Oprah Winfrey’s interviews with authors of her book club selections will be featured exclusively on Apple’s forthcoming Apple TV Plus service, and she’s announced the first book selection for the project: “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Apple teamed with Winfrey for Apple TV Plus series “Oprah’s Book Club,” premiering Nov. 1 when the service
SAN SEBASTIAN — “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” Italy’s Cesare Pavese wrote memorably in a poem that enchanted Chilean film director José Luis Torres Leiva a decade or so back. Now he delivers a film of that title which world premieres at San Sebastian in main competition and talks about death without,
Grammy winning singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson has announced plans for a special small-venue tour to benefit the Special Forces Foundation, kicking off at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA, on September 29. The limited run of dates comes on the heels of the simultaneous release of his album and Netflix anime film of the same name,
Older audiences still care about going to the movies. That’s the takeaway after Hollywood profited by providing cinephiles of drinking age with compelling content last weekend. Three new nationwide releases — Focus Features’ “Downton Abbey,” Disney-Fox’s “Ad Astra” and Lionsgate’s “Rambo: Last Blood” — catering to these crowds enjoyed a promising start. Most notably, “Downton Abbey,”
September 23, 2019 6:33AM PT As part of Sunday night’s In Memoriam tribute at the 2019 Emmy Awards ceremony, Halsey performed a version of Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 classic “Time After Time,” over a montage of television stars who died over the past year. Introduced by actress Regina King, the singer performed accompanied only by a pianist and honored Katherine
NBCUniversal’s local TV division is taking a new tack to reach younger audiences that don’t tune in to its traditional newscasts. On Monday, NBCU’s 42-station local TV group is launching LX — a digital news brand that will produce original content for online distribution and, in 2020, via a live-streaming internet network and multicast over-the-air
A consortium built by some of the nation’s biggest media outlets to win new kinds of advertising is quickly changing its course. Founded in 2017 by Viacom, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner, OpenAP was initially designed to help marketers figure out ways to buy advertising based on reaching segments of audience that aren’t defined
September 23, 2019 6:00AM PT Vimeo wants to make it easier for companies to find editors and other creatives for their video projects: The company launched a marketplace for video production jobs called “For Hire” Monday that aims to connect video professionals with potential clients. “Every business, brand and agency today faces hurdles in producing
Independent music publisher Big Deal Music Group announced today that they have signed a joint venture deal with Nice Life Copyright Company, the music publishing company founded by Grammy-nominated producer/ writer/ artist Ricky Reed. Under the terms of the agreement, Big Deal will administer songs for Nice Life, and the two companies will join forces
SAN SEBASTIAN — Warner Bros. Pictures Intl. has grabbed near-worldwide distribution rights to “El verano que vivimos,” a romantic melodrama directed by “Fariña” Carlos Sedes and co-produced with Atresmedia Cine, Bambú Producciones and La Claqueta. One of the most awaited local releases of next year, “El verano que vivimos” rolls from August for nine
SAN SEBASTIAN — Sales house The Match Factory is launching exclusively via Variety the trailer of “Patrick,” Gonçalo Waddington’s debut feature, as the film world premieres in the Official Selection at the San Sebastian Festival. Screening in main competition, “Patrick” recounts the story of an eight-year old Portuguese boy, Mario, who is re-discovered years later
iwonder, a VoD platform dedicated to documentaries, has launched in eight countries in Southeast Asia. It is already available in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The service provides access to more than 1,000 documentaries in more than 50 genres, including entertainment, sports, history, politics, science and technology, religion, music, movies, nature, biography and war. Leading
Iwonder, a VoD platform dedicated to documentaries, has launched in eight countries in South East Asia. It is already present in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The service provides access to over 1,000 documentaries in more than 50 genres, including entertainment, sports, history, politics, science and technology, religion, music, movies, nature, biography and war. Leading
Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is scheduled for a China release on Oct. 25, three months after its U.S. debut. The mainland opening will hit after the country’s National Day holiday in the first week of October, which this year marks a key and politically sensitive anniversary — the 70th year of
