Taylor Swift has signed an exclusive global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group, after being with Sony/ATV since she first came to Nashville as a young teenager. The switch was widely expected, as it not only puts all of Swift’s future creative output under the Universal banner but reunites the singer with former Sony/ATV Nashville
February 6, 2020 8:15AM PT Madonna has hit out at the London Palladium for abruptly cutting short her live “Madame X” show after she ran over an 11 p.m. curfew on Wednesday. The singer was performing when the Palladium dropped the stage curtain and switched off the sound when she went past the deadline. Madonna
February 6, 2020 8:33AM PT Dead & Company — original Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir, with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti — today announced dates for their month-long Summer Tour 2020. The trek will kick off July 10 and 11 at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado and conclude on August 7 and 8
Disney Plus roared out of the gate, signing up 28.6 million subscribers less than three months after its debut. And despite Disney Plus’ smaller content lineup, about half of Americans said they think the Mouse House service is just as good as category leader Netflix, according to a new survey by consumer-research firm Piplsay. Asked
February 6, 2020 7:45AM PT Pearl Jam will play its smallest show in New York in nearly 14 years when it visits the historic Apollo Theatre in Harlem on March 26, the day before its 11th studio album “Gigaton” will be released on the group’s Monkeywrench label through Republic Records. The event will be broadcast
“CBS This Morning” co-anchor Gayle King took to Twitter to complain about the way CBS News excerpted her recent interview with former WNBA player Lisa Leslie about basketball great Kobe Bryant – a rare display of a major news personality visibly at odds with her network over editorial judgement. In a two-part video posted to
The end of the 2020 Awards Season is upon us! As Hollywood A-listers and executives party all the way up to and through the main event on Sunday night, Variety will be all over town reporting from inside all the biggest A-list bashes and the most intimate gatherings. Keep checking back for all the latest
“Joker” star Joaquin Phoenix has linked with environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion and non-profit organization Amazon Watch for a short film sounding the alarm around deforestation and global wildfires. “Guardians of Life,” which Variety reveals exclusively below, also stars Rosario Dawson, Matthew Modine, Oona Chaplin, Q’orianka Kilcher and musician Albert Hammond Jr of The Strokes
Kirk Douglas will be included in the “in memoriam” section of this year’s Academy Awards. His death on Wednesday at the age of 103 led to an outpouring of tributes across Hollywood. It also resulted in some last minute edits to the “in memoriam” package, which had been completed, but was edited to include the
Van Jones gave the crowd an assignment at the end of Wednesday night’s premiere of the ABC drama series “For Life” at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. “This show cannot fail,” Jones, the activist and CNN host and commentator, said after moderating panel with stars and producers of the show that revolves around the theme
After “Joker” star Joaquin Phoenix took Hollywood to task at the BAFTA Awards over the lack of diversity in this year’s awards season nominees, urging his counterparts to “do the hard work” to dismantle racism, many in the industry immediately took notice, and Cynthia Erivo is no exception. Erivo is nominated in the lead actress
ASCAP today announced the first wave of music creators who will appear at the 2020 ASCAP Experience (which was formerly called the ASCAP “I Create Music” EXPO), taking place April 1 – 3 at the InterContinental Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. ASCAP Chairman of the Board and President Paul Williams leads a lineup of more than 40 different panels stacked with industry talent (89% of whom
U.K. pay-TV broadcaster Sky says its efforts to improve diversity on screen are paying off, but that it has more to do to improve the representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers. In the 12 months to the end of September 2019, BAME representation on screen was 31%, ahead of Sky’s published target
Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique expands their slate for the upcoming Berlin Film Festival with global sales rights on “Last and First Men,” from the late Icelandic-born filmmaker-composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, which will world premiere in the Berlinale Special section. With narration by Tilda Swinton, “Last and First Men” juxtaposes a science-fiction story written in 1930
Twitter reached the $1 billion sales mark in the fourth quarter of 2019 — a company record — and netted more daily active users than Wall Street expected, but higher costs led to a miss on profits. Revenue in Q4 reached $1.01 billion, up 11% and topping analyst forecasts, which reflected “steady progress on revenue
