As a kid in London, Emilia Clarke got a distinct vibe from her local comic book shop: “No girls allowed.” The Emmy nominee and lead of the HBO pop culture juggernaut “Game of Thrones” was therefore doomed to spend her adolescence reading hand-me-down comics from her older brother and meeting caped crusaders on the big
Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY has earned the Peabody Institutional Award, with the honor presented by Oprah Winfrey. DuVernay and Winfrey collaborated on 2014’s “Selma” and 2018’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” and among other projects, the duo also executive produce “Queen Sugar,” which DuVernay created for Winfrey’s OWN network. Selected by the Peabody Board of Jurors, the
If you ever yearned to hear concerts by your favorite artists one night and listen to their TED talks the next, then Park City Song Summit may be your kind of music festival. That’s even though the Utah gathering is avoiding that particular F-word, “festival,” in emphasizing that its inaugural edition — set for Sept.
Currently in production on the second season of “To the Lake,” a dark depiction of a world affected by a mysterious virus, which has gained worldwide popularity on Netflix, Moscow-based 1-2-3 Production is only just getting started. As Variety found out, the second season of “Call Center” is also in active development, with “Dreams of
Netflix announced that “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” will return for Season 2 on July 6. The sketch comedy series, which delivered some of TV’s most memeable moments, brings Robinson’s absurdist humor to life’s most bizarre and mundane situations. “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” is created and written by
It may not have been a full Broadway production, but the Roundabout Theatre Company nonetheless knows how to welcome live theater back to New York City. The 56-year-old performing arts organization hosted its 2021 gala, “Curtain Up, Light the Lights!,” in Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield on Monday night. It marked one of the first large-scale
ADAPTATION U.K. broadcaster BBC has announced a raft of documentary commissions at the ongoing Sheffield Doc/Fest, including an adaptation of the bestselling book “Natives” by BAFTA and MOBO award-winning hip-hop artist, bestselling author and social entrepreneur Akala‘s The series “Akala: Race, Class and Empire” (working title), a BBC Three commission, will combine the story of
Leading digital art brand Ikonick is teaming up with Bravado, Universal Music Group’s global merchandising and brand management company, to produce, market and distribute canvas art and NFTs across their extensive roster of artists. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have become all the rage in the music industry in recent months. As cryptographic assets that cannot
One of the great perks of working as an entertainment writer is the weird promotional stuff you get in the mail — cool things intended to amplify buzz around a project that can’t really be elaborate or useful enough to qualify as payola. Far beyond just t-shirts and hoodies, over the decades we’ve gotten everything
Russia’s CTB Film Company, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year, is set to follow its 2021 family adventure “Upon the Magic Roads” with two animated films, “The Nutcracker and the Magic Flute” and “My Sweet Monster.” The latter, scheduled for September release and already sold to several territories, including the U.S., Germany and France,
In recent years, the British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival has become synonymous with the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, with many of the two-week festival’s screenings taking place in and around the central London venue. This year, however, Variety can reveal that the festival will take place on the opposite side of the Thames
Kirk Iwanowski, after serving as chief marketing officer of Epix for nearly 10 years, has left the MGM-owned premium entertainment network to join video search and analytics vendor AnyClip. Iwanowski exited Epix in January, prior to Amazon’s announcement last month of its $8.5 billion deal to acquire MGM. At AnyClip, Iwanowski’s first initiative has been
Snap, as part of staffing up teams for its TikTok-like Snapchat Spotlight user-generated content initiative, has hired two executives from ByteDance’s TikTok: Sam Corrao Clanon and Varshini Satish. Corrao Clanon (above right) has joined Snap as director of content, focusing on Spotlight. In the newly created position, Corrao Clanon oversees the company’s Community team and
Tracee Ellis Ross is executive producing a new podcast she says will celebrate true-life stories of heroism, inclusion and community — while dispelling misconceptions about the American identity. The 10-episode “I Am America” is slated to be released in early 2022. It’s being produced with Dear Media, the podcast network founded in 2018 with a
After he initially announced plans to release his debut album independently, singer-songwriter Sam Williams has signed with Universal Music Group Nashville, the company is announcing today. The 24-year-old son of Hank Williams Jr. and grandson of Hank Williams will issue his first full-length recording, “Glasshouse Children,” via Nashville’s top label group this summer. “It’s been
