Tag: Entertainment-Variety

Tim Cook is stepping down at Apple‘s CEO after 15 years. John Ternus, senior VP of hardware engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer, the company announced.

Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and Ternus will become its next CEO effective Sept. 1, 2026. The transition, which was approved unanimously by the board of directors, follows “a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process,” the company said.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. “I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world.”

Cook, 65, first joined Apple in March 1998 and was named CEO in August 2011, shortly before the death of co-founder and previous CEO Steve Jobs. Prior to that, Cook was the tech giant’s COO and served as head of Apple’s Macintosh division.

Ternus, 50, joined the executive team in 2021 as SVP of hardware engineering. Throughout his 25-year tenure so far at Apple, Ternus has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of products across every category. The company said he was “instrumental” in the launch of multiple new product lines, including iPad and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch. Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said in a statement. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another.”

Regarding Ternus, Cook said that he “has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”

Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple’s non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, will become its lead independent director on Sept. 1 with the CEO changeover. Ternus will join the board of directors on the same date.

More to come.

Disney+ Japan has struck a multi-year co-development agreement with The Seven, Inc. to produce Japanese-language live-action series exclusively for the platform, with titles destined for audiences in Japan and worldwide.

The deal – Disney’s first ongoing content development tie-up with a Japanese production company for global streaming – will see Disney’s creative team working alongside The Seven from the ground up.

The Seven, a Tokyo-based outfit owned by TBS Holdings (Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings, Inc.), was launched at the end of 2021. Under the new framework, Disney and The Seven will build a pipeline of original series, combining their respective creative strengths. The company also holds a multi-year production partnership with Netflix, under which it has produced titles including “Alice in Borderland” and “Yu Yu Hakusho.”

Carol Choi, executive vice president of original content strategy at The Walt Disney Company APAC, said: “Since the launch of Disney+ in Japan, general entertainment and local originals have become an increasingly important part of our content offering, making this collaboration a natural evolution in accelerating our content investment.”

Narita Gaku, executive director of content production at The Walt Disney Company Japan, added: “We aim to nurture distinctive Japanese stories that feel authentic, enduring, and genuinely meaningful to audiences.”

Setoguchi Katsuaki, president and CEO of The Seven, said: “I am confident that by unleashing the refined creativity of The Seven through Disney’s extensive network and expertise, we can evolve Japanese stories into the next craze that people truly fall in love with. We will continue to transcend borders and language barriers in pursuit of authentic and innovative works that remain etched in the hearts of viewers forever.”

Vice president and chief creative officer Morii Akira – who produced both seasons of “Alice in Borderland” – added: “In finding a partner who shares our aspirations, I feel both an expansion of possibilities and a profound sense of responsibility. Our mission is to take Japan’s signature delicate human dramas and intricate settings and elevate them into top-tier entertainment that anyone – regardless of border or race – can feel is their own story.”

The partnership comes as Disney+ continues to build its Japanese-language slate. The platform has previously released Japanese live-action titles including “Gannibal” and “Disney Twisted-Wonderland: The Animation,” alongside international originals such as FX’s “Shōgun,” which drew significant viewership. Japan remains one of the platform’s key markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

It’s still an open question whether an AI performer can actually “act,” but awards bodies will soon have to confront whether such a performance could ever be eligible for a major award.

It seems like a storyline plucked out of some Hollywood dystopian satire. Still, with the arrival of concepts like AI “actress” Tilly Norwood and, now, the likeness of Val Kilmer in an upcoming movie role a year after his death, the question of whether AI-generated likenesses could ever be awards-eligible is lingering over multiple organizations that recognize achievements in filmmaking. 

Kilmer was cast in “As Deep as the Grave” before his death in April 2025, in which he was set to portray Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist. Due to complications from throat cancer, he was ultimately unable to appear on set. Writer-director Coerte Voorhees, who had built the role around him, refused to recast. Instead, with the cooperation of Kilmer’s estate and his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, Voorhees reconstructed the performance using generative artificial intelligence, assembling the role from archival material and digital tools.

“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” Voorhees told Variety when the film’s trailer debuted. “It was very much designed around him.”

The film, which does not yet have U.S. distribution, arrives at a moment when the industry is still in the process of considering the ramifications of AI attempting to replicate actors’ performances. 

