| | | | | | What's news: More stars at the Berlin Film Festival are avoiding political questions. Amazon has renewed Off Campus before its S1 premiere. A John Wick videogame is in the works. David Boreanaz will lead NBC's reboot of Rockford Files. And Netflix has acquired U.S. rights to the Jack Thorne-penned adaptation of Lord of the Flies. — Abid Rahman
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AI Clip of Cruise Fighting Pitt Has Top Hollywood Writer Warning: "It's Likely Over for Us" ►Slopsided. A stunningly realistic AI video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt has one top Hollywood screenwriter warning the industry is about to face major challenges due to the new and rapidly evolving technology, while the MPA has blasted the company behind the model. The 15-second video depicts the two A-listers trading blows on a rooftop. The video was posted two days ago by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson, who was Oscar-nominated for a short film in 2002. Robinson pointed out his video was created by simply entering a two-line prompt into Seedance 2.0, which is owned by the Chinese parent company of Tiktok, ByteDance. The MPA called on the company to curb its “infringement” of copyrighted works. The story.
—The latest. The FBI has released new details of the suspect they’re looking for in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie. On Thursday, following a forensic analysis of the previously-released doorbell camera footage by the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, investigators determined they’re searching for a man, approximately 5’9” to 5’10” tall, with an average build. They said he was also wearing a black, 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack in the footage. The story.
—Sounding the alarm. A number of production staffers at the CBS Evening News have taken buyouts — and one exiting producer has made it clear that she did so due to the new leadership at the news division. CBS News offered buyouts to non-union Evening News staffers in late January, a few weeks after Tony Dokoupil took over as anchor of the program and a day after editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told the news division that she was seeking to “make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century.” 11 staffers have taken the buyout offer, among them producer Alicia Hastey. In a goodbye message to her colleagues, Hastey wrote, "there has been a sweeping new vision prioritizing a break from traditional broadcast norms." The story.
—Dawson would have loved it. Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, are among those who have donated to James Van Der Beek‘s GoFundMe page for the late actor’s family. The Oscar-winning filmmaker donated $25,000 to the account, launched by the Dawson’s Creek star’s close friends for his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and their six children. The GoFundMe is asking for financial aid after medical costs left them “out of funds.” As of Thursday at 7:30 p.m. PT, more than $2m had been raised of a goal of $1.5m. Early on Wednesday, the donation goal was much lower, at $550,000, but as donations kept flooding in, organizers kept increasing it. The story. |
Disney Is Launching Its 2027 Super Bowl Blitz ►Hype machine goes brrr. ESPN has been televising live sports into America’s homes for nearly 50 years … but it’s never had a Super Bowl. But in one year, that changes. Disney will have the rights to Super Bowl LXI in 2027, with ESPN and ABC set to broadcast the big game. And the company is going all-out to get the word out, with what it calling “The year of the Super Bowl.” THR's Alex Weprin spoke to Andy Tennant, vp of Super Bowl production for ESPN, about the big buildup to The Big Game a year out. The interview.
—Big change. CinemaCon has unveiled plans for a new program providing time on stage beyond the usual suspects, with three very different companies — Angel Studios, StudioCanal and Row K Entertainment — getting to present inside the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace. The new program, titled “CinemaCon Film Showcase,” is part of a revamped lineup that no longer includes an International Day, which was previously held on Monday before the first Hollywood studio presentation Monday evening. The story.
—Upped. Sophie Leonard is moving from producing to an executive role at Fox. Leonard, the executive producer of the network’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, has been named executive vp unscripted at the Fox Television Network. She’ll take charge of the network’s unscripted efforts — which comprises a plurality of the network’s primetime programming — including development, production and strategy. Leonard will report to Fox Television network president Michael Thorn. The story.
—Trending up. For the fourth quarter, Roku reported net revenue of $1.5b, up 16 percent year over year and above its guidance, and net income of $80.5m, or 53 cents per share, also above prior guidance and Wall Street expectations. Platform revenue made up the bulk of it, bringing in $1.2b, up 18 percent, as the company cited growth in video advertising, as well as improvements to the interface. In December 2025, The Roku Channel hit an all-time high, representing 6.3 percent of all TV streaming, according to the Nielsen Gauge. The results. |
Why the Comedy Bros Are Turning on Trump ►"The cultural problem for Trump is that comedy does not sour politely. It moves from fascination to boredom, from indulgence to contempt. And contempt is contagious." With their tens of millions of subscribers, “manosphere” comedy podcasts — a circle of pals that includes such Trump-amenable comics as Tony Hinchcliffe, Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz — were the president's most useful cultural intermediaries during the last election. THR's Seth Abramovitch writes that there's been something of a volte face in recent months amid a litany of scandals, as well as the ICE killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, that has seen the bromance between right-coded comics and the president quickly cool off. The analysis.
