ASCAP has revealed that most of its major annual awards presentations will go virtual for the second year in a row, with predictions for herd immunity status still out of the range of the spring and early summer dates when the shows would usually go down in person in Beverly Hills. The four shows affected
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Presenters and honorees at the April 4 SAG Awards are likely to air political views, which inevitably will inspire public indignation: “Why should anybody listen to you people?” Naysayers often see this as a 21st-century liberal conspiracy, but actually, it was the U.S. government that first encouraged Hollywood folks to speak out on issues. Before
Variety’s seventh annual Artisans Awards celebrates those essential to the filmmaking process and who have exhibited the most exciting and innovative work of the year in their respective fields. The tribute evening will take place in a virtual ceremony on Monday, April 5 that will stream on the Santa Barbara Film Festival website. Variety’s Senior
Jongnic Bontemps might just qualify as the unofficial composer of the Black Lives Matter movement. No fewer than four major documentaries on African American subjects — airing now, or soon, on CNN, Netflix, National Geographic and Amazon Prime — feature scores written by the Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based composer. “I asked the universe for this,” Bontemps admits.
In criminal cases, wiretapped phone conversations are commanding pieces of evidence (juries love them), and in documentaries about crime they tend to be some of the most gripping. We hear people as they really are. In “Allen v. Farrow,” the tapes of Woody Allen in phone conversations secretly recorded by Mia Farrow present an oily
Everyone wants concerts to come back. Everyone who attended the premiere event for Nat Geo’s “Genius: Aretha” at the makeshift drive-in in the Rose Bowl parking lot Thursday had a more specific wish: that Cynthia Erivo concerts would come back. Never mind that that really hasn’t much of a thing up till now, with Erivo
Hailey Rhode Bieber is launching her own YouTube channel with OBB Pictures. The model and host’s channel launches Friday, and will feature a wide range of short-form content, including lifestyle tips, beauty tutorials, social causes and a talk show called “Who’s in My Bathroom?” — a show hosted from Bieber’s own bathroom in her home
A year ago, “Tiny Desk” creator Bob Boilen, producer Bobby Carter and senior Director of NPR Music Lauren Onkey looked ahead to an uncertain future for the beloved online concert series. “I believe NPR started to work from home on March 12,” says Onkey. “And I think we filmed our last ‘Tiny Desk’ concert in
Raven Banner Entertainment announced it has completed production on Rue Morgue Magazine founder Rodrigo Gudiño’s “The Breach,” marking a reunion with former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, who serves as the film’s executive producer and co-producer of the score. Based on a book by horror novelist Nick Cutter (born Craig Davidson), with a screenplay co-penned
China built more than 2,000 new screens in the first two months of the year despite the uncertainty facing the exhibition sector due to COVID-19, according to the country’s National Film Administration. China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest film market last year. It looks set to maintain that status in 2021, as
At only 8-years-old Soleil Moon Frye picked up millions of fans and inspired countless other kids through her titular leading role in NBC sitcom “Punky Brewster.” She was starting to grow up around cameras, and when that show came to an end three and a half years later, while she continued to act, she also
If you’ve watched CBS in the past several months, including during the Super Bowl, you’ve probably heard the network’s new five-note mnemonic. The cue now appears in most CBS promos and I.D.s and has become CBS’ audio signature, often paired with the classic network tagline “This Is CBS.” Now, CBS is taking the mnemonic a
Taylor Swift gave a small spoken preview of her Grammy performance on Sunday in a post on CBS’s Twitter account, revealing that she’s reuniting with two of the collaborators who helped her make her nominated album “Folklore.” She revealed that in preparation for the performance, the three have quarantined together in a house for the entire
The ad-supported version of HBO Max, set to launch in June 2021, already has $80 million in upfront advertising commitments, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said. Kilar, speaking Friday at AT&T’s analyst and investor day presentation, didn’t reveal key details of the HBO Max AVOD tier like pricing and ad load. In terms of content, the
Vice President Kamala Harris will be trading the White House for an orange blimp this Saturday at Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards. During the slimy affair hosted by Kenan Thompson, the VP will be introduced by actress Jennifer Garner and is set to deliver special remarks as part of the show’s Generation Change presentation, ViacomCBS’ pro-social
