| | | | | | What's news: It's magazine day! This week sees the release of THR's annual Music Issue, featuring cover stars FKA Twigs, Rosé and Justin Tranter. Bill Burr has defended his decision to perform in Saudi Arabia. Xbox is raising its Game Pass prices. Versant has signed a rights deal with WNBA. James Mangold has signed an overall deal with Paramount. And Jeremy Irons is the latest big name actor to join the cast of the Highlander remake. — Abid Rahman
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THR's 2025 Music Issue ►How FKA Twigs came back from the brink. Music’s perennial provocateur FKA Twigs opens up to THR's Shirley Halperin about her settlement with Shia LaBeouf — “I wouldn’t say I feel safe” — and reveals how a pivot from that Coachella visa debacle could lead to Grammy glory. The interview.
—Why Rosé can't chill. She’s one of the most famous women in the world. But behind all the choreographed chaos, Blackpink star Rosé tells THR's Nicole Fell that she is chasing something far harder to capture: authenticity. The interview.
—Music’s hottest hitmaker hits back. Justin Tranter wrote the soundtrack to the last decade, penning multi-platinum anthems for Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber and Chappell Roan. But pop’s ultimate secret weapon is sounding an alarm: Without better pay, the next generation of hit songwriters may never arrive. THR's Ethan Millman spoke to Tranter, the 70b stream man, about the state of the music industry. The interview. |
Grammys 2026: The State of the Race ►"The Grammys have never just been a charts game." There are plenty of reasons to be nostalgic for the good old days of 2024. But for the Grammy Awards, there’s been one especially big change. Last year was full-on Superstar Season: There were new albums from Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Billie Eilish; the explosion of breakout sensations Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter; a genuine cultural phenomenon with Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Five years after expanding the nominations in the Big Four categories from five to eight, the lists were bursting at the seams. This year, not as much. For THR , Alan Light writes that with fewer megastars dominating the charts, the industry confronts a crossroads: less spectacle, more substance, and maybe — just maybe — a little more soul. The analysis.
—"The Academy has flubbed categorizing music from Black artists so often that one could practically put them on a calendar reminder." A year after Beyonce's historic Cowboy Carter win for best country album at the Grammys, the decision to split the category in two — best contemporary country album and best traditional country album — is shaking up the genre, and raising eyebrows. THR's Kevin Dolak looks at how the Grammys’ new "Beyonce rule" is polarizing country music. The story.
—Promising roundup of rookies. Last year’s lineup for the Grammys best new artist category was stacked with heavy hitters. This year’s field? Leaner on marquee names but packed with a slew of buzzy upstarts and industry darlings who promise to make this the Grammys’ most unpredictable horse race. The story. |
Kimmel Was Just the Opening Salvo In a TV Affiliate Insurrection ►"The frustrations are boiling over." In the wake of the Jimmy Kimmel suspension and reinstatement controversy, Disney CEO Bob Iger eventually shut down a gambit by Nexstar and Sinclair to sideline the Trump-baiting late night comic. THR's Alex Weprin cautions that despite the dust up, local broadcasters are gearing up for a much bigger fight. The analysis.
—Does Sora 2 come to Hollywood in peace — or to leave it in pieces? On Tuesday, OpenAI dropped Sora 2, the newest iteration of its 2024-launched video-generation tool. Figure skaters with cats on their heads, dog astronauts gobbling tennis balls, unusually agile horseback riders standing astride multiple animals — these were some of the snippets seen in its short video presentation. THR's Steven Zeitchik and Julian Sancton hash out what the latest OpenAI wildness means for Hollywood. The conversation.
