From the creator of In The Cut and Family Time, Bentley Kyle Evans, comes Grown Folks, a half-hour situation comedy about two blue-collar couples who share a duplex while navigating life, marriage, and friendship.
The new show, Grown Folks stars Gary “G-Thang” Johnson (Disaster Movie, Moneyball), Tracey Cherelle Jones (Don’t Be a Menace to South Central, The Players Club, Baby Boy), Jay Phillips (Semi-Pro, Baby Mama, Prom Night) and Caryn Ward Ross (The Game, You Take the Kids).
The show is set to premiere Tues. Oct. 3 at 9:30 p.m. (ET).
More details soon!
MTV is bringing back one of the network’s former flagship programs.
TRL (Total Request Live) returns to the cable channel on October 2 with five rotating hosts.
Among the new faces to take the helm of the revived TRL is Atlanta-raised comedian DC Young Fly.
The 25-year-old internet personality is a regular on MTV’s Nick Cannon Presents: Wild ‘n Out and a co-host for The 85 South Show podcast.
He also appeared in the 2016 film Almost Christmas with Kimberly Elise, Mo’Nique, Nicole Ari Parker, Gabrielle Union, Danny Glover, and Omar Epps.
Amy Pham, Erik Zachary, Lawrence Jackson, and Tamara Dhia will join DC on TRL.
During its initial run from 1998 – 2008, Total Request Live was the television focal point for all things pop culture related.
The show counted down the most popular music videos of the day, and it was the go-to platform for entertainers to promote their music, movies, or other ventures.
TRL helped eventual music superstars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, and Eminem become household names.
The teen-centered TV series was also a career launching pad for ex-hosts Carson Daly, La La Vasquez, and Vanessa Lachey.
Source: ALl Hip Hop News
Bill Cosby has lost yet another lawyer as Brian McMonagle today made it official his desire to depart the defense for the actor’s criminal case for the alleged 2004 rape of Andrea Constand.
With a mistrial declared on June 17 on the three felony charges of second-degree aggravated indecent assault that could see Cosby in jail for a decade if found guilty, a retrial has now been set to start on November 6 in Norristown, PA.
In paperwork filed Tuesday in Pennsylvania state court, the Philadelphia lawyer asked to be able to “withdrawal as counsel” to Cosby. “The defendant is taking necessary steps to secure new counsel,” McMonagle’s filing adds. “Defendant requests that he be given until August 21, 2017, to retain new counsel,” it goes on to the state of Cosby, who has had local legal big shot McMonagle by his side soon after the actor was arraigned December 30, 2015 in the criminal case and released on $1 million bail.
A hearing is set for August 22 on the motion along with other matter related to the case as it heads towards the retrial this fall. While no reason is given for the sharp tongued McMonagle’s departure, it is unusual in such cases for one attorney to ask to exit before a replacement has been named.
Reps for the 80-year old Cosby had no comment on McMonagle’s exit but stated that LA-based Angela Agrusa is still on the defense team. The actor’s representatives also had no word on if Cosby’s announced town hall tour was actually going ahead or not.
Almost certain that his exit will go ahead and be approved by Judge Steven O’Neill later this month, McMonalge joins the likes of Marty Singer, former Assistant U. S. Attorney Christopher Tayback and Washington D.C-based Monique Pressley as former members of Team Cosby.
Accused by more than 60 women of sexually assaulting and drugging them over the decades, Cosby faces not only the criminal case in Pennsylvania, which has a much longer statute of limitations on sex crimes than most jurisdictions but several other civil cases around the nation.
Despite admitting in depositions more than a decade ago to giving Constand Benadryl pills on the night of the alleged assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion, Cosby always has insisted that the encounter with the ex-Temple University employee was consensual. Constand and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office beg to differ, to put it mildly.
Source: Deadline
A century and a half after slavery was abolished in the U.S., the wounds left by one of the darkest periods in American history are far from healed, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the recent announcement of HBO’s upcoming drama series Confederate, from Game Of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, which explores an alternate timeline of seceded southern states where slavery is legal and has evolved into a modern institution.
