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Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein will posthumously receive the Producers Guild of America’s (PGA) Trailblazer Award at the Guild’s 2025 ceremony next month.

The award recognises their “shared commitment to paving the way for female producers and championing women’s voices in Hollywood” and will be a poignant element of the PGA Awards on February 8 in Los Angeles.

“Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein have made a lasting impact on the industry with their trailblazing work and steadfast commitment to amplifying women’s voices,” said PGA presidents Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line. “Lynda and Paula embody the spirit of...

Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein will posthumously receive this year’s Trailblazer Award for their work creating opportunities for female producers, the Producers Guild of America announced Friday.

“Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein have made a lasting impact on the industry with their trailblazing work and steadfast commitment to amplifying women’s voices,” Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line, PGA presidents, said in a statement.

“Lynda and Paula embody the spirit of women who have broken barriers and paved the way for future generations of producers. Their visionary work includes iconic films that have defined eras, alongside their unwavering commitment to championing underrepresented stories,” the statement continued. “Honoring them highlights their dedication to empowerment, innovation and mentorship, celebrating not just their individual legacies but also their shared commitment to advocating for women and fostering collaboration.”

The recognition will be given at this year’s PGA Awards on Feb. 8 at the Fairmont Century Plaza.

The Producers Guild of America will posthumously honor late producers Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein with the Trailblazer Award, the guild announced on Friday. Their tributes will take place at the Producers Guild Awards, to be held Feb. 8 in Los Angeles.

Obst and Weinstein, who both died in 2024, will receive the awards for “their shared commitment to paving the way for female producers and championing women’s voices in Hollywood.”

“Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein have made a lasting impact on the industry with their trailblazing work and steadfast commitment to amplifying women’s voices,” Producers Guild of America presidents Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line said in a statement.

“Lynda and Paula embody the spirit of women who have broken barriers and paved the way for future generations of producers. Their visionary work includes iconic films that have defined eras, alongside their unwavering commitment to championing underrepresented stories,” they continued.

Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein, the late powerhouse producers who championed women’s voices in Hollywood, will be honored at the Producers Guild Awards next month. Both are set for the 2025 PGA Trailblazer Award.

“Lynda Obst and Paula Weinstein have made a lasting impact on the industry with their trailblazing work and steadfast commitment to amplifying women’s voices,” Producers Guild of America presidents Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line said in a statement Friday. “Lynda and Paula embody the spirit of women who have broken barriers and paved the way for future generations of producers.”

Related: 2025 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Oscars, Spirits, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More

Weinstein, who died March 25, won a pair of Emmys for the HBO telefilms Too Big to Fail and Truman and nominated for Recount and Citizen Cohn. She also worked on films including The Perfect Storm, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Analyze This and its sequel Analyze That.

On the night of the 2000 presidential election, as the counting began in a tight race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and incumbent Vice President Al Gore, it all came down to Florida. And then, all hell broke loose.

Director Jay Roach and writer Danny Strong captured the stakes and the personalities that drove that strange moment in “Recount,” the Emmy-winning 2008 HBO movie starring Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey, Bob Balaban and Laura Dern. Instead of “Stop the Steal,” the rally cry in 2000 for Bush supporters was “Stop the Recount.”

“The events in ‘Recount’ were in some way a rehearsal for January 6,” Roach says. “It proved that there was potential to physically disrupt an election.”

As the nation braces for what will surely be a long night of waiting for election returns, it’s eye-opening to revisit the chaos and political theater that ensued for five weeks while Bush and Gore...

Emmy voters are now halfway through final balloting for this year’s awards, making decisions about which drama and comedy series, limited series, talk series, variety series and specials, structured and unstructured reality programs, reality competition shows, animated programs, documentary and nonfiction programs and game shows they like best.

And, oh yeah, they’re also picking their favorite TV movies, although they probably won’t have to think too long or too hard about what seems to have become the Emmys’ least consequential category.

It wasn’t always like that. The Outstanding TV Movie category has produced some notable television, including “Death of a Salesman” with Lee J. Cobb, the ultimate tearjerker “Brian’s Song,” the shocking “Special Bulletin”and 21st century standouts “The Gathering Storm,” “Recount,” “Grey Gardens,” “Behind the Candelabra” and even last year’s winner, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”

Over the years, the category has often been...

