Television

Ahead of its Season 1 finale, psychological thriller “Cruel Summer” is getting a second season at Freeform after becoming the network’s most-watched series ever. “Renewing Cruel Summer for a season 2 was an easy decision,” said Freeform president Tara Duncan. “It’s the biggest series debut in Freeform’s history and the audience response has been overwhelmingly

Fox Entertainment and its animation studio Bento Box Entertainment are getting into NFTs — non-fungible tokens — and launching a $100 million creator fund through its newly created business unit, Blockchain Creative Labs. Blockchain Creative Labs will be based in Los Angeles and operate under the Fox Entertainment banner, with Bento Box CEO Scott Greenbreg

“The Blacklist” star Megan Boone is leaving the NBC drama series after eight seasons, Variety has confirmed. Boone has played FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen on the series since it began, starring opposite James Spader. With her exit, Spader, Harry Lennix, and Diego Klattenhoff are the only original cast members left on the show. NBC declined to

On Tuesday afternoon, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival streamed a candid, hour-long conversation between four of the key minds behind Netflix’s second season of “Love, Death & Robots.” Creator and executive producer Tim Miller (“Deadpool,” “Terminator: Dark Fate”), executive producer David Fincher (“The Social Network,” “Fight Club”), supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (“Kung Fu

“The Masked Singer” producer Fox Alternative Entertainment (FAE) and Dublin-headquartered outfit BiggerStage will jointly produce variety competition series “The Big Deal” for Ireland’s Virgin Media Television. The series, presented by Vogue Williams, features celebrity judges including pop legend Boy George; comedian and actor Deirdre O’Kane; Aston Merrygold, formerly of boy band JLS and recent finalist

Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety‘s Actors on Actors. For more, click here. Anya Taylor-Joy and Josh O’Connor, who appeared together in the latest movie adaptation of “Emma” in 2020, both broke out as Netflix stars during the pandemic. In “The Queen’s Gambit,”

Animation luminary Fred Seibert’s FredFilms will team up with Chinese content production firm DeZerlin Entertainment for an incubator projected called “Hot Pot! Cartoons,” which hopes to bring emerging Chinese talent and content out to the global market. In the project, FredFilms’ U.S.-based development and production team and Qingdao-headquartered DeZerlin will supervise up-and-coming Chinese creators to

The “Beauty and the Beast” prequel has officially been ordered to series at Disney Plus, Variety has learned. The live-action musical series will star Luke Evans and Josh Gad, who will reprise the roles of Gaston and LeFou (Louie) respectively from the 2017 live-action “Beauty and the Beast” film. In addition, newcomer Briana Middleton will join

Some 25 years after Martin Bashir’s bombshell interview with Princess Diana on BBC’s “Panorama” program, the scandal continues to rage on. On Tuesday, a U.K. parliament House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee interviewed at length former BBC director generals Tony Hall and John Birt, current director general Tim Davie and current chair

Apple TV Plus released a trailer for Season 2 of “Central Park,” premiering on June 25. In the animated musical comedy series’ second season, the Tillerman family continues living in and caring for Manhattan’s biggest park. Molly (now voiced by Emmy Raver-Lampman) navigates adolescence, Cole (Tituss Burgess) is embarrassed by a humiliating moment at school,

Seasoned producers James Fox and Dom Waugh will join ITV Studios label Rollercoaster Television, later this year. The new outfit is an entertainment label set up to create and produce new formats for the U.K. and global markets. Currently heading up the entertainment division of Remarkable as MD and director of content respectively, Fox and

As streamers continue to carve out their niches for specialized content, Netflix has established a firm foothold in original anime production of both established and original IP. On Tuesday morning, the platform outlined a group of exciting upcoming titles, headlined by the hugely anticipated “The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf” animated spinoff, in a pre-recorded

“Manifest” has been canceled at NBC after three seasons, Variety has confirmed. The news comes as the supernatural drama has been released on Netflix, where it currently sits at No. 1 in the streamer’s U.S. Top 10. However, sources tell Variety that the show is hoping to find a new home elsewhere. The single-camera series had generally produced

CJ ENM, the South Korean entertainment giant behind “Parasite,” has struck a strategic alliance with Japanese terrestrial broadcast group Tokyo Broadcasting System. The deal, announced Tuesday, will see the joint production of content for the global market and cooperation in other new business areas. It also represents a further expansion of CJ ENM’s recently-announced plans

