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Exclusive: Sony Pictures Television have extended the options on several key cast members of its upcoming Netflix comedic coming-of-age drama Boots, Deadline has learned.

The move comes ahead of the series’ Oct. 9 debut on the streamer. Its timing is related to the series’ major delay as the cast options are set to expire Aug. 30, sources said. Extended are Miles Heizer, Liam Oh, Kieron Moore, Dominic Goodman, Angus O’Brien, Blake Burt and Rico Paris, I hear. The options of several cast members have not been extended, which I hear was due to creative reasons, based on where the showrunners plan to take the story in a potential second season.

The biggest name on the cast, Vera Farmiga, is believed to have had a one-year deal and had no option to extend but I hear the creative team is contemplating Season 2 possibilities for her character.

Studios proactively securing series casts is not unusual.

American television writer and producer of popular sitcoms such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude.

Norman and his wife, Lyn, founded the Lear Family Foundation in 1997 to support a wide range of nonprofit organizations across the country.

Charities & foundations supported

Norman Lear has supported the following charities:

Adopt-a-MinefieldAlliance for Women in Media FoundationArtists for a New South AfricaAutism SpeaksConservation InternationalDeclare YourselfDoctors Without BordersElizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS FoundationEnvironmental Media AssociationGLAADGlobal GreenHabitat For HumanityLear Family FoundationNational Domestic Violence HotlineNatural Resources Defense CouncilOceanaPlaying for ChangeRape FoundationUNICEF Read more about Norman Lear's charity work and events. Related articles Ansa Shakes the...

Jennifer Lopez, the trailblazing and internationally renowned actress, singer, dancer, producer and businesswoman, will receive the Virtuoso Award at the Scad Savannah Film Festival, the largest university-run film festival in the world, in recognition of her Oscar-buzzed portrayal of — appropriately enough — a great movie star in Bill Condon’s musical Kiss of the Spider Woman.

The honor will be presented on Saturday, Nov. 1, immediately after an hourlong recording of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which will be moderated by yours truly in front of a festival audience, and during which Lopez will discuss her life and career.

“It’s an extraordinary honor to welcome Jennifer Lopez to Savannah,” Christina Routhier, the fest’s senior execuive director, said in a statement. “Her performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman is a revelation, and having an artist of her global stature join us is a landmark moment for our festival and our community.

Comedy doesn't always travel well, even between countries like the United States and the United Kingdom; we may share some close cultural bonds and we might speak the same language, but our humor is subtly different. Still, that hasn't stopped TV networks importing popular sitcoms from across the pond and remaking them to suit their respective audiences,  with many of the most famous examples heading in a westerly direction for a stateside spin. It's been a mixed bag over the decades: While some are hits, like "The Office" or "Sanford and Son" (based on "Steptoe and Son"), you also have abortive attempts like "The Rear Guard" ("Dad's Army") and "Kings of Van Nuys" ("Only Fools and Horses"). When it works, though, it really works, and one American remake that is arguably better than the beloved British original is "All in the Family."

Norman Lear's groundbreaking show took its basic...

Did you know the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies spent three weeks at the top of Billboard’s country charts? Or that Sherwood Schwartz used the theme song from Gilligan’s Island to explain the show’s premise because the network worried new viewers wouldn’t understand why everyone was stuck on that island?

The Hollywood Reporter has compiled more “Hey, I never knew that” facts about iconic TV theme songs, including the bouncy opening numbers for these six classic sitcoms.

1 Friends

The ubiquitous clap-clap-clap-clap theme song has earned the Rembrandts more than $5 million in royalties. But shouldn’t some of the cash go to the cast for all the times they had to listen to “I’ll Be There for You”?

“No one was really a big fan of that theme song,” Jennifer Aniston told the BBC in 2016. “We felt it was a little... I don't know. Dancing in a pond?...

Miles Heizer is leading a powerful new Netflix series.

The 30-year-old actor stars in Boots, a coming-of-age dramedy inspired by Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine. Originally known as The Corps, the series marks the final project from legendary producer Norman Lear, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 101.

The show premieres October 9 and follows closeted teen Cameron Cope and his best friend Ray McAffey as they enter Marine Corps boot camp in 1990.

Click through to see who stars in Netflix’s Boots…...

In today’s edition of Sitcom Sliding Doors, imagine a world in which Archie Bunker, the bigoted patriarch of All in the Family, was played not by Carroll O’Connor but… Captain Stubing from The Love Boat?

It coulda, woulda happened, according to MeTV. In an interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show star Gavin MacLeod revealed that he auditioned to play Archie. No word on how well he did, but MacLeod sounded like he would have turned down the role had Norman Lear offered it.

“It was so defaming. You need a special guy to play that,” explained MacLeod. “I abhor bigotry in every shape and form. I come from a place of love and compassion. It wouldn’t have been a good fit.”

By all accounts, O’Connor also wasn’t a fan of racial prejudice. He figured out how to play the part anyway.

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise has reportedly declined a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor that was set to be awarded during President Donald Trump’s administration. The news, confirmed by several Kennedy Center insiders and reported by multiple outlets, has stirred curiosity and speculation given the high-profile nature of the award and its political backdrop.