Sydney Pollack was the Oscar winning filmmaker who could’ve branded himself as Hollywood’s favorite journeyman, crafting solid entertainments for over 40 years. But how many of his titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at all 20 of his films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1934, Pollack got his start as an actor, studying under legendary New York teacher Sanford Meisner. He cut his teeth is television, appearing in such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Playhouse 90” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” before transitioning into directing for the small screen. Even after making a name for himself behind the camera, he kept popping up onscreen, starring in “The Player” (1992), “Husbands and Wives” (1992), “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999), “Changing Lanes” (2002), “Michael Clayton” (2007) and his own “Tootsie” (1982), to name but a few.

It was this experience as a performer that made him a favorite with actors, including Robert Redford, with whom he made seven films.

A galaxy far, far away keeps getting bigger and bigger thanks to Disney+ expanding the “Star Wars” franchise with several TV shows, such as “The Mandalorian” and “Ahsoka,” to go alongside their film output. As such, “Star Wars” fans have gotten used to seeing actors from the franchise popping up at various awards shows — either for “Star Wars” projects or for other works. Giancarlo Esposito was Emmy-nominated for his villainous work in “The Mandalorian,” for example,” while last year’s Best Drama Actor Emmys lineup included Mando himself, Pedro Pascal, who was cited for “The Last of Us.” With this in mind, here are eight “Star Wars” actors who could be nominated at this year’s Emmys.

Rosario Dawson — “Ahsoka”

Dawson will be looking to secure a nomination for her work in “Star Wars” itself. She plays the live-action version of Ahsoka Tano, a fan-favorite character who originated in the...

Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman will star in Searchlight Pictures’ The Roses, a reimagining of the 1989 dark comedy The War Of The Roses to be directed by Jay Roach.

Tony McNamara, whose credits include Poor Things and The Great, wrote the screenplay based on the novel by Warren Adler.

The Roses centres on the seemingly perfect family life of Theo and Ivy, whose private competition and resentments are exposed when Theo’s professional dreams come crashing down.

Cumberbatch is producing through his SunnyMarch with Leah Clarke and Adam Ackland, who have been in development on the project since 2017. Colman is...

Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are going to have a nasty divorce.

The two British stars have signed on to star in The Roses, Searchlight’s reimagining of the 1989 dark comedy The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

Jay Roach, the comedy director who segued into drama with movies such as Recount and Bombshell, is helming the feature that is in development at the studio arm. Tony McNamara, who earned an Oscar nomination for writing Searchlight’s acclaimed Poor Things, penned the script, which is based on the novel published in 1981 by Warren Adler.

The original movie, directed by Danny DeVito and released by 20th Century Fox, told of a married couple, Oliver and Barbara Rose, who seemingly live the perfect life in a perfect old mansion. When the wife realizes she no longer loves her husband, and in fact bitterly dislikes him, it precipitates...

Joe Lieberman, the former Connecticut senator and Al Gore’s Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, has died. He was 82.

His family said in a statement that he died due to complications from a fall.

“Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest,” his family said. His wife, Hadassah, and other family members were at his side when he died, according to the statement.

At the time of his death, Lieberman was leading an effort to recruit a candidate for the group No Labels, which has been seeking a “unity” ticket to run independently of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Lieberman held to the view that, even in a time of hyper polarization, there was a common ground to be found in politics. His own career reflected that, and even those who criticized his positions found him friendly, kind and polite.

Paula Weinstein, the veteran studio executive, two-time Emmy winner and producer on such projects as The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Perfect Storm, Analyze This and Grace and Frankie, died Monday. She was 78.

Weinstein died at her home in New York, her daughter, Hannah Rosenberg, told The Hollywood Reporter. No cause of death was revealed.

“The world is a lesser place without my mother,” Rosenberg said in a statement. “She was a masterful producer and a force of nature for the things she believed in, including the many projects that spanned her illustrious career, the stories she fought to tell and the social justice causes she championed.”

In September, Weinstein exited Tribeca Enterprises, which she joined as executive vp in 2013, to work on political campaigns. She earlier was a vp at Warner Bros., an executive vp at 20th Century Fox and president of United Artists.

In 1989, she and her late husband,...

Paula Weinstein, the respected producer of films including “The Perfect Storm,” “Analyze This,” “The Fabulous Baker Boys” and “Blood Diamond,” and former chief content officer at Tribeca Enterprises, died Monday in New York. She was 78.

Her daughter, Hannah Rosenberg, said in a statement, “The world is a lesser place without my mother. She was a masterful producer and a force of nature for the things she believed in, including the many projects that spanned her illustrious career, the stories she fought to tell and the social justice causes she championed.

