The 6th edition of MipDrama, launching Friday as part of virtual conference and market event MipTV, showcases new series – most in post-production, a few wrapped – from some of the biggest and most exciting drama series players in the world. Few events will command more attention from buyers. The following are brief profiles of
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China is set to host the winter Olympics in February, but the extent of American involvement is on shaky ground. There’s plenty of precedent for Olympic-scale strife — in 1980 and 1984, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. engaged in respective boycotts of each other’s Olympics — but this Cold War is raising complicated questions for a
ZDF Enterprises has boarded the second season of the coming-of-age, pandemic thriller “Sløborn” as co-producer and global distributor. Season 1 of the ZDFneo original series dealt with the spread of a deadly virus across the world that ravaged the island of Sløborn, and the inhabitants’ fight to survive the catastrophe. In Season 2, audiences will
London-based DCD Rights is launching a brand-new eight-hour second season of Spanish-Portuguese crime thriller “Dry Water.” A slice of Galician and Portuguese Noir, “Dry Water” marks part of a pioneering push by Spain’s Portocabo, producer of Movistar Plus smash hit “Hierro,” to take classic free-to-air scripted in its native Galicia, north-west Spain, into a premium
Global distribution-production company Rmvistar has acquired global rights to the multi-award-winning animated short “Anacronte,” produced by leading Argentine animation house Mr. Bug Studio in collaboration with the film’s co-director Raúl Koler. At the same time, Rmvistar has also confirmed that it will be partnering with the folks at Mr. Bug on a new high-concept science
Impact X Capital, a Black entrepreneur owned venture capital firm seeking to invest £100 million ($137 million) for underrepresented entrepreneurs, is launching Impact X Studios to fund, develop and package international content with an focus on diversity and inclusion. A creative capital vehicle for underrepresented talent, iImpact X Studios is being launched by Erica Motley,
Netflix ushered in a new TV dawn in distribution. In reaction, Europe’s public broadcasters are driving a less vaunted but still significant revolution in production. Few are pushing the envelope more than Germany’s ZDF. After “The Typist” and “Shadowplay,” four-hour limited series “The Winemaker,” a MipDrama entry, marks another series from the German state broadcaster
New York-based boutique distributor Juno Films has acquired North American rights to the intimate and compelling Norwegian documentary “Seyran Ates: Sex, Revolution and Islam,” featuring Turkish-German feminist lawyer and one of the first female imams in Europe. The deal was brokered by DR Sales ahead of the film’s world premiere at the San Francisco Intl.
The “Airplane!” school of chock-full-of-jokes conceptual parody, with its fourth-wall-smashing stupido-smart goofiness, had a pretty impressive run. It ruled for several decades, spawning everything from the “Airplane!” creators’ own “Naked Gun” franchise — to me, the media-age Marx Brothers-worthy masterpiece of the form — to the Wayans brothers’ “Scary Movie” franchise to several dozen comedies,
Italy’s Iervolino Entertainment, the film and television production company founded by producer Andrea Iervolino and co-owned with Monika Bacardi, is planning to invest €100 million ($118.6 million) in the production of animated content along with an additional €8.5 million ($10.1 million) in its new production subsidiary in Serbia. The new Iervolino Studios, which comprises two
Told he’s been cursed and will die within a week, a Kathmandu man desperately seeks the elusive spirit that might save him in “Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache.” Though playing upon Tibetan Buddhist concepts, this latest film from Bhutan-born writer-director Khyentse Norbu (“The Cup,” “Travellers and Magicians”) doesn’t use traditional religious
Although this year’s edition of the Cannes TV market MipTV is going virtual, the opportunity for distributors to catch the eye is larger than ever as global and regional content are eager to make up for lost time. The MipDrama showcase in particular still provides the ideal place to drum up interest in a series,
CBS News veteran Kim Godwin is expected to become the next president of ABC News, a move that would make her the first Black executive to lead a broadcast-network news division in the U.S. Godwin has had an offer from Disney’s ABC for several weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter, but only
There is no “best actress” award at the Grammys, perhaps for obvious reasons, but maybe there should be this coming year. And the Grammy would go to… Taylor Swift, for so persuasively playing her 18-year-old self in “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” her beyond-meticulous recreation of the 2008 recording that did win her her first album of
Multi-platinum rapper Saweetie has jumped on a new version of Gwen Stefani’s most recent single, “Slow Clap.” The collaboration also sees the two coming together for an old-school music video directed by Sophie Muller, who previously collaborated with Stefani on the videos for No Doubt’s iconic ballad “Don’t Speak” and solo track “Wind It Up.”
