July 2, 2019 9:00AM PT “Cash Cab” just keeps on coming back. The game show, which originally aired on Discovery from 2005 to 2012 and was resurrected again for a two-year run in 2017, is now being resurrected once more, this time by Bravo. The NBCU owned network has announced that comedian Ben Bailey will
Television
Abrams Artists Agency has offered to accept Writers Guild of America’s key requirements in order to return to representing WGA members again, three months after the bitter dispute began. According to an Abrams spokesperson, the agency will stop taking packaging fees and not to engage in affiliate production if it can represent WGA members. The offer is
Demand for digital advertising drove the bulk of demand for WarnerMedia’s “upfront” sales efforts, according to a person familiar with the matter, suggesting Madison Avenue is turning more avidly to some of the industry’s most traditional providers for the newest forms of video marketing even as they ponder how much to spend on traditional TV.
July 2, 2019 6:29AM PT Amazon has ordered a documentary series to go from Starbucks. “This is Football” will span the globe and tell six stories about the global power of soccer. Veteran producer and film exec Joe Roth, an owner of the Seattle Sounders team, will exec produce the series. It will go out
“One Cup, A Thousand Stories,” a major factual series about the history and influence of tea, has been commissioned from BBC Studios, by Migu, the digital content subsidiary of China Mobile. The series is BBC Studios’ first fully-funded production commission in China. BBC Studios has previously worked with other Chinese broadcasters to co-produce titles including
There are three women in the BBC’s roster of top-earning talent for the first time. Radio presenter Zoe Ball tops the list, earning up to £374,999 ($473,000). The U.K. pubcaster said there was “rapid and real change” in the gender split of its top-earners since it was first required by government to publish figures in
In today’s TV news roundup, Hulu drops the first trailer for Mindy Kaling’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and Netflix has released official art from the upcoming “Witcher” series. FIRST LOOKS Netflix has released first look images from its upcoming “The Witcher” series, based on the video game of the same name. Below (from left to
A TV series based on the “The Sandman” comic books created by Neil Gaiman has officially been ordered to series at Netflix. Allan Heinberg will write and serve as showrunner and executive producer on the series, with Gaiman and David S. Goyer also writing and executive producing. Gaiman, Heinberg and Goyer will co-write the first
Meredith Stiehm, co-chair of the Writers Guild of America’s agent negotiating committee, has signed with Verve talent agency. She’s the second high-profile WGA leader to sign with Verve in recent days. “Big Fish” screenwriter and WGA West board member John August announced on June 28 that he had signed with Verve, which had agreed to
July 1, 2019 12:22PM PT “Master of None” star Aziz Ansari is returning to Netflix with a new stand-up special, four years after his previous special streamed on the platform and two years after the second season of “Master of None” ended. The new special, titled “Aziz Ansari: Right Now,” is set to drop July
The “Gremlins” animated series is officially moving forward at the WarnerMedia streaming service. The series, which Variety exclusively reported back in February, will be titled “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.” Set in 1920s Shanghai, the series will tell the story of how 10-year-old Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie) met the
July 1, 2019 11:47AM PT The third season of the HBO series “Divorce” will be the show’s last. Season 3, which will consist of six episodes, will debut tonight. The series is described as the story of a very, very long divorce. It stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church as Frances and Robert,
July 1, 2019 11:22AM PT Netflix has put out an order for a new horror series from Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy, the creators of “The Haunting of Hill House.” The seven-episode series, titled “Midnight Mass,” will follow an isolated island community which experiences miraculous events – and frightening omens – after the arrival of
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 sees the highly anticipated return of “Stranger Things,” with season 3 dropping on
July 1, 2019 9:12AM PT “What Just Happened??!” Fred Savage’s new Fox show premiered to pretty poor numbers, that’s what. The after-show spoof series aired its premiere episode last night to a 0.3 rating and a meager 800,000 total viewers. The premiere was squashed in the 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. time period by “$100,000