“She shattered barriers in Hollywood and always lifted other women along with her. And I know my mother would want me to add this: if you’d like to honor her, please stop what you are doing and turn your attention toward reelecting President Biden and making sure Democrats win down the ballot so we can be sure Democracy survives...

Paula Weinstein, who produced dozens of films including The Perfect Storm and The Fabulous Baker Boys, exec produced Grace and Frankie, won Emmys for Truman and Recount and was a former studio and Tribeca Enterprises executive during a nearly 40-year career, died Monday morning. She was 78.

Her daughter Hannah Rosenberg told Deadline that Weinstein died peacefully at her home in New York. She was well-liked around Hollywood; condolences to her many friends in the industry.

“The world is a lesser place without my mother,” Rosenberg said in a statement to Deadline. “Paula was a lifelong activist and force of nature who was a champion for social justice and underdogs for more than half a century. She shattered barriers in Hollywood and always lifted other women along with her. I know my mother would want me say this: if you’d like to honor her, please stop what you are doing...

At a glance, Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign for president was the definition of quixotic. She was 47 years old; at the time, she had served only one term (starting in 1968) as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. (Her district centered on the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.) To say that Chisholm wasn’t a seasoned Washington, D.C., player would be putting it mildly. And she looked like an outsider. She wore puffy wigs, schoolmarm glasses, and tasteful print dresses. There was a slightly prim stoicism about her, though she lit up whenever she flashed her smile with the gap tooth on the right side. She looked like who she was — a day-care supervisor from Bed-Stuy, and a devout Christian.

But her persona didn’t end there. This church lady was a fighter, of Guyanese and Bajan descent, and she spoke with a pristine propriety that carried a hint...

British actor Tom Wilkinson, who appeared in films including ‘The Full Monty’, ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, passed away in the U.K. He died at the age of 75 on Saturday. He won a BAFTA for supporting actor for ‘The Full Monty’, in which he plays an unemployed steel worker who joins a male striptease dance group who decide to strip completely — “go the full Monty” — in order to make money, reports Variety.

“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him,” the statement from his family to the BBC read.

As per Variety, Wilkinson reprised his role as Gerald in ‘The Full Monty’ for the recent Disney+ series which revisited the characters 26 years later.

Wilkinson was Oscar-nominated for his roles in ‘Michael Clayton’, in which he played...

George Clooney, Michael McKean and Richard Roeper are among the stars remembering acclaimed British actor Tom Wilkinson, who died “suddenly” on Saturday at the age of 75.

Wilkinson, known for his BAFTA-winning role in The Full Monty and Oscar-nominated turns in Michael Clayton and In the Bedroom, died at home, according to a statement from the actor’s family, who were with him when he died as was his wife.

For his role in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton, the 2007 drama that starred George Clooney and Tilda Swinton, who won the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance, Wilkinson received a best supporting actor nod.

“Tom made every project better, made every actor better,” Clooney said of Wilkinson in a statement. “He was the epitome of elegance, and he will be dearly missed by all of us.”

McKean posted to X (formerly known as Twitter) that Wilkinson was a “great actor,...

Tom Wilkinson, the Emmy-winning actor who starred in the 1997 film The Full Monty and reprised his role in the 2023 sequel TV series, has died. He was 75.

Wilkinson passed away on Saturday at his home in the UK, according to the BBC. No cause of death has been reported.

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In The Fully Monty, Wilkinson plays an unemployed steel worker, Gerald, who joins a striptease dance group to make money.

British actor Tom Wilkinson has died at the age of 75. According to a statement shared with the BBC, Wilkinson passed "suddenly" at his home with his wife and family in his company. The Wilkinson family asks for privacy as they mourn.

The son of a farmer, Wilkinson approached acting like a pure professional; he was committed but unsentimental, never sparing unneeded effort. He spent his early acting days in the 1980s content with roles on TV, but he shifted his focus to films in the 1990s because, as he bluntly admitted, that's where the money was. He recounted to the Guardian in 2008: "I was broke, and in a position I'd never been in before -- phoning people up to ask: 'Have you got anything for me, anything?' I knew lots of actors who were making movies, and I thought: 'I'll have a piece of that, please.'"

Sure enough,...

Actor Tom Wilkinson, known for his BAFTA-winning role in The Full Monty and Oscar-nominated turns in Michael Clayton and In the Bedroom, died Saturday. He was 75.

Wilkinson died “suddenly” at home, according to a statement from the actor’s family, who were with him when he died as was his wife.

