Rakuten TV has announced the launch of two new owned and operated FAST channels, bolstering its role as a curated channel programmer in the free ad-supported streaming TV services space. The channels, announced during MipTV’s FAST Summit, will see the growing pan-European video-on-demand streaming service enter the TV series landscape by launching a reality/factual entertainment channel in
New films from Hong Sang-soo and Michel Gondry will world premiere at Directors Fortnight, a selection running parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. This edition marks the first under the leadership of Julien Rejl as artistic director. Succeeding to Paolo Moretti, Rejl was named by the governing body of Directors’ Fortnight, the SRF (Société des réalisateurs
Beta at MipTV has unveiled a visually dazzling first trailer for period drama “La Storia” that will be Italian pubcaster RAI’s biggest event show this year. The sweeping eight-episode saga is based on a globally bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante – whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary
Stormy Daniels becomes a dating show host in Canada’s “For the Love of DILFs,” combining two groups of “internet’s favorite gay archetypes: Himbos and daddies.” Produced by Daddy TV, it premiered in January. “I was brought here by Doctor DILF, a mysterious gay relationship expert, to help these singles find the man of their dreams. I know
Beleaguered multinational cinema operator, Cineworld says that has halted its attempt to sell off its businesses outside the U.S., U.K. and Ireland. This appears to mean that the group will remain intact as it seeks a pathway out of the U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy strictures. “The group received proposals for the [rest of the world]
Netflix has swooped on “Vortex,” the event drama-fantasy series which recently launched on France Televisions and garnered stellar ratings. The limited series will be available on Netflix in 190 countries starting June 2. The mini-series was produced by Quad Drama, the banner behind “Women at War” and “The Bonfire of Destiny” — a pair of highly successful shows
ZDF Studios, the commercial arm of German broadcaster ZDF, is to create the position of director international content partnerships with effect from May 1. The position will be taken by Jeffrey Haverkamp. The core tasks of this position, which has an interface between ZDF Studios and ZDF, will include initiatives to strengthen ZDF’s international programming
CANNES — Two personal stories, one of immigration, another of sheer human decency, won out against some stiff competition at MipTV on Sunday, sharing in a dead heat the Buyers Coup de Coeur at the first MipDoc International Buyer Screenings. A bold experiment, the Screenings saw MipTV allocate he prime market real estate of mid Sunday
As the search for the next “Squid Game” continues, South Korea brought out the big guns at MipTV, introducing several scripted and unscripted offerings. These includes FormatEast’s intergenerational game show “Gganbu Race,” inspired by the Netflix smash hit. “It’s a slang term meaning close friends and companions. Kids would say that when forming teams to
Producer Timur Savci co-heads prolific Turkish shingle Tims & B that a decade ago made “Magnificent Century” the Ottoman costume drama which spearheaded the country’s TV boom. Savci and his team are currently at the MipTV market in Cannes with their new show “Modern Woman” (pictured above) in which a young working woman in Turkey
Television Broadcasts, Hong Kong’s leading free-to-air broadcaster, has said that it is considering legal action against a group of shareholder activists. The shareholder group, seemingly led by Chow Ngai Keung and publishing its critiques on Facebook, has made a series of complaints about TVB. These include the allegation that TVB is operating a streaming app
Jake Gyllenhaal is determined to star in another Broadway musical. “There are so many musicals I love so deeply,” Gyllenhaal, who starred in a revival of “Sunday in the Park With George” with Annaleigh Ashford in 2017, told Variety at the Los Angeles premiere of his new action drama “The Covenant” on Monday evening. “At
Jonathan Majors and his talent manager Entertainment 360 have parted ways, an insider has confirmed to Variety. The development comes three weeks after the “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” actor was arrested on charges of assault and harassment in New York in late March. Majors has also been dropped by his former
Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz are continuing to use their voices to spread awareness about the abuse they suffered throughout their television careers. During Monday’s episode of the “Drama Queens” podcast, the actors were joined by Danneel Ackles to recap the Season 4 finale of “One Tree Hill.” However, the discussion turned
“Beef” star David Choe has come under fire for resurfaced footage from 2014 where he details his own “rapey behavior” toward a massage therapist — but you won’t find the video online so easily now. On Thursday, writers Aura Bogado and Meecham Whitson Meriweather both posted clips from “Erection Quest,” an episode of Choe’s podcast
