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One of Tennis Channel ’s top personalities, former Grand Slam doubles champion  Justin Gimelstob , is being sidelined in the wake of a recent arrest on felony battery charges and an expose in The Telegraph listing a string of alleged assaults by the former tennis pro over the past three years. "Justin asked Tennis Channel for a leave of absence while he works through this issue,” the Sinclair-owned network said in a statement to Deadline. “As he is a longtime, valued member… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2zymTmC

Former President George H.W. Bush has died at the age of 94. Bush, also a former CIA director and Vice President, passed Friday at 10:10 P.M. Central time, according to his official spokesperson. In a statement, his son and former President George W. Bush, praised his father. “Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, and I are saddened to announce that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died. George H. W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2Q3CrJv

Kid Rock is out as Grand Marshal of Nashville's 2018 Christmas Parade. The move to expel the controversial conservative rocker comes after he used disparaging language against The View TV host Joy Behar , calling her a “bitch” during a TV appearance. The parade will go on with James Shaw Jr., the so-called Waffle House hero who thwarted a mass shooting in Nashville last spring, replacing Kid Rock. The controversy started when Kid Rock appeared on Fox & Friends , which was… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2Sk7Y6L

One of the leading rushers in the National Football League has been cut by the Kansas City Chiefs after a video showed him violently shoving and kicking a woman. Kareem Hunt was released late this afternoon by the Chiefs after the star running back was shown in a TMZ video accosting a woman at a Cleveland Hotel. Earlier, Hunt was placed on the commissioner's exempt list by the NFL . That sanction meant he could not practice, play or attend games during a league… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2AFOfXI

EXCLUSIVE : Famous astrophysicist/TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson has come under scrutiny as two more women have accused the Cosmos host of sexual misconduct. In light of the new allegations, the networks and producers behind the Emmy-winning Cosmos r eboot are vowing to look into the matter. "The credo at the heart of Cosmos is to follow the evidence wherever it leads,” the producers of the show said in a statement to Deadline. “The producers of Cosmos can do no less in… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2zBw85C

EXCLUSIVE : Lyndsey Weber is moving from Bad Robot to Amazon Studios , where she will become a producer of television content. Weber is Bad Robot’s head of film and has spent the past decade with J.J. Abrams. Bad Robot confirmed her exit. It seems clear that Weber is held in very high regard there, even though she is exiting, "Lindsey Weber is the personification or raw talent, brilliantly hard work and tireless dedication,” Abrams said in a statement. “Being in the… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2zIDYe3

During his Late Show interview with former First Lady Michelle Obama , Stephen Colbert noted FDR had said the presidency was “essentially a moral position” and wondered how that felt to be The Example Family for America. “When you're the first of anything the bar feels higher,” Obama responded, of being the country’s first black First Family. “You don't have room to make mistakes,” she added, in her latest interview touting her book, “Becoming Michelle Obama.” When she and… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2SlXtQh

On the November 30, 2018 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor in chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film senior writer Ben Pearson and writer Chris Evangelista to talk about the latest TV and film news, including Star Wars, Chris Evans, Mary Poppins Returns, Daredevil, Disney+, Scars on Film Villains, MPAA trouble. You can subscribe to /Film Daily on iTunes , Google Play , Overcast , Spotify and all the popular podcast apps (here is the RSS URL if you need it). Opening Banter : Peter was out yesterday due to power outages in southern california, which apparently has no real infrastructure against rain. In The News: Ben: ‘The Mandalorian’ Adds Nick Nolte To Grumble and Scowl His Way Through the ‘Star Wars’ Universe Peter mentions Everything We Learned From The Russo Brothers About ‘Infinity War’, ‘Avengers 4’ and ‘Star Wars’ Chris: Chris Evans May Not Be Done With Captain America Yet, Says the Russo Brothers Ben: ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ Early Buzz: As Expected,