“The family asks for privacy at this time,” the statement continued.

Wilkinson was nominated for six BAFTA awards over the course of his career, winning best performance by an actor in a supporting role in 1998 for The Full Monty. His other nods included recognition for Michael Clayton, In the Bedroom and Shakespeare in Love.

In The Full Monty, he played Gerald, a former steel mill foreman who joins his fellow unemployed workers in staging a strip show.

Speaking about getting the part to The Guardian in 2011, Wilkinson recalled how he had been offered both a starring role in a...

Tom Wilkinson, the Oscar-nominated British actor best known for roles in The Full Monty, In the Bedroom, and Batman Begins, has died at the age of 75.

Wilkinson’s family confirmed the charactor actor’s death Saturday in a statement (via the BBC), noting that he died “suddenly.”

“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30,” the family said in a statement. “His wife and family were with him. The family asks for privacy at this time.”

Wilkinson was a two-time Academy Award nominee,...

Tom Wilkinson, the British actor who appeared in films including “The Full Monty,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” died Saturday in the U.K., the BBC reported. He was 75.

“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him,” the statement from his family to the BBC read.

He won a BAFTA for supporting actor for “The Full Monty,” in which he plays an unemployed steel worker who joins a male striptease dance group who decide to strip completely — “go the full Monty” — in order to make money. Wilkinson reprised his role as Gerald in “The Full Monty” for the recent Disney+ series which revisited the characters 26 years later.

Wilkinson was Oscar-nominated for his roles in “Michael Clayton,” in which he played an attorney who has a manic episode...

CNN’s Sara Sidner faced a precarious situation on air today when reporting from the West Bank, as a protester in a pro-Palestinian demonstration confronted her and shouted, “f— CNN.”

Sidner was on the streets of Ramallah when a man ran up and began to shout at her, “You are genocide supporters. You are not welcome here,” before shouting the expletive about the network. She tried to turn away and he eventually left. “You see that people are very angry. They do not like the way that CNN has been reporting the story,” Sidner then told viewers.

“What you are seeing is the heightened fear, anger, frustration with what’s happening,” Sidner said.

The network has not yet commented. But Sidner, who was in a helmet and vest, was unharmed. A security guard was with her and helped her away from the scene.

Sidner, an anchor and correspondent for the network,...

Former studio executive and prolific producer Paula Weinstein is leaving Tribeca Enterprises, where she’s been chief content officer for the past decade, to jump into political work and help “as many voices as possible be heard.”

“I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and rail about everything. I really want to jump in, fully, into the campaigns. Both statewide and national campaigns,” she tells Deadline. “It just feels very much like a moment…between the climate, and book banning and everything else that I don’t need to go into.”

In a memo to staff this morning, Tribeca CEO Jane Rosenthal said Weinstein will “devote her efforts to fighting for the preservation and advancement of human and women’s rights, and most urgently the upcoming elections.” She will also continue to consult for Tribeca. Next summer’s festival, dates just announced, would have been her 12th.

Weinstein’s position,...

Oscar winner Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) stars as a wannabe private detective who has a lengthy history of drug abuse, a messed up personal life, and an unwillingness to do a job any earlier than 11am in the Apple TV+ comedy High Desert. The first trailer for the streaming service’s new dark comedy shows Arquette’s character’s basically a walking, talking trainwreck.

Matt Dillon, Christine Taylor, Weruche Opia, Brad Garrett, Bernadette Peters, Rupert Friend, and Keir O’Donnell also star.

Nancy Fichman, Katie Ford, and Jennifer Hoppe created the series and serve as writers and executive producers. Patricia Arquette and Ben Stiller executive produce, and four-time Emmy Award winner Jay Roach directs.

The eight-episode half-hour series will premiere on Apple TV+ on May 17, 2023 with the release of the first three episodes. Additional new episodes will premiere on Wednesdays.

Patricia Arquette stars in Apple TV+’s ‘High Desert’

The Plot:

High Desert...

The White House Plumbers (accidentally) took down the presidency, but can Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux take down their Emmy competition? The “White House Plumbers” stars are both contending in Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actor, but only Harrelson is currently predicted to earn a nomination at the moment, sitting in fourth place, while Theroux is in ninth. If you’re predicting just one of them, you might want to reconsider that because this category is kinder to double noms than you might think.

