All results
Shola Ajewole has been appointed the Senior Vice President of Creative and Cultural Diversity at FX. In this newly-created role, Ajewole will spearhead the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts via cultivating relationships and content material, assisting expertise to reach initiatives, and working with Disney General Entertainment Content’s diversity, equity and inclusion team, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ajewole joined FX in 2016 and served as their enterprise affairs lawyer overseeing deals for scripted, unscripted, and animated series and fostering partnerships between FX and Walt Disney TV divisions. He has served as VP of enterprise and authorized affairs at Fox 21 TV Studi Ajewole says he’s honored to continue to uphold FX’s commitment to empowering a variety of voices and his own career dedication to diversity and inclusion. “I’m honored to take this new role and excited to work with John Landgraf, Eric Schrier and the rest of my colleagues to help FX build on...
Robin Thede is in her bag. The Emmy-nominated multi-hyphenate and creator of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show” signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV, under which Thede will develop new content for streaming services, reports The Hollywood Reporter. The new television programming will be executive produced in part by Thede’s production company, For Better or Words, Inc. If you need me, I’ll be in my bag. 🙌🏽 https://t.co/eq79daGeEH — Robin Thede (@robinthede) August 25, 2020 “When I was creating ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show,’ I wanted to make a narrative sketch series where Black women could live grounded experiences in a magical reality,” Thede said in a recent interview with Variety . “So for us, it was a playground where we could create these sketches, and live these three-dimensional characters, and tell these stories that could recur throughout the season and throughout the series.” In addition to working on the second season of “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” the former late-night...
As we’ve expected for months now, Jessica Jones and The Punisher have both been canceled at Netflix as Disney begins to further plot out its upcoming streaming service, Disney+. Marvel canceled Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Daredevil late last year, so it was only a matter of time. Because of its new streaming service, Disney is pulling all of their films from Netflix, and the Marvel Netflix shows were a casualty. Now, Marvel will be completely out of Netflix. Execs have not ruled out that the shows could continue on Disney+. Right now, Marvel has planned out series for Loki, Scarlet Witch/Vision and The Winter Soldier/Falcon for Disney+. Other Marvel series remain on Freeform ( Cloak & Dagger ) and Hulu (Runaways ), one of which is owned by Disney and the other Disney has a major stake in. Deadline first reported the news of the new cancellations. Jessica Jones still has a third season which will air on Netflix sometime this year. Jessica Jones starred Krysten Ritter and the series...
Grown-ish is helping its college-age viewers erase their student loan debt. The Freeform black-ish spinoff has partnered with scholarship app Scholly to create a program that will pay off up to $125,000 of student debt. The program was created in part to help promote grown-ish ‘s second season, which will premiere on Freeform Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. “Acknowledging that student loans have crippled a generation of young Americans and are keeping them from achieving their dreams, the program aims to help student loan borrowers pay off debts that may be holding them back from living their best lives. Thus far, Scholly has helped students win over $100 million dollars in scholarships and aided many in reducing their debt,” said the network in a statement. Current students and grads with an outstanding loan balance are encouraged to submit themselves into the program’s first round via Scholly’s website or app between Jan. 2 and Jan. 31 . Winners will be announced at the 2019 Freeform...
A recent Cowen Insights report showed that Netflix is a mainstay in many homes. 39 percent of people surveyed ages 18-34 cited Netflix as the service they use most often to view video content on TV. Only 17 percent named Google’s YouTube as their top service. Amazon Prime video trailed with 3 percent, and traditional basic cable was preferred by just 13 percent of respondents. The insights from the report on CultureBanx shows that content with diverse storylines such as predominately black casts or displays of black identity gets an increase in viewership by non-black audiences as well. And by tapping into younger, more diverse audiences, Netflix is outperforming the competition. Netflix’s initiatives such as ‘Strong Black Lead’ on Facebook and Twitter are having a positive impact on viewership through social engagement and campaigns such as the star-studded “A Great Day In Hollywood” campaign , which was modeled after the iconic “A Great Day In Harlem” image. Netflix’s 125 million...
Layne Eskridge, who has worked as a development executive at Netflix since 2016, oversaw the production of Netflix Originals such as Ozark and She’s Gotta Have It in her previous role. But starting next month, she will start her new role as Creative Executive at Apple. Eskridge’s new role will report to Apple’s Head of Development for Worldwide Video according to Deadline. Her work before Netflix includes doing development at Ellen DeGeneres’ ‘A Very Good Production’ where she was able to develop One Big Happy and Little Big Shots . Eskridge did programming at Universal Cable Production and has served as a board member for Colour TV, which is for diverse execs in TV that want to increase the number of diverse content creators in Hollywood. Apple has been making moves in the streaming world recently, including the recent news that they were signing a multi-year deal with Oprah Winfrey to “release original content from Apple.”