Principal photography has begun on PIXIE, a comedic thriller to be directed by Barnaby Thompson (ST. TRINIAN’S 1&2), it was announced today.
The film stars Olivia Cooke (READY PLAYER ONE, THOROUGHBREDS, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL) in the lead role alongside Ben Hardy (BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE) and Daryl McCormack (A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL, PEAKY BLINDERS) with Colm Meaney (LAYER CAKE, CON AIR), Dylan Moran (BLACK BOOKS, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, RUN FAT BOY RUN) and OscarÒ nominated and EmmyÒ-winning actor Alec Baldwin (SNL, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, STILL ALICE).
Thompson is producing the film with James Clayton (MY GENERATION, PRIDE). Peter Touche and Samantha Allwinton from Ingenious Media will serve as executive producers.
Thompson will direct from an original script by Preston Thompson (KIDS IN LOVE). John De Borman (FULL MONTY, AN EDUCATION) is the director of photography and David Holmes (OCEAN’S ELEVEN, KILLING EVE) is the composer.
Funded by Ingenious and Fragile Films, with support from Northern Ireland Screen, PIXIE will shoot in and around Belfast, Northern Ireland for seven weeks, with additional photography in the West of Ireland.
Endeavor Content is handling worldwide sales. Paramount Pictures has acquired distribution rights in the UK and Ireland.
Pixie (Cooke) wants to avenge her mother’s death by masterminding a heist, but her plans go awry and she finds herself on the run with two young men (Hardy, McCormack) who are way out of their depth being chased across the Wild Irish countryside by gangsters. She has to pit her wits against everyone, taking on the patriarchy to claim the right to shape her own life.
“I am excited to be returning to the Emerald Isle, the birthplace of my father and where I started my career directing documentaries, to make a comedic thriller with a wonderful cast against an extraordinary landscape. I’m also thrilled the film is going to be distributed in the UK and Ireland by Paramount, where I started my career producing movies,” said Barnaby Thompson.
Barnaby Thompson started his career directing documentaries including the award-winning KISS THE SKY about Jimi Hendrix. He worked with legendary producer Lorne Michaels producing WAYNE’S WORLD 1&2, CONEHEADS and TOMMY BOY. He returned to the UK where he set up Fragile Films and has produced and/or directed some of the most successful British independent films including SPICEWORLD, KEVIN AND PERRY GO LARGE, AN IDEAL HUSBAND, ST TRINIANS and ST TRINIANS 2: THE LEGEND OF FRITTON’S GOLD, EASY VIRTUE and DORIAN GRAY. Most recently he was the executive producer of the UK hit, FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS. He was nominated for a BAFTA and OscarÒ for DEAR ROSIE, a short film written by Peter Morgan.
Nicholas Hoult’s breakthrough role came in the 2002 comedy-drama film About a Boy before transitioning to adult roles with the drama film A Single Man and the classical fantasy Clash of the Titans. He was cast as the mutant Hank McCoy in Matthew Vaughn’s superhero film X-Men: First Class, a role he has reprised in later instalments of the series, including the recent X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Other recent roles include Jack the Giant Slayer, Warm Bodies, Mad Max: Fury Road, Kill Your Friends, The Rebel in the Rye, Sand Castle and The Favourite, among others.
Lily Collins broke out as an actor with the likes of Priest, Abduction and Mirror Mirror, where she played Snow White. She then starred in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Stuck in Love The English Teacher and Love, Rosie. She won a Golden Globe nomination for Rules Don’t Apply and earned much praise for To the Bone and the TV miniseries Les Miserables.
In Tolkien, they share the screen with Hoult taking on the role of the eponymous author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and Collins co-starring as the writer’s muse, Edith Bratt …
Who is Tolkien to each of you?
Nicholas Hoult: I didn’t know the man, to be honest with you, before reading this script. I knew his work so he was someone who sparked my imagination and gave me a wonderful world to escape to and be part of. But then reading this story I was suddenly opened up to a whole new thing; I had disappeared into his world for years but suddenly became aware of the man behind the mythology that I love. And his story is remarkable, incredible, and one that stands alone. I thought it had to be told.