The cast of “Glee” reunited virtually to remember Naya Rivera, who died last July at the age of 33, at the GLAAD Media Awards on Thursday. The tribute was opened by Demi Lovato, who had a brief role on the Fox series alongside Rivera. “I don’t have to tell you that this year was a
Sarah Jessica Parker got a big career boost as a teenager from her starring role in the offbeat, much-praised sitcom “Square Pegs,” which had a one-and-done, brilliant-but-canceled run on CBS in the 1982-83 season. Parker has paid tribute to “Square Pegs” creator and showrunner Anne Beatts, who died April 7 at the age of 74.
For the second year in a row, “Schitt’s Creek” won for outstanding comedy series at the 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards. Writer-star-executive producer Dan Levy accepted the prize on behalf of the series. “When we set out to make ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ we simply wanted to tell funny and hopefully meaningful stories about personal growth, love,
A judge has rejected a copyright lawsuit that claimed that Marshmello’s 2018 hit “Happier” infringed on an earlier song. Arty, a Russian DJ whose legal name is Artem Stoliarov, filed suit in 2019, claiming that Marshmello’s song ripped off the synthesizer melody from his 2014 remix of the song “I Lived.” Arty was represented by
All products and services featured by Variety are independently selected by Variety editors. However, Variety may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. “Top Chef” has returned and our hearts are full of quickfire delights and watching Padma Lakshmi discerningly analyze
Natalie Morales (“The Little Things”), Amy Landecker (“Transparent”) and Alice Lee (“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”) have been cast in TikTok star Sarah Cooper’s single-camera CBS comedy inspired by her book “How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.” Cooper serves as co-writer and executive producer of the untitled project along with showrunner Cindy Chupack (“Otherhood”). The
Most late night talk shows nowadays aim to serve an audience that is, late at night, not watching their TV set. The calculated virality of bits from James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” to Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” to Jimmy Fallon’s TikTok dances with Addison Rae — all of those things are meant to be disseminated
In playing online pharmaceutical titan and mob boss Richard Wheatley on NBC’s “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” Dylan McDermott gets to go toe-to-toe with Christopher Meloni’s detective Elliot Stabler, chests puffed and expressions snarled. The show marks a return for Meloni’s beloved “Law & Order” character and a return to the primetime procedural beat for
Country star Kane Brown has announced his “Blessed & Free” tour for the fall, which comes with the underlying assumption that the nation will be mostly blessedly COVID-free by the time the outing kicks off in indoor arenas on Oct. 1. As a major basketball fan who played the sport in high school, Brown made
Taylor Swift die-hards are paving the way for her highly anticipated re-release of her sophomore album, “Fearless” … making sure a certain Big Machine doesn’t get in the way. If you haven’t heard, Taylor’s been in an all-out war with her former label over her masters, and has decided to re-record her original songs and
Renée Elise Goldsberry is in talks to star in the “She-Hulk” series at Disney Plus, Variety has confirmed with sources. She joins previously announced series lead Tatiana Maslany and Ginger Gonzaga. The series centers on lawyer Jennifer Walters (Maslany), cousin of Bruce Banner, who inherits his Hulk powers after she receives a blood transfusion from
A new U.K. campaign is calling for urgent action to support the families of film and TV workers by allocating budget lines for childcare. Led by childcare facility and mobile nursery The WonderWorks, the ‘Keeping Families in Film’ campaign has garnered support in the form of an open letter, signed by major figures such as
“Judas and the Black Messiah” has been nominated for six Academy Awards and actor Daniel Kaluuya has already won Golden Globe and SAG Awards for his portrayal of Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton. Kaluuya describes the role as a tall order. “It was like a big mountain,” Kaluuya said. “When you get to the bottom
For “Mank” star Amanda Seyfried, she keeps her phone on silent and turns off all her notifications, so when she received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress as Marion Davies in the David Fincher film, her publicist called her mother and woke her up with the good news. “It’s nice to talk about something
Challenges facing the TV business include technology and creativity. Sometimes, however, everything comes down to math. The nation’s TV networks claim the primary arbiter of who watches their programs allowed its business to deteriorate during the coronavirus pandemic and has only devised “a four-ounce solution to a ten-pound problem” of trying to count TV viewers