Since 2000, there have been 10 projects that have fielded a pair of nominees in limited series/TV movie actor. And half of them hailed from HBO, home to “White House Plumbers” as well. In 2004, “Something the Lord Made” nabbed bids for Mos Def and Alan Rickman. Four years later, “Recount” stars Kevin Spacey and Tom Wilkinson faced off. The trend really took off in the 2010s, during...

Hollywood star Michael Keaton took home the Emmy for Best Actor in a Limited Anthology Series at the 74th Television Academy Awards, for his role in Hulu’s critically acclaimed ‘Dopesick’ series.

He was up against Colin Firth in ‘The Staircase’, Andrew Garfield in ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’, Oscar Isaac in ‘Scenes from a Marriage’, Himmesh Patel in ‘Station Eleven’, and Sebastian Stan in ‘Pam & Tommy’, reports Collider.

Keaton starred as Dr. Samuel Finnix, a small-town family doctor in a mining town who sees devastating effects of OxyContin first-hand, after administering it to his patients for chronic pain.

From the first episode, audiences were enthralled with the heart-wrenching story that is, unfortunately, close to reality for a lot of people throughout the country (and the world).

The limited series is an adaptation of Beth Marcy’s best-selling book ‘Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors’ and the ‘Drug Company that Addicted America...

Ryan Kadro, formerly the executive producer for “CBS This Morning,” has been tapped as CNN’s senior vice president of content, strategy and development.

He will report to Amy Entelis, executive VP of talent and content development for CNN Worldwide. Among his duties, Kadro will help revamp CNN’s morning news program. He will also help brainstorm new programming for the cabler.

Kadro is a former deputy to Chris Licht, who is now CEO of CNN, and took over as executive producer of “CBS This Morning” after Licht departed to work on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Also Read:

Brian Stelter Out at CNN, ‘Reliable Sources’ Canceled

His appointment at CNN is yet another indicator of a larger shift in the network’s news programming strategy, following the ouster of Brian Stelter and the cancellation of “Reliable Sources.” Last week, CNN parted ways with longtime legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin as well.

Click here to read the full article.

Actor-writer-director Danny Strong is no stranger to celebrating on Emmys night. He earned two Emmys in 2012 for writing and producing HBO’s political drama Game Change, which followed his Emmy-nominated screenplay for the similarly ripped-from-the-headlines HBO film Recount in 2008. Since that double win a decade ago, Strong has gone on to co-create the Fox drama series Empire with Lee Daniels (who also directed The Butler from a script by Strong).

Strong is a multiple nominee again this year for Hulu’s limited series Dopesick, for which he earned nods for writing and directing in addition to outstanding limited series. Dopesick follows the rise of the opioid crisis in the United States and the nefarious actions of Purdue Pharma, which developed and aggressively marketed OxyContin while hiding its highly addictive properties. The result is a multi-layered true crime saga that traces the Sackler family-controlled Purdue’s shady business practices,...

Danny Strong has been through the Emmy whirlwind before, being nominated for writing “Recount” (2008) and winning for both writing and producing “Game Change” (2012). But what does it mean to nab his first directing nomination thanks to “Dopesick”? “It was so thrilling and exciting,” he declares in our Meet the Experts: TV Directors panel. Strong is also up for writing and producing the Hulu limited series that chronicles the rise of the opioid epidemic in America. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“I didn’t expect to be nominated as a director and when it came in, I was pretty blown away and quite moved by it,” Strong readily admits. In all, “Dopesick” received 14 total Emmy nominations this year. What is it that made the filmmaker so invested in the project originally? As he explains, once he started researching the Sackler family, he found himself “horrified by the actions of this company,...

With must-see projects like Dopesick, Recount and Game Change under his belt, Danny Strong knows a thing or two about how to craft the perfect, ripped-from-the-headlines yarn that’s sure to generate Emmy heat. Here, the writer-director-actor gives a five-point masterclass for budding screenwriters.

1 – Lean on the masters

Arthur Miller is one of my writing heroes, along with the films of Sydney Pollack and Sidney Lumet. They are big inspirations for me when I do these kinds of projects that are very intense and powerful, moralistic and about something. The perennial is All the President’s Men. The screenplay by William Goldman is sort of the North Star of powerful, immediate, true-life stories. It’s extremely tense and feels like a thriller without really having those thriller beats. Those four are definitely my biggest influences.

2 – Avoid ‘loosely...

