International Insider: Tokyo Tales, Israel-Gaza Crisis Continues; All3Media Sale Latest

Happy Friday, Insiders. Jesse Whittock on board to guide you through the big news items of the week. Read on and sign up for the newsletter here.

Tokyo Tales

Local talent in abundance: First, we go to Zac Ntim in Japan for a report on the Tokyo International Film Festival… The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF – no, not that one) is underway in its first completely unrestricted, post-Covid-19 edition. It’s been a long time coming. Proceedings opened Monday with a well-attended opening ceremony followed by a screening of Perfect Days, the Tokyo-set Cannes title from German filmmaker Wim Wenders, who is also serving as the jury president of the festival’s main competition. This year’s competition has a strong focus on local talent, with three films from Japan in the main competition — the same number as from China. The festival’s centerpiece masterclass sessions almost entirely feature local talent. Participants include Zhang Yimou, who also picked up the fest’s Lifetime Achievement Award; Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda; Hong Kong actor Tony Leung; and filmmakers Gu Xiaogang and Mouly Surya, who will pick up the festival’s Kurosawa Akira Award at the closing ceremony. You can read coverage from Days of Being Wild and 2046 actor Leung’s sold-out masterclass here, in which he addresses his long-standing working relationship with director Wong Kar-Wai.

Word from the top: “Being in Asia, we are a little far away from Europe, so I want to put more emphasis on Asian countries that are close to Japan, like China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, or even Iran or India,” TIFF Chairman Ando Hiroyasu told Deadline of his plans for the festival’s future when we grabbed him for an interview. This has translated into big numbers elsewhere. Hiroyasu revealed the number of films shown at TIFF has “increased by 25%” this year but the biggest difference from previous editions is the number of international visitors. “Last year, only 104 people came from abroad. This year, that number is almost 2,000, including journalists and people associated with the films and the tourists coming to Japan for the festival,” he said. “That is a big jump, so we are coming back to normal.” In a wide-ranging chat, he also revealed a desire to move the timing of the young festival to a “better position” within the congested calendar, noting he currently begins collecting films in July and August — “holiday season,” as Hiroyasu put it.

“The world is in love with Japan”: Global expansion was the central topic of the festival’s annual industry conference hosted by the Motion Picture Association. The session featured names such as Toho Tombo producer Georgina Pope, Netflix Director of APAC Content and Studio affairs Debra Richards, producer Niv Fichman and Ruriko Sekine of the Japan Film Commission. Pope began the session with a keynote, telling the room of industry professionals that “the world is in love with Japan” but to harness this interest, the country must address a series of key lapses in official film infrastructure. Pope said one of the main issues is the country’s nascent incentive system. “We are so far behind our neighbors, and be under no illusions, our neighbors, especially in Southeast Asia, are big, looming competitors for the Japan-based industry,” she said. “A lottery system does not work. A shared purse does not work. Producers need a predictable, robust, easy-to-understand system like they have in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, or like our fiercest competitor, Thailand.” Intriguingly, Pope added that she recently escorted The White Lotus creator Mike White on a location scouting mission in Japan, with ambitions for the third season of the HBO show to shoot in the country. However, White and producers ultimately passed up Japan for Thailand’s generous production incentive and stunning scenery. “Sadly, it’s not an isolated incident,” said Pope. Read here for more.

‘Godzilla’ rises: TIFF runs until November 1, with the closing film being Toho’s Godzilla Minus One from director Yamazaki Takashi, which locked UK-Irish distribution this past week. “This new film is very well made,” Ichiyama Shozo, TIFF Programming Director, told us. “It’s a kind of homage to the first Godzilla film in 1955. I was very moved by the film. It has a very strong anti-war message, and that’s why I decided to show it. Audiences will love it, I’m sure.”

Israel-Gaza Crisis Continues

“Important to explain our process”: The tragic conflict in the Middle East is now nearing its third week as casualties continue to mount, and the reverberations of the violence have dominated much of the news agenda everywhere from politics to entertainment. We began the week with a modicum of good news as cable TV reported a handful of Israeli hostages had been released, and Hollywood figures signed a letter praising President Joe Biden’s role in the mediation. There was less effusive talk around the WGA, which was one of the few U.S.-based media organizations that had not officially condemned the Hamas-backed attacks on Israeli soil. On Monday, the Screenwriters Guild of Israel said its U.S. counterpart’s silence was “considered a stand,” in what was a damning public statement. The guild’s East Coast arm claimed this was a matter of policy — with so many journalists among its membership, public statements would only hinder their work, it argued. The line didn’t wash with The Hurricane screenwriter Dan Gordon, who quit over the “repugnant” position. Just minutes after Dominic Patten’s report on Gordon landed, the WGA West backtracked and released a statement saying it was “horrified by the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7” and apologized for the previous weeks of silence. At the time of writing, the WGA East had not altered its position.

