News

Undeniable, a new documentary label from Fremantle, has partnered with Big Pond Films and Concordia Studio on true crime doc Whatever It Takes, which tells the true story of Ina and David Steiner, two journalists targeted in one of the most extraordinary and bizarre scandals in Silicon Valley. Helmed by Jenny Carchman, the Emmy nominee behind Showtime’s The Fourth Estate, the film is slated to premiere in the Documentary Spotlight section of SXSW later this year.

Whatever It Takes picks up in the summer of 2019, as a middle-aged couple is subjected to cyberstalking threats and bizarre deliveries including a bloody pig mask and funeral wreath. As the harassment intensifies, the police and FBI close in on a Silicon Valley giant and some very unlikely suspects. The film tells the extraordinary story of eBay, a Fortune 500 company founded on the principle that “people are basically good,” and how members of...

The arrest of the Long Island Serial Killer and the slew of still-unsolved murders along the shore of Gilgo Beach will be the focus of an upcoming Netflix docuseries.

Filmmaker Liz Garbus, who directed the 2020 dramatized film Lost Girls about the Gilgo Beach killings, will return to the role of documentarian for the three-part series, which the streaming service announced just six weeks after Rex Heuermann was charged with murder for three of the victims, as well as remains a prime suspect for a fourth.

However, that arrest accounts for...

100 Foot Wave (HBO/Max) 100 Foot Wave

Chris Smith’s show about big-wave surfing is back in contention for its second season, just a year after its first was nominated in this category and won for cinematography. Surfer extraordinaire Garrett McNamara returns with other surfers and their stories, too.

Dear Mama (FX/Hulu) Dear Mama

Allen Hughes, a nominee in this category in 2018 for The Defiant Ones, profiles Tupac Shakur and his activist mom. (jeen-yuhs, which explored Kanye West’s relationship with his mom, was nominated for this award last year.) It attracted the most viewers ever for an FX unscripted show.

Prehistoric Planet (Apple TV+) Prehistoric Planet

Season one of this David Attenborough-narrated study of dinosaurs was snubbed (its VFX is cutting-edge, but some doc purists object to re-creations). However, voters have a track record of embracing nature/animal-related docs in this category.

The 1619 Project (Hulu...

“Search Party,” the 2016 TBS original series that’s finally found its third season a home on HBO Max, has seen its lurching offscreen evolution mirrored by seasonal onscreen switch-a-roos. What started as a quirky mystery built around a wayward group of shallow millennials shifted into an ever-darkening cover-up where mounting guilt led to bigger and more telling mistakes. When Season 2 ended, Dory (Alia Shawkat) was being arrested for the murder of Keith Powell (Ron Livingston), a private investigator that she and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Drew (John Reynolds) killed out of self-defense.

But the deviant in-joke for the audience — which lingered for two-and-a-half years, while WarnerMedia shifted distribution priorities from cable to streaming and “Search Party” waited in TV purgatory — was that Dory may be charged for a murder that’s closer to manslaughter, but she just tried to kill someone else for real; Dory meant to shove April (Phoebe Tyers) off a ferry,...

“Search Party,” the 2016 TBS original series that’s finally found its third season a home on HBO Max, has seen its lurching offscreen evolution mirrored by seasonal onscreen switch-a-roos. What started as a quirky mystery built around a wayward group of shallow millennials shifted into an ever-darkening cover-up where mounting guilt led to bigger and more telling mistakes. When Season 2 ended, Dory (Alia Shawkat) was being arrested for the murder of Keith Powell (Ron Livingston), a private investigator that she and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Drew (John Reynolds) killed out of self-defense.

But the deviant in-joke for the audience — which lingered for two-and-a-half years, while WarnerMedia shifted distribution priorities from cable to streaming and “Search Party” waited in TV purgatory — was that Dory may be charged for a murder that’s closer to manslaughter, but she just tried to kill someone else for real; Dory meant to shove April (Phoebe Tyers) off a ferry,...

In today’s TV news roundup, Quibi has released the names of several celebrity guests slated to appear in Jennifer Lopez’s new series “Thanks A Million,” and Showtime has teamed up with Imagine Documentaries to produce “Gossip Starring Cindy Adams.”

Castings

Quibi has announced several of the participants for its Jennifer Lopez-produced series “Thanks A Million.” The show will see celebrities kickstart a donation chain by gifting $100,000 to an unsuspecting individual who has had a positive impact on their life. Lopez, Kristen Bell, Karlie Kloss, Tracy Morgan, Aaron Rodgers and Alex Rodriguez are all set to lead individual episodes.

Developments

Showtime has partnered with Imagine Documentaries for a limited series examining the four-decade career of stalwart New York Post columnist Cindy Adams. “Gossip Starring Cindy Adams” will examine the power and influence that Adams wielded from her perch at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid. It will also delve into some...

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Documentaries will chart the rise of New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams in a docuseries for CBS’s Showtime Networks.

Jenny Carchman, who made Showtime’s Emmy-nominated New York Times documentary The Fourth Estate, will direct the Adams series, working closely with the New York Post, where the columnist still writes for Page Six.

Gossip Starring Cindy Adams will premiere in 2021 and chronicle Adams’ four-decade career as the “reigning queen of gossip,” the notorious characters that have emerged from her writing, and her journalistic colleagues.

