DAZN Forges Anti-Piracy Partnership With AI-Based Social Analytics Outfit Videocites

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran Actor Alfredo Castro (The Club, No, From Afar) is in the middle of what could be described as a mid-career boom, but he doesn’t think it’ll bring him many plaudits in his native country.

It’s been 25 years since Choclair told us he likes “chillin’, ‘Monday Night Raw’ watching” on Rascalz’ legendary hit “Northern Touch”. And while a lot’s changed — smartphones, global warming, an impending AI apocalypse — some things remain exactly the same. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Taormina Film Festival, one of Italy’s oldest movie celebrations, has undergone many makeovers through the years. Held since the mid-1950s in the Sicilian resort that recently got a promotional boost as the location of “The White Lotus” Season Two, this storied summer fest boasts an 8,000-seat open-air ancient Greek amphitheater in the shadow of Sicily’s active Mt. Etna volcano. In 2000, Tom Cruise stood on stage, greeted by hundreds of lit candles and a standing ovation to celebrate his 38th birthday while he was promoting “Mission: Impossible 2.” Ups and downs followed, as several chiefs took the Taormina reins over the the ensuing decades, until more recently the event fell off the international radar.

Religion of Sports and Showtime Sports are teaming up on “Goliath,” a new three-part docuseries examining the life, career and impact of basketball icon Wilt Chamberlain from his emergence on the national scene as a high schooler in the 1950s through his death in 1999.“We are honored to team up with this group of talented filmmakers to bring the under-examined story of Wilt Chamberlain’s complex life to the masses,” Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza said in a statement. “Everybody knows Wilt for his legendary accomplishments on the basketball court — scoring 100 points in a game, averaging 50 points and 25 rebounds in a season — but there’s so much more to him than his stats.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Sarah Jessica Parker honored the 25th anniversary of “Sex and the City” on Tuesday by posting a picture of her “Carrie” necklace on Instagram. “It’s our silver anniversary but the memories will always be gold. X, SJ,” Parker captioned the photo, featuring the necklace housed in a box for Melvyn’s, the old-school department store where viewers can imagine a younger Carries shopping and finding her love for fashion. A post shared by SJP (@sarahjessicaparker)

Fox News Digital in a Wednesday report that posted just a couple of hours before Warner Bros. Discovery brass announced the ouster of CEO Chris Licht. David Zaslav handpicked Licht last April to replace Jeff Zucker, the successful but divisive longtime CNN leader ousted after disclosing an affair with one of his direct reports.

Paramore‘s Hayley Williams shared her stance against Ron DeSantis while taking the stage in New Jersey this past weekend (May 27).While headlining Adjacent Music Festival in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the frontwoman declared that anyone who votes for the Republican presidential candidate is “dead” to her.“I’ll be happy to tell you I’m very fucking comfortable talking politics,” Williams told the crowd. “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re fucking dead to me.

Thursday report, writing: “Some presidential candidates struggle to nail their message. Ron DeSantis is struggling to nail his NAME.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer, director, and film and TV industry pioneer Renzo Rossellini is being honored with the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award. The Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema will pay tribute to the consummate filmmaker and renaissance man – who as a producer shepherded works by master directors such as Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmüller, Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola – with a screening of Fellini’s 1980 work “City of Women” on its 8,000 seat open-air Piazza Grande venue on Aug. 10, followed by an onstage conversation the next day. Rossellini who also worked as assistant director for his father Roberto and, among others, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol – and is a director in his own right – “Has never ceased his quest to pass on his knowledge of the cinema, teaching generations of students and cineastes with passion and commitment,” the fest said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning production hub Neom has locked a partnership with the film and digital content production and finance company Telfaz11.

Thania Garcia Composer Nicholas Britell, who has scored films for Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk”) and Adam McKay (“The Big Short,” “Vice,” “Don’t Look Up”), as well as HBO’s “Succession,” has inked a new label services deal with Secretly Distribution. The Emmy-winning composer, pianist and producer collaborated with Secretly to release “Succession: Season 4 (HBO Original Series Soundtrack)” on global streaming services — just hours after the highly-anticipated series finale aired — via the composer’s newly launched Lake George Music Group imprint. “It has long been a dream of mine to release music through my own label, and I’m tremendously excited to have the final season of ‘Succession’ as our label’s first release,” said Britell in a statement. “Lake George Music Group is proud to partner with the team at Secretly.”

