Strand Releasing picks up North American rights for Diamond Diplomacy. This is Yuriko Gamo Romer’s baseball doc tracing U.S.-Japan relations from 1872 to Shohei Ohtani, with a fall theatrical rollout after festivals and awards attention in North America. Trailer here.
Paris Hilton’s production company 11:11 Media (Infinite Icon) is joining forces with Saw director Darren Lynn Bousman for Road To Reality. Set inside the world of a long-running reality television franchise, the horror film is set to start production this July.
StudioCanal (How To Make a Killing) and France’s biggest publisher, Hachette Livre, are launching On Screen, a joint venture set to develop film and TV based on Hachette’s extensive catalog. Jumping on the international book-to-screen adaptation bandwagon, StudioCanal now gets first look at thousands of titles ranging from the Astérix comic book series to James Patterson novels.
Pathé (Prod Co: Emilia Pérez) and Vendôme Pictures (Prod Co: Coda) launch Emotion Pictures – a production company that specializes in English-language films. Under this new banner, Emotion Pictures will develop, acquire, fully finance, and produce a slate of films that will be theatrically released in Europe.
N Lite (U.S. and Tokyo-based anime studio) is making a manga series based on their upcoming animated feature film Mfinda. The manga follows a 13-year-old Congolese girl who is transported to the Mfinda, a magical forest of spirits, gods, and ancestors.