US Briefs: TWC kicks off 'The Founder' awards run

The Founder opened in Los Angeles on December 7 for one week ahead of nationwide roll-out on January 20.

John Lee Hancock directed the story of McDonald’s entrepreneur Ray Kroc and will take part with the cast in a week-long series of Q&A’s as Harvey Weinstein pushes for awards.

The film also stars Laura Dern as Kroc’s first wife Ethel; Linda Cardellini as his second wife Joan Smith; John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

• The 16th annual Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival will run from January 13-26 at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto before touring select cities. The line-up showcases the best Canadian features, shorts and student shorts in 2016 selected by a panel of seven filmmakers and industry professionals. Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit (Searchers) opens the programme, which includes Nathan Morlando’s Mean Dreams, Hello Destroyer by Kevan Funk, and Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World.
• FilmRise has acquired worldwide rights from Preferred Content to Ryan Suffern’s documentary Finding Oscar, about a boy who survived the 1982 Dos Erres massacre of villagers by Guatemalan Special Forces. Finding Oscar will open theatrically in spring, followed by exclusive streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the summer. Frank Marshall and Suffern produced and Steven Spielberg served as executive producer.
• The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation announced that Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs will receive the 2017 Pioneer Of The Year award at CinemaCon on March 29 in Las Vegas.
• Will Arnett will star in the live action family comedy Show Dogs co-produced and co-financed by Open Road Films and Riverstone Pictures. Raja Gosnell (The Smurfs, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Scooby Doo) is directing and principal photography is is underway at Pinewood Studio Wales. Open Road International will handle international sales through its agreement with FilmNation.
• Paramount executives said on Wednesday that the trailer forMichael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight has reached 100m views following its debut on December 5. The film will open on June 23.
• Will Ferrell is teaming up with Legendary Pictures to star as a member of a professional eSports team in a film said to be in the vein of Talladega Nights. Evil Geniuses and Fnatic, two of the premiere international eSports teams, are in discussions to have a presence in the film. Mosaic and Gary Sanchez are producing with Patrick Connelly and John Beach of Gravity Squared co-producing. Universal Pictures will distribute worldwide excluding China.