Barry Levinson Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Robert De Niro will star in the Warner Bros. mob drama Wise Guys from director Barry Levinson, Deadline can confirm. The project reunites the duo following their collaborations on the Emmy-nominated HBO TV movie The Wizard of Lies, which had De Niro playing Bernie Madoff, and Magnolia Pictures’ 2008 dramedy, What Just Happened, as well as the director’s earlier films Wag the Dog and Sleepers.

There’s been a lot of drama surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery over the past few weeks, with the new CEO, David Zaslav, cutting jobs and costs, including shelving two films that were in post-production (“Batgirl” and “Scoob! Haunted Holiday”).

EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous Content has hired former Bron executive David Davoli as President of International, based in New York.

previously announced cast members Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, Everly Carganilla and Connor Esterson. The project will be headed by the original franchise’s creator and director Robert Rodriguez, who is also producing and writing alongside Racer Max.

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Magnussen (No Time to Die) is set to star in Netflix’s upcoming reboot of the popular franchise, Deadline has learned. He joins previously announced cast members Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, Everly Carganilla, and Connor Esterson.

Based on the 1992 film of the same name, which was also Crystal’s directorial debut, “Mr. Saturday Night” is co-written and stars the 74-year-old actor as Buddy Young Jr., a comedian whose career soars and then plummets during the early years of television.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media“Mr. Saturday Night” will wrap up its Broadway run on Sept. 4.

John Panzarella will be this year’s recipient of the Location Managers Guild International’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It will be presented at the ninth annual LMGI Awards, which are returning live to the Los Angeles Center Studios on August 27.

Billy Crystal is attached to star and executive produce new limited series “Before,” where he will play Eli, a child psychiatrist and recent widower who encounters a troubled young boy. Apple TV+ has picked up the show hailing from Paramount Television.Sarah Thorp (“The Bounty Hunter”) will serve as writer, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Levinson (“Dopesick”) attached to direct.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterBilly Crystal is set to star in the limited series “Before” at Apple, Variety has learned.Crystal will star in the show as Eli, a child psychiatrist who recently lost his wife when he encounters a troubled young boy. Crystal will also executive produce in addition to starring.The series comes from writer Sarah Thorp (“The Bounty Hunter,” “Hawthorne”), who is also an executive producer.

EXCLUSIVE: Apple TV+ has picked-up Before, a limited series starring Billy Crystal, who also will serve as executive producer, Deadline has learned. I hear details on the project, including the size of the order, are still being finalized.

EXCLUSIVE: AMC Networks has acquired North American rights to Monsieur Spade, a one-hour drama starring Clive Owen from The Queen’s Gambit co-creator Scott Frank and City On A Hill showrunner Tom Fontana. Black Bear Television also has joined as the series’ studio and will deficit finance.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen I watch a movie by the writer-director James Gray, I often have the sensation that I’m seeing two films in one: the story being told and the one hovering offscreen — the one that’s all about his aspiration to be something larger than a mere storyteller. Early Gray films like “The Yards” (2000) and “We Own the Night” (2007) were modest tales suffused with his desire to be making “a ’70s movie.” “Ad Astra” (2019) was a lavishly scaled outer-space thriller suffused with his desire to be making “2001: A Space Odyssey.”“Armageddon Time,” Gray’s eighth feature, marks a break from most of what he has done before.

EXCLUSIVE: Showtime has announced a new date for the third-season return of City on a Hill starring Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge. The series that also stars Jill Hennessy, Lauren E. Banks and Matthew Del Negro will premiere on Sunday, July 31 at 10 p.m. Eight, one-hour episodes are planned. Watch the new trailer above.

Clayton Davis Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official awards predictions for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis; Awards Circuit Column, a weekly analysis dissecting the trends and contenders by television editor Michael Schneider (for Emmys) and Davis (for Oscars); Awards Circuit Podcast, a weekly interview series with talent and an expert roundtable discussion; and Awards Circuit Video analyzes various categories and contenders by Variety's leading awards pundits. Variety's unmatched coverage gives its readership unbeatable exposure in print and online, as well as provide inside reports on all the contenders in this year's awards season races.

Clayton Davis An exciting and welcomed twist to the Emmy race for outstanding television movie has arrived, as Mimi Cave’s horror-comedy “Fresh,” starring Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones, is being submitted for Primetime Emmy consideration.This offers an interesting possibility in a category that hasn’t drummed up much excitement over the last couple of years. While buzzy titles like “Bad Education” and three consecutive “Black Mirror” episodes dominated, the soulful purpose of the category has seemed to be missing.

As you’d expect, even the most acclaimed filmmakers slow down in their later years. Sure, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg are exceptions, but for the most part opportunities are fewer and farther between.

Opening his remarks to a crowd in the backyard of his Kalorama neighborhood home, Ireland’s Ambassador Daniel Mulhall quipped, “I’m kind of wondering: Is it legal to have so many people at a party?”

Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were set to host their first official film screening at the White House on Thursday.The Bidens will show HBO’s “The Survivor,” in honor of Yom HaShoah and Holocaust Remembrance Week, in the White House movie theater on the ground floor of the East Wing.The film tells the story of boxer Harry Haft, who put the lives of fellow concentration camp prisoners at risk to save his own. The movie dramatizes Haft’s experience in Auschwitz, a central part of the Nazi death camp system.An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland and at least 1.1 million died, according to its museum and memorial website.Director Barry Levinson, actor Ben Foster, who plays Haft, the film's producers and representatives of the American Jewish Community were expected to attend, the White House said.HBO debuted “The Survivor” on Wednesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

HBO’s The Survivor will be shown at the White House on Thursday, marking President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s first official screening since taking office.

