In this week’s International TV Newswire, Amazon announces a raft of international original programming, the European Animation Awards (Emile Awards) get postponed, Fremantle picks up two new executives, Viacom announces an English-language adaptation of Argentine hit “100 Days to Fall in Love,” and ITV and Alchemy Entertainment sign a first look deal. Amazon’s Big International Week In
MADRID — Marking its eighth quarter of consecutive growth in pay TV clients, Movistar Plus, the pay TV/SVOD division of Telefonica, Europe’s third-biggest telecom, punched 11,300 net additions in customers from April to June. The figure is 49% up year-on-year in terms of net adds, and takes Movistar’s total pay TV sub count in Spain
Twitter’s changes to make the social net easier to use — and efforts to clean up the platform by curbing spam, harassment and other malicious activity — appear to working as CEO Jack Dorsey expected: Twitter grew its daily user base in Q2 at its fastest rate in nearly two years, boosted the top line
July 26, 2019 3:00AM PT Google has teamed up with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to give 100,000 Google Home Mini smart speakers to people living with paralysis and their caregivers, the company announced Friday morning. Eligible U.S. residents can apply on the website of the foundation. The commitment comes as Google is increasingly
Vivendi saw its half-year revenues rise by 13.6% to €7.3 billion ($8.1 billion) during the first six months of 2019, bolstered by the continued growth of Universal Music Group (UMG), which helped offset the losses at Canal Plus Group. Canal Plus, whose subscriber base in mainland France had been going down, is preparing to downsize
Vivendi saw its half-year revenues rise by 13.6% to €7.3 billion ($8.1 billion) during the first half of 2019, bolstered by the continued growth of Universal Music Group (UMG) which helped offset the losses at Canal Plus Group. Canal Plus, whose subscriber base in mainland France had been going down, is preparing to downsize its
July 26, 2019 1:36AM PT A censor working in a Turkish prison becomes obsessed with an inmate’s mysterious wife in this capable, low-key thriller debut. In Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” Gene Hackman played a surveillance expert who insists that curiosity is beyond the purview of his job, only to become obsessed with the mystery
Borne on the back of a juvenile performance of remarkable intelligence and spontaneity, Vardis Marinakis’ fine-boned “Zizotek” has an uncanny shimmer to its storytelling: It slips unnoticed from genre to genre like a quiet child moving between rooms trying not to disturb the adults. Starting out as a family drama of parental neglect and abandonment,
MADRID — Rolling off their partnership on “While at War,” one of the biggest and highest-profile Spanish movies of 2019, Academy Award winning director Alejandro Amenábar (“The Others,” “The Sea Inside”) is now teaming with Movistar +, the pay TV division of Spain’s Telefonica, on the development of a drama series, inspired by the Spanish
“Queer Japan,” a documentary about the LGBTQ community as it exists today in Tokyo and several smaller (but still major) Japanese cities, is a movie that makes you realize that liberation movements have become more global, in spirit and in fact, than anyone might have expected. The director, Graham Kolbeins (who also co-shot and edited
John Fogerty has become the first artist signed to perform at Woodstock 50 to publicly pull out, now that organizers are planning to hold the festival at conventionsk amphitheater in Maryland instead of the huge, originally scheduled site in New York. ”John Fogerty knows where he will be for the anniversary weekend of Woodstock,” his
“Thor: Love and Thunder,” the fourth part of Marvel’s superhero franchise, will shoot in the Disney-owned Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. The film is set to receive more than $16.7 million (A$24.1 million) in subsidies from the Australian federal government and the New South Wales state government. The announcement, made Friday by NSW minister for
July 25, 2019 8:14PM PT Fans remember”Fast Times at Ridgemont High” for its raunchy humor, loaded soundtrack and clever storyline, but an underlying subplot involving underage sex and abortion often flies under the radar — and that might be a good thing. According to screenwriter Cameron Crowe, the film’s abortion side-story wouldn’t hold up with
Veteran script supervisor Karen Golden, best known for her work on “Transformers,” died Tuesday after a seven year battle with Alzheimer’s. She was 78. Golden spent her career working alongside a long list of major film directors, including Michael Bay, John Huston and Ron Shelton. She collaborated with Bay on scripts for “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor,”
Nickelodeon’s new competition series, “America’s Most Musical Family,” which was announced in February, has revealed its judges lineup and recording partner. Ciara, who serves as executive producer, will be joined by singer Debbie Gibson and YouTube star David Dobrik on the panel. Nick Lachey, of the group 98°, hosts the show. The 12-episode series will
