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Thread: Anna

  1. #1
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    Anna

    Helen Mirren, Luke Evans to Star in Luc Besson's Film 'Anna'
    8:38 AM PDT 10/9/2017 by Etan Vlessing


    Getty Images (3)
    Helen Mirren, Luke Evans and Luc Besson

    Cillian Murphy and Russian model Sasha Luss are also among the cast of the new movie.
    Helen Mirren and Luke Evans are set to topline Luc Besson's Anna, with Lionsgate coming on board to co-produce and distribute.

    Anna, written and directed by Besson, will be produced by his EuropaCorp shingle and starts production in November. The film will be released under Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment label. Lionsgate UK released Besson's last movie, the big-budget sci-fi epic Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, in the U.K. market.

    Anna features Mirren, Evans and Cillian Murphy, with Russian model Sasha Luss playing the titular role of Anna.

    "We are delighted to be reunited with Luc and his EuropaCorp team on another exciting, action-packed film featuring an A-list cast,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chairman Patrick Wachsberger and president of acquisitions & co-productions Jason Constantine said in a statement.

    Marc Shmuger will produce for EuropaCorp. Peter Nichols of Lichter Grossman Nichols Adler & Feldman negotiated the deal for Besson and also reps Luss.

    Mirren is represented by CAA, Evans by WME and United Agents in the UK and Murphy by ICM Partners, The Lisa Richards Agency and Lou Coulson Associates.

    The distribution and co-production deal was negotiated for Lionsgate by Constantine, Eda Kowan, executive vp of acquisitions and co-productions, John Biondo, executive vp of business & legal affairs, acquisitions and co-productions and Elizabeth Hopkins, senior vp of business & legal affairs, acquisitions and co-productions.

    Shmuger and Aaron Michiel, executive vp of business and legal affairs, negotiated the deal on behalf of EuropaCorp.
    Sasha Luss was in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (didn't see it - did anyone here see it?) Looks like she's Luc's new ingenue muse.
    Gene Ching
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  2. #2
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    Anna (2019 Movie) Official Trailer – Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mi

    Gene Ching
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  3. #3
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    Anna (2019 Movie) Official TV Spot Trailer – Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy,



    Premieres today. Anyone going?
    Gene Ching
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  4. #4
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    Anna - Trailer 3 English (2019)

    Gene Ching
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  5. #5
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    Anna = $3.5M flop

    Does 'Anna' Mark the End of the Line for Luc Besson?
    1:00 AM PDT 6/28/2019 by Scott Roxborough


    Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
    Luc Besson

    The film's $3.5 million domestic bow was the worst-ever for the French director, who has faced sexual assault allegations and whose EuropaCorp shingle is fighting to survive amid a string of pricey flops.

    Anna was supposed to be Luc Besson's comeback movie.

    After the galactic flop that was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) — the $180 million sci-fi epic grossed just $250 million worldwide, far below expectations — Besson's new action thriller was designed to remind audiences what they love about the French action helmer.

    The film — about a young woman who becomes a KGB assassin in Cold War Russia, starring supermodel-turned actress Sasha Luss — features Besson's trademark style of hyper-kinetic, female-fronted action of the kind that made the director's Lucy and La Femme Nikita worldwide hits.

    But when Lionsgate's Summit label released Anna last weekend, the movie misfired, earning just $3.5 million in 2,114 theaters, the worst-ever bow for a Besson-directed film in the U.S.

    The flop comes at a particularly bad time for Besson, who is struggling to keep his debt-laden company, EuropaCorp, from collapse and has recently faced a flurry of #MeToo allegations.

    In May 2018, Belgian-Dutch actress Sand Van Roy filed a complaint, accusing Besson of drugging and raping her at a Paris hotel. On Nov. 28, five more women came forward in a report in French investigative magazine Mediapart, alleging sexual misconduct. In total, nine separate women have accused the director of sexual assault and harassment.

    Following Van Roy's allegations, Lionsgate put the release of Anna on hold and only confirmed a release date for the film after the Paris prosecutor's office dismissed the rape charges, saying an investigation failed to turn up sufficient evidence to support the woman's allegation.

    Lionsgate picked June 21 for Anna, giving the film a high-profile summer bow. But the distributor did the minimum in the way of promotion for the film, with no pre-release screenings for press and little-to-no media beyond trailers and a handful of TV spots.

    It's a pattern that looks to be repeated internationally. Lionsgate U.K. has done next to no marketing for the movie, which bows in Britain on July 5. Anna is nowhere to be found on the company's website or Twitter feed. Even Rambo: Last Blood, which goes out in the U.K. in September, has a bigger presence, with Lionsgate U.K. promoting the teaser trailer released last month.

    Similarly, StudioCanal, which has Anna in Germany (July 15) and Australia (Sept. 5) has done little to let Besson fans know the movie is coming.

    “There's been next-to-no marketing, no trailer push, no real news from the distributor,” says Ines Walk, editor-in-chief for Moviepilot, an online portal for German film fans. “No one really has it on their radar.”

    While the #MeToo allegations against Besson may have impacted the distributor's release strategy (StudioCanal did not respond to requests for comment), Walk says it has likely had little impact on local audiences. “#MeToo allegations have far less impact in Europe than than in the U.S.," she says. "That's why you see, sadly, that films by Woody Allen or Roman Polanski still do repetitively well here."

    Instead, Walk believes, for a younger demographic, Besson's action brand may have passed its sell-by date.

