The music superstar is nowhere to be seen as a character in the new Antoine Fuqua-directed biopic about her late brother.
“I wish everybody was in the movie,” Jackson sibling LaToya Jackson told me Monday night at the film’s premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. “She was asked and she kindly declined so you have to respect her wishes.”
Michael is portrayed by their nephew Jaafar Jackson with Joe Jackson played by Colman Domingo and Nia Long playing Katherine Jackson. LaToya is portrayed by Jessica Sula. Juliano Valdi takes on the role of younger Michael.
Fuqua said it was “very important” for him to have the Jackson family involved with the movie.
“You’re telling somebody’s life, you want to make sure that they’re happy,” he said.
Not only does Michael’s estate have a financial investment in the project, but his son, Prince Jackson, serves as an executive producer. His other children Bigi and Paris are not involved. Paris has publicly criticized the film for having “a lot of inaccuracies” and “a lot of full blown lies.”
She said in a video posted to social media, “The film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy. And they’re going to be happy with it.”
As for Janet, Fuqua said, “I have so much respect and love for Janet, but you know it’s OK. She’s supportive of Jaafar and that’s what matters.”
LaToya gushed over Jaafar’s performance.
“Oh my gosh, I have to tell you that Jaafar was absolutely fabulous,” LaToya said. “I’m sure you’ve seen the movie and you know how wonderful he is, how we all forget and think that we’re watching Mike. It’s like, ‘Oh, I forgot this is Jaafar.’”
As Variety’s Brent Lang and Rebecca Rubin first reported in early April, the Jackson estate had to pay up to $15 million for reshoots. They had to cut scenes showing Michael being accused of child molestation by Jordan Chandler because Chandler’s settlement with the singer barred the depiction or mention of him in any movie.
“My Hero Academia in Concert,” a live show pairing a 15-piece band performing Hayashi Yuki’s anime score with projected footage from the series, will tour the U.S. this fall, Toho Co., Ltd., GEA Live and RoadCo Entertainment have revealed.
The U.S. run opens Sept. 12 in Farmington, N.M., with subsequent dates stretching from the West Coast – including Los Angeles and San Francisco – to Brooklyn on the East Coast. The run follows a 10-city European debut also scheduled for fall 2026.
The show draws on all eight seasons of the anime, projecting key sequences on a large screen while the live band performs Hayashi’s compositions in sync – including well-known themes “You Say Run” and “You Can Be a Hero.” The production premieres May 30 at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan before heading abroad.
“When this music is performed live, the story takes on an entirely new dimension that audiences will feel in a much deeper way,” said Floris Douwes, producer and managing director at GEA Live. “Hayashi’s compositions don’t just accompany the action. They drive the emotion and intensify every moment throughout the performance. We’re excited to bring this experience to the passionate fans across the United States for the first time.”
“The world of ‘My Hero Academia’ will come to life like never before,” added a Toho spokesperson. “This concert gives U.S. fans their first chance to experience the music, the action, and the heart of the series live on stage, creating unforgettable moments for audiences everywhere.”
The tour is anchored in the franchise’s 10th anniversary – the anime first aired in April 2016 – with the milestone year also bringing a commemorative logo, special visual releases and the announcement of a brand-new extra episode. Horikoshi Kōhei’s source manga underpins the franchise’s scale: more than 100 million volumes in circulation worldwide, over $130 million earned at the global box office, and a combined social media following north of 4.3 million.
The show is built around Horikoshi’s manga, in which a Quirkless boy named Izuku Midoriya defies the odds to pursue his dream of becoming a hero after the most powerful hero of his era passes his ability on to him. Midoriya trains alongside his peers in Class 1-A at U.A. High School, where the demands of heroism – and villainy – press in on them from every direction.
GEA Live, a Sony Music Masterworks Live division partner, has previously produced live experiences around titles including “Demon Slayer” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” RoadCo Entertainment – a joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment and touring producers Stephen Lindsay and Brett Sirota – specializes in live events built around established intellectual properties.
Tucker Carlson‘s break with President Donald Trump — whom the ex-Fox News host once robustly supported — took a stunning turn, as Carlson apologized for campaigning for Trump and said he was sorry for “misleading people” about Trump.
