Exclusive: Goodfellas has acquired international rights for French director Gaël Morel’s drama To Live, To Die, To Live Again set against the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, ahead of its world premiere in Cannes.
Rising French actors Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros and Théo Christine co-star as a romantically entwined trio whose youthful dalliance takes them into life-changing territory with the arrival of AIDS. While they expect the worse, the destiny of each character will take an unexpected turn.
Morel has taken inspiration from his own teenage fears around AIDS in the 1990s as well as research he did for a planned documentary on people who caught the virus and were saved at the last minute by the development of effective antiretroviral therapies.
Michèle Halberstadt and Laurent Pétin produced the film under the banner of their Paris-based film company Arp Sélection, which will also distribute the feature in France.
Rising French actors Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros and Théo Christine co-star as a romantically entwined trio whose youthful dalliance takes them into life-changing territory with the arrival of AIDS. While they expect the worse, the destiny of each character will take an unexpected turn.
Morel has taken inspiration from his own teenage fears around AIDS in the 1990s as well as research he did for a planned documentary on people who caught the virus and were saved at the last minute by the development of effective antiretroviral therapies.
Michèle Halberstadt and Laurent Pétin produced the film under the banner of their Paris-based film company Arp Sélection, which will also distribute the feature in France.
- 5/2/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Way back in 2011, Sony Pictures acquired a spec script titled The Big Stone Grid, which was written by S. Craig Zahler – who is best known these days for writing and directing the films Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. As of early 2012, Michael Mann was in talks to work on script revisions with Zahler and to direct the film. The Mann take on the material didn’t come to fruition, and four years later the project moved over to Lotus Entertainment, with Pierre Morel on board to direct. Morel couldn’t get it into production, either. Eight more years down the line, World of Reel reports that Zahler is now set to direct the film himself.
Part of the reason why Zahler has gone six years without directing a new film is the fact that the project he was pursuing, Hug Chickenpenny (an adaptation of...
Part of the reason why Zahler has gone six years without directing a new film is the fact that the project he was pursuing, Hug Chickenpenny (an adaptation of...
- 4/5/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Exclusive: Pierre Morel, the veteran action director behind Taken, has been tapped to direct a feature based on the popular racing Nft Reactor Motors from the company of the same name, Deadline has learned.
The film will be produced by Morel, Mike Bundlie and Barry Levine of Abstract Entertainment, and Renee Tab of Sentient Entertainment.
Created by artist and Abstract co-founder Bundlie, Reactor Motors‘ storyline follows geophysicist Eva Mason as she accidentally discovers a new mineral she calls Reykium while researching geothermal energy in Iceland’s volcanoes. The mineral is energetically reactive to metal which she and her team convert into the future of clean energy race cars in hopes of making it globally available. Subsequently, her team’s racing wins catch the attention of an energy conglomerate that will do anything to acquire the Reykium engine.
“Pierre is the perfect director for Reactor with his...
The film will be produced by Morel, Mike Bundlie and Barry Levine of Abstract Entertainment, and Renee Tab of Sentient Entertainment.
Created by artist and Abstract co-founder Bundlie, Reactor Motors‘ storyline follows geophysicist Eva Mason as she accidentally discovers a new mineral she calls Reykium while researching geothermal energy in Iceland’s volcanoes. The mineral is energetically reactive to metal which she and her team convert into the future of clean energy race cars in hopes of making it globally available. Subsequently, her team’s racing wins catch the attention of an energy conglomerate that will do anything to acquire the Reykium engine.
“Pierre is the perfect director for Reactor with his...
- 3/13/2024
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Cena and Brie display zero chemistry a dumb adventure yarn set in a fictional South American state. It feels like it should be a satire of the genre, but isn’t
Taken director Pierre Morel gets it really, really wrong with this dumb, crude and not remotely entertaining action-comedy. The idea isn’t too bad: it’s about a former US special forces soldier who gets caught up in a South American coup after being hired as bodyguard to a journalist. You can picture Armando Iannucci running with the satirical possibilities, or a more serious-minded film-maker wading knee-deep into moral murk, John le Carré style. Instead, Morel, working with a script by Jacob Lentz, squanders the basic concept – not to mention the gym time that wrestler-turned-actor John Cena put in to get the upper body of a Greek god.
Cena plays Mason Pettits, a military veteran struggling with post-army life...
Taken director Pierre Morel gets it really, really wrong with this dumb, crude and not remotely entertaining action-comedy. The idea isn’t too bad: it’s about a former US special forces soldier who gets caught up in a South American coup after being hired as bodyguard to a journalist. You can picture Armando Iannucci running with the satirical possibilities, or a more serious-minded film-maker wading knee-deep into moral murk, John le Carré style. Instead, Morel, working with a script by Jacob Lentz, squanders the basic concept – not to mention the gym time that wrestler-turned-actor John Cena put in to get the upper body of a Greek god.