Earlier this month, we learned that Disney and Lucasfilm had another live-action Star Wars series in the works. It’s a Rogue One prequel series that will focus on Diego Luna reprising his role as Cassian Andor, and it just got the best showrunner that a series focusing on a Rebel spy could ask for: The Americans executive producer Stephen Schiff . Deadline has word on the Rogue One prequel series landing Stephen Schiff as showrunner. He’s coming off five years working on the FX series The Americans , one of the best shows to hit cable in the past decade. The series frequently flew under the radar, but it finally got the recognition it deserved when it was nominated for Best Drama Series this year, and Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell landed Best Actor and Best Actress nominations, with the former taking home the trophy. But the most important thing about The Americans is that it focused on two Russian spies tasked with siphoning the United States government for information after

Remember  The Predator ? Shane Black ‘s sequel/reboot hit theaters this year, but it seems like everyone already forgot about it already. Maybe we’d all still be talking about  The Predator right now if it had kept one of the script’s early ideas intact: Predator-monkey hybrids. That’s right – at one point,  The Predator  was going to feature Predator DNA mixed with monkeys and other animals. But it never came to pass. Instead we got Thomas Jane telling terrible jokes! See  The Predator concept art below. I thought  The Predator was entertaining , but also  very stupid. The film was not exactly a box office hit, and as 2018 draws to a close, almost no one is talking about it. Except Constantine Sekeris, The Predator ‘s concept artist. Sekeris sat down with  AvP Galaxy  to share some concept art, and reveal a concept that never made it into the final film. Check out that bad boy above – it’s a Predator-monkey hybrid. Sekeris says an early script was much different than the fina

Kuma , a dog who played “Stan” on early episodes of Disney Channel’s Dog With A Blog , and later appeared in Nick Jr.’s Mutt & Stuff ,  has died. He was 16 years old (just shy of 17) and suffered from complications from a recent stroke. The original star of Dog With A Blog , Kuma was chosen out of thousands of furry Hollywood hopefuls to play the starring role of Stan, a dog who talked (via the voice of Stephen Full) and maintained a blog that covered the antics of his human… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2QyJTfm

A bunch of nerds in Italy put their big brains together to determine the most influential movie of all time, and the answer might surprise you. According to their findings, the 1939  The  Wizard of Oz is the most influential film ever made, while  Star Wars is second. The study also ranked directors and actors, and came up with some unexpected results. More on the most influential movie ever made below. In a report appearing in the journal Applied Network Science , a team of researchers broke down the all-time most influential film, actor, director and more. How did they arrive at these results? I’ll let them tell you themselves, since they’re smarter than I am: Our objective is to measure the success of a movie by accounting how much it has influenced other movies produced after its release, from both the artistic and the economic point of view. We apply our method on a subset of the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) citation network consisting of around 47,000 international movie

"I need you to help me with something… Think of it like it's a game, like a memory game." What if we lived in a world where all of our memories were stored into a digital database? Now is a short film written and directed by Justin Zachary , and plays with that concept. The story is about a computer scientist who digs through his girlfriends memories only to discover a haunting truth that he's desperate to cover up. Zachary also stars in the film, along with Susanna Ericsson , Craig Braun , and Francesca Fondevila . I like the low-key sci-fi elements, subtle and simple but just enough of an edge to make this a believable "near future" story. This reminds me a bit of Ex Machina , and you'll see why once it gets into it. Definitely worth a watch. Thanks to Justin for the tip on this. Brief description from Vimeo : "A computer scientist in the near future scrutinizes his girlfriends memories only to discover a haunting truth that he's desperat

EXCLUSIVE : The recently announced Star Wars   series for  Disney ’s upcoming family focused streaming service, Disney+, is being shepherded by former The Americans executive producer Stephen Schiff . Schiff serves as executive producer and showrunner on the live-action series, a Star Wars prequel based on  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,  which is toplined by the film's star  Diego Luna  reprising his role as Cassian Andor. Lucasfilm produces the series, which follows the adventures… from Deadline https://ift.tt/2zxXV74

