Albums by Stormzy, Dua Lipa, Laura Marling and Michael Kiwanuka have been nominated for the 2020 Mercury Prize, one of the most coveted awards in the U.K. Other nominees for the £25,000 ($31,700) prize include Anna Meredith, Charli XCX, Georgia, Kano, Lanterns on the Lake, Moses Boyd, Porridge Radio and Sports Team. There are five
Countryline, the U.K.-based country music fan app backed by Elton John, has announced a strategic partnership with L.A.-based Starlings Entertainment, one of the companies that invested in Oscar-winning biopic “Rocketman.” Starlings is making a cash investment into CountryLine and the companies have agreed a first-look deal to develop film and TV projects that leverage country
“Da 5 Bloods,” “Extraction” and “The Crown” are among the shows nominated for the 7th Annual Location Managers Guild International Awards. The LMGI Awards will break from tradition and take place on a virtual platform due to the coronavirus pandemic. Actor and Director Isaiah Mustafa will host the awards ceremony and will be joined by
Sony Pictures Television has sold its 50% stake in Israel’s Dori TLV to Dori Media. The deal will allow Dori Media Group to fully consolidate its ownership of Dori TLV’s Israeli channels and operations. Sony Pictures Television had a stake in Dori TLV since 2014. Dori TLV owns and operates two daily telenovela channels, Viva
Warner Bros. is adjusting its movie production and distribution plans in light of the prolonged shutdown of theaters driven by the coronavirus pandemic, AT&T CEO John Stankey told investors Thursday. Stankey emphasized that the studio still “believes in the theatrical experience” but said it is inevitable that some titles planned for a traditional theatrical will
“Bill & Ted Face the Music” has shifted its release plans, and instead will debut on premium video on demand and in select movie theaters on Sept. 1 as coronavirus cases spike across the country. The announcement comes following the news that Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” has been taken off release calendars, though its still expected
As traditional cable programmers struggle, startup VENN is stepping up to the plate with a business model the founders of the live-streaming video-game entertainment network say is custom-built for the over-the-top era. For the Aug. 5 launch, VENN will make its 24-hour, free-to-watch linear network available on Amazon’s Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Gaming and Twitter. In
UPDATED: Taylor Swift made a surprise announcement that she will be releasing her eighth studio album, “Folklore,” Thursday midnight. In a social media posts, Swift explained that the album is the result of many of her plans for 2020 — including a short stadium tour supporting her 2019 album “Lover” — were scrapped due to
Primary Wave Music Publishing has acquired a stake in the music publishing catalog and master recordings of Devo, one of the most influential and longest-running acts to emerge from the new wave era. The acquisition includes some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Whip It,” “That’s Good,” “Girl U Want,” “Freedom of Choice,” and more.
As a second wave of COVID-19 escalates in Spain, Sony Pictures Releasing has moved up — not back — the local release of Santiago Segura’s family comedy “Father There is Only One 2,” the country’s biggest potential national blockbuster for 2020. Originally scheduled to open in Spanish theaters on Aug. 7, the sequel to the
AMC Theatres has delayed plans to reopen its cinemas as coronavirus cases surge across the United States. The company, which ranks as the country’s largest movie theater chain with more than 600 locations, will now open its venues in mid to late August. The problem of when and how moviegoing can safely resume and cinemas
Atari and developer Hello There Games released a new rhythm-based, touch-screen-optimized mobile game “Beat Legend: Avicii” on Thursday, featuring 15 of late producer, performer and songwriter Tim “Avicii” Bergling’s tracks. “Beat Legend: Avicii” is the first in a planned series of musical-artist-focused, rhythm-based mobile games from Atari and Hello There Games. Music royalties from the
Twitter fell short of Wall Street earnings expectations for the second quarter of 2020 as total revenue fell 19%, despite packing on a record 20 million daily active users in the period. What Twitter calls “monetizable” daily active users increased 34% year over year to 186 million, adding 20 million in Q2 and representing the
Jill Weindorf has been promoted to general manager of Concord Recorded Music, chief executive Tom Whalley announced on July 22. Most recently serving as the senior vice president of promotion and marketing, her new position finds Weindorf supervising all label services operations across Concord’s label roster, both current releases and catalog. She’ll also continue to
AT&T touted the “successful” launch of HBO Max — with the new service helping to boost overall HBO and HBO Max customers by 1.7 million over the first six months of 2020. As of June 30, 2020, AT&T’s WarnerMedia reported 36.3 million total U.S. subscribers to HBO Max and HBO, up from 34.6 million at