Cena plays Mason Pettits, a military veteran struggling with post-army life...
- 12/25/2023
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Director Pierre Morel is the man who made Liam Neeson into an action icon. His movie Taken established the middle-aged character actor as perhaps the 21st century’s biggest action icon, and it was an unlikely transformation. Truly, Morel is an ace action director, with his film District 13 being one of the best action movies of the last twenty years. Since Taken, he’s specialized in transforming actors into action stars, directing Sean Penn in The Gunman and Jennifer Garner in Peppermint. Both were pretty grim movies, so now Morel is turning to somewhat lighter material with Freelance.
In it, John Cena plays a former special forces operative who’s become a suburban dad and lawyer. He seeks to recapture some of the excitement of his youth by taking a job as a bodyguard for a high-profile journalist (Alison Brie) who’s interviewing a dictator. In the middle of the assignment,...
In it, John Cena plays a former special forces operative who’s become a suburban dad and lawyer. He seeks to recapture some of the excitement of his youth by taking a job as a bodyguard for a high-profile journalist (Alison Brie) who’s interviewing a dictator. In the middle of the assignment,...
- 10/30/2023
- by Chris Bumbray
- JoBlo.com
Pierre Morel among producers. Production in Australia set for early 2024.
XYZ Films has boarded worldwide sales on Sentient Entertainment’s shark thriller Alphas starring Martin Henderson and will introduce to buyers at AFM next week.
Liam O’Donnell will direct the Australia-uk co-production and Taken and District 13 director Pierre Morel will produce alongside his partners Renee Tab and Christopher Tuffin of Sentient, and Matthew Chausse and Drew Bailey.
Principal photography is scheduled to start in Australia in early 2024 on Alphas, which takes place in a quiet surfing community where killer whales are enlisted to fend off great white sharks after a series of attacks.
XYZ Films has boarded worldwide sales on Sentient Entertainment’s shark thriller Alphas starring Martin Henderson and will introduce to buyers at AFM next week.
Liam O’Donnell will direct the Australia-uk co-production and Taken and District 13 director Pierre Morel will produce alongside his partners Renee Tab and Christopher Tuffin of Sentient, and Matthew Chausse and Drew Bailey.
Principal photography is scheduled to start in Australia in early 2024 on Alphas, which takes place in a quiet surfing community where killer whales are enlisted to fend off great white sharks after a series of attacks.
- 10/26/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Plot: A former special forces operative (John Cena) turned family man lawyer is tempted by an old friend to take a job as a bodyguard for a famous journalist (Alison Brie) who’s set to interview a dictator.
Review: Pierre Morel will forever be celebrated as the director who turned Liam Neeson into an action star. His movie, Taken, remains (by a long shot) the best movie in that franchise. Now, Morel is dipping his toe into a different genre, the action-comedy. While Freelance has some well-conceived action sequences and a game cast, there’s a big problem – the movie isn’t funny.
Indeed, Cena can be hilarious, given the right material. He has a twinkle in his eye that makes him personable despite his hulking physique, with Blockers an excellent example of that. But he feels like the wrong fit for this. Given that the premise seems to promise...
Review: Pierre Morel will forever be celebrated as the director who turned Liam Neeson into an action star. His movie, Taken, remains (by a long shot) the best movie in that franchise. Now, Morel is dipping his toe into a different genre, the action-comedy. While Freelance has some well-conceived action sequences and a game cast, there’s a big problem – the movie isn’t funny.
Indeed, Cena can be hilarious, given the right material. He has a twinkle in his eye that makes him personable despite his hulking physique, with Blockers an excellent example of that. But he feels like the wrong fit for this. Given that the premise seems to promise...
- 10/26/2023
- by Chris Bumbray
- JoBlo.com
In his otherwise astute Cahiers du Cinéma review of About Dry Grasses, Josué Morel describes the main character of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest epic work, Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), as a frustrated, badly loved, and, at times, angry man, who’s “perhaps even a pedophile.” While it can be seductive, sometimes convenient, to reduce the ambivalence of a characterization to something so clear, the manner in which Morel pins Samet down constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of Ceylan’s commitment to capturing, among other things, the dimensions of child-adult and pupil-teacher relations in all their complexity.
About Dry Grasses involves a complaint about transgressive behavior by Samet toward one of his female students, 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bagci), with whom he’s nurtured a caring bond within an institution where any expression of affection would be fundamentally at odds with its pedagogy and ethos. The plot of Ceylan’s film isn’t...
