Friedkin Uncut, the documentary by Francesco Zippel about the Exorcist and French Connection director William Friedkin, has been acquired by social entertainment platform TaTaTu ahead of the film’s world premiere in Venice. TaTaTu, whose founder Andrea Iervolino is a producer on the movie, has taken North American…

The European Film Academy on Friday again called for the immediate release from a Russian prison of Ukranian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov who has been on a hunger strike for more than 50 days. France’s Société des Réalisateurs de Films, which organizes the Directors’ Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival, has also…

As several excellent books and articles are reminding us, 1968 was a year of tumult. Regimes were collapsing on this date 50 years ago, protesters jammed the streets, and the worlds of music and film were being re-imagined. Even the tightly regimented Cannes Film Festival exploded in a noisy chaos of…

In a chilling new documentary, Oscar-winning director William Friedkin returns to the roots of one of the most successful horror films of all time, his frightening film of William Peter Blatty’s bestseller The Exorcist. That 1973 classic had audiences fainting in their seats, became a box office sensation and was…

William Friedkin's feature documentary The Devil & Father Amorth has been acquired by The Orchard for theatrical release this Spring. The doc that follows an exorcism of an Italian woman by by the Vatican's Father Gabriele Amorth, was produced by LD Entertainment, specifically by Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon. A…

The film editor behind one of the most famous car chases in movie history has died. Jerry Greenberg, whose work on The French Connection won him an Academy Award for film editing, died Friday after a long illness. He was 81. The French Connection car chase featured Detective Jimmy Doyle (played by Gene Hackman)…

William “Billy” Friedkin’s documentary about exorcism, The Devil and Father Amorth, which has him witnessing first-hand the work of the Vatican’s in-house exorcist, was acquired by LD Entertainment who will work with ICM Partners to enter into partnerships to distribute the film worldwide. Friedkin, of course…

Alec Baldwin is taking over as host of TCM’s weekly The Essentials program, showcasing "must see" classic films. Baldwin takes over hosting duties following last month’s death of TCM host Robert Osborne. David Letterman, Tina Fey and William Friedkin are among the guest co-hosts signed to join Baldwin. The new season…

Writer and filmmaker William Peter Blatty, author of the famed 1971 novel The Exorcist that he helped turn into one of the most iconic supernatural horror films of all time, died Thursday at age 89. William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist movie based on Blatty’s Oscar-winning screenplay, tweeted this…

"In retrospect, I was wrong to shoot it that way, but there was no other way to get it done." That's how director Billy Friedkin last week summed up his famously hair-raising chase scene in the Oscar-winning 1971 film The French Connection. Friedkin was speaking before a rapt audience at the Directors Guild that had…

Iconoclastic director William Friedkin will give the cinema masterclass at this year’s Cannes film festival. The Exorcist director follows in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese, Nanni Moretti, Wong Kar-wai and Quentin Tarantino among others. The masterclass will be hosted by film critic Michel Ciment. Friedkin recently…

EXCLUSIVE: William Friedkin will develop to direct The Winter Of Frankie Machine, an adaptation of the 2007 Don Winslow bestselling novel that once had Martin Scorsese and then Michael Mann attached to direct, and Robert De Niro attached to star. The project, which shook free of Paramount some time ago, hasn’t yet…