Oscar-nominated Mexican directors sign joint deal

Los Angeles – The three Mexican directors who shook up Hollywood last February with 16 Academy Award nominations have formed a moviemaking partnership with Universal Pictures worth a reported $100 million.

Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will produce five movies, some of them in Spanish, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

“These filmmakers truly represent the importance of cultural diversity for the global audience,” said David Linde, co-chairman of Universal Pictures.

The trio, who individually directed “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Babel” and “Children of Men,” will call their production company Cha Cha Cha.

Universal plans to distribute the trio’s films abroad. A U.S.-Canadian distributor was not named. The total cost of the films could reach $100 million, according to the Times.

The three have marketed themselves together since their stunning Oscar success.

Del Toro directed “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which won three Oscars and was nominated for six. Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel” was nominated in seven categories, including best picture and best director, and won for best original score. Cuaron’s “Children of Men” was nominated in three categories.

DiCaprio says Gore influenced other climate change movie

Cannes, France – About a decade ago, when Leonardo DiCaprio was on the cusp of megastardom and Al Gore was the U.S. vice president, the two talked together about global warming.

Now an all-out environmental activist, DiCaprio has followed Gore’s lead by bringing a climate change documentary to the Cannes Film Festival.

DiCaprio co-produced and co-wrote “The 11th Hour,” which explains how humans have changed the climate and how to fix the damage.

“It’s such an amazingly large issue, and you suddenly you feel like, what can I do? What can I do? It’s too big for me to deal with,” the 32-year-old actor told reporters Saturday in a beach cabana overlooking the Mediterranean.

DiCaprio said the environmental movement owed a great debt to Gore, whose “An Inconvenient Truth,” was shown at Cannes and won an Academy Award for best documentary feature.

“I think that movie, through the cinematic format, was able to convey science to the public and to the media in a way that it had never done before,” DiCaprio said.