For the sixth week in a row, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” tops the albums chart at No. 1 and its leading single, “Last Night,” adds a third nonconsecutive week atop the singles chart. In its latest tracking week, “One Thing” (released via Big Loud/Mercury/Republic Records) collected the equivalent of 167,000 album sales
For the second week in a row, “Succession” reached its biggest audience yet. The HBO drama reached 2.6 million viewers on Sunday night, when the fourth episode of its fourth and final season debuted. That’s an improvement of 4% from Episode 3, which featured a shocking death and brought in a then-series high of 2.5
The TV Academy has a problem with Jon Stewart’s Emmys submission and has forced a change. Apple TV+ and the creative teams behind “The Problem With Jon Stewart” had plans to compete in the outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special category, where its first season received an Emmy nomination last year. However, the Television Academy
Artists spend months rehearsing for — and years dreaming about — headlining the Coachella festival, the biggest in North America. So the fact that Frank Ocean’s festival-closing performance — his first in nearly six years — was so shambolic left many concertgoers distressed, depressed, annoyed and other similar emotions (and left exponentially more people feeling similar kinds
Judy Blume is having a major moment. Not only did Prime Video just release a documentary about her life, “Judy Blume Forever,” but Hulu recently also announced it’s turning her book, “Summer Sisters,” into a limited series. And on April 28, a film adaptation of “Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret?” will be in
In 2014, Argentine writer-director Damian Szifron made a considerable splash with “Wild Tales.” The Oscar-nominated, Almodóvar-produced feature consisted of six escalatingly over-the-top stories that put a blackly comic slant on human behaviors at their worst, adding up to a flamboyantly enjoyable whole. It’s surprising that it’s taken him nearly a decade to deliver his next
ABC’s “The Rookie” will be returning for a sixth season where it’s expected to hit its 100th episode milestone, the network announced on Monday. The procedural follows John Nolan (Nathan Fillion), the oldest rookie in the LAPD, who uses his life experience, determination and sense of humor to keep up with rookies 20 years his
Mischa Barton will appear in the new season of “Neighbours” coming to Amazon Freevee. Barton will guest star in the upcoming season of the long-running Australian soap opera, which was picked up by Freevee back in November. According to her official character description, Barton will play Reece, “an American new to Erinsborough who’s not quite
Sister co-founder and chief creative officer Jane Featherstone spoke about how difficult it is to back original IP – as opposed to the relentless stream of reboots and spin-offs – in the current climate. “We have to hold our nerve,” Featherstone said. “As producers, we have to try and [walk] that tightrope of kind of
Bill Hader insists he never had any long range plans for “Barry’s” storylines. At the Los Angeles premiere of the HBO series’ fourth and final season on Sunday, Hader told Variety when he first began the process of developing and pitching “Barry” seven years ago, he had “no idea where the series was going to
There’s no question that the most-talked-about performance of Coachella weekend one was Frank Ocean’s festival-closing, wildly uneven set. But that’s unfortunate seeing as the desert gathering, often seen as a state-of-pop-music coming out party, had an enormous amount of interesting and often great stories and sets over the course of three days. The biggest takeaway,
“Killers of the Flower Moon” author David Grann recently told Vanity Fair that he is “pretty overwhelmed” that his 2017 non-fiction book, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” has been adapted into Martin Scorsese’s latest epic. The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, is set
“Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” is the most-watched program out of all ABC News launches to ever debut on Hulu, Variety has learned exclusively. According to ABC News, “Pretty Baby” ranks No. 1 in total hours streamed in its first week compared to all previous ABC News premieres on the streamer. Specific viewership data was not
“That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson is back on trial again. The new trial began on Monday morning with jury selection in downtown Los Angeles, after the jury in Masterson’s first trial last year failed to reach an unanimous verdict, stating they were “hopelessly deadlocked.” With a hung jury, a mistrial was declared in November
Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) has tapped Lori Christian and Rob Femia to join its executive board. Christian has been upped to executive VP of marketing, while Femia has been named executive VP of business and legal affairs for the label group consisting of Capitol Records Nashville, EMI Records Nashville, Mercury Nashville, and MCA Nashville.