Carlson made the comments on Monday’s episode of his podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show,” speaking with his brother Buckley Carlson, a former Trump speechwriter.
“You wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. I mean, we’re implicated in this, for sure,” Carlson said on the podcast. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind,’ or, like, ‘Oh, this is bad, I’m out.’”
“It’s, like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now,” Tucker Carlson said. “So I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional.”
About Trump, Tucker Carlson said at another point, “clearly there were signs of low character. We knew that.” But, he said, “There are tons of people of low character who, like, outperform their character. It doesn’t have to be sort of the norm actually these days. I say I’ve outperformed my character a lot. I don’t have especially high character, right? But you know, you try to, whatever, you try your best.”
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Carlson in recent months in response to his former ally becoming increasingly critical of the Trump administration – most notably its handling of the Epstein files and the president’s war against Iran. This month, the president called Carlson “a Low IQ person,” “stupid,” and “highly overrated” in several Truth Social rants attacking him, as well as other former allies, including Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones and Candace Owens.
Carlson told Newsmax earlier this month, “I’ve always liked Trump and still feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves. He’s hemmed in by other forces. He can’t make his own decisions. It’s awful to watch.”
Last week, Carlson’s son Buckley Carlson (who has the same name as his uncle) exited his job as VP JD Vance’s deputy press secretary.
A crew member on Universal‘s live-action sequel “How to Train Your Dragon 2″ has suffered a severe injury following an accident that occurred off-set in the U.K. earlier this month, Variety understands.
The individual, understood to be working as a special effects technician, severed multiple fingers on one hand during an incident involving a saw in a workshop at Sky Studios Elstree, where the film is currently in production. Despite extensive surgery, the severed digits were not able to be reattached.
Variety has reached out to Universal for comment.
“How to Train Your Dragon 2,” being directed by Dean Deblois — who helmed all the franchise’s animated features and 2025’s first live-action remake — began shooting in Sky Studios Elstree in February, marking a change from the first which was filmed at Belfast’s Titanic Studios.
The film is once again led by Mason Thames, with Nico Parker Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Nick Frost and Gerard Butler also reprising their roles from the first film and Cate Blanchett playing Valka, who she voiced in the animated features. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and Phil Dunster are among the new casting additions.
Produced by Universal-based Marc Platt Productions, it’s currently scheduled for a June 11, 2027 release date.
While the circumstances around the “How to Train Your Dragon 2” accident are unclear, last year the U.K.’s crew member union Bectu issued a joint statement with the producer’s union Pact about health and safety concerns on film and TV productions. According to the two entities, their research linked many safety risks to workers being asked to work beyond contractually negotiated rest periods, known as “broken turnaround.”
“Breaking turnaround impacts workers’ ability to do their job safely and effectively,” said Bectu National Secretary Spencer Macdonald. “Reports to Bectu indicate that exhaustion, accidents and near-misses are all too common, as well as poor mental health for many film and TV workers.”
Premiering in the international competition at Visions du Réel, “Saudades Eternas” is the feature debut of visual artist and director Emma Boccanfuso, drawn from years spent filming inside Rio de Janeiro’s Chapéu Mangueira favela.
The film centers on Sueli, a formidable matriarch presiding over a busy, multi-generational household. Within the walls of her home, daily life unfolds – arguments, laughter, children growing up – while outside, gang shootings and deaths continue at a steady pace.
“Saudades Eternas”
Courtesy of VdR
The film never leaves the house, which is both refuge and witness to the cycles of life and loss beyond its walls. The most you see of the outside world is the beach of Copacabana from the terrace, just a few hundred meters away.
Boccanfuso’s starting point was the cultural shock she experienced when she first arrived in the favela.
“What really hit me was their relationship to death. There were a multitude of deaths and shootings that broke out while I was there,” she tells Variety. Coming from what she describes as a contained experience of death – “the hospital, the cemetery” – she was struck by the contrast. “I felt that the boundaries between the dead and the living were completely dissolved… and that they had an ease in accepting death.”
That tension became the core of the project. “I needed to live there to try to understand how it could be possible to live in such violence and at the same time to live life at 300%, to be the most smiling people I have ever met.”
Originally conceived as an installation piece during her studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, the film grew organically into a feature.
