Patrisse Cullors is making a big step into the television business. The co-founder of Black Lives Matter has signed her first over overall deal with Warner Bros. Television Group. Characterized as multi-year and wide-ranging, the pact will see Cullors develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. Cullors’ agreement encompasses
Ramsey Naito started her career at Nickelodeon back in the 1990s, and went on from there to do work as a film producer and exec at a where’s-where of major animation powerhouses including Blue Sky, Paramount Animation and Cartoon Network. Two years ago, she proved one can always go home again, and returned to the
Less than a week after Pedro Pascal wrapped production on Season 2 of “The Mandalorian,” the entire entertainment industry — and much of the world — effectively shut down in the wake of the growing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the new season of the mega-hit “Star Wars” series now set to premiere on
After outlining her exec team, recently appointed Universal Studio Group chief Pearlena Igbokwe is adding another studio to that group. Igbokwe has announced, via a letter obtained by Variety, that the Universal Television Alternative Studios is being incorporated into Universal Studio Group. As part of the move, UTAS president Toby Gorman is joining Igbokwe’s leadership team. UTAS
Securing Endeavor Content to represent a second season of a cross-cultural fantasy rom-com four years after the show’s debut was good news for “Dramaworld” and its producer, Korean-American company Third Culture Content. So, too, was the attachment of major talent, including Daniel Dae Kim, Henry Lau, and feted Korean actor Ha Ji-won (“Secret Garden,” “Duelist”).
YouTube is taking aim at QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy-theory cult. The video platform said it is expanding its hate and harassment policies to prohibit content targeting an individual or group with “conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence.” YouTube is positioning the move not as a “ban” of QAnon per se. Rather,
Taraji P. Henson will host and also serve as producer on podcast series “Jacked: The Rise of New Jack Swing,” delving into the origins of the influential music scene — and its ultimate decline. The six-part series comes from podcast company Wondery and Universal Music Group, the first joint project under the companies’ previously announced
As a kid growing up in Scotland, 25-year-old indie-pop singer/songwriter Joesef got his first exposure to some of his favorite bands through playing Electronic Arts’ “FIFA” video games with his brothers: everyone from Bombay Bicycle Club to the Kooks to Kings of Leon, whose early series of sync placements in the mid to late aughts
UPDATE: NBC News is not backing down to calls to move President Trump’s town hall on Thursday night. NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde said in a statement that the decision to air Trump’s town hall at the same time as Vice President Biden’s was not a decision motivated by business. “We share in the
The percentages of women working as directors and writers on independent films reached recent highs in 2019-2020, according to a report released Thursday. Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, announced that the group’s Indie Women study found women
Bhanu Athaiya, the costume designer who became the first Indian to win an Oscar, for Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” (1982), died at her home in Mumbai Thursday after a prolonged illness. She was 91. Athaiya was suffering from a brain tumor for the last eight years, her daughter Radhika Gupta told news agency PTI. Athaiya was
Mipcom is the biggest international TV get-together of the year, but the 2020 event was a different beast due to COVID-19. While there were hopes the Cannes affair could take place in person this October, organizer Reed Midem revealed in September that the market would go virtual — and judging by the fast-rising COVID-19 count
Programming for the 50th anniversary of PBS’s Masterpiece will now include performances by Martin Freeman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kyle MacLachlan and Tom Hollander. The full lineup was announced exclusively to Variety on Thursday morning. The anthology drama series, produced by GBH Boston, will mark five decades on Jan. 10, 2021. While “Elizabeth Is Missing,” “All
Rome’s MIA market, the growing showcase for international TV series, feature films and documentaries, kicked off Wednesday in the Eternal City. The sixth edition of the event—whose acronym stands for the Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo, or the International Audiovisual Market—runs both physically in the Italian capital and online Oct. 14-18. (Find the full schedule here). This
Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin and Paul Rodriguez are some of the celebs who are taking part in a new virtual Chicano cultural celebration. Marin and singer Marisol “La Marisoul” Hernandez of La Santa Celilia will co-host Ingeñuity’s OndaLive! Chicano Music + Culture Fest presented by AARP. The three-day fan gathering kicks off on Oct. 27.
