Tag: Entertainment – Variety

It’s time to return to Star’s Hollow.

An official documentary about “Gilmore Girls,” the beloved seven-season family dramedy that premiered in 2000, is currently in production and set to debut on HBO Max. Per the official logline, the untitled film is told from the perspective of series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino alongside her husband, executive producer Daniel Palladino, and “reveals how the show eclipsed expectations to become a cross-generational phenomenon by unpacking the unique alchemy of the creators, cast, crew and collaborators. The film includes never-before-seen outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage and script pages.”

Along with the Palladinos, the documentary will feature Lauren Graham, who starred in “Gilmore Girls” as Lorelai Gilmore, plus additional key cast and crew.

Bonni Cohen serves as director on the documentary, which is produced by Sony Pictures Television’s This Machine, led by R.J. Cutler, in association with Warner Horizon Unscripted Television. Executive producers include Cutler, Jane Cha Cutler, the Palladinos, Mark Blatty, Elise Pearlstein and Trevor Smith. Cohen and Melissa Robledo serve as producers.

“Gilmore Girls” was produced by Warner Bros. Television and aired on the WB for its first six seasons before moving to the CW for its seventh and final season from 2006 to 2007. Along with Graham, the cast included Alexis Bledel as Lorelai’s daughter, Rory Gilmore, as well as Melissa McCarthy, Keiko Agena, Yanic Truesdale, Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop, Edward Herrmann, Liza Weil, Jared Padalecki, Milo Ventimiglia, Sean Gunn, Chris Eigeman and Matt Czuchry.

While the Warner Bros. production is the first authorized documentary about “Gilmore Girls,” an unauthorized project called “Searching for Stars Hollow” was announced to be in the works in 2025 with Bishop, Padalecki, Chad Michael Murray and more set for interviews.

The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that outdoor poster ads for “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” breached its code by presenting an image that gave “a realistic impression of a dead child,” while clearing companion TV and streaming spots for the same campaign.

The ASA investigated four issues stemming from several complaints about ads for the Warner Bros Entertainment U.K. Ltd. cinema release, seen in April this year. The regulator upheld one complaint and rejected the other three in a ruling published Aug. 5.

“The ASA received 30 complaints, many of whom believed the ads were distressing for children and adults,” the ASA said.

Posters on the London Underground and at outdoor sites showed a close-up of a mummified female figure with grey, ashen skin, cracked lips and one eye swollen shut, wrapped in material resembling a shroud and inscribed with hieroglyphic-style symbols.

The ASA said the figure’s features gave “a realistic impression of a dead child” and that the material wrapped around her added to that impression. Because the posters ran in untargeted locations, including on the London Underground and at a site visible from a children’s nursery, the regulator concluded the imagery was likely to distress young children who saw it. It ruled the posters unsuitable for outdoor display in that form, finding them in breach of CAP Code rules 1.3 and 4.2.

Warner Bros. had argued the poster’s neutral expression, open eye and absence of a sarcophagus or restraints were deliberate choices meant to reduce distress, and noted the studio’s outdoor buying policy of keeping horror titles at least 100 metres from schools – a standard that does not extend to nurseries.

The ASA ordered that the poster ads “must not appear in the form complained of” and directed Warner Bros. to keep future marketing likely to frighten young children away from places where they would see it.

The ruling cited BCAP Code rules 1.2, 4.1, 4.10, 5.1 and 32.3, and CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.3, 4.1 and 4.2.

The ASA rejected a separate complaint that the posters trivialized child loss or ongoing global conflicts, finding that text identifying the image as promotion for a film provided sufficient context, even if some viewers found it distasteful.

Variety has reached out to Warner Bros. Discovery for comment.

The campaign also included a TV ad and a matching Prime Video ad depicting a family receiving a call about a daughter who had gone missing eight years earlier, with the father questioning what she was doing in a 3000-year-old sarcophagus. On-screen text read, “Some Things Are Meant to Stay Buried.” Both ran with a post-7:30 p.m. scheduling restriction cleared by Clearcast.

The ASA found the TV and streaming ads were unlikely to cause serious distress and that their scheduling restrictions were sufficient to limit exposure to young children, rejecting complaints that they should have been kept off air later or targeted more precisely on Prime Video. It also noted Clearcast’s data showing an average children’s index of 31 across the TV placements – well below the industry baseline of 100 that represents typical child viewership, indicating the actual child audience was low. No further action was required for the TV and streaming ads.

“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” released in the U.K. on April 17 and grossed $2.9 million.

Disney posted mixed results for the June 2026 quarter, as Disney+ and Hulu continued to boost profits and the theme parks division turning in solid performance. And Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro revealed his latest move to restructure the media conglomerate’s operations: He’s moving most of consumer products out of Disney Experiences and into the entertainment unit.

