The St. Petersburg Intl. Media Forum has announced its opening and closing films for the upcoming event. The Cannes prize-winning Canadian film “Mommy” will open the forum, while Jennifer Lawrence’s “Serena,” from Oscar-winning director Susanne Bier, will close the proceedings. Xavier Dolan’s fifth film, “Mommy” examines the familial issues between an estranged mother and son, and stars Anne Dorval. “Mommy” won the top Jury Prize at the 67th Cannes Film Festival.“Serena,” which stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, is set in depression-era North Carolina and follows a couple’s life as they try to manage their timber empire. The screening will mark the film’s the world premiere. The forum kicks off Oct. 1 in Russia. The annual event is organized by Roskino with support from the St. Petersburg government.The event will take place from October 1st – October 10th.
EXCLUSIVE: Fox has just closed a deal with Bryan Singer to direct X-Men: Apocalypse, the next installment of its billion-dollar Marvel mutants franchise. This will be Singer’s fourth installment as director; he hatched the franchise with the first two films for Fox, and came back to direct this year’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. That latter film, which meshed the original trilogy cast with the one from X-Men: First Class, grossed $746 million worldwide, the most of any of the films. Singer’s participation in the new film had been rumored, but his deal is now done.
The new film is being scripted by Simon Kinberg from a story written by Singer, Kinberg, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris. Singer and Lauren Shuler Donner are producing with Kinberg and Hutch Parker. Production begins early next year, and the film will be released May 27, 2016.
Apocalypse takes place a decade after Days of Future Past and is a seamless next step in the story. The altering of time has unleashed a new and uniquely powerful enemy. Charles (James McAvoy), Erik/Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) are joined by young Cyclops, Storm, Jean and others as the X-Men must fight their most formidable foe yet: an ancient unrelenting force determined to cause an apocalypse unlike any in human history. The universe continues to expand with characters, and maybe this is the one where Channing Tatum comes aboard as Remy LeBeau, better known as Gambit, which has been widely rumored even by the Foxcatcher star himself. This is Fox production chief Emma Watts’ baby, but Daria Cercek is overseeing for the studio, and Jason Taylor will oversee for Singer’s Bad Hat Harry. Singer is repped by WME.
We’ve uploaded untagged & HQ photos of Jen at the iHeart Radio Music Festival in Vegas last night! Enjoy!
There will be no Oscar three-peat for the red-hot team of Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, whose “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle” snagged the duo Oscar nominations in 2012 and 2013. The Depression-era drama “Serena” — filmed back in 2012, between the other two films — will be sitting out this year’s Oscar race, the film’s US distributor, Magnolia Pictures, confirmed to The Post on Monday.
Cooper plays a North Carolina lumber tycoon with a past and Lawrence his unhappy wife in the film, which was shot in the Czech Republic. “Serena” was hotly anticipated to be an Oscar contender last year, but the Hollywood Reporter reported in December that it was just being screened for potential distributors following a protracted editing period.
“Serena” is scheduled to have its world premiere at the London Film Festival in October and will begin rolling out in Europe shortly thereafter. But although it will be eligible for the British Academy Awards, a Magnolia spokesperson confirmed there are no plans for even an Oscar-qualification run at the end of 2014 before “Serena” hits US theaters sometime in 2015.
However, fans will be able to see J.Law and Cooper separately on the big screen before 2014 is out. She’s back on Nov. 21 with the latest installment of her franchise, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” and Cooper stars as a Navy SEAL in Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” slated for an Oscar-qualification run beginning Christmas Day.