Max’s Marketing Boss Explains Using Old ‘Harry Potter’ Logo to Announce New Series, and Boosting Combined Platform’s Family Focus

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer NBCUniversal executives did not comment on the writers strike at its New York-based NewFront presentation to advertisers Tuesday, even as hundreds of Writers Guild of America members and their supporters rallied in a picket line outside the 5th Avenue event. The scripts for the occasion, led by Peacock president Kelly Campbell, were prepped ahead of Monday’s late-night call for a strike once contract negotiations broke down between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). They were not modified Tuesday to include remarks about the strike, despite the fact TV and film writers had gathered in mass outside at the WGA East’s only planned protest for Day 1 of the work stoppage.

BreAnna Bell “Fboy Island” is officially moving to The CW. The network has ordered a third season of the reality dating series as well as a new spinoff, “Fgirl Island.” The news comes after the series was canceled by HBO Max after the release of Season 2, along with several other original unscripted shows. “With its innovative and modern twist on the reality dating genre, incredibly talented host Nikki Glaser, and truly unforgettable title, ‘Fboy Island’ on The CW is a perfect match,” commented Olander. “Along with our partners at STXtelevision, we look forward to growing the franchise on The CW with the gender-flipping spinoff ‘Fgirl Island’ and cannot wait to introduce the next generation of FBoys and FGirls to existing fans as well as a new broadcast audience.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The new regime at Peacock has spent the past nine months preparing to take its baby bird to new heights. The number of big moves made by the NBCUniversal-owned streamer — from amping up its original content slate to livestream deals with Hallmark, Reelz and Big 10 college football to bringing NBC shows back into the fold for next-day viewing and eliminating its free tier for new users — is setting the stage for what executives hope will be a growth spurt in 2023. Peacock, which launched three years ago last month, will show of its brighter plumage Tuesday with its New Fronts presentation to advertisers. “It’s all coming together,” says Peacock president Kelly Campbell, who signed on in October 2021 after serving as president of Hulu. “We’re just seeing an increasing interest overall when it comes to inflow and engagement, and people are stickier than they were in the past.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer With half a day to go until the clock strikes midnight on WGA talks, Hollywood is trying to operate as if it were any other day in town, despite the fact TV and film writers could be on strike Tuesday if the negotiations don’t go their way. While high and low-budget shows alike shoot in Los Angeles, New York City, Georgia and across the pond Monday, everyone from writers on sets to executives in office buildings knows Tuesday might bring a situation they haven’t dealt with since 2007. “As expected, it is eerily quiet — it is overcast in LA and that matches the mood of the town,” one comms exec said. “Lots of discussion about what news to announce and how news will play with both sides of the table, so to speak. Definitely feels like the calm before the storm.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Amazon is bringing more than 100 of its Prime Video originals to Freevee, the company’s ad-supported platform that’s home to new hit “Jury Duty,” this year. The deal marks the first time these titles will be available to view for free and with commercial breaks. Among the slate of hit Prime Video shows and movies that will begin streaming on Freevee (while still remaining available for ad-free viewing on Prime Video) are “Reacher,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “The Wheel of Time,” “A League of Their Own” and “LuLaRich.” As of Monday, more than 50 of these originals are now available for streaming on Freevee, including “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” “The Grand Tour,” “Mozart in the Jungle,” “Bosch,” “Modern Love,” “Savage X Fenty,” “Sylvie’s Love,” “Troop Zero” and “Late Night.”

Harry Potter film franchise, posted two photos of herself when sharing the news. In the sweet images, Bonnie took to Instagram to show off her baby bump and captioned the post: "We’re having a baby! So excited to share this beautiful land with them. "What a wild and humbling journey pregnancy is, transforming to make space for new life.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Aidy Bryant is set to star in “Lonely Hearts Club,” a dramedy series based on an episode of the Crime Junkies podcast, currently in the works at Peacock. “Beau Is Afraid” filmmaker Ari Aster is executive producing the project. Set in the late 1940s, “Lonely Hearts Club” is described as a darkly comedic true crime thriller about a lonely woman who falls in love with a dim but handsome con man. Together they form an unlikely “Loser-Bonnie-and-Clyde”-style partnership that ends in lies, murder and the electric chair. The show is based on an episode of Ashley Flowers’ Crime Junkie podcast entitled “Infamous: The ‘Lonely Hearts’ Killers.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Disney Entertainment has reshuffled roles and oversight among some comms and PR execs amid the second round of layoffs companywide. In addition to this week’s changes, Variety has confirmed that since February, Shari Rosenblum has led publicity, talent relations and events across 20th Television, 20th Animation and ABC Signature as SVP of publicity for Disney Television Studios. Rosenblum, who has spent 18 years at the studio leading campaign efforts for series including “Modern Family,” “The Dropout” and “Homeland,” reports to Candice Ashton. New reorg moves include:

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Amazon is putting its ownership of the Culver Theater to good use with a two-day screening of “The Boys” Season 3. On both Friday, April 28 and Saturday, April 29, all eight episodes of the third season of the Prime Video drama will play on the big screen in the Culver City cinema (formerly an ArcLight/Pacific theater, acquired by Amazon in July 2022) starting at 9 a.m. For the April 28 screening, the FYC event will run until 6:30, ending in an hourlong Q&A with the cast and executive producers in honor of National Superhero Day. There will be no Q&A on April 29, which will conclude the festivities at 5:30.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer In a months-long goal to reach 7,000 job cuts total, Disney will begin its second round of layoffs of the year today. The notifications will be handed out to staff through Thursday, concluding with approximately 4,000 job eliminations completed overall by week’s end, according to company officials. While the Disney workforce will be reduced by thousands across divisions Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products (hourly frontline operations roles at Parks and Resorts will not be affected), and locations from Burbank to New York and Connecticut, there are still more layoffs to come. According to Disney, a third and final wave of cuts is expected to begin ahead of the summer, which will bring the Mouse House to its 7,000 layoffs target. (The figure represents 3.2% of Disney’s total headcount of about 220,000 worldwide as of Oct. 1, 2022.)

