Willie Garson, an actor best known for playing Stanford Blatch on “Sex and the City” and Mozzie on “White Collar,” has died. He was 57. A family member of Garson’s confirmed his death to Variety. A cause of death has not been disclosed. In HBO’s wildly popular “Sex and the City” series, Garson portrayed talent agent
Television
NBC was officially the most-watched network in America from 2020-21. NBC won both the 52-week TV season in adults 18-49 and in total viewer figures for the first time since 2018, bolstered by favorable ratings for “,” “Saturday Night Live,” “This Is Us,” “The Voice” and “America’s Got Talent.” In total viewers, NBC’s win totaled
ViacomCBS is dangling a deal for its two premiere subscription services — offering up to 38% off for new customers who take both Paramount Plus and Showtime. In what the company says is a limited-time promo, it’s offering Showtime and the ad-supported Paramount Plus Essential plan together for $9.99/month. Showtime with the ad-free Paramount Plus
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. Award-winning author and journalist Anderson Cooper has spent his career documenting the lives of others. But in “Vanderbilt:
“NCIS: Hawai’i” scored big for CBS on the first Monday of the fall TV season (a feat achieved even with the competition with all of the other networks back with originals and ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.”) The police procedural, which stars Vanessa Lachey, Yasmine Al-Bustami, Jason Antoon, Noah Mills, Tori Anderson and Kian Talan, was
Sharon Horgan is set to star in, co-write, and executive produce a dark comedy that has been ordered to series at Apple, Variety has learned. The untitled comedy follows the lives of the Garvey sisters, who are bound together by the premature death of their parents and a promise to always protect one another. Apple
It’s been 10 years since audiences first met Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) in her quest for revenge on the wealthy Grayson family, who she believed were responsible not only for her father going to prison, but also for his death. Loosely based on “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas, the series, aptly titled
The idea of a series starring Black characters on a historically Black, monied island that’s completely unconcerned with the white power structures beyond it is a juicy one. Created by Karin Gist of Fox’s “Star” and “Revenge,” and executive produced by Lee Daniels, “Our Kind of People” embraces its singularity. Whereas something like HBO Max’s
Can we talk? Because Variety has learned Kathryn Hahn is attached to play Joan Rivers in “The Comeback Girl,” a limited series in development at Showtime, produced by Warner Bros. Television, Atlas Entertainment and Berlanti Productions. In addition to starring as Rivers, Hahn will executive produce “The Comeback Girl,” Greg Berlanti will direct and executive
Who’s really going to be in charge? NBCUniversal and a group leading the nation’s big TV companies are both jockeying to find ways to create a media-measurement rival to Nielsen, but an organization that represents some of Madison Avenue’s largest advertisers is warning the media entities to proceed with caution. “If NBC wants to do
Banijay has boarded “Countrymen,” a new drama series produced by its Norwegian label, Rubicon, with a cast of Scandinavian stars, including Nader Khademi (“Ninjababy”), Ayaz Hussain (“Kasim Bæder”), Jonas Strand Gravli (“Ragnarok”) Arben Bala (“Lilyhammer”) and Erika Strand Mamelund. The show will world premiere at Cannes Series and has been commissioned by the public broadcaster
Apple TV Plus released a first look at “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which launches Sept. 30. The series’ companion podcast will also launch that same day. Stewart returns to host a television series 16 years after he closed out his run on “The Daily Show.” He jokes about that in the clip, saying, “This
Accounting for 40% of all selected projects, French productions will dominate this year’s Toulouse-set Cartoon Forum for reasons that far exceed home field advantage. Underpinning the 33 projects presented at this year’s pitch sessions as well as the relatively robust state of the Gallic animation ecosystem – which produced 295 hours of content in 2020
Nigerian media conglomerate EbonyLife Media and Sony Pictures Television (SPT) have set Alo, an initiative offering a platform for writers of African heritage. The word Alo is from the Yoruba language and translates as “once upon a time.” The initiative will open Sept. 24 through Nov. 5, when writers can submit their television scripts and
A bevy of owners of local TV stations have already moved to stop selling ads based on traditional TV ratings. Nielsen intends to start helping the effort next year. The measurement giant, which has been under scrutiny in recent months for what media and advertising companies believe is a slower approach to transforming its long-held
