Vince Vaughn has some thoughts about late-night television.
On a new episode of Theo Von’s podcast “This Past Weekend,” the two got to talking about how comedy has become more political in recent years, with Vaughn saying it’s “part of the job because you’ve got to talk about current events, but you don’t want to become part of a group and feel like you’re a champion for one ideology. You want to make fun of everybody.”
Von said Hollywood is a “liberal place” and Vaughn added an addendum: “But not really. It’s more like, ‘We’re smart and got it figured out, and if you don’t agree then you’re an idiot.’” He continued, “There was definitely a culture that if you didn’t agree with these ideas, you were looked at as bad.”
This attitude, said Von and Vaughn, bled into the late-night TV landscape, plaguing the programs hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and more. (Vaughn and Von did not name names.)
“A lot of the late shows have struggled because … the only person they could make fun of at a certain point was white, redneck kind of people, and then everything tanked after that,” said Von.
“The podcasts have gotten so much more popular with less production, less writers, less staff. And the reason is … people want authenticity,” added Vaughn. “The talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based. They were going to [evangelize] people to what they thought. And so people just rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic. It felt like they had an agenda. It stopped being funny, and it started feeling like I was in a fucking class I didn’t want to take. I’m getting scolded.”
While many believe the reason late-night shows are in decline is shifting viewing habits and the move away from linear television, Vaughn thinks the main problem is the shows themselves.
“The phenomenon isn’t what they say. They always blame technology, but the reality is it’s the approach,” he said.
“People are going to tune into a podcast more so because they want to feel like people are having a real conversation. It’s interesting to them,” Vaughn added. “But if you look at what happened to the talk shows and why their ratings are low, it’s got only to do with the fact of what you just said, which is they all became the same show. They all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad.”
Von asked Vaughn — who has previously identified as a “libertarian” and visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office — if he ever felt “ostracized” in Hollywood.
“I always got along with people … and try to be honest about who I am,” Vaughn said, adding, “I have opinions on both sides” of the political aisle. He said his early relationships in Hollywood were not colored by politics because “we weren’t 23 sitting around talking about fucking taxes.”
He added, “If you’re constantly worried what someone else thinks of you and you’re only around them a couple hours a day, you’re miserable most of the time. You’ve got to find the way to be yourself, but be respectful.
It’s been another crazy week for Casey Bloys. On Monday, the HBO and HBO Max chief jetted into London to press the flesh in advance of the streaming platform finally launching in the U.K. His visit came just days after he was spotted having lunch with Netflix boss Ted Sarandos in Hollywood, instantly igniting rumors that Bloys may be eyeing the exit once Paramount completes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The shadow of Paramount has inevitably also clouded what should have been a crowning moment for HBO Max as it finally arrives in the country where, as Bloys told Variety, so much of its content originates, from “Harry Potter” to “House of the Dragon” and the upcoming Richard Gadd series “Half Man” (a BBC co-production). While HBO have moved forward with launching the streamer on Thursday as planned, including flying in talent and execs for a glitzy party on Wednesday night, the truth is no one knows how long HBO Max will continue in its current format given Paramount boss David Ellis’s indication it will eventually merge with Paramount+.
Despite all the drama, Bloys sat down with Variety to talk about HBO Max’s content strategy in the U.K., what fans can expect from “Harry Potter” and whether he knows what’s going to happen after his WBD contract runs out next year.
When you spoke to Variety in 2023, not long after Discovery acquired Warner Bros., you mentioned that David Zaslav reached out to you almost immediately to tell you that HBO was big priority from him. In that vein, have you heard from David Ellison yet?
Yes, absolutely, he’s reached out. I’ve had lunch with him. He also is a big fan of HBO, so obviously can’t get too much into conversations. But it was a very, very nice lunch, and he had a lot of great things to say about not just HBO, but the entire team.
You also had lunch with Ted Sarandos last week…
I have lunch with lots of people.
Are you going to stay at HBO post-acquisition?
That is so far ahead of anything — because we are in the process — there are rules around what you can talk about, what you can’t talk about. But I’m going to go back to my lunch with David and the nice things he said about HBO and the team and all that. And you know, as we get closer to the close of transaction, we will be able to talk more about what does this look like, how will it work, that sort of thing. So I’m looking forward to that. But unfortunately, I mean — it’s actually legal — things you can and cannot discuss.