—Trending up. Xbox is raising its Game Pass prices ahead of the launch of two new handheld consoles on Oct. 16. The PC Game Pass plan had previously cost $11.99 per month, while the “Ultimate” ran $19.99/month. Now, the “Premium” plan will cost $14.99 per month and the “Ultimate,” which Xbox console players use, will cost $29.99. The Ultimate Game Pass plan provides access to console, PC and cloud gaming, while the PC plan was limited to PCs. Both options boast “hundreds” of games, “new games on day one” — though certainly not most new releases — and an EA Play membership, as well as other “deals, discounts, perks, and in-game benefits for free-to-play games.” Game Pass users could often purchase a digital game (on or not on Game Pass) at a discount. The story. |
Bill Burr Defends Performing at Riyadh Comedy Festival ►"They’re just like us." Bill Burr took to his podcast to give a detailed rundown of his experience last week in the Middle East, where he performed at the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival. The actor-comedian described rather nervously warming up for the event with a set in Bahrain to get a feel for what an audience in the region would find funny (and acceptable) and then performing at the Saudi Arabia festival’s opening night on Friday. Burr painted a portrait of a region where people were, well, “just like us” — wanting live comedy, wanting to relax and have fun, and consuming a surprising amount of Western culture. Burr’s take on the event comes as some comedians such as Shane Gillis, Marc Maron and David Cross have voiced objections to the festival. The story.
—Tough year. Dolly Parton will not attend the 16th Governors Awards. The legendary singer-songwriter and actress and noted philanthropist was tapped by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board of governors to receive its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the ceremony on Nov. 16. Parton, 79, who lives in Tennessee, announced earlier this week that “health challenges” were forcing her to postpone a series of six concerts that were to have taken place in Las Vegas later this year, for which tickets sold out in less than two hours. It has been a difficult year for the fan favorite, whose husband on nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, died in March. The story.
—"They really did her dirty, didn’t they?" Move over busted bust of Cristiano Ronaldo. Step aside "Scary" Lucille Ball. There's a new statue of a legend that has the internet asking "WTF?" On Saturday, the small rural Tennessee community of Brownsville honored their most famous daughter Tina Turner with a statue. The 10-foot tribute to the late rock legend, located not too far from Nutbush, features the singer striking a familiar pose — all big hair, short skirt and microphone in hand. Alas, the execution of the statue by the sculptors left a lot to be desired, and led to much mockery and even anger on social media. The story. |
Paramount+'s 'Lioness' Renewed for S3 ►It’s official! Taylor Sheridan's Lioness has been renewed for a third season. The CIA action-drama has been announced as renewed 10 months after its season two finale aired last December. Word of the pending renewal was first reported in August, but the studio finally confirmed the news Wednesday. The show was reportedly held up due to negotiations with co-star Nicole Kidman, while star Zoe Saldaña was already signed through a third season. Both Oscar-winning actors are also executive producers on the project. No word yet on a description or cast list for the third season, other than Saldaña and Kidman returning. The story.
—More options. What will likely be one of Fox Sports’ biggest NFL broadcasts of the season is adding another way to watch. Tubi, Fox Corp.’s free streaming outlet, will stream the Thanksgiving game between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers through a partnership with Fox Sports. The Thanksgiving matchup will be the second NFL game to live stream on Tubi, following Super Bowl LIX in February. (Fox’s SVOD service, Fox One, will also carry the game.) The Super Bowl collaboration was a successful one: Tubi’s stream of the game averaged some 13.6m viewers, the largest streaming audience to date for a Super Bowl and more than 10 percent of the game’s record-breaking total viewership of 127.7m. The story.
—🎭 Filling out. 🎭 FX is moving ahead with Very Young Frankenstein, giving the project a pilot order and casting six actors in the comedy based on Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Zach Galifianakis, Dolly Wells, Spencer House, Nikki Crawford, Kumail Nanjiani and Cary Elwes will star in the pilot, which FX began developing in June. Details on the characters they’ll be playing are under wraps for the moment, as are plot specifics. Brooks is an EP of Very Young Frankenstein along with writer/showrunner Stefani Robinson and director Taika Waititi, both alumni of FX’s What We Do in the Shadows. Garrett Basch (also a WWDITS veteran), Brooks’ producing partner Kevin Salter and Michael Gruskoff, who produced Young Frankenstein, are also EPs. The story. |
NBCU Unveils Expanded BravoCon Streaming Plans ►Going all in. Bravo is set to bring back its BravoCon fan experience Nov. 14-16, after a two year hiatus, and its plan includes more streaming on Peacock than ever before. Originally launched in 2019 as a much smaller fan event, BravoCon has grown substantially in scale and significance. This year’s installment, which will be held over a weekend at the Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, will see more than 150 “Bravolebrities” in attendance, including multiple live panels led by Andy Cohen every night of the event. Peacock will stream the main BravoCon stage (it’s called the Bravoverse Live Stage) live all weekend, while panels on the secondary Gold and Glam stages will stream on-demand the day after they are held. The story.