In a letter to shareholders accompanying the earnings results Wednesday, Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro said that starting in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 (which runs October-December 2026) Disney will be moving “much” of its consumer products business results from the experiences segment to the entertainment segment. That means that sales for merchandise for “Avengers: Doomsday,” for example, would fall under entertainment revenue and put the bulk of the consumer products biz under Disney Entertainment’s studios group. The consumer products business accounted for $1.1 billion in revenue this quarter, the strongest year-over-year growth in five years.

“We believe this shift will have strategic and operational benefits by bringing the monetization of our IP through consumer products closer to the studios that create that IP,” D’Amaro, who previously ran Disney Experiences before stepping into the CEO job in March, wrote in the letter to shareholders. “Additionally, we believe this presentation will better reflect the returns our Entertainment segment is generating from the content it produces and make our Entertainment segment more comparable to peer reporting methodologies.”

On the streaming front, revenue from Disney+ and Hulu was up 11% for the April-June quarter, to $5.53 billion — and operating income in the entertainment streaming segment more than doubled, to $712 million, compared with $329 million in the year-earlier period. Disney said overall streaming subscription revenue was up 15%, to $4.7 billion, and ad sales increased 3%. The company no longer discloses total subscriber figures on a quarterly basis.

In the letter, D’Amaro also outlined some AI developments at the company, including the Parks division’s recently implemented large-scale use of Disney’s proprietary AI tool, J.A.R.V.I.S.

“We made our J.A.R.V.I.S. AI tool available to our more than 2,000 Imagineers earlier this year, giving them instant access to over 70 years of institutional knowledge,” D’Amaro wrote. “We’re using AI-powered digital twins and simulation tools to design and stress-test new attractions, including leveraging these tools for the Abu Dhabi park. And we’re applying AI to simplify the booking and planning journey for our guests, while equipping our cast members with AI-assisted tools to better serve guests in the moment.”

Disney continued to tout the blockbuster success of “Toy Story 5” in the latest quarterly earnings results, revealing the film’s release has also led to the franchise as a whole reaching more than 2 billion hours streamed on Disney+ and record consumer products sales.

Overall, Disney reported net income of $2.63 billion on $25.2 billion in revenue, with adjusted EPS of $2.06 (up from $1.51 with the exclusion of income tax and one-time impairment and severance charges) for the quarter ended June 27. Revenue was up 7% year over year while net income increased 28% (without those favorable exclusion, income was down 48%) for the period, which is Disney’s Q3 of fiscal 2027. Wall Street analysts on average forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $1.85 on $25.4 billion in revenue for the three months ended June 30 (Disney’s Q3 of fiscal 2026), according to data provider LSEG.

Total segment operating income was up 21% to $5.6 billion. Free cash flow came in at $3.1 billion.

Following recent layoffs, D’Amaro noted that Disney remains “highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise to create incremental capacity to invest for growth and are evaluating a variety of levers, including reductions in labor and SG&A.” The CEO says the company is “mid-stream in this work” and “will provide future updates on our progress.”

Previously, Disney had set an $8 billion goal for share repurchases in fiscal 2026, which ends in September. With the confirmation of the sale of Disney’s 50% stake in A+E Global Media to an affiliate of co-owner Hearst, Disney said it will use the approximately $1.2 billion in cash from the sale to increase its total share repurchases for the year to at least $9 billion.

Disney took a $812 million impairment charge during the quarter due to its investment in A+E. Severance costs for the quarter were $88 million.

Overall, Disney’s entertainment segment (which includes film and TV studios and networks as well as the streaming business) revenue was up 6% to $11.3 billion for the quarter. The division continued to receive a boost from the acquisition of a large stake in Fubo last fall, which it combined with the Hulu live TV business. The addition of Fubo contributed a 4% lift in subscription and affiliate fees revenue, which was up a total of 12%.

Ad sales for the entertainment division were down 1% on lower rates. Content sales decreased 6% due to a decrease in TV/video-on-demand and home entertainment distribution sales.

On the movie front, Disney praised “Toy Story 5” for surpassing $1 billion in global box office, bringing the franchise’s lifetime global box office to more than $4 billion, while downplaying recent releases “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” and the live-action “Moana” movie, both of which “underperformed our box office expectations,” Disney said.

ESPN revenue for the quarter was up 4% to $4.5 billion. Ad sales increased 5% on higher impressions. Operating income declined 17% to $858 million, a larger drop than the 14% that Disney previously estimated due to a double-digit percentage increase in programming expenses, including the timing of new rights agreements, on the close of the NFL Network deal. “Contributing to the lower-than-expected operating income were four-game sweeps in early rounds of the NBA Playoffs and the impact of a network carriage dispute,” Disney said.

