#mark canton

The Strangers – Chapter 3

1. The 1st season (Sunday, July 18th - September 26th, 2021)

2. The 2nd season (Sunday, August 14th to October 23rd, 2022)

3. The middle season (Friday, December 1st, 2023 to February 9th, 2024)

4. The 2nd-to-last season (Friday, March 7th - May 16th, 2025)

&

Den of Thieves (2018)

Directed by Christian Gudegast

'Purple Rain' Exec Recalls Traveling the World With Prince, Late Nights on Mulholland (Guest Column) - Hollywood Reporter

by Mark Canton

When I was a production executive at Warner Bros., sometime around 1983, the legendary chairmen of Warner Bros. Music Mo and Michael Ostin asked me to meet an emerging artist named Prince. When Prince arrived, he had a screenplay in his hand and a guitar over his shoulder. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in the rarified company of an artistic giant. After reading the screenplay, I appealed to my Warner Bros. colleagues and my esteemed bosses, Bob Daly and Terry Semel, convincing them with passion and persistence that we had to make Purple Rain.

All movies are difficult to make, but those that stand the test of time are rarely an accident. For this one, Prince and his management team, led by Bob Cavallo and Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli, were always clear about their desire to raise the bar in terms of the film’s music and the story’s emotional resonance. As we wove our way through the arduous process, we discovered a rare synergy between a movie company and their sister record company, and at the end of it all we had exactly what we wanted: A powerful movie with an awesome companion album, both of which will live on forever as hits.

Even if you didn’t know him personally, there’s no disputing it: Prince was a genius, a word that is thrown around all too lightly in our business. I knew him as a kind and funny person who fought for song rights and artist independence like few others at his level. He was incredibly focused. He was sometimes not easy, like all the greats. He was a fashion icon. He loved basketball. He loved Minnesota. Most of all, he loved making and performing music.

My favorite personal memory was having Friday night dinners with him and meeting acquaintances at the fabulous Helena’s (a private supper club). He would often spontaneously invite me to jump in his 1969 purple Cadillac with his friend and driver, a 6’ 9” cool guy named Chicky, and we would end up in Silver Lake or the top of Mullholland. He’d either take out a guitar or pop in a cassette and play something absurdly brilliant. Then he would simply ask me, in his quiet and honest way, “Well, what do you think?” I always responded in a cross between “What the f—? Why are you asking me?” or “How is it that you are just so damn awesome?” It was always magical, and I felt incredibly honored.

Transparent’s Jill Soloway To Direct Red Sonja

Red Sonja has a new director.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Transparent creator Jill Soloway will helm the troubled feature. Loosely based on Conan the Cimmerian creator Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonya of Rogatino — a 17th Century swashbuckler in one of Howard’s stories — the character as she is popularly known was created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith in the pages of Marvel’s Conan…