Tom Cruise and the Kennedy Center Honor: Why He Said No

According to reports, Tom Cruise cited “scheduling conflicts” as the official reason for declining the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025, which was to be presented at a ceremony hosted by Donald Trump. This honor typically recognizes outstanding contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

Trump had announced a star-studded lineup of honorees including rock band Kiss, actors Sylvester Stallone and Michael Crawford, singer Gloria Gaynor, and country legend George Strait. Cruise would have been among the most prominent recipients, making his decision noteworthy. While...

On Monday, August 11, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the rollout of the inaugural BAFTA Honours, scheduled to take place on Sunday, November 2 in Los Angeles, California. And while this indeed a new event, it does fill a BAFTA-sized hole on the awards calendar, dating back to 2020.

Officially, the Honours are described as the first event of its kind in the United States, providing a new series of special awards across film, games, and television to recognize individuals and organizations that have had significant and positive impact on the sector. The event will bestow the iconic BAFTA mask upon three distinguished honorees, marking only the sixth time that the BAFTA mask is awarded in the U.S., marking a significant milestone for BAFTA North America.

IndieWire has confirmed that this news comes with final notice that BAFTA’s previous special awards ceremony in North America, the Britannia Awards,...

*The New Avengers are headed to Disney+.

Thunderbolts* will make its streaming platform debut on Wednesday, Aug. 27. The MCU flick “assembles an unconventional team of antiheroes, with Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker,” per the official logline. “After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap set by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, these disillusioned castoffs must embark on a dangerous mission. Forced to confront the darkest corners of their pasts, will this dysfunctional group tear themselves apart, or find redemption and unite before it’s too late?”

More from TVLineEvery New Scripted Show Confirmed to Premiere in 2025 — Save the Dates!

Miles Heizer is heading to the front lines in Boots, which comes to Netflix Oct. 9. Inspired by former US Marine Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine, the upcoming eight-episode series hails from creator and co-showrunner Andy Parker, showrunner Jennifer Cecil, and executive producer Norman Lear.

Boots is a one-hour comedic drama that delivers an irreverent, offbeat take on the coming-of-age story. Set in the tough, unpredictable world of the 1990s US Marine Corps — when being gay in the military was still illegal — the series follows directionless, closeted Cameron Cope (Heizer) and his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh), the son of a decorated Marine, as they join a diverse group of recruits. Together, this ensemble navigates the literal and metaphorical landmines of boot camp, forging unlikely bonds and discovering their true selves in...

Netflix has slated one of the last series impacted by the 2023 Hollywood strikes that had been in limbo, Boots (formerly known as The Corps), the last show from legendary producer Norman Lear, who died in December 2023 at the age of 101. The comedic coming-of-age drama starring Miles Heizer will premiere October 9. You can see first-look images above and below.

Greenlighted in May 2023, Boots, inspired by Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine, started production that summer but had to shut down one week into filming due to the strikes. Production picked up in March 2024.

It is unclear why it took more than a year for Boots to get on the air, but a lot has changed in America with respect to government administration’s views on the series’ subject matter; production on the series wrapped in August 2024, three months before the Presidential election.

Boots follows directionless, closeted Cameron Cope (Heizer...

Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, George Strait, and English actor Michael Crawford will receive the Kennedy Center Honors at a Donald Trump-hosted ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8.

This is the first Kennedy Center Honors since President Donald Trump took over as chairman of the prestigious Kennedy Center earlier this year. His first action was removing Biden-era appointees from the board and stacking it with loyalists. At a board meeting in March, he said that things were going to change with him in charge.

“We’ll go slightly more conservative,...

The ultra-obscure 1978 sitcom "Apple Pie" was created by Norman Lear, the mastermind behind such shows as "All in the Family," "Maude," "One Day at a Time," and "The Jeffersons." His successes are legion and span many decades. He passed away in 2023 at the age of 101, leaving behind one of the largest legacies in the history of television. Every working comedian knows the legend of Norman Lear.

No one, however, remembers "Apple Pie," one of the master's greatest failures. "Apple Pie" was set in 1933, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression, in Kansas City, Missouri. Rue McClanahan, who would go on to star in "The Golden Girls," played the protagonist, Ginger-Nell Hollyhock, a lovelorn hairdresser. She lived with a rogue's gallery of "relatives," a fake family she culled together from newspaper want ads. She hired a "Grandpa" (Jack Gilford), a "daughter" named Anna (Caitlin O'Heaney), and a "son" named...

William H. Macy, the revered Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning character actor, will sit down with yours truly on Sept. 9 in Toronto to record a special episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in front of an audience at THR’s Access Canada Summit, a three-day event that spotlights Canada’s vibrant content industry.

The recording will take place at Toronto’s Omni King Edward Hotel at 10:30 a.m. local time. Tickets are available for purchase on the summit’s website.

Macy, 75, is best known for his work in films like 1996’s Fargo, 1997’s Boogie Nights and 2015’s Room, as well as TV series such as ER and Shameless. He will be at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January en route to being acquired by Netflix, and for which he...

