city Hollywood, county Bureau: Last News

Angelique Jackson Billed as “Black culture’s biggest night,” the NAACP Image Awards are always a collection of the most influential figures in film, television, music, literature and more. Take this year’s lineup of entertainer of the year nominees: “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo, multi-hyphenate Keke Palmer, rapper Kendrick Lamar, comedian Kevin Hart and NFL Hall of Famer-turned-broadcaster Shannon Sharpe. “They are undeniable, the biggest names of 2024 — for different reasons, which is what I love,” says Connie Orlando, executive vice president of specials, music programming & music strategy at BET, which backs the awards.

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent has announced the 31 filmmakers set to participate in the 2025 edition of Project Involve, a program going into its 32nd year that has fostered the careers of more than 1,000 filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities.

EXCLUSIVE: A diverse array of voices and genres, ranging from singular horror stories, to topical thrillers to social realist dramas, highlight the 2024 Muslim List. MPAC Hollywood Bureau and The Black List have selected 10 scripts for this year’s list, highlighting the very best work from Muslim writers. Launched in 2020, this is the third edition of the list.

Naman Ramachandran The South Asian House (SAH) initiative, which aims to highlight, recognize and appreciate South Asians in film and television, has unveiled its program for this year’s Tribeca Festival in New York. For the centerpiece Build Bridges, Create Impact summit on June 12, SAH founders Monika Samtani and Rohi Mirza Pandya have partnered with MOXMO Media and Jayaram in collaboration with Facet, Walmart, and iHeartMedia.

Shanelle Genai Celebrating its 55th anniversary this year, the NAACP Image Awards continue to be a shining beacon of Black excellence when it comes to highlighting creatives and projects other awards shows tend to overlook. This year’s nominees include Colman Domingo, Halle Bailey, Usher, Fantasia Barrino-Taylor and Keke Palmer — all up for Entertainer of the Year, the ceremony’s top prize.

EXCLUSIVE: The Black List is opening submissions for six diversity lists in partnership with GLAAD, CAPE, the MPAC Hollywood Bureau, The Salon, the Latin Tracking Board, NALIP, 1IN4 Coalition, and the WGA Disabled Writers Committee, in addition to establishing the Desi List-–a new, curated list that will shine a light on the most promising feature scripts and pilots from South Asian writers.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “American Fiction” director Cord Jefferson, composer Laura Karpman and director John Hoffman (“The Barber of Little Rock”) were among the Oscar-nominated attendees at Gold House‘s inaugural Oscars One House Toast. In partnership with GLAAD, the NAACP Hollywood Bureau, La Cena, IllumiNative, Harness, Pillars Fund, The Blackhouse Foundation, The Female Quotient, and The Latinx House, Gold House honored the 2024 multicultural nominees and achievements across filmmaking at the celebration on Thursday night at Harriet’s Rooftop in West Hollywood.

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent has named the eight writers selected for the seventh edition of its Episodic Lab, designed to provide individualized story and career development for writers with original pilots for television. The participants and projects are Desdemona Chiang (ZHIZHA! (紙紮!)), Giovanni Maldonado Chinea & Myles Hawthorne (The Machetero), Robert Cohen & Ioana Uricaru (Overcast), Catherine Durickas (Beige Is Not Dead), Azza Malik (Dear Azza,) and Robert ToTeras (Jourdain).

Variety’s Angelique Jackson at the Sundance Film Festival as a part of Adobe’s Fireside Chats with Changemakers in Film. Watch all three conversations below: Andra Day and Kyle Bowser, Senior Vice President of NAACP Hollywood Bureau “I’ve been hearing this thing in the past few years about no more slave stories, no more past and all this stuff, and no more Black pain porn. And I don’t like the term because I think it boils it down.

