Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
July 26 - August 1st

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Apple TV+ unveiled the premiere date for its first German-language series “Where’s Wanda?” which will debut globally on Wednesday, October 2, 2024 with the first two episodes, followed by a new episode every Wednesday through November 13, 2024...

San Diego Comic-Con is back in full force this year as the Hollywood studios bring their major IP to the iconic convention after many skipped out on the 2023 event because of the dual writers and actors strikes. Streamers and TV networks have taken over the Gaslamp District again with massive ads across the major hotels like the Hilton, Hard Rock and Pendry, as well as the trains. The big winner undoubtedly is Paramount, which has splashed advertisements across what seems like the entirety of downtown San Diego. From train cars dedicated to CBS hits like Elsbeth, Tracker and Ghosts to an extreme takeover of the Hard Rock Hotel (including the restaurant) for the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants, the studio is everywhere....

You have to look hard to find a trailer  for the recent release of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, Estonia’s entry for this year’s Best International Feature Film category, on Facebook and Instagram — and forget about clips. Even though the lyrical documentary about women in an Estonian sauna has won numerous top prizes around the world—Best Directing at Sundance 2023; Best Documentary at San Francisco International; Best Documentary at the 2023 European Film Awards; Best Cinematography at IDFA 2024—many of the film’s artful moving images of women’s bodies were banned by Meta’s algorithms, and the U.S. distributor Greenwich Entertainment had to rely on a static image to promote the film on the platforms. Once an ad is flagged and blocked, filmmakers and marketers typically can re-submit a new version. But because the process is typically automated, it’s not always clear what is the offending material. “It’s like a game of whack a mole,” says Michael Belkewitch, Senior Director of Social Media at digital agency Submersive Media. “Is there a quick shot of someone smoking? So you cut that out. Is it the characters kissing? And then you cut that out.”...

The British Film Institute has awarded 19 new grants totaling £527,563 ($681,275) through its U.K. Global Screen Fund, aimed at boosting international prospects for the U.K.’s indie screen sector. Funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the coin is split between International Business Development and International Distribution strands. Distribution grants went to 13 films to support festival launches, including Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Sandhya Suri’s “Santosh” and Karan Kandhari’s “Sister Midnight,” all of which bowed at Cannes, and Alice Lowe’s “Timestalker,” which premiered at SXSW...

Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis, who just snagged an Emmy nomination for her critically-acclaimed turn on The Bear, is poised to receive another accolade. The American Film Institute announced today that it will present a doctorate of fine arts degree honoris causa to Curtis in honor of “contributions of distinction to the art of the moving image.” Curtis will receive the shine and the diploma during the AFI Conservatory’s commencement ceremony celebrating the class of 2024 at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre on Aug. 10...

When Gary Hustwit took his latest documentary “Eno” to Sundance in January 2024, he wasn’t riddled with anxiety about whether or not the doc about musician Brian Eno would find distribution. . “I don’t think many of the distributors were ready to take on something like ‘Eno,'” he says. “I am also still innovating the software needed to dynamically stream a film that’s different every time it plays. So, there was a lot of interest in the movie, but I think basically they just wanted me to make a director’s cut and release it like a normal film and that wasn’t something that I was interested in doing at the stage. When we are doing the live events we make the documentary on stage with Brain One, our generative computer system,” says Hustwit. Brain One — an anagram of Brian Eno — produces a new version of the film based on the “Eno” archive of 500 hours of footage plus the interviews Hustwit shot over several years. Brain One is hooked up to a theater’s projection system and a new version of “Eno” is created....