Check out the official Ron’s Gone Wrong Trailer directed by Sarah Smith! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Sign up for a Fandango FanAlert for Ron’s Gone Wrong: https://www.fandango.com/rons-gone-wrong-2021-224127/movie-overview?cmp=MCYT_YouTube_Desc Want to be notified of all the latest movie trailers? Subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to stay
Drake and Live Nation Canada will open History, a new live-entertainment venue in the superstar rapper’s hometown of Toronto, later this year, the company announced Tuesday (June 8). “Some of my most memorable shows were playing smaller rooms like History,” Drake in a statement. “I wanted to take those memories and what I learned to
The MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) will return this year for an in-person show on Sept. 12, airing live from the Barclays Center in New York City. No performers have been revealed yet, but according to the announcement, the ceremony, which will air in over 175 countries, will “feature performances from some of music’s biggest
Premiering on Wednesday at both NewImages and Tribeca festivals, the motion-capture VR experience “Jailbirds: Bwa Kayiman” follows a pair of inmates, locked in a bleak and cheerless prison and lorded over by a spiteful warden. Though the slight Booker (Elliot Delage) suffers from all the warden’s cruelties, the hulking Felix (Barry Johnson) lives in unexpected
Running June 9-13, this year’s NewImages Festival will mark its fourth edition with a robust slate of world premieres and an ever-expanding industry program. Whereas last year’s lockdowns forced the festival to push its third edition to September, this year finds the NewImages festival returning to its traditional June berth. Taking place as a hybrid
Some of the world’s biggest online media platforms including The New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde, have been temporarily taken offline. A cause is not yet known, but it’s thought a server outage could be at play. Users trying to access sites such as The New Yorker, The Independent and the Financial Times’
Cannes XR, NewImages Festival and Tribeca Festival have partnered to create XR3, a virtual exhibition space that will host a selection of 50 XR projects from the three festivals’ programs. Set to launch on Wednesday – the opening day for this year’s Tribeca and NewImages editions – the digital exhibition will be available via the
After canceling its last edition due to the pandemic, Directors’ Fortnight, a section running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, will be back with a stylish and eclectic international lineup, including Joanna Hogg’s highly anticipated “The Souvenir Part II,” Clio Barnard’s “Ali & Ava,” Jonas Carpignano’s “A Chiara,” Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Rwanda-set sci-fi film “Neptune Frost,” and Alice
When planning this year’s festivities, the team at NewImages Festival – which celebrates XR in all its diversity – did not want to sit on their hands, waiting for the public to find them. “We don’t want to hold any old event,” says festival director Michaël Swierczynski. “We want to fully occupy the space [around
Abu Dhabi is stepping up efforts to become a global media and entertainment industry hub as part of a drive to diversify its oil-based economy. The oil-rich capital of the United Arab Emirates has consolidated its so-called culture and creative industries — basically museums and media industry infrastructure — into a single unit called DCT
Leading Indian studio Yash Raj Films’ Yash Chopra Foundation has launched a vaccination drive for Bollywood industry personnel. YRF chair and MD Aditya Chopra has made available the sprawling premises of its Mumbai studio for the drive, which began Tuesday. The first phase is expected to inoculate 4,000 workers with the aim being to vaccinate
After canceling its last edition due to the pandemic, Directors’ Fortnight, a section running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, will be back with a stylish and eclectic international lineup, including Joanna Hogg’s highly anticipated “The Souvenir Part II,” Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Rwanda-set sci-fi film “Neptune Frost,” and Pietro Marcello and Francesco Munzi’s “Futura.” The world premiere of
SF Studios is set to co-produce and distribute “UFO Sweden,” a sci-fi adventure from Crazy Pictures, a Swedish film collective whose past credits includes the 2018 hit movie “The Unthinkable.” Reinvent will handle international sales on “UFO Sweden,” which is scheduled to start shooting in the fall. SF Studios will distribute the film in the
Rising filmmaker Ma Aeint has disappeared without trace after being arrested by authorities in Myanmar earlier this month. Her family has no knowledge of her whereabouts, nor formal explanation for her sudden detention. Ma Aient was a producer and co-writer on “Money Has Four Legs,” which appeared in the New Currents competition at the Busan
Russian production and distribution powerhouse Central Partnership and the Latin American film group BF Films have announced their first co-production, Variety can reveal. “Schizophrenic” is a psychological horror film set in the real world of severe mental disorder. Dark stories of real patients will serve as inspiration, and a variety of schizophrenia symptoms are part