One of the biggest surprises on Emmy nominations morning showed up in the Best Limited/Movie Writing category when “Impeachment: American Crime Story” got nominated, a season that many pundits were clearly underestimating, as lead actress Sarah Paulson also nabbed a bid. This category is especially stunning in that half of these six shows are not nominated in the program category, despite most of them being predicted in this race. That said, as far as potential winners, the two nomination leaders, “The White Lotus” and “Dopesick,” will be battling it out to see who comes out on top.

Here are Gold Derby’s current Best Limited/Movie Writing Emmy 2022 racetrack odds:

“The White Lotus” (Mike White) – 10/3 odds

“Dopesick” (“The People vs. Purdue Pharma” by Danny Strong) — 4/1 odds

“Station Eleven” (“Unbroken Circle” by Patrick Somerville) — 5/1 odds

“The Dropout” (“I’m In A Hurry” by Elizabeth Meriwether) — 11/2 odds

“Maid” (“Snaps” by Molly Smith Metzler...

A new Ocean’s Eleven film starring Margot Robbie is in “active development” at Warner Bros., Deadline can confirm. Four-time Emmy winner Jay Roach (Bombshell) is looking to direct the pic, which is not yet greenlighted.

While we hear that the film scripted by Carrie Solomon will be set in Europe in the 1960s, further details with regard to its plot are being kept under wraps. Robbie and Tom Ackerly will produce for LuckyChap, alongside Roach and Michelle Graham for Everyman Pictures. Gary Ross, Olivia Milch and LuckyChap’s Josey McNamara will exec produce alongside Village Roadshow, which may also co-finance the project. Warner Bros. is eyeing a production start in spring of 2023.

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh launched the Ocean’s heist franchise—based on the 1960 Rat Pack pic—with Ocean’s Eleven back in 2001. The film starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts grossed over 450M worldwide, with its...

“These are people desperate to preserve their way of life,” argues Bob Balaban about the characters on Netflix’s “The Chair.” The comedy about an English department at a prestigious university. The series has earned Best Comedy Actress nominations at both the SAG and Critics Choice Awards for Sandra Oh, who stars as the department’s new chairperson. Balaban plays Elliot Rentz, a senior professor whose job is threatened by dwindling enrollment and who must supervise a young professor who is seeking tenure, but whose more progressive teaching methods Elliot finds distasteful. Check out our exclusive video interview with Balaban above.

The actor argues that one of the show’s appeals is that all of the characters are appealing. “There are no villains here,” he argues. “That’s one of the reasons why I think people reacted well to it — people under great stress with very high stakes.” Though the series is a comedy,...

Emerging from the long shadow of Covid, we are headed into what traditionally has been known as broadcast upfront week, a ritual dating back to the three-network days and centered on the annual fall release of new car models. The moniker is less apt than ever this year, with the CW as the only broadcast network doing a standalone event; the others all are part of corporate portfolio presentations. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, the architect of the Discovery-WarnerMedia 43 billion merger, is expected to take the stage and make the case for the combined entity. One more recently merged entity, TelevisaUnivision, will make its upfront debut. Additionally, a newfronter, YouTube, has elbowed its way in with a breakfast and its Brandcast extravaganza.

After reaching a peak about four years ago, the party portion of upfront week has slimmed down dramatically. Agency bashes (and Entertainment Weekly & People’s...

Exclusive: The story of one of America’s most beloved TV personalities, Johnny Carson, may finally be coming to the screen. A high-profile series, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Carson, written by Deadwood creator David Milch and to be directed by Jay Roach, was recently taken out and has been heating up the premium marketplace. The project, titled King Of Late Night, is a co-production between wiip and Anonymous Content.

The series will follow the life and career of late-night TV pioneer Johnny Carson from New York to Los Angeles to the Las Vegas strip. King Of Late Night will reveal how Johnny’s diehard connection to his audience overlapped with his lifelong desire for a basic quality of life, and how his beloved on-screen persona came into conflict with the more colorful aspects of his personal life.

Carson, who grew up in Nebraska and served in the Navy in World...

Len Amato, the former President of HBO Films, Miniseries and Cinemax, has been named chief content officer at MasterClass. He will head the content organization and help lead content innovation, strategy and development of class launches for the educational streaming platform.

During Amato’s tenure at the helm, HBO Films won the Emmy for Outstanding Made For Television Movie five times in six years from 2009-15. The Liberace pic Behind the Candelabra was its most-honored program, with 11 wins and 15 nominations at the 2013 Emmys.

Before becoming president, Amato — who left HBO a year ago — served as HBO program executive and executive producer on 2008’s multiple Emmy-winning film Recount. The film began Amato’s association with director Jay Roach and writer Danny Strong who would later repeat their creative collaboration on Game Change.