Another alternate history drama series, which has been in the works at Amazon for over a year, also paints a reality where southern states have left the Union but takes a very different approach. Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder. It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.
Deadline announced the Packer/McGruder project back in early February. At the time, it was untitled, and the producers would not divulge any details about the storyline beyond it revolving around an alternate universe in the vein of Amazon’s flagship The Man in the High Castle.
It was HBO’s announcement of Confederate this month that prompted the Black America team to reveal the project’s premise. “It felt this was the appropriate time to make sure that audiences and the creative community knew that there was a project that preexisted and we are pretty far down the road with it,” Packer told Deadline.
Black America, which Packer said is in “very, very active development” with McGruder “off and writing,” originated at Amazon Studios. The service’s head of content Roy Price called Packer more than a year ago while the producer was on the set of his latest box office hit Girls Trip. “Literally, Roy said to me, ‘you’re either going to think that I’m crazy or brilliant’,” Packer recalled of how Price opened the conversation. “I said ‘Well, first of all you’re both, second of all, what’s the idea?’ And after I heard it, I said, ‘Yes, that underscores the idea that you’re both crazy and brilliant’.”
While it may have sounded crazy at first, “I was immediately enthralled by the idea; I couldn’t stop thinking about it and what a provocative and bold piece of content it could be,” Packer said. Price soon reached out to McGruder with whom Packer had briefly worked in the past on Think Like A Man and had been looking to team up again. “Being a fan of Aaron, I thought he definitely had the right tone, the right voice, the right wit to handle a project like this,” Packer said. “Aaron and I sat together and talked about what a huge opportunity and responsibility it would be to do this project and do it right.”
As for the tone of the hourlong series, it’s “a drama, but it wouldn’t be Aaron McGruder without traces of his trademark sardonic wit,” Packer said.
Black America creates the kind of utopia that has been on the minds of generations of black Americans for whom the series may have a sense of wish-fulfillment.
“It was something that was personally intriguing for me as a black American,” Packer said. “You would be hard pressed to find many black Americans who have not thought about the concept of reparation, what would happen if reparations were actually given. As a content creator, the fact that that is something that has been discussed thoroughly throughout various demographics of people in this country but yet never been explored to my knowledge in any real way in long-form content, I thought it was a tremendous opportunity to delve into the story, to do it right.”
That involves “bringing on the appropriate historians to make sure we are telling the story in an accurate and responsible way,” Packer said, noting that historians have been brought in as consultants on the project, working with the producers.
Why is working with scholars on a fictional series set in present time so important? “Even though the story is set in contemporary society, not post-slavery, it relies on us being factually correct in telling the story of how we got to a contemporary society where you’ve got a sovereign country that is run by black Americans,” Packer said.
He declined to comment directly on HBO’s Confederate, which Benioff and Weiss will be writing with Malcolm and Nichelle Tramble Spellman, out of respect to its creators because the series has not been made yet. On a personal level, “the fact that there is the contemplation of contemporary slavery makes it something that I would not be a part of producing nor consuming,” he said. “Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”
Packer said that it is early to talk about Black America‘s message since the series is still being developed. But by answering the questions “what if reparations were given, what would this country and that alternate country look like today, how would Americans look, our communities, relations, I think that there definitely is a message about how we co-exist today where that didn’t happen, there weren’t reparations, and you still have black Americans who are suffering from the effects of slavery in various ways,” Packer said. “You still have the prison-industrial complex that disproportionally imprisons black and brown people, you can trace that back for many reasons to slavery.”
Ultimately, Black America “will speak to where we are now and the mistakes this country has made and things we should do going forward,” Packer said.
Source: Deadline
Nia Long has joined the cast of CBS’ veteran crime drama series NCIS: Los Angeles as a series regular. She will be introduced in the ninth-season premiere on Sunday, October 1.
Long will play Shay Mosely, the team’s new executive assistant director. The character will fill the void left by the death of NCIS Assistant Director Owen Granger, played on the show for five seasons by the late Miguel Ferrer, who died in January. As a former Secret Service agent now working for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Mosely is an experienced Washington insider who brings an East Coast style and demeanor to the West Coast team.