Image Source: Sony Pictures

In today’s TV landscape, few characters have made the kind of comedic and cultural impact as Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker from Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family.

The 1970s are often considered a Golden Age of TV comedy, thanks largely to two production powerhouses: Mtm, which gave us The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show, and Tandem Productions, the company co‑founded by Norman Lear. Tandem delivered a string of groundbreaking hits — All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Sanford & Son. Among these, perhaps none resonated more deeply than All in the Family, a...

Marlene Warfield, the New York actress known for her feisty turns as the prostitute ex-girlfriend of James Earl Jones’ boxer in The Great White Hope on Broadway and the big screen and as a young revolutionary in Network, has died. She was 83.

Warfield died April 6 of lung cancer at a hospital in Los Angeles, her sister, Chequita Warfield, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Warfield also recurred as Maude’s third and last regular housekeeper, the Jamaica-born Victoria Butterfield, on the sixth and final season (1977-78) of the famed Norman Lear-created CBS sitcom that starred Bea Arthur.

After appearing in the East Village at St. Mark’s Playhouse in French dramatist Jean Genet’s The Blacks — where she understudied for Cicely Tyson and also worked alongside the likes of Jones, Godfrey Cambridge and Maya Angelou — Warfield made it to Broadway in October 1968 when she was cast as Clara in The Great White Hope,...

Heavy metal legends Spinal Tap are officially returning with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, the highly anticipated sequel to Rob Reiner’s '80s mockumentary about the fictional rock band whose members constantly disagree with each other. Now, we finally got our first trailer for the long-awaited sequel, which is set to be released in theaters next September 12, and will feature the return of classic cast members, as well as some notable new additions. The old metal gods may be back, but the question remains: Are they now big enough to get the Stonehenge stage prop they deserve? Check out the first trailer below...

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues features the return of the classic cast. Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Fran Drescher, who will be reprising their roles from the 1984 mockumentary. Rob Reiner is directing and also appearing in front of the camera again to...

Four Emmys. Three Oscars. Two Grammys. One-half of a legendary songwriting team who made an enduring impact on the soundtrack of Hollywood.

Alan Bergman — whose collaboration with wife Marilyn resulted in dozens of indelible songs performed from everyone from Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand to Michael Jackson, and soundtracked everything from In the Heat of the Night to Severance — died Thursday at the age of 99. (Marilyn died in 2002.)

The Bergmans formed a formidable lyric-writing duo, teaming with several of the greatest composers of the 20th century, including Quincy Jones, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, and Marvin Hamlisch.

They received the Trustees Award from the Grammys in 2013 and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980; the couple also received the organization’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 1997.

Here are 10 must-hear classics from their award-worthy songbook.

“Nice ‘n’ Easy” (1960)

Cowritten with Lew Spence, the swinging lead single...

Alan Bergman, the lyricist whose collaborations with his wife Marilyn were behind the Oscar-winning songs “The Way We Were,” and “The Windmills of Your Mind” as well as such beloved TV theme songs for such series as Good Times, Maude and Alice, died on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99.

His death was announced by a family spokesman, Ken Sunshine. (Marilyn Bergman died in 2022.)

According to Sunshine, Bergman suffered from respiratory issues in recent months, but continued to write songs till the very end. His daughter Julie Bergman was present at the time of his death.

For most of the three decades starting in 1970, the husband-and-wife team scored 16 Oscar nominations. A partial list of their notable songs includes:

“I Knew I Loved You” (music by Ennio Morricone) recorded by Céline Dion for the Morricone tribute album We All Love Ennio Morricone (2007) “The Windmills of Your Mind...

Over a 50+-year career, legendary sitcom director James Burrows has been honored with 28 Emmy nominations for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, winning five.

At age 84, his most recent nomination came Tuesday for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for Hulu’s Mid-Century Modern for the episode “Here’s To You, Mrs. Schneiderman.” It is the ninth episode of Season 1 in which Bunny (Nathan Lane), Jerry (Matt Bomer) and Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham) face the sudden tragedy of losing Bunny’s mom, Sybil Schneiderman, played by Linda Lavin, as they try to find how to move on. Lavin had died unexpectedly of lung cancer after filming seven of the 10 episodes in the season.

Burrows, who began his career with The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1974, has won 11 Primetime Emmy Awards over the course of his career, including for Outstanding Comedy Series. His first nomination and first win for directing in...

The revered Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård will sit down with yours truly to record a special episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in front of an audience at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Friday, July 11. The taping will take place at 11 a.m. local time, at Congress Hall within the Thermal Hotel. No ticket or pass is required for entry — admission is free — but seating is limited to the first 250 people to arrive.

The 74-year-old is at the fest to receive Kviff’s Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, previous recipients of which include Robert De Niro, Judi Dench, Michael Caine, Isabelle Huppert, Richard Gere, Helen Mirren, John Travolta, Willem Dafoe, Julianne Moore, Mel Gibson, John Malkovich, Susan Sarandon, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Russell Crowe.

He is being celebrated for a film career that has included standout performances in numerous Lars von Trier...