Were there any traits you recognised in him?
NH: When Dome [Karukoski, the director] and I would speak about it, we thought he was quite hobbit-like in nature. He likes his comforts but he is very dedicated and loving and caring, obviously very imaginative and creative, and a bit of an outsider in some ways who was looking for a place to be and to escape to. He was also someone who had a serious intellect.
In what ways did the story resonate with you, Lily?
Lily Collins: Something that resonates with me very strongly in the story is that one can have a soulmate and it doesn’t even have to be romantic. It can be a friendship, and in this story we deal with Edith and Tolkien’s love, and that from a very young age was a soulmate connection. But he also has these three friends who are very much soulmates in their own right. You don’t necessarily know the impact you are going to have on someone and vice versa. It could be years later that you are still having that impact on them. Also, Tolkien, to me, is a creator of stories that deeply impacted my wanting to be an actor.
How so?
LC: I lived in the English countryside when I was little. It was very Shire-like and I used to go around the garden pretending that there were magical creatures everywhere. I would read the books and disappear into this world in my head and I wanted one day to translate that to other people. Acting is exactly what that does for me and, ironically, I ended up doing a movie about the man behind that. Tolkien found the magic in the mundane and in nature and that felt very connected to me from such a young age.
Did you read other books in that genre? C. S. Lewis, maybe?
LC: Anything fairy tale. C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter, Tolkien, anything fantasy based. I also loved reading the darker side of fairy tales, like the Grimm stories, which maybe are not the Disney versions we all know.
Who did you want to be in the Tolkien books?
LC: The elven characters resonated very deeply with me because I used to run around the garden pretending there were elves and fairies everywhere. I auditioned for one of the Peter Jackson films to play an elven character, one of hundreds of people, probably, and didn’t end up getting it. But then again, eight years later here I am playing the woman who partly inspired her and was quite muse like in that regard for all the elven characters. That was something I felt naturally inclined to.
NH: I think the reality of my nature, especially as I get older, is that I am more hobbit-like. I appreciate those characters, although thinking about it now just as you were talking I was like, ‘It would be good to be a wizard wouldn’t it?’ I did love Aragorn too, and especially Viggo [Mortensen]’s interpretation of him in the movies. What a hero. What a guy.
What happened at your Peter Jackson audition, Lily?
LC: I didn’t do well. There was no script to read, just these sides that were quite confidential. Don’t ask me to do it now because I won’t be able to but we had to speak Elfish! And we had to make it up because they hadn’t given us a proper language. It was the role Evangeline Lilly played [Tauriel], so another Lilly, but not this Lily! It was just an honour to just go in for it.
Was Peter there?
LC: No, it did not get that far. So he probably never even saw it.
Have you learned any Elfish, Nic?
NH: I have learnt bits for this film. The languages I speak in this are more the precursors to the things that he then created for The Lord of the Rings. We worked with a professor at Oxford and he would take Norse and Anglo-Saxon elements and combine them into these limericks that I would then learn. Basically, they would send them to me written down and I would look at them and then I’d hear them and I’d think, ‘Well, that doesn’t align. That sounds nothing like what it looks like,’ so I would have to write it out phonetically and learn it and recreate it and then kind of put back in the meaning behind it.
Both these characters follow their dreams so how important was that for you, to be true to yourself and to follow your dreams?
LC: Something that I have always been taught me from an early age is to follow your gut and your heart and to do what it is that pleases your soul. But that doesn’t always come easily. Growing into adulthood has been a journey of discovering what it is that I really enjoy and why I enjoy it, as well learning about myself, and getting to know that road blocks are going to come your way; it is how you deal with them that defines who you are and where you end up. That is pretty much the book I wrote a couple of years ago — the book dealt with those kinds of things, too. It is an ever-evolving process and the goal is always to stay true to what makes you happy and to find people to surround yourself with who respect that, and maybe share some of your interests.
