Category: Entertainment

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 2 first two episodes of the “Scrubs” revival, which aired Wednesday night on ABC and will stream next day on Hulu.

When ABC’s “Scrubs” returned earlier this year after a nearly 16-year break, fans were quite divided on one major change in character dynamics: J.D. (Zach Braff) and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) had divorced. In Season 1 of “Scrubs” 2.0, J.D. returned to Sacred Heart as chief of medicine, which put him back in the same workplace as his ex.

And that was the point. If Season 1 was about setting up that new dynamic between J.D. and Elliot, Season 2 is about seeing how they’ve adapted to this new reality. And that includes seeing your ex start to date other people. As the Season 2 premiere episode (“My First Time in a While”) opened on Wednesday, J.D. is smitten by Charlie (Rachel Bilson). But is this just a rebound?

Meanwhile, along with Episode 2 (“My Mentee”), also shown on Wednesday, viewers get an update on Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) and his autoimmune disease. And we see some cracks continuing to form in Turk (Donald Faison), while J.D. and Elliott adjust to their roles as mentors to the fresh crop of faces — including new arrivals Grant (John Higgins) and Mimi (Keyla Monterroso Mejia).

Besides McGinley, other OG cast members making appearances include Carla (Judy Reyes), Jordan (Christa Miller) and The Todd (Robert Maschio). And later in the season, expect to see more from the Janitor (Neil Flynn) and also Elliot’s ex-flame Sean (Scott Foley).

Variety spoke with “Scrubs” exec producer and showrunner Assem Batra about the premiere episodes’ revelations, and where we go from here — including whether Dr. Cox will be OK, and if J.D. and Elliot’s child Ollie will be seen.

You kick off the season digging deep into Dr. Cox’s disease, and how it impacts J.D. and the others. What made you decide to spend so much more time on that?

We focused a lot on that because we set up this very sort of dire, serious feeling last season. We wanted to put our audience at ease that we aren’t in any way putting Dr. Cox in such jeopardy that he might not be with us. We feel like it’s a way of making the audience know that he’s always going to be part of this family. When we were reading comments, people were like, “Is he gonna die?” This is a comedy. We don’t want to go that far with it. So part of it was just showing their continued journey to help Dr. Cox stabilize this particular autoimmune disease that we gave him. With the kind of medications they have these days, people can do very well on them. So it’s just a matter of now finding the right treatment.

I mean, people do die on “Scrubs!” So it was within the realm of possibility that something could happen to Dr. Cox.

Absolutely, of course. That is always open and in the air, but we just wanted people to at least feel like our family is back together, and we’re not only playing into the jeopardy of that. That’s why we wanted to focus on treating him as opposed to putting him in jeopardy.

How much do we see Dr. Cox throughout the season? Obviously John has his other job in the Bill Lawrenceverse.

I know, we would have loved to see him more. But what we could get with his ‘Rooster’ schedule was about four episodes, so that’s about what we’re going to see him for this run.

We also got to see Judy Reyes as Carla in the season opener, but she also has a day job on “High Potential.” I’m sure it’s been a challenge finding ways to get familiar faces back.

We have to give a lot of love to our line producer Mike Livanos, because he’s always going back and forth, trying to figure out how. It’s not just the days we get them to shoot, but they have to fly up to Vancouver. So we really can eke out sometimes a very small amount of time for people who are doing more than one project.

Christa also makes an appearance as Dr. Cox’s wife, Jordan, and she too has another job on Bill’s “Shrinking.” It is nice to see you managing to find ways to get folks in, so they’re still part of the universe.

Yeah, everybody’s been so kind about giving their time and coming back to do the show, and we thought it would just be a really fun opener to have her reacting to Perry’s illness because we haven’t seen her point of view on it more than her finding out. We saw her find out, but this is her reacting to what happens when somebody you care about that much is so sick.

Things seem to be going OK so far with J.D. and Charlie. What are the plans with those two?

I always call these post-divorce relationships the “first pancake” relationships because it’s like you make that first pancake, it’s all weird, and not the most beautiful one, and then you try again. It is a little bit his rebound relationship where he’s finding himself again. And like we see in the early episodes, he’s doing too much and overthinking it. He’s almost reverting back to when he was younger. And so, he does stabilize with her a little bit more as we see them together. But this is very much trying to show that first relationship after a big breakup.

And there’s the moment where he hires Joey Fatone to do a Cameo for her.

That was going to be an off-screen joke, and then we found out Joey Fatone was OK to come do the joke. So it was great.

How would you describe these first few episodes in terms of storylines that will evolve as the season goes on?

We really want to explore who J.D. and Elliot are now that they aren’t together as a couple. What’s their new normal? We don’t have that many episodes to tell the stories of them outside of the hospital, but we do want to see them a little bit as parents and who they are to one another now that they’re back in the friendship zone of post-divorce.

Are we going to see their child?

If I’m allowed to do that as a spoiler, we will. We will see their kid. We don’t have a lot of time, as we’re telling these stories and wanting to get all of our new cast in as well. But where we can sprinkle it in, even if it’s a mention, we try to keep that whole world alive, that they are parents now.

Donald has talked in other interviews about how you’re exploring Turk’s mental health a bit more this season. It was hinted at briefly last year. How will you dive in a little more on that?

