Game of Thrones author also has a Netflix film on the way, but there is still no word of his finishing the fantasy series that made his name
After the huge success of HBO’s adaptations of his Game of Thrones books, George RR Martin has signed a deal to develop several television series for the network and its streaming arm, HBO Max.
Related: George RR Martin: ‘Game of Thrones finishing is freeing, I’m at my own pace’
Continue reading...HBO’s Covid Diaries NYC stitches together five documentary shorts by film-makers between 16-22, covering the dizzying, surreal first days of the pandemic
The middle of March 2021 will bring, for most Americans, a strange, surreal anniversary: the year mark of the horrifying realization – be it through a tweet, a cancellation, a diagnosis of a loved one or a celebrity, a lost job or gig – that the coronavirus was a very real threat that would implode the world as we knew it. For Aracelie Colón, then a 16-year-old high school junior in Manhattan, it was the email announcing a two-week closure from school. For fellow high school junior Shane Fleming, it was the positive diagnosis of a classmate and the closure of the Film Forum, where the movie buff caught a final feature showing on 14 March. For Arlet Guallpa, then 22, it was an ambulance outside her building in Washington Heights, fetching the first of many residents who would succumb to the virus.
Related: 'They refused to act': inside a chilling documentary on Trump's bungled Covid-19 response
Continue reading...‘Fox turned down the first draft because I didn’t put any murders in it. People watch mob shows because they like to see murders’
I was still writing the pilot episode when Steven Van Zandt – who would go on to play strip-club owner and second-in-command Silvio Dante – came to read for the part of Tony Soprano. I thought: “With Steven, it could be more like The Simpsons: more comedy, less nasty bits, more absurd.” But once we hired Jim Gandolfini for Tony, it all went back to where it started.
Continue reading...In the documentary Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests, the discriminatory nature of a widely used tool is put under the microscope
Scrolling dating apps in 2015, Tim Travers Hawkins didn’t know who his type was. He didn’t even know what a type was. Hawkins, a British film-maker then new to New York, “noticed something that was very different to people’s profiles in the UK and that was the use of these four letters,” he said to the Guardian. Curious, he looked it up. “I was like, ‘Huh, that’s different’.”
Related: 'We're all part of the story': behind Will Smith's 14th amendment docuseries
Continue reading...The new HBO documentary in which Mia and Dylan Farrow revisit their 1992 allegation against Woody Allen claims to be an even-handed investigation. But its failure to present the facts makes it feel more like activism
“HBO Doc About Woody Allen & Mia Farrow Ignores Mia’s 3 Dead Kids, Her Child Molester Brother, Other Family Tragedies” was the headline on one US showbiz site, above its review of the four-part documentary, Allen v Farrow, about the continuing battle between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, now entering its fourth decade. But this review was very much an outlier. In the vast main, reaction to the strongly anti-Allen series has been overwhelmingly positive, with Buzzfeed describing it as a “nuanced reckoning” and Entertainment Weekly comparing it to the recent documentaries about Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Epstein. This reaction is more of a reflection of the public’s feelings towards Allen – particularly in the US – than of the documentary, which sets itself up as an investigation but much more resembles PR, as biased and partial as a political candidate’s advert vilifying an opponent in election season.
Related: Allen v Farrow review – effective docuseries on allegations of abuse
Continue reading...The film-maker and wife Soon-Yi Previn claim film is ‘hatchet job riddled with falsehoods’ on abuse allegations
Woody Allen has rebutted renewed allegations, in the HBO documentary Allen v Farrow, that he sexually assaulted his daughter Dylan in 1992, calling the series “a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods”.
In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, said that film-makers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick had “spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods”.
Continue reading...The popularity of classic shows in the past year is about more than nostalgia – what pulls us back in is their relevance to today
At least Covid struck during the age of “peak TV”. After all, were this not a time when the shows being piped into our living rooms were better, smarter, starrier, more plentiful and more readily available than ever before, what would we have done to stay on an even keel through a year in lockdown?
