Netflix‘s strategic investment in Welsh production hubs has generated more than £200 million ($265 million) for the U.K. economy since 2020, according to a report released Wednesday by the streaming giant and Creative Wales.

The economic windfall comes as the streamer gears to bow director Gareth Evans’ action thriller “Havoc,” starring Tom Hardy – now holding the distinction as the largest feature film ever shot entirely within Wales.

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The Welsh investment represents part of Netflix’s broader U.K. production strategy, with the nation becoming a key filming destination for the streamer’s high-profile content. Beyond “Havoc,” Wales has hosted production for tentpole series including “The Witcher,” creating substantial economic ripple effects throughout the region.

According to the report, Netflix productions have supported over 500 Welsh businesses across multiple sectors since 2020. For every £1 ($1.32) spent by the streamer in Wales, 58 pence (76 cents) flows to TV

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27249666

On the edge of honor...lies revenge. The Old West collides with the swordplay of the Samurai in the first trailer for your new favorite martial action movie, Tornado. Set in 1790, Tornado follows the journey of a young woman who must confront the merciless thieves who are chasing her, with newly released footage teasing a gripping and gloriously violent tale of survival and revenge. You can check out the new trailer for Tornado below.

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“Set in the rugged landscape of 1790s Britain, Tornado (Kōki) is a young and determined Japanese woman who finds herself caught in a perilous situation when she and her father's travelling puppet Samurai show crosses paths with a gang of ruthless criminals led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his ambitious son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). In an attempt to create a new life for herself, Tornado seizes the opportunity to take matters into her own hands and steal the gold from their most r

A UK cinema has been forced to issue a warning after a TikTok trend saw screenings of A Minecraft Movieplagued by “disruptive behaviour”.

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However, the movie, whose cultural impact is renowned, particularly among younger people, has sparked a flurry of disruption and chaos in cinemas across the world.

Footage captured across social media shows food and popcorn thrown across the audience, along with loud shouting, some swearing, and general raucousness including people jumping out of their seats. Dozens of young people and children are seen laughing with their phones out as they capture the disorder.

In one cinema in the US, police were called to quell the commotion, after viewers refused to calm down. It has prompted REEL cinema in the market town of Fareham to issue a warning.

“To ensure everyone has the best possible cinema experience, we're increasing our monitoring of screens during performances,” a spokesperson told the Daily Echo.

“Disruptive behaviour

Angels in the Asylum, a British indie film starring Simon Pegg and Katherine Waterston, has stopped shooting indefinitely after running out of cash midway through production, Deadline can reveal.

Angels in the Asylum was mounted without its financing fully in place and had to halt filming in February, 15 days into a month-long shoot. There is no clarity on when the £5M ($6.4M) production might restart as producers scramble to bring in new finance.

Angels in the Asylum set out to tell an important story about women incarcerated against their wishes, but has created a messy legacy in which crew members are said to be owed at least £600,000 in wages. Cast pay was ringfenced in an escrow account under Equity union agreements.

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The reasons for the financial strife are disputed. The position of Sorrenti and Greenwood is that funding under an arrangement with distributor Parkland Pictures has not materialized. In a statement, they said it was “devastating” that Angels in th

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26208354

A few weeks ago, a source inside of Amazon/MGM was telling Jeff Sneider that rumored Bond producer David Heyman was potentially eyeing Alfonso Cuarón to direct the next 007 instalment.

Matt Belloni is now saying on The Town podcast that he’s also heard Cuarón could direct Bond 26, adding that the filmmaker has met with Amazon and has a new “take” for how the next one would look like.

Amazon wants to move quickly and have a team ready once the $1 billion rights deal is closed with Barbara Broccoli. Yesterday, I reported that writers have already been hired for Bond 26; it makes sense that a director is now being eyed as well.

What this Cuarón rumor seems to imply is that Amazon/MGM are not willing to wait another 18 months for Christopher Nolan to complete and release “The Odyssey.” Hey, the studio spent over $1 billion to toss Broccoli aside, it’s no wonder they want to get this next Bond off the ground ASA

Amazon is lining up Harry Potter’s David Heyman and Spider-Man’s Amy Pascal to oversee the James Bond franchise for its studio MGM.

In news first reported by Puck, the two heavyweight producers are said to be the choice of senior Amazon-MGM executives Mike Hopkins, Jen Salke, and Courtenay Valenti and the studio is now negotiating deals with the pair.

Heyman is the British producer who acquired the film rights to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter book series, and produced all eight subsequent film adaptations as well as the three Fantastic Beasts films. Other high-profile credits to his name include the Noah Baumbach-directed Marriage Story and White Noise, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.

