July 29, 2019 10:01AM PT Cristin Milioti has been cast in the lead role of the HBO Max comedy series “Made for Love,” Variety has learned. The series is based on the novel of the same name by Alissa Nutting. Milioti will play Hazel Green, a woman who escapes her marriage to Byron Gogol, a sociopathic-trending
Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV. Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, “Jane the Virgin” comes to an end after five season on The CW,
PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger has signed a 5-year contract extension with the company. Kerger made the announcement at the network’s summer Television Critics Association press tour. She has been in the role since 2006 and represents the longest-running PBS president in the broadcaster’s history. “You always wrestle with the question how long is
Exclusive TMZ/Getty Composite Wendy Williams is not backing down from Bow Wow … sources close to her say his recent body-shaming attempt won’t stop her from defending Ciara, or from trashing him in the future. Bow Wow and Wendy have been exchanging insults ever since he dissed Ciara at a performance earlier this month, telling
July 29, 2019 9:51AM PT Chance the Rapper today announced dates for his North American tour in support of his just-released new album, “The Big Day.” The 35-date tour launches Sept. 14 in San Francisco and wraps Nov. 10 in Miami, Fla. — the itinerary appears in full below; special guests will be announced soon.
July 29, 2019 9:20AM PT ByteDance, the company behind the hugely popular TikTok app, is working on its own phone. A ByteDance representative confirmed the company’s plans for a mobile phone in a conversation with Reuters, explaining that ByteDance got its hands on the talent required to build the device through a deal with Smartisan,
“The Irishman” will, it turns out, be ready in time to world premiere as the opening night film of the 57th New York Film Festival. Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating crime drama, which relies on special effects to “de-age” stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, has long eyed the coveted slot. After all, Scorsese is perhaps
The young adult series “Trinkets” has been renewed for a second and final season at Netflix. Season 2 will consist of ten 30-minute episodes and will be showrun by Sarah Goldfinger. “Trinkets” centers around three teenage girls from different corners of the high school cafeteria who find themselves in the same mandated Shoplifter’s Anonymous meeting
Blackbird Presents, Keith Wortman and the Raine Group today announced the appointment of legendary music publishing executive Lance Freed as President of the newly formed Blackbird Music Publishing Group. The company will have offices in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville. The company also announced that it has acquired the administration rights to the music catalog of Burt Bacharach. With over
“Easy Rider” wasn’t born to be live, necessarily, but it will be, now, with a combination of screening and live performance set to take place at Radio City Music Hall Sept. 20. The film’s key original soundtrack artists, John Kay of Steppenwolf and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, are on board to reprise their songs
Matteo Bocelli, the 21-year-old son of opera singer Andrea Bocelli, has signed with Capitol Records, home to Katy Perry, Sam Smith and Halsey, among many others. The younger Bocelli joined his father on the 2018 album, “Si,” released by Decca, for the moving duet “Fall on Me” (“Ven a Mi” in Italian), which has racked
Mott the Hoople’s spring reunion tour, their first in America in 45 years, brought joy to many fans in the U.S — and heartbreak to a lot more, as the group only played a handful of cities, concentrated mainly in the Northeast. Frontman Ian Hunter had indicated that might well be it for the reconstituted
Epic Games’s first Fortnite World Cup Finals pulled in a live-streaming audience of more than 2 million concurrent viewers on Sunday who watched a 16-year-old wunderkind win the $3 million solo grand prize — the largest cash payout for an individual esports champ. The winner: 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, aka “Bugha,” a Fortnite player from Pennsylvania
“Sherlock Holmes 3,” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, has been selected by the California Film Commission to receive a conditional $20.8 million tax credit for shooting in California. Other feature films announced Monday include a Warner Bros. remake of “Little Shop of Horrors” with a $9.6 million credit; Will Smith’s “King Richard” with
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the final season of “Orange is the New Black,” streaming now on Netflix. For six seasons “Orange is the New Black” acclimated viewers to life inside a detention center. First it was the minimum security fictional Litchfield Correctional Institution, then it was a maximum
