WGA, SAG-AFTRA Say DGA Deal Won’t Change Their Goals

Next month, Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer” faces off against Greta Gerwig‘s “Barbie” on its opening weekend, a showdown that very well may christen the summer’s biggest movie. In “Barbie,” moviegoers know what to expect, a smart, quippy film from Gerwig with a meta twist on its subject.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music BMG has acquired a “substantial stake” in the work of legendary songwriter and two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Paul Simon, the company announced Thursday. The acquisition includes his royalty income in Simon & Garfunkel recordings as well as his neighboring rights income; Simon sold his publishing catalog to Sony Music Publishing in 2021. According the the announcement, the deal includes such songs as ‘The Sound Of Silence’, ‘The Boxer’, ‘Mrs Robinson’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Paul Simon was represented in the transaction by Gene Salomon and Don Passman at Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman. 

Tori Spelling might not like it, but Dean McDermott is dead set on walking away from their marriage.

According to reports out on Wednesday, Tina Turner‘s son Ike Turner Jr. was arrested in Texas last month, just weeks before his mother’s death.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Members of the Directors Guild of America have until Friday to vote on their new contract, and those contacted this week by Variety were overwhelmingly voting yes. In interviews, members noted the contract includes significant gains in residuals, creative rights, safety provisions and working hours. But several also indicated that they have no interest in compounding Hollywood’s labor strife. Most directors and below-the-line DGA members have been out of work since the Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2. “I’ve been around long enough that is a pretty good deal, and I’d like to get back to work,” said Matt Rebenkoff, who has worked as a first assistant director on “Don’t Look Up,” and “Jumanji: The Next Level.”

Sophia Scorziello editor Since 2006, the city of New York’s Made in NY Production Assistant Training Program has been an onramp to successful careers in TV and film production open to low-income New Yorkers across the five boroughs. A new study has measured the long-term return on that investment for the more than 1,100 people who have gone through the four-week program over the past 16 years. The study, commissioned by Brooklyn Workforce Innovations and Bloomberg Philanthropies, measured the impact of training program, which is a highly competitive intensive offered yearly to about 80 New Yorkers each year since its inception. The training program was birthed during Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral administration. Bloomberg Philanthropies has kept a close watch on it since the billionaire investor left office in 2013.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford is retiring from playing Indiana Jones after the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but that doesn’t mean Ford himself is leaving Hollywood behind. Far from it. During an upcoming interview on CNN and Max’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” (set to air and stream on June 23), Ford laughs at the idea of retiring from acting. Next month, he will turn 81 years old. When asked if he plans to retire, Ford replied, “I don’t. I don’t do well when I don’t have work. I love to work. I love to feel useful. It’s my jones. I want to be helpful” Why does Ford still have the acting bug as he gears up to turn 81 years old? “It is the people you get to work with,” he said. “The intensity and the intimacy of collaboration. It’s the combined ambition somehow forged from words on a page. I don’t plan what I want to do in a scene. I don’t feel obliged to do anything. I’m naturally affected by things that I work on.”

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Nearly 100 people were injured by “golf-ball sized” hail before a Louis Tomlinson concert scheduled for Wednesday night at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver, the West Metro Fire Department told CNN. At least seven people were transported to area hospitals with “non-life-threatening” injuries, the fire department tweeted, with as many as 90 people treated at the venue for abrasions and broken bones. “I managed to hide where they were selling drinks and I used my backpack to protect myself and another girl,” one fan told CNN, saying she experienced minor injuries. The National Weather Service office in nearby Boulder issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the areas at around 9 p.m., noting the venue would be affected.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor High Fidelity Pictures and newly formed sister company Nuworx Productions are set to adapt Behzad Karim Khani’s bestselling novel “Hund, Wolf, Schakal” together with a yet-to-be-announced German broadcasting partner. Production for the series is due to start next year. The critically acclaimed novel tells the story of two very differently wired brothers who fled Iran with their father, and must now stand up for themselves on the streets of Berlin. The book received the Debut Prize at the Harbour Front Literature Festival, along with numerous positive reviews and was on the Shortlist of the Aspekte-Literature-Award.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The livestream for Netflix’s third annual Tudum fan event garnered 78 million views across all of the streamer’s social platforms Saturday, marking this version — presented in front of 11,000 people in São Paulo, Brazil — as up 86% in viewership from last year’s 41.8 million views, and more than 203% from 2021’s initial 25.7 million. Netflix likely didn’t set out to bring the in-person Tudum crowd to tears during the three-hour event — but once they started flowing, it was a fortunate side effect the streamer proudly displayed on social media. “I wish you could have been there to convey the electricity of the audience and capture those moments,” Netflix chief marketing officer Marian Lee told Variety Tuesday about the streamer’s first attempt at pulling off Tudum as a real-time presentation with an in-person audience, following two years of the virtual-version of the event. “We posted on Twitter crying fans in the audience because it was just like that sort of Beatles moment every time one of their favorites came on stage, there were just sobbing tears in the audience.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Francois de Brugada, the long-running boss of Banijay France, will be stepping down in September to lead FL Entertainment’s newly created division dedicated to live events. Named Banijay Events, the division will build on Banijay’s parent company FL Entertainment’s recent investment in The Independents, a global marketing and communications group for luxury and lifestyle brands, as well as Banijay’s acquisition of Balich Wonder Studio, the Italian entertainment group. FL Entertainment said Banijay will be able to seize opportunities within the live event industry as it “remains largely unconsolidated and has a business model very similar to that of content production and distribution.” Banijay reached €3.2 billion ($3.5 billion) in revenues for 2022.

