May 19, 2019 8:05PM PT SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you have not seen the series finale of “Game of Thrones,” titled “The Iron Throne.” Whether you loved it or hated it, the series finale of “Game of Thrones” was one for the history books. After the final episode aired Sunday night, fans
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SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you have not seen the finale of “Game of Thrones.” Well, that’s it. After the “Game of Thrones” finale, many of us will likely emulate Jon Snow and just retire North of the Wall. It was billed as one of the biggest events in TV history, and showrunners
News Team: Assemble. CBS News plans to hurl a new anchor squad into TV’s morning-news wars Monday when a different trio – Gayle King, Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil – takes the helm at “CBS This Morning.” The A.M. effort that has won critical plaudits by focusing on harder news topics, like international affairs and
The Mother of Dragons is saying goodbye. After portraying Daenerys Targaryen on “Game of Thrones” for the better part of the past decade, Emilia Clarke penned a heartfelt farewell ahead of the series finale. “Finding the words to write this post has left me overwhelmed with how much I want to say but how small
May 19, 2019 11:58AM PT Who will survive the finale of “Game of Thrones”? Some savvy watchers of the HBO series might have a clue heading into Sunday night’s episode after a detailed description of the final installment reportedly leaked online. [Note: This post does not contain any “Game of Thrones” spoilers.] A spokesperson said
Polygram Entertainment, Universal Music Group’s film and television division, along with Capitol Music Group, Motown Records and Fulwell 73 announced today that “Hitville: The Making of Motown” has been acquired by Showtime for release in North America with plans for a fall premiere, and Altitude for theatrical release in the UK and Ireland. The feature-length
Eight years and eight seasons later, the “Game of Thrones” cast finally has some downtime to relax or move onto other projects. Some stars, like Kit Harington, who told Variety that he doesn’t plan on taking another role as physically demanding as Jon Snow, certainly deserve a break, but others have wasted no time getting back on
The searing first season of “Fleabag” felt like a complete story in and of itself. As adapted from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show, the series expanded on the world of a woman wild with lust and grief with such expert ease that by the time it ended, even Waller-Bridge herself was sure that it was the
Richard Madden is thankful for his time on “Game of Thrones,” but is also happy to have been able to move on when he did. The “Bodyguard” star sat down with “Sharper Objects’” Amy Adams for Variety’s Actors on Actors, where he expressed some incredulity at the idea of spending so long with just one
Madonna’s controversial performance may have grabbed the headlines, but Duncan Laurence won the nearly four-hour-long 2019 Eurovision Song Contest for the Netherlands with the song “Arcade,” which he cowrote with Joel Sjöö and Wouter Hardy. Laurence won a total of 492 points from the expert juries and televoters in a contest that was touch and
May 18, 2019 9:07PM PT The cold open for the season finale of “Saturday Night Live” saw the Trump administration taking some liberties with a rock classic. Alec Baldwin returned as President Donald Trump, letting America know that he is going to be taking it easy now that summer is nearly here. He then said
U.K.-based Great Point has bought into Seven Seas Films, the British indie producer that recently teamed with BBC Studios for a drama series about the final months of Marilyn Monroe. Great Point has a new “enterprise investment scheme” fund, Great Point Ventures, and is primed to invest in several more film and TV producers in
CBS’ effort to buy pay TV service Starz from Lionsgate seems on the surface to be a head scratcher. CBS has told Wall Street for years that it has prospered because it brings only two must-have services to the table in negotiations with MVPDs, allowing the Eye to drive a hard bargain. Why would CBS
Producer Dana Brunetti filed suit on Friday seeking to block the second season of the anthology series “Manhunt,” which is set to dramatize the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Brunetti sued Lionsgate, the production company, as well as Discovery Communications and Charter Communications. Brunetti, the producer of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and many other
May 18, 2019 6:07AM PT [embedded content] “Now is the time to choose a side,” the icy and frightening Mrs. Coulter says in the first trailer for “His Dark Materials,” the big-budget TV adaptation from the BBC and HBO of the bestselling fantasy books by Philip Pullman. Ruth Wilson plays Coulter, and is among a
