January 28, 2020 12:00PM PT “The Passage” creator Liz Heldens has scored a drama pilot order at Fox for the 2020-2021 season. The one-hour project is titled “The Big Leap.” Inspired by the UK docuseries “Big Ballet,” the show centers on a group of diverse underdogs from all different walks of life who compete to
Television
AT&T, Comcast and Walt Disney aren’t the only big companies eager to get into streaming-video. Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s most influential advertisers, is looking to do the same. P&G. the maker of Pampers, Crest and Bounty, among other popular supermarket staples, has struck a partnership with Stone Village Television, the production company
The BBC and TVNZ’s adaptation of Man Booker Prize winning novel “The Luminaries,” starring Eva Green, is among the scripted TV projects that will feature in this year’s Berlinale Series Market and Conference program at the Berlin International Film Festival. Set during the 1860s gold rush in New Zealand, the Working Title and Southern Light
“Miracle Workers: Dark Ages” sees Steve Buscemi shift from playing God to a local excrement remover, and Daniel Radcliffe ditch his awkward angel for a soft-brained prince. Given the malleable nature of the TBS anthology series, creator Simon Rich was presented with a blank canvas for Season 2. Rich made the decision to leave behind
Matthew McConaughey and Nic Pizzolatto are coming together for a potential new TV series at FX. The “True Detective” collaborators have landed a script-to-series order for a drama series titled “Redeemer,” which Pizzolatto will write and in which McConaughey will star. Both will also executive produce the project. In addition, Pizzolatto has signed an overall
Fitness expert Bob Harper spent a dozen years training contestants to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time on the original, NBC incarnation of “The Biggest Loser,” a show he calls “the O.G. fitness reality series.” But in 2017 he suffered a major heart attack that had him rethinking his approach
Although “The Bachelor” dipped week-to-week, the ABC show still managed to top the TV ratings charts for Monday night. Episode four of the dating show’s 24th season scored a 1.6 rating among adults 18-49 and drew just under 6 million total viewers. That’s down around a quarter million viewers from last episode, but is still
“Jimmy Kimmel Live” switched gears Monday night and spent the hour paying tribute to late Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant, making it one of several late-night shows that acknowledged his death. Every late-night show took time to acknowledge the news, particularly Los Angeles-based “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Conan” and “The Late Late Show With James
Visual effects and animation studio Framestore, which won Oscars for “The Golden Compass,” “Gravity” and “Blade Runner 2049,” and whose recent work includes “Avengers: Endgame” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home” in movies, and “His Dark Materials” and “Watchmen” in TV, has launched FPS, which offers a suite of pre-production services. The move sees the company’s
Scandinavian major NENT Group has commissioned romantic drama “Harmonica” from Warner Bros. International Television Production Sweden. The Swedish series has been co-created by Josephine Bornebusch, whose previous drama “Love Me” has performed strongly on NENT Group’s Viaplay streaming service in the Nordic region, and was recently renewed for a second season. The six-episode “Harmonica” is
ITV Studios has snapped up Endemol Shine executive Lisa Perrin, appointing her as the new managing director of international production. Perrin joins the company from Endemol Shine Group (ESG) where she served as CEO of Creative Networks. Her exit comes as the business prepares to merge with Banijay Group, resulting in the departures of a
“The only absolute in history is change,” said the Victorian historian Lord Acton. He might have been talking about the streaming platforms’ current international strategies. Since they launched internationally, Netflix and Amazon’s focus and priorities have been in constant evolution. Current pressures – evolving demographies, new regulation, new competition, still untapped growth – mean that
GÖTEBORG, Sweden — Swedish prodco Dramacorp has signed with U.K. scribe Michael Robert Johnson (“Sherlock Holmes,” “Mute,” “The Frankenstein Chronicles”) for the English-language supernatural thriller “Heritage” (a working title). Co-writers are Göteborg-based Morgan Jensen (“Thicker than Water”, “Hassel”) and Theo Gabay. The show, in early development, deals with modern elitism and hereditary. In it, a
Late in the film “Lance,” a documentary that depicts the ascent and the crash of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, the subject recalls the disappearance of his lucrative sponsorships. These deals — with a massive market value and a perhaps more important intangible value of keeping him in the public eye as a figure of rectitude
