| | | | | | What's news: Hollywood is waking up to the news that Robert Redford has died at the age of 89. Emmys TV ratings were up 8 percent. HBO Max will air the first scripted portrayal of the Oct. 7 attack. Shari Redstone has been named chair of the board of Sipur. Lil Nas X is in treatment. — Abid Rahman
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Robert Redford 1936 – 2025 ►Icon. Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy and Sundance Film Festival founder who starred in such movies as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were and All the President’s Men — and who won an Academy Award for directing Ordinary People — has died. He was 89. Redford died early Tuesday at his home in Utah, his long-time publicist Cindi Berger confirmed to THR. The actor-producer-director, a four-time Academy Award nominee and honorary Oscar recipient, was one of the few truly iconic screen figures of the past half-century, the avatar of a certain kind of all-American ideal who nonetheless took a dyspeptic view of his country in several notable dramas including Downhill Racer, The Candidate and Three Days of the Condor. The obituary.
—"A genius has passed." Tributes began pouring in for Robert Redford on Tuesday morning after the Hollywood icon's death was announced. Ron Howard, Colman Domingo, Rosie O’Donnell, Stephen King, Marlee Matlin and William Shatner were among the notable names to share their thoughts on the entertainment industry titan. Howard described Redford as "a tremendously influential cultural figure for the creative choices made as an actor/producer/director and for launching the Sundance Film Festival which supercharged America’s Independent Film movement." The reaction. |
Trump Files $15B Defamation Suit Against the NYT ►"The “Times” has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!)" Donald Trump filed a $15b defamation lawsuit against the NYT and four of its journalists on Monday, accusing the newspaper of being a “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” The suit claims the NYT was “spreading false and defamatory content about President Trump” in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election. The suit cites three NYT articles, as well as book written by two named NYT journalists, that is claimed were “carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump, and all published during the height of a Presidential Election that became the most consequential in American history.” The four journalists named in the lawsuit are investigative reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, Washington D.C. correspondent Michael S. Schmidt and White House correspondent Peter Baker. The story.
—"This is a bump that he’s gonna get over." Lil Nas X‘s attorney has shared that the rapper is in treatment following his arrest and felony charges last month. In August, the rapper, whose real name is Montero Hill, was arrested after he was found roaming through Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, nearly nude and seemingly delirious. At the time, police took him to a hospital for a possible overdose before he spent the weekend in jail. He later pleaded not guilty to the four felony charges filed against him. After lawyers for the rapper appeared in court on Monday, they later spoke with press outside of the Los Angeles courthouse, where attorney Drew Findling shared more details. The story.
—Nearing a W. Some claims in a novel lawsuit from a production company for Blade Runner 2049, accusing Tesla of feeding images from the movie into an artificial intelligence image generator to create unlicensed promotional materials and Warner Bros. Discovery of facilitating the alleged infringement, have been dismissed. Tesla’s partnership with WBD to promote its robotaxi at a glitzy unveiling, which was done from a studio lot last year, sparked the lawsuit. Alcon Entertainment alleged that the image was intended to be understood as an actual still from Blade Runner 2049‘s sequence of Ryan Gosling’s character exploring a ruined Las Vegas. The story. |
Shari Redstone's Next Act ►Passion project. Shari Redstone isn’t exiting the media business just yet. A few months after handing over the keys to Paramount, the mogul has been named chair of the board for the global entertainment studio Sipur (it means “story” in Hebrew), best known for its Emmy-winning Oct. 7 documentary We Will Dance Again and the Netflix drama series Bad Boy. Currently president of the Redstone Family Foundation, the former Paramount Global chair will work actively with Sipur’s co-founders, CEO Emilio Schenker and business leader Gideon Tadmor, along with their leadership team, to continue bringing the studio’s work to a global audience. Redstone is an investor in the Israel-based studio, which endeavors to develop, produce, license and distribute content at a fraction of the cost of traditional Hollywood projects. The story.
—"It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News." Longtime CBS Evening News anchor and regular 60 Minutes contributor Dan Rather does not like what he sees happening at — and to — his old employer. Before David Ellison bought Paramount Global and merged it with his Skydance, there were “several instances in which the previous owners … tried to sort of dictate what kind of news comes on — even on 60 Minutes,” Rather told Andy Cohen on Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show. We “have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets,” Rather added. The story.
—🤝 Reup. 🤝 Andy Cohen is sticking with SiriusXM, inking a new deal with the satellite radio giant for his flagship daily show Andy Cohen Live and his Radio Andy channel. Cohen has become a staple of the service with his pop culture news and analysis and his newsmaking celebrity interviews. He also played a practical joke on the media and many of his colleague Howard Stern's listeners last week, taking over Stern’s channel to declare that it would be rebranded “Andy 100,” fooling the AP, among other media outlets. Stern is still holding talks with the company about his own future, though he indicated that he would like to cut a new deal. The story.
