Ron Howard Says Jim Henson Documentary Will Reveal Surprises About Muppet Legend

It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Jim Henson came up with the concept for an immersive video dome long before Sphere bubbled up in Las Vegas.

Lily Gladstone took a break from jury duty at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday to present Ron Howard with Variety’s Profile in Excellence Award. Howard was the guest of honor at the annual Welcome to Cannes Party, hosted in partnership with the Gotham Film & Media Institute at Lucia Beach, where an array of industry veterans — including The Gotham’s Jeffrey Sharp, Focus Features’ Jason Cassidy, Disney’s Keleigh Thomas Morgan, the Sundance Institute’s Eugene Hernandez and more — donned their best beach chic attire (with sunglasses) to mix, mingle and sip rosé.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube‘s message to Madison Avenue: The video giant isn’t like traditional TV — it’s bigger, with literally billions of viewers, and better at targeting relevant audiences. At its annual Brandcast event, held Wednesday during the TV biz’s upfronts week, YouTube drilled home massive scale. On average, viewers watch more than 1 billion hours of content on TV screens daily.

Late in the highly entertaining and enlightening new HBO Documentary Films movie on the life and career of Faye Dunaway we learn how much this iconic star just loves coming to the Cannes Film Festival. “Just about every year,” she says not only for the world’s best films but also to immerse herself in all aspects of filmmaking. In fact I have seen her many times just soaking it all up cinematically both here in Cannes and Telluride to name two fests. So it seems appropriate that the Cannes Classics section would be the place for the World Premiere Wednesday night (in the presence of Dunaway as the French like to call it) of this terrific new docu in which Dunaway pretty much tells it all straight about her life, loves, desires, ambitions, movies, co-stars, depression, controversies, family, and hopes for the future in a profession she says she can’t imagine not working in.

With summer just around the corner, gardeners are once again tending to their outdoor space after many miserable, cold months.

Susan Backlinie, who played the first shark attack victim in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” has died. She was 77. Backlinie died Saturday morning at her California home due to a heart attack, Convention All Stars owner Sean Clark confirmed to Variety. The former actor and stuntwoman was one of the company’s clients.

Gemma Atkinson shows what Gorka Marquez was really sent her as she joked about him expecting 'nudes'. The Hits Radio host made the cheeky comments as she shared the aftermath of facing the 'hardest challenge' she's done.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Roger Corman, who died Saturday at 98, was famously involved with many of the greats of filmmaking at the start of their careers. In the case of Ron Howard, he helped the young actor transition from being a child star into a versatile director, giving him his first directing job with the action comedy “Grand Theft Auto” in 1977. Howard noted that Corman was also known for giving women more opportunities than they typically had in the film industry at that time, including Penelope Spheeris and Gale Ann Hurd.

Variety yesterday that he passed away on Thursday (May 9) at his home in Santa Monica, California, surrounded by family members.Corman was seen as a trailblazer in the world of independent film, producing and directing hundreds of low-budget movies and giving an early platform to leading figures in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that,’” the family said in a statement.Known variously as ‘The Pope of Pop Cinema’ and ‘The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood’, he made his name in the 1960s, creating his own studios New World Pictures and New Concorde, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2009 for his “rich engendering of films and filmmakers”.His own films were often made quickly with low budgets and specialised in genres such as horror, science fiction and action.Several major names received early credits in Corman’s work, including Nicholson in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Scorsese with Boxcar Bertha (1972), Cameron with Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Ron Howard with Grand Theft Auto (1977).Howard himself joked that Corman told him during the tumultuous making of his first film Eat My Dust that “if you do a good job on this film, you won’t ever have to work for me again!”Tributes have come in for Corman, with director John Carpenter writing on X: “Roger Corman, one of the most influential movie directors in my life, has passed away.

Roger Corman, the Oscar-winning “King of the Bs” who helped turn out such low-budget classics as “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and gave many of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died. He was 98.Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Catherine Corman said Saturday in a statement.“He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him,” the statement said.

Roger Corman, who directed and produced hundreds of low-budget films and discovered such future industry stars as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, has died. He was 98.

Saturday Night Live has announced it will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year with a three-hour primetime special on NBC.The tribute will air live on February 16, 2025 – which is a Sunday – and will be part of a “celebratory weekend” for the show.No further details about the show have been shared, although earlier this year, creator Lorne Michaels did indicate plans for such a special.“We’re doing the 50th anniversary show in February of ’25, so I will definitely be there for that, and definitely be there until that, and sometime before that we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do,” he said.NBC ran a similar tribute for the show’s 40th birthday in 2015, featuring appearances from countless alumni from SNL history, including Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Will Ferrell, Norm MacDonald and Tina Fey.A feature film about the show’s premiere episode on October 11, 1975 is also in the works. Titled SNL 1975, it is set to be directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Ghostbusters: Afterlife).The film will be based on real-life accounts based on an extensive series of interviews conducted by Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan with “all the living cast, writers and crew”.Gabriel LaBelle from The Fabelmans will portray Michaels, while The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien will play Dan Aykroyd in the film.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The Jim Henson Company‘s live-action monster tale “Grendel” has rounded out its cast with Jeff Bridges in the role of Grendel, as well as Dave Bautista as Beowulf and Bryan Cranston as King Hrothgar. Also joining the cast are Thomasin McKenzie as Queen Wealhtheow, Aidan Turner as Unferth and, as the Shaper, T Bone Burnett, who will also provide original songs for the film. Robert D.

First Minister John Swinney has ruled out introducing legislation on gender reform after a previous law was vetoed by the UK Government.

Russell T Davies is the latest high-profile TV industry figure to criticize Netflix for allowing real-life Baby Reindeer characters to be identified online.

Janet Maslin Ron Howard has been part of our collective consciousness for as long as I can remember. Or at least he looms large in mine. Born in 1954, he was on many of the TV series I grew up watching and had his own starring role on “The Andy Griffith Show” by 1960.

Captain Kirk says he is open to a return to Star Trek – if the storytelling is stellar.

Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas will be starring in “Eden,” a thriller film directed by Oscar winning director Ron Howard. Here’s all we know about the project: Ana De Armas brings boho chic back: Her Spring look includes chic tube top and maxi skirtSydney Sweeney wears Angelina Jolie’s iconic Oscars gown 20 years laterReports from Deadline claim the film is based on an unsolved mystery that occurred in the Galapagos island.

Chris Hemsworth has opened up about his genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease, and the public reaction to the news.While working on the docuseries Limitless in 2022, the Thor star took a number of genetic tests, which revealed that he is likely to be diagnosed with the disease.According to the NHS, Alzheimer’s is a progressive condition, with symptoms mainly including memory loss, confusion, disorientation, problems with speech and language, and hallucinations.The show revealed that Hemsworth carries two copies of a gene closely associated with Alzheimer’s, meaning he is eight-to-10 times more likely to suffer from the condition.The news reportedly coincided with the actor taking some time off, which led some fans to believe the two were connected. Now, in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Hemsworth has opened up about the experience.“It really kind of pissed me off because it felt like I had been vulnerable with something personal and shared this,” he said.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Jeff Bridges is going back to the grid. The 74-year-old actor told the Film Comment podcast (via The Playlist) that he is going to appear in “Tron: Ares,” the third film in the long-running sci-fi franchise that Bridges inaugurated with “Tron” in 1982 and reprised with “Tron: Legacy” in 2010.