Category: Entertainment

TLC in the U.K. has ordered a Top Trumps-themed panel show set to be hosted by comedian Katherine Ryan.

Based on the card game and tentatively titled “Top Trumps: The Comedy Pack,” it will see Ryan in charge of proceedings as team captains Joel Dommett and Jon Richardson battle it out with classic card face-offs, live studio challenges and bluffing games. It is produced by TalkbackThames with Naked and set to launch early next year.

“Everyone knows Top Trumps, but no one has ever played it quite like this,” said Ryan. “We’re taking this iconic game and supersizing it into something bigger, louder and much funnier. And with Jon and Joel captaining rival teams, chaos is pretty much guaranteed.”

The news comes as part of a bumper comedy slate for the newly free-to-air channel, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery U.K. & Ireland.

It includes a three-season order of “Mock the Week,” which will take the series up to Season 5 in 2027. The long-running panel show, which went on hiatus in 2022 after two decades at the BBC, was revived for the network earlier this year and has already broadcast Season 1 plus a summer special (Season 2 is set to air on Sept 13). It is hosted by Dara Ó Briain and produced by Angst productions.

The network has made a concerted effort to invest in comedy since re-launching at the beginning of this year. As well as “Mock the Week,” TLC debuted another new format, “Unacceptable,” hosted by Ed Gamble which launched last month and has already been renewed for a second season.

“Six months on from TLC’s successful launch as a free-to-air, broad entertainment channel, it’s hugely exciting to bring another brand-new original format to the schedule in ‘Top Trumps: The Comedy Pack’ (w/t),” said Graham Lafferty, WBD’s SVP for content strategy and networks in the U.K. and Ireland.

“We are thrilled to have the brilliantly funny Katherine Ryan at the helm, no stranger to TLC after appearances on ‘Mock the Week’ and ‘Unacceptable,’ along with an exceptional comedy pairing in Joel Dommett and Jon Richardson. Our take on Top Trumps is perfectly placed for TLC’s growing U.K. comedy line-up, alongside ‘Mock the Week’ – which we are delighted to secure for a further three series with Dara Ó Briain satirically steering us through the 2027 news agenda – and a second series of ‘Unacceptable’ hosted by the hilarious Ed Gamble.”

WBD is also investing in its motoring content with “The Race Mechanic,” “Richard Hammond’s Workshop” and “Wheeler Dealers World Tour,” among other titles set to land on TLC’s sister network Quest.

Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát’s first English-language feature, “My Notes on Mars,” starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend, will open the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori.

The section has unveiled a richly assorted lineup featuring works by female directors and exploring the female universe, regardless of who is behind the camera.

This years’s selection of the Giornate – which is also known as Venice Days – comprises 25 world premieres across several sections, 14 of which are directed by women.

The hotly anticipated “My Notes on Mars” by Horvát — whose last film “Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time” debuted at Venice and Toronto in 2020 — centers on an astrophysicist with a troubled marriage named Margot who vanishes while hiking with her husband, Sam. Weeks later, she suddenly reappears on the day of her own memorial service. Margot remembers nothing about her life — except her Mars research.

“Notes on Mars” is among 10 Venice Days competition entries that will be judged by an all-female jury headed by Spanish director Carla Simón (“Alcarràs,” “Romeria”). The other jurors are Hania Mroue, founder and director of Beirut’s beloved Metropolis Cinema, and Italian director and producer Sara Fgaier.

Polish-born director Kuba Dorabialski’s “Agata the Writerm” starring Mia Wasikowska as a Polish-Australian satirical novelist who travels from Sydney to Sarajevo to write a novel about the Bosnian war only to be challenged by locals, is also ensconced in a competition berth.

Other standout Venice Days competition titles include Italian director Nicola Sorcinelli’s “Balcanica,” about Afghan musicians traveling along the Balcan route after music has been banned in their country, starring Matilda De Angelis (“Citadel: Diana”) who is also a co-producer on the film; Nigerian director Damilola Orimogunje’s “Dear Ajayi,” about two estranged Nigerian sisters who reunite at the wake of a tragedy; and French filmmaker Robert Guèdiguian’s “A Woman Today,” about a young woman named Juliette who holds a top job in finance and whose world collapses when she is assaulted by a colleague at a company event.

