Paramount Pictures is closing deals with Robert Pattinson and Smile filmmaker Parker Finn to tackle a remake of Possession, the cult 1981 psychological supernatural horror movie written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski.

The deal is being made in the shadow of the landmark transaction that saw parent company Paramount Global agree to be acquired by a consortium led by Skydance. That deal will take about a year to complete, including clearing regulatory hurdles.

The Possession pact is personal for Paramount CEO Brian Robbins and motion picture co-heads Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland, who fought hard to keep Finn in the Paramount family. He’s a homegrown talent, with Smile becoming a surprise hit at Paramount in 2022.

Finn will write the script, direct and produce via his Bad Feeling banner. Pattinson will produce via his production company Icki Eneo Arlo. His acting involvement will be clarified down the road as the script and schedules develop.

Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, who helped produce Zach Cregger’s breakout Barbarian, will also produce.

The package hit the town in mid-June, quickly eliciting a bidding war. According to sources, theatrical players Warner Bros., Sony and Paramount were the final bidders.

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The deal marks a leveling up for Finn, who is in post on Smile 2 for Paramount and has a first-look deal with the studio. Possession was not part of the first-look, but the studio has seen Smile 2 and feels tremendously high on it.

Possession is intended to be Finn’s next movie. It will afford Finn a bigger scale, but sources say he hopes to keep an eye on an intimate story.

The government’s adviser on political violence has written to the home secretary asking to investigate the intimidation of candidates during the general election.

Lord Walney is suggesting there could have been a "concerted campaign by extremists".

He is urging Yvette Cooper and Security Minister Dan Jarvis to commission a short inquiry to find out if groups in different constituencies were working together and to document what he calls the "dark underbelly" of abuse.

In the letter, seen by the BBC, Lord Walney said evidence from the last couple of months points to a "concerted campaign by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs within their constituencies to compel them to cave into political demands".

He writes the "conduct of the election campaign in many communities has underlined the gravity of the threat to our democracy" from the abuse and intimidation of politicians, local and national.

Lord Walney said: "I am increasingly concerned about the scale of intimidation against candidates in the general election.

"I believe there is now a need for a focused piece of work on the scale and drivers of this intimidation so that it cannot continue to mar our democratic processes and put candidates at risk."

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His concerns follow comments from the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who told the BBC: "if there is something that keeps me awake at night, it is the safety of MPs".

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Sir Lindsay said he had "never seen anything as bad" as the current level of intimidation.

Conservative groups are threatening to block Switzerland from hosting next year’s Eurovision by forcing budget referendums on potential host cities, saying the song contest is a “propaganda event” that “celebrates satanism and occultism”.

Switzerland won the right to host the world’s largest live music event after the Swiss singer Nemo triumphed in Sweden with The Code. The cities of Zurich, Geneva, Bern and Basel have all filed applications to host the five-day spectacle.

The Christian conservative Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) party, however, has said it will seek to make use of the country’s direct democracy system to put the bidding cities’ loan applications to the vote.

“The Eurovision song contest is a ghastly propaganda occasion”, the EDU said in a social media post on Tuesday. “A country that provides a stage to such disgusting trash won’t elevate its image but merely showcase its own intellectual decline.”

Samuel Kullmann, a senior EDU politician, told the Swiss broadcaster SRF his party was disturbed by Eurovision’s increasing “celebration, or at least tolerance of … satanism and occultism”. “More and more artists present openly occultist messages and underline them with respective symbols,” he said.

The Acolyte has quickly become one of the most controversial Disney Plus Star Wars projects in the entire era, right up there with The Last Jedi. But all the hate and/or support aside, there is a simple question: Will The Acolyte get a season 2?

Ever since the last few excellent episodes I have gone from mixed on the show to a supporter, and no matter what happens in the finale, I’d like to see it continue. But I have to admit that seems exceedingly unlikely based on what we know.

No, it’s not about the show being woke or it being bashed by Star Wars YouTubers and their audiences. Rather, it’s pretty simple: Cost versus viewership.

Estimates of the cost of The Acolyte put it at $180 million for what are effectively eight, thirty minute episodes. That’s an absolutely wild amount of money for a Star Wars thing that is nowhere near theaters, but rather the sixth Disney live-action Star Wars series instead. And while I think the show has a solid aesthetic, no, it does not look like a $180 million production, and you have to wonder where much of that money went.

Then there’s viewership, where if it was a breakout smash hit, it might be worth spending that for another season. But it’s just not there, based on what we know. Disney does not give out official numbers but Nielsen says its premiere was half the viewership of Ahsoka and 75% lower than The Mandalorian. Reportedly, it’s the second-least watched show, also behind The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan. I cannot imagine it surged in popularity from there.

Before you say “well it’s just so bad, that’s why viewership is low,” you should know the least-watched show is Andor, universally praised as one of the best things in Star Wars history, even past the Disney era. It did in fact get a season 2, however, on a reported $250 million budget. Disney might have been okay doing that once given the sky-high reviews and massive praise for it, but The Acolyte certainly doesn’t have that, and no one is saying it’s anywhere close to the quality level of Andor.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government unveils plans for a “rooftop revolution” today that will see millions more homes fitted with solar panels in order to bring down domestic energy bills and tackle the climate crisis.

The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, also took the hugely controversial decision this weekend to approve three massive solar farms in the east of England that had been blocked by Tory ministers.

The three sites alone – Gate Burton in Lincolnshire, Sunnica’s energy farm on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border and Mallard Pass on the border between Lincolnshire and Rutland – will deliver about two-thirds of the solar energy installed on rooftops and on the ground in the whole of last year.

