WASHINGTON — A pair of reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday show a much more widespread Russian disinformation campaign before and after the 2016 presidential election that sought to impersonate mainstream media organizations and at the same time try to discredit them. As much of the focus has been on Facebook, Twitter
Month: December 2018
Reviews are in for Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic, and it’s not all awards-season buzz. Despite garnering six nominations for this year’s Golden Globes, McKay’s kitschy approach to the politically charged film has polarized reviewers, prompting a mix of scathing critiques and celebratory praise for the director’s distinct film style. What critics can agree on, however,
As the number of scripted series continues to grow (more than 500 in 2018), it is not just a race to produce the biggest quantity, but also the highest quality programming. Looking at the upcoming slate for 2019, there appears to be no shortage of unique stories coming. Here, Variety previews the most anticipated scripted
CBS All Access has renewed “Tell Me a Story” for a second season. The renewal comes ahead of the first season finale, which is slated to air in January. The series, which has aired seven episodes thus far, takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and reimagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Set
December 17, 2018 10:51AM PT A filing for a new TiVo remote control suggests that the company may be getting ready to show an Android TV-based set-top box at CES in Las Vegas next month. The device likely won’t be sold to end users, but instead ship to TV operators looking to combine TiVo’s DVR
Writer-creator Lena Waithe and actor Brian Tyree Henry will present a quarter of a million dollars in filmmaker grants come January as hosts of the annual Independent Spirit Awards nominee brunch. Waithe, this year’s Spirit Awards honorary chair, and Henry will dole out the prizes in four categories, including a $50,000 unrestricted grant for a
HBO is developing a female skateboarding comedy series that hails from Crystal Moselle and Lesley Arfin. Inspired by the film “Skate Kitchen,” which Moselle directed and co-wrote, the untitled series is set against the backdrop of New York City and will follow a diverse group of young women navigating their lives through the predominantly male oriented
December 17, 2018 10:30AM PT Director-producer Justin Lin has planted his Perfect Storm Entertainment banner with Apple in an exclusive overall TV development pact. Lin moves to Apple after six years with Sony Pictures TV. During that time Perfect Storm delivered three drama series for CBS — “Scorpion,” “S.W.A.T.” and the reboot of “Magnum P.I.”
One of the most interesting sketches from this past weekend’s broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” came not during the show, but rather one of its commercial breaks. Viewers who stuck around during advertisements in the first half of “SNL” no doubt saw cast member Kyle Mooney creating a short video with the use of Google’s
One of international cinema’s undisputed greats in costume design, Piero Tosi’s work first faced the awards season spotlight 64 years ago with only his third film, Luchino Visconti’s masterwork “Senso,” which competed for the Golden Lion in Venice in 1954. Nominated for five Oscars for costume design and recipient of an honorary Oscar in 2013,
Is 2018 an anomaly, or is it a harbinger of things to come? The awards derbies of recent years have seen a predominance of indie films at the expense of big studio features — resulting in a slate of Oscar contenders devoid not only of genuine blockbusters but also of more modest mid-budget crowd-pleasers. This
Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV. Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, “Schitt’s Creek” airs a holiday special and “The Runaways” returns for Season 2
Former ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey is joining Netflix as the vice president of original content, Variety has learned. In her new role, she will report to Cindy Holland, who is also vice president of original content. Dungey is expected to start working at the streamer in February. “We’re delighted to be adding Channing’s expertise, leadership
December 17, 2018 9:58AM PT 20th Century Fox veteran Vincent de la Tour is joining Paramount Pictures in a role covering Austria, Germany and Switzerland. He will be executive vice president for theatrical and home media for those territories, overseeing the local teams and reporting to Cameron Saunders, Paramount’s EVP of international theatrical distribution, and
For most of its 91 years, Oscar has been surrounded by hoopla. Now it’s surrounded by noise, which isn’t the same thing. For decades, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ attitude toward the media was: “Don’t talk about the organization; instead, talk about the creative members and their movies.” But in the internet