When Rob Reiner‘s directorial debut, “This Is Spinal Tap,” opened in theaters in early 1984, it quickly became a cult classic beloved by music fans and cinephiles alike for its hilarious portrayal of the title band, a heavy metal group plagued by mishaps while on tour promoting its latest album. Told in a documentary style in which Reiner riffed on films like D.A. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back” and Martin Scorsese‘s “The Last Waltz” to tell Spinal Tap’s story, the film was incredibly influential, spawning a whole series of mockumentaries by “Spinal Tap” band member Christopher Guest and television series like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.”

Yet, when Reiner tried to raise money for the movie, no one was interested — even after he shot a 20-minute reel of scenes to demonstrate what he was going for. “We went to every single studio and got turned down everywhere,...

For a particular segment of 1972 America, Sammy Davis Jr. kissing Archie Bunker represented all their worst fears rolled up into one smooch. A man kissing another man! A Jew kissing a gentile! A Black person kissing a white person! The trifecta!

It’s not a surprise that it took some work for the show to get that electric moment. Credit goes to Davis himself, who was an All in the Family superfan. He loved the show so much that he pushed back the start times for his Sunday performances by 30 minutes so he could catch the latest episode in his dressing room, according to the biography, Norman Lear: His Life & Times.

Davis had been friends with producer Norman Lear for years, going back to the days when Lear was a writer for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour. From the show’s beginning, Davis wanted to...

If ever a film seemed at first like a long shot for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, it’s “This Is Spinal Tap.”

A “mockumentary” before the term existed, it was a comedy show skit that gradually evolved into a full-length film about a fictional — and terrible — British heavy rock band’s disaster-filled U.S. tour. It was shot on handheld 16mm cameras, and it was nearly all improvised. Yet it was also made by four professional actors who were gifted at improvisation — Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, all of whom are also talented musicians, and “All in the Family” actor Rob Reiner, who directed.

Every major film studio had rejected a 20-minute demo reel the creators had shot (most of the scenes from which made it into the final cut). But “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear saw something in it — his connection with...

Bill Moyers, who carried an unblemished air of moral conviction throughout a 43-year career as a broadcast journalist, mostly in his later years for PBS, died Thursday in Manhattan, the New York Times reported. He was 91.

Moyers was characterized by an insatiable and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, but he was deeply concerned not only with how things are but how they should be.

He was also well known for his views that the mainstream media reflect the bias inherent in their ownership by giant corporations whose goals align with those of the right. But despite uncovering disappointing behaviors on the part of politicians and various institutions over the years, Moyers was fundamentally an idealist.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, the Nation editor and publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote: “Moyers constantly reminded us of journalism’s indispensable role in our democracy. Instead of providing yet another venue for the predictable preening of establishment leaders,...

Actors Steven Weber, Lori Petty, Cynda Williams and Mitchell Anderson have joined the lineup of Pride Live! Hollywood, which continues through June 29 at venues across Hollywood.

The inaugural pop culture festival will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the LGBT comedy Jeffrey with star Weber, who will be reunited with his Wings and Dracula: Dead and Loving It co-star Amy Yasbeck.

Meanwhile, Petty, Williams and Anderson have joined Relax … It’s Just Sex co-stars Billy Wirth, Tim Perez, Chris Cleveland and Eddie Garcia in a tribute to pioneering producer Steven J. Wolfe and his groundbreaking film.

Elsewhere, festival partner Amoeba Music will sponsor a free Pride Live! Hollywood concert performance by Durand Jones & The Indications, followed by a signing of their latest album, Flowers.

Also added to the schedule is a screening of disco movie Can’t Stop the Music with screenwriter Bruce Vilanch and cast member Leigh Taylor-Young.

As previously announced,...

Phil Rosenthal may be many years out from his last sitcom, but the Everybody Loves Raymond creator keeps damn busy. In the wilds of Alberta earlier in June, where he accepted the award of excellence at the annual Banff World Media Festival, the star of Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil sat down to go through his packed schedule. There’s the eighth season of his culinary travelog, out today, a Paley Center retrospective of Raymond, his upcoming speaking tour and, if the red tape finally permits it, a mid-summer launch for his and Nancy Silverton’s Los Angeles diner, Max and Helen’s. The famously cheery TV writer is psyched about it all… though he is not above indulging a few digressions about the horrors of American life at the moment.

Are you the kind of traveler who goes someplace and immediately says, “I could live here?”

Oh yes. I...

Exclusive: Dominic Colón has signed with M88 for representation.

Colón is a writer and actor from the Bronx, New York, whose television pilot Papi, made The Blacklist’s inaugural Latinx TV List. As one of the top three finalists, he received a blind pilot deal at Hulu. He has had projects in development at Hulu, ABC & Utv and is a 2024 Wgae Showrunner Training Academy graduate.

As Deadline revealed in April, Colón has been set as the co-writer/creator of the television adaptation of Joseph “Fat Joe” Cartagena’s memoir The Book of Jose, alongside Kenya Barris, which is currently in pilot development at Starz with BET Studios. The series will follow the rags-to-riches story of Grammy-nominee Fat Joe and chronicle his evolution from growing up in the Bronx to becoming a global superstar with a career spanning over three decades.

