NBCUniversal said Friday night it would release former NBC News staffers who believe they were sexually harassed from confidentiality and non-disparagement arrangements, a sign that the company continues to grapple with allegations made against it in the recent Ronan Farrow book, “Catch and Kill.” “Any former NBC News employee who believes that they cannot disclose
Television
October 25, 2019 4:55PM PT In today’s TV news roundup, Disney Plus announced a new unscripted series with the Jim Henson Company and Fox released a trailer for “The Moodys.” DATES MTV’s “Ex on the Beach: Peak of Love” will premiere on Dec. 5 with Romeo Miller set to host. Ten international celeb-reality singles will
The casts and creative teams behind six of Apple’s forthcoming original series appeared at the Variety & Apple TV+ Collaborations event on Friday, offering behind-the-scenes info on the nascent streamer’s shows. In a series of panels presented at Avra Beverly Hills, the audience of entertainment-industry awards voters learned firsthand how many of the shows came
October 25, 2019 3:56PM PT “The Masked Singer” has become the first reality series ever to rank as the number one show through four weeks of the TV season. The Fox singing competition show finished top of the Live+3 TV ratings charts once again, seeing a 32% bump after three days of delayed viewing to
“One Thousand and One Nights,” a vast collection of treasured Middle Eastern folklore, is being adapted for film, TV and gaming content by producer Reza Aslan and film executive Erik Feig’s new venture, Picturestart. The internationally renowned stories — which count characters like Aladdin and his genie, Sinbad and Alibaba — will be framed as
October 25, 2019 11:00AM PT “Batwoman” and “Nancy Drew” are staying on the case for the CW, which has given full season pickups to its fall freshman dramas. Both shows have delivered modest live ratings in their brief runs to date. The early renewals are a sign of faith in the properties from CW and
October 25, 2019 10:00AM PT T-Street, the recently formed independent studio launched by writer-director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman, has tapped Nena Rodrigue to be president of television. She will executive produce and have creative oversight of all TV projects at the studio. “We are super excited to have Nena join our team,” said
When HBO’s “Silicon Valley” returns for its sixth and final season, the Pied Piper gang will be pivoting one last time to tackle emerging privacy issues, a new internet and some degree of actual success for its perpetually stumbling underdogs. Which is exactly why it was time to wrap the series with its final seven
In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic 1986 graphic novel “Watchmen,” the superheroes and vigilantes make their own costumes. This gives every look a level of accessibility that’s not often a consideration for big-budget action projects, but was a theme that needed to be carried over into HBO’s adaptation of the award-winning comic book. Meghan
The final season of “Will & Grace” premiered last night on NBC to series low figures in Live+Same Day. NBC revealed it was bringing season 11 forward last week, replacing freshman comedy “Sunnyside” in the schedule. The premiere scored a 0.5 rating among adults 18-49 and was watched by 2.3 million total viewers, a substantial
October 25, 2019 7:56AM PT PBS NewsHour and Politico will team up to host a debate among Democratic presidential candidates in December. The two media outlets will moderate an event slated to be held December 19 at the University of California, Los Angeles. The debate will air live on PBS and will be streamed online
In this week’s International TV Newswire, Enders Analysis’ report casts shadow over European soccer rights, Netflix primes its Spanish-language star system, landing Manolo Caro for a new thriller, Denmark prepares a new series TV fest, and Spain’s Movistar Plus primes female voices. European Soccer Faces ‘Post Boom’ – Report Pele popularized the phrase “the beautiful
Sales to the U.S. and to streamers, fueled especially by the popularity of British drama, helped drive the value of U.K. television content exports to a record £1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in 2018-19, a new report says. The U.K. TV Exports Report, published by producers’ trade body Pact on Friday, revealed a 7% uptick in
Versatile veteran actor and multihyphenate Danny DeVito, whose memorable roles include such projects at TV’s “Taxi” and Miloš Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” will receive a Lifetime Achievement award for acting at the Camerimage International Film Festival, which runs in Toruń, Poland, on Nov. 9-16. In the awards arena, DeVito shared a best
Joel Kinnaman admits that the astronaut suit he wears in “For All Mankind,” his new Apple TV Plus drama series that creates an alternate history in which the Soviets make it to the moon before the U.S., is horribly uncomfortable. “It’s a lot more fun as an idea than to actually do it,” Kinnaman, who
