Here are the books, films and TV shows to watch out for in 2017

Get ready for a year of binge-watching and reading.


........Brain on Fire

Source: We Live Entertainment/YouTube
Chloe Grace Moretz stars in this Irish-Canadian-American co-production based on the autobiography of the same name by writer Susannah Cahalan. It details her ‘month of madness’ after she contracted the rare disease Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

A riveting true story of a woman’s struggle in and out of madness in “Brain On Fire”
| February 6th, 2017


“Brain on Fire” is the astonishing true story of a young woman’s descent into madness in the face of a medical mystery starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, Carrie-Anne Moss, Richard Armitage, Jenny Slate and Tyler Perry.

Based on the award-winning memoir and a New York Times bestseller, “Brain of Fire” is directed by Gerard Barrett and trails the challenges of Susannah Cahalan (Moretz), a young woman just out of university and living her dreams in New York City. She’s an up-and-coming journalist at the New York Post, and she’s falling in love with a musician named Stephen. When her boss gives her the big assignment that will jumpstart her career, things couldn’t be better.

Soon little things start going wrong. Susannah gets a flu she can’t shake, she forgets things, and she misses deadlines at work. She can hear people talking about her, she’s sure that Stephen has another girlfriend, and she can’t control her body. It soon gets worse; Susannah begins having violent seizures, and her increasingly psychotic behaviour means she must be watched at all times.

After repeated trips to the hospital, a team of doctors can find nothing wrong with her. As Susannah is admitted and spends days, then weeks, in a hospital bed losing her ability to move, talk, even eat, her family is repeatedly told that she is one hundred percent healthy. Her mom Rhona and her dad Tom are at a breaking point, waiting for their daughter to die while being told there is nothing anyone can do to help her.

With Susannah trapped in a body that continues to deteriorate, her family keeps hoping for someone, anyone, that can solve the mystery. Only when they finally find a doctor determined and curious enough to see her case through can Susannah begin to recover from her bizarre illness and try to get back to the vibrant young woman she was.

Witness an inspiring miracle when “Brain on Fire” opens February 22 in cinemas from Pioneer Films.

A riveting true story of a woman’s struggle in and out of madness
posted February 12, 2017 at 06:30 pm
by Manila Standard Showbitz

Brain on Fire is the astonishing true story of a young woman’s descent into madness in the face of a medical mystery starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, Carrie-Anne Moss, Richard Armitage, Jenny Slate, and Tyler Perry.

Based on the award-winning memoir and a New York Times bestseller, Brain of Fire is directed by Gerard Barrett and trails the challenges of Susannah Cahalan (Moretz), a young woman just out of university and living her dreams in New York City. She’s an up-and-coming journalist at the New York Post, and she’s falling in love with a musician named Stephen. When her boss gives her the big assignment that would jumpstart her career, things couldn’t be better.

Soon little things start going wrong. Susannah gets a flu she can’t shake, she forgets things, and she misses deadlines at work. She can hear people talking about her, she’s sure that Stephen has another girlfriend, and she can’t control her body. It soon gets worse; Susannah begins having violent seizures, and her increasingly psychotic behaviour means she must be watched at all times.

After repeated trips to the hospital, a team of doctors can find nothing wrong with her. As Susannah is admitted and spends days, then weeks, in a hospital bed losing her ability to move, talk, even eat, her family is repeatedly told that she is one hundred percent healthy. Her mom Rhona and her dad Tom are at a breaking point, waiting for their daughter to die while being told there is nothing anyone can do to help her.

With Susannah trapped in a body that continues to deteriorate, her family keeps hoping for someone, anyone, that can solve the mystery. Only when they finally find a doctor determined and curious enough to see her case through can Susannah begin to recover from her bizarre illness and try to get back to the vibrant young woman she was.

Witness an inspiring miracle when Brain on Fire opens Feb. 22 in cinemas from Pioneer Films.

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Broad Green Pictures Is Missing Release Dates and Angering Filmmakers. Here’s Why.
Broad Green pulled Lucy Walker's film from Sundance at the last second, but that's one issue among many for the struggling indie studio.

