The Supreme Court tossed out a suit filed by the attorney general of Texas and backed by President Donald Trump that sought to throw out the results of the election in four states that went for Joe Biden. The court ruled that the state of Texas “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts […]
Read more
Paramount Television Studios has locked Michael Douglas and Christoph Waltz for Reagan & Gorbachev, a limited series that James Foley will direct. Douglas will play President Ronald Reagan, and Waltz will play Mikhail Gorbachev, in a series that B. Garida adapted from the Ken Adelman’s book Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War. Adelman was Reagan’s arms control director. The package is coming together […]
Read more
Time magazine has named President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as its 2020 Person of the Year. The title reflects the ability of the chosen individual to “affect the news or our lives, for better or worse,” as the magazine describes. Upon the winning the honor Thursday, Biden and Harris simply said, “Thank you for […]
Read more
Showtime is moving forward with its comedy from the Safdie brothers. The premium cable network has tapped Emma Stone to star in The Curse, which has now been formally ordered to series. Picked up to pilot in February, the comedy from the Uncut Gems duo is described as a genre-bending scripted comedy that explores how an alleged curse disturbs […]
Read more
NBC is developing Zorro, a contemporary take on the classic masked vigilante character with a gender swap. It comes from a high-profile creative team, which includes filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, writer-director Rebecca Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara and her LatinWe, as well as Ben Siverman and Howard T. Owens’ Propagate. CBS Studios, where Propagate has a deal, will co-produce with Universal TV. Co-written by […]
Read more
Jessica Simpson is getting into business with Amazon. The singer, actress, fashion mogul and author has signed a multimedia rights deal with the tech and retail giant that includes a pair of TV projects at Amazon Studios as well as a publishing component. The two TV shows, one unscripted and one scripted, are based on […]
Read more
The Academy Awards have announced producers for the upcoming 93rd ceremony. Emmy nominee Jesse Collins (“Zoboomafoo”), Oscar nominee Stacey Sher (“Django Unchained” and “Erin Brockovich”) and Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh (best director for 2000’s “Traffic”) will produce the upcoming show, which is scheduled to air on Sunday, April 25. This is the trio’s first time producing the annual Oscars telecast. “The upcoming Oscars […]
Read more
Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment is putting down roots at Amazon. The 6-year-old company behind such projects as I, Tonya; Birds of Prey; and Hulu’s Dollface has inked a first-look television deal with the streaming service. The news comes as the company, previously housed at Warner Bros., is already in production on TV series elsewhere, including Netflix’s Margaret Qualley-fronted dramedy Maid and the […]
Read more
Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli’s daughter Olivia Jade is finally discussing her experience being caught in the middle of the college admissions scandal. Jade, 21, sat down with Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith for Tuesday’s episode of “Red Table Talk.” She explained her decision to participate in the show in a promo clip on Instagram, saying, […]
Read more
The song-catalog bonanza of 2020 just hit a peak that is not likely to be topped: Universal Music Publishing Group has acquired Bob Dylan’s entire catalog of songs in a blockbuster agreement encompassing more than 600 copyrights spanning 60 years, ranging from 1962’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” to this year’s “Murder Most Foul.” His catalog was previously administered in the […]
Read more
David L. Lander, who played Andrew “Squiggy” Squiggman for all eight seasons of the popular ABC sitcom Laverne & Shirley, has died. He was 73. Lander died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from multiple sclerosis, his wife, Kathy Fields, told TMZ. The actor was diagnosed with the disease in May 1984 but kept it a […]
Read more
A regional state stay-at-home order will go into effect for Southern California and San Joaquin Valley at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday amid rising COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. State officials confirmed the order with The Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press on Saturday afternoon. The California Department of Public Health reported on Friday that ICU capacity dropped to 13.1 […]
Read more
Apple TV+ is banking on some gutsy women. In a competitive situation, the streaming service has ordered a straight-to-series order for an event docuseries from Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea Clinton based on their best-selling book, The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. The Clinton women will host and exec produce […]
Read more
Warner Bros. is plotting a sweeping response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has shuttered movie theaters around the country. After announcing that Wonder Woman 1984 will go to HBO Max as well as theaters Dec. 25, the studio has laid out a similar path for its 2021 slate amid uncertainty about when moviegoing will get back to normal. […]
Read more
David Sheehan, one of the most prominent entertainment journalists and critics in the Los Angeles TV news arena for more than 30 years, has died. He was 82. Sheehan died Tuesday at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center from complications of a stroke he suffered last week. “I worked with him the day before he went […]
Read more
Election month was big for all three major cable news networks, but CNN saw the most record-breaking growth. Compared to last November, CNN’s total viewership grew 135% and its viewership in the key demo grew 209%, according to Nielsen Media Research ratings data. Overall, says the network, it broke all of its previous viewership records. […]
Read more
Julianna Margulies has joined the cast of “The Morning Show” Season 2, Variety has learned exclusively. She will play Laura Peterson, an anchor at UBA News. She joins returning series stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as well as Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Bel Powley, Karen Puttman, and Desean Terry. It was also previously […]
Read more
There will be no “virtual” Oscars. “The Oscars in-person telecast will happen,” a rep from the Academy and ABC tells Variety exclusively. This year, the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences moved their annual telecast back two months to April 25, 2021, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sources inside the Oscars say that by pushing the […]
Read more
Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump will follow her bestselling exposé of her dysfunctional family life with a new book on “America’s national trauma”, her publisher has announced. The Reckoning will be published by St Martin’s Press in July 2021. According to St Martin’s, it “will examine America’s national trauma, rooted in our history but dramatically exacerbated by […]
Read more
Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would fuel an overturning of the presidential election to Joe Biden. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said in an interview with the Associated […]
Read more
Elliot Page, the Oscar-nominated actor who has starred in Juno and The Umbrella Academy, has announced he is transgender. Page, formerly known as Ellen Page, shared the news on social media, expressing “overwhelming gratitude” for those who have supported him. “Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. […]
Read more
As previously announced, the Quibi app as of Tuesday (Dec. 1) is no longer operable — marking the quick and quiet end of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ill-fated $1.75 billion quest to carve out a new corner of the subscription streaming-video market. The Quibi app will remain on users’ devices until they delete it. However, the app no longer allows users […]
Read more
Abby Dalton, the bubbly actress who starred on the 1960s sitcoms Hennesey and The Joey Bishop Show before portraying the scheming winery heiress Julia Cumson on the primetime soap Falcon Crest, has died. She was 88. Dalton died Nov. 23 in Los Angeles after a long illness, her family announced. Dalton began her career appearing in several Roger Corman movies, […]
Read more
The conservative editorial magazine The National Review Monday denounced Donald Trump’s “petulant refusal” to accept the results of the presidential election and his continued spread of election disinformation as being “disgraceful.” “There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes (some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take […]
Read more
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced on Monday that he’ll step down from his post on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, even though his current term isn’t set to end until July. Pai was tapped to lead the FCC in January 2017 and was first appointed as a commissioner by President Barack Obama in 2012. President-elect Joe Biden has […]
Read more