Amy Poehler is set to make her documentary directorial debut with a look at Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. “Ron Howard at Imagine [Entertainment] came to and said, ‘Would you be interested in telling a story?’” Poehler said on Thursday night during the Creative Coalition Television Humanitarian Awards, where she was honored by Seth Meyers.
Peacock will finally be taking flight on Roku devices, after months of wrangling — and NBCUniversal’s TV apps will not be going dark on Roku after all. Roku and NBCU reached a deal Friday afternoon that will provide access to the Peacock streaming app on the streaming platform’s players and Roku-enabled TVs. In addition, the
Check out the official The Opening Act trailer starring Jimmy O. Yang! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Sign up for a Fandango FanAlert for The Opening Act: https://www.fandango.com/the-opening-act-2020-223505/?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
Canada has proven to be fertile ground when it comes to pop stars — from Drake to the Weeknd to Justin Bieber. The latest to emerge from the suburbs of Toronto is Ali Gatie, an artist of Iraqi descent who recently surpassed 3 billion cumulative streams on DSPs for his 2019 single “It’s You.” Managed
Somehow, the mysterious British R&B/electronic-ish combo Sault has managed to drop four richly diverse, socially confrontational albums, all of them good and two of them absolutely great, in just 18 months. Their willful anonymity would be annoying or pretentious if the music weren’t so good and if it weren’t in service to their powerful, Black-centric
SO. MANY. SONGS. As lockdown lengthens the thicket thickens, so with a nod to Alicia Keys on her excellent new album “Alicia” — which features “Me x 7,” a killer tag-team with Philly’s Tierra Whack that would have been on this week’s list if we hadn’t already reviewed the album — let’s get it. Anitta
The Trump administration made good on its threat to block U.S. users from accessing TikTok and WeChat, announcing that American businesses will be banned from distributing either of the Chinese-owned apps effective Sunday. Industry experts say the app ban is without precedent in the U.S., while free speech advocates said the bans on TikTok and
Country singer Tyler Childers has released a six-minute video statement in which he urges fans, particularly those who share his Appalachian roots, to empathize with the anger and despair being expressed by the Black community in the wake of a wave of deaths at the hands of police. He says he reluctantly recorded the speech
A quarter of this year’s Cartoon Forum pitches are derived from existing IP and “The Upside Down River” – a high concept mini-series – is a fine example. Based on the book “La rivière à l’envers” by award-winning French children’s author Jean-Claude Mourlevat, the 10-part fantasy adventure comes from the 10-year-old Paris-based producer-distributor Dandelooo, whose animation
Fernanda CalfatGetty Images From hot takes on the buzziest fashion shows and the latest happenings in the industry to Outfit of the Day pictures, Antoine Gregory’s Twitter account @bibbygregory has always served as a window into his mind. And at its forefront? Black designers—always. As one of the few Black students in his design class
Barbie Ferreira can’t use Instagram as freely as she used to. The actress, whose credits include the HBO Max movie “Unpregnant” and HBO’s TV series “Euphoria,” now has more than 2 million followers and is trying to reestablish her relationship with the internet at large. “The internet, right now, is a little hectic for me,”
Beyond Fest, the highest-attended genre film festival in the U.S., will open on Oct. 2 with the world premiere of Jim Cummings’ werewolf tale “The Wolf of Snow Hollow” and Joe Dante’s classic film “The ‘Burbs.” The social-distanced, drive-in event at the Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, Calif., will close on Oct. 8 with the
“Love Island” has swapped its titular island for Las Vegas this season, and the show just scored its largest dice roll (read audience) of the season. Episode 19 of season 2 drew a total of 2 million viewers, a 6% increase from last episode. That represents it largest tally of the season to date, narrowly
In the run-up to the San Sebastián film festival, where Movistar Plus will world-premiere two of its most ambitious series to date — “Riot Police” and “Tell Me Who I Am” — president Sergio Oslé chatted with Variety about its new phase in production, working with AMC Studios, and the runaway success of a series
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In another dimension—the one where science isn’t “an opinion,” where health is a human right, where Quibi is the name of a celebrity baby instead of, like, whatever it is—Fashion Week would be moving right along. There would be triumphs and trends, breakout faces wearing sponsored mascara, and
