Images speak louder than words, they say. A trailer for With Hasan in Gaza from Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari (A Fidai Film, Recollection, An Unusual Summer), which world premieres in the competition lineup of the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival on Aug. 7, abides by that saying.
Below, THR can exclusively reveal the first trailer for the film ahead of the Swiss festival, which runs Aug. 6-16.
“Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered,” reads a synopsis of the movie on the Locarno festival website. “What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown.”
The summary also promises “a cinematic reflection on memory, loss, and the passage of time, capturing a Gaza of the past and lives that may never be found again.”
Aljafari, in a director’s note, describes the film as “an homage to Gaza and its people, to all that was erased and that came back to me in this urgent moment of Palestinian existence, or non-existence.” And he highlights: “It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists.”
The movie was produced by the filmmaker through his Kamal Aljafari Productions, with the support of the Doha Film Institute, Cnap – Image/mouvement, the Gwaertler Stiftung, the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, the Media City Film Festival’s Chrysalis Fellowship, and Atelier 105 – Light Cone.
With Hasan in Gaza
Courtesy of Kamal Aljafari Productions
The trailer for With Hasan in Gaza now provides a first glimpse of some of the images captured on this trip through Gaza, including kids approaching the camera and a drive along the coastline.
“I went to Gaza 24 years ago searching for a friend, without an address,” the filmmaker says. “This is my first film, which I have never made.”
Check out the trailer for With Hasan in Gaza below.
Mikey Madison, who won this year’s best actress Oscar for her performance in Anora, and Jeremy Allen White, who is elbowing for his third acting Emmy for The Bear come September, are circling the lead roles in Sony’s high-profile sequel to The Social Network.
Aaron Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for penning the 2010 movie, wrote the script and will direct the drama that is inspired by a series of articles Jeff Horwitz wrote for The Wall Street Journal known as The Facebook Files.
Insiders stress that no offers have been made and that the film is still in the development process, although the project is a top priority for the studio and moving fast. Sorkin has been meeting with actors and is packaging a cast and budget, which he will then show to the studio for final approval. Meetings with Madison and White have taken place and the chess pieces are slowly coming together.
While the acclaimed 2010 drama focused on the making of the Facebook, now known as Meta, the story of the new feature will focus on how the company’s own reporting pointed to the negative effects its social media was having on teens and kids, how it knew misinformation was proliferating and causing violence, and how it contributed to the coup attempt of Jan. 6, 2021.
If offers and, indeed, dealmaking closes, Madison would play Frances Haugen, the data engineer-turned-whistleblower who went to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Wall Street Journal with her information. White would play the former WSJ tech reporter who leads the breaking of the Facebook files.
One source said the project would have shades of The Insider, the 1999 movie from Michael Mann that told of a whistleblower blowing the lid off the tobacco industry by talking to 60 Minutes. Another source said the project has shades of Spotlight, the 2015 movie that centered on reporters from the Boston Globe investigating child sex abuse by the city’s Roman Catholic clergy.
Sony had no comment.
Mikey Madison and Frances Haugen
Brendon Thorne/Getty Images; Peter Rae / Sydney Morning Herald/Getty Images
Sorkin, Todd Black, Peter Rice and Stuart Besser are producing the sequel.
David Fincher directed the original Social Network, which starred Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and earned eight Oscar nominations, winning three.
Madison received numerous accolades for her work in Anora, earning multiple nominations and ultimately wins courtesy of the BAFTA Awards and the Academy Awards. Anora won five Oscars, best picture among them. Madison also memorably appeared in Scream (2022) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
She is due to shoot The Masque of the Red Death, a reimagining of the creepy Edgar Allan Poe story from filmmaker Charlie Polinger, in early 2026. The horror project hails from A24, which will distribute worldwide, and Picturestart, which is producing. Earlier this year, she was in talks to star in Star Wars feature Starfighter, but those talks crumbled over financial reasons.
White has earned two Emmy wins for his work on FX’s The Bear and this fall will portray Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century’s true-life Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which chronicles the making of his album Nebraska. The drama is due to hit theaters Oct. 24.
Madison is repped by UTA, Authentic Talent and Sloane Offer. White is repped by WME and Entertainment 360.
Topher Grace has joined Cristin Milioti in Buddy, an independent horror thriller from Casper Kelly.
Kelly, who co-created Adult Swim shows such as Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell and the horror comedy viral sensation Too Many Cooks, is directing the feature and co-wrote it with Jamie King, who previously worked on the Disney+ family movie World’s Best.
Production is currently underway in Ohio.
Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the project is being described as a “new experience in horror.”
J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules are producing via their BoulderLight Pictures, the production company that is having busy year with Companion, Friendship and the upcoming horror movie Weapons on their slate.
Tyler Davidson and Drew Sykes are producing for Low Spark Films, the Cleveland, Ohio, based production company that counts Emily the Criminal and Take Shelter among its credits. The company is co-financing the project.
Range Select and UTA are co-repping the project’s distribution rights.
While Grace became a bold-faced name thanks to his good-natured starring turn in now classic sitcom That ’70s Show, the actor has focused on work to upend that image.
This year alone he co-starred in The Waterfront, Kevin Williamson’s Netflix crime drama in which he played a fun and dangerous drug supplier. He also starred as a fugitive informant trying to survive a deranged Mark Wahlberg in Lionsgate action thriller Flight Risk. Last year, he appeared in A24’s well-regarded and awards-nominated psychological horror movie Heretic. Grace next appears opposite Glen Powell and Margaret Qualley in A24 thriller Huntington.
He is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Hirsch Wallerstein.
Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan joined The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened in Hollywood podcast to retell the making of his Oscar-nominated 2000 debut, You Can Count on Me.
