Month: February 2021

Adam Wingard, director of the upcoming monster showdown “Godzilla vs. Kong,” will helm the remake of the 1997 thriller “Face/Off” for Paramount. Wingard will write the script with longtime collaborator Simon Barrett. The two have previously worked on the 2016 found footage horror film “Blair Witch,” the 2014 thriller “The Guest” and the 2010 horror
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Hollywood’s major unions have signed on with the AFL-CIO’s push to advance public policy initiatives involving diversity, equity and inclusion issues. The broad goal is to strengthen collective bargaining and copyright protections and the state and federal level. On Thursday, a clutch of entertainment industry union representatives gathered for a virtual news conference to detail
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Keyboardist-composer Chick Corea, who attained stardom as a fusion pioneer and distinguished himself as a do-anything player across the jazz spectrum and beyond, died Tuesday from a rare form of cancer, his Facebook page announced. He was 79. He left a message on his page for his fans: “I want to thank all of those
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Disney Plus had the wind at its back to close out 2020: The streaming service notched 94.9 million customers worldwide as of Jan. 2, 2021, the company announced. That’s up more than 8 million in just one month, from 86.8 million paid subscribers as of Dec. 2. It also now tops Disney’s original projections of
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Variety has promoted Jem Aswad  to Deputy Music Editor. Based in New York, Aswad joined Variety in April 2017 from Billboard. He signed on to relaunch Variety‘s music coverage alongside Shirley Halperin, Executive Editor of Music, to whom he reports. Aswad’s promotion comes as Variety has expanded the scope and volume of its music editorial
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MTV Entertainment Group— which includes MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and multiple other ViacomCBS brands — announced today the promotions of Lance McPherson to executive VP and deputy general counsel and Bahareh Kamali to executive VP, strategic development. “Lance and Bahareh are consummate pros who bring a high level of expertise and experience, forging groundbreaking deals
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Tom McAlister has been promoted to president of Back Media and made the strategic communication agency’s first-ever partner. In his new role, McAlister will over see operations in the company’s Austin, Atlanta, New York City and San Francisco locations, as well as its Santa Monica headquarters. “Tom is a world-class creative marketing and communications strategist,
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Always expect the unexpected, especially in this unpredictable awards season. I’ve been wondering if we might see the “WTF nomination” on Oscar-noms morning. I’m talking about an actor who is catapulted into the race without any previous mentions from the most crucial televised awards shows — BAFTA, Critics Choice, the Golden Globes and SAG. Not
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Listen to the theme song of Nicolas Cage’s new horror movie “Willy’s Wonderland” and chances are you won’t be able to get it out of your heard. Here, Variety gives you the first listen to the full creepy, yet catchy “The Birthday Song and Willy’s Jingle.” In the Kevin Lewis-directed film, Cage plays a man
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In 1970, Ali MacGraw, then a relatively unknown model-turned-actress fresh off her debut role in “Goodbye, Columbus,” sat on the front steps of a Cambridge, Mass., duplex in deep winter, sobbing and shivering and blubbering the line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It was the non-apology heard ’round the world. While MacGraw,
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Over a decade in the making, The Actors Fund and Thomas Safran & Associates broke ground Thursday morning on The Hollywood Arts Collective, a $120-million project that will include 151 affordable housing units for artists. “With gentrification and rising rents in neighborhoods traditionally accessible to workers in the entertainment and arts community, The Hollywood Arts
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The part-documentary/part-drama “The Social Dilemma” deals in part with the spell that Silicon Valley tech companies have cast over a willingly mesmerized populace, and so Nina Simone’s version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ classic “I Put a Spell on You” was brought in as a musical accent mark for the film. For the soundtrack album, producers
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China’s top broadcasting regulator said Thursday that it will ban BBC World News from the country, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The National Radio and TV Administration (NRTA) said that BBC World News was found to have “undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity” because of its China-related reports that “went against the
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The parallel between fast cars and high fashion is self-evident. Both modes operate in a luxury world that is sometimes unattainable, always aspirational, and downright sexy. LaQuan Smith lives in this world. But it wasn’t always like that. “Nothing was given to me on a silver platter,” Smith, 31, told ELLE. “I had hustle to
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