Sky Original’s fifth and final season of “Gomorrah,” RTL Group and Beta Film’s German-language “Sisi,” and Canal Plus’ hip-hop themed “All The Way Up” will — rather fittingly — join the David Tennant-led, Slim Film+Televison/Federation co-produced “Around the World in 80 Days” for an internationally accented edition of Canneseries, which plays from Oct. 8-13. Running
Finnish series “Mister8,” produced by It’s Alive Films and sold internationally by Federation Entertainment, will celebrate its international premiere at Canneseries. The series festival will take place on Oct. 8-13 in Cannes, alongside the 37th edition of the MipTV market. Starring Krista Kosonen (spotted in “Blade Runner 2049”) and Pekka Strang, reuniting after their 2019
There’s a new kid in town, who is actually an old kid in town, at the Basque public broadcaster EiTB. After 15 years working at Discovery in the U.K. – latterly as its VP, editorial department, EMEA – Unai Iparragirre has returned to his native Northern Spain and taken over as director of ETB, the
Transparent Arts, an Asian-American talent management firm, has come on board as producer of Korean drama series “Idol: The Coup.” In South Korea, the show will premiere on JTBC this winter. International rights are held by iQiyi, the Chinese streaming platform. The series is a 12-episode drama about a failing K-pop girl group called Cotton
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched the series premiere of “Ordinary Joe.” “Ordinary Joe,” NBC’s latest tearjerker drama, starts simply enough with the eponymous young man (played by James Wolk) graduating from college. He is at a time in his life where the world is both widely open to him, but
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched the series premiere of “The Big Leap.” “The Big Leap,” the title of Simone Recasner’s new television series, has multiple meanings for the rising star. It is the name of the reality dance competition within the show, on which the main characters are competing, in
Betty Gilpin has joined the upcoming Showtime drama series “Three Women.” Gilpin joins previously announced cast members Shailene Woodley and DeWanda Wise. The series is based on the book of the same name by Lisa Taddeo. The series is described as a portrayal of American female desire, in which three women are on a crash
Netflix has renewed “My Unorthodox Life” for a second season. The show stars fashion executive Julia Haart, who left the ultra-Orthodox community in which she was raised to conquer the modern world. The unscripted series follows her and her four children as they navigate life since leaving their extreme religious Jewish community. Still a proud
ABC released a trailer for the “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19” crossover event that marks season premieres for both shows on Sept. 30. In the “Station 19” Season 5 at 8 p.m., the annual Phoenix Festival will cause problems to be solved by the teams of Station 19 and the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, all
The first episode of “NCIS” premiered in 2004 with news footage of George W. Bush boarding Air Force One transforming into a scripted scene of a fictional George W. Bush joshing about barbecue before one of his new bodyguard mysteriously drops dead. Forty-some odd minutes of Mark Harmon being right, Sasha Alexander frowning, and countless
Canal Plus, the Vivendi-owned pay TV group, is set to acquire a 70-percent majority stake in SPI International, a global media company operating 42 TV channels across six continents. Canal Plus Group, which boasts 22 million subscribers across 40 countries in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, has ramped up its international footprint in recent years.
Netflix has renewed romantic drama series “Virgin River” for a fourth and fifth season. “Virgin River” is based on Robyn Carr’s book series of the same name. The show follows Mel Monroe (played by Alexandra Breckenridge), a woman who takes a job as a midwife and nurse practitioner in the remote Northern California town of
The U.K.’s film and television bodies celebrated their compatriots’ winning streak at the Emmy Awards on Sunday evening, with British talent taking home dozens of gongs, including Michaela Coel’s win for best writing in a limited/anthology/TV movie for “I May Destroy You” and Josh O’Connor’s Emmy for lead drama actor for “The Crown,” along with
The 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards on CBS rebounded from last year’s all-time low ratings, reversing steady declines with a 16% gain of viewership to 7.4 million, compared to approximately 6.37 million viewers in 2020. Per the accurate Nielsen Live+Same Day time-zone adjusted fast nationals for Sunday night, the ceremony averaged the total time spent across
Malika Andrews will replace Rachel Nichols as the face of ESPN’s regular NBA coverage, in a move executives no doubt hope will bring a difficult era at the Disney-backed sports-media giant to an end. ESPN said Andrews, who is extending her contract, will anchor “NBA Today,” a new weekday basketball program that will air starting