broadway: Last News

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticJerry Seinfeld has no hard feelings for the “putz” Manhattan comedy club co-owner who declared a coronavirus-ravaged New York City “dead forever.”“I have nothing against that guy,” Seinfeld tells CBS’ 60 Minutes this week about Stand Up N.Y. comedy club co-owner James Altucher, who wrote the R.I.P New York article on LinkedIn two months ago.

Dade Hayes Finance EditorDwayne Johnson, who teamed with Dany Garcia and RedBird Capital Partners to acquire the XFL over the summer, says the football league will take 2021 off but plans to return in 2022.“It’s an uphill battle,” Johnson wrote in a tweet, “but we’re hungry, humble and no one will outwork us.”The upstart off-season rival to the NFL, a reanimated version of the one operated by the same name by NBC and wrestling magnate Vince McMahon in 2001, got a few weeks into its season before COVID-19 struck. McMahon funneled some $200 million into the effort to revive the league but it declared bankruptcy in the spring.

Dino-Ray Ramos Associate Editor/ReporterIt was nothing but net for the NBA Finals on ABC on Wednesday, as Game 1 of the Los Angeles Lakers-Miami Heat  championship series left everyone in the dust. The game delivered a 2.2 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic to go along with 5.31 million viewers who watched the Lakers’ 116-98 victory in the bubble in Orlando.The game was preceded on ABC by a special Jimmy Kimmel Live: Game Night (1.1, 4.16M) and NBA Countdown (1.0, 3.30M), with the NBA block sweeping primetime in the demo and viewers for the network.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticBonni Lou Kern, one of the original Mouseketeers on television’s pioneering The Mickey Mouse Club of the 1950s, died September 28 of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Wooster, OH. She was 79.Kern, a California native whose married name was Bonni Carr, appeared as a Mouseketeer in 1955-56 and was featured in the episode titled “Save Bonni Lou Kern!” in which the 14-year-old girl was caught in a fishing net.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorArchie Lyndhurst, the star of BBC children’s show So Awkward, has died at the age of 19 after a short illness.Lyndhurst was best-known for playing Ollie Coulton in the CBBC show, which is made by Channel X. He was the son of Nicholas Lyndhurst, the star of iconic British comedy Only Fools And Horses.CBBC confirmed the news and said: “All of us are devastated to hear the news of Archie’s passing.

Andreas Wiseman, Anthony D'Alessandro EXCLUSIVE: Gerard Butler’s latest action thriller Greenland will not be playing at U.S. movie theaters as the pic’s studio ErosSTX pivots the feature for a Premium Video On-Demand release sometime in the fourth quarter.STX will control the PVOD window on the Ric Roman Waugh-directed movie.

Anthony D'Alessandro Editorial Director/Box Office EditorSPOILER ALERT: This interview contains details about tonight’s series finale for CW’s The 100, “The Last War”We caught up with The 100 series creator Jason Rothenberg to ask him about some of tonight’s special guests, and what’s next in the series franchise.Tonight you brought back Lexa. After you killed her off, there was plenty of controversy, but was it always your intention to bring her back? Were there any loose ends you needed to tie up between her and Clarke?Jason Rothenberg: Once we decided that the role of the judge during the test was someone who assumes the shape of the person that was your greatest love, your greatest teacher, or your greatest enemy, then it was a no

Pete Hammond Awards Columnist/Chief Film CriticAs expected, the Producers Guild of America is following the lead of the Oscars and other awards shows and moving its 32nd annual awards show into the spring of 2021. The American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards also announced Wednesday a later date for their awards, which will now be held on April 18, 2021, while adding an Animated Series category to the mix.The PGA Awards will now be held Wednesday, March 24, and it will be virtual.

Peter White Television EditorSouth Park is heading to MTV and MTV2 after ViacomCBS revealed that it would simulcast the animated comedy’s hour-long pandemic special.The long-running Comedy Central series will premiere its supersized episode – The Pandemic Special – tonight, Wednesday September 30 at 8 pm.

Denise Petski Senior Managing EditorLate-night hosts weighed in with their reactions on Tuesday night’s first presidential debate (if you can call it that) between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden that quickly erupted into a bizarre, chaotic mess. CNN correspondent Dana Bash described it as a “s**t show” on live TV.Stephen Colbert bemoaned on CBS’ Late Show: “I come to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, an empty vessel.