Nicolas Winding Refn’s lastest project, “Too Old To Die Young,” is being billed as a new TV series from Amazon Studios. But at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday afternoon, the controversial director said that he wouldn’t call it that. “This is a movie,” Refn said. “It’s a 13-hour movie. It’s
Recently minted film and TV firm Media Musketeers has signed a slate finance deal with Paris-based investment outfit Entourage Ventures. It has also brought on Patrick Swiderski as its finance chief. Former Apple executives Sebastien Janin and Andy Docherty teamed with former Warner Bros. exec Chris Law to launch Media Musketeers earlier this year. Its
The 2019-2020 broadcast season is all but set and with it, several clear trends have emerged among the Big 4 and The CW. The name of the game this year is franchise extensions. There are currently five such shows lined up for next season: “Batwoman” (Arrow-verse) and “Katy Keene” (“Riverdale” spinoff) at The CW; “Mixed-ish”
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Robert Diaz,” the sixth season finale of “The Blacklist.” It’s nary that a week goes by without NBC’s “The Blacklist” doling out a high-stakes situation. This sixth season alone James Spader’s Raymond Reddington faced a surprise jail twist, a capital punishment trial in which he
May 17, 2019 3:48PM PT In today’s roundup, Netflix announces Tan France will host upcoming fashion show “Next in Fashion” and Variety has an exclusive look at the next episode of the Wu-Tang Clan docuseries. CASTING Netflix has revealed that “Queer Eye” star Tan France and style icon Alexa Chung will host the upcoming fashion competition “Next
Welcome to “TV Take,” Variety’s television podcast. “Veep” ended its Emmy-winning run on HBO May 12. Throughout the past seven seasons, pretty much everyone on the political comedy has taken aim at the idiotic and power-hungry Jonah, played by Timothy Simons. However, Selina Meyer’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) attack in the last episode takes the cake, according to
May 17, 2019 3:03PM PT Shares of Lionsgate have jumped nearly 15% in the wake of a report that CBS Corp. has made an informal, $5 billion bid for the company’s Starz cable network. Lionsgate stock surged $2 to close at $15.60 in Friday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, then gained another 10
May 17, 2019 3:00PM PT “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is coming to an end. Variety has learned exclusively that the syndicated game show has been canceled. To date, it has aired nearly 3,000 episodes, including over 300 when the show aired on ABC. “After a successful 17-year run, ‘Who Wants To Be A
Nominations for the 2019 BET Awards were announced today with Cardi B leading with 7 nods, followed by Drake (5), Beyonce, Travis Scott and J. Cole, each with four. Bruno Mars, 21 Savage, Childish Gambino, H.E.R. and Ella Mai also received multiple nominations. The show, which is in its 19th year, airs live from downtown
May 17, 2019 2:15PM PT After collaborating on Mounia Meddour’s 2019 Un Certain Regard title “Papicha,” High Sea Production and Tribus P have joined forces with CG Cinema to launch an investment fund, Dock, which is dedicated to financing and co-financing director-driven film and TV content for the international market. Patrick André at High Sea,
After recently hosting Michael Bay’s big-budget actioner “6 Underground” and George Clooney-directed series “Catch 22,” Rome’s Cinecittà Studios is set to welcome several more productions with Hollywood ties. The next one is Netflix witchcraft series “Luna Nera,” helmed by a trio of Italian women: Francesca Comencini (“Gomorra”), Susanna Nicchiarelli (“Nico, 1988”) and Paola Randi (“Little
May 17, 2019 2:00PM PT “Rick and Morty” is getting the Dungeons & Dragons treatment later this year in a new tabletop adventure, Wizards of the Coast announced Friday. “Dungeons & Dragons vs Rick and Morty: Tabletop Roleplaying Game Adventure” will include everything those looking to dive into D&D will need to get started. D&D
Three years after Wanda Sykes’ Epix standup special, she is back with “Wanda Sykes: Not Normal,” this time for Netflix, the company she publicly called out just last year for pay inequality. “They came in with the best offer,” Sykes tells Variety, not just referring to the money made for selling “Not Normal” to the streamer,
May 17, 2019 11:00AM PT James Corden is in advanced talks on a new multi-year deal with CBS that will keep him at the helm of “The Late Late Show” as host and executive producer. Sources said Corden’s camp has been in deal talks with CBS for some time. The previous deal that Corden inked
By the standards of long-running series, “Game of Thrones” maps onto its decade unusually well. This is a very small thing. That the fantasy show, which ran with a sort of mathematically pleasing symmetry from 2011 to 2019, is more authentically of the 2010s than, say, “Mad Men” (2007-2015) or “Killing Eve” (2018-the future) is