NH: It is about listening to gut instincts and those things because that’s something that is quite difficult to do and be honest with. It is something I am still learning and trying to get better at. In terms of following dreams, I am lucky that I found something I loved doing at a pretty young age. I still love doing it and it still feels new and fresh to me in many ways. I don’t feel that I have been doing it for a long time. Each job feels like a new challenge. I turn up on day one and I have no idea what I am doing and I really love that. I am very fortunate to pursue that.
What are your own experiences with writing?
LC: I used to write for magazines when I was younger. I wrote for US and UK magazines, online stuff, and then I wrote a book two or three years ago which was a memoir of sorts.
What inspired you to write the book?
LC: I was receiving a lot of messages on social media, specifically Instagram, from young women all over the world expressing to me their insecurities and fears and feelings about themselves and always prefacing them by saying, ‘I know that you cannot relate to this because you are an actress and live in Hollywood, but this is my insecurity, my issue.’ I thought they were so brave because on Instagram your photo is right there so it isn’t anonymous and I thought, ‘If they are going to be brave and do that, I am going to be brave and do that.’ They are feeling alone and if they don’t feel alone, maybe it will help them get through it and maybe I will find something therapeutic about that, too. So it was really just me trying to say, ‘You are not alone so be brave.’ And for me, I felt I had a lot of baggage that I was carrying around, not that anyone knew about it but I thought I had to get rid of that in order to take on the baggage of any characters I played.
Was it difficult deciding what to sift out when writing the book?
LC: I’m not sure that there was a lot that I left out, to be honest. Maybe there will be a Part 2! At the beginning when I started to write it, my editor said, ‘Don’t sell yourself short. You can go a little bit deeper here, here and here.’ It was interesting because as I was writing, I was shooting To The Bone, which is about a subject matter that I write about [anorexia]. And my experiences within acting greatly influenced my understanding of some of my chapters. Therefore, I went deeper into those chapters and came to an inner peace more because I had worked through them. It was really interesting that they both married with each other.
Do you ever write diaries or journals, Nic?
NH: I wrote The Lord of the Rings (laughs)! My answer is not as impressive as Lily’s! I played a writer a few years ago [J.D. Salinger in The Rebel in the Rye] and to play him and to get an understanding of that process I would write short stories. But apart from that, no, would be the answer. I love reading but I have never felt that was something that I could do.
Would you ever want to publish your short stories?
NH: They are not very good (laughs). Honestly, they are not good. A lot of the time Salinger wrote about kids because he found them innocent. Also, his central characters were more honest and truthful because of that. So I would walk around New York, then go home and write stories about what I saw that day. They were normally just about relationships.
TOLKIEN
Was there a big difference between your preparation for playing Salinger and for Tolkien?
They are very different people, creatively and everything. There was a similar process in some regard, in terms of learning the facts, but then that film dealt with a much bigger time span. They both had some similar experiences in that that they both fought through war, and we see how that affected them. But they are very different characters. I wrote stories for Salinger, while I practised painting for this film.
Who introduced the Tolkien books to you?
NH: I was given The Hobbit by the directors of About a Boy, Chris and Paul Weitz. It was lovely and I still have that copy of the book and so I went back to it again in the build up to this and it felt very fortuitous, in a way. What better gift could you give to a kid of that age, a gift of that imagination and story? That was probably the thought behind it. I look forward to sharing that and passing it along.
LJ: I just remember the time period of being in elementary school and having always had this love of magic and fantasy, knowing the world of Harry Potter and then also Tolkien; they took me away to different worlds. I used to go to the library as a kid in school and I would just sit and read them. It was a private time and a sense of escapism in a way. And then I would look forward to the Peter Jackson films when the trailers were coming out. I got really excited and I would look at the release date and go with friends and I still have all my ticket stubs; I keep all my ticket stubs.
Lily, how did it feeling turning 30?