“I was really just filming with my smartphone – I filmed static shots, like paintings that I projected onto the wall,” she says. “To try to recreate this house and invite the viewer to feel this experience of violence that takes place outside, from within the house.”
Over time, Boccanfuso – who moved into a house next door – became part of the family, and they grew accustomed to being filmed. Her stripped-down approach ultimately defines the film’s aesthetic.
Sound plays a central role in conveying what the camera doesn’t show: Boccanfuso reconstructs the violence through what is heard, incorporating additional recordings – gunfire, fragments of conversations between gang members captured on walkie-talkies – which were recorded separately and integrated into the sound edit.
It never occurred to her to film the violence itself, she says, or even the family’s reactions to the deaths. In a context where shootings are frequently filmed and routinely circulated, often in real time via local messaging groups, she was unsettled by what she saw as a normalization of such images, particularly among children.
This absence created a structural challenge in the edit. “You want to talk about all these deaths, but we don’t have the images,” she recalls of conversations with her editor.
The solution was to build a narrative system around absence. Voice messages announcing deaths are layered over static shots of an empty home, echoing her own experience of events unfolding.
“We decided to represent the violence in the film exactly as I experienced it with my camera: off-screen, inside the house, confined with the characters, waiting for information on the phone,” piecing events together “by word of mouth, from one window to another,” she explains.
The film does not attempt to map each death into a clear narrative. What emerges is less a catalogue of tragedy than a portrait of resilience.
“We approached death more as a multitude accumulating around Sueli – and more broadly within the favela – rather than trying to make the viewers understand who is who.”
For Boccanfuso, whose previous work was rooted in the contemporary art world, the film’s selection at Visions du Réel is an opportunity to reach a wider audience and shed light on a community living within conditions shaped by systemic injustice.
She is now considering a follow-up set on Copacabana beach, where she would reconnect with the same characters, now working as surf instructors and street vendors, to portray the legendary beach from their point of view, away from its postcard image.
Produced by Close Up Films and Macalube Films, with co-production support from Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), “Saudades Eternas” will world premiere in the main competition at Visions du Réel on April 21.
Following her critically acclaimed headline performances at the Coachella festival, Colombian superstar Karol G has announced “Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour,” a massive global tour beginning this summer and stretching to July of 2027. Full dates appear below.
“Karol G delivered an explosive performance that leaned heavily into Latin and female empowerment, covering multiple genres of music and guest appearances while showing off her formidable talents as a singer, performer and conceptualist,” Variety wrote of Karol’s Coachella performance. “The show was an explosion of music, dancing, colors and symbols that words could never do justice.”
Tickets for the tour, promoted by Live Nation, will be available starting Monday, April 27 through various presales.
Fans in select markets will get first access to tickets through various presales, including an exclusive artist presale beginning Monday, April 27. To be eligible for the artist presale in the USA, Canada and Europe, fans must register at karolgmusic.com between now and Friday, April 24 at 10AM EST/7AM PST. Fans in Latin America can sign up at karolgmusic.com for more information including updates on ticket sales in those cities.
General on-sale timing will vary by market.
The tour will also offer a variety of different VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level. Packages vary but include premium tickets, invitation to the pre-show VIP Lounge, specially designed merch items & more. VIP package contents vary based on the offer selected. For more information, visit vipnation.com.
Stavros Halkias has set his second Netflix special, “Uncle Stav,” which will premiere on the streamer sometime later this year.
The New York-based comic will tape the hour in his hometown of Baltimore at the Lyric on April 24 and 25. “Uncle Stav” follows Halkias’ last Netflix special, 2023’s “Fat Rascal.” Prior to that, he released his 2022 special “Live at the Lodge Room” on YouTube, where it hit 1 million views in its first four days and has since surpassed 8 million.
Halkias is a stand-up comic and actor who is currently performing on his “The Dreamboat Tour.” His comedy is both vulgar and playful, often covering topics like sex, body image, masculinity and his Greek heritage.
He recently wrote, produced and starred in the indie comedy “Let’s Start a Cult,” and Varietybroke the news that he will star in Judd Apatow’s upcoming country music comedy “The Comeback King” alongside Glen Powell. (Halkias is playing Powell’s character’s agent. Cristin Milioti and Madelyn Cline also star.)
