PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Comedy Central and Jim Jefferies inked a first look content deal for TV and digital media, as well as a pick-up for late-nighter The Jim Jefferies Show for a 20-episode third season.
Animal Planet is diving into all-new series, The Aquarium (wt), produced by Left/Right and Copper Pot Pictures. Georgia Aquarium, which plays a crucial role in aquatic conservation, will allow Animal Planet’s cameras access to its inner workings. Series is set to premiere in 2019.
Ethical cosmetics company Lush launched an entertainment creation hub, Lush Presents, to create film and television, podcasts, books, music and events. “The last two years have been spent figuring out how we can bring Lush’s global network, access and values to creative storytelling across all platforms and media,” said Lush’s Matthew Shaw. “We want to use the principles at the heart of Lush – equality, inclusion, respect for humans, animals and our planet – to create entertainment that reflects the age we live in and the world we now inhabit.”
Netflix ordered 20 episodes of Team Kaylie, from Tracy Bitterolf (Emma Approved) and Pamela Eells O’Connell (Jessie Bunk’d). Comedy stars Bryana Salaz (Best Friends Whenever) as a selfie-obsessed celebrity ordered to do a community service stint with inner city middle schoolers.
Top 10 Weekend Domestic Box Office Estimates: February 1-3
Glass (Universal) $9.5 million (week 3), cume revenue $88.7 million
The Upside (STX) $8.9 million (week 4), cume revenue $75.6 million
Miss Bala (Sony) $6.7 million, opening weekend
Aquaman (Warner Bros.) $4.8 million (week 7), cume revenue $323.6 million
Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony) $4.1 million (week 8), cume revenue $175.3 million
Green Book (Universal) $4.3 million (week 12), cume revenue $55.8 million
The Kid Who Would Be King (Fox) $4.2 million (week 2), cume revenue $13.2 million
A Dog’s Way Home (Sony) $3.5 million (week 4), cume revenue $35.9 million
Escape Room (Sony) $2.9 million (week 5), cume revenue $52.1 million
They Shall Not Grow Old (Warner Bros.) $2.4 million (week 7), cume revenue $10.7 million
Source: Comscore
NEW AND RETURNING SERIES
NBC ordered ten episodes of comedian competition series Bring the Funny, featuring with Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live), Chrissy Teigen (Lip Sync Battle) and Jeff Foxworthy (The Jeff Foxworthy Show) as judges and Amanda Seales (Insecure) as host. The net is teaming with Just for Laughs to feature stand-ups, sketch troupes and comedic variety acts. “Kenan, Chrissy, Jeff and Amanda are not only hilarious, but are pioneers in their respective arenas and understand what it takes to have longevity and breadth in this industry,” said Meredith Ahr, President, Alternative and Reality Group, NBC Entertainment.
Netflix ordered season two of Sex Education. The show attracted over 40 million households within its first four weeks, according to the streamer.
Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories, which delves into hidden records to investigate what the history books may have missed, premieres Monday, March 4 at 8p. First up: A team of scholars reexamine a 300-year-old Salem Witch Trials case.
Spring Baking Championship returns to Food Network on Monday, March 18 at 9p, with chefs facing off to create animal-themed donuts.
PBS Kids’ new animated series, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, based on the book series Ordinary People Can Change the World, is slated to launch Monday, November 11, 2019.
Pasiones will air three romantic dramas on its Latin American feed in February, beginning with Turkish drama Guerra de Rosas (War of Roses) on Monday, February 4, followed by the premiere of the Venezuelan hit Rosario on Tuesday, February 5, and Mexican romance classic Cuando Me Enamoro (Timeless Love) on Monday, February 18. Times vary by country.
COMING UP
TV One is celebrating Black History Month with programs that exemplify this year’s theme, “Represent Change.” The net is running a short form video campaign featuring influential black women, with 30-second on-air interstitials of the women speaking on the impact of action and change. Across its digital and social platforms, TV One will feature in-depth profiles documenting their start, their struggle and how they became champions of change.
BBC America will air The EE British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, February 10 at 9p. Ceremony will be hosted by Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) from the Royal Albert Hall in London.
A live event will follow the last episode of The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Yes, It’s Really Us Singing: The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Concert Special follows the series finale on Friday, April 5 at 9p, with the cast performing songs, complete with a band and orchestra.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will receive a VH1 Trailblazer Honors award for her commitment to fight for women and families, and for serving as a voice for human and civil rights. Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay will also be honored at the event, which will air as an hour-long special on VH1 and Logo on International Women’s Day, Friday, March 8 at 9p.
TCA TALK
How do Ken Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan develop a documentary? “We chase every rabbit down every rabbit hole,”said Duncan, on hand at TCA to promote PBS doc Country Music. “That’s what reporting is. I’m a reporter who now talks about stories that are 100 years old.”
The Affair’s Dominic West said he appreciated the opportunity to play a full-on hero in PBS/BBC’s upcoming six-part adaptation of Les Miserables. “I get a lot of villains and it was so refreshing to play a hero who is a profoundly good man,” said West. “Living with Jean Valjean is a wonderful experience. Living with Noah Solloway is not.”