Amato joined HBO in March 2007 as SVP HBO Films.

Countless American lives have been touched by opioid addiction or lost to it. And this crisis, more and more, is getting covered by TV. High-profile projects in which opioids play a part include HBO’s “Mare of Easttown,” with Kate Winslet’s title character in slow-motion grief over the loss of her son to drugs, and Showtime’s “American Rust,” featuring Jeff Daniels as a cop in a town governed by its need for pills — who is himself addicted. But Hulu’s “Dopesick,” currently streaming, targets the source of the problem, depicting corporate malfeasance and ineffective government oversight while displaying empathy for those struggling with addiction.

The limited series, starring Michael Keaton and Kaitlyn Dever, has its roots in a real-life crime story — the introduction and marketing of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin. But in order to convey the ravages of the drug, it borrows a sense of dread from fiction.

Prince Harry made a plea to world leaders to keep working to expand global vaccine access this week, saying “we are all at risk” in the meantime.

While introducing the GQ Heroes of the Year, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine team, at the GQ Men of the Year Awards on Wednesday, the Duke of Sussex said, “Until every community can access the vaccine, and until every community is connected to trustworthy information about the vaccine, then we are all at risk.”

He went on, “There is a huge disparity between who can and cannot access the vaccine. Less than 2% of people in the developing world have received a single dose at this point and many of their healthcare workers are still not even vaccinated.”

Harry, who relocated to America with wife Meghan Markle last year, has been advocating for widespread access to Covid-19 vaccines for months.

In May, at the star-studded Vax...

Hulu released the first trailer for its upcoming limited series about the beginning of the opioid crisis, “Dopesick,” which tracks how Oxycontin became the “worst drug epidemic in American history.”

Watch the trailer above. The series will premiere on Oct. 13.

The eight-episode series stars Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Will Poulter and John Hoogenakker, with Kaitlyn Dever and Rosario Dawson. Guest stars include Phillipa Soo and Jake McDorman.

“Dopesick” examines how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. The series takes viewers to the epicenter of America’s struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Big Pharma to a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA. Defying all the odds, heroes will emerge in an intense and thrilling ride to take down the craven corporate forces behind this national crisis and their allies.

The limited series is inspired by the New York...

Casting director David Rubin has been re-elected to a third term as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization announced on Wednesday.

Rubin was first elected president in 2019, and re-elected last year. While an Academy president can usually serve four one-year terms, Rubin will not be able to run next year; he is currently in the final year of his third three-year term on the board, and term limits will prevent him from returning to the board next year. Since the president is selected from among the 54 board members, Rubin cannot be a candidate in 2022.

At a meeting on Tuesday night, the Board of Governors also elected an expanded roster of eight vice presidents, with screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, costume designer Isis Mussenden, production designer Wynn P. Thomas and producer Janet Yang re-elected to their positions and CEO David Linde along with producers DeVon Franklin, Donna Gigliotti...

“The Comey Rule” premiered on Showtime over two nights on September 27 and 28 of last year telling the story of James Comey’s (played by two-time Emmy winner Jeff Daniels) tenure as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The two-part limited series frames Comey’s time as the head of the FBI through two of the most high profile investigations the agency conducted. The first is the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary and Comey’s decision to announce that the investigation was being reopened (due to a connection with former congressman Anthony Weiner) less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election. The second part of the series examines Comey’s navigation of the agency’s investigation into the campaign of President Donald Trump (played by Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson) and possible connections it had with the Russian government.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 editor Alan Baumgarten topped the dramatic feature editing category of American Cinema Editors’s 71st Ace Eddie Awards, while Palm Springs’s Matthew Friedman and Andrew Dickler won the category for best edited comedic feature, during Saturday’s virtual ceremony.

This is the third Ace Award for Baumgarten, who also accepted Eddies for American Hustle in 2014 and Recount in 2009. It was the first Eddie and second Ace nomination for Friedman, who was also nominated a year ago for The Farewell; and the first Eddie and first nomination for Dickler.

Trial — Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix courtroom drama about events ...

The Trial of the Chicago 7 editor Alan Baumgarten topped the dramatic feature editing category of American Cinema Editors’s 71st Ace Eddie Awards, while Palm Springs’s Matthew Friedman and Andrew Dickler won the category for best edited comedic feature, during Saturday’s virtual ceremony.