The average age of the top touring performers is 52.6 years old, Tim Ingham revealed in a Rolling Stone column last week. His data is based on Pollstar’s midyear tally of the 100 highest grossing acts in the world. Led by 72-year-old Elton John, who grossed $82.6 million between Nov. 22 2018 and May 22
Donald Trump attacked Al Sharpton as a “con man” who “hates whites & cops” shortly before the MSNBC host and civil rights activist is scheduled to hold a press conference Monday to criticize the president’s recent remarks about Baltimore. “Al Sharpton would always ask me to go to his events,” Trump wrote in early morning
With the 2019 edition of the Tour de France having drawn to a close, the first image of “The Racer,” a film set during the notorious 1998 edition of the iconic bike race, has been released. The real-life Tour de France was tainted by doping scandals in 1998, subsequently earning the nickname the Tour de
July 29, 2019 2:06AM PT Benedict Cumberbatch will lend his voice to “The Tiger Who Came to Tea,” the animated adaptation of Judith Kerr’s classic children’s book for Channel 4 in the U.K. The “Avengers: Endgame” star will be joined by Tamsin Greig, David Oyelowo, David Walliams, and Paul Whitehouse in the Lupus Films-produced movie,
Chinese animation “Nezha” broke local records with its $91.5 million opening, the highest ever for an animated film in the Middle Kingdom. The amount also made it the second-highest-grossing film of any kind in the world over the weekend, trailing only “The Lion King,” though it will quickly overtake the Disney title in China. An
Netflix and Amazon Web Services are among the newest members of the Academy Software Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting the use of open source software in Hollywood that is being spearheaded by the Linux Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The foundation also announced Monday that it now stewards the
The National Basketball Association and China’s Tencent Holdings have announced a five-year extension of their existing partnership, which sees Tencent as the NBA’s official digital partner. The new deal runs to the end of the 2024-25 season and covers live NBA games, NBA programming and interactive fan experiences. Under the new deal, live NBA games,
Dora the Explorer was seven years old when audiences met her on television, a sing-songy polymath who traveled the map seeking answers and solving puzzles, accompanied by a big-mouthed backpack and equally loquacious monkey, Boots. Nearly 20 years have passed since the adventure show first aired (enough to cultivate a massive global awareness), but only
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” this year’s Palme d’Or winner, was cancelled from screening Sunday as the closing film for China’s FIRST Film Festival for “technical reasons,” making it the fifth festival film to run into trouble with Chinese censors this year. “Parasite” is a violent, dark comedy about class conflict and greed that
MADRID — Marking a milestone move in its drive into content creation, already seen in France, French telecom Orange is teaming with The Mediapro Studio on Orange’s first original scripted series in Spain, which will be aired on Orange TV. Developed by Madrid-based 100 Balas (“Vota Juan”), owned by The Mediapro Studio, the still-to-be titled
“There’s so much to see and do in Arous,” read the brochure for a Sudanese vacation spot where visitors could go scuba diving amid reefs “made famous by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Hans Hass.” Never mind that Sudan was in a state of civil war and no place for tourists in the early 1980s. European tourists
U.S. financier Colony Capital may be in negotiations to buy a minority share stake in Legendary Entertainment. The Hollywood production company behind “Godzilla” and “Pacific Rim” is owned by China’s Wanda group. Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Colony had held talks with Wanda. It reported that Colony may use a new fund, Colony Media Partners
Exclusive Pro boxer Jose Benavidez was arrested this weekend for alleged street racing in Arizona. Benavidez — who fights as a welterweight — was busted Saturday night in Maricopa County, where he was taken in and booked for one count of misdemeanor racing/exhibition of speed and one count of driving with a suspended or revoked
Richard A. Fox, a theater owner who founded the Fox Theater chain and a former president of NATO, died Wednesday. He was 90. After founding Fox Theaters in 1957, Fox spent more than three decades growing his company, eventually expanding to twenty-five locations with more than one-hundred screens and over 1000 employees. At its peak,
(Warning: This column contains major spoilers about the ending of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” Read at your own risk.) I want to talk about the ending of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” starting around the moment the Manson family shows up on Cielo Drive, and…well, okay, we’ll get into it in a bit. So