News

At the outset of the 1960s, the United States felt poised for its greatest decade yet or armageddon. The Soviet Union's launch of the Earth satellite Sputnik in 1957 had placed many Americans on edge. How had the Russkies beaten the most prosperous country on the planet into space, and what were our leaders doing to counteract this disaster? This led to one of the most contentious and closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, which found Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly prevailing over Republican Richard M. Nixon. Many were hopeful that the country was in the right, aspirational hands; almost just as many were convinced we'd consigned the country to certain doom.

In times like these, people used to go to their local movie theater to escape the fresh hell of the outside world. They'd line for any entertainment that promised some kind of catharsis. Romances, comedies, romantic comedies, horror flicks,...

Elliot Silverstein, who helmed episodes of such acclaimed TV shows as Naked City, The Twilight Zone and Route 66 before guiding Lee Marvin to a best actor Oscar in Cat Ballou, his feature directorial debut, died Friday in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 96.

The Boston native also helmed A Man Called Horse (1970), which starred Richard Harris in the title role as an English aristocrat who eventually becomes the leader of the Native tribe that had captured and tortured him. The action movie spawned a couple of sequels.

Most importantly, Silverman was instrumental in the formation of the milestone Bill of Creative Rights for directors.

“Every director today owes a debt of gratitude to Elliot Silverstein,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. “No one ever worked harder or was more passionate about protecting artists from having their work and vision altered than Elliot.”

It was Silverstein...

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2023 Emmy Predictions:

Outstanding Animated Program Rick and Morty, S7. Adult Swim.

Weekly Commentary: Netflix’s “Entergalactic,” the animated accompaniment to Kid Cudi’s album is competing against long-standing series such as “Bob’s Burgers,” “Rick and Morty” and “The Simpsons.” The streamer pulled off a surprise win last year with “Arcane,...

In their first public appearance since WarnerMedia merged the two development divisions this past April, execs from HBO Max and Adult Swim previewed their upcoming slates, releasing new footage from adult-skewing offerings “10-Year-Old-Tom” and “Smiling Friends,” while talking up several more.

Created by Michael Cusack (“Yolo: Crystal Fantasy”) and Zack Hadel (of the popular YouTube channel “psychicpebbles”), “Smiling Friends” picks up where the viral 2020 short left off, following the lives of two hapless cheer merchants sent to make their clients smile. Mixing 2D, primitive character designs with candy colors and the winking edge of an online forum, the series is due out later this year.

“[Though they’re both well known independently,] combined, Hadel and Cusack are doing something really special,” said Walter Newman, senior VP comedy development at Adult Swim. “From the character designs to the voice work, it represents a lot of what we’re trying to accomplish here.”

Adult Swim is also ready to...

Suzanna Makkos has been named executive vice president of original comedy and adult animation for Adult Swim and HBO Max’s adult animation development teams, which WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group is merging under her newly expanded leadership. The move will not result in any personnel cuts or changes.

“The adult animation boom is just starting, and by aligning our strengths and organizing as one, unified, best in class development team we are creating an unmatched, multiplatform destination for both creators and fans,” said Sarah Aubrey, head of original content for HBO Max. “Adult Swim has created an iconoclastic adult animation brand, and that identity will not only be preserved, it will now be further fueled by HBO Max and Suzanna’s talented development leadership.”

Makkos, who joined WarnerMedia in 2019, will continue to report to Aubrey and will now additionally report to Michael Ouweleen, the president of Adult Swim for...

Suzanna Makkos will oversee both Adult Swim and HBO Max’s Adult animation and comedy teams

Adult Swim will merge its TV development with HBO Max’s Adult Animation group. This newly-expanded team will be under the purview of Suzanna Makkos, who will now hold the expanded title of executive vice president of original comedy and adult animation for both brands.

Makkos will continue to report to Sarah Aubrey, HBO Max head of original content, and also now report into Michael Ouweleen, president of Adult Swim, on all content developed for Adult Swim on all platforms. Adult Swim’s development team, led by Walter Newman, will now report into Makkos.

“The adult animation boom is just starting, and by aligning our strengths and organizing as one, unified, best in class development team we are creating an unmatched, multiplatform destination for both creators and fans,” Aubrey said. “Adult Swim has created an iconoclastic adult animation brand,...

In the latest consolidation move within WarnerMedia’s TV operations, Adult Swim and HBO Max’s adult animation development teams are being combined into one, led by Suzanna Makkos. Previously EVP Original Comedy and Animation for HBO Max, Makkos is taking an expanded role as EVP Original Comedy and Animation for HBO Max and Adult Swim.

She will continue to report to Sarah Aubrey, HBO Max’s head of original content, and will now also report to Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen on all content developed for Adult Swim on all platforms. Adult Swim’s development team, led by VP Walter Newman, will now report into Makkos.

“The adult animation boom is just starting, and by aligning our strengths and organizing as one, unified, best-in-class development team we are creating an unmatched, multiplatform destination for both creators and fans,” said Aubrey. “Adult Swim has created an iconoclastic adult animation brand,...