He appeared in Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia” and Steven Soderbergh’s sci-fi series “Command Z,” and next he’ll be seen in the A24 Anthony Bourdain biopic “Tony.” He is also in Shane Gillis’ Netflix series “Tires” and hosts “Stavvy’s World,” a popular comedy podcast. Halkias broke out as a co-host of the since-retired comedy podcast “Cum Town” alongside Adam Friedland and Nick Mullen.
“Uncle Stav” is executive produced by Halkias and Ben O’Brien for Stavvy Baby Entertainment.
Halkias is repped by UTA and Schreck Rose Dapello.
Trump also said the tech exec once called him during his first term in office to ask for help on an unspecified matter — and Trump said his reaction to the call was that “I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
Trump, in a post Tuesday morning on his Truth Social account, explained that Cook called with “a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix.”
Trump continued, “Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well. The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’” (“Tim Apple” is what Trump mistakenly called the exec at a 2019 White House summit convening Cook and other members of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.)
Trump, without providing details about the problem Cook supposedly reached out for help on, said that Cook “explained his problem, a tough one it was, I felt he was right and got it taken care of, quickly and effectively. That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship.”
According to Trump, “During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could. Years latter, after 3 or 4 BIG HELPS, I started to say to people, anyone who would listen, that this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t. Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!!”
Variety has reached out to Apple for comment.
Over the years, Cook has sought to curry favor with Trump. In August 2025, Cook visited the White House and present Trump with him a custom-made 24-karat-gold Apple plaque, intended to commemorate Apple’s announcement that it planned $100 billion in new U.S. investment. Cook also personally donated $1 million to Trump’s second inauguration fund (along with contributions from other business leaders).
Trump, in his post Tuesday, began by observing, “I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim.”
Cook will step down as CEO to become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors on Sept. 1, 2026. At that time, John Ternus, senior VP of hardware engineering, will become Apple’s next CEO. The transition, which was approved unanimously by the board of directors, follows “a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process,” the company said.
Almost exactly a year ago, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura and the large cast and crew behind “The Secret Agent” turned the famed Cannes Film Festival red carpet into an impromptu carnaval parade courtesy of renowned Pernambuco frevo group Guerreiros do Passo. That homage to the rich culture of Pernambuco mirrored the four-time Oscar-nominated film’s ode to the state capital of Recife, which, thanks to Mendonça Filho and other major exponents such as Gabriel Mascaro and Marcelo Gomes, plus a talented — and hungry — new generation, has solidified itself as a hotpot of film talent in Brazil.
Speaking at the opening of the Projeto Paradiso Talent Network National Meeting, held this year in Recife, the Secretary of Culture of Pernambuco, Cacau de Paula, said the state of Pernambuco is a “direct part” of Brazil’s historical film momentum over the last two years. “Our cinema is over a century old and so rich. We had a historical year with ‘The Blue Trail’ and ‘The Secret Agent,’ it’s a great moment from cinema from Pernambuco and a great opportunity to share our landscapes, our creativity, our people, our way of speaking with the world.”
At the end of March, Recife held the National Meeting for Regional Audiovisual Incentives, organized by Brazil’s national setorial fund (FSA). Key industry figures from across the country gathered at the imposing São Luiz Cinema, which can be seen at length in “The Secret Agent,” to sign 41 terms of cooperation between federal, state and local governments. Pernambuco was granted R$24,6 million ($5 milion), with R$20 million ($4 million) coming from the federal government through the FSA and the remainder from the state through Adepe.
Projeto Paradiso Talent Network National Meeting 2026, courtesy of Juana Carvalho
“We from the government of Pernambuco are immensely proud of our cinema and renewed public incentive policies,” she added. “We are witnessing a rich period following the Paulo Gustavo Law, regional incentives, and with more to come soon. Culture Minister Margareth Menezes was [in Recife] recently to launch regional incentives, a key initiative during such a rich moment for Brazilian cinema, where we are successfully uniting creativity and public support to generate new opportunities. To see all of you here is to see the future we want for our cinema. We are seeing the cinema of tomorrow, respecting our past and our traditions.”