Grazer and Howard are executive producers alongside Imagine Entertainment’s Michael Rosenberg, Imagine Documentaries’ Sara Bernstein and Justin Wilkes, and Troy Searer from New York Post Entertainment. Carchman is directing and producing.

Gossip Starring Cindy Adams was announced by Vinnie Malhotra, executive vice president of nonfiction programming for Showtime Networks.

With documentaries on the rise and multiple backers and outlets for non-fiction films, two veteran filmmakers — married producer-financier Dan Cogan and producer-director Liz Garbus — have decided to launch their own production company, Story Syndicate. Clearly, it’s a propitious time: The public’s appetite for non-fiction stories has never been greater, as movies ranging from last year’s “Rbg” and Oscar-winner “Free Solo” to 2019 hits “Apollo 11,” “Amazing Grace,” and “The Biggest Little Farm” hit big at the box office.

The move means that in the coming months, Cogan will transition from daily management of 12-year-old Impact Partners, which has financed over 100 films, including the Oscar-winning “Icarus” and “The Cove” and Oscar nominees “Fathers and Sons,” “How to Survive a Plague” and “Hell and Back Again.” He will join forces with Garbus, director of the Emmy-nominated “The Fourth Estate” and Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated “What Happened Miss Simone?,” by creating a...

With documentaries on the rise and multiple backers and outlets for non-fiction films, two veteran filmmakers — married producer-financier Dan Cogan and producer-director Liz Garbus — have decided to launch their own production company, Story Syndicate. Clearly, it’s a propitious time: The public’s appetite for non-fiction stories has never been greater, as movies ranging from last year’s “Rbg” and Oscar-winner “Free Solo” to 2019 hits “Apollo 11,” “Amazing Grace,” and “The Biggest Little Farm” hit big at the box office.

The move means that in the coming months, Cogan will transition from daily management of 12-year-old Impact Partners, which has financed over 100 films, including the Oscar-winning “Icarus” and “The Cove” and Oscar nominees “Fathers and Sons,” “How to Survive a Plague” and “Hell and Back Again.” He will join forces with Garbus, director of the Emmy-nominated “The Fourth Estate” and Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated “What Happened Miss Simone?,” by creating a...

Panama City — Prior to the launch of Iff Panama in 2012, Panama’s film production was virtually non-existent. With the aid of the festival, the national film fund, and impetus created by an influx of foreign shoots, local productions have secured an increasingly important role at the domestic box office.

Several projects now enjoy multi-territory releases – such as Abner Benaim’s “Ruben Blades Is Not My Name” and Arturo Montenegro’s “Frozen in Russia,” both released in 2018.

Iff Panama has increased visibility for local films and helped local helmers set their sights on the international market.

Seven Panamanian films are screening at the 8th Iff Panama; other promising projects are in production or pre-production.

All projects explore the complex, multi-faceted dimensions of Panamanian culture, ranging from tropical rainforests and indigenous tribes to the legacy of decades of U.S. presence.

Miguel González’s half-hour documentary, “The Fourth Estate,” turns on corruption...

There is something to be said for unbridled ambition. No matter its accepted outcome, no matter how it scores at the box office or what instantaneous praise it receives, a film can still be admired for its fearless commitment to scope and the best of its intentions. If it’s passionately executed with personal conviction, even a faulty feature can be respected for aspiration alone. And if said film happens to also be very good, so much the better. This, on more than one occasion, has defined the best of Bernardo Bertolucci, a filmmaker who thrived in the realization of such grand cinematic enterprise. From Before the Revolution (1964) to Last Tango in Paris (1972), from The Conformist (1970) to The Dreamers (2003), his films have been fortified by a visual potency and an overt thematic prominence—big ideas, brazenly presented. Even when they’re a tad self-important, the stirring spirit of his work is impressively demonstrable.

Gary Levine and Jana Winograde have been upped to Co-Presidents of Entertainment at Showtime Networks. The promotion stems from the recent elevation of Showtime CEO David Nevins to Showtime Chairman and CEO and Chief Creative Officer for CBS Corporation. With him taking on a larger role at CBS Corp., he was expected to hand more responsibilities to his top lieutenants at Showtime.

In turn, with Levine, along with Winograde, taking on additional duties, he will delegate some of his existing ones to the two top programming executives under him, Amy Israel and Vinnie Malhotra, who have been promoted to Evp, Scripted Programming, and Evp, Nonfiction Programming, respectively.

Levine, a 18-year Showtime veteran and a top programming/development executive, and Winograde, a respected business executive who joined the network in 2017, will continue to report to Nevins. Israel and Malhotra, who previously reported to Levine, will report to him and Winograde.

This...

Gary Levine and Jana Winograde have been named co-presidents of entertainment at Showtime Networks, the company announced Thursday.

The pair will develop and supervise all Showtime programming, including comedy, drama, unscripted, documentaries and film, overseeing production, program operations, business affairs, casting, scheduling, research and home entertainment. They will also be liaisons to CBS’ international and domestic distribution groups. Additionally, Winograde will become a board member of Smithsonian Networks, also a division of CBS Corp.

The move comes shortly after David Nevins’ elevation in October to chief creative officer of CBS Corporation and chairman of Showtime, adding to his existing position as CEO of the premiere cable network.