And while we don’t know if “As Deep as the Grave” will be a viable awards contender or if the Kilmer likeness will be deemed a success or failure, it’s nonetheless forcing awards groups to confront a question their rulebooks were not written to answer: Can a performance that no human being has given compete for the industry’s highest honors?

The answer, depending on whom you ask, ranges from “possibly” to “probably not,” and “we are still working on it.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took its most public position on the matter following the 2024 awards cycle. That season encompassed the controversy surrounding Brady Corbet’s historical epic drama “The Brutalist,” which used generative AI to enhance Hungarian dialogue in Adrien Brody’s performance and produce architectural imagery. That prompted enough unease within the Academy that it felt compelled to respond, although the response stopped short of an official ruling. AI tools, the Academy said, “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination.” Voters were instead instructed to weigh “the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship.”

Surely that is a principle, but it’s not yet a policy. In the case of Kilmer, it raises more questions than it resolves. The organization will announce any updated rules for this year in the coming weeks.

The Actor Awards, which are helmed by SAG-AFTRA, have drawn a harder line. Under its current rules, performances “fully generated by artificial intelligence” are disqualified from Actor Awards consideration. Work enhanced by AI may still qualify, but only when the performer has provided consent in accordance with union agreements. The consent portion is a standard that Kilmer’s estate has satisfied, but it seems likely the performance would be considered “fully generated” and thus not eligible.

Earlier precedents — including the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” which involved roles those performers had previously inhabited, drew their own fair share of criticism.

However, this isn’t a question only plaguing actors. The use of AI in creative work is affecting every craft. Other major awards organizations have arrived at positions of varying clarity. The Recording Academy, responding to its own reckoning with AI-generated music, established in June 2023 that only human creators are eligible for Grammy recognition. Works containing AI elements may still qualify, but the human contribution must be meaningful — not incidental.

“We’re not going to be giving a nomination or an award to an AI computer or someone who just prompted AI,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told Variety at the time. “It’s the human award highlighting excellence, driven by human creativity.”

The Television Academy, which hosts the Emmys, requires disclosure when AI-generated material exceeds a minimal threshold and is tied to its code of ethics. BAFTA has discouraged the use of AI in certain categories, particularly in its games vertical. Notably, none of these positions were written with a Kilmer scenario in mind, and none are fully equipped for it.

One of the deep discomforts lies in the question of what an AI performance actually is, and who, or what, deserves credit for it. Kilmer delivered performances over four decades that remain staples of his legacy. I think often of his turn as rock icon Jim Morrison in “The Doors” (1991), his career-defining work as Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993) and his gay and wisecracking private detective in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005).

The prospect of posthumous recognition, through a role constructed after his death, raises its own kind of unease. Would that recognition honor Kilmer himself or simply the technology deployed in his name? Would this warrant consideration for best visual effects, standing toe-to-toe with “Avengers: Doomsday” or “Dune Part Three”? I’d imagine many members of the Visual Effects Branch would be divided on the answer.

But what is clear is that studios are not waiting for the debate to settle. 

Sun Zhonghuai, a senior executive at Tencent, projected in late 2025 that AI-driven productions could account for 10% to 30% of film, television and animation output within two years. The tools are accelerating faster than the ethics can evolve, and the embrace of AI is accelerating faster than rules can be made.

Groups like the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards have yet to formally establish AI guidelines, but are expected to do so in the coming years (perhaps even sooner?).

Versions of this conversation began long before Kilmer’s film reached the marketplace. Andy Serkis’ lived-in work as the terrifying hobbit Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” and as the warrior ape Caesar in the modern “Planet of the Apes” trilogy pushed audiences and awards bodies to reconsider what constitutes acting. Serkis was nominated by the Critics Choice for best supporting actor for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011) and given a special prize for best digital acting performance for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) by the org.

The debate continued with the arrival of James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009) and persisted even in voice performance work such as Scarlett Johansson’s turn as the AI Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her” (2013), whom the CCA also nominated for supporting actress in her respective year. And even for this upcoming awards season, questions are likely to surface around whether Rocky, the lovable sidekick to Ryan Gosling’s astronaut in “Project Hail Mary,” is a performance worth recognizing, thanks to puppeteer and voice performer James Ortiz.

If audiences respond positively to Kilmer’s performance in “As Deep as the Grave,” awards voters will find themselves facing a verdict that no existing guidelines anticipate. Are people watching a tribute to a beloved actor or just another instance of AI slop?

The answer matters. But whatever it is, it won’t be the last of its kind.

