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Updates earlier exclusive, with quotes:: It’s official. David Eilenberg is returning to being a buyer.

The Chief Creative Officer of ITV America is joining Roku as its Head of Originals.

ilenberg will join in April and report to Rob Holmes, VP Programming at Roku.

It comes as the streaming service has been ramping up the amount of exclusive and original content that it develops and commissions.

Last year, Roku acquired Quibi’s library of original content and launched dozens of short-form shows on The Roku Channel, including a number that never launched on the Jeffrey Katzenberg-led service. In addition, it renewed a number of shows for second seasons.

But outside of the Quibi deal, the service, which essentially began as a streaming aggregator, has plans to bolster its pipeline of original series and films even further with plans to order around 50 series and films over the next two years.

The “Florida Man” headlines are coming to the small screen. Luke Kirby and Tiana Okoye will star in Panhandle for Spectrum Originals and Roku, Spectrum Originals announced Tuesday. The dramedy is set in the Florida panhandle and is described as “a love letter to the sunshine state” from creators Nick Stoll — a Florida native — and Carla Kettner. “Panhandle pairs an eccentric, agoraphobic arm-chair detective with a reluctant traffic cop in a series that showcases community, connection, and yes, only-in-Florida characters,” a statement announcing the series said. “Together, ‘Bell Prescott’ (Kirby) and ‘Cammie Lorde’ (Okoye) wrestle with personal demons, shocking twists, and a few Florida gators on their journey to heal themselves and their town.” Kirby is known for playing Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Okoye has appeared in The Good Place and Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. She’ll soon appear in the upcoming romantic comedy The Valet.

Jackie Quiñones will be back on the beat: Starz has renewed the crime drama Hightown, starring Monica Raymund, for Season 3, the network announced on Tuesday.

“Hightown is such an incredible show, and we could not be happier that it’s been renewed for a third season,” Kathryn Busby, President of Original Programming for Starz, said in a statement. “We are excited to return to Cape Cod to see our iconic characters battle their past mistakes as well as new foes in the dangerous underworld that lies beneath this idyllic setting.”

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Spectrum Originals has ordered the dramedy series “Panhandle” starring Luke Kirby and Tiana Okoye, Variety has learned.

Set in the Florida panhandle, the series follows agoraphobic arm-chair detective Bell Prescott (Kirby) and reluctant traffic cop Cammie Lorde (Okoye) as they wrestle with personal demons, shocking twists, and a few Florida gators on their journey to heal themselves and their town.

Spectrum has ordered an eight-episode first season of the series, which will shoot in Savannah, Ga. It will have a nine month exclusive ad-free run on Spectrum before an ad-supported second window on The Roku Channel.

Nicholas Stoller and Carla Kettner created the series and will serve as executive producers. Conor Welch also serves as an executive producer. Colin Bucksey will direct the pilot. Sony Pictures Television is the studio behind the series.

“Nick and Carla are an electric team who have crafted a story that is a love letter...

Nick Stoller and Carla Kettner’s Florida dramedy is finally heading to the small screen.

Spectrum Originals and Roku have teamed up to greenlight Panhandle, which was formerly known as Florida Man, with Luke Kirby and Tiana Okoye starring.

The project, which comes from Sony Pictures Television, had previously been given a put pilot commitment by Fox in December 2019.

Panhandle follows an eccentric, agoraphobic arm-chair detective with a reluctant traffic cop in a series that showcases community, connection, and only-in-Florida characters. Together, Bell Prescott, played by Kirby, best known for playing Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Cammie Lorde, played by Okoye, who has appeared in The Good Place, wrestle with personal demons, shocking twists and a few Florida gators on their journey to heal themselves and their town.

The series will have a nine-month exclusive run on Spectrum Originals before moving to an an exclusive free advertising-supported window on The Roku Channel.

Emmy-winning producer, screenwriter and playwright Walter Halsey Davis, whose credits include the television movies Last Flight Out, Jane Doe, The Killing Mind, Stone Fox, and The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, has died. He was 76.

Davis died on Aug. 31 after a battle with metastatic prostate cancer, according to his family and former associates. The Redondo Beach native was a fifth generation Californian whose aviator aspirations led to a U.S. Navy officers training program. Davis excelled in his class but set aside that ambition in favor of creative writing and poetry pursuits and a Uc Santa Barbara degree in English literature.