By Anne Thompson and Graham Winfrey





Broad Green

It was baffling when distributor Broad Green Pictures pulled Lucy Walker’s “Untitled Buena Vista Social Club Documentary” from the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, the same day as its intended premiere, with a press release that said the “post production process has taken longer than expected.” Nearly a month later, Broad Green has made no further comment on the film’s status, but its homepage still boasts that “Lucy Walker’s Buena Vista Social Club documentary will have it’s [sic] official world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival!”




That disconnect (and typo) could be a matter of sloppy site maintenance, but multiple IndieWire interviews with people familiar with Walker’s film and Broad Green suggest more complex issues dog the three-year-old would-be studio. (Walker declined to comment for this article; Broad Green executives didn’t respond to requests for comment.)



Walker, a Sundance award-winning documentarian with two Oscar nominations, made a deal with Broad Green shortly before the 2015 Cannes Film Festival to finance her new film, a sequel to Wim Wenders’ 1999 hit “Buena Vista Social Club.” On a January 13 Instagram post, Walker announced that she’d completed the film and had a press day booked for the January 20 premiere. Two weeks later, in a February 1 Instagram post, she commented, “it’s not clear for now if that work will be seen or appreciated which is the purgatorial pitstop we are in currently.”


On February 2, Walker turned to social media again, posting an Instagram photo of an emoji chia pet with the comment, “Things you get around to when your distributor pulls your film from every festival.” In the same Instagram post, Walker also implied that there has been a communication breakdown between her and Broad Green executives.

“When people have been ‘traveling’ and unable to speak to one another for weeks you start to wonder if it’s an honest description, don’t you?” Walker wrote. “So few people lose their satellite phones when rowing the Atlantic, for example. Or forget to tell their assistant that they are going on a month-long silent meditation retreat.”


Wall Street billionaire brothers Gabriel and Daniel Hammond launched Broad Green in 2014 with the goal of launching a full-fledged studio, expanding rapidly to 87 staffers and opening brand-new Hollywood offices where they feed their employees breakfast and lunch. “It’s everything from the guys that option the books and graphic novels — the development sides, the earliest stages, the IP, production — on through marketing and distribution,” Gabriel Hammond told IndieWire in 2015.

However, outside of its 2015 Sundance acquisition “A Walk In the Woods,” starring Robert Redford, which made nearly $30 million at the domestic box office, and Bryan Cranston thriller “The Infiltrator,” which managed $15 million, Broad Green has struggled to find its footing.

Disappointments include Ramin Bahrani’s well-reviewed real estate thriller “99 Homes” ($1.7 million domestic), Sarah Silverman’s depressive drama “I Smile Back” ($58,000), and Amazon Studios’ Nic Winding Refn horror flick “The Neon Demon” ($1.5 million domestic). “Brain on Fire,” starring Chloe Grace Moretz, debuted at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival to mostly withering reviews and then sold straight to streaming platform Netflix, with no theatrical release.

Even with stars Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, and Christian Bale, Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups” scored only $566,000, while his two “Voyage of Time” documentaries grossed even less. Malick’s “Song to Song,” starring Rooney Mara and Michael Fassbender, will open SXSW on March 10.



In summer 2016, the company laid off around 6 percent of its staff, all of whom worked in the publicity department, and saw the resignation of publicity head Adam Keen, distribution chief Travis Reid, and former Anonymous Content producer Alix Madigan, among many more. Today, according to a company spokesman, the team numbers about 69.

When it comes to Broad Green’s oversight of its pipeline, several former employees told similar stories of a company led by people who have the ambition to run a studio but a dearth of experience, and didn’t listen to their own staff. “There’s a definite lack of understanding of the business that prevented them from making clear decisions,” said a former employee.

Among the issues that face Walker’s Buena Vista Social Club documentary, which was produced by Convergent Media and Blink TV: creative differences between the filmmaker (who wanted to play Sundance) and Broad Green’s Gabriel Hammond (who still hasn’t dated the movie or made further festival plans), complex music clearances, finishing costs, and the pressing need to deliver finished assets to multiple international buyers who acquired rights in Cannes 2015 from sales company Mister Smith, which handles Broad Green’s international sales.