Do you mean in terms of your future at the company?
I wasn’t necessarily talking about my future. I was just talking about what a combined service would look like, you know, that sort of thing strategically, what he’s thinking. He said publicly, and also to me, that HBO is a big priority for him, and he feels strongly about that. So again, nice early signs, but there’s only so much we can talk about now.
But with your deal expiring next year are you thinking about the future at the moment?
Now do you really think I’m going to answer that?
Courtesy of Warrick Page/HBO Max
U.K. Originals
Turning to the U.K., have you been planning more U.K. originals in advance of HBO Max launching here? I know you have “Youth” with Sharon Horgan coming up and “Half Man” (although that will only be available on the BBC in the U.K.).
If you think about our slate, a lot of it is local original programming already. “Harry Potter,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” House of the Dragon.” [We’ve got] Sharon Horgan, we’ve got co productions with Michaela Coel, George Kay, so I feel like I work with a lot of a lot of U.K. talent.
In terms of U.S. streamers in the U.K., Apple TV’s creative director for international, Jay Hunt, has been particularly impressive in terms of “glocal” commissions. Do you envision having someone in a similar role here for HBO Max?
No and like I said, if you look at what we’ve done, at least in my time there at HBO, we’ve had a lot of successful co-productions. So we know a lot of not just talent, but a lot of executives, had a lot of good experiences with many different broadcasters. So I don’t anticipate needing someone in addition to that. You don’t know what the future holds. But for right now, I don’t think it’s necessary.
HBO has done a lot of co-productions with broadcasters in the U.K. where it takes the rights outside of the U.K. With HBO Max launching here, how is that going to work going forward?
We haven’t done one yet since launch. But given our history, I imagine it’s something we’d like to continue. It’ll be a conversation, though, about what streaming rights look like now. Where before we didn’t have to worry about it or think about it, now we will. I don’t know what that looks like because we haven’t dealt with it yet, but I’d like to have the option to continue to do them when we find the right project or the right talent.
Warner Bros.
Harry Potter
Is there anything new you can tell me about the “Harry Potter” series?
I don’t think I can other than I’m thrilled with what I’ve seen.
What made you feel like the time was right to bring it back?
Well, there’s no right number, but I do think it’s hard sometimes for people to really — you know, they’ll say, “The movies just came out!” It started about 20 years ago!
And what’s nice is the books have obviously remained popular, but you now have parents who grew up on it and wanting to share that with [their] kids, and kids on their own wanting it so just from a from a business point of view, that’s a big opportunity. From a creative point of view — I mean, look, I’ve always worked in television, it’s my preferred medium. One of the benefits of it, from my point of view, is spending more time with characters and story. And so if you’ve got a book, let alone a series of books, to kind of arbitrarily say, “Well, we’ve got two hours” you have to make some difficult decisions. So the idea is to have the freedom to let it breathe a little bit more and explore the world a bit more.
Has the fact that actors are effectively signing up to it for 10 years made casting difficult?
Not really. I mean, I think anytime someone signs on to a TV project, the hope is it’s gonna be [a] job for the next 10 years. I mean, that’s a dream. So we didn’t really have any issues with that. I think anybody who’s willing to go up for a television show, it’s possible they’re signing up for a long-term gig. So it’s something you have to think about. But we haven’t seen many people say, “Well, I don’t want to do that, because it’s going to be too long.”
Paapa Essiedu, who is set to play Snape in the show, recently talked about some of the toxic and racist reactions to his casting, including death threats. Did you anticipate that reaction?
With all actors on any kind of big IP shows — and this is obviously one of those where you’ve got, you know, passionate fans, people with a lot of opinions — it can get scary in places. So for any show like that, we anticipated it and tried to have training, you know, best practices in terms of social media and how to handle it. And obviously we’ve got a serious security team. So unfortunately, it was something that we thought might happen and we just try to be as careful as we can.
Have you cast Voldemort?
No, we have not.
Because there’s a lot of names in the mix. Tilda Swinton was one.
As a rule, I would say any rumors – don’t [believe them]. I don’t even know who we’re casting.
I’m not sure I believe that…
I really don’t! I would take everything you read with a grain of salt.
HBO
D.C. Universe
The proliferation of the DCU on HBO always felt like it moved at a slightly slower pace and volume than the MCU on Disney+. Was that a deliberate strategy?