Sudden death, scandal, disenfranchised divas, a moved-up airdate… It’s safe to say that Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich faced a few more difficulties than usual in mounting what his final edition of the telecast he’s been at the helm of for 40 years. Some of these he had a year to try to solve. But then
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the fourth episode of Season 24 of “The Bachelor.” After weeks of being cooped up in the Bachelor mansion, Peter Weber’s contestants were finally released to their first travel destination: Cleveland, Ohio. The first week’s one-on-one went to Victoria Fuller, and she and Weber
Mark Lazarus was an executive at Turner Broadcasting in the 1990s when the company was the NBA’s sole national cable-TV partner. As such, he had a front-row seat for the hand wringing that occurred when Michael Jordan abruptly left pro basketball in 1993. “There was a ratings hit,” says Lazarus, who became president of Turner
January 27, 2020 5:45PM PT The “Equalizer” reboot in the works at CBS is taking the next big step. CBS has officially ordered the project, which has Queen Latifah attached to star, to pilot. The prospective show is described as a reimagining of the classic series in which Queen Latifah portrays an enigmatic figure who
NBA legend Kobe Bryant’s untimely death has had reverberations around the world, where fans from Italy to the Philippines have united in expressing their grief and honoring the late basketball player, who was one of the most global-facing athletes the league has ever produced. The coronavirus sweeping China momentarily relinquished its grasp on the nation
What happens when you mix cats, a couple of Facebook watchdogs and a deranged killer who publishes homicidal videos to the Internet? One of the most talked-about (and disturbing) true-crime shows in recent memory. (SPOILER WARNING: Plot Details Ahead) “Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer,” about a group of Facebook sleuths attempting to
In today’s TV news roundup, Ray Romano got a guest star gig on “One Day at a Time” and Freeform released the trailer for “The Thing About Harry.” FIRST LOOKS Freeform released a trailer for “The Thing About Harry,“ which premieres Feb. 15. The upcoming rom-com tells the story of high school enemies, “uber-jock” Harry
As the CW’s “Arrow” prepares to sign off after eight seasons, the writers had a difficult balance to strike in the final episode: acknowledging the changes that have come to Earth Prime in the aftermath of the timeline-changing “Crisis on Infinite Earths” arc, wrapping up the characters from the mothership series and also leaving enough
Awkwafina’s incredible run of success continues, as the numbers for the debut of her new Comedy Central show make for more than pleasant reading. Episode 1 of “Awkwafina is Nora from Queens” has amassed 818,000 total viewers after three days of delayed viewing, which represents a healthy 67% boost from the Live+Same Day tally of
Deborah Barak, the president of business operations of CBS Entertainment, CBS Television Studios and CBS News since 2015 and a veteran of the company for well over three decades, will be exiting at the end of 2020. Barak’s exit is not related in any way to the recently closed ViacomCBS merger, a source familiar with
Innovative Artists has signed a deal with the Writers Guild of America that allows the agency to represent WGA members following a nine-month standoff. The agency issued an announcement Monday through Owner and President Scott Harris, along with the Innovative Artists’ Executive Committee. “We are proud to support our literary agents and the talented writers they
Carmi Zlotnik, Starz’s president of programming, is exiting the company after a decade with the premium cabler to “pursue new creative endeavors,” Variety has learned. Zlotnik has been with the company since 2010, overseeing the development and production of “Power,” “Outlander,” “American Gods,” “Vida,” “The Girlfriend Experience,” “The White Queen,” “Black Sails,” “Magic City,” and
The upcoming continuation of “Saved by the Bell” at the NBCUniversal streamer Peacock has found the final members of its main cast. Haskiri Velazquez, Mitchell Hoog, Alycia Pascual-Pena, and Belmont Cameli will all star in the series. They join previously announced series lead Josie Totah as well as John Michael Higgins, who will play the
The 2020 Grammy Awards fell off enough to hit a new key demo low in the Nielsen ratings. In the time zone adjusted fast nationals, the Sunday awards telecast on CBS drew a 5.4 rating in adults 18-49 and 18.7 million viewers. That is down a scant 3% in the key demo and 6% in
The Recording Academy’s “In Memoriam” section, which traditionally runs towards the end of the Grammy Awards ceremony and honors those in the music industry who died in the previous year, is bound to displease many — as the internet’s ire proves annually. Omissions are to blame: some due to time constraints, others to very recent
Netflix is looking to up its adult animation game. The streamer has signed a multi-year production commitment overall deal with Titmouse studio, the animation house behind “Big Mouth.” Under the deal, Netflix will have a first look at shows that Titmouse develops. “When Netflix asked if we wanted to go steady, we were thrilled. When