The Busan International Film Festival has selected Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi as its 2025 Asian Filmmaker of the Year, honoring the director’s uncompromising contributions to Asian and world cinema.
Panahi will receive the award during the opening ceremony of BIFF’s 30th edition, which runs Sept. 17–26 in the South Korean port city. The accolade, one of the festival’s highest honors, is presented annually to an individual or organization that has made a significant impact on the development of Asian cinema. Past recipients include an elite roster of artists and autuers, such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung, Ann Hui, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and the late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others.
A central figure in Iran’s New Wave cinema, Panahi came to prominence with his debut The White Balloon (1995), winner of Cannes’ Camera d’Or. He has since built a career defined by formal rigor and fearless political critique, continuing to create films despite a state-imposed ban and multiple arrests. Earlier this year, Panahi completed the rare European festival trifecta, taking home the Palme d’Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident (2025). The Hollywood Reporter’s critic on the ground at the festival hailed the film as “a shrewdly crafted vengeance film” that “slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects.”Panahi previously won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Taxi (2015) and the Golden Lion at Venice for The Circle (2000), making him the first Asian director to claim the top prize at all three major European festivals.
Accepting the Palme d’Or at the Cannes ceremony, Panahi said: ““At a time when making films in my country becomes more difficult every day, this recognition reminds me that cinema can still connect us beyond borders, languages, and limitations. I not only accept this award in my own name, but also on behalf of all those who, in silence, in exile, or under pressure, continue to create.”
Neon acquired North American theatrical rights to It Was Just an Accident at Cannes and plans to release the film on Oct. 15.
The 30th Busan International Film Festival will be headquartered once again at the Busan Cinema Center, with screenings and special events taking place throughout the city. BIFF’s Asian Project Market (APM), a vital incubator for emerging filmmakers across the region, runs concurrently with the festival. The event will unveil its competition selection in late August.
Jimmy Hunt, the freckle-faced youngster who appeared in Pitfall, Sorry, Wrong Number, Cheaper by the Dozen, Invaders From Mars and 31 other features before he retired from acting at age 14, has died. He was 85.
Hunt suffered a heart attack six weeks ago and died Friday in a hospital in Simi Valley, his daughter-in-law Alisa Hunt told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hunt played William Gilbreth, one of the 12 offspring of an efficiency expert (Clifton Webb) and a psychologist (Myrna Loy), in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), then returned to play another son in the family, Fred, in the sequel, Belles on the Toes (1952).
As an orphan, his character fueled the plot in The Mating of Millie (1948), a charming romantic comedy starring Evelyn Keyes and Glenn Ford, who taught him how to shoot marbles on the set. And in The Lone Hand (1953), Hunt portrayed the son of a widowed farmer (Joel McCrea) and served as the film’s narrator in what he said was one of his favorite acting experiences.
Hunt’s onscreen parents included Jane Wyatt and Dick Powell (in 1948’s Pitfall), Claudette Colbert (1949’s Family Honeymoon), Ronald Reagan (1950’s Louisa), Teresa Wright (1950’s The Capture) and Patricia Neal (1951’s Week-End With Father).
He also played Margaret O’Brien’s brother in Her First Romance (1951).
His most memorable role, however, came as David MacLean in the cult sci-fi classic Invaders From Mars (1953), directed by famed production designer William Cameron Menzies.
In the movie — made in about 3 1/2 weeks for less than $300,000 — David spies a flying saucer from his bedroom and notices his dad (Leif Erickson) acting weird. Then he’s sucked underground, where he encounters a Martian and his green humanoid accomplices aboard the saucer. But was it all a dream? Gee whiz!
In Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders, Hunt came out of retirement to play a police chief. As he approaches a hill where the flying saucer may have landed, he says, “I haven’t been here for 40 years.”
It was the only movie of his career for which he received residuals. “Every once and a while, the Screen Actors Guild sends me a check for like nine dollars,” he said with a chuckle in 2022.
From left: Evelyn Keyes, Jimmy Hunt and Glenn Ford in 1948’s The Mating of Millie.
Courtesy Everett Collection
James Walter Hunt was born inLos Angeles on Dec. 4, 1939. An MGM scout visited his second-grade class at his Culver City school, which was located mere blocks from the studio, and that led to the 6-year-old redhead playing a kid version of Van Johnson’s Navy pilot in High Barbaree (1947).
Placed under contract, he would appear in five films released that year, then another eight in 1948 as he attended MGM’s Little Red Schoolhouse, where his classmates included Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor.