July 1, 2019 8:37AM PT Quibi will crown nature’s “Fierce Queens” with a series about female animals. The project comes from the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, which is behind blue-chip natural history shows including the “Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth” series. It is BBC Studios’ first commission for Quibi, the short-form streaming service founded
Anthony LaPaglia and Jessica Marais will star alongside Rebecca Gibney in Australian drama series “Halifax: Retribution.” The crime thriller follows forensic psychiatrist Jane Halifax and was on Australian free-TV network Nine in the 1990s and early 2000s. It has resurrected the Melbourne-set show, with production getting underway this month, on location. Other cast for the
Rebecca Gibney, Anthony LaPaglia and Jessica Marais head the cast of crime thriller mini-series “Halifax: Retribution.” The show is the revival of an iconic Australian series that ran on the Nine Network for six seasons from 1994 to 2002, starring Gibney. In the new show, produced for Nine, Gibney’s forensic psychiatrist character is called back
The entertainment industry has rarely been shy to put politics under the lens. In recent years, shows like “Veep” and “House of Cards” provided side-splitting satire and dystopian shock and awe respectively, before the current administration threw a spanner in the works. Now, creators are having to adapt to the new political reality and executives
The debut of “Stranger Things” in 2016 marked the first real, huge streaming TV phenomenon. Other Netflix shows had made an impression before: “House of Cards” in 2013 and “Orange Is the New Black” shortly thereafter proved that streaming was coming for cable’s gig, hard. But it was the nostalgia grabs and exhilarating monster chases
June 29, 2019 3:20PM PT The Women’s World Cup is making history, and not just in the sports world. Friday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinal game – between USA and host nation France – drew more than 6.3 million viewers on Fox and Fox streaming sources, making it the most watched FIFA Women’s World Cup
June 28, 2019 6:30PM PT CBS is officially not moving forward with “Surveillance,” a much-buzzed-about spy drama pilot starring Sophia Bush. Sources had previously told Variety that the show had support within the network, but that it was not seen as a good fit for CBS. The drama had tested “through the roof,” they said.
Laurie Luhn, the former Fox News staffer who made sexual abuse allegations against Roger Ailes, has dropped a $750 million lawsuit against Showtime over the forthcoming miniseries “Loudest Voice.” Luhn filed suit in January, accusing Showtime, Blumhouse and journalist Gabriel Sherman of violating her right to privacy. The suit alleged that Sherman was “cashing in”
June 28, 2019 4:16PM PT In today’s TV news roundup, AMC releases a new teaser video and key art for Season 4 of “Preacher,” and “Wrong Man” gets picked up for Season 2 on Starz. DATES VH1’s new real estate docu-series “Love & Listings” is set to premiere July 21. The eight-episode season follows young,
The Writers Guild of America has hit back at Hollywood agents with accusations of collusion following a pair of lawsuits alleging that the guild is abusing its collective bargaining authority. With the bitter standoff in its third month, the WGA brushed off recent suits by UTA and WME, calling them “meritless.” The guild sent a
When George R.R. Martin first started screenwriting in the early 1990s, his then-agent recommended he read “Adventures in the Screen Trade” by William Goldman, in which one of Goldman’s central maxims is “Nobody knows anything.” “My experience with ‘Game of Thrones’ just confirms that Goldman had it right: Nobody knows anything. Don’t let anyone tell
When Netflix gave “One Day at a Time” the ax in March, Pop TV president Brad Schwartz leaped into action. “It just jumped out at me: ‘Oh my God, that’s such a Pop show,’” he told Variety, sensing similarities in themes between the Norman Lear reboot and “Schitt’s Creek,” the hit that put the niche
June 28, 2019 2:00PM PT Rob McElhenney of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” has ignited a turf feud with Steve Carell after posting an Instagram video taunting “The Office” star from the Dunder Mifflin set. In response, Carell offered the olive branch of a crossover episode. McElhenney posted an Instagram video from the parking lot
Shonda Rhimes, one of Hollywood’s most powerful storytellers, has partnered with Dove in the past to improve the portrayals of women in the media. Their latest collaboration, #ShowUs, is a new photography database with more than 5,000 images of diverse women to help promote more accurate representations in the press and advertising. Last week, Rhimes
June 28, 2019 12:45PM PT “Holey Moley” hit the ratings fairway with its debut, and the ABC mini-golf competition series saw a decent 30% bump from a 1.0 to a 1.3 in the Live+3 ratings. The Stephen Curry-starring show came in fourth place for the week, as NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” came out on top,