Mike Fleming-Junior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

A small piece of contemporary cinema history was written last night in St Andrews, Scotland when Steven Soderbergh sat down with Joe and Anthony Russo on stage at the Sands International Film Festival to discuss their 2002 collaboration Welcome to Collinwood. 

We’re back to live blog the hopefully new and improved Golden Globes. It’s a new iteration of the awards on CBS after the Globes’ longtime network, NBC, ended its relationship after the awards show’s previous management was scandalized by revelations that the now-defunct HFPA had no Black voting members among other improprieties.

After launching the Strike Talk podcast with producer Todd Garner to give WGA strikers comfort in the early days of 2023’s labor unrest, Billy Ray is signing off. When you are an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and a director and producer to boot, you’ve got to go back to work at some point. No one expected it to go 30 weeks, but Ray threw himself into each installment, from landing guests who demystified the process, and down to its editing. It’s as if he was making a weekly series episode or a movie. It was all for his love for fellow practitioners of the writing craft, and his need to sound an alarm on how a failed negotiation over wages, AI and the shrinking of writer rooms would endanger an ecosystem that has fueled brilliant writing on series and films for decades. Here, he teams with Deadline co-editor Mike Fleming Jr. to discuss what might happen going forward, with mergers still reshaping the Hollywood landscape, and a battle brewing just up the road with IATSE and Teamsters as their deals expire this summer. Deadline offers gratitude to Ray, and to Garner, for their selfless dedication to making this such a great ride.

EXCLUSIVE: Christine Vachon offered her outlook on some of the industry’s most pressing issues at a keynote masterclass session this afternoon at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Long before Jennifer Lawrence became an Oscar winner, she was an aspiring actress beginning to lay the groundwork for a Hollywood career.

Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here following another busy week in our world. Read on for our dissection of the biggest headlines.

Peter Jackson’s mesmerizing Disney+ documentary The Beatles: Get Back was supposed to be a six-hour immersion into the recording of Let It Be and the last live concert by rock music’s most famous band before they split up and headed toward solo careers.

Script writing has begun on the final season of Stranger Things.

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this occasional column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business.

Afternoon all! It’s been a manic week but fortunately one that can be summarized neatly in several paragraphs, as evidenced below. Read on International Insider crew.

Afternoon all, Max Goldbart here looking back on quite a week. Lots to digest so the Insider has you covered. Read on.

Good afternoon Insiders and it’s Max Goldbart here with your weekly dose of the biggest headlines across the film and TV world.

Longtime Fleet Street fixture Baz Bamigboye is joining Deadline as a columnist and international editor at large. Bamigboye comes from London’s Daily Mail, where he has been the newspaper’s chief chronicler of showbusiness in the UK for three decades.

Afternoon International Insiders. The team is in Berlin and EFM is hotting up. We’ve got the latest from Germany and more so read on.

Welcome to this week’s International Insider. Max Goldbart here bringing you the latest in what’s been a busy seven days in the world of international TV and film.

Deadline has hired Valerie Complex as its new Associate Editor/Film Writer. The longtime freelance writer covering the film industry arrives from Gizmodo, where she was an editor at the company’s genre vertical io9.

Mom on the move! Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost‘s first child together may have arrived weeks before Us Weekly confirmed the news.

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business.

Deadline has made a pair of staff moves as it continues its editorial expansion. London-based reporter Diana Lodderhose is returning to the site’s fold as International Features Editor, while Alexandra Del Rosario, currently Associate Editor, Nights & Weekends, has shifted to TV Reporter.

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmErnest Cline’s Ready Player Two sequel novel launches November 24 in the U.S. and UK.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos are right now announcing that Netflix will boost its presence in the state by expanding its ABQ Studios and committing to an additional $1 billion in production spending.The Studio expansion will add 300 acres to the company’s existing studios, located in Albuquerque’s Mesa Del Sol area.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE; 20th Century Studios has engaged 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg to direct the fifth installment in the Predator series. The script is being written by Patrick Aison, whose producer-writer credits include the series Kingdom, Jack Ryan and Treadstone.They are keeping the plot line under wraps for the moment, but I’m told it won’t swing back to the developments in the most recent film.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: No final decision has been made, but Deadline hears that the uncertainty of the future theatrical marketplace has Disney looking at launching a number of its upcoming tent pole family films on Disney+ instead of the theatrical release bows that were envisioned when the films were developed and green lit.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Allen Hughes has resumed work on Outlaw: The Saga Of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, the five-part FX documentary series about the volatile life and legacy of the late hip hip icon/poet, and the Black Panther member mother who raised him with the values that infused his socially conscious music.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmUPDATED, 11:32 AM: HBO Max said today that it will unwrap My Gift: A Christmas Special from Carrie Underwood on December 3. The American Idol champ and seven-time Grammy winner’s music special will spotlight songs from My Gift, her first holiday album.The streaming show will feature a duet with John Legend on “Hallelujah,” an original song he co-wrote with Toby Gad that appears on the record.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: While drug manufacturer Pfizer has lately been getting headlines for its potential breakthrough COVID-19 vaccine, Studio Entertainment One and Spike Lee are prepping an untitled tumescent tuner on the breakthrough of an earlier Pfizer miracle drug: Viagra.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmQuentin Tarantino has signed a two book deal with Harper, the HarperCollins imprint. First up is Tarantino’s first work of fiction, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a novel to be published next summer that breathes new life into the characters and the premise of a film that got 10 Oscar nominations and won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Brad Pitt.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Deadline has learned that Blair Rich will leave her post at year’s end as Warner Bros Pictures Group President, Worldwide Marketing, and Warner Bros Home Entertainment. Rich is a highly respected exec in the marketing space with strong filmmaker relationships.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Solstice Studios has acquired worldwide rights to The Plane, an elevated action thriller that stars Gerard Butler. The film is now booked for takeoff on June 28, 2021, shooting in Southeast Asia.Deadline revealed earlier this week that Lionsgate exited the film because the production could not get COVID insurance and the risk became too great for the indie studio on the $50 million budget film.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Jack Huston has stepped in to play the male lead in Wash Me in Tthe River, joining Robert De Niro and John Malkovich in the Randall Emmett-directed action drama.Taylor Kitsch exited the role, this after agreeing to replace Colson “Machine Gun Kelly” Baker. The action-thriller is in the vein of No Country for Old Men.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Spyglass Media Group has set a remake of the 1986 film Short Circuit, bringing on the writing team of Eduardo Cisneros and Jason Shuman to put a Latinx twist on the screenplay for the family film.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Mindful that David Mamet gave me the best quote I’ve ever gotten in 30 years of trade reporting, I have been chasing him down to try to get him to answer a question on my mind.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmWhile there has been question about big movies holding their theatrical release dates around the holidays in this COVID moment, Universal’s News of the World is solidifying a plan to release theatrically in the U.S., while getting its international release through Netflix.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmJP Richards will leave his post as co-president of Worldwide Marketing at Warner Bros, another casualty of the restructure of WarnerMedia. Richards is a six year veteran at the studio.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: In a development that will chill those roaming the halls of the virtual American Film Market and putting film deals together, Lionsgate has exited The Plane, the Christian Gudegast-directed action film set to star Gerard Butler. The film was the big acquisition title at last year’s AFM, and it sold out to the walls quickly after financier MadRiver International unveiled it.