Screen Global Production

Venice Film Festival’s industry event Venice Production Bridge (VPB, September 3-9) has expanded steadily since launching 15 years ago. New for this year is VPB Location Market, a home for film commissions and studios to meet producers looking to shoot internationally.

UK actor Martin Freeman is to star in US filmmaker Dakota Gorman’s thriller Speak Up, with UK sales agent Altitude introducing the project to buyers in Toronto. After a brutal car accident, a young woman wakes up in a small-town emergency room where a brain injury has rendered her unable to speak. Isolated and without a voice, she must save herself from the very man who tried to kill her: her doctor. Altitude is positioning the project in the vein of Phone Booth, Panic Room and Watcher.

Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) honoured film and television at the group’s 13th annual awards in Los Angeles over the weekend. Warner Bros’ motion picture awards category winner One Battle After Another directed by Paul Thomas Anderson shot across California’s Humboldt County, Sacramento, Stockton, Eureka, Arcata, and San Diego, and in El Paso, Texas.

Top executives from the UK studios sector have joined the speaker lineup for this year’s Screen Summit, ‘Financing the future of UK film’, taking place at the BFI Southbank in London on September 29. Tickets are on sale now. The Early Bird offer of £245 + VAT ends next week. Joining the summit lineup is Noel Tovey, managing director at Sky Studios Elstree, which opened in 2023 and features 13 sound stages across 27.5 acres, and has hosted productions such as Wicked and Jurassic Park: Rebirth.

The scorching weather over the past few months has prompted local and international productions filming in France to rework their summer shooting schedules, rewrite budgets and requisition what seemed like every available air-cooling system in the country. For independent producers with limited budgets and insurance policies that would not pay out for extreme weather stoppages or postponements, this meant finding safe strategies to keep the cameras rolling. “We couldn’t interrupt filming.

The stiff competition among European countries for tax incentives to attract inward investment is causing considerable problems for local producers, according to a panel of film funders from Sweden, Croatia, Austria and Estonia. “The incentive war - if we pour so much tax money into an automatic funding system, at the very end we lose the IP, and it goes elsewhere,” said Mikael Fellenius, CEO of Sweden’s Film i Vast, pointing to how frequently they were used by the US studios and streamers.

A new study has highlighted the potential economic impact on Los Angeles County were the $111bn Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) merger to close. The report, compiled by CVL Economics and published on Wednesday, estimates the transaction could result in the loss of 4,500 film and TV jobs in the region over the three years the companies would combine operations.

Further cast include Lee Sung-min, Lee Jun-hyuk and Yoon Kyung-ho. By Michael Rosser 19 Aug 2026 Jang Jae-hyun, the director of Korean blockbuster Exhuma, is set to begin filming horror Vampir this month with an all-star cast led by Yoo Ah-in. The star of Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and last year’s box office hit The Match, Yoo will play a contract killer who tracks down a mysterious pagan group at the request of a clergyman.

British Film Institute (BFI) CEO Ben Roberts said “we have to find a way to get more money into the system” to ensure cultural cinema stays distinctive.

Nominees worked on films including 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'. By Ellie Calnan 18 Aug 2026 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man' source: Netflix The shortlist for the second annual UK Location Manager Awards has been unveiled, with film credits including Project Hail Mary and Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Nominees are recognised across location management, unit management, supplier services and production support.