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In January, when Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” launched in Italy at a special venue at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios equipped with a 70mm projector, Raffaella Leone had reason to be particularly proud.Leone Film Group, the company founded in 1989 by spaghetti Western master Sergio Leone and now run by his children, Raffaella and Andrea, is the Italian co-distributor of the film, shot in Ultra Panavision. “It has a special meaning for us,” she says. “It takes us back to our...
Leone Film Group
Raffaella
Leone
Co-Founder
Up until 2012, Leone had mainly been distributing movies for TV, but a few years ago, as top Italian distributors Medusa and Rai Cinema started focusing more on TV dramas and local movies, she stepped into the theatrical-distribution gap. A deal with DreamWorks was inked, followed by a multiyear agreement with Lionsgate. Now, Leone Film Group has gone into local production, acquiring shingle Lotus Productions, which made Gabriele Muccino’s hit 2018 dramedy “There Is No Place Like Home” among Italy’s top homegrown grossers. In 2016, Leone announced that it was branching out into high-end television for the international market with the still-in-development “I Beati Paoli,” a Mafia origins show conceived by screenwriter-director Giuseppe Tornatore.
