February 25, 2020 9:12AM PT Lady Gaga has announced that her next single, “Stupid Love,” the first new material she has released since the “Star Is Born” soundtrack, is dropping Friday at midnight ET. The singer posted the news on her social media accounts; there is also a billboard in Hollywood. Details were scant as
February 25, 2020 9:15AM PT Jazz artist Julia Lewis (stylized JULiA LEWiS) is the first signing to the Atlas Music and Quincy Jones Productions joint venture. Lewis, whose real name is Benjamin Falik, arrives from the Bay Area where he built a following as a local producer, DJ and independent artist. Said Richard Stumpf, who founded
February 25, 2020 8:34AM PT Lauren Yee’s play draws on the music of Dengue Fever to track the fate of a fictional Cambodian band that ran afoul of the Khmer Rouge. Is there anything less politically threatening than a rock band jamming to its own vibrant music? Tell that to the Khmer Rouge, which descended
As expected, Justin Bieber cruised to the top of the Rolling Stone albums chart with “Changes,” his first album in more than four years. The new set bowed with 232,700 album units. New releases counted for four of the week’s top 10 albums, with A Boogie wit da Hoodie and Tame Impala coming in in
February 25, 2020 8:30AM PT IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to “Undine,” a reimagining of an ancient myth from Christian Petzold. The deal continues the relationship between the indie distributor and the German auteur — the two previously worked together on Petzold’s “Phoenix.” “Undine” debuted at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. IFC Films
February 25, 2020 7:00AM PT National Geographic Documentary Films has bought the documentary “Saudi Runaway,” which follows a young woman in Saudi Arabia attempting to flee the country before her arranged marriage. The deal was announced on Tuesday prior to “Saudi Runaway” screening at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Susanne Regina Meures, the movie had
Before being found guilty by a jury and handcuffed on his way to jail, Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual misconduct, harassment, assault or rape by at least 100 women. On Monday morning, the possibility of Weinstein being imprisoned seemed impossible, to some. How could one of Hollywood’s most powerful men end up behind bars?
Three distant mountains; three chatty encounters between long-acquainted women; three comically tiresome intrusions from self-important men shot only from behind. Prolific South Korean arthouse staple Hong Sangsoo has dealt in playful, internally rhyming triplicate before, but never with such a gently sardonic female focus, and seldom as straightforwardly as in his airy, charming Berlin competition
February 25, 2020 7:44AM PT Neon has acquired North American rights to “Gunda,” directed by “Aquarela” helmer Victor Kossakovsky and executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix. The film made its world premiere in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival. It is one of the few films in the festival this year to have closed
February 25, 2020 7:16AM PT CNN’s Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta and President Donald Trump are sparring again. During a press conference in New Delhi, Acosta pressed back on the President’s assertion that CNN had to walk back a recent report from several news organizations on Russia trying to interfere in the 2020 election.
When they start noticing unusual twists on reality blooming all around them in their otherwise unremarkable Philadelphia lives — leading to an elaborate scavenger hunt unlike anything they could’ve imagined — the main quartet of characters in “Dispatches From Elsewhere” think they’ve got it figured out. The charismatic Simone (Eve Lindley) embraces the phenomenon as
REinvent Studios, the Copenhagen-based company launched last year by former TrustNordisk CEO Rikke Ennis, has pre-sold the Icelandic crime drama “Trom” to ZDF/Arte for Germany and France. ZDF/Arte will be co-producing the anticipated series which was pitched last year during the Co-Pro Series at the Berlinale Series forum. “Trom,” based on Jagvan Isaksen’s crime novels
Actors Gerard Butler (pictured above with Soho House’s Dominic Hofer and Studio Babelsberg’s Christoph Fisser), Daniel Brühl and Tom Wlaschiha, who played Jaqen H’ghar in “Game of Thrones,” were among the guests at the Studio Babelsberg Night Friday at Berlin’s Soho House. Other actors at the party included Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Schuele, Elyas M’Barek, Iris
An investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against opera singer Plácido Domingo by opera performers’ union found that he “engaged in inappropriate activity, ranging from flirtation to sexual advances, in and outside of the workplace” when he was a senior executive at the Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera, according to the Associated Press
Twice Academy Award-nominated writer-director Hany Abu-Assad (“Paradise Now,” “Omar”) is teaming with Abbout Productions, Lebanon’s top indie shingle, on TV series project “The King’s Wives.” The six-episode fiction, pitched Feb. 25 at the 2020 Berlinale Co-Pro Series, is set to be the first TV drama produced by Abbout, a Beirut-set production house run by Georges
