‘Crime, Food, Music, Sports’: Documentary Producers Get ‘Very Strategic’ as Content Budgets Tighten

Netflix acknowledged the punishing landscape that is streaming today but — even as some now question the entire model — insisted it’s a good business if you’ve got “strong execution and focus” and it does.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In a milestone media moment for women’s sports, Fox Sports is about to deliver the most expansive coverage of a FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament in history – an investment driven by the success of the U.S. national team and its pursuit of an unprecedented third consecutive victory. From July 20 through Aug. 20, cabler Fox Sports 1 (FS1) and the Fox broadcast network will serve up more than 190 hours of live soccer programming from the tournament staged in Australia and New Zealand. The roster includes 64 matches, about half of which will air on Fox, the broadest platform for the games and for sponsors. All matches will stream live via the FS1 app. The quarterfinals, semifinals, third-place match and the big finish will all air live on Fox.

Naman Ramachandran TNT Sports went live on Tuesday across the U.K. and Ireland, replacing BT Sport. The rebrand was revealed earlier this year as part of the Warner Bros. Discovery joint venture. TNT Sports is already used as WBD’s sports brand in Latin America and the U.S. TNT Sports will present the premium live sports rights previously carried by BT Sport including the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Europa Conference League, Gallagher Premiership Rugby, Heineken Champions Cup, EPCR Challenge Cup, MotoGP, cricket, UFC, Boxing and WWE. In addition, the Olympic Games Paris 2024, grand slam tennis tournaments, including the Australian Open and Roland-Garros and cycling grand tours, including the Tour de France, will be available.

The studios are putting on a united front when it comes to the striking scribes and actors, but Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global dust-up over who really has the streaming rights to Eric Cartman and the South Park gang shows no signs of settling down.

Variety + Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, presented by City National Bank. Leaders, athletes and executives came together at the 1 Hotel West Hollywood to discuss the varying challenges, techniques and strategies that have served them well. Here are 10 key takeaways from a day of lively discourse.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor It’s a social media app that blends TikTok-esque user videos, mobile gaming and donations to charitable causes. Robert Weiss, a TV producer-turned-executive-turned digital entrepreneur, calls it Roar Social, and he’s spent the past three years fine-tuning the app experience that he has dubbbed “gamified giving.” Backed by $10 million in seed funding, Roar Social is set to launch beta form later this year on Apple’s App Store. Weiss has been nurturing the big idea behind Roar Social for more than 10 years. But it was during the hard early months of the pandemic, in August 2020, when he felt the time was right to dig in to developing an platform designed to bring one-swipe ease to making charitable donations via an entertaining digital media experience. The emergence of the TikTok video format changed everything.

Tom Brady's son, Jack is forging his own path. In an interview on, Bridget Moynahan opened up about the son she shares with the NFL legend. Asked whether the 15-year-old might want to follow in his actress mother's footsteps, the star said that he's not exactly gravitating toward a career like either of his famous parents. «He's kinda like that normal kid who doesn't really know what he wants to do yet,» she said.

Oscar nominated producer Lawrence Turman died Saturday at the Motion Picture and Television Country Home and Hospital at age 96 after a stellar career not only as a producer of such seminal films as The Graduate (1967), The Great White Hope (1970), American History X , and many more in a producing career that lasted six decades, but also significantly took a turn when he left his partnership with another producer David Foster to head the prestigious Peter Stark Producing Program at USC in 1991, an association that continued until his retirement just two years ago in 2021.

A trio of docs and a wider-than-usual run for a Vertical Entertainment thriller populate a specialty weekend with fewer new openings as theaters stick with Asteroid City and devote screens to Indiana Jones and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. Call it jittery Friday as the indie community like the rest of Hollywood awaits news from SAG-AFTRA as the guild’s contract is set to expire tonight.

EastEnders actor Paul Nicholls, who played the popular Joe Wicks on the BBC soap, is barely recognisable 25 years after his dramatic exit from Walford. The 44 year old star has taken on a new role in a BBC children's drama series Phoenix Rise.

Jesse Armstrong and Danny McBride will have some individual independence to celebrate this holiday weekend.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Strand Releasing has acquired North American rights to “Fantastic Machine,” a documentary which is executive produced by Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and won Sundance Festival’s Creative Vision Award. Directed by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck, “Fantastic Machine” went on to win both the Youth Jury Special Mention and the Cinema Vision 14+ awards at the Berlin Film Festival. The documentary examines humanity’s infatuation with images of itself, and the impact that has on an untethered free market flooded with photos from 45 billion cameras worldwide each minute.

Darrell Issa Guest Columnist Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet represents California’s 48th Congressional District. Later today on the Nashville, TN campus of Belmont University, I’ll convene a field hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. The hearing won’t just take place in Music City, USA but five years after Congress achieved that rarest of things: A consensus solution that recognized the rights of musical artists and created a way they could be compensated fairly by publishers. It may be hard for some to believe, but at the time we crafted this legislation, the music industry and other content owners were being crushed by widespread piracy and an inability to monetize the value of musical creativity.

If anyone knows what it’s like to have famous siblings, it’s the Jonas Brothers.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Academy of Country Music has announced some of the musicians, producers, engineers, venues and touring industry execs winners who will be celebrated at the 16th ACM Honors ceremony at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Aug. 23. The show serves as a music-industry-centric adjunct to the ACM Awards telecast that is globally webcast in the spring. The announcement of these winners precedes by a day the reveal of the big names that will receive special awards during the August program, along with forthcoming news of the show’s host and ticketing information. Jay Joyce, the producer for Lainey Wilson, Ashley McBryde and many other artists, was named producer of the year for a sixth time. Justin Niebank has an even longer-running streak — he’ll be awarded as audio engineer for a ninth time.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The members of the international juries that will decide the Magnolia prizes at the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival were Thursday made to do double duty as speakers in public masterclasses that were open to a generation of aspiring documentary and animation makers. David Stephan, jury president in the animation category, along with fellow judges Spencer Ooi and Jia Fou, spoke at length about getting their starts in the business and finding inspiration. “When I studied animation, I didn’t have a textbook available. I saw extremely limited things, so I did further research to make myself understand what I was doing in such a career,” said Jia.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Warner Bros. Discovery is negotiating to sell around half of the storied Warner studio’s film and TV music-publishing assets for approximately $500 million, three sources confirm to Variety. The news was first reported by Hits. While it is unclear exactly which assets are on the table, one source says that the rights to “slightly less than half” of the catalog, with a price of around $500 million, are likely to go to a major label, with Sony said to be in the lead. The catalog is believed to include music from such films as “Purple Rain,” “Evita,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Rent” several “Batman” films and many more titles, as well as songs included in iconic films such as “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca” — iconic titles to be sure, but again, it is unclear exactly which rights are in play. Top attorney Allen Grubman is said to be overseeing the deal for Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav.

Kevin Costner’s divorce from estranged wife Christine Baumgartner got off to a messy start.

Lindsay Lohan is celebrating her love.