WarnerMedia is unifying its adult animation under Suzanna Makkos.

The former Fox comedy exec who currently serves as exec vp comedy and adult animation for HBO Max is adding oversight of WarnerMedia’s niche cable network Adult Swim to her purview.

Makkos, in the newly created role, will continue to report to head of originals at HBO Max Sarah Aubrey and to Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen. Adult Swim’s development team, overseen by Walter Newman, will now report to Makkos. The move is the latest consolidation efforts put in place at WarnerMedia as the company, like others, looks to ...

WarnerMedia is unifying its adult animation under Suzanna Makkos.

The former Fox comedy exec who currently serves as exec vp comedy and adult animation for HBO Max is adding oversight of WarnerMedia’s niche cable network Adult Swim to her purview.

Makkos, in the newly created role, will continue to report to head of originals at HBO Max Sarah Aubrey and to Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen. Adult Swim’s development team, overseen by Walter Newman, will now report to Makkos. The move is the latest consolidation efforts put in place at WarnerMedia as the company, like others, looks to ...

No, this isn’t a documentary about the sorry situation faced by too many American homeowners. Howard Hughes takes Rko into SuperScope and color for this attractive, somewhat tame sunken treasure adventure starring his captive glamour star Jane Russell. No off-color advertising slogans this time around, but the show shapes up as a swimsuit catalog for Jane as well as her handsome co-stars Richard Egan and Gilbert Roland. Plus, the Latin rhythms of the incomparable Pérez Prado!

Underwater!

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1955 / Color / 2:1 widescreen (SuperScope) / 99 min. / Street Date January 29, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Jane Russell, Richard Egan, Gilbert Roland, Lori Nelson, Robert Keith, Joseph Calleia, Eugene Iglesias, Ric Roman, Dámaso Pérez Prado, Max Wagner.

Cinematography: Harry J. Wild

Film Editors: Stuart Gilmore, Frederic Knudtson

Original Music: Roy Webb

Second Unit Director: William Dorfman

Underwater photography: Lamar Boren

Written by Walter Newman story by Hugh King, Robert B. Bailey

Produced by Harry Tatelman,...

The history of the Academy Awards is the history of outside observers complaining that the voters got it wrong. And while our perceptions of Oscar mistakes often have a lot to do with how movies age and how tastes change, sometimes it’s immediately apparent that a mistake was made. Here are some examples of choices from the major categories that seemed like flubs right out of the gate.

Best Picture: “Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain” (2005)

Fifteen years later, this one still stings. A genuinely great film, one that’s both historically significant and still emotionally powerful, gets beaten by a gimmicky movie that takes an important subject and grinds it into ham-fisted theatrics and excessively on-the-nose writing. There are many theories behind the “Crash” win — from its studio’s blanket coverage of awards voters with early DVD screeners to older Hollywood veterans refusing to watch the gay-cowboy movie — but no matter why it happened,...

Exclusive: One of Hollywood's long-lost scripts, period horror thriller Harrow's Alley, could finally see the light of day after British actor and writer Emma Thompson partnered with His Dark Materials producer Bad Wolf to develop it for the small screen. The project is set up at HBO, sources said. The original script was written by Walter Newman, who was nominated for three Oscars, 1951's Ace In The Hole, 1965's Cat Ballou and 1978's Bloodbrothers, in the 1960s but…...

Jane Fonda movies on TCM: ‘The China Syndrome,’ ‘Klute,’ and Jean-Luc Godard drama ‘Tout Va Bien’ among highlights (photo: Jane Fonda in ‘Klute’) Turner Classic Movies’ 2014 "Summer Under the Stars" kicked off earlier today, August 1, with a day-long series of Jane Fonda movies. Still reviled by American right-wingers because of her 1972 trip to North Vietnam while the United States was at war with that country — she was photographed seated on an anti-aircraft battery — but admired by others for her liberal views, anti-war activism, and human rights advocacy, the two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner has enjoyed a highly eclectic film career, eventually becoming a rarity among rarities: Jane Fonda is the child of a film star (Henry Fonda) who not only became a film star in her own right, but who went on to become an even bigger screen legend than her famous parent. (See also: Jane Fonda “Summer Under...

Ace in the Hole

Written by Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman

Directed by Billy Wilder

USA, 1951

Ace in the Hole is a quintessential Billy Wilder movie. Though largely ignored upon its initial release, this 1951 feature bears all the hallmarks one associates with Wilder’s best work: cynicism, humor, terrific performances, sharp dialogue, and impeccable direction. Here, to keep within the theme of the title, we get it all in spades.

The recently released Criterion Blu-ray of the film likewise boasts an abundant assortment of features. There is of course the new restoration, which looks great, as well as a commentary track with scholar Neil Sinyard, a brief afterword by Spike Lee, and interviews with Kirk Douglas and cowriter Walter Newman. The insert booklet, with essays by filmmaker Guy Maddin and critic Molly Haskell, is cleverly assembled as a foldout mock newspaper. And the documentary, Portrait of a “60% Perfect Man”: Billy Wilder,...

