Television

“Lisey’s Story,” the upcoming Apple TV Plus drama from Stephen King and J.J. Abrams, has cast Sung Kang in a recurring role, Variety has learned. Kang joins previously announced stars Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Joan Allen, and Dane DeHaan. The eight-episode series is based on Stephen King’s 2006 book of the same name. It follows

December 6, 2019 2:00PM PT The new series hits the comedy sweet spot of self-aware and completely ridiculous. The premiere of “Astronomy Club” is so dense with fully-formed jokes, wry social commentaries, and wild left turns that you’d be forgiven for wondering if you accidentally dropped into the show’s second season rather than its first.

Jan Motjo’s Beta Films has found new broadcast homes for the Movistar Plus original series “Arde Madrid,” which won the Rose d’Or-Award for Best Comedy or Drama this past Sunday in London. The Virginia-based MHz Networks will broadcast the series in the U.S., France Televisions in France, HBO in Brazil and Teleclub in Switzerland. According

The second season of Apple’s period comedy “Dickinson” has cast Finn Jones and Pico Alexander. Jones will star as Samuel Bowles, described as an energetic and magnetic newspaper editor. Alexander will play Henry “Ship” Shipley, a dropout of Amherst College and a boarder with the Dickinsons. Jones is best known for playing Loras Tyrell during most

There’s never a second that Abby (co-creator Abby McEnany) is unaware of all the things that make her different from the characters we’re used to seeing on TV, let alone those that typically get to anchor their own shows. She’s a butch “queer fat dyke” (her words) with OCD whose deep insecurity about all the

The fist-pumping and GTL days are over. Nicole Polizzi — aka Snooki — says she’s retiring from “Jersey Shore.” “I am retiring from ‘Jersey Shore,’” Snooki said on Friday’s episode of her iHeartRadio podcast, “It’s Happening With Snooki & Joey.” “I am not coming back for ‘Jersey Shore’ Season 4, if there is one. The

The soundtrack to Netflix’s “The Two Popes” is the tonally diverse product of Grammy Award-winning musician Bryce Dessner who was tasked by director Fernando Meirelles to score the film, generating large-scale cinematic energy to unseen, intimate moments between religious figures.  Scheduled for release on Friday, Dec. 20, “The Two Popes” explores the friendship between Pope

Actress Isabella Gomez claims she started receiving less auditions once it became known she was Latina after starring as Elena Alvarez in “One Day at a Time.”  “It’s interesting because I am white passing. So, when I got here people didn’t know I was Latina. I was going out all the time, getting call backs

Up against fierce competition in the form of a blockbuster “” between the Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, “Young Sheldon” managed to gain week-to-week and top the scripted TV ratings chart for the night. The “Big Bang Theory” spinoff scored a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49, up 12% from the 0.98 rating from its

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read on if you have not watched the first five episodes of Disney Plus’ “Star Wars” spinoff series “The Mandalorian.”  Episode 5 of “The Mandalorian” was a real blast from the past. Mando and Baby Yo landed on the planet of Tatooine, where so many iconic moments from the “Star Wars” franchise

When Dean-Charles Chapman first went to audition for World War I action drama “1917,” he wasn’t told it would be shot to look like one continuous take.  “We never got to read a script, so I learnt just, like, four pages from this scene,” Chapman tells Variety. “It wasn’t until [director Sam Mendes] told me,

With “The Kominsky Method,” Chuck Lorre ventured out of his broadcast comedy comfort zone and took a leap into the world of streaming, an unknown quantity for him. During a keynote conversation at Variety’s Innovate Summit presented by PwC, held Thursday at the 1 Hotel in West Hollywood, Lorre talked about how making a show

In today’s TV news roundup, “Dispatches From Elsewhere” starring Jason Segel has been scheduled for a two-night premiere date and Netflix released a teaser for Season 2 of “You.” CASTINGS Briana Cuoco has been cast in HBO Max’s “The Flight Attendant” in the recurring role of Cecilia. The series details the chilling story of a flight

It’s an event nearly 500 hours in the making when the “Arrowverse” and fellow CW superhero series “Black Lightning” collide in the five-part epic crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Inspired by the iconic graphic novel by the same name, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” finds the “Arrowverse” heroes — including Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), The

December 5, 2019 4:14PM PT Rich Battista, the recently boarded chief executive of Imagine Entertainment, has exited his post at the production company after joining but a few months ago in August, Variety has learned. “Rich Battista has left Imagine Entertainment,” said Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, the founders of the company, in a joint