Social media posts: Over in the UK, United Agents Head of Comedy Kitty Laing found herself in hot water after reposting a spate of messages about the conflict. Laing, who represents the likes of Katherine Ryan and Jamie Demetriou, was called out on X by Borat Subsequent Moviefilm writer Lee Kern, leading United to launch a full investigation as Laing hurriedly apologized. The situation mirrored that of CAA’s Maha Dakhil, who was forced to resign from the agency’s board after reposting an Instagram post that said: “You’re currently learning who supports genocide.” Like Dakhil, Laing was stood down from her executive-level duties but has kept her job. Elsewhere in the UK, BBC Director General Tim Davie was also forced to defend the BBC’s independence in front of the influential Conservative 1922 Committee, explaining why the broadcaster’s news reports do not refer to Hamas as “terrorists,” while ITV News apologized for platforming an Iranian state TV journalist who had separately praised Hamas’ attack on Israel as “a moment of triumph.” Collectively, the week’s events remind everyone how delicate the situation is in the Middle East.

Also read: At Mipcom last week, Max sat down with Nadav Palti, one of the few Israeli delegates who attended the confab. He explained that he had made the trip to Cannes to show “we will not let [Hamas] win.” Read the fascinating report here.

All3Media Sale Latest

Best and final offer?: Much of speculation on the Croisette and late-night industry chatter at the infamous ‘Booze Alley’ last week at Mipcom Cannes centered on who will snap up UK super-indie All3Media. As the event came to a close, Max and I got word that the on-off sales process for the Warner Bros. Discovery and Liberty Global-owned firm had moved a stage closer to completion. The auction that kicked off in September is down to a final group: Banijay, Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company and Goldman Sachs — the first time the latter’s name has been connected with a deal. ITV, which came mighty close to a deal earlier this year, continues to monitor the situation, our sources say. The reported valuation is around £1B ($1.2B), but we hear debt was a major issue for ITV, while there are concerns over the price tag, so there’s a way to go yet. Dealmaking is always a tough process but hopefully it’s all done in the right spirit while subterfuge and dark arts remain solely with All3’s global unscripted smash The Traitors. 

AFM Energy Rising

Market trading: AFM begins next week in LA at the new venue of Le Méridien Delfina, with hundreds of distributors and packagers descending on the Santa Monica hotel to sell, sell, sell. They’ll be doing so with the actors strike still shrouding Hollywood, and packages proving harder than ever to pull together with stars unwilling or unable to put their names to projects. Even in that context, our film team has been hard at work bringing you news of the biggest packages and pre-market dealmaking. A surprise project Andreas revealed on Wednesday is Kevin Costner’s big-budget Warner Bros title Horizon: An American Saga, which German sales firm K5 International will be selling. Concourse Media has the Utkarsh Ambudkar-starring The Book of Jobs, while Dev Patel will feature in a pair of movies, horror Rabbit Trap and Wicker, in which the BAFTA winner will co-star alongside Olivia Colman. There’s also noise around The Process, which Halle Berry is starring in and producing; dystopian sci-fi Conception starring Keira Knightley; and Novocaine, featuring The Boys star Jack Quaid. LA-bound buyers will be particularly keen to dip into our full pre-market coverage, which you can find here.

Something To Binge On

‘Accounts’ payable: The chances of an Australian streaming sitcom about an injured dog and an ill-suited but sweet couple becoming one of the most-talked about global shows should be slim. But that’s exactly what happened with Colin From Accounts. The show has established Foxtel streamer Binge as a player in the original content game, and writing is now well underway for a secoond season. Earlier this month, I exclusively spoke with Alison Hurbert-Burns, Binge’s Executive Director, about the show and others from the Binge/Foxtel stable as the pay-TV giant launched its 2024 slate. She talked Colin, outlined how the content ecosystem works, paid tribute to late colleague Brian Walsh, who unexpectedly passed away earlier this year, and revealed Binge’s first feature film original, How to Make Gravy starring Hugo Weaving. Read on.

The Essentials

🌶️ Hot One: The BBC has boarded Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s drama set in a Birmingham university.

🌶️ More heat: UTA signed Monster filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda and Belgium’s Baloji.

🌶️ Spicy deal: Disney is set to offload most of its Indian business to rival Reliance Industries, valuing the biz at $10B.

🌴 Survivor: Max sat down with execs who are rebooting the reality behemoth in the UK after two decades.

🛑 No-go: Channel 4 refused to release findings from an independent report assessing if the UK network is anti-racist or not.

🤝 Festival: Ghana’s African Cinema Summit unveiled its speaker line-up.

🧩 Rejigged: Georgia Arnold’s exit from Paramount after 25 years sparked a restructure at the firm’s Social Impact division.

🎱 Snooker loopy: David Beckham’s Studio 99 is making an Amazon doc about snooker genius Ronnie O’Sullivan.

👀 First look: At Erin Moriarty in Raindance competition title Catching Dust.

Zac Ntim contributed to this week’s Insider