October 28, 2019 11:35PM PT Korean Telecom, a phones to TV channels giant, has signed a content partnership agreement with U.S. media firm Discovery to launch a joint venture that will produce original, non-scripted Korean entertainment content for Korean and international audiences. The contents will be broadcast through KT’s subsidiary channel operator SkylifeTV, Discovery Korea
Television
October 28, 2019 7:02PM PT [embedded content] Disney has dropped the second trailer for Jon Favreau’s upcoming Star Wars series for Disney Plus, “The Mandalorian.” The trailer teases the titular bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal)’s origin, showing him walking through a town filled with Storm Troopers’ heads on pikes. “Is the world more peaceful since the
In today’s roundup, National Geographic announced the ensemble cast joining “Genius: Aretha” and Comedy Central has ordered eight episodes of Bobby Moynihan’s digital series “Loafy.” CASTING Malcolm Barrett (“Timeless, “Preacher”), Patrice Covington (“The Color Purple”), Kimberly Hébert Gregory (“Vice Principals”), Rebecca Naomi Jones (“The Big Sick”), Sanai Victoria (“Black-ish”) have been cast alongside Cynthia Erivo
October 28, 2019 4:18PM PT CBS and Viacom now plan to merge as soon as early December, the two media companies said Monday, setting in motion the last steps to yet another consolidation in the traditional media sector. The two companies, which will be known as ViacomCBS once the deal is complete, said the pact
The streaming-war spotlight is shifting to AT&T-owned WarnerMedia on Tuesday, Oct. 29, when the media conglomerate will host a media event on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., to unveil its over-the-top entrant, HBO Max. AT&T chief operating officer and WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey told Variety earlier this year that there is a “tremendous
ABC has given full season orders to freshman shows “Stumptown” and “Mixed-ish” as well as sophomore series “The Rookie.” Both “Stumptown” and “Mixed-ish” are produced solely by ABC Studios, while “The Rookie” is a co-production between ABC Studios and eOne. This marks the first full season pick ups for any of ABC’s fall shows thus
October 28, 2019 11:30AM PT The CW is developing a series about Superman and Lois Lane starring Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch. The potential series would follow the world’s most famous super hero and comic books’ most famous journalist as they deal with all the stress, pressures, and complexities that come with being working parents
“Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman will receive the Producers Guild of America’s Norman Lear Achievement Award for her impact on television. Kauffman will get the award at the 31st Annual Producers Guild Awards on Jan. 18 at the Hollywood Palladium. Previous honorees include Ryan Murphy, James L. Brooks, Shonda Rhimes, Chuck Lorre, and J.J. Abrams. Amy
Corie Henson is leaving Fox for WarnerMedia. The veteran exec has been appointed as the new executive vice president and head of unscripted programming for TBS, TNT and truTV. In her new role, Henson will lead and oversee unscripted creative development and production for all three cable brands, reporting to Brett Weitz, general manager of
A potential spinoff of ABC comedy “Fresh Off the Boat” is one step closer to reality. While a spinoff had been reported as being in early development back in August, Variety has learned that an episode of “Fresh Off the Boat” will begin filming in mid-November that will introduce the characters that would form the basis
Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV. Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, “The Deuce” comes to an end on HBO, and Apple TV Plus launches
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Comedian Dave Chappelle was presented with the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize forAmerican Humor Sunday night following a barrage of heartfelt tributes praising his courage, his spontaneity and his genius at drawing laughter from sobering racial commentary. The Twain event, now in its 22nd year, was a non-stop love fest as a parade
October 28, 2019 8:32AM PT “Batwoman” was up against two unfamiliar foes in the NFL and the World Series in the Sunday night TV ratings, yet the CW show managed to remain stable week-to-week. The Ruby Rose show scored a 0.3 rating among adults 18-49 and was watched by 1.26 million total viewers, almost exactly
With the highly-anticipated launch of Apple TV Plus Nov. 1, Variety television critics Daniel D’Addario and Caroline Framke discuss the service’s present and what could be its future. Daniel D’Addario: If Apple TV Plus’s entry into the marketplace is an event — which, given the size of nearly everything Apple does, it probably should be
The reviews for Apple TV Plus’ first four original series — “The Morning Show,” “See,” “Dickinson” and “For All Mankind” — dropped on Monday morning, providing the first takes on Apple’s original TV content strategy. “The Morning Show,” starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, follows a popular news program grappling with the aftermath