That was deliberate because I do it based on the script. More than anything else — forget about anybody, any plan or anything like that — you have to do it based script by script. Is it a good script? Do we think it’s interesting creatively? Do we think it makes sense as a show? So for me, personally, I think anytime you lay out a thing dictating in advance how many shows you’re going to have per year, it sets up an opportunity where you might compromise creatively. And so I think it’s always better just start every project “What do we think of what’s in front of us here?” versus, well, “If we don’t have this one, we can’t have that one.” You’ve got to start with what’s in front of you.
There was a point where no one ever thought superhero fatigue would kick in and now it seems like it really has. Did you anticipate that?
I think, in retrospect, our approach creatively probably is the more prudent one. And I think one of the benefits also that we have at HBO / HBO Max / Warner Bros. Discovery, if you think about some of the shows, it’s not just “Game of Thrones.” It’s funny, when “A Knight of Seven Kingdoms” comes out there’s language around “another ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoff.” And I like to remind people, this is [only] the second one.
And I think part of it is because a lot of what gets written about is development and some people will talk about development like it is actually [in production]. So I’ve had to remind people, there’s been “House of the Dragon” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” — and that’s it, regardless of what else gets written about. We didn’t do five “Game of Thrones” spinoffs because we’ve got DC and we just did “It: Welcome to Derry” and they’re working on a second season. We’ve got other places to go. We’re developing a “Crazy Rich Asians” series. So we’re not locked into just one world or one universe. But I think logically, if you think about it, if you overdo anything, if you give to people too much of anything, kind of by definition it becomes less special. So I think it’s something you have to be careful about.
Is there a chance that Colin Farrell will return for a second season of “The Penguin”?
Colin is going to be in the [“The Batman: Part II”] movie. He’s got other movies going on. [..] I would say it’s certainly complicated, but something everybody involved would like to figure out. I just don’t know.
What about Viola Davis’ “Waller” spinoff – does it look like it might go into production?
Put it this way, I wouldn’t say it’s on the runway. But “Lanterns” is coming up this summer.
HBO
Other HBO Shows
Have you talked to Sam Levinsion about any “Euphoria” spinoffs?
No, no no. He is so focused on Season 3 that we haven’t gotten into what he wants to do next. So I will wait to hear from him, but we are deep in post. And the air date is, you know, we’re weeks out, so he is really laser focused on getting the show completed.
Has “White Lotus” Season 4 started shooting?
Hasn’t started yet, but they are deep into prep. It’s soon.
Do you have anything else in the pipeline with “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong?
Well, we had his directorial debut in “Mountainhead,” which was last year. And let’s see, how would I categorize it? He’s noodling. I think anytime you come off a big show. it’s good for a creator to kind of take their time, maybe do other things. I’m pretty confident that he will come to us when the time is right.
“Succession” was a show that a lot of people said it took them a couple of episodes to really get into. Some people think that particularly in the streaming age, where there is so much content, it’s arrogant for creators and execs to expect audiences to invest that amount of time into a show before it “gets good.” What do you make of that?
I’ve heard people talk about that before. One thing I’ll say about “Succession” — people say, “Oh, in Episode 4, it really kind of clicked,” and I was like, “No, I believe it was there from the beginning. You just got the rhythm of it [now]. So it wasn’t the show. It was you.” But remember it used to take — we talked about seasons, like we talked about “Game of Thrones” in Season 3 is when it kind of clicked.
So I don’t think it’s arrogant. I think it’s letting artists do their thing. But the marketplace is the marketplace, and there’s a ton of new shows now, whereas before, you could stick around for Seasons 1, 2, see if it found its legs. I think it is a little crazy to think a show is going to be fully formed by, you know, whatever [early episode]. But you know, each show is different, too. Some come knowing exactly what it is. The beauty of television is you have the ability to evolve and change and turn into something.
OpenAI said it will discontinue Sora, the generative-AI video creation platform it launched in late 2024, without providing a reason for the decision.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” OpenAI’s Sora team said in a statement Tuesday.
The statement added, “We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.” OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for additional info.
The announcement comes just three months after Disney inked a groundbreaking deal with OpenAI. Under the three-year licensing agreement, Sora would have been able to generate user-prompted videos from a set of more than 200 masked, animated or creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. Sora and ChatGPT Images were to generate “fan-inspired” videos with Disney’s licensed characters in early 2026 — with Disney+ adding a curated selections of Sora-generated videos.