It’s important for us to not just let it drop. We’re a comedy, and we want to show our relationships and the fun dynamics between friendships. But it is important for us to mention that these things don’t just disappear for people. We do hit on that a little bit, and what is J.D.’s take on it for his friend.

And then we know Scott Foley is coming back. Can you tease what’s going to be happening with him and with Elliot?

What was great was how when he came back in, it just felt like he had never left. It felt like he was such a part of it. What happens when somebody you’ve always had chemistry with, but never could quite work it out, comes back into your life. Do you say? Do you give it another shot? That’s Elliot’s dilemma. She’s in a very different place, and what does that mean for them?

Sounds like there’s a lot on J.D. and Elliot handling the fact that they’re both moving on. What does what does that mean for the two of them?

They don’t even really know. As we, the writers, explore it, you can see that they’re on their own journey, which is one of the reasons we chose to not have them stay married. We kept Turk and Carla married, but there are so many fun, interesting things to explore with J.D. and Elliot. What’s it like to see your ex date when you’re also working with them, and you have to know everything about their personal life? How does that make you feel? What does it mean to now be a friend again and not a partner. We get to explore all of those very organic things that happen to people after a breakup, and because they’re working together, it’s intensified for them. This season is a little bit more about J.D. and Elliot in those terms of who they are to each other now.

Another story you left hanging last season was the janitor and the janitor’s son, and the renewal of that rivalry.

We have a little bit of fun coming up with them and picking up on this sort of bizarre idea that this is the janitor’s son, or is it really? What’s going on with this? It gives Neil a good reason to come back if his son is in the hospital. So we play a little bit of that in an episode as well.

With Joel Kim Booster departing and both Dr. Cox and the Janitor only guest starring, does J.D. need another foil?

We have John Higgins as sort of a frustration for J.D. Whereas J.D. was always so needy, wanting Dr. Cox to be his mentor, now he’s still kind of needy, wanting Grant, the character played by John Higgins, to be his mentee. He’s like, “Why don’t you like me more?” That color on J.D. was always so fun — the neediness, and it gives him a way to play that still. Grant may not be a foil in terms of stopping him from accomplishing what he wants in the hospital, but he’s not accomplishing that mentor-mentee relationship that he craves, that he had with Dr. Cox or believes he had.

Yeah, I noticed there’s already sort of a generational thing going on with the two of them, with JD willing to bend the rules to help Dr. Cox, and Grant saying, absolutely not.

It’s funny that you pick up on that, but that is a very Gen Z thing of how they don’t look at things the same way. Something that he learned from Dr. Cox, and we always think of as metaphorical parents, is that you’re going to pass down what you learn, and it’ll be easy. But the interesting thing about so-called parenting or being a mentor, it’s never easy. There’s always something you didn’t see coming. Grant’s personality is so different. He’s an ethical person, but J.D.’s an ethical person too. They just see whatever that means in two different lights. It’s a fun dynamic for us to play with.

Elliot is also doing her own mentoring and also seeing those limitations too.

And that’s another fun Gen Z thing to play. The thing I love about this generation is, they don’t see age as a limitation the way Gen X was taught to see it. That’s a cool thing to play between Tosh (Ava Bunn) and Elliot, where Tosh is just kind of like, “it’s not too late to do what you’ve always wanted to do.” That’s just like a new thing for Elliot to hear.

I know you’ve been asked a lot about Ken Jenkins returning as Dr. Kelso. Any hope of an appearance?

What I tell everybody is, we have to remember that people have their stuff going on in their lives. They can’t always do these things, and it doesn’t mean they don’t want to. It’s just whatever limitations they’re having in their own life or schedule. He knows that the door is always open. He could call me today and say I can fly in next week, and I would write him in. So it’s really just a matter of if he could make it happen, we’re here for him.

Any other themes you want to tease for this season?

There’s mentorship. I think honestly, the J.D./Elliot of it all. I hope our audiences can be excited about that because I think people have questions about why we broke them up. That’s one of those cool relationships where you’ll always wonder why they couldn’t work. But that’s just one of the complex things we get to play between them.

Laura Benanti is out of the woods and into a thicket that is very different from her initial Broadway base: the world of stand-up comedy. Officially, “Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares” is a “one-woman show,” but she says the only reason she shies away from calling it stand-up at all is because she respects the people who practice that on a weekly basis too much to want to claim she’s mastered that craft as an interloper. But whatever the comedic equivalent of belting is, that’s a natural skill that Benanti is also turning out to have in her wheelhouse, as she carries the art of quip-riddled personal storytelling as well as she carries a tune.

“Nobody Cares,” which plays at the Wallis in Beverly Hills Thursday through Sunday and moves to Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory the following weekend, is not tuneless, so anyone who first came to love Benanti as a Broadway songbird needn’t worry her vocal cords have been clipped for this production. But the handful of songs she works into this current show are all original numbers, conceived in the same mostly irreverent vein as the spoken-word parts that dominate the show. Zero knowledge or prior appreciation is required of her rich history as the breakout starlet powering shows like “The Sound of Music,” “Nine,” “My Fair Lady,” “She Loves Me” and “Into the Woods.” The so-called reformed ingenue is now prepared to tackle middle-aged topics like divorce (in multiples), postpartum depression and the tricky art of balancing self-deprecation and personal pride, via deft writing that suggests maybe she ought to be co-writing her own musical comedies, if she takes a pause from this confessional vein.

