Filmbase are celebrating their 25th anniversary this week with festivities taking place on Friday June 24th and Saturday June 25th. Events include a public interview with Oscar nominated actress Saoirse Ronan which will take place on June 25th. Saoirse is one of Ireland’s most successful actresses having played starring roles in Joe Wright’s ‘Hanna’, ‘Atonement’ and Peter Weir’s ‘The Way Back’.

Celebrations kick off at Filmbase’s Temple Bar location on Friday 24th June at 7pm with a special ‘Road to the Oscars’ panel session. The panel including Juanita Wilson (The Door, As If I Am Not There), Steph Green (New Boy) and Nicky Phelan (Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty). The panel will discuss how they got to the Oscars with their work following a screening of the Oscar-nominated short films.

Other events at the Filmbase 25th celebration include a Birthday Party, sponsored by Jameson, at Filmbase from 6pm-8pm on June 25th and screenings of short films, filmmakers speaking in the café in Filmbase, animation demos and top tricks and demo for the DSLR camera throughout the Saturday.

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Just came across two photos of Saoirse while she visited RTÉ Tubridy Radio. You can read our previous update to listen to the interview.

Unfortunately Saoirse will be in “Anna Karenina” according to IFTN.

Keira Knightly and Jude Law are reportedly attached to the film to play the title character and her husband. Despite reports indicating her involvement in the project, IFTN have also received confirmation that Saoirse Ronan is no longer attached to the film.
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We just added the scans of Saoirse in Bullett Magazine, thanks to Access Saoirse for scanning them.

Saoirse visited RTÉ Tubridy Radio on May 11th to talk about her involvement in the Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & TV Festival and her career, including “Hanna” and the upcoming “Violet & Daisy“. You can download the podcast via RTE.ie by going to this page (and scroll down to May 11) or by downloading it directly by clicking on this download link.

Thanks Jessica for the heads up.

Keep in mind this could be turn out to be a rumor just like with “The Host“.

Director Neil Jordan reunites with producer Stephen Woolley for mother-daughter bloodsucker pic.

CANNES — Oscar winning filmmaker Neil Jordan is reuniting with producer Stephen Woolley to make Byzantium, a female vampire movie with Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton as the lead bloodsuckers.

The original script is penned by Moira Buffini and details the story of a mother vampire who turns her own daughter into a vampire and the pair form a lethal partnership, sometimes posing as sisters.

The £8 million ($11 million) budgeted movie is set to shoot in October.

Jordan and Woolley have made several movies dating back to 1984’s The Company of Wolves, based on Angela Carter’s novel.

Woolley produced Jordan’s Oscar winning The Crying Game also and last worked together on Breakfast on Pluto in 2005.

“I love the horror genre and we’ve been working on this for three or four years. I sent it to Neil and he liked the script,” Woolley said. “We’d both recently revisited Angela Carter’s book and it was just chance that when I called [Jordan], we were thinking along the same lines.”

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The original script is based on a youth theater play by Buffini but has been taken to a slightly more adult, darker level, Woolley said.

Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen’s Number 9 Films production banner is gearing up to shoot its $17 million budgeted Mike Newell directed adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, penned by David Nicholls.

Cast includes Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irvine.

It is backed by Optimum Releasing, BBC Films and the British Film Institute, which now has lottery funding duties since the end of the U.K. Film Council. It is being sold here by Hanway Films.

Along with Number 9 Films production banner partner Elizabeth Karlsen, the company is gearing up to give longtime assistant and Number 9 stalwart Joanna Laurie her first taste of filmmaking.

Laurie is producing Hyena, an alternate London cops thriller written and directed by Gerard Johnson. Billed as a police noir inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville, one of the forerunners of the French New Wave, the film is set in contemporary West London amongst the Turkish and Albanian communities of asylum seekers.

It is being developed with Film4, the broadcaster’s standalone movie-making unit and marks Johnson’s second big screen outing and will star Peter Ferdinando.

Ferdinando appeared in Johnson’s debut horror thriller, Tony, about a serial killer in a rundown suburb of London. It is being sold at the Marche du Film by Independent.

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Saoirse talked to Press Association during the Opening Of Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & TV Festival.