The post Awards Season Calendar 2025-2026: Key Dates for the Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG, DGA and More appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The post Warner Bros. TV Group’s Channing Dungey on Emmy Nomination Haul, Future of ‘The Pitt’ and ‘The Penguin,’ When to Expect New ‘Ted Lasso’ (EXCLUSIVE) appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The post Julian McMahon, ‘Fantastic Four,’ ‘Nip/Tuck’ and ‘FBI: Most Wanted’ Star, Dies at 56 appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The post Kaitlyn Dever’s Harrowing Turn in ‘The Last of Us’ Qualifies for Guest Acting and Supporting Categories (EXCLUSIVE) appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The post Emmy Predictions 2025: ‘Adolescence,’ ‘Severance’ and ‘The Studio’ Among Early Frontrunners In 19 Categories appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The post Box Office: ‘Mickey 17’ Freezes Up With Chilly $7.7 Million Opening Day appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The 18th annual Women in Film Oscars party celebrated the achievements of the 65 women nominated at the 97th annual awards.

The organization, Women in Film, has been advocating for gender equality since 1962 and has provided support during the #MeToo movement, COVID, the unions strikes, and more recently, the devastating wildfires.

This year, WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer told the audience, which included Cynthia Erivo, Monica Barbaro, Diane Warren, “Dune 2” producer Tanya LaPointe and more, “Our industry has taken a beating in the past four years, and that combined with what’s happening to women, to transgender people, to immigrants, to queer people and people of color across this country, means that we need this community more than ever. We need to double down on our efforts for inclusion as a community and not let up.”

The event was held Friday night at the Wheelhouse in West Hollywood. Among the other nominated attendees were “The Substance” director Coralie Fargeat, Erivo, Barbaro, “Gladiator 2” costume designer Janty Yates, “Sugarcane” director Emily Kassie, Diane Warren and more.

Schaffer continued, “Community is the heart of this organization. It’s people working together to change perception, change business practices and culture. Our mission is gender equality, but in order to achieve that, people need to feel safe, physically, emotionally and financially.”

Schaffer was one of the thousands impacted by the wildfires and said she was one of the 11,500 people who had lost their family home. She reminded the crowd that WIF had been partners with the Entertainment Community Fund and said, “I know many of you have already given to countless gofundmes, to the Red Cross to firefighters, but this is not over. The recovery process will take many years and many hands. Please make a donation tonight to the entertainment community fund.”

In closing, Schaffer celebrated the women and called on them to “strengthen our bonds. If there ever was a room or a backyard of people who have the tenacity, the courage and the creativity to imagine our way out of this dark time, it is this room.”

After, she called on the Oscar-nominated women to come to the stage and introduce themselves one by one before a group photo was taken.

The post Women in Film CEO Kirsten Schaffer Urges the Need to ‘Double Down on our Efforts for Inclusion’ appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

The young (and the frugal) staff members at United Talent Agency were up in arms last week, sources told Tenpercenteries, over news from leadership that the company was suspending its free lunch service. 

What began as a post-pandemic perk to lure staff back into the office had miraculously and generously lasted until 2025. UTA was serving up dishes from Leora, the restaurant that sits in the agency’s shadow in Beverly Hills. A turkey club sandwich will run you $15 and a sesame ginger salad sets you back $22 (very modest prices for Los Angeles eateries, btw). 

The free chow was served daily, except on Fridays, and continued through a brutal period of industrywide cost-cutting that persists to this day. Free catered lunches were introduced to Hollywood’s office culture by Silicon Valley, where companies like Facebook would install shopping mall-style food courts to keep programmers fed and happy. Netflix still boasts an impressive menu of cuisine (hot and takeaway) at its Sunset Boulevard headquarters. 

If UTA’s biggest rivals — CAA and WME — ever did offer free lunch, they certainly don’t now. Sources at UTA said agency heads are currently cooking up supplements like coupons, to roll out in the coming weeks. Some UTA assistants wondered aloud to their bosses if they would be compensated for the lunch loss, estimating the meals would introduce a financial burden they haven’t had to carry in years.

