Category: Entertainment

The 53rd annual Daytime Emmy nominations announcement is underway. Among early nominees: Recently ended talkers “The Kelly Clarkson Show” (recognized for talk series and talk host) and “Sherri” (with a nod for talk host).

The Daytime Emmys, administered by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, recognize daytime dramas, talk series, entertainment news, culinary, adventure, instructional and legal/courtroom programming. This year’s Lifetime Achievement honoree, Gold & Silver Circle inductees, and ceremony host will be announced at a later date.

Formerly held in June, the Daytime Emmys moved to mid-fall last year; the 2026 event is scheduled to take place as a single ceremony on Friday, October 30, in Los Angeles.

“We’re proud to honor the extraordinary talent and creative teams whose work continues to define and elevate daytime television,” said NATAS president/CEO Adam Sharp. “As the Daytime landscape evolves and new forms of storytelling emerge, we remain committed to recognizing the innovation happening across the industry.” 

This year’s Daytime Emmys nominations come after serveral rule changes were announced this spring. Among the modifications: Submissions will now be episode-based, which it calls a “primetime format,” allowing programs to enter multiple submissions for different episodes and potentially receive several nominations.

Additionally, NATAS has opted to determine how many nominations a category will get based on a scale of how may submissions there were, much like what happens at the Primetime Emmys. The default number of nominations in a category are:

10 – 29 submissions: 5 nominations
30 – 59 submissions: 6 nominations
60 – 89 submissions: 7 nominations
90 – 119 submissions: 8 nominations
120 -149 submissions: 9 nominations
150 or more submissions: 10 nomination

If there are fewer than ten submissions in a category, the default number of nominations is 50% of the category’s submissions, rounded up to the nearest whole number. Categories with three or fewer submissions have no nominations, “though the National Awards Committee may proceed with an award based on a standard of excellence if the category is not otherwise merged or eliminated.”

Meanwhile, there’s a new threshold for when you’re eligible for guest actor in a daytime drama (“To be eligible for the guest category, you must be seen in a maximum of 19% of episodes aired/streamed for the first time during calendar year 2025. Otherwise, you must enter in categories eligible only in the Leading, Supporting, or Emerging Talent categories.”).

And the science and nature programming category has been eliminated in Daytime, as programs will now have to submit in Primetime, News & Doc or Children’s & Family, depending on eligibility.

Finally, daytime dramas and non-fiction programs will now enter alongside each other in categories except writing and directing. The categories will be split again if both the daytime drama and daytime non-fiction tracks have at least 10 submissions each.

NATAS Productions is behind the Daytime Emmys. Adam Sharp and Lara Gates are executive producers, and Leon Knoles is back as ceremony director for a fifth straight year. “Each year, the Daytime Emmy Awards celebrate the creativity, passion, and dedication that drive this vibrant community of storytellers,” said Daytime Emmy awards head Rachel Schwartz. “Congratulations to this year’s nominees, whose work continues to entertain, inspire and connect with audiences every day. We look forward to celebrating their remarkable achievements in Hollywood this October.” 

Here are this year’s nominations, starting with four categories that were revealed Monday night during the broadcasts of entertainment news magazines “Extra” and “Entertainment Tonight”:

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Outstanding Lead Performer in a Daytime Drama Series: Actress

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Outstanding Lead Performer in a Daytime Drama Series: Actor

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Outstanding Daytime Talk Series

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Outstanding Daytime Talk Series Host

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More to come as the remaining nominees are announced on Tuesday morning.

Legendary Entertainment‘s first theme park attraction, “Kong x Godzilla” at Lotte World in Seoul, opens July 24, marking the studio’s entry into location-based entertainment after several years of development on the project.

“It was a big priority for me when I joined Legendary nine years ago,” James Ngo, Legendary’s executive VP of franchise management, tells Variety. “These types of deals take a long time to do, and construction also takes a long time as a process, so I immediately started trying to get Legendary into the space.”

“This is the right time in the franchise for us to bring these major experiential projects to the fans so that they can experience it in real life,” Ngo adds. “We’re going into our sixth movie next year; we have a TV show. So the franchise is kind of at its apex right now in terms of all the different media projects.”

The MonsterVerse has generated more than $2.5 billion at the global box office across five feature films, including “Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” with a sixth installment already in the works. The franchise’s Apple TV series, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” is now in its second season.

