WME Signs Rashad Frett; Agency Will Help Writer/Director’s Sundance Short ‘Ricky’ To Become A Feature

The future is bright. Amid Paula Abdul‘s new partnership with Psychics1on1, the “Straight Up” singer has opened up about how psychics foretold her American Idol success.

Alec Baldwin is already facing involuntary manslaughter charges and a potential five years in prison if found guilty for the 2021 fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins, and now the parents and sister of the slain of Rust cinematographer have filed a lawsuit of their own.

EXCLUSIVE: 2x Academy Award nominee Mary J. Blige (Mudbound) is set to star alongside Tulsa King‘s Jay Will in the upcoming drama Rob Peace. Through her banner Blue Butterfly, she’ll also exec produce the pic, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, which is now in production.

Seth MacFarlane and his Fuzzy Door production company have signed with WME for representation. The move marks MacFarlane’s return to the agency following a move to CAA in 2017.

EXCLUSIVE: Media mogul Jose ‘Pepe’ Bastón is looking to ramp up his interests in the U.S. after signing with Allied Management Group, the company founded by former NBCU exec John Pollak and actor Wilmer Valderrama.

EXCLUSIVE: Artists First on Friday announced its signing of boxing Hall of Famer, Sugar Ray Leonard.

EXCLUSIVE: M88 has signed Nigerian American filmmaker Walé Oyéjidé, on the heels of his first narrative feature, Bravo, Burkina!‘s world premiere in the NEXT section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Doctor Who and Victoria actress Jenna Coleman have been announced as key cast on Northern England-set action thriller Jackdaw, the debut feature of Jamie Childs, whose drama directing credits include The Sandman and His Dark Materials.

One of the most delightfully warming and comically offbeat films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Babak Jalali’s “Fremont” tells the story of Donya, a former Afghan translator for the U.S. government who’s felt adrift in the titular California city since resettling there to evade the Taliban.  READ MORE: ‘Fremont’ Review: An Afghan Insomniac Tries To Find Purpose In A Refreshingly Unique & Jarmuschian-Esque Indie Dramedy [Sundance] Living in an apartment complex alongside other Afghan immigrants, working at a Chinese-American fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, and spending evenings alone at a local restaurant that plays Afghan soap operas, Donya — portrayed, in a captivating debut performance, by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada —longs for companionship.

EXCLUSIVE: ColorCreative, the management and production company founded by Issa Rae and Deniese Davis, has signed first-generation Liberian-Nigerian filmmaker Tari Wariebi for representation.

The purge of some of Showtime’s less popular series from the network’s streaming service has gotten underway. According to sources, the majority of of the shows impacted lasted one season. As Deadline revealed exclusively earlier today, that includes Let The Right One In and American Gigolo, which have been canceled. Additionally, in the process of being taken off are American Rust, Wakefield, and On Becoming a God In Central Florida, which also ran for one season each, as well as the Jim Carrey starrer Kidding, which produced two seasons, sources said.

Multi-platinum selling recording artist, producer and philanthropist Zayn Malik has inked with UTA for representation across music, film and television, among other areas.

EXCLUSIVE: Range Media Partners has signed Jarreau Carrillo, the actor-filmmaker whose new short The Vacation has generated substantial buzz on the ground at Sundance 2023.

EXCLUSIVE: After helping get this years Sundance Film Festival off the ground with the festival’s opening night movie, Sometimes I Think About Dying, director Rachel Lambert has signed with Range Media Partners. Lambert along with the films star, Daisy Ridley have earned raves following the premiere and the project is now being eyed by several buyers who attended opening night. The pic is also competing in the U.S. Dramatic Competition.

EXCLUSIVE: Christian Robinson (BMF, Interview With The Vampire) has signed with Cultivate Entertainment Partners for representation.

JuVee Productions, the production company owned by Viola Davis and film producer Julius Tennon, has signed a two-year, exclusive first-look television and new media deal with Entertainment One.

In Montana’s Big Sky Country, a black cloud hangs over the state’s expansive horizon. It looms above the indigenous residents of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations and nearby towns in Big Horn County most of all.

The thorny, complicated history between the United States and Iran is infinitely more complex for those of the Persian diaspora living in America. It’s this nuanced tension trickling down to identity — between being too much this and not enough that in either homeland — that writer-director-producer Maryam Keshavarz (“Circumstance”) explores in her third film, “The Persian Version,” a decades and generation-spanning dramedy.

Over the past few years, it’s thankfully become more common to find screenings with closed captioning at your local multiplex. Not just theaters that hand out closed captioning devices — which often require another layer of artifice between the audience and the movie — but actual onscreen captions.