Amazon is putting out some “Bait” to hook Emmy voters.

The streamer’s British six-part miniseries “Bait,” starring Riz Ahmed, is making a push for the Emmy season, with plans to submit in 21 categories, including outstanding limited or anthology series, Variety has learned exclusively.

“Bait” follows Shah Latif (Ahmed), a struggling British Pakistani actor navigating an existential crisis while auditioning for the role of James Bond amid cultural backlash, professional pressure and strained family relationships. The Prime Video series, which premiered globally on March 25 after debuting earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, has received positive reviews from critics and currently sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the Emmy front, “Bait” will mount a wide-ranging campaign spanning major series and craft categories.

Ahmed, an Oscar winner for producing the live-action short “The Long Goodbye” (2021) and a best actor nominee for the intense drama “Sound of Metal” (2020), has established himself as a multi-hyphenate across film, television and theater. At the Emmys in 2017, he made history as the first South Asian and Muslim man to win an acting Emmy for his role as Nasir Khan in HBO’s miniseries “The Night Of.” That same year, he earned a second nom in guest actor for HBO’s comedy “Girls.” He’ll be a huge focus for the campaign, going for another nomination for lead actor (limited).

Guz Khan, who portrays Shah’s cousin Zulfi, will be submitted for supporting actor (limited), while Sheeba Chaddha, who plays Tahira, will vie for supporting actress. Actors may self-submit for Emmy consideration, and many final choices regarding episode submissions for artisans will not be fully known until nomination voting begins in June.

Director Bassam Tariq will put forth episode 3, titled “House or Home,” which will also serve as the official writing submission for writer Azam Mahmood.

Along with Ahmed, the series’ executive producers are Allie Moore, Ben Karlin and Jake Fuller, with Chris Sheriff, Karen Joseph Adcock, Dipika Guha, Prashanth Venkataramanujam and Azam Mahmood serving as producers.

This year’s Emmy timeline begins with nomination-round voting from June 11-22, followed by nominations on July 8.

The full list of Emmy submissions for “Bait” is below:

All six episodes of “Bait” are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Satire site the Onion says that it has — after 17 months legal wrangling — successfully landed a deal allowing it take over Infowars, the right-wing conspiracy-fueled site run by Alex Jones.

Ben Collins, CEO of the Onion, confirmed to Variety details of the company’s new plan to assume control of Infowars under a deal with Gregory Milligan, who was appointed by a bankruptcy court to manage the Infowars site.

Under the terms of the agreement, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license the infowars.com domain name and associated intellectual property including its name, as first reported by the New York Times. The deal would run for six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

In November 2024, the Onion gleefully revealed its winning bankruptcy-auction bid for Infowars, which was sued into bankruptcy (as was Jones) after the families of victims in the Sandy Hook mass shooting in Connecticut won a judgment in 2022 against Jones in a defamation suit. Jones had repeatedly lied and posited baseless conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. (During the defamation trial in Texas in 2022, Jones testified that he now believes the Sandy Hook shooting was “100% real.”)

But a bankruptcy judge in Texas in December 2024 rejected the Onion’s cash bid of $1.75 million to acquire the Infowars assets, saying the auction process lacked clarity and that the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims deserved more money.

Now, under the new deal with the court-appointed administrator, the Onion said that in the coming weeks (and pending court approval) it will launch a new digital platform and comedy network at Infowars.com, led by creative director Tim Heidecker and head of programming Mia DiPasquale. The effort “is designed to create a home for emerging and established comedic voices while expanding The Onion’s role as a modern satire institution,” according to the company.

“A lot of institutions and people gave up on doing the right thing over the last two years. Despite an insane amount of threats and bullshit, we persevered,” Collins said in a statement. “Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they’ll finally get some justice, and even some money. You will get a new home for funny things on the internet, a tote bag with a good logo on it and a great newspaper made by human beings in your real-life mailbox.”

Heidecker, whose credits include “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Adult Swim, commented: “There are a lot of talented people making great work with very little support. This is a chance to build a place for ambitious, specific, internet-native comedy and to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history.”

The Onion said the plan was developed with the support of Sandy Hook families. “The Sandy Hook families took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others. For years, he used his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit,” said Chris Mattel, partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder and attorney for the Sandy Hook families who won a $1.4 billion verdict against Jones and Infowars in Connecticut. “When InfoWars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families’ courage and The Onion’s vision, persistence and stewardship.”