This isn’t the first time Broad Green has faced a dispute related to a festival premiere. Director Jeremy Saulnier’s horror-thriller “Green Room” — which Broad Green financed but did not release, selling the movie to A24 — premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight, but only after a lengthy dispute with Broad Green over sending the film to the festival at all. Sources say Broad Green wanted to skip Cannes to premiere the movie at a later festival, and at the time, Saulnier made no secret of his antipathy toward Gabriel Hammond.

While the Hammonds hoped to foster a friendly and hospitable place to work, people who have worked with the financial service moguls say that while Hollywood is a relationship business, they relate to numbers more than people. “You have to know what the rules are before you can break them,” said one ex-employee. “I felt like I was participating in an expensive experiment.”


The company initially focused on specialty fare, then moved toward more mainstream titles and looked to algorithms to gauge their commercial potential. However, Miramax’s “Bad Santa 2,” released November 23, earned just $17.2 million. One agent admitted that Broad Green is not her first-choice home for a favorite movie. “They lost some good, talented people,” she said. “They’ve changed strategies a handful of times. We’re waiting and watching.”

Next on the Broad Green release calendar was the sorority comedy “Step Sisters,” from “Drumline” director Charles Stone III. However, Los Angeles Media Fund CEO Jeff Soros has had to cover “Step Sisters” production overages, and production sources confirm the movie will not make its March 31 release date. For now Broad Green is still the North American distributor, but that could change.



Looking ahead, John Leonetti thriller “Wish Upon” is set for June 30, while Cannes 2016 pickup “Villa Capri,” directed by Ron Shelton and starring Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones, is set for August 25.

There’s no evidence that Broad Green is planning to offload Walker’s film the way they did Saulnier’s, but other distributors told IndieWire they wouldn’t be surprised by that outcome, and there is word of a potential partner sharing the burden of releasing the movie.


Though the future of Walker’s “Untitled Buena Vista Social Club Documentary” seems very uncertain, the director has hinted that a resolution could be forthcoming very soon. “Any minute now we’ll be able to explain!” she wrote on Instagram. ““I’m still dreaming the beautiful film we made might be seen ever again.”

:scratch: Betrifft das die USA? Auf den Phillipinen steht ja nun die Kinopremiere kurz bevor.

Chloë Grace Moretz Can’t Trust Her Mind in First Trailer for ‘Brain on Fire’
Written by Jonathan Dixon on February 20, 2017


Clouds of Sils Maria star Chloë Grace Moretz premiered her latest project, Brain on Fire, at Toronto International Film Festival last year and ahead of a Netflix release, the first trailer has landed. Directed by Gerard Barrett (Glassland), the film explores the true story of Susannah Cahalan, a journalist in New York City who was inflicted with serious health issues, including seizures and hallucinations (scientifically diagnosed as anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis).

As one can see in the trailer, her condition worsens over the course of weeks and she quickly goes from violence to catatonia. It’s not until having numerous misdiagnoses and a hospitalization, when a doctor finally gives her a diagnosis with the hope she can rebuild her life. Also starring Jenny Slate, Thomas Mann, Tyler Perry, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Richard Armitage, check out the trailer below for the Charlize Theron-produced drama.

One morning, 24-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up in a hospital bed. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. And she had no idea how she got there.

Based on Cahalan’s bestselling memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, director Gerard Barrett’s adaptation captures the horrifying experience of one woman’s unexplained descent into madness and the medical miracle it took to pull her back from the brink. Fresh out of journalism school and ready to embark on adult life, Susannah (Chloë Grace Moretz) already seemed to have it all: her dream job at the New York Post, supportive co-workers (Tyler Perry and Jenny Slate), a devoted boyfriend (Thomas Mann), and a loving family (Richard Armitage and Carrie-Anne Moss).

Then, almost overnight, this ingénue went from one of the Post’s most reliable reporters to an unstable, paranoid shell of her former self. Plagued by auditory hallucinations and memory loss, doctors dismissed her condition with a diagnosis of partying too hard and stress. But as her condition worsened, the stakes grew higher, and the race to find an answer became a matter of life and death.

Richard Armitage TH‏ @RCArmitageTH

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'Brain on fire' is scheduled to be released on April 13, 2017 in Thailand.