Now Disney has ended its partnership with OpenAI, which included plans for the media conglomerate to take a $1 billion stake in the artificial-intelligence company led by CEO Sam Altman.
A Disney rep said in a statement to Variety: “As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
OpenAI had provided a preview of Sora, which uses a text-to-video model, in February 2024 before releasing the first public version of it in December of that year.
Madrid-based global powerhouse The Mediapro Studio has joined forces with Emmy-winning producer-showrunner Charles Wachter to launch a new non-fiction banner, Stopwatch Media.
Wachter, whose notable credits include reality shows “Million Dollar Secret” for Netflix, “Beast Games” for Prime Vídeo and “Got to Get Out” for Hulu, as well as hit Netflix series “Win the Mall,” will be based out of Toronto where Stopwatch Media will have its H.Q, allowing The Mediapro Studio to gain a foothold on Canadian soil and continue expanding its global infrastructure.
Led by Wachter, the new label will harness The Mediapro Studio’s international reach, resources and partnerships to develop premium formats for both the United States and global audiences.
“Capitalizing on the trend of U.S. shows coming to Canada, this is about putting a flag in the ground and building out the production infrastructure to deliver ambitious, globally relevant shows,” Wachter said. “With The Mediapro Studio as our partner, we have the vision, creative freedom and ambition to develop ideas that can make an impact in the United States and beyond.”
“The Mediapro Studio has always sought to partner with bold creative voices who can push the industry forward and Charles Wachter is exactly that,” added Pam Healey, head of unscripted at The Mediapro Studio U.S. “His track record of delivering premium original formats with international resonance makes Stopwatch Media a natural extension of our global content strategy. With this launch, we are cementing our presence in Canada with one of the very best.”
The launch of Stopwatch Media comes at a pivotal moment for the industry, as networks and platforms seek high-impact formats with franchise potential in an increasingly crowded market.
“Collaborating with Charles at Stopwatch Media is a statement of how we see the future of nonfiction content,” said JC Acosta, director of The Mediapro Studio U.S. “Our priority is clear: to develop and produce bold, global unscripted formats.”
Among the more prominent production-distribution companies based out of Southern Europe, The Mediapro Studio has fast expanded to 53 outposts across the world.
Its fiction productions include such recent hit films as “Aída y Vuelta,” “El 47,” and “The Good Boss,” starring Javier Bardem. It has also backed such bar-raising international shows as “The New Pope,” “The Young Pope,” “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” and “Barrabrava,” among many others.
Bob Dylan‘s touring continues to appear never-ending, to use the catchphrase that fans long ago applied to his near-constant bouts of road work. Now the west coast will be the beneficiary of that, as Dylan has added a fresh string of dates to his itinerary that include a batch of shows in California.
There has been no formal announcement going out about the added shows, as of this writing, but eagle-eyed fans saw the concerts had gone up on Dylan’s tour page Monday night.
Dylan does not have an L.A. show scheduled, per se, but he’s playing just about everywhere in the vicinity but L.A. County, so Angelenos who want to catch him this summer will have plenty of opportunities for a short drive, to Santa Barbara, Palm Desert, Highland or San Diego.
One place Dylan won’t be this summer is on Willie Nelson‘s Outlaw Music Festival. He was a co-headliner with Nelson for extensive tours the past two summers, including shows at the Hollywood Bowl. But Nelson’s tour routing for the 2026 festival went out Tuesday morning and Dylan was not among the participants, in what is likely a friendly “most likely you go your way and I’ll go mine” situation. (Nelson only has 12 dates scheduled for this summer’s outing, versus the 35 that he and Dylan did together in 2025.)
Dylan’s west coast swing will kick off June 4 in Troutdale, Oregon, at McMenamins Edgefield. Then he has a two nighter June 4 and 6 at the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville, Washington. It’s back to Oregon, by way of Eugene, on June 12, as he plays the Cuthbert Amphitheatre.
The California leg of his journey begins June 12 in Lincoln, Calif., at the Venue at Thunder Valley. He goes on to do two nights at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre June 13-14.