“Gary and Jana are peerless in their roles. Both command great respect from their colleagues inside and outside the company, and they have been key in driving our growth,” said Nevins in a statement. “As we invest more deeply in creating world class content for our audiences,...

Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap,” an look at small-town American life through the lens of a group of skateboarder friends, led the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors nominations for nonfiction filmmaking Thursday.

The film, a Hulu original documentary, landed seven bids, for direction, editing, cinematography, original score, debut feature and the audience award, in addition to outstanding achievement in nonfiction feature filmmaking, the organization’s top prize. It was also mentioned in the “Unforgettables” sidebar honoring the subjects of many of this year’s documentaries.

The seven-nomination haul was enough to match Cinema Eye’s record, held by Louie Psihoyos’ “The Cove,” Lixin Fan’s “Last Train Home” and Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir.”

The other nominees for outstanding achievement in nonfiction feature filmmaking were “Bisbee ’17” (five nominations), “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” (five nominations), “Of Fathers and Sons” (three nominations), “Three Identical Strangers” (three nominations) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?...

Showtime has made available the documentary short film The Family Business: Trump and Taxes for free online and across multiple platforms.

The film follows a team of New York Times investigative reporters through their diligent and intense efforts in uncovering the information that led to their exclusive report on Trump family finances. The film is now available for online sampling on YouTube, Facebook and Sho.com. It also is rolling out across multiple television and streaming providers’ devices, websites, applications and authenticated online services and their free On Demand channels.

The film was directed by Jenny Carchman and produced by Oscar nominees Liz Garbus and Justin Wilkes (The Fourth Estate) who were embedded for more than a year inside The New York Times. It follows Times investigative reporters David Barstow, Russell Buettner and Susanne Craig as they expose the untold story of how Donald Trump became rich. Mr. Trump has...

In 2003, Steve James’ first docuseries debuted on PBS. “The New Americans” was a seven-hour “verité style” film following a diverse group of immigrants and refugees who left their homes to move to America. The expansive, six-and-a-half-year project covered the subjects in their native countries as well as in the states, and all 411 minutes aired over three nights as one big event.

“It didn’t play theatrically because it was seven hours long,” James said. “It played at Idfa, SXSW, and one other film festival, and then it was on public television, and then it was gone.”

As James distinctly remembers, this was a time before streaming and DVRs, before Netflix and HBO sparked national news with buzzy docuseries, and before an era of peak TV led to massive libraries of endlessly accessible content.

“I remember thinking, ‘Jeez. All that work, it’s on television, and then it’s done,'” James said.

“Free Solo,” “Quincy,” “Minding the Gap,” “Rbg,” “Three identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” are among the films nominated for the Audience Choice Prize at the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors, an awards show devoted to all facts of nonfiction filmmaking.

“Bathtubs Over Broadway,” “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.,” “On Her Shoulders” and “Shirkers” were also nominated in the Audience Choice category, which can be voted on by members of the public at the Cinema Eye website.

The bulk of the Cinema Eye Honors nominees will be announced on Thursday, Nov. 8, and the winners will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 10 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.

Also Read: 'Free Solo,' 'Minding the Gap,' 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Land Ida Documentary Nominations

In the Broadcast Film category, the nominees were four docs from HBO – “Baltimore Rising,” “Believer,” “The Final Year” and...

At their inaugural Fall Lunch in held in Los Angeles on Thursday, Cinema Eye Honors unveiled their first round of awards, including their annual list of significant nonfiction film subjects and a list of the year’s ten top Nonfiction Short Films. They also released nominees in four categories: Broadcast Film; a new award for Broadcast Series; the Heterodox Award, which recognizes fiction films that blur the line between fiction and documentary; and the annual Audience Choice Prize, voted on by documentary lovers around the world.

Netflix, Focus Features, and Hulu hosted the event at Casita Hollywood with many of the year’s top filmmakers on hand, including Kirby Dick, Morgan Neville, Matt Tyrnauer, Jimmy Chin, Rj Cutler, Lauren Greenfield, Alan Hicks, Laura Nix, and Brett Morgen. The full list of nonfiction film and craft nominees, including the five nominees for Outstanding Nonfiction Short Film, will be revealed on Thursday,...

Cinema Eye Honors revealed the first awards announcements for the organization’s 12th annual awards on Thursday.

Audience choice nominees include recent documentary awards-circuit players such as “Free Solo,” “Minding the Gap,” “Quincy,” “Rbg,” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The group also unveiled its list of “The Unforgettables,” honoring notable and significant nonfiction film subjects, such as rock climber Alex Honnold (“Free Solo”), recording artist M.I.A. (“Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.”), Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“Rbg”), and television legend Fred Rogers (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”).

Joining the broadcast film category is a new field this year, broadcast series, which features contenders such as Netflix’s “Evil Genius” and “Wild Wild Country,” and Showtime’s “The Fourth Estate.”

In the Heterodox category, recognizing fiction films that actively blur the line between fiction and documentary, The Orchard and MoviePass’ “American Animals,” Magnolia’s “Skate Kitchen,” and...

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi‘s “Free Solo” leads the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards with six bids, including Best Documentary and Best Director. Also nabbing nominations in those two top categories is Bing Liu‘s “Minding the Gap,” which is also in the running for Best First Time Director, as well as “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” “Dark Money,” “Hitler’s Hollywood,” and “Three Identical Strangers.” In all 10 films were nominated for the top prize at these awards bestowed by the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. (Bfca). The other four are “Crime + Punishment,” “Hal,” “Rbg,” and “Wild Wild Country.”