“The character was created specifically for Nia to capitalize on her strengths and personality and we are excited about the new opportunities and dynamics she brings to the show,” said NCIS: Los Angeles executive producer/showrunner R. Scott Gemmill. “We couldn’t be happier to have her join our family.”
Boyz N the Hood alumna Long recently did a major arc on Fox’s Empire. She can next be seen in the indie film Lemon, from director Janicza Bravo, which premiered at Sundance. Also, she starred in the Sundance indie “Roxanne Roxanne” and recently wrapped the Sony feature Life in a Year.
Long is the ambassador for the United Nations Foundation’s Nothing But Nets program, a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa. This month, she is traveling to Tanzania for the campaign, to visit the world’s largest refugee camp where she will meet with refugee families and distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets that help keep families safe from the disease. She is repped by Primary Wave, CAA and Meyer and Downs.
Source: Deadline
Ice-T has joined Vincent Pastore and Ace Young in the independent horror film “Clinton Road”.
Filming is set to begin in August in New York City with Steve Stanulis directing from a script by Derek Ross Mackay. Producers are Noel Ashman, Richard Grieco and Stanulis through his Stanulis Productions company.
The story is based on the real-life Clinton Road — a notorious, 10-mile stretch of narrow road deep within the New Jersey pine barren woods, which has served as the source of urban legends about paranormal activities such as ghosts and gatherings of witches. It is also an infamous disposal area for corpses in mob hits. In the movie, the road is investigated by a gang of bold teenagers who discover themselves stranded, scrambling against a sadistic satanic cult.
Ice-T will play the role of a club owner who has had his own experience in the past with Clinton Road and does his best to persuade the group from going there.
Other actors cast for “Clinton Road” include Vincent Young, Erin O’Brien, and Bo Dietl.
Ice-T has played NYPD sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the series “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” since 2000. Pastore is best known for appearing on the HBO series “The Sopranos.”
Source: Variety
Patti LaBelle will be named the BMI Icon at the 2017 BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards, recognizing her “unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers.”
The event, scheduled for Aug. 31 at the Woodruff Arts Center’s Symphony Hall in Atlanta, honors BMI songwriters, producers, publishers, and administrators of the past year’s most-performed R&B/hip-hop songs. BMI’s R&B/hip-hop songwriter, producer, and publisher of the year are also named during the ceremony.
Previous recipients of the BMI Icon Award include Nile Rodgers, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, James Brown, Al Green, and Snoop Dogg.
Labelle hits “If Only You Knew” (1984), “New Attitude” (1984), and “On My Own” (1986), a duet with Michael McDonald, are among BMI’s repertoire of more than 12 million musical works.
Ahead of the launch of Apple Music’s new show, “Carpool Karaoke: The Series,” the tech giant has released a new trailer for the show starring what feels like almost every celebrity ever.
Set to “Get Up Off That Thing,” the star-studded trailer features guests like John Legend, Alicia Keys, Ariana Grande, Metallica, Shaq, Miley Cyrus, Will Smith, Chelsea Handler, and many more in a taste of what’s to come from the talk-show-segment-turned-spinoff-series.
Similar to the original segment from “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” will feature celebrity pairings sharing a car, singing along to their personal playlists, and embarking on goofy adventures.
The 16-episode series will premiere Tuesday, Aug. 8 at 9 p.m. with an episode featuring Will Smith and James Corden — and, as the trailer revealed, a full marching band — and two new episodes airing each week afterwards.
Other celebrity pairings will include Miley, Noah, Billy Ray and the entire Cyrus family; Shakira and Trevor Noah; Shaquille O’Neal and WWE star John Cena; “Game of Thrones” stars Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams; Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith; and John Legend, Alicia Keys and Taraji P. Henson.
“Carpool Karaoke: The Series,” which is produced by CBS Television Studios and Fulwell 73, was originally set to air four months earlier than its late summer premiere date. It will be available exclusively to Apple Music subscribers.
Source: Variety