LC: It was great. I had a great time. It was gong to happen regardless so I thought I had better have a good attitude about it. I was filming in Birmingham, Alabama and my mom flew up for my actual birthday. But then the next weekend two of my best friends from the age of five flew out. We took a road trip to Nashville. It was so fun. We had 36 hours. We rode horses and went to all of the honky tonks, we went to the bars, wore cowboy boots and cowboy hats. It was great, just pure innocent fun and then I drove back and I went to work the next day.
TOLKIEN DEBUTS ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD ON AUGUST 26 AND BLU-RAY™ & DVD ON SEPTEMBER 9
In the heartfelt tale THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, Milo Ventimiglia stars as Denny, a racecar driver who is devoted to his witty, wise almost human dog, Enzo. More than a pet, Enzo (voiced by Kevin Costner) is Denny’s best friend. Denny meets Eve, a teacher played by Amanda Seyfried; they fall in love, marry and have a baby. With support from Eve and Enzo, Denny learns how to navigate family life, even in times of crisis, using the lessons he’s learned on the race track. Moving, exciting and at times very funny, the film is told from Enzo’s perspective, with the dog’s unique insights into the complexities of family life and the human condition.
Incorporating traditional narrative story-telling, as well as numerous forms of pioneering technology, including found footage, hand-held cameras, surveillance cameras, and smart glasses, Investigation 13 is a new-age fright-fest chronicling the tale of a group of college science students investigating the urban legend of The Mole Man, an ex-patient said to still be residing within the walls of the Black Grove Asylum. When members of the group start missing, they soon learn that this myth is more real than they thought, making this 13th investigation one they will come to regret.
On 1st September 2019, 70 years to the day since the World Premiere, Studiocanal will celebrate The Third Man with a special event at Picturehouse Central, London. Film critic Danny Leigh will host a Q&A featuring one of the last remaining crew members, Angela Allen, as well as special guest and fan of the film, screenwriter Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove, The Two Faces of January), with more special guests still to be confirmed. There will also be a live musical performance from Cornelia Mayer, a Viennese zither player who trained with Anton Karas (the composer and performer of the iconic original soundtrack). Tickets for the event can be purchased here.
Get ready to snap your fingers! The Addams Family is back on the big screen in the first animated comedy about this creepy and kooky team. You may think your family is weird but the outlandish, bizarre, and completely iconic Addams Family, will have you thinking again.
Summer of 1945. A temporary orphanage is established in an abandoned palace surrounded by forests for the eight children liberated from the Gross-Rosen camp. Hanka, also a former inmate, becomes their guardian. After the atrocities of the camp, the protagonists slowly begin to regain what is left of their childhood but the horror returns quickly. Camp Alsatians roam the forests around. Released by the SS earlier on, they have gone feral and are starving. Looking for food they besiege the palace. The team are terrified and their camp survival instinct is triggered.
From the effects team behind Harry Potter, and acclaimed filmmaker Simon Wells comes rousing fantasy-adventure Dragon Kingdom, on DVD and Digital this September from Uncork’d Entertainment. To save their Kingdom from the Dark Lord’s army, a mighty and courageous legion of warriors must travel through the forbidden lands fighting the fearsome fire breathing monsters of The Dark Kingdom, a land that swallows all who enter, in order to rescue their King.
HITSVILLE: THE MAKING OF MOTOWN, the remarkable film charting the creation and incredible success of the legendary Motown Records against the backdrop of the growing civil rights movement, will be released in UK & Irish cinemas for One Night Only from the World Premiere on 30 September, and on general release from 4 October. The first documentary about the iconic label to be made with the participation of the label’s visionary founder, Berry Gordy, HITSVILLE: THE MAKING OF MOTOWN will be an unmissable cinematic event, releasing during the year Motown Records celebrates its 60th Anniversary.