Dominic Patten, Ted Johnson In the wise words of George W. Bush, “well that was some weird shit.”The first of three debates between incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden was a fierce fracas that left most of the rules and portions of reality behind almost from the jump.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmHere’s some interesting timing on a fresh social media post, on a couple fronts. A Twitter account with the handle Republic of Kazakhstan that launched on Sunday with benign facts, just now put up a tweet “congratulating” Donald Trump on his victory tonight in the first U.S.

Dino-Ray Ramos, Amanda N'Duka If you go anywhere this week for a getaway from all the madness, then might I suggest the wonderful world of Buteau pia? It’s a land of laughs, joy, a little shade, stories about working with the iconic J. Lo  — all overlooked by Buteaupian queen Michelle Buteau.

Justin Kroll Senior Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: The classic spaghetti western that helped launch Clint Eastwood’s career looks to be getting the TV treatment as We are hearing Mark Gordon Pictures is developing A Fistful of DollarsTV series. The company has acquired the rights to the film as well as the Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai epic, Yojimbo, which the Eastwood film was based on.

Denise Petski, Ted Johnson ABC News’ World News Tonight with David Muir topped its broadcast rivals in the first week of the new season.The newscast drew 8.50 million viewers, compared to 7.33 million for NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and 5.15 million for CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.In the 25-54 demo, World News Tonight had 1.67 million, to 1.48 million for NBC Nightly News and 930,000 for CBS Evening News. In the 18-49 demo, ABC had 1.1 million, to 993,000 for NBC and 672,000 for CBS.The figures, released by ABC News, are from Nielsen and are for live plus same day viewing.

Dade Hayes Finance EditorDisney is rolling out GroupWatch, a feature that enables up to seven Disney+ subscribers to simultaneously view and react to a movie or series.It is the most ambitious push into social viewing by any streaming service yet, expanding on efforts by Hulu and Amazon Prime Video as well as apps like Netflix Party and Scener, which added Disney+ to its roster over the summer. Unlike those other offerings, though, Disney’s GroupWatch is not a web browser extension or something limited to a laptop.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorThe BBC has responded to the story that’s the talk of the British TV industry: that the government is poised to appoint the right-wing Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore as the BBC’s next chairman.The Sunday Times reported over the weekend that it was a “done deal” that Moore would get the top job, even though the government is yet to launch a formal recruitment process for the role.The news shocked many industry watchers, given Moore has a history of being nakedly aggressive towards the BBC and was fined by a court in 2010 for failing to pay his licence fee.A Very English Scandal actor Hugh Grant described the prospect of Moore at the BBC, and former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre becoming the new

Alexandra Del Rosario Associate Editor/Nights & WeekendsDetails of President Donald Trump’s tax records made news Sunday when a New York Times report revealed that the former reality television star only paid $750 in taxes for 2016, 2017. Like many social media users, Late Night host Seth Meyers said even that he’s paid more than Trump in income taxes.“$750? I pay more than that in Blockbuster late fees I’m serious,” Meyers quipped Monday night. While it may be entertaining to compare one’s tax payments to Trump’s relitively scant remittance for 2016 and 2017, Meyers took time during his “A Closer Look Segment” to criticize the president and the American tax system.

Ted Johnson The first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden likely will be the most watched political event of the cycle so far, but it’s the aftermath of the debate that will be almost as important as what they say and what they do.The minutes, hours and days afterward will see an avalanche of analysis, polling and other data to try to frame who won and who lost.

David Robb Labor EditorSandra Karas, secretary-treasurer of Actors’ Equity, was surprised Monday morning when she read The New York Times’ article about President Trump’s income taxes – and the $70,000 that he reportedly wrote off as a business expense for hair styling in connection with his TV show The Apprentice. “It made me laugh when I saw it in the paper,” she said.

Dominic Patten Senior Editor, Legal & TV CriticThe Walt Disney Company may be losing some of its privilege, at least when it comes to a potential pay-equity class action lawsuit against the House of Mouse, what they knew and when they knew it.As part of the ongoing action first filed back in April 2019 by two long time female employees of Disney, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge on September 25 ordered the company to partially pull back the corporate curtain on how compensation is determined and paid out at the Burbank HQ’d media giant.First revealed in a document dump by Disney lawyers on August 6, this could end up being a mere fishing expedition or a treasure trove for plaintiffs LaRonda Rasmussen, Karen Moore and now others, depending