Alex Jones has not commented on the Onion’s new plan to take over Infowars.

In April 2024, New York-based G/O Media sold The Onion to Jeff Lawson, co-founder and former CEO of Twilio and a longtime fan of the satire site. Lawson hired Lawson, a former NBC News reporter covering disinformation, extremism and the internet, to run the company.

On Monday, The Onion shared a fake message from the fictional CEO of Global Tetrahedron, “Bryce P. Tetraeder.”

“With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website,” Tetraeder’s post said. “The InfoWars of tomorrow will converge into a swirling vortex of content about content, talent acquiring talent, rings of concentric media mergers processing all human artistry into one endlessly digestible slurry. This will be a dank, sunless place, one where panic and capital feed on each other like twins in the womb of a hulking, unknowable monster — a monster known by many names, but which I like to call modern-day America.”

J.M. Harper’s documentary “Soul Patrol” garnered the top nonfiction honor at the 28th annual Sarasota Film Festival. About the first all-Black special forces unit in the Vietnam War, the doc premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

“We are so honored to receive this award,” said “Soul Patrol” producer Sam Bisbee, who was recently nominated for an Academy Award for “The Perfect Neighbor.” “I’ve always had the best experiences at Sarasota, starting with our film ‘Robot & Frank’ in 2012. The film community there is just so wonderful.”

Despite critical acclaim and winning the Sundance U.S. documentary directing prize, “Soul Patrol” is still seeking distribution. Submarine’s Josh Braun, the film’s sales agent, told Variety that the doc is “on the path” to finding a home.

“Festivals like Sarasota, the Berkshires, the Hamptons, and Woodstock are an important part of the infrastructure,” Braun said. “Particularly for films that haven’t found their deal yet.”

Last month, Braun sold the Sundance 2026 title “Cookie Queens” to Roadside Attractions. The film about the $800 million worth of cookies that Girl Scouts across America sell annually took home the SIFF special jury doc prize.

Rory Kennedy returned to SIFF for the fourth time with her doc “The Trial of Alec Baldwin.” The film is a revealing portrait of Baldwin after the tragic on-set accident on the movie “Rust,” which resulted in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

“We are longtime admirers of the Sarasota Film Festival and its deeply engaged audiences,” Kennedy said. “’The Trial of Alec Baldwin’ is particularly suited to the big screen — where its tension, complexity, and sense of disbelief unfold most powerfully as a shared, collective experience.”

Kennedy said that she has partnered with “a terrific distributor” to release the doc in theaters this fall.

On April 19, after a screening of “In the Hand of Dante,” director Julian Schnabel received the SIFF Achievement in Directing Award. Kenny Anderson received the Achievement in Sport Award.

Libby Ewing garnered SIFF’s narrative feature jury prize for “Charliebird.” The film previously won the Tribeca Festival 2025 Founders Award for Best U.S. narrative feature.

Audience awards went to Ari Selinger’s “On The End” for best narrative film and John H. Cunningham’s “Occupational Hazard: The First Coral Reefers” for documentary.

SIFF awarded “In Plain Sight” the best U.S. narrative short. Best documentary short went to “40 Days In Saratoga” and best animated short was awarded to “My Neighbor.”

“I’m honored to help close out the 28th year of the Sarasota Film Festival by celebrating the exceptional films showcased this year,” said Mark Famiglio, SIFF President and Chairman of the Board. “At its core, the festival exists for the community – to champion diverse voices and the power of storytelling.”

Consisting of 47 features and 39 short films, the festival kicked off on April 10 with a screening of “Deep Water” and concluded on April 19.

When explaining why they chose British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. as the international guest of honor at this year’s Projeto Paradiso National Talent Network gathering in Recife, the initiative’s executive director Josephine Bourgois said it was because Davies Jr’s “My Father’s Shadows” is a film that “could have been made by a Brazilian filmmaker.” This feeling was confirmed over the director’s visit to the Northeastern capital, where he showed his BAFTA-winning film at the imposing Cinema São Luiz. 

“I had never seen my skin tone shot like [it],” said director Stefano Volp following the busy Saturday night screening. “‘My Father’s Shadow’ brings such a poetic and honest experience about masculinity, and particularly Black masculinity, to Brazil,” echoed filmmaker Fernanda Lomba. “Akinola bravely and generously weaves a fabulous patchwork of memory, private life, and Nigeria’s history. We have a lot to learn from this filmmaker’s gentle radicality [in Brazil].” 

