News

France’s TF1 Group has posted a positive set of results for the first half of 2022, as Covid-19 pandemic challenges which weighed on turnover in 2020 and 2021 continue to subside.

The results followed news on the Wednesday (July 27) that the France’s competition authority had raised concerned about the group’s plans to merge with the M6 Group.

The group’s six-month report operation suggested the operation remained a key project for the coming months, noting it had spent 6.8m (€6.8m) on related expenses to date.

Talking on the margins of the results announcement, TF1 Studios CEO Gilles Pélisson said both parties remained committed to the plan but were also open to the fact it might not go ahead.

“The dream we shared is not necessarily shared by the competition authority,” he said. “On that basis, before the dream becomes a nightmare, there also needs to be a reality check, around...

Exclusive: Agent Josh Rahm is set to join Verve sources tell Deadline. The former ICM Partners agent will join Verve’s Talent Department which has nearly quadrupled in size in recent months following the news former WME agent Sean Grumman would head up the department. Rahm joins former ICM Partners colleague, talent agent Jr Ringer as well, both bringing a roster of up and coming clientele, including Charlotte Hope, Keean Johnson, Evin Ahmad, Ruairi O’Connor, Tadanobu Asano Ludi Lin and Jorge Lendeborg Jr with more announcements to come.

“I’m proud to be joining the team at Verve and to work with likeminded colleagues who believe in artist first representation. The energy and creativity within the walls here is palpable and I’m thrilled to be a part of further building out the talent business at Verve,” said Rahm.

Prior to ICM, Rahm spent a decade at CAA, working within the talent and lit departments,...

The team behind podcast breakouts Serial and S-Town have set their latest audio project – a podcast series about an alleged conspiracy to introduce an Islamist agenda into schools in the UK.

Serial Productions, which was acquired by The New York Times Company in 2020, is producing The Trojan Horse Affair with host Brian Reed, who was behind Serial follow-up S-Town, and Hamza Syed, a doctor-turned-reporter.

The pair are investigating a mystery at the heart of a scandal that emerged in the UK in 2013.

When a strange letter kicked off a national panic in Britain, Syed was skeptical. The letter appeared to be a secret communique between Islamic extremists who’d been infiltrating the city schools in Birmingham – Syed’s hometown – in a supposed plot called Operation Trojan Horse. The letter led to a crackdown on Muslim educators and harsh new British counterterrorism measures.

But Syed suspected the public had been misled...

Cassie’s whole “I think I should be single and work on myself” plan hits a psychopath-sized snag in this week’s Euphoria — but that’s far from the only havoc Nate Jacobs wreaks during the hour.

Before the ending credits roll, The Artist Formerly Known as Tyler has dumped (and then done) Cassie in a location straight outta Serial Killer Digest And he’s managed to get his father in a blackmail-type situation. Whatever else you wanna say about the kid, you’ve gotta admire his multitasking abilities.

More from TVLineThe White Lotus: Aubrey Plaza to Star in...

French film exports generated 91.4M euros ($103.6M) in 2021, a 5.5% increase on the previous year’s provisional figures, while admissions were up 8% to 14.8M. Comparatively, French films within France sold 39.2M tickets during the year. The figures were announced during the annual Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema which is taking place in Paris this week — one of the rare international gatherings in the current landscape that’s being held as a physical event.

Today’s numbers are provisional estimates and will be higher when they are trued up in the fall. For example, when originally announced in January 2021, the 2020 receipts were 86.6M euros, ultimately jumping to 101.7M euros when recalculated in November; a decline of over 60% versus 2019.

Interestingly, China in 2021 overtook Russia to become the leading overseas market for French titles in terms of admissions, partly owing to the fact that its cinemas recovered more quickly from Covid than elsewhere. Over...

On Friday night, three crew members involved with French sequel Serial (Bad) Weddings 3 died in a car crash near Châtellerault.

A fourth crew member, who was also in the car, was taken to the Poitiers University Hospital in critical condition. News of the collision was first reported by French publication, La Nouvelle Republique.

While none of the crew members have been named yet, those who died were aged 19, 47 and 49. The head-on crash happened around 9 p.m., after the group had wrapped up filming for the day. In the other car caught up in the crash, there was only one person, who left the scene slightly injured, according to firefighters.

The French law enforcement branch known as the gendarmerie is now undertaking an investigation into the accident, to confirm the cause. As is typical in the case of fatal accidents, blood alcohol and narcotics tests were conducted, though the results have not yet been released.

George Takei has lived through cataclysmic times, but he’s never given up his hope for a better future. You can see this sense of hope in his choices of projects, whether it’s the vision of Gene Roddenbery in Star Trek or in his most recent project, narrating two stories by Ken Liu for Serial Box.

“Many of my friends are saying, ‘This is cataclysmic, what we’re living through. It’s dystopian, everything being destroyed, this is the end of the earth,’” he says. “I tell them, ‘No, we go through many cataclysms.’ And I tell them about my childhood.”

As a child during World War II, Takei’s family was taken to Japanese Internment Camps. At five, he thought living in the swamps of Arkansas, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers, was a great adventure. For his parents, it was sheer cataclysm. Forced from their home at gunpoint,...

