Shanola Hampton To Headline & Produce NBC Pilot ‘Found’ From Nkechi Okoro Carroll & Berlanti Prods

Kristen Stewart and Jessica Chastain are stepping out for the night!

The PGA Awards is always one of the longest awards ceremonies. This year, however, there was joy in the room as it returned to an in-person event and fine career honoring acceptance speeches by Kathleen Kennedy, George Lucas, Greg Berlanti, and Issa Rae.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterNot unlike the many TV series Ryan Murphy has devoted to the untold histories of Hollywood, the “Glee” creator took the stage at Saturday’s Producers Guild Awards to share some of his own with one of the night’s big honorees: Greg Berlanti.Presenting Berlanti with the PGA Norman Lear Achievement Award, Murphy delivered a heartfelt and candid tribute to the prolific Berlanti — one packed with sweet and humble beginnings for men who now populate media power lists and highest-paid rankings.In the late ’90s, Murphy said, he and Berlanti were hungry young screenwriters looking to break into the industry — Murphy a journalist, Berlanti an assistant to a producer). Murphy got his big break first, selling a script to Steven Spielberg for “$30,000 after commissions,” he said.

On Saturday night, Greg Berlanti used his PGA acceptance speech as a platform to widely criticize the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida.

Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher were both Hollywood veterans when they were elected as co-presidents of the Producers Guild of America in June 2018. But while both had overseen big studios, films and television shows, nothing could have prepared them for what they’d encounter in their four years Iin office with the PGA, including the #MeToo revolution, the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.“We didn’t know each other when this shotgun marriage was formed,” Berman said.

Paul Plunkett When this year’s Producers Guild of America Awards are handed out, along with those being recognized for their achievements in projects over the last year will be a handful of the industry’s top names, receiving the guild’s Honorary Awards.These Honorary Awards were not handed out during last year’s virtual ceremony, adding more excitement to this year’s in-person event.The 2022 Visionary Award, which recognizes a television, film or new media producer for unique or uplifting contributions to our culture through inspiring storytelling or performance, will be awarded to Issa Rae. The producer-actor-writer, whose HBO series “Insecure” wrapped up this year after five seasons, also served as executive producer on “A Black Lady Sketch Show” and “Sweet Life: Los Angeles,” to name a few of her credits.

Sasha Urban editorIn one of the most star-studded lineups of this year’s awards season, Serena Williams, Nick Jonas and Oscar nominees Kristen Stewart and Ciaran Hinds have been tapped as presenters at the 33rd annual Producers Guild Awards Saturday evening, Variety has learned exclusively.They will be joined at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel by Josh Brolin, Rachel Brosnahan, Daniel Durant, Alana Haim, Jude Hill, Chris Pine, Daniel Dae Kim, Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Ryan Murphy, Simon Rex and Kerry Washington, as well as previously announced presenters Meryl Streep, Casey Bloys, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh, Aunjanue Ellis, Jung Ho-yeon, Linda Lavin, David Alvarez, Jessica Chastain, Denis Villeneuve, Troy Kotsur, Andrew Garfield, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Steven Spielberg. The PGA Awards are known to be a strong predictor of which film will take home best picture at the Academy Awards, which will be held on March 27.

EXCLUSIVE: This Is Us star Chris Sullivan has been tapped as the lead of ABC’s single-camera comedy pilot The Son In Law, from 20th Century Television.

EXCLUSIVE: Frankie Faison rounds out the quartet of actors set to anchor ABC’s proposed spinoff from The Rookie set at the FBI. Along with previously cast Niecy Nash, Kat Foster and Felix Solis, Faison will guest star in a two-episode arc in the current fourth season of The Rookie, which serves as a backdoor pilot for the potential spinoff.

Carole Horst Dominique Fishback earned acclaim in “Judas and the Black Messiah” playing Deborah Johnson, the wife of murdered Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya, who won an Oscar for the role). She’ll next be seen in the Apple TV Plus limited series “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” which bows March 11 on the streamer. It’s a heavyweight project: The series is based on Walter Mosley’s novel (he exec produces) and stars Samuel L.

Kat Foster and Felix Solis will star opposite Niecy Nash in the proposed spinoff from The Rookie. The duo will guest star in a two-episode arc in the current fourth season of The Rookie, which will serve as a backdoor pilot for the potential spinoff of the ABC series starring Nathan Fillion.

Angelique Jackson As Samuel L. Jackson took the microphone to introduce the screening of “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” the acting icon reflected on the 12-year journey to get the limited series made.“This was a project that’s been eating me up for 10-12 years, and I’ve been chasing it and running it to different places trying to get it done,” Jackson told the crowd inside the Regency Bruin Theatre in Westwood.

Fallon Smythe (grown-ish) and Tyler DiChiara (The Virgin of Highland Park) are set as series regulars in the CW’s DC universe-set Gotham Knights pilot, Deadline has confirmed

Contenders Film: The Nominees, a one-stop-shop experience featuring a smörgåsbord of Oscar-nominated talent discussing their top-tier projects, kicks off Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. PT as a virtual event, the latest in Deadline’s rapidly expanding Contenders series. Stars, creatives and craftspeople behind 24 films will take part in moderated panels discussing the roads that led them to the doorstep of the Academy Awards.

Tony Walton, one of the most prolific, honored and celebrated designers of sets and costumes on Broadway and in Hollywood, has died. He was 87.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterShanola Hampton has been cast in the lead role of the NBC drama pilot “Unfound,” Variety has learned.The one hour drama deals with the fact that, in any given year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S. More than half that number are people of color that the country seems to forget about. Public relations specialist Gabi Mosley (Hampton) — who was once herself one of those forgotten ones — and her crisis management team now make sure there is always someone looking out for the forgotten missing people.

EXCLUSIVE: Berlanti Productions, run by Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, has promoted Eliza Weiss to Creative Executive.

Twice-Oscar-nominated producer Monica Hellstrøm and her partner at Copenhagen-based Final Cut For Real, Simon Lereng Wilmont, have helped to evacuate the protagonists of one of their films, The Distant Barking of Dogs, from a war-torn area of eastern Ukraine.