BBC One has signed up for a half-hour Christmas special of “Shaun the Sheep” from stop-motion animation specialists Aardman. “A Winter’s Tale from Shaun the Sheep” (w/t) sees Shaun’s seasonal excitement turn to dismay when a farmhouse raid to get bigger stockings for the Flock inadvertently leads to the disappearance of his cousin Timmy. Originally
The challenges facing U.K. independent producers have been laid bare in a survey that shows that many earn less than £6,000 ($7,800) a year for their film producing work. According to the Producers’ Roundtable survey, 75% of independent film producers who have made one to two feature films earned less than £6,000 a year over
Today the Rolling Stones announced that their “No Filter” tour will return to North America for a 15-city run in 2020. The 2020 tour is set to kick off May 8 at SDCCU Stadium in San Diego and will bring the Stones back to markets they have not played in over a decade, including Vancouver,
Berlin-based sales agent M-appeal has picked up Norwegian children’s film “Sisters: The Summer We Found Our Superpowers,” ahead of the European Film Market in Berlin, where it will screen. The film, an uplifting and empowering story about sisterhood, is directed by Silje Salomonsen and Arild Østin Ommundsen, who are a married couple, and stars their
February 6, 2020 3:35AM PT TrustNordisk has picked up international sales rights to Martin Zandvliet’s next crime-thriller “The Marco Effect” which is based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s bestselling novel by the same name. The screenplay for “The Marco Effect” is written by Anders F. August (“A Fortunate Man”) and was co-written by Thomas Porsager. The film
February 6, 2020 3:47AM PT Construction has begun in Seoul’s Chungmuro district on a complex that will house a museum, film archives and screening rooms. Chungmuro is the old center of Korea’s film industry, akin to Hollywood in Los Angeles, or Soho in London. In recent years, much of the Korean industry has moved to
Sony Pictures Television-backed Eleventh Hour Films has optioned documentary maker Chris Atkins’s prison diaries “A Bit of a Stretch.” The book covers Atkins’s time in notorious U.K. prison HMP Wandsworth – one of Europe’s oldest and largest prisons – where he served a five-year sentence for a tax scheme related to funding one of his
French TV networks M6 and Canal Plus have boarded “Presto! School of Magic,” an animated comedy series produced by TeamTo and based on the popular film delivered by N’Wave Studio. TeamTo is producing the series with Belgian banners Panache and La Compagnie Cinématographique. “Presto! School of Magic” features a band of talented and curious kids who dream
Chinese short video app Bilibili has launched a series of music events for people forced to stay at home in China due to the spread of novel coronavirus. The company has teamed up with the annual Strawberry Music Festival to create the Stay at Home Strawberry concert series, working around the theme of “Hi, I’m
UFA Fiction is partnering with actor-producer Tyron Ricketts and his Berlin-based Panthertainment to produce films and series for the global market focusing on stories from people of color. UFA Fiction producer Nataly Kudiabor (pictured, left) will work with the Austrian-born Ricketts (right), one of Germany’s most successful black actors, on developing and overseeing projects Panthertainment
Representation of women and people of color in feature films has never been better in Hollywood — if it’s on screen. According to a major new study from UCLA’s social sciences division and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, authored by Dr. Darnell Hunt and Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, the film industry’s efforts to
ProSiebenSat.1 is set to announce in the coming weeks whether or not it will sell its transatlantic subsidiary Red Arrow Studios. In September, the German media giant launched a strategic review of the production and distribution division with the aim of selling it or forming a partnership with other potential investors. A final decision had
Beta Cinema has acquired world sales rights outside Israel and Poland for “My Neighbor Adolf,” the new film by Leon Prudovsky (“Five Hours from Paris”), starring David Hayman (“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”) and Udo Kier (“The Painted Bird”). Set in Colombia in the 1960s, the film is centred on Polsky (Hayman), a lonely
February 5, 2020 10:17PM PT Dominique Green, a veteran of both the French and British film industries, has been appointed artistic director of the Dinard Film Festival, a festival in Brittany, northwestern France that showcases films from the U.K. Green’s early career involved distribution, exhibition and festivals and a sting at Virgin Films. Twelve years
Nicki Minaj clearly felt comfortable with the interviewer when she sat for an hour-long Q&A Wednesday as part of the Pollstar Live conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Her interrogator was her manager, Irving Azoff, who she’s just as frank with — and about — now that they’re enjoying a professional partnership as she was