—✊ It's spreading. ✊ The production assistants organizing movement has gone from one acclaimed show to another. Organizers on Monday filed for a National Labor Relations Board union election to represent production assistants on Abbott Elementary, the critically lauded ABC sitcom following teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia elementary school. Workers on the show are attempting to join a union affiliated with LiUNA Local 724, the Hollywood laborers’ union that nearly one week prior successfully unionized production assistants on HBO Max’s The Pitt. The story. |
Oscars: Brazil, Poland and Iran Make Selections ►🏆 Boa sorte! 🏆 Brazil has selected Kleber Mendonça Filho’s period political thriller The Secret Agent as its contender for the 2026 Oscar in the best international feature category. Narcos star Wagner Moura stars in the 1970s-set drama, playing a technology expert who gets on the wrong side of Brazil’s military dictatorship and finds himself a target. He returns to his hometown to reunite with his young son and flee the country before hitmen, hired by a corrupt federal official, catch him. The Secret Agent premiered in competition in Cannes, where Moura won the best actor prize. In 2025, Walter Salles' I’m Still Here became the first-ever Brazilian film to win the Oscar for best international feature. Brazil has also been nominated in the category a total of six times. The story.
—🏆 Powodzenia! 🏆 The Polish Film Institute has picked Agnieszka Holland's Kafka, a non-chronological and playful biopic on iconic Czech writer Franz Kafka, to be Poland’s candidate for the 2026 Oscars in the best international feature category. In her latest feature, Holland, an Oscar nominee for In Darkness (2011), Europa Europa (1990), and Angry Harvest (1985), combines recreated scenes from Kafka’s life with sequences from modern-day Prague, which show how the master of alienation and angst has been turned into a brand to attract tourists and sell tchotchkes. Poland has been nominated 13 times for the best international feature Oscar, and has won the prize once for Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida in 2015. The story.
—🏆 Movaffagh bāshi! 🏆 Iran‘s official selection committee has picked Ali Zarnegar’s thriller Cause of Death: Unknown to represent the country for the 2026 Oscar race in the best international feature category. The drama follows a group of strangers traveling through Iran’s Lut Desert. When one of them suddenly dies in the middle of the night, emergency services refuse to send an ambulance because the cause of death hasn’t been verified by a doctor. Searching the body, the men find no ID but a lot of money and are forced to confront a moral and ethical dilemma. A much higher-profile Iranian film, Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident , has made France’s five-film shortlist of potential Oscar contenders and would be a near shoo-in should it be selected. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Row K Entertainment has picked up the U.S. rights to Charlie Harper, the romance movie starring CODA breakout Emilia Jones and Nick Robinson. The indie, directed by Tom Dean and Mac Eldridge, had its world premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Row K, the theatrical distribution arm of Media Capital Technologies that launched in August 2025, earlier nabbed the North American rights to Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire after a world premiere in Venice and a North American premiere at TIFF. Charlie Harper centers on Charlie (Robinson) and Harper (Jones), two young adults who fall in love while navigating their early 20s and discover themselves both as individuals and as a couple. The story. |
Casey Bloys Gets Candid In Post-Emmys Chat ►"My response to The Pitt is that it is a little bit of a throwback to the principles that made television in the first place: longer order, the ability to return on an annual basis, shooting on a soundstage in Los Angeles." Fresh off his portfolio's 30 wins, Casey Bloys, the top creative exec at HBO and HBO Max, talks to THR's Mikey O'Connell about the return of The Pitt — "exactly what you want to see with a second season show" — reveals the latest on Big Little Lies' potential return, an update on The White Lotus, Hacks ' endgame, and gracefully dances around that Paramount Skydance acquisition chatter. The interview.
—Woof! The 2025 Emmys posted their second consecutive gain in viewers, the first time that’s happened in more than a decade. Sunday’s telecast on CBS (also live-streamed on Paramount+) averaged 7.42m viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen figures. That’s up 8 percent from the 2024 ceremony on ABC, which brought in 6.9m viewers and stopped a streak of two straight all-time ratings lows for the Emmys. The 7.42m viewers for Sunday’s show is also the biggest audience for the Emmys since 7.83m people watched the 2021 awards, also on CBS. Sunday’s increase in viewers brought the Emmys their first back-to-back ratings gains since the 2012 and 2013 telecasts (also on ABC and CBS) each built on the previous year. The ratings.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 HBO Max will air the first scripted portrayal of the devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The company has acquired the exclusive U.S. rights to One Day in October. The limited series depicts Hamas‘ 2023 surprise attack which killed 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapped 251 others. One Day in October was filmed on location in Israel and is based on real-life accounts. The project described by producers as chronicling "seven emotionally gripping and artistically interwoven narratives of love, courage, sacrifice and survival. From families torn apart to moments of hope emerging in the face of unspeakable tragedy to incredible bravery against the odds, each episode reveals the human cost and resilience born out of chaos." The story.
—🎭 Double duty. 🎭 THR trickster Ryan Gajewski has the scoop that Mary McDonnell is joining the cast of two forthcoming projects. The Oscar-nominated actress is set to star in thriller feature One Second After and will also appear in Marvel Television’s Vision series. McDonnell joins previously announced castmembers Josh Holloway and Hannah John-Kamen in director Scott Rogers’ One Second After. A co-production between MPI Original Films and Startling Inc., the movie adapts author William R. Forstchen’s 2009 sci-fi novel of the same name. McDonnell will portray Jen, the astute mother-in-law to John (Holloway) who looks after his daughters after an electromagnetic pulse attack throws society into chaos. McDonnell’s role has not been disclosed for Disney+’s Vision show that wrapped principal photography over the summer. The story.
