Malala Yousafzai Boards Pakistan’s Oscar Submission ‘Joyland’ as Executive Producer (EXCLUSIVE)

EXCLUSIVE: Maya Penn, the 22-year old award-winning animator, environmental activist and multi-hyphenate, has set her first directing project: the animated short film Asali: Power of The Pollinators. The short is an original project from Penn’s purpose-driven animation studio Upenndo! Productions and is set to be executive produced by Viola Davis, Julius Tennon and their JuVee Productions.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Cody Ryder has joined Park Pictures as senior executive producer for commercials and co-head of film and television. Ryder is the first executive producer at the company to serve in a dual capacity across its commercial and feature film divisions. Ryder previously served in the TV and branded content department at Plum Productions. There, she developed pitches and produced branded content until becoming a freelance line producer based out of New York. Ryder has been freelance ever since until she decided to join the ranks at Park in its Los Angeles office.   Ryder’s projects include the recently released Kendrick Lamar short film “We Cry Together”and the “We Matter Too” PSA produced with Common’s Imagine Justice organization. She has worked with brand clients including Coca-Cola, Old Navy, Verizon, McDonald’s, Chevy, Reebok, Instagram,and Kia, to name a few; and artists like LCD Soundsystem, Kanye West, Haim, Brandi Carlile and Questlove. Her feature film work includes “The Art of Self Defense,” “The Clovehitch Killer,” “Other People,” “Cop Car” and “Robot and Frank.”

Netflix has announced that it will be launching a new game development studio which will be led by Overwatch executive producer, Chacko Sonny.During the TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 event yesterday (October 18), Netflix’s vice president of games Mike Verdu shared the news of the new California studio, which is currently unnamed (via VGC).“We are starting another organic new studio in Southern California, this time around Chacko Sonny, who oversaw production on God of War Ascension for Santa Monica and oversaw a portfolio of their games, and then was executive producer of a little game franchise called Overwatch,” Verdu said.“He could have gone anywhere, he could have raised money, he could have done anything and he chose to come here. We are building a team around him and looking to him to reinvent what games can be.”Chacko Sonny left Blizzard Entertainment in September 2021 in order “to take some time off.” He worked at the company for five years from 2016 but didn’t become an executive producer on the Overwatch franchise until 2018.

EXCLUSIVE: Comcast NBCUniversal is excited to announce the exclusive premiere of the documentary film The Return from record-breaking film and Emmy-nominated TV producer Will Packer.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Six-time Primetime Emmy award-winner Frank Doelger, whose credits include “Game of Thrones,” “The Swarm,” “John Adams” and “Rome,” and Intaglio Films, a joint venture between Beta Film and ZDF Studios, have started production on surveillance drama thriller “Concordia,” set in an experimental utopian community. ZDF, MBC, France Télévisions and Hulu Japan have signed up as partners for the six-part series, shot in English and directed by Barbara Eder (“The Swarm,” “Barbarians,” “Cop Stories”). Doelger helms as executive producer and showrunner, alongside the executive producers Ute Leonhardt, Rafferty Thwaites, Jan Wünschmann and Robert Franke. Shooting takes place at various locations in Rome, Northern Italy, and Leipzig in Germany.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Who can forget Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” that cheeky work of early-18th-century satire in which the author had the nerve to suggest cannibalism as a means of keeping Ireland’s unwanted kids “from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick”? In “Plan 75,” debuting director Chie Hayakawa floats an equally extreme idea of her own without so much as a glimmer of irony, and the suggestion is upsetting enough that the public will likely still be citing it decades down the road. Set in near-future Japan, where it’s a surplus of seniors — versus an abundance of babies — that’s causing trouble, this chilling social drama takes its name from a hypothetical new legislation whereby an overtaxed government offers its elderly citizens an incentive to euthanize.

“House of the Dragon” executive producer Sara Hess is going to continue developing original projects for HBO. The network announced Friday that Hess, who is also a writer on the “Game of Thrones” prequel series, is extending her overall deal for another two years.

Elliot Page has his next project lined up.

Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown” is headed to the small screen as a 10-part series with the author acting as showrunner and executive producer alongside Taika Waititi, who will direct the pilot episode for Hulu.“Silicon Valley” and “Crazy Rich Asians” actor Jimmy O. Yang is set to star.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Troy Kotsur, the Oscar-winning actor of “CODA,” has joined Mounia Meddour’s uplifting drama “Houria” ahead of its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival. Meddour’s follow-up to her Cesar-winning film “Papicha” tells the story of Houria, a gifted dancer with dreams of joining the Algerian National Ballet. To make ends meet, she bets in clandestine fights overnight. However after winning a final, Houria is violently assaulted by a man determined to get his money back. When she wakes up in a hospital, she no longer is able to speak and will certainly never dance again. Refusing to abandon her dream, she throws herself, heart and soul, into her physical recovery and meets at a rehab center other women damaged by life. Houria resolves to help them transcend their wounded bodies and stand tall by teaching them how to dance through a choreography inspired by sign language.

