LALIFF 2022 Festival Lineup Revealed: HBO Max’s ‘Father Of The Bride’, Disney’s ‘Mija’, More

It’s been a busy few months for Lizzo and there’s no sign of slowing down.

Selome Hailu HBO Max and Cartoon Network announced a new family-oriented animated special called “Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth” from Sacha Baron Cohen, Greg Daniels, Mike Judge and Michael Korman. Baron Cohen is set to star.“Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth” is set in the mythical “Town of Fools” that has long existed in Yiddish folktakes and shares the original stories’ absurdist humor and interpretive questioning in a nod to Jewish intellectual traditions.

EXCLUSIVE: The single-camera teen comedy Wild Life from Imagine Kids+Family has received a pilot order at HBO Max with rising star Izabella Alvarez (Euphoria, The Casagrandes) set as the show’s lead.

CNN Films and HBO Max have commissioned a new documentary about Little Richard, from Emmy-winning director Lisa Cortés (All In: The Fight for Democracy) of Cortés Filmworks. The film, Little Richard: I Am Everything (w/t), will take a deep dive into the life and career of the iconic musician, who did what he felt, and felt what he did—”at all costs”—presenting never-seen-before archival footage, as well as interviews with loved ones, colleagues, contemporary musicians and historians.

Director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade won critical acclaim for his 2005 documentary “The Staircase”, chronicling the trial of novelist Michael Peterson, accused of murdering his wife in 2001.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterBrad Wilson, HBO Max’s U.S. general manager and EVP of global data, CRM and growth, is exiting amid an ongoing shakeup at new company Warner Bros.

EXCLUSIVE: Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to Grandave International’s romantic comedy Divorce Bait, with plans to release it in theaters and on digital platforms this fall.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max has given a script-to-series order to Anon Pls, a one-hour drama based on DeuxMoi’s upcoming debut novel, from Berlanti Productions and Warner Brothers Television.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy nominee Ben Feldman (Superstore), Missi Pyle (Y: The Last Man), Jacqueline Correa (Graduate), Nondumiso Tembe (Six), Morgan Lynee Dudley (The Prom), Andrew Barth Feldman (High School Musical: The Musical – The Series), Glynn Sweet (Rosamunde Pilcher) and Alexa Povah (The King’s Man) will round out the cast of Netflix’s romance A Tourist’s Guide to Love, joining an ensemble that also includes Rachael Leigh Cook, Scott Ly, Thanh Truc and Le Thien, as previously announced.

EXCLUSIVE: James DuMont (The Righteous Gemstones), Christopher James Baker (Ozark), Manny Galan (City on a Hill), Juvian Marquez (Power Book II: Ghost) and Anirudh Pisharody (9-1-1) will round out the cast of the thriller Unit 234, from director Andy Tennant, which is currently in production in the Cayman Islands. The quintet will star alongside previously announced cast members including Isabelle Fuhrman, Don Johnson and Jack Huston.

EXCLUSIVE: Riot Games, the developer behind League of Legends and Valorant, continues to bolster its entertainment studio with a handful of key executive hires hailing from Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount and more.

Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller is the latest DC Comics character getting the small screen treatment.

EXCLUSIVE: New Line’s feature take of John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down has added three: J. Smith-Cameron, Poorna Jagannathan and Maliq Johnson. They’re joining previously announced Isabela Merced, Cree Cicchino, Felix Mallard and Judy Reyes in the HBO Max movie.

The 20th anniversary of American Idol will be celebrated tonight with a reunion special airing on ABC!

Ramin Karimloo, the male lead of Broadway’s Funny Girl, will be out of the show temporarily after testing positive for Covid just four day’s after the musical revival’s opening night.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max docuseries The Way Down: God, Greed & The Cult of Gwen Shamblin is set to be adapted as a scripted series.

Hacks,” which premieres on the streamer May 12 with two episodes, followed by two more each week until June 2. Picking up after stand-up legend Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) lost her Vegas residency, she and young comedian Ava (Hannah Einbinder) travel across the country to workshop her new act.Additional cast includes Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Jane Adams, Christopher McDonald, Kaitlin Olson, Paul W. Downs, Poppy Liu, Rose Abdoo, Mark Indelicato, Meg Stalter, Angela E.

If you watched the first season of the Emmy-winning and critically-acclaimed HBO Max comedy series “Hacks”—and you probably should if you didn’t, it’s a great conflict between two generations of comedians—you probably remember that things ended on a cliffhanger. The dark mentorship between legendary Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her young, entitled writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is still very much touch and go.

is back with season 2. The HBO Max series starring Jean Smart is set to premiere almost exactly one year later, on May 12, 2022.