WME Signs Olympian-Turned-‘Earth Mama’ Filmmaker Savanah Leaf

EXCLUSIVE: UTA has signed Young Mazino in all areas. The agency will help bolster Mazino’s career across film, television, and more.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International “Drive My Car” star Hidetoshi Nishijima has signed with CAA for representation. Nishijima starred in the acclaimed 2021 Japanese feature “Drive My Car,” which was nominated for four Academy Awards, and walked away with the Oscar for best international feature film. He earned several awards for his performance in the Cannes-premiering critical darling, including best actor from the National Society of Film Critics and the Boston Film Critics Circle Awards, as well as the Japan Academy Film Prize for best actor. Nishijima will next star alongside Rashida Jones in “Sunny,” Apple TV+’s half-hour dark comedy series from A24 and Lucy Tcherniak. He also stars in Kitano Takeshi’s “Kubi,” which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

EXCLUSIVE: Activist Artists Management on Tuesday announced their signing of Human Rights Watch, the international organization working to promote and defend human rights around the world. Activist’s Bernie Cahill and Jon Kanak will rep the organization, as well as its 40+ years of human rights research and advocacy, helping to extend its reach through the creation of fresh scripted and unscripted storytelling opportunities across film and TV.

EXCLUSIVE: Zoë Chao has signed with Entertainment 360 for representation. She most recently appeared in Netflix’s Your Place Or Mine opposite Reese Witherspoon. She will next be seen in Hulu’s Nightbitch opposite Amy Adams and can currently be seen in the Party Down reboot for Starz. In March, SXSW premiered the independent film If You Were The Last, starring Chao and Anthony Mackie.

EXCLUSIVE: House of Lies creator Matthew Carnahan has signed with Verve for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmakers Janeen and Michael Damian have entered into three-picture directing and producing deal with Brad Krevoy’s Motion Picture Corporation of America, MPCA CEO Krevoy announced on Wednesday.

EXCLUSIVE: Get Me Out Productions, the international production company behind the Crackle reality series Men of West Hollywood, has signed with A3 Artists Agency for representation.

This past Friday (April 14), the British band Breezer released a “lost” Oasis album they’d created using AI. AISIS’ The Lost Tapes/Vol.1 was, in fact, written by Breezer, but the band is fronted by a digitally programmed Liam Gallagher.

not-so-amicable parting from Warner Music was announced, Brazilian superstar singer Anitta has inked with Universal’s Republic Records, sources close to the deal tell Variety. Republic declined requests for comment. The singer left Warner after 11 years at the company and a big effort by the company’s Warner Records label to break the singer in the U.S. with her multi-genre latest album “Versions of Me,” released just over a year ago. Despite a blockbuster performance at last year’s Coachella festival, a massive international hit with the song “Envolver” (which has amassed more than 500 million streams on Spotify), and collaborations on the album with hitmakers like Max Martin, Ryan Tedder and Stargate — not to mention features from Saweetie, Missy Elliott, Khalid and Maluma — the album was not a hit in the U.S., although she remains a superstar in Latin America and other territories.

Scandoval is slowly unraveling right before our eyes on Vanderpump Rules.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Oscar-winning documentarian Bryan Fogel has signed for representation with Range Media Partners. Fogel is best known for his 2018 film “Icarus,” which exposed Russia’s state-sponsored doping program and the whistleblower at its center. The Netflix title won the Academy Award for best documentary, the first such prize for the streamer. Prior to its crowning moment on the Dolby stage, the film sold for $5 million out of the Sundance Film Festival. Additional laurels for “Icarus” included the special jury prize at that year’s Sundance, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Journalism, and nominations from BAFTA, the television academy and the Directors Guild of America.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss, best known for his Oscar-winning turn in The Goodbye Girl, has signed with Innovative Artists for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: Welcome to Earth with Will Smith producer Nutopia is pushing further into the returning formats game with the hire of a new Creative Director in the UK.

EXCLUSIVE: LBI Entertainment has signed BAFTA Award-nominated writer, director and producer John Lee Hancock for management, Deadline has learned.

EXCLUSIVE: Actor and online influencer Alexis Ren has signed with WME in all areas.

A legendary Ayrshire youth leader has turned 80 - with no signs of slowing down.

EXCLUSIVE: M88 has inked a deal to rep brother filmmakers Aaron Tao And Winston Tao, who together go by the name TAO/S.

Angelique Jackson CAA has signed filmmaker Megan Park for representation. Park’s feature directorial debut, “The Fallout,” premiered at SXSW in 2021 and took home the festival’s grand jury prize and audience award, as well as the first-ever Brightcove Illumination Award for writing the screenplay. The film was released on HBO Max in Jan. 2022 and stars Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler, following the teenagers as they attempt to rebuild their lives after a school tragedy. Park was named one of Variety’s “10 Directors to Watch” for 2022 and also won the Toronto International Film Festival’s Rising Star Award and an Emerging Directors Award from the Cannes Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy-winning filmmaker and actor Ashly Burch has signed with WME for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed filmmaker Jamie Dack, whose debut feature Palm Trees and Power Lines earned her the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.