Latest news with #Miramax
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Fantastic Four's Vanessa Kirby and 'Thunderbolts*' Sebastian Stan Unite for New Movie
After they're finished fighting off villains and saving the world, two of the biggest names in the 2025 superhero film landscape are set to team up. And they'll do so in a genre that's an extremely far cry from the Marvel world. Sebastian Stan has made the leap from popular superhero to fan-favorite after reprising his role as Bucky Barnes in Thunderbolts*. He'll now star in a new project with one of the biggest names in the highly anticipated Fantastic Four: First Steps movie, Vanessa Kirby, who'll portray Sue Storm, which is set to premiere on July 25. As Deadline first reported, Stan and Kirby will headline and produce a new film based on Australian author Amy Taylor's upcoming second novel, Ruins. The news comes after Deadline reported that Miramax won the rights to Ruins "in a competitive bid." Here's a look at the book's story, which Deadline detailed: "Ruins follows a couple whose affair with a young Greek woman over the course of a summer in Athens threatens to crack their relationship open in a story about privilege and power, desire and intimacy." It sounds exciting, to say the least, and it's also a unique project that'll showcase the broad skillset of both stars. Along with Fantastic Four: First Steps, Kirby was featured in the movie Eden with Jude Law, Ana de Armas and Sydney Sweeney. She also played The White Widow in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Stan has portrayed the character Bucky in multiple Marvel films, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He also starred in the 2024 film A Different Man, among many other projects.'Fantastic Four's Vanessa Kirby and 'Thunderbolts*' Sebastian Stan Unite for New Movie first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 12, 2025
Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Sarah Harte: Same old crap being served up with a veneer of feminist empowerment
I was on the way back last week from moderating an event in Belfast, where we discussed the staggeringly high rates of domestic and sexual abuse north and south of the border. We also explored the obvious connection between the increasing number of increasingly younger victims and perpetrators of domestic and sexual abuse with the proliferation of porn. `Catching up with the news cycle for my column on the Belfast Enterprise train, two images in the news felt depressingly relevant to what we had been discussing at the '5 Books That Could Save Your Life' event. One was of Harvey Weinstein in a New York court last Wednesday in his wheelchair, having been found guilty of sexual assault. Weinstein was previously found guilty of rape in a separate trial in California and was sentenced to 16 years in that case. He also settled a civil case against him. At the heart of much of the testimony is the claim that, as a power player in the movie industry (he co-founded Miramax film studio), he used his "unfettered power" to abuse victims. Harvey Weinstein in state court in Manhattan for his retrial on June 5 where he was found guilty of sexual assault. Picture: Charly Triballeau via AP More generally, power and control lie at the heart of all domestic and sexual abuse cases. It is never simply a matter of the perpetrator's actions in a particular case. In the dock with him will be a deeply flawed ideology of masculinity that he has been sold from birth about his right to power and control over women. The decision by around 100 women to complain about a variety of sexual assaults and rapes by Weinstein (not all complaints ended in criminal charges) fuelled the #MeToo movement. Although it initially seemed like a watershed for the feminist movement, a backlash has been underway ever since. A counternarrative in the Weinstein case is that ambitious young women, with one eye to the main chance, took advantage of the casting couch to advance their careers. However, what that narrative does not consider is the vast power disparities between someone who is a gatekeeper and someone young, hoping to advance in their nascent film career, attending a meeting in a hotel room, crossing fingers and toes that they will emerge unscathed. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced last week that his office plans to retry the rape charge against Weinstein over an alleged 2013 attack on actress Jessica Mann. The cover of Sabrina Carpenter's 'Man's Best Friend' Album. This brings us to the second image of 26-year-old pop singer Sabrina Carpenter, released during the week to promote her forthcoming album, Man's Best Friend, which is set for release in August. On her knees, Carpenter is having her hair pulled by a faceless man in a suit (the suit presumably signifying power), mimicking a dog. This image upset domestic violence survivors and organisations, among others, including (hearteningly) some young fans who were savvy enough to decode and dislike the image. From Carpenter's point of view, who is trying to promote her album, it was successful, garnering plenty of attention and discourse on social media, where opinions seemed sharply divided. I stared at the picture and felt a fleeting moment of futility thinking "God, what's the point in sharing knowledge about domestic abuse, exploring solutions when marketing teams and photographers willingly pump this damaging crap out". The more traction images like this get, the more normalised they become. Carpenter in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine has spoken about how young female artists are picked apart publicly saying that 'girl power' and 'women supporting women' should be the reality but instead 'the second you see a picture of someone wearing a dress on a carpet you have to say everything mean about it in the first 30 seconds