EXCLUSIVE: Copper comes from Arizona, and Peaches from Georgia, but if we had to rewrite the lyrics to the Blossom Dearie standard “Rhode Island is Famous For You,” you can add film production to the latter 1,214 square mile sized state. Much of that has to do with producer Chad A. Verdi who over the last eight years…

Two years ago, Miles Teller cut his fingers and took a beating as a jazz drummer in the three-time Oscar winning film Whiplash. This year, Teller endures a different type of pummeling as two-time world boxing champ Vinny 'Paz' Pazienza in Ben Younger's Bleed for This. Paz was at the top of the world in 1991, then the…

Bleed For This, the movie about the incredible comeback story of boxer Vinnie Pazienza, came to our big all-day awards-season event The Contenders Presented By Deadline. In front of a packed DGA theater audience of Oscar voters and key guild members, writer-director Ben Younger and stars Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart…

5th Writethru, Sunday AM: Updated analysis Warner Bros. is calling the weekend for its Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at $75M with  international pushing the global opening for the movie at $218.3M. Whenever there’s a big film like this in the U.S./Canada market, the tide can rise all…

Five years after the final Harry Potter movie, Warner Bros. is looking to keep its $7.7 billion franchise alive for continued generations with its spinoff series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Opening stateside and in 63 offshore territories sans China and Japan, Fantastic Beasts is hoping to cast a spell…

When Bleed For This started, I immediately thought to myself, ‘Oh boy yet another boxing movie’.  I mean, haven’t we seen every variation of this genre, particularly with the great ones like Rocky, Raging Bull, The Fighter, Champion. This film, from writer/director Ben Younger seemed headed in predictable directions…

Director-writer Ben Younger is making his own comeback with Bleed for This, his first film in about 10 years, which tells the story of the ultimate comeback in boxing. Two-time world champion Vinny “Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza was in a terrible car crash in 1991. Nearly paralyzed with a severe neck injury, he found…

After playing the Toronto International Film Festival, the biopic about one of boxing’s greatest comebacks, Vinny Pazienza, will go wide on November 18 rather than the planned limited release on November 4.  Open Road just made the announcement about the Ben Younger-directed movie starring Miles Teller as “the…

Open Road Films’ boxing pic Bleed For This starring Miles Teller has been selected as the closing-night film at the Austin Film Festival, which runs October 13-20. The fest also said that STX’s Hailee Steinfeld pic The Edge Of Seventeen will serve as the Centerpiece selection after it recently closed the Toronto Film…

There’s been a number of boxing films lately, and while underdog is the de rigueur theme throughout all of them, there’s nothing like the fall, then the severe drop, and then the ultimate rise of two-time world champion fighter Vinny Pazienza aka Vinny Paz. Here’s a boxer who collapsed due to near-fatal hydration…

With today’s announcement of the first (and biggest) batch of galas and special presentations for the 41st annual Toronto International Film Festival, is it too early for me to say the movie awards season is off and running? Just on the surface it appears that TIFF will be showing off even more expected Oscar…

“With this severe of an injury, one bump, one fall, any kind of movement, and your spinal cord could sever.” Vinny Pazienza was on top of the boxing world after winning the junior middleweight title in 1991. A month later, a car wreck left him with a broken neck, and doctors told the Pazmanian Devil he might never…