Open Thread

Deadline reports: Tammy Faye, the Olivier-nominated Elton John–Jake Shears–James Graham musical about ’80s-era televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, will premiere on Broadway during the 2024-25 Season. The musical will be staged at an as-yet-unannounced Nederlander Theatre. Venue, production dates and casting will be announced at a later date. The official synopsis: “From a studio in South Carolina, Tammy Faye and Jim …

Variety reports: Is it real — or is it YouTube‘s robot singer copying a pop star’s vocal stylings? YouTube announced new AI music experiments it has been developing with Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab. The most interesting (and possibly most disorienting) of YouTube’s AI tests is Dream Track in YouTube Shorts. Here’s how it works: A user types an idea …

Deadline Hollywood reports: Members of a special House committee fired off a letter to Apple, questioning whether the decision to end The Problem with Jon Stewart was due to concerns over the company’s relationship with China. Last month, it was announced that the Apple+ show was ending, and The New York Times reported that Stewart told members of his staff …

People Magazine reports: In Lifetime’s upcoming original holiday movie Ladies of the ‘80s: A Divas Christmas — part of the network’s annual “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” season programming slate — daytime drama queens, played by WKRP in Cincinnati‘s Loni Anderson, Falcon Crest‘s Morgan Fairchild, Dallas‘s Linda Gray, and Knots Landing‘s Donna Mills and Nicollette Sheridan, reunite to film the final …

The BBC reports: Politician Nigel Farage and social media sensation Nella Rose are among this year’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here campmates. This Morning‘s Josie Gibson and EastEnders actress Danielle Harold are also going to be on the show. Hosts Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly will cheer on the celebrities as they battle it out to be …

Variety reports: A musical adaptation of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the 1985 teen comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt, is in the works. The stage show is based on the film’s screenplay by Amy Spies and features a score of 1980s chart-toppers, including the Cyndi Lauper hit that inspired the title. “Girls Just Want to Have …

Deadline Hollywood reports: Song ideas can come from anywhere. Case in point: the Aerosmith song I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, the group’s first No. 1 hit, was inspired by Barbra Streisand‘s romance with husband James Brolin. In her memoir My Name is Barbra, Streisand recalled being in bed with Brolin. He told her, “I don’t want to fall …

Variety reports: The full list of nominations for the 67th annual Grammy Awards is out, with SZA as the leading nominee, with nine. Other key nominees include Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Jon Batiste, Victoria Monét and Billie Eilish, all of whom will be competing against SZA for record of the year. In the album of the year …

Deadline reports: NBC said that average of 7.51 million viewers watched the third Republican debate Wednesday night across the broadcast network, streaming and digital, marking a drop from the previous two GOP debates this cycle. The figure is still a relatively solid number, but it’s off from the 9.5 million who watched the second debate in September and the 12.8 …

Variety reports: Disney, which is in the home stretch of swinging the deal to become the full owner of Hulu, will launch a beta test of an app next month that combines Disney+ and Hulu into a single experience, CEO Bob Iger said. Disney still needs to close its deal with Comcast to buy out NBCUniversal’s 33% stake in Hulu. …

AM New York reports: Boy George — the Culture Club icon of the 1980s — is returning to Broadway in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.” The singer-songwriter whose hits include “Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” will play Moulin Rouge club owner Harold Zidler in the jukebox adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive 2001 movie. He starts Feb. …

CNN reports: In an interview about her upcoming memoir, “My Name is Barbra,” two-time Oscar-winner Barbra Streisand told the BBC that she was fed up with Siri getting her name wrong. “My name isn’t spelled with a ‘Z’,” she argued. “It’s Strei-sand, like sand on the beach. How simple can you get?” In a move most of us could only …

Billboard Magazine reports: Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) blasts in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Nov. 11), scoring the superstar her 13th No. 1 on the chart. The set debuts with 1.653 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 2, according to Luminate. That marks the largest week for …

Billboard Magazine reports: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – which began 40 years ago and started inducting artists into its ranks in 1986 – welcomed the Class of 2023 to its extensive roster on Friday (Nov. 3) evening at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine and …

Deadline reports: The first installment of Ryan Murphy’s American Sports Story anthology series for FX will star Josh Andrés Rivera as Aaron Hernandez and Patrick Schwarzenegger as fellow former NFL star Tim Tebow. The season is based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc from the Boston Globe and Wondery. The first limited series installment charts the rise …

Variety reports: HBO and Max CEO and chairman Casey Bloys apologized to TV critics Thursday for using fake Twitter accounts to respond to negative reviews of HBO series, following a Wednesday report that revealed Bloys’ past behavior. “It’s very important to me what you all think of the shows. So when you think of that mindset, and then think of …

The Hollywood Reporter reports: Disney has agreed to take full control of Hulu in a deal with Comcast, which has owned a third of the streamer ever since Disney’s acquisition of the 21st Century Fox entertainment assets. “The acquisition of Comcast’s stake in Hulu at fair market value will further Disney’s streaming objectives,” the Bob Iger-led company said in a …

Billboard Magazine reports: Flavor Flav is known for a lot of things: wearing that giant clock for the past 38 years, serving as Public Enemy rapper Chuck D’s colorful on-stage foil and an unencumbered enthusiasm that helped propel the group into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But on Sunday (Oct. 29), the Milwaukee Bucks gave Flav a job …

Variety reports: Submarine will serve as the North American Sales agent for “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” which premiered at the 2023 Cannes International Film Festival. Following the 1980 release of “Caligula,” producer and reconstructionist Thomas Negovan re-edited the film for three years utilizing the original materials for “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” which includes never-before-seen footage shot in 1976. Negovan’s reconstruction …

Deadline reports: Universal/Blumhouse’s big screen version of nine-year-old videogame Five Nights at Freddy’s has hit an unprecedented $78M opening, $4.4M shy of what Uni wowed with earlier this summer in firing up Oppenheimer ($82.4M). Yet, while presales indicated a huge hit, the whole Peacock day-and-date of it all, which wound up knocking out projections on Halloween Ends a year ago …