‘The Boys’ to Show ‘Urethra Scene’ and ‘Herogasm’ on the Big Screen With Season 3 Marathon at Amazon’s Culver Theater (EXCLUSIVE)

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Studios has rounded out its cast for the actioner Heads of State with the addition of Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon), Stephen Root (Barry), Carla Gugino (Leopard Skin), Jack Quaid (The Boys), Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso), Richard Coyle (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), Clare Foster (Sherlock), Katrina Durden (Doctor Strange) and Aleksandr Kuznetsov (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore).

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Layoffs will be hitting 25% of employees across the Showtime, MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks groups in the U.S. Tuesday, following months of internal deliberations about integration amid Showtime’s rebranding into Paramount+ With Showtime. Additionally, MTV News — which was significantly affected by layoffs more than five years ago — will be shutting down. Other units, most of which are operations, will be shuttered as well. In a memo to staff, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks president Chris McCarthy said that, despite Paramount’s “success in streaming, we continue to feel pressure from broader economic headwinds like many of our peers,” and that “senior leaders in coordination with HR have been working together over the past few months to determine the optimal organization for the current and future needs of our business.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “The Mandalorian” star Rosario Dawson and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” star Tony Revolori are set as the co-leads in the upcoming western animated series “Ghosts of Ruin.” Per the show’s logline, “In the near-future tech dystopia of San Francisco, ‘Ghosts of Ruin’ is a genre-bending animated series where virtual reality has evolved into Neural Reality, creating a world where video games have been synced directly into players’ minds and are indistinguishable from real life. The series follows a group of gamers on their journey into the world’s first neural reality battle royal tournament game called ‘Ruin.’ However, a rogue program emerges to turn their paradise into a living nightmare.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nexstar reported its first-quarter 2023 earnings Tuesday, revealing its overall ad sales were down 6% year-over-year but its digital revenue increased by a record 16.5%, in part due to the inclusion of the CW Network in its offering. Wall Street forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $2.67 on $1.24 billion in revenue, according to analyst consensus data provided by Refinitiv. Nexstar reported diluted EPS of $2.97 on $1.26 billion in revenue. “Nexstar’s first quarter financial results once again outperformed consensus expectations across all key financial metrics including net revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and attributable free cash flow. All-time high quarterly distribution revenue and the benefit of The CW acquisition more than offset the cyclical year-over-year decline in political and Olympic advertising, resulting in record first quarter net revenues for the Company. We returned nearly 60% of first quarter attributable free cash flow to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases.

Katie Reul editor A brand new trailer for “Oppenheimer,” the upcoming film from director Christopher Nolan, was released Monday by Universal Pictures in anticipation of the feature’s July debut. Set to a dramatic score from Ludwig Göransson, the newly-dropped teaser offers closer looks at the key players of the Manhattan Project, as portrayed by a star-studded cast including Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Leslie Groves Jr. and Tom Conti, who appears briefly as a somber looking Albert Einstein. “Oppenheimer” centers around the legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy), who is credited as the inventor of the atomic bomb. Based on the biographical novel “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the film follows the physicist as he works alongside a team of government scientists to develop nuclear weapons in the early 1940s.

As video game projects are gathering some steam in Hollywood, New Line Cinema has been pushing forward with a follow-up to 2021’s “Mortal Kombat” reboot with a new sequel. And much of the surviving characters return in the next film alongside the new incarnation of fan-favorite Johnny Cage, as teased at the end of the first installment.

Meg Ryan made a rare public appearance in New York on Thursday where she was seen with Michael J. Fox and his wife, Tracy Pollan.  The trio were all smiles sitting on a couch together at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall where a special screening for Fox’s documentary, "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie," was being held.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish addressed the writers strike during Paramount’s Q1 earnings call Thursday, stating that writers are “an essential part of creating content” and “we hope we can come to a resolution that works for everyone fairly quickly.” However, the Paramount chief added, “it’s also fair to say there’s a really big gap.” “Obviously, we’ve been planning for this, we do have many levers to pull and that’ll allow us to manage through the strike, even if it’s for an extended duration,” Bakish said. “In terms of those levers, we have a lot in the can, so to speak, content in the can. So with the exception of things like late-night, consumers really won’t notice anything for a while. Add to that a broad range of reality, unscripted, where we’re definitely a leader, as well as sports, and that’s not effected, so we can do more in those areas, if necessary.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer With major cost-saving initiatives in effect at Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount and more mega media companies and economic uncertainty on Wall Street, the content spend free-for-all is definitely over. Today, the focus is turning to scalable franchises that work for in a multiplatform media world where Hollywood will get the biggest bang for more limited bucks. According to Perkins Miller, CEO of media company Fandom, the financial focus for the next 18 months should be on mining IP and franchises for all their worth. “My view is that, you don’t want to stifle innovation, I think creativity is incredibly important and you want to see that breakout show that is interesting or that movie that was greenlit because the story was so remarkable that it breaks the mold,” Miller said on the latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast. “And I wouldn’t suggest that anybody should stop those kinds of activities. I think that are important, obviously, from a creative standpoint. But from an economic one, which is the question you’re asking, what is the most economically smart thing to do, I think the most economically smart thing to do is to focus on franchises and figure out your scaled production against them.”