Cinephiles were rather upset that WarnerMedia was shutting down the movie streaming subscription service FilmStruck , many of them prominent filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Edgar Wright, Barry Jenkins, Kathleen Kennedy, Christopher Nolan and more. But the media giant reassured movie lovers that they would have a new iteration of FilmStruck coming sometime in 2019 , though it might not go by that name. Now the first details have emerged on the FilmStruck replacement, which WarnerMedia is creating as a way of reaching back out to cordcutters who have turned away from the traditional cable and satellite television services. But will it offer the kind of movies that FilmStruck subscribers loved? The Hollywood Reporter has details on the FilmStruck replacement from WarnerMedia after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson gave a presentation to analysts about the company’s future endeavors. Stephenson said: “You must develop a direct relationship with your viewers. An

Perhaps desperate to slow down any Oscar momentum surrounding  First Reformed , Paul Schrader has decided to complain about movie audiences, and then say some really dumb stuff about Kevin Spacey . The writer and filmmaker first sat down to an interview to bemoan the sad state of unserious movie-goers. Later, he hopped onto his Facebook page to reveal he  really wants to make a movie with Kevin Spacey, despite the allegations of sexual misconduct against the actor. Needless to say, this has raised a few eyebrows. Paul Schrader is responsible for one of the best movies of the year –  First Reformed . But rather than sit back and glide through awards season, the filmmaker has issued some controversial statements. Let’s get the least-controversial bit out of the way first, shall we? During a talk at a recent BAFTA Screenwriters Series in London (via Deadline ), the  Taxi Driver screenwriter was asked about the sorry state of cinema today when compared to the 1970s, when Schrader bro

Four more actors are suiting up for the upcoming  Kingsman prequel. According to a new report,  The Amazing Spider-Man ‘s  Rhys Ifans  is in talks to join the  Ralph Fiennes and  Harris Dickinson -led  Kingsman  prequel as the potential villain. Joining alongside him are several other genre vets:  Game of Thrones ‘ Charles Dance and  Captain America: Civil War ‘s Daniel Brühl , while  Watchmen ‘s  Matthew Goode is reportedly being eyed for a role. Collider reports that Rhys Ifans, best known recently for playing the Lizard in  The Amazing Spider-Man , is circling a role as a “dangerous and manipulative Russian mystic” in the  Kingsman prequel set during World War I. Also joining the cast are Dance and Brühl in undisclosed roles, though it’s notable that all three of these actors are known for playing villains — Dance as Tywin in Game of Thrones , and Brühl as Zemo in  Captain America: Civil War plus as literally every Nazi in the past decade. The outlet also reports that Go

As the  Mission: Impossible franchise has taught us, Tom Cruise is up for anything –  especially if it’s dangerous. And what could be more dangerous than going to space? While the  Mission franchise might not ever journey to the stars, Tom Cruise  did almost blast off once – with James Cameron . According to Cameron, he once wanted to make a movie with Cruise  in space . And of course, Tom Cruise was up for it. Sooner or later, Tom Cruise will end up in space. I don’t know what the circumstances will be, but I know it will happen, because it seems inevitable. And if James Cameron had his way, it would’ve happened by now. In an interview with Empire , Cameron revealed that back in 2000, he pitched the idea of making a space movie in actual space to Cruise: “I actually talked to [Cruise] about doing a space film in space, about 15 years ago. I had a contract with the Russians in 2000 to go to the International Space Station and shoot a high-end 3D documentary there. And I thou

If you were itching for a dark and gritty reboot of  The Powerpuff Girls , you’re in luck. No? You never wanted one in the first place? Well too bad, because  Adi Shankar has made it part of his “Bootleg Universe” which includes the likes of his famously violent  Power Rangers fan film, and the  The Punisher: Dirty Laundry , which brought Thomas Jane back into the role. Now, the cheery children’s show  The Powerpuff Girls gets the dark and modern treatment in a 20-minute short film titled  Powerpuff Girls: The Long Way Back . Powerpuff Girls Short Film: The Long Way Back Powerpuff Girls: The Long Way Back is directed by Steven LaMorte and written by Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus , and follow the older Blossom ( Dina Cataldi ), Bubbles ( Krystle Martin ), and Buttercup ( Jisaura Cardinale ) as they reunite for one final mission after giving up their powers 10 years ago following the death of their father Professor Utonium ( Joe Abraham ). The short film also features the appea