Last year the Bfca nominated 16 films for this award, three of which –“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” “Faces Places,” and “Strong Island” — went on to contend at the Oscars. And in 2016 the Bfca shared its Best Documentary winner (“O.J.: Made in America”) with the Academy...

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Free Solo,” a National Geographic documentary about Alex Honnold’s attempt to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan rock formation without any ropes or protective equipment, leads all films in nominations for the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Broadcast Television Journalists Associations announced on Monday.

“Free Solo” received five nominations, including Best Documentary and Best Director, and an additional honor for subject Honnold, who was one of eight subjects singled out in the Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary category.

Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” and Chapman Way and Maclain Way’s “Wild Wild Country” each received five nominations, while Kimberly Reed’s “Dark Money,” Rüdiger Suchsland’s “Hitler’s Hollywood” and Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” received four each.

Also Read: 'Fahrenheit 11/9' Director Michael Moore to Receive Critics' Choice...

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s “Free Solo,” which captured rock climber Alex Honnold’s hair-raising ascent of Yosemite National Park’s 3,000-foot El Capitan rock formation, led the nominations for the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, it was revealed Monday. The film netted six nominations including best documentary and best director.

Close behind with five mentions each were “Minding the Gap” and “Wild Wild Country,” from Hulu and Netflix respectively.

Voted on by the Broadcast Film Critics and Television Journalists Assns., the awards will be presented at a gala event hosted by science educator and television personality Bill Nye on Saturday, Nov. 10 at Bric in Brooklyn, New York.

The nominees are:

Best Documentary

“Crime + Punishment” – Director: Stephen Maing (Hulu)

“Dark Money” – Director: Kimberly Reed (PBS)

“Free Solo” – Directors: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (National Geographic Documentary Films)

“Hal” – Director: Amy Scott (Oscilloscope)

“Hitler’s Hollywood” – Director: Rüdiger Suchsland...

The Broadcast Film Critics Association (Bfca) and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (Btja) have announced the nominees for the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. The winners will be presented their awards at a gala event, hosted by science educator and television personality Bill Nye, on Saturday, November 10 at Bric in Brooklyn, New York.

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s “Free Solo” leads this year with six nominations and one honor, including Best Documentary, Best Directors, Best Sports Documentary, Most Innovative Documentary, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and a Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary honor for Alex Honnold. “Minding the Gap” and “Wild Wild Country” follow with five nominations each, with “Dark Money,” “Hitler’s Hollywood,” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” each earning four nods.

“We are thrilled to celebrate this year’s outstanding documentary work at the upcoming event,” said Broadcast Film Critics Association President...

The perilous attempt by climber Alex Honnold to become the first person ever to scale and solo climb Yosemite’s 3000 foot high El Capitan Mountain with no ropes or safety gear is chronicled in the documentary Free Solo, a film that has climbed the list of nominees with six nods (and one honor) for the 2018 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. The awards take place on Saturday November 10 in Brooklyn.

Bing Liu’s skateboarding docu, Minding The Gap, and the Emmy winning Netflix limited docu series Wild Wild Country follow with five nominations each. All three films are nominated in the Best Documentary category which includes theatrical features and streaming/television entries.

In what has been an outstanding year for docus, both critically and at the box office, three films that have earned big dollars in theaters are also well represented on the list – Morgan Neville’s poignant Mr. Rogers docu, Won...

How long are our attention spans? It’s a question worth asking as the manifold dramas and traumas of the Trump presidency tend to overshadow one another.

“The Family Business,” a Showtime documentary short broadcast Sunday night, prompts this question more than perhaps any other. It focuses on the New York Times report, published on Oct. 2, into Donald Trump’s family finances and the degree of fraudulence that padded both his claims that his father had given him a fairly small loan, paid back with interest, and his dealings with the Internal Revenue Service. Cameras recorded the moving and strangely mundane scene before it went live, with reporters stuck in a midtown Manhattan conference room, as tense as actors waiting for opening night of a play.

According to “The Family Business,” the investigation was prompted by reporters’ curiosity after the provocative and incomplete Rachel Maddow segment that aired last March...

When the New York Times editors hit publish on yesterday’s exhaustive report detailing how Fred Trump fraudulently funneled millions to his son — President Donald J. Trump — Showtime’s cameras were rolling. A holdover from Liz Garbus’ “The Fourth Estate” — a four part series documenting the New York Times covering President Trump’s first year in office that aired this spring — director Jenny Carchman helmed a crew that continued to follow the reporters working on this particular story about Trump’s tax avoidance, which took nearly two years to report.

The Times story by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and David Barstow calls into question President Trump’s image as a self-made billionaire, revealing that he received the equivalent today of $413 million from his father. Worse yet for the President, the Times reported that the money transfers were “dubious tax schemes” that sometimes involved “outright fraud.”

The film about the process,...

In today’s film news roundup, immigration drama “The Infiltrators” gets financing, Jake Busey is starring in a high-school comedy, and Stuart Ford’s Agc Studios hires two former Im Global executives.

