Former Weta Digital Staff’s VFX Startup Floating Rock Studios Secures Seed Funding (EXCLUSIVE)

EXCLUSIVE: The story of the American Basketball Association (ABA), which was responsible for stars such as Julius Erving, is to be told in a new docuseries for Amazon.

Anna Nicole Smith's daughter is celebrating her Sweet 16! Dannielynn Birkhead is marking her milestone birthday on Wednesday and, together with dad Larry Birkhead, sharing exclusive details with Entertainment Tonight. Dannielynn is all smiles in a new photo snapped on her special day, wearing a tie-dye yellow oversized  T-shirt over black fishnet long sleeves, with black pants and platform boots.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Saudi Film Commission (SFC) has announced that four feature film project that are winners of its Daw Film Competition to discover new local talent and champion the next generation of filmmakers have finished principal photography. These works, which are likely to surface on the festival circuit, are a tangible sign that Saudi Arabia’s nascent local industry is fostering local films with potential to travel as well as to play for local audiences. The films are: “Within Sand,” a first work by Moe Alatawi inspired by the true story of a 23-year-old tobacco merchant ambushed by thieves in the desert who leave him to fend for himself with only a dagger. The film, produced by Reem Alatawi and Riyadh-based Alsarid Films, features an all-Saudi cast, while 70% of its film crew hails from Saudi Arabia. This is the first homegrown production to shoot in the unique landscapes of NEOM, the futuristic megacity in-the-making where the $100 million U.S./Saudi actioner “Desert Warrior” was shot. NEOM is situated along the kingdom’s Red Sea coast in Tabuk, in the northwest of the kingdom.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iconoclast, the international production group behind Romain Gavras’ Venice competition film “Athena,” is setting a wide-ranging slate of projects with emerging filmmakers from different audiovisual fields, including Leo Berne from the artists collective Megaforce, and Elias Belkeddar and Said Belktibia from the collective Kourtrajmé. The company is also producing the next projects of Harmony Korine and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, among others. In a rare interview, Nicolas Lhermitte, who co-founded Iconoclast with Mourad Belkeddar, says the company has emerged from the pandemic with a record number of developed projects. “We took the opportunity during the pandemic to develop a lot of projects, and today we have around 30 projects in the pipeline, spanning films and series that are set up at our studios in France, the U.S. and Germany,” says Lhermitte, who adds that Iconoclast aspired to “accompany multi-disciplinary artists to venture from one field to another, films, TV series, branded content, and music videos.”

has finally debuted on Prime Video with the first two episodes of season 1. The prequel series adapted from J.R.R.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief South Korea’s leading entertainment group CJ ENM has appointed Steve W. Chung as its global chief growth officer. He will be based in Los Angeles. Previously, Chung served as chief growth officer at Fox Corporation. Prior to that Chung was the founder and CEO of Frankly, a publicly-traded media tech company based in San Francisco. He was also a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and an executive producer in China.  Chung currently serves as a board member of the non-profit National Asia Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA) and received his B.A from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

EXCLUSIVE: Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel), Bobby Soto (Narcos: Mexico), Julio Cesar Cedillo (Narcos: Mexico), Veronica Falcón (Ozark), Sarayu Blue (I Feel Bad) and Eric Johnson (Fifty Shades franchise) are among the newest additions to Prime Video’s Michael Peña starrer A Million Miles Away, which has entered production in Mexico City. Others rounding out the ensemble of the Alejandra Márquez Abella-helmed film include Jordan Dean (Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace), Ashley Ciarra (Chupa), Michelle Krusiec (Hollywood), Emma Fassler (Recovery Road), Michael Adler (Super Pumped), Carlos S. Sanchez (Chicago Fire) and Isaac Arellanes (Ghostwriter).

Ethan Shanfeld After being slapped by Will Smith onstage at the Oscars, Chris Rock says the Academy has asked him to host next year’s award ceremony. Performing a show in Phoenix on Aug. 28, Rock told the crowd that he turned down the offer, per The Arizona Republic. The comedian apparently joked that his return to the Oscars would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson “to go back to the restaurant,” a reference to the murder trial of O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, who left her glasses at an Italian restaurant before being killed. Throughout his 90-minute stand-up comedy show, Rock said the Oscars slap hurt, noting that Smith played boxer Muhammad Ali in the 2001 movie “Ali.”

Chris Rock said it was not a difficult decision to turn down hosting the Oscars next year. The comedian was famously slapped by Will Smith at this year’s ceremony after he made a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head. Rock revealed during the Phoenix, Arizona, leg of his stand-up tour that the Academy had approached him to return to the show next year, Arizona Republic reported.

