Tag: Entertainment-Variety

A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump‘s executive order last year to end funding for PBS and NPR public media violated the First Amendment.

In a ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of the District Court for D.C. said Trump’s executive order to cease funding for NPR and PBS is unlawful and unenforceable. The judge wrote that the First Amendment right to free speech “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”

“It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch,” Moss wrote.

Trump’s order defunding PBS and NPR “singles out two speakers and, on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs… Although there are many lawful reasons that the government might decline to make ‘a valuable governmental benefit’ available to someone, punishing disfavored private speech is not one of them.”

Moss also noted that Trump’s order canceled federal funding for public media “without regard to whether the federal funds are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems, which serve as the technological backbones of public radio and television; to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones; to support the emergency broadcast system; or to produce or distribute music, children’s or other educational programming, or documentaries.”

A copy of the ruling is available at this link. Moss was nominated to the bench by President Obama.

Variety has reached out the White House for comment.

Both NPR and PBS had sued Trump over his executive order suspending U.S. federal funding for public media. Trump’s order, issued May 1, 2025, alleged the public-media organizations engaged in “biased and partisan news coverage” and instructed the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS” to the “maximum extent allowed by law.”

CPB shut down in January 2026 after 58 years following the funding cuts. In July 2025, Congress approved Trump’s rescission package, eliminating $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting that had been approved for the next two years. After Congress approved the defunding of CPB, Trump celebrated in a post on Truth Social, writing that Congress had cut funding from “ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED. REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”

In a statement about Tuesday’s ruling, PBS said, “We’re thrilled with today’s decision declaring the executive order unconstitutional. As we argued, and Judge Moss ruled, the executive order is textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, in violation of longstanding First Amendment principles. At PBS, we will continue to do what we’ve always done: serve our mission to educate and inspire all Americans as the nation’s most trusted media institution.”

Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, said: “Today’s ruling is a decisive affirmation of the rights of a free and independent press — and a win for NPR, our network of stations, and our tens of millions of listeners nationwide. The court made clear that the government cannot use funding as a lever to influence or penalize the press, whether as a national news service or a local newsroom. Public media exists to serve the public interest — that of Americans — not that of any political agenda or elected official.”

Maher added that NPR and its member stations “will continue delivering independent, fact-based, high-quality reporting to communities across the United States, regardless of the administration of the day.”

NPR also provided a statement from the attorney who represented the organization, Theodore Boutrous, partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. “Today’s ruling is a significant victory for the First Amendment and for freedom of the press,” Boutrous said. “The district court’s decision bars the government from enforcing its unconstitutional Executive Order targeting NPR and PBS because the President dislikes their news reporting and other programming. As the court expressly recognized, the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power—including the power of the purse—‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’ by others. The Executive Order crossed that line.”

In “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” we meet Yoshi, a cuddly green dinosaur in pink boots who looks like a plastic bath toy and will eat just about anything (he’s voiced in a babyish coo by Donald Glover). We also meet an army of Lumas, the icky-adorable iridescent stars in designer colors who are the cousins of Lumalee from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” — but Lumalee had a funny Debbie Downer vibe, whereas the new ones are just generic glowstick mascots saying “Mama!” The mama they’re referring to is Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), the adoptive mother of the Lumas (how did that happen? Why ask why?), who happens to be the sister of Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). In the opening scene, Rosalina is kidnapped by a giant shape-shifting droid that whisks her to outer space, where the entire movie takes place — and I mean that it really is set in space, since it never settles on a planet, or anywhere else, long enough to give you a satisfying sense of locale.

That droid is being controlled by Bowser Jr., who is like a tiny plushie version of his father — and who, as voiced by Benny Safdie, comes off as a kiddie Wallace Shawn pipsqueak tyrant. He’s got daddy issues, of course, but will resolve them, since Bowser (Jack Black) hasn’t gone away. He’s just very small (that happened when he got zapped at the end of the first film), and he’s now rather chastened, to the point that he actually becomes a friend of our heroes for a while and never even sings one song (that’s right — there is no sequel to “Peaches” in this movie). Then Bowser gets big again and reunites with his son, and the two agree to rule the universe together (or something), but somehow two Bowsers add up to less of a wowser than one. 

