TV/Film
Where Is That Movie About Halsey’s Life? The Answer Could Be Its Own Rom-Com
Halsey revealed in late January that she was pregnant and expecting her first child, and the father of her baby was later revealed as her boyfriend, screenwriter Alev Aydin. The couple were first spotted together in public in October 2020. She set the record straight months later by letting critics know, “My pregnancy was 100% planned, and I tried very hard for this bb.” She wore a rainbow crochet crop top in her pregnancy announcement that served as a subtle reminder of her previous pregnancy loss, with the expected child being a “rainbow baby.” She opened up about suffering a miscarriage onstage before she even had time to fully process she was pregnant in a 2018 interview on The Doctors. Halsey also shared that she was battling endometriosis, ...
Olivia Rodrigo, BTS, Taylor Swift & More of the Week’s Biggest Winners (May 14)
Happiest Music News: Olivia Rodrigo is Billboard‘s latest cover star The “Drivers License” hitmaker is on Billboard‘s cover, where writer Andrew Unterberger recalls Rodrigo’s fast track to superstardom, bypassing the usual route of past Disney stars, picking up the pace at the resurgent Geffen Records, and wondering if she’ll be stuck as “the heartbreak girl.” Read her cover story interview here, and see the photos from the cover shoot here. Funniest Music News: T-Pain goes on an apology tour on Instagram Live What happens when T-Pain doesn’t check his Instagram DMs for years? He invites the same high-profile artists who tried contacting him, including Lil Jon, Kehlani, Zedd and Lauren Jauregui, up on Instagram Live to of...
Country Music Drama Produced by Talent Manager Jason Owen Lands Fox Series Order
The series, written by Hilfers, will feature original music and covers. The production counts Jason Owen, one of music’s top managers, among its exec producers. He is expected to bring his wealth of knowledge and relationships to make a mark on the series as his client roster includes such artists as Kacey Musgraves, Faith Hill, Little Big Town and the estates of Johnny and June Carter Cash. Sources say some of Owen’s clients are expected to appear and/or perform on the series, which will begin casting immediately. When Fox picked up the script nearly two years ago, the drama was poised to be a co-production between the network and its former in-house Gail Berman-led SideCar content development accelerator. SideCar was disbanded last summer, with Berman returning to run her production comp...
Taylor Swift, BTS & More Up for Best Music Documentary at MTV Movie & TV Awards: Exclusive
As previously announced, comedian Leslie Jones will host the first show; comedian Nikki Glaser will host the second. Here are the nominees in the two social categories: Best Music Documentary Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You: This concert film follows Grande onstage and behind-the-scenes on the Sweetener World Tour in 2019. Netflix released the film on Dec. 21, 2020, to mark the first anniversary of the tour’s conclusion. The film was directed by Paul Dugdale, whose previous credits include Coldplay’s Ghost Stories and The Rolling Stones’ road movie doc Olé Olé Olé! Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell: This doc is built around archival footage of the late rap legend The Notorious B.I.G. It features rare footage filmed by Damion “D-Roc” Butler and interviews with Biggie’s family an...
Meet 2021’s ‘American Idol’ Top 10 (Including a Comeback Contestant)
The unprecedented twist adds an interesting footnote to Idol history. Every year, Billboard asks the top finalists to name their favorite Idols from previous seasons. This year, Gunn appears as a favorite alum and at the same time is a current contestant. Billboard asked Gunn if he knew that he was named as a past favorite by Cassandra Coleman, who mentioned him before she knew that he would be joining this season. “No, I hadn’t heard that yet. Wow! I just saw her in the hotel while I was coming in. That’s awesome.” Before Gunn’s win was announced, the top nine contestants spoke to Billboard via Zoom from their Orlando, Fla. hotel, as they spent last week at Disney World for this Sunday night’s show, which was the annual Disney evening, complete with son...
Olympia Dukakis, Oscar Winner for ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies at 89
Away from the big screen, Dukakis taught drama at NYU for more than 15 years and was a founding member of two regional theaters: The Charles Playhouse in Boston and the Whole Theater in Montclair, New Jersey. Her husband of 55 years, stage and character actor Louis Zorich (Paul Reiser’s father on Mad About You), died in January 2018 at age 93. She was a first cousin of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. After years toiling on the stage, Dukakis, then in her mid-fifties, turned heads as the nagging Sicilian wife and mother Rose Castorini in Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck (1987). She also won a Golden Globe and top honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review for her career-defining performance...