Moving south, Dylan will perform at the Santa Barbara Bowl on June 17. The following night, June 18, he plays in Highland at what may be the most intimate hall on the schedule, the Yaamava’ Theatre. (Being a casino show, admission to that one is adults-only, in case anyone was planning to introduce their kids to “Rough & Rowdy Ways” in the Inland Empire.)
He goes from possibly the smallest to possibly the largest venue on the itinerary when he hits the Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert June 20. Dylan wraps up his sojourn in California with a show at San Diego’s Rady Shell at Jacobs park June 21.
By the time he gets to Phoenix, it will be two nights later, as he plays the Arizona Financial Theatre on June 23.
He begins to venture eastward as July dates kick in, with a show in Thackerville, Oklahoma on July 2 and two nights at Wolf Trap in Virginia July 24-25.
Tickets for most of the west coast shows are set to go on sale March 27, although Santa Barbara won’t be putting tickets up till March 28.
Dylan seems to be adding shows piecemeal rather than an entire show at once, so it seems highly likely more dates will be added.
The west-coast swing comes on top of dates in other parts of the country Dylan had already announced for March, April and the very beginning of May, with shows taking place mostly in the Midwest and South. Concerts on his calendar for those months are mostly in secondary markets, ranging from Muncie, Indiana to Knoxville, Tennessee to Tyler, Texas.
See the full lineup of Dylan tour dates, with ticketing links, on his website here.
Dylan began his 2026 touring in Omaha, Nebraska on March 21, followed by a show in Sioux Falls, South Dakota the following night. Again, fans were eagle-eyed and noted that the Omaha show was billed as a continuation of the “Rough & Rowdy Tour” that has gone on for several years — whereas by night 2 in Sioux Falls, the graphic for the concert had changed to merely billing it as part of a “North American Tour.”
Nonetheless, whatever the billing may have changed to, Dylan is still performing six songs a night from “Rough & Rowdy Ways.” The sets have similarities to what he was doing on the road last year, with the additions of “Man in the Long Black Coat,” which he had not played in concert since the 2010s, and “Nervous Breakdown,” an Eddie Cochran cover he’d never sung publicly before.
The arrangements are not exactly the same as last year, however, as Dylan fans were surprised to hear his band sticking only to acoustic guitars and not electrics during the year’s opening shows.
One reason Dylan may have for preferring his own shows to jumping back on the Outlaw Music Festival this year: He continues to order phones to be locked in pouches on his own tour dates, something he wasn’t able to do when touring with Nelson.
Former Pussycat Doll Jessica Sutta is alleging her MAGA politics is one of the reasons she was not asked to return for the group’s “PCD Forever” tour. The group originally found pop stardom as a six-girl group headlined by Nicole Scherzinger, but only three original members are returning for the 2026 reunion (which also includes the new single “Club Song”). Scherzinger, Kimberly Wyatt and Ashley Roberts are the Dolls who will embark on a global tour set for the United States, Europe and the U.K. later this year.
Speaking on a recent episode of “The Maverick Approach” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly), Sutta claimed she was never notified about a Pussycat Dolls reunion.
“None of us were called. None of us were told about anything. In fact, we were blindsided,” Sutta said, revealing that she didn’t even get a phone call from Scherzinger until the day the Pussycat Dolls reunion without her was announced to the public. Sutta did not answer the phone.
“I don’t plan to call her back,” she said. “I love Nicole. This is very bittersweet for me. I respect her as an artist. I even cried with joy when she won her Tony [for ‘Sunset Boulevard’] just recently.”
Sutta reasoned that she was not asked to participate in the Pussycat Dolls reunion because “I was a liability” given her politics. Per EW: “Sutta has been an outspoken supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, since she endorsed him for president in 2024. The two connected over their shared medical beliefs after, Sutta said, the COVID vaccine left her feeling ‘like I was on the brink of death.’”
“I align with Bobby Kennedy, which is aligning with MAGA,” Sutta said during her recent podcast interview. “Do I love what Trump is doing? Absolutely not. I do not believe in war. [But] we didn’t have a chance for the [vaccine] injured community to get help without him… People are screaming at me, ‘You’re MAGA, you’re MAGA.’ Yeah, I am. I triple down on it because I’m so sick of people telling me who I should be.”
Sutta wasn’t the only original Pussycat Doll to be blindsided by the group’s 2026 reunion. Carmit Bachar wrote on Instagram that she also found out about the new Pussycat Dolls tour when it was announced to the public, adding: “I would have appreciated direct communication.”
