February 11, 2019 9:45PM PT Netflix is partnering with “Deutschland 83” creator Anna Winger on a new miniseries that tells the story of a young ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman who flees her arranged marriage and religious community to start a new life abroad. “Unorthodox” is the first project out of the gate for Winger’s newly launched
Television
Tahar Rahim, the French actor currently appearing in the Berlinale opening film “The Kindness of Strangers,” is in negotiations to star in Damien Chazelle’s highly anticipated Netflix series “The Eddy,” Variety has learned. A Paris-set musical series written by Jack Thorne (“National Treasure”), “The Eddy” will revolve around a club, its owner, the house band,
Irish director Brian O’Malley, who is known for gothic chillers “Let Us Pray” and “The Lodgers,” is attached to co-direct the English-language steampunk spaghetti Western series “That Dirty Black Bag”with Italy’s Mauro Aragoni. It’s set to start shooting in August. “That Dirty Black Bag” is being produced by Palomar, the Italian shingle behind upcoming “The
To mark the second solid week of the Television Critics Assn. press tour, Hulu brought previewed some new series, including limited adaptation “Catch-22,” anthology “The Act” and comedies “Shrill” and “Ramy,” while BET paneled its television version of “Boomerang”; Nickelodeon celebrated the 20th anniversary of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and Comedy Central celebrated new series “The Other
February 11, 2019 5:34PM PT Comedy Central has renewed “The Other Two” for a second season. The announcement was made at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Monday. The series stars Drew Tarver as a 28-year-old struggling actor and Heléne Yorke as his 30-year-old sister, who is struggling in general. As the two
February 11, 2019 5:30PM PT Comedy Central is bringing back “Crank Yankers.” The basic cabler announced at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Monday that they have ordered a 20-episode revival of the prank call series. Updated for a digitally driven audience, the show will now feature puppets pranking people on phones, social
Carmen Argenziano, an actor best known for his roles in “Stargate SG-1” and “The Godfather Part II,” has died, talent agency Event Horizon Talent confirmed Sunday in a Facebook post. He was 75. “While Carmen was a client, he was also a good friend. While he was a class act and a consummate gentleman at the events
David Spade is returning to late-night TV, in a bid from Comedy Central that will shake up the way the network does business around midnight. David Spade, the comedian once famous for delivering the “Hollywood Minute” during the “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live,” will devote considerably more time going forward to the Viacom-owned
In today’s TV news roundup, Hulu sets the premiere date for season three of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Samantha Bee will host another “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” DATES Hulu has announced a slate of release dates for several original series and films. The first trio of episodes from the third season of “The
Premium cabler HBO will be “core” to the new WarnerMedia streaming service, emphasized TBS and TNT president Kevin Reilly at the Television Critics Assn. press tour on Monday, and indicated that Netflix likely won’t hold onto “Friends” for long. WarnerMedia’s upcoming platform, which will compete with subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon, and the
Jane Levy has been cast in the lead role of the NBC drama pilot “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” Variety has learned. In addition, Paul Feig will no longer direct the pilot as planned due to scheduling conflicts. He remains on the project as an executive producer. Richard Shepard has now joined the pilot as the director and
“America’s Got Talent” has set a new host and members of its judging panel going into Season 14, Variety has learned. Terry Crews will take over as host of the NBC competition show from Tyra Banks. In addition, Gabrielle Union and Julianne Hough will serve as judges on the upcoming season, joining returning judges Simon Cowell
MADRID, Spain — On Jan. 28 this year, the cast and crew of the Movistar Plus’s 16th century adventure drama “The Plague” wrapped shooting on Season 2. Variety visited the set and interview members of the team responsible for what could well be the country’s most ambitious TV project ever. Here are five take-aways from
Lucy Liu has been cast in a lead role in the upcoming CBS All Access dramedy series “Why Women Kill,” Variety has learned. The series details the lives of three women living in three different decades: a housewife in the ‘60s, a socialite in the ‘80s and a lawyer in 2018, each dealing with infidelity in
Winter is coming to Portugal. In a bid to further expand its footprint in Europe, Time Warner has launched its premium content streaming service HBO in Portugal. Acclaimed HBO original shows led by “Game of Thrones,” “Big Little Lies,” “Westworld” and “True Detective” will be available in Portugal starting Feb. 11. HBO Portugal went live
BERLIN — Spanish broadcast network Atresmedia and Bambu Producciones teamed on two milestones in the international outreach of Spanish series: “Gran Hotel” and “Velvet,” whose avid audiences, especially in Latin America, proved there was a mass audience abroad for original Spanish series, not just their formats. Atresmedia and others – Netflix, for example – took
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, Jordan Peele’s “Lorena” debuts on Amazon as does “The Umbrella Academy” on Netflix.
“Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” the Netflix anthology series showcasing memories and inspirations behind the country icon’s most beloved songs, has rounded out its cast. Melissa Leo, Ray McKinnon, Andy Mientus, Katie Stevens and Michael Willett will star in “Two Doors Down,” in which a family’s “lifetime of secrets” comes bursting out during a chaotic but comedic
February 11, 2019 9:55AM PT Hulu’s senior vice president of originals Craig Erwich says that the streaming service will “continue to be an important player” as Disney absorbs 21st Century Fox’s entertainment properties, and said its release of its Fyre Festival documentary ahead of Netflix’s version “wasn’t meant as a dig.” “Hulu is a very
February 11, 2019 9:12AM PT Starz has pulled the plug on the J.K. Simmons spy drama “Counterpart” after two seasons. The series hailed from MRC and Anonymous Content. The final episode is set to air on Sunday. Showrunner and creator Justin Marks disclosed the cancellation Monday morning via Twitter. Marks suggested that MRC would shop
February 11, 2019 9:07AM PT Hulu is developing a series based on the book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America” by Erik Larson. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will executive produce the project along with Stacey Sher, Rick Yorn, Emma Koskoff, and Jennifer Davisson. Paramount
February 11, 2019 3:25AM PT NBCUniversal International Networks has acquired crime drama “The Murders” across multiple European markets as well as for Africa, it announced Monday. The police procedural, which stars Jessica Lucas (pictured) will air from mid-2019 on Universal TV in the U.K. and Africa, and on 13thStreet in France, Germany, Spain, and Poland.
Anyone who casts an eye over the long-form dramas premiering at this year’s Berlin Intl. Film Festival can find many series that are ripe for picking by new territories — as well as plenty that have already been pounced on by in-the-know buyers. Since it launched five years ago, the Berlinale Series program has become
Italian TV and film production company Palomar – which is at the Berlin Film Festival with Claudio Giovannesi’s competition entry “Pirhanas” – last month forged a strategic alliance with France’s Mediawan under which Mediawan took a majority stake in Palomar which, in turn, became a Mediawan stakeholder. The deal marked the first acquisition outside France
BERLIN — A desperate city hunts for a child killer in the six-part drama series “M – A City Hunts a Murderer,” a modern-day interpretation of Fritz Lang’s iconic film which world premieres Feb. 12 as part of the Berlin Film Festival’s TV strand, Berlinale Series. The six-hour limited series is a Superfilm production by John
A major presale has been signed for “Bella Germania,” and fittingly for a sweeping tale of Italian immigrants in Germany, it has been picked up by RAI. The Italian pubcaster will play it on its flagship free-TV station RAI Uno and is expected to launch it this summer. Spanning several generations, “Bella Germania” comprises three
February 10, 2019 9:00PM PT Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) will direct two of the eight episodes of RAI and HBO’s Elena Ferrante adaptation “The Story of a New Name,” the second season of “My Brilliant Friend,” according to sources. A representative for Wildside, the show’s production company, had no comment. Director Saverio
SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you have not seen the Season 9 midseason premiere of “The Walking Dead,” titled “Adaptation.” The midseason premiere of “The Walking Dead” picks up immediately where the midseason finale left off, with Jesus (Tom Payne) lying dead after the group’s first encounter with The Whisperers. The rest of
As the cable portion of the Television Critics Assn. press tour continued, A&E looked ahead about a year to the next season of “Knightfall,” while Epix brought two big dramas set to premiere in the summer of 2019: “Pennyworth,” based on DC Comics characters, and the Ben Kingsley starrer “Perpetual Grace, Ltd.” Lifetime brought together
National Geographic, in partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Warner Horizon Scripted Television, has greenlit to series an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book “The Right Stuff,” which recounts the early days of the U.S. space program and its astronauts. Using Wolfe’s book as a jumping-off point, the first season begins in 1958, the