Issa Rae’s Raedio Inks Multi-Year Partnership With Def Jam (EXCLUSIVE)

America Ferrera is admitting to something personal!

Greta Gerwig had a clear vision for the story she wanted to tell with Barbie and rejected the idea of cutting a scene with Margot Robbie and an older woman on a bench.

This Barbie is a body-positive queen — and her name is Issa Rae.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Whether it’s a soundtrack, a score or a song placement, there are countless wrong ways to do music for film and so few ways to make it feel right. There’s very little leeway, which is why it can be so challenging for even the most successful hitmakers to make the transition to film music — especially with a major film event like “Barbie.” With albums and songs by Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars and many others under his belt, seven-time Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson is one of the most successful pop songwriter-producers working today, yet his work on the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster “Barbie” film — for which he co-wrote and co-produced five songs, cowrote the score with longtime collaborator Andrew Wyatt, and served as an executive music producer — was a new experience.

Selome Hailu Eight years after the last controversy-flanked season of “Project Greenlight,” the show still thrives on movie magic and the drama that follows. Max debuted a revamped version of the docuseries on July 12, this time led by Issa Rae’s production company Hoorae. Rae, Kumail Nanjiani and Gina Prince-Bythewood act as the official mentors, meeting up to select a female first-time feature filmmaker to direct a script they’ve commissioned by an outside writer. They land on Meko Winbush, a writer, director and editor with extensive experience making trailers and short films. Notably, after the selection process is complete, Rae jets to London to shoot “Barbie” and Nanjiani enters production. Their screentime drops dramatically after the first episode. Prince-Bythewood remains more involved thoughout, regularly making time to call Winbush while editing her own film, 2022’s “The Woman King.”

Leonardo DiCaprio is standing with his fellow actors. The “Revenant” star took to his Instagram Stories to show his support not long after it was announced that SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) formally approved a strike upon negotiations falling apart between the actors’ union and major Hollywood studios and streamers, who are represented by the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers).

Leonardo DiCaprio is standing with his fellow actors. The  star took to his Instagram Stories to show his support not long after it was announced that SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) formally approved a strike upon negotiations falling apart between the actors' union and major Hollywood studios and streamers, who are represented by the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers).The actors will now join the writers on the picket line, marking the first time since 1960 that two major guilds will be striking at the same time.

Do you feel like the genre aspect of the film Meko had to make presented certain challenges, and at the same time, benefits for viewers to see inside the process?Rae: As a producer, that was a learning lesson. I felt like we were really ambitious on our side to one, I think that finding a talented female filmmaker wasn’t a challenge at all, it’s more just having them produce something with a limited budget in a limited amount of time.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Syd Barrett was the guiding light of the original Pink Floyd — the band’s singer, primary songwriter and guitarist from their first day until their psychedelia-defining 1967 debut album, “Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” His sparkling, childlike melodies and lyrics have cast a huge influence over rock and pop music ever since — David Bowie cited him as a pivotal influence, and it shows — and entire genres of music, particularly the neo-psychedelic waves of the early ‘80s in the U.S. and U.K., bear his fingerprints. Yet he was also one of rock’s first “acid casualties” — people who took too many drugs, or at least the wrong ones, and were never the same afterward. His bandmates and friends say one day, he was just gone: The distinctive sparkle in his eye and spring in his step had disappeared. He became uncommunicative and withdrawn; he’d go onstage and just stand there, strumming one chord or doing nothing while the other bandmembers would struggle to hold things together. He’d bring the band a song and continually change it as they tried to follow him — this remarkable documentary takes its title from one such song, so titled because they could never get it if he kept changing it.

formally approved a strike upon negotiations falling apart between the actors' union and major Hollywood studios and streamers, who are represented by the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers).The actors will now join the writers on the picket line, marking the first time since 1960 that two major guilds will be striking at the same time. The writers' strike began May 2 and is in its 10th week.In addition to Rae, a number of others stars are speaking out following news of the strike, including Josh Gad, Olivia Wilde, Rosie O'Donnell, Margaret Cho, Jamie Lynn Spears, Mandy Moore, Amber Tamblyn, Riley Keough and Kaley Cuoco, who posted messages of support for SAG on social media. A post shared by Josh Gad (@joshgad)star Cynthia Nixon posted to her Instagram Story, «The @sagaftra strike has at last arrived.

Issa Rae can’t wait to stop wearing pink after the Barbie press tour  ends.