Cinema from Pernambuco, and Recife specifically, has a long, century-old tradition. In the 1920s, the Recife Cycle (Ciclo do Recife) was a pioneering movement in silent cinema and one of the most productive crops of the century in the country, producing 13 features in 8 years. Towards the end of the ’90s the early 2000s, Recife housed another crucial film movement, with seminal films such as Lírio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas’s “Perfumed Ball” (1996), Marcelo Gomes’s “Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures” (2005) and Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz’s “I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You” (2009).
The next generation was already impacted by the introduction of regional film funds towards the end of 2007. Between 2007 and 2011, cinema from Pernambuco saw investment increase by more than 500%, rising from R$2,1 million ($450,000) to R$11,5 million ($2.3 million), which tripled the number of local producers. Films released right after this jump include Mendonça Filho’s fiction feature debut “Neighboring Sounds” and Gabriel Mascaro’s “August Winds.”
Now, Mascaro and Mendonça, just off the back of major international successes with “The Secret Agent” and “The Blue Trail,” are in their very own moment of passing the torch to the next generation of filmmakers.
Courtesy of Guillermo Garza/Desvia
“Kleber’s arrival at the Oscars, as well as Gabriel’s trajectory over the last year, are very good thermometers of how the international market perceives our output, and it helps boost other local filmmakers,” says producer Thaís Vidal, of Filmes do Atlântico. Vidal is currently in post-production on “Paraíso de Mujeres,” by Argentinian director Karina Flomenbaum in co-production with Nevada Cine, and financing for “Amazon Dream,” by Andrew Sala. She’s also working on her directorial debut, “Absence Sensor,” a Brazil-France co-production with Socle, Vitrine Filmes, Moçambique and Filmes do Atlântico.
Legendary Recife producer João Vieira Jr. of Carnaval Filmes tells Variety that his home city is “bearing the fruits of decades of collective work.” “We were a generation that decided, at the end of the ’90s, that it was possible to make quality cinema in Recife without asking for permission from the Rio-São Paulo axis. ‘Perfumed Ball’ opened that door, then ‘Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures’ went to Cannes and ‘I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You’ went to Venice.”
“Each of these steps proved that cinema from Pernambuco is not a regional phenomenon; it is a cinema with its own language that can be in dialogue with the world. What we are experiencing today is the consolidation of a work that has been conducted for a long time,” adds Vieira Jr., who is currently in post-production with “Correnteza” (“River Flow”) written by Wislan Esmeraldo, screenwriter of “Motel Destino,” and Hilton Lacerda (“Tattoo”), and about to wrap shooting for “Madrugada,” by Armando Praça (“Greta”), which was shot entirely at night in the Recife city centre.
When talking to local filmmakers, one unanimous sentiment is pride over the sense of community built by the industry in Recife. At the beginning of the century, the sense of isolation from the industry hub of the Southeast, plus the lack of structured funding opportunities, led producers, directors and writers to band together to get films made. Two decades later, the Bolsonaro government, followed by the pandemic, replicated this need for a strong union to a younger generation.
“We had collectives and, with them, possibilities of working on each other’s films, wearing different hats, exchanging feedback… At that time, scarcity acted as a driving force for collaboration,” says Emilie Lesclaux, the French producer based in Recife who landed a historic best picture Oscar nomination for “The Secret Agent” earlier this year.
“When I shot my first feature 22 years ago, we did not have a film school,” echoes veteran Marcelo Gomes. “Only two or three feature films had been made in Recife in a period of 30 years. So we brought in heads of departments from other states, but we made a point of taking in several interns and paying it forward. Several people who worked on our sets went on to make films of their own, like Gabriel Mascaro, Juliano Dornelles and Pedro Sotero.”
“Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures”
“Pernambuco was the first state in Brazil to open a public call for projects, and that was only because we were very united as artists and we pressured the government,” he emphasizes. “This allowed us to build a very tight creative network, built upon a sense of solidarity. In Rio, things are very fragmented; the city is much bigger.”
Mendonca Filho says something similar, remarking that when he was making “Neighboring Sounds” he was “pressured to hire a big name as a cinematographer” but chose newcomer and friend Pedro Sotero. “Today, he is one of the great Brazilian cinematographers. These decisions are technical, but also affectionate.”
