Weta Digital lending morsels of its own muscle to aid its production. Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior 1 & 2), Li Guangjie (Drug War) and Qu Jingjing (Birth Of The Dragon) stakes their claim in the cast with the heavy-handed sci-fi underway as a bold new program is implemented to find a new solar system for Earth after succumbing to deadly climate change, forcing mankind underground. An official release date hasn’t been set yet, though it’s safe to say this one probably won’t see the light of day until 2019, so sit tight and keep warm until […]

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FAST: Taylor Sheridan Taps Chris Pratt To Star

There are no setbacks for actor Chris Pratt who is now in discussions to star in Taylor Sheridan’s next venture according to Variety on Wednesday evening. Under the working title, Fast, the project centers on a special forces commando tapped by the DEA to lead a black-ops unit targeting drug dealers protected by the CIA. The move would be especially pivotal for Pratt following the fallout over the recently-shelved Guardians Of The Galaxy: Vol. 3 in what would have been the actor’s fourth Star-Lord reprisal in Disney’s MCU. Sheridan work continues to be celebrated stemming from screenwriting duties on 2016 crime opus, Sicario, and his riveting must-see 2017 directorial feature, Wind River. Sheridan is set to direct the tentatively titled Fast from his own script with David Heyman producing.

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MASTER Z: IP MAN LEGACY Offsets Max Zhang’s One-Man Martial War In The Official Trailer

Yuen Woo-Ping’s new entry into martial arts cinema fan service with Master Z: Ip Man Legacy now has its first local release date slated for December 21. It also has a new official trailer to accomodate fans eager gague the next spun-off chapter of the Wing Chun saga that now sees Max Zhang reprising his role from Ip Man 3. The prospectively cast Michelle Yeoh also weighs in as the villain next to cohorts Dave Bautista and Zhang’s fellow SPL 2 co-hort, action star Tony Jaa among the cast line-up as our hero, having retired his fists, is forced to pick up the craft once more and face off with drug-pushing Triads. It’s also been a long minute since Well Go USA acquired this film among several titles starring Zhang so we’ll see if this stick going into the next few months. One certainly hopes!

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KILLING

KILLING: Watch The Official Trailer For Tsukamoto Shinya’s Period Samurai Drama

Tsukamoto Shinya’s latest, Killing, is standing pretty well thusfar as it makes the festival rounds from Toronto to Busan and eventually at Sitges in Italy where it won Best Music. Its next stop will be at the Singapore International Film Festival in December following its release next month on November 24. Killing pivots from Tsukamoto’s more gritty, horrific war perspective, Fires On The Plain, toward more contemplative sword drama centered in the 19th century as trade between U.S. and Japan brings centuries of peace in Japan to an end. At the crux of our story is a traveling ronin, a farmer’s daughter and her brother with whom he spars on occasion, all standing at the precipice of a major turning point in history as war becomes more imminent. Ikematsu Sosuke stars with actress Aoi Yu, Nakamura Tatsuya, and Tsukamoto himself who plays a dueling samurai who brings a spate of […]

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JOHNNY-DEPP

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Is Getting A Franchise Reboot At Disney

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had my fill of Captain Jack Sparrow. As such, I’m open to what new stories lie ahead as Disney opens its doors to screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick for a Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise reboot. That’s the word now over at Deadline as Jerry Bruckheimer is also reportedly coming aboard to produce another swashbuckling tale with other potential new characters to center on. Pirates Of The Caribbean launched in 2003 as the first of five films that have seen Johnny Depp as its centerpiece opposite Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun-Fat, Ian McShane, Javier Bardem and many more for its marquee legacy. Gore Verbinski directed the first three titles in the well-over $4.5 billion dollar-earning pirate adventure pentalogy preceding Rob Marshall, and directing pair Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. Reese and Wernick are the minds behind […]

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