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Exclusive: Apple Original Films’ Camp Fire drama The Lost Bus has rounded out its cast with the addition of Ashlie Atkinson (BlaKkKlansman) and Spencer Watson (Them).

Details as to their roles are under wraps. But they join an ensemble that also features Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera and Yul Vazquez.

Based on Lizzie Johnson’s novel Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, the film is set during the disastrous 2018 Camp Fire that became the deadliest fire in California history. The story is told through the perspective of heroic bus driver Kevin McKay and schoolteacher Mary Ludwig, who helped navigate a bus full of children through a deadly wildfire, as the town of Paradise is caught in destruction and chaos.

Paul Greengrass is directing from a script by Brad Ingelsby. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures, Jason Blum’s Blumhouse, Ingelsby and Greg Goodman are producing, with Lizzie Johnson...

BBC Greenlights Drama On Football Sexual Abuse Scandal; Nick Rowland & Matt Greenhalgh Attached

The BBC has greenlit a factual drama telling the story of the former footballer whose revelations about the sexual abuse he suffered as a youth player sent shockwaves through the footballing world. Calm With Horses’ Nick Rowland is directing and Control’s Matt Greenhalgh is writing Floodlights, which will spotlight Andy Woodward, whose public retelling of the horrific trauma he experienced led to a national inquiry. The Last Kingdom’s Gerard Kearns will play Woodward and the show will also feature Jonas Armstrong (The Bay), Morven Christie (Lockwood & Co) and Steve Edge (Benidorm). “Since speaking out in 2016 I wanted to continue to encourage people to talk without fear, to make a change,” said Woodward. “Floodlights tells my story, which no child should ever have to go through. I hope this film helps to stop abuse in football...

“The Flash” star Greg Finley is set to join Emile Hirsch (“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”) in indie crime thriller “Gemini Lounge,” Variety can confirm exclusively.

The film, the first from “Rush Hour” producer Arthur Sarkissian’s new media and entertainment company Global Ascension Studios, is directed by Danny A. Abeckaser (“Mob Town”).

“Gemini Lounge” sees Hirsh star as Bobby Belucci, a demoted detective who goes under cover in an attempt to take down the mob’s most ruthless killer. As Belucci loses himself in the role, he finds his life spiraling out of control – and with it, his last chance at redemption.

Finley will play one of the mob’s hitmen, gangster Anthony Senter.

Production has kicked off in the Los Angeles area, with additional photography to be shot in New York.

Finley is perhaps best known for his five season turn in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager...

Exclusive: Colin Firth, Toby Jones Crystal Clarke and Tanya Moodie have signed on to star alongside Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward in Empire of Light, the drama from Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, which marks his follow-up to 2020 Best Picture nominee 1917.

While the Searchlight Pictures title’s plot is being kept under wraps, it’s billed as a love story set in and around a beautiful old cinema on the South Coast of England in the 1980s. Mendes penned the script in his first solo outing and will produce alongside Pippa Harris for Neal Street Productions. The film lensed by Mendes’ longtime collaborator Roger Deakins is scheduled for release next fall.

Firth is an Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG and Critics Choice Award winner who recently starred...

After the cruelest year and amid the weirdest awards season in memory, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Birds of Prey applied two wins apiece to lead the film side of the eighth annual Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Awards.

With Birds of Prey not among the five nominees for Best Makeup & Hairstyling at the Academy Awards this month, Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has emerged as the Oscar front-runner.

Pinocchio scored the night’s final prize for Best Special Make-Up Effects in a Feature at the virtual ceremony held Saturday.

On the TV side, the marquee winners included Bridgerton, The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit, The Mandalorian, Schitt’s Creek and Westworld.

The Kelly Clarkson Show and All That swept the respective make-up and hairstyling categories for Daytime Television and Children and Teen Programming. The night’s other double winners were Saturday Night Live and Hamilton.

Emmy-winning comedy legend and...

At only 8-years-old Soleil Moon Frye picked up millions of fans and inspired countless other kids through her titular leading role in NBC sitcom “Punky Brewster.” She was starting to grow up around cameras, and when that show came to an end three and a half years later, while she continued to act, she also picked up an audio recorder and eventually a video camera to begin documenting everything from fun with her celebrity friends at theme parks to intimate conversations and musings on life. As the reality television genre began to take root in the industry, Frye’s recordings were kept just for her, “locked away” for more than two decades. But four years ago things changed.

Around that time, Frye tells Variety, she began to question if the way she remembered certain moments and events from her life really happened the Way she remembered them. Most people in...