Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodóvar says that he is withdrawing from his first English-language feature, "A Manual for Cleaning Women" produced by and starring Cate Blanchett.
Almodóvar, 72, told entertainment news website Deadline Hollywood that he was unable to handle the commitment.
"It has been a very painful decision for me," Almodóvar told Deadline Hollywood. "I have dreamt of working with Cate for such a long time. Dirty Films has been so generous with me this whole time and I was blinded by excitement, but unfortunately, I no longer feel able to fully realize this film."
A new director hasn't been announced yet by Blanchett's Dirty Films production company.
Almodóvar's brother and business partner confirmed the decision in a social media post on Wednesday.
"Pedro Almodóvar is leaving the 'A Manual for Cleaning Women' project, which will continue forward with Cate Blanchett," Agustin Almodóvar, who helps his sibling run their El Deseo production company, wrote on Twitter
"A Manual for Cleaning Women" is an adaptation of the eponymous collection of short stories by American author Lucia Berlin.
Pedro Almodóvar won Oscar awards for best foreign language film for "All About My Mother" (1999) and for best original screenplay for "Talk To Her" (2002). He made his first short in English, "The Human Voice," featuring Tilda Swinton, in 2020.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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