Month: April 2021

Kacey Musgraves’ next album, due out later this year, will be jointly released via Interscope Records and UMG Nashville. The partnership will find the labels collaborating on marketing, radio promotion and international marketing for the six-time Grammy winner’s new music. Musgraves’ most recent album, “Golden Hour,” released in 2018 via MCA Nashville, won four Grammy
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Oscar-winning Irish writer-director Terry George (“Hotel Rwanda,” “In The Name of The Father”) and Egyptian writer Mariam Naoum have teamed up to co-write Arabic serial killer series “The Alexandria Killings” on which George will serve as showrunner. The high-end show in Arabic and English is based on the true story of shadowy Egyptian sisters Raya and
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Erin Doherty, who won acclaim playing Princess Anne in “The Crown,” headlines the cast of Amazon Prime Video and BBC One psychological drama series “Chloe.” The cast also features rising U.K. acting talents including Billy Howle (“The Serpent”), Pippa Bennett-Warner (“Gangs of London”), and Jack Farthing (“Poldark”), alongside Poppy Gilbert (“Stay Close”), Akshay Khanna (“Grace”),
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The 2021 Webby Awards nominations, recognizing the year’s best websites, podcasts, apps and other internet services, have been announced. Variety received three nominations: general social, entertainment; general websites and mobile sites, entertainment; and video series and channels, entertainment, for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series. Winners of the 25th Annual Webby Awards, presented by the International
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WarnerMedia has set up two Chinese-language series that will debut later this year. Period drama series “Legacy” hails from mainland China, while crime drama “Trinity of Shadows” is a three-way venture involving partners from Taiwan and Hong Kong. “Legacy” is a 1920s-set drama that chronicles the lives of the wealthy Yi family and three sisters
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Swiss doc fest Visions du Réel’s second virtual edition frames multiple titles – “The Bubble, “My Old Man” and “The Home” portraying an ever growing and aging demographic and the conditions in which its members live the final stage of their lives. The debut feature documentary of Chase Musslewhite and Jesse Zinn, the later also VdR
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In connection with an authoritative new report from Midia Research showing how songwriters are being dramatically short-changed by the streaming economy, ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus says that “songwriters are last in line for streaming royalties.” In an op-ed that recently appeared in the U.K. paper The Guardian, Ulvaeus — pictured above left, who cowrote nearly every
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Reflecting the big issues examined in this year’s film lineup, the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival’s (CPH:DOX) industry section likewise grapples with such major topics as climate change, biodiversity and the tectonic shifts being felt far and wide in the global political and economic order. The industry sidebar comprises the Forum financing and co-production event; the
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Climate protection, the growing threats to ocean life, the FBI’s smear campaign against Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi death squad are just some of the wide-ranging topics examined at this year’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), which kicks off Wednesday. Since its establishment
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The Locarno Film Festival’s Industry Academy workshop is extending its global reach to Africa. The prominent Swiss festival’s formative initiative dedicated to training young professionals working in sales, traditional or online distribution, theatrical exhibition and programming for festivals – which is an intergral part of Locarno’s Locarno Pro industry side – has forged a new
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Video infrastructure provider Bitmovin has raised $25 million in Series C financing, led by Swisscom Ventures, the venture arm of the Switzerland telco. Others participating in the funding round were Climb Ventures and existing investors Atomico, Highland Europe and Constantia New Business. The announcement brings Bitmovin’s total funding to $68 million to date. Customers of
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Kevin Mayer, the hard-charging executive who was one of the architects of Disney Plus, says sports-only streaming platforms have every chance of being viable. As chairman of DAZN, he now has a chance to prove his point. The former TikTok CEO was speaking on Tuesday at APOS, the high-powered Asian media conference operated by consultancy
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WarnerMedia has appointed broadcast executive Annelies Sitvast to the newly created role of head of unscripted production for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Based in Amsterdam, Sitvast will commission unscripted programming for streamer HBO Max, which will begin rolling out in Europe by year’s end, and will report into Antony Root, head of original production
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James Murdoch, former CEO of 21st Century Fox, and founder and CEO of Lupa Systems, is heralding a future that spotlights creator-led franchises. Delivering the opening keynote speech at the annual APOS conference, Murdoch said that the emergence of massive conglomerates meant that “there is less room for truly original work (and) lots more derivative
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PBS is teaming with U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 and Arte France for feature-length documentary “Generation 9/11,” which marks the 20th anniversary of the twin tower attacks by following the children born to fathers who perished in the disaster. Produced by London-based outfit Arrow Pictures, the 120-minute doc introduces the youth born in the wake of
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Tel Aviv-based Cinephil, the sales agent for the Oscar nominated “Collective” and “The Act of Killing” among others, has clinched world rights to “Songs of Earth” from seasoned Norwegian helmer and producer Margreth Olin of Speranza Film. The documentary project marks the third collaboration between Cinephil’s managing director Philippa Kowarsky and Olin after the DOC
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Five members of the United States House of Representatives have signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to launch an investigation into the Live Nation–Ticketmaster merger, which they call a “monopoly.” Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ-09), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ-06), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY-10), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-09) and David Cicilline (D-RI-01) sent the letter on Monday to
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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has issued a statement following an email sent by its former president calling the Black Lives Matter organization “a hate movement.” The L.A. Times published an article on Monday detailing the email, which was reportedly sent on Sunday. According to the Times, former HFPA president and current member Phil Berk
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After several previous notable singles, Polo G’s “Rapstar” is looking like his first true phenomenon, becoming his first No. 1 single with the highest streaming numbers for any song by a male artist out of the box so far in 2021. The song debuted atop the Rolling Stone songs chart and bounced Lil Nax X’s
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