Pretty much what we did anyway, it turns out. Because the viewing trend of the past 12 months, which few saw coming, has been a clamour for the classics. At a time when there is more box-fresh prestige entertainment than you can shake a battered remote at, viewers on both sides of the Atlantic decided instead to reacquaint themselves with old friends: Rodney Trotter, Jerry Seinfeld and, overwhelmingly, Tony Soprano.
Continue reading...The rebooted show will be called And Just Like That... and will feature the original stars, apart from Kim Cattrall
Sex and the City will be given a 2021 makeover, US streaming service HBO Max has announced.
Long-swirling rumours that the video-on-demand arm of the prestige TV brand was considering commissioning a revival of the 90s and 00s show were confirmed on Sunday night US time when three of the four stars of the original show, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis, shared a trailer for the series on social media platforms.
Continue reading...The ugly green coat in the HBO drama The Undoing has usurped a starry cast that includes Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. But what are the show’s makers trying to say, exactly?
The real star of The Undoing, HBO’s absurd marital melodrama, is not Hugh Grant, the Manhattan skyline or even the pair of David Hockneys hanging inside a vast penthouse in episode one. It’s a coat.
Sludge-green, calf-length, with wide lapels and a hood, this coat is worn again and again by Nicole Kidman’s character, a gnomic therapist called Grace, as she floats down Madison Avenue, through Central Park and even into the prison on Rikers Island, brooding over her marriage to a man who may, or may not, have just murdered his lover with a lump hammer.
Continue reading...Officials in Danbury, Connecticut, say they will name their sewage plant after the comedian John Oliver, in retaliation for an expletive-filled rant about the city on his HBO show.
Related: John Oliver: US is 'making a mockery of the phrase a jury of your peers'
Continue reading...Channel has given green light to House of the Dragon series, set 300 years before original blockbuster, reportedly after ditching another option
HBO is green-lighting a new Game of Thrones prequel after reportedly canceling another that starred Naomi Watts.
The cable channel said on Tuesday that it has given a 10-episode order to House of the Dragon, set 300 years before the original series that ended its eight-season run in May.
Continue reading...Russian version will revolve around role of a CIA agent before the nuclear accident
Russian state TV is set to air its own drama about the deadly 1986 Chernobyl disaster – but unlike the HBO series, which has transfixed viewers around the world, this version will claim that a CIA spy was present for the worst nuclear accident in history.
Chernobyl, which will air on Russia’s NTV channel, appears to fulfil a demand from tabloid columnists and state TV news for a more patriotic retelling of the story.
Continue reading...Modern-day cup initially mistaken for a Starbucks mug makes appearance in feast scene, provoking hilarity and anger
It’s a faux-medieval fantasy world of magic, dragons and heroic warriors … and possibly at least one coffee shop.
Fans of Game of Thrones have been reacting with bemusement and anger after a coffee cup from present-day Earth made an erroneous appearance in one of the latest episodes of the TV juggernaut, which has returned for its final season.
Continue reading...The saga of the Seven Kingdoms may be bowing out, but it has opened the floodgates. Here’s your guide to the next big heroes
Rand al’Thor was found as a baby on the slopes of Dragonmount and taken to Two Rivers, where he grew into a broad-shouldered shepherd boy. But Rand is possessed of immense power, a power as yet untapped, for he is also The Dragon Reborn, destined to be hunted by Darkhounds and Darkfriends as he bids to prove himself a mighty warrior leader. Among other things, Rand’s existence shows that you should always believe ancient prophesies, that even the low-born can save the world – and that characters in TV fantasy series must always have two names.
Rand is just one of the 2,782 characters who appear in Wheel of Time, the bestselling saga of fantasy novels by Robert Jordan. We can only hope the forthcoming adaptation on Amazon will hone the cast down a little, as we follow Rand and his forces towards Tarmon Gai’don, or the final battle between good and evil.
Continue reading...The singer’s estate is claiming the network is breaching a 1992 non-disparagement contract by airing a two-part documentary alleging sexual abuse against children
Michael Jackson’s estate is suing HBO over the network’s plans to air a documentary alleging the singer sexually abused two young boys.
The estate is claiming that by showing Leaving Neverland, HBO is violating a non-disparagement clause from a 1992 contract. According to the suit, when HBO aired Michael Jackson in Concert in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour, the clause precluded them from disparaging the singer in future works.
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