Ariana DeBose to Star in New Psychological Thriller 'House of Spoils' for Amazon Prime Video

Qurate Retail Group, the John Malone-backed owner of video screen shopping mainstays QVC and HSN, has installed former Amazon exec Soumya Sriraman as president of streaming.

David Simonsen is joining Amazon and taking over the new position of Director Prime Video, Southeast Asia. He will be based in Singapore and is starting on Monday, September 5.

record with 10 million viewers in its premiere last month and boosted its viewership by 2% for its second episode. “The Rings of Power” is led by showrunners and executive producers Payne and Patrick McKay.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is the biggest thing Amazon Prime Video has ever done, and it looks like the TV series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing has delivered big time.

Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video, a representative for the streamer confirmed to Variety. Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it’s genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin. The practice caught notice after the premiere of the first two episodes of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Prime Video’s monumentally scaled fantasy series based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an 84% rating from professional critics but a 37% from user-submitted reviews. “The Rings of Power” has been fending off trolls for months, especially ones who take issue with the decision to cast actors of color as elves, dwarves, harfoots and other folk of Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth.

“Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” which is a prequel based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien that’s set thousands of years before the events of “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings.” Several new 2022 films will be available on the streamer as well: including Channing Tatum’s “Dog,” Michael Bay’s “Ambulance,” Zac Efron’s “Firestarter,” Dylan O’Brien’s “The Outfit,” and more. Noteworthy library titles arriving this month include “Fight Club” (1999), “Legally Blonde” (2001) and “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991).

Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer are teaming up to star in “The Wasp,” a psychological thriller based on Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play of the same name.“Moonlight” Oscar nominee Harris and “Game of Thrones” actor Dormer will play Heather and Carla, who meet up for tea after not having spoken in several years. Heather presents a shocking proposition that will change their lives forever.Guillem Morales (“Inside No.

Today (September 1) sees the launch in the US of Amazon Prime Video ’s highly anticipated series, The Rings of Power. This epic drama, set thousands of years before the events of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is thought to be the most expensive TV series ever made.

EXCLUSIVE: Emma Roberts (Madame Web) will exec produce and star in Space Cadet, a new rom-com from Stampede Ventures, which enters production this month. Also now aboard the film from writer-director Liz W. Garcia (The Lifeguard) is Prime Video, which will distribute it internationally.

Mikhail Gorbachev has died at age 91, social media revived a Pizza Hut commercial from 1998 with the former Soviet Union leader dining out at the American chain in Moscow. But was it really him or a lookalike?Yes, that really was Gorbachev and his granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya in the ad, which was filmed in December 1997 and aired internationally — but not in Russia — in January 1998.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Barbie Ferreira, who broke out on HBO’s buzzy series “Euphoria,” is joining the cast of “House of Spoils,” a psychological thriller starring Ariana DeBose. The film is backed by Amazon Prime Video and Blumhouse Television. Production is expected to begin in the fall. Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy will direct “House of Spoils” from their own script. It will premiere on Prime Video on a yet-to-be-determined date. “House of Spoils” follows an ambitious chef (DeBose) who opens her first restaurant — a farm-to-table joint on a remote escape — where she battles chaos in the kitchen, a dubious investor and crushing self doubt. Oh, and the powerful spirit of the estate’s previous owner, who is constantly threatening to sabotage her. Ferreira is playing a sous chef who works with Debose’s character. According to the official logline, the film is “a tense, psychological and sensuous thriller that will leave hearts pounding and mouths watering.”

While audiences anxious await Anne Hathaway‘s next performance in James Gray‘s “Armageddon Time,” in theaters this October, there’s news about one of her upcoming roles. Deadline reports that Hathaway will team up with “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye” director Michael Showalter for a new project for Amazon Prime Video.

K.J. Yossman “Clarkson’s Farm,” the break-out British Amazon Prime Video hit starring former “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson attempting to run a farm in the Cotswolds, has just wrapped and is already in the edit suite, confirmed Amazon Studios’ U.K. head of originals Dan Grabiner. “Because it’s farming and it’s authentic it’s so linked to the seasons and the farming year and the weather and things like that,” Grabiner said at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday morning. “Season 2 has just about wrapped filming. It looks amazing, I think that’s fair to say.” Grabiner also promised fans more of the show’s break-out stars Kaleb Cooper, a farming contractor, and experienced farmer Gerald Cooper, who tries to guide Clarkson in his thick West Country accent.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Soumya Sriraman, the former BritBox CEO who joined Amazon to lead its Prime Video Channels business in the U.S., is stepping down after two years at the SVOD. Sources indicate the executive is still at Amazon but will be leaving imminently for another role elsewhere. Sriraman is best known for her work pioneering the best-of-British streaming service BritBox in the U.S., where she is based. The SVOD launched there in 2017 and quickly reached 250,000 subscribers in one year. By the time Sriraman departed, in October 2020, the service had more than 1.5 million subscribers. The successful U.S. launch allowed joint operators BBC Studios and ITV to expand the brand to other markets, including Australia and Canada.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Amazon Studios is merging its Prime Video and Freevee unscripted teams  under the oversight of reality TV vet Chris Castallo. Having previously focused on Prime Video fare, Castallo will now oversee unscripted for both outlets and report to Lauren Anderson, who was recently named head of AVOD original content and programming at Amazon Studios. The move comes following a restructure inside Amazon’s ad-supported video on demand service. Earlier this month, Ryan Pirozzi was named head of Freevee, overseeing the business side of the streaming service, while Anderson was given oversight for programming, which includes development, production, licensing, scheduling, research and strategy for Freevee and Prime Video’s ad-supported FAST linear channels. Anderson and Pirozzi had formerly served as co-heads of content and programming for Amazon Freevee (the ad-supported video on demand service that had been known as IMDb TV).

Angelique Jackson Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose, who delivered a star-making performance as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” has nabbed her next leading role — and it’s a far-cry from the musical fare audiences have become accustomed to.DeBose will star in “House of Spoils” a new psychological thriller for Amazon Studios and Blumhouse Television, written and directed by “Blow the Man Down” filmmakers Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, based on their original idea.The film follows an ambitious chef (DeBose) who opens her first restaurant — a farm-to-table affair on a remote estate — where she battles kitchen chaos, a dubious investor and crushing self doubt. But the pressure heats up thanks to the powerful spirit of the estate’s previous owner who threatens to sabotage her at every turn.

The Western genre waned in popularity in the 1980s, but 21st-century cinema still has the occasional film that harks to its heyday. Most of these are genre hybrids, like Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” or S.

Amazon Prime Video’s ‘The Lake’ Producer Amaze Signs COO & Business Affairs VP

More than 350,000 households ditched subscriptions to the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ last quarter, according to regulator Ofcom’s annual Media Nations UK report, which showed a record year for British high-end TV production.