Oscars, but turned the opportunity after he was infamously slapped by Will Smith during this year’s ceremony.As the Arizona Republic reports, during a stand-up show in Phoenix over the weekend, Rock said he refused the invitation and joked that it would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson “to go back to the restaurant” she ate at on the evening she was murdered at her Los Angeles home.Rock also reportedly said that he had been offered to star in a Super Bowl commercial following the incident, but turned that down as well – and noted that Smith’s slap was physically painful. “He’s bigger than me,” Rock said of the Ali star.

Chris Rock will not be returning to the Academy Awards as a host. During the comedian’s Sunday night show in Phoenix, Rock shared with the audience that he was asked to host next year’s Oscar Awards ceremony, which he denied, according to the Arizona Republic. Rock, 57, made a joke to the crowd and compared returning to the Academy Awards to Nicole Brown Simpson’s death.

That’s a hard pass. Chris Rock said he rejected an offer to host the 2023 Oscars during a Phoenix comedy show.

, maneuvering for the Iron Throne continues despite the fact that King Viserys (Paddy Considine) has named Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) his successor -- and that council pledged to honor the decision when the day comes for her to wear the crown. One of those people still positioning for the seat of power is Lord Corlys Velaryon, aka the Sea Snake, played by Steve Toussaint. The actor tells ET that his character is full of pride and resentment and still reeling from what happened to his wife, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), many years prior. “He doesn’t hide the fact that it irks him that his wife is not on the throne,” Toussaint says, not hiding the fact that he thinks Rhaenys is a far more qualified ruler than her cousin, Viserys.

Tayshia Adams may be a former Bachelorette, but she's not tuning into the current season of the show. ET's Rachel Smith spoke to the 31-year-old reality star at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, and Adams revealed why she hasn't been watching Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey's journey for love.«I'm definitely invested more so [in] talking to the girls behind the scenes,» she told ET. «I can't really watch the show too much.

Officers now have the power to carry out ‘targeted stop and searches’ in Moss Side, according to Greater Manchester Police. This comes in the wake of police stepping up patrols in the area after a fatal shooting earlier this month.

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stepping into Muse frontman Matt Bellamy’s Los Angeles studio is immediately surreal, on a couple of different fronts. For one thing, there’s the fact that it’s in an unmarked former storefront on a heavily trafficked urban street, so on the other side of the one-way glass, pedestrians are constantly passing by, unaware that they’re about two yards away from a rock star coming up with new songs to potentially join “Madness” or ”Uprising” guy as new KROQ-driven earworms in their heads. But apart from the street scene outside practically brushing up against his console, there’s something else about the place… “I don’t know if you remember the TV show ‘Twin Peaks,’” Bellamy inquires. As a matter of fact, yes. “Do you remember the Red Room? We’re sitting in it, basically,” he says, and sure enough, here in the front room of his studio, there is the black-and-white zig-zag flooring, the wrap-around red drapes, the minimalist lamp, the vaguely retro sitting chair…. Bellamy is a student of fantastical pop culture, so it makes sense that he’s surrounded by a Lynchian throwback space — even if the rock arias he creates here passionately reach for the sky, rather than feeling like they’re stuck in an interdimensional waiting room.

A former girlfriend of R Kelly yesterday recalled how the musician’s one time business manager once remarked that he should just have had her killed after she took a videotape that featured a threesome involving her, Kelly and a young teenage girl, rather than paying her for the tape’s safe return.Lisa Van Allen was the latest witness to testify in Kelly’s current criminal trial in relation to the many allegations of sexual abuse that have been made against the musicianShe talked about her own relationship with Kelly, echoing a lot of what was said by other ex-girlfriends who testified during his earlier trial in New York last summer, especially regarding how he directed their sexual encounters and sought to exert control over various other aspects of their lives.But the real focus of Van Allen’s testimony was the videos of her having sex with Kelly and Jane, the musician’s god daughter and the star witness of the current trial, who testified last week. Van Allen says that she first met Jane in 1998, and that she had three sexual encounters with her and Kelly over the next three years.Jane would have been around fourteen in 1998, although Van Allen claims Kelly lied at the time and said that the younger girl was sixteen.

Christopher Vourlias Former Netflix executive Tania Zarak Quintana has joined Iceland’s Truenorth, one of the leading production services companies in the Nordics, as it looks to ramp up development of original content. The production outfit is developing a slate of original shows including “Starlungar,” a 10-part series it’s dubbed “‘The Godfather’ of the 13th century” that follows four wealthy and powerful clans as they fight to gain power over Iceland, and “Eyland,” a dystopian series set in present-day Iceland that questions what would happen if communication with the rest of the world suddenly stopped. Truenorth is also attached to co-produce a feature-film adaptation of bestselling Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson’s thriller “Outside,” which was optioned by Scott Free Productions.