Pascal was chair of Sony’s film division until 2015, where she oversaw Bond films including Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. She was forced to leave in the aftermath of the studio’s infamous email hack after leaked messages suggested she h

Amazon has paid more than $1bn for “creative control” of the James Bond franchise, the Guardian understands, in a deal that has met with a mixed response from stars of the films.

Amazon MGM Studios said on Thursday that it had struck a deal with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the British-American heirs to the film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films.

The world’s second largest corporation by revenue confirmed it had formed a joint venture with the duo to house the James Bond intellectual property with Amazon assuming “creative control”.

Amazon said the financial terms were for its eyes only, but it is understood that control of 007 was ceded for about $1bn (£790m), a figure first reported by the US Hollywood news oulet Deadline.

Daniel Craig, the most recent actor to play Bond, offered his congratulations to Broccoli and Wilson on Friday. Craig, who first appeared in Casino Royale in 2006, said: “My respect, admiration and love

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24475507

Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise.

The shock announcement — which is sure to shake and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the news that long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back.

As per details of the arrangement, Amazon MGM Studios, Wilson and Broccoli have formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. The three parties will remain co-owners of the iconic franchise but Amazon MGM will have creative control.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24148722

Hammer Films, arguably the biggest name in British genre filmmaking, is busy making a new horror feature – its first since 2023’s Doctor Jekyll. Called Ithaqua, it’s a period piece with a solid cast including Luke Hemsworth and Kevin Durand.

Shooting is currently underway in Canada, with the iconic studio releasing a number of behind-the-scenes images from the production on its Instagram feed.

Rather disappointingly, however, a separate post includes a teaser poster which bears all the hallmarks of being generated using a piece of AI software like Midjourney. We’ve contacted Hammer Films to find out whether or not it is indeed AI-generated and will update this post if and when we get a response.

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As for the film itself, it stars Luke Hemsworth, Kevin Durand, Craig Lauzon and Michael Pitt and is co-written, directed and produced by Casey Walker. If the synopsis is anything to go by, it sounds like

Last month, Boyle told Empire that he was going to be directing the trilogy capper, and claimed that it wouldn’t be shot “until audiences respond to the first film.” Judging by the record-breaking reaction to the trailer, I don’t believe Boyle/Garland will have much of a problem completing their trilogy.

In fact, it actually looks like it’s now on the fast track as a recent listing has “28 Years Later: Part 3” starting production on March 31, 2025. The entire trilogy will have been shot and completed by the time Boyle starts to do press on the first one in June.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23914079

On Avenue Mews in the leafy North London suburb of Muswell Hill, long-term friends Ruth (Ruth Syratt) and Megan (Megan Stevenson) run Cha Cha Cha together from rented premises. There they sell vintage goods – “anything we can get our hands on that’s from the past”, as Ruth puts it. They do not, however, sell the old dodgem car – with flashing lights and lo-fi control boards attached – which they find abandoned by the bins outside their shop, but instead, upon discovering that it is a time machine, use it to gather genuine antiques from different places and eras.

Six years later, business is booming, but strange meteorological phenomena suggest that something is amiss in the space-time continuum. A secret club of local eccentric inventors known as the Technology Engineering Scientific Thought and Innovation Society, or ’T.E.S.T.I.S’ (it will later be renamed B.R.E.S.T.S., in part to reflect the shifting gender balance of it

Middle-aged Jack, arrested for drugs, strives in 6 weeks to repair marriage, curb bullying in-law, and guide stepbrother Kenny Boy, but his efforts fail as life spirals out of control.

IMDb

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23605030

Studiocanal will re-release actor and comedian Tony Hancock’s feature films, The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man on Blu-ray and DVD next month.

The Rebel:

Blu-ray Extras include “An Irrepressible Streak “ – comedian Paul Merton on The Rebel; “A Definitive Comedian – Diane Morgan on Tony Hancock; plus commentary with comedian Paul Merton and screenwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, a Behind the Scenes Stills Gallery, and the film’s theatrical trailer.

The Punch and Judy Man:

Blu-ray Extras: “Hard Knocks” – Paul Merton on The Punch and Judy Man; an excerpt from the ABC Series, Hancock; a BEHP Audio interview extract with Jeremy Summers; an episode of The Blackpool Show: Season 1 Episode 7 (1966), compèred by Hancock; a Behind the Scenes Stills Gallery, and Theatrical trailer.

Also:

Hancock: The Lad Himself by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page is still available direct from B7 Media, a smashing 290-

It's been tricky catching this, until now.