Project Financing

Chicago Media Project Invest/Impact’s Paula Froehle and Steve Cohen have joined the immigration drama “The Infiltrators” as executive producers and financiers, Variety has learned exclusively.

Cmp I/I has invested previously in the Academy Award-winning documentary “Icarus,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” and Showtime’s series “The Fourth Estate.”

Directed and produced by Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, “The Infiltrators” centers on a small group of young undocumented immigrants who embark on a high-risk mission inside America’s for-profit detention system in order to set people free. The film, which mixes documentary with narrative dramatization, stars Chelsea Rendon, Vik Sahay, Maynor Alvarado, and Manuel Uriza.

Production is currently underway in Southern California. The...

Going back to the Sopranos, HBO has demonstrated a gift for grandly celebrating its new product, with its premieres serving as lavish exercises in self-congratulation. Still there was a palpable tension at Tuesday night’s party for Sharp Objects at the Dome – a sense that the fate of this new series carried more than usual importance.

Consider the following: HBO, now under new At&T ownership, has experienced mixed reaction to widely hyped new shows like Succession (already renewed) and Here and Now (cancelled), and would like to deflect media obsession from high-spending rivals like Netflix. Sharp Objects is a dark and gritty show about women, created by women.

Moreover, Sharp Objects also is a high profile example of the unfolding saga of movies-versus-tv. The novel by Gillian Flynn (who wrote Gone Girl) was originally...

Last Year’s Winner: “Planet Earth II”

Still Eligible: No.

Hot Streak: A network hasn’t won this category in back-to-back years since PBS in 2013 and 2014, which was also the last time the same show won twice in a row — “American Masters.”

Fun Fact:

“American Masters” has 17 nominations and 10 wins in this category, which is far and away the most of either accolade. But a new trend in docuseries, as well as new mediums supporting the genre, are clashing with PBS’s established favorite. HBO’s “The Jinx” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” solidified the interest in and respect for true crime docuseries, and while last year saw “Planet Earth II” take the Emmy, the genre’s success has lead to more competition overall.

“Evil Genius” is a Netflix true crime docuseries that hasn’t made “Making a Murderer”-level waves, but could still benefit from having extra eyes on it.

Imagine Entertainment chairmen Brian Grazer and Ron Howard announced Tuesday that producer Justin Wilkes is joining the company to launch its new venture, Imagine Documentaries.

Based in New York, Imagine Docs will focus on developing and producing feature documentaries and non-scripted television. Wilkes served as a producer on Howard’s documentary debut, “Jay-z’s Made In America,” and was also a producer on the National Geographic series “Mars.” Wilkes has won multiple Emmys and Peabody Awards and was recently nominated for an Oscar as a producer on the Netflix doc “What Happened, Miss Simone?

“We are so excited to have Justin join the team. He combines unique vision and masterful execution in all his projects. In the world of filmmaking and documentaries, he is a visionary. We have enjoyed our successful collaborations over the years, and are excited for what is to come in the future,” said Grazer and Howard in a statement.

Washington — Rob Reiner’s new movie “Shock & Awe” is the story of the Knight-Ridder D.C. journalists who “got it right” on Iraq, as he says, in their skeptical coverage that cast serious doubts about the Bush administration’s case for war.

Reiner plays bureau chief John Walcott, who at one point tells his reporters, “When the government says something, you only have one question to ask, and that is, ‘Is it true?'”

“Certainly most of the mainstream journalists did not ask those tough questions in the run up to the war in Iraq, and I would submit that they didn’t ask those questions of Donald Trump during the campaign,” Reiner tells Variety‘s “PopPolitics” on SiriusXM’s Potus Channel. “And I think he got pretty much a free ride.”

He said that since Trump was elected, many news outlets are “doing their due diligence, but now we...

While streaming services have offered subscribers access to documentaries and unscripted series for some time, it’s only fairly recently that streamers have been making original unscripted and docuseries, such as Amazon’s “The Grand Tour” and Netflix’s “Wild Wild Country,” “Chef’s Table” and “Fastest Car.”

But it was less than 18 months ago when Netflix launched an initiative to make more of its own original unscripted shows, resulting in hits including “Queer Eye,” “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman” and “Nailed It.” In May, Netflix signed a multi-year deal with Higher Ground Prods. — a company formed by former President Barack Obama and wife Michelle — that will include unscripted and docuseries and scripted content.

“We have, what, 125 million accounts with Netflix, and that sort of equates closer to 300 million active sets of eyeballs when you think about multi-user households,” says Lisa Nishimura, Netflix’s VP of original documentary and comedy programming.

The New York Times is heading to the UK after BBC Two picked up the rights to Showtime documentary series The Fourth Estate.

The British public broadcaster will air Liz Garbus’ four-part series later this month after its launch on the premium U.S. cable network last month.

The Fourth Estate looks at the inner workings of the gray lady during the first 12 months of Donald Trump’s presidency. It follows journalists including Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush as well as editor Dean Baquet covering Trump’s inauguration, accusations of fake news as well as major stories about the Russia investigation. The doc also looks at how the New York Times is changing, launching the Daily podcast, and responding to the challenges of being a digital publication.

The series was produced and directed by Garbus and Jenny Carchman and is a Radical Media and Moxie Firecracker Films Production in association...

