Here’s the dealio: The studio is running a sweepstakes starting now and through June 26, offering one “Vampire Academy” fan the chance to win an exclusive prize package: a four-day trip to London, including airfare and accommodations, where the winner will spend one day hobnobbing with the cast and crew on set, and the rest of the time being escorted about by a knowledgeable tour guide to see all the city’s finest sights. Also, you’ll be given a video camera with which to document the experience and make all your friends insanely jealous.

And if you’ve been reading this with tears in your eyes and drool on your lips, and you want to go to there, you can skip over to the film’s official site and get busy with your entry. Just remember: no biting.

Are you going to enter this neat-o sweepstakes?

Source: MTV

The Weinstein Co. on Thursday debuted the first trailer from “Salinger,” the documentary about the mysterious writer, ahead of its Sept. 6 release date. And the project is indeed being framed like a mystery, with the main question centering on why Salinger suddenly stopped publishing in 1965,  at the height of his fame. As the voiceover says, “He became a modern-day Howard Hughes.”  According to the trailer, which features interviews with Ed Norton, John Cusack and author Tom Wolfe, among others, the film will tackle Salinger’s intense combat experiences in World War II, his personal demons and the fallout from his groundbreaking novel “The Catcher In the Rye.”

Whether or not the filmmaker was able to actually speak to Salinger before his death in 2010, or if he has new information about what Salinger continued writing for the next 40 years, remains unclear.

To coincide with the theatrical release, Simon & Schuster will release a book — “The Private War of J. D. Salinger,” which Salerno co-wrote with David Shields — on Sept. 3.

We caught up with Salerno on Thursday to discuss the details of his long-gestating documentary.

Question: What propelled you to spend $2 million of your own money and nine years of your life to make this film?

Salerno: Salinger is a massive figure in our culture and yet remains an extraordinary enigma.  The critical and popular game over the last half-century has been to read the man through his work because the man would not speak, but the untold story of his life is more dramatic than anything he ever wrote. And that’s the story I wanted to tell: his life. Not the myth that has burned so brightly for nearly 50 years. I had three questions when I began this project nine years ago: 1. Why did J.D. Salinger stop publishing?  2. Why did he disappear? 3. And what has he been writing for 45 years?

Can you give us some details on how you made your deals with the Weinstein Co., Simon & Schuster, and “American Masters”/PBS? Our understanding is that these are the only three parties you showed the film to.

That’s true.  I showed the film to only these three companies because they were my ideal homes for the movie and book. The negotiations were highly unusual and required a number of people to keep every aspect secret.

Why did these distributors clamor to get the rights? Are there any details of the documentary you can share with us?

When I was kid, there was a lot more mystery when you went to the movies. We have lost a lot of that mystery: moviegoers today know almost everything about a film before they go sit in a dark theater.  “Salinger” is a totally immersive experience and we have worked very hard to preserve the mystery of the film and the book until they are released in September.

As a result, you’re not going to see the best parts of the film in the trailer, you’re not going to know months ahead of the release the names of Salinger’s friends who speak for the first time, and we’re not going to release galleys of the book.  A lot of the media around the film naturally is focused on “The Catcher in the Rye,” which has sold more than 65 million copies, but Salinger had a fascinating life before “Catcher” was published and an even more fascinating life after.  The moments that truly defined Salinger — from the beaches of Normandy, where he landed on D-Day, to a bunker in New Hampshire, where he lived with the Glass family — are covered in unprecedented fashion.

Were you surprised by what you uncovered in research? Is Salinger the same man you thought he was when you started your project?

At this point I would say that making the film and co-writing the book with David Shields strengthened many beliefs I had about Salinger and changed many others.  He is an infinitely richer, more complex, more contradictory, and more fascinating human being than I could ever have imagined when I began this project. It’s the complexity that stays with me: Salinger produced exquisite works of fiction while in perpetual freefall. I’m struck by the myriad connections between Salinger’s personal life and his strikingly autobiographical art.  I’m thrilled that people are so excited about the trailer, but the trailer is only a small glimpse of the film.