Variety spoke with Benanti about why “Nobody Cares” has been so rewarding for someone who has already received two and a half decades of applause for her stage work… and also, in a peculiar wrinkle, a lot of love (well, from some) for her portrayal of Melania Trump on “Late Night With Stephen Colbert.” The show has been a hit in New York and London,

Most people would see “Nobody Cares” and think that you were a very practiced stand-up comedy person, which was never your history prior to conceiving this. it’s been something that was buried latent in you for a long time. Not that this strictly counts as stand-up comedy, but certainly a lot of it is in that sphere or involves those skills.

Yeah, I would say this show is most akin to stand-up, for sure, and with some good musical comedy in there as well. We have five original songs that I co-wrote with Todd Almond, who’s on stage with me. It’s certainly comedic storytelling. Something I talk about is, I really want people to understand that this is not like a cabaret. This is not Broadway songs or Broadway music in any way. It’s 16-plus (age-wise). There’s adult content; there’s foul language. It’s not what people might expect of me if they only know me from my roles on Broadway.

Looking at previous interviews you’ve done when you went out with this show, you get those disclaimers in pretty early toward the start of most interviews. You really want to get that message out. That must come from having had a few surprised customers.

Yeah. I still always have, I’m gonna say, at least 15 people in the audience who are like, “Where am I? Why isn’t she singing ‘The Sound of Music’?” And it does take a little while to win them over, because they don’t want to hear me sing a song about dicks. They’re just like, “What’s going on?”

Have you had any walkouts over the dicks, and/or the lack of “Into the Woods” content?

Nobody has left. Well, at least that I could see. Maybe the people in the back have. But nobody’s left. But they certainly have scowled.

Presumably the scowlers come around eventually? But not everything is for everybody.

I mean, even the most reluctant husband or boyfriend who got dragged there, by the end of the show, I do feel like I’ve won them over. And for whatever reason, this makes me really happy. My audiences have been, for the most part, really intergenerational, from teenagers to women in their 20s and 30s and 40s all the way through to people in the audience who are in their 80s, and likely they are the people coming knowing me from Broadway. But everybody seems to really enjoy it, and it’s really nice to see all of those people in one place at the same time laughing at the same things.

You’ve been doing other things where people discover your sense of humor. But the people who know you most for the ingenue characters you talk about having been put it early in your theater career, they wouldn’t have reason to naturally make that leap, like, “I can just tell that lady has a really wicked sense of humor.”

Right. That’s been sort of an uphill battle. But certainly I think even in the ingénues I’ve played, I’ve always tried to pepper in humor wherever I can find it, and to mine humor at any moment, even if it’s not on the page. I’ve done that since I was 18, playing Maria in “The Sound of Music.” That was always a big goal of mine. But I do think that the repertoire certainly that I had till I was 30 was for the most part ingénues. But I think “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” even though that closed early and wasn’t a big hit, educated a lot of people in the Broadway community to the fact that I’m a clown. And I always have been. I’m sort of like a clown that was in an ingenue leading lady’s body.

And I think doing Melania really helped with that. People realized that I could do sketch comedy and impressions. But I know I’m not the only performer who feels that you just have to sort of keep showing people who you are. Because if you do a lot of different things, like musicals and plays and comedy and drama… it’s harder for people to put you in a box of, this is what you do… I constantly have people be like, “I didn’t know you were funny.” It used to piss me off, and now I’m like, “Yeah, you didn’t, and it’s my job to show you that I am.”

This show came about from Audible asking you to write and perform an autobiographical piece. So did wanting to do something like this come out of that assignment, or were you always like, “Someday I’m gonna put my own voice out there, whether it’s with a comic sensibility or something else, where I will be as great being myself as I’ve been being an interpreter as I’ve been of other people’s voices”?

Well, you know, I’ve done these Broadway concerts since I was 22, all over the country, where I would go to wherever and sing Broadway music and then do stories in-between. And the feedback I would often get is people saying, “I loved the stand-up. The stand-up was actually my favorite part.” But I think I was always just too scared to do that outside of the context of the career I had already had — the safety of singing songs that people expect of me. Then I started hosting a bunch of (events) and writing the monologues and and a lot of the bits, and it was so fun. I love the puzzle of a joke. Especially if it’s something that is a serious topic, I love figuring out how to talk about it in a way that makes people laugh and disarm them. So when Audible reached out to me about commissioning a show, I immediately said yes, because I had already been wanting to do that. But then as I started writing it, I just kept thinking, “Nobody cares. Nobody cares what a middle-aged white lady has to say. This is not the voice that we’re clamoring for.” But they paid me, so I had to keep writing.

And slowly, I allowed myself to feel the joy of the puzzle. And I have some really wonderful girlfriends who would come to my makeshift garage and listen to me do jokes and give feedback. And they were like, “I need to hear this, actually. You can be as self-deprecating and as insecure as you want, but what you’re saying is something I actually really need and want to hear, even outside of my friendship with you.” So that gave me courage and solace as I continued to write it. Now that I’m touring with it, I’m seeing that, and that’s still the feedback that I’m getting from audiences, which is really, really gratifying.