—Banana republic latest. After she was appointed as the DOJ's top competition cop, Gail Slater articulated an “America First” agenda that would involve empowering the middle class to “shape the economy toward their own flourishing” by way of aggressive antitrust enforcement. The veteran tech and media lawyer ended up lasting roughly a year at her post, stepping down on Thursday amid mounting tension over her authority to pursue cases against large companies cozying up to the administration and going above her head to strike deals with higher-ups. THR's Winston Cho and Ethan Millman write that after Slater's departure, signs could be pointing toward an out-of-court ending to Live Nation's monopoly suit. The story.
—Shut up and take my money! John Wick is back! No, not for the long-gestating John Wick: Chapter 5, but for a newly announced, big-budget video game from Saber Interactive, the developer behind Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. The project is described as a mature audience, third-person action game that will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game announcement was made during the Sony State of Play Showcase, with a trailer revealed during the presentation. The story. |
Es reicht! Don't Mention Politics! ►Omerta continues. After Berlinale jury head Wim Wenders shocked many when he said the festival should "stay out of politics" on Thursday, Michelle Yeoh, this year’s honorary Golden Bear recipient, was quick to fend off political questions at her presser on Friday. The Oscar-winner star was asked within minutes about what she thinks of the U.S.’s political landscape, but Yeoh dodged the issue, saying, "it is best not to talk about something I don’t know about. But I think I want to concentrate on what is important for us, which is cinema." The story.
—"I think we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now, and so as artists, I’m always interested in doing things that are apolitical." Bella Ramsey, George Jacques, and Neil Patrick Harris had more political questions to field ahead of the Berlin premiere of Sunny Dancer. Jacques, Ramsey, and Harris were asked about whether films should be political and if cinema can fight fascism. Later, Harris was asked by a journalist, “Do you dare to criticize your government and do you think democracy in the U.S. is in danger?” “Wow,” Harris began. “While I have my own political opinions, I think as a performer, especially in this kind of movie, [I’m] trying to be as inclusive [as possible.] I never read this script as a political statement." The story. |
Amazon's 'Off Campus' Renewed Ahead of Premiere ►Feeling confident. Amazon Prime Video has given a second season renewal to Off Campus before the first season kicks off in May. The college soap is based on the Elle Kennedy book series of the same name and, according to a synopsis, follows “an elite ice hockey team and the women in their lives, as they grapple with love, heartbreak, and self-discovery—forging deep friendships and enduring bonds while navigating the complexities that come with transitioning into adulthood.” The first season centers on a romance between quiet songwriter Hannah, played by Ella Bright, and Briar University’s all-star hockey athlete Garrett (Belmont Camelli). The early second season renewal for Off Campus follows the breakout success of another TV series set in a fictional hockey universe, Heated Rivalry. The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 Nicolas Cage is Spider-Man — sort of — in Prime Video‘s new series Spider-Noir. The streamer released the show’s first teaser trailer on Thursday, which presents the Marvel Comics Spider-Verse character in live action for the first time. Marking the Oscar winner’s first leading TV series role, Cage plays Ben Reilly, an aging and down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero. Prime Video also announced a premiere date, May 27, and says the episodes will be dropped as a binge release. The story.
