FANTASTIC BEASTS 3 SUSPENDS FILMING: The third Fantastic Beasts has shut down its shoot in the U.K. after a member of the production tested positive for COVID. “A team member from Fantastic Beasts 3 has tested positive for COVID-19,” Warner Bros. told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement, without confirming the team member's identity. “The diagnosis was confirmed as a result of required and ongoing testing that all production employees receive, and the team member is currently in isolation. Out of an abundance of caution, Fantastic Beasts 3 paused production and will be back up in accordance with safety guidelines.” The Harry Potter spinoff stars Eddie Redmayne and Jude Law. The film is due to bow July 15, 2022.
BAFTA UNVEILS LONG LIST: BAFTA has published its longlists for the 2021 Film Awards, which members will now cut down. Takeaways, via Deadline: Minari is in for foreign-language movie but not for Best Film (Another Round made both); Tenet missed both Best Film and British Film but did make Director and below-the-line categories; Spike Lee isn’t on the Director list, but Da 5 Bloods is on nine including Best Film and Screenplay; Malcolm & Marie missed everything aside from the two lead performances; zilch for On The Rocks, and fairly slim pickings for Apple in total, which only has four appearances across Greyhound and Wolfwalkers; Judas And The Black Messiah made it onto seven lists but missed Best Film and Director; The Mauritanian, The White Tiger, and The Dig made the Best Film longlist.
SUMMER HOUSE A PRESSURE COOKER? Season five of Bravo‘s Summer House was filmed in quarantine. Kyle Cook told E!: “Five seasons in I think it's kind of nice for us to have a little bit of change of pace. It was dramatically different. First of all, it's the perfect pressure cooker scenario. We basically all arrived at the house and never left. There was no longer the Friday and Sunday commute back to NYC. I've been doing this long before the show, that was a nice little gift. Sunday scaries are a lot more manageable if you're not dealing with four hours of traffic headed back to the city.”
U.S. STREAMERS BULK UP WITH NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHOWS: A new drama series Losing Alice from Israel will debut on AppleTV+ January 22nd, part of a growing trend of foreign-language films landing on streamers. HBO Max has snagged Spanish series Veneno, Italian mob drama Gomorrah, Israeli family comedy Uri and Eli; Hulu recently debuted No Man’s Land and German thriller Deutschland 89; Netflix has bowed Spain’s Money Heist and South Korea’s Kingdom. “Just five to six years ago, if you had a non-English show, in Europe for example, your market was basically limited to the dubbing territories, so Germany, Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Now you can sell it anywhere,” says Jens Richter, CEO of International at Fremantle.