Colón was a writer on the Netflix series, Boots (fka...

To kick off the inaugural Pride Live! Hollywood festival on Wednesday, a group of Norman Lear’s former collaborators and friends took part in a tribute to the TV icon, who broke boundaries in LGBTQ+ storytelling with his many shows.

Moderated by entertainment writer James Colucci, the panel — held at Emerson College’s L.A. campus — featured The Jeffersons showrunner Jay Moriarty; Sanford and Son and Fernwood 2 Nite writer Bob Iles; Mary Hartman, Marty Hartman creator Gail Parent; actresses Lynne Moody, Liz Torres and Isabella Gomez; One Day at a Time co-creator Mike Royce; Clean Slate co-creator Dan Ewen; author Greg Cope White; and Lear’s producing partner Brent Miller and longtime assistant Cindy Villa.

“I think that Norman is that rare magic that happens when a great humanist is also in charge of some shit, and Norman ended up in charge of some shit,” Ewen said of Lear’s...

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On July 4th, 1976, the United States of America celebrated its Bicentennial. 200 years of existence bred public, country-spanning events and jamborees. But underneath this pomp and circumstance bred a curdling, unsettled need for self-examination, criticism, and change. All of that came, in large part, because of television.

This appliance, now firmly a part of an average household's daily life, became increasingly capable of global transmissions, presenting and reflecting perspectives heretofore unseen. In the real world, government corruption, complicated conflicts, and demands of racial and gender equality rocked and rolled, often in live broadcasts in full color.

So, in the TV world, programs started to follow suit. Thus, not unlike the best movies of the 1970s, shows became exponentially more complex, compelling, and incendiary. Throughout the '70s, the art form expanded more and more, in lockstep with the public's appetite for change and investigation,...

A new Pride festival celebrating LGBTQ representation in entertainment is coming to Los Angeles, just in time for the 25th anniversary of Queer as Folk.

Cast members of the Showtime series will reunite for the first ever Pride Live! Hollywood, running June 11-29, also featuring a Golden Girls 40th birthday and a tribute to the late Norman Lear, among other events at venues around Hollywood.

“It’s more important than ever that we celebrate the fabulous light of programs like Queer as Folk, not to mention Pride Live! Hollywood’s other offerings,” said Scott Lowell, who played Ted Schmidt in the 2000-’05 series. “Especially during Pride Month in LA at a festival that not only acknowledges the past but shows us the path forward.”

Lowell will reunite with co-stars Hal Sparks, Robert Gant, Michelle Clunie, Thea Gill, Peter Paige and Sharon Gless, as well as creators Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman for the festival.

The inaugural Pride Live! Hollywood festival has added several events to its lineup.

A number of screenings have joined the schedule, including The Big Johnson, about queer punk legend Dean Johnson, with nightlife impresario Mario Diaz and filmmaker Lola Rocknrolla discussing the film and its subject afterward.

Additionally, organizers have added screenings of Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field, focusing on the Sex and the City costume designer; the comedy Things Like This, with writer-director and star Max Talisman in conversation to follow. In addition, the Los Angeles premiere of the U.K. feature Unicorns, starring Ben Hardy and Jason Patel, will be preceded by Remi Gabriel’s short Barbie Boy.

And two free-admission events will take place at Amoeba Music: Power-pop band L.A. Exes will perform and sign their album Get Some at Amoeba Music, and a Pride weekend kickoff event will feature Long Beach-based DJs wonderfulbryan and speakandspel spinning LGBT favorites.

Actor turned writer and director Juan Pablo Di Pace is making his feature debut with a decades-spanning meta romance. The star co-directs “Before We Forget” with Andrés Pepe Estrada from a script he wrote; the iconic late Norman Lear, who died in 2023, is an executive producer.

“Before We Forget” is a staggeringly beautiful depiction of trying (and sometimes failing) to remember every detail of our first loves. Di Pace leads the film as Matias, an Argentine filmmaker grappling with an unfinished movie that was inspired by his friendship with a Swedish classmate he met at boarding school in 1997. As the logline teases, “their bond, defined by tenderness and fascination, is abruptly severed when Alexander (Oscar Morgan) is expelled, leaving young Matias (Santiago Madrussan) with a story of unspoken emotions. Twenty-five years later, Matias reopens Pandora’s box, coming face-to-face with Alexander (August Wittgenstein) once again. As life begins to imitate art,...

Valerie Mahaffey, the Emmy-winning actor known for such TV series as “Northern Exposure,” “Big Sky” and “Desperate Housewives” and films including “Sully” and “Seabiscuit,” has died. She was 71.

Mahaffey’s husband, actor Joseph Kell, disclosed that she died May 30 in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer.

“I have lost the love of my life, and America has lost one of its most endearing actresses. She will be missed,” Kell said.

Mahaffey won the supporting comedy actress Emmy in 1992 for her work as a hypochondriac Eve in the fictional Alaskan town featured in CBS’ fish-out-of-water dramedy “Northern Exposure,” which aired from 1990 to 1995.