About Dry Grasses involves a complaint about transgressive behavior by Samet toward one of his female students, 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bagci), with whom he’s nurtured a caring bond within an institution where any expression of affection would be fundamentally at odds with its pedagogy and ethos. The plot of Ceylan’s film isn’t...
- 9/7/2023
- by Diego Semerene
- Slant Magazine
John Cena and Alison Brie get caught in the middle of political unrest in the first trailer for the forthcoming action-comedy movie Freelance.
The Relativity Media film from director Pierre Morel (Taken) hits theaters Oct. 6. It centers on a Special Forces operator (Cena) resurfacing from retirement to escort a journalist (Alison Brie) to interview the dictator of a foreign country, which is embroiled in a dangerous coup that begins shortly after their arrival.
During the trailer, Brie tells Cena, “I’m with the president of a country in the middle of a coup. This is the scoop of a lifetime.” He bluntly responds, “You gotta be alive to have the scoop of a lifetime.”
Later, after they find themselves fleeing from peril, Cena asks, “Are you still excited to cover a coup?” Brie understatedly replies, “Less and less, honestly.”
Morel directs from a script by Jacob Lentz (Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The Relativity Media film from director Pierre Morel (Taken) hits theaters Oct. 6. It centers on a Special Forces operator (Cena) resurfacing from retirement to escort a journalist (Alison Brie) to interview the dictator of a foreign country, which is embroiled in a dangerous coup that begins shortly after their arrival.
During the trailer, Brie tells Cena, “I’m with the president of a country in the middle of a coup. This is the scoop of a lifetime.” He bluntly responds, “You gotta be alive to have the scoop of a lifetime.”
Later, after they find themselves fleeing from peril, Cena asks, “Are you still excited to cover a coup?” Brie understatedly replies, “Less and less, honestly.”
Morel directs from a script by Jacob Lentz (Jimmy Kimmel Live!
- 8/21/2023
- by Ryan Gajewski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
“Taken” director Pierre Morel is turning his lens to action-comedies with latest film “Freelance.”
Alison Brie stars as a washed up journalist who travels to Colombia for a high-profile interview with a local dictator. She hires a private security guard, played by John Cena, to protect her while abroad; yet of course, things go horribly wrong and the duo are on the run.
The official synopsis reads: An ex special forces operative stuck in a dead-end desk job (Cena) reluctantly takes on a gig to provide private security for a struggling journalist (Brie) as she interviews a ruthless — but impeccably dressed — dictator (Juan Pablo Raba). When a military coup breaks out just as she’s about to get the scoop of a lifetime, the unlikely trio must figure out how to survive the jungle, the assassins, and each other in order to make it out alive.
Alice Eve and Christian Slater also star.
Alison Brie stars as a washed up journalist who travels to Colombia for a high-profile interview with a local dictator. She hires a private security guard, played by John Cena, to protect her while abroad; yet of course, things go horribly wrong and the duo are on the run.
The official synopsis reads: An ex special forces operative stuck in a dead-end desk job (Cena) reluctantly takes on a gig to provide private security for a struggling journalist (Brie) as she interviews a ruthless — but impeccably dressed — dictator (Juan Pablo Raba). When a military coup breaks out just as she’s about to get the scoop of a lifetime, the unlikely trio must figure out how to survive the jungle, the assassins, and each other in order to make it out alive.
Alice Eve and Christian Slater also star.
- 8/21/2023
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
‘Canary Black’: First-Look Image From Action Thriller Starring Kate Beckinsale & Rupert Friend — AFM
Principal photography has begun in Croatia on the action thriller Canary Black, starring Kate Beckinsale and Rupert Friend (Anatomy of a Scandal). Production has also shared the first-look image from the project, which you can check out above.
The action flick is directed by the Taken and Peppermint filmmaker Pierre Morel from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy (Inheritance). Producer, financier, and sales firm Anton (Greenland) holds world sales rights and will be selling the film at AFM this week.
The film’s plot follows a top CIA operative, Avery Graves (Beckinsale), who is blackmailed by terrorists into betraying her own country to save her kidnapped husband. Cut off from her team, she turns to her underworld contacts to survive and help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want. Betrayed at every turn, she must rely on her cutting-edge training and primitive fighting skills in a deadly race to deliver...
The action flick is directed by the Taken and Peppermint filmmaker Pierre Morel from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy (Inheritance). Producer, financier, and sales firm Anton (Greenland) holds world sales rights and will be selling the film at AFM this week.
The film’s plot follows a top CIA operative, Avery Graves (Beckinsale), who is blackmailed by terrorists into betraying her own country to save her kidnapped husband. Cut off from her team, she turns to her underworld contacts to survive and help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want. Betrayed at every turn, she must rely on her cutting-edge training and primitive fighting skills in a deadly race to deliver...
- 11/1/2022
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
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.