Build around Brexit: Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle has called on film-makers and writers to “reach around the hollow cavern” of Brexit to ensure British TV and film continues to be seen as among the best in the world. The director said working on his most recent production, the 10-part television drama Trust, which starts on BBC Two, had made him more determined to work with European production companies.

“The series is set in 1973, the year in which we joined Europe, so there was something ironic about the fact we were making it with the knowledge we were going to leave,” he said. “It just seemed more and more insane to us, especially as we were making it with this wonderful Italian co-production company.

“I can only hope that filmmakers, writers, journalists will try to build around this. Airline companies certainly will, as will businesses. Right now it feels as though something has been severed and we’re adrift but I hope that people will try to compensate for this terrible void that’s been created for us by politicians.”

Trust, which tells the story of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, the grandson of the then richest man in the world, marks Boyle’s first return to TV since directing the pilot of the 2014 police drama Babylon. Trust was written by Simon Beaufoy, who worked with Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, and stars Donald Sutherland as John Paul Getty, Hillary Swank as Gail Getty, the kidnapped teenager’s mother, and Brendan Fraser as the fixer called in to sort everything out.

Eminem breaks 36-year-old record

Eminem has broken the UK chart record for consecutive No 1 albums, beating a record held jointly for 36 years by Abba and Led Zeppelin. His album Kamikaze, a surprise release recently and his second album in less than a year, is his ninth No 1 in a row — a run stretching back 18 years to his second collection, The Marshall Mathers LP. Eminem put out a statement alongside the news, saying: “Does this mean I get to call myself Sir Eminem?”

Kamikaze is also the fourth-fastest selling album this year in the UK, behind Arctic Monkeys, Drake and George Ezra, and outsold the No 2 album, the soundtrack to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, by three copies to one. The album’s opening track, The Ringer, also reached No 4 in the singles chart — it features an attack on Donald Trump, describing him as an “evil serpent” — while two other album tracks, Lucky You and Fall, also reached the Top 10.

After garnering a reputation as a formidable “battle rapper” in the late 1990s, Eminem broke into the mainstream in 1999 after being mentored and signed by Dr Dre, with his debut album The Slim Shady LP. It remains the only one of his albums not to reach No 1 in the UK, though two of its singles reached the top five. While that album showcased his cartoonishly violent alter ego Slim Shady, he let his own voice come through on the follow-up, 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP — regarded by many as one of the greatest rap albums of all time.

No popular film category in Oscars

The organisation that bestows the Academy Awards says it is suspending plans to award a new Oscar for popular films amid widespread backlash to the idea. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it will further study plans for the category. It wrote in a statement that it recognised that implementing a new award three-quarters of the way into the year created challenges for films that have already been released. The film academy announced the new category for “outstanding achievement in popular film” last month. It prompted an immediate outcry, with many inside and outside the film industry wondering how it would affect critically and commercially popular films such as Black Panther. The superhero blockbuster has been cited as a possible best picture contender, with producers launching an awards-season push. Critics of the Academy’s decision had feared, however, that a new category could stand in its way of the more prestigious prize. No traditional superhero film has ever been nominated for best picture.