EJ Panaligan editor The first trailer for director Neil Blomkamp’s “Gran Turismo,” adapted from the popular PlayStation video game racing franchise, has been released. Blomkamp, whose notable directing credits include “District 9” and “Elysium,” departs from his typical science fiction subject matter to take on the sports racing film. Based on a true story, “Gran Turismo” follows a young teenager who’s obsessed with playing the racing video game and gradually takes his controller skills onto a real racetrack with hopes to become a professional race car driver. Archie Madekwe plays the film’s main character, with David Harbour as his racing trainer, Djimon Hounsou as the teenager’s father and Orlando Bloom as a motorsport marketing executive. Darren Barnet plays a respected GT Academy driver who feels threatened by the teenager’s fast-growing success.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The new regime at Peacock has spent the past nine months preparing to take its baby bird to new heights. The number of big moves made by the NBCUniversal-owned streamer — from amping up its original content slate to livestream deals with Hallmark, Reelz and Big 10 college football to bringing NBC shows back into the fold for next-day viewing and eliminating its free tier for new users — is setting the stage for what executives hope will be a growth spurt in 2023. Peacock, which launched three years ago last month, will show of its brighter plumage Tuesday with its New Fronts presentation to advertisers. “It’s all coming together,” says Peacock president Kelly Campbell, who signed on in October 2021 after serving as president of Hulu. “We’re just seeing an increasing interest overall when it comes to inflow and engagement, and people are stickier than they were in the past.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Amazon is bringing more than 100 of its Prime Video originals to Freevee, the company’s ad-supported platform that’s home to new hit “Jury Duty,” this year. The deal marks the first time these titles will be available to view for free and with commercial breaks. Among the slate of hit Prime Video shows and movies that will begin streaming on Freevee (while still remaining available for ad-free viewing on Prime Video) are “Reacher,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “The Wheel of Time,” “A League of Their Own” and “LuLaRich.” As of Monday, more than 50 of these originals are now available for streaming on Freevee, including “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” “The Grand Tour,” “Mozart in the Jungle,” “Bosch,” “Modern Love,” “Savage X Fenty,” “Sylvie’s Love,” “Troop Zero” and “Late Night.”

Bonnie Wright is pregnant. The 32-year-old actress - who is best known for playing Ginny Weasley in the 'Harry Potter films alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint - tied the knot with Andrew Lococo in March 2022 and took to social media on Friday (28. 04.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Aidy Bryant is set to star in “Lonely Hearts Club,” a dramedy series based on an episode of the Crime Junkies podcast, currently in the works at Peacock. “Beau Is Afraid” filmmaker Ari Aster is executive producing the project. Set in the late 1940s, “Lonely Hearts Club” is described as a darkly comedic true crime thriller about a lonely woman who falls in love with a dim but handsome con man. Together they form an unlikely “Loser-Bonnie-and-Clyde”-style partnership that ends in lies, murder and the electric chair. The show is based on an episode of Ashley Flowers’ Crime Junkie podcast entitled “Infamous: The ‘Lonely Hearts’ Killers.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Disney Entertainment has reshuffled roles and oversight among some comms and PR execs amid the second round of layoffs companywide. In addition to this week’s changes, Variety has confirmed that since February, Shari Rosenblum has led publicity, talent relations and events across 20th Television, 20th Animation and ABC Signature as SVP of publicity for Disney Television Studios. Rosenblum, who has spent 18 years at the studio leading campaign efforts for series including “Modern Family,” “The Dropout” and “Homeland,” reports to Candice Ashton. New reorg moves include:

A future Hogwarts student! Harry Potter star Bonnie Wright announced that she is pregnant and expecting her first child with her husband, Andrew Lococo.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer In a months-long goal to reach 7,000 job cuts total, Disney will begin its second round of layoffs of the year today. The notifications will be handed out to staff through Thursday, concluding with approximately 4,000 job eliminations completed overall by week’s end, according to company officials. While the Disney workforce will be reduced by thousands across divisions Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products (hourly frontline operations roles at Parks and Resorts will not be affected), and locations from Burbank to New York and Connecticut, there are still more layoffs to come. According to Disney, a third and final wave of cuts is expected to begin ahead of the summer, which will bring the Mouse House to its 7,000 layoffs target. (The figure represents 3.2% of Disney’s total headcount of about 220,000 worldwide as of Oct. 1, 2022.)

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “The Good Doctor” has been renewed for a seventh season at ABC ahead of its Season 6 finale. The medical drama, which debuted in 2017, stars Freddie Highmore as Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young autistic surgeon who has savant syndrome and works in the surgical unit at the prestigious San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. Alongside Highmore, the “Good Doctor” cast includes Hill Harper as Dr. Marcus Andrews, Richard Schiff as Dr. Aaron Glassman, Fiona Gubelmann as Dr. Morgan Reznick, Will Yun Lee as Dr. Alex Park, Christina Chang as Dr. Audrey Lim, Paige Spara as Lea Dilallo, Bria Samoné Henderson as Dr. Jordan Allen and Noah Galvin as Dr. Asher Wolke.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters revealed what exactly went wrong with the live “Love Is Blind” Season 4 reunion special on Sunday — and how they plan to fix the problem with other live broadcasts moving forward. “We’re really sorry to disappoint so many people,” Peters said during a prerecorded Q1 earnings interview Tuesday. “We didn’t meet the standard that we expect ourselves: to serve our members and just be clear from a technical perspective. We’ve got the infrastructure. We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try to improve live-streaming performance after the last live broadcast, Chris Rock[‘s ‘Selective Outrage’] in March. We just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love Is Blind.'”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Netflix reported its first-quarter 2023 earnings Tuesday. The streamer added 1.75 million net new subscribers in Q1, compared with gaining 7.66 million for the final quarter of 2022, the period during which its low-cost, ad-supported tier launched.