Special events include Italian director Francesca Archibugi’s doc “Carla Lonzi, dentro e fuori dal mondo,” about radical feminist activist and art critic Carla Lonzi; Dutch-Egyptian director Ashgan El-Hamus’ debut “Al Baraneya,” about a young, pregnant, woman in an Egyptian village who is mulling the prospect of a promising future in the city if their family land is sold; and the closing film, which is French director Lèa Domenach’s queer and feminist musical comedy “A Man’s Skin,” which is set in the Italian Renaissance and re-teams the director with Catherine Deneuve after their collaboration on Bernadette Chirac comedy “The President’s Wife.”

Shorts by Mona Fastvold and Claire Denis will unspool as part of the Prada-commissioned Miu Miu Women’s Tales, a series of short films directed by women.

In a statement, the section’s artistic director Gaia Furrer pointed out the variety of narrative forms on display. She described them as: “sentimental science fiction, experimental documentaries, history films, family melodramas, anti-hero westerns, musical comedies and other works that freely cross the borders between documentary film and fiction, autobiography and invention.”

“It’s a patchwork of genres that reflects the vibrancy of contemporary cinema and its ability to evolve along with the world itself,” Furrer said.

This edition of Venice Days is dedicated to the memory of Italian film critic Giorgio Gosetti, who in 2004 founded the Venice Days section – which is modeled on Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and supported by Italian film directors’ associations ANAC and 100autori. Gosetti died in March in Rome at 70 years old.

“For 23 years, without interruption, he was its [Venice Days’] guiding spirit, the lifeblood of the organization, motivating and uniting the professionals that turned it into a festival that is known and respected the world over,” a statement noted.

The 23nd edition of Venice Days will run Sept. 2-12, in tandem with the official Venice Film Festival selection. See the full lineup below.

IN COMPETITION

“Sadness Sometimes, Other Times Revolt,” Maria Aparicio

“Agata the Writer,” Kuba Dorabialski

“Balcanica,” Nicola Sorcinelli

“Camouflage,” Mykyta Gibalenko 

“Dear Ajayi,” Damilola Orimogunje

“I Plant My Hand in the Garden,” Boris Hadžija and Hoda Taheri 

“Les Indes,” Pauline Julier, Nicolas Chapoulier 

“My Notes on Mars,” Lili Horvàt – Opening Film

“Salón De Bellezza” Nathalia Acevedo

“A Woman Today,” Robert Guédiguian

OUT OF COMPETITION

“Man’s Skin,” Léa Domenach 

SPECIAL EVENTS

“Al Baraneya,” Ashgan El-Hamus  

“Carla Lonzi, A Feminist Story,” Francesca Archibugi 

“The Phantom,” Ignacio Masilorens, David Lamelas

“The Massacre,” Cosimo Messeri

“Even if Hell Came,” Samuele Rossi 

WOMEN’S TALES PROJECT (shorts), in collaboration with Prada’s Miu Miu Label

“Discipline,” Mona Fastvold 

“Avec Kim,” Claire Denis 

Sony Music Entertainment has once again sued the AI music generator Udio, alleging the startup illegally copied more than 30,000 songs from the likes of Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Elvis Presley to train its models.

Sony first brought lawsuits against Udio and its competitor Suno in June 2024 alongside labels Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, Sony claimed that discovery for the case revealed 30,117 tracks were found among Udio’s training datasets. U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein last month denied Sony’s bid to add those tracks to its original suit, prompting the label to file a new complaint to protect its copyright.

“Foundational principles of copyright law dictate that copying protected sound recordings for the purpose of developing a commercial AI product like Udio’s requires permission from rightsholders,” Sony alleged in its complaint. “Otherwise, such AI offerings will erode the value of the artistic works that comprise the essential raw materials that allow them to function in the first place. If left unmoored from existing and longstanding legal constraints, such products could supplant, rather than support, genuine human creativity.”

Representatives for Sony and Udio did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Udio claimed in an April response to Sony’s initial suit that, while admitting it trained its models on copyrighted songs uploaded to YouTube, such training amounted to fair use due to its platform using “a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

The case comes as companies across the media and entertainment industries, from Hollywood studios to record labels to news organizations, try to navigate how to engage with AI while protecting their copyrighted work. Since the original lawsuit, both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have settled their respective cases against Udio and entered into licensing agreements with the AI startup, which is preparing a new industry-backed model for release later this year. (Sony and Universal are still fighting Suno in court.)

But such agreements show that Udio could have licensed Sony’s tracks instead of allegedly ripping them from YouTube, the label claimed.

“At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to incentivize human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries,” Sony claimed in its lawsuit. “Achieving this end does not require stunting technological innovation, but it does require that Udio adhere to copyright law and respect the creators whose works allow it to function in the first place.”

The company is seeking at least $150,000 per each work infringed and for the court to block Udio from using its work to train its models.