Stephen Colbert has, nearly every weeknight for the past 15 months, led the nation’s most-watched late-night show without many of the trappings viewers have come to expect. He’s had no live audience to respond to his jokes and monologues. His bandleader, Jon Batiste, made musical contributions from a remote location. And his interviews with newsmakers

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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the June 14 episode of “The Bachelorette.” Katie Thurston’s reign as the sex-positive Bachelorette continued during her first group date of the new season of ABC’s dating competition. She was joined by podcast host Heather McDonald with 10 of her remaining men as they

George Lopez and his real-life daughter Mayan Lopez are slated to star in a “working-class family” comedy from Universal Television about “dysfunction, reconnection and all the pain and joy in between.” “Lopez vs. Lopez,” which has a put pilot commitment from NBC, is produced by Mohawk Productions, Travieso Productions, Mi Vida Loba, and 3 Arts.

The “Assassin’s Creed” live-action series at Netflix has enlisted Jeb Stuart to serve as writer, Variety has learned exclusively from sources. The series was first announced as being in development in October as part of a deal between Netflix and Ubisoft to develop content based on the best-selling video game franchise. The deal includes live-action, animated,

The Truth is Out There, and Lizzy Caplan, Christian Slater and Clark Duke will find it in Netflix’s “Inside Job,” a new conspiracy theory office comedy animated series from “Gravity Falls” writer Shion Takeuchi and creator Alex Hirsch, both of whom have development deals with the streamer. In an announcement made during Netflix’s Adult Animation

Madison Avenue’s interest in digital ads, sports and new concepts tied to bolstering messages of diversity helped Disney close a fast-paced upfront that saw more than 40% of total dollars committed to the company go to streaming and interactive venues, the latest sign of how advertisers are working differently with some of the nation’s most

When Steve McQueen was curating the narratives for his Amazon Prime Video anthology “Small Axe,” the year 1968 felt like the best place to start. This was because it was a year of mass strikes in France, a year in which Conservative politician Enoch Powell made his infamous “rivers of blood” speech and a year

Robin Thede and London Hughes are set to star in a “Perfect Strangers” reboot that is in development at HBO Max, Variety has confirmed. In the multi-cam reboot, perfect strangers Deja (Thede) and Poppy (Hughes) unexpectedly discover that they are half-sisters when they both inherit a one-bedroom apartment above a trap yoga studio in Fort Greene,

Really getting under the skin of a fully realized female character has long remained a challenge in television, but in recent years, the brilliant-yet-troubled heroine has been taking a back seat to someone more authentically human, whose personal struggle is no longer peppered in through lazy shorthand ciphers that check the “complex character” box. This

Disneyland will no longer require fully vaccinated visitors to wear masks indoors or outdoors starting on Tuesday, said the Anaheim, Calif.-based theme park and resort, which has been engaged with a phased reopening since April 30. The move comes in conjunction with the State of California’s eased COVID-19 regulations on June 15, in which all

Veteran CNN correspondent told viewers Monday that she recently had surgery for ovarian cancer and will undergo chemotherapy for a period of weeks. Amanapour, who has not been hosting her program for CNN’s international outlets for the past four weeks, returned to the air Monday and opened her program with remarks about her condition. “I’ve

Once seen as nothing more than a niche genre, superhero content has come to be a dominant force on screen. Television, especially, has seen a massive influx of such large-scale stories of late. But with audiences having seemingly infinite options of what to watch, long gone are the days of the simple hero origin stories

Ahead of streaming a pre-recorded Studio Focus presentation as part of this year’s hybrid Annecy Animation Film Festival, Netflix has shared with Variety that “Big Mouth” stars Nick Kroll and Maya Rudolph will be joined by a star-studded lineup of new and returning voice talent in “Human Resources,” the upcoming series spinoff series of the

In 1958, CBS’ “Playhouse 90” won the first-ever Primetime Emmy award for dramatic anthology series, beating out nominees including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Hallmark Hall of Fame” and “Studio One.” The anthology Emmy category only lasted a year, but a variation of “outstanding dramatic program,” which mostly recognized individual episodes of anthologies such as “Hallmark Hall

The penultimate episode of “The Stand” finally paid off what Stephen King fans knew was coming ever since the project was greenlit: the destruction of Randall Flagg aka the Dark Man’s (Alexander Skarsgård) debaucherous Las Vegas community. As Randall screams about the traitors in their midst and has Larry (Jovan Adepo) and Ray (Irene Bedard)