Will Ferrell is seen out with his entire family, but that's exactly what transpired Wednesday in London at the premiere.The 55-year-old funny man was seen out with his wife, Viveca Paulin, dressed to the nine alongside the couple's three sons — Magnus, 19, Mattias, 16, and Axel, 13. Ferrell almost looked like his character in Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated look inside Barbie Land, in which Ferrell plays a human.

Molly-Mae Hague didn't hold back when it came to her latest public appearance as she put on a dazzling display at the UK's star-studded Barbie premiere. The European premiere of the new movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling took place on Wednesday night (July 12).

Issa Rae‘s Raedio, the audio division of her Hoorae Media company, has inked a multi-year partnership with Def Jam Recordings. The deal includes publishing, music supervision, podcasts, digital content, and beyond. It will also allow Raedio to sign, market, and distribute Def Jam artists.

Greta Gerwig was planning to work with Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan again in the Barbie movie but that ultimately didn’t pan out.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Saoirse Ronan revealed last September to People magazine that she tried and failed to film a cameo in the upcoming “Barbie” movie, which is directed by her “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” filmmaker Greta Gerwig. It turns out Gerwig eyed even more “Barbie” cameos, including one that would’ve reunited her and Ronan with Timothée Chalamet. The Oscar nominee also appeared in “Lady Bird” and “Little Women.” “Well, it was always going to have to be like a sort of smaller thing because she was actually producing at the time, which I am so proud of her for,” Gerwig said of having to scrap Ronan’s cameo. “And of course, it’s brilliant. But it was going to be a specialty cameo. I was also going to do a specialty cameo with Timmy, and both of them couldn’t do it, and I was so annoyed. But I love them so much. But it felt like doing something without my children. I mean, I’m not their mom, but I sort of feel like their mom.”

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Each episode of the new season of “Project Greenlight” begins with a worthy mission statement. “We’re choosing a woman director,” executive producer Issa Rae tells us, “because ‘Project Greenlight’ has never had one before.” Gina Prince-Bythewood, the director of films including “The Woman King” and also an executive producer here, adds, “It’s about time the world sees how many dope women directors there are just waiting to get their shot.” These are statements that are hard to argue with — “Project Greenlight,” this season, did choose a woman director, the first-time filmmaker Meko Winbush, to pull together a feature film, the sci-fi family drama “Gray Matter,” in just 18 days of shooting. And Winbush, who is Black, is one of many who deserve a chance of the sort the industry doesn’t tend to hand out freely to women of color, something both “Insecure” creator Rae and Prince-Bythewood surely understand well. (They’re two of three putative “mentors” for Winbush on the show, along with actor Kumail Nanjiani, who also co-wrote “The Big Sick.”) And yet the show is purpose-built not to elevate or to celebrate Winbush but to somewhat ruthlessly pull apart the ways in which she might be made to look unready for the job and unsteady on her feet. It’s a shockingly watchable series that evinces that sickly feeling of humiliation from a past, crueler era of reality TV — “The Comeback,” but make it indie.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Over the past weekend, the Weeknd broke London Stadium’s record for highest attendance with his two-night stand at the venue on Friday and Saturday, which drew 160,000 people to his “After Hours Til Dawn Tour.” The tour also holds the record for highest single-night attendance for any show at the stadium with 80,000 fans. According to promoter Live Nation, the tour has already sold more than 2 million tickets for its European and forthcoming South America and Mexico dates — and 200,000 for both England and France. The sold-out 2022 North American leg of the stadium tour grossed more than $148 million dollars. The global tour has now grossed over $350 million dollars to date.

America Ferrera stepped out on the pink carpet in a stunning two piece look for the premiere of Barbie in Los Angeles on Sunday (July 9).

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer In a display of pink visible from outer space, Greta Gerwig’s  “Barbie” held its lush world premiere on Sunday in Los Angeles. The Shrine Auditorum, located smack in the middle of the USC campus, was hosed down in colors of blush and bashful for the anticipated Warner Bros. release (as in, the security guards wore pink polo shirts), which drew the film’s stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.  One notable absence was Noah Baumbach, the film’s co-writer and Gerwig’s partner. “My co-writer and co-creator, my partner in love and art, Noah Baumbach is not here. He is passionately supporting the fight of the Writers Guild of America,” Gerwig said. “He is a Barbie girl. Nothing in ‘Barbie’ happened without him, and nothing in Hollywood happens without writers.”