Vision Films Inc. in association with MJW Films and Little Angel Productions are delighted to present the heartwarming original pop musical film, Stuck on VOD and DVD for the first time. Taking place over one fateful day on a New York City subway, a team of strangers from different walks of life are unexpectedly brought together in an uplifting celebration of life and kindness through music. Directed by Michael Berry and adapted for the screen by Berry and Riley Thomas, the film that Variety says “benefits from a lot of heart and not being like anything else out there” enjoyed a critically acclaimed theatrical run earlier this year. Produced by Mike Witherill (John Wick and Drinking Buddies) and Joe Mundo (Sunset Strip and Cardboard Boxer), Stuck will be released across all major VOD platforms on August 27 and on DVD September 17, 2019.
In 1999, outside the sleepy town of Hellmington, troubled high school senior Katie Owens mysteriously vanished. Nine years later, Detective Samantha Woodhouse, a former classmate of Katie’s, returns to Hellmington for the first time since graduation to deal with the unexpected death of her father. His passing just another tragedy in an already devastating year for Sam: her own daughter was murdered, resulting in a downward spiral of anguish and guilt that has slowly destroyed her marriage and career.
Tim Burton’s live-action Dumbo hovers in the Number 1 spot for a second consecutive week, more than doubling the sales of its closest competitor.
Keeping Captain Marvel (2) and Shazam! (3) at bay, the re-make of the Disney classic sees Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito reunite with Tim Burton; the trio last worked together on Batman Returns in 1992.
Hellboy (2019) is the week’s highest new entry based on just two days’ worth of digital downloads alone. A reboot of Mike Mignola’s graphic novel, this action-fantasy sees anti-hero Hellboy caught between the supernatural and human worlds and forced to battle an ancient sorceress hell-bent on revenge. The film stars Stranger Things’ David Harbour as the eponymous character.
Former chart topper Alita: Battle Angel drops one place to Number 5, while animated adventure Missing Link enters the Top 10 for the first time following its release on disc; zooming up 16 places to Number 6.
Aquaman treads water at Number 7; Mary Poppins Returns drops two places to Number 8; Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse falls one to 9. Finally, A Star Is Born returns to the Top 10 at Number 10.
On this week’s Official Film Chart online show, see an exciting featurette of Marvel’s record-breaking box office smash Avengers: Endgame, available to Download & Keep from August 19. The action-packed superhero film was recently announced as the highest-grossing film of all-time and is a strong contender for Number 1 on the Official Film Chart upon release.
Ahead of Horror Channel’s UK TV premieres of THE DEAD 2 and OFFENSIVE, (part of the FrightFest season), brothers Howard and Jon Ford discuss the trials and tribulations of filmmaking, healing wounds and why THE DEAD 3 won’t be happening any time soon…
Horror Channel will be launching their massive 13-night FrightFest Season with the UK TV premiere of THE DEAD 2. Excited?
Howard Ford: Well it’s a surprise, but a lovely one! Until I was asked to do this interview, I had no clue The Dead 2 had even been picked up by Horror Channel! But yes, I’m very excited.
Jon: I hope the viewers enjoy the film. We went through much pain and effort to make this film, in tough parts of India. We were on a very modest budget and didn’t go to the usual tourist places. It made me laugh when I saw a review stating “they obviously had a lot more money”, I take that as a compliment.
And Jon Ford, the season ends with the first ever TV showing of your debut solo directorial debut, OFFENSIVE. What are you hoping the viewers will take from the film?
I hope viewers will appreciate a true revenge film for a change. I hope they enjoy that rare gasp of fresh air that only a truly independent film dare give. And notice the messages about modern technology and today’s society.
Offensive
OFFENSIVE is an award-winning film that has wowed festival audiences around the world since its World Premiere at FrightFest in 2016. What’s the latest news on release dates?
Jon: Thanks yes, it has won many awards including “Best Film”, Jury and audience awards, which is apparently a first. So I’m very proud of it. Of all the things I’ve filmed in my career it’s the one I like the best. I think because I remained pure to the original idea. We’re still in negotiations at this very moment so stand by on release dates.
Howard, you have quite a meaty acting role in OFFENSIVE. How did you convince Jon to cast you?