“We were strictly lower middle-class people,” Hunt said in 1986. “Actually, that’s the way we stayed. As long as [his parents] were satisfied that I was getting a good education, the acting was all right.”
In Cheaper by the Dozen, his character, William, weeps as he informs his siblings that their dad has died.
During the making of the movie in Seal Beach, California, his real father “was working for a company, and he went back to Kentucky to open a plant for them back there, and he was gone for a couple of months,” he recalled at the 2022 Cinecon Classic Film Festival. “In my mind, I saw him coming home on a plane and the plane crashing. So I could get myself worked up.”
His big-screen résumé also included Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster (Erickson played his dad in that, too); Fuller Brush Man (1948), starring Red Skelton; Rusty’s Birthday (1949), the last in the Columbia Pictures series about a boy and his German shepherd; The Sainted Sisters (1948), starring Veronica Lake; Top O’ the Morning (1949), starring Bing Crosby; Shadow on the Wall (1950), starring Ann Sothern; and She Couldn’t Say No (1954), starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons.
“I took my little lunch pail and I went to work each day, and the director told me what he wanted me to do,” he said in a 2017 interview.
While filming Douglas Sirk’s Week-End With Father, Hunt broke his arm rehearsing a potato-sack race with Van Heflin but kept working, he said. “No one made me finish the picture that way. I wanted to,” he recalled. “I considered myself a professional. In other words, I never had any really bad times as a boy actor.”
After Invaders was completed, Hunt — who said he was paid about $4,000 for his work on the movie — was called back to film some new scenes for its U.K. release, as censors there did not approve of the original ending.
Jimmy Hunt in a promotional photo for Invasion From Mars.
20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved/courtesy Everett Collection
It turned out that Invaders was the last straw.
“The older I got, the more serious I became about getting a scene right on the first take,” he said. “Adult actors all made jokes when they blew their lines. Kids just feel dumb when it was their fault. So acting became harder for me all the time.”
At the ripe old age of 14, Hunt “decided that I would rather play sports in high school than make movies, so I retired,” he explained. He went to college and served for three years in the U.S. Army, intercepting and breaking code.
Later, he served as a sales manager for an industrial tool and supply company in the San Fernando Valley that serviced aerospace firms.
He said he was still getting mail from Invaders fans some 70 years after it first hit theaters.
Survivors include his wife, Roswitha, whom he met in Germany while in the Army and married in January 1963; his sons, Randy and Ron; another daughter-in-law, Christina; his sister, Bonnie; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. His daughter, also named Roswitha, died more than a decade ago.
Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: start your engines — or at least your members-only streaming service!
The Oscars submission site, through which film companies upload streaming assets to the Academy Screening Room, opened on Monday, and if past is prologue, members will soon be able to check out some of the year’s top films from the comfort of their home.
Film companies will have to go through a few hoops — and write a check — to take advantage of this pipeline, though.
There are two submission deadlines for general entry/feature film, which are based on when a film is released. The Academy must receive both an Oscars Submission Form (OSF), signed by all credited producers, and a copy of the complete screen credits by Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 5 p.m. PT, for films released between Jan. 1 and June 30, and by Thursday, Nov. 13, by 5 p.m. PT, for films released between July 1 and Dec. 31.
Beginning this year, all credited individuals with a “producer” or “produced by” credit are required to sign the General Entry form to ensure that all parties are properly informed of the criteria and deadlines regarding the film’s eligibility and potential designated award recipients. (This follows an Oscar nominations announcement earlier this year in which the producing nominees for an unusually high number of nominees for best picture and best documentary feature had not yet been adjudicated.)
In addition, the following award categories have additional or separate entry requirements and deadlines: Animated feature film, animated short film, best picture, documentary feature film, documentary short film, international feature film, live action short film, music (original score, original song), visual effects.
Complete rules, additional qualification criteria and FAQs for all award categories are posted here.
DC Studios is taking one step closer to a Wonder Woman movie, with the studio in talks with Ana Nogueira to pen the script.
Nogueira is a favorite at the studio, where she has a blind deal and wrote next summer’s Supergirl movie and is working on a live-action TeenTitans movie for the Warner Bros.
Wonder Woman is a crown jewel of the DC Universe, and along with Superman and Batman, makes up part of the Trinity of its key heroes. Gal Gadot previously starred in a pair of Wonder Woman films, with 2017’s Wonder Woman breaking ground for female led superhero films and earning both acclaim $822 million globally. She also starred in Wonder Woman 1984 and appeared in Justice League, The Flash and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The role will be recast for the new DC Universe.
