Before we get into that, however, we're going to start with one of the most recent announcements. There She Goes, a BBC comedy-drama that stars David Tennant (Barty Crouch Jr.) and Jessica Hynes (Mafalda Hopkirk) as a couple struggling to find answers about their daughter's disability, will return for a one-off special. The special will air on BBC2 and focus on the family as their daughter hits puberty.
Jessie Cave (Lavender Brown) was also recently featured in an exciting announcement. She will appear on The Stand Up Sketch Show alongside her husband. The show takes stand-up acts from established and upcoming comedians and recreates them as filmed sketches. Cave will appear in these sketches for the show's fifth season, which is set to air later this year.
At the start of the month, Alfonso Cuarón (director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) sat down with his fellow Oscar-winning Mexican directors Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant) and Guillermo del Toro (Parallel Mothers) for a chat about their careers and how they have crossed over the years. The so-called Three Amigos talked about Iñárritu and del Toro's upcoming award prospects (with Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths and Pinocchio, respectively) at a 90-minute session at the Academy Museum on January 6.
We also received news of who scored awards from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists at the start of January. The full winners' list was released on January 5, with Colin Farrell (Percival Graves, Fantastic Beasts) and Dame Emma Thompson (Professor Trelawney) both winning individual awards. Thompson won the Grand Dame Award for defying ageism and the award for Most Daring Performance for her role in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Farrell won the Best Actor award for The Banshees of Inisherin, which also stars Brendan Gleeson (Mad-Eye Moody). The film also won Best Film and Best Screenplay, Original. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, which features David Bradley (Argus Filch) and Fantastic Beasts's Ron Perlman (Gnarlak), won the award for Best Animated Film. Congrats to all our winners!
Composer John Williams has had a couple of projects announced this month. At the start of January, it was announced that he would be composing a new theme for the ESPN College Football Championship. The song is called Of Grit and Glory and plays during the opening credits of matches on ESPN. ESPN co-director and producer Martin Khodabakhshian described how the piece is intended to convey "the feeling behind the night, fear and anticipation, triumph and failure."
More recently, it was announced that legendary director Steven Spielberg is spearheading a project alongside John Williams to create a feature-length documentary about the composer's life. Laurent Bouzereau (Five Came Back) is set to direct the project, which is currently in the early stages of production.