Give us one reason why non-Salinger fans would want to see your movie.

This is not a literary biography designed to play only to die-hard Salinger fans.  This is a mystery thriller.  For two hours in the film and 750 pages in the book, you are on an investigative journey, putting the pieces of the puzzle together one by one.   This is history through a contemporary lens.  The big questions are what happened to J.D. Salinger and why, and the film and book answer those questions and many others.

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Weinstein Co. has inked a deal for Stephen Frears’ Philomena, paying $6.5 million for rights in the U.S., Canada and Spain.

The film stars Judi Dench as Philomena Lee, an Irishwoman who searches for the son she was forced to give up for adoption. It’s based on BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith‘s 2009 book, “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.”

British comedian Steve Coogan directs and stars as a journalist who helps Lee search for her son in the film, which he co-wrote with Jeff Pope.

Philomena is being shopped to distributors at Cannes’ Marche du Film by Pathe International and BBC Films, the standalone moviemaking unit of the U.K. public broadcaster.

The drama is produced by Coogan, Gabrielle Tana and Tracey Seaward and executive produced by Baby Cow’s Henry Normal, BBC Films chief Christine Langan and Pathe’sFrancois Ivernel and Cameron McCracken.

Natascha Wharton oversaw the film for the BFI’s Film Fund.

It marks a return to the big screen for Frears after Lay the Favorite last year. His directorial effort for HBO, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, will unspool May 22 in a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The film, directed by 26-year old Ryan Coogler, is about the last day of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old, African-American Bay Area resident who was shot to death by a BART transit police officer in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009. Grant was unarmed at the time of the shooting.

The officer who shot him was charged with murder. However, the officer claimed he mistook his gun for his taser when he shot Grant, and the jury convicted him of involuntary manslaughter.

Riots and protests broke out in the Bay Area after the verdict was handed down.

Right before “Fruitvale Station” started filming, the Trayvon Martin case came to prominence. Martin, an African-American, was shot by a community watch member, generating huge media attention in the United States.

“It happened right before I read the script, which made me stop and go, wow, this is so relevant,” star Michael B. Jordan (“The Wire,” “Chronicle”), who plays Oscar Grant, said of the Martin shooting.

“We thought, my God, this is so topical. We have even more of a reason to make this movie because it happens too often,” Melonie Diaz, who plays Sophina, Oscar Grant’s girlfriend, told CNBC.

“Fruitvale Station” is Ryan Coogler’s first feature film, but he had some big-name support in the form of Academy-Award winner Forest Whitaker, who signed on to produce the film, and fellow Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, who played Wanda, Grant’s mother.

“Octavia had just won an Oscar when I had finished writing the script…and my agent suggested her [for the role] and I was like, man you’re crazy. Let’s try it,” Ryan Coogler said.

Spencer did sign up for the part, and had nothing but praise for Coogler.

“It was Ryan’s first full-length feature, but you knew you were in very capable hands when you read the script, it was so amazing,” Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer said.

The film was shot in 20 days during July 2012 on what Coogler calls “no money.” He said the entire reason he made the film was to get Oscar’s story told and share who he was as a person.

‘Fruitvale Station’ was picked up for distribution by The Weinstein Company, and though it’s only May, Academy Award buzz is already in the air for the film and its star, Michael B. Jordan.

Fruitvale Station is released in the United States on July 12th.

Source: CNBC

It might as well have been the unofficial start of the 2013 Oscar race. In what has become an annual Cannes ritual, impresario Harvey Weinstein summoned a crowd full of press and buyers Friday night to the Majestic Hotel for a show-and-tell spotlighting upcoming features from The Weinstein Company.

Admitting that when he and his brother Bob first tried to recreate the success they had enjoyed at Miramax by founding TWC seven years ago, they hit a rocky patch, he celebrated their turn-around, saying, “Last year was as good a year as we ever had at Miramax.”

Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook, which Weinstein first trumpeted at last year’s Cannes, broke through at the box office and also took home Oscars. And as Weinstein introduced trailers and clips from TWC’s 2013 slate, it looks as if his cupboard is again bursting with potential awards contenders. There’s The Butler, Lee Daniels’ portrait of a long-serving White House butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, with a host of celebrity cameos, coming to theaters Aug. 16; August: Osage County, the John Wells-directed adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a dysfunctional family, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, set for a Nov. 8 release; Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman as the actress-turned-monarch, which is scheduled for an awards-qualifying run beginning Dec. 27; and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, with Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela and Naomie Harris as his wife Winnie, produced by Anant Singh.

To sweeten the pot further, TWC concluded a $6.5 million deal Thursday, picking up U.S., Canada and Spain rights to Stephen Frears’ Philomena, starring Judi Dench in the true story of an Irish woman searching for the son she was forced to give up for adoption, although it did not immediately announce a release date.

Friday night, Weinstein lavished special attention on Grace, noting it was the seventh movie he’s made with Kidman, who skipped out from her jury duties for a moment to attest, “I got to know Grace very, very well, researched her and fell in love with her.” With that she headed off to a jury meeting, “hopefully,” cracked Weinstein, “to decide which movie of mine wins the Palme d’Or — I’ve certainly given [jury head] Steven [Spielberg] enough money over the years.”

Clips from Grace showed Kidman-as-Grace attempting to settle into the role of a lifetime, only to be tempted by a return to the screen when Alfred Hitchcock — this time around played by Roger Ashton-Griffiths — shows up to offer her the starring role in Marnie.

Weinstein enthused over Shane Salerno’s Salinger, a new documentary about J.D. Salinger, which, from the snippets of the movie shown, appears to argue that the reclusive author never stopped writing and left several completed manuscripts behind when he died.

He showed off four films he has playing in the festival: James Gray’s period movie The Immigrant, starring Marion Cottillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, both of which are in the official competition: Ryan Coogler’s Sundance hit Fruitvale Station, which proved a sensation when it played the Certain Regard sidebar Thursday night; and David Lowery’s outlaw drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, for which TWC is handling foreign. Calling Rooney Mara, who appears in that movie to the stage when the presentation ended, he teased he’d love to make Charade 2 with the Audrey Hepburn-like actress.

The presentation also included footage from David Frankel’s One Chance, in which James Cordon plays Paul Potts, the British tenor who vaulted from obscurity when he won Britain’s Got Talent. And it included a trailer for Wong Kar Wai’s martial arts pic The Grandmaster, opening in the U.S. on Aug. 23.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The Weinstein Company is in advanced negotiations to acquire all U.S. rights to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 3D adventure pic “The Young and Prodigious Spivet,” in what will be one of the highest-profile deals inked at Cannes.

Adapted from Reif Larsen’s novel by Jeunet and his scribe partner Guillaume Laurant (“Amelie”), the English-language “Spivet” centers on a 12-year-old boy (Kyle Catlett) with extraordinary skills who leaves his family in Montana and takes off on a cross-country adventure to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. to receive a prize.

Helena Bonham Carter and Kathy Bates star in the film, Jeunet’s first English-language pic since 1997′s “Alien: The Resurrection.”

It’s also the director’s first 3D pic and he said that he studied movies including Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” to prepare “Spivet.”

Pic will be digitally remastered by Imax and will be released in France Oct. 16.

Jeunet’s Paris-based Tapioca Films, Epithete and Filmarto produced the film in association with Gaumont, which has French distribution and international sales rights. CAA packaged and negotiated the deal.

“Spivet,” which lensed in Alberta, Canada, pre-sold at script stage to a many territories last Cannes and Gaumont is closing most outstanding territories.

