Chris Jansing is accustomed to doing marathon stints in front of the camera for NBC News and MSNBC. In the aftermath of 9/11, she sometimes found herself reporting or anchoring for seven hours or more. “I lived on tater tots for, I think, two months,” she recalls in a recent interview. “It was the one…

Sean Penn went to war and a movie broke out. That is, in effect, the story behind the making of the documentary “Superpower,” a gripping cinematic portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the eve of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  Co-directed by Penn and Aaron Kaufman, who helmed…

Tubi pulled a FAST one on Super Bowl viewers on Sunday night. Tubi, the free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, ran a clever trompe l’oeil ad that made it look as if viewers’ TVs were changing the channel right in the middle of the climactic end of the Eagles-Chiefs game. The 15-second spot, which ran…

Actor-director Marco D’Amore, who played the ruthless central character Ciro Di Marzio on the Italian mob show “Gomorrah,” is directing “Caracas” a Naples-set drama in which he stars opposite Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty,” “Strangeness”). “Caracas” is a co-production between Picomedia, Mad Entertainment and Vision Distribution, which will release the film in Italy. Vision Distribution’s…

A sequel to “Plane” is officially taking flight — or rather, setting sail. Mike Colter, who played accused murderer Louis Gaspare in the original film, will headline the new, nautical movie, which is aptly titled “Ship.” Producers MadRiver Pictures, Di Bonaventura Pictures and G-BASE Productions are returning for the sequel, with director Jean-François Richet also…

Note: This article is an offshoot of Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “The New Face of Content Piracy,” available exclusively to VIP+ subscribers. After dipping during the great COVID lockdown, media piracy has come roaring back.  The proliferation of popular streaming TV content and the return of robust wide-release film slates have helped drive steady…

MetFilm Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to Vinay Shukla’s documentary “While We Watched.” Produced by the U.K.’s Lono Studio and BritDoc Films, the documentary is a newsroom drama intimately chronicling the working days of Indian broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates a spiralling world of truth and disinformation. Kumar, a Ramon Magsaysay…

Celebrities once again ran up the score for Super Bowl advertisers. The most-watched Super Bowl LVII ad on YouTube on Sunday was Melissa McCarthy’s Booking.com spot, in which the actor and comedian is whisked away on a whirlwind musical tour of gorgeous vacation getaways. John Travolta’s T-Mobile ad, crooning a riff on “Summer Nights” (alongside…

When “Batgirl” completed its seven-month production in Scotland, star Leslie Grace received a wrap gift from Brendan Fraser, who played her nemesis, Firefly, in the DC movie — a gold necklace that included two charms, a little bell and a pair of dice. “The card said a lot of really sweet things, but he basically…

Georgia Oakley, director of the BAFTA-nominated British film “Blue Jean,” says she “wrestles” with awards season and those it chooses to celebrate, when filmmaking is such a collaborative effort. “I wrestled with this idea in my head,” says Oakley while speaking to Variety about her feature debut “Blue Jean” scoring a BAFTA nomination for outstanding…