In a conversation with lauded Brazilian screenwriter Jaqueline Souza earlier in the week, the Davies Jr. mentioned how he realized in the last few years that there is a “big bridge between Brazil and Nigeria that maybe a lot of Nigerians are not cognizant of.” “We share a lot within our spirituality, the way we see the world, food, and politically as well.”

Speaking with Variety at the event, the director recalls first visiting Brazil a few years ago and going to Rio de Janeiro to see landmarks such as Christ the Redeemer and Copacabana Beach. “But everybody I met kept telling me I needed to go to Salvador. When I finally visited, it was almost like a psychedelic experience. It was one of the most striking feelings I have ever felt. It was like a fever dream; everything felt so vivid. I was there for maybe four or five days. When people describe ‘My Father’s Shadow’ as a fever dream, this is how I felt about Salvador.”

With “My Father’s Shadow” being released in Brazil at the end of the month, Davies Jr prepared a special treat for the city he felt so connected with: a screening with live score performed by the film’s musicians, Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra. Since the drama is being distributed by Filmes da Mostra, the distribution arm of the Mostra de São Paulo, Davies Jr is also taking the event to the city where he held the Brazilian premiere back in October. 

“I remember telling my Brazilian distributors once we struck a deal to show the film in Brazil that it would be incredible to have a proper premiere in Salvador,” adds the director. “I wanted to do something with the film in the city. I wanted to give the audience in Salvador something that felt truly special.” As for the São Paulo screening, the filmmaker called it a “gesture of our appreciation for having the film housed within such a fantastic, prestigious festival.”

The director’s time in Brazil is being captured by a duo of documentarians working on a special short film about how “My Father’s Shadow” resonates in Brazil. Director Lucas Crystal and cinematographer Henrique Alves first approached the British-Nigerian filmmaker at the Mostra de São Paulo, and have been closely following him on his latest visit.

“We thought about making a documentary when we realized that Akinola’s journey through Brazil would mimic that of Brazilians themselves, starting in the Northeast and going all the way down towards the south,” says Crystal. “We felt there was a poetry in this geographical mirroring, and we wanted to tell audiences about this bridge between Brazil and Nigeria, one we didn’t even know existed before meeting Akinola at the Mostra.”

The filmmaking duo says their film will be even more relevant given that Brazil will hold presidential elections at the end of the year. “Akinola’s film is very political and can talk to audiences at this key moment in our political history. We are about to make a choice that will define life for generations of Brazilians,” emphasizes Crystal, with Alves adding that films like “The Secret Agent” and “I’m Still Here” have opened a national appetite for political stories, but there’s still a lack of Black-focused and Black-led political narratives. “As a Black filmmaker, Akinola’s work spoke directly to me in a way Brazilian films haven’t in a while.”

With such a special connection to the Latin American country, would Davies Jr. ever embark on a Brazilian co-production? “Absolutely, I’d love to,” he says immediately. “It would be incredible to figure out the right relationship. I’ve met incredible Brazilian producers and filmmakers and everybody has been really generous and clever. I am sure when the time is right and the perfect opportunity arises, one hundred per cent, I’d love to work with Brazil. There is a bridge to be built. There is a big Brazilian community in Lagos, so hopefully we can find the right story for co-production. I am completely open to it.”

And the feeling is mutual when it comes to the Brazilian counterparts. Lomba, a filmmaker who works directly with strengthening the presence of Black creatives in Brazilian cinema through Nicho 54, says Davies Jr.’s visit to Brazil is “part of a certain Black zeitgeist, a moment where creative and business connections are heating up between Brazilian and African filmmakers thanks to a shared cultural imaginary. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of a long-awaited collaboration.” 

To Davies Jr., being able to connect with the diaspora is even “more important” than he realized while making his film. “The response to the film has been overwhelming. When you make an authentic piece of work, people in the diaspora can resonate with the film regardless of where they are. I think we need to see more of each other’s films. I think there needs to be a lot more collaboration and a lot more sharing of resources, concepts and ideas between filmmakers.”

“I think for so much of the world, especially the Anglophone world, we look towards the U.K. and the U.S. and suddenly that seems to dominate the conversation, but there is a huge underserved Francophone community, there’s a Caribbean community, a Latin American community… We just need to figure out more ways of connecting.”