PEN America honors activists, artists and dissidents

Yesterday, Deadline broke the news that Marvel had found their man to helm the upcoming “Thunderbolts” movie in Jake Schreier. And since the Thunderbolts team in the comics has a lot of characters affiliated with Captain America, it’s easy to speculate who might end up in the movie’s group.

A small group of freelance post-production coordinators in New York have voted unanimously to join the Communications Workers of America in NLRB-supervised elections at eight separate companies, including Apple Studios, Netflix Productions, Universal Television, CBS Studios, Showtime, HBO, Turner and Disney Pictures.

Selome Hailu Jordana Hochman has been promoted to executive vice president and head of programming at ITV America.Hochman was named executive vice president and head of East Coast programming in 2019, and will now expand her oversight to include productions on both coasts. In her time at ITV America, she has amassed credited including Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” A&E’s “The First 48” and upcoming documentary “Exposing Parchman,” Oxygen’s “New York Homicide,” OWN’s “Marry Me Now” and Disney+’s “Becoming.” She is also working on upcoming projects for Netflix, Hulu and Starz.Hochman joined ITV America in 2013, first serving as vice president of programming at Leftfield Pictures.

Thania Garcia The City of Brotherly Love will welcome Bad Bunny and Tyler, the Creator as co-headliners for the Made in America Festival which returns for its 10th year. As usual, the event will take place at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadephia over Labor Day weekend, from September 3-4.With a lineup curated by festival founder, Jay-Z, Made in America will include performances from hip-hop and R&B artists Lil Uzi Vert, Jazmine Sullivan, Burna Boy, Snoh Aalegra, Kodak Black and Pusha T.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran unscripted producer and executive Pam Healey has been named president of Wheelhouse Entertainment’s flagship production company Spoke Studios.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival has named its jury totaling more than five dozen members across 18 categories with Alan Zweibel, Aidan Quinn, Anne Archer, Rose Troche and Oge Egbuonu judging the U.S. Narrative Feature Competition.

For all the shock and awe that the Hulu series Pam & Tommy has to offer on the tortured romance of Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson and priapic Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, creator/EP Robert Siegel, EP D.V. DeVincentis and EP/episodic director Craig Gillespie saw a whole other, higher layer in the couple’s story.

announced they would exit their roles as Motion Picture Group chairman and president this summer after Amazon completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of the storied studio. The move is a homecoming for DeLuca, who joined Warner’s New Line Cinema as an intern at age 19 and rose to president of production.

Toby Emmerich is out as the head of Warner Bros. motion picture studio. Replacing him are Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who recently exited the helm of MGM. This had been rumored since before they exited that studio (they’ll stay into the summer until their contracts expire). This is part of Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s grand plan to split Warner Bros into multiple labels, with Warner Bros proper/New Line, DC Entertainment and Animation.

Carson Burton The multiverse is hot right now.From “Everything Everywhere All At Once” to “Star Trek” to the DC Extended Universe, each multiversal story carries with it its own style, rules and implications on reality. Now, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe aims its post-“Endgame” storyline through the multiverse the stakes are ever-increasing. Creating the multiversal, mind-bending looks for the new blockbuster hit “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is a tall task for VFX artists working on the Sam Raimi project, but the innate flexibility of these stories allows for creative expression to thrive.“The hardest part on this kind of project is sometimes not the execution of the work itself, but sometimes it’s just finding what is it that we want to do,” Alexis Wajsbrot of Framestore VFX told Variety.

Antonio Ferme editorThe 2022 PEN America Literary Gala featured remarks from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and other notable figures who emphasized the importance of protecting free speech.“I see freedom of speech as a hope of democracy,” Booker told Variety on Monday night at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Sebastian Stan is opening up about THAT scene from his Hulu series Pam & Tommy.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorJudy Greer admits seeing Renée Zellweger for the first time in full makeup, prosthetics and wardrobe as convicted murderer Pam Hupp while shooting “The Thing About Pam” presented a a unique set of challenges.“We both looked at each other and started laughing,” Greer, who plays controversial prosecutor Leah Askey in the true-crime series, said Wednesday at the NBCU FYC House in Hollywood during a panel moderated by yours truly. “And then she told me not to make her laugh because her face would fall off.”Asked if her face ever did “fall off,” Zellweger laughed, “Yes.”Zellweger revealed the prosthetics did cause her to break out in a rash. “The rash didn’t go away.

Naman Ramachandran The Indian media and entertainment sector, currently valued at $24 billion is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2024, according to the country’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur.“I personally feel with the growth rate we have and I’m sure it’s going to grow more than that. By 2030 we expect it to double and even more,” Thakur told Variety at the Cannes Film Festival.Thakur spoke with Variety on Wednesday at the Cannes India Pavilion after he launched a filming incentive that offers up to 35% reimbursement on local spend to international productions shooting in India.“I think it’s quite lucrative and I expect a lot of people to come and shoot in India, because our major focus is to make India the content hub of the world,” said Thakur.

Former EastEnders actress Pam St Clement has made a very rare appearance on social media as she celebrates her 80th birthday. Pam played the iconic Pat Butcher in the London soap for over two decades, but is known for keeping her personal life extremely private.