How Matty Met Saadi -- and Got Him to Invest in Movies
May, 20, 2010 7:52 pm | Comments On #Matthew Beckerman, Moamar Gadhafi, MoviesPreviously: Gadhafi Goes Hollywood: Dictator’s Son Gets In With $100M
Jersey boy Matthew Beckerman is no world traveller.
And when he set out to start a movie investment fund, he didn’t really plan to go much further than his cousins.
The 33-year-old former music promoter raised about $1 million from friends and family to get Natural Selection started in 2008. And he succeeded in securing $20 million in further commitments to launch a proper film production fund later that year.
That was in August 2008. By September 2008, as the global financial meltdown shook the world, “every person I had backed out,” he recalled. “It was a bloodbath.”
“I finally went to my grandfather. When he said ‘I can’...
Read MoreGadhafi Goes Hollywood: Dictator’s Son Gets In With $100M
May, 20, 2010 2:23 pm | Comments On #Moammar Gadhafi, MoviesEXCLUSIVE
Here are two names you don’t expect to see together: Moammar Gadhafi. Hollywood.
But guess what – they’re in bed, making movies.
Hollywood’s latest financial backer is the middle son of the Libyan dictator, Saadi Gadhafi, who is backing a movie production fund called Natural Selection to the tune of $100 milllion.
Mathew Beckerman, the CEO of Natural Selection, secured Gadhafi"s backing barely one year ago, and has lately won the Libyan’s agreement to accelerate his investment from an initial plan of 20 films over five years.
“He loves movies,” explained Beckerman in an interview in his suite on the seventh floor of the Carlton Hotel at the Cannes Film Festival,...
Read MoreCannes Roundup: Yachts, India's Reliance and a Nuclear Doc
May, 19, 2010 7:01 pm | Comments On #Cannes, Countdown to Zero, Doug Liman, Fair Game, IM Global, Movies, Reliance Entertainment, Tom BernardRead full Cannes coverage at Report From Cannes and WaxWord Cannes.
The real business in Cannes this year is going on in the port, where the yachts of Big Money are parked – French-Tunisian media financier Taraq Ben Ammar, ex-Microsoft mogul Paul Allen (who has Mick Jagger aboard) and the Isle of Man fund. Agents and producers parade in and out, paying homage and aggressively offering friendship to cash-rich newbies like Pennsylvania billionaire Norton Herrick.
The minds of Hollywood are particularly concentrated on where the money lies at a time when money is particularly scarce.
This was reflected in the...
Read MoreExclusive: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Explains 'Biutiful'
May, 18, 2010 9:40 am | Comments On #Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Biutiful, Cannes, festival 2010, Javier Bardem, MoviesCannes has been buzzing about the latest work by writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu -- “Biutiful,” starting Javier Bardem as a modern-day Job in the slums of Barcelona.
In an exclusive video interview with TheWrap, the director explains how the main character of the film, Uxbal, came to him, and why he chose to make a film about the underbelly of Western society, the immigrant wage slaves and the lives of desperate people on the edge.
As Uxbal, Bardem is a man navigating a sordid world of poverty, corruption and immigrant desperation. Uxbal struggles to balance humanity with the needs of survival. tries to feed his children as a dealer in street contraband, and offers up his gift for speaking with newly-departed spirits to families in pain.
"I wrote the role for (Bardem)," Inarritu says in the interview. "It’s a...
Read MoreDeals: Endgame to Finance Drama With Ellen Page, Ron Nyswaner
May, 18, 2010 4:03 am | Comments On #Cannes, Cynthia Wade, Ellen Page, Endgame Entertainment, Freeheld, Jim Stern, Movies, Ron NyswanerRead full Cannes coverage at Report From Cannes and WaxWord Cannes.
Jim Stern's Endgame Entertainment announced Tuesday it would be financing a feature film starring Ellen Page ("Juno"), and written by Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia") drama based on the Oscar-winning documentary short "Freeheld."