Trailer

This brings us to Bond jokes. Starting with Sean Connery's Bond in 1962, the suave secret agent often accompanied his punches with a punny punchline. In Goldfinger (1964), after electrocuting a would-be assassin in a bathtub, Bond says, "Shocking. Positively shocking." And now, according to some rumors, the next round of James Bond films will bring back these puns in a big way. But, honestly, have they ever really left?

According to a lengthy report in The Times, and reported by other outlets like MovieWeb, insiders suggest that the next installment in the franchise will "return to a Bond of quips and camp, a shift away from the Shakespearean heft of Craig. More traditional yet easier to sell via memes to Amazon’s younger demographic."

MovieWeb notes that this news "is sure to send a shiver down the spines of many a Bond fan." While Screenrant declares that this move would "would be a mistake." While there is some truth that the Daniel Craig era, beginning in 2006 with Casino

Close up on an undiluted bowl of water sitting centre stage. Slowly, droplets of thick, red blood fall, blotching the crystal-clear liquid – order turning into crimson chaos.

These are the opening shots in the morose, sparse vision for Shakespeare’s Scotland presented by director Max Webster, first seen at the London’s producing powerhouse the Donmar Warehouse in 2023 before hopping across to the West End last autumn.

Led by David Tennant and Cush Jumbo as the cursed couple who dabble in a spot of regicide, Webster’s revival involved audiences donning headphones, lines being whispered into microphones and given skin-crawling intensity even at the back of the auditorium.

Now in cinemas from 5 February, headphones are out and a newly rendered soundscape is in: it would be logistically impossible to give every cinema-goer a headset after all. Filmed during the Donmar run (so losing some of the refinements present during the follow-up West End season), the sound mix flits betwee

On British telly in half an hour.

The US subtitles are indeed a thing:

Sparrows Can’t Sing attempts to represent the diversity of characters and cultures that were prevalent in the East End during the early 1960s, including those typically found in the local pub, as well as local tarts, Jewish tradesmen and spivs. Consequently the dialogue became a mix of rhyming slang, London Yiddish and thieves cant. It is no surprise that it became the first English language film to be released in the US with subtitles.

Also on the Internet Archive.

A24 and Alex Garland hit a home run with Civil War earlier this year. The film had pretty good reviews but did exceptionally well at the box office. There was doing well and then there were the numbers that this movie managed to pull in. If it was one of the bigger studios, they would have looked at that $124 million worldwide and probably fired someone, but for A24, that is a win. So, it's not surprising to hear that Garland and A24 are teaming up for another war-based project. This one is just called Warfare and was written and directed by Garland and Ray Mendoza, an Iraq war veteran. Whenever a movie based on modern-day warfare comes out, you always see veterans reacting to the film and talking about what aspects of the film are accurate and what aspects aren't. This time, the team for this film appears to be trying to stop that before the film even comes out by having a veteran behind the camera. It's one thing to have someone on set as a consultant; it's another to have them beh

If you’re honest with yourself, you probably weren’t all that excited about 28 Years Later when you first heard about it. After all, as entertaining as 2002’s 28 Days Later was, 2007’s 28 Weeks Later demonstrated all the signs of diminishing returns. It wasn’t as scary. It wasn’t as memorable. And it turns out that things just weren’t as interesting six months after a zombie outbreak as they were four weeks after. By rights, 28 Years Later should continue this trend. And, when it comes out, that might still prove to be the case. As of now, though, it’s just about the most exciting film of 2025. And this is entirely down to its trailer.

By now, you know the basic formula for most movie trailers. Pick any song from the last 50 years, doesn’t matter which, and record a new version of it. The first half of it should be dreamy and distant, the second punctuated with big echoey drums that cut well with the action. Just recently, the Minecraft Movie trailer did this with Magical Mystery

Sony Pictures has released its first teaser for 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle’s long-awaited zombie apocalypse sequel.

The footage is largely black with Morse code audio and flashes of an island connected by a long land bridge, as well as statue-like figures (crucified zombies?), red skulls and red contamination symbols.

The studio is being extra cryptic with the release, taking the unusual step of putting no movie title or description on the YouTube video, but it was also tweeted from the official 28 Years Later account on X.

Internet sleuths have said the island appears to be Lindisfarne in Northumberland, which would seemingly be a smart place to take refuge during a zombie outbreak.

The official description: “Sometime after the events of 28 Weeks Later, the Rage Virus has returned, and a group of survivors must survive in a world ravaged by hordes of the infected.”

Teaser