Now, before Wednesday’s king’s speech, which will include legislation for setting up the new publicly owned energy company GB Energy, ministers are working with the building industry to make it easier to buy new homes with panels installed, or instal them on existing ones.

Ministers are looking at bringing in solar-related standards for new-build properties from next year.

At present, while formal planning permission is not required, there are restrictions on where and how high up on buildings they can be placed. There are also restrictions in conservation areas and on listed buildings. These may also be re-examined.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14697456

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IMDb

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14697456

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IMDb

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IMDb

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14688506

Archaeologists are finding out more about prehistoric life in Kent from 5,000 years ago at one of the country’s largest ancient burial grounds.

Experts say the multi-year dig at Stringmans Farm on the Lees Court Estate, near Faversham, has uncovered artefacts dating back to the Neolithic or Bronze Age period.

The community excavation project led by a team from the Kent Archaeological Society unearthed a selection of items including flint chippings (leftovers from making stone tools), fragments of rare, decorated pottery created 3,000 years before the Romans came to Kent, and evidence of human prehistoric cremations.

Archaeologists are finding out more about prehistoric life in Kent from 5,000 years ago at one of the country’s largest ancient burial grounds.

Experts say the multi-year dig at Stringmans Farm on the Lees Court Estate, near Faversham, has uncovered artefacts dating back to the Neolithic or Bronze Age period.

The community excavation project led by a team from the Kent Archaeological Society unearthed a selection of items including flint chippings (leftovers from making stone tools), fragments of rare, decorated pottery created 3,000 years before the Romans came to Kent, and evidence of human prehistoric cremations.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14685929

Wigan Archaeological Society members have been unearthing ancient treasures and revealing a previously unknown monument thought to date back to 1650 BC on open land at Aspull.

The enigmatic site first came to their attention in 2019, when a near-circular cropmark was spotted in overhead images seen online.

At first it was thought it might represent the remains of a barrow (burial mound) but investigations were hampered for a long time by the pandemic.

The site – which the archaeologists first called Aspull Ring Feature – lies within sight of Winter Hill and Anglezarke Moor, areas rich in prehistoric monuments and it was thought they might be connected.

There then followed the digging of a series of exploratory trenches, the first of which concluded that the area had been a ditch was deliberately filled in so they changed its name to Aspull Ring Ditch.

Further trenches established the shape of the ditch and uncovered a carefully built structure of alternating layers of sand, rounded stones, and clay. Helpfully, at least two long pieces of burnt wood were also involved in its make-up, allowing experts to take samples for radiocarbon dating which gave them a date from the middle Bronze Age: 1650 BC.

By the close of the 2022 season, they had working theory that the feature had originated as a Neolithic henge monument, which was then repurposed during the Bronze Age, possibly as a funerary enclosure (mortuary).

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A spokesperson for the society said: “While there are still many puzzles and conundrums to unravel at this site, there are two finds that so far defy explanation.

"The first is an irregular stone ball covered with brown and white patinas that hinder identification of the rock type, but it might be granitic, and is certainly not local.

“Our second enigma is a stone inscribed with three deep, parallel grooves, 9mm apart. Then another one turned up, this time with four parallel grooves spaced 8.4mm apart. Better still, it was found in a carefully excavated section, meaning that we can tell it was definitely beneath the burnt layer dated to 1820 BC. Like buses, a third example duly appeared, again in a certain prehistoric context and this time with eight grooves 10mm apart.

“In each case, the grooves are precise and deep, unlike, for example, sharpening stones, where the grooves tend to be at random angles and anything but precise. What they mean, though, is truly mystifying.

Wigan Archaeological Society members have been unearthing ancient treasures and revealing a previously unknown monument thought to date back to 1650 BC on open land at Aspull.

The enigmatic site first came to their attention in 2019, when a near-circular cropmark was spotted in overhead images seen online.

At first it was thought it might represent the remains of a barrow (burial mound) but investigations were hampered for a long time by the pandemic.

The site – which the archaeologists first called Aspull Ring Feature – lies within sight of Winter Hill and Anglezarke Moor, areas rich in prehistoric monuments and it was thought they might be connected.

There then followed the digging of a series of exploratory trenches, the first of which concluded that the area had been a ditch was deliberately filled in so they changed its name to Aspull Ring Ditch.

Further trenches established the shape of the ditch and uncovered a carefully built structure of alternating layers of sand, rounded stones, and clay. Helpfully, at least two long pieces of burnt wood were also involved in its make-up, allowing experts to take samples for radiocarbon dating which gave them a date from the middle Bronze Age: 1650 BC.

By the close of the 2022 season, they had working theory that the feature had originated as a Neolithic henge monument, which was then repurposed during the Bronze Age, possibly as a funerary enclosure (mortuary).

...

A spokesperson for the society said: “While there are still many puzzles and conundrums to unravel at this site, there are two finds that so far defy explanation.

"The first is an irregular stone ball covered with brown and white patinas that hinder identification of the rock type, but it might be granitic, and is certainly not local.

“Our second enigma is a stone inscribed with three deep, parallel grooves, 9mm apart. Then another one turned up, this time with four parallel grooves spaced 8.4mm apart. Better still, it was found in a carefully excavated section, meaning that we can tell it was definitely beneath the burnt layer dated to 1820 BC. Like buses, a third example duly appeared, again in a certain prehistoric context and this time with eight grooves 10mm apart.

“In each case, the grooves are precise and deep, unlike, for example, sharpening stones, where the grooves tend to be at random angles and anything but precise. What they mean, though, is truly mystifying.