HBO, the acclaimed television network, has officially given the green light to the comedy series “The Franchise,” as announced by Amy Gravitt, Executive Vice President of HBO Programming and Head of HBO & Max Comedy Series. This highly anticipated series features an impressive ensemble cast led by Himesh Patel and Aya Cash, along with previously announced stars Jessica Hynes, Billy Magnussen, Lolly Adefope, Darren Goldstein, Isaac Powell, Richard E. Grant, and Daniel Brühl. “The Franchise” is a half-hour comedy that hails from the creative minds of Sam Mendes, Armando Iannucci, and Jon Brown.
Set in the comedic realm of an unloved franchise movie, “The Franchise” dives headfirst into the battle for relevance in a chaotic and unconventional cinematic universe. This series unveils the clandestine pandemonium lurking behind the scenes of superhero filmmaking, leaving viewers to ponder: what exactly goes into the making of the cinematic sausage? With the utmost humor and candor,...
Set in the comedic realm of an unloved franchise movie, “The Franchise” dives headfirst into the battle for relevance in a chaotic and unconventional cinematic universe. This series unveils the clandestine pandemonium lurking behind the scenes of superhero filmmaking, leaving viewers to ponder: what exactly goes into the making of the cinematic sausage? With the utmost humor and candor,...
- 8/10/2023
- by Morgan Hall
- TV Everyday
YouTube‘s latest original “follows four unheard voices from across the globe as they journey to Rome for an unprecedented climate dialogue with Pope Francis.”
The platform has largely shuttered its in-house production efforts, but still makes the occasional (often education- and/or activism-themed) original. The Letter: A Message For Our Earth is the latter—a film inspired by the pope’s 2015 letter “Laudato Si’,” in which he called for “swift and unified global action” to combat global warming.
Per YouTube, the “four unheard voices” meeting with Pope Francis include Arouna Kande from Senegal; Cacique Dadá from Brazilian Amazon; Greg Asner and Robin Martin from the U.S.; and Ridhima Pandey from India.
“The contributors each represent a different community impacted by climate change, and their stories bring together important perspectives from underrepresented voices in the global debate about climate change,” YouTube said in a press release.
The Letter is...
The platform has largely shuttered its in-house production efforts, but still makes the occasional (often education- and/or activism-themed) original. The Letter: A Message For Our Earth is the latter—a film inspired by the pope’s 2015 letter “Laudato Si’,” in which he called for “swift and unified global action” to combat global warming.
Per YouTube, the “four unheard voices” meeting with Pope Francis include Arouna Kande from Senegal; Cacique Dadá from Brazilian Amazon; Greg Asner and Robin Martin from the U.S.; and Ridhima Pandey from India.
“The contributors each represent a different community impacted by climate change, and their stories bring together important perspectives from underrepresented voices in the global debate about climate change,” YouTube said in a press release.
The Letter is...
- 10/6/2022
- by James Hale
- Tubefilter.com
Armando Iannucci is returning to HBO once again.
The network has ordered a pilot for “The Franchise,” a new satire which will see the “Veep” creator turn his eye for institutional dysfunction toward an industry that has no shortage of it: Hollywood. The series will follow the behind-the-scenes drama on the set of a “dysfunctional, nonsensical, joyous hellscape of franchise superhero movie-making,” as the cast and crew of a fictional franchise wonder if their jobs have any meaning, per the announcement.
The script was written by Jon Brown and Keith Akushie, with Iannucci collaborating with them on the pilot story. Iannucci will serve as an executive producer alongside Sam Mendes, who is also directing the pilot. Pippa Harris, Nicolas Brown, and Julie Pastor are also producing.
The pairing of Iannucci and Mendes is an exciting one for fans of British film and television. The two have never collaborated before, but...
The network has ordered a pilot for “The Franchise,” a new satire which will see the “Veep” creator turn his eye for institutional dysfunction toward an industry that has no shortage of it: Hollywood. The series will follow the behind-the-scenes drama on the set of a “dysfunctional, nonsensical, joyous hellscape of franchise superhero movie-making,” as the cast and crew of a fictional franchise wonder if their jobs have any meaning, per the announcement.
