Composer Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

The new John Lewis Christmas advert for 2023 has finally arrived. And there's often one detail most TV viewers are keen to find out - what is the song choice this year?

A woman who alleged she was drugged and raped by Lawrence Jones tearfully told a jury she may have been 'naive' to go back to his flat but that the impact 'has affected the rest of my life'.

For Pixar‘s Elemental, composer Thomas Newman was given the challenge of scoring for ‘elemental’ cultures that don’t exist in the real world, while instilling a sense of familiarity for the viewer. He says the real difficulty was to “point towards different cultures and never land on one.”

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender.

The expansion of the city centre’s skyline is continuing into Cheetham Hill, with a 23-storey tower planned for the area.

Danny Elfman is responding to allegations that he sexually abused a woman in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Caroline Brew editor Billie Eilish and Finneas along with Lenny Kravitz and Diane Warren are among the nominees at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards. Eilish and Finneas landed a nomination for “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie.

Big Brother fans have been left fuming during the spin-off show Big Brother Late and Live, as the latest star to be evicted joined host Will Best for a chat. Kerry was booted out of the house on Monday, 30 October, in a shock Halloween-themed twist, but her departure only aired during the show on Tuesday, 31 October.

ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus has warned of the “existential challenge” of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the music industry.Ulvaeus is the president of CISAC, a non-profit organisation that represents songwriters and composers around the world, collecting and paying royalties to its members whose music has been used in broadcasts, concerts, bars and on streaming services.A new report from the organisation showed that royalty collections for songwriters and composers had recovered from pre-pandemic levels but Ulvaeus warned that AI could present greater challenges to musicians going forward.In a forward to a new report from CISAC, Ulvaeus wrote: “This year’s results show that the collective management system, despite all the enormous challenges it faces in adapting to digital, is still robust and effective. CMOs (collective management organisations) have the backs of the creators they serve and are now delivering more money to more creators than ever before.“And that is good news – because, fresh from Covid and the economic squeeze, what we now face is another very serious, existential challenge – that of artificial intelligence.

Tesco has issued an urgent message to customers ahead of Halloween.

Snap returned to revenue growth in the third quarter, surprising Wall Street, and clocked gains in daily active users (DAUs), as net losses widened on a restructuring charge amid layoffs.

The new musical Here We Are, which is the final show from legendary composer Stephen Sondheim, has officially debuted off-Broadway.

WME has signed the Estate of Nigerian bandleader, composer, political activist and Afrobeat creator Fela Kuti for management worldwide under its WME Legends division.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Cord Jefferson’s satirical comedy “American Fiction” has won the Audience Award for narrative film at the Middleburg Film Festival. Proving to be a true crowd-pleaser, it’s the third audience prize for the MGM title on the festival circuit following the Toronto and Mill Valley Film Festivals (at the latter it tied with “Rustin”).

King Charles has revealed his biggest regret from his historical Coronation weekend as he admitted he was too far away to see the performers at the Windsor Castle concert.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Danny Elfman has responded to the accusations raised in the lawsuit filed against him on Thursday.

Todd Gilchrist editor For horror fans, Claudio Simonetti is a household name. First a founding member of rock group Goblin, whose work is synonymous with filmmaker Dario Argento’s genre standard-bearers “Deep Red” and “Suspiria,” a producer and pop artist in his native Italy, and later a lead composer on Argento’s “Tenebre,” Lamberto Bava’s “Demons” and more, Simonetti and his collaborators turned iconoclastic takes on scoring — utilizing the sounds of prog rock and disco — into iconic pieces of film music.

Danny Elfman has been accused of sexual misconduct by a second woman, according to a lawsuit obtained by Rolling Stone.The lawsuit, which was filed anonymously by a Jane Doe accuser in Los Angeles on Thursday (October 19), claimed that Elfman frequently exposed himself to her and allegedly told her that he masturbated next to her while she was asleep and couldn’t consent to the act. A representative of Elfman has denied the allegations.The suit comes three months after fellow composer Nomi Abadi previously accused Elfman of exposing himself and harassing her in 2017, before reaching a settlement of $830,000 (£645,000) to silence the claims.

