January 16, 2019 12:04PM PT NBC has renewed the competition series “Ellen’s Game of Games” for a third season. Season 2 of the show officially launched on Jan. 8, though a preview aired on Dec. 12. Ellen DeGeneres serves as host and executive producer of the one-hour show, which includes supersized versions of some of the
Television
January 16, 2019 12:00PM PT Paul DeBenedittis has been named executive vice president of programming and content strategy at Nickelodeon. There, he will lead content and programming strategies, partnerships, acquisitions and media planning for the flagship network as well as Nick Jr., Nicktoons and TeenNick across linear television, digital, branded apps and video-on-demand channels, among other
R&B artist MAJOR. is on “cloud three million” right now. His track “Honest” scored a 2019 Grammy nomination for best traditional R&B performance, and, as he tells Variety exclusively, he recently landed a recurring role on Fox’s “Star.” The singer-songwriter, born Major Johnson Finley, is currently shooting the musical drama in Atlanta, and will make his
January 16, 2019 10:59AM PT Karen Kovacs, a former senior executive at Time Inc. and a one-time publisher of People magazine, has been named executive vice president of client partnerships at NBCUniversal’s ad-sales unit. Kovacs will oversee broader partnerships with advertisers, and work to develop deeper alliances between sponsors and various parts of NBCU’s media
Jenji Kohan, creator and showrunner of “Orange Is the New Black” and “Weeds,” has been named recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement. She will be honored at the Writers Guild Awards show on Feb. 17 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Jenji Kohan’s
January 16, 2019 10:00AM PT [embedded content] President Donald Trump’s proposed space force may debut on Netflix before it actually makes it to space. Variety has learned that the streaming giant has ordered a comedy series from “The Office” alums Steve Carell and Greg Daniels titled “Space Force.” It is described as a workplace comedy centered around
January 16, 2019 4:00AM PT The monocle-wearing Mr. Peanut is about to offer snack fans an entirely new lens on Super Bowl advertising. Planters, which has featured the anthropomorphic legume for more than a century as its spokes-character, will place him in a 30-second ad slated to appear in the second quarter of CBS’ broadcast
Scandinavian sci-fi series “The White Wall” is coming to the international market, starting at NATPE, after DRG picked up international rights to the upcoming project. Finland’s Fire Monkey and Nice Drama, part of the Nordic Entertainment Group, are making “The White Wall” for Swedish pubcaster SVT and its Finnish counterpart, YLE. It will feature a
January 15, 2019 4:18PM PT Viacom has laid off a number of staffers in its entertainment group, with the majority of the affected employees hailing from Paramount Network, Variety has learned exclusively. A Viacom spokesperson declined to comment. But a source with knowledge of the situation that the number of affected employees was fewer than 20,
In today’s TV News Roundup, “The Last O.G.” announces its Season 2 return date and Variety has the exclusive first look at Fox’s new legal drama “Proven Innocent.” FIRST LOOKS Netflix has announced its new limited series “Black Earth Rising” will launch on Jan. 25. The contemporary thriller series stars Michaela Coel as Kate Ashby, a Rwandan girl
January 15, 2019 1:56PM PT As CBS looks to find its footing after being rocked by a series of scandals, acting CEO Joseph Ianniello and other top executives took questions from employees on Tuesday about the company’s culture and future plans. In the first of two planned live-blog sessions on the company’s internal employee web
January 15, 2019 12:54PM PT Matt Walsh has been tapped for a lead role in the upcoming ABC single-camera comedy pilot “Happy Accident.” In the series, two Pittsburgh families – a father (Walsh) with three adult daughters, and a hotel lounge singer with her med student son – are forced together after a decades-old secret is
January 15, 2019 12:31PM PT Netflix has renewed “Grace and Frankie” for a sixth season ahead of the Season 5 premiere this Friday. The series stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the titular characters who found their lives turned upside down when their husbands (played by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, respectively) revealed they
January 15, 2019 12:24PM PT CBS Corp. veteran Armando Nuñez will be honored in April with Variety‘s International Achievement in TV Award at the MipTV conference in Cannes. The award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated leadership and innovation in the international television marketplace. Nuñez, president and CEO of CBS Global Distribution Group and CBS’ Chief Content Licensing
January 15, 2019 12:23PM PT The NAACP has slammed CBS News for not including any African-American journalists on its 2020 election coverage team. CBS News came under fire over the weekend after an associate producer tweeted out an image of the news outlet’s 2020 team. In a statement obtained exclusively by Variety, a spokesperson for the NAACP said
