‘Public Defenders’ Comedy From Eddie Quintana & McG Lands Pilot Order At ABC

EXCLUSIVE: Picture Tree Int’l (PTI) has boarded sales on German Sophie Scholls – The Final Days Oscar-nominee and hitmaker Marc Rothemund’s heart-warming family drama Weekend Rebels, inspired by the true story of a father who forged a special bond with his autistic son through the search for a perfect soccer club.

Movies and mountains! Mammoth Film Festival returns to California this year and will feature several indie flicks with star-studded casts.

American Cinemas Editors has cut together the nominees for its 73rd annual ACE Eddie Awards, which will be handed out next month. See the list for all 14 categories below.

and are slated to star in a body-swap comedy for Amazon from the writer/director of Hulu's Palm Springs, reports. There aren't yet many details about the film—including a title or a release date—but the cast and concept alone are enough to have us all in.Here's everything we know so far about the Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston body swap comedy:Who's in it: Julia Roberts, fresh off a return to her rom-com roots in 2022's Ticket to Paradise, and Jennifer Aniston will star in the currently untitled comedy. In 2016 Roberts and Aniston both appeared in the film Mother's Day.

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Studios has won a heated auction among four other studios and streamers for a Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston comedy vehicle. The untitled body swap comedy was pitched last week by Max Barbakow, who will write and direct the film. LuckyChap Entertainment, the production label of Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, will produce alongside Roberts and her Red Om Films banner, Aniston’s Echo Films, and Barbakow. He is best known for directing Palm Springs, the Andy Samberg-Cristin Milioti 2020 comedy won by Neon and Hulu at Sundance for a then-festival record sum. The comedy is based on his original pitch.

Written by Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill, “You People” takes a look at what happens when two very different families — one Black and one white — come together. Hill and Lauren London play a new couple whose relatives find themselves examining modern love and family dynamics amidst clashing cultures, societal expectations and generational differences.“You People” also marks Barris’ directorial debut.“You People” was released in select theaters on Jan.

NBC has ordered the pilot for Wolf, a one-hour medical drama from writer-producer Michael Grassi, producer-director Lee Toland Krieger and executive producer Greg Berlanti. The project comes from Warner Bros Television, where all three are under overall deals.

How do you make the norm abnormal for the sake of comedy? Interracial/mixed-race families are so ordinary these days (I’m part of one as we speak), but comedy often has to exaggerate our differences to strike at deep laughs that speak to deeper, uncomfortable truths. That’s fair enough, and writer/director Kenya Barris’ (“Black-ish”) well-intentioned family comedy, “You People,” certainly seems to have the plan to use racial misunderstanding, misfires, and mis-intentions, to create a funny, insightful dialogue about families, love, and race in America today.

The mystery surrounding the death of Orange County, California public defender Elliott Blair continues…

In a nutshell the brilliantly hilarious, pertinent, and wickedly smart new movie, You People is in some ways a new age Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, that landmark 1967 Tracy-Hepburn-Poitier Oscar winning comedy about the effect an interracial relationship has on the parents of the young couple. Of course back then it was a major social issue and even had trouble booking some southern theatres. The idea was switched in a Bernie Mac/Ashton Kutcher 2005 remake that all those years later did not have the same impact. With anti-semitism and racism back on the rise in 2023 America however the concept of an interracial/interfaith marriage, Black and White, Jew and Muslim, could not be more timely or needed, and in co-star Jonah Hill’s and director Kenya Barris’ whipsmart screenplay is also a knock-you-out-of- your-seat laugh riot. Ironically I saw it this week at its World Premiere at the same Westwood Village theatre where I saw Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner all those years ago. With a packed house the laughter was so continuous and loud for You People it was hard to hear a lot of the lines. When was the last time that happened?

Amazon Freevee has given a straight-to-series order to The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, an immigrant comedy inspired by the personal experiences of Vijal Patel (Black-ish, The Middle), starring Naveen Andrews (The Dropout), Sindhu Vee (Starstruck), and Megan Hilty (Smash). Sahana Srinivasan (Grown-ish), Arjun Sriram (Sydney to the Max), Ashwin Sakthivel (Smeds and Smoos), Ethan Suplee (Babylon) and Nicholas Hamilton (Time) round out the series regular cast. Pete Holmes (Crashing) and Romy Rosemont (A Million Little Things) will recur in the eight-episode half-hour series. The project had been in development at IMDb TV, which rebranded to Amazon Freevee, since 2021.

Elliot Blair tragically died over the weekend during his anniversary vacation. It’s a sad story, but could there be something more to it? His family seems to think so… and it might have something to do with his job. You see, Blair (pictured above) was a public defender in Orange County, California. Hmm.

PBS Masterpiece has boarded Nolly, a British period drama series starring Helena Bonham Carter.

NBC has ordered a pilot for the drama series Murder by the Book from Good Girls creator Jenna Bans under her Universal Television-based production banner Minnesota Logging Company. Good Girls executive producer Bill Krebs will pen the script with Bans.

EXCLUSIVE: Ghosts standout Danielle Pinnock has landed a supporting role alongside Eddie Murphy and Tracee Ellis Ross in the holiday comedy Candy Cane Lane from Prime Video.