Film and TV guilds, regional bodies and representatives of leading companies in New Zealand have joined forces to set up a coronavirus crisis center. The move comes the same day as the government put the entire country into lockdown for four weeks and New Zealand cinemas close for an indefinite period. The Screen Sector COVID-19
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the second episode of “Westworld” Season 3. After a Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Caleb (Aaron Paul)-centered premiere, Episode 2 of “Westworld” Season 3 brought the show back to the park and to everyone’s favorite brothel madam-turned-ruthless killer, Maeve (Thandie Newton). Newton was reunited with
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “The Walking Dead” Season 10 Episode 13, titled “What We Become.” “The Walking Dead” said goodbye to another longtime cast member in this week’s episode, with Danai Gurira officially exiting the series after seven seasons of playing Michonne. It was first announced last year
“The Rosie O’Donnell Show” is back. O’Donnell’s talk show returned for one night only on Sunday to serve as a fundraiser for The Actors Fund, an organization that provides numerous services for people in need in the performing arts and entertainment business. The evening raised more than $500,000, which included $100,000 from O’Donnell. The 3
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the sixth episode of “Outlander” Season 5, entitled “Better to Marry Than Burn.” It’s no secret that Maria Doyle Kennedy is a talented actress — but if anyone didn’t know before, they do now after watching “Outlander’s” latest episode, “Better to Marry Than Burn.”
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the second episode of “Westworld” Season 2. Yes, that really did happen. On Sunday night’s episode of “Westworld,” Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) sneak back into the park’s tech corridors to investigate why Maeve (Thandie Newton) has gone missing. Instead, they discover that
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical adaptation of “In the Heights” could struggle to be ready in time for its big-screen debut, currently set for June 26, if coronavirus concerns delay post-production, the Tony winner suggested Sunday night. Miranda — in a livestream interview with Rosie O’Donnell that was billed as a remounting of her successful daytime talk
March 22, 2020 5:03PM PT Originally set for April 25, this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been postponed. A new date will be announced at a later time. The White House Correspondents’ Association made the announcement on Sunday afternoon. “The White House Correspondents’ Association regrets to announce that it is unable to go ahead
Facebook is contributing its supply of 720,000 respiratory masks to U.S. health care workers and is looking to procure millions of additional masks, joining Apple and others pitching in to provide the protective gear amid critical shortages during the COVID-19 outbreak. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, announced the donation Sunday on the social platform.
“Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner seemed to take a shot at Evangeline Lilly and other people not social distancing during the coronavirus quarantine. “Stay inside, don’t be f—ing stupid, even if you count your freedom over — I don’t know, what is it — your health,” she said during an Instagram Live video on
The Creative District Improvement Company has teamed up with property developers Quinn Estates to invest £250 million ($292 million) in Ashford International Studios, a new film and TV studios in Ashford, South-East England, which they say will create 3,000 jobs. The 15-acre site was formerly a locomotive manufacturing plant until the early 1980s. The companies
March 22, 2020 12:31PM PT New York production company American High is calling for volunteers to help assemble face masks for health care workers fighting coronavirus. On Monday, people can drop off materials to make the face masks and build them at the Greater Syracuse Soundstage in New York. Volunteers will be given gloves and
March 22, 2020 11:04AM PT Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the first U.S. senator to contract coronavirus. His office announced the diagnosis on Twitter Sunday morning, saying he is asymptomatic and currently in quarantine. The announcement said that he was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his
The International Olympics Committee will take a month to decide whether the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics can proceed as planned, given the global spread of coronavirus, a move that would potentially wreak havoc on the fortunes of hundreds of athletes, the media industry and the plans of many big-spending advertisers. The IOC said Sunday that
Autumn de Wilde, the director of Focus Featres’ “Emma,” flew home to Los Angeles on Thursday night after a London work trip and began a 15-day self-quarantine at a friend’s bungalow. Though not usually a nervous flier nor a germaphobe, de Wilde said she’d had a “stressful” flight because of her anxiety about coronavirus. “I