—🤝 Rights deal. 🤝 Versant is betting big on women’s sports, with the company inking its first exclusive media rights deal with League One Volleyball (LOVB, pronounced “love”), part of a larger strategy to invest in the space. The company, which is set to be spun out from NBCUniversal early next year, will inherit some legacy rights from NBCU and it recently cut a deal with the USGA (alongside a renewal from NBCU), but the League One deal marks an expansion of the company’s nascent sports strategy, with women’s sports set to be at the heart of it. Terms of the LOVB deal were not disclosed, though it is a multiyear deal that will see LOVB games get a plum primetime spot on Wednesday nights on USA Network, beginning in Jan. 2026. The story. |
Best of the Fall Fests: THR's Critics Picks ►Packed with awards contenders. With Venice, Telluride and Toronto wrapped up for another year, THR's crack team of reviewers — David Rooney, Jordan Mintzer, Sheri Linden, Jon Frosch, Angie Han, Caryn James and Jourdain Searles — are ready to share their highlights from the fall film festivals. In the mix are a cathartic tearjerker about Shakespeare’s family, Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear threat thriller and a wrenching Gaza docudrama. The list. |
TV Review: 'Black Rabbit' ►"Bleak 'Rabbit.'" THR's chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg reviews Netflix's Black Rabbit. Mix The Bear, Uncut Gems and a lot of Ozark and you get this eight-part limited series about two bumbling brothers trying to set things right in Brooklyn. Starring Jude Law, Jason Bateman, Cleopatra Coleman, Amaka Okafor, Sope Dirisu and Troy Kotsur. Created by Zach Baylin and Kate Susman. The review.
—"A bone-crunching good time." For THR, Michael Rechtshaffen reviews Ben Wheatley's Normal. The TIFF-premiering neo-Western tells the story of an interim sheriff who senses something amiss about a small Minnesota town. Starring Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler and Lena Headey. Written by Derek Kolstad. The review.
—"The cast compensates for missteps." For THR, Stephen Farber reviews Brian Cox's Glenrothan. The Succession star's TIFF-bowing film is a Scotland-set drama about estranged brothers reuniting. Starring Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Shirley Henderson and Alexandra Shipp. Written by David Ashton. The review.
In other news...
—Charlie Hunnam goes full-on Monster in haunting trailer for The Ed Gein Story
—HBO Max to launch in 8 APAC markets in October
—Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G to headline 2026 Coachella
—Hozier, Blink-182 to headline Sea.Hear.Now
—THR and Amazon Ads Most Influential Trailblazers in Marketing dinner: See the Photos
—Paula Shaw, actress in Freddy vs. Jason and Hallmark holiday telefilms, dies at 84
—Bobby Hart, co-writer of "Last Train to Clarksville" for The Monkees, dies at 86
What else we're reading...
—A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza [BBC]
—Sian Cain talks to Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on how they built The Rest Is History into the biggest history podcast in the world [Guardian]
—Max Tani reports that LAT heiress Nika Soon-Shiong will be the new publisher of the fast rising Drop Site News [Semafor]
—Demetri Sevastopulo and Barney Jopson report that Trump is signaling that the U.S. and China have struck a deal over TikTok [FT]
—Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, Jeremy Herb, Kristen Holmes and Holmes Lybrand go inside the growing concerns about podcaster Kash Patel’s FBI leadership [CNN]
—Will Sommer reports that there's no proof that Charlie Kirk's assassin Tyler Robinson was a groyper [Bulwark]
Today...
...in 1993, NBC unveiled its Cheers spinoff show Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer. The series ran 11 seasons before being picked up for a revival on Paramount+ three decades later. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Amy Poehler (54), Jennifer Tilly (67), Mickey Rourke (73), Molly Shannon (61), Nick Jonas (33), Max Minghella (40), Alexis Bledel (44), Fan Bingbing (44), Lee Jin-wook (44), Ed Begley Jr. (76), Kurt Fuller (72), Marc Anthony (57), Michael Mosley (47), Michael James Shaw (39), Chase Stokes (33), Aaron Phypers (53), Jayne Brook (65), Toks Olagundoye (50), Vanessa Aspillaga (53), Holly J. Barrett (23), Kyla Pratt (39), Danny John-Jules (65), Elena Kampouris (28), Sarah Steele (37), Emily Fairn (27), Ian Harding (39), Thekla Reuten (50), Mike Doyle (53), Christopher Rich (72), Bailey De Young (36), Amy Price-Francis (50), Ed Stoppard (51), Jessica Plummer (33), Dave Register (37), Doug Cockle (55), Bechir Sylvain (44), Peter Keleghan (66) |
| Patricia Crowley, who starred as the harried suburban wife and mother of four kids and a sheepdog on the 1960s NBC comedy Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, has died. She was 91. The obituary. |
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