that you see it.' Hmmm. There is truth in what she says, but images are extremely powerful. We are more likely to remember information presented in images than information presented in text, a phenomenon known as the Picture Superiority Effect. We respond to and process visual data far faster than any other type of data. Sex positive Sabrina Carpenter's tours are big on 'horny choreography', sexual innuendoes complete with glittery bodysuits, garter belts and simulated sex. Fans lap it up. Her prerogative, you might say. Have fun, Sabrina. The whole sex positive idea that women should be free to express themselves sexually is both fascinating and complicated. Sex positive commentators would have it that cranks, often bitter middle-aged feminists past their sell-by date, try to police sexual expression and slut-shame other women. Women should be able to display their bodies as they wish. Somebody wrote on X (Twitter) that 'her [Carpenter] owning and doing what she wants with her body IS feminism'. There is something in this. I could never stand over the idea of promoting modesty to young women. I'm stone-cold on the concept of moral judgment and outrage. Down that way lies something we grew up with, or at its most extreme, what is being enforced by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, questions like these are nuanced. There are often other dynamics behind a façade of sexual bravado, and 'anything goes' sex positivity is incredibly naïve without some component of critical analysis. Porn and violence against women The pornification of young people's psychosexual development is having disastrous effects. We see that vividly in the domestic and sexual abuse statistics. In January this year, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris spelt it out. Online violent pornography is driving much of the violence that gardaí are seeing in sexual assaults on women, rising levels of domestic violence, and normalising violence against women. Not all decisions we make around our sexuality are inherently empowering because not all decisions are made in a vacuum. The central question is when are choices rendered illusory by circumstances and socialisation? For example, you can say that a woman selling sex is autonomously doing so. Or you can dig deeper and say that no little girl says, 'When I grow up, I want to be a prostitute' so how did that little girl get there? And how did the guy who pays for her services get there? Carpenter's career is going gangbusters, but that image, far from satirising and subverting misogynistic tropes in a tongue-in-cheek way as some have claimed, reinforces them. It's up there with Nicole Kidman in 'Baby Girl', depicting a CEO down on her knees lapping milk from a dog bowl because a young male intern told her to. Fans argued the film advocated for middle-aged women's right to sexual pleasure. It received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by whoops and hollers. To me in both cases, a filmmaker and a photographer, try to get a rise out of us using tropes from porn. Successfully so, commercially, but you wonder at what cost culturally, because they are trafficking in a retrograde misogyny that does enormous damage, reinforcing women's submissiveness to men as the status quo. Veneer of female empowerment It's the same old sexist crap dished up in a shiny new package with a veneer of female empowerment. Fine for Carpenter and Kidman, whose success may protect them, but not so much for the regular Josephine, duped by the idea of individualist agency as a shield against exploitation. It also empowers future perpetrators to feel entitled to do to the 'bitch' what they want because an expectation is created. Messages like this is why we end up with characters like Weinstein, who was allowed to use his power in open sight to access young women's bodies in a consumerist neoliberal society that believes everything is for sale, baby, and why some young women end up finding themselves skirting a line between choice and coercion in a hotel room that ends in a courtroom.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harvey Weinstein gets mistrial on rape charge after jury drama spirals out of control
Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes retrial ended with no verdict on a rape charge Thursday as the jury foreperson refused to continue deliberating because of alleged threats from another juror — just one day after the disgraced Miramax mogul was convicted on a more serious sex rap. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber ruled that the deadlocked jury had not been able to reach a unanimous verdict on whether Weinstein, 73, raped former actress Jessica Mann inside a Midtown hotel room in 2013. 'Sometimes jury deliberations become heated. I understand this particular deliberation was more heated than some others. That's unfortunate,' Farber told the panelists, before finding a mistrial on the rape charge. The decision to call an end to the eight-week trial came after chaotic deliberations in which the panel of seven women and five men ultimately delivered a split verdict Wednesday, convicting Weinstein of one count of criminal sex act in the first degree and acquitting on a second count of that same rap. Jury dysfunction broke out last week when one juror expressed that 'playground' bullying was happening during deliberations — which leaked into the following days as the foreperson, Juror No.1, claimed that a fellow panelist verbally threatened him, telling him, 'I would meet you outside one day.' The judge ordered the jury to 'cool off' Wednesday, pausing deliberations before the partial verdict was delivered. He ordered the jurors to keep weighing the rape charge Thursday — and in the morning summoned the foreperson to the courtroom to ask him if he was able to continue working with the others. 