Television

In a move to expand its pan-European reach, Italy’s Mediaset has acquired a 9.6% stake in Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 Media, which is Europe’s second-largest TV group in terms of TV home penetration. Mediaset is Italy’s top commercial free-to-air broadcaster. Its purchase of a stake in ProSiebenSat.1, for a reported $368 million, comes amid a wave of consolidation

Genius Brands International has launched a new animated TV series, “Stan Lee’s Superhero Kindergarten,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to star. “It is an honor and privilege to work with Genius Brands and POW! Entertainment on this new series and help carry on Stan’s creative legacy by introducing this new group of superheros to preschool children

Sky is building its slate of originals in Italy with “Romulus,” a 10-part series about the origin of Rome from Cattleya, the Italian producer that makes “Gomorrah.” Non-English-language drama is in vogue, but “Romulus” takes that a step further by having the characters speak in archaic Latin. Matteo Rovere, known for his movie work, is

Netflix has signed on as a partner on BAFTA’s Breakthrough Brits, the program that supports up-and-coming U.K. talent. BAFTA said that the partnership with Netflix will help facilitate expansion of the ‘Breakthrough’ initiative globally, and the partners will work to identify overseas talent in new territories such as India and the U.S. Netflix is deepening

“My final day of shooting, I felt fine … I felt fine … I felt fine … then I went to do my last shots and started hyperventilating a bit,” he said. “Then they called ‘wrap’ and I just f—-g broke down. It was this onslaught of relief and grief about not being able to

May 28, 2019 3:21PM PT In today’s roundup, Netflix announces the premiere date for the final season of “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” and the basketball documentary “Q Ball” premieres tonight on FS1. DATES The third and final season of “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” will launch on Netflix on June 14, making it the last entry in Netflix and Marvel’s

Looking for a cheap space to get some work done? “Broad City” creators and actors Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have a solution: “SheWork,” an outdoor urban work space not to be confused with real-life workplace company WeWork. In a season five episode of “Broad City,” Glazer’s character devised “SheWork” as a smoker-friendly outdoor office

It’s tough to make a splash when there are literally hundreds of TV shows in the pop culture universe. But the number of freshman series that fought their way to attention-getting status among millennials and Gen Xers made a notable uptick in the 2018-2019 season to date. “The Masked Singer,” “Manifest,” “The Conners,” “New Amsterdam,”

On a Tuesday afternoon in March at NBC Universal Studios, an episode of “Songland” is being filmed, with judges Ryan Tedder, Shane McAnally and Ester Dean evaluating and reworking aspiring songwriters’ original material. The nitty-gritty of debating what can be done with the tunes to make them work is fairly intense. But there are more

Amazon is continuing to expand its YA slate with a series order for the drama “The Wilds.” The series follows a group of teenage girls from radically different backgrounds after an airplane crash strands them on a deserted island. The series hails from writer and executive producer Sarah Streicher, whose past credits include working as

Audrey Morrissey can’t stop the feeling. The showrunner and executive producer of NBC’s “The Voice” spends most of her professional life thinking about songs. She thinks about the new and not-so-new tunes that should be in the repertoire of her hit singing-competition series. She thinks about how music can be a signpost for shifts in

May 28, 2019 11:46AM PT Despite returning the lowest rating for one of its season premieres to date, the season 6 debut episode of “Marvel’s Agents of Shield” has showed impressive growth in delayed viewing. The episode went from a 0.44 rating in Live+Same Day in the key 18-49 demographic, to a 0.9 in Live+7,

CNN is moving some of the production jobs in its London offices to Atlanta, the latest in what appears to be a recent series of moves aimed at tweaking the news outlet’s operations in the wake of the purchase of its parent company, WarnerMedia, by AT&T. “In the coming months CNN International will be consolidating

TruTV has laid off most of its programming and marketing staffers as oversight of the WarnerMedia cabler is consolidated into the broader Turner entertainment group. TruTV on Tuesday morning informed a few dozen staffers — said to be less than 50 — in New York and Atlanta that they would receive severance buyouts. The operations