December 5, 2019 2:30PM PT “Yellowstone” star Kevin Costner is expanding his television universe to include a whole lot more national parks. Variety has learned that the Oscar winner has set up a one-hour drama project at ABC about the Investigative Services Branch of the National Parks Service. Costner is co-writing the series with showrunner

If Midge Maisel wants to be successful as a standup comedian, her portrayer Rachel Brosnahan says, “she’s going to have to give up her personal life. She’s going to have to go at it alone.” The second season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” ended with Brosnahan’s 1950s housewife-turned-comic, character getting the opportunity of a lifetime

Leonard Goldberg, a prolific producer and TV executive who supervised movies and TV series that captivated viewers in two different centuries, died on Wednesday due to injuries sustained during a fall. He was 85. Goldberg most recently served as an executive producer on the popular CBS drama series “Blue Bloods,” which is in its tenth

Peter Segal will direct and executive produce Stephen Amell’s upcoming Starz series “Heels,” Variety has learned exclusively. The eight-episode drama, which hails from Lionsgate Television in association with Paramount Television Studios, stars Amell and Alexander Ludwig as brothers Jack and Ace Spade. Set in a close-knit Georgia community, it follows a family-owned wrestling league as the

It’s official: with the amount of scripted series alone hitting the 500 mark and refusing to stop there, there is just too much content available to keep up with all of it. But although the quantity of series offered continues to grow, that does not automatically mean the quality increases as well. As such, no

Karen McDougal, the former model who was paid $150,000 to stay quiet about her affair with President Donald Trump, sued Fox News on Thursday, alleging that host Tucker Carlson falsely accused her of extortion. The slander lawsuit, filed in state court in New York, concerns a segment that aired in December 2018 in which Carlson

“The Simpsons” is leading the way with three Writers Guild of America nominations, followed by two each for “Bob’s Burgers,” “The Crown,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Pen15,” “Russian Doll,” “Succession,” “Veep” and “Watchmen.” Fox’s “The Simpsons,” which began airing in 1989, scored noms in the animated category for the “Go Big or Go Homer,” “Livin’

HBO Max has given out a series order to the half-hour high school dramedy “Generation.” The project had been ordered to pilot at the nascent streamer earlier this year, meaning this is the first HBO Max pilot to get picked up to series. The ten-episode series follows a group of high school students whose exploration

December 5, 2019 10:00AM PT A one-hour rom-com procedural set in the Florida Panhandle is in the works at Fox. The network has issued a put pilot commitment to “Florida Man,” which hails from “Neighbors” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” director Nick Stoller, and “Bones” producer Carla Kettner. “Florida Man” centers around the loquacious, eccentric Bell

 Jeff Rossen, a TV journalist who became a fixture on NBC’s “Today” with reports about consumer tips and avoiding scams, is taking up a new role at Hearst Television. Rossen will become the company’s chief national consumer correspondent, a new role, and will continue to deliver his “Rossen Reports” that help people analyze how to

Netflix is just “scratching the surface” of what it plans to do in non-English-language programming, the company’s head of international originals said Thursday, adding that, for the streaming giant, “Hollywood is not the be-all and end-all of storytelling.” The streamer’s success with series such as Germany’s “Dark” and Denmark’s “The Rain” means it will go

Julianne Hough addressed Gabrielle Union’s revelation yesterday that she had a five-hour meeting with NBC about the culture at “America’s Got Talent.” Speaking during an appearance on the “Today” show this morning, Hough commended Union for standing up for herself, and also congratulated NBC for agreeing to sit down with her for discussions. “When I

December 5, 2019 8:00AM PT Indie film and television studio MRC has acquired the rights to beloved children’s book series “Eloise,” written by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight and first published in 1955. The deal spans film, TV, live stage and related ancillary rights. MRC plans to work closely with Handmade Films, and

December 5, 2019 8:00AM PT “Reprisal,” a new Hulu drama setting out to tell a grim story of bloody revenge, aims at a clever pitch-darkness. It more often lands on a sort of congenital sourness, one that grows choking at the series’s hour-long episode lengths. It’s an unfortunate miss for series star Abigail Spencer, an

Longtime Comcast executive David Cohen is stepping down from his operational role overseeing public policy, government relations, diversity and other key corporate functions for the media giant. Comcast said Thursday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Cohen, senior executive VP and chief diversity officer, will step down from his operational responsibilities as of