Disney Experiences, which currently houses theme parks, cruises and consumer products, saw June quarter revenue of $10 billion (up 10%) and operating income of $3 billion (up 20%).

Attendance at Disney domestic parks grew 3% from April-June. Disney World in particular experiencing a “stand-out quarter, with healthy core attendance increases from domestic tourists and annual passholders, and effective summer promotions and new experiences that further supplemented growth,” though Disney notes it has “continued to face headwinds from international attendance at our domestic parks.”

For the July-September quarter, the company expects total segment operating income of approximately $4.9 billion, with the inclusion of financial results from a 53rd week of operations.

“Our strong fiscal Q3 results and reiterated full-year outlook reinforce our confidence that we are uniquely well positioned,” D’Amaro said in the letter to shareholders. “Decades of IP investment have built deep fan connections that translate into strong financial results. Our accelerating global guests growth at Experiences, ‘Toy Story 5’s’ theatrical and consumer products success, and strong ESPN viewership gains all helped expand our consumer reach this quarter. Together, our results show a unique ability to engage consumers at scale, both digitally and physically, even amid macro uncertainty.”

Also Wednesday, Disney struck a content deal with TikTok that will let the app’s creators (initially in the U.S.) make shorts tied to characters and stories from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, FX and other properties. The resulting creator videos will be available on both TikTok and on Disney+ in the form of “Verts,” the company’s vertical video format.

Prateek Kuhad, the Indian singer-songwriter known for hits including “Cold/Mess” and “Kasoor,” will make his feature film acting debut in “Drowning” (“Doobna” in Hindi/Urdu), Marginal MediaWorks has revealed.

Directed by Dar Gai and shot on location in New Delhi, the film marks Marginal’s first fiction feature produced in South Asia, in partnership with Los Angeles-based label D36 and Mumbai-based Jugaad Motion Pictures.

Kuhad plays Tarush, an indie musician in Delhi who lands one breakout hit and then can’t escape the grip of a criminal record label boss. Marginal founder and CEO Sanjay M. Sharma is producing with the company’s head of film, Milan Chakraborty, D36 co-founder and CEO Abhi Kanakadandila, and Jugaad co-founders Dheer Momaya and Gai, from a story the group developed jointly.

“The film is like if the Safdie brothers mixed John Carney’s ‘Once’ and Lars von Trier’s ‘Dancer in the Dark’ in the blender that is the contemporary music scene in Delhi,” Sharma said.

For Kuhad, the project grew out of an earlier collaboration with Gai, who directed the video for his song “Cold/Mess.” “Ever since Dar directed the video for ‘Cold/Mess’ I hoped we would find more ways to work together,” Kuhad said. “So when Abhi and Sanjay brought the idea for a film inspired by my song ‘Drown,’ I was immediately intrigued.”

Kuhad’s “Cold/Mess” reached No. 1 on Spotify India and was featured on former U.S. President Barack Obama’s year-end playlist; the Gai-directed video was later named Rolling Stone’s Music Video of the Year. His third album, “Full Moon Chamber,” arrived July 10 via Atlantic Records, following a run of sold-out headline tours across North America, Europe, the U.K., Asia and the Middle East. He is repped by CAA and Big Bad Wolf India, with Everyday Rebellion handling worldwide management.

Gai’s credits include “Three and a Half,” which streams on Netflix worldwide after a stellar festival run; her second film, “Namdev Bhau: In Search of Silence,” played at Busan, BFI London and Palm Springs. Jugaad’s “Last Film Show” was shortlisted for the international feature Oscar. “With Doobna, I wanted to make a film that feels like life right now: real, funny, tragic, chaotic, and impossible to escape, impossible to press a reset button,” said Gai, a Ukrainian native long based in Mumbai.

Kanakadandila, whose D36 roster spans South Asian-descent artists in the U.S., U.K., India and Pakistan, framed the film as a response to a gap he sees in how the region’s music culture reaches screen. “India has a singular relationship between music and cinema, but there’s a fundamental mismatch between the spirit of the contemporary scene and the format of traditional Bollywood,” he said.

The film is the anchor of a South Asia-focused push within Marginal’s broader international slate, which also includes projects in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Europe and Canada. “This is a trillion dollar market, two billion people, more English speakers than the United States itself, and the fastest growing, digitally connected, and largest youth population in the world,” Sharma said. “Just as we’ve seen Korean culture, food, fashion, music and cinema resonate around the world, a similar wave is coming from South Asia.”