We would happily pay for lunch to hear how those conversations went.

Notable talent agency and management signings:

Kamala Harris has signed with CAA for representation in all areas, with a focus on speaking engagements and publishing. She was repped by the agency before becoming Vice President in 2021.

Gersh has signed Constance Wu. She’s best known for her roles in 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians,” 2019’s “Hustlers” and the 2015-2020 ABC comedy series “Fresh Off the Boat.”

UTA has signed seven-time Grammy- and Academy Award-winning artist Jon Batiste for representation in all areas.

Former President Joe Biden has signed with CAA. Biden was represented by the agency from 2017 to 2020, following his two terms as Vice President under President Barack Obama.

UTA has signed digital media company Jubilee Media and its founder Jason Y. Lee for representation in all areas. In addition to the popular format “Surrounded,” Jubilee’s YouTube channels feature such series as “Middle Ground,” “Odd One Out,” “Versus 1,” “30 vs 1,” and “Ranking.”

Quvenzhané Wallis has signed with Gersh for representation in all areas. She is the youngest person to be nominated for best actress at the Oscars, for her turn in 2012’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Almost Friday Media, the digital content network and comedy production hub born out of the Instagram meme account Friday Beers, has signed with Range Media Partners. Almost Friday Media is working on a TV pilot with Danny McBride’s Rough House Pictures.

Writer, director and executive producer Matt Hastings has signed with Gersh. Hastings continues to also be repped by attorney Bob Getman and The Gotham Group. Hastings’ latest drama series, “Fallen,” premiered last month on Sundance Now and AMC+.

Matt Donnelly is senior entertainment and media writer for Variety.

Katcy Stephan is a film reporter for Variety.

Tenpercenteries also runs in Variety‘s weekly magazine

The post Variety’s Tenpercenteries Returns: Signings, Deals and Dish About Hollywood’s Top Talent Agencies and Management Firms appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

Sunday might be billed as Hollywood’s biggest night, but it certainly won’t be outside of the Oscars ceremony. As the town readies for the last evening of awards season, theaters are seeing another muted weekend. Focus Features’ underwater thriller “Last Breath” is projecting a measured opening at $7.3 million. Meanwhile, Disney’s “Captain America: Brave New World” is expected to maintain No. 1 for the third weekend in a row, despite quickly losing momentum among moviegoers.

“Last Breath” dived into $3 million across Friday and preview screenings from 3,018 venues. The survival thriller, about a real rescue operation by deep sea divers, is projected to earn $7.3 million through its opening frame. Alex Parkinson directs a cast that includes Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole, adapting from his own 2019 documentary of the same name. Focus acquired distribution rights last summer.

Reviews have been positive for “Last Breath” and audience sentiment is positive, with moviegoer pollster Cinema Score turning in a B+ grade. Original, adult dramas have been tougher sells for moviegoers in recent years. Focus is hoping solid notices can propel “Last Breath” and keep it from wobbly sea legs in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, “Captain America: Brave New World” is expected to hold onto the top slot at the box office, even after it suffered a 68% drop in its last outing — the third-worst second-weekend plummet in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s history, behind only theatrical bombs “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (-69%) and “The Marvels” (-78%). The superhero entry earned another $3.6 million on Friday, which is down 50% from its $7.2 million daily gross a week ago.

“Brave New World” will look to surpass $150 million domestic sometime on Sunday. It’ll soon outgross “Eternals,” another rare Marvel disappointment at $164 million. Counting down the list, that’d make it the 32nd-highest-grossing MCU entry in North America, ranked among 35 total entries. “Brave New World” will next have to get ahead of the 2011 original “Captain America: The First Avenger” ($176 million) to even escape a bottom five finish for the franchise.

Falling to third place, Neon’s horror comedy “The Monkey” is suffering a sharp drop in its second outing after earning a lukewarm “C+” grade on Cinema Score. The indie release earned an estimated $1.8 million on Friday, with rivals expecting about $6.2 million and a 56% fall for this second weekend. That’s a much steeper decline than director Osgood Perkins’ last genre play at Neon, last summer’s breakout “Longlegs,” which also landed a C+ grade on Cinema Score but dropped only 46%.

