In The News

After years of bit parts in TV and films, the Bridgton-based actor has a key role in director George Clooney’s upcoming film ‘The Tender Bar,’ which stars Ben Affleck.

Until this year, Matthew Delamater was taking his acting career one day at a time.

One day, after all, was the amount of time he spent on most TV and film sets. He’s worked steadily for about a decade, but often in small roles. He was credited as “bearded prison guard” in a 2018 episode of the Stephen King-inspired Hulu series “Castle Rock” and “gun salesman” in the 2017 comedy film “Daddy’s Home 2.”

Then, in February, he began two solid months on the set of the much-anticipated drama “The Tender Bar,” working side-by-side with Oscar winners George Clooney, the film’s director, and Ben Affleck, its star. The film is about a boy essentially raised by his bartender uncle (Affleck) and the bar’s patrons. Delamater plays one of those regulars, Joey D.

Negotiations for a new SAG-AFTRA film and TV contract won’t get underway until 2023, but the union’s newly elected leaders already are vowing to take a tough stand at the bargaining table.

“I intend to build up the perception of SAG-AFTRA as one of power and strength to the envy of our industry peers and reservation of our employers,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher told members in the latest issue of the union’s magazine. “Only if we take a stand and commit to the things that matter, do we have influence both in D.C. and at the negotiating table.”

MFA invites you to brave the winter chill, assemble your film team, and rise to the challenge for a chance to win cash prizes!

The 2022 MFA Winter Film Challenge is the Maine Film Association’s first-ever weekend-long filmmaking celebration, providing a platform for Maine filmmakers to challenge themselves creatively and showcase their skills and talent. Teams of filmmakers from across the state will have 72 hours to write, shoot, and edit a short film. All events associated with the competition will accommodate in-person (as COVID allows) and virtual attendees through a hybrid format. We hope this will enable interested creatives from Fort Kent to Kittery to participate and make a film in their hometowns.

Niels Juul hopes to raise up to $10m and says he wants to ‘democratise’ antiquated funding system.

The executive producer behind blockbusters including Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is to make Hollywood’s first feature film funded entirely by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with a promise that those who invest will get a share of any profits and meet the stars of the production.

Niels Juul, who has set up the production company NFT Studios to fund a series of films, hopes to raise between $8m and $10m (£6m and £7.5m) through the sale of 10,000 NFTs to the public and institutional investors.

Juul said the aim was to develop a new funding model for films to circumvent an antiquated Hollywood system under which smaller productions take up to eight years to reach movie or TV screens.

“Producers have come through the first three COVID waves and know what to do to keep things moving,” one veteran producer notes, pointing to safety protocols implemented at the start of the pandemic that, for the most part, have allowed studios and independents to keep making movies even through this fall’s surge of infections caused by the Delta variant.

“Rapid testing is widely available, so production facilities can test everyone every day, making transmission pretty unlikely. I really don’t see a big impact over the near term,” notes Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. “But if it turns out that Omicron is more deadly than thought and we are more defenseless, it will become a problem.”