March 22, 2020 10:33AM PT Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo is the latest celebrity to reveal that he has tested positive for coronavirus and that he and his family are in self-isolation. Domingo announced the diagnosis in a Facebook post on Sunday morning, saying it was his “moral duty” to tell people. He said that
Newly announced music performance live-streams added for Sunday include Evanescence, Miguel, Bastille, Alex Aiono … and, believe it or not, a piano performance by news anchor Katie Couric. Those five web mini-concerts are all late additions to the Sunday schedule sponsored by Global Citizen as part of the “Together at Home” series. All will take
The Australian federal government has ordered all cinemas in the country to close, as an additional measure against the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The order was made on Sunday evening local time and takes effect from noon on Monday. The measure could remain in place for several months. The move is part of a
March 22, 2020 8:25AM PT British commercial broadcaster ITV has halted production on the U.K.’s most popular scripted shows — soaps “Coronation Street” and “Emmerdale” — due to the coronavirus crisis. In a statement, the company said: “We’ve been doing our best to carry on filming, whilst adhering to the government’s latest health guidelines, to
In the time of “Netflix and quarantine,” more people than ever are looking for the next great TV show to binge-watch. But with literally tens of thousands of titles across multiple streaming services, it’s tough to zero in on the ones you’re most likely to love. Now there’s a new app aiming to offer a
Last week, Donald Glover provided fans with a distraction from coronavirus quarantine by surprise-dropping a 12-song new album in the wee hours of the morning, which was available to stream on a dedicated website before being removed approximately 12 hours later. At 3 a.m. ET Sunday, he officially released the album onto streaming services, with a
Netflix is squeezing back video bit rates to reduce the strain on bandwidth-stressed networks worldwide, starting in Europe and the U.K. But the company is telling customers in affected regions that, technically speaking, they’ll still be able to stream HD and even Ultra HD content — just that the video will be delivered with lower
Los Angeles landmark Magic Castle has laid off almost all of its staff, as the spread of coronavirus affects businesses nationwide, Variety has learned. The members-only club pink slipped 189 employees on Saturday, insiders said, and will operate on a skeletal staff of nine to maintain the historic Hollywood clubhouse, which sits just behind the
Keith Hagan of SKH Music is a veteran music publicist who worked with Kenny Rogers for 15 years (the two are pictured above). Below, Hagan shares some memories of Rogers, who passed away Friday at the age of 81. They say you should never meet your heroes, but apparently “they” never met Kenny Rogers. I
It could be lights out for the movie theater business if Congress doesn’t pass the trillion-dollar coronavirus rescue bill. That’s the stark message from John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). “The situation is that dire,” Fithian told Variety, taking a break from working the phones in Washington D.C.,
Apple is donating several million industrial-grade respirator masks to health care organizations, amid a critical shortage of supplies and equipment needed to respond those affected by the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Tim Cook, the CEO of the tech giant, confirmed Apple’s efforts to help the cause Saturday, saying the supplies would go to providers in
SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris has issued a video detailing the union’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “Make no mistake: We are in this together,” she said. “I want you to know that we, SAG-AFTRA, are responding to this and taking action in real time, and I mean that’s morning and night and into the wee
Every time a new mental-health therapy arrives, it’s propelled by the ideology — and the testimonials — of a religion. Sigmund Freud’s descriptions of psychoanalysis all point to the miracle-cure mythology of the moment when a patient, at long last, touches the nerve of his or her suppressed trauma and is liberated from it. In
Just as the March 18 edition of “CBS This Morning” ended at 9 a.m. ET, executive producer Diana Miller was informed that the show’s studio was about to be shut down for the second time in a week because of the threat of exposure to the coronavirus. As Miller’s team scrambled to find other studio
March 21, 2020 1:11PM PT Frisky if familiar, this rom-com asks, can a carnal road trip lead to its odd couple to self-knowledge? An elementary school classroom may seem an odd place to launch a romantic comedy that soon finds its protagonists coupling with abandon in a slew of quasi-public spaces. But in the rom-com