“The Good Fight” still has some punches left to throw. CBS All Access has renewed the drama for season 5, while also conceding that the current season will have to be curtailed to only seven episodes due to the coronavirus production shutdown. The seventh, and now final episode of season 4 will debut on the
Mark Wahlberg is in early negotiations with streaming giant Netflix to produce and star in spy movie “Our Man in New Jersey.” Should the deal be made, Wahlberg would portray a blue-collar 007 James Bond-type character. “Safe House” writer David Guggenheim is also in talks to develop the script. Stephen Levinson, who came up with
Netflix has acquired “Ball and Chain,” a superhero film starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Oscar nominee Emily V. Gordon (“The Big Sick”) is writing the script, adapted from the 1990s comic of the same name by Scott Lobdell. It follows a married couple going through relationship turmoil who also have superpowers, but they only
The CW won’t be debuting any new original scripted shows in fall 2020. Due to the ongoing coronavirus-related production shutdown, the network is holding nearly all of its original scripted fare for January 2021. In announcing its 2020-2021 schedule on Wednesday, however, the network did say that it would air the series finale of “Supernatural”
NBC has acquired the hit Canadian medical drama series “Transplant,” the network announced Thursday. The CTV series debuted its first season on Feb. 26. The 13-episode series centers on Dr. Bashir “Bash” Hamed, a Syrian doctor with battle-tested skills in emergency medicine who fled his country with his younger sister, Amira. Together they struggle to
“Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker Luca Guadagnino will direct a reboot of “Scarface” for Universal Pictures. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen wrote the latest version of the script with earlier drafts by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Jonathan Herman and Paul Attanasio. “Scarface” will be produced by Dylan Clark for his Dylan Clark Productions. Scott Stuber will
A U.K. petition calling for an inquiry into press conduct leading up to the suicide of “Love Island” host Caroline Flack has been thrown out by Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg. The popular “Love Island” presenter, one of the country’s most recognizable TV personalities, had been due to go on trial in
“Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs booked the role of Andre Layton in the small-screen adaptation of “Snowpiercer” less than a year after taking his final Broadway bow in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical. But it’s only now, exactly three years after his casting in the pilot was announced, that he’ll finally be seen in that role — a
Beanie Feldstein is following stay-at-home orders at her parents’ house in Los Angeles. When she’s not watching “Ozark,” she’s hanging out with the family’s 90-pound English bulldog Jackie or Zoom-ing with friends. “We’ve been doing some trivia in my friend group,” Feldstein says on Thursday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.”
More than a year ago, TikTok got its knuckles rapped by U.S. regulators over allegations that it violated the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). TikTok paid a $5.7 million fine and promised to come into compliance with the law under a settlement with the FTC. But today, TikTok is still violating COPPA, a
In the two and a half decades I’ve been covering the Emmy Awards, nothing stands out like what happened to the show in 2001, the year the ceremony almost didn’t happen. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Emmys were postponed twice — the second time on Oct. 7 (with producers already
In Santa Clarita, a suburb just north of L.A., construction is continuing at the Center at Needham Ranch, which has already seen entertainment companies move in. “For the last week or so we’ve been getting calls and texts from production companies, from locations scouts and studios looking for space,” says CBRE executive VP Craig Peters,
Pearl Jam offers a startling vision for an Earth ravaged by climate change in a new animated video for their song “Retrograde,” directed by Emmy-winning Australian filmmaker Josh Wakely (“Beat Bugs”). The clip, the latest from Pearl Jam’s “Gigaton” album, extends that project’s environmentally conscious themes by featuring teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg as
The state with the iconic landscapes launched its incentives 16 years ago, and last year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham helped pass SB2, which more than doubled the state’s annual cap on its 25% to 30% refundable tax credit to $110 million, and added a 5% uplift for shooting outside the Albuquerque-Santa Fe urban corridor. Rural
Newly minted Sports Illustrated Studios is launching its first feature film project with women’s rowing story “The Red Rose Crew: A True Story Of Women, Winning, and The Water.” David Glasser’s 101 Studios will, produce, finance and distribute the film adaptation of Daniel J. Boyne’s biography, centered on the formation of a U.S. rowing team
