EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Sony’s 3000 Pictures has acquired the bestselling hot summer novel Dolly All the Time. Gemma Burgess will adapt the novel by Annabel Monaghan, and Temple Hill Entertainment is set to produce with Annika Patton overseeing it for the producer.

Dolly All the Time came out at the beginning of the summer and quickly hit the bestseller lists. Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn’t solve. Not when her mom left when she was 12, and not at 39 when she moves with her son back to Whitfield, RI for the summer to keep her dad and brother from losing the family home.

So when she comes across Stewart Whitfield — annoyingly handsome scion of the Whitfield family — with a flat tire and at the wrong end of a very public  breakup, it’s in her nature to help. She comes away with an offer he suggests, which has her posing as his girlfriend. It ends up being more than either of them bargained for, because as public dinners and high society benefits turn into sunset boat rides and kisses, real sparks commence.

Deal has an uplifting backstory for the screenwriter Burgess, about handling adversity and writing yourself out of a jam. Burgess moved to the UK to be showrunner for My Lady Jane, the show she created for Amazon. Shortly after she moved her family to join her for a second season, Amazon canceled the show, despite superb reviews.

She stayed on the other side of the pond, and hustled. It has paid off. Burgess is currently adapting the K-drama phenomenon Crash Landing on You for Netflix and Skydance; she is adapting her short story Doomed as a series for Netflix with Busy B producing; she also created the series Smooth Criminals with Disney/20th and Drew Goddard; she’s got Liars for Searchlight; and Friends Like These for A24 and Gloria Sanchez. On the feature side, Burgess just finished writing Red, White & Royal Blue 2 for Amazon. She also continues to write novels (she’s had five of them published with Macmillan and Harper Collins that hit the bestseller lists). She is repped by UTA, Kaplan / Perrone Entertainment and Felker McGinnis & Ryan.

Sony-based Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 Pictures and Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey’s Temple Hill have had great success turning books into movies. For 3000, that includes Where the Crawdads Sing and People We Meet on Vacation, the latter an adaptation of the Emily Henry novel that is Emmy-nominated. Upcoming is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun directed by Taika Waititi and starring Jenna Ortega. 

Temple Hill’s book adaptations range from The Twilight Saga to The Maze Runner and The Fault in Our Stars. 3000 Pictures and Temple Hull previously teamed on The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, The Longest Ride, The Hate U Give, and Love, Simon.  

Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is defending his upcoming film DAU against attacks by the government of Ukraine that it represents Russian propaganda and should not be screened at the Venice Film Festival next month.

Khrzhanovsky took to Facebook on Thursday to post a point-by-point rebuttal of the criticism of his film and claims linking him, the film’s financiers, and DAU actor Teodor Currentzis to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“DAU is not a Russian film and does not represent Russia at the Venice Film Festival,” Khrzhanovsky writes, noting that he is “not a citizen of the Russian Federation” having renounced his Russian citizenship “in protest against the state policy of the Russian Federation and its war against Ukraine.”

His film, Khrzhanovsky said, “is not an instrument of Russian state cultural policy. It is an artistic statement about the nature of totalitarian evil.”

The 3-hour DAU film is the latest in a series of movies, art installations and video projects created by Khrzhanovsky using material filmed over three years from 2008 to 2011 on a closed set in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Earlier this week, the Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy issued a joint statement criticizing the Venice festival for including DAU in its line-up.

“At the time when Russia is continuing its war of aggression against Ukraine, systematically destroying cities, cultural heritage and national identity,” the statement reads, “offering one of the world’s most prestigious cultural platforms to a project linked to the Russian state and its networks of influence sends a deeply worrying signal.”

The statement goes on to list the film’s alleged connections to Putin’s Russia, including Khrzhanovsky’s citizenship, and that of DAU lead actor Teodor Currentzis, and its connection to Sergei Adoniev, a Russian business man who has been sanctioned by Ukraine and the U.S.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera took to Instagram on Wednesday to clap back at those allegations and to defend his decision to include DAU at this year’s festival. In his post, Barbera describes Khrzhanovsky as “a Russian dissident who ended up on the regime’s blacklist as a terrorist and enemy of the state — a director who, from the very beginning, has taken a stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine”. He called the attacks on DAU an “inexplicable smear campaign against a film that its accusers have evidently not even seen yet.”