Even without the same staying power though, “The Monkey” is in a strong position. Produced for around $10 million, the Stephen King adaptation has a shot at getting past a $24 million domestic total by the end of the weekend.

In fourth, Sony’s release of “Paddington in Peru” earned another $970,000 on Friday and is projecting $4.5 million for its third weekend of release. The StudioCanal production is now pacing a touch ahead of the humble Brit bear’s last adventure, “Paddington 2” in 2017. Total domestic gross for “Peru” should reach $31 million through Sunday.

Universal’s “Dog Man” looks to round out the top five, despite its availability as a premium digital rental and now more than a month into its theatrical release. The DreamWorks Animation caper earned $860,000 on Friday and is projecting $4 million in its fifth weekend of release — with an outside shot of surpassing $83 million by the end of the frame.

The post Box Office: ‘Captain America’ Staying Above ‘Last Breath’ as Theaters Go Quiet Over Oscars Weekend appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.

A statement released by the family Saturday said that Johansen’s death came “after a decade of profoundly compromised health” and that he “passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers.”

In February, Johansen’s family announced he was suffering from stage four cancer, a brain tumor and a broken back. The tumor was diagnosed in 2020 and was not able to perform for the final years of his life.

The family’s statement added, “David and his family were deeply moved by the outpouring of love and support they’ve experienced recently as the result of having gone public with their challenges. He was thankful that he had a chance to be in touch with so many friends and family before he passed. He knew he was ecstatically loved.” The family also said that “there will be several events celebrating David’s life and artistry; details to follow.”

Even as his health declined, Johansen had had a high profile in the last years of his life, thanks to a Showtime documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi. Johansen made public appearances to promote the doc alongside Scorsese when it came out in 2023. The film was based around the filming of what turned out to be Johansen’s final full gigs, at New York’s Cafe Carlyle right before the pandemic lockdown.

The Staten Island native started out singing with a local band, the Vagabond Missionaries, in the 1960s. He joined the nascent New York Dolls in 1971, and their first performance came at a Christmas Eve concert at a homeless shelter. Their first album, titled “New York Dolls” and produced by Todd Rundgren, was released in 1973 and featured the members in drag on the cover, reflecting the gender-bending style of the time of rockers like David Bowie.

The album’s grungy hard rock-meets-glam pop sound on songs like “Personality Crisis” reflected the theme of alienated youth and served as a template for bands like the Ramones. But though their albums were critically acclaimed, they didn’t sell well, and the Dolls became known as much for some members’ drug addiction and wild antics as for their musicianship.

But although Johansen admitted he bought into that perception of the group himself as the years passed and his musical interests changed, he came back around to giving his band its due. “When Morrissey got the Dolls together to do a (2004 reunion) concert in London at the Meltdown Festival,” he said in an MSNBC interview two years ago, “I was kind of hesitant, because over the years I had taken on the journalist (attitude) of ‘They were trashy, they were flashy, they were junkies,’ and that was about as far as I went with it. (Then) I started listening to the records to prepare for the show, and I was quite surprised how good they were. They were very musical — and pretty genius lyrics, if I do say so myself.”

After releasing a second album, 1974’s “Too Much Too Soon,” the New York Dolls broke up in 1976. Johansen went on to perform and release albums as a solo act, often playing New York Dolls songs and performing with fellow Dolls member Sylvain Sylvain. Johansen opened for the Who on an East Coast tour in 1982.

He re-styled himself as lounge singer Buster Poindexter in the late 1980s, as part of a wave of jazzy sounds and retro performers. As Poindexter he performed with the “Saturday Night Live” band and had a hit with the song “Hot Hot Hot.”

Johansen also worked in film and television, playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in 1988’s “Scrooged” opposite Bill Murray. He co-starred in the movie “Car 54, Where Are You?” and appeared in films including “Let it Ride” and “Mr. Nanny.” He also had a part in the HBO series “Oz.”

