Producers of the film Brick Lane have cancelled filming in the London area where it is set owing to opposition from the Bangladeshi community there. The film was due to start shooting in the area this weekend. Ruby Films said it had been advised by police and Tower Hamlets council not to film in Brick Lane area, in London's Shoreditch.

  DOUBLE, Double Toil and Trouble; Fire Burn, and Cauldron Bubble... Four centuries after Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, two rival sets of film-makers are battling to produce a Hollywood version of the "Scottish play". Both have major players in the film world behind them and both have declared similar intentions of appealing to a modern audience with special effects that p...

  Titanic Director Says, Cinema Should Wake Up To Possibilities of 3D A leading Hollywood director has called on studios, film-makers and distributors to wake up to the role that 3-D films can play in winning back audiences to the big screen. James Cameron, showered with Oscars for Titanic, is directing a science-fiction 3-D film for 20th Century Fox. He says 3D technology lets c...

  Oscar winning actress  Charlize Theron has convinced legendary British director Alan Parker to helm her pet project, 'Ice At The Bottom Of The World'. The South African born actress is set to star in and produce the project for which she acquired film rights a decade ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The family drama about a navy captain who returns home...

  Russia is Creating its Own Version of Hollywood It is -25C in a disused Red Army hangar in northern Russia. The director is wearing 18 layers of clothing. The cast can act for only a few minutes, before being taken inside to protect them from frostbite. Welcome to Stoliwood, Russia's answer to Hollywood. The director, the Emmy-award winning Brit Tom Roberts, recalls from th...

With no previous film experience, 12 year old Brit Dakota Blue Richards has beaten off 10,000 other hopefuls for the part of Lyra in New Line Cinema's His Dark Materials trilogy. The Cambridge schoogirl got the part after open auditions earlier in the year. The first film - the Golden Compass (Northern Lights in the UK) - is shortly to go into production with a rumoured budget...

A remake of the controversial British horror classic The House On Straw Hill (1975) will start shooting this summer, starring Martin Kemp (The Krays), Jane March (Color of Night), Gillian MacGregor (The Sickhouse) and Patrick Bergin (Sleeping With The Enemy), with horror film legend Bob Keen (Hellraiser, Dog Soldiers) directing.    

  An interrogation chamber has been discovered below ground in Dalston, where people suspected of involvement in terrorism are to be held and questioned prior to rendition abroad in secret flights. Not a real scenario as far as we know, but real enough for the makers of a micro-budget feature film Rendition, filming now in London.

Based on a novel by Rayda Jacobs, winner of the Sunday Times Fiction and Herman Charles Bosman awards, Confessions of a Gambler is currently in production in South Africa. The film tells the story of Abeeda, a feisty, independent, pious Muslim woman who confronts the prejudices of her community and wrestles with her faith and the issues that face women in the modern world.