TV

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Taylor Swift won three American Music Awards Sunday night, including the top “favorite artist” honor — explaining her absence as due to being busy in the studio re-recording her entire Big Machine catalog. The climactic favorite artist award came as something as a surprise, since Swift’s name had not come up as a winner any time earlier in […]