Wild Horse Nine is preparing to run free, as the feature is set to open the 49th Mill Valley Film Festival.

Writer-director Martin McDonagh‘s film, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, will screen as the opening night title on Oct. 1, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. McDonagh, Rockwell and co-star Mariana Di Girolamo are expected to attend the screening. Wild Horse Nine premieres in competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival next month.

Rockwell’s career of acclaimed work will be the focus of a Mill Valley tribute on Oct. 2. The actor’s memorable performances include his Academy Award-winning role in McDonagh’s 2017 feature Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, along with his Oscar-nominated role as President George W. Bush in Adam McKay’s 2018 movie Vice. He earned Emmy Award nominations for the series Fosse/Verdon and The White Lotus.

Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Rockwell as two CIA operatives who travel from Santiago, Chile, to Easter Island amid the tense lead-up to the South American nation’s 1973 coup. The mission gets complicated due to one agent’s connection to two young activists, played by Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas. Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey also star in the film that Searchlight Pictures releases in theaters Nov. 6.

Additionally, the festival adds a New Directors Section this year to spotlight first and second features from rising American and international filmmakers.

“Opening night is always the moment this festival comes alive, and this year is no exception,” says Mill Valley Film Festival founder and executive director Mark Fishkin. “Bringing Wild Horse Nine to our audience first, with a filmmaker as bold as Martin McDonagh and a cast featuring a fearless performance by Sam Rockwell, is exactly the kind of moment Mill Valley exists to create. It’s a night that reminds us why we do this work, and a fitting start to our 49th year and the next seminal decade.”

The 2026 Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 1-11 in Marin County and Berkeley, California.

EXCLUSIVE: De Fabeltjeskrant, the classic Dutch kids TV program set in the Great Animal Forest, is being given a new lease of life and a fresh international rollout.

Some 1,600 episodes of the puppet show will be restored, as a CGI incarnation of the property enters development and will be shopped to buyers at MIPCOM in October. The restored episodes are due to be released on the De Fabeltjeskrant YouTube channel.

 Three-time Tony Award-winning producer Robin de Levita Productions has partnered with the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, Monks and JVDB Studios on the restoration initiative, which is working from original 16mm film elements preserved for more than half a century.

The business case is that producers and distributors are continuing to look toward established family IP with multigenerational recognition for their content, and that streaming and digital platforms have created new opportunities for extensive TV libraries that were previously difficult for international audiences to access. De Fabeltjeskrant is designed to tap into both notions, restoring and distributing the original programming for the audiences who grew up with it and simultaneously rebuilding the property for children encountering its characters for the first time.

Spot-motion puppetry show De Fabeltjeskrant, created by Leen Valkenier, first broadcast in 1968 and went on to become a cultural phenomenon in the Netherlands and Belgium. With a title translating as The Fables Newspaper, the show took place in a forest filled with anthropomorphic animals where the main character, an owl named Meneer de Uil read headlines from a daily paper.

The show used humor as a mechanism to explore frienship, community, curiosity and respect. Running for more than 1,600 episodes it became a cultural touchstone for Dutch audiences, and was sold into 40 countries.

“Thanks to the extraordinary work of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, these original films have survived for more than half a century,” said producer Robin de Levita. “Together with our partners, we can finally restore them with the care and precision they deserve and share them with audiences around the world. The world has changed enormously since 1968, but people haven’t. The stories of the Great Animal Forest are perhaps even more relevant today than ever before.”

CGI series

The new animated version is being billed as a “new creative future for the franchise,” and will see the Great Animal Forest and its inhabitants reimagined, while keeping the same underlying values as the original show.

Monks is working with Robin de Levita Productions on the new incarnation, using current-generation animation and digital production technology.

“Great entertainment brands are timeless,” said Victor Knaap of Monks. “Together we are combining heritage, creativity and cutting-edge technology to build a new international future for this extraordinary brand.”

Jordi van den Bussche of JVDB Studios added: “Technology should help great stories reach more people. By combining AI, digital production and global distribution, we can introduce one of Europe’s most iconic children’s series to new generations around the world.”

The new CGI show will be presented to buyers in Cannes for MIPCOM in October.