February 25, 2020 6:37AM PT AMC Networks has set a new carriage pact with Dish and Sling TV that expands the distribution of AMC’s growing portfolio of subscription streaming services. The deal covers AMC’s six linear channels — AMC, SundanceTV, IFC, We TV, BBC America and BBC World News — as well as streaming services
Breaking Through The Lens, an initiative launched three years ago to promote emerging female directors, has unveiled the shortlist of projects vying to participate in the 3rd edition of its pitching platform set to take place during the Cannes Film Festival. The selected projects, which will be pitched to over 100 financiers and key industry
Paul Williams — singer, actor, writer of hits ranging from “We’ve Only Just Begun” to “Rainbow Connection” and, not least, president of ASCAP — will be the 2020 recipient of the Johnny Mercer Award at the 51st Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Dinner, taking place June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel
February 25, 2020 4:24AM PT Tiberius Film, headed by Oliver Fink, has acquired rights for Germany to drama “Blind,” starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin, at Berlin’s European Film Market, as well as horror film “Death of Me” and action-horror movie “The Driver.” “Blind” tells the story of a writer who loses his wife and
Two investment firms said they would buy a majority stake in Univision, the nation’s biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, setting up a new era for the large broadcasting company at a time when traditional media entities are grappling with new ways to reach large audiences. Searchlight Capital Partners and ForgeLight LLC, two investment firms, will acquire a
February 25, 2020 3:30AM PT Scott Harris, the songwriter, producer and musician who has worked extensively with Shawn Mendes, has signed a joint agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Work of Art. The long-term copublishing deal marks the first collaborative signing between the two companies, both under the Sony Music umbrella. Among Harris’ best known
Hillary Clinton has said that the jury’s verdict in the trial of Harvey Weinstein, formerly one of her primary Hollywood donors, “really speaks for itself.” “It is obviously something that people have looked at and followed, because it was time for an accounting and the jury clearly found that,” said Clinton, who was speaking Tuesday
Young Italian director Chiara Bellosi is at the Berlinale with “Ordinary Justice” which examines the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case who intersect on the benches outside the room where the case is being tried. This first work, screening in Generation14Plus, is produced by Carlo Cresto-Dina’s Tempesta Film which discovered Alice Rohrwacher (“The
Exclusive TMZ/Getty Jake Paul and Zayn Malik‘s online shouting match — via Gigi Hadid — got started with what sounds like a hard snub to come get crazy with the YouTube broskis. Sources close to Jake tell TMZ … both he and Zayn were staying at the same hotel in Vegas over the weekend, and
Netflix and other streaming giants might be setting the pace for a global TV landscape upended by video-on-demand technology, but European players are shaking up domestic markets by ramping up investment in original production, forging unlikely partnerships, and looking to beat Netflix at its own game by finding innovative ways to personalize the VOD viewing
A wet, windy night couldn’t dampen the mood at the opening reception of the Berlinale Series Market and Conference, the Berlin Film Festival’s popular three-day TV strand that kicked off Monday Feb. 24 with a full house at the Gropius Mirror Pavilion. Among those in attendance (pictured, from left) were European Film Market director Matthijs
These days, the horror-fantasy thriller tends to be a junk metaphysical spook show that throws a whole lot of scary clutter at the audience — ghosts, “demons,” mad killers — without necessarily adding up to an experience that’s about anything. But in “The Invisible Man,” Leigh Whannell’s ingenious and entertaining update of a concept that’s
February 24, 2020 11:34PM PT Sales agent Dutch Features has boarded crime miniseries “Black Nazareth,” and has started sales on it at the European Film Market in Berlin. The Dutch miniseries, which is in development, follows a customs officer in the port of Rotterdam who is drawn into a criminal operation while trying to deal
BERLIN — ITV Studios push into European drama has been boosted by pre-sales on “Romulus” and a slew of deals across a burgeoning slate of non-English language productions as ITV Studios aims to position as a world-class player in global content production. Announced at this week’s Berlinale Series Market, the sales play off ITV Studios
Tuesday see’s the Berlin Film Festival play host to the sixth edition of its Co-Pro Series Pitch and Networking event, where 10 exciting TV projects from around the world will pitch to potential co-producers, investors, sales agents and broadcasters. Under the umbrella of the Berlinale Co-Production Market – dedicated to connecting feature film producers and