AT&T said sales for the second quarter of 2020 were lower across all of its segments because of the coronavirus pandemic. That included a 22.9% plunge in WarnerMedia revenue, which the telco said was partly due to lower content and ad sales related to COVID-19. WarnerMedia’s Q2 2020 operating revenue was $6.8 billion, down 22.9%
In the aftermath of its Endemol Shine takeover, newly formed France-based European content powerhouse Banijay has announced that Pilar Blasco, former CEO of Endemol Shine Iberia, has been appointed CEO of its Spain-headquartered unit Banijay Iberia, while Paolo Bassetti remains in place as CEO of Banijay Italy. The merger led by Marco Bassetti — who
Bad Wolf, the producer of “The Night Of” for HBO, “A Discovery of Witches” for Sky, and “His Dark Materials” for BBC and HBO, has optioned rights for the book “Coming Undone” by Terri White, editor-in-chief of Empire magazine, in a deal with Anna Pallai at AMP Literary. The production company, led by former BBC
State-controlled China Central Television (CCTV) has halted broadcasting English soccer matches on its main sports channel. The move appears to be a result of growing political tensions between China and the U.K. CCTV canceled its coverage of the game between Liverpool and Chelsea on Wednesday night, according to sources quoted by Bloomberg. It will not
Netflix has boarded “O2,” a French survival thriller directed by Alexandre Aja, whose credits include “Crawl,” “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Piranha 3D.” The film, which marks the return of Aja to a French-speaking project after a 15-year career in the U.S., is produced by Vincent Maraval, Brahim Chioua and Noëmie Devide for Getaway Films.
BBC radio and music is strengthening its diversity commitments, dedicating £12 million ($15.2 million) of its commissioning budget over the next three years towards diverse and inclusive content. This amount will cover new programming commissioned by network radio and BBC Sounds from 2021/22, open to both in-house and independent production companies to compete for. The
Play video content Exclusive TMZ.com Kim Zolciak says she’s smoothed things over with Marlon Wayans over his infamous “White Chicks 2” diss … it’s all water under the bridge now, but masks almost got in the way!!! We got Kim and hubby, Kroy Biermann, at LAX Wednesday and our camera guy wanted to talk about
One Direction returned to Twitter for the first time in two years on Wednesday, July 22, posting ahead of its 10-year anniversary: “Tomorrow! You and me got a whole lot of history #10YearsOf1D,” the band wrote. The tweet swiftly accumulated nearly 1 million re-tweets in 14 hours and more than 1.7 million likes and spurred
China has struggled to get viewers back into cinemas this week, but the Shanghai Intl. Film Festival (SIFF) has found a way to break through: screen all eight of the “Harry Potter” franchise films in a row, with limited seating due to COVID-19 distancing measures, and watch the public duke it out for the privilege
Demitra “Mimi” Roche, who appeared on the Oxygen reality show “Bad Girls Club,” has died. She was 34. Roche’s colleague, record producer Vince Valholla, announced her death via Twitter on Wednesday. Valholla is the founder of Valholla Entertainment in Miami, Fla., where Roche had worked as vice president of A&R since 2011. “I’m at a
J. Cole has dropped the first tracks confirmed to appear on his upcoming album, “The Fall Off,” on Wednesday night. “The Climb Back,” which he produced, and “Lion King on Ice,” which he co-produced with T-Minus and Jetson, will be listeners’ first look into the new record, and follows his last album, “KOD, ” which
Members of SAG-AFTRA have ratified a successor deal to the union’s master contract covering work on feature films and primetime television. The performers union announced the approval Wednesday evening following three weeks of voting and spirited campaigns for and against the pact with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The three-year deal is
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced he is holding off on imposing a stay-at-home order on the city, citing a decline in positivity rates in local COVID-19 testing results Garcetti, in a news conference late Wednesday afternoon at Los Angeles City Hall, said the seven-day average of positive tests had declined to 10% from
Imax China, the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Imax, has warned that it expects a net loss between $34 and $36 million for the first half of the year, as cinema closures in the country due to COVID-19 have slammed exhibition firms. The 2020 figures stand in contrast to a net profit of $24 million in
When pioneering rock ’n’ roll artist Little Richard died recently, fellow ’50s pop music icon Pat Boone’s name was prominently noted in many of the obituaries. One of Boone’s biggest records of the era was a cover version of Little Richard’s rock classic “Tutti Frutti,” but the references to Boone weren’t all positive, and the