Documentary Director RJ Cutler Expands His Development and Production Team (EXCLUSIVE)

Meghan Markle’s Netflix project has gotten the boot. The streaming giant dropped "Pearl," the working title of an animated series that was created by the Duchess of Sussex through Archewell Productions, Deadline reported on Sunday.

EXCLUSIVE: Even Netflix’s in-house members of the Royal Family are not immune to a wave of cutbacks going on as the streamer recalibrates after a precipitous stock drop incurred after a drop in subscribers. Netflix has quietly dropped Pearl, the working title of an animated series that was created by Meghan Markle through Archewell Productions, the shingle the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry set up at Netflix in fall of 2020 to create scripted series, docuseries, documentaries, features and children’s programming. Pearl was to be Archewell’s first animated series.

Michael J. Fox is going back to his beginnings.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCJ ENM, one of the companies leading the Korean entertainment wave, has acquired a minority equity stake in U.S.-based metaverse firm Hyperreal Digital.The stake was made through a private transaction with Hyperreal’s founders. The value of the stake was not disclosed.

Entering a new phase. Kristin Cavallari has fully moved on following her split from Jay Cutler.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaGary Hustwit has started production on “Eno,” a career-spanning documentary about musician and artist Brian Eno.The non-fiction film boasts access to hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, unreleased music from Eno’s archive, and visual art. It’s the first authorized documentary about the music legend.The producers say that “Eno” will be released in multiple versions and will employ “groundbreaking generative technology” in its creation and exhibition. Though the specifics haven’t been revealed, insiders say that the finished film can take on myriad different forms depending on the platform or manner in which it is being viewed.

The tenth instalment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise has hit a major snag.

Filmmaker Jason Pollock, director of the Stranger Fruit and documentaries, has announced the next case his team’s lens will be focused on: The Case of Korryn Gaines. Korryn’s family has given Pollock exclusive rights to develop both a feature documentary and narrative film about Korryn’s life and death.

TNT and TBS are moving out of the scripted game under new parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, which under CEO David Zaslav has promised $3 billion in cost savings in the post-WarnerMedia merger era, Variety has learned exclusively.The WarnerMedia-run cable channels will no longer develop new scripted content, two sources close to the matter tell Variety.

Kevin Hart’s two entertainment businesses, HartBeat Productions and Laugh Out Loud, are merging into a single comedy-centered entity called Hartbeat.

Naman Ramachandran Voltage Pictures has appointed Darcy Donelan as VP, development and production, reporting into president and COO Jonathan Deckter and Voltage founder and CEO Nicolas Chartier.Harvard graduate Donelan, who started her career with Voltage, was most recently with CAA in the books department and previously with HBO, where she worked as a marketing manager focusing on international original programming. Voltage also recently hired Southwestern Law School graduate Haley Cohen as attorney, business and legal affairs.

This is the terrifying moment two boys were seen climbing on a crane at a Salford housing development over the weekend. The shocking footage was captured by an Ordsall resident who witnessed the youngsters' dangerous stunt.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAfrican American-founded, faith-based channel Impact Network is making a big push into entertainment and lifestyle content with the ramping up of its Saturday programming slate, the hiring of a new chief creative officer and executive producer of original content, and the launch of a 6,000-foot production facility in Detroit with a music division, Variety has learned exclusively.The privately owned Impact Network has a reach of 80 million homes and distribution deals with DirecTV, Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Verizon Fios, Frontier, Cable Bahamas, Cox and Altice USA. Founder and CEO Bishop Wayne T.

Addie Morfoot ContributorThe Producers Guild of America has invited 11 documentary producing teams to take part in the inaugural cohort of the PGA Create lab for emerging and mid-career documentary producers from diverse backgrounds. The program, which will take place from April 25-28, is designed for producers in active development, financing and packaging of nonfiction features or series, and the producing teams are making films about topics including climate change activists, women’s roles in the Catholic Church and queer activist Sarah Hegazi.The first cycle of PGA Create, which took place in October, spotlighted scripted feature films or series.

EXCLUSIVE: Retired professional hockey player Miles Koules has launched the production company Koulest Productions, partnering with his father Oren Koules—who co-founded Evolution Entertainment and its division Twisted Pictures—to option the YA survival thriller, Ski Weekend, for development.

Francis C. La Maina, the former COO of Dick Clark Productions who helped create Dick Clark Corporate Productions in 1991, has died at 82. La Maina, who represented Clark for over 25 years as his business advisor and president and board member of Clark’s affiliated companies, died Friday in Burbank, California.“We announce with great sadness that Francis C.

Addie Morfoot ContributorStory Syndicate, the production house founded by Oscar and Emmy-winning documentary powerhouse couple Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, is bulking up its development and production team with a new hire, a promotion and a first-look deal with producer and investigative journalist Amy Herdy.The New York-based production company, which launched in 2019, was behind several popular docs and docuseries in 2021, including Garbus’ “Becoming Cousteau” (National Geographic), Orlando von Einsiedel’s “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis” (Netflix) and John Hoffman and Janet Tobias’ “Fauci” (Nat Geo).Jon Bardin, most recently Story Syndicate’s head of creative, has been named head of documentary and nonfiction. Bardin, who has been at the production company since its inception, has served as a producer or executive producer on Story Syndicate documentaries including Jesse Moss’ “Mayor Pete,” Erin Lee Carr’s “Britney Vs.

Wilson Chapman editorFrancis “Fran” La Maina, who served as president and chief operating officer of Dick Clark Productions, died Saturday in Burbank, Calif., his representative Cheryl J. Kagan confirmed to Variety. He was 82.“Fran was my soulmate,” his domestic partner Carla Patterson said in a statement.

Pop documentaries are almost always marketed on the allure of proximity – allowing the viewer the privilege of being up close and personal with an artist despite that intimate feeling often being crafted within a space that still holds the audience at an arm’s length. In the new Disney+ documentary-concert film Driving Home 2 U, Olivia Rodrigo looks back on the making of her debut album Sour through in-studio footage captured on a GoPro tucked in the Los Angeles studio where she wrote and recorded the album with producer Dan Nigro.