News

Lori Loughlin, best known to TV audiences for family friendly fare like ABC’s Full House and Hallmark Channel’s When Calls the Heart, is not who you would expect to see preside over a squad room on a Dick Wolf procedural. But after some time away from the limelight, the Tgif vet reports for duty as Bishop, a no-nonsense lieutenant in the Long Beach police department, on Prime Video’s On Call.

In her very first scene, Bishop gathers her police force and uses some very salty language as she relays pertinent intel regarding the prime suspect and “piece...

Exclusive: NBCU Launch has set its 2024-26 class for the TV Directors Program, now in its fifteenth year. Those selected and the shows they are attached to are Parisa Barani (Law & Order), Winter Dunn (The Irrational), Nina Kramer (St. Denis Medical), and Liz Sargent (Chicago Med).

Founded in 2009, NBCU’s scripted directing program (now called the NBCU Launch TV Directors Program) gives experienced directors with distinct points of view their break into episodic television. The program supports the company’s goal of producing authentic stories with talent whose lived experiences inform their unique creative visions.

It’s the first scripted directing initiative in the TV industry to guarantee that participants will helm at least one episode by the program’s culmination. Directors shadow on two episodes of an NBCU scripted series before sitting in the director’s chair themselves. This year’s class will benefit from new learning and development...

Station 19‘s Jay Hayden guest stars as Agent Tyler Booth on CBS’s FBI: International season four episode seven. Directed by Brenna Malloy from a script by Kyle Steinbach, episode seven – “Keen as a Bean” – will air on Tuesday, December 10, 2024 at 9pm Et/Pt.

Jesse Lee Soffer stars as Supervisory Special Agent Wesley “Wes” Mitchell, Carter Redwood plays Special Agent Andre Raines, Vinessa Vidotto is Special Agent Cameron Vo, Eva-Jane Willis is Europol Agent Megan “Smitty” Garretson, and Christina Wolfe plays Special Agent Amanda Tate.

“Keen as a Bean” Plot: Wes’ former colleague, U.S.-based agent Tyler Booth (Hayden), enlists the Fly Team’s assistance in helping him capture an American.

Eva-Jane Willis as Europol Agent Megan “Smitty” Garretson in ‘FBI: International’ season 4 episode 7 FBI: International Details, Courtesy of CBS:

FBI: International is the third iteration of the successful FBI brand that follows the elite operatives of the Federal...

Exclusive: Jay Hayden will debut on CBS’ FBI: International on December 10 at 9 p.m. as U.S.-based agent Tyler Booth, and Deadline has your first look at the Season 4 episode and a Q&a with the actor below.

The episode “Keen as a Bean” follows Tyler after he flips the ex-wife of a criminal on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and enlists the Fly Team to help lure the perp out of Russia. Kyle Steinbach wrote the episode and Brenna Malloy directed it.

As we revealed in September with Hayden’s casting news, Booth is described as an intelligent and charismatic agent who travels to Budapest looking for assistance on a case. The agent he seeks out is Wesley Mitchell, played by Hayden’s good friend Jesse Lee Soffer who joined the cast this season as the show’s new lead. Tyler and Wesley go way back, which...

Filmmakers have a new reason to rejoice. The U.S. unit of Munich-based camera and imaging giant Arri has expanded its Franz Wieser Grant program, which provides aspiring creatives with access to Arri products and resources.

The program will now extend beyond features, shorts and documentaries to encompass photography, live events, worship, and broadcast projects. The initiative, open to U.S. filmmakers, has supported 45 feature-length films, shorts, documentaries, and music videos since its inception.

Launched in 2013 as the Amira Grant program, it is now named after the late Franz Wieser, the longtime Arri exec who worked to empower filmmakers. Bavaria-born Wieser first joined Arri in the U.S. as an intern nearly three decades ago, rose to the position of VP, marketing and was a force behind the industry’s transition from film to digital. He passed away in 2019.

Filmmakers benefiting from the program include Brenna Malloy, writer and director of “Rocket,...

In today’s TV news roundup, season two of “Tell me a Story” finds two new cast members, and “Star Wars Resistance” has set a premiere date for its second and final season.

Casting

Caleb Castille and Christopher Meyer have joined the cast of season 2 of the CBS All Access fairytale anthology series “Tell Me a Story,” Variety has learned exclusively. The duo will play brothers, with Castille starring as the smart, dominant older sibling Ron, and Meyer playing the soft-spoken, fiercely loyal Derek.

Castille currently recurs on Hulu’s “Wu Tang: An American Saga” and will next be seen as the lead of the Netflix romantic drama feature “The World We Make” which premieres next month. He is represented by Gersh and Echo Lake Entertainment. While Meyer is is best known for being a series regular on season 4 of “The Affair” opposite Dominic West and Sanaa Lathan. He is repped by Pantheon,...

NBC’s push for diversity and inclusion continues as it unveils the 2019-2020 classes for Female Forward and the Emerging Director Program, two pioneering scripted initiatives to increase the representation of female and ethnically diverse directors by creating a pipeline into scripted television. The initiatives stand out as the only programs in the industry that give participating directors an in-season guarantee to direct at least one episode.

Female Forward, which aims to achieve gender parity in the director’s chair, ushers in its second year with seven directors helming episodes of NBC shows. The new class of Female Forward directors and the NBC series they will direct include Kris Lefcoe (Superstore), Brenna Malloy (Chicago Fire), Sj Main Muñoz (Chicago Med), Kim Nguyen (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Sara Zandieh (Good Girls).

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the Emerging Director Program, which is the network’s first pipeline program for ethnically...

The Academy has named the 17 students voted as winners of the 43rd Student Academy Awards, which this year received a record 1,749 entries. The submitted films came from 286 colleges and universities within the United States and 95 abroad; along with the usual suspects — AFI, USC, Nyu, Chapman — the winners include students from the likes of Tel Aviv University, DePaul University and Maharishi University of Management.

All winners are eligible for the Oscars in the Documentary Short Subject, Animated Short Film or Live Action Short Film category. Previous winners include Pete Docter, Cary Fukunaga, John Lasseter, Spike Lee, Trey Parker and Robert Zemeckis. Full list below.

Read More: How the Academy Pushed the Diversity Needle with 683 Member Invites

Alternative

“All These Voices,” David Henry Gerson, American Film Institute

“Cloud Kumo,” Yvonne Ng, City College of New York

“The Swan Girl,” Johnny Coffeen, Maharishi University of Management

Animation

“Die Flucht,” Carter Boyce, DePaul University

“Once upon a Line,...