QCode, a podcast content studio and network startup, announced that it has raised $6.4 million in Series A funding, led by wireless and smart speaker maker Sonos with participation by venture-capital firm C Ventures. With the financing round, Ryan Taylor, GM of Sonos Radio, will join the QCode board. QCode CEO Rob Herting, a former
Launching exclusively with Selfridges, the Hyundai Re:Style 2020 capsule collection was created in partnership with six leading global designers: Alighieri, E.L.V. DENIM, Public School, pushBUTTON, Richard Quinn, and Rosie Assoulin—who have created items including jewelry, jumpsuits, shirts, vests, and bags from the discarded raw materials of car production and scrapping processes. The forward-thinking designers were
Getty Images; Chung and Zendaya courtesy of Eco AgeInstagram Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world. Some of the most talked-about red carpet looks of recent months bear little resemblance to what we might have seen in the pre-lockdown days. There was Regina King making a powerful statement
Not every pandemic-era awards show can reinvent the wheel, or try to, just for the sake of quarantine creativity points. And so “The Billboard Music Awards” occupied a unique space in the recent history of prime-time awards shows, by proceeding almost exactly as it probably would’ve if there had been a live audience in the
TuneCore, the digital music distribution service provider for independent artists, has passed the $2 billion mark, paying its roster of independent artists an average of $1.2 million per day, according to an announcement from the company, which states that TuneCore and its parent company Believe distribute approximately one third of the world’s digital music. The company
Korean electronics giant LG has partnered with NEW ID, part of the Next Entertainment World group, to expand the Korean entertainment content available to users of its smart TV sets. Among the new offerings is YG TV, a channel launched with the YG Entertainment talent agency that is responsible for K-pop acts including Blackpink, G-Dragon,
It’s either an in-joke or an irony that the not-terribly-terrifying villain of “A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting” is named The Grand Guignol, for Rachel Talalay’s perky, clean-cut kiddie-horror steers as far clear as possible of the macabre gore and gruesomeness implied by the name. In this tale of an underground babysitter syndicate dedicated to
Romania has chosen Alexander Nanau’s documentary “Collective” to be its official entries in the International Feature Film category of the 93rd Academy Awards, while Ecuador has selected Paul Venegas’ “Emptiness” and Algeria has entered Djaâfar Gacem’s “Héliopolis.” Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina has confirmed that Jasmila Zbanic’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?” will represent the country in the
Dealing with a surge in COVID-19 cases, France has imposed a nightly curfew in Paris and eight other cities, which could potentially put some film releases and shoots on ice. Announced by President Emmanuel Macron during a televised address on Wednesday, the curfew will kick off on Saturday and remain in place for six weeks,
BAFTA and Golden Globe winner Bill Nighy (“Love Actually,” “Emma”) will headline the cast of “Living,” alongside Aimee Lou Wood, known for her breakout role in Netflix’s “Sex Education.” The screenplay by Nobel and Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (“The Remains of The Day”) is an English-language adaptation of the 1952 classic “Ikiru,” written by
WarnerMedia is pulling the plug on linear channel HBO in India and Pakistan. It will also terminate the WB movie channel in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives from Dec. 15. “After 20 years of successes for the HBO linear movie channel in South Asia and more than a decade with the WB linear movie
Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:
Snapchat today is launching a new feature called Sounds — which, taking a page from TikTok, lets app users add song clips to their Snaps and Stories. Snapchat’s music feature launches with an exclusive preview of Justin Bieber and Benny Blanco’s new song “Lonely,” before the full song launches widely Thursday at 9 p.m. PT.
The BAFTA Television and Television Craft Awards are enforcing new rules from the 2021 edition of the awards, incorporating the findings of its wide-ranging diversity review carried out earlier this year and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of nominees in the performance categories will increase from four to six. The total number
After debuting her new “Commander in Chief” song earlier in the day, Demi Lovato delivered an emotive version of the protest song Wednesday night on the Billboard Music Awards telecast — a powerful anti-Trump message for NBC to be putting on the air, especially the night before the network is to host a controversial town