Lady Gaga has released a short film for her latest single, “911,” off her “Chromatica” album. The just-under-four-minutes music video was directed by Tarsem Singh, with visuals eerily reminiscent of his earlier feature film, “The Cell,” starring Jennifer Lopez. After the video’s premiere, Gaga said, “This short film is very personal to me, my experience with mental
To deliver director Antonio Campos’ “The Devil All the Time,” based on Donald Ray Pollock’s acclaimed 2011 novel set against a rural backdrop during the period between World War II and the Vietnam War, cinematographer Lol Crawley aimed to show a town out of step with the times. “We had this idea that the rural
While the premise of “Antebellum” has been shrouded in mystery, activist filmmakers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz (credited as Bush + Renz) worked with their crew to deliver a wild ride delving into the current climate of racism. In choosing to deal with the pandemic situation, “Antebellum” will only be available on VOD in the
The raw heat that comes off of “Nick Cordero: Live Your Life: Live at Feinstein’s/54 Below” makes the loss of the vocalist-actor known for awe-inducing Broadway roles in “Waitress,” “A Bronx Tale” and “Bullets Over Broadway” feel devastating all over again, although the shock has hardly worn off since he died in July after a
“Last Call” is a movie about a man in need of an intervention. Not David (Daved Wilkins, co-writer of the downbeat film), who misdials the suicide hotline and gets a janitor named Beth (Sara Booth, wife of the director) working late at the local community college instead, but director Gavin Michael Booth, who has fallen
The hearty applause from European journalists at the end of Woody Allen’s online/on-site press conference for “Rifkin’s Festival,” which world premiered on Friday at the San Sebastian Festival, was probably as much for Allen’s career at large as his latest movie in particular. Opening the festival, and set at the San Sebastian Festival – with
Mort Rifkin, the ostensible novelist at the center of “Rifkin’s Festival,” has longterm writer’s block, and it’s hard to imagine that Woody Allen has ever empathized less with a character. Where Mort believes it’s futile to write if the finished work is not going to be on the level of Dostoevsky, the 84-year-old Allen continues
David Oyelowo and director Nate Parker are collaborating again on the drama “Solitary.” The film also stars Olivia Washington, Barry Pepper and Jimmie Fails. Oyelowo will play a wrongfully imprisoned man who’s been released after seven years of solitary confinement. Washington will portray his fiancé. Production starts next week in Vancouver for Bron Studios. Parker
Everyone’s favorite familiar-slash-vampire hunter on FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows” will soon show off his musical side on the small-screen: Harvey Guillén will recur on the second season of NBC’s “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” Variety has learned exclusively. In the multi-episode arc, Guillén will play George, a new programmer who is constantly looking for
The best talk show hosts are made into stars by the medium. To wit: Rosie O’Donnell was a well-known comic and actor but hardly the dynamo she eventually became when she began her daily show. She reinvented the medium that had, before her, been dominated by former local news anchor Oprah Winfrey. Both these stars
Ryan Murphy had a very specific look in mind for Lucia State Hospital, a mental institution that’s at the center of his new Netflix series, “Ratched” (premiering Sept. 18), a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” prequel and origin story for Nurse Ratched (Sarah Paulson) that takes place in 1947. “He wanted the hospital not
FilmRise has licensed more than 500 hours of content from NENT Studios UK, the production and distribution entity of the Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT). Under the deal, FilmRise has acquired all digital rights, including AVOD and SVOD for the content in both the North and South American territories. The package includes the British comedy “Peep
Alicia Keys spent the first five albums of her career as a sleekly sophisticated singer-songwriter and pianist, crafting anthemic R&B that was often bold but just as often bland. After releasing 2012’s “Girl on Fire,” she grew tired of such perfection, stopped wearing make-up and released “Here,” a raw, unrefined album filled with nervous jazz-R&B-hop
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has resigned from her position as the U.K.’s special envoy on media freedom. Clooney’s decision is in protest against the U.K.’s intention to pass the Internal Market Bill that is designed to ensure barrier-free trade between the four U.K. nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland after the Brexit
The new Young Adult book “Devastation Class” is not your average book-to-movie adaptation. When the film rights were snapped up in 2018 to adapt the science fiction book series by Glen Zipper and Elaine Mongeon, the project hadn’t yet found a publisher. A few months later, HarperCollins’ Blink YA Books secured the literary rights. The