Pioneering Police Officer The Focus Of ‘The Winters Lion’ (Exclusive); BBC Acquires ‘One Piece’ Series; Marlow Film Studios Appeal — Global Briefs

Parvinder Shergill To Front Film On First Asian-British Female Police Officer

EXCLUSIVE: Parvinder Shergill will lead an indie movie about a pioneering Asian-British female police officer. Shergill play PC Karpal Kaur Sandhu in The Winters Lion, with shooting set to go ahead in spring 2025 in the UK. Further casting is underway. Dhruv Bhatnagar, whose credits include work on Dune: Part Two, will make his directorial debut, while first-time screenwriter Tharen Sawan is the writer. Shergill’s Pinder Productions, which focuses on female-centric, South Asian-led British stories, is producing. The news comes a week after Shergill unveiled Break a Leg, a mockumentary set in a British drama school. Her short film Kaur, originally for ITVX, was sold to Netflix earlier this year.

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BBC Acquires Anime Series ‘One Piece

The BBC has bought more than 1,000 episodes of Japanese anime series One Piece for the BBC iPlayer. The show, dubbed in English, comes from Toei Animation and is based on Eiichido Oda’s manga series of the same name. It has been on screens since 1999 and follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat Crew as they explore the Grand Line in search of a mythical treasure that would make him the next King of the Pirates. BBC iPlayer, in partnership with BBC Three, will launch all 10 One Piece sagas between September and December, with the first three launched on Sunday (September 1). The anime series is separate to the Netflix live-action series starring the likes of  Iñaki Godoy, Emily Rudd, Mackenyu, Jacob Romero Gibson, and Taz Skyla.

Marlow Films Studio Planners Appeal Rejection

The company planning a Hollywood-backed overhaul of the UK’s Marlow Film Studios is to appeal against its rejection. The plan was to build a major film and TV production campus on a quarry in Buckinghamshire, which Marlow Film Studios (MFS) claimed would injected £750M in capital investment and an extra £3.5B in economic investment each decade it was open through production spend. However, after receiving the backing from the likes of Sam Mendes and James Cameron, a Buckinghamshire planning committee rejected the plans, saying it was on greenbelt land, which is protected from development in British law. MFS will now appeal and repeat a call for a public inquiry. It claims the UK has a shortage of studio space, and that the land in question is “presently unusable for domestic buildings or agriculture.”

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