‘The Wheel of Time’ canceled, Un Certain Regard winners revealed, Josh O’Connor to star in Joel Coen’s ‘Jack of Spades,’ and more of today’s top news stories
Gold Derby's top news stories for May 23, 2025.
The Wheel of Time canceled after three seasons on Prime Video
Amazon has canceled fantasy series The Wheel of Time after three seasons. The series, which premiered on Prime Video in 2021, was based on the popular novel series by Robert Jordan, and featured a large ensemble cast led by Rosamund Pike. The third season made Nielsen's top 10 list of streaming originals, but the renewal bar is high for expensive fantasy series.
Cannes' Un Certain Regard winners revealed
The 2025 winners of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, which honors early career filmmakers, have been revealed. La misteriosa mirada del flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo), the debut feature of Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, won the top Un Certain Regard Prize. Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto won the second-place Jury Prize with his film Un Poeta (A Poet). Palestinian filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser won Best Directing for their film Once Upon a Time in Gaza. Urchin's Frank Dillane won Best Actor. O Risa e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm) star Cleo Diára won Best Actress. And Harry Lighton won Best Screenplay for Pillion, his debut.
Josh O'Connor to star in Joel Coen's Jack of Spades
Challengers star Josh O'Connor has reportedly signed on to star in director Joel Coen's upcoming film Jack of Spades. Details are being kept under wraps, but the film is slated to shoot in Scotland this summer. It will be Joel Coen's second film without brother Ethan, following 2021's The Tragedy of MacBeth.
Chechen doc Imago and Julian Assange doc win top documentary awards at Cannes
The documentary jury at the Cannes Film Festival announced the honorees for the L’Oeil d’or documentary prize. Déni Oumar Pitsaev's Imago won the L’Oeil d’or as the top documentary at the festival, while Eugene Jarecki's The Six Billion Dollar Man, about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, received a Special Jury Prize. Imago tells a very personal autobiographical story about Pitsaev, a Chechen man who left the war-torn region when he was young, as he returns an area of Georgia where his Chechen family settled to try to reconnect with his family and culture. The Six Billion Dollar Man tells the story of activist Assange's ten-year legal ordeal as he battled espionage charges.
Vicky Krieps and Christian Friedel join historical drama The Idiots
Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) and Christian Friedel (The Zone of Interest, The White Lotus) have joined the cast of directors Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert's historical drama The Idiots, about the lives of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Ripley's Johnny Flynn) and his wife Anna (The White Lotus' Aimee Lou Wood) as he prepared to write The Idiot, one of history's greatest novels. Barbara Marten (Dune: Prophecy) and Rainer Bock (Atlas) have also joined the cast.
Alex Garland directing Elden Ring game adaptation for A24
Ex Machina and Civil War director Alex Garland is returning to A24 for a big new project — an adaptation of epic dark fantasy video game Elden Ring. The game, which was first release in 2022, was directed by FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki with story and worldbuilding by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. Peter Rice is set to produce alongside Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich of DNA. Martin and his producing partner Vince Gerardis will also produce.
Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars sets release date
20th Century Studios has set a March 27, 2026 release date for director Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie The Dog Stars. The film is based on a 2012 novel by Peter Heller about a pilot searching for the source of a mysterious radio transmission. Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, and Benedict Wong star.
Ivors winners include U2, Charli XCX, Robbie Williams
Great Britain's Ivor Novello Music Awards honored rising and well-established artists, with U2 receiving the elite Academy Fellowship, Robbie Williams receiving the PRS For Music Icon Award, Brandon Flowers of The Killers receiving the Special International Award, and post-punk band Bloc Party receiving Outstanding Song Collection. Charli XCX won Songwriter of the Year, Berwyn won Best Album for Who Am I, San Soucis won Best Contemporary Song for “Circumnavigating Georgia," Orla Gartland won Best Song Musically And Lyrically for "Mine," and songwriters Peter Fenn, Jesse Fink, and Myles Smith won the PRS For Music Most Performed Work for Smith's song "Stargazing."