“Godzilla has been around for 70-plus years, Kong as a character has been around for 100 years,” Ngo says. “As far as the fan base goes, we get everybody who knew Godzilla and Kong when they were kids but are now in their 50s, 60s and older. Our new films are starting to appeal to younger kids and teens, so the audience base has grown the most, and it’s the furthest along of all of our franchises.”

Lotte World is undergoing a renovation, and the company committed to making the Legendary IP the centerpiece of that work, according to Ngo.

“Lotte is such an incredible partner in the region, in the territory,” Ngo says. “Lotte World specifically has been around for a very long time. It’s very well known, and it’s beloved in South Korea, but also around Asia regionally. This is going to be Lotte’s biggest investment as a ride in the park. It’s not just a ride, it’s going to be the marquee ride of the park and really the main attraction for everything.”

“From the moment guests come to line up, they are being recruited to join Monarch,” Ngo adds, referring to the fictional organization that tracks the franchise’s giant creatures. “That’s kind of our opening human touchpoint for the guests to be able to step foot into this world.”

Guests then board a HEAV, the Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle featured in the films, before encountering Kong.

“Kong really guides them through Hollow Earth and all the experiences, while also protecting them against all the dangers that they would find in Hollow Earth,” Ngo says. “There are massive screens, a lot of amazing media that we’ve created with our partner. There are physical sets as well for our Titans and animatronics at massive, massive scale. The combination of real-world things with the media that works together in order to enhance the guest experience makes it extremely immersive.”

Ngo describes the ride as one piece of a larger strategy spanning gaming, consumer products and publishing.

“Our gaming reaches our consumers on a digital level on the screen. Consumer products really allow them to bring it home and experience it at home. Our comics and publishing program allow them to expand on their stories and use their imagination to go to places that may not be on screen yet,” Ngo says. “For location-based entertainment, it brings them into the whole world on a physical level and really gets to put them in the middle of that world. The strategy of being able to be where our consumers are really completes that cycle for us.”

The ride’s development also involved Legendary’s film division directly, according to Ngo.

“Legendary is very nimble and tightly connected. The filmmakers really sit one floor down from where my team and I sit, so we run up and down talking to them every step of the way,” Ngo says. “They suggest certain storyline tweaks in order to better tie it into the next film. It’s not just that they see a final product and approve it or not. They work with us every step of the way, and they try to tie so many touchpoints back into the film, back into the comics. This is becoming a very much interconnected world and experience.”

Legendary maintains a dedicated Beijing-based team covering the Asia territory, Ngo says.

“The Asia territory is extremely important to a lot, if not all, of the projects that we work on. A lot of our IP and the type of movies that we make resonate so well within that market,” he says. “MonsterVerse, for example, is massive, massive in Asia.”

Ngo frames the Lotte World ride as a test case for adapting Legendary’s characters to physical spaces.

“It’s being the first to go to market. It will show people how amazing this IP is to be adapted into this format, and that it’s doable,” Ngo says. “The biggest challenge in the past, especially for ‘Pacific Rim’ and MonsterVerse, has been the scale of our characters and the scale of our world. It’s an amazing thing to experience in location-based entertainment, but it’s also very hard to execute. Now that we’ve been able to execute it in this way and it looks incredible, I think people will start to embrace it more in the LBE [location-based entertainment] space.”

South Korea’s broader entertainment profile factored into the decision as well, Ngo says.

“South Korea is just really on the world stage on multiple levels, from manufacturing to entertainment to exporting amazing IP… I don’t think it was new for us,” Ngo says, noting Legendary had already worked with Korean entertainment IP and fashion partners in the past. “I think the opportunity would just allow us to create a stronger foothold in the market.”

Ngo says Legendary has explored location-based concepts for other franchises in its library, including “Dune,” “Pacific Rim,” “Detective Pikachu” and “Enola Holmes.”

“Some may be a large theme park ride or attraction, or even a whole land, and others may be more pop-up and dining experiences, or escape rooms and murder-mystery experiences where it makes sense,” Ngo says. “I think all of them have the IP DNA in order to expand into the space. It’s just depending on timing, where the actual opportunities are in terms of locations and what people are looking for in terms of markets.” Legendary is also set to launch a new franchise, “Street Fighter,” this October.

Asked whether the definition of franchise management has fundamentally shifted as audiences increasingly expect brands across multiple platforms, Ngo says: “I don’t know if the definition of it has changed. Studios like Disney and other larger studios have had these strategies for many decades, so I don’t necessarily think it’s a new concept… We’ve been able to sustain this for over a decade now with the MonsterVerse, and we’re building ‘Dune’ to that level as well.”