You know what’s so weird is, before X was X, when it was just Twitter and it was fun instead of just the dumpster fire of misogyny that it is now, I really got into it, because the puzzle of having to deliver a joke in 140 characters was really fun for me. I do think that’s where a lot of people started to realize I was funny. I noticed a lot of comics started following me, and I started having back-and-forth bantering with them. People who did not know anything about me at all started following me on Twitter. In some ways, that helped me more than anything, weirdly. And now, I get to do it.

And I still feel self-conscious about calling it stand-up because I have so much respect for stand-ups, that they have such a hard job. They work so hard, and I do sometimes worry that they’re gonna be like, “Oh, OK, Miss Broadway, Miss ‘I’ve never played a small club.’ You’re a stand-up comic. OK.” But I don’t know how better to describe what I’m doing than that, especially when I’m trying to set expectations for the audience of what it is.

Were you ever tempted to work more inside-baseball theater stories into the show? Because in interviews you have some hilarious stories about old-timers you’ve worked with and stuff like that. But that’s not the theme of this show. This is about pretty common experiences, or at least exaggerated versions of experiences that have actually happened to you. So you’re talking about perimenopause when you could be sharing theater anecdotes. But you’ve prioritized the most universal stuff.

Yeah. My intention with this show is to broaden my audience. Of course I want to keep my core musical theater fans; I owe my career to them. But I want to broaden my fan base, and the thing I always say is, you don’t have to know anything about Broadway. You don’t have to like Broadway. One of the lines in my show is, “I want to give a very special welcome to those of you who were dragged here by someone who said, ‘I know you don’t like Broadway, but I think you’ll like her.’” And so my goal with this show is to use it as almost a Trojan horse of, “Hey, everybody, this is what I’m capable of…” And when I do my more Broadway-style concerts, I definitely have theater anecdotes because that’s what that audience really wants to hear. But for me, I want this to be more universal, and not that I’m an actress doing a comedy show. I’m a person telling you stories about my life — which, unfortunately, are not actually that exaggerated. The stories you hear in my show, sadly, are true.

There are moments in the show where you’re very deadpan about how you do the lead-in to the punchline, and the punchline is you delivering the really terrible thing that happened to you, or the shocking secret. And there’s a great comic rhythm to it, even though what you’re talking about is not inherently funny. You’ve actually said that a lot of this is about the worst experiences of your life. Did you have any questions with yourself about whether to go sort of full vulnerability as far as dealing with everything — from beimg twice divorced and making the third time the charm, to breaking your neck, perimenopause and postpartum depression? The lightheartedness of it doesn’t really stop, even though you’re getting into heavy material.

You know, that’s like my mom coming through…

Whose approach to finding levity in everything you have talked about. You once described your mother’s approach to finding laughter in the worst circumstances as “giggles at a funeral.”

And I will say that a lot of these stories have the benefit of hindsight. At the time they weren’t funny, but in retrospect they are. I think that challenging topics feel more accessible to people when they’re laughing, and can make a greater impact, because laughter opens our hearts, and then once a heart is open, you can sort of slip in the message.

But, like when I was in London, I definitely felt this sense of how my open-hearted, “I wear my heart on my sleeve” (attitude), especially as it pertains to my children, was not as welcome as it is in the States. Which was interesting to feel. There’s a song on my show called “Mama’s a Liar.” The first two sections of the song are comedic, and then the last one is very genuine. And I could almost feel people’s discomfort in London, that during a comedy show I’m singing something emotional. But in the States it’s people’s favorite song. So it’s been interesting to me to see who is ready, willing and able to go on a journey with a comedy show that occasionally has some heartfelt moments. You know, Mike Birbiglia does that in such a masterful way. One of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of his is not only am I laughing, but he’s making me feel something and think about things.

Do you have a final feeling you want to leave people with, when they come out?

Hmm. I’ve spent a lot of my time feeling a lot of shame about the stories I talk about — and what a waste of time. So I want to make them laugh, and I want them to walk away being like, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Let’s talk about your Melania Trump, which oddly enough is something through which a lot of people have learned about you for the first time. Will you find a place to do it again, or was that specific to the Colbert show?

I mean, it’s so synonymous, (so) I do it a little bit in my theater concerts. I do a medley, as her. And I’ve done it a bit on my Instagram, but I’m not sure where else I would do it, you know? I’m not sure where I’d go with it.

MAGA was kind of mad at you…

Uh, yeah.

But at the same time, you got a huge aount of very positive response for doing that. So how did that work out for you, with this whole world applauding you for this, and then knowing people are pissed off too? Because a big component of the show you’re doing now is that you have always been a people pleaser.

Exactly. I was just gonna say that, the people-pleasing thing. And then I was like, “You know what? Fine. I don’t want these people to feel comfortable with me.” You know, I had some followers be like, “Stick to singing. I liked you, now I don’t.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry I ever made this a safe space for you. Goodbye.” So I do not shy away from my belief system. If that loses me followers, if that loses me fans, I feel like I’m on the right side of history. But it certainly was scary at times. But that’s for the most part died down. And look, it makes me practice what I preach in this show, which is: Not everybody’s gonna love you, and that’s fine.

That recurring bit helped set up for people that you have these comedic chops, and you might be exercising them, with a comic sensibility that might be off the beaten track.

Exactly. And for the people who know me, or have a preconceived notion of who I am, my hope is that they open themselves to this version of me that’s the real part of me. And I hope that people who don’t know me at all will come and enjoy themselves, and I can introduce myself to them as the person I’ve always been. You know, as the recovering ingenue, not the ingenue.