I should mention that the film also includes the grouchy Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) and his fellow denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom, plus the Honey Queen (Issa Rae), who rules the Honeyhive galaxy, and Wart (Luis Guzmán), who might just as well be called the Frog King, as well as the artesanía-decorated residents of what appears to be a Mexican village in the red desert, plus a giant bee, Rob the Robot (who has a funny moment when he gets stuck on saying the letter “rrrrrrrrr….”), a full-on T. rex and a giant purple dragon, plus Fox McCloud (Glen Powell), a swaggering pilot who’s like Han Solo crossed with Rocket from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.

Did I mention that Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), those valiant mustached Brooklyn plumbers, are in “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie”? They most definitely are, though they often feel like an afterthought. They’re on their own disparate galaxy quest, trying to stop the Bowsers, and to help Princess Peach rescue her captive sister. She and Mario have a mutual crush thing going on, but that’s kind of an afterthought too, since the romance isn’t built into the movie’s storyline. Nothing is, really. Not a single one of these characters, including Mario and Luigi, occupies the center of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” And that’s because the movie has no center.

The film keeps throwing things at you. It’s an orgy of video-game Easter eggs, but while that’s all clearly designed to appeal to young gamers, I don’t mean that the film replicates the experience of playing one of the Super Mario Bros. games. The first movie actually did — and managed, at the same time, to be a miraculously entertaining transmutational story for kids and adults alike. It was one of the best animated films in years.

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is one of the worst. It has the same directors, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, and the same screenwriter, Matthew Fogel, but despite flashes of imagistic dazzle, it almost seems like these talented artists have been body-snatched. It feels like the Nintendo suits took over this time. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is full of scenes of running, leaping, chasing, falling through the air, falling into lava, fighting and more fighting, but nothing in the movie is sustained. It’s a mad jumble, an eager product-tie-in mess. It’s one of the only animated features I’ve seen since the “Pokémon” films that seems to be wearing its Easter eggs on the outside.      

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” had a center, and a great one, in the presence of Bowser, who Jack Black played as a leering supervillain who was also a debauched romantic. The entire plot of the movie spun out of his love for Princess Peach, and Black’s vocal performance was a delectable weave of monomania and insecurity. I realize that the filmmakers didn’t just want to repeat what they did the first time. But they should have gone bigger. And the fact that Black never gets to sing a song is going to disappoint a galaxy’s worth of fans. Instead, the two Bowsers wind up seeming rather innocuous: just another double cog in the film’s machinery of eye candy in all directions.

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is frenetic in such an impersonal way that it feels like the entire film should be put on Ritalin. Yet it may well be that as a commercial enterprise, this more-is-more Easter-egg hunt of a movie will clean up exactly as it’s designed to. The film treats its story as a threadbare adventure, a mere throwaway, because it’s so focused on those little pings of recognition for gamers. And that’s quite a comedown. After several decades of dreadful video-game films, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and, last year, “A Minecraft Movie” were proof positive that the big-screen adaptation of a game could be wild — and, in a phantasmagorical way, classical — fun. Let’s hope “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” doesn’t herald a return to the days of video-game movies as spectacular and overstimulated chaos.

Variety has announced additional speakers for the 2026 Entertainment Marketing Summit, presented by Deloitte, on April 22 in Los Angeles. Speakers will include NBCU Television Chairman Pearlena Igbokwe; Apple’s VP of Music, TV, Sports, Podcasts, and Beats, Oliver Schusser; supermodel and entrepreneur Ashley Graham and Netflix Games President Alain Tascan. 
 
Igbokwe, Chairman, Television Studios, NBC Entertainment & Peacock Scripted, will participate in a keynote conversation with Cynthia Littleton, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Variety, speaking about the excitement for NBC as it celebrates its 100^th year anniversary as a storied TV brand. 
 
Schusser, VP Music, TV, Sports, Podcasts, and Beats at Apple, will speak to Variety reporter Steven Horowitz in a keynote conversation about Apple’s vision for connecting with audiences, hot off its wildly popular Bad Bunny Superbowl Halftime Show. 
 