Marginal has produced more than a dozen features in just over five years, including Tribeca 2025 Audience Award runner-up “The Rose: Come Back to Me,” Tribeca Jury Prize winner “Cypher,” and the recently released horror title “Camp.”

ESPN has lined up its fourth annual “Creator Network” of digital stars who will fan out across the country to promote the 2026 NFL season that is set to culminate with the Super Bowl airing on ESPN for the first time.

The five members of the cohort for this year are, as described by ESPN:

Chase Murman (@theQBplug) TikTok | Instagram | YouTube — Founder of The QB Plug, one of social media’s fastest-growing football brands, known for original quarterback storytelling and athlete-first content that has helped redefine how the next generation consumes football.

Isaac Rochell TikTok | Instagram | YouTube — Former NFL defensive lineman, sports media personality, and creator who combines an authentic player’s perspective with relatable storytelling around sports, fatherhood, and life beyond football.

Simone Scott TikTok | Instagram — Sports creator, host, and reporter who makes football, basketball, and other sports approachable through clear, engaging content that helps fans better understand the games and storylines driving the conversation.

Diana Flores TikTok | Instagram — Captain and quarterback of Mexico’s World Champion National Flag Football Team, global ambassador for the sport, and bilingual creator helping grow flag football’s reach ahead of its Olympic debut at LA28.

Leah Cammarano TikTok — Sports analytics creator and former Carolina Panthers Football Analytics intern who makes advanced football data accessible through engaging, easy-to-understand storytelling.

“This is a major moment in ESPN’s history, and we have an incredible opportunity to tell that story in new and authentic ways,” said Kaitee Daley, ESPN’s senior VP digital, social and streaming content. “Partnering with creators who have built passionate communities through their distinctive voices and storytelling styles will help bring fans closer to the people, culture and highlights that will define the road to ESPN’s first Super Bowl.”

ESPN first established its Creator Network in 2022 as the cable giant sought to embrace new forms of content and promotion for its game coverage and studio shows. The 2026 group will be given broad access to attend college football games, NFL events including the upcoming Super Bowl set for Feb. 14 at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium. ESPN and ABC will share the rights to the big game, marking the return of pro football to ABC’s air, some 20 years after the “Monday Night Football” franchise shifted from ABC to ESPN.

ESPN is one of many blue-chip media brands that have worked to harness the power of buzzy creators to produce social media and video content. In the sports context, NBCUniversal brought influencers and creators to help drive conversation around the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy. In February, the NBA enlisted more than 200 creators to help promote the NBA All-Star Game and All-Star Week events in Los Angeles.

ESPN’s Creator Network is supported by Blue Hour Studios, a social media-focused brand and media strategy agency based in New York.

Paramount Skydance said second-quarter profit fell, even as the company was boosted by its streaming media and studios operations, while its large TV division shed ad dollars and subscribers. David Ellison, the company’s CEO, vowed that its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery would close, despite legal setbacks that have slowed the transaction.

“While there is still significant work to be done, our confidence in the opportunity continues to grow, and
we’re excited for the future of this company powered by storytelling and accelerated by technology,” Ellison said in a letter to shareholders Tuesday.

Paramount said net earnings fell to $41 million, or four cents per share, in the second quarter, compared with $57 million, or eight cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Revenue rose 1% to $6.91 billion, compared with nearly $6.85 billion a year earlier.

In the company’s TV operations, the largest part of its business, revenue fell 9%, to $3.12 billion, compared with $3.45 billion a year earlier. Ad revenue fell 14%, due in part to difficult comparisons with 2025 that involved more NCAA advertising. Distribution fees fell 6%, due in large part to erosion of linear subscriptions.

Revenue from streaming operations rose 9% to $2.5 billion, with revenue from Paramount+ rising 16%. The service added 2 million subscribers in the second quarter, ahead of expectations. The company cited FIFA World Cup telecasts in certain Latin American nations as as UFC broadcasts in the U.S., and said Paramount+ had its “lowest churn quarter” since launch.

Revenue from the company’s studios rose 16% year-over-year to $1.3 billion, owing in part to films such as “Scary Movie” and programming for third parties from its TV production operations.

Paramount said its upfront sales process had ended, and it had secured “double-digit growth in commitments across the company,” without offering further details about volume or pricing.

The company projected revenue in the third quarter would grow between 4% to 7%, increasing to $6.95 billion and $7.15 billion, with more growth from studios and streaming and “moderating declines” from TV. Subscribers to Paramount+ are seen as “flattish.”

Despite a recent legal setback that will delay the closing of its deal for Warner, Ellison said he remained optimistic it would eventually close. “We remain confident the transaction will be completed, creating a stronger, more competitive media company,” he said, describing the combined entity as a smaller player when compared with “tech giants such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and others.”

More to come