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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Felicity Huffman is returning to acting — and to ABC — with a single-camera comedy that has landed a big pilot production commitment at the network. The Peanut Butter Falcon‘s Zack Gottsagen co-stars in the project from Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment. Written by Becky Hartman Edwards, the untitled comedy is inspired by Susan Savage, the real-life owner of the Triple-A baseball team the Sacramento […]
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Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo is being scorched on social media for not pushing back at Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen from him. During the Sunday morning interview – the president’s first since losing the race to Joe Biden — Trump called the election “rigged” and a “fraud” in what journalist Yashar […]
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President-elect Joe Biden will have an all-female senior communications team at his White House, reflecting his stated desire to build out a diverse White House team as well as what’s expected to be a return to a more traditional press operation. Biden campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield will serve as Biden’s White House communications director. […]
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Luther actor Idris Elba is set to interview former Beatle Paul McCartney for a 60-minute BBC One holiday special. Produced by The Graham Norton Show outfit So Television, Idris Elba Meets Paul McCartney will be filmed in London over the coming weeks in line with local Covid-19 rules. Elba, who moonlights as a musician and DJ, will interview McCartney about his career as one of the […]
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The arrival of Margaret Thatcher in season four of The Crown was keenly anticipated: Gillian Anderson is magnificent, Thatcher was an icon whichever way you cut it, cue popcorn, etc. In fact, when it arrived, Anderson’s performance was unnerving. Damian Barr, the author of Maggie & Me, not a Tory, puts this a bit more strongly: “I’m […]
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The 2020 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was a welcome — but atypical — sight. Though no crowd could be in attendance, 20.7 million TV viewers tuned in from 9 a.m. to noon, when it averaged a 5.3 rating among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen. Those numbers made the Thanksgiving parade NBC’s highest-rated and most-watched entertainment […]
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Los Angeles County announced a new stay-home order Friday as coronavirus cases surge out of control in the nation’s most populous county. The three-week order takes effect Monday. It came as the county confirmed 24 new deaths and 4,544 new cases of COVID-19. The five-day average of new cases was 4,751. Nearly 2,000 people in […]
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. He made the announcement on Twitter, writing, “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” Flynn pleaded guilty […]
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Beyoncé’s big summer — with the Juneteenth release of “Black Parade,” her work with Megan Thee Stallion on the “Savage” remix and her Black Is King film — vaulted her into the top spot as the most-nominated artist at the 2021 Grammys. The superstar musician scored nine nominations, extending her record as the most-nominated female artist in Grammy […]
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Fox News has reached a settlement with the parents of Seth Rich in a dispute over the network’s coverage of his death. Rich, then a staffer for the Democratic National Committee, was shot in the back in July 2016. While law enforcement characterized it as a botched robbery, a Fox News story about his death […]
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Former ESPN star Jemele Hill is moving into scripted television and has teamed with Gabrielle Union to develop a half-hour comedy series about Black women with financial independence. New Money, which is based on a story from Hill and The Undefeated journalist Kelley Carter, who run Lodge Freeway Media, is in development at Showtime. The series is produced by Union’s I’ll […]
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Weeks after the passing of legendary “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, Sony Pictures Television has announced that popular contestant and “Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time” tournament winner Ken Jennings will serve as the first of a series of interim guest hosts when the trivia game show returns to production on Monday, Nov. 30. “Alex believed in the importance of […]
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