Apple’s feature The Banker will make its world premiere as the closing night film for the AFI Fest 2019.
The festival’s closing night gala is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 21, at the historic TCL Chinese Theatre. The Banker opens in theaters on December 6, 2019, before it debuts on Apple TV+, a new home for the world’s most creative storytellers, in January 2020.
Michael Lumpkin, director of AFI Festivals, said, “The Banker joins a remarkable group of films being released this year that openly confront centuries of racism and injustice in our country, while celebrating the brave individuals whose activism has created real change.”
Based on a true story, The Banker centers on revolutionary businessmen Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) and Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), who devise an audacious and risky plan to take on the racist establishment of the 1960s by helping other African Americans pursue the American dream. Along with Garrett’s wife Eunice (Nia Long), they train a working class white man, Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult), to pose as the rich and privileged face of their burgeoning real estate and banking empire–while Garrett and Morris pose as a janitor and a chauffeur. Their success ultimately draws the attention of the federal government, which threatens everything the four have built. The drama is directed by George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) and produced by Joe Viertel. Brad Feinstein produced under his Romulus Entertainment banner, along producers Nolfi, Mackie, Nnamdi Asomugha, Jonathan Baker and David Lewis Smith The executive producers are Jackson, Joseph F. Ingrassia, Will Greenfield, David Gendron and Ali Jazayeri. The Banker was written by Nolfi, Smith, Niceole Levy and Stan Younger from a story by Smith, Stan Younger and Brad Caleb Kane.
AFI Fest 2019 takes place November 14-21, 2019, at historic theaters in Los Angeles. Screenings, galas, and other events will be held at the TCL Chinese Theatre, the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres and the Hollywood Roosevelt, and will open with the world premiere of AFI Conservatory alumna Melina Matsoukas’s Queen & Slim. The full festival lineup and schedule will be unveiled later this month.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More