The final performance show of the season gave ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” a boost on Monday, as it hit a nine-week high and narrowed the demo gap with NBC’s “The Voice,” which remained the night’s top show despite declines. Closing things out, CBS’ “Hawaii Five-O” won its timeslot with its final original episode on... Read more »

VH1 is entering the ayem news space, with a celeb gossip twist. “The Gossip Table,” created and exec produced by “Rachael Ray” alum Shane Farley, is a weekday morning news show that features a panel of gossip columnists discussing the latest in celebrity fare. Panel includes Rob Shuter from NaughtyButNiceRob.com, Marianne Garvey from New York... Read more »

Ten years after its launch as the first 24-hour free-to-air movie channel in the Arab world, Dubai-based private satcaster MBC2 has become Hollywood’s strongest bridge to the Middle East and an interesting indicator of the Arab Spring’s impact on TV in the region.

The Fondation Liban Cinema is paying tribute to late great Lebanese helmer Maroun Baghdadi with a boxed set of the entire body of work by the auteur, who worked with Francis Ford Coppola and is considered the pioneer of new Lebanese cinema. Baghdadi, known for pics that vividly portrayed Lebanon’s civil war, such as “Little... Read more »

Anne Heche’s TV roles have hewn toward the whimsical, and “Save Me” – a half-hour premiering with back-to-back episodes on NBC – is no exception. Echoing the movie “Hello Again” (which makes sense, since at times Heche seems to be channeling Shelley Long of post-“Cheers” vintage), Heche plays a suburban woman who has a spiritual... Read more »

Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theater has found a summer tenant, with dance revue “Forever Tango” returning to the Main Stem for a ten-week run prior to the fall opening of new musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.” “Tango” will feature guest star vocalists in limited engagements as part of its New York run, starting... Read more »

Universal has acquired distribution rights to Latin America and Spain on the Studiocanal-sold “Shaun the Sheep,” adding two more major deals to the Aardman production’s already impressive major territory count at Cannes. On the Croisette, “Shaun” has racked up sales to Japan (Tohokushinsha), CIS (Volga), Scandinavia (Svensk), Switzerland (Impuls), and Poland (Monolith). Studiocanal is distributing... Read more »

Spanish director Carlos Saura, the major figure of the Nuevo Cine Espanol, is set to direct “Argentina,” a documentary about tango. Nathanael Karmitz’s MK2, which is scoring heavily this week at the Cannes Festival with “A Touch of Sin,” has acquired international sales rights. Shooting from this fall, “Argentina” continues Saura’s lyrical exploration of the... Read more »

Thanks to the allure of such Hollywood stars as Brad Pitt, who is the channel’s May star of the month, MBC2 has the fourth-biggest Facebook following in the MENA region, the first when it comes to media and TV.

IM Global and Switzerland’s Impuls Pictures have partnered on a new output deal, the companies announced Tuesday from Cannes. Deal adds to IM Global’s existing network of output partners, which include Universum in Germany, Top Film in Russia and Eastern Europe, Sun Distribution in Latin America, and eOne in the U.K., Canada and Spain. IM... Read more »

Set to unspool Stateside on HBO, "Behind the Candelabra" is the most bigscreen-worthy film Steven Soderbergh has made since "Che."

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired U.S. rights to Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past,” which preems Friday at Cannes. SPC and Farhadi have collaborated successfully before. SPC released Farhadi’s Iranian film “A Separation,” which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film in 2012. “The Past” stars “The Artist’s” Berenice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa and Tahar Rahim.... Read more »

CANNES—This year’s  Cannes saw a deluge of new titles brought onto the market. But, through Monday afternoon at least, there had not been a deluge of deals snapping them up. One day before the pre-sales market wound down, with major distributors planning to pack their bags Tuesday, most major U.S. and European sales companies had... Read more »

Nearly bereft of laughs, this final "Hangover" should nonetheless generate lucrative business

Big cable operators remain unable to shake the stigma of poor service and chronic rate hikes, once again turning in dismal  scores for TV service on the American Customer Satisfaction Index that — on average — are lower than any other consumer sector. Overall, consumers’ satisfaction with pay TV television rose 3% over last year, to an... Read more »

Hayden Christensen is set to star in the indie spy thriller “Inner Circle” in a co-production between Christensen’s newly minted Glacier Films, Original Entertainment and Hartland Entertainment. Original Entertainment heads Daljit DJ Parmar and Hunt Lowry will produce with Christensen and his brother Tove Christensen and Leonard Hartman. Luke Daniels is exec producing. Production on... Read more »

A densely packed, often astonishing cinematic feast that honors Rome in all its splendor and superficiality.

Dan Petrie Jr. is set to direct indie drama “Dawn Patrol” with Scott Eastwood and Jeff Fahey starring. Project was announced at Cannes, where Red Sea Media is handling international sales. Petrie will produce with Rick Dugdale through their Enderby Entertainment banner along with Eastwood. Lensing will take place in Ventura County north of Los... Read more »

A murkily derivative sci-fi-horror entry that basically amounts to "Red Planet of the Dead."

It's official--Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio will join Demi Lovato and Simon Cowell on the judges panel for "The X Factor."