In today’s TV news roundup, Disney Plus announces a McGuire family reunion and Showtime releases the trailer for “The L Word: Generation Q.” CASTING Disney Plus has revealed that Hallie Todd, Robert Carradine and Jake Thomas will reprise their roles as Jo, Sam and Matt McGuire, respectively, alongside Hilary Duff in the new “Lizzie McGuire”
Hailee Steinfeld is gearing up for her first major television role with “Dickinson” on Apple Plus, in which she stars as famed poet Emily Dickinson, but the multi-hyphenate could be gearing up for yet another leading role on television on another new streaming service: Marvel’s “Hawkeye” series on Disney Plus. Steinfeld is being eyed for
The “Succession” season two finale took fans by surprise with its shocking cliffhanger, and even Sarah Snook (Shiv Roy) was caught off guard by the script. “Episode 10 of season two, I was reading by myself in my trailer, and no on was around but I still had my hands over my face, covering my
Amazon has renewed the anthology series “Modern Love” for a second season. John Carney, who adapted the New York Times column of the same name for the screen, has also signed an overall deal with Amazon. In addition to writing, Carney also served as director and executive producer on the series. The news comes less than
October 24, 2019 3:19PM PT The Marvel live-action series “Cloak and Dagger” has been canceled at Freeform. The series aired its second season back in April. It followed Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) who are two different kids from very different backgrounds but who find themselves burdened by and awakened to
Vice Media will probe fires in the Amazon; Russia’s crackdown on hip-hop artists; and escalating tensions in the Middle East, all as part of a new investigative series set to debut on Hulu. The streaming-video hub said it had ordered 10 episodes of “Vice Investigates,” which is billed as a series of “immersive narratives and
The FX drama pilot “The Old Man” starring Jeff Bridges has added two new cast members. Variety has learned exclusively that both Leem Lubany and E.J. Bonilla have joined the project. In addition to Bridges, they join previously announced cast members John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, and Alia Shawkat. Based on the bestselling novel of the
Overall on-location filming in Greater Los Angeles declined 5.2% from July through September, according to a report released Thursday by the FilmLA permitting agency. Officials said they were not concerned about the decline in shoot days to 9,226, noting that it was due partly to near-record activity levels in 2018 quarter and to an apparent
Attention, Shepard Smith: You could have a job waiting for you at CNN. Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, suggested at an event held by the network Thursday that the AT&T-owned news outlet would be “open” to speaking with the former Fox News Channel anchor when he is allowed to start looking for a
October 24, 2019 10:51AM PT “The 100” may be coming to an end, but the world of the show could very well be living on. Variety has confirmed that The CW will a backdoor pilot during the show’s upcoming seventh season that will set up a potential prequel series. Set 97 years before the events
October 24, 2019 10:20AM PT The new drama based on Philip Pullman’s ‘The Golden Compass’ has star power but little imagination of its own. Adapting a beloved property is as delicate a task as it is unenviable. You have to justify the shift of mediums, make smart adjustments to the source material accordingly, and perhaps
Netflix has ordered an original CGI-animated preschool series, “Oggy Oggy,” based on the hit franchise “Oggy and the Cockroaches,” from French production company Xilam Animation. The series “Oggy and the Cockroaches” has reached 800 million households around the world over the last 20 years and already ranks as one of the most popular kids series
China’s state broadcaster blacked out the first two days of the NBA’s new season and Tencent did not stream the majority of the games live, as the league continues to face off with the Communist government over free speech. The NBA has been at odds with Chinese sponsors, networks and fans in its most critical
The BBC needs to come up with an integrated strategy to win young viewers, deliver original British programming, and be more open about how it operates, British media regulator Ofcom said in its second annual report scrutinizing the world’s biggest pubcaster. Ofcom said the BBC is “broadly delivering” on its mission, has upped program spending
Entertainment One has reshaped its EMEA distribution team under Dan Gopal with a new structure, new hires, and two sales execs exiting. Gopal is one of three regional distribution EVPs and oversees Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for eOne, which is being acquired by Hasbro in a $4 billion deal. He told Variety that