SALES Kids’ content distributor Federation Kids and Family and ZDF Enterprises have sold all three seasons of hit series “Find Me in Paris” to streamer Disney Plus as part of a worldwide multi-territory deal, while Italian state broadcaster RAI also picked up season 3 following on from its successful run of the first two seasons.
Dua Lipa, My Chemical Romance, Green Day and Halsey will headline the 2022 Firefly festival, which returns to Delaware’s Woodlands Sept. 22-25. Presale for the festival, which is presented in conjunction with AEG Presents, begins Friday, February 25 at 10 am ET. “After last year’s rapturous return, Firefly 2022 is packed full of everything that makes
Making a good argument that rehearsals are for rookies, and that some Oscar nominees are better utility players than others, Questlove sat in with John Mayer’s band at a Madison Square Garden show Monday after the singer’s usual drummer, Steve Ferrone, tested positive for COVID in the afternoon leading up to the show. Mayer’s crew
Mediawan (“Call My Agent!”) has signed a strategic partnership with Laurent Zeitoun’s production company Good Hero to co-develop and co-produce original international TV series and feature films. Based in New York and Paris, Good Hero was launched by Zeitoun, an independent producer whose credits include “The Intouchables,” “The Death of Stalin,” “Ballerina” and “Fireheart” (pictured).
With a reported budget of $50 million and a U.S. box office gross of only $29 million, “Zoolander 2” is one of the biggest flops of Ben Stiller’s career. The writer-director-actor recently told Esquire that watching his star-studded “Zoolander” sequel fail at the box office around the world was “not a great experience.” Stiller produced,
My fellow fashion lovers who grew up with a dog-eared copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths and idle daydreams of walking among deities, our time is now. For spring 2022, echoes of antiquity breathed new-old life into the runway, from the dreamy gathered gowns at Loewe and statuary-inspired trompe l’oeil triumphs at Thom Browne
Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), which runs in-person from March 23 to April 3, has unveiled its Science sidebar, a program consisting of 15 science-related films. Among the films are “A.I. at War,” which takes the viewer on a journey with an A.I. robot to some of the world’s conflict zones, “Pleistocene Park,” which
SoundCloud has entered into a joint venture with Solid Foundation, the management and creative services arm of QC Media Holdings, which both are owned and operated by Quality Control Music founders Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas. In this deal SoundCloud and Solid Foundation are joining forces to “discover new talent and revolutionize
Lorraine Burgess has been confirmed as chief financial officer at BBC Studios after serving as interim CFO since July 2021. Burgess will report into chief executive Tom Fussell. Producer-distributor BBC Studios is U.K. broadcaster BBC’s largest commercial subsidiary, which contributed sales of £1.25 billion ($1.7 billion) in the 2020/2021 financial year. Burgess’ role is key
Netflix has signed a three-year agreement with French film guilds to invest a minimum of €40 million ($45 million) in the financing of French and European movies which will be released in French theaters. Netflix previously signed a pact with France’s broadcasting authorities to start investing 20% of their annual revenues on French content, both
As BBC Studios gears up for its annual showcase, where it introduces its upcoming hot projects to international buyers, U.K.-based Jonathan Blyth, BBC Studios’ director of comedy, and Kelly Miller, BBC Studios’ Los Angeles-based senior VP of scripted strategy, sat down with Variety to discuss what’s on their comedy slate, working with streamers and the
Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” and Colm Bairéad “An Cailín Ciúin” lead nominations at the 2022 Irish Film and Television Academy Film and Drama award nominations with 10 nods across categories. “Belfast” is nominated for best film, best director and script for Branagh, with a lead actor nod for Jude Hill, supporting actor recognitions for Ciarán Hinds
“Adipurush,” starring Prabhas (the “Baahubali” films), is one of the most anticipated Indian films of 2022. It is directed by Om Raut, who directed Ajay Devgn-starring “Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior,” the biggest Indian box office hit of 2020 with $50 million. “Adipurush” is Raut’s take on Indian mythological epic “Ramayana,” which has been adapted for
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Red vs. Blue,” Monday’s episode of “9-1-1: Lone Star.” Lisa Edelstein is exiting “9-1-1: Lone Star” after playing Gwyneth Morgan, the wife of Rob Lowe’s Chief Owen Strand and the mother of Ronen Rubinstein’s T.K. Strand, for two seasons on the Fox drama, Variety
Journalist Jemele Hill, civil rights activist Stacey Abrams, superstar Will Smith and the legendary Cicely Tyson were among the winners of podcast and literary kudos presented Monday as part of the 53rd NAACP Image Awards. The Image Awards’ non-televised awards are being handed out during five virtual ceremonies to stretch across the week starting Feb.