Howard Ford: I think what first appealed to Jon was how cheap I was going to be! Ha. Also I owed him one, on-screen as he came out to Morocco and Spain for Never Let Go and I had him run over by a truck (an in-gag from the Dead 1) and he had to lay in the road covered in blood so now it was my turn to get bloody! I loved shooting those scenes in Offensive, who doesn’t want to Axe up a few Nazi’s?! I just wish I had done more, but the experience and the fact I got away with it did give me a bit of a taste for that acting thing!
Did the global success of THE DEAD put a lot of pressure on you both to keep working together and come up with a sequel?
Howard: I’ve got to be honest with you, we did The Dead 2 so we could get paid some of the profit from The Dead 1! We saw all these millions of dollars in revenue on the statements for The Dead 1 in the US, but, some clever wording in the distribution contract meant we were going to see almost nothing of it. We knew we had the remake rights as we felt there was potential for a sequel. We originally planned to continue from where we left off but it was such a traumatic shoot in Africa we decided to do a stand-alone movie in India. The great thing is, it means you don’t have to see The Dead 1 to watch The Dead 2. It’s a different journey with new characters across zombie infested India!
There’s a lot of hope amongst your fans that they’ll be a third THE DEAD film. Can you give us an update?
Howard: We just had a chat about this and we decided that we will do it when we get the rights back to both films. Right now, we get precisely zero from all those amazing fans who buy the movie.
Jon Ford: When you’ve gone through the hell we went through to make both The Dead movies and see those bank statements with millions of dollars going to other people, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. We want to make a Dead trilogy but as Howard mentioned, we’ll probably have to wait a good few years to get the rights back.
Having gone on to pursue solo careers, do you think it will harder or easier to co-direct again?
Howard/Jon Ford: There was a lot of tension on those shoots and frustration from every angle trying to bring audiences something different by shooting them in far flung inaccessible locations, but we have a lot of hindsight now and some of the wounds have healed a bit, so I think we’d actually be able to collaborate a lot easier now. We’ve also scratched a lot of our own itches!
Howard Ford, you’ve just released ADVENTURE BOYZ, a big departure from your genre roots. Tell us a bit about the film and what inspired you to make it?
Howard: Adventure Boyz is always going to be the film I love the most. It’ll be that one I’ll be hitting replay to as I crack open my third bottle of wine and cry into it while watching my little boys come and rescue their dad from a jail cell (That’s in the plot by the way, I hope to stay out of jail in real life!). I made the film to inspire my two young sons, who also star in the movie, and remind them that there is more to life than staring into a device or spending time on social media. Adventure Boyz is about re connecting us to the things that matter. It’s also very Goonies meets Home Alone, so I hope our horror fans who have kids can show them this movie as no one swears or gets their head cut off and it has lots of positive messages!
The Dead 2 – India
Jon, what’s next for you?
Jon: I’m going to be directing a feature film adaptation of Don Quixote. So will be shooting in August this year. It’s a crazy film about a scarecrow that’s struck by lightning and comes to life in the form of Don Quixote.
I’m also going to be directing and writing a Medieval thriller, set during the Black death. It’s uncanny how close to “Zombies” the plague victims became. they became crazed, dripping blood from every orifice, and would attack people, infecting them in seconds. It’s a bit 28 days later so maybe I’ll satisfy my running zombie itch in a way after all?! We’ll be shooting that in 2020.
And Howard, is there anything you can tell us about your next film?
Howard: I am due to direct The Ledge soon for GFM films which is very taught, tight, thriller/horror, you might say a female cliff-hanger about one girl, a witness to a heinous crime, who is being pursued up a mountain by five guys who cannot let her leave alive. I’m also developing my own projects, one being a ghostly affair!
Finally, is there anything in the FrightFest season that you’ll be watching?
Howard: Jon: We both loved Wolf Creek so would love to check out the sequel!
THE DEAD 2 has its UK TV premiere on Horror Channel, Fri Aug 18, 9pm.OFFENSIVE has its UK TV premiere on Horror Channel, Sun Aug 25, 9pm.
