Categories In Development/ Pre-Production Print Media Spy Wars

Damian Lewis: Spy Wars – April 9, 2019

Factual: Covering Stories From the Past 40 Years

by Broadcast Now | April 9, 2019

As reported earlier, Damian is turning his talents to factual in Damian Lewis: Spy Wars. The Billions star has signed on to produce and front the eight-part docu-drama series set in the world of espionage.

British producer Alaska TV is attached to co-produce the series with Lewis’ new firm Rookery Pictures, with first-run rights going to A+E Networks UK-owned pay-TV channel History. A+E Networks International is co-funder and has sales rights.

Former Miramax exec Richard Tulk-Hart was hired as managing director of international content sales and co-productions at A+E Networks International in 2017 to lead a push into co-created shows, and this series is the first factual fruit of that strategy.

Continue reading Damian Lewis: Spy Wars – April 9, 2019

Categories Dream Horse In Development/ Pre-Production TV/Film Projects

Damian to Star as Lead Cast in UK Race Horse Feature – March 13, 2019

Off to the Races: Dream Horse

by Andreas Wiseman | Deadline | March 13, 2019

EXCLUSIVELittle Miss Sunshine star Toni Collette and Homeland star Damian Lewis are to lead cast in UK race horse feature Dream Horse for American Animals and Three Identical Strangers outfit Raw.

Euros Lyn, director on Sherlock, Happy Valley and Black Mirror, is helming the true story about a woman’s dream to breed and raise a champion racehorse on the allotment of her modest Welsh village. Hereditary star Collette will take the lead role of Jan Vokes, a middle-aged barmaid at a working men’s club who recruits her initially reluctant husband Brian and local accountant Howard Davies (Lewis) to help her bring together a syndicate of local people to breed a foal – which they name Dream Alliance. On the racetrack, he proves himself to be more than a match for the multi-million pound racehorses he comes up against, transforming the lives of those around him.

Continue reading Damian to Star as Lead Cast in UK Race Horse Feature – March 13, 2019

Categories Announcement In Development/ Pre-Production News Print Media Rookery Productions

Damian Launches ‘Rookery Productions’ – March 1, 2019

Plans to Develop Feature Film, Television and Theater Projects

by Peter White | Deadline | March 1, 2019

EXCLUSIVE: Damian Lewis has launched his own production company, Rookery Productions, and plans to develop and direct projects across feature film, television and theater.

First off the block for Rookery is A&E Networks’ factual series Damian Lewis: Spy Wars, which he will co-produce, marking his nascent indie’s first project.

In an interview with Deadline, Lewis said that he wants to produce and direct across genres and has already lined up to develop a feature film, another television series and a play.

“It’s an opportunity for me to create some exciting drama and comedy,” he said. “It gives me an opportunity to be creating things from inception.”

He admitted that it was early days and these projects needed time to “percolate”. But he added,

Continue reading Damian Launches ‘Rookery Productions’ – March 1, 2019

Categories In Development/ Pre-Production Print Media Spy Wars

Are You Excited to See a Different Side of Damian Lewis? – Feb 28, 2019

Damian Lewis is Hosting a New Factual Spy Series

by Nick Levine | BBC America: Anglophenia | February 28, 2019

Calling all Damian Lewis fans: the Homeland and Billions actor is to make his debut as a documentary host.

Lewis will show off his factual chops as the presenter of a new eight-part docu-drama series about some of the most important international spy missions of the last four decades.

The series, which is being made jointly by A&E’s U.K. and U.S. divisions, has the working title Damian Lewis: Spy Wars, Deadline reports.

Each episode will tell a different real-life spy story with Lewis introducing reconstructions of key events from the mission, as well as interviews with experts and former spies from the CIA, KGB, and MI6.

Lewis will definitely need his passport for the job, as it’s being shot in London, Moscow, and Israel.

Read the rest of the original article at BBC America

Categories Announcement In Development/ Pre-Production Print Media Spy Wars

A&E Set for Damian Lewis-Fronted Docu-Series – Feb 28, 2019

Damian Lewis: Spy Wars

by Kaltrina Bylykbashi | TBI Vision | February 28, 2019

A&E Networks and A&E Networks U.K. have partnered on factual co-produced Damian Lewis: Spy Wars.

Featuring Lewis in his first docu-drama role, this 8 x 60-minute factual series will reveal the remarkable true stories behind some of the most gripping and important international spy operations of the last forty years.

Using reconstructions, the show will see Lewis act as the guide with each episode telling a different spy story from the Cold War through to the ‘war on terror’ and the renewed espionage hostilities of present day. It is shot on location in Moscow, Israel and London. It will feature experts and former spies including ex-Mossad, ex-CIA, ex-KGB and ex-MI6.

Continue reading A&E Set for Damian Lewis-Fronted Docu-Series – Feb 28, 2019

Categories Behind the Scenes In Development/ Pre-Production on set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Print Media

Exclusive Preview: New Images from Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – Jan 25, 2019

“A Sprawling Tale of Counterculture California and the Final Days of Hollywood’s Golden Age”

by K. Austin Collins | Vanity Fair | January 25, 2019

Quentin Tarantino was six years old and living in the Los Angeles area when, in the summer of 1969, hell broke loose. You know this story: five people murdered over the course of two days that August, shot and stabbed by a clan of hippie impressionables in anticipation of Helter Skelter, Charles Manson’s idea of holy terror. It’s a Hollywood tale—not least because its most famous victim, the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, was the wife of director Roman Polanski, which put the terror square in the back lot’s backyard.