K.J. Yossman Jemima Khan (“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”) and Jaime Ray Newman (“Dopesick”) have boarded Seemab Gul’s Oscar-qualifying short film “Sandstorm” as executive producers. A coming of age story, centering around a Pakistani schoolgirl called Zara, “Sandstorm” navigates the “tricky terrain of internet dating in a conservative Muslim society,” according to the logline as well as questions “the objectification of the female body and its relationship to honor in Pakistani culture.” In the short, Zara sends her virtual boyfriend a “sensual dance video” which he then uses to blackmail her. “Caught between his manipulative behaviour and the desire to experience love on her own terms, Zara searches for the strength to reject the confines of a patriarchal society,” reads the synopsis.

The co-executive producer of popular US comedy series Scrubs has been charged with 18 counts of sexual assault. Eric Weinberg, 62, is said to have “relied on his Hollywood credentials” to lure young women to photo shoots where he is alleged to have assaulted them, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney.The charges stem from alleged incidents involving five different women in the years between 2014 and 2019.

Activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai has joined Pakistani film “Joyland’s” team as Executive Producer, a Variety report stated. “Joyland,” directed by Saim Sadiq, is Pakistan’s official submission in the foreign language film category at the Oscars. Yousafzai is backing the film through her own production company, Extracurricular Productions. 

Refresh for more details: Rust Productions and its star and producer Alec Baldwin have reached a settlement with the estate of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. As part of the peace, the DP’s husband Matthew Hutchins will executive produce Rust, which will return to production in January 2023 with the original cast.

Emmy-winning producer Jesse Collins has been tapped as showrunner and executive producer of the 80th Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, dick clark productions and NBC announced Tuesday. Jesse Collins Entertainment president Dionne Harmon also will serve as an executive producer of the show that will air live coast-to-coast from the Beverly Hilton on Tuesday, January 10 at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT on NBC and Peacock.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” has promoted Matt Lappin to serve as co-executive producer of the late night show. In his new role, Lappin will help oversee the show’s daily creative direction; his promotion was announced on Tuesday by executive producers Stephen Colbert and Tom Purcell. Lappin was most recently senior supervising producer. As co-executive producer, he’ll be part of a team that also includes co-EPs Denise Rehrig and Tanya Michenvich Bracco. Together, they’re all helping Colbert and Purcell run the ship in the absence of former executive producer Chris Licht, who departed “The Late Show” earlier this year to take over CNN as its CEO.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large The rebirth of the Golden Globes has found its showrunner. Jesse Collins, who just won an Emmy earlier this month as the producer behind “The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent,” has signed on to executive produce and showrun the 2023 Golden Globes as it returns to NBC in January. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, NBC and telecast producer Dick Clark Prods. announced on Tuesday that Collins would be at the helm as the Globes airs its 80th edition on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. ET. The Globes will continue to take place at its longtime home inside the Beverly Hilton ballroom.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Alongside her work through Extracurricular and Malala Fund, Yousafzai is throwing her weight behind Pillars Artist Fellowship, which supports emerging Muslim directors and screenwriters. The program is timely, given shocking new data from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that reveals Muslims comprised only 1.1% of characters in popular television series from 2018 to 2019, despite making up 25% of the world’s population. Set up last year by Pillars Fund and actor-producer Riz Ahmed and his production company, Left Handed Films, the fellowship provides an unrestricted grant of $25,000 to 10 recipients a year. It also offers one-on-one mentorship, professional development and access to an advisory committee of leading figures such as “Ms. Marvel” showrunner Bisha K. Ali and Mahershala Ali.

Malala Yousafzai is one of creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime. For more, click here. Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai is comparing herself to the monster from “Stranger Things” as she shows off her double-jointedness. “I am Vecna,” she declares while bending her fingers way back, emulating the slimy talons of Jamie Campbell Bower’s dastardly overlord of the Upside Down. Yousafzai may be a messenger of peace, globally recognized for her work campaigning for girls’ education, but she’s also lost a lot of sleep devouring the stunningly violent fourth season of the hit Netflix series, which she binge-watched with her new husband, Asser Malik. Growing up in Swat Valley, Pakistan, the TV enthusiast watched shows such as British sitcom “Mind Your Language” and ABC’s “Ugly Betty” to improve her English and decipher Western culture. Now, inhaling the latest TV programs is technically her job. “I am a producer,” says Yousafzai proudly. “I want my name to be there in TV shows, documentaries and movies.”

Manori Ravindran International Editor Malala Yousafzai has unveiled her first slate of film and TV projects for Apple TV+ through her production banner Extracurricular. The Nobel Laureate struck a programming deal with Apple TV+ last year, and appointed former Berlanti Productions executive and “The Flight Attendant” producer Erika Kennair as president of production at Extracurricular. The resulting projects reflect “Stranger Things” and “Severance” fan Yousafzai’s wide array of interests and tastes — some of which may surprise people. Headlining the slate is “Hyperobject,” a feature film adaptation of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed book “Disorientation” — a sharp-edged, celebrated satire published earlier this year about a college student’s revealing dissertation on a young poet. The project will be directed by “Don’t Look Up” helmer Adam McKay.