Killer Mike has announced plans to release a new album and has shared the first taster from the record ‘Don’t Let The Devil’.The LP ‘Michael’, which is his first since 2012’s ‘R.A.P. Music’, is set to be released on June 16.The first single from the record, which you can listen to below, features his fellow Run The Jewels cohort El-P.“[Run the Jewels] is the X-Men, this is my Logan,” Mike said in statement via Rolling Stone.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “The Good Doctor” has been renewed for a seventh season at ABC ahead of its Season 6 finale. The medical drama, which debuted in 2017, stars Freddie Highmore as Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young autistic surgeon who has savant syndrome and works in the surgical unit at the prestigious San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. Alongside Highmore, the “Good Doctor” cast includes Hill Harper as Dr. Marcus Andrews, Richard Schiff as Dr. Aaron Glassman, Fiona Gubelmann as Dr. Morgan Reznick, Will Yun Lee as Dr. Alex Park, Christina Chang as Dr. Audrey Lim, Paige Spara as Lea Dilallo, Bria Samoné Henderson as Dr. Jordan Allen and Noah Galvin as Dr. Asher Wolke.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters revealed what exactly went wrong with the live “Love Is Blind” Season 4 reunion special on Sunday — and how they plan to fix the problem with other live broadcasts moving forward. “We’re really sorry to disappoint so many people,” Peters said during a prerecorded Q1 earnings interview Tuesday. “We didn’t meet the standard that we expect ourselves: to serve our members and just be clear from a technical perspective. We’ve got the infrastructure. We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try to improve live-streaming performance after the last live broadcast, Chris Rock[‘s ‘Selective Outrage’] in March. We just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love Is Blind.'”

Sufjan Stevens has announced his new album ‘Reflections’ along with new single ‘Ekstasis’.The album is a studio recording of his score for the ballet by choreographer Justin Peck, and was performed by pianists Timo Andres and Conor Hanick. The record is set for release on May 19 via Asthmatic Kitty Records.Speaking about how ‘Ekstasis’ captures the mood of ‘Reflections’, Stevens said: “It is about energy, light and duality.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” is the most-watched program out of all ABC News launches to ever debut on Hulu, Variety has learned exclusively. According to ABC News, “Pretty Baby” ranks No. 1 in total hours streamed in its first week compared to all previous ABC News premieres on the streamer. Specific viewership data was not provided. Described as a “galvanizing look at actor, model and icon Brooke Shields as she transforms from a sexualized young girl to a woman discovering her power,” the two-part doc debuted April 3 on Hulu, following its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. “Holding a mirror up to a society that objectifies women and girls, her story shows the perils and triumphs of gaining agency in a hostile world.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Millennials are the largest untapped market that video game companies should be focusing on, per a new study from Fandom, which finds that the generation spends more time gaming than both Gen Z and teens. According to fan-community platform and entertainment company Fandom’s annual Inside Gaming report, which was released Thursday, “despite teens and Gen Z spending more time gaming than they did last year, older generations of players are spending more hours per week gaming.” Compiled based on proprietary user data from Fandom.com and a global study that examines how gamer motivations and behaviors vary by generation, the report found that 52% of Millennials surveyed rank playing video games as their top interest and 40% of Fandom’s Millennial audience spends over 22 hours per week gaming, compared to only 29% of tweens.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery finally revealed the plans (and confirmed the long-rumored name) for its new streaming service, Max, which will combine offerings from HBO Max and Discovery+ into one product, during a splashy press presentation on the Warner Bros. Studio lot Wednesday. The event kicked off at 10 a.m. at the iconic Burbank location, presided over by WBD CEO David Zaslav, president and CEO of global streaming and games JB Perrette, HBO and HBO Max CEO and chairman Casey Bloys (who now also has oversight of Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network), and U.S. networks group chairman and chief content officer Kathleen Finch. Variety is on the scene, ready to fill you in on all the details about the new streamer, Warner Bros. Discovery’s direct-to-consumer strategy, the future of HBO and the standalone version of Discovery+.

SZA has announced a string of new tour dates, spanning across the UK, Europe and North America.Having recently finished a series of sold-out tour dates, SZA has revived her ‘SOS’ tour with ten new performances in Europe and twenty-one dates in North America.The second leg of the tour will see the Grammy-winning R&B artist perform at arenas in Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Berlin and Cologne, before moving through the UK for four shows. This includes two consecutive nights at London’s O2 Arena.All European dates will take place throughout June and will end with one performance in Dublin’s 3Arena.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” Paramount’s “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Netflix’s “Arcane” are just the start of a new wave of movies and TV series based on popular video games and table-top gaming IP.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Fox Nation is moving further into reality TV with the launch of new series “The Real Hatfields & McCoys: Forever Feuding.” Launching April 24 on the Fox News-backed streaming service, the five-episode series “will spotlight the modern-day Hatfields and McCoys whose notoriously violence-ridden relationship has taken a contemporary twist. From the families’ brutal disputes in the 1800s to current 21st century issues, the program, set in West Virginia, highlights their ongoing rivalry.” Per Fox Nation, “Hatfield family members including Nancy Justus (the oldest surviving direct descendent of Devil Anse Hatfield), Missy Lester, Amber Bishop, Chad Bishop and Christopher Champagne will be featured on the program, while the McCoys’ Big Jim, Courtney Quick, Derek DeProspero, Casandra Champagne, James Quick and John Quick will appear.”