DC Studios co-head James Gunn recently addressed speculation that the film was being fast-tracked. “It’s a priority but I wouldn’t call that fast-tracked,” he wrote on Threads last week. “Nothing is going to be shot unless we’re as sure as we can be that the script is good.”
DC is coming off of the success of Superman, which introduced Milly Alcock’s Supergirl. The character will bow in her own film on June 26, 2026, with DC also bringing Clayface to the big screen on Sept. 11, 2026
DC Studios has also spent time developing a Wonder Woman-centric TV show, Paradise Lost, a prequel described as its answer to Game of Thrones. Its status is unclear.
Adria Arjona is set to star alongside Michael B. Jordan in The Thomas Crown Affair for Amazon MGM Studios.
Jordan directs and stars in the feature reimagining that is currently in production in London and follows Norman Jewison‘s 1968 original of the same name starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Kenneth Branagh, Lily Gladstone, Danai Gurira, Pilou Asbæk and Aiysha Hart round out the cast for the new project that hits theaters March 5, 2027.
Taylor Russell was previously set to star opposite Jordan in the film. The Hollywood Reporter reported last week that the Bones and All actress exited the movie amid creative differences.
Drew Pearce (The Fall Guy) wrote the script for the new movie after Wes Tooke and Justin Britt-Gibson penned a previous draft. Producers include Jordan and Elizabeth Raposo for Outlier Society and Charles Roven for Atlas Entertainment. Patrick McCormick and Toberoff Productions’ Marc Toberoff also produce. Alan Trustman, who wrote the original film, serves as an executive producer.
The original Thomas Crown Affair landed two Oscar nominations and tells the story of an insurance investigator working to track down the perpetrator of a bank heist. It was remade in 1999, with the updated version starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.
Arjona is known for such series work as Disney+’s Star Wars show Andor and for features including Blink Twice and Hit Man. She can next be seen opposite Dakota Johnson in Neon and Topic Studio’s comedy Splitsville.
The Thomas Crown Affair reunites Jordan with the studio that released his 2023 directorial debut, Creed III.
Jordan teased his take on The Thomas Crown Affair during a video segment at CinemaCon in April, telling the crowd that his movie “isn’t just another remake.”
Arjona is represented by CAA, Anonymous Content, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Stone Genow.
Tommy Dorfman‘s film adaptation of Mariko Tamaki’s graphic novel Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me has cast Ava Phillippe and Sam Morelos in the lead roles, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal.
Toronto-based film and television production company Wildling Pictures and L.A.-based MXN Entertainment told THR that director Dorfman, best known for her role in Netflix‘s 13 Reasons Why, has found her stars in Phillippe — daughter of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe — and Morelos (That ’90s Show).
Based on Tamaki’s best-selling graphic novel, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me follows Laura Dean, the most popular girl in school and Freddie Riley’s dream girl. “She has it all — charm, confidence, and charisma,” a plot synopsis reads. “But there’s one problem: Laura Dean keeps breaking up with her. The story follows Freddie’s journey to finding the courage to end her toxic relationship and regain her self-love, with the help of her best friends and a psychic.”
Dorfman said about the casting: “While searching for our Freddie, Sam came into the room with a grounded, eccentric, and timeless character encompassing all of Freddie’s wonder, heart, and artistry. It was clear from that moment that she was the right person to bring this story to life.”
“Similarly, Ava’s effortlessness as Laura Dean and the chemistry between them as actors was electric. I couldn’t be more thrilled to work with both rising stars on my sophomore film.”
Dorfman’s recently launched Good Girl Productions has boarded as co-producer of the film with Wildling Pictures and MXN Entertainment. The company, focused on telling stories that “challenge and shift our perspective of the human experience — and deepen our own human experience as a result of them,” has launched in partnership with Tricky Knot, an entertainment financing and development company. Tricky Knot is co-financing Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me through its partnership with Dorfman’s banner.
Matt Code at Wildling Pictures added: “We are thrilled to have Ava and Sam onboard this heartwarming and funny adaption of Mariko Tamaki’s story. This film is a fresh and important exploration of love and friendship. Tommy and Good Girl Productions are the perfect partners for this project, bringing immense passion to the adaptation. Together with our partners at MXN, we look forward to working with this wonderful team to bring this story to the big screen.”
Tamaki’s powerful commentary on the teenage LGBTQIA+ experience and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s illustrations received global recognition, with Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me named one of Time’s 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.
She has also written for both Marvel and DC Comics, and is currently an executive story editor on season two of Apple’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and served as a co-producer on season two of Goosebumps for Disney+.