Most recently, Mahaffey was seen in the Apple TV+ series “Echo 3” and the 2020 indie film “French Exit” opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges. For the latter, she earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her role as the optimstic Madame Reynard in Azazel Jacobs’ dark comedy.

She co-starred...

Valerie Mahaffey, the Emmy-winning actress known for her work on such shows as Northern Exposure, Desperate Housewives, Young Sheldon and Dead to Me, died Friday. She was 71.

Mahaffey died in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer, publicist Jillian Roscoe announced.

Known for playing eccentric characters, Mahaffey received a Spirit Award nomination for her turn as widowed American expat Madame Reynard in French Exit (2020) opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges as mother and son.

From 1991-94, she appeared on five episodes of CBS’ Northern Exposure over three seasons and received a supporting actress Emmy in 1992 for portraying the hypochondriac Eve, wife of Adam Arkin’s character.

She played the manipulative Alma Hodge, ex-wife of Kyle MacLachlan’s Orson Hodge, on ABC’s Desperate Housewives from 2006-07; recurred as the teacher Victoria MacElroy on CBS’ Young Sheldon from 2017-20; and played Lorna Harding, Christina Applegate’s narcissistic mother-in-law, on Netflix’s...

Charles Strouse, the famed Broadway composer who received Tony Awards for his scores for Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie, died Thursday at his home in New York City, his family announced. He was 96.

A member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Theater Hall of Fame, Strouse wrote music for more than a dozen Broadway shows.

He and lyricist Martin Charnin were responsible for the immortal tunes “Tomorrow” and “It’s the Hard Knock Life” from Annie, and he and his most frequent collaborator, lyricist Lee Adams, partnered on such classic show tunes as “Put on a Happy Face” from Bye Bye Birdie, “You’ve Got Possibilities” from It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman and “This Is the Life” from Golden Boy.

Asked by Playbill in 2009 why he got into the theater, Strouse replied: “You can make a lot of money and you meet beautiful girls.

Charles Strouse, the musical composer for such Broadway hits as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie, films including Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968) and All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989) and for the TV series All In The Family, died at his home in New York City on May 15. He was 96.

His death was announced by his children Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria, and William Strouse., and was nominated for Golden Boy, Charlie & Algernon, Rags, and Nick & Nora.

Strouse was born on June 7, 1928 in New York City, the son of Ethel (Newman) and Ira Strouse. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 1947, he received two scholarships to Tanglewood, where he studied under composer Aaron Copland. Subsequently, Copland arranged for Strouse to get a scholarship with legendary teacher, Nadia Boulanger, in Paris.

Strouse met songwriting partner, lyricist Adams, at a party in 1949, and the duo began a longtime collaboration starting with writing songs for summer resorts in the Adirondacks. Strouse and Adams contributed material to numerous Off-Broadway musical revues, including Catch a Star, Shoestring Revue, The Littlest Revue and Kaleidoscope, and wrote specialty material for Kaye Ballard, Carol Burnett, Jane Morgan and Dick Shawn.

In 1958, Strouse and lyricist, Fred Tobias wrote the chart-topping pop song “Born Too Late” (recorded by The Poni-Tails), and it was in that same year that Strouse and Adams had their Broadway breakthrough. They were hired by producer Edward Padula to write a satirical musical about rock and roll and teen idol culture. The show, Bye Bye Birdie, became their first Tony Award-winning hit. The production starred Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke and won four 1961 Tony Awards including Best Musical, earning Strouse the first of his three Tony Awards.

The show introduced the world to such songs as “Put On A Happy Face,” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.” A 1962 movie version, starring Ann-Margret, was one of the top-grossing films of the year, and featured Margret’s now iconic performance of the film’s newly added title song, “Bye Bye Birdie.” Strouse would later win a 1996 Emmy Award for the new song, “Let’s Settle Down,” written with Adams and added for the musical’s 1995 TV adaptation, starring Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams.

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Additional collaborations with Adams include the Mel Brooks musical All American (1962) starring Ray Bolger. Though the show was not a commercial success, it featured what would become the popular American standard “Once Upon a Time”. Golden Boy (1963), a musical adaptation of the play by Clifford Odets starred Sammy Davis Jr., garnered Strouse his second Tony Award nomination. It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane… It’s Superman! gave audiences another popular Strouse & Adams song, “You’ve Got Possibilities” (first recorded by Linda Lavin). And in 1970, when the team wrote the score for Applause (based on the film All About Eve and Mary Orr’s The Wisdom of Eve and starring Lauren Bacall), Strouse would win his second Tony Award.

Strouse’s biggest Broadway success was with collaborators Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan on Annie (1977), based on the comic strip, “Little Orphan Annie,” by Harold Gray. The Depression-era musical about a plucky red-headed orphan girl who wins the heart of billionaire Oliver Warbucks, was one of Broadway’s biggest hits of the 1970s, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and garnering Strouse his third Tony Award and a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album. Strouse’s score included “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard–Knock Life,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” and “I Don’t Need Anything But You.” Annie ran for over 2,300 performances on Broadway, where it has been revived twice and has inspired hundreds of worldwide productions. It has also been adapted for two film and two television productions.

