MGM Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Golden Globes have plenty of movies to sift through and consider for its upcoming 81st annual awards ceremony. With “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro” on the drama side, and “The Color Purple” and “Poor Things” in comedy, alongside the buzzy summer double-feature “Barbenheimer,” a star-studded event is surely awaiting viewers.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor 1957 was a big year for David McCallum, the respected Glasgow-born actor known for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Great Escape” and his 20-year run on “NCIS” as quirky pathologist Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. The actor, who died Sept.

JBL Fest kicked off last Thursday, in Las Vegas. The launch party was attended by some of the world’s most famous celebrities, including Lenny Kravitz, Madison Beer, Ashlee Simpson, and more.

The “Strike Force Three” live event has struck out. The hotly anticipated show — which was announced last week by Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert — has been cancelled due to illness.

Michaela Zee After winning this year’s Toronto International Film Festival’s people’s choice award, “American Fiction” has pushed back its limited release to Dec. 15 and will expand in theaters on Dec. 22.

Selome Hailu The “Strike Force Three” live event announced by Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert last week has been canceled, as Kimmel has tested positive for COVID. “Well, Las Vegas, I got Covid, and sadly, we need to cancel this weekend’s Strike Force Three show,” Kimmel posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I could never live with myself if I got my hometown friends sick.

Strike Force Three, a planned live show from Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, has been canceled.

Peter Oillataguerre has been appointed to the new role of Head of Feature Film Production at Amazon MGM Studios, studio head Jennifer Salke announced to staffers via email on Friday.

Angelique Jackson Veteran executive Peter Oillataguerre is returning to Amazon MGM Studios in the newly created role of head of feature film production. Studio chief Jennifer Salke announced Oillataguerre’s hiring in a memo to staff on Friday. “With more than 20 years of industry experience, Peter is a seasoned executive with considerable expertise in the world of production,” Salke wrote.

Ed Gein offers fresh insight into the mind of “The Mad Butcher” — told, in parts, by Gein himself in never-before-heard audiotapes.“Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein,” premiering Sept. 17 on MGM+, uses the tapes, unearthed in 2019, to delve into the mind of Gein, who was arrested in November 1957 in desolate Plainfield, WI.

The late-night power players behind the new “Strike Force Five” podcast are temporarily losing two members for a special live on-stage event.

McKinley Franklin editor Edward “Eddie” Marks, the Emmy-winning president of Western Costume Company, died on Monday in Prague. He was 76.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Three of the “Strike Force Five” are taking their show on the road. Late night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel will host a one-night-only event, dubbed “Strike Force Three,” at the Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas on Saturday, September 23 — marking the first time the trio have been on stage together at the same time. Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, John Oliver and Seth Meyers recently launched the podcast “Strike Force Five,” as a way to help support the staffs of their respective shows.

K.J. Yossman The first season of James Bond reality TV series “007’s Road to a Million” has yet to drop, but casting is already underway for Season 2.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic In December 2020, Cord Jefferson sat down with the novel “Erasure,” by Percival Everett, and saw his life reflected back at him. “It was like someone had written down a Christmas gift for Cord,” he says.

EXCLUSIVE: Sipur, the Israeli studio behind North Road-backed Bad Boy and award-winning doc series The Devil’s Confession, has struck a multi-year deal with local network Reshet13.

Michaela Zee Marcia de Rousse, who played Dr. Ludwig on the HBO original series “True Blood,” died in Altadena, Calif., on Saturday from a long illness, her agency told Variety. She was 70.

In its second weekend in theaters, MGM and director Emma Seligman’s teen comedy Bottoms broke into the top ten films for the weekend (no. 7) on 715 screens, a major North America expansion from a 10-theater opening last week. An estimated $3 million gross for the three days, and $3.6 million for the four-day Labor Day holiday (PSA $4,206 and $5,019 respectively) means the film will continue to expand, with about 1,200 screens planned for next weekend.

Shaquille O’Neal is determined to get his body back to championship-caliber level. And when he gets there, the Hall of Famer will party like it’s 2006.

Venice Film Festival. But the SAG-AFTRA strike made it impossible for the tennis drama, which MGM pushed to a 2024 release date, to come to the Lido. So instead, Venice kicked off with World War II drama “Comandante” by young Italian auteur Edoardo De Angelis.

