How Foreign-Language and Indie Oscar Contenders Worked the System

Jesse Williams is celebrating the opening night of his Broadway show!

Michael Appler Jesse Williams and Jesse Tyler Ferguson celebrated the Broadway opening for “Take Me Out” on Monday evening in New York at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater.A revival of the 2003 Tony-winning best play, headlined by Williams, Ferguson and Patrick J. Adams, “Take Me Out” is the third of 19 new shows that will open this month, continuing the march of star-driven offerings in Broadway’s first regular season since its return after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

If the last week in our entertainments has shown us anything, it’s that even the most ordered, traditional of ceremonies can be disrupted by an unkind explosion of id, with ramifications splashing like crocodile tears on even the most unexpected of our heroes. Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play that charts the ramifications when a star baseball player comes out as gay, opens on Broadway tonight in a revival that has the perfect timing of a triple play.

Sarah Ferguson and her ex-husband Prince Andrew had a social media gaffe over the weekend.

K.J. Yossman It was a quirk of fate that first set Cécile Frot-Coutaz on the path to becoming CEO of Sky Studios, to which she was appointed last year.“I think we all have [those] moments that have quite an impact on your trajectory,” Frot-Coutaz tells Variety. “You may not really realize it when it happens, but when you look back later on, you can see the thread.”For Frot-Coutaz, who is receiving Variety’s Intl.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentIn the run up to MipTV, Keshet International has unveiled a raft of new shows, spanning factual and foreign-language dramas, including “Ellie Simmonds: A World Without Dwarfism?” from the U.K., “Roomies” from Finland, “Storm Lara” from Belgium and “Family Dinner Date” from Israel. “Storm Lara” is a a real-time thriller produced by Belgium’s A Perfect View which has been commissioned by Flemish streamer Streamz and was part of this year’s Berlinale Series Market Selects. “Storm Lara” revolves around five people whose lives collide during a late-night radio show.Ordered by BBC One and produced by Flicker Productions, “Ellie Simmonds: A World Without Dwarfism?” is a one-off documentary about British Paralympian Ellie Simmonds who travels around the U.K.

Moon Knight is reportedly working on a new Marvel project.As reported in Deadline, Sabir Pirzada will work on a new adaptation of superhero ‘Nova’.The character first appeared in Marvel Comics 46 years ago. Nova – or Richard Rider – is a member of the intergalactic police force called Nova Cops.In the comics, Nova has crossed paths with the Guardians Of The Galaxy and the secret Avengers, meaning there is potential to cross over with other Marvel films.It is not known yet whether Nova will be developed into a feature film or a limited series for Disney+.NME has reached out to Marvel for comment.Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige ha previously told ComicBook that Nova was set to appear in early drafts of James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy.“If we have a big board with a bunch of characters that have more immediate potential, Nova is on that board,” he told the publication.“Because of the connection to the Guardians universe, because there are more than one examples to pull from in the comics that are interesting.

Friends forever! After The Office debuted on NBC in 2005, viewers quickly fell in love with the different dynamics amongst the cast.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, met with Ukrainian refugees in Poland on Thursday.  Ferguson, 62, shared on Twitter that Poland has taken in about 1.7 million refugees so far. "The invasion of Ukraine is heartbreaking to watch. So many families are being separated and displaced," she wrote.

take part in a poll featuring the last 10 Best Picture winners.Just as this year’s Oscar voters are doing with this year’s nominees beginning Thursday, the poll’s participants are asked to rank the 10 past winners in order of preference. Then the ranked choice voting (RCV) system will be used to determine which of the films has the broadest across-the-board support, just as the Academy’s accounting firm of PwC will do with Oscar ballots.The 10 films are, in chronological order, “The Artist,” “Argo,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight,” “Birdman,” “The Shape of Water,” “Green Book,” “Parasite” and “Nomadland.”The poll is now open here.Early next week, we will reveal the results and explain in detail how the process worked to arrive at those results.The ranked-choice system has long been used in the nomination round of Oscar voting, but it was extended to the final Best Picture vote after the category expanded from five to 10 nominees in 2010.

Tim Gray Senior Vice President“Audible,” an Oscar nominee for documentary short, features a winning combination: great filmmaking and a great subject matter.Director Matt Ogens had been waiting for 12 years to tell the story about the Maryland School for the Deaf and their championship football team. However, he doesn’t consider it a sports documentary: “It’s a coming-of-age story and some of it is unique, some of it is universal.”However, he had trouble getting funding: “We had a lot of doors shut in our faces by people thinking there wasn’t an audience for this.”During that time, Ogens would check in regularly with people at the school when he visited his family in the Maryland-D.C.

EXCLUSIVE: Imperative Entertainment, the company behind the Boomtown podcast, which is being adapted into a Billy Bob Thornton-fronted series from Taylor Sheridan, has set its latest Texas podcast.

EXCLUSIVE: David Steward II’s Lion Forge Animation studio, known for its Academy Award winning short Hair Love from director Matthew A. Cherry, has expanded its leadership team while continuing to scale production and development activity in its third year, promoting two-time Emmy-winning animation director Saxton Moore to Vice President of Production, and hiring Neely Shamam to serve as Vice President of Development.

Eric Stonestreet had quite the story to tell regarding his old frat house as he chatted to Drew Barrymore on Global’s “The Drew Barrymore Show”.

Oscar winnerWilliam Hurt, who died today at 71, left behind a yet-to-be-released TV series, AMC’s first animated drama Pantheon. Hurt was cast in the project, from creator and showrunner Craig Silverstein a year ago. He had completed vis voice work on the series before his death, sources tell Deadline. There is no premiere date yet for Pantheon; it will likely debut later this year.

OtherSide Entertainment stopped working on System Shock 3 in 2019.Spector, studio and creative director at OtherSide, recently spoke with GamesBeat. While he didn’t say his version of the game was cancelled, Spector clarified that OtherSide Entertainment hasn’t worked on it for a while.When asked if the development of System Shock 3 came to an end for OtherSide, Spector responded: “We released a statement last year.

Jon Burlingame editorThe Academy’s 400-member music branch singled out an especially diverse group this year, including composers born in England, Spain and Germany, along with two Americans – one of whom is not only female but also a person of color.They also cast a wide net in terms of genre: a comedy, two dramas, a science-fiction epic and an animated family film. And while “Dune” has long been the favorite of Oscar prognosticators, don’t count out critically praised “Power of the Dog,” the colorful backdrop of “Encanto,” or Academy voters’ frequent use of the score category as consolation prize: a convenient way to reward a film that won’t win anything else.“Don’t Look Up”New York composer Nicholas Britell received his third Oscar nomination for the music of Adam McKay’s sci-fi social satire: an eclectic brew of big-band jazz, traditional orchestral sounds, considerable electronics and a wild collection of offbeat instruments from toy piano to banjo and mandolin.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentHamaguchi Ryusuke’s Oscar-nominated “Drive My Car” took eight prizes at the 45th Japan Academy Film Prize ceremony, held on Friday at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takawana in Tokyo.In addition to the best picture award, the film won best director (Hamaguchi), best screenplay (Hamaguchi and co-writer Oe Takamasa) and best actor (Nishijima Hidetoshi). The film also scooped prizes for cinematography, lighting, editing and sound recording.Meanwhile, best actress went to Arimura Kasumi for her work in the hit romantic drama “We Made a Beautiful Bouquet.”Best animation honors were awarded to Watanabe Ayumu’s “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko,”  a heart-warming coming-of-age film set in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.