The script was written by Jon Brown and Keith Akushie, with Iannucci collaborating with them on the pilot story. Iannucci will serve as an executive producer alongside Sam Mendes, who is also directing the pilot. Pippa Harris, Nicolas Brown, and Julie Pastor are also producing.
The pairing of Iannucci and Mendes is an exciting one for fans of British film and television. The two have never collaborated before, but...
- 8/8/2022
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
“Veep” boss Armando Iannucci’s newest comedy – “The Franchise” – has been ordered to pilot at HBO, with Sam Mendes set to direct.
The half-hour comedy is set in the world of superhero movie-making, and Jon Brown is the showrunner.
Here’s the logline: “A hopeful crew trapped inside the dysfunctional, nonsensical, joyous hellscape of franchise superhero movie-making. If and when they finally make the day, the question they must face — is this Hollywood’s new dawn or cinema’s last stand? Is this a dream factory or a chemical plant?”
Also Read:
HBO Max Shape-Shifts: What We Know for Sure – and What We Don’t | Analysis
Mendes executive produces for Neal Street Productions, while Iannucci executive produces for Dundee Productions. Brown is also an EP. Keith Akushie and Marina Hyde are both writers and EPs.
Other executive producers for Neal Street include Pippa Harris, Nicolas Brown and Julie Pastor
Brown,...
The half-hour comedy is set in the world of superhero movie-making, and Jon Brown is the showrunner.
Here’s the logline: “A hopeful crew trapped inside the dysfunctional, nonsensical, joyous hellscape of franchise superhero movie-making. If and when they finally make the day, the question they must face — is this Hollywood’s new dawn or cinema’s last stand? Is this a dream factory or a chemical plant?”
Also Read:
HBO Max Shape-Shifts: What We Know for Sure – and What We Don’t | Analysis
Mendes executive produces for Neal Street Productions, while Iannucci executive produces for Dundee Productions. Brown is also an EP. Keith Akushie and Marina Hyde are both writers and EPs.
Other executive producers for Neal Street include Pippa Harris, Nicolas Brown and Julie Pastor
Brown,...
- 8/8/2022
- by Jolie Lash
- The Wrap
Exclusive: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, known for hits including The Two Popes, The Constant Gardener and City Of God, is launching a slate of environmental films in association with UK production firm Make Waves.
Four of the projects on the $20M documentary slate have already attracted talent and funding.
Meirelles himself will direct Soil, a feature-length documentary about the little-known microscopic world beneath our feet, which will reveal the revolutionary solutions that could help avert a planetary food crisis.
The “flagship” film on the slate is Blue Carbon, which will be directed by BAFTA and Emmy-winning filmmaker Nicolas Brown (Serengeti Rules). With 2021 Grammy-nominated DJ Jayda G as its protagonist, the feature will spotlight a movement to grow an ocean forest across the planet to help combat climate change. The film will weave together stories of ocean activists, scientists and frontline communities, and will feature music from Brazilian samba artist Seu Jorge...
Four of the projects on the $20M documentary slate have already attracted talent and funding.
Meirelles himself will direct Soil, a feature-length documentary about the little-known microscopic world beneath our feet, which will reveal the revolutionary solutions that could help avert a planetary food crisis.
The “flagship” film on the slate is Blue Carbon, which will be directed by BAFTA and Emmy-winning filmmaker Nicolas Brown (Serengeti Rules). With 2021 Grammy-nominated DJ Jayda G as its protagonist, the feature will spotlight a movement to grow an ocean forest across the planet to help combat climate change. The film will weave together stories of ocean activists, scientists and frontline communities, and will feature music from Brazilian samba artist Seu Jorge...
- 3/17/2021
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: On the heels of 1917 winning three Oscars and its soon to be $300M+ success at the global box office, Amblin Partners is reteaming with Pippa Harris and Sam Mendes’ Neal Street Productions for an adaptation of the Jess Walter New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins. Amblin takes over from Fox 2000 as the studio on the project. This is not a project that Mendes will direct. Amblin and Neal Street are currently winnowing the list of potential helmers.
Walter’s book is set in an Italian seaside village off the Ligurian Sea in 1962. There a charming young man runs a hotel with no guests, until one day an American starlet, fresh from the set of Cleopatra, appears and captures his heart. Five decades later in Hollywood, a jaded assistant to a powerhouse producer gets caught up in the magic of his story, and takes it upon herself to find a happy ending.