EXCLUSIVE: With Mipcom on the horizon, Sweden’s Eccho Rights is building out its sales team by hiring well-respected exec Tess Charman.

Emma Seligman’s Bottoms is looking at an estimated weekend gross of $516k on ten screens with a possible leading $51,625 per-theater average for the raunchy, teenage high school girl take on Fight Club.

The release of “Dune: Part Two,” one of the fall’s most anticipated films, has been postponed from November until next year, Warner Bros. confirmed Thursday.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter Today, TIFF announced additional honourees who will be receiving a TIFF Tribute Award at this year’s Festival. Recipients include award-winning Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz who will be honoured with the TIFF Emerging Talent Award presented by MGM. This award is in the spirit of Torontonian Mary Pickford, the groundbreaking actor, producer, and co-founder of United Artists, whose impact continues today.

Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy franchise) and Jason Momoa (Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) have been set to star in The Wrecking Crew, a buddy action comedy that Blue Beetle‘s Ángel Manuel Soto will direct for MGM, Deadline can confirm.

will return for season 3, Prime Video announced. The fan-favorite show is currently airing the final episodes of season 2 after doubling its season 1 viewership last month. «We've been delighted to see the passion with which fans have embraced, making Summer Fridays an entertainment phenomenon,» Vernon Sanders, Amazon and MGM Studios head of television, said in a statement.

Selome Hailu FX has set premiere dates for its fall 2023 lineup. Along with the previously announced dates for “American Horror Story: Delicate” and “American Horror Stories,” the network has mapped out the debuts of “The New York Times Presents: How to Fix a Pageant,” “A Murder at the End of the World” and Season 5 of “Fargo.” “The New York Times Presents: How to Fix a Pageant” will premiere on Sept. 29 and follows the rigging scandal and contestant revolt that took place as Miss USA and its parent company, Miss Universe, came under female ownership for the first time, as well as the legacy brand’s attempts to increase profitability by embracing women’s empowerment.

FX’s fifth season of multi-award winning series, Fargo, is returning on Tuesday, Nov. 21 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The network today also unveiled first look images from the new season and revealed more details on the plot of the Noah Hawley-created TV series spawned from the Oscar winning 1996 Coen Brothers movie.

Saltburn, the latest film from Promising Young Woman filmmaker Emerald Fennell, will open this year’s London Film Festival. 

Naman Ramachandran “Saltburn,” Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated sophomore feature after the Oscar and BAFTA-winning “Promising Young Woman,” will open the 67th BFI London Film Festival. The film is produced by Fennell and Margot Robbie, whose “Barbie” has grossed more than $1 billion, as well as Josey McNamara (“Promising Young Woman,” “Barbie”). “Saltburn” reunites Fennell with her “Promising Young Woman” star Carey Mulligan and the cast also includes Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E.

Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation (WRMPPF) is honoring one of their biggest champs this year with a posthumous recognition: late MGM and United Artists Distribution Boss Erik Lomis. The honor will be recognized at the October 4 dinner at The Beverly Hilton.

! The Summer I Turned Pretty, the multigenerational drama and coming of age story focusing on Isabel “Belly” Conklin, has officially been renewed for a third season. Prime Video made the announcement on August 3, 2023, while also revealing some big news in the process: it will be the biggest season yet.

will return for season 3, Prime Video announced on Thursday. The fan-favorite show is currently airing the final episodes of season 2 after doubling its season 1 viewership last month. «We've been delighted to see the passion with which fans have embraced, making Summer Fridays an entertainment phenomenon,» Vernon Sanders, Amazon and MGM Studios head of television, said in a statement.

Selome Hailu Jenny Han’s teen drama series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” has been renewed for a ten-episode third season at Amazon Prime Video. Though the news was announced on Thursday, Amazon says the greenlight was made official internally before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA went on strike, and that no work on Season 3 will begin until labor negotiations between the guilds and the studios have been resolved. According to Amazon, Season 2 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is one of the 10 most-watched seasons of any series ever on Amazon Prime Video, with its July 14 premiere more than doubling viewership of Season 1 within three days of launch.

The Summer I Turned Pretty has officially been renewed for a third season at Amazon’s Prime Video!

We’ll always have summer.