Rachel Zegler takes on “The Hanging Tree” from The Hunger Games and the track just debuted on Friday (October 20)!

Thania Garcia Rachel Zegler‘s vocals ring through “The Hanging Tree,” the first song to be released as part of the upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” The orchestral title, out today via Geffen Records, first appeared as the second single from the soundtrack for “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1” in 2014. Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss Everdeen, offered her vocals for the track that was originally written by Suzanne Collins and composed by Howard, Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz from the band the Lumineers.

William Earl Composer Danny Elfman has been accused of alleged sexual harassment by a second woman, in a case with similarities to one that was revealed in July. In the new suit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, a woman going by Jane Doe XX alleges the “Edward Scissorhands” composer harassed her during a period from 1997 to 2002 starting when she was a 21-year-old film student. A spokesperson for Elfman said, “The allegations of misconduct made against Mr.

Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning composer Danny Elfman has been accused in lurid detail of sexual misconduct by another woman, who claims he frequently was naked in her presence and allegedly masturbated while she slept next to him.

A second woman has accused Danny Elfman of sexual harassment.

writes in her memoir that he broke up with her via text message.According to the , Spears writes in The Woman in Me that Timberlake initiated the split with a text. Remember that this breakup happened in 2002, meaning that he would have had to compose his breakup message using T9—so this could have taken hours to type out, depending on Timberlake's level of eloquence.After the three-year relationship ended, while Timberlake was boosting his own image and insinuating that Spears had cheated on him with “Cry Me a River,” Spears wrote that she was, “comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.”Per the same New York Times report, Spears writes that she kissed choreographer Wade Robson during her relationship with Timberlake, but “suggests that her behavior was related to rumors of Timberlake’s unfaithfulness.” Sounds…messy.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor How does one create a film festival during an actors strike? Middleburg Film Festival executive director Susan Koch explains she’s approached programming the Virginia fest in the same manner as she has always done. “We looked for the strongest films and a wide range of films that represent diverse voices and ones we feel will expand our view of the world,” she tells Variety. Now in its 11th year, the festival continues to be a carefully curated weekend of films and conversations, including many of the year’s buzziest titles.

Evian Christ will drop his long-awaited debut album Revanchrist on Friday. The U.K.-based producer and composer has already released "On Embers" and today he unleashes "Yxguden," an album highlight featuring Drain Gang rapper Bladee.

Gordon Cox Theater Editor The 2023 edition of Variety’s annual theater breakfast was all about the Business of Broadway. But that didn’t keep things from getting spiritual, too. In a panel discussion featuring the starry cast of “Merrily We Roll Along” — held during the Business of Broadway breakfast Oct.

Caroline Brew editor Carla Bley, an influential jazz composer and pianist, died in her home in Willow, N.Y. due to complications from brain cancer. She was 87.

Addie Morfoot Contributor John Legend is lending his voice to “We Dare to Dream,” a documentary about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Legend will write, compose and record “Don’t Need to Sleep,” an original song for the docu, which will open theatrically Oct. 20 at New York’s IFC Center.

Valerie Wu Intern Miyazaki’s first animated feature in 10 years, “The Boy and the Heron” has come out with its official English voice cast. GKIDS, which serves as animation group Studio Ghibli’s North American distributor, announced that the full cast will consist of Christian Bale as Shoichi Maki; Dave Bautista as The Parakeet King; Gemma Chan as Natsuko; Willem Dafoe as Noble Pelican; Karen Fukuhara as Lady Himi; Mark Hamill as Granduncle; Robert Pattinson as The Gray Heron and Florence Pugh as Kiriko. They’re joined by Luca Padovan as protagonist Mahito Maki and Mamoudou Athie, Tony Revolri and Dan Stevens as the Parakeets.