The New York Dolls reunited in 2004 due to the undying fandom of Morrissey, who had been president of their regional fan club growing up and beseeched them to get back together when he was curating the Meltdown Festival. Johansen and Sylvain were joined at that show by Arthur Kane, who died shortly afterward; the other two members then went on to release three more albums and do multiple tours into the early 2010s.

For several years, Johansen hosted the eclectically programmed “David Johansen’s Mansion of Fun” on SiriusXM Radio. It was that satellite program that first grabbed the attention of Scorsese, who had liked the Dolls back in their early ’70s heyday.

“I became aware of his radio show, ‘Mansion of Fun,’” Scorsese said in an appearance on “Morning Joe.” “I didn’t know it was him curating it, I just would listen to this music and I’d hear different combinations, whether it was American folk, Sicilian folk, South American, Maria Callas singing Puccini or ‘La Boheme,’ all this stuff mixed together. And it became an inspiring foundation of my listening experience – and affected the films I made,” the director added.

In 2023, Scorsese and David Tedeschi directed “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” a Showtime documentary.During a panel session held to promote the documentary, Johansen recounted his earliest memory of performing in front of an audience, as a youth at a Battle of the Bands event Staten Island. “I closed my eyes and I started singing ‘Oh baby, Boogaloo down Broadway’ and when I was done I thought, Why were they applauding,” he says. “It was a great moment. And I decided to make it my life’s work.”

Looking back on his career in a 2004 interview with Terry Gross for “Fresh Air,” Johansen reminisced on how casual beginnings turned into manifestos for the New York Dolls. “When we started the Dolls… we were really such a gang, and it was like us against the world, and we were really trying to evolve music into something new, and it was, you know, very kind of almost militant to us. And then over the years, you know, in the history books, like the ‘Rolling Stone Complete Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll’ or something, you look in the appendix and see where your name is and see what they say about you…. and (it) would always say, ‘They were trashy. They were flashy. They were drug addicts. They were drag queens.’ And that whole kind of trashy blah, blah, blah thing over the years kind of settled in my mind as, oh, yeah, that’s what it was, you know? And then by going back to it and deconstructing it, and then putting it back together again, I realized that, you know, it really is art.”

He added, “We just wanted to make an explosion of excitement. So that’s what was missing. Rock ‘n’ roll had become very kind of pedantic and meandering, and it was looking for something, but it was like an actor in search of a play or something, you know?”

Johansen’s Poindexter persona came about after he set up shop at Tramp’s in his Gramercy Park neighborhood in New York to do an undercover residency where he could cover the kind of eclectic material he favored beyond rock ‘n’ roll. “I figured I’d use a pseudonym so people wouldn’t be coming in screaming for ‘Funky But Chic.’… I had been listening to a lot of jump blues at the time, but I also did, ‘The Seven Deadly Virtues’ from ‘Camelot’ and whatever — just whatever songs I wanted to sing. And by the end of four weeks… it started out as a three-piece band and wound up as a 15-piece band. So I think by the time it got to the national awareness, it did have this kind of Vegas-y kind of idea to it. But it started off more kind of like the Louis Prima days in the ’50s of Vegas.”

The persona provided a kind of freedom for Johansen he hadn’t felt either as the Dolls’ frontman or performing under his own name.

“I have this friend, Elliott Murphy, who’s a singer…. When I started doing Buster Poindexter, he used to say to me, ‘David, Buster Poindexter is so much more like you than David Johansen is’, you know, if you get what I’m saying.’… In other words, with Buster, I really kind of went on stage and really didn’t edit myself and just kind of said whatever came to my mind and didn’t have many filters. Whereas prior to that… I had the David Johansen group or band or whatever it was called, and we used to open for a lot of bands in hockey rink. At that point, I was going out there and kind of presenting this what I thought was ideal picture of myself… whereas Buster was really kind of more warts and all, you know. And I think by doing that, it helped me to be myself more.”