July 25, 2019 6:33PM PT This debut feature by Chinese stop-motion animator Shengwei Zhou is as accomplished and inventive as it is conceptually bizarre. The recent demise of American animator Suzan Pitt reminded many that there had been nothing quite like her relatively few screen works — particularly 1979’s “Asparagus.” That 20-minute riot of ominously
In today’s film news roundup, Bill Pullman, Eddie Izzard, Diplo and Nina Dobrov get cast and Treehouse Pictures is developing John Grisham’s “The Confession” as a movie; Uzo Adaba’s “Miss Virginia” gets sold. CASTINGS Bill Pullman, Eddie Izzard and Diplo have joined the cast of the Focus Features comedy “Covers” opposite Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis
July 25, 2019 6:00PM PT The luscious 2001 movie hit makes it successfully to the stage — elephant and all — in this gorgeously flashy version. If they didn’t do “Lady Marmalade,” I was going to storm the stage. Happily, director Alex Timbers and writer John Logan were savvy enough to open their Broadway adaptation
July 25, 2019 6:00PM PT Could this rags-to-riches Cinderella story about an abused single mom and a troubled athlete be the best-worst movie of the year? Good bad movies are hard to come by, but thank goodness for director David Mahmoudieh’s “See You Soon.” He and co-writer, co-producer and leading lady Jenia Tanaeva have crafted
Mike Biggane, Spotify’s global head of curation strategy, is leaving the company for a new position at Universal Music Group, sources tell Variety. Among the music streaming giant’s top executives, he follows the recently reported departure of Spotify’s chief economist Will Page, who will stay on as a consultant while writing a book. News of
While vampires and zombies are evergreen horror movie favorites, the motion picture arts have not been particularly kind to that bush-league cousin, the killer tree-spirit. Two of the better-known among relatively few examples are esteemed by bad movie aficionados: There was 1957’s drive-in special “From Hell It Came,” in which an actor lumbering around in
TMZ President Trump is sticking up for A$AP Rocky by dressing down the Swedish Prime Minister … the Prez says he’s very disappointed Sweden’s leader didn’t step in to help A$AP skirt an assault charge. POTUS just went on a Twitter tantrum against the European nation and its government … demanding the Swedes give A$AP
Ryan Murphy has politics on the brain. Not only is he getting ready to see the launch of his new Netflix series “The Politician” in September, but he’s keeping an eye on the 2020 election. He’s already hosted a fundraiser at his home for Sen. Kamala Harris. “My dream ticket would be Kamala Harris and
It was only a matter of time before Netflix’s days of renewing everything came to an end. As much as the streaming platform keeps expanding, it’s also keeping a keener eye on its overall programming, making cuts even when it goes out of its way to profess that the decisions are more difficult than we
July 25, 2019 4:22PM PT Live Nation Entertainment revealed earnings for a strong second quarter. Among the highlights: revenue was up 10% for the quarter to $3.2 billion; AOI increased 23% to $319 million and earnings per share climbed 68% to $0.41. Key in today’s report is what the company calls a “strong tailwind in
July 25, 2019 4:15PM PT “ER” producer Neal Baer is among the creatives teaming with Endemol Shine North America’s Authentic Entertainment on a new unscripted series entitled “The Mystery of the 1957 Gay Wedding Photos.” The series investigates a collection of photos which are among the first to document a gay wedding in the U.S.,
In today’s roundup, NBC sets premiere date for new late night series “A Little Late with Lilly Singh,” and Netflix’s “Orange Is The New Black” launches a new initiative supporting eight non-profit organizations. CASTING Xosha Roquemore and Alano Miller have been cast as the lead couple, Gently James and Evan Fisher, in the new OWN
July 25, 2019 3:37PM PT In another victory for the Writers Guild of America, the Buchwald Talent Agency has signed the WGA’s three-month-old Code of Conduct that allows the agency to represent WGA members. It’s the third mid-sized Hollywood agency that’s agreed to abide by the terms of the new rules following Verve and Kaplan
Amazon is a major player in the streaming-video wars, but its Q2 results show where its priorities lie: getting people to buy more stuff and delivering that faster. The e-commerce giant missed its profit target for the second quarter of 2019, with higher-than-expected costs for the company’s move to offer one-day shipping through its Prime
July 25, 2019 2:51PM PT Mark Gordon is officially moving on from his role as Entertainment One’s president and chief content officer of film and television in the wake of a conflict with the group. Instead, he is shifting his efforts to developing and producing content for the British-Canadian indie as part of a multi-year