While working on an Mfa degree at UCLA, Davis’ pursuits got a major boost when his 1971 play The Tapioca Misanthropa won the Samuel Goldwyn Award. His other stage credits included Panhandle and Tilden.

Davis has spent some of his teen years in Germany and his command of the language...

'The Pink Panther' with Peter Sellers: Blake Edwards' 1963 comedy hit and its many sequels revolve around one of the most iconic film characters of the 20th century: clueless, thick-accented Inspector Clouseau – in some quarters surely deemed politically incorrect, or 'insensitive,' despite the lack of brown face make-up à la Sellers' clueless Indian guest in Edwards' 'The Party.' 'The Pink Panther' movies [1] There were a total of eight big-screen Pink Panther movies co-written and directed by Blake Edwards, most of them starring Peter Sellers – even after his death in 1980. Edwards was also one of the producers of every (direct) Pink Panther sequel, from A Shot in the Dark to Curse of the Pink Panther. Despite its iconic lead character, the last three movies in the Pink Panther franchise were box office bombs. Two of these, The Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, were co-written by Edwards' son,...

Film director best known for the Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's and 10

The film-maker Blake Edwards, who has died aged 88, will be best remembered as the creator of the Pink Panther films, and as the husband of the entertainer Julie Andrews. But Edwards was a third-generation show-business figure whose complex and controversial career spanned more than 50 years, initially as an actor and writer and subsequently as one of America's most prolific producer-directors, primarily concerned with the popular genres of comedy and musicals and with creating television series.

Despite working in mainstream cinema, his maverick spirit and ego made him an uneasy partner with Hollywood studios. He famously savaged the hand that had fed him so well with S.O.B. (1981), a raucous, vitriolic attack on Tinseltown. His sophisticated work drew strongly on his love of early cinema (his stepgrandfather had directed silent films), and on his own life and psychological problems (he...

Today director/screenwriter Blake Edwards died at the age of 88. To those born in the 1980s and upward Edwards is likely a name that won't resonate with their generation, but for the older ones that came of age in the 1960s to the beginnings of the '80s, his movies are remembered. 10 with Bo Derek and Dudley Moore. Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews and which was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar. The creator of The Pink Panther and its hapless hero, Inspector Clouseau. The director of Breakfast at Tiffany's, which gave us the iconic image of a black-gloved Audrey Hepburn holding her fashionably long cigarette holder.

Edwards began his career writing the screenplays for two westerns of the late 1940s, Stampede and Panhandle. He went on to find regular work in the television shows of the 1950s, being a staff writer on The Mickey Rooney Show before selling his...

Los Angeles — Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "10" and the "Pink Panther" farces, is dead at age 88.

Edwards died from complications of pneumonia late Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.

Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.

At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the "Pink Panther" movies. The other, "Big Rosemary," was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.

"His heart was as big as his talent. He was an...

Actor-turned-director found fame with romantic classic but carved out a niche in comedy, particularly his collaborations with Peter Sellers, and with his wife, Julie Andrews

Blake Edwards, the director of Breakfast at Tiffany's, 10 and eight Pink Panther movies, has died aged 88. One of Hollywood's most successful specialists in comedy, Edwards never won an Academy award for any of his films, but was given an honorary Oscar in 2004 citing "his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen." He married Julie Andrews in 1969 and directed her in a strings of films – most notably The Tamarind Seed (1974), S.O.B. (1981) and Victor/Victoria (1982).

Edwards was born in Tulsa in 1922 and started off as an actor, appearing in around 30 films between 1942 and 1948. He moved into scriptwriting, starting with the westerns Panhandle and Stampede, and then started directing in the mid-50s, honing his skills across a variety of genres. His aptitude...

The man who brought the world Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau, writer/producer/director Blake Edwards, has died at the age of 88.Born in Oklahoma in 1922, Edwards was largely raised by his mother and his stepfather, a film production manager, in what he later described as a seriously dysfunctional family. He eventually met his biological father, a former stage director, at the age of 40, but regretted the decision.His family moved to Los Angeles when he was three, and he attended Beverly Hills High before making a stab at acting in movies such as Ten Gentlemen from West Point, A Guy named Joe, Ladies Courageous, Strangler of the Swamp and Leather Gloves. But in 1946, he co-wrote the Western film Panhandle and produced it, nabbing a small role in front of the camera.Other early work included creating and writing radio series including Richard Diamond, Private Detective and The Line-Up. His film...