Piers Morgan‘s fuming after claiming his friend, Sharon Osbourne, was shamed into making an apology for defending him … and now he wants her ‘Talk’ cohorts to say sorry to him! The ex-“Good Morning Britain” host said early Friday morning he can’t believe “this is where we’ve reached” after Sharon posted a lengthy apology Thursday
In today’s Global Bulletin, “The Prince of Egypt” musical plans its return to London’s West End, BBC Arts unveils a slate of TV and radio adaptations for its Lights Up festival, Festival MiX Milano rebrands as MiX International Festival of LGBTQ+ Cinema and Queer Culture, Mip Cancun announces 2021 in-person market dates and details, and
The cheaper, ad-supported version of HBO Max is set to debut in June, AT&T said, and the telco also substantially raised subscriber targets for HBO and HBO Max through 2025. The company said it now expects 120 million-150 million HBO Max and HBO subscribers by the end of 2025, up from the 75 million-90 million
Director-producer Dorián Fernández Moris, the leading light on an genre production scene based out of Iquitos in the heart of the Amazon, is set to produce “The Sugar Girl,” a slice of Amazon Noir aimed squarely at international markets. Mixing a cop drama-thriller and doses of Amazon legend and the supernatural, “The Sugar Girl” will
Mexican-American filmmaker Sofia Garza-Barba made waves with her award-winning short film “Death After Pancakes,” taking prizes at the Independent Filmmakers Showcase and Lady Filmmakers Film Festival, and has shared with Variety that it’s time to announce her debut feature outing, a supernatural fairy tale thriller “Santos Remedios,” pitching at this month’s Sanfic-Morbido Lab. “Santos Remedios”
Chile’s Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic), and Mexico’s top genre festival Morbido have announced the six titles set to participate at the Sanfic-Morbido Lab, held March 23, a COVID-era online rejigging of their existing co-venture. “Although the pandemic forced us to postpone the August 2020 in-person version of Factoría Morbido-Sanfic, this did not prevent us
Media Musketeers has boarded a pair of high-profile drama series, including “Pulse,” a survival thriller from The Mediapro Studio, and “Un Prophete,” the series adaptation of Jacques Audiard’s 2009 film that won Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize and a BAFTA, and earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Media Musketeers is set to co-produce “Un Prophete” with
Culture channel Arte France is set to co-produce Léonard Cohen‘s debut animated feature “Flavors of Iraq,” a project presented at this week’s Cartoon Movie and produced by France’s Nova Production and Miyu Productions. A documentary, ”Flavors of Iraq” “is the memory of a child, that of an apricot ice cream. A memory that allows the
Canada-based actor Colm Feore, whose credits include Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy,” “My Salinger Year,” “The Amazing Spiderman 2” and multiple Oscar winner “Chicago,” is to star in post-apocalyptic Western “Six Guns for Hire,” which has just started principal photography in Toronto, Canada. The film also stars Maurice Dean Wint (“The Kid Detective,” “Diggstown”), Oyin Oladejo
Argentine filmmaker Seba De Caro’s latest outing in the horror genre, “El Viejo” (“The Old Man”) taps collective and childhood memories of Argentina’s military dictatorship and the haunted house fable. “For me, the possibility of narrating a story that pits childhood against the most terrifying past in the history of my country is a unique
Piers Morgan, the combative former host of “Good Morning Britain,” has fired his latest broadside, demanding an apology from CBS show “The Talk.” On Friday, hours after his friend Sharon Osbourne clarified her stance following accusations of racism on “The Talk,” which she co-hosts, Morgan sprung to her defence. “Sharon’s been shamed & bullied into
A Spanish movie spin-off of Netflix 2018 supernatural thriller hit “Bird Box,” which starred Sandra Bullock and was directed by Susanne Bier, is in the works. The as yet to be titled movie will start production toward the end of this year in Spain. Alex and David Pastor, whose credits include Netflix crime thriller “The
Though it will forever be associated with one brief mid-1970s heyday, the disaster-movie genre has made a stealth comeback in recent years, being a natural fit for a cinematic era dominated by CGI-laden action fantasies. Of course Hollywood has kept its hand in, with efforts like “San Andreas” and “Pompeii.” But there have also been
The first thing one notices about “Azor” is how real it feels: the entitlement, the encyclopedic knowledge of “good” families, the multilingual fluency, the bonhomie of power. The main characters are a Swiss private banker and his wife, and it comes as no surprise to learn that director Andreas Fontana is himself the grandson of
Cliff Simon, who played the villain Ba-al on the “Stargate SG 1” TV series, died in a kite-boarding accident Tuesday on Topanga beach in Los Angeles. His wife Collette reported his death on his Facebook page, writing “To Friends, family and fans,It is with unimaginable heartbreak that I am sharing with you, that my beloved