Justin Lacob: Last News

Menudo: Forever Young,” the HBO Max docuseries about the titular Latin American boy band, has been released.Directed by filmmakers Angel Manuel Soto and Kristofer Ríos, the four-part docuseries follows the rise of Menudo, a Puerto Rican musical group formed in 1977 by producer Edgardo Díaz that became one of the most popular boy bands in history, selling 20 million records worldwide during the 1980s. The series chronicles the group’s meteoric rise in the ’80s, and the fall it suffered during the ’90s, after sexual abuse allegations against Díaz surfaced.

EXCLUSIVE: FAST channel DOCUMENTARY+ has picked up worldwide rights to Ninety-Five Senses days after the film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Sports Documentaries has picked up North American TV and streaming rights to the sports documentary The Lionheart, directed and produced by Laura Brownson (The Rachel Divide), ahead of its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. No word on a release date yet.

EXCLUSIVE: The docuseries based on The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome podcast is moving a step closer to fruition.

Naman Ramachandran New York-based film and TV studio and streaming network FilmRise has acquired North American distribution rights to true-crime documentary feature film “The Thief Collector.” Directed by Emmy winner Allison Otto (“The Love Bugs”), the film follows one of the most audacious and puzzling art thefts of a generation. In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s seminal work, “Woman-Ochre,” was sliced from its frame and stolen off the walls of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, disappearing into the desert. Over 30 years later, in a remote town in New Mexico, the $160 million dollar painting was rediscovered in the unlikeliest of places – the home of an eccentric married couple, both schoolteachers, with a keen eye for great works but a very unconventional method of collecting them. The film features Glenn Howerton co-creator, director, writer and star of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

EXCLUSIVE: Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, has launched its latest slate of original feature docs.

EXCLUSIVE: Vertical Entertainment has secured North American, United Kingdom, and Ireland distribution rights to Broadway Rising, Amy Rice’s documentary chronicling the reopening of Broadway after the 2020 Covid pandemic shutdown.

XTR has launched production on Role Players, which is billed as the definitive documentary on the seminal fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.

HBO Max will release Menudo: Forever Young, a new documentary about the Latin American boy band from filmmakers Angel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and Kristofer Ríos (Havana Skate Days), on June 23. The premiere will follow the project’s debut at the 2022 Tribeca Festival on June 11.

Documentary+, the free streaming service launched by non-fiction studio XTR, is getting into the original programming and has ordered its first project.

Miss Cleo, the popular television psychic whose commercials became iconic during the 1990s, is set to be the focus of an upcoming documentary.The documentary, produced by the nonfiction entertainment studio XTR and production company Majority, will explore the life and career of the alleged Jamaican shaman who rose to national prominence with the phrase “Call me now!” According to Deadline, Miss Cleo’s Psychic Reader’s Network raked in over $1 billion until the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against her in 2002, ultimately ending her career.Award-winning filmmaker Senain Khesghi, best known for her work on films such as Project Kashmir and The Diplomat, will direct the documentary about the late Miss Cleo (born Youree Dell Harris), who died in 2016 at the age of 53 after a bout with cancer.“Youree Harris may have been an accomplice or perhaps a victim in the Psychic Reader’s Network fraud, but she also had talent and personality, which for women doesn’t always translate into access or wealth,” Kheshgi said in a statement. “Her story is an example of how brown and Black women have historically been marginalized and exotified in society and popular culture.

EXCLUSIVE: There’s a boom in collectible sports trading cards – from the $4.6M paid for a Luka Doncic rookie card or the $5.2M for a 1952 Mickey Mantle card as well as a recent deal that valued card brand Topps at $1.3B

The IOC Refugee Olympic Team competing in the Tokyo Olympics is set to be the subject of a feature documentary from For Sama director Waad Al-Kateab.

Haley Bosselman editorNon-fiction film and television studio XTR and documentary production company Optimist are partnering up for a feature documentary about the GameStop, WallStreetBets and short squeeze movement.“This story is still evolving daily,” director Chris Temple said. “It’s so important to have a strong, nuanced documentary that can capture this landmark moment as it unfolds, through the perspective of the key people and forces that are shaping it.”Temple and Zach Ingrasci will direct the untitled GameStop documentary, with Jenna Kelly producing and Bryn Mooser and Justin Lacob executive producing.