The film, which recently joined the Criterion Collection, is an intimate character study of siblings Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo, in his screen debut), orphaned at a young age and reunited as adult. Rory Culkin, younger brother to Macaulay and Kieran, plays Sammy’s bright son Rudy.
Lonergan had already had success as a playwright and was writing Hollywood comedies at the time (1999’s Analyze This, 2000’s The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle) when the opportunity arose to direct one of his own screenplays.
“[The studio] didn’t want to give me the final cut, so I brought Marty [Scorsese] in as a protector and he became the executive producer and he had final cut, which made them relax and made me feel like I would essentially have complete creative control, which was a must for me going in,” Lonergan explains.
Lonergan had already worked with Scorsese on a number of unproduced projects. “We’d become friendly and he’d always been very helpful — as he still is to this day,” he explains. The pair later collaborated on 2002’s Gangs of New York, on which Lonergan was one of three credited writers.
For the role of Sammy, Lonergan offered the part to Ethan Hawke, who passed. “So I auditioned a lot of the guys that I liked. And Josh Hamilton and Mark [Ruffalo] were kind of the neck and neck for it,” Lonergan recalls. “With Mark, you had obviously a hot theater talent, but he had not done a film yet for a major role.”
“He’d been trying to be an actor in LA for quite a while, bartending and, well, he’d been trying to do theater in LA, which is an idiotic plan, as Mark was going to tell you,” he continues. In the end, Ruffalo got the role. “He just seemed to fit the part better,” Lonergan says.
He’s proud of having offered Ruffalo a launching pad to his now storied film acting career. “The truth is, you feel both proud of yourself and proud of him. I do feel a certain pride in it, and yet actors bring so much to the project that you don’t feel like taking credit for it.
“Of course, you want them to be grateful to you forever, and not to forget what you’ve done for them,” Lonergan jokingly adds.
Listen to the You Can Count on Me episode of It Happened to Hollywood below and be sure to subscribe for more stories about the making of beloved films from the people who made them.
Layoffs are currently underway at the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group as the storied movie studio attempts to streamline its structure and save costs.
The layoffs will reduce the staff by about 10 percent. The operation, which does business around the globe, had a total head count of under 1,000 employees, according to insiders.
Motion Picture Group chairmen Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy announced the layoffs in an internal memo to staff on Wednesday morning. The duo had come under intense scrutiny earlier this year after a string of box office misses, only to be followed by a dazzling winning streak, led by A Minecraft Movie and Sinners.
The layoffs, which will impact production, marketing, distribution and live theater ventures, come amid larger changes at Warner Bros. Discovery.
Read it in full below.
Team Motion Pictures –
Earlier this year, in collaboration with leaders across the film division, we undertook a thoughtful assessment of our current structure and began the work to transform our business as we transition from a US Home Office/International model toward a fully global structure.
The exploration led to important conversations and insights to better understand how we reach audiences, what fundamental shifts should be implemented as teams work together across the world to collectively engage today’s moviegoers, and what the division needs to be successful.
In partnership with our P&C colleagues, and with these new learnings, we spent a lot of time thinking about how we evolve our teams to ensure films made here at Warner Bros. continue to receive world class release campaigns, and we engross audiences with the kind of memorable in-theater experience only the big screen can offer.
Adapting how we work often calls for evolution, and the future of how we run this business has required us to make some very difficult decisions, including staffing adjustments that will impact members of the Motion Picture Group. This week, your department leadership will share what these strategic changes mean for you and your teams. In the coming weeks and months, we will work with leaders around the world to shape and implement this global operating model in a way that reflects local needs and realities.
Coin Operated, the horror-centric banner founded by It and Annabelle writer-producer Gary Dauberman, has secured the screen rights to The Medium, the award-winning video game created by European developer Bloober Team.
Dauberman and Mia Maniscalco, his president at Coin Operated, will produce the adaptation through the banner.
A search for a writer and a director for the project is underway.
Set in the post-communist era of Poland in the 1990s and taking place mostly in a fictional abandoned hotel in Krakow, the game tells of a woman named Marianna, imbued with psychic abilities, who is called to unravel the mystery of the death of an innocent child.
The game was praised for its visuals and its dystopian surrealist style, inspired by the works of painter Zdzisław Beksiński. It also earned praise for its original soundtrack, created by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Akira Yamaoka. Bloober, run by CEO Piotr Babieno, has published a mix of original and franchise games, from Observer: System Redux to the award-winning Silent Hill 2.
“With its compelling story and incredibly cinematic visuals, The Medium is a natural for a feature film adaptation,” said Dauberman in a statement. Dauberman previously worked on adapting horror video game Until Dawn, directed by David F. Sandberg, which Screen Gems released earlier this spring.
“When I talked to Piotr about it, we immediately connected on our mutual love of horror and his vision for where the genre is headed. I have no doubt anything Bloober develops is going to push horror forward in unique and terrifying ways, and I’m excited to be working alongside them,” continued Dauberman.
Stated Babieno, “Adapting games into films often involves balancing many interests, but with The Medium, I have a deep sense that Gary is the perfect partner for us. From our very first conversation, I felt we were completely in sync. And every conversation since has only reinforced that feeling.”
Dauberman is the triple threat filmmaker behind some of the biggest horror franchises of the past decade, including It, Annabelle and The Nun. His company is currently developing a modern era reboot of Urban Legend, based on Screen Gems’ 1990s slasher movie of the same name, with Shanrah Wakefield set to write the script; Human Remains, a new horror film from writer Zachary Donohue; and Ushers, based on Joe Hill’s short story for Screen Gems being adapted by Zak Olkewicz.