The Golden Globe-winning filmmaker remarks how, just last week, five creatives from Pernambuco were awarded Platino Awards for their work in “The Secret Agent”: Tomaz Alves Souza and Mateus Alves for original score, Thales Junqueira for production design and Eduardo Serrano and Matheus Faria for editing. “It only reiterates the notion that you can make great cinema in Recife. It’s crazy that it would even be up for discussion in 2026.”
Writer-director Karkará Tunga, who is currently working on his directorial feature debut “Batoki: Noite Sem Lua,” recalls being part of the inaugural class of graduates from Recife’s first film school, another watershed moment for the city’s film community. “When I arrived in Pernambuco and saw the level of public funding available, I understood it was possible to make films here,” points out the creative, whose family is from Pernambuco but was raised in São Paulo, a reality faced by many second-generation filmmakers born in families who’ve left the Northeast for the Southeast in the ’80s and ’90s.
“We are still a way to go when it comes to Indigenous and Black filmmakers accessing these resources, but there is a sense of possibility,” adds Tunga. “I was part of the first class of students to graduate from the local film school, and I could see a much more diverse group of filmmakers coming right after me. The film school generation challenged this hegemony to create a strong sense of community and nurture the desire to build a new cinema. One that feels much more concrete today than six years ago, when the Bolsonaro government decimated our public structures.”
Despite all the many positives, like everywhere else in the world, there are still challenges plaguing the local industry. “Our disadvantages are structural,” says Vieira Jr. “We are far away from the financing hubs, lack quality screening rooms away from the capital cities, and heavily depend on federal financing open calls directly tied to the unsteady rhythms of Brazil’s cultural policies. We’ve learnt to be resilient, but we deserve more, and we know how to ask for it.”
“I also hope we as artists continue to pressure the government to promote cinema and to cultivate audiences,” echoes Gomes. “We need fresh audiences, we need films made in Recife to be seen across Brazil.”
Producer Wandryu Figueredo do Nascimento, who is currently working on “Ontem Foi Dia 22 de Junho,” points out that Recife needs more training centers and development opportunities. “Our neighboring state of Ceará has incredible labs, workshops, and established training programs for writers,” continues the producer. “We only have the film school and film festivals to rely on. The Ceará Film Commission is also way ahead of our newly inaugurated Recife Film Commission, but we are hopeful it’ll get there.”
“For something like [‘The Secret Agent’] to happen again, we need a local policy to build bridges between local production companies and the international market, promoting the participation of Pernambuco producers at big co-production platforms,” remarks Vieira Jr. “It is not enough to make extraordinary films, we need producers to have a seat at tables where decisions are made.”
Lenny Pearce, the creator of Toddler Techno and Baby Raves, has signed a music and content development deal with Disney.
Under the deal, Disney Music Group will release Pearce’s next album, “Disney Jr. Music: Lenny Pearce Toddler Techno” on May 15, featuring remixed songs from the Disney Jr. catalog. The first remixed single, “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Theme (Toddler Techno Remix)”, will be available April 24. Pearce will also develop animated content inspired by the Toddler Techno remixes.
“I had so much fun remixing these songs in my studio,” Pearce said. “My 3-year-old daughter loves these shows, especially ‘SuperKitties,’ so it made the whole project extra special. Certainly, a proud dad moment. Disney were such a pleasure to work with, from audio to music videos the whole process was incredibly seamless.”
Other songs to be featured on the album include remixes of the theme from “Sofia the First: Royal Magic,” “Hot Dog!” from “Mickey Mouse Clubouse,” and the theme from “Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends.”
“Music has always been a powerful way for kids to engage with our stories,” said Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television. “Lenny has tapped into that in a really fresh way, taking songs kids already love and reimagining them in new ways. This collaboration lets us build on that connection, bringing some of our biggest stars like Mickey, Spidey and SuperKitties into new music experiences for kids to enjoy on Disney+.”
Pearce launched Toddler Techno in 2024 and has taken it to a global stage. He has released multiple albums and gone on multiple sold-out concert tours. He is set to play shows across the United States, Canada, and the U.K. in the coming months.
“Having seen Lenny’s concert in person, it’s clear he’s built something special—an experience where families connect through music in a fun, modern way,” said Ken Bunt, president of Disney Music Group. “We’re excited to bring that same energy to Disney Jr.’s songs and give families a new way to enjoy them together live and at home.”