I may be a little strange, but I’m watching the show and thinking, “Oh, I liked her opm Broadway, but she’s so good at this. She should just do this. She should just do comedy all the time.”

I’d love to do that!

WIll you continue touring this show into next year and beyond?

Yeah. But we did film it, in London, and so my hope is that we’ll be able to get a distributor for it, and it’ll be out in the world in some capacity. And frankly, like, I would like to do this forever. I love theater — I’ll always do theater — but my goal with this show is to show people that I’m funny, and especially in L.A., get [00:27:00] people to hire me for comedy. My absolute dream is to be on a television comedy and just get to go to work and laugh all the time, and continue to write more of these shows and tour them. I really love it. It brings me the most joy of anything I do.

Any quick synopsis of what else is happening in your professional life? You’ve done so much television.

I’m on “Mayor of Kingstown,” which is coming back; I’m not sure when. But I am a free agent, so anyone who would like to hire me is welcome to hire me.

This would not be the first time that pronouncement has been made in Variety.

Yes, please. Exactly. “Dear Hollywood.”

“Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares” will be performed five times at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills: Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. Tickets and other information can found online at thewallis.org or 310-746-4000. Following the Beverly Hills engagement, Benanti will also perform at Orange County’s South Coast Repertory from Oct. 8-11. Tickets for that run are available at scr.org.

The World Soundtrack Awards‘ Discovery of the Year prize has a knack for spotting emerging talent. Gustavo Santaolalla (“21 Grams”), Michael Giacchino (“The Incredibles”) and Nicholas Britell (“Moonlight”) all won it before reshaping the modern film score, and recent winners Daniel Blumberg (“The Brutalist”) and Jerskin Fendrix (“Poor Things”) look set to follow.

Meet this year’s five nominees.

Mari Fukuhara (“Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”)

Mari Fukuhara started piano at three, before studying classical music at Toho Gakuen School of Music while playing in jazz and pop bands on the side. She later established herself as a solo artist. “Looking back, I don’t think I followed a straight path toward becoming a composer,” she says. “Rather, all these different musical experiences naturally led me toward film.”

In 2020, French producers approached Fukuhara about licensing one of her recordings for a new film. Within months, she had instead signed on to compose the original score for a pilot project that would eventually become “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain.”

“Being involved from such an early stage allowed the relationship between the film and its music to grow over time,” Fukuhara says. “It was very important to express a child’s perception and imagination, and what ‘reality’ means to a child. I felt that one of the important roles of the music was to make Amélie’s experience of the world feel real.”

Looking ahead, Fukuhara hopes to return to live performance while pursuing projects “driven more by images, atmosphere and feeling than by a clear narrative — a film where I could explore a different kind of musical space.”

Paris Hurley (“The Chronology of Water”)

Trained as a classical violinist from an early age, Paris Hurley earned acclaim for her autobiographical live project Object as Subject before turning to film. “I’d been told over and over that my music is very cinematic,” she says. “It has a forward momentum and a deep emotional core that takes the listener somewhere. That sense of leading someone through an emotional journey is what people were responding to.”

After working alongside Clint Mansell on “Love Lies Bleeding,” Hurley handled Kristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” on her own, pursuing the project after tearing through the source memoir. “I read it in a weekend, and my whole body shot through with fire,” she recalls. “I immediately knew I was supposed to score the film.”

That visceral response reflects a lifelong fascination with music as a physical experience. “Sound is immersive,” she says. “I’m always looking to hold people in the sound, whether it’s hitting you in the face, inside your ear or all around you. Film is a fun way to explore that because it can be so grand. Music physically changes you, whether you make it or listen to it.”

Hannah Peel (“Midwinter Break”)

Hannah Peel got her start doing session work on violin, trombone and piano for a range of artists, all while angling for film and TV. When the Royal College of Music told her she wasn’t classical enough for its film music master’s, she went her own way, releasing records built around a hand-punched paper-strip music box. The unusual instrument eventually caught the attention of music advisors on projects including “Anna Karenina” and “Dancing With the Stars.”

Peel’s work on the 2019 documentary “Game of Thrones: The Last Watch” landed her an Emmy nomination and an agent, and she’s been working steadily since, refining a style balanced between acoustic and electronic textures. “It’s much more common now for people to create their own sounds, and that blur between sound design and music is where I like to sit,” she says.

She’s now scoring Netflix’s “Assassin’s Creed” series, drawing on the games while developing a sound that blends ancient and new. “Everything about it has been brilliant,” she says. “I’ve been able to explore instruments I can’t find in sample libraries, so I can build my own sound worlds. That gets me very excited, because I have something that doesn’t sound like anything else, and the production has been open and supportive.”

Kangding Ray (“Sirāt”)

Trained as an architect and born as David Letellier, Kangding Ray made his name in Berlin’s experimental music scene, quietly releasing music on Raster-Noton, the German label known for artists including Ryoji Ikeda, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto. His experimental and ambient work gradually gave way to dance and, almost naturally, to film. His first score, for 2022’s “Kiss My Wounds,” caught the attention of German awards voters. Soon, director Oliver Laxe came calling, inviting him to score “Sirāt.”