The JITC Hollywood Bureau for Jewish Representation — “The first and only Jewish Hollywood bureau,” launched in 2021 and founded by Allison Josephs — has sent a letter to the Motion Picture Academy claiming that its inclusion policy “erases Jewish peoplehood and perpetuates myths of Jewish whiteness, power, and that racism against Jews is not a major issue or that it’s a thing of the past.”The letter has been signed by more than over 200 people, including David Schwimmer, Tiffany Haddish, Julianna Margulies, Michael Rapaport, Debra Messing, Ginnifer Goodwin and Marta Kauffman.In August, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences amended its “Representation and Inclusion Standards” for the 96th Oscars Awards Show, airing March 10 on ABC.Regarding lead actors or “significant supporting actors from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups,” the academy included, among others, African American/Black/African and/or Caribbean descent; East Asian; Hispanic or Latina/e/o/x; Indigenous Peoples; Middle Eastern/North African; and Southeast Asian.“Jewish people being excluded from the Motion Picture Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards is discriminating against a protected class by invalidating their historic and genetic identity,” the letter states.“This must be addressed immediately by including Jews in the Motion Picture Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards.”Other signees of the letter include Bret Gelman, Iliza Schlesinger, Elon Gold, Josh Dallas, Emanuelle Chriqui and Mark Feuerstein.“While many mistakenly believe that Judaism is only a religion, Jews are actually an ethnic group, with a varied spiritual practice that not all observe,” the letter says.

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent on Wednesday named the eight screenwriters set for the 25th edition of their Screenwriting Lab. The latest cohort of the intensive program, designed to provide individualized story and career development for screenwriters with fiction feature screenplays, includes Bri Brooks, Karina Dandashi, Thais Drassinower, Chloé Hung, Adam Meeks, Nat Moonhill, Veronica Moonhill and Richard Van.

Randee Dawn When the NAACP Image Awards returns on Feb. 25 for its 54th annual ceremony, there’ll be plenty of cause for celebration. Not only will artists from television, motion picture, music and literature find themselves feted for their contributions, but it’s also the 20th anniversary of the creation of the organization’s Hollywood Bureau – and the first time the show will be fully in front of a live audience since 2020. But an Image Award event isn’t just another reason to hand out accolades during a packed award season. For organizers and nominees alike, the existence of a show that largely focuses on Black entertainers is an achievement in itself. It exists both within the Hollywood bubble and outside of it, with its own rules and perspectives and, perhaps most importantly, own voters.

EXCLISIVE: Sony Pictures International Productions has acquired global rights to the award-winning comedy Americanish, marking the feature directorial debut of Iman Zawahry. Specifics as to plans for the pic’s distribution have not yet been disclosed.

CNN plans to move its Los Angeles bureau from an office tower in Hollywood to Warner Bros. Discovery office space in Burbank.

EXCLUSIVE: Talk show reunions, heartland justice, stateside backlash to the 1970s Iranian hostage crisis, and faith vs a child’s transgender identity are among the stories that make up the second annual Muslim List.

EXCLUSIVE: Creator+, a next-generation content studio and distribution platform for digital-first storytellers and creators, has unveiled their inaugural class of emerging filmmakers for its ‘Flip the Script’ Short Film Fund.

Sasha Urban editorThrough her organization Jew in the City (JITC), Allison Josephs has been advocating for accurate representations of the Jewish community in the media since 2007. She’s now opening an official Hollywood bureau to elevate JITC’s efforts, something Josephs said she would have done earlier, but she had no idea such a thing even existed until last year.“We had been using social media, op-eds and relationships with reporters,” Josephs said, until she learned about other minority Hollywood bureaus created by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), NAACP and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE).

A new report from the Hollywood Bureau of the NAACP has found that the scarcity of Black executives in Hollywood has led to a plethora of films and TV shows that “are harming the African American community,” and that the “absence of Black control of media has rendered the community vulnerable to a host of debilitating impressions, ranging from negligent disregard to deliberate degradation.”

EXCLUSIVE: The controversy-plagued Golden Globes looks set to return this weekend, but no one will see it online or otherwise.