'No, I'm sorry,' the juror said. Weinstein, who has often been reserved to moderate expressions from his black wheelchair, clapped three times when the juror refused to head back into deliberations. The judge said after in court that he spoke with others on the panel, who told him they were 'extremely disappointed' in not being able to finish their duty — while also pouring water on the foreperson's claims that deliberations were as toxic as they seemed. 'They did not describe anything that rose to the level of threats,' the judge said. As jurors were leaving the courthouse, several expressed frustration with deliberations and criticized the jury foreman, calling the jury dysfunction 'overblown.' The jury was hung on whether to convict Weinstein of rape in the third degree for allegedly assaulting Mann, who sobbed on the stand while describing the rape, and seeing Weinstein's erection-inducing drug needle in the trash afterward. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said prosecutors were ready to roll and retry Weinstein for the third time on Mann's accusation. But Weinstein's attorney, Arthur Aidala, asked for the charge to be dismissed. The judge set a hearing for July 2 to schedule a trial date. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg explained that his decision to retry the case for the third time was for 'survivors.' 'Harvey Weinstein is going to be held accountable for his conduct as to Ms. Haley, and he's facing a very significant term of imprisonment for that,' Bragg said at a press conference. 'But the jury was not able to reach a conclusion as to Jessica Mann, and she deserved that.' Mann said in a statement that she will go to bat for prosecutors and testify for a third time against Weinstein. 'I will never give up on myself and making sure my voice – and the truth – is heard. I have told the District Attorney I am ready, willing and able to endure this as many times as it takes for justice and accountability to be served. Today is not the end of my fight,' Mann said. Weinstein was convicted of criminal sex act in the first degree Wednesday for assaulting Miriam 'Mimi' Haley, a former TV production assistant, at his Soho loft in 2006. Jurors acquitted Weinstein of the same charge pertaining to the alleged rape of former Polish model Kaja Sokola, who testified that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at a Tribeca hotel in 2006, days shy of her 20th birthday. Weinstein faces a sentence of up to 25 years in prison for the conviction of first-degree criminal sex act. The rape charge he faces carries a potential sentence of up to four years in prison. The producer perv has also been sentenced to 16 years in California for raping an Italian model at a film festival in 2013. He was initially found guilty at trial in 2020 of criminal sex act and rape and given a 23-year prison sentence — but New York's highest court tossed the conviction last year. Weinstein's attorney, who bemoaned over-and-over about how ex-Miramax studio boss wasn't getting a fair trial, said that they will appeal the partial conviction. 'We have very powerful evidence that there was gross juror misconduct at this trial,' Aidala said.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Squabbling jurors return split verdict in Harvey Weinstein trial, can't agree on rape charge
Disgraced Hollywood perv Harvey Weinstein was convicted Wednesday of a top charge in his Manhattan sex-crimes retrial — but squabbling jurors so far have failed to reach a verdict on a lesser count. The shocking, if unfinished, outcome also saw Weinstein acquitted on the second top count – a twist that nonetheless likely won't keep the 73-year-old former movie mogul from spending the rest of his life behind bars. It capped nearly a week of jury deliberations marked by infighting — including hours before the partial verdict when the foreman dramatically said he felt bullied and that another juror had threatened him. This prompted Weinstein to push for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber to halt the trial — claiming he felt like he was being put at risk. 'You are endangering me, your honor. I am not getting a fair trial,' he whined. The 12 angry jurors, seven women and five men, appeared poised to be sent home, when they told Farber they had reached a verdict on two of three charges against Weinstein. The wheelchair-bound ex-Miramax studio boss held his head down when jurors announced they had found him guilty of a first-degree criminal sex act for allegedly assaulting Miriam 'Mimi' Haley, a former TV production assistant. But when Weinstein was found not guilty on the same charge for the assault of Polish former model Kaja Sokola, his head sprang up and he looked at his attorneys, as if he was surprised. Jurors didn't reach a verdict on a count of third-degree rape tied to allegations made by ex-actress Jessica Mann, and were told they'd have to come back Thursday for more deliberations. 'Frankly, it wasn't intended to be easy… but please continue to deliberate with a goal to reach your verdict,' Farber said. The Tinseltown creep's first trial in Manhattan ended with a conviction, too — in a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement against sexual violence. But New York's highest court overturned that verdict last year in a shocking decision and ordered a new trial in the same courthouse. Whatever the full verdict, Weinstein is likely to be locked up for life. The first-degree criminal sex act conviction carries a sentence of up to 25 years behind bars. The rape charge he still awaits a decision on carries a 4-year maximum prison sentence. Weinstein has also been sentenced to 16 years in California on a rape conviction there. Haley and Mann, who both testified in Weinstein's first Manhattan trial in 2020, returned for dramatic second stints on the witness stand. The trial also saw a new alleged victim, Sokola, who testified that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at a Tribeca hotel in 2006, days shy of her 20th birthday. 