Strouse was passionate about collaboration and would earn Tony Award nominations for his scores with lyricists: David Rogers, Charlie & Algernon (1980), based on the novel Flowers for Algernon, Steven Schwartz, for Rags (1986), with book writer Joseph Stein starring Teresa Stratas, and Nick and Nora (1991), a musical based on Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man characters, written with Richard Maltby, Jr.

Strouse’s film scores include Bonnie and Clyde (1967) starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, There Was a Crooked Man (1970), with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, Sidney Lumet’s Just Tell Me What You Want, and the animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989).

In addition to his awards, Strouse was the recipient of several honorary doctorates. He was a longtime member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, inducted in 1985, and the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Strouse also composed orchestral works, chamber music, piano concertos, and an opera. His original piano work, Concerto America, was composed in 2002 to commemorate 9/11 and premiered at The Boston Pops in 2004. His opera Nightingale (1982), starring Sarah Brightman, had a successful run in London, followed by many subsequent productions.

In 1977, Strouse founded the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, through which many young composers and lyricists honed their craft and developed their work. Strouse authored the autobiography Put on a Happy Face: A Broadway Memoir, published by Union Square Press in July 2008.

In addition to his four children, Strouse is survived by eight grandchildren, Sam and Arthur Strouse, Navah Strouse, Vivian, Weston and Ever Brush, and Owen and Theodore Strouse.

A private ceremony will be held at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in New York City.

A new Los Angeles-based event will celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride and pop-culture milestones next month.

The producers of L.A’s Infinity Festival, which celebrates the intersection of technology and entertainment, have teamed up with The Hollywood Partnership and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to present Pride Live! Hollywood, a monthlong celebration of “LGBTQ+ creativity in media and entertainment.”

The lineup will feature a tribute to Norman Lear’s pioneering television work, anniversary celebrations of TV series The Golden Girls and Queer as Folk, documentary premieres, film screenings, panels, parties, interactive events and presentations of disco-era films, along with participation by stars and creatives. Events will take place at venues in and around Los Angeles, including the W Hollywood, the Montalbán Theater, LA Explained, Emerson College, Amoeba Music, the Aster and Lemon Grove, Whisky Hotel Hollywood, NeueHouse Hollywood and more.

Organizers explained that with more than 150,000 people attending the annual L.

The Hollywood Reporter and Campari are pleased to invite attendees of the upcoming Cannes Film Festival to a very special event: a live recording of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast with the legendary actress Sissy Spacek, featuring an hourlong conversation about Spacek’s life and career, followed by a cocktail reception.

Spacek, who will be at the fest as a star of the competition film/sales title Die, My Love — which was directed by Lynne Ramsay and also stars Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattison and Nick Nolte — will be interviewed by yours truly Saturday, May 17, in the Campari Lounge, a chic venue inside the Palais that overlooks the Croisette. Doors open at 10:30 a.m., recording begins at 11 a.m., local time.

Given the venue’s limited space, those wishing to attend are encouraged to RSVP via this link as soon as possible.

Spacek, 75, has been a revered actress for more than 50 years.

There is one phrase in Jon Voight’s “Make Hollywood great again” plan that could upend the TV industry: “Restoration of the Finsyn Rule” for both broadcast networks and streamers.

The document, which Deadline revealed exclusively Tuesday, also confirmed that TV series indeed are part of the initiative since initial statements, including President Donald Trump’s Sunday social media post, only focused on American movies filming overseas being hit with tariffs.

The five-page plan, delivered to Trump by the Oscar-winning actor over the weekend, is not taken very seriously in Hollywood, especially when it comes to the part about imposing tariffs on other countries’ tax incentives. Veteran producers called the tariff idea “ill-thought” and “idiotic,” with another referring to the Voight-Trump initiative as “two old men and a bunch of hot air.”

Still, nearly everyone I’ve spoken with agrees that the document is starting off an important conversation.

“Jon...

Exclusive: Twenty-Nine Palms Entertainment, the new London-based international sales and production company launched by Edoardo Bussi last month, has unveiled Before We Forget as its first global acquisition for its upcoming Cannes slate.

The nostalgic, coming-of-age story marks the feature directorial debut of Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Pace, and Andrés Pepe Estrada, who is best known as an award-winning editor on films such as Argentina, 1985 and Upon Open Sky).

Di Pace stars as man looking back on the moments that shaped him, returning to memories of his student days in 1990s Italy, to rediscover the friendships, heartbreaks, and quiet triumphs of youth. As the line between past and present begins to blur, he understands that growing up never truly ends, and that looking back can be the only way to move forward.

Originally titled Duino, the Argentinian-Italian-u.S. co-production is lead produced by Di Pace’s Momento Films.

When news broke on Friday afternoon that Amazon wouldn’t be making a second season of the comedy Clean Slate, media reaction hovered between two viable extremes: “Amazon Cancels Show We Never Knew Existed” and “Amazon Canceled Norman Lear’s Kinda-Final Show.”