The challenge of understanding Donald Trump’s effect on America at large goes hand-in-hand with covering the 45th president of the United States. From big picture questions like, “What’s the story?” to more detailed queries like, “What’s the angle on the story?” and even “What are the appropriate adjectives to frame that angle within the story?” there’s no set handbook for reporters who are constantly being undermined by the authority figures they cover.

How do you convey facts in an era of fake news? “The Fourth Estate” aims to illustrate exactly that, as Liz Garbus’ four-part docuseries delves into the exhausting lives of New York Times’ reporters delivering exhaustive coverage of all things Trump. Starting with the newsroom watching his inauguration and running through April 2018, the engrossing series moves at the pace of its subjects: fast and efficient. Yet much like some of the inevitable mistakes of the paper of record,...

A veil is lifted in the final episode of The Fourth Estate, Liz Garbus' new Showtime docu-series about the New York Times' coverage of the Donald Trump presidency. (It premieres on May 27th.) The Washington bureau's conservative politics correspondent, Jeremy Peters, is reporting on Roy Moore's failed bid for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. He links up with Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and the Southern politician's most vocal national surrogate. It's clear the pair – a leader of the alt-right and a gay beat reporter with a book deal,...

The story behind the new documentary series for Showtime, The Fourth Estate, begins in January 2017 with the staff of The New York Times in crisis. Not only is the nation in turmoil under its new President, but the venerable newspaper itself – an American institution – must deal with the aftermath of having flubbed two of the biggest stories since Watergate. During the 2016 Presidential election, the newspaper routinely dismissed Donald Trump as a viable candidate. Worse, once he was selected as the Republican nominee, it also double-downed by offering its own polling analytics as proof that Hillary Clinton […]

The post Exclusive interview: The Fourth Estate producers on going inside The New York Times during Trump’s first 100 days appeared first on Monsters and Critics.

Showtime’s expansive 2018 Emmy Fyc mailer will soon be arriving on the doorsteps of the TV academy membership. While the premium network previously shipped three series-specific mailers back in April for drama series “The Chi,” comedy series “Smilf” and limited series “Twin Peaks,” they’ve now sent out a fourth mailer featuring all of their eligible Emmy submissions. See photos above and below.

See Emmys 2018 exclusive: Showtime categories for ‘Patrick Melrose,’ ‘Smilf,’ ‘Twin Peaks’ and more

Included is recent Emmy winner “Shameless,” two-time champ for Best Comedy Stunts and four-time nominee for William H. Macy as Best Comedy Actor. Former Best Drama Series winner “Homeland” (2012) is also back in action after concluding its seventh season last month. Look for Emmy favorite Claire Danes and repeat nominee Mandy Patinkin to be major players again in the acting categories, along with Lesli Linka Glatter for directing the drama series.

More shows to...

Watching the 2016 presidential election play out, Oscar-nominated documentarian Liz Garbus was as surprised as anyone by the outcome, as Republican candidate Donald Trump took a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.

“All the predictors were telling us it was going to turn out one way, and it turned out another, and I think there was a moment in which storytellers were figuring out, what is our role in this new political landscape?” Garbus said in conversation with Deadline, “Do we have one, and how should we use it?”

This question would become the seed of Garbus’ Showtime docuseries The Fourth Estate, in which the filmmaker offers an inside look at The New York Times‘ efforts to cover the first year of Trump’s presidency, with unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Nyt journalists and editors—those individuals the President has declared “the enemy of the people.”

Becoming “addicted” to Twitter throughout this past election cycle,...

FX has landed the rights to a series with The New York Times called “The Weekly,” the network announced on Wednesday.

The network has committed to a minimum of 30 episodes, with the series scheduled to premiere later this year. Hulu will air the episodes a day after they air on FX. The series will be produced by The New York Times and Left/Right.

Styled in the same vein as the paper’s podcast, “The Daily,” the weekly, half-hour series will spotlight one or two of The Times’ top visual stories and the go behind-the-scenes with those stories’ reporters. “The Weekly” will not have a host, instead using The Times’ reporters to act as a guide as they report their own stories. Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor at the paper, will oversee “The Weekly” on behalf of The Times’ newsroom.

Also Read: Trump Hires Clinton Impeachment Lawyer - as the NY Times Predicted, in a Story Trump Denied

“The New York Times is synonymous with excellence and FX is honored to be chosen as their partner on what will be the first entry for both organizations into the weekly TV news business,” said FX Networks CEO John Landgraf. “A free press is vital to the health of our American democracy. ‘The Weekly’ will give viewers compelling stories about the courage and commitment New York Times journalists bring to seeking out and reporting the truth. We also want to thank our partners at Hulu on this deal and the team at Left/Right.”

“The Weekly” will not be the first documentary series to air this year that will spotlight the reporting at The Times. Later this month, Showtime will premiere Liz Garbus’ “The Fourth Estate” series, which looks at paper through the lens of covering the Trump Administration.

“Our ambition with ‘The Weekly’ is to bring the authority and excellence of New York Times journalism to the largest possible television audience. Partnering with FX and Hulu together for distribution represents an entirely new and uniquely powerful way do just that,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, The New York Times Company’s chief operating officer. “The leadership at each of these organizations demonstrated real enthusiasm for The Weekly and for work of The Times. We are incredibly excited to work with them, and with our production partners at Left/Right, to make millions more people spend much more time with quality, original journalism.”

