December 4, 2018 7:37AM PT Live entertainment company LiveXLive wants to make streams of big concerts about a lot more than just the gigs: The Santa Monica-based company is getting ready to unveil a new show format dubbed “LiveZone” at the upcoming Rolling Loud Festival in Los Angeles later this month that will include artist
December 4, 2018 7:10AM PT Rapper/entrepreneur Pitbull today announced his partnership with music-finance firm Sound Royalties and its founder Alex Heiche. The company’s stated goal is to help artists advance their careers while retaining ownership of their creative works by advancing performance royalties paid through labels, Sound Exchange, as well as songwriter royalties paid through
December 4, 2018 7:00AM PT Get ready to enter the world of “Mission Impossible,” thanks to virtual reality: VR game developer VRWERX has partnered with location-based VR startup Nomadic as well as Paramount on a new “Mission Impossible” VR experience custom-made for VR centers. The experience will allow consumers to explore the world of the
Peter Hedges didn’t write the role of Ben Burns, a 19-year-old recovering drug addict in “Ben Is Back,” for his Oscar-nominated son Lucas Hedges. It was actually Julia Roberts who nudged Lucas Hedges to consider portraying her on-screen offspring in the emotional drama about a mother who attempts to help her son after he returns
Most CEOs might not pepper their conversation with adjectives like “dope” and “fire,” but most CEOs aren’t like Jonny Shipes, who is at the helm of the rising independent hip-hop label Cinematic Music Group. Shipes tells Variety that what “turned this sh– around” was discovering Sean Kingston, who after signing with CMG in its founding year
Charlie Corwin, the former head of Imagine Entertainment, will help Uproxx as it dives more deeply into the television and film space. The veteran executive is the first appointment to Uproxx’s advisory board. Ultimately, there will be four or five people on the board. “The idea is that this will be a very active board
Reddit, the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, is now serving up more than 1.4 billion native video views per month. Reddit released the new data point Tuesday as part of a a 2018 year in review report, which also highlighted continued growth in the site’s popular crowd-sourced “ask me anything” interview format. The social
As someone who loves acting so much he “would do this for free,” Mahershala Ali yearned to explore deeper aspects of his work with press and audiences. “There’s only so much bandwidth in an interview, only so much space. Forty percent of my interview is usually around things of diversity or color,” he says. “You
Melissa McCarthy and Lupita Nyong’o sat down for a chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors. For more, click here. Melissa McCarthy is best known for creating outsize comedic characters, but this year she took on a dramatic role in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” Marielle Heller’s story of a forger desperately holding onto her place in a
Fox Digital Studio, Heavy Metal Media and 4th Row Films are in development on a documentary feature film about the sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal with director Douglas Tirola attached. Tirola has directed six feature documentaries including A&E IndieFilms’ “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead” about the story of the National Lampoon, and “Brewmaster,” which had its
Mahershala Ali and John David Washington sat down for a chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors. For more, click here. Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”) and John David Washington (“BlacKkKlansman”) have catapulted into the awards season conversation with two searing films about race in America. Both movies are based on true stories. Ali, who won the supporting actor
Timothee Chalamet says earlier in his career, he felt like a “fraud.” When he attended a screening of Christopher Nolan’s film “Interstellar,” he was among famous co-stars like Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and John Lithgow. “And I really had no career at this point, so I was the fraud a little bit, in the room,”
Mahershala Ali toplines the upcoming third season of HBO’s “True Detective,” but he was originally only offered a supporting role as the lead actor was supposed to be white. Ali told John David Washington during Variety‘s Actors on Actors series that he had to convince show creator Nic Pizzolatto that he was the right choice for
Lady Gaga and Lin-Manuel Miranda sat down for a chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors. For more, click here. Few artists have been decorated as frequently as Lin-Manuel Miranda. The impresario has won a Pulitzer and shared a Kennedy Center Honors designation for the stage bombshell “Hamilton”; he’s also won an Emmy, three Tonys and three Grammys.