It’s perhaps to be applauded that, at its launch, Apple TV Plus doesn’t have a genre tentpole show based on an established intellectual property — its equivalent, say, of “The Mandalorian,” the “Star Wars”-universe series that will serve as further inducement for Disney Plus subscribers. Instead, Apple is trusting a mix of unfamiliar properties to
Watching “Dickinson” is a strange experience, and not just because it’s a deliberately strange retelling of poet Emily Dickinson’s life complete with bass-heavy needle drops and hallucinations of Death as a man with a Cheshire Cat smirk (played by, this is true, Wiz Khalifa). For all the big creative swings the new Apple TV Plus
The first moon landing looms large in American history as a vital landmark of innovation national pride, and even the evolution of news as entertainment. The country, and likely the world, simply wouldn’t be the same without it — which is exactly what “For All Mankind” is banking on. As imagined by Ben Nedivi, Matt
On “The Morning Show,” the highest-profile of the new series Apple is using to launch its streaming service, Reese Witherspoon’s character, Bradley Jackson, has a political philosophy even unlikelier than her name. A field reporter for a regional superstation whose lean, we’re told, lies somewhere between the Sinclair organization and David Duke, Jackson herself is
October 28, 2019 1:51AM PT Sky Studios has inked deals with Free@Last TV, the producer of “Agatha Raisin,” and Sagafilm, the Iceland-based program-maker that counts “Stella Blomkvist” among its credits. The deals cover development and distribution. The producers get money to work up their slates, Sky gets a pipeline of programming, and Sky’s sister company,
And so, here we are again. In October of 2017, Ronan Farrow made an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” at a shaky time in his relations with NBCUniversal. Farrow, who had worked as a mid-afternoon host at MSNBC and a contributor working off a contract at NBC’s “Today,” had just published a blockbuster
AT&T has struck a deal to sell its majority stake in Central European Media Enterprises for $1.1 billion as part of the telco giant’s larger campaign to shed non-core assets and pay down debt. AT&T said Sunday it would sell its majority interest in the media company that operates in Central and Eastern European markets
FX’s hit horror anthology series “American Horror Story” celebrated its 100th episode milestone in true “AHS” style, hosting a lavish bash among the tombstones at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery — a location that had particular significance for series creator Ryan Murphy. “One of my favorite memories of the show was here when we were shooting
President Donald Trump made a rare Sunday morning address to the nation shortly after 9 a.m. ET to announce the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a two-hour US-led raid in Northern Syria. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said. The major broadcast networks broke into regular
VALLADOLID, Spain – The Valladolid Intl. Film Festival (Seminci), the truest event dedicated to international arthouse cinema on Spain’s festival calendar, capped off eight days of screenings, press conferences and roundtables by handing out awards on Saturday evening at the Spanish city’s historic Calderon Theater. The evening’s big winners: Wang Quan’an’s “Öndög” and Karim Aïnouz’s
Alec Baldwin has recently said he doesn’t want to play Donald Trump anymore, but that didn’t stop him from returning to the Studio 8H stage for “Saturday Night Live’s” Oct. 26 episode. This time, though, he brought with him some past “SNL” cast members: Fred Armisen and Darrell Hammond. Hammond reprised his infamous take on
Nearly 60% of the writing staff behind FX Networks’ series — a programming slate that includes “Pose,” “American Horror Story” and “Better Things” — are not white males, said FX Networks and FX productions chairman John Landgraf at the USC Gould School of Law-Beverly Hills Bar Association 2019 Institute on Entertainment Law and Business. That
Tina Tchen, incoming president and CEO of Time’s Up, has put out a statement calling on NBCUniversal to release its employees from their NDAs and “unequivocally” allow them to “speak without any fear of retaliation.” The statement comes after Rachel Maddow announced on her show Friday evening that NBCUniversal will release former employees from their
Jane Fonda may have just given the greatest acceptance speech of all time. Fonda was set to accept the Stanley Kubrick award for excellence in film during BAFTA LA’s annual celebration on Friday night at the Beverly Hilton, but since the actor had been arrested earlier in the day while protesting for climate change awareness
France-based Banijay Group has sealed a deal for Endemol Shine, in a move that will create a new pecking order in the international TV business. The merged entity will be the largest non-U.S. player in the market, with a bigger catalogue than the main U.K. players, BBC Studios and ITV Studios. Banijay is owned by