Month: May 2020

Facebook has bumped up the star wattage for this week’s livestreaming “#Graduation2020” virtual commencement festivities. The social giant announced more than 70 stars — including Selena Gomez, Cardi B, Usher, Matthew McConaughey and TikTok influencer Dixie D’Amelio — will be joining its “#Graduation2020: Facebook and Instagram Celebrate the Class of 2020,” a multihour livestreaming event
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Hollywood’s streaming wars are growing more intense. Months after Walt Disney blocked Netflix from advertising on entertainment-focused outlets like ABC and FX, NBCUniversal said Monday that it would not accept commercials  “at this time” from rival streaming services on Peacock, its own subscription-based streaming-video outlet. Laura Molen, a president of NBCUniversal’s ad sales and partnerships,
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In “Capone,” Tom Hardy, as the aging, broken-down, not-all-there Al Capone, acts under a corpse-gray mask of desiccated-mobster makeup, and he speaks in a bullfrog croak so raspy it sounds like he’s only got one or two vocal cords left, and that they’ve been burnt to a crisp. It’s 1946, and Capone’s days as the
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A Seattle fund aiming to fill a gap in financing for South Asian filmmakers is launching Monday. The Tasveer Film Fund will bestow $5,000, in a first for that community, to South Asian shorts filmmakers to tell their stories, according to the organizers. Rita Meher, executive director of Tasveer South Asian Film Festival, and Pulkit
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iHeartMedia today announced that Bill and Melinda Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook, singers Mary J. Blige, Smokey Robinson and Becky G, rapper T.I. and actors Freida Pinto, Henry Winkler, Rita Wilson, Tim Cook and Emmy award-winning news anchor Tom Brokaw have joined “Commencement: Speeches for the Class of 2020” podcast event for America’s graduation month, featuring commencement addresses from
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Even before coronavirus, Brazil’s film sector was in extraordinary trouble, victim of a near 18-month freeze on government film funding under far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Now, many executives fear a radical shake out. “We have the incentive freeze, coronavirus, economic crisis, need for a new audiovisual law,” says Fabiano Gullane, one of Brazil’s biggest
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Despite dramatic times, there is room for some encouragement in recent moves by the Spanish film industry. Basque global hit “The Platform” proved the most-watched movie on Netflix in the U.S. The Mediapro Studio is upping film production with high-profile projects such as the Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas drama “Official Competition.” Meanwhile, Mr. Fields
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Scrantonites, assemble! John Krasinski brought back more than a dozen castmates from “The Office,” including Steve Carell, Jenna Fischer, Mindy Kaling and Rainn Wilson, to throw a virtual wedding for a Maryland couple on his weekly life-in-quarantine YouTube show, “Some Good News.” Susan and John, whose marriage proposal echoed Jim’s to Pam on “The Office,”
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Netflix has ordered “Clark,” a drama series about the Swedish criminal Clark Olofsson who will be portrayed by Bill Skarsgård (“It Chapter Two”). The six-episode series is based on Olofsson’s autobiography “Vafan var det som hände” and will chart Clark’s early years until present day. Referred to as a “celebrity gangster,” Olofsson started his criminal
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Discovery’s British channels have ordered four lifestyle and entertainment shows – including series hosted by Rachel Khoo and Gok Wan – that were shot at the presenters’ homes under COVID-19 production protocols. Food Network gave the greenlight to “Simple Pleasures,” which follows Khoo in her country kitchen as she makes her favorite recipes using everyday
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Japanese production company Sunrise is to revive the iconic “Inuyasha” anime franchise and deliver a series “Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon.” Viz Media has come on board to handle digital streaming rights, electronic sell-through, and home video in North America and Latin American territories. Most of the Japanese film industry is currently shut down as a result
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Based in Trivandrum, India, Toonz Media Group will partner with Robert Chandler’s Space Age Films and Gina Carter & Stephen Fry’s Sprout Pictures in the U.K. to co-produce an adaptation of the classic tale “The Canterville Ghost” by celebrated Irish author Oscar Wilde. L.A.-based Cinema Management Group (CMG) handles international sales. First published in 1887,
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Contact-free technology is being deployed at many of South Korea’s multiplexes as theater chains attempt to define a new normal in the post-coronavirus era. The country’s number one exhibition player CJ-CGV turned its Yeouido branch into a completely contactless, “untact” in local jargon, theater in April. To accommodate local audiences’ growing fear of physical contact
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Writer-producer Donick Cary has spent his whole career near the top of the showbiz comedy heap, from stints on “Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Simpsons” to sitcoms like “Just Shoot Me!,” “New Girl,” “Parks and Recreation” and “Silicon Valley.” So it shouldn’t surprise that his first directorial feature, the documentary “Have a Good
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