Alison Herman TV Critic Every generation gets the aspirational workplace it deserves. In 2006, “The Devil Wears Prada” helped establish the archetype of an imperious, intimidating woman who rules her chic urban office with an iron fist; with its obvious Anna Wintour analog, the book-turned-film also doubled as a bookend to the era of the print magazine editor’s omnipotence. Eight years later, Sophia Amoruso coined the term “Girlboss,” a cutesy moniker that soon got a Netflix adaptation to match. Latter-day examples have updated the template to keep pace with the times: “Younger” took place in the wake of the Great Recession, when securing a dream job requires some deceit, while “The Bold Type” was proudly progressive — think 2010s Cosmo, not mid-aughts Vogue. In these stories, actual employment is less secure, but the employer acts less like a dictator than a stern, if nurturing, mentor.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic “Sorry to Bother You,” Boots Riley’s 2018 directorial debut, was a cultural event: It announced Riley, who’d already made a career as a politically minded rapper, as a sharp critic of contemporary capitalism who could pair his ideas with grabby, memorable imagery. The cascade of reveals and visual transformations toward the end of that film, too good to spoil for the uninitiated, worked brilliantly as spectacle and made Riley’s case too: Under our current system, we all end up becoming beasts of burden.  Riley returns with a larger canvas and new expressions of familiar concerns with “I’m a Virgo.” Like “Sorry to Bother You,” which addressed the problems of its telemarketer characters, this series merges the prosaic with the surreal. On “I’m a Virgo,” we follow a 13-foot-tall man trying to figure out where he fits into his community and into the ongoing struggle for a fairer future. As played by Jharrel Jerome (of “Moonlight” and an Emmy winner for “When They See Us”), the massive fellow known as Cootie is taciturn, shy — understandably out of place. To work out, he bench-presses an entire car; his aunt and uncle (Mike Epps and Carmen Ejogo), raising him in their Oakland home despite being people of more typical stature, fret over how much food it takes to keep their nephew alive.

Naman Ramachandran Respected British broadcaster Clive Myrie was removed at the last minute from presenting an edition of the BBC’s “News at Ten” last week, according to a report in the U.K.’s Times newspaper. Myrie was replaced by Jane Hill as the news bulletin presenter on June 16 because BBC chief content officer Charlotte Moore had impartiality concerns regarding the ruling Conservative party, per the Times. Earlier that evening, Myrie had hosted the BBC’s “Have I Got News For You,” a satirical comedy quiz show that grills celebrity contestants on the week’s top stories and news, where he made several jokes about former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who had been found guilty of deliberately misleading the U.K. parliament over the ‘partygate’ scandal.

Ryan Giggs' case was back in court ahead of a scheduled trial next month. The former Manchester United star did not attend the hearing at Manchester Crown Court on Thursday morning, as his attendance had been excused.

More than two-thirds of people eligible for the Disability Cost of Living payment have received their cash, according to figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

This Morning viewers were still left stunned when a detail about Dermot O'Leary was once again mentioned on the show. The presenter was back at the helm of the ITV daytime show on Thursday (June 22) alongside Holly Willoughby as they wound up a two-week stint hosting together.

, who called the man out for using the tragedy to chase clout on social media. After news of the missing submersible first broke, Szasz (who has since deleted his account) tweeted that he was worried for his step-father, but still planned to attend , and tagged the band-members for good measure. Szasz also mentioned the Titan submersible and his missing step-dad while tweeting at an OnlyFans model. None of this appears to have sat well with , who wrote on her IG Stories, per , “People is like, ‘Well what is he supposed to do? Be sad at the house? Is he supposed to go look for himself?’ Yes.” This content can also be viewed on the site it from.Szasz then doubled down on Twitter, writing, “What a pos trashy celeb.

isn't the only one bringing looks to the Beyoncé . All around the world, fans are channeling their inner alien superstar to listen to the singer's nearly three-hour .

A 'Peeping Tom' pervert has been jailed after he tried to film a teenage girl.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The membership of SAG-AFTRA has voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike authorization, maximizing the guild’s leverage ahead of negotiations that begin on Wednesday. The guild announced Monday night that 97.91% of the voting members supported the authorization. Turnout was 47.69%. The vote comes as the Writers Guild of America strike enters its sixth week. Many SAG-AFTRA members have already joined WGA members walking the picket lines. The leaders of both guilds have expressed solidarity with each other several times this year. The writers strike has caused a sharp downturn in production, especially in television. If SAG-AFTRA goes on strike, any remaining film and TV production would halt immediately. The union represents 160,000 performers.