—🤝 Rights locked in. 🤝 A year ago, the WNBA signed an 11-year media rights deal with NBCUniversal (along with Disney and Amazon) that included a slate of games on its USA Network cable channel. A few months later, NBCU announced plans to spin off USA Network and other cable assets into a separate company, eventually named Versant. With the pending spinoff, Versant has now signed its own deal with the WNBA to keep the league on USA. Like NBCU’s deal, Versant’s will run from 2026-36. It will also increase the number of games on USA to 50 per year. The story.
—Ramping up the live events. Free Solo climber Alex Honnold is reaching new heights in an upcoming Netflix special, Skyscraper Live. In the new 2-hour live special, world-renowned American rock climber Honnold will attempt to become the first person to free solo one of the tallest buildings on the planet, named Taipei 101. The skyscraper, which is the tallest building in Taiwan and the 11th tallest in the world, stands at 1,667 ft tall and includes 101 floors. Honnold was previously featured in the Oscar-winning documentary, Free Solo. It followed his historic free solo of El Capitan’s 3,000-foot Freerider route in Yosemite National Park, which means he climbed it without a rope or help. The story. |
Jeremy Irons Joins Amazon's 'Highlander' Remake ►🎭 Stacked cast. 🎭 THR's Borys "Scoops" Kit has the scoop that Oscar, Emmy and Tony winner Jeremy Irons is the latest bold-faced name to join the cast of Highlander , Amazon MGM’s remake of the 1980s cult classic. The feature has Henry Cavill leading a stellar cast that already includes Russell Crowe, Marisa Abela, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan and Djimon Hounsou. The action fantasy, which hails from Amazon MGM’s United Artists banner, is being directed by Chad Stahelski and is slated for a theatrical release. Production was to have started in late September/early October but was pushed after Cavill sustained an injury during pre-production. Production will now begin in early 2026. In a part that could be juicy, Irons will play one of the movie’s villains, the leader of a secret order called The Watchers, who are keeping an eye on the immortals and see them as a threat to humanity. The story.
—🤝 Overall deal. 🤝 Paramount Pictures has signed an overall deal with James Mangold, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Logan, Ford v. Ferrari, and A Complete Unknown. The studio is already in business with the writer-director having picked up a biker thriller titled High Side in August after winning the project in a bidding war. That project has Timothée Chalamet attached to star. Mangold will develop, direct, and produce feature film projects for the studio. His new association with the studio now puts at least two high-level movie projects at other companies in question. Mangold was developing the Star Wars movie, Dawn of the Jedi, for Lucasfilm, which was to have explored the origins of the Force. And he was developing a horror feature for DC Studios centered on the character Swamp Thing. The story.
—It may not be a barrel of laughs, but... THR's Scott Feinberg has the scoop that Mary Bronstein’s acclaimed indie If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has been submitted for Golden Globes consideration in the musical or comedy categories rather than drama categories. The feature centers on a widely lauded performance by Rose Byrne as a woman whose life is literally and figuratively crashing down around her. The A24 release, Bronstein’s second feature and first in 17 years, had its world premiere at Sundance and then played at the Berlin and Telluride. Byrne, who appears in virtually every scene of the film, usually in a tight close-up, was awarded Berlin’s Silver Bear for best leading performance for her turn as the troubled Linda. The story. |
'Mishima' to Screen in Japan After 40-Year De Facto Ban ►Finally. The 2025 Tokyo Film Festival will screen Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters . It will be the film’s effective Japan premiere — some 40 years late. The film’s path to Japanese screens has been tortured in the extreme. Co-written and directed by Schrader, the film was backed by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas’ Zoetrope Pictures. Shot entirely in Japan with an all-Japanese cast and featuring a Philip Glass score, the movie explores the life and ideas of the country’s most controversial literary iconoclast, Yukio Mishima, the novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times before taking his own life by ritual suicide after leading a failed coup d’état. The movie’s frank depiction of Mishima’s bisexuality and radical politics, not to mention the involvement of foreign filmmakers, drew a boycott from the writer's widow and incensed the ultra-right-wing political groups that continued to lionize him, leading to an unofficial ban. The story.
