How Award-Winning Musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Is Growing Up to Broadway

EXCLUSIVE: Tony Award-winnning director Anna D. Shapiro has signed with CAA for representation. CAA also will represent multimedia venture Highwire Media which includes principals Shapiro, Leelai Demoz, Ian Barford, and Brad Keywell.

EXCLUSIVE: The award-winning documentary Long Line of Ladies, about a 13-year-old Native American girl’s coming of age ceremony in the Karuk tradition, will premiere on the New York Times Op-Docs channels Tuesday, the first day of Indigenous Peoples Day.

An award-winning author is set to bring the joy of literature and writing to communities as part of Paisley Book Festival.

Broadway box office held steady last week, with impressive attendance for recent arrivals Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo, and Leopoldstadt again setting a house record at the Longacre with receipts of $1,158,051.

As Season 1 of “House of the Dragon” comes to a close, HBO subscribers need not wait long for another healthy dose of prestigious family drama set in the world of the wealthy and influential. The trailer has arrived for Season 4 of “Succession,” HBO’s razor-sharp drama slash satire centering on the embittered Roy family, owners of the fictional media empire, Waystar Royco.

Broadway is going Back to the Future this summer when the Olivier Award-winning musical stage adaptation of the 1985 film begins previews at the Winter Garden Theatre. Making the trip stateside will be Roger Bart and Hugh Coles reprising their West End performances as Doc Brown and George McFly.

Broadway box office held steady at $28,621,480 last week as a slate of new productions began or continued previews (Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo filled more than 90% of their seats), MJ and Leopoldstadt set house records and The Phantom of the Opera was once again standing room only as the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical heads toward its Feb. 18 closing.

Alan Moore wants nothing to do with the various adaptations of his DC Comics maxiseries, Watchmen — Primetime Emmy awards or not.

Girls Aloud's Kimberley Walsh appeared on This Morning today to speak to Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary following her unveiling as the character of Odd Socks on The Masked Dancer this weekend. But Kimberley also spoke about how she and her Girls Aloud bandmates have funded a cancer research project in the late Sarah Harding’s name and told the hosts it’s unlikely the band will ever perform as a foursome again.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Cinemed, the Mediterranean Cinema Film Festival, is partnering up with Lebanese film org Aflamuna / Beirut DC to launch a new co-production and co-financing initiative aimed at high-profile projects from the Arab world. The new program, which is also backed by France’s National Film Board and is part of the festival’s industry showcase Cinemed Meetings, will present seven projects involving 22 Arab countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Liban, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Syria, among others. All selected projects are currently in development and are being brought by filmmakers who have previously directed at least one short film.

Jeff Barnaby, a filmmaker and member of the Mi’kmaw tribe who brought Indigenous cinema to greater attention, has died at 46. He had a yearlong battle with cancer, his representative confirmed.

Award-winning movie and stage actor and gay icon, Angela Lansbury, has passed away at the age of 96, five days before her 97th birthday. She is best known for playing crime-solving mystery writer Jessica Fletcher in the crime mystery series Murder, She Wrote, for which she received 11 Emmy nominations.Lansbury also starred in numerous films such as The Portrait of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate, winning Golden Globes for both. In 1971 she starred in Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks endearing herself to a generation of children. Lansbury’s breakout role came at the age of 19 when she acted in the psychological thriller, Gaslight, for which she received her first Oscar nomination.She made her Broadway debut in 1957 and over the course of her stage career was awarded five Tony Awards for roles in such plays as Mame and Blithe Spirit.  In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell. The marriage only lasted a year on the account of Cromwell being gay.In a 2017 interview with Radio Times, Lansbury recalled, “I had no idea that I was marrying a gay man,”“I found him such an attractive individual, a very glamorous person – he knew everybody, he was a friend of Joan Crawford’s, these people who I was fascinated by as a young actress.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “A Strange Loop,” creator Michael R. Jackson’s meta comedy-drama, which won the Tony for best musical, is closing on Broadway in 2023. It will play its final performance on Jan. 15 at the Lyceum Theatre. “Bringing ‘A Strange Loop’ to Broadway has been extraordinary. Michael R. Jackson is one of the most important voices of this generation, and we’re thrilled that so many enthusiastic audience members have been able to experience his monumental musical,” said producer Barbara Whitman. “We look forward to having more theatre lovers come see the show in its final weeks.” “Though ‘ A Strange Loop’ is not autobiographical, it is my life’s work. As such, I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to share this raw, vulnerable, and personal story with the world and to have connected with so many enthusiastic, loving audiences,” said creator Michael R. Jackson, “I am also indebted to the many extraordinary collaborators and institutions past and present that made the telling of this unique story possible. You each will have a piece of my heart, soul, and my loop forever.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Future Laobans,” a project directed by Maung Sun and produced by Maung Sun and Ma Aeint, claimed the Busan Prize, the top award at the Asian Project Market, on Tuesday. The awards were made at an event held at the Paradise Hotel in Busan’s Haeundae district at the end of three days of quick-fire meetings between producers and directors and an array of potential co-producers, financiers and distributors. Organizers said that they put together 705 such one-on-one meetings. The CJ ENM Award went to Indonesia’ “Gaspar,” to be directed by Yosep Anggi Noen and produced by Yulia Evina Bhara and Cristian Imanueli.