No Deadline Strike Talk Podcast Today; Billy Ray & Todd Garner Return Next Week To Review And Look At IATSE & Teamster Collisions Just Up The Road

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Oscar-winning actor Halle Berry had a strike of inspiration on the flight to Saudi Arabia, where she gave a career-spanning conversation at the third edition of the Red Sea Film Festival. The flight, she said, led her to figure out what she wants to direct next: “It’s a love story at its core but it deals with the supernatural, time travel and the future.” This will mark Berry’s sophomore feature after 2020’s MMA drama “Bruised.” When asked about her first directing experience, the actor was frank, labelling the entire process “hell.” “Because I was a woman, and a Black woman, the treatment I received and the things I had to put up with were unconscionable,” she said.

Bad Press, King Coal, Joonam and Fantastic Machine are all award-winning documentaries, yet in the race for Oscar recognition, they’re underdogs. Despite the many honors they have collected at festivals around the world, each of these exceptional films has struggled to land distribution, complicating efforts to get attention from Academy voters (on Monday, King Coal did lock down a deal with American Documentary for broadcast next year on POV). 

EXCLUSIVE: The Artists Equity movie Unstoppable remains exactly that: After the production was shut down during the WGA strike, the William Goldenberg directed, Jennifer Lopez and Jharrel Jerome starring sports movie will return to shooting on Dec. 12 with Don Cheadle, Michael Peña and Bobby Cannavale joining the cast.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, a day before the National Board of Review will weigh in on its selections for the best films and performances of 2023. They’ll be following the New York Film Critics Circle who kicked off the season last week by crowning Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” as its top choice. Its West Coast counterpart, Los Angeles Film Critics, will drop their choices on Sunday.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic A movie directed by the berserk “Muppet Show” character known as Animal couldn’t be any more unruly than Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s new film of that title. This sporadically fun but exhausting hot mess provides 202 minutes of hyperventilating overkill for star Ranbir Kapoor as a tycoon’s favorite son whose anger-management (as well as daddy) issues are off the charts.

England came back from two goals down to beat the Netherlands and keep their hopes of advancing to the knockout stages of the UEFA Women's Nations League alive.

Thousands of unpaid carers across Scotland are set to receive a one-off payment for £270.50 next week. The Carer’s Allowance Supplement will be paid on Friday, December 8 and is only available to eligible claimants living in Scotland who were in receipt of Carer’s Allowance, delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), on October 9, 2023.

Netflix’s Wham! documentary and the George Michael co-directed George Michael: Freedom, which is the ultimate second part of a whopping double-header that I urge you to do over the Christmas period. And now, you can add another to the list; George Michael: Portrait of A Legend which is available on special collectors’ edition Blu-ray and DVD with a smashing a host of extras and a 44-page booklet.I’ve not seen this one as yet but I’ve heard good things.

In a sense, Central Appalachia is as threatened by climate change as much as any other place on Earth.

Netflix has snapped up rights to Incoming, a comedy written and directed by The Mick creators Dave Chernin and John Chernin, in their feature debut.

Sub-zero temperatures could hit Greater Manchester next week as the UK is hit by a cold weather blast bringing 'below average temperatures' and even the chance of snow.

For a Friday that is time for reflection and giving thanks, host Billy Ray and returning original host Todd Garner welcomes WGA president Meredith Stiehm and SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher. They talk with the guys about the lessons learned from the long and brutal six month strike that is finally and mercifully over. The guild leaders advise IATSE and Teamsters negotiators what to expect when their deals expire next July. They also review a negotiation that in their minds never had to turn into such a protracted process. The gains made by their guilds could have been achieved if only the signatories had sent in the CEOs earlier to the bargaining table, and stopped trying to work from a contract and negotiating moves that were hopelessly outdated in the streaming age. Coming in for particular criticism here is AMPTP negotiator Carol Lombardini. After Billy Ray recalled watching Lombardini cancel catering and then announce that the WGA walked away from the table in 2017, Stiehm said this time the head negotiator for studios responded to rejection of an offer by the WGA negotiating committee by presenting the contract to membership and releasing the full offer to the media. Ray and Garner will do one more Strike Talk by the way, and to the editors, that is another thing to give thanks for.

A kind dad had offered to help his neighbour decorate his house before he was brutally killed by him. Tarik Hussein lived next door to 56-year-old Esmaeil Tofigh in Longsight.

IDFA – the largest documentary film festival in the world — has just wrapped its 36th edition, and it was a memorable one by every definition. Two hundred and fifty films screened in Amsterdam, representing work from across the globe –the Middle East to Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe.

EXCLUSIVE: Buchwald has signed Grammy-winning multi-hyphenate Billy Ray Cyrus and Firerose Cyrus for worldwide representation in all areas. 

EXCLUSIVE: MTV Documentary Films’ impressive slate of short films will debut on the Paramount+ streaming platform on Tuesday, a lineup that includes The ABCs of Book Banning, the directorial debut of documentary legend Sheila Nevins.

A new devolved benefit replacing Carer’s Allowance for people in Scotland is set to launch in three council areas from next week. People in Dundee City, Perth and Kinross and the Western Isles will be able to make a new claim to Social Security Scotland for the Carer Support Payment from Monday, November 20.

Scottish Labour will back a ceasefire next week when MSPs debate the spiralling conflict in the Middle East.

It’s unlikely the U.S. Supreme Court would have adopted a code of ethics, as it did this week, without a series of revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas and his appetite for first-class vacations paid for by a wealthy Republican friend. Consider it another example of Thomas’ influence on the Court. 

So the good news is that the half year double strike that ground Hollywood to a halt is over. The bad news is Billy Ray has just about come to the end of the road on Deadline Strike Talk, which to our mind has been superb and a light in the darkness. He will do one more episode or two to wrap up the lessons we hopefully learned from this labor discord, and then we will beg him to keep a podcast presence with Deadline. In sober and intelligent tones, and with a superb roster of guests, he has helped create an understanding of the intricacies, forces and history that went into the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. The hope is he, and his initial co-pilot Todd Garner, will want to continue together or separately an inside baseball dialogue with the industry that Deadline serves. That is a conversation for another day. Here, Billy Ray discusses the settlement that puts the industry back to work. And he is joined by California State Senators Anthony Portantino and Dave Min to discuss the role of state government in supporting the labor movement.