EXCLUSIVE: Gearing up for Toronto, IM Global chief Stuart Ford says the company is “engineering its usual full-on assault on the marketplace.” Ford is currently in Venice in support of Ti West’s The Sacrament and Steven Knight’s Tom Hardy-starrer Locke. Both of those films are part of an abundant Toronto slate that’s…

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has set Kirsten Dunst to play the female lead in Midnight Special. She will star opposite Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton in the Jeff Nichols-directed film. In the film, a father and his 8-year old go on the run when dad realizes the boy has some kind of special powers. Nichols, who last…

Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess are star-crossed lovers separated by class, wealth, and a pair of side by side planets whose gravities are mutually incompatible in Upside Down, the second feature from French-Argentinian director Juan Diego Solanas. More than two years after wrapping in late 2010, the ambitious science…

Critics may have been mixed after this morning’s press screening,  but the World Premiere audience at Wednesday night’s Cannes gala of director Walter Salles’ long-gestating film  On The Road was highly enthusiastic giving the film about the Beat Generation a 10 minute standing ovation. Co-producer Rebecca Yeldham…

UPDATED: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is the big winner as the National Society of Film Critics unveiled its awards today. The film took best picture honors, and star Kirsten Dunst was selected best actress as she was at the Cannes Film Festival. The drama beat out Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life for the top honor…

Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom have joined Clive Owen and Anil Kapoor in Cities, the international thriller being directed by Roger Donaldson. Matthew Metcalfe and Chris Curting are producing. The film is a cautionary tale about greed and ambition that takes place in the exuberant months leading up to the Dow Jones…

EXCLUSIVE: Along with everything else about the 2001 Toronto Film Festival, the launch of Magnolia Pictures was quickly forgotten on September 11, as co-founder Eamonn Bowles and other indie film execs scrambled to find ways to get home. Magnolia marked its 10th anniversary at 2011 Toronto. While the company still…

EXCLUSIVE: Adam Scott has been set to star in A.C.O.D., with Stuart Zicherman making his directorial debut on a script he wrote with Ben Karlin. The project is being financed and produced by Black Bear Pictures, which is currently in production with an untitled Ramin Bahrani-directed pic that stars Zac Efron and Dennis…

CANNES AWARD SHOCKER: Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree Of Life’ Wins Palme d’Or In the end, it was the movie that has been the most talked about over the past two Cannes Film Festivals, so it was probably preordained, even in a great year for movies like this one has been, that Terrence Malick’s epic dissertation on life …

Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which just handed out its awards. The reclusive director did not attend the ceremony, and the award was picked up by producers Bill Pohlad and Dede Gardner. The meditative drama starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn rece…

Here’s a video look at Melancholia director Lars von Trier trying to be humorous during the press conference with some of the comments that got him banned from the Cannes Film Festival this morning. Poor Kirsten Dunst looks like she wants to melt through the floorboards as von Trier just can’t bring himself to stop…

UPDATE: 9:30 AM: Now director Lars von Trier has issued an apology: “If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologize. I am not anti-semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi.” PREVIOUS, 9:05 AM: The Cannes Film Festival has just issued a press…