A resounding flop upon its release, which saw it recut and rereleased as The Big Carnival without any greater success, Criterion remasters Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole for Blu-ray with a beautifully packaged presentation. A darkly prophetic nightmare concerning the carnivalesque power of the media, the 1951 feature is decades ahead of its time, and received a resoundingly sour reception upon initial release. Hot off the success from his 1950 hit, Sunset Boulevard, it would take the box office return of 1953’s Stalag 17 to recuperate Wilder’s studio graces.

Alternating between cocksure aggression and derisive self-loathing, smarmy journalist Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) struts into the office of Albuquerque’s local newspaper where he proceeds to demean a Native American employee and a ridicule the secretary fior her framed and self-embroidered mantra, “Tell the Truth.” It’s immediately clear that Tatum considers the local paper something akin to a cess...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: May 4, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Kirk Douglas gets the scoop in Ace in the Hole.

Billy Wilder’s (Sabrina) 1951 film noir drama Ace in the Hole is one of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker.

Kirk Douglas (Paths of Glory) gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter who washes up in dead-end Albuquerque, happens upon the scoop of a lifetime, and will do anything to keep getting the lurid headlines.

Also starring Jan Sterling and Bob Arthur, Wilder’s follow-up to his ominously alluring Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred exposé of the American media’s appetite for sensation that has gotten only more relevant with time.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo edition of the movie contains the following features, the bulk of them ported over from...

The “adult” Western – as it would come to be called – was a long time coming. A Hollywood staple since the days of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the Western offered spectacle and action set against the uniquely American milieu of the Old West – a historical period which, at the dawn of the motion picture industry, was still fresh in the nation’s memory. What the genre rarely offered was dramatic substance.

Early Westerns often adopted the same traditions of the popular Wild West literature and dime novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries producing, as a consequence, highly romantic, almost purely mythic portraits the Old West. Through the early decades of the motion picture industry, the genre went through several creative cycles, alternately tilting from fanciful to realistic and back again. By the early sound era, and despite such serious efforts as The Big Trail (1930) and The Virginian (1929), Hollywood Westerns were,...

Hollywood director and screenwriter who won an Oscar for Dog Day Afternoon

In Sunset Boulevard, William Holden's character remarks: "Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture. They think the actors make it up as they go along." Given the difficulties in quantifying their contributions, screenwriters seldom get the recognition they deserve. Frank Pierson, who has died aged 87, wrote the screenplays for 10 films but his reputation rests on Cat Ballou (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), all of which gained him Academy Award nominations, with the last of them winning the Oscar for best original screenplay.

Yet most of the plaudits for Dog Day Afternoon went to Sidney Lumet, the director, and Al Pacino, the star. Pierson, whose work had as much to do with structure and character as dialogue, shaped the script from a Life magazine article about a bungled bank robbery that took place...

Exceptional Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Frank Pierson, who became presidents of both the Writers Guild, West, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, died today in Los Angeles of natural causes following a short illness, according to his manager. He was 87. Gentlemanly yet ornery, meticulous yet creative, Pierson compiled a remarkable writing resume, starting in the 1950s with television shows like Have Gun, Will Travel and Playhouse 90, followed by five decades of films like Cat Ballou (screenplay by Walter Newman and Frank R. Pierson), Dog Day Afternoon (screenplay by Frank Pierson), A Star Is Born (screenplay by Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne and Frank Pierson), In Country (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Cynthia Cidre), and Presumed Innocent (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Alan J. Pakula). In his 80s, he worked for HBO on telemovies, AMC as a writer/consulting producer on Mad Men, and on CBS...

Exceptional Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Frank Pierson, who became presidents of both the Writers Guild, West, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, died today in Los Angeles of natural causes following a short illness, according to his manager. He was 87. Gentlemanly yet ornery, meticulous yet creative, Pierson compiled a remarkable writing resume, starting in the 1950s with television shows like Have Gun, Will Travel and Playhouse 90, followed by five decades of seminal films like Cat Ballou (screenplay by Walter Newman and Frank R. Pierson), Dog Day Afternoon (screenplay by Frank Pierson), A Star Is Born (screenplay by Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne and Frank Pierson), In Country (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Cynthia Cidre), and Presumed Innocent (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Alan J. Pakula). Even in his later years, he worked for HBO on telemovies, AMC as a writer/consulting producer on Mad Men,...

There was no a-ha! moment, no seeing of the light, no epiphany. I’d loved movies since I was a kid, had been a buff since my early teens, but there was no one, shining instance of enlightenment where my relationship with film graduated to something — … Well, the kind of thing my Sound on Sight colleagues have been talking about this month with their “gateway” films. Instead, it was a cumulative experience for me; my road to that point was a long, winding, gradual one. Here and there along that road something would lodge in the ol’ gray matter, tickle at some deep place, until enough of those somethings gathered up over the years finally coalesced into a critical mass.

But I can tell you where that first turn in that road was; that first stop where I picked up that first something. I was six years old, it was...