How Billie Holiday’s Estate Has Led ‘An Afterlife of Tragedy’
“It’s not right that someone who was as awful to Billie Holiday as Louis McKay was would then have control of her likeness and her money,” says Danyel Smith, a former Billboard editor whose Shine Bright: A Personal History of Black Women In Pop is due early next year. “And it’s insane, at the end of the day, control of her money and likeness is in the hands of people who didn’t know her or have a relationship with her.” The last year has been unusually active for Holiday’s estate. She’s the subject of two movies: The United States vs. Billie Holiday, plus the Billie documentary that started streaming on-demand in December. Her haunting recording of the civil rights classic “Strange Fruit” took off during last su...
From ‘Lizzie McGuire’ to ‘A Cinderella Story,’ What’s Your Favorite Hilary Duff Role? Vote!
This is what dreams are made of: Hilary Duff is returning to your TV screen in Hulu’s recently announced How I Met Your Father, a spin-off the long-running CBS sitomc How I Met Your Mother. But what project do you love watching her in most? The 33-year-old star landed her first major role when she was just 10 years old, playing Wendy in the 1998 family comedy film Casper Meets Wendy. And Meghan Trainor might be the biggest fan of Duff’s two-time Emmy-nominated Disney Channel sitcom Lizzie McGuire: The singer was put to the test by Lizzie McGuire herself in Billboard‘s Quizzed series back in December 2019, where the two even duetted on “This Is What Dreams Are Made Of.” The Disney star eventually transformed fro...
Will Smith Film Departs Georgia Over Voting Restrictions
Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua have pulled production of their runaway slave drama Emancipation from Georgia over the state’s recently enacted law restricting voting access. The film is the largest and most high-profile Hollywood production to depart the state since Georgia’s Republican-controlled state Legislature passed a law that introduced stiffer voter identification requirements for absentee balloting, limited drop boxes and gave the State Election Board new powers to intervene in county election offices and to remove and replace local election officials. Opponents have said the law is designed to reduce the impact of minority voters. In a joint statement, Smith and Fuqua — who are both producers on the project — said they felt compelled to move the production out of Georgia. ...
2021 Guild Of Music Supervisors Awards: Full List of Winners
Celeste also performed “If I Ever Lose This Heaven,” a song that first gained notice on Quincy Jones‘ 1974 album Body Heat. Andra Day, an Oscar nominee for her performance in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, performed a song to open the show. The show also included performances by Darius de Haas (the zesty “One Less Angel” from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and Angelica Garcia. Soul won the award for best music supervision for film budgeted over $25 million. The award went to Tom MacDougall, the film’s music supervisor. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste are Oscar-nominated for composing the film’s score. Reznor and Ross won here for best song written and/or recorded for television for “The Way It Used to Be,” which they wrote and recorded for an epi...
‘Tina’ Doc’s Oscar-Winning Directors on Bringing a Fresh POV to Tina Turner’s Life
This Saturday (March 27), Lindsay and Martin’s new documentary Tina premieres on HBO at 8 p.m. ET and will stream on HBO Max. Covering everything from her hard-scrabble childhood to her abusive marriage to Ike Turner to her against-the-odds comeback and global domination in the 1980s, Tina paints a portrait not just of Tina Turner the human but of the Tina Turner narrative, detailing her frustration as she was routinely forced to re-live traumatic incidents from her life during countless press spots. Favoring new interviews with people who knew her instead of celebrity testimonials, Tina serves both as an introduction to the uninitiated and an important summation of her remarkable life and talent for longtime fans. Ahead of Tina‘s HBO premiere, directors Lindsay and Martin hopp...
Demi Lovato Performs ‘Dancing With the Devil’ & Talks ‘Letting My Guard Down’ at Drive-In Docuseries Debut
Then she live-debuted her new song “Dancing With the Devil,” breathing life into the full version of the damning confessional ballad that plays in the background of the trailer. The track vividly recalls her life-threatening heroin overdose in 2018 when she sings in the second verse, “Tin-foil remedy, almost got the best of me/ I keep praying I don’t reach the end of my lifetime.” Following the performance, Ratner previewed a conversation he and Lovato filmed for SXSW, where the docuseries opened last week at the virtual adaptation of the film festival based in Lovato’s home state of Texas. While COVID-19 completely skewed people’s personal and professional schedules, the timing of Dancing’s release might’ve been one of the few things that happened at exa...