Read original story FX Orders New York Times Series ‘The Weekly’ At TheWrap...

And so, we reach the final month before Emmys eligibility closes once more. As the mad rush intensifies before the official start of summer, a number of returning TV shows will definitely be vying for your attention.

But amidst all the chaos of those shows making their way back into living rooms, some new series will also be vying for your attention. As is our custom at the beginning of each month, we’ve collected a rundown of the shows that might just be worth your time across broadcast, cable, and streaming.

(Missed our picks of what the first part of the year had to offer? Here are some notable TV premieres from February, March, and April.)

“Being Serena”

As one of the great athletes of her generation embarks on the new quest of being a mother, this five-part HBO series tracks her life on and off the tennis court.

The New York Times kicked off this year's streamlined Digital Content NewFronts by unveiling a slew of video and audio endeavors -- and teased a forthcoming TV show adaptation of its hit podcast The Daily, which was the centerpiece of last year's presentation.

While the Times didn’t disclose any additional details about the show, assistant managing editor Sam Dolnick said that TV represented an important new frontier. After inking a pact with production company Anonymous Content in January, it has several shows in the works. A Showtime series about its journalists called The Fourth Estate is set to premiere on May 27, while an eight-part Netflix medical series dubbed Diagnosis will launch in 2019. The company also envisions that several of its celebrated franchises could spawn TV adaptations, including its Modern Love column; its Overlooked series, which reexamines women and minorities who did not rightfully receive obituaries; and its famed crossword...

The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival Closed on Saturday night with the World Premiere of the first part of Liz Garbus’ new four-part documentary series The Fourth Estate. The fly-on-the-wall doc offers an inside look at The New York Times during the first year of the Trump Presidency.

The screening was introduced by Tribeca Co-Founder Robert De Niro who berated Trump for his use of the term Fake News: “it’s a funny thing calling something ‘fake news’ just because you don’t like it. It’s still news and when it’s the truth, it’s the truth and when it exposes you as a liar, a scam artist and a criminal, that so called ‘fake news’ can lead you to doing real time. And I hope I can do that on Saturday Night Live, depose him, interrogate him, then I want to put him in handcuffs and I...

The opening or closing night of a film festival can make a statement — about where that festival, or the larger world of film, is headed. Tonight, the Tribeca Film Festival made a striking statement by presenting Liz Garbus’ “The Fourth Estate” as its closing-night selection. Garbus is a renowned documentary filmmaker whose artistry has only grown with the years, culminating in the luminous, heartbreaking, Oscar-nominated musical psychodramatic portrait “What Happened, Miss Simone?” (2015). But “The Fourth Estate” isn’t, technically speaking, a feature film. It’s the first episode of a four-part documentary series, produced by Showtime (it premieres there on May 27), that takes a close-up look at the inside hustle and bustle of The New York Times as it covers the Trump presidency.

The distinction between a film or TV documentary may, at this point, seem academic. There’s a mountain of nonfiction now produced for the small screen. Almost every year at Sundance,...

For its closing night screening, the Tribeca Film Festival hosted the world premiere of Liz Garbus' new documentary series, The Fourth Estate, which follows The New York Times as its reporters and editors cover the first year of Donald Trump's presidency.

The festival may have been winding down Saturday night — and Trump himself was speaking at a rally in Michigan while many political staffers and reporters were attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. — but in New York, De Niro was still full of rage at the president as he also expressed support for "legitimate journalists...

The American press, or the “The Fourth Estate,” is under steady attack throughout the first episode of this documentary series for Showtime. Director Liz Garbus takes us inside the newsroom of the New York Times during the first months of the scandal-ridden Trump administration, and she reveals the challenges that the reporters face on a daily basis.

A lot of what we see in the first scenes looks like impotent wheel-spinning, as the journalists try to figure out how to cover a president who is openly hostile to them. We see them patting themselves on the back a lot, and this expresses the insecurity of their position. The New York Times is in competition with the Washington Post, and we watch how they try to beat each other on stories, but there is little genuine excitement in what we see these reporters doing; there is instead a constant low-level sense of dread.

The conversation we hear is peppered with the qualifying words and phrases that have crept into and degraded American vernacular: “kind of” and “sort of” turn up all the time in meetings. And the man who became president doesn’t qualify anything, unless he’s trying out one of his verbal evasions that are reliant on conspiracy theories or worse.

Also Read: How Tom Petty Became the Key to HBO's Elvis Presley Documentary

White House correspondent Maggie Haberman is heavily relied on in the Times newsroom as a source for Trump information and Trump character analysis because she has been covering him since she worked at New York tabloids in the 1980s. He used to give her quotes to “juice” her articles then, and it is clear that she is beyond tired of having to deal with him.

Haberman often openly admits to being drained of energy, and she is stuck in a disbelieving, defensive persona. What she really wants to do is get back to her children, and she talks about how she thought her coverage on the Trump beat would finally end when he lost.

Garbus shows Haberman having to take a call from one of her children while she tries to do an interview for a podcast, and the way Haberman crouches on the floor of the office while she attempts to reassure her child is an image of helplessness that epitomizes what most of the people in this movie are feeling.