Earlier in the market, The Weinstein Co. inked multi-territory deals on Saul Dibb’s WWII drama romance “Suite Francaise,” starring Michelle Williams, Matthias Schoenaerts and Kristin Scott Thomas; and Stephen Frears’ “Philomena,” toplining Judi Dench, Steve Coogan and Charlie Murphy.

Source: Variety

The subtitled movie, set in France in 1958, centers on Rose (Deborah Francois), a small-town girl who applies for a secretarial position at an insurance office run by the sleek, fast-talking Louis (Romain Duris).

“She’s a disaster, but when she types, she’s fast, strong and focused,” Louis says of her secretarial skills.

He comes up with the idea to enter her in speed-typing contests, and the two start to have feelings for one another as she blazes her way through the competitions.

The problem? He thinks she should focus on her skills instead — and he also harbors an affection for his childhood sweetheart, played by Oscar nominee Berenice Bejo (The Artist).

The Hollywood Reporter film critic Jordan Mintzer called the movie “Mad Men meets The Artist” in his review out of the Rome International Film Festival last year.

“This impressive debut feature from writer-director Regis Roinsard is boosted by terrific lead turns from Romain Duris and Deborah Francois, as well as some stunning old-school cinematography from [The Artist director] Michel Hazanavicius regular Guillaume Schiffman,” he wrote.

THR has the first look at the trailer. The film, distributed the Weinstein Co., hits theaters Sept. 6.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Starring Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer, “Fruitvale Station” tells the true story of Oscar Grant (Jordan), who was shot and killed at age 22 by a BART police officer at the Fruitvale station in Oakland, Calif. on New Year’s Day in 2009. Grant’s death was caught on video thanks to cell phone cameras focused on his arrest, and the footage sparked outrage around the country. “Fruitvale Station” deals with the last day of Grant’s life.

“The pressure of playing a real person is 100-times greater [than normal],” Jordan, best known for his work on “Friday Night Lights” and in “Chronicle,” told HuffPost at Sundance. “One day, his daughter is going to watch this movie. That was something I constantly thought about. His mom is going to watch this movie. I didn’t want to let anybody down. At the premiere in Sundance on Saturday, his aunt stood up and said, ‘You know, Mike, there were certain times in the movie where I couldn’t tell Oscar from you,’ and that’s the biggest compliment I ever could have gotten.”

The Weinstein Company is set to release “Fruitvale Station” on July 26. Below, find the film’s new theatrical poster, debuting exclusively here at HuffPost Entertainment and on our sister site, Moviefone.

Source: Huff Post

“Fruitvale,” which won the festival’s Grand Jury and Audience awards in January, is set to hit the big screen on July 26 — three months before it was initially slated to debut at the box office. The Weinstein Co., which purchased the drama for $2 million at Sundance, quietly changed the film’s release date last month.

Starring newcomer Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale” is based on the 2009 shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, an African American who was killed by a BART transit police officer in Oakland. The movie received rave reviews when it screened at Sundance, inspiring early Oscar buzz. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who had his directorial debut “Don Jon’s Addiction” play at this year’s fest, tweeted this after seeing the film:

The move to July is somewhat unconventional, given that award-season contenders are typically released between October and the end of the year. Eight of the nine best picture nominees at the 2013 Academy Awards hit theaters during that three-month time period, and the only Oscar contender that came out earlier in 2012 was “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” another Sundance favorite that debuted in June.

The Weinstein Co. is no doubt hoping to replicate the success of “Beasts” — which also earned an Oscar nod for director Benh Zeitlin and actress Quvenzhané Wallis — or other past rare summertime critical darlings like “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Midnight in Paris.”

“We want to take advantage of the counterprogram slot in the summer,” said Erik Lomis, the independent studio’s head of theatrical distribution. “It’s a very powerful movie and it has a chance to catch the zeitgeist in a more effective way. And there are certainly plenty of films that have come out in the summer that have gotten end-of-year accolades.”

Source: Los Angeles Times

Source: Huff Post