Lacey Chabert and Crown Media Family Networks have agreed to an exclusive multi-picture overall deal. The agreement sets Chabert up to headline and executive produce films and other content for the Hallmark Channel and other Hallmark platforms throughout the next two years. The company announced the deal on Monday. “Lacey’s warmth, talent, relatability and creative
The celebration of Black cinema should be year-round and the focus on embracing Black creatives in the awards community is ongoing. While the Oscars often receive the brunt of criticism for their lack of diversity among its nominees, they are typically used as a scapegoat for the real issue, which is not enough Black projects
We don’t talk about Bruno, and we don’t forget about Dre. The Super Bowl resulted in super nostalgia for fans of Eminem and Dr. Dre, as catalog albums by both those hip-hop titans landed among the newbies in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart, reflecting the unusually high level of enthusiasm for
Black History Month, pioneered by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1926, has been a fixture in my life for as long as I can remember. When you grow up in a Black church, and in other Black cultural institutions, there is often a Black History Month-themed program that the children participate in, and we all
The nascent XFL football league, now owned by superstar Dwayne Johnson, has set an R&D partnership with the NFL that is designed to “expand the game of football.” Johnson and business partner Dany Garcia aim to open XFL training camps in January 2023. The partnership with the NFL does not involve games or teams specifically
Britney Spears has landed a massive publishing deal for a tell-all memoir, Variety has confirmed with a source close to Spears. Publishing house Simon & Schuster and Spears have secured a deal for the pop star’s memoir. The book will provide Spears’ accounts of and commentary on her rise to fame, her music career and
Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, an independent film producer, are personally donating $10 million to Tougaloo College, a historically Black college and university in Mississippi, and the school’s partnership with Brown University. Of the total, $5 million will fund scholarships at Tougaloo, in Jackson, Miss., and $5 million will establish the
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed the U.K. is set to drop the last few COVID restrictions, including the requirement to self-isolate following a positive COVID-19 test. The restrictions will end on Thursday, Feb. 24. Johnson made the announcement in the House of Commons on Monday. The changes mean that people who test positive for
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not seen the first six episodes of “Euphoria” Season 2. Labrinth doesn’t necessarily consider himself a composer. “I know I am, but I don’t look at myself that way,” the 33-year-old musician tells Variety. “I’m just transmitting energy that I hear and see and feel.” Indeed, when most
“The Alienist’s” Rosy McEwen has boarded Georgia Oakley’s upcoming feature “Blue Jean” in the lead role. McEwen, who was named one of Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch 2020, will play the eponymous Jean, a teacher who finds herself grappling with her identity during the tail-end of the 1980s. Oakley, whose debut short film “Little Bird”
James Cullen Bressack (“Fortress”) is adapting the play “Murder, Anyone?” into a feature film, Variety can exclusively reveal. “Muder, Anyone?” was originally written by Bressack’s father, Emmy Award-winning “Pinky and the Brain” writer Gordon Bressack. The play first premiered at the White Fire Theatre in Los Angeles in 2017. Gordon Bressack, who worked on dozens
Say this for “The Endgame”: It knows what it has in Morena Bacarrin, an actor so immediately telegenic that making sure she has everyone’s attention is as simple as her walking into a room. As notorious mastermind Elena Federova, Baccarin commands her every scene in NBC’s newest drama with a sly grin and slightly raised
Coming of age is a perennial theme in music, be it Billie Eilish singing about the joys and woes of growing up on “My Future,” or Olivia Rodrigo baring her soul on “Brutal.” For the band Fun., which released its seminal second album “Some Nights” 10 years ago today (Feb. 21), that moment came as
Italian exhibitors are sounding an alarm over the country’s pandemic-prompted box office plunge and the removal of theatrical windows which they say are causing closure of 500 movie screens. Their cry for help comes amid what they say is a lack of signals in Italy pointing to the cinemagoing recovery that is instead currently underway
The social network backed by ex-president Donald Trump — ironically, it’s called Truth Social — has hit the top of the Apple App Store rankings for free apps a little over 12 hours after it debuted. The Twitter-style app invites users to “share your unique opinion” and insists that it is “free from political discrimination.”