Broadway Producer Garth Drabinsky Sues Actors’ Equity For $50M, Claiming Defamation & “Blacklisting” Following ‘Paradise Square’ Collapse; Union “Vigorously” Disagrees

EXCLUSIVE: Australian-British writer Pip Williams’ novel The Dictionary of Lost Words is to be adapted as a TV series.

Michael Butler, the Tony-winning producer who brought Hair to Broadway in 1968 and later produced the film adaptation and many other productions of the show, died Monday in Santa Barbara. He was 95.

Keeping his distance. Judge Judy claimed that Justin Bieber avoided her when they were neighbors due to her comments about his legal issues.

EXCLUSIVE:Shelved producer Counterfeit Pictures has hired long-serving Just For Laughs comedy expert Zoe Rabnett.

The Good Nurse director Tobias Lindholm and producer Scott Franklin joined Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York awards-season event to talk about their Netflix pic and especially the film’s two Oscar-winning stars: Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne.

The stars and creatives of several buzzy films turned out November 5 for Contenders Film: New York, Deadline’s annual daylong awards-season kickoff event. Click through a photo gallery of arrivals above.

As Nexstar announced Wednesday morning, former Pop TV president Brad Schwartz is returning to the network executive ranks as President of Entertainment at The CW. Reporting to new CW president Dennis Miller, he will be starting at the network in two weeks as he winds down his current role as CEO of The Capra Project, a startup entertainment venture focused on “authentic stories of family, faith, joy and hope” which was launched last year with investment from Lionsgate, UTA, Blumhouse and Tyler Perry.

EXCLUSIVE: Jim Biederman, who produced Kids in the Hall and Jodi Lennon, who produced At Home with Amy Sedaris, are teaming up and have struck a first-look deal with Truly Original.

Brad Schwartz has been officially named as President, CW Entertainment.

Katie Holmes has been set to star in The Wanderers, a new Off Broadway play from the Roundabout Theatre Company. The New York debut of Anna Ziegler’s latest will begin preview performances January 26, 2023 head of a February 16 opening at the Laura Pels Theater in New York.

Award-winning producer Ben Feigin, who served as an executive producer on Schitt’s Creek, died Monday of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

Jules Bass, whose work as a producer and director of stop-motion and animated television specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and The Year Without A Santa Claus has become an integral part of the holiday season for generations, died today in Rye, New York, of age-related illnesses. He was 87.

EXCLUSIVE: George Gallo (The Comeback Trail) is teaming with Green Book Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga to produce The Accidental Gangster, a new thriller based on reformed gangster Orlando ‘Ori’ Spado’s bestselling autobiography of the same name. The former will also direct from a script by the author’s son Anthony Spado and David Steenhoek.

Covid isn’t done with New York’s theater scene just yet. At least four Broadway and major Off Broadway productions have either canceled or postponed performances or temporarily replaced principal cast members in the last week due to the virus.

, but was apparently just spotted making out with a DJ in downtown New York.Of course, it's possible she's also with Pitt, and no judgments there; after allegedly being cheated on by her ex Sebastian Bear-McClard, Ratajkowski deserves to have fun. But we'd imagine that given , Pitt is actually little fun these days. A DJ, on the other hand…His name is Orazio Rispo, per , and he and EmRata were reportedly spotted making out on Friday, October 14.

Looking For Alaska, based on the award-winning novel of the same name. Deadline first reported the news.Published in 2021 by Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, the novel debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, spending over a year on the paperback list. The story follows college best friends Alex and Poppy, to very different people who vow to take a yearly vacation somewhere every summer.Henry, who most recently published “Book Lovers,” and who has a continuing book contract with Berkley Books for at least three more novels after her latest announced “Happy Place,” posted Deadline’s piece to her Instagram.She also later announced the news in her substack newsletter “Emily’s Grocery List,” the edition titled “About Time I Told You Some News.”“People We Meet on Vacation” is (very likely) going to be a movie!” Henry wrote in her newsletter.

Former Central Intelligence Agency officer David Priess defended being a signatory on a letter with more than two dozen other current and former intel agents and experts who claimed the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop bombshell looked like a "Russian information operation." In October 2020, the Post broke the story about how then-Wilmington computer shopkeeper John-Paul Mac Isaac came into possession of the laptop first son Hunter Biden left at his store near Trolley Square.  A copy of the hard drive was provided to the FBI and another to former New York City Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," Priess and fellow signatories wrote in-part.