Wayfarer Studios Names Labid Aziz As COO And CFO

Editor’s note: Former Los Angeles Blade News Editor Karen Ocamb reflects on the painful truth that is for too many in the LGBTQ+ community, especially those in their 40’s onward, a reality that they live. While some celebrity parents in this modern era enthusiastically embrace and affirm their queer children- that was hardly ever the case in years past to the point of erasure.

EXCLUSIVE: David Henry Hwang, the Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly playwright currently writing the script for a live-action musical film adaptation of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, has signed with CAA.

Los Angeles police on Wednesday declared an unlawful assembly when a downtown rally for Donald Trump apparently turned destructive and violent. Video and pictures on the ground from reporters andaerial footage showed police in riot gear clearing the area and reportedly making arrests.

The union representing rank-and-file Los Angeles Police Department officers rejected a "Protect Our Profession" proposal, which aimed to raise $10 million in union dues to support candidates in 2022 elections who oppose the "defund the police" movement.  Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents approximately 9,800 officers, asked members to approve the plan last month that would have collected $22 per paycheck over a nearly two-year period, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. 

coronavirus surge in the city. Five of the studios’ programs — including two from the hit “NCIS” series — will be affected by the pause, which pushes back the return of post-holiday production from Jan. 4 to Jan.

Disney Television Studios has joined other major TV studios in pushing the post-holidays start of production for Los Angeles-based shows amid an unprecedented surge in coronavirus infections and Covid-19 deaths in Los Angeles County.

Elaine Low Senior TV WriterA number of CBS Studios productions — including “NCIS,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Seal Team,” “Why Women Kill” and “Diary of a Future President” — are extending their holiday hiatus by one week amid the spiking COVID-19 surge in Los Angeles County, Variety has learned.Those productions will resume on Jan. 11.

The New York, Los Angeles and Boston critics have had their say and now we begin the long, tedious rollout of other critics groups who insist their honors are not meant to have any influence on guild or Oscar voters. The Chicago Film Critics Association and Florida Film Critics Circle have now made their selections and anointed, respectfully, “Nomadland” and “First Cow” as Best Picture.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Sunday determined their picks for the year's best in film. Small Axe was tapped as best picture.

Kawhi Leonard had a very practical reason for leaving Toronto, his hands got cold.

Weta Digital has tapped Ken Kamins, and former Disney COO Tom Staggs, and Google SVP Jeff Huber to its Board of Directors. The appointments comes as the Peter Jackson studio has offices planned in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The trio join Weta Digital board members Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Sean Parker, Joe Letteri and CEO Prem Akkaraju.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday made the decision not to criminally charge two LAPD officers who accidentally fatally shot a Trader Joe’s store manager two years ago while trying to prevent an armed suspect from taking customers and staff hostage. Melyda Maricela Corado, 27, died from a single gunshot wound when she was struck at the entrance of a Trader Joe’s in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles on July 21, 2018.

As the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine was delivered at a Los Angeles-area hospital, the county’s hospital and ICU capacity dropped to alarming lows.

Who said there wouldn’t be any awards before the end of 2020? There are critics groups handing out (virtual) trophies in the weeks ahead and instead of New York or Los Angeles going first, we begin with their peers in Boston. And in what may be a familiar refrain, The Boston Society of Film Critics capped off their annual year-end winners by selecting “Nomadland” as Best Film.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media WriterGersh Agency principle David Gersh has voiced his support for CAA’s position on the role of talent managers in the agency’s larger fight with the Writers Guild of America.In a declaration filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, David Gersh asserts that WGA West executive director David Young told him that the guild would continue to ask talent managers to help find jobs for writers in order to keep the pressure on CAA and WME, the two largest agencies that

Time magazine will announce its 2020 Person of the Year tonight in a first-ever broadcast special, but editors named their picks for Entertainer and Athlete of the Year on Twitter today: South Korean K-pop boy band BTS and Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James.