Director Mark Pellington and producer Tom Gorai of Los Angeles-based Pellington/Gorai have signed with bicoastal/international Propaganda Films for exclusive representation in spots and music videos. The deal also give Propaganda first-look rights to all Pellington/Gorai’s feature film, television and internet projects. In other Propaganda news, the company has committed to the Hollywood redevelopment push, signing a 10-year lease for a 30,000-square-foot office building in the heart of the city. The interior of the two-story building will be demolished, and a new space will be designed. The company’s four current Hollywood locations will be consolidated into the new site by early fall. The complex will include offices, production suites, editing bays and a state-of-the-art screening room. It will house Propaganda’s commercial, music video, talent management, television, film and new media divisions, in addition to Satellite’s spot and music video divisions…. Word is that director Richard D’Alessio is joining New York-headquartered Shooting Gallery Productions….Director Boris Damast has joined the directorial roster of bicoastal Celsius Films…..Feature filmmaker John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Pecker) is making his spot debut via bicoastal The Industry: a more.com assignment for Citron Haligman Bedecarre, San Francisco….Denver animation studio Celluloid has added directors/designers Dan Yaccarino, Stacey Steers and Cathy Joritz, director Bill Kopp, and designers Aaron Augenblick and David Zweig….Stu Kuby has joined JSM, New York, as director of production….Bicoastal Johnson/Burnett Studios is opening a production office in Toronto this month. Tania Smunchilla, former VP, marketing/sales for The Post Group, Toronto, has been named to manage the new Johnson/Burnett, Toronto, operation….Bicoastal/international marketing communications company Pittard Sullivan has teamed with Goldman Productions, Cincinnati, to launch a joint venture audio company, RipTide Music. Richard Goldman, founder of Goldman Productions, will serve as CEO/president of RipTide Music, which has signed composer David Logan….
Harris Dickinson Toys With Ambiguity In “Babygirl” While Keeping a Secret From Nicole Kidman
Harris Dickinson was nervous to approach Nicole Kidman.
This would not necessarily be notable under normal circumstances, but the English actor had already been cast to star opposite her in the erotic drama "Babygirl," as the intern who initiates an affair with Kidman's buttoned-up CEO. They'd had a zoom with the writer-director Halina Reijn, who was excited by their playful banter and sure that Dickinson would hold his own. And yet when he found himself at the same event as Kidman, shyness took over. He admitted as much to Margaret Qualley, who took things into her own hands and introduced them.
"She helped me break the ice a bit," Dickinson said in a recent interview.
On set would be an entirely different story. Dickinson might not be nearly as "puckishly audacious" as his character Samuel but in the making of "Babygirl," he, Kidman and Reijn had no choice but to dive fearlessly into this exploration of sexual power dynamics, going to intimate, awkward, exhilarating and meme-able places. It's made the film, in theaters Christmas Day, one of the year's must-sees.
"There was an unspoken thing that we adhered to," Dickinson said. "We weren't getting to know each other's personal lives. When we were working and we were the characters, we didn't veer away from the material. I never tried to attach all of the history of Nicole Kidman. Otherwise it probably would have been a bit of a mess."
His is a performance that reconfirms what many in the film world have suspected since his debut seven years ago as a Brooklyn tough questioning his sexuality in Eliza Hittman's "Beach Rats": Dickinson is one of the most exciting young talents around.
Dickinson, 28, grew up in Leytonstone, in East London — the same neck of the woods as... Read More