Dick Clark Productions has named Tamaya Petteway SVP of Partnerships. In her role, Petteway will run DCP’s sponsorship division overseeing revenue streams and profits related to sponsors, advertisers, locations, and venues. She will also lead sales initiatives and strategy across all DCP platforms. Reporting into Jay Penske, CEO, Chairman & Founder of Penske Media and CEO, DCP, and Mike Kohn, DCP’s COO, Petteway will officially join the team on June 12, 2023.  She will be based out of DCP’s Beverly Hills headquarters.

Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis once again called out Disney over Memorial Day weekend, and, come Tuesday morning, the hosts of “Morning Joe” were cracking up at the Florida governor’s assumption that invoking his feud with the company would help him in a state like Iowa.During an interview with “Fox and Friends”, DeSantis argued that Iowans should vote for him over twice-impeached-once-indicted former president Trump, because Trump has “taken the side of Disney” and “I think a multi-billion-dollar company that sexualizes children is not consistent with the values of Florida, or the values of a place like Iowa.”After playing that clip on Tuesday morning, the “Morning Joe” hosts and panelists were stunned before anything else.“Ron DeSantis decides that he’s gonna launch his campaign by talking about how the Magic Kingdom sexualizes children,” Scarborough marveled. “This is something that, again, we’ve all grown up with Disney.

Jessica Kiang With conflict currently erupting in Sudan, one could be forgiven for approaching Mohamed Kordofani’s “Goodbye Julia,” which takes place in Khartoum during the six years prior to the 2011 secession of South Sudan, as a worthy, topical history lesson. And it certainly does have merit as a primer for the class, ethnic and religious unrest that besets the troubled state. But what actually transpires is far more engaging, in the vein of Asghar Farhadi, wherein a tight, high-concept moral core unravels into strands of widening, deepening social consequence. Telling the story of a fraught friendship between two very different women, Kordofani’s intelligent, compassionate scripting ensures that the political never overwhelms the personal. Yet it also illuminates just how well the fault lines that divide a nation can map onto the rifts within a human heart divided against itself. 

Dani Dyer literally broke the internet two days ago when she introduced her newborn twins to the world.The TV star, who actually gave birth to the two baby girls on the 22nd May, shared three stunning snaps of her recently expanded family on Instagram.The first showed the little ones snuggled up and fast asleep, wearing matching baby grows and hats with bows on while the second saw Dani’s partner, premier league footballer Jarrod Bowen carrying his two daughters out of the hospital. In the third pic, the twins were seen sleeping together again in the sweetest pink babygrows, which of course, led to an abundance of fans - including Dani’s father EastEnders’ star Danny Dyer - taking to the comments section to offer their congratulations.

he said “On day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive in issuing pardons.”“I mean, he’s not really that stupid,” Scarborough said on Friday morning. “Maybe he’s talking like a third grader? We’re talking about people who tried to overthrow American democracy, and Ron knows that.

Quentin Tarantino is back at the Cannes Film Festival this year for a special screening in the Directors’ Fortnight.

Former Love Island winner Dani Dyer has announced that she has given birth to twin girls after revealing earlier this year that she was expecting her first children with West Ham forward boyfriend Jarrod Bowen.

Cannes Film Festival, auteur Quentin Tarantino revealed more about his upcoming 10th (and possibly final) feature film, “The Movie Critic.” All audiences have known so far is that it would follow a titular film reviewer in the 1970s, which many speculated would be about famous female critic Pauline Kael. But he confirmed in an interview with Deadline that the story will focus on a male film critic living in California, based on a real person who wrote reviews in a porno magazine in 1977. “He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic,” Tarantino said.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian auteur Marco Tullio Giordana, best known internationally for sweeping terrorism-themed epic “The Best of Youth” (2003) is set to soon return behind the camera on “La Vita Accanto” a psychological drama about a talented young woman contending with profound rejection due to her looks. Shooting is set to start on June 5 in Vicenza, Northern Italy, on “Vita Accanto,” (the title can be translated as “the life beside”) which is co-written and produced by Marco Bellocchio – the Italian master who is currently competing for a Cannes Palm d’Or with “Kidnapped.” Italy’s Intramovies has started launching pre-sales on “Vita Accanto” in Cannes.