Another The Affair star, Ruth Wilson, was also touting a project for PBS – she’s playing her own grandmother in PBS Masterpiece’s Mrs. Wilson, following Alison Wilson, who learned after her late husband died that he had three wives. The toughest part of playing a member of her own family? “Kissing my granddad…I have to go to therapy now,” joked Wilson. During her Q&A session at TCA a fire alarm went off, prompting Wilson to remark, “It’s my grandfather, cursing the project!”
PBS and Smithsonian Channel announced at TCA that they’re teaming on a two-hour film tracing the origin stories of animals. Top scientists from around the world follow clues from the fossil record in When Whales Walked: A Deep Time Journey (wt).
Also at TCA, PBS and Vox Media shared that news that No Passport Required will be back for a second season this fall, exploring six different American cities. “No Passport Required was one of our freshest and most popular new shows last year,” said Pamela A. Aguilar, Senior Director, PBS Programming. “It included new perspectives and provided a unique lens that brought younger audiences to PBS, who connected with Marcus and the culture and cuisine of these diverse communities.”
There’s room for more DC comic-based shows on The CW, said net President Mark Pedowitz at TCA. “Things will age and we want to get the next generation of shows to keep the CW DC universe going for as long as possible,” said Pedowitz, adding that the next Arrowverse crossover, slated for fall 2019, will be “the biggest and most complicated yet.”
TECH TALK
Apple’s fix for a FaceTime bug that allowed people to hear audio on other people’s phones, even if they hadn’t accepted a call, will roll out this week, said Apple. The company originally announced the software would come out last week. “We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue,” the Apple spokesperson said on Friday.
Tequila Works is teaming with Sony Pictures Virtual Reality to extend the Groundhog Day movie franchise with VR game Groundhog Day: Like Father, Like Son. In the game, players are stuck in a single day in the world of the son of the main characters in the movie, Phil and Rita. “We are not developing a new Groundhog Day movie,” Jake Zim, SVP of the Sony Pictures VR group, told Variety. “This is us expanding the storyline into a new format. We’ve taken Groundhog Day and put it into a musical, now we’re putting it into an immersive experience.”
Electric vehicle start-up Byton is including a mammoth 48-inch display screen embedded its upcoming M-Byte SUV. Recognizing the danger of such a large screen distracting drivers, the company has included features like an eight-inch touch pad between the driver and front passenger’s seat that will allow drivers to control the display while keeping their eyes on the road. Vehicle is slated to launch in China this year and in 2020 in North America.
Snap is accepting applications for participants in the second class of its Yellow accelerator program, as it looks for new voices in video, audio and editorial with unique ways to pursue specific audiences. Up to ten companies will nab investments of $150,000, along with support, mentorships and office space. Submissions will be accepted through March 31.
Spotify is reportedly in advanced talks to buy podcast company Gimlet Media (Reply All) for over $200 million. It would be the music streamer’s first acquisition of a content company.
SOCIAL MEDIA
People who deactivated their Facebook accounts for four weeks reported being happier, less active on other social media sites, and less polarized about news. On the other hand, they were less-informed about factual news. Researchers from NYU and Stanford paid particIpants $102 to leave the Facebook for FOUR weeks, and while most chose to reactivate their accounts after the test was over, they used the site less.
CASTING
Murray Abraham (Homeland), Imani Hakim (Everybody Loves Chris), David Hornsby (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Danny Pudi (Community), Ashly Burch (OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes), Charlotte Nicdao (Camp) and Jessie Ennis (Veep) have joined the cast of Apple’s upcoming comedy set in a video game development studio…Eden Sher (The Middle) will recur in the fifth and final season of The CW’s Jane the Virgin…Domenick Lombardozzi landed a series regular role in upcoming HBO comedy Mrs. Fletcher…Ambyr Childers was elevated from recurring to series regular for season two of Netflix psychological thriller You.
ADVERTISING
Optimzing ad journeys based on consumer sentiment could save big bucks, according to a study from ViralGains, MAGNA and IPG Media Lab. The study tested two video ad journeys, one with ads optimized based on sentiment, and the other based solely on exposure. Results: 59% of all ad impressions were wasted with standard video retargeting, consumers on a sentiment-driven journey were more likely to take action – 2.7x more likely to search for the brand and 2x more likely to visit the brand’s website. Suppressing ads to audiences that have indicated they are not interested in a brand and reallocating impressions to those who have shown interest could deliver an average of $59k in savings for a $100k campaign. “Brands that listen to the consumer and create a customized experience rather than blanket everyone with the same ad sequencing stand to benefit in almost every conceivable way,” said Kara Manatt, MAGNA. “Customizing the consumer ad journey is a key element to smart advertising.”
Five days before the Super Bowl, 36 brands had released 108 pieces of Super Bowl-related ad creative that garnered 110 million online views, according to iSpot.tv. Over 60.4 million were YouTube earned media views. A 30-second spot during the big game averaged $5-$5.2 million.
GOING GLOBAL
Preschool learning and entertainment platform Hopster secured a partnership with the United Group, a telecoms and media provider in South East Europe. As part of the agreement, Hopster will make its video streaming service available on EON platform via SBB in Serbia and via Telemach in Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