“In light of recent developments, I feel it is important to speak honestly and respectfully,” Bachar wrote. “I was not contacted regarding the group’s decision to move forward, and I learned of these plans at the same time as the public. Given my history with the brand, having been part of its foundation long before its commercial debut and instrumental in the connections that led to the record deal… I would have appreciated direct communication.”
“While this is disappointing on a personal level, I remain proud of the role I played in helping shape what The Pussycat Dolls became,” she added. “I believe the legacy of any group is built not only by those seen on stage, but also by the collective contributions and shared vision that brought it to life.”
Scherzinger, Wyatt and Roberts were confronted with leaving their former Dolls out of the reunion during a viral interview on “Today,” where Scherzinger went struggled to give an answer the question and responded: “Well, I mean, listen, we are just, we are like, we are so. As women today….”
Wyatt jumped in to explain the Pussycat Dolls have always had “an ever-changing lineup and you know, this is what it looks like now in 2026, and you never know what comes next. I think ultimately we’ve got to protect our peace and when something like the Pussycat Dolls has so much history, we have ruptured in the past, and right now we are repairing, and we’re sort of on the same page with that.”
The 53-date “PCD Forever” tour kicks off June 5 in California and will make stops in cities such as Phoenix, Tampa and New York City before heading to Europe in September. The tour wraps Oct. 13 in London. Lil’ Kim and Mya are joining the Dolls for select shows.
Watch Sutta’s complete interview on “The Maverick Approach” podcast in the video below.
“Nielsen’s announcements to delay their February Gauge report (with its anticipated spike in TV audience totals), and also revert Gauge’s math to a method now proven to undercount all TV forms throughout the upfront season, are both indefensible manipulations that run completely counter to the role of a fair and neutral measurement and currency data provider,” said Sean Cunningham, CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, a veteran trade group that acts as a proxy for the TV networks in dealings with Madison Avenue, in a prepared statement.
At issue was the implementation earlier this year of new data that shows how U.S. households connect to and consume TV, use video-capable digital devices, and interact with and share streaming media and ecommerce accounts. The research, known as DASH, is a syndicated study fielded in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, a polling firm. Nielsen had previously informed clients that its use of the data could result in a one-time expansion of the number of households, or “universe,” watching cable and broadcast TV, and a potential diminution of the overall audience watching streaming.
But the uptick in linear viewing across cable and broadcast– spurred by February telecasts of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics on NBC and Peacock — has alarmed many streamers, all of whom have seen their fortunes soar as they reel in scads of new broadband viewers. The behind-the-scenes push and pull over the Gauge shows Nielsen having to cater to a new generation of customers — companies like Amazon, Roku and Netflix — that can be just as challenging as traditional clients like CBS, Fox and NBC.
Nielsen suggested the VAB’s furor might be misplaced. “The VAB membership includes Nielsen’s competitors and a subset of the ad-supported video industry. So it’s no surprise they are being misleading,” Nielsen said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: the change the VAB is fighting for is already a part of Nielsen currency. We’ve been using it in our TV ratings, which networks and advertisers buy and sell against, since February. The only methodology pause is happening to The Gauge, which is a free, monthly report. The ad industry at large does not use The Gauge to sell ads or guarantee ad buys. That is what our currency ratings are for.”
In his statement Cunningham accused Nielsen of “obvious manipulation and sector bias,” because the decision holds back a look at robust performance by traditional TV in an era when streamers are steadily gaining audience.
“Purposely delaying and suppressing TV’s February’s audience totals — which include both a Super Bowl and a primal American-lead Olympics — is more than just public kowtowing to Google, or an escalation of Nielsen’s thumb on the Gauge scale while cheerleading YouTube boom / TV gloom; this level of manipulation looks to me like obvious interference in markets,” Cunningham said.
In a letter to clients issued last week, Nielsen Chief Client Officer Peter Naylor said Nielsen would hold back on the Gauge in order to integrate ” methodology updates” being made to its measuring technology.
The measurement donnybrook is the latest fissure between Nielsen and its media client base. TV networks believe Nielsen’s recent move to update its long-running panels with data from interactive TV have created significant issues around tabulating cable networks, particularly when it comes to calculating critical viewership “demos” of people between 18 and 49 or 25 and 54. Advertisers watch these two groups closely — the former in entertainment programming and the latter in news programming.