September 23, 2019 2:30AM PT Will Arnett and Chris Geere will star as the chairman and coach of an English soccer team, respectively, in “The First Team,” a new comedy for the BBC from the producers of “The Inbetweeners.” The series will follow the off-the-field misadventures of three young soccer players played by Shaquille Ali-Yebuah
SAN SEBASTIAN — Barcelona-based boutique studio Filmax has acquired international rights to Argentine producer-director Beda Docampo’s “The Curse of the Handsome Man,” produced by Ibón Cormenzana’s Arcadia Motion Pictures alongside Cados Producciones and Damned Besso –based in Spain—in co-production with Cecilia Díez’s Zarlek Producciones (“Medianeras”) in Argentina. The film is backed by Spanish public broadcaster
SAN SEBASTIAN — Via their BRBR collective, filmmakers Nacho A. Villar and Luis Rojo have directed award winning music videos, and commercias. Now they’ll make the leap to features with “La Mala Familia,” a gritty urban drama set in the outskirts of Madrid. Variety spoke with the film’s producer, Javi Tasio, who developed this project at ECAM’s
SAN SEBASTIAN — Paul Hudson’s Outsider Pictures has acquired world sales rights to“Submergible” (Submerged) a narco capsule-sub-set drama thriller from Ecuador’s Alfredo León León who debuted with an original prisoner-of-war drama, “Open Wound.” Written by Daniela Granja Nuñez and Alfredo León León, “Submerged” is produced out of Ecuador by León León’s Boom en Cuadro and
It was known ahead of time that the Emmy Awards planned to dispense with a traditional orchestra or pit band for the walk-up and bumper music. What wasn’t anticipated was that the music choices were being outsourced to a bar mitzvah DJ in Des Moines. Or, very possibly, it was a local who had found
SAN SEBASTIAN — Director-producer-actress Carmen Chaplin is set to direct “Charlie Chaplin, a Man of the World,” a theatrical documentary feature which will add a hardly-explored new facet to the creator of the Tramp, one of the most iconic cinema characters in popular consciousness, plumbing Chaplin’s Romani roots and heritage. Marking the first time that
September 22, 2019 10:02PM PT The Big 4 broadcast networks put a cap on their worst year in Emmy history on Sunday night. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC brought home just 16 Emmy Awards — the lowest combined total in history for the four major broadcast networks. The previous low was 19 combined wins in
September 22, 2019 9:49PM PT Karamo Brown has doubled down on comments he made about his fellow “Dancing with the Stars” contestant Sean Spicer, in which he promoted the idea of meeting political adversaries “in the middle.” The amicable “Queer Eye” host received criticism when he said he was “most excited to meet” Spicer ahead
September 22, 2019 9:42PM PT Fresh off their Emmy win for outstanding drama series, the “Game of Thrones” cast opened up about their feelings on the series finale and the backlash they had faced from fans. On closing the show after its eight season run, actor Peter Dinklage said he’d had a tough time closing
September 22, 2019 9:11PM PT Billy Porter choked up backstage on Sunday at the Emmy Awards as he spoke about the larger cultural significance of his lead drama actor Emmy win for the FX drama “Pose.” Porter leads the large ensemble on the series set in 1980s New York City during the height of the
As the country inches closer to the 2020 election, Emmy winners on Sunday night used their time in the spotlight to advocate for political causes. Celebrities such as Patricia Arquette, Michelle Williams, and RuPaul Charles all urged activism from viewers while accepting their awards. While accepting her Emmy for her supporting role in Hulu’s “The
The 2019 Emmy telecast effectively began with a speech by a star from the recent past: Bryan Cranston, who recalled watching the moon landing on television, noting that the most famous televised event in history made him feel he could “go anywhere — even Albuquerque.” The reference to the setting of “Breaking Bad,” the past
The 71st annual Primetime Emmy Awards had some truly surprising moments, twists that not even the most experienced prognosticators saw coming, moving tributes and calls to action. It’s just too bad that not a single one of them came courtesy of Fox’s production. The Emmys are, all things considered, a dependably tame awards ceremony. They
Although the HBO series”Game of Thrones” and “Veep” both came to an end this year and therefore were seeing their final chances to be celebrated at the Emmys, the voting members of the Television Academy did not just tick off all the boxes for those two behemoths and call it a night. In fact, far
“When They See Us” star and newly minted Emmy winner Jharrel Jerome was posed a tough question backstage after taking lead actor in a limited series or movie. A reporter asked Jerome why people of color seem to win major awards only for stories that detail their trials and tribulations. “Unfortunately, I think our strongest
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s critically-acclaimed auteur comedy “Fleabag” had only one chance to clean up at the Emmys, and while it didn’t fully sweep comedy categories, it came damn near close. The Amazon Prime Video half-hour took the coveted comedy series category, as well as lead comedy actress (for Waller-Bridge), comedy writing (also for Waller-Bridge) and comedy