January 15, 2019 12:20PM PT Marc Paskin, an alum of ABC News and Mic, has joined UTA’s News & Broadcast division as an agent. Based in New York, Paskin will focus on finding next-generation journalism stars and those who work in the converging worlds of TV and digital. “As is all of media, the news
The Murdoch family’s new Fox needs Madison Avenue to buy commercials in an abundance of sports broadcasts. Seth Winter will take on the job of selling them. Winter, the former head of NBC Sports ad sales, is joining Fox in a similar role, taking over a critical position at the company as it focuses more
“Black Monday” show creators David Caspe and Jordan Cahen divulged an intriguing detail to come later in the first season of the new Showtime comedy at its world premiere, held at the Theatre at Ace Hotel on Monday night in Los Angeles. “The fourth or fifth episode opens with a sexual harassment seminar, which very well
January 15, 2019 9:34AM PT Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich has signed on with CNN as a senior commentator. Kasich signaled his intent to move into media on Monday when it was disclosed that he had signed with UTA for representation after ending his tenure in Columbus. Kasich is set to make his CNN debut
French company Mediawan has acquired a majority stake in Palomar, the leading independent Italian production outfit behind the cop show “Inspector Montalbano” and the highly anticipated series “The Name of the Rose,” with John Turturro and Rupert Everett. The deal marks the first international acquisition by Mediawan, the listed company launched in 2016 by three
Jimmy Tatro and Scott Porter have been cast in an upcoming episode of the first season of the CW’s “Charmed,” Variety has learned exclusively. Tatro, who is best known for “American Vandal” and a recent stint on the second season of “The Guest Book,” will guest star as a “bad boy” angel named Gideon, while Porter
The producers of a new series about Napoleon that will be helmed by Agnieszka Holland will pitch the project to potential partners in Berlin at the Co-Pro Series event, which is part of the Berlinale Co-Production Market and the Drama Series Days. The Co-Pro event has a strong pedigree with “Babylon Berlin” and “Valkyrien” among the
Alicia Keys will be hosting the 2019 Grammy Awards, the singer announced this morning via a video on her YouTube channel. “I’m soooo EXCITED to announce that I’ll be hosting the 61st Annual Grammy Awards ✨!! There’s so much in store and I CAN’T WAIT for y’all to see it ALL come to life 💜
Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman-CEO, summoned all of his folksy Oklahoma earnestness as he made an enthusiastic pitch to Wall Street analysts about the telephone company’s bold efforts to transform itself into a multimedia powerhouse. It was late November, less than six months after AT&T had wrapped up its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. But
Duane “Dog” Chapman is back. WGN America is bringing the infamous bounty hunter back to the small screen in a new 10-part series, “Dog’s Most Wanted,” which goes into production early this year. “America has been captivated by Dog, Beth and their dramatic true-crime experiences for over a decade,” said WGN America President Gavin Harvey.
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the series premiere of “The Passage,” which aired Jan. 14 on Fox. Author Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” trilogy consists of more than two thousand pages chronicling a post-apocalyptic world in which an attempt at finding a new immune system booster turned people into “virals,”
January 14, 2019 5:20PM PT NBC has ordered the drama “Council of Dads” to pilot. Based on Bruce Feiler’s memoir of the same name, the show follows Scott Perry and his family, whose lives are thrown into upheaval when he gets a potentially terminal diagnosis. Facing his mortality, he and his wife, Robin, assemble a unique
In today’s TV News Roundup, “So You Think You Can Dance” gets renewed and DeWanda Wise and Jessica Williams enter”The Twilight Zone.” DATES Netflix’s new Ricky Gervais series “After Life” is set to launch March 8 with co-stars Kerry Godliman, Tom Basden, Tony Way, David Bradley and Ashley Jensen. “After Life” follows Tony (Gervais) who
January 14, 2019 3:34PM PT The Megyn Kelly debacle at NBC News has raised the question of whether NBC News chief Andy Lack will face repercussions for the costly experiment. But NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke told Variety on Monday that he is “100% behind Andy” and accepts some blame for the decision recruit Kelly from
January 14, 2019 3:10PM PT Ryan Murphy has assembled quite the cast for his Nurse Ratched series at Netflix. Murphy announced that Sharon Stone, Finn Wittrock, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Cynthia Nixon, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, and Corey Stoll will all star in the series alongside the previously announced star Sarah