Francis Roberts, previously a manager at YouTube working with some of the platform’s biggest creators, has joined Snap as senior manager of digital talent. Roberts starts at the Snapchat parent company Monday, May 18. Based in L.A., he will report to Jim Shepherd, Snap’s head of talent partnerships. Most recently, Roberts was at YouTube, where
Strand Releasing has acquired North American rights to Catherine Gund’s documentary “Aggie,” about her mother Agnes “Aggie” Gund, the high-profile art collector and philanthropist. “Aggie,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, explores the issues of art, race and justice. The elder Gund sold Roy Lichtenstein’s “Masterpiece” in 2017 to launch the $100 million
Producers on the Move, a networking forum for up-and-coming producers from Europe, takes place as a virtual event this week. The organizer, European Film Promotion, has given Variety exclusive access to the projects the producers are pitching to sales companies. Here are their projects, including the latest films from the directors of SXSW standout “Lake
Even in a pandemic, the impact of an Apple commercial in boosting a song’s streams and overall good fortune remains virtually unrivaled. The latest benefactor? Norwegian pop singer-songwriter Anna Lotterud, a.k.a. Anna of the North, whose 2019 single “Dream Girl” has seen a surge in streaming activity since it began appearing as the score for
The schedule for IAB’s streaming-only 2020 NewFronts is out, with the addition of several new players to the weeklong digital-marketing pitchfest from June 22-26. Social-media players Facebook, Snap and TikTok will participate in the NewFronts for the first time, among the nearly two dozen companies presenting in the 2020 NewFronts. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the
YouTube’s annual Brandcast marketing event this year will have an entirely different look and feel — it’s happening only online, as big in-person events have been nixed during COVID-19. And the video giant has approached the quarantine as an opportunity to do something different and reach an even bigger audience of marketers and agencies. YouTube’s
Here’s a new way to virtually watch HBO shows with up to 20 of your friends, while many Americans are still stuck at home under lockdown. Seattle-based startup Scener has launched support for HBO that enables co-watching features for HBO Now and HBO Go viewers via a Google Chrome browser extension. The WarnerMedia-owned premium programmer
Rock veteran John Lydon, better known as John Rotten, will host a virtual event on June 7 at 5 a.m. EST to celebrate the digital release of the 2018 documentary “The Public Image Is Rotten,” which arrives today (May 14) on Vimeo On Demand in both English and Spanish. The one-hour, 43-minute film about his
Vox Cinemas, which operates 514 movie screens across the Middle East, is to open a drive-in cinema in Dubai, which will be the only one to operate in the city, although not its first. The drive-in, which opens on Sunday, is located on the rooftop of a shopping mall, Mall of the Emirates. The capacity
Walter Presents has acquired U.K. rights to “When The Dust Settles,” the hit Danish psychological drama series, from DR Sales. “When The Dust Settles” tells the story of eight strangers whose lives intertwine in the aftermath of a shocking terrorist attack in a Copenhagen restaurant. The ten-part series was created by Ida Maria Rydén and
Consumers around Asia have been locked down, had their travel restricted and been forced to spend more time with their families. Their digital consumption has risen. But the changing patterns of online usage have lifted far more categories than entertainment. A new research note from ComScore, published Thursday, presents data from six territories in Asia-Pacific.
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi will be highlighted at next month’s Cannes Marché du Film Online’s focus on streaming platforms, as the world’s film industry seeks to get a stronger handle on the possible role of streaming platforms in future movie financing and distribution business models. HBO Max’s keynote is described as its
Netflix has bought global rights to Polish feature “The Hater,” which won Best International Narrative Feature at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film will be available worldwide, excluding Poland, from July. Polish subscribers will have access to the film “as soon as the licensing window allows, which is planned for March 2021,” according to
Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis have rallied to the defense of Johnny Depp, claiming he was never violent toward them during their relationships with him. Their claims were made as part of witness statements submitted ahead of a libel trial against The Sun newspaper over an April 2018 article in which Depp was described as
ViacomCBS’s ad-funded streamer Pluto TV has expanded its offering in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with the launch of 24 new channels. The launches bring the AVOD service’s portfolio to 75 channels in the three markets. The new offerings include pop-up channels focusing on ViacomCBS IP such as “SpongeBob Squarepants,” “iCarly,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Victorious,” “Bubble Guppies”