YouTube has turned to K-pop megastars BTS — and their global ARMY fanbase — to juice up the platform’s Shorts video-clips feature. BTS and YouTube officially announced the Permission to Dance Challenge, inviting people around the world to record and share their own 15-second versions of the group’s music video for their recently released hit.
CNN disclosed the first details of its long-awaited new subscription streaming service Monday, which will launch in the first quarter of 2022 with 8-12 hours of original live content each day. CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker shared some basic information about CNN Plus with his employees in an internal meeting Monday. A network representative confirmed
Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga will join forces for a pair of shows at Radio City Music Hall in August that are being billed as their final appearances together, reps for the two singers announced Monday morning. The “One Last Time: an Evening With Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga” shows will take place August 3
The War on Drugs will release “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” their first studio album since 2017’s “A Deeper Understanding,” on October 29 on Atlantic Records. A North American and European tour scheduled to follow next year, including a date at Madison Square Garden. The group previews the album with its first song and video,
Republic Records as promoted Kevin Lipson to executive vice president of global commerce and digital strategy, the company’s executive VP/general manager Jim Roppo announced. He is based in Republic’s New York headquarters. In this role, Lipson, a seven-year veteran of the Universal Music Group company, will oversee commerce and streaming for the label’s acts worldwide. He and his staff have worked
ViacomCBS International Studios and Italy’s Leone Film Group have forged a strategic partnership by signing a long-term agreement to co-produce a wide range of Italian content for the global market. This potentially milestone pact between VIS and Leone — the prominent indie production and distribution shingle owned and operated by late master director Sergio Leone’s children
Nexstar Media Group’s fledgling NewsNation cable network is shuffling its programming lineup to add a nightly live show hosted by Dan Abrams and a three-hour morning news block anchored by Adrienne Bankert. Both shows begin Sept. 27. “Dan Abrams Live,” to air at 8 p.m. ET, is described as a news analysis program that he
Journalist Christopher Pickard was at the just-concluded Cannes Film Festival as part of a film crew shooting “Cannes Uncut,” a feature-length documentary celebrating the iconic festival that will be ready in time for its 75th edition next year. He shares his experiences of shooting during this year’s festival exclusively with Variety. Like many others, even
Netflix is teaming with Romain Gavras, the French filmmaker of “The World is Yours” and “Our Day Will Come,” for his next film which will start production this week in France. The untitled film will mark Gavras’s follow up to his 2018 film “The World is Yours,” a crime comedy with Isabelle Adjani and Vincent
Pedro Almodóvar’s new film “Parallel Mothers,” starring Penelope Cruz, will open the upcoming Venice Film Festival in September. Almodóvar’s hotly anticipated pic, which was shot during the pandemic, will world premiere on the Venice Lido in competition on September 1. The film sees the Spanish auteur reuniting with Cruz, a frequent collaborator, most recently in Almodóvar’s
September’s 69th San Sebastian Festival has announced its first nine Competition contenders led by Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet (“The Class”) and English auteur Terence Davies (“Sunset Song”) but packed out by six female directors. Two at least are already sparking anticipation: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, a French genre auteur backed like Palme d’Or winner “Titane” by
ITV Studios is the latest super-indie to bow out from October’s Mipcom market in Cannes — traditionally the largest annual confab for the global TV industry. The production-distribution giant joins the likes of “Peaky Blinders” distributor Banijay, whom Variety revealed was skipping the market back in June, and content powerhouse BBC Studios, which also pulled the
HBO has paused shooting on its “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” because of a positive COVID-19 case on set, Variety has confirmed. As part of testing implemented for all production employees, a production member on the series tested positive for COVID-19. In compliance with industry guidelines, the production member is in isolation,
The Calculus Creative Content EIS Fund, and other funds managed or advised by Calculus, has invested in Brouhaha Entertainment, a newly formed outfit which combines the slates of seasoned producers Gabrielle Tana, Troy Lum and Andrew Mason. Tana produced the Oscar-nominated “Philomena,” “The Invisible Woman” and “The Dig.” Lum founded Hopscotch Films which became Australia’s
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read until you have watched “Rick and Morty” Season 5, Episode 5, “Amortycan Grickffiti.” Leave it to “Rick and Morty” to have an episode that’s one-half a coming-of-age (space) adventure and one-half a “Hellraiser”-inspired action-drama. That’s “Amortycan Grickfitti” in a nutshell, separating the kids (Summer and Morty) from the adults (Rick,