Also Read: Gilda Radner Documentary 'Love, Gilda' to Open Tribeca Film Festival

If there is a star in “The Fourth Estate,” it may be Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller, a very tough, skeptical journalist who knows how to separate what is important from what isn’t, which turns out to be a particularly crucial skill for covering this particular White House. There’s an exciting scene where Bumiller reacts incredulously when she sees that her lede has been watered down, and we see her defiantly trying to get some of her original intent back into the top of the story.

It says something about this administration that the scandals covered in “The Fourth Estate” feel like they happened in an already distant past even though they occurred just a little over a year ago. There is the start of the scandal about Russian interference with the 2016 election, and then the turnovers and resignations of officials close to Trump, and the reporters write about these things in all seriousness and with all due diligence.

It is made clear that the New York Times needs money, and that Facebook and Google are eating into their business. “We’re not driven by clicks,” says Time publisher A. G. Sulzberger. “We think in decades.” But there is the very uneasy sense that the foundation of newspapers like the Times is fragile, especially when we see Trump attacking the press as any dictator would.

Also Read: Netflix Partners with BuzzFeed for New Documentary Series

Trump himself is seen giving speeches throughout, and we hear him on the phone with Haberman, who has to listen to his off-the-record profane anger. The thing that makes Trump so hard to fight is that he is such a comic figure on the surface. His face often takes on the supercilious look of a grand female dowager, like Margaret Dumont, before it folds back into the cartoonish grin of a minor fat-cat capitalist. Haberman says that Trump’s greatest dream is to be taken seriously, and she says that he is searching above all for respectability.

“The Fourth Estate” ends on a cliffhanger that is supposed to whet our appetite for future episodes, but surely many of us are waiting for this whole thing to be finished. Everyone in this movie seems to be wondering how long we have to wait for the end of this publicity stunt gone wrong. But if we are in for a long haul, it feels as if Bumiller is the one who can best lead us through it.

Read original story ‘The Fourth Estate’ Film Review: Inside Look at NY Times Reveals Low-Level Dread in Trump Era At TheWrap...

Tears were shed at Chanel’s Tribeca Film Festival luncheon celebrating women filmmakers on Friday.

Paula Weinstein, Tribeca Enterprises executive vice president, made a speech to a restaurant full of female filmmakers, producers, writers, actresses and gatekeepers that acknowledged just how much things have changed in the entertainment industry.

“In my early days in Hollywood, there was very little reaching back to pull women forward,” she said. “‘Now we are in the third phase of the women’s movement and this is a must. This is a moment when we need to hold hands and bring each other along and allow our work to help to the women who are less fortunate so they can have their moment. Whether it’s a blow job or a shift loss, we want to help make that stop happening.”

After the room cheered, Weinstein began to cry.

“I’m just so moved and inspired,...

The 17th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, running through April 29, is once again packed with films, talks, and moving image work beyond film such as Vr, television, online work, and gaming events. The opening film is Lisa D'Apolito's Love, Gilda, a documentary about the late, beloved comedian Gilda Radner; the centerpiece is Drake Doremus' sci-fi romance Zoe; and closing out the fest is Liz Garbus' documentary The Fourth Estate, detailing how the staff of The New York Times dealt with the election and subsequent first year of the Donald Trump administration. This year's edition boasts 96 feature films, which includes a particularly notable statistic: a record 46% of them are directed by women, a fact that resonates for obvious reasons relating to the current heightened consciousness...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Robert De Niro is still as anti-Trump as ever.

Months after criticizing Donald Trump in an impassioned speech at the National Board of Review awards, the veteran actor continues to speak out against the reality star turned president. De Niro, who on Wednesday kicked off the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival with co-founder Jane Rosenthal in New York City, tells The Hollywood Reporter why it was important to highlight Trump's tense relationship with the press in this year's lineup.

"[Closing night doc] The Fourth Estate is an obvious one and a necessary film to see. … It's about The New York Times...

Typically Tribeca Film Festival press luncheons preview their annual lineup, with a reminder of the event’s social and economic impact to downtown New York in the years post-9/11. However, Tribeca co-boss and two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro kicked off this year’s 17th annual event at Thalassa Restaurant by jabbing at his favorite punching bag: President Donald Trump.

“Look at all the Fake News writers here today,” joked Robert De Niro to several laughs.

“The country has had a bad year, and you — the press – have taken a lot of hits. America is being run by a madman who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came inside a bucket of his beloved Colonel Sanders Fried Chicken,” exclaimed De Niro.

“When he doesn’t like what he hears, he dismisses it by saying it’s un-American and damning it as ‘fake news’. But we know the truth. All...

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival will again live-stream a dozen panels and events exclusively on Facebook for free — no ticket or trip to Manhattan required.

The 12 sessions from Tribeca include the April 19 panel with HBO’s “Westworld” co-creators/showrunners/directors Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, along with cast members Evan Rachel Wood (pictured above), Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, and James Marsden. They’ll be talking about the upcoming season 2 premiere, slated for April 22, after it screens at the festival.

Tribeca’s Facebook live-streams also are scheduled to include sessions with Spike Lee, Alec Baldwin, Jamie Foxx, Paris Hilton, Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, André Leon Tally, Antonio Banderas, Terrance McNally and John Legend. The 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by At&T, runs April 18-29.

The talks are available exclusively via Facebook Live on the Tribeca Film Festival Facebook page at facebook.com/tribeca. Tribeca also live-streamed 12 panels during last year’s fest on Facebook.