After making her narrative feature debut with “Sisters in Arms,” a thriller about a battalion of Kurdish female warriors, Caroline Fourest, a prominent French journalist-turned-filmmaker, embarked on her boldest undertaking yet with her next project, “Broken Truth.”
An English-language love story and road movie, “Broken Truth” is set during the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Fourest shot it over seven weeks in Kyiv and across the war-torn country, almost entirely with a Ukrainian cast and crew, in the dead of winter, while missile and drone alerts continued to hit the Kyiv region. There were only a handful of French collaborators on set, including acclaimed cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, whose credits include Luc Besson’s “Léon: The Professional” and “The Fifth Element.”
“We’ve been trying to make this film for three years now, right from the start of the war,” Fourest said in an interview after wrapping the shoot in Kyiv, where she said she planned to board an overnight train out of the country because commercial flights remain suspended.
Penned by Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”), “Broken Truth” centers on Julien, a cynical French disinformation strategist based in Kyiv who works in a bot farm and is in the process of selling his startup when the war breaks out. He unexpectedly falls for Katharina, a Ukrainian museum curator and single mother who distrusts him and the murky business he is involved in. As the invasion begins, the pair and Katharina’s 10-year-old daughter flee together, embarking on a road trip navigating the chaos of war.
Fourest, who is a top specialist of counter-propaganda and is regularly invited on French political talk shows, says she was immediately drawn to the project after it was brought to her through producer Jean-Charles Lévy, who had deep ties to Ukraine after working there on several movies over the years, notably on “The Revenge of the Shiny Shrimps.”
Lévy introduced Fourest to the script after American producer Robert Stein, who had initially sought a U.S. director, found that no American filmmaker was willing to shoot a feature in Ukraine during the war.
“I’ve been very involved with Ukraine for over 10 years,” she says. “When our American producer Robert Stein brought the screenplay to my attention, it was impossible for me to not fight to direct it. It was exactly the movie I dreamed to craft about Ukraine and the ravages of propaganda : through a beautiful love story torn apart by distrust and lies,” she says.
Fourest has indeed been involved with Ukraine for over a decade, dating back to a 2011 documentary on Ukrainian feminists for France 2, a couple years before the Maidan uprising. She later returned to report on Maidan for France Culture and served as a foreign observer during the first post-Maidan election in Odessa.
She says the script appealed to her because it’s “at the heart of what’s happening in the United States, what’s happening here, and what Russia has done to Ukraine. It’s really all these factories churning out fake profiles and fake narratives, pushing false stories and flooding the web and social media with false narratives to sow confusion and, sometimes, to serve authoritarian states like Russia.”
Despite Levy’s and Fourest’s experience and knowledge of Ukraine, “Broken Truth” proved a near mission impossible to pull together. It was originally conceived around an American lead but actors who balked at filming in Ukraine. She eventually turned to Sisley, who previously starred in the action franchise “Largo Winch.”
“I need a French actor who speaks English really well and fits the role, and as it turned out, Tomer Sisley was a perfect fit for Julien,” she says.
Fourest said audiences may be surprised by Sisley’s performance because “he’s not playing the savior at all.” “It’s not an action movie — it’s really a love story.”
Katharina is played by Pustovit, a Ukrainian actress whose real-life story closely echoed that of her character. Fourest said she discovered after casting her that the actress had volunteered extensively during the war to the point of burnout, had a boyfriend fighting on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and had even been held captive by Russian forces for several days.
“She’s actually gone through experiences similar to Katharina’s in the film,” Fourest says.
Fourest and her producers also decided to take on the risk to shoot the entire film in Ukraine despite the ongoing war and were able to enlist a brave french insurance broker, Hugo Rubini, who came on board. “Without him, if we’d had to pay for insurance like you do when filming in a war zone, we definitely couldn’t have made the film on a €2.6 million budget,” says Fourest.
Operating in Kyiv meant coping with power outages, missile strikes and drone alerts. Fourest said the production relied on a military adviser equipped with software that could distinguish between alerts that posed a real threat to their location and those affecting the broader Kyiv region. That allowed the team to filter out many alarms and only seek shelter when it was absolutely necessary — it happened at least once during filming, when the cast and crew spent an hour in a shelter listening to drones explode overhead.