When documentary filmmaker Ezra Edelman, an Oscar winner with “O.J.: Made in America,” sat down at a panel during the Cannes Doc Day last week and started off by saying he was just talking about the rise of fascism in the world and enduring racism in sports, there was a feeling this session would be
“Black Widow” held on to top spot at the South Korean box office despite a challenge from the new release of local horror film “The Medium.” New release, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” made no impact. The Disney-Marvel film saw weekend earnings of $4.09 million, a drop of 54% compared with the previous session. Since
The Tokyo International Film Festival has joined forces with Amazon Prime Video to create a new award that will help new film directors. The winner will be given a prize of JPY1 million and the opportunity to explore the production of a feature film with Amazon Studios. The festival is scheduled to be held from
Kanye West apparently premiered new material at a small listening event in Las Vegas, according to multiple unconfirmed but reliable-seeming social media reports that surfaced Sunday — several of which apparently include snippets of at least two songs. The clips arrived amid reports that a new West album is imminent — possibly the long-delayed “Donda,”
Bollywood star Vidyut Jammwal is debuting as a producer via his Action Hero Films outfit and is teaming with Reliance Entertainment and T-Series for espionage thriller “IB 71.” Jammwal, best known for his “Commando” action film franchise, will also star in the film as an Indian intelligence officer deployed in the run up to the
Tennis player Coco Gauff has become the latest star athlete to drop out of the Tokyo Olympic games, which are set to begin later this week under unprecedented restrictions for an event designed to bring together a global audience. On Sunday, Gauff confirmed via social media that she has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus
“Chinese Doctors” gave a shot in the arm to a sluggish weekend at the Chinese box office, coming in first with sales of $44.4 million, according to Maoyan data. The patriotic tear-jerked had little competition: only other patriotic films, children’s animations and youth-centric programming are currently in theaters. The Wuhan-set pandemic film from Bona Film
Zac Efron, Karrueche Tran, Andy Serkis, “This Old House” and “Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time” were among the winners on Sunday night as the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) announced its remaining crop of Daytime Emmys winners, in the “fiction and lifestyle” fields. The 48th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards for children’s
Pop-punk revivalist Jxdn rang in his first live show ever at the Roxy Saturday night with a slew of special guests, including Blink-182 drummer and mentor Travis Barker, rapper Iann Dior and singer Nessa Barrett. The show was a short hour-long event, with no opening acts, but still packed a punch. Jxdn’s gratitude to be
Fueled by strong reviews, “Roadrunner” ignited the independent movie theater scene, collecting $1.9 million from 925 U.S. cinemas. The documentary, chronicling the life of the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, landed in eighth place on box office charts, which is pretty good for a non-fiction film. Its ticket sales, averaging to a strong $2,050 per
Whether you’re escaping the heat or escaping the crowds, summertime calls for getting lost in film’s best coming-of-age stories. Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and Showtime are all streaming the very best of the genre, reminding us of a time when life felt a bit more simple, but seemed oh-so complicated at
Movie theater operators did not mince words in asserting that Disney left money on the table by putting Marvel’s “Black Widow” on Disney Plus on the same day as its theatrical debut. In March, Disney announced that “Black Widow,” among several of its 2021 films, would premiere simultaneously on the studio’s subscription-based streaming service —
I first learned that “Roadrunner,” Morgan Neville’s documentary about the life and death of Anthony Bourdain, contains three sentences spoken by Bourdain that he never actually spoke out loud in the same way that you learn about a lot of things these days: by seeing an eruption of outrage about it on Twitter. The eruption
“Her voice — it’s just like butter,” said a patron of the Hollywood Bowl Friday night, using the familiar “SNL”-derived description of Barbra Streisand’s voice and applying it to the weekend’s headliner, Christina Aguilera. Not to critique the critiques of esteemed season ticket-holders, but this comparison seemed exactly wrong. Aguilera’s voice is not like butter;
Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s chief marketing officer, posted a message Saturday from the company’s Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, in which he discussed the recent firing of three senior marketing executives over disparaging remarks they sent in a public company Slack channel. The three employees of the film marketing team were let go