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Exclusive: Howzat! Angel City director Arlene Nelson is helming cricket doc Floodlight about the journey of a new Women’s Premier League (Wpl) team in India.

Floodlight follows the mix of seasoned and emerging Indian cricketers who play alongside world-class players for the Up Warriorz in India’s Wpl, which launched in 2023 and is the female equivalent to the money-spinning Indian Premier League.

Global media and and entertainment company Art&m is producing, with UTA attached for worldwide sales in an unusual TV distribution move for the U.S. agency. Jinisha Sharma from Capri Global and Dipti Agrawal and Tushar Apshankar from Tudip Entertainment are series co-producers and Art&m’s Arnab Chakraborty is showrunner.

Filmed across the UK, Australia, Dubai and India, the series looks at the Wpl’s global impact and the figures driving the growth of women’s sports. The Wpl offers its stars some of the...

Exclusive: MRC is set to independently finance The Gallerist, Cathy Yan’s new film starring the previously announced Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega.

The company also today officially confirmed the remaining cast for the film, which includes Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers), Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction), Emmy nominee Zach Galifianakis (Only Murders in the Building), Golden Globe nominee Daniel Brühl (The Franchise), Grammy nominee Charli xcx (I Want Your Sex), and Oscar and Tony winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (Wednesday).

Written by Yan (Birds of Prey) and James Pedersen (High Heat), the film follows a desperate gallerist who conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami. It’ll be produced by Ash Sarohia and Jonathan King from Concordia Studio; Sophie Mas and Portman from MountainA; Tom McCarthy and Rae Baron...

Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, are in talks to buy a majority stake in Angel City Fc, the professional women’s soccer club based in Los Angeles, a source confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.

Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, has previously been the largest shareholder of the team. If the investment from Bay and Iger finalizes, the team will have a valuation of more than $300 million, per Semafor, making it the highest valued women’s soccer club.

Bay, who is the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is said to be taking the lead on the investment.

The women’s soccer club was launched in 2020 by Natalie Portman, venture capitalist Kara Nortman and entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, with a number of notable celebrity investors including Ohanian’s wife, Serena Williams, as well as America Ferrera, Jessica Chastain, Christina Aguilera, Billie Jean King,...

Exclusive: Natalie Portman has joined the voice cast for French director Ugo Bienvenu’s upcoming animated feature Arco about a boy who uses rainbows to travel through time and his adventures as he gets stuck in the wrong era.

Portman is also producing with Sophie Mas under their joint Paris and New York banner MountainA with Félix de Givry at Paris-based Remembers.

Taking its cue from the fantasy premise that rainbows are time machines, the movie revolves around 10 year old rainbow-child Arco, who lives in the distant future, 2932.

His maiden journey in his multi-colored suit does not go to plan. He loses control and veers off course to land in a near future, 2075, where Iris, a girl the same age as Arco, witnesses his fall and then makes it her mission to get him home.

Arco

Arco is the first feature for Bienvenu after short films Maman and L’entretien and comic books.

Arlene Nelson will direct a documentary series on Indian Women’s Premier League cricket team U.P. Warriorz, it was revealed on the sidelines of the Asian TV Forum and Market (Atf).

The men’s Indian Premier League (Ipl) is one of the most lucrative properties in world sport. In June 2022, Viacom18, a TV and streaming group backed by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani, paid $3 billion to win an online auction for two packages of digital rights to the men’s Ipl cricket. Disney, which held the TV and digital rights to Ipl for the past five seasons, won only the broadcast TV rights, but agreed to pay $3.01 billion for them.

The Women’s Premier League launched earlier this year and also proved to be enormously popular. The city-based team franchise rights were sold for $572 million and the media rights for $116 million.

Nelson recently directed “Angel City,” a three-part HBO documentary...

Exclusive: Bria Samoné Henderson (The Good Doctor), Stakiah Lynn Washington (Primo), Tonya Pinkins (Red Pill), and Kim Estes (Dexter) have joined the cast of Angel City, the debut feature from filmmaker Noel Braham.

Braham, who is also head of LA’s growing Micheaux Film Festival, penned the screenplay and will direct with Courtney L. Branch producing and Mario Contini set as director of photography. Sherri Martin, Dale Martin, Hadassah McGrew, and Michael Knapp serve as executive producers. Principal photography is set to begin in Los Angeles in April.

The film’s full synopsis reads: Angel City follows the journey of Ace, an optimistic rideshare driver in Los Angeles with big dreams of becoming a star. Obsessed with finding his big break, he grapples with the looming specter of homelessness, struggling to make ends meet, and his determination is put to the ultimate test when he’s suddenly evicted from a hostel.

Natalie Portman is shining a light on Angel City Football Club in “Angel City”.

HBO announced their new documentary on Thursday, which will tell the inspirational story of Angel City Football Club’s first season in The National Women’s Soccer League.

“Sometimes you dream impossible dreams and you let them go away and you’re kinda like, ‘Oh, that’s silly.’ But then sometimes someone you love and respect goes, ‘No, that’s a good idea. Keep going,” Portman narrates in the opening of the official teaser.

Read More: Natalie Portman Series ‘Lady In The Lake’ Temporarily Shuts Down After Threats Against Crew

The docuseries will go behind the scenes of the Los Angeles-based professional women’s soccer team’s rise to glory in their first season in 2022. The club was founded and led by an all-female team, with Portman at the head.

The original three-part documentary series will...