—Sugoi! Also on Wednesday, the Tokyo Film Festival unveiled the full lineup for its 38th edition. Highlights include new films from Fan Bingbing, Tadanobu Asano and Rithy Panh, Chloé Zhao's Hamnet, Brendan Fraser's Japan-set Rental Family, acclaimed doc The Ozu Diaries, as well as lots of top tier anime. Also included in the main competition is Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir's Palestine 36, a sweeping colonial-era drama set in 1936 starring Hiam Abbass. The lineup. |
TV Review: 'Brian and Maggie' ►"Relationship status: It's complicated." THR's Angie Han reviews PBS' Brian and Maggie. The Queen director Stephen Frears helms this two-part miniseries revolving around a 1989 interview of the U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by her onetime friend, the broadcast reporter Brian Walden. Starring Steve Coogan, Harriet Walter, Paul Clayton, Tom Mothersdale and Ivan Kaye. Created by James Graham. The review.
In other news...
—Netflix’s new releases coming in October
—AFI Fest sets lineup with Jim Jarmusch, Paolo Sorrentino, Kaouther Ben Hania films
—Jim Carrey to receive honorary César award
—Jason Blum to receive Milestone Award at 2026 PGA Awards
—Doja Cat set to perform at LACMA’s Art+Film Gala
—Saudi Arabia unveils film production investment
—TikTok star Keith Lee signs with UTA
—Samuel M. Sherman, producer of Satan’s Sadists, The Naughty Stewardesses and other exploitation films, dies at 85
What else we're reading...
—With the U.S. government shut down, Carl Hulse writes that Democrats see no need to capitulate, and the Republicans don't see need to cut a deal [NYT]
—Eric Vilas-Boas wonders if Apple did the right thing in delaying the release of The Savant in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder [Vulture]
—Stephanie Hughes reports on Canadian media giant Rogers' attempts to merge its stakes in Toronto's Raptors, Maple Leafs and Blue Jays into one sports empire [Bloomberg]
—With Netflix, Oracle and Spotify recently opting for co-CEOs, Chip Cutter and Theo Francis write that tech companies are increasingly going down that path in the hopes of securing more than one successor [WSJ]
—Joshua Rivera looks into why Jared Kushner and the Saudis took over video game giant Electronic Arts [Vanity Fair]
Today...
...in 2010, Sony released David Fincher's The Social Network in theaters. The film about the founding of Facebook, written by Aaron Sorkin, was a huge critical and commercial success and ranked No.34 in THR's best films of the 21st century. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Julie Andrews (90), Brie Larson (36), Emerald Fennell (40), Michaela Coel (38), Zach Galifianakis (56), Jurnee Smollett (39), Beck Bennett (41), Jean-Jacques Annaud (82), Esai Morales (63), Luna Blaise (24), Sarah Drew (45), Katie Aselton (47), Sherri Saum (51), Priah Ferguson (19), Josh Brener (41), Matthew Daddario (38), Angela Giarratana (32), Brandon Keener (51), Danielle Bisutti (49), Charles Edwards (56), Jay Underwood (57), Danika Yarosh (27), Nanci Chambers (62), Marielle Heller (46), Michelle Bauer (67), Christian Borle (52), Ciarán McMenamin (50), Roxane Mesquida (44), Cariba Heine (37), Olga Fonda (43), Cassandra Freeman (47), Hakeem Kae-Kazim (63), Ted King (60) |
| Renato Casaro, the Italian designer of movie posters renowned for the hand-crafted art he created for films including A Fistful of Dollars, Conan the Barbarian and the Rambo features, has died. He was 89. The obituary. |
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