EXCLUSIVE: Steven Pasquale (American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson), Stephanie Szostak (A Million Little Things) and Tony Curran (Your Honor) are set for key recurring roles in David E. Kelley’s The Missing, Peacock’s eight-episode series based on Israeli crime writer Dror A. Mishani’s international bestselling novel The Missing File. Details of their characters are being kept under wraps.

When it came time for director Barry Levinson to cast the role of famed boxing trainer Charlie Goldman in his new film “The Survivor,” he went straight to his friend Danny DeVito. “This was all Barry,” DeVito said about how he came to be a part of the HBO Holocaust film, telling TheWrap it was like no time had passed at all since he and Levinson first worked together on the 1987 film “Tin Men.”“The Survivor” tells the true story of Harry Haft, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who was forced to box other inmates to survive – sometimes to the death.

Sasha Urban editorIn the late 1940s, when Barry Levinson was a young boy, his family hosted a guest — his grandmother’s brother. The man’s name was Simka, and he shared a room with Levinson for a two-week period before moving away.

It’s directed by Barry Levinson. The two first worked together in the 1987 movie “Tin Men.”“When I read the script it was like a bolt of lightning,” DeVito said. “You wanted to know more and more about it. It hits you like a ton of bricks.”

premiering April 27 on HBO — is based on the true story of Harry Haft, a Polish-born Jew who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a teen. There he managed to survive by being a boxer and was forced to pummel fellow prisoners for the amusement of the German officers.After World War II, Haft eventually moved to the United States, where he continued his boxing career for an unusual reason: Haft was convinced his first love was still alive and believed that if he became famous enough through boxing, she would see his name in newspapers and they would be reunited.

Deadline has launched the streaming site for its Contenders Television, which launched the TV awards season this weekend with 48 series and almost 150 panelists converging at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles to discuss their buzzworthy shows in front of a full house of industry voters.

For their HBO Max film The Survivor, which chronicles the real-life journey of Harry Haft, a concentration camp prisoner forced to box to survive his internment, both director Barry Levinson and star Ben Foster found compelling connections to the story through their own families, as well as disturbing parallels to currently unfolding history.

After being exclusively virtual the past couple of years we are happy to announce we are back in front of a live audience again.

What does it take to escape painful memories? Harry Haft’s own struggle to overcome his personal trauma is the basis for “The Survivor.” The true story of coming to grips with unspeakable evil and its lingering influences marks a theatrical return for Barry Levinson. The director’s most recent projects saw him helm selected mini-series episodes along with HBO movies like “Paterno” and “Wizard of Lies.

**WINNER.Theatrical Feature FilmPaul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast”Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”Steven Spielberg, “West Side Story”Denis Villeneuve, “Dune”First-Time Feature Film DirectorMaggie Gyllenhaal, “The Lost Daughter”Rebecca Hall, “Passing”Tatiana Huezo, “Prayers for the Stolen”Lin-Manuel Miranda, “tick, tick…BOOM!”Michael Sarnoski, “Pig”Emma Seligman, “Shiva Baby”DocumentaryJessica Kingdon, “Ascension”Stanley Nelson, “Attica”Raoul Peck, “Exterminate All the Brutes”Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, “The Rescue”Drama SeriesKevin Bray, “Succession”: “Retired Janitors of Idaho”Mark Mylod, “Succession”: “All the Bells Say”Andrij Parekh, “Succession”: “What It Takes”Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, “Succession”: “Lion in the Meadow”Lorene Scafaria, “Succession”: “Too Much Birthday”Comedy SeriesLucia Aniello, “Hacks”: “There Is No Line”MJ Delaney, “Ted Lasso”: “No Weddings and a Funeral”Erica Dunton, “Ted Lasso”: “Rainbow”Sam Jones, “Ted Lasso”: “Beard After Hours”Mike White, “The White Lotus”: “Mysterious Monkeys”Movies for Television and Limited SeriesBarry Jenkins, “The Underground Railroad”Barry Levinson, “Dopesick”: “First Bottle”Hiro Murai, “Station Eleven”: “Wheel of Fire”Danny Strong: “Dopesick”: “The People vs. Purdue Pharma”Craig Zobel, “Mare of Easttown”Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Regularly Scheduled ProgrammingPaul G.

Farrah Forke, who co-starred on the long-running NBC sitcom "Wings," died of cancer on Feb. 25 in her Texas home, a family friend confirmed to Variety. She was 54.

Farrah Forke, probably best known for her co-starring role on NBC’s long-running sitcom Wings, died of cancer February 25 at her home in Texas, according to a family friend. She was 54.

Kate Aurthur editorFarrah Forke, who co-starred on the long-running NBC sitcom “Wings,” died of cancer on Feb. 25 in her Texas home, a family friend confirmed to Variety.

Samuel L. Jackson will receive an Honorary Oscar at the 2022 Governors Awards later this month, but the actor says his shelves should already be graced by at least one of the statuettes.

Oscar and Emmy winner Barry Levinson has been tapped to direct David E. Kelley’s The Missing, Peacock’s eight-episode series based on Israeli crime writer Dror A. Mishani’s international bestselling novel The Missing File. Levinson will direct multiple episodes, including the first, and executive produce the series from Kelley, Keshet Studios and Universal Television

Selome Hailu David E. Kelley’s upcoming Peacock crime drama “The Missing” has tapped Barry Levinson to direct multiple episodes, including the first. He will also executive produce the series.“The Missing” is based on Dror A.