Walter’s book is set in an Italian seaside village off the Ligurian Sea in 1962. There a charming young man runs a hotel with no guests, until one day an American starlet, fresh from the set of Cleopatra, appears and captures his heart. Five decades later in Hollywood, a jaded assistant to a powerhouse producer gets caught up in the magic of his story, and takes it upon herself to find a happy ending.
- 2/13/2020
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
The UK producer and Bafta chair talks about her working day, first job in the industry and her desire to take a meeting with Bong Joon Ho.
Pippa Harris is the Bafta-winning producer of Sam Mendes’s First World War drama 1917.
She runs London-based film, TV and theatre company Neal Street Productions with Mendes, Caro Newling and Nicolas Brown and has a full slate executive producing series 10 of Call The Midwife for the BBC, a new Penny Dreadful spin-off Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels for Showtime, series three of Britannia for Sky Atlantic and is developing an adaptation of...
Pippa Harris is the Bafta-winning producer of Sam Mendes’s First World War drama 1917.
She runs London-based film, TV and theatre company Neal Street Productions with Mendes, Caro Newling and Nicolas Brown and has a full slate executive producing series 10 of Call The Midwife for the BBC, a new Penny Dreadful spin-off Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels for Showtime, series three of Britannia for Sky Atlantic and is developing an adaptation of...
- 2/4/2020
- by ¬0¦Pippa Harris¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
"I had never seen anything like this before..." Abramorama has debuted the official trailer for a profound documentary titled The Serengeti Rules, which first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. This fascinating, beautiful nature documentary is about a group of scientists in the 1960s who traveled all over our planet, "driven by an insatiable curiosity about how nature works." After traveling to some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth, they discovered a single set of rules that govern all life. "This film is about more than the ecology of place. Collectively, the fact that scientists have found nature working the same way all over the planet tells us that Bob (and the others) discovered something fundamental about life. Predators and keystone species may become our greatest allies in the coming fight to protect our biosphere." Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Nicolas Brown's documentary The Serengeti Rules,...
- 4/16/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
StudioCanal, fresh off the U.K. box-office success of Paddington 2, is building on its slate of family titles.
The growing studio is set to adapt Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, having teamed with Neal Street Productions, the All3Media-owned company behind TV shows such as Penny Dreadful and Call the Midwife and films including Revolutionary Road and Jarhead.
Simon Farnaby — who co-wrote Paddington 2 with director Paul King — will pen the adaptation, with Neal Street's Pippa Harris and Nicolas Brown producing.
Magic Faraway Tree — which will be the first-ever feature film based on Blyton's Magic Faraway...
The growing studio is set to adapt Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, having teamed with Neal Street Productions, the All3Media-owned company behind TV shows such as Penny Dreadful and Call the Midwife and films including Revolutionary Road and Jarhead.
Simon Farnaby — who co-wrote Paddington 2 with director Paul King — will pen the adaptation, with Neal Street's Pippa Harris and Nicolas Brown producing.
Magic Faraway Tree — which will be the first-ever feature film based on Blyton's Magic Faraway...
- 11/20/2017
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
BBC drama boss Wenger orders over 25 hours of drama.
Russell T Davies, Stephen Poliakoff and Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas have penned dramas for Piers Wenger’s inaugural slate, reports Broadcast.
The BBC drama boss unveiled over 25 hours of new drama commissions across BBC1 and BBC2 at an event co-hosted by director general Tony Hall.
The nine series, seven for BBC1, one for BBC2 and one for BBC3, join recently announced Wenger commissions including Kudos’ Gunpowder and The Forge’s Carey Mulligan-fronted crime drama Collateral.
BBC1
Doctor Who writer Davies has written A Very English Scandal, a 3 x 60-minute series directed by Stephen Frears.
Based on the book A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment by John Preston, it follows the true story of Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe’s conspiracy to kill his ex-lover Norman Scott.
Commissioned by Wenger and BBC director of content Moore, it...
Russell T Davies, Stephen Poliakoff and Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas have penned dramas for Piers Wenger’s inaugural slate, reports Broadcast.
The BBC drama boss unveiled over 25 hours of new drama commissions across BBC1 and BBC2 at an event co-hosted by director general Tony Hall.