—🎭 Safe pair of hands. 🎭 NBC’s Rockford Files reboot has found its leading man. David Boreanaz has signed on to star in the pilot as private eye James Rockford. He’ll take on a role made famous by James Garner in the original Rockford Files, which ran from 1974-80 and continued later with several TV movies. Boreanaz will also be a producer on the pilot. NBC ordered the pilot in January as part of a spate of pickups as the network stages its own mini-revival of the traditional pilot season. NBC has ordered eight pilots so far, up from just three last year. The story. |
Thandiwe Newton, Ncuti Gatwa Board Michaela Coel's 'First Day on Earth' ►🎭 Stellar additions. 🎭 Michaela Coel’s next series for HBO and the BBC, First Day on Earth, is adding to its cast as filming gets underway. Thandiwe Newton, Ncuti Gatwa, Maxine Peake and Danny Sapani have joined Coel in the show, in which Coel plays a novelist at a personal crossroads. The series is Coel’s first as creator, writer and star since the critically hailed and Emmy- and BAFTA-winning I May Destroy You. Aside from character names, details about the roles for the four actors are being kept quiet for now. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Sony Pictures Television said Friday that Netflix has acquired U.S. rights to Lord of the Flies, the limited series adaptation written by multi-award-winning Adolescence screenwriter Jack Thorne. The show, based on William Golding’s classic novel, is produced by Eleven and directed by Marc Munden and has had a positive reaction in the U.K. since it launched on Feb. 8. The series is screening in Berlin, making it the second year in a row that Sony has presented a series at the Berlinale, following the gala premiere for The Narrow Road to the Deep North from Curio Pictures last year. The story.
—Dethroning a monster. Netflix's (perhaps overly) twisty limited series His & Hers climbed to the top overall ranking on Nielsen’s charts for Jan. 12-18 with 2.24b minutes of viewing. Stranger Things fell one spot with 1.91b minutes, the first time since its final season debuted in late November (a span of seven weeks) that it was not the top title. Several other shows also had strong weeks. Landman reached a series high of 1.77b viewing minutes on Paramount+ in the week leading up to its second season finale on Jan. 18. The Pitt crossed the billion-minute mark for the first time, recording 1.16b on HBO Max two weeks into its season. On Peacock, The Traitors drew 892m minutes, beating its prior high mark — set a week earlier — by more than 100m minutes. The streaming rankings. |
Jessica Gunning to Play Cass Elliot in Biopic ►🎭 Supreme casting. 🎭 Jessica Gunning, the Emmy and BAFTA-winning star of Netflix sensation Baby Reindeer, has been cast to play singer Cass Elliot in a biopic from Peter Jaysen and Alan Gasmer’s Veritas Entertainment. The movie will be based on the memoir My Mama Cass, written by Elliot’s daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell. Novelist and screenwriter Emma Forrest will be adapting the book for the screen. Veritas, which was recently behind Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, has packaged the project, which is being shared with financiers. Elliot, who died in 1974 at 32, came to prominence as a member of the musical group The Mamas & the Papas, earning a Grammy Award and later releasing several solo albums. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 A forthcoming thriller starring Josh Duhamel and Dylan Sprouse is ready to get some attention. Inaugural Entertainment has acquired North American distribution rights to writer-director David Lipper’s action film Neglected. The movie wrapped production in Mississippi and is eyeing a theatrical release in April after having premiered on the festival circuit. Neglected centers on Detective Shaw (Duhamel), who faces an unexpected battle for survival during his final day on the job. Shaw must race to solve a series of murders in order to save his son from a serial killer. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Rafael Manuel’s debut feature Filipiñana, the formally ambitious class satire that recently took home the special jury award for creative vision from Sundance. The deal, negotiated by Kino Lorber’s Karoliina Dwyer and Austin Kennedy of Magnify, arrived shortly before the film’s European premiere in Berlin. The distributor says it’s planning a theatrical release later this year, followed by digital and home entertainment rollouts. Executive produced by leading Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, Filipiñana expands the Filipino director’s 2021 short of the same name into a feature set almost entirely within the manicured confines of an elite country club outside Manila. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Netflix has acquired The Baddest Speechwriter of All, a documentary short about Dr. Clarence B. Jones, the lawyer and speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It will drop on the service later this year. Co-directed by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot and, in his directorial debut, NBA great Stephen Curry, the 29-minute film was awarded Sundance's short film grand jury prize last month, and seems likely to contend for the best documentary short Oscar a year from now. The story. |
Four More for the Four Fab Four Films ►🎭 Across the (Beatles Cinematic) Universe. 🎭 Sam Mendes' four-movie Beatles biopic project for Sony has added to its ensemble cast. The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event has cast Lucy Boynton as Jane Asher, Farhan Akhtar as Ravi Shankar, Penarth's Morfydd Clark as Cynthia Lennon and Harry Lawtey has joined as Stuart Sutcliffe. The quartet join the Fab Four as portrayed by Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. The cast also includes Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as Brian Epstein, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, Harry Lloyd as George Martin and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey. The story.
