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The Sundance Institute’s Documentary Fund is readying to hand out nearly $1.4 million in 2022 grants ahead of the 20th anniversary of Sundance’s Documentary Film Program. The $1,396,500 in unrestricted grant money is going to 35 projects in various stages of production. Recipients come from 31 countries, and of the 14 U.S. films, all are helmed by at least one BIPOC or have a BIPOC lead producer (or both). Two of these projects are directed by Indigenous filmmakers....

Italy’s theatrical box office is finally showing some encouraging signs after long lagging behind other European countries in terms of post-pandemic returns. In early September, during Venice, Italy’s culture ministry issued an alarming report showing that in 2022 more than 60% of the country’s population did not go to the movies. But shortly after the fest local motion picture association ANICA and Italy’s exhibitors launched a five-day event called Cinema in Festa offering discounted tickets at participating theaters across the country that has been a resounding success. The Sept. 18-22 initiative (modeled on National Cinema Day in the U.K. and U.S.) drew 1.2 million admissions and $3.9 million in box office revenue which represents a $2.1 million jump compared with the previous frame. This take is all the more significant since tickets went for $3.40, which is roughly half price....

A “digital twin” of Bruce Willis was created by the deepfake company Deepcake to be used in an advertisement for the Russian telecoms company MegaFon. The engineers processed a dataset composed of 34,000 images of Bruce Willis and made his ‘digital twin’ for the series of MegaFon ads,” Deepcake does not own the rights to Willis’ image — or to his “digital twin.” “The rights to Bruce Willis’ image [and] to his Digital Twin belong to Bruce Willis and to him only.”k...

Academy Award winner Danny Boyle is set to helm a stage adaptation of “The Matrix,” incorporating hip hop dance choreography. Boyle’s “Free Your Mind” is a Warner Bros. Theater Ventures-licensed project set to open at the new Manchester, U.K. arts venue, Factory International. The “large-scale immersive performance” will debut in October 2023. “Combining the hip-hop choreography of hundreds of dancers with the latest immersive design, the production will stretch across the building’s ultra-flexible spaces, responding to them and harnessing the collective energy of the moment.” Michael “Mikey J” Asante is composing the music for the dance show while Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy is choreographing. Boyle’s longtime collaborator Tracey Seaward will produce. Poet/playwright Sabrina Mahfouz (“Noughts & Crosses”) and artist Es Devlin are also on board to write and provide large-scale sculptures, respectively. The show was commissioned by Factory International....

The Edinburgh International Film Festival, one of the U.K.’s premiere film events, is to “cease trading immediately,” with its parent charity, the Centre for the Moving Image, going into administration. The CMI, which also runs Edinburgh’s Filmhouse Cinema and Cafe Bar and the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen, announced on Thursday that all three of its operations would close with immediate effect, citing rising costs and reduced trade. “The charity is facing the perfect storm of sharply rising costs, in particular energy costs, alongside reduced trade due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. The combination and scale of these challenges is unprecedented and means that there was no option but to take immediate action.” the CMI said in a statement. The 75th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival ran Aug. 12-20 this year, with incoming creative director Kristy Matheson at the helm. It opened with the U.K’s premiere of Charlotte Wells’ acclaimed debut and Cannes hit Aftersun, starring Paul Mescal...

Ticket prices have increased at least 20 percent since 2019, for an average price of $11. The changing market conditions related to the current release schedule include different levels of attendance by families and older audiences; that makes announcing an adjusted price difficult. Meaning: If there were more movies, more kids and more senior citizens would be in attendance  and that would drive down the average price with their ticket discounts. Box office in 2022 currently stands at 66 percent of 2019, many films that would once go to theaters now debut on streamers, COVID hasn’t gone away, and theaters are still trying to claw back their audiences. However, in one way the market is utterly unchanged: Prices continue to rise...