In today’s roundup, Showtime debuts a trailer for its upcoming drama “City on a Hill,” and MSNBC expands into weekend programming with “Saturday Night Politics With Donny Deutsch.” DATES: MSNBC‘s “Saturday Night Politics With Donny Deutsch” will premiere this Saturday, May 4 at 8 p.m. ET. The new program, which is part of the network’s expansion
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Veteran exec Peter Golden is departing his longtime post as head of casting at CBS, Variety has learned. The move follows complaints to human resources about Golden’s behavior made by members of the CBS casting department. It also comes just months after Golden’s name surfaced in reporting on sexual-misconduct allegations against ousted CBS CEO Leslie
Mother’s Day is still over a week away, but a festive celebration for the holiday came early in Los Angeles Thursday evening, as H.E.R., La La Anthony, Anthony Anderson and more came together to celebrate their moms and moms everywhere during VH1’s annual “Dear Mama: A Love Letter to Mom” tribute. Ahead of the live taping
May 3, 2019 2:56PM PT Facebook’s new Oculus Quest headset is set to launch with a series of notable games and experiences later this month — but one key service will be missing: Viveport Infinity, HTC’s Netflix-like VR subscription service, won’t be available on the device. Viveport president Rikard Steiber first mentioned the missing support
Vudu wants to entertain Middle America with a lineup of free, ad-supported original streaming content — and the company also envisions the slate as a great way to get consumers to buy stuff from its parent, Walmart. This week, Vudu pulled back the curtain on its upcoming lineup of free-to-watch originals, which execs say is
May 3, 2019 2:32PM PT Abandoned features found in the Afghan Film archives shed light on the nation’s short, rocky Communist era. Assembling a few found shards from the recent history of endlessly broken Afghanistan, “What We Left Unfinished” is cultural archaeology of special interest to cineastes. Miriam Ghani’s film spotlights five features that were
In a pre-Cannes Film Festival announcement, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges and Tracy Letts have signed on to star in the comedy “French Exit.” Rocket Science and Wild Bunch are handling international sales, beginning in Cannes. CAA Media Finance is representing the U.S. rights. The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival opens on May 14. Azazel Jacobs
May 3, 2019 2:24PM PT A lot of people have opinions about the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie trailer that dropped on Tuesday, and none of them are good. That includes John Mathieson, the director of photography for rival video game-based movie “Pokémon: Detective Pikachu.” “Funny enough, I was offered [‘Sonic the Hedgehog’] and after watching
May 3, 2019 2:18PM PT “The Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon” and “Survivor” helped CBS claim the top three spots in the Live+3 ratings for the week of April 22. In what was a slow week overall, “The Big Bang Theory” led the way with a 2.8 rating in delayed, having posted a 1.8 in
Disney has finalized its deal to sell 21 Fox regional sports networks to Sinclair Broadcast Group in a transaction valued at $10.6 billion. Byron Allen, the entrepreneur behind Entertainment Studios, has teamed with Sinclair as an equity partner in the newly formed Diamond Holding Group. The agreement covers outlets serving major markets around the country.
For 18 years, Chris Kattan has harbored a secret that he’s finally ready to share: The comedian believes he broke his neck while performing a sketch on “Saturday Night Live” in 2001, an accident that he says nearly paralyzed him, led to years of addiction struggles and sidetracked his career. In his new memoir, “Baby
The Writers Guild of America has removed the judge assigned to its lawsuit against Hollywood’s four major talent agencies, using its only preemptory challenge. The WGA had asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marc Gross to voluntarily recuse himself from the case earlier this week but Gross refused, leading to the guild using its right
Disney-Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” will continue obliterating records this weekend as the superhero blockbuster heads for at least $175 million in North America, early estimates showed on Friday. “Avengers: Endgame,” which opened with a stunning $357.1 million last weekend, should easily eclipse the record for biggest domestic second weekend of all time, currently held by 2015’s
TORONTO — Veteran Toronto director Laurie Lynd taps into the myth-busting 2017 book “Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic” for a documentary feature that reframes the legacy of Quebec flight attendant Gaetan Dugas, a promiscuous gay man who was incorrectly identified as patient zero by investigators from the U.S. Center for
Indie studio 1091, formerly known as The Orchard, is laying off nine employees or roughly 25% of its staff as it moves in a new strategic direction that will see the company release fewer films. The cuts will be across the company and will include reduction in marketing, distribution, and other areas. The layoffs come
What images immediately come to mind when someone mentions polo matches? Most likely horses, women dressed to the nines in frilly floral dresses and men in dapper spring-themed suits. It’s an event frequented by royals and the wealthy upper class—Gossip Girl and Pretty Woman taught us that. But Work to Ride, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization
You can’t keep a good devil down. Nearly a year after its Fox cancellation, “Lucifer” returns with a 10-episode fourth season at its new Netflix home. Creatively, the shift came at a pivotal moment for the series. The Season 3 finale found the title character (Tom Ellis) revealing his true devil face to his partner/potential
TORONTO–Director Nanfu Wang wracked up accolades for her debut feature “Hooligan Sparrow,” a riveting, guerrilla-style exposé of sexual abuse in China that made the Academy Award shortlist for best documentary. But as she prepared to return to the cutting room for her sophomore feature, she learned a valuable lesson that guides her to this day.