The process began unusually early. Ray started work two years before the shoot, with Laxe spending five-day stretches at his Berlin studio. By the time cameras rolled, roughly 80% of the score had been written from the script. The result is about 62 minutes of music, concentrated in key scenes. “It’s either fully present or not there at all,” he says. He also pushed for silence, convinced the music hits harder when it arrives.

Sam Slater (“2000 Meters to Andriivka”)

Sam Slater fell into film scoring by accident. A self-described “studio nerd,” the Berlin-based composer started as a sound designer and creative engineer for Jóhann Jóhannsson, Dustin O’Halloran and Hildur Guðnadóttir, whom he later married (“which is lovely”).

“That catalyzed a love of not only film work but also the experimental underbelly of it, which has always been where my curiosity lies,” he says.

His work now spans formats, from the Emmy-winning documentary “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, to the PlayStation 5 game “Saros,” which NME called “the stuff of nightmares.”

That range suits him. “Once you move into non-diegetic sound, an abstract expression of a story or emotion, you’ve entered a wonderful world,” he says. “Our generation wants to expand the palette as much as possible. The fact that we debate whether something is sound design or music means we’ve reached the strange and wonderful edges of what music is in these contexts, and I find that thrilling.”

Mattel is getting a new CEO: The toymaker and media company announced that Roger Lynch, who’s been chief exec of Condé Nast for more than seven years, will become its next CEO.

Lynch will become chairman of Mattel effective Oct. 2 and will assume the role of CEO “effective on or before” Nov. 2. He succeeds Ynon Kreiz, who will step down as chairman and CEO effective Oct. 2, “to take a senior leadership position at another public company,” according to Mattel.

Lynch has served as CEO of Condé Nast since 2019, leading the publishing and media company through a period of major disruption.

“Roger is a visionary leader with a track record of growing global companies at the forefront of changing industry and consumer trends,” Mattel board member Judy Olian, who has led the succession process, said in a statement. “Throughout his service on the board, Roger has been an invaluable contributor to shaping the company’s direction in the midst of its expansion into entertainment and digital products.”

Regarding Kreiz, Olian commented, “The board is most grateful for Ynon’s eight years of transformational leadership, and wishes him every success in his new role. Ynon leaves an invaluable legacy of transitioning Mattel from a toy manufacturer to a leading IP-driven play and family entertainment company. Knowing Roger as we do, we are confident that he and the talented Mattel team will build on that powerful foundation, and continue to advance our strategy to leverage our iconic brand portfolio.”

Lynch said: “I am honored by the Board’s confidence in me and couldn’t be more excited to lead the incredible team at Mattel. Throughout my years on the Board, I have admired Mattel’s brands, its talented people, and unique culture. I am especially grateful to Ynon for his many years of outstanding leadership and service to the company. During his tenure, Mattel has leveraged the power of its world-class brands, attracted exceptional entertainment partners, and strengthened its balance sheet. The company is well positioned for its next phase of profitable growth and its exciting new chapter.”

Kreiz said: “It has been a privilege to lead Mattel, with a global team dedicated to its mission and purpose, and I am proud of all we have achieved together. Mattel is in a position of strength, with a world-class brand portfolio, product offering, and global capabilities. I am grateful to the Board, management team, and entire Mattel organization for their commitment and collaboration during the past eight years, and I have every confidence the company will continue to thrive under Roger’s leadership.”

Mattel credited Kreiz with boosting its market share across key toy categories, ranking No. 1 globally in dolls, vehicles, and infant, toddler and preschool segments. Under Kreiz, Mattel also has won new or renewed entertainment licenses, including Disney Princess and Frozen, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Toy Story, KPop Demon Hunters, and DC.

Mattel also pointed to Mattel Studios’ first theatrical release, “Barbie,” was the top global box office film of 2023 and Warner Bros. Pictures’ highest-grossing movie of all time.

With Lynch’s departure from Condé Nast, the company announced that Mike Perlis, current lead independent director of the board of directors, will step in as interim CEO.

Mubi has taken worldwide rights to two iconic series from Movistar Plus International, the overseas distributor of the biggest Spanish pay TV and SVOD operator: “La Mesias,” from “La Bola Negra” directors Los Javis, and “Riot Police,” the first premium TV series from “The Beloved” director Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

Further headlines: Nominated on Sept. 23 for an International Emmy, four-part “The Anatomy of a Moment,” from Alberto Rodriguez (“The Tigers”), has rolled out in further territories in Europe.

The in-all 33 new deals were unveiled during the first day of trading at Madrid’s mega-market and forum Iberseries & Platino Industria, where Movistar Plus has a large market presence led by screenings or presentations of top titles bound for October’s Mipcom.

On Tuesday, Movistar Plus International hosted a showcase, screening and cocktail of Spain’s sex trade chronicle “El Castillo,” a standout at San Sebastián; a screening of withering LOL Millennial comedy “Many People Have to Die,” marking out creator Victoria Martín as a major Spanish comedic talent; and a presentation of “Killing a Bear,” based crime drama turning on the deep social conflict surrounding the death of brown bear Cachou, found dead in a ravine in the Pyrenees in 2020. The “small, local story vividly illustrated the polarized world we live in,” creators Jorge and Alberto Sánchez Cabezudo have told Variety.