But it’s a Hollywood story for bigger reasons. This was an era, not merely an event; a lifestyle, a people, a widespread obsession—not merely a spot on a timeline or map. The city is a sprawl. So was 1969. And so is the work of Quentin Tarantino, whose last three movies were violent but (mass Nazi execution notwithstanding) playful excursions into history, all of them riffs on the deviant style and rough talkiness of the Westerns Tarantino loves, even the Dirty Dozen-esque World War II picture Inglourious Basterds, in which a motley troop of American badasses, a mock-Tennessean Brad Pitt at its helm, takes its grievances out on Nazi skulls.

View the new and exclusive images here
Read the rest of the original article at Vanity Fair

Categories Britannia Award Charity Fashion and Style Football/Soccer Helen In Development/ Pre-Production Music Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Personal and Family Life Philanthropy Poll Run This Town Summertime Tennis

A Year in Review: Top Damian Lewis Moments of 2018 – Dec 31, 2018

Top Moments of 2018

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | December 31, 2018

Far left: Damian performing Singing in the Rain at Old Vic’s Bicentennial Ball

It’s been quite the year for Damian, from starring in two new films as he continues to play Bobby Axelrod on Billions to his charity work, love of football, and hitting the town with Helen. There are “Best of 2018” lists everywhere you look so why should we be any different?  So today, on the last day of the year, we revisit the memorable year Damian has had both personally, and professionally.

Below you will find links to the stories behind our Top Damian Lewis Moments of 2018:

  • Damian makes his fourth appearance at Soccer Aid
  • Damian receives BAFTA LA’s Britannia Award
  • Damian will play Steve McQueen in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
  • Damian continues supporting the Cure EB initiative
  • Damian attends the UEFA Champions League and World Cup
  • Damian will play Toronto’s ex-Mayor Rob Ford in Run This Town
  • Damian and Helen, Hand-in-Hand: Old Vic’s Bicentennial Ball, Best Beginnings, London Fashion Week, Circus Arts Gala, BRIT Awards, Letters Live, The Prince’s Trust, Wimbledon, Rolling Stones concert, British Summertime Festival, Port Eliot Festival, Liquid Leisure Aqua Park, family vacation in Italy, Chessington World of Adventures, and BGC Charity Day

Happy New Year and we will see all you fandom next year!

Categories In Development/ Pre-Production Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Print Media

2019 in Pop Culture – Dec 30, 2018

A Guide to Everything You’ll Need to Know About TV, Film and Music Next Year, Including Tarantino’s Charles Manson Obsession

by Steve Rose | The Guardian | December 29, 2018

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Hollywood has been like a ghost town recently. Where have all the actors gone? Where’s Brad Pitt? Where’s Leonardo DiCaprio? Where are Al Pacino, James Marsden, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Emile Hirsch, Kurt Russell? Even Luke Perry goes straight to voicemail. Turns out, they are all over on Quentin Tarantino’s set, recreating the Manson family murders and the decadent, dodgily attired, flower-powered Los Angeles of the late 1960s.

Tarantino’s take is a mix of reality and fiction, he’s hinted. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski, who was murdered by Manson’s followers in 1969. DiCaprio and Pitt (in their first time on screen together) play fictional friends – respectively a washed-up TV cowboy and his stunt double – who are, says Tarantino, “struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognise any more.”

Tarantino has described the film as “probably the closest to Pulp Fiction that I have done”, which will be music to fans’ ears, but this could be his biggest challenge yet…

Read the rest of the original article at The Guardian

Categories In Development/ Pre-Production Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Print Media

Guide to the Movies and Stars to Watch Out For in 2019 – Dec 30, 2019

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Paul Whitington | The Independent.ie | December 29, 2018

Next year, like most years, kicks off with a bang as the Oscar hopefuls crowd into the multiplexes to vie for our attention. There are some fine films in amongst all the usual awards hype, and January and February are definitely good months for cinema-goers.

The superhero craze shows no sign of slowing, sadly, and a clutch of noisy adventures will be heading your way in the early summer, including an Avengers finale. Lots of family franchise sequels and rehashes are on the way, too, including a ‘Dumbo’ remake, while for grown-ups Quentin Tarantino has an intriguing new film on the way, and so does Martin Scorsese.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

July 26, 2019

Quentin Tarantino has assembled a formidable cast for this intriguing drama set in Hollywood in 1969, on the eve of the Manson family murders. Leonardo DiCaprio is Rick Dalton, a washed-up TV actor who lives next-door to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), while Brad Pitt plays Rick’s long-time stuntman. Damian Lewis, Al Pacino and Lena Dunham co-star.

Read the rest of the original article at The Independent.ie 

In addition, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood made Jacob Stolworthy’s ‘Films To Watch Out For in 2019,’ professing it as one of the movies we’ll likely be talking about when the 2020 Oscars roll around.

Continue reading Guide to the Movies and Stars to Watch Out For in 2019 – Dec 30, 2019