First Look At Nicola Coughlan & Lydia West In ‘Big Mood’
06.04.2023 - 11:59 / variety.com
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief ITV has commissioned a second season of the comedy-drama series “The Dry” for ITVX. It will be produced by Element Pictures (part of Fremantle), in association with Fís Eireann/Screen Ireland and ITV Studios, in partnership with RTÉ. Nancy Harris (Dates) and acclaimed director Paddy Breathnach (Viva, Rosie) will return to helm the second season, which will stream exclusively on ITVX next year. The first season was made available to view for free on the streamer last month. With the story picking up seven months after the end of the first, Roisin Gallagher will return as recovering alcoholic Shiv Sheridan, alongside regular cast members from the first series. Further casting details will be confirmed later. in due course.
Emma Norton, Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe will serve as executive producers for Element Pictures, alongside Nancy Harris and Paddy Breathnach. ITV Studios is handling global distribution of the show. Linear TV rights sales on Uma Thurman-starring thriller “Suspicion” head the MIPTV slate of producer and distributor Keshet International. The show, a remake of Keshet’s “False Flag” was originally commissioned for streamer Apple TV+, which launched it in February last year. Directed by Chris Long the plot involves a trans-Atlantic cat and mouse game as the kidnappers of the son of a wealthy American businesswoman (Thurman) try to evade law enforcement agencies. It also stars Kunal Nayar, Noah Emmericah, Georgina Campbell, Elyes Gabel, Elizabeth Henstridge, Tom Rhys-Harries and Angel Coulby. At MIPTV, Keshet will also showcase surrogacy drama “A Body That Works,” modern-day western “Line in the Sand,” one-part investigation “Sexual Harassment – The Truth,” and romance format
First Look At Nicola Coughlan & Lydia West In ‘Big Mood’
EXCLUSIVE: Chris Diamantopoulos, who starred in HBO’s Silicon Valley and is currently on Peacock’s Mrs. Davis, has co-created and is set to star in a new family comedy series that is being taken out to market.
The critically-acclaimed HBO Max comedy series “The Other Two” returns with its third season next month. Starring Heléne Yorke, Drew Tarver, Case Walker, and Molly Shannon, the show was created by former “Saturday Night Live” co-head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Global cinema box office recovered strongly in the first three months of the year, driven by the performance of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in many territories and a bumper Chinese New Year season in mainland China. The upbeat news was delivered on the eve of CinemaCon Las Vegas by specialist research firm Gower Street Analytics, which has now increased its forecast of the cinema industry’s full year. The firm now projects that 2023 gross revenues will reach $32 billion, a 10% increase on its earlier estimate of $29 billion. “A $32 billion global box office in 2023 would represent an approximate +23% improvement on 2022. It remains 20% behind an average of the last three pre-pandemic years (2017-2019), but it shows how post-pandemic recovery of our business continues to improve,” said Gower Street.
K.J. Yossman ITVX and Apple TV+ have bucked the U.K.’s downward trend in streamer subscriptions by showing strong growth. According to the analysis from consultancy Kantar, the number of households in the U.K. that subscribe to at least one streaming service fell in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022. The first three months of this year showed 16.10 million households subscribed to at least one streamer while the first quarter of 2022 the figure was 16.91 million and the figure for the same quarter in 2021 was 16.95 million. Despite the consistent drop over the last two years, the research showed that ITVX’s premium service – which launched in the last quarter of 2023, replacing ITV’s previous streaming platform ITV Hub – gained the most number of new SVOD subscribers in the quarter. They were followed by Apple TV+.
Will Ferrell is no stranger to sports comedies, with the likes of “Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby,” “Semi-Pro,” and “Blades Of Glory” already under his belt. Now he’ll tackle territory similar to “Happy Gilmore” and “Caddyshack.” Deadline reports that Ferrell will headline an upcoming golf comedy series about a pro golfer who becomes the controversial face of a new league competing with the PGA.
EXCLUSIVE: In what is shaping up to become one of the biggest TV comedy packages to hit the marketplace in awhile, Will Ferrell & Jessica Elbaum’s Gloria Sanchez Productions and Rian Johnson & Ram Bergman’s T-Street have joined forces to develop a comedy TV series as a starring vehicle for Ferrell, I have learned.
It appears Charlie Sheen has made amends with “Two and a Half Men” showrunner Chuck Lorre, 12 years after their dramatic falling out.
EXCLUSIVE: Time does heal all wounds. Twelve years after Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre’s dramatic falling out on Two and a Half Men, the pair are back in business together, reuniting on Lorre’s first Max comedy series How To Be a Bookie, I have learned.
Kevin Hart‘s comedy series Die Hart has been renewed for a third season at Roku on the heels of a record-breaking premiere weekend for Season 2.
