Month: February 2020

Lee Phillip Bell, co-creator of popular soap operas “The Young and the Restless’ and “The Bold and The Beautiful,” died on Tuesday. She was 91. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bell created two of daytime television’s hit soap operas,”Y&R” and “B&B,” along with her late husband William J. Bell. In 1975, Bell won a Daytime Emmy
0 Comments
There’s a school of critical thought that believes no contextual details or backstory to a film — be they to do with its source material, the circumstances of its production, or its makers’ motivation — should be examined or factored into a review of it, that the final product up on the screen is the
0 Comments
February 26, 2020 1:14PM PT The Writers Guild of America East has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against NBCUniversal over last month’s closure of Peacock Productions, the unit that produces nonfiction television shows. The complaint, filed with the National Labor Relations Board, alleges that after the WGA East learned that Peacock Productions would cease
0 Comments
A small group of Chinese move theater owners have cancelled plans to attend this year’s CinemaCon, the annual gathering of global exhibitors in Las Vegas, Variety has learned. A delegation of roughly 24 people from China have pulled out over travel restrictions in the region, a spokesperson for the National Organization of Theater Owners, which
0 Comments
“Dau. Natasha,” the Russian art project-turned-movie franchise competing at the Berlinale, has triggered headlines in the local and international press over the years due to its epic scale, scenes of graphic violence and anecdotes of an allegedly oppressive work environment for women. Hours before the film’s premiere at a presser on Wednesday, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who
0 Comments
With “The Invisible Man,” a terrifying thriller starring Elisabeth Moss, Universal is attempting to revive the cinematic prospects for its classic monster properties. After “The Mummy” with Tom Cruise flamed out theaters in 2017, the studio scraped its plans to form an interconnected Dark Universe and instead retooled its vision to create standalone stories unique
0 Comments
In 2013, Sally Potter lost her younger brother, artist and musician Nic Potter, to early onset dementia, although the disease is so cruel, one could say that she began losing him a couple years earlier — that he started to disappear on her in 2010 — and that her film “The Roads Not Taken” is
0 Comments
Legendary Entertainment has appointed veteran sports-media attorney Matthew Erramouspe to the newly developed role of chief legal officer and executive VP. Erramouspe has been co-chair of O’Melveny & Myers’ Entertainment’s Sports and Media practice group. He will report to Legendary’s CEO Joshua Grode and work closely with the heads of Legendary’s business units. “Matthew has been
0 Comments
As the star of CBS’ courtroom drama “All Rise,” Simone Missick takes playing Judge Lola Carmichael seriously, even if the character isn’t always that herself. “I’ve got the fortune of coming up after Viola Davis, after Kerry Washington, that showed networks and buyers and audiences that they did want to see [these] stories told,” Missick
0 Comments
FandangoNow, the on-demand transactional movie and TV service from NBCUniversal-owned Fandango, is now available on Amazon Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition Smart TVs. The expansion to Amazon’s TV hardware platform comes as Fandango vies to get a bigger slice of the digital-entertainment pie — competing with Amazon Video, as well as Apple, Google
0 Comments
After a long development process, Steven Spielberg is handing the directing reins on “Indiana Jones 5” to another filmmaker for the first time in the franchise’s 39-year history, Variety has learned. Sources say, while a deal hasn’t closed, “Ford v Ferrari” director James Mangold is in talks to take the job. Mangold has been put
0 Comments
Nahnatchka Khan could have another series coming to ABC. The “Fresh Off the Boat” creator is an executive producer on a pilot called “Valley Trash,” which has been picked up at the Disney-owned network. A single-cam comedy, “Valley Trash” hails from “Speechless” writer Niki Schwartz-Wright (who will serve as writer, EP and showrunner) and is
0 Comments
The Alliance, the pact formed by Europe’s top state broadcasters to counter the growing power of Netflix and other streaming giants, has joined forces on a high-end adaptation of bestselling environmental sci-fi thriller “The Swarm.” As previously announced, multi Emmy award-winning producer Frank Doelger (“Game of Thrones”) is executive producing the English language series via
0 Comments
The twin pillars of Alfred Döblin’s epochal 480-page 1929 German-language novel and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s deeply influential 15-hour miniseries, first broadcast in 1980, together create an overarching shadow from which Burhan Qurbani’s relatively svelte three-hour contemporary reworking of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” struggles to escape. Although promising a deep-cut dash of contemporary topicality by reimagining the main
0 Comments