Much of an actor’s job is to convey a character’s inner emotional truth. That can prove complicated when the character requires layers of prosthetics and specialized makeup to come to life. Such was the challenge for Zachary Quinto, who portrays Charlie Manx in AMC’s “NOS4A2,” an adaptation of Joe Hill’s novel about a supernatural being

Canal Plus Group is on track to acquire M7, a leading pay-TV company in Europe operating in Benelux and Central Europe, as it aims to ramp up its subscriber base across the continent. The acquisition, which has yet to be approved by the European Commission, would create a turnover of more than 400 million euros

Timing is everything in Hollywood. Endeavor’s formal unveiling of its plan to go public later this year couldn’t have come at a less-opportune moment. Although Endeavor’s IPO intentions were well known, the timing of its May 23 filing with the SEC seemed at best tone-deaf to many industry insiders, coming amid the extraordinary standoff over

Discovery wants to tout “Shark Week” during TV’s Upfront Week. Discovery will elbow its way next year into TV’s annual May showcase, the mid-month series of presentations the nation’s big media companies give to Madison Avenue in an effort to woo billions of ad dollars for their coming programming schedules.  Discovery is betting that its

To the list of TV revivals and revisits, add Britain’s beloved and widely traveled “Gavin & Stacey.” The BBC announced Tuesday that it would catch up with the doings of the eponymous couple and their friends and family this Christmas after a nearly 10-year hiatus. The hourlong special is written by James Corden and Ruth

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, “Good Omens” premieres on Amazon and Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” drops

Topher Grace believes we may take “Saturday Night Live” for granted. After nearly 45 years, the late-night sketch series has become such an institution that it’s easy to forget the program’s unique place in TV history. “There’s something special about ‘SNL’ and how it’s been in the same place the whole time,” Grace told Variety‘s

HBO gave fans a long parting look at the making of “Game of Thrones” on Sunday night in a two-hour documentary that focused on the Herculean efforts by the small army craft and technical experts who worked on the mammoth fantasy drama. “Game of Thrones: The Last Watch” introduced viewers to the leaders of the

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the entire second seasons of “Killing Eve” and “Barry.”  I was dead certain that “Killing Eve” and “Barry” — two of my favorite television debuts of 2018 — should have ended after a single season. Both coincidentally starring unstable assassins, the shows were smart, propulsive, and extremely weird

Just as CBS News is pushing to turn a corner on a more than a year of internal turmoil, veteran anchor Scott Pelley shone a light back on to its recent past. The anchor, a veteran of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News” alleged Sunday that he was taken off CBS’ evening-news broadcast in

“AP Bio” has been canceled at NBC. Series creator Mike O’Brien shared the news with fans on Twitter, writing that “This has been my favorite project of my life.” In the single-camera comedy, Glenn Howerton portrayed a disgraced Harvard philosophy scholar who lost out on his dream job and was forced to return to Toledo,

May 24, 2019 4:30PM PT This current “Jeopardy!” player has just won over $2 million on the popular game show. Who is James Holzhauer? The 34 year old professional sports gambler from Las Vegas has hit a “Jeopardy!” milestone by becoming only the second person in the show’s history to win over $2 million in

Before “The Hot Zone,” Julianna Margulies admits she would often see stories about diseases such as Ebola in Africa and only “skim over them.” After getting to meet those on the front lines of trying to contain and cure infectious diseases, such as Dr. Nancy Jaax, whom Margulies plays in the National Geographic limited series,

May 24, 2019 2:21PM PT CNN has laid off a handful of staffers from its health-journalism unit after deciding to place its health, climate and Southeastern newsgathering operations under a single aegis. ” As part of the normal course of business, our newsgathering team made a small restructure earlier this week that ultimately impacts 6-7

Following his 2014 Tony Award for best actor as President Lyndon B. Johnson in Robert Schenkkan’s play “All the Way,” Bryan Cranston is looking to add to his trophy collection this year with his performance as Howard Beale in “Network.” The deranged anchorman — who’s famously “mad as hell and not going to take this

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “What/If,” streaming now on Netflix. Writer and executive producer Mike Kelley’s latest piece of dramatic storytelling is a limited series morality tale that starts with a high-powered, wealthy woman named Anne Montgomery (Renee Zellweger) offering Lisa, a young woman with a startup (Jane Levy),