The song “Hot Hot Hot” became ubiquitous in 1987, with its No. 45 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 hardly reflecting how popular it became as an MTV staple. Johansen ultimately came to have mixed feelings, at best, about the tune. “That was, like, the bane of my existence, that song,” he said in the Scorsese film. “I don’t know how I feel about it now. I haven’t heard it lately. It was ubiquitous… they play it at weddings, bar mitzvahs, Six Flags.” Of how quickly that success came and went, he quipped, “I was a one-hit wonder twice.”

The New York Dolls had not played together for decades when Morrissey convinced the surviving members, who also included guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and bassist Arthur Kane, to reunite for a festival he was curating in the U.K. in 2004. “He called me, and he said, ‘I understand you’re a pretty big Maria Callas fan’,” Johansen said in the Scorsese documentary. “And I said, ‘Yes, I happen to be known for that in certain circles.’ He said, ‘Well, you know that film she made where she did a fantastic concert at the Royal Festival Hall?’ I said, ‘Yes, by heart.’ He said, ‘How would you like to play the Royal Festival Hall?… All you have to do is get the Dolls back together.’ And I thought, ‘Royal Festival Hall, Maria Callas…’ I combed every opium den in Chinatown, and I pulled that band together. We were fantastic.”

Any immediate plans to continue the reunion came to a halt when Kane fell ill and died just 22 days after the 2004 reunion gig, of previously undiagnosed leukemia. But after a pause, Johansen soldiered on with Sylvain in a reconstituted version of the group. The new version of the Dolls released three albums — 2006’s “One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This,” 2009’s “Cause I Sez So” (which reunited the with debut album producer Rundgren) and a swan song, 2011’s “Dancing Backward in High Heels.” The irony was not lost on many that the second incarnation of the group lasted much longer and had more recorded output than the first.

While the Dolls never announced a second breakup, the band went dormant again after a 2011 tour that included Earl Slick in the lineup and had the group opening for Motley Crue and Poison — ironically, two bands whose big, coiffed looks were influenced by the initially androgynous image of the Dolls.

Scorsese had some contact with Johansen before ultimately signing on to do a documentary about the singer. “We worked together on ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” the filmmaker recalled in 2023, and there was also an episode of the series “Vinyl” — edited by Tedeschi, who went on to co-direct the doc — that featured a dramatized portrayal of the Dolls recording “Personality Crisis.”

Later, Scorsese went to see one of Johansen’s shows at Club Carlyle, and “after it was over, we looked at each other and said, ‘We gotta shoot this thing’… We didn’t know it was going to be a film, but we wanted to record it.” He got Brian Grazer and Ron Howard on board as producers, and filmed shows at the New York nightspot around the time he was opening “The Irishman.” “Less than a few weeks later was the shutdown, and we had captured it just in time.”

Johansen told “Morning Joe” that the Cafe Carlyle shows represented the ultimate performing pleasure for him. “It’s a dream because you can sleep there (at the hotel),” he said. “My dream my whole life has been taking an elevator to work. I wish I could press a button and be in the dressing room. It’s the schlep that kills you.”

The singer also had other outlets for his varied musical tastes, including forming the band the Harry Smiths with Levon Helm and Hubert Sumlin, which performed the songs of Howlin’ Wolf. As a visual artist, he recently had an exhibition of his paintings in New York at the Elliot Templeton Fine Arts gallery. 

With Johansen’s death, there are no longer any surviving original members of the Dolls. Sylvain died in January 2021. The group’s very first drummer, Billy Murcia, died in 1972, before the band’s recording career got underway. His successor in the classic lineup of the group, Jerry Nolan, passed away in 1992. Guitarist Johnny Thunders died in 1991, and Kane passed away shortly after the 2004 reunion.

Talking at the time the Dolls were reuniting in the late 2000s, Johansen said: “It’s a tonic for the blues. People can walk around living a life of quiet desperation, but maybe if they started shouting about it, they’d be happy.”

Survivors include his wife, Mara Hennessey, and his daughter, Leah Hennessey.

The post David Johansen, New York Dolls Frontman, Dies at 75 appeared first on Entertainment News Boom.