I can understand both approaches. Despite the presence of stars Laverne Cox and George Wallace, Lear’s posthumous credit was the highest-profile thing Clean Slate had going for it, and despite all of those elements, I never heard anybody mention Clean Slate out in the wild. It was an invisible show in a landscape that too frequently renders all but the biggest titles invisible.

For me, though, the abrupt end of Clean Slate represented the end of a different, less-heralded era: that of Freevee’s half-hour development, one of the most creatively interesting and commercially botched pieces of brand-building in recent memory.

Freevee, the ad-supported branch of Amazon...

Amazon's streaming service, Prime Video, has canceled the legendary Norman Lear's final television series, Clean Slate. The comedy, which starred Orange is the New Black standout Laverne Cox and comedian George Wallace, was well-received by critics and audiences alike, and told a timely tale featuring a transgender actress, but that failed to sway the company into giving it a second season. The news was first reported by Deadline, in a guest column penned by Cox, Wallace, and co-creator Dan Ewen.

Though only first reported on Friday, April 18, the heartfelt and earnest piece from its creative team revealed that the series was actually canceled back at the end of March, barely a month after the show premiered (to positive reviews and an 89% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes). It's hard not to wonder if the series' subject matter — which spoke directly to the highly politicized issue of transgender people and their...

Amazon Prime Video has canceled the comedy series Clean Slate after one season, the company confirmed. The series, which premiered on February 6, 2025, featured Laverne Cox and George Wallace and was one of the final projects produced by television legend Norman Lear before his death in 2023.​ Clean Slate centers on Harry Slate (Wallace), an old-school car wash owner in Alabama…

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Clean Slate will not be returning for a second season.

On Friday (April 18), it was announced that the comedy series, which was the late TV legend Norman Lear‘s final completed project, has been canceled by Prime Video after one season.

The series starred Laverne Cox and George Wallace as an estranged daughter and father from Mobile, Alabama trying to reconnect after decades part amid tensions over trans rights and a changing America

Keep reading to find out more…Laverne, George, and co-creator Dan Ewen broke the cancellation news in a guest column posted on Deadline‘s website.

In their message, they called Clean Slate a “labor of love,” and a “seven-year effort” that “was gone in a puff of server exhaust,” adding that they first learned about the show’s cancellation “by the end of March.”

“Thank you to everyone who laughed and cried with us. Thank you to...

Norman Lear’s final completed project “Clean Slate” has been canceled at Prime Video after one season, the series’ stars Laverne Cox and George Wallace and co-creator Dan Ewen revealed in a Friday guest column on Deadline.

The series premiered on the Amazon-owned streaming platform on Feb. 6. But by the end of March, the eight-episode “labor of love” was canceled.

“A seven-year effort was gone in a puff of server exhaust,” Cox, Wallace and Ewen wrote.

Representatives for Prime Video declined to comment.

“Clean Slate” follows an old school and outspoken car wash owner named Henry (Wallace), who is thrilled that his estranged child is finally returning home to Alabama after 17 years. However, Henry has a lot of soul searching to do when the child he thought was a son returns as the determined, proud, trans woman, Desiree (Cox).

The series, which was initially brought by Cox and Wallace to Lear as “Sanford and Daughter,...

Amazon's Prime Video has cemented its name among the most successful streaming services, with a diverse set of original projects, whether films or TV series. However, after recently canceling Bosch: Legacy, the streamer has now canceled yet another show.

The comedy sitcom Clean Slate premiered on Feb. 6 to positive reviews. It was co-created by Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black) and George Wallace (Batman Forever), who also starred in the sitcom. However, despite the positive reviews, Deadline officially confirmed Prime Video axed Clean Slate after one season.

Cox, Wallace, and co-creator Dan Ewen confirmed the news in a guest column on the outlet, detailing the show's origins and further details about the show. Clean Slate was one of the last series veteran producer Norman Lear produced before his death in 2023, as the series had been originally announced in January 2020 by Peacock. Development took several years, moving from Peacock to...

Amazon Prime Video has canceled Clean Slate, which was television legend Norman Lear’s final completed project, after one season. Series stars Laverne Cox and George Wallace, as well as their fellow co-creator Dan Ewen, broke the news in a guest column on Deadline.

Clean Slate premiered on Prime Video on February 6; by “the end of March” it was canceled, the trio wrote. Cox, Wallace and Ewen called the series a “labor of love,” and a “seven-year effort” that “was gone in a puff of server exhaust.”

Perhaps a little bit of a shot there on how Amazon conducts its business.

It was Cox and Wallace who brought the show to Lear. Lear, the sitcom dynamo (for decades and decades), died in December 2023 at 101 years old. Lear was the comedy genius behind All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

The Hollywood Reporter reached...

It’s one and done for Prime Video’s Clean Slate, starring Laverne Cox and George Wallace. The Norman Lear-produced comedy has been cancelled.

Co-created by Cox, Wallace and Dan Ewen, the eight-episode series centered around Desiree (Cox), a transgender woman who returned to her Alabama hometown and reunites with her father (Wallace) for the first time since she transitioned.

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