This is the third Ace Award for Baumgarten, who also accepted Eddies for American Hustle in 2014 and Recount in 2009. It was the first Eddie and second Ace nomination for Friedman, who was also nominated a year ago for The Farewell; and the first Eddie and first nomination for Dickler.

Trial — Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix courtroom drama about events ...

Film editor Alan Baumgarten could embark on a second career as a juggler. Not that he has an interest in bowling pins or the circus, but the longtime cutting craftsman has made a specialty of, well, juggling many characters and non-linear plots into clean, coherent audience experiences. Baumgarten was nominated for an Oscar for 2013’s “American Hustle” and again this year as one of the six nominations (and perhaps the most no-brainer nod of them all) notched for Aaron Sorkin’s vast ensemble drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

The film depicts an inflammatory political and cultural period in 1968 and 1969, and contains more than two dozen characters, from lawyers and defendants to judges and government officials. Though the size of the cast was formidable, Baumgarten’s greatest challenge came in a six-minute scene that narrow-focused on two characters and a complex flashback to a riot outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

The decision to incorporate actual archival footage from the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” may have been risky but recently Oscar-nominated editor Alan Baumgarten explains that he and writer/director Aaron Sorkin both came to the decision rather easily. “It was quite easy and we both came to it independently. There was archival material written into the prologue that was very effective,” Baumgarten tells us in our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video above). It was when Sorkin was watching the riot sequence for the second time that he floated the idea of using such footage in the film. “As soon as he mentioned it, I said, ‘Great! I’m all for it. Give me a couple days and let me show you something.’ We quickly locked into the fact that it was going to be used sparingly. It was really...

Variety’s seventh annual Artisans Awards celebrates those essential to the filmmaking process and who have exhibited the most exciting and innovative work of the year in their respective fields.

The tribute evening will take place in a virtual ceremony on Monday, April 5 that will stream on the Santa Barbara Film Festival website. Variety’s Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay will moderate conversations with all the Artisan Award recipients.

The Variety Artisans Award will honor the following recipients:

Alan Baumgarten for Netflix’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which sees the editor reunite with screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin. Baumgarten won an Emmy for his work on 2008’s “Recount.” He received an Academy Award nomination for 2013’s “American Hustle.”

Nicolas Becker, who earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Sound for his work on Amazon’s “Sound of Metal.” Becker has over 263 credits which include “Arrival,” “Ex Machina” and “Gravity.

A scripted GameStop film is in development at HBO.

The project hails from executive producers Andrew Ross Sorkin of Tbtf Productions, Len Amato of Crash&Salvage, and Jason Blum of Blumhouse Television.

The film is described as exploring how a populist uprising of social media day traders beat Wall Street at their own game, turning the stock market upside down and shaking the financial world to its core.

This is the latest onscreen project set up to detail the ongoing stock market saga around GameStop. A feature documentary was announced just yesterday, while earlier this week a feature film adaptation from writer Mark Boal was announced, with Noah Centineo set to star in a major role. MGM also recently picked up the rights to author Ben Mezrich’s book proposal, “The Antisocial Network,” which also dives into the Wall Street fiasco. Grand Central Publishing plans to publish the book in the fall.

The cast of Hulu’s Dopesick continues to impress.

Michael Stuhlbarg, fresh off Showtime’s Your Honor, has boarded the star-studded cast of the Hulu limited series that tackles the opioid crisis.

Based on the New York Times best-selling book of the same name, the eight-episode drama from Danny Strong (Recount, Game Change) “takes viewers from a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA, and to the opulence of “one percenter” Big Pharma Manhattan. The unsparing yet deeply human portraits of the various affected families and their intersecting stories hold up a mirror to where America is right now, while shining a hopeful light on the heroes battling the worst drug epidemic in American history.”

Michael Keaton (Spotlight) stars as Samuel Finnix, an old-school doctor who ...

The cast of Hulu’s Dopesick continues to impress.

Michael Stuhlbarg, fresh off Showtime’s Your Honor, has boarded the star-studded cast of the Hulu limited series that tackles the opioid crisis.

Based on the New York Times best-selling book of the same name, the eight-episode drama from Danny Strong (Recount, Game Change) “takes viewers from a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA, and to the opulence of “one percenter” Big Pharma Manhattan. The unsparing yet deeply human portraits of the various affected families and their intersecting stories hold up a mirror to where America is right now, while shining a hopeful light on the heroes battling the worst drug epidemic in American history.”

Michael Keaton (Spotlight) stars as Samuel Finnix, an old-school doctor who ...