It’s been a whale of a week in the world of Woodstock 50. While the festival — slated for the weekend of Aug. 16-18 in Watkins Glen, New York with Jay-Z, Dead & Company and Miley Cyrus on the bill, among many others — has been dogged by reports of disorganization and financial troubles since
Stephen I. Diener, a longtime music and entertainment executive who served as president of ABC Records in the 1970s and led in its sale to MCA Corporation in 1979, died at this home in Coral Gables, Florida on April 30. He was 80. Diener’s career included positions with a range of entertainment companies, starting with
May 3, 2019 11:48AM PT AMC Networks has shut off public access to a database for its Sundance Now and Shudder subscription-streaming services that was discovered to be accessible on the open internet, after the company was alerted to the issue by a security researcher. The publicly exposed AMC database included 1.62 million total records
The flight from traditional pay TV subscriptions reached new records in the first three months of this year, and online TV subscription services did little to provide relief for their operators. Altogether, the industry lost north of 1 million pay TV subscribers in Q1 after shedding 3.2 million subscribers through all of 2018. BTIG analyst
It was a blue carpet pep rally as Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier and Rhea Perlman debuted their new film “Poms” on Wednesday night in Downtown Los Angeles. But much like their characters in the film, the actresses’ cheers weren’t for sports teams. Instead, they were celebrating a Hollywood system that is hopefully becoming
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Dead to Me,” streaming now on Netflix. By the time Liz Feldman’s dark comedy “Dead to Me” completed its 10-episode first season, it took its characters through the stages of grief not only for the deceased loved ones in their lives, but in a
Has YouTube become the new center of gravity for primetime? That’s the narrative it wants Madison Avenue to believe — especially as it relates to coveted younger demos. The Google-owned video behemoth now counts 2 billion monthly unique users globally, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced at Thursday’s Brandcast marketing event in NYC. That’s up around
Early in the filming of his documentary “The Quiet One,” Oliver Murray knew he had his emotional centerpiece after capturing his subject, the longtime Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, talking about an encounter with Ray Charles. It’s a simple and quiet moment in a film packed full of tales of pop-culture upheaval, one that touchingly
Cruising the edge of sets like a shark in shallow water, still photographer Ron P. Jaffe has spent a career using his stealthiness to capture the perfect shot. Sharing tales from times past as he sits in the serenity of his Playa del Rey home, he describes taking pictures on many of the crime movies,
With the Writers Guild of America locked in a bitter standoff with Hollywood agents, three high-profile screenwriters have slammed the severity of the WGA’s tactics. The letter, addressed to WGA leaders, was written by Brandon Camp, Peter Landesman and Phyllis Nagy. The WGA and the Association of Talent Agents saw talks crater on April 12
Courtesy Women’s Hurricane XLT2 Outdoor Voices outdoorvoices.com $85.00 When Birkenstocks were called chic by Eva Chen back in 2014, the dark ages of constrictive heels ended and the Ugly Shoe Era began. The acceptance of comfort footwear is arguably the best thing to happen to women since we started wearing pants, and we will forever
E! has picked up “Very Cavallari” and “Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian” for third seasons, Variety has learned exclusively. Additionally, the network has renewed “Dating #NoFilter” for a second season, with new episodes premiering later this year. “At E!, we continue to build on our successful unscripted slate with fun, edgy and inspiring series led by