EXCLUSIVE: Yul Vazquez (Severance, Will Trent), Cheryl Umaña (The Pitt, All American), José Zúñiga (Twilight, Griselda) and newcomer Bryanna Marie Felipe will lead the cast of the Cuban American film 1972. The announcement of their participation arrives as 1972 wraps production after shooting in Los Angeles.

The film from Nil Novi, Ten to the Six Pictures, and Three Friends/One Spirit is eyeing a festival run for early 2027.

1972 tells a story of family, hope, resilience, and the complexities of identity and belonging. At her New Year’s Eve party in 1972, Cuban exile Gloria Cienfuegos (Umaña) faces the onslaught of a defiant daughter (Felipe), a charismatic and provocative novelist friend (Vazquez), a rogue hamster, and her worst fears of losing hope and never returning to her homeland.

In addition to the above four actors, the cast also includes Sienna Oquendo as Lucia Cienfuegos, Krizia Bajos as Natalia Robles, Orlando Pinedala as Fernando, Kelvin Han Yee as Ismael, Aixa Clemente as Ofelia, Yareli Arizmendi as Anais, Adam Peltier as Frank, Paige McGhee as Darla, Damian Darnell Lewis as Ronald, Gia Ochsenbein as Lisa, and Gary Guerrier as Ed.

The film is inspired by Marissa Chibás’ upbringing as the daughter of a commander in the Cuban Revolution and as a Miss Cuba runner-up. Chibás, who wrote and directed the film, is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow for her screenplay 1972, which was selected for the 2024 Gotham Week’s Project Market, the Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List, was an Athena Awards finalist, and received an inaugural Sundance/Gold House Artist Accelerator grant. 

“1972 celebrates the communities that shaped me: young women finding their voices with Carole King on the turntable, the daughters and sons of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, and a generation that watched humanity land on the moon and believed anything was possible,” shared Chibás.

Adding, “Their optimism, contradictions, resilience, and dreams are woven into every frame of this film. Together, our extraordinary cast and creative team of 1972 recreated a world that feels remarkably familiar today—a time of political division, war, galvanized youth, and people searching for a different future. Although rooted in one Cuban family’s experience, I hope audiences everywhere recognize something of themselves in the universal search for home.”

1972 is produced by Liz Cardenas and Rui M. Xu. In addition to acting, Vazquez serves as executive producer. The creative team also includes Director of Photography Diana Matos, Editor Jonathan Cuartas, Composer Marcelo Zarvos, Production Designer Sandra B. Rodriguez, and Costume Designer Victor A. Sandoval. The film features songs by Bobi Cespedes, PALO!, The S.O.U.L., Jomama Jones, Blue Eye Extinction, Constance Hauman, and Johnny Knollwood and the Church of Mad Love.

Vazquez is represented by Gersh Agency and Untitled Entertainment. Umaña is represented by Metropolitan Talent Agency. Zúñiga is represented by SDB Partners and Prime Talent Media. Felipe is represented by Arise Artists Agency and Brave Artists Management.

EXCLUSIVE: VIZ Media, a leading global producer of anime, manga and original graphic novels, has teamed with The Gotham Group to develop film and television adaptations based on titles from its original intellectual property. The deal includes the company’s acclaimed VIZ Originals graphic novel line and its landmark animated RWBY franchise.

VIZ is behind some of the most prestigious anime brands in the industry, including One Piece, Demon Slayer, Naruto, and Jujutsu Kaisen.

Under the agreement, The Gotham Group—whose credits include Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Search for WondLa, Washington Black, the Maze Runner franchise and biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere—will identify and package projects drawn from VIZ Media’s library of original IP.

At the heart of the collaboration is RWBY, created by the late Monty Oum. Since its debut in 2013, RWBY has amassed more than 350 million views globally while expanding into publishing, video games, consumer products and multiple spinoffs, including RWBY: Ice Queendom and two Justice League x RWBY animated crossover films.

Widely recognized as the first anime series produced in the United States—and the first Western-produced anime to be dubbed and distributed in Japan—RWBY helped pave the way for a new generation of globally developed anime-inspired storytelling.

RWBY, set in a world filled with horrific monsters bent on death and destruction, humanity’s hope lies with powerful Huntsmen and Huntresses. Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long are four Huntresses in training whose journeys will take them far beyond the halls of Beacon Academy. Together, they must overcome powerful enemies and protect the world of Remnant.

“From the beginning, our vision for RWBY has been to build a global franchise that connects with fans across every medium,” said Brad Woods, President and CEO VIZ Media. “With Volume 10 officially underway, we’re excited to take the next step by partnering with The Gotham Group to develop RWBY, alongside our growing portfolio of original graphic novels, for film and television. Together, we look forward to bringing these stories to new audiences around the world.”