It’s been less than four years since #OscarsSoWhite became a hot topic at the Academy Awards after 2015 films like “Creed” and “Straight Outta Compton” failed to land major nominations for people of color. (It actually began the year before but picked up steam when, for the second year in a row, no people of
This awards season, the Hollywood studios’ Golden Boy, Oscar, stars in The Return of the Prodigal Son. This year’s lineup of studio contenders has opened screen doors to the top award after Oscar’s long affair with those wild young things called “the indies.” As the blockbusters became the more and more favored means of recoupment
For as scattered as the Golden Globes can be, there are at least a couple of constants when it comes to the nominations. The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. has proved time and again that its favorite kind of actors to reward tend to come from two extreme sides of the spectrum: talented first-timers and huge
December 17, 2018 9:39AM PT Starz has promoted Marta Fernandez to executive VP of originals programming. Fernandez has been with Starz since 2007. Most recently, she has helped steer the original programming team and leads the company’s inclusion initiatives. Among the shows that she directly oversees are the drama series “Vida” and “American Gods” and
NBCUniversal’s Hispanic broadcaster Telemundo is developing its first English-language newscast in collaboration with YouTube in a bid to tap the burgeoning U.S. Hispanic youth demographic. Borne out of a YouTube grant aimed at awarding journalism projects that “elevate quality journalism, evolve business models to drive sustainable growth, and empower news organizations through technological innovation,” Telemundo News’
Jared Gutstadt, the co-founder of production music house Jingle Punks and a multi-instrumentalist who favors guitar and drums, is extending beyond his field with the release of his first album of original material under the name Bear and a Banjo. In typical Punks style, Gutstadt — who performs under the name Jingle Jared — is
From Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, the leaders of right-wing Republican politics have tended to be fire-breathers (or, in the case of Reagan, a saber rattler who could make snake oil taste like honey). But Dick Cheney broke that mold. Speaking in soft terse corporate tones, with the precision squint of someone
December 17, 2018 8:56AM PT Popular YouTube creator PewDiePie’s ongoing battle to keep his channel’s subscriber count No. 1 ahead of India’s T-Series took another bizarre twist: A branded-content section of the Wall Street Journal’s website was hacked with a fake message apologizing to PewDiePie and urging people to subscribe to his channel. A spokeswoman for
December 17, 2018 8:49AM PT Comcast television subscribers can now enjoy YouTube in ultra-high definition: The Google-owned video service is now serving up 4K videos on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 set-top boxes, the cable company announced Monday. X1 owners who also happen to have a X1 voice remote can get access to a curated selection of
Earlier this year, Sony/ATV Music Publishing Chairman/CEO Martin Bandier announced that he will be stepping down from his post at the end of March, 2019, when his contract expires. It is a matter of fact and not opinion to say that he is one of the greatest music publishers in history and has built the
Ed Sheeran topped Pollstar’s 2018 year-end global touring chart with a record $432 million gross on 4,860,482 tickets sold, the publication announced today, with Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” tour leading the U.S. tours chart with $277.3 million and came in second globally with $345.1 million on 2,888,892 tickets sold. Jay-Z and Beyonce’s “OTRII” tour of North America
Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to her hometown on Sunday for the New York premiere of “On the Basis of Sex,” a biopic starring Felicity Jones tells the Supreme Court justice’s origin story. The 85-year-old Brooklynite received a standing ovation when she entered the Walter Reade Theater — a testament to the Notorious RBG’s rock-star status. Ginsburg
Paul McCartney and Emma Stone get surreal for a good cause in the short film inspired by McCartney’s new anti-bullying song “Who Cares,” which held its premiere Sunday night at Beverly Hills’ Fine Arts Theater. In the short directed by Brantley Guitierrez (a longtime McCartney tour photographer) and choreographer Ryan Heffington, the music legend and
Netflix isn’t killing movie theaters. At least, that’s the take-away from a new study conducted by EY’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics group, which finds that people who go to movies in theaters more frequently also consume more streaming content. That flies in the face of the “conventional wisdom” of box office sages, who grimly ascribe
Sunday night’s “This Is America” tour stop could have been seen as a funeral for Childish Gambino — the musical alter-ego Donald Glover has said he’s retiring after this tour and forthcoming album — but that doesn’t mean it was a somber occasion. On the contrary, Gambino put on a show at Los Angeles’ the
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