Christopher Hampton to Adapt Walter Isaacson’s Acclaimed Biography of Leonardo Da Vinci for Universal (EXCLUSIVE)

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Oscar winner Jeremy Irons has joined the cast of Palme d’Or-winning director Bille August‘s prestige limited series “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which also stars Sam Claflin. A sprawling adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel, the English-language series is produced by Mediawan’s banner Palomar, the leading Italian company behind “Inspector Montalbano” and “The Name of the Rose,” in collaboration with another Mediawan label, France’s DEMD Productions.

EXCLUSIVE: Amidst the continuing tragedy of the Israel-Hamas war, Leviathan Production has entered development on a feature adaptation of Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battles Against Hate Speech, a historical work penned by Victoria Saker Woeste.The film will tell the story of the campaign of antisemitism waged by automotive pioneer Henry Ford throughout the 1920s. It was in 1925 that Aaron Sapiro, a self-made lawyer and activist, sued Ford for libel. After a dramatic court case that gripped the nation, Sapiro forced Ford to shut down his antisemitic newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, and apologize publicly to the Jewish people.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Kelly Rizzo, TV personality and entrepreneur who is the wife of the late Bob Saget, is launching “Comfort Food,” a new weekly podcast in which she hosts intimate conversations with guests about life, love and loss — while tucking into emotionally comforting food. In January 2022, Saget died at a Florida hotel at the age of 65. The comedian, known for his starring role on “Full House,” had just kicked off a new comedy tour.

Perfume lovers can get their hands on a luxury Tom Ford scent for one of the cheapest prices I've seen in one retailer's huge Black Friday sale. I'm a perfume expert, and have tried a lot of scents on the market, as well as making my own fragrances in the perfume capital of the world - Grasse, France.

and . The lookalike pair have been galavanting around New York City, as supermodels do, looking gorgeous on the red carpet, also as supermodels do.On November 15, the duo wore Ralph Lauren to the National Book Awards, where their outfits could not disguise the fact that they have practically the same face.

Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber chose to match outfits in a fashionable outing in New York. The two opted for all black looks at the exposition of Planet Omega at the Chelsea Factory. While they coordinated on color, the two added their own personal style to each outfit, resulting in two different looks that were in harmony.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Get ready for Gawker 3.0: The twice-shuttered blog site has a new owner, who plans to bring the gossipy pop-culture brand back to life — but not in exactly the same way. Meng Ru Kuok, CEO and founder of Singapore-based Caldecott Music Group, acquired the assets of Gawker from Bustle Digital Group. In an email to Variety, Kuok confirmed that he has closed the deal buying the Gawker trademarks and domain name but not its article archives.

EXCLUSIVE: The Jackson Hole International Film Festival will debut December 8 to 10 in Jackson, WY, via a new partnership with the Hamptons International Film Festival.

petition that has amassed over 21,000 signatures so far. It accuses Macy’s of attempting to expose “tens of millions of viewers at home to the liberal LGBTQ agenda.”The group primarily takes issue with including musical performances from two Broadway shows — & Juliet and Shucked — both of which feature trans or nonbinary performers.Justin David Sullivan, who is nonbinary, plays the role of May, a nonbinary friend of Juliet in & Juliet, while Alex Newell, a Tony Award winner who is also nonbinary, plays the female character Lulu in Shucked.Calling the parade a “nonbinary and transgender extravaganza,” the group laments Sullivan’s decision to decline eligibility for the Tony Awards on the grounds that the traditional gender-based acting categories are not inclusive enough for gender-nonconforming actors.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Tosca Musk‘s romance-centric streamer Passionflix has found the leads for its film adaptation of Alice Clayton’s 2012 New York Times best-selling romance novel “Wallbanger.” Playing the steamy love story’s leads Caroline and Simon are “Heels” vet Kelli Berglund and “Hidden Strike” actor Amadeus Serafini. “Wallbanger” is an irresistible tale of exasperation at first sight, according to the film’s official synopsis.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Comedian Tom Segura has announced the first leg of his new global stand-up comedy tour “Tom Segura: Come Together.” “This tour is bigger and blacker than anything I’ve ever done,” Segura said. “But that name has already been used, but ‘Come Together’ gets the point across. Let’s all come together for a night.