Ngo says he views Legendary’s position five years from now as an extension of where the studio already stands today.

On whether he sees Legendary primarily as a film studio or as a broader entertainment company, Ngo says: “I would argue that we’re already there. I think the volume of scaling up and putting out more franchises is probably the goal. We have the infrastructure, we’re already working in all of these different areas and franchises to create amazing experiences for our fans. We’ve always been a very fan-first type of studio. We know what our fans want, we give it to them, and we delight them.”

“My So-Called Life” creator and “Wicked” writer Winnie Holzman has been tapped to receive Humanitas‘s Kieser Award, while writer/comedian Ashley Nicole Black has been named host of this year’s Humanitas Prizes Award Show & Toast, the org announced Monday.

Also on Monday, Humanitas announced the nominees for this year’s ten Humanitas Prizes, and revealed that Starz is back as the awards show’s key sponsor.

The ceremony, which will also announce the 2026 New Voices Fellows, College Screenwriting Awards and Starz #TakeTheLead Award, will take place at Avalon Hollywood on Sept. 9.

The Humanitas Prize honors “film and television writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced, meaningful way. Prizes are presented at an annual event where winners receive a trophy and a cash prize.” Here are this year’s nominees:

Drama Teleplay

“Chicago Med” (“The Book of Charles”): Allen MacDonald

“Grey’s Anatomy” (“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”): Jess Righthand

“Paradise” (“Graceland”): Dan Fogelman, Eric Wen

“The Testaments” (“Stadium”): Gianna Sobol

Comedy Teleplay
“Abbott Elementary” (“Goofgirl”): Justin Tan

“Long Story Short” (“Yoshi’s Bar Mitzvah”): Raphael Bob-Waksberg

“Resident Alien” (“The End is Here”): Chris Sheridan

“Shrinking” (“My Bad”): Brian Gallivan

Limited Series Teleplay
“Beef” (“Oh, The Comfort, The Inexpressible Comfort”): Lee Sung Jin, Madeleine Pron

“DTF St. Louis” (“No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way from Across the Street”): Steven Conrad

“Hal & Harper” (“Are You Watching?”): Cooper Raiff

“Washington Black” (“The Flying Man & the Musician”): Selwyn Hinds

Children’s Teleplay
“E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web” (“Part 3”): Levi Abrino

“My Brother the Minotaur” (“Lunacy and Lorcan”): Mark B. Hodkinson

“The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder” (“The Shade of It All”): Tiffany Thomas

“Tab Time” (“When We Lose Someone”): Sean Presant

Drama Feature
“All That’s Left of You”: Cherien Dabis

“Preparation for the Next Life”: Martyna Majok

“Song Sung Blue”: Craig Brewer

“Train Dreams”: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar

Comedy Feature
“A Nice Indian Boy”: Eric Randall

“Rental Family”: Hikari, Stephen Blahut

“The Invite”: Will McCormack, Rashida Jones

“The Baltimorons”: Jay Duplass, Michael Strassner

Family Feature
“Elio”: Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, Mike Jones, Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi

“Grow”: Nick Güthe, Christos N. Gage, Ruth Fletcher Gage

“Hoppers”: Jesse Andrews, Daniel Chong

“KPop Demon Hunters”: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan

Short Film
“Beyond Unstoppable”: Valerie Alexander

“Double Happiness”: Shari Albert, Laura LeeLun

“The Birthday Gif”t: Stephanie Alison Walker, Paula Pizzi

“Vital”: Amir Zargara, Gabe Berry

Documentary (Feature)
“Come See Me in the Good Light”: Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, Tig Notaro, Stef Willen

“The Tale of Silyan”: Tamara Kotevska

“Life After”: Reid Davenport, Colleen Cassingham

“Shuffle”: Benjamin Flaherty

Documentary (Docuseries, Single Episode)
“Billy Joel: And So It Goes” (“Part Two”): Susan Lacy, Jessica Levin

“Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” (“Shelter of Last Resort”): Samantha Knowles

“Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!” (“Part Two”): Judd Apatow, Michael Bonfiglio, Joe Beshenkovsky

“Rise of the 49ers” (“We Built This City”): Ryan Kelly, Nick Mascolo

In the case of Holzman, the Kieser Award “honors those who have dedicated their substantial talent, work, and resources to creating transformative stories that celebrate our common humanity.” Past winners include Greg Berlanti, Marta Kauffman, John Sacret Young, John Ridley, Jason Katims, Fay Kanin and Bill Moyers.

