Zoe Ball is 'smiling through tough times' says her son Woody amid absence from BBC Radio 2 show

Grimes is teaming up with aespa!

The Fall Festival trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto have traditionally been the venues for the serious start of Oscar season. But that kind of awards season mojo has been shifting, however slowly, with the most recent Best Picture winner, Oppenheimer released in July 2023, and 2022 winner Everything Everywhere All At Once released in March of their respective years. In fact the big Oscar opponent and BAFTA winner to the latter title, All Quiet On The Western Front also defied the odds, having first played at Berlin in late winter of 2022, around the same time Everything Everywhere debuted at SXSW. Cannes also has become a much bigger factor in recent years launching such winners and contenders as Parasite, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Triangle Of Sadness, Anatomy Of A Fall, Drive My Car, The Zone Of Interest and more in the past few years that all went on to Best Picture nominations, against the previous common wisdom that Cannes was a risky place to start an Oscar run as May is so far away from the prime time to campaign. So in other words everything everywhere is being turned on its head when it comes to all things Oscar.

Sony will be releasing the untitled Keke Palmer and SZA R-rated comedy on Jan. 24, 2025.

EXCLUSIVE: Josh O’Connor is set to star in Kelly Reichardt‘s next film The Mastermind. Reichardt will write and direct the film with production expected to start sometime this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Newly minted Emmy Award winner Jessica Gunning has signed with UTA for representation in all areas.

NBC has once again triumphed in the ratings over the 52-week season thanks to its coverage of the Paris Olympics and trusted summer hit America’s Got Talent.

Zara Larsson is soaking up the sun on vacation!

Shawn Mendes may be in Rio right now, but he was in Miami earlier in the week and some new photos from that getaway have emerged!

Christina Ricci is opening up about her past.

anti-LGBTQ screeds, has been accused of allegedly writing sexually lewd and politically inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board over a decade ago.Robinson, who is Black, reportedly referred to himself on the message board as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, disparaged Martin Luther King, Jr., and made derogatory comments about the Black, gay, Muslim, and Jewish communities, according to a shocking report from CNN.The comments on the message board, which date back to a time period between 2008 and 2012, predate Robinson’s political activism and his stint as North Carolina’s current Lieutenant Governor.The online user, who CNN claims is Robinson, claimed to be a “perv” on the message boards of the porn website Nude Africa, allegedly writing graphic, sexually explicit messages talking about extramarital affairs, physical sex acts, and bodily fluids and claiming to be sleeping with his sister-in-law — all of which may or may not have been part of a fetish or roleplay fantasy scenario.Despite his repeated use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on the campaign trail, and attempts to cast transgender females as predatory and a danger to women in restrooms, Robinson allegedly claimed, in posts written over a decade ago, that he loved watching pornographic scenes where transgender women have sex with cisgender women.“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson allegedly wrote.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The challenge in talking about Jamie XX’s brilliant new album “In Waves” is trying to describe what “kind” of music it is. As the main songwriter and producer in the British trio the XX, he was the driving force behind one of the great hopes of alternative music in the late ‘00s.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. We may not be getting a Rihanna album any time soon, but the entrepreneur-singer is at least gifting us with a rare discount on her Fenty haircare products. Three months after its long-anticipated release in June, Rihanna’s Fenty haircare line is on sale for the first time ever.

Anna Tingley Kenny Leon, the creative force behind a new revival of “Our Town” on Broadway this fall, wasn’t always a fan of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play. ”There was no diversity in the town,” the Tony-winning director recalls thinking after seeing a student production in high school. “I just wasn’t drawn to it.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic At times, the three-part harmonic convergence of Brandi Carlile with longtime bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth has felt so much like blood harmony that you could fool yourself into thinking you’re hearing triplets. Of course, it’s been a case of identical twins +1, but now fans of their band are getting a chance to hear what the brothers sound like on their own, after 25 years of constant collaboration, via “Vera,” the official recorded debut of the Hanseroth Twins, on which Carlile served as executive producer The Hanseroths and Carlile sat down with Variety in the green room of the Grammy Museum before they made an appearance there earlier this week, to discuss the recently Elektra release and what they’ve learned about one another from working apart as well as together.

Katcy Stephan Austin Abrams wasn’t intimidated when he found out his role in “Wolfs” would require him to wear only underwear and crew socks for the first half of the film. After all, he had previously stripped down to gold spandex shorts for a memorable homoerotic dance number on the HBO hit “Euphoria.” “I didn’t really care,” he tells Variety of the minimal costume. “I was kind of ready to do whatever I needed to do to be able to work with those guys.” The guys in question? George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Howard Stern and Donald Trump were locked in a war of words this week after the SiriusXM radio host shared some blunt opinions about Trump supporters. Stern said that he has no respect for Americans who vote for Trump for president, which prompted Trump to claim Stern “went woke” and lost radio listeners as a result. “This whole idea of you like me, you are good, and if you don’t, you are bad… I’ve been the victim of this,” Stern said during a recent episode of “The Howard Stern Show” (via The Daily Beast).

Carolyn Giardina Exhibitors touting AI-driven creative tools at the International Broadcasting Convention, which wrapped earlier this week in Amsterdam with a reported 45,000 attendees from 170 countries, struck a delicate balance in their messaging. Companies such as Adobe and Avid emphasized continued innovation and a desire to empower creatives, while steering clear of anything that might suggest potential job loss.

Angelique Jackson Keke Palmer and SZA‘s highly-anticipated team-up movie is coming to theaters next January. The TriStar Pictures movie — produced by Issa Rae‘s Hoorae, written by Syreeta Singleton and directed by Lawrence Lamont — will get a theatrical release on Jan. 24, 2025.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor UTA has signed Blackmagic Design, the digital film tech company behind video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors and more for broad representation. Founded by top post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

Penguins at a Scots zoo have taken part in the Wee Waddle - strolling along a walkway in a 'penguin parade'.

Warm tributes have been paid to Mushtaq Ahmad OBE, the former lord lieutenant of Lanarkshire, who has died at the age of 81.