Graham will join Natasha Bolouki, Partner and Agent, UTA, to chat about “The Power of Partnership,” moderated by Jennifer Maas, Senior TV Business and Games Reporter, Variety. 
 
Tascan joins Wenny Katzenstein, Managing Director, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Deloitte Consulting LLP, U.S. in the fireside chat “Leveling Up Fandom: How Games Extend Entertainment IP,” moderated by Variety’s Maas. 
 
In other newly added highlights, CAA Senior Leader Brent Weinstein will moderate the fireside chat “Mythical Momentum!,” a look into how Rhett & Link’s Mythical has driven consistent innovation and growth spanning three decades, featuring Dennis Ortiz, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Jacob Moncrief, COO, Mythical. 
 
“The next chapter of entertainment marketing will likely be defined by how well brands turn audiences into participants,” said Stephanie Dolan, U.S. Entertainment Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “The combination of storytelling, data, and real-time feedback is transforming fandom from something you observe into something you actively shape. As platforms expand and expectations evolve, marketers have an opportunity to build deeper, more personalized connections. With Deloitte’s 20th annual Digital Media Trends report launching this week, we’re excited to bring fresh insights to the event and collaborate with industry leaders to help shape the future of entertainment marketing.” 

Speakers join previously announced programming including keynote conversations featuring Pam Abdy, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group Co-Chair and CEO, and Tina Knowles, businesswoman, fashion designer, art collector, philanthropist and activist. 

Deloitte is the presenting partner of the summit. Please see Deloitte’s website for a detailed description of its legal structure.  NBCUniversal is a Premier Partner of the event, with supporting partners Discord, StackAdapt, & Vizio. Get your ticket today at variety.com/entmar.

NATPE, the industry convention that for decades brought TV executives together (and at one point was the largest syndication sales marketplace in the nation), is folding. Canada-based publishers Brunico Communications, which acquired the NATPE assets in 2023, announced Tuesday that it would no longer continue with its U.S. events effective next year, including NATPE Global, Realscreen Summit and Kidscreen Summit.

As part of the shutdown, NATPE executive director Claire Macdonald and Kidscreen publisher Jocelyn Christie are exiting Brunico.

Brunico blamed “this period of market change” for what it called a “difficult, but necessary decision” to end the U.S. events. The company will continue to operate the Banff World Media Festival (which takes place June 14 to 17 this year) and continue to publish Realscreen, Kidscreen, Playback and Strategy.

“This decision was deeply considered and stemmed from the market consolidation that continues to progress and have structural impacts on the content production business,” Brunico Communications president/CEO Russell Goldstein said in a statement. The company’s Kidscreen Awards and Realscreen Awards will also continue.

As for the exits of Macdonald and Christie, Goldstein added, “Their passion for the communities we serve has always been evident – from the calibre of the brands’ portfolio to the level of industry respect – and we thank them for their significant contributions.”

Brunico acquired NATPE in 2023 after the event — which launched in 1963 as the National Association of Television Programming Executives — declared bankruptcy. Among the assets Brunico purchased were NATPE Global, NATPE Budapest, NATPE Streaming+ and the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards. Because of the bankruptcy, NATPE — which already had been struggling to continue during the COVID pandemic — scrapped its 2023 event. In 2024, the show returned and in 2025 and 2026 was paired with Brunico’s longrunning Realscreen Summit in Miami.

NATPE’s peak was perhaps in the 1990s and early 2000s, when hundreds of syndication distributors would promote their wares on the massive NATPE convention floor — which major companies like Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount, King World, Sony and others erecting tremendous booths boasting A-list talent and gourmet catering. At night, distribbers like King World would hire talent like Elton John to wow the audience of station managers. But TV consolidation and the shrinking of the syndication business changed all that, and NATPE struggled to remain relevant into the 2010s, aiming its focus around to international and then the creator economy, but never quite finding its place in the new media order.

Perhaps more surprising, given Brunico’s longer tenure with its Realscreen and Kidscreen Summits (which are paired with its continuing trade publications), is the decision to end those events as well. The two events “have served as the heartbeat of the international unscripted and kids content communities for the past 30 years and have proudly been a seminal catalyst of opportunity for an entire generation of media executives and their companies,” Brunico said.