‘La Mesías’

A Movistar Plus Original, large scale “La Mesías” delivered a first instance of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s full-on creativity, working with the budget they required, shooting each episode with different genre influences – psychodrama, sci-fi, procedural and musical – and a pop sensibility and varying formats across multiple timelines, all of which they have now repeated in “La Bola Negra.”

“La Mesías,” like La Bola Negra,” also explores legacy and repression, here the psychological trauma left by a messianic mother, who turns her family into a cult.

“The series talks about religion, but as a form of education and this is what makes it interesting,” told Variety on set in 2023.

Key territories for the Mubi deal were announced in exclusivity by Variety in July.

‘Riot Police’

World premiering at San Sebastián in 2020 and starring “The Beloved’s” Victoria Luengo, Riot Police confirmed Sorogoyen’s ability to bring a big screen punch to his first premium series.

A six part series “Riot Police” also underscored his ability to mix genre and social point, exploring the failures and fragility of the masculine psyche as a riot police squad become the subject of an internal police enquiry led by Luengo’s character after bungling an eviction. The series closed early deals with HBO Latin America and Canal+ in France.

“The series I’ve seen rarely evolve in style,”Soroyogen told Variety in 2020. But Riot Police does in the use of hand-held, anamorphic fisheye lense camerawork for the eviction moving to a 15 minutes sequence shot in final episode.

‘The Anatomy of a Moment’

Co-produced with Arte France, starring “Money Heist’s” Alvaro Morte, “The Anatomy of a Moment” delivers Rodríguez’s fictionalized vision of how three key figures of “Shakespearian stature,” Rodríguez has said– Spanish Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez, Spanish Communist Party head Santiago Carrillo and armed forces chief Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado – wrestled democracy for Spain over 1976-77and almost lost it in a 1981 botched coup d’état. New international distribution takes in pubcasters RTP (Portugal), RTS (Switzerland), RTV (Slovenia) and Cinob0 (Greece).

More Top Sellers: ‘Querer,’ ‘The New Years,’ ‘The Nameless’

A top best series Grand Prix winner at Series Mania last year, Alauda Ruiz de Azua’s’s marital rape series Querer,” part family drama, part courtroom thriller, she has observed, continues to roll out around the world. Already acquired by Arte, Querer has now been licensed to Cinobo Poland, Italy’s MyMoviesOne, Latvia’s Latvia’s Mobilais and South Korea’s LG Plus.

Movistar Plus International has closed Greece and Poland, both with Cinobo, and Latvia (Latvijas Mobilais) on Sorogoyen’s “The New Years,” on-off couple romantic saga that played Venice in 2024 alongside Alfonso Cuarón’s Cate Blanchett starrer “Disclaimer” for Apple TV+, and Thomas Vinterberg’s big StudioCanal play “Families Like Ours.

France’s Filmo, Media4Fun and South Korea’s LG Plus have bought “The Nameless,” a portrait of evil family horror series from Filmax (“[REC]”), Pau Freixas (“The Red Band Society,” “You Shall Not Lie”) and Pol Cortecans (“You Shall Not Lie”),

A Drill-Down on More Deals:

*Cinobo Greece has picked up two seasons of “Bellas Artes” plus “A 100-Million Reward.”

*Filmo has also licensed “La vida breve.”

*Flow, the big Argentine streaming service covering Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, has become one of the first operators to buy “Many People Have to Die,” as well as “The Center,” “La Caza. Irati” and doc “Bisbal.”

*”Riot Police” also sold to Media4Fun.

*Italy’s MyMovieOne has acquired global electricity power outage anthology “OffWorld,” including episodes by Sorogoyen, Rodríguez, Isaki la Cuesta, Isa Campo and Rail Arévalo.

*Poland’s TVP has taken “La Canción,” from “Hierro” and “Rapa” creators Pepe Coira and Fran Araujo, placing Spain’s stunning 1968 Eurovision win in Spain’s dawn-of-democracy later liberty. Further acquisitions take in Costa del Sol mob lawyer comedy “Marbella,” crime investigation thriller “La Caza.Irati,” from Banijay’s DLO Producciones and two seasons of Canary Islands-set murder mystery “Hierro.”

*South Korea’s LG, a streaming service, has licensed “El centro,” “La Caza. Irati,” two ‘Hierro’ seasons, “El dentista’,” and “La vida breve.”

Beta Film has unveiled a broad international sales footprint for “Rex – Vienna Calling,” the latest incarnation of the three-decade-old “Rex – A Cop’s Best Friend” franchise, as production gets underway on a second season.

The series has been sold to SBS in Australia, Rai in Italy and TV 2 in Denmark. Elsewhere in Europe, buyers include Alpha TV in Greece, HRT in Croatia, Planet TV in Slovenia, STVR in Slovakia, Nova in Bulgaria and TVR in Romania, while Baltic deals take in Duo Media Networks in Estonia, SIA Tet in Latvia and LNK in Lithuania.

Action Channel in Japan and SHANT TV in Armenia are also on board, with further sales under negotiation.

The deals come as the evergreen IP continues to find traction in an increasingly on-demand television market. Audience analytics firm PlumResearch describes mature streaming markets as shifting “from hits to habits,” with much viewing taking place across the long tail rather than being concentrated solely around new releases.

The longevity of “Rex” offers a case in point. Over its 30-year history, the police-dog franchise has spawned multiple local adaptations. Canadian remake “Hudson & Rex,” another long-running Beta title, was recently renewed for a tenth season.