Matthew McConaughey teased his upcoming Apple comedy series with Woody Harrelson in an interview with Kelly Ripa on her SiriusXM podcast Let’s Talk off Camera with Kelly Ripa. McConaughey revealed the title of the series, Brother From Another Mother, which Apple has described as an odd-couple love story that revolves around the “strange and beautiful bond” between the pair.
SiriusXM’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast, the Texas actor revealed the title of the show to host Kelly Ripa.“It’s called ‘Brother From Another Mother,’” McConaughey said of what will be the on-screen reunion between him and fellow Texan Woody Harrelson, who last starred opposite McConaughey in the first season of the HBO crime drama “True Detective.” Both McConaughey and Harrelson were nominated for Emmys for their roles in the show. The two first worked together on the satire film “Edtv” nearly 25 years ago.As previously reported, the new series will center on a “heartfelt odd couple love story revolving around the strange and beautiful bond” between McConaughey and Harrelson’s characters.
Is Jason Sudekis going to pull of a triple crown? The “Ted Lasso” co-creator won the Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy in 2021 and 2022 and is gunning for a third win for the Apple TV+ breakout’s final season. The last time any actor pulled off three wins in a row was Michael J.
EXCLUSIVE: Apple TV+ has opted not to renew for a second season Amber Brown, its single-camera kids/family comedy series based on the bestselling books by Paula Danziger, which is headlined by Sarah Drew and child actor Carsyn Rose. The news comes more than eight months after the series’ 10-episode first season was released on July 29. I hear the options on the cast have lapsed.
Joe Otterson TV Reporter The upcoming Netflix animated comedy series “Mulligan” has set its full voice cast. The series regulars for the show include: Nat Faxon, Chrissy Teigen, Tina Fey, Sam Richardson, Phil Lamarr, and Dana Carvey. Kevin Michael Richardson, Ayo Edebiri, Daniel Radcliffe, Ronny Chieng have been cast in recurring guest star roles. Full character descriptions can be seen below. The series, which was originally ordered at Netflix in March 2020, hails from co-creators Robert Carlock and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” writer and executive producer Sam Means. Per the official logline, “After Earth is destroyed by an alien attack, a rag-tag band of survivors has to start society over from scratch. It’s an opportunity to learn from humanity’s past mistakes and get things right this time. Or make the same mistakes all over again. Probably the second one.”
Sure, HBO is breaking all sorts of records and gaining millions and millions of viewers with massively expensive shows like “House of the Dragon” and “The Last of Us,” but the premium network is still killing it with more under-the-radar offerings such as “Somebody Somewhere.” READ MORE: ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ Review: Kathryn Hahn Is Captivating In A Terrific Adaptation As seen in the new trailer for “Somebody Somewhere” Season 2, the series picks up after Season 1 and shows how life is going for new roommates, Sam and Joel.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief C More has commissioned a second, six-episode season of ITV Studios Finland’s glossy detective drama “Helsinki Crimes” (aka “Harjunpää”). The first season of Helsinki Crimes became one of C More’s most-watched crime series to date. After its launch on Netflix last year, in regions across CEE, Benelux, Austria and the Nordics, the series was one of the top ten most-watched series, and the third most-watched in Finland. In the new season, Chief Constable Timo Harjunpää, portrayed by Olli Rahkonen, and his murder team investigate bloody clashes between street gangs, love scams and a wave of burglaries.
UK streamer ITVX is to look into the life of fake CIA agent and bigamist William Allen Jordan in a three-part doc series.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Richard Roxburgh (“Elvis,” “The Crown”) and Rebecca Gibney (“Halifax: Retribution,” “Back to the Rafters,” “Wanted”) star in Prosper, a Lionsgate-Stan series about a family with huge wealth that builds a powerful mega-church. Production has now started in Sydney, Australia. First announced in September last year, “Prosper” follows the founding family of an Australian church as it is poised to break into the U.S. and harvest yet more wealth and power. But, while preaching a message of faith, love and acceptance to their followers, behind closed doors the Quinn the family is protecting shameful secrets.
Naman Ramachandran Blue Ant Media and World of Wonder have launch free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel Drag Race Universe on Amazon Freevee in the U.S. Programming launch highlights on the Drag Race Universe channel include: “Canada’s Drag Race” seasons 2 and 3 (19 x 60’), “RuPaul’s Drag Race U.K. vs The World” (6 x 60’), “RuPaul’s Drag Race U.K.” seasons 2 and 3 (20 x 60’). “Drag Race Holland” (8 x 60’), “Drag Race Espana” (10 x 60’), “RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under” seasons 1 and 2 (16 x 60’), the first season of “Drag Race Philippines” (10 x 60’) and “Drag Race Philippines Untucked” (10 x 30’), its companion series that follows the backstage drama.