Month: October 2019

ITV Studios’ Armoza Formats has inked a co-development deal with major Chinese broadcaster Hunan TV. The first show to come out of the partnership is dance competition “Dance Smash,” which began airing in China this month. The show is based on Quebecor Content and Fair-Play’s format “Dance Revolution,” which originally aired on Canada’s TVA. It
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October 28, 2019 11:35PM PT Korean Telecom, a phones to TV channels giant, has signed a content partnership agreement with U.S. media firm Discovery to launch a joint venture that will produce original, non-scripted Korean entertainment content for Korean and international audiences. The contents will be broadcast through KT’s subsidiary channel operator SkylifeTV, Discovery Korea
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October 28, 2019 7:02PM PT [embedded content] Disney has dropped the second trailer for Jon Favreau’s upcoming Star Wars series for Disney Plus, “The Mandalorian.” The trailer teases the titular bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal)’s origin, showing him walking through a town filled with Storm Troopers’ heads on pikes. “Is the world more peaceful since the
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October 28, 2019 6:51PM PT Following Netflix’s announcement that the streamer is testing faster playback speeds — allowing consumers to watch films at a higher rate than intended — various industry members including Judd Apatow, Aaron Paul, and Brad Bird have come forward to share their feelings on the possible update. Apatow was particularly displeased
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October 28, 2019 5:51PM PT Mark Damon’s DCR Finance Corp. has signed a deal to provide $65 million in financing for a new version of “Sinbad” with production set to begin in early 2020, Variety has learned exclusively. DCR, a media financing fund headed by Damon, Adi Cohen and Jordi Rediu, will unveil details to
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October 28, 2019 5:12PM PT Angelina Jolie kept the crown away from Joaquin Phoenix over the weekend in one of the closest box office races in recent memory. Final figures released Monday showed that Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” slipped past Warner Bros.’ “Joker” with $19.37 million to $19.25 million for the Friday-Sunday weekend —
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In today’s roundup, National Geographic announced the ensemble cast joining “Genius: Aretha” and Comedy Central has ordered eight episodes of Bobby Moynihan’s digital series “Loafy.”  CASTING Malcolm Barrett (“Timeless, “Preacher”), Patrice Covington (“The Color Purple”), Kimberly Hébert Gregory (“Vice Principals”), Rebecca Naomi Jones (“The Big Sick”), Sanai Victoria (“Black-ish”) have been cast alongside Cynthia Erivo
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Need an update on what the heck is happening in the ‘Terminator’ universe? Check out this quick, fact-filled catchup that will get you up to speed before you go see ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ in theaters November 1! Watch More: ► Terminator: Dark Fate Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqrPrcUPDltcoSy10amWY_wS ► Exclusive Interviews: http://bit.ly/2D4tzw4 ► Set Visits: http://bit.ly/2mktEBb ► Celebrity
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October 28, 2019 4:18PM PT CBS and Viacom now plan to merge as soon as early December, the two media companies said Monday, setting in motion the last steps to yet another consolidation in the traditional media sector. The two companies, which will be known as ViacomCBS once the deal is complete, said the pact
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Japanese screen legend Kiyoshi Atsumi built his entire career on one role. For nearly three decades, the comic actor played a character named Torajiro Kuruma — “Tora-san” to his onscreen family and real-world fans — appearing in approximately two new installments of the long-running franchise per year. To Japanese audiences, Atsumi was Tora-san, a connection the actor
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The streaming-war spotlight is shifting to AT&T-owned WarnerMedia on Tuesday, Oct. 29, when the media conglomerate will host a media event on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., to unveil its over-the-top entrant, HBO Max. AT&T chief operating officer and WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey told Variety earlier this year that there is a “tremendous
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UPDATED: “Booksmart” director Olivia Wilde and stars Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein expressed shock and disappointment over news that an airline apparently censored their film’s lesbian sex scene. “I don’t understand it,” Wilde told Variety’s Marc Malkin on the red carpet at the Academy’s Governors Awards on Sunday night. “There’s censorship, airline to airline, of
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Alex Gibney’s “Citizen K” is a devastating portrait of corruption in Vladimir Putin’s Russia that seems to grow ever more timely. It follows Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch and ally of Putin who became an unlikely political dissident, risking everything to blow the whistle on the threat the Russian leader poses to democracy. “After 2016,
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October 28, 2019 2:00PM PT The social media skirmish that broke out after Martin Scorsese called Marvel movies “not cinema” and compared them to “theme parks” has reached Japan. There has been heavy local coverage of the back-and-forth between Scorsese and allies such as Francis Ford Coppola, and Marvel defenders, including Marvel Comics Universe directors
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After a rocky few years, cinema from the Philippines is once again bristling with energy and innovation. International interest is rising, and the Tokyo International Film Festival’s 2019 selection reflects some of that. The recent launch of two incentive schemes by the Philippines government may help the country’s production become more international. The Tokyo festival
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ABC has given full season orders to freshman shows “Stumptown” and “Mixed-ish” as well as sophomore series “The Rookie.” Both “Stumptown” and “Mixed-ish” are produced solely by ABC Studios, while “The Rookie” is a co-production between ABC Studios and eOne. This marks the first full season pick ups for any of ABC’s fall shows thus
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