'For myself, it closes a chapter that caused me a lot of pain,' Sokola said after the verdict was read Wednesday. '(Prosecutors) finally put the man who deserves to be in jail, in jail, for the rest of his life.' Weinstein's first trial was marked by dramatic moments outside the courtroom, where dozens of women danced and chanted on the sidewalk in flash mob protests against sexual assault. But this time around, the circus-like atmosphere seemed largely confined to the courtroom. Weinstein's theatrical defense lawyer Arthur Aidala made nearly two dozen motions for mistrials throughout the seven-week trial and as jurors' deliberations descended into acrimony. They reached a boiling point Wednesday after the foreman asked to speak to the judge about a situation that 'isn't very good.' After a 20-minute closed-door conversation, Farber said the foreman outlined he felt threatened by another juror. 'Juror No. 1. made it very clear that he wasn't going to change his position… but he indicated that one other juror made comments to the effect that 'I would meet you outside one day' and there's yelling and screaming,' Farber said. An apoplectic, beet-red Aidala called for a mistrial and melodramatically contended, 'There's a crime going on in there.' 'I should call 911 on his behalf,' Aidala offered. Weinstein then asked to address the court, using the chance to call for an end to the fractious deliberations. But the judge swatted down Weinstein, noting he has been in law for more than 30 years and jurors fighting is not different from anything else. 'I'm not going to allow any injustice to happen to you… I am very much guarding your right to have a fair trial,' Farber told him. Soon afterward, jurors announced they'd reached the partial verdict. The foreman later said jurors reached their decision on the two counts Friday, but still were hung up on the rape charge for Mann's accusations. Mann, formerly an actress, sobbed while describing Weinstein raping her inside a Midtown hotel room in 2013, and discovering the sex fiend's erection-inducing drug needle in the trash afterward. In her own dramatic testimony, Sokola had recalled for jurors how Weinstein name dropped A-list celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow after the shocking attack, before giving his teenage victim — who had screamed in horror — a demented word of purported advice. 'He said that I have to work on my stubbornness,' Sokola said. 'I have to listen to him if I want to proceed with that career.' Haley, a former TV production assistant, told jurors that the Weinstein — who boasted the power to decide who appeared in films and who got jobs on sets — sexually assaulted her at his SoHo loft in 2006. The Finland native stormed out of the courtroom in tears during a painstaking cross-examination from Weinstein's lawyer — snapping, 'Don't tell me I wasn't raped by that f–king a–hole!' Haley, after the verdict, lambasted Weinstein's defense attorneys for inspiring chaos in the courtroom. 'The defense set a very disruptive and chaotic tone from the very start of this trial,' she said. 'I'm so grateful (the jury) saw through the nonsense and the antics. 'Testifying in the face of constant disruptions, victim shaming and deliberate attempts to distort the truth was exhausting and at times dehumanizing.'
Geek Tyrant
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Miramax Picks Up the Rights to Amy Taylor's Upcoming Novel RUINS to Make Film Set to Star Vanessa Kirby & Sebastian Stan — GeekTyrant
In a competitive bidding war, Miramax has won the rights to author Amy Taylor's upcoming second novel, Ruins , with Oscar nominees and longtime friends Vanessa Kirby and Sebastian Stan attached to headline and produce. The story follows a couple whose affair with a young Greek woman over the course of a summer in Athens threatens to crack their relationship open in a story about privilege and power, desire and intimacy. Taylor's first hit novel was Search History in 2023. Ruins is set to be released in the U.S. on August 12th, and Allen & Unwin will publish in Australia and New Zealand on July 1st. There is currently an ongoing negotiation for UK publishing rights. Stan recently received an Academy Award nomination as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his role as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice. He won a Golden Globe Award for his performance in A24's A Different Man . He earned an Emmy, SAG and Golden Globe nomination for his role in the Hulu limited series Pam and Tommy. Upcoming he will star in Cristian Munju's next feature film Fjord for Neon and he will next begin production on Justin Kurzel's Burning Rainbow Farm , which he will star in opposite Leo Woodall. Stan can currently be seen reprising his role of Bucky Barnes in Marvel's Thunderbolts* and he's currently filming Avengers: Doomsday . Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and Critics Choice nominee Kirby will next star as Sue Storm (The Invisible Woman) in Marvel's The Fantastic Four: First Steps which will be released globally on July 25. She too is currently filming Avengers: Doomsday . This summer she can be seen in Vertical's Ron Howard's directed period thriller Eden . Also on the horizon is Netflix's Night Always Comes , which she also produced through her company Aluna Entertainment. She earned critical acclaim for her performance in Kornél Mundruczó's Pieces of a Woman for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Other credits across film and television include the Mission: Impossible franchise, Ridley Scott's Napoleon , The Crown series, The World to Come , and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw . via: Deadline