“Jean-Charles and I are stubborn. For us, it made no sense to shoot this film in Latvia, as was suggested, or anywhere else. First of all, because the entire beginning of the film takes place in Kyiv, and we film Kyiv, Khreshchatyk, Maidan, St. Sophia, St. Andrew’s,” she says.
“As you know, the Russians hit very hard this winter just to take advantage of the freezing temperatures, to really increase the losses and the impact. There were a lot of power outages, but Ukrainians know how to make do with anything. You have to figure it out, but they know how,” she reminisces.
Lévy says there was “no other place where we could have shot this important movie.” “Our crew became family and it was so important for us to show the industry is still standing and it’s still possible to shoot upscale, international-level English speaking feature films in Ukraine, even during the war,” he continued.
For the war sequences, Fourest also pursued authenticity. “All our Ukrainian soldiers are actual military actors. They’re all actors who joined the army and are fighting,” she says.
One of the leading actors, for instance, came to set between tours on an active front and returned to combat immediately after shooting, while one crew member had lost a foot after stepping on a landmine. Another had a metal plate in his head after surviving an explosion on the front line.
“It was just like that. Everyone has related stories; everyone has family members who died because of the war or who are on the front lines,” she says.
Ultimately, Fourest says the production became a source of collective purpose to the point that crew members told her the project had helped them “look forward again.”
The film got supported by the Ukrainian State Foundation, as well as French pay TV channel Canal + and broadcaster France Television. Levy’s Forecast Pictures produced it with Pronto Films, Wild Tribe, Be Cool Produzioni, Ethic Scenarii and Saga Films.
Fourest hopes to complete a first cut by September. The plan, she says, is for “Broken Truth” to premiere first in Ukraine before traveling internationally, with a festival launch hopefully in the cards.
The film, which premiered on March 20, is a continuation of the hit BBC series “Peaky Blinders,” which starred Cillian Murphy and ran for six seasons from 2013 to 2022. The series already had a strong audience on Netflix, which holds the streaming rights in the U.S. and various territories outside of the U.S., and the new film easily became the most-watched title on Netflix during the week of March 16-22.
The No. 2 title of the week, leading the non-English TV chart, was “BTS The Comback Live: Arirang,” which debuted on March 22 and hit 13.1 million views before the viewing window ended that night. With a full day of viewing accounted for, the live K-pop concert special hit 18.4 million viewers.
For the second week in a row, the No. 1 title on the English-language TV chart, was “One Piece” Season 2. The series hit 11.1 million views in its first full week of availability after debuting with 16.8 million views in four days. Season 1 also reappeared on the chart in the No. 4 position.
“School Spirits” has been renewed for Season 4, Variety has learned.
The third season of the Paramount+ supernatural horror drama aired its finale on March 4 after it originally premiered on Jan. 28.
The official logline for the show states, “‘School Spirits’ is centered around Maddie (Peyton List), a teen girl stuck in the afterlife investigating her own mysterious disappearance. Maddie goes on a crime-solving journey as she adjusts to high school purgatory, but the closer she gets to discovering the truth, the more secrets and lies she uncovers.”
Along with List, the series stars Kristian Ventura as Simon Elroy, Spencer MacPherson as Xavier Baxter, Kiara Pichardo as Nicole Herrera, Sarah Yarkin as Rhonda, Nick Pugliese as Charley, Rainbow Wedell as Claire Zomer, Josh Zuckerman as Mr. Martin, Maria Dizzia as Sandra Nears, Ci Hang Ma as Quinn, Miles Elliot as Yuri, and Milo Manheim as Wally Clark.
“School Spirits” was created by Nate Trinrud and Megan Trinrud. Both serve as co-showrunners and executive producers as well.
School Spirits was created by Nate Trinrud & Megan Trinrud, who are co-showrunners and executive producers on the series. Oliver Goldstick, who was previously an executive producer and co-showrunner on the show, will return as a consultant on Season 4. List serves as an executive producer in addition to starring. Paramount Television Studios produces.
In an interview for the Season 3 finale, Megan teased what fans can expect for Season 4 after [SPOILER ALERT] the barrier that keeps the ghosts on the Split River campus has disappeared.
“What I find genuinely interesting is being stuck somewhere for so long and then being released into the world — only to realize how hard it is to exist in that huge space again. The world has changed. Split River as a school is a very tight little environment. What’s out there is very different, and I think it will be a real shock.”