The film tells the story of a gay New Jersey car mechanic (Page) who struggles to get medical and work benefits after her girlfriend, a police detective, is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher will produce, along with Stern, Vie Entertaiment's Kelly Bush and Cynthia Wade
Full news release below:
Los Angeles, Cannes (May 18, 2010) – Academy Award®-nominated...
Read MoreInarritu's 'Biutiful' Channels Intensity of Modern Society
May, 17, 2010 8:10 am | Comments On #Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Biutiful, Cannes, Javier Bardem, MoviesRead full Cannes coverage at Report From Cannes and WaxWord Cannes.
Cannes finally turned interesting on Monday with the debut of a piercing work by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, “Biutiful,” starting Javier Bardem in a performance that left audiences in tears and applause.
The film tells the story of a Spanish man, Uxbal, navigating a sordid world of poverty, corruption and immigrant desperation. Uxbal tries to feed his children as a dealer in street contraband, and offers up his gift for speaking with newly departed spirits to families in pain.Cannes Festival Thus Far: A Magnificent Anachronism
May, 16, 2010 10:23 am | Comments On #cannes film festival 2010, MoviesWith the Cannes Film Festival halfway over, the annual celebration of cinema feels more and more like “a magnificent anachronism,” which is what Fox cochairman Tom Rothman aptly called it on Saturday night.
As the independent film world continues its painful convulsion, France continues to gather the best of film around the world while insistently ignoring the encroachment of new technology and shorter attention spans. (A five-hour opus on Carlos the Jackal (below)? Bring it on!)
Film evidently still matters to many, but the most distinctive presence along the Croisette this year are the foreign comers on the financing side – Doha, Qatar, announcing a new film finance fund, Abu Dhabi beefing up its film production, Singapore financing...
Read MoreCannes Parties: Vanity Fair Buzz at the Hotel du Cap
May, 16, 2010 9:30 am | Comments On #Cannes, Gucci, Hotel du Cap, Movies, vanity fairLet it not be said that despite the crushing absence of any stellar films so far the Hollywood folks do not know how to have a good time.
The Vanity Fair-Gucci party at the legendary Hotel du Cap in Cap d’Antibes was the white-hot ticket with everyone from Queen Noor of Jordan to Martin Scorsese to Google’s Eric Schmidt.
It's far away enough from Cannes, deep behind iron gates, so the paparazzi can't get near it.
Inside, the power elite of the entertainment industry buzzed about the food, their travel arrangements and, we can only assume, global warming. Precious little, truth to tell, about the movies.
Harvey Weinstein gave up nothing about the still-pending deal to buy Miramax. Meg Ryan wore a...
Read MoreDiego Luna: 'We're Pushing Kids to Be Adults Before They Should'
May, 16, 2010 8:09 am | Comments On #Abel, Cannes, Diego Luna, MoviesRead full Cannes coverage at Report From Cannes and WaxWord Cannes
Diego Luna, 30, ('Y Tu Mama Tambien') shows an extraordinarily sensitive side in directing his first feature film, “Abel.”
The movie is about a nine-year-old boy who process the trauma of his father’s disappearance by believing that he is an adult.
Luna sat down with TheWrap to talk about the origin of the film, the loss of his own mother at age 2, and the impact of fathers leaving their families in Mexico to seek jobs in the United States. "We're pushing kids to be adults before they should. They have to deal...
Read MoreCannes Festival Dismayed by New Polanski Charge (updated)
May, 15, 2010 11:40 am | Comments On #Cannes, Charlotte Lewis, Gilles Jacob, Movies, Roman PolanskiRead full Cannes coverage at Report From Cannes and WaxWord Cannes.
Update:
Director Woody Allen continued to defend Polanski when questioned about his colleague on French radio.
Allen said Polanski "was embarrassed by the whole thing," ''has suffered" and "has paid his dues." He said Polanski is "an artist and is a nice person" who "did something wrong and he paid for it."
But according to the AP, it was unclear whether Allen was aware of the new allegations when he made the remarks on France Info radio from the Cannes Film Festival. Allen had previously signed a petition calling for Polanski's release.
Previously:
The...
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Description
TheWrap's Editor-in-Chief reports from the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