Alison Herman TV Critic SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers from “Unmortricken,” the fifth episode of “Rick and Morty” Season 7. Dan Harmon is, by his own admission, “allergic to serialized, canonical stuff.” But the “Rick and Morty” co-creator told Variety that he resisted that impulse for “Unmortricken,” the episode that brought Season 7 of the Adult Swim animated sitcom to its halfway point on Sunday night. Not only does “Unmortricken” check in on the series’ overarching story for the first time since the Season 6 premiere (which aired over a year ago); it also sees the grisly death of a character once built up as the show’s arch-antagonist, even as it gives another an unprecedented level of power within the “Rick and Morty” universe.

Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey recently encountered a TV ad that conjured memories of his company’s carriage battle with Disney last September. This commercial message, however, came from a different legacy media company pushing into subscription streaming.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “My Stand-In,” an action drama that starts shooting imminently, is a new Thai-language original series for Chinese streaming platform iQiyi. Fitting the booming ‘Boys Love’ genre, the series is a screen adaptation of a hit Chinese-language web novel “Stand-In Ship” written by Shui Qiancheng. The underlying novel has garnered over a billion readers on platforms including Weibo and iQiyi Novels.

New Riyadh-based acquisition and distribution company TwentyOne Entertainment has announced its launch at upcoming the Red Sea International Film Festival, which is due to unfold in the port city of in Jeddah from November 30 to December 9.

As a string of seaside communities frequented by affluent Big Apple residents, you might think The Hamptons are off limits to us mere mortals. But we were pleasantly surprised when we paid a brief visit to escape the frenetic energy of “the city that never sleeps”. We set off on the only (double deck) Long Island Railroad [LIRR] train to Montauk from New York’s Penn Station at 9am.The single track railway takes you out to the Hamptons in the morning, returning at 11pm.The three-hour journey allows time to settle back, chat and tuck into a packed brunch, passing through each of the Hamptons, West, East and Southampton, before arriving at Montauk.

Christopher Vourlias When the Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival kicks off its 64th edition on Nov. 2, the organizers will unveil a host of changes while renewing their commitment to serving audiences at one of Europe’s longest-running film events — all at a time of almost unprecedented uncertainty over the future of cinema and even the very purpose of festivals themselves.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Music Box Films has dropped the trailer for “The Crime Is Mine,” François Ozon’s screwball comedy set in 1930s Paris starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder and Isabelle Huppert. A showbiz caper with a feminist edge in the vein of Ozon’s “8 Women” and “Potiche,” “The Crime Is Mine” will open in New York on Dec. 25, followed by Los Angeles and a national expansion.

Ethan Shanfeld Matty Matheson, celebrity chef and star of FX’s restaurant dramedy “The Bear,” has released a free digital cookbook via WeTransfer. The book, “Cookin’ Somethin’ for College,” features 12 easy-to-make recipes geared toward Gen Z and college students. The recipes range from the “ultimate” breakfast sandwich to peanut butter instant noodles with sesame fried egg.

Naman Ramachandran Bangladeshi auteur Mostofa Sarwar Farooki has wrapped his latest film “Last Defenders of Monogamy.” The cast is headlined by popular Bangladeshi actor Chanchal Chowdhury (“Karagar,” “Hawa”) and Xefer Rahman and the cast also includes Samina Hussain Prema and Shuddho Rai. The film follows Shafqat (Chowdhury), a father of two adolescents and a loving husband, who is a firm believer in the ideals of monogamy but the winds of change take a big test of his ideologies. “Working with Farooki is always special.