The DAU project, initially conceived as a biopic of the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet scientist Lev Landau (nicknamed Dau), became a massive immersive installation. Hundreds of cast members, actors and non-actors, lived on the closed set, in costume and in character, isolated from the outside world during filming. From the hundreds of hours of footage shot, Khrzhanovsky has produced several feature films. DAU. Natasha, screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020, winning a Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution for cinematographer Jürgen Jürges.

In his Facebook post, Khrzhanovsky refutes or qualifies the various accusations made against him and his film. Adoniev, he says, was a financier of the broader artistic 𝘋𝘈𝘜 project but “his financing ended completely in 2019 and he has had no financial relationship with the project since then. He did not finance the completion of the film selected for the competition of the Venice Film Festival.” Adoniev’s involvement, the director adds, was prior to his being sanctioned by the U.S. or Ukraine government.

The filming of the DAU project in Ukraine, writes Khrzhanovsky, took place before the Russian invasion of the country. His own position on Russia’s war against Ukraine “has been and remains unequivocal,” he writes. “I publicly supported Ukraine long before the full-scale invasion. Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, I signed an open letter by Russian filmmakers in support of Ukraine.”

A stickier point is DAU lead actor Theodor Currentzis. A well-known Greek conductor, Currentzis took on Russian citizenship in 2014. Currentzis has never publicly supported Russia’s war against Ukraine, but he has not publicly condemned it either.

“However one may judge his decision not to make such statements [against the war], judging a person on the basis of the citizenship they hold — and, even more so, using citizenship acquired years after most of the filming as evidence of the film’s current connection to the Russian state — is not justified,” writes Khrzhanovsky.

Given what he characterized as his long and enduring support for Ukraine, Khrzhanovsky said the attempt to frame him and his film as supporting the Russian state or its war against Ukraine was “especially painful for me.” He said he understood the need, “during wartime, to scrutinize the sources of financing of cultural projects, political connections, and possible instruments of Russian influence. [But] that is precisely why standards of factual accuracy must be particularly high.”

His movie, he said, “should not be prematurely judged on the basis of false associations, distorted chronology, or assumptions that contradict the documented history of the project. I have been and remain opposed to Russia’s war against Ukraine and to the political system that made this war possible.
Opposing totalitarianism also means defending factual truth.”

DAU will screen in competition at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, which runs Sept. 2-12.

Diego Luna‘s “Ashes,” a migrant drama that the “Andor” star directed, has sold to Watermelon Pictures ahead of its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The deal is for U.S. and Canadian rights.

The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last spring, with many critics singling out the lead performance of Anna Díaz, who plays 21-year-old Lucila, for praise. In the film, she relocates from Mexico to Spain and reunites with her mother (Adriana Paz), who left her children behind years ago to get a better job and earn more money an ocean away.

In an interview ahead of the film’s premiere, Luna, who grew up in Mexico, told me that “Ashes” was deeply personal. He was drawn to the material because of the way that immigrants have been demonized in America under Donald Trump and throughout the world.

“It’s everywhere,” Luna said. “And it’s based on ignorance and selfishness. It’s related to this fear of what you have being taken away from you. It’s this stupid idea of feeling like you need to protect yourself.”

Watermelon was founded in 2024 by brothers Badie and Hamza Ali to present more complex portraits of Palestinians and Arabs. It has broadened that mandate and established itself as a label for edgy, indie fare. The company has distributed such films as “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” Eugene Jarecki’s look at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as the Academy Award-nominated “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

The distribution deal for “Ashes” was negotiated by Munir Atalla, head of production and acquisitions for Watermelon Pictures, and Jean-Benoit Henry, head of international sales at Luxbox, which represents worldwide sales of the film.

The film was adapted from the novel “Ceniza en la boca,” published in English as “Eating Ashes,” by Mexican author Brenda Navarro. The screenplay was written by Luna, Abia Castillo and Diego Rabasa.

“We are incredibly proud to welcome Diego Luna and ‘Ashes’ to Watermelon Pictures,” said Hamza Ali. “Diego has created a deeply relatable human film about migration, family and the search for belonging that feels both intimate and universal.”

“I’m very pleased to partner with Watermelon Pictures on the U.S. and Canadian theatrical release of ‘Ashes.’ We couldn’t be in better hands,” said Luna. “Their vision and commitment to supporting films that challenge perspectives and inspire audiences is deeply important to us. We share their belief in the power of film to move people, and I’m thrilled to have a partner who believes in ‘Ashes’ as deeply as we do.”

North American release plans for “Ashes” will be announced at a later date. Netflix signed a deal in Cannes to distribute the film in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal.

Variety broke the news about the sale of “Ashes.”