December 4, 2018 6:00AM PT Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s iconic parking lot scene may have popularized their hit song “Shallow,” but Gaga said it’s even more important for simply showing a man listening to what a woman has to say. “This is a conversation between a man and a woman, and he actually listens
Yang Weidong, president of Alibaba’s video-streaming platform, Youku, has been fired and is under police investigation for corruption, the company confirmed Tuesday. Alibaba Pictures chairman and CEO Fan Luyuan will take over running China’s equivalent of YouTube, while also continuing in his current capacity. Yang, who also served as head of Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment
Bestselling South African author Deon Meyer’s “Trackers” is being adapted for TV after African pay-TV heavyweight Multichoice teamed with German pubcaster ZDF to bring the thriller to the small screen. “Trackers” interweaves three story strands into a thriller spanning the length and breadth of South Africa and involving organized crime, smuggled diamonds, state security, black
December 4, 2018 3:27AM PT Some hot production companies are getting “Dirty” for Amazon. Sharon Horgan’s Merman and “Peaky Blinders” producer Caryn Mandabach Productions are developing gritty drama “Dirty” for Amazon Studios alongside Kapital Entertainment. In-demand writer Danny Brocklehurst (“Safe”) will pen and exec produce the series, which promises to be a “funny, filthy, brutally
December 4, 2018 3:04AM PT BAFTA’s annual Film Awards have shifted to an earlier date in 2020 to stay in their usual slot ahead of the Academy Awards. The BAFTA ceremony will be held Sunday, Feb. 2, 2020, one week before the Oscars, which themselves were moved up a few months ago from Feb. 23,
Simone Baumann has been chosen to take over as managing director of movie promotion agency German Films, replacing Mariette Rissenbeek, who has been appointed as executive director of the Berlin Film Festival. Baumann, who starts her new role Feb. 1, has been German Films’ representative in Central and Eastern Europe since 2003; she is also
T.I. ‘Madman’ Trump Making World Laugh At Us 12/4/2018 12:50 AM PST EXCLUSIVE T.I. is doubling down on his hatred of President Trump, but it’s not personal … instead, Tip’s concerned the “madman” is turning the U.S.A. into an international laughingstock. T.I. sat down with our Raquel Harper for Tuesday’s episode of “Raq Rants” on BET, and
Chris Darden Kareem Hunt Should Be Arrested ‘Open-and-Shut Case’ 12/4/2018 12:20 AM PST EXCLUSIVE There’s no reason Kareem Hunt shouldn’t be arrested and charged with battery for attacking that woman back in February … so says famed prosecutor Christopher Darden. “I would have filed battery charges against him,” Darden tells TMZ Sports … saying
It took a long journey before Egyptian-Austrian director Abu Bakr Shawky managed to bring his unconventional road movie “Yomeddine,” which is Egypt’s candidate for the foreign-language Oscar, to the big screen. This ultimately uplifting drama in which a middle-aged man raised in a leper colony embarks with a sidekick and a donkey on a journey
Camila Cabello’s ‘Havana,’ ‘Never Be the Same’ Reach New Milestone – Variety You will be redirected back to your article in seconds December 3, 2018 10:12PM PT It wasn’t all about the PDA between Cardi B. and Offset at the Los Angeles leg of the KIIS-FM Jingle Ball tour on Friday. Love was also in
Iconic New Zealand film maker, Geoff Murphy, known for “The Quiet Earth” and work on “Dante’s Peak,” has died. He was 80. Murphy’s death on Monday was confirmed by the New Zealand Film Commission. The organization called him “one of the leading figures in New Zealand cinema’s renaissance of the late 1970s and 1980s.” A
December 3, 2018 9:28PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by the TV advertising attention analytics company iSpot.tv, Paramount Pictures claims the top spot in spending with “Bumblebee.” Ads placed for the sci-fi/action film had an estimated media value of $8.03 million through Sunday for 819 national ad airings
December 3, 2018 9:10PM PT Since Drake shattered virtually every streaming record with his “Scorpion” album, released in June, it’s no surprise that his 8.2 billion streams in 2018 make him not only Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the year, he’s the platform’s most-streamed artist of all time. “Scorpion” and its song “God’s Plan” also were
December 3, 2018 9:05PM PT Apple Music today unveiled its most-streamed songs and albums of 2018 — and not surprisingly, Drake was at the top of both lists (and had 3 of the Top 5 songs). Just an unsurprisingly, both lists are dominated by hip-hop, pop and R&B. The company also included its editorial selections
Check out the official Captain Marvel trailer starring Brie Larson! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Buy Tickets to Captain Marvel: https://www.fandango.com/captain-marvel-2019-188283/movie-overview?cmp=MCYT_YouTube_Desc US Release Date: March 8, 2019 Starring: Gemma Chan, Brie Larson, Lee Pace Directed By: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck Synopsis: Carol Danvers becomes one of the universe’s most
Japan’s Nippon Television Network has sold the scripted format rights to its one-hour drama series “Abandoned” to leading Thai production house JSL Global Media. The deal is the first time that a Nippon TV scripted format is being adapted in Southeast Asia. It is also the first format deal for “Abandoned.” “Abandoned” is a touching drama seen