Thomasin McKenzie Shoots ‘Totally Completely Fine’ for Stan, Sundance Now – Global Bulletin

Patrick Frater

CLOSE TO THE EDGE

Thomasin McKenzie (“Life After Life,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and Devon Terrell (“Rap Shit”) star in “Totally Completely Fine,” a series co-production between Sundance Now and Australia’s Stan, which has now started production in Sydney. McKenzie plays a young woman whose life was a mess even before she inherited her grandfather’s coastal clifftop house and became tasked with helping people who come too close to the edge. Strangely though people respond to her chaotic, nihilistic brand of psychology. The series was created and is executive produced by Gretel Vella (“The Great,” “A Sunburnt Christmas”), who co-wrote the show with Keir Wilkins (“Surviving Summer”) and Emme Hoy (stage play “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”). The series is produced at Fremantle Australia by Alice Willison (“The Other Guy”), with Nat Lindwall as executive producer. The series is directed by Lucy Gaffy (“Here Out West,” “Doctor, Doctor”) with Adrian Chiarella (“Dwarf Planet”) directing episode four. It is financed with the assistance of Screen NSW under the Made in NSW Fund. Fremantle will distribute the series internationally.

CINEMA COUPONS

China’s Film Administration is to give out RMB100 million ($14.8 million) of coupons that are intended to boost consumer visits to cinemas and help the theatrical industry recover after the effects of COVID. The coupons will be available until October. No details were available of how the coupons can be obtained of how they can be used. China’s cinemas were closed in the first five months of the pandemic in 2020 and rebounded in 2021. But much of the current year has been affected by a new COVID wave leading to rolling closures and capacity restrictions. Nationwide box office in the year to date is $3.3 billion, down 30% in comparison with 2021.

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IPO INCREMENT

China’s Bona Film Group has set RMB5.03 as the price of the new shares it is selling as part of its IPO on the Shenzhen stock market. It may sell 274 million shares, allowing it to raise up to RMB1.38 billion ($204 million) before costs.

MELBOURNE SHORTS

The ongoing Melbourne International Film Festival handed out prizes on Thursday evening for its short film program. The total prize money on offer was A$63,000 ($45,000). The City of Melbourne Grand Prix was awarded to “Murmurs of the Jungle,” directed and produced by Sohil Vaidya. Stop motion animation film “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” directed and produced by Lachlan Pendragon, won the VicScreen Erwin Rado Award for Best Australian Short.

CUT SHORT

Hong Kong’s censors have banned a 2017 animated short film “Losing Side of a Longed Place” that was to have been screened by the Ground Up Film Society. Censors objected to a one second shot of the 2014 Occupy Central activities when tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets for two months. Hong Kong’s Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration ordered the directors to delete the scene which “reconstructed the illegal occupation movement.” The producers chose not to make the cuts, meaning that it is effectively banned. In 2017, the film won the best animated short film prize at Taiwan’s Golden Horse festival in 2017. And when the film played at a festival in Amsterdam, it had been promoted and endorsed by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, as an example of the diversity of Hong Kong’s cinema culture.

FIGHT CLUB

Sports entertainment platform DAZN have snapped up Hexagone MMA global broadcast rights for the U.S., U.K., Mexico, Poland, Australia, New Zealand and more.

DAZN subscribers will be able to watch Loiseau vs Mytilinaki duke it out for the Bantamweight title and Ftouhi vs Sousa go head to head for the Strawweight title on Aug. 28, which will be broadcast live from Dubai.

They will also be able to watch all Hexagone MMA fights live and on demand through to March 2023.

The rights deal follows similar live sports broadcasting deals including with UEFA Champions League, Naciones MMA and La Liga.

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