“Rex – Vienna Calling” stars Maximilian Brückner (“War Horse,” “Cherry Blossoms”) as detective Max Steiner, who teams with German Shepherd Rex to tackle cases across Vienna. Six new feature-length episodes are currently shooting at some of the Austrian capital’s most recognizable locations.

The first season opened to almost 1.6 million viewers on Germany’s SAT.1, posting a 7% overall share and 9.9% among 14-49s. In Austria, the six feature-length episodes averaged 701,000 viewers and a 27% share on ORF, while the Italian premiere on Rai 2 drew more than 750,000 viewers and a 5.6% share, rising above one million once on-demand and catch-up viewing was included.

Produced by MR Film in co-production with SAT.1 and ORF, “Rex – Vienna Calling” is distributed worldwide by Beta Film. The series is backed by FISAplus, the Austrian Television Fund and the state of Lower Austria.

Top Bollywood star Ajay Devgn tells Variety he is confident “Drishyam 3: The Conclusion” clears the bar set by its predecessors, calling the psychological thriller’s twists unpredictable even for genre-savvy audiences accustomed to guessing outcomes.

Speaking ahead of the film’s Oct. 2 release, Devgn says the Hindi-language franchise ends definitively, unlike its open-ended Malayalam-language counterpart.

Devgn, who plays the protagonist Vijay Salgaonkar, watched the completed film on Tuesday and emerged reassured, despite what he describes as the pressure of following two successful predecessors, particularly the second installment, which he calls a difficult film to follow. He watched it alongside people whose judgment he trusts, and came away without the fear that audiences might feel it could have been better. He credits writer/director Abhishek Pathak and the writing team, saying the film is shot well and grips audiences throughout.

“You will not be able to guess,” Devgn says. “So, the twists and turns are a lot, and they are unexpected.”

The “Drishyam” franchise centers on a family man who covers up an accidental killing to protect his wife and daughters, then finds himself locked in a battle of wits with the police officer investigating the case.

The “Drishyam” story has traveled widely since Jeethu Joseph’s original Malayalam film starring Mohanlal opened in 2013. It was remade in Kannada as “Drishya” and in Telugu as “Drushyam,” both in 2014, and in Tamil as “Papanasam” in 2015, with Kamal Haasan in the lead and Joseph again directing. The Hindi version, starring Devgn and Tabu, also arrived in 2015, followed by a Sinhala remake and the Chinese adaptation “Sheep Without a Shepherd” in 2019. Joseph’s Malayalam sequel arrived in 2021, with Pathak’s Hindi “Drishyam 2” following in 2022. The Malayalam “Drishyam 3” opened earlier this year and has grossed INR239 crore ($25 million). Panorama Studios, which holds the Hindi and international remake rights, is now developing Korean, Spanish and English versions of the franchise, while limiting its own Indian-language output to Hindi.

On playing the character across all three films, Devgn says Salgaonkar has “become more calmer, I would say. He’s more prepared,” he says, noting the story picks up directly where “Drishyam 2” left off rather than showing a further gap in the character’s development, so there is limited room to trace additional emotional evolution beyond what the film itself depicts.

Devgn spoke to Variety on the sidelines of the FICCI-Frames Indian media industry conference in Mumbai where he was in conversation with Alok Jain, head – Hindi and English entertainment business (streaming, TV and studios), JioStar.

Despite the Malayalam “Drishyam 3” leaving its ending open, Devgn says the Hindi version takes a different approach entirely. “This is a completely different script altogether,” he says. “There is no comparison. There is nothing. And in our film, we’re not leaving any loophole or anything. We are finishing it. This is the conclusion.”

Devgn says his next release, the comedy “Golmaal 5,” is complete and will arrive in January. He has also wrapped an as-yet-untitled film carrying the working title “Ranger,” a Luv Ranjan production, and is preparing to start work on “Chauhan.”

Asked about further installments of the “Raid” franchise, Devgn says he would continue only with the right material. “Hopefully, yes, if we get a great script, because you don’t plan it,” he says, adding that a strong script is what would determine whether the franchise moves forward. The “Rudra” franchise remains on pause, a decision he says was intentional.

Devgn also addressed the Hindi-language film industry’s turnaround after a pandemic-era slump he attributes to audiences outpacing the industry’s output as international viewing habits reshaped expectations. He says the industry has since worked to catch up with a more evolved audience, with some films succeeding as a result. He adds that theatrical viewing endures in India in part because it remains one of the few affordable, communal entertainment options families can enjoy together, contrasting it with the shorter, costlier outings offered by restaurants. Once audiences have a good experience at the theater, he says, they tend to return.

Devgn says he is also developing a few scripts with an eye toward returning to directing, tentatively within the next two years.

On the broader evolution of Indian audiences amid a global shift toward AI-generated content, Devgn says viewers have become highly discerning, often able to judge from a trailer alone whether a film is worth watching, and says that instinct is right the vast majority of the time. He says a weak film struggles regardless of how strong its marketing is, since audiences can sense when they are being misled.

Asked about AI’s role in storytelling, Devgn, who owns generative AI company Prismix, says, “I think it is here to stay. I myself have an AI company,” he says, adding that the venture is performing well. He says full audience connection may take time, since viewers know AI-generated content isn’t real, but reiterates his belief that the format will endure.