The deal also includes VIZ Originals, VIZ Media’s original manga imprint. Featuring works from acclaimed creators Rem & Bikkuri (Devil’s Candy), author Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl), Eisner nominee Sam Sattin (Lynx), and renowned artist Acky Bright (Galaxic Baseball League) among many others.

“We are thrilled to be working with the iconic VIZ on RWBY and beyond,” said The Gotham Group’s Founder & CEO Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. Its titles have captivated audiences for decades and VIZ has been instrumental in bringing the global phenomena of manga and anime to the US. The RWBY franchise is one of the most prolific out there and we’re excited to be a part of bringing new stories to life.”

Abbe Lane, the glamorous entertainer who starred in movies with Glenn Ford and Cornel Wilde and built a thriving singing career alongside her onetime husband, famed bandleader Xavier Cugat, has died. She was 93.

Lane died April 25 of natural causes in Los Angeles, her son Steven Leff told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lane starred in nearly two dozen Italian movies, working with the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Totó, and with Tony Randall toplined the 1958 Broadway musical comedy Oh Captain! (1958), directed by José Ferrer.

Once called the “Swingingest Sexpot in Show Business,” the redhead made a 3D splash in Wings of the Hawk (1953), starring Van Heflin and Julie Adams. She also appeared with Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea in Ride Clear of Diablo (1954), with Ford in The Americano (1955), with Dennis O’Keefe in Chicago Syndicate (1955) and with Wilde, who also directed, in Maracaibo (1958).

The Brooklyn native had married the Spanish-born, Cuba-raised Cugat in Miami in 1952 after he had spotted her singing in a Broadway show when she was nearing 16 and he was approaching 49. She fronted his Latin music orchestra and toured with him throughout Europe before she initiated their Mexican divorce in June 1964.

She quickly remarried, and two years later Cugat wed another much younger entertainer, Charo, the last of his five wives.

Lane wrote about her marriage to Cugat in the 1993 roman à clef But Where Is Love?, which publisher Warner Books promoted as a “riveting, glitzy, star-splashed tale of passion, obsession and one young woman’s poignant search for happiness. Peopled with Hollywood luminaries both real and imagined, it features tantalizing lore and gossip only a true insider could provide.”

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lane said she suffered “constant mental abuse” from Cugat. “He told me when to eat, when to sleep, when things had to be done,” she said. “I never argued with him. There was no point. His will prevailed in all cases.”

Abigail Francine Lassman was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 14, 1932, and raised in Manhattan. She sang on the radio and modeled, attended the High School of Music and Art for a year and then, billed as Abbe Marshall, performed on Broadway in 1947-48 in George Abbott’s Barefoot Boy With Cheek and in Michael Todd’s As the Girls Go.

“That’s when I met Cugie,” she said in 1963. “He was looking for a new vocalist when he saw me doing a calypso number in the stage show one night. The very next day Cugie was a guest with Vincent Lopez [on Lopez’s TV show, where she was a performer], and he saw me again. He liked my style and voice and asked me to audition the next day. I did and he hired me.”

After being accompanied by her mother on the road for about a year, she and Cugat wed — “I figured, I’ll marry him and travel, I didn’t realize that there would be other things involved,” she explained in a 2005 interview.

The couple toured Italy and performed as themselves in cha-cha-cha nightclub acts seen in Lo Scapolo (1955) and Donatella (1956). Soon, she was heading such Italian films as The Lady Doctor (1957), Honor Among Thieves (1957) and Roulotte e roulette (1959).

In 1957, Lane performed backed by her husband on NBC’s The Xavier Cugat Show and on The Ed Sullivan Show, and a year later, she was paired with Tito Puente and his mambo orchestra on the album Be Mine Tonight. A review of the LP notes that she “commands the spotlight from start to finish, galvanizing otherwise innocuous lyrics with wit, sophistication and sheer lust.”

Lane also partnered with bandleader Sid Ramin on a 1959 album of pop tunes as she recorded for RCA Victor and then Mercury Records.

She had become a cultural icon, and in the original 1960-61 Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie, Chita Rivera‘s character sings “Spanish Rose” with these lyrics: “I’ll eat the tacos and the enchilada; I’ll drink tequila till I feel no pain; The only song I’ll sing will be ‘Granada’; I’ll be more español than Abbe Lane.”

Lane, who spoke four languages, also headlined a Las Vegas act, performed often on The Tonight Show, The Hollywood Palace and The Merv Griffin Show and acted on Naked City, Burke’s Law, F Troop, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch — as a spoiled perfume heiress — and Hart to Hart.

She said that the dominating Cugat told her “for so many years that, ‘Unless I’m behind you on the bandstand, you will not be able to perform, you will just melt away,’” she said. “It was not true, but I bought into it.”

Six months after divorcing Cugat, she married Perry Leff, a Creative Management Associates agent who represented the likes of Barbra Streisand and Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz, in a ceremony at the Plaza in New York. He died in 2020.

She also is survived by another son, Andrew, a music industry veteran and attorney, and a granddaughter, Kaia.