Actors will occasionally get injured on set (or worse). Usually, it is caused by an accident while performing a stunt or an out-of-the-blue occurrence. However, there have been instances where the on-screen talent was intentionally hurt. And while this has occurred in various genres, it tends to happen most often in horror features, although this may be a coincidence.

Related: Every Horror Movie Inspired By Serial Killer Ed Gein

Some of the incidents were allowed (or even encouraged) by the actors, to get an authentic shot or reaction. However, there have also been scenarios where the director and or crew did this without consulting the actors and even out of malice.

The New York Times has acquired Serial Productions, the company behind the hit podcast Serial.

As part of the deal, the media company will enter into a creative and strategic alliance with longtime radio show This American Life, which developed the original Serial pod, about the murder conviction of Adnan Syed. The first season was downloaded on average 20 million times per episode and was at the forefront of the podcast boom.

Serial Productions is led by Julie Snyder, Sarah Koenig and Neil Drumming. At its new home with the Nyt it will continue to commission and edit its own stories, which will be amplified by the paper, and the goal is to inject more resource and up the producer’s volume. The first joint production will be Nice White Parents, which will see Chana Joffe-Walt examine the role white families play in shaping public education.

This American Life will remain...

Make way for the parade! Featuring Brian Trenchard-Smith, Eli Roth, Katt Shea, Thomas Jane, our very own Don Barrett and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Screams of a Winter Night (1979)

Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death (1975)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2018)

The Rhythm Section (2020)

Atomic Blonde (2017)

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965)

The Ipcress File (1965)

Funeral In Berlin (1966)

Extraction (2020)

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

The Mermaid (2016)

Oklahoma! (1955)

Singin’ In The Rain (1953)

Nightcrawler (2014)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

Ghetto Freaks a.k.a. Sign of Aquarius (1970)

Hostel (2005)

Cabin Fever (2002)

Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen (2012)

The Movie Orgy (1968)

Gremlins (1984)

The Goonies (1985)

Hell of the Living Dead a.k.a. Night of the Zombies (1980)

Troll 2 (1990)

In The Land Of The Cannibals a.k.a. Land of...

Phil Clapp and Lucy Jones were speaking at the UK Cinema Association’s annual conference.

UK Cinema Association CEO Phil Clapp was in bullish form about the health of the UK’s exhibition sector at the start of the Ukca’s 2020 annual conference, titled “Audiences - growing the big screen experience.”

“There is a recognition that the industry as a whole is enjoying a period of considerable success. The last two years have seen the strongest admissions in the last 50 years,” Clapp said at the event, which runs March 3-4.

He said that in 2019, 30 new cinema sites opened in the UK,...

Exclusive: In some big podcasting news, Serial Productions, creator of hit podcasts Serial and S-Town, has hired writer-producer and former film director Neil Drumming as its new managing editor.

Drumming will lead the expansion of Serial Productions’ development slate, recruiting producers, writers and reporters

to develop fiction and non-fiction podcasts. He will be working closely with Alissa Shipp, who develops Serial’s film and TV

projects, and Serial’s rep UTA to create fiction podcasts.

Drumming joins from This American Life, where he produced projects with filmmakers and writers including Adam Mansbach (Barry), Scott Brown (Castle Rock), and Sasheer Zamata (Saturday Night Live). In 2017, he produced the segment What You Don’t Know with filmmaker Lulu Wang, which was an inspiration for Golden Globe-winner The Farewell. Drumming also won a Peabody Award for his work as an editor on the S-Town podcast.

“Five years ago, with the release of Serial, we...

Ralph Dibny’s love life is looking up! After much teasing, The Flash will introduce the P.I.’s DC Comics love interest Sue Dearbon in the Feb. 18 episode (The CW, 8/7c), and TVLine has your first look at the potential future couple.

As TVLine exclusively reported, Natalie Dreyfuss, whose past TV credits include The CW’s The Originals and Cmt’s Still the King, will recur as Sue Dearbon, who is described as possessing a fierce intelligence and a spitfire personality. She is the daughter to one of Central City’s most wealthy families, but there’s much more...

The lack of a blockbuster English-language film from Luc Besson has been cited as a cause.

French cinema generated 40.5m admissions internationally for overall box office receipts of $272.5m (€244.4m), according to provisional figures released by French cinema export agency Unifrance on Thursday.

Although final figures will not be confirmed until later this year, this is down 7% on the definitive figure of 43.7m admissions generated by French films around the world in 2018. This in turn represented a 50% fall on the 82.6m international admissions notched up in 2017.

The decline of the last two years is due mainly to the absence of...

Even as Netflix and other platforms continued to gain ground, France’s theatrical box office broke a 50-year record with 213 million ticket sales, showing that movie-going and streaming can co-exist. Admissions increased by 6%, and the French B.O. clocked in at about €1.4 billion ($1.57 billion), a slight increase on 2018.

Hollywood titles ruled the roost, breaking a 10-year record by accounting for 59% of all theatrical admissions in France in 2019, with 125 million tickets sold. Disney alone took a 23.4% market share, with “The Lion King” topping the list of highest-grossing films and five other titles – “Avengers: Endgame,” “Frozen 2,” “Toy Story 4,” “Captain Marvel” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which is still in theaters – ranking in the top 10.

Overall, nine of the top 10 films came from U.S. studios. Besides the Disney tentpoles, they included Warner Bros.’ “Joker,” Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Far From Home.