    “There seems to be a generational changing of the guard going on, with older directors losing favor among younger film fans that make up the core audience for action movies,” she argues. “It's something we are seeing, to a lesser extent, with Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan as well, this older generation of film makers are generating less excitement among our users than younger directors such as (Blade Runner 2049 helmer) Denis Villeneuve.”

    This is all bad news for Besson, who is struggling to save EuropaCorp, the production and distribution company he founded in 1996. The beleaguered firm was put under court protection in France last month and given six months to restructure its debt. EuropaCorp has been bleeding money for years — it posted a $101.2 million loss in its latest half-year results, reported in December. That follows a $93.9 million loss over the previous 12 months and a $136.5 million loss in the 12 months before that (the company did not respond to requests for comment for this report).

    The company's follow-up to box office bomb Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets was submarine thriller Kursk, which sank without a trace. The movie, starring Colin Firth, Matthias Schoenaerts and Léa Seydoux, earned just $5 million worldwide — including a paltry $775,000 in France — and failed to find a U.S. buyer.

    Last July, EuropaCorp signed a distribution partnership with Pathé, the group that bought out EuropaCorp's chain of French theaters in 2016. Pathé last month released EuropaCorp's Nous finirons ensemble, Guillaume Canet’s follow-up to his 2010 box office smash Little White Lies. The sequel grossed $22 million in France, above half that of the original. Pathé will also handle Anna's release in France.

    Besson has already sold off much of EuropaCorp's silver, offloading its French TV division for $13 million and hawking the company's Roissy Films library — some 500 titles — to French group Gaumont for an undisclosed sum. The company also cut into overhead, chopping costs 34 percent in the last fiscal year to $15.5 million. Besson even quietly shuttered his Paris-based film school last July. All this was done in order to reduce debt and refocus EuropaCorp on its core production business.

    The company confirmed it is in bailout talks with Pathé for a possible debt-for-equity swap, which would see Pathé take a majority stake in EuropaCorp in exchange for a cash infusion to allow the struggling company to restructure its debt. EuropaCorp said it was in negotiations with other potential buyers. Besson and his holding company FrontLine still own 38 percent of the company, while Chinese investors, which put $67 million into the company in 2016, hold 28 percent.

    EuropaCorp has few assets left aside from its remaining back catalog, now valued at $160 million, according to its own estimates. Besson's company, which used to release around 10 films a year, currently has no movies in production.

    The lone bright spot is EuropaCorp's TV production division, which saw revenue jump nearly 80 percent to $22.5 million last year due to delivery of NBC's Taken. Besson has three new English-language series in development: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec, Gray and American Flagg.

    But if Anna tanks worldwide in the manner it has stateside, even great TV will unlikely to be enough to save Besson's bacon.
    THREADS
    Anna
    #metoo (An Open Secret: Hollywood - Please Watch)
    Gene Ching
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  6. #6
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    How do you say 'flop' in French? 'fiasco'?

    GLOBAL JULY 25, 2019 9:09AM PT
    Luc Besson’s ‘Anna’ Flops at French Box Office, Adding to Pressure on EuropaCorp

    By ELSA KESLASSY
    International Correspondent
    @elsakeslassy


    CREDIT: SHANNA BESSON

    Luc Besson’s latest film, the Helen Mirren-starring thriller “Anna,” is failing at the French box office, dealing a further blow to his financially ailing EuropaCorp, which is in talks to be taken over by one of its lenders.

    After falling flat at the U.S. box office with a mere $7.6 million in nearly five weeks, the action-packed “Anna” has managed to gross only $3 million (€2.7 million) in two weeks in Besson’s native France, where distributor Pathe gave it a wide release backed by ample marketing muscle. It’s Besson’s second-biggest flop after “The Lady,” his 2011 biopic with Michelle Yeoh.

    The failure of “Anna” to catch fire increases the pressure on Besson and EuropaCorp, which is in negotiation to be taken over by its junior lender, the New York investment fund Vine Alternative Investments. Up till now, Besson has been regarded as one of EuropaCorp’s key selling points, but the poor performance of “Anna” may cast doubt on that idea. The studio currently has no other movies in production.


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    “Anna” was released on 620 screens across France on July 11 and has sold 436,399 admissions, including about 40,000 tickets from the sneak premieres Pathe organized. Although Pathe increased the number of screens to 818, the film’s tickets sale dropped by about 40% between the first and second week.

    Besides the poor critical reception that the film has garnered, some French journalists have noted that the movie suffered from the absence of Besson during the promotion – the helmer didn’t do any press or TV – and the fact that Besson’s reputation has been hurt from the rape accusations filed by the actress Sand Van Roy last year. A nine-month police investigation into Besson was dismissed in February. Shortly after the case was dropped, Van Roy said she filed another complaint, and her testimony has been featured in the French press, including in Le Monde newspaper, which ran a long article right before the release of “Anna.”

    Besson’s home turf is usually a safe territory for his movies to find an audience, even with English-language pics that fail to conquer the U.S. “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” for instance, sold 2.4 million admissions in two weeks in France.

    In the last decade, “Lucy” is the only film directed by Besson that has turned out to be a global box office hit.

    Pathe is releasing “Anna” in France as part of its three-year distribution deal with EuropaCorp. The two companies were previously in discussions for Pathe to take a majority stake in EuropaCorp, but those talks eventually failed.

    EuropaCorp confirmed the talks with Vine on July 14 and said negotiations were ongoing with both Vine and EuropaCorp’s senior lender, JP Morgan, which would also have to sign off on the deal.
    Anyone see this here?
    Gene Ching
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