The nine series, seven for BBC1, one for BBC2 and one for BBC3, join recently announced Wenger commissions including Kudos’ Gunpowder and The Forge’s Carey Mulligan-fronted crime drama Collateral.
BBC1
Doctor Who writer Davies has written A Very English Scandal, a 3 x 60-minute series directed by Stephen Frears.
Based on the book A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment by John Preston, it follows the true story of Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe’s conspiracy to kill his ex-lover Norman Scott.
Commissioned by Wenger and BBC director of content Moore, it...
- 5/5/2017
- ScreenDaily
Call The Midwife creator Heidi Thomas is developing a new Us-based drama about nurses.
The as-yet-untitled project is expected to be co-produced by a UK and Us channel, and will focus on a team working in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1920s.
According to Broadcast, Thomas is working with Neal Street Productions on the series, which is to be shot on location in the Kentucky mountain range.
The story will be based on the work of Frontier Nursing Service founder Mary Breckinridge, who was inspired by the district nursing systems of London and Scotland.
Breckinridge went on to lead a small team in the Appalachians, where they encountered multiple challenges including mudslides, snakes, wildcats and disease.
"In Prohibition Kentucky, the biggest killers were tuberculosis and gunfire," said Thomas.
"Men, women and children struggled to eke out an existence in a beautiful but hostile landscape – without any assistance from doctors or nurses.
The as-yet-untitled project is expected to be co-produced by a UK and Us channel, and will focus on a team working in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1920s.
According to Broadcast, Thomas is working with Neal Street Productions on the series, which is to be shot on location in the Kentucky mountain range.
The story will be based on the work of Frontier Nursing Service founder Mary Breckinridge, who was inspired by the district nursing systems of London and Scotland.
Breckinridge went on to lead a small team in the Appalachians, where they encountered multiple challenges including mudslides, snakes, wildcats and disease.
"In Prohibition Kentucky, the biggest killers were tuberculosis and gunfire," said Thomas.
"Men, women and children struggled to eke out an existence in a beautiful but hostile landscape – without any assistance from doctors or nurses.
- 10/31/2014
- Digital Spy
Carrie Brownstein currently helps flesh out the modern hipsters and weirdos of the Pacific Northwest on the IFC comedy Portlandia. But her newest writing project looks to the past: As Variety reports, Brownstein has signed on to write a film adaptation of the U.K. series Lost in Austen, which finds a modern day Brooklynite transported to the world (19th century England) of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.
Lost in Austen will be Brownstein's first film writing credit; it was one of screenwriter Nora Ephron's unfinished projects...
Lost in Austen will be Brownstein's first film writing credit; it was one of screenwriter Nora Ephron's unfinished projects...
- 8/6/2014
- Rollingstone.com
For 10 years, the Neal Street company has combined critical and popular triumphs. This autumn they're conquering the Us
On a side street near Covent Garden in central London, a production company with a startlingly varied portfolio of film, stage and TV hits has something fresh to celebrate. Founded by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris and Caro Newling in 2003, Neal Street Productions is marking its 10th birthday.
The roll call is impressive. The company is the hidden link behind the BBC's flagship The Hollow Crown Shakespeare films, the stage shows Shrek the Musical, Merrily We Roll Along and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the BBC's popular Sunday evening drama Call the Midwife.
It is a surprising mix, and one that looks more unlikely still when you realise Neal Street also ran the Bridge Project with Kevin Spacey's Old Vic, brought the acclaimed play Enron into the West End, co-produced the film Revolutionary Road,...
On a side street near Covent Garden in central London, a production company with a startlingly varied portfolio of film, stage and TV hits has something fresh to celebrate. Founded by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris and Caro Newling in 2003, Neal Street Productions is marking its 10th birthday.
The roll call is impressive. The company is the hidden link behind the BBC's flagship The Hollow Crown Shakespeare films, the stage shows Shrek the Musical, Merrily We Roll Along and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the BBC's popular Sunday evening drama Call the Midwife.
It is a surprising mix, and one that looks more unlikely still when you realise Neal Street also ran the Bridge Project with Kevin Spacey's Old Vic, brought the acclaimed play Enron into the West End, co-produced the film Revolutionary Road,...
- 10/19/2013
- by Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.