Besides “My So-Called Life” and “Wicked,” Holzman’s other credits include “Thirtysomething,” “Once and Again” and “Huge.” As an actor, she’s been seen in “Jerry Maguire,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Comeback” and “A Man on the Inside.” Most recently, she co-wrote both screenplays for the movie adaptations of “Wicked.”

“Winnie has consistently explored the complexities of the human condition with compassion, intelligence, and emotional honesty. Winnie’s work has made generations grappling with coming of age and identity feel seen,” said Humanitas executive director Michelle Franke. “We admire her steadfast commitment to mentoring and nurturing writers, as we saw up close when she twice served as a mentor in our New Voices Fellowship program. We are honored to be recognizing her with our top honor, the Kieser Award, this September.”

As for the Starz #TakeTheLead Award, the honor is meant to “amplify narratives by, about and for women and underrepresented audiences.”

“Starz’s generosity has had a profound impact on Humanitas’ work over the last four years, most notably by providing support to our New Voices Fellowship,” Franke said. “In 2026, we’re thrilled to offer the #TakeTheLead Award once again. We’ll share more application details via our website in the coming weeks and more programming details at The Humanitas Prizes event this fall.”

Also, winners of the 2026 New Voices Fellowship, David and Lynn Angell College Comedy Award and Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Award will be revealed at The Humanitas Prizes Awards Show & Toast.

“The New Voices Fellowship is a six-month mentorship program while the College Screenwriting Awards carry with them professional engagements and significant cash prizes. Lists of semifinalists for the New Voices Fellowship and for the College Screenwriting Awards are available on the organization’s website.”

In addition to being the culminating event of the annual awards program, The Humanitas Prizes Awards Show & Toast raises financial support for the New Voices Fellowship, College Screenwriting Awards and a programs including the Industry 101 event series and The Writers Room program for high school students.

As for Black, the writer/comedian has worked on “Ted Lasso” and “Shrinking,” where she also recurs. Her other credits include “Bad Monkey” and “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.”

“The Last of Us” voice actor Ashley Johnson got her start in Hollywood as a child actor, playing the role of Chrissy Seaver on the final two seasons of ABC‘s sitcom “Growing Pains” from 1990 to 1992. On a recent episode of her “Weird Kids” podcast, Johnson revealed she was once nearly abducted by a fan after a live taping of the show (via People).

“It was in the first year I was on, and we had only done a couple of film nights,” Johnson said. “So, I hadn’t done that many yet and at that time, all of the cast sort of had trailers and they were like old camper trailers. They’re not like the fancy trailers that they are now. They were great. We would exit our trailers before the shoot and the audience that would be walking in, you would walk by the audience before you would walk into the studio.”

Johnson said the studio was not equipped with metal detectors and other security measures that are now common practice in Hollywood. The studio audience would only be “within five feet” of the actors when they were entering the set, for example.

“Somebody had written in and said that, ‘I am coming to set and I am going to bring a gun and I am going to murder some of the cast,’” Johnson continued. “So, I’m walking with my mom and then I just remember some guy hops out of the line and he grabs me and grabs me up and starts booking it. And all I remember is like, there was security that somehow got on him after some time.”

Security apprehended the fan and Johnson remembered “flying around in the air” during the struggle to set her free. The would-be kidnapper had a gun on him, the actor recalled.

“I was clueless as to what was happening, but I was very upset and they were talking to me about it after. And they were like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I just said, ‘I just think I’m gonna be in trouble,’” Johnson said. “Because I think I was such a polite kid at the time. I think he was running with me and running away. I was like, ‘Who are you, sir? What is your name? I was very pleased to meet you.’ But he was packing. They got him. This was the thing. He was high on something. It wasn’t meth, but it was something — like, he was so strong.”

Johnson made her television debut on “Growing Pains” and continued on the small screen with roles on short-lived series such as “Phenom” and “Maybe This Time.” She pivoted to voice acting at a young age with a role on the “Jumanji” animated series, which included 40 episodes, and she’d continue with this work throughout her career. She is the voice of Ellise in “The Last of Us” video game franchise, which won her two BAFTA Games Awards.

Following “Growing Pains,” Johnson reprised her role of Chrissy Seaver in the 2000 movie “The Growing Pains Movie” and the 2004 follow-up “Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers.”