—🏆 Congrats! 🏆 As awards season chugs along, it was the Costume Designers Guild’s turn on Thursday, announcing the winners across film, television, short form costume design and costume illustration. The guild's 2026 awards, held at The Ebell of Los Angeles, saw prizes handed out to the costume designers behind One Battle After Another, Frankenstein and Wicked: For Good, while on the TV side, awards went to The Studio, Palm Royale and Andor. The winners. |
TV Review: 'Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette' ►"Dazzling, then discomfiting." THR's Angie Han reviews FX on Hulu's Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon star alongside Naomi Watts (as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) in the first volume of the planned anthology series. Also starring Grace Gummer, Alessandro Nivola, Leila George and Sydney Lemmon. Created by Connor Hines. The review.
—"Absorbing but dramatically diffuse." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Shahrbanoo Sadat's No Good Men. A female camera operator and a Kabul network newsman form a complicated romantic alliance in the months leading up to the Taliban retaking the city in 2021, in this Berlin Film Festival opener. Starring Shahrbanoo Sadat, Anwar Hashimi, Liam Hussaini, Yasin Negah, Masihullah Tajzai, Torkan Omari, Fatima Hassani and Ahmad Azizi. Written by Shahrbanoo Sadat. The review.
—"Convincing but conventional." THR's Leslie Felperin reviews Danielle Arbid's Only Rebels Win. Arbid's Berlin-bowing drama centers around the relationship between a Beirut woman of a certain age and a much younger African immigrant. Starring Hiam Abbass, Amine Benrachid, Shaden Fakih, Charbel Kamel and Alexandre Paulikevitch. Written Danielle Arbid. The review.
—"Quietly effective." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Leyla Bouzid's Berlin competition entry, In a Whisper. The Tunisian filmmaker's third feature stars newcomer Eya Bouteraa as a Muslim lesbian returning home for a funeral, and Hiam Abbass as the mother unwilling to fully accept her. Also starring Marion Barbeau and Feriel Chamari. Written by Leyla Bouzid. The review.
—"Doesn't live up to its title, but plenty of fun." THR's Frank Scheck reviews Tyree Dillahay and Adam Rosette's GOAT. A small goat aspires to play pro ball in a league populated by big animals in Sony Pictures Animation's latest effort. Featuring the voices of Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, Jenifer Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson, Sherry Cola, Eduardo Franco, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee and Stephen Curry. Written by Aaron Buchsbaum and Terry Riley. The review.
In other news...
—SNL: Connor Storrie, Ryan Gosling to host after Winter Olympics hiatus
—Essence names 2026 Black Women in Hollywood honorees
—Ray Romano signs with WME
—From streaming to Samsung Frame TVs, the top 27 Presidents Day deals
—Susan Grode, Hollywood power lawyer, dies at 86
What else we're reading...
—David Smith looks at how awards favorites like One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme made expert use of non-actors [Guardian]
—Powerful piece from Elizabeth Bruenig on the deaths caused by a measles outbreak [Atlantic]
—Grim story from Michael Schulman about a nepo baby's attempts to use AI and complete Orson Welles’s mangled masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons [New Yorker]
—Sarah Perez reports that Spotify's best developers haven’t written a line of code since December, thanks to AI [TechCrunch]
—Here's your Friday list: Survivor: All 47 winners who outwitted, outplayed and outlasted their competition [THR]
Today...
...in 2015, 20th Century Fox released Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service in theaters. The British spy action comedy film, based on Mark Millar's comic book series, was a huge success and spawned three followup films. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Mena Suvari (47), Stockard Channing (82), Kim Novak (93), Henry Rollins (65), Robbie Williams (52), Alaqua Cox (29), Carolyn Lawrence (59), Antonio Negret (44), Neal McDonough (60), Sophia Lillis (24), Tracy Ifeachor (41), Kelly Hu (58), Sydney Chandler (30), Tony Dalton (51), JB Blanc (57), Donald Sumpter (83), Richard Tyson (65), Andy Buckley (61), Ferdinand Kingsley (38), Daniel Portman (34), David Naughton (75), Hugh Dennis (64), Bo Svenson (85), Michael Buscemi (66), Park Hee-soon (56), Brina Palencia (42), Michele Greene (64), Ryan Farrell (45), Joe Estevez (80), Cissy Jones (47) |
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