The Zurich Film Festival will honor Oscar winner Martin McDonagh with its A Tribute To … Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to cinema at its 22nd edition in September.

McDonagh will accept the award in person during a gala premiere of his upcoming black comedy Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, and Parker Posey, following its world premiere in Venice.

“Martin McDonagh is one of the most exciting auteur filmmakers of his generation. He is a master of dark comedy and character writing…  His wonderfully curious characters never fail to draw us in, and he has a remarkable gift for manoeuvring them into absurd predicaments through screenplays of exceptional wit and precision,” said Christian Jungen, CEO of the Zurich Film Festival.

“McDonagh’s talent for eliciting complex and nuanced performances from his actors is a defining hallmark of his distinctive style. Wild Horse Nine is no exception and, in our view, one of the standout films of the season. We have had the privilege of screening several of Martin McDonagh’s earlier masterpieces, and we are delighted to honor his outstanding contribution to the art of cinema.”

Set shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Rockwell as CIA agents Chris and Lee who set out to Easter Island from Santiago, where they are stationed alongside their boss and bureau chief, MJ (Buscemi). Amongst the Island’s iconic statues, as the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies, Chris’s newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas, threatens to send everyone’s trip to this remote paradise sideways.

London-born filmmaker and playwright McDonagh gained attention behind the camera with his Academy Award–winning short Six Shooter, before going on to direct and write critically acclaimed features In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin.

Past recipients of Zurich’s A Tribute To … Award include Noah Baumbach, Edward Berger, Paolo Sorrentino, Wim Wenders, Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Oliver Stone, Maïwenn and Luca Guadagnino.

The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs from September 24 to October 4.

We’re getting a Rockstar Games partnership with Netflix before Grand Theft Auto VI — and that’s totally fine by us.

Ahead of the highly anticipated video game’s November release, 13 years in the making, the streamer is set to debut “Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look” on Aug. 27 at 3 p.m. ET. The teaser will then stream on YouTube later that day at 9 p.m. ET.

“Grand Theft Auto reveals have become cultural moments in their own right. The anticipation and fandom around Grand Theft Auto VI is unprecedented, and we’re honored that Rockstar Games has partnered with us to debut the next part of the Grand Theft Auto story with Netflix members first,” Netflix’s VP of Nonfiction Series Brandon Riegg said in a Thursday statement. “It’s a reflection of what we hope Netflix is becoming: a place where the most ambitious storytelling, from any medium, can find the biggest possible audience.” 

“Vice City, USA. Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida — forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive,” per the game’s logline.

GTA6 was formally announced in February 2022 as the sequel to 2013’s GTA5, but has since been delayed twice. The original Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997, created by David Jones and Mike Dailly.

Grand Theft Auto VI hits PlayStation 5 and Xbox on Nov. 19, following the extended first look on Netflix on Aug. 27 at 3 p.m. ET.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav says staffers are working “extremely hard” and staying focused despite uncertainty about the fate of the company’s pending merger with Paramount.

Speaking to Wall Street analysts on the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Zaslav said he had assumed “it was going to be quite challenging” for employees to tune out the noise and maintain morale. But during visits in recent weeks to various European offices, Zaslav, said, he was struck by the “work ethic” he encountered.

“The overall culture of this company and the work ethic of the company has been inspiring,” Zaslav said. “The focus has been that this is a great company, and that how do we take advantage of every day we’re here and try and focus on the best performance possible, but also this idea of, what stories will we tell?”

Announced in February, the $110 billion merger drew lawsuits last month from attorneys general of 12 states as well as the Writers Guild of America. The suits contend the transaction violates antitrust laws, with the WGA also arguing it will harm entertainment workers. A judge this week set a March trial date, leaving both companies to soldier on in the meantime, barring an out-of-court settlement.

“We’ve been trying to drive the value of the company to deliver to PSKY and to [CEO David Ellison] the best company possible,” Zaslav replied when asked about the potential scenario of the deal falling apart and WBD resuming its prior plan to split into two companies. “The company is performing at a very high level. And we have every expectation that the transaction will close, and that the company will be performing even better than the plan that we presented to PSKY when we did our deal.”

Prior to his comments, WBD reported lackluster results for the second quarter, with revenue sandbagged by summer movie flop Supergirl and the lack of NBA telecasts.

If the Paramount deal does end up being completed, it will give Warner its fourth corporate owner in the past decade. Successive acquisitions by AT&T and Discovery Communications have not been fruitful despite the company controlling prestige assets like Warner Bros., HBO and CNN.

Recent media reports have indicated that executives at WBD, as is often the case at companies about to be acquired, are exploring their career options rather than waiting and taking their chances with new management. In what many observers considered a warning shot, the company last month sued Amazon for allegedly poaching HBO marketing executive Pia Barlow. The lawsuit accused the tech giant of “hurriedly seeking to pirate away a number of contracted employees” from WBD.

“It has been challenging, and our focus has been, how do we drive a stronger company, meet and exceed our business plan, and deliver a stronger and higher-growth company, to PSKY and David,” Zaslav said on the earnings call. He added that he was impressed by “the way this company is performing, and you look at the close to 40,000 people coming in every day.”

It is “unusual,” Zaslav continued, for energy levels to sustain during a period of corporate tumult. “We’re lucky, and I think that we have an unusual set of employees that really love these assets. As long as we’re here, we’re gonna be working hard every day.”