Peter Bart: Broadway Openings Set Breathless Pace, Testing Frazzled Critics And Taunting Virus

Selome Hailu Peacock has given a straight-to-series order to Jason Woliner for an untitled project in the style of his work on “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”While plot details remain under wraps, the project is described as “mix[ing] fact and fiction to tell a bizarre and incredible tale.” Woliner, who directs and executive produces the project, has been shooting it for over a decade.Executive producers also include Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver and Loreli Alanis for Point Grey Pictures; Megan Ellison for Annapurna; and Michael Sagol and Bert Hamelinck for Caviar. Tyler Ben-Amotz also produces for Caviar.

EXCLUSIVE: LA-based Tricycle Logic has set a U.S. theatrical release for Lebanese director Oualid Mouaness’ debut feature, 1982. The coming-of-age drama premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival where it won the NETPAC Award. It will release domestically beginning June 10 at the Quad Cinema in New York and on June 24 will expand to Los Angeles with a national rollout to follow throughout the summer. 
The New York date coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Lebanon war on June 6. (Check out the trailer below.)

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentNetflix on Friday officially opened its Italian base in Rome, in a classy neoclassical building near the iconic Via Veneto, and announced a substantial slate of originals that stand as testament to what co-CEO Reed Hastings called the streaming giant’s “growing business in Italy.”“The breadth and variety of our Italian slate perfectly represents our ambitions,” said Hastings, who took the stage at the presentation’s conclusion. Hastings took the opportunity to note how pleased he is that Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” which Netflix produced, scooped top honors at Italy’s David di Donatello Awards, the country’s top film prizes, earlier this week.Netflix’s new Italian slate is headlined by a high-end English-language series adaptation of “The Leopard,” the classic Sicily-set novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” breaks new ground among the more recent “Trek” shows by going back to the old ways — that is to say that the show is much more episodic as compared to the heavily serialized “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard.”In an interview with Variety, series star Anson Mount said that the idea of the show following that format was always the intention of its creators and allowed the cast to “get ourselves out of the way a little bit.”“I like to think that Pike is not the star of the show,” said Mount, who plays Captain Christopher Pike. “The star of the show is the Enterprise.

Kailia Posey is being remembered by those who knew the late pageant star. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Maureen Francisco – who worked with Posey at her most recent pageant – shared that she was "in shock" when she heard the news.  "When I first saw the post that her mom posted about Kailia, I was in shock, I didn’t believe it. At first, I thought maybe her mother’s Facebook got hacked, so I had to wait.

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

Elizabeth and Lucas have a cute exchange on the telephone in a new sneak peek from tonight’s all-new When Calls The Heart.

Composer and London theatre owner Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom of the Opera) informed cast and creatives today that his Cinderella musical will close at the Gillian Lynne Theatre ,Covent Garden,London on June 12 after a troubled run of less than a year.

Sasha Urban editorDirector Sam Gold’s Broadway production of “Macbeth,” which stars Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, was already a tall order for its cast, who had only four weeks of rehearsal before previews began. It was made more difficult by multiple COVID cases, including Craig’s, that caused the production to close for 11 days earlier this month.

Billy Crystal is official back on Broadway!

The timing seemed propitious: Eager to entice new subscribers, CNN+ was about to unfurl a multi-part exposé of Fox News and its 91-year-old patriarch, Rupert Murdoch. It would be juicy material for the new streaming platform, with newsies on the left hammering their rivals on the right. How could it fail?

NEW YORK -- When Broadway's revival of “Funny Girl” begins, star Beanie Feldstein sits in a Broadway dressing room, getting ready to go on. She wonders nervously to her assistant: "You ever feel like there’s someone watching from the shadows?"The line takes an extra jolt of meaning because Feldstein is stepping into hallowed ground.

Smartly sidestepping the obvious comparison from the start – the line-reading of “Hello gorgeous” sounds more conversational, less sing-songy than the one etched in our brains for all these decades – Broadway’s new Funny Girl revival doesn’t so much make a grand play for replacement as a peaceful offering for coexistence: The show that made Barbra Streisand a musical theater icon likely won’t do the same for its latest star, but neither is it cause for grumbling how-dare-shes.

Bryan Cranston had a busy week on Broadway!