*Forbes has released its 2017 list of the world’s highest paid comedians, and earning spots in the top five are Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.
While Jerry Seinfeld returns to the perch with $69 million, Rock is right behind him with $57 million banked. Louis C.K. follows at No. 3 with $52 million, with Chappelle’s $47 million placing him at No. 4.
Amy Schumer, the lone woman on the list, rounds out the Top 5 with $37.5 million.
Kevin Hart, last year’s highest-paid comic, dropped to No. 6 on the list, earning $32.5 million.
Forbes said it created its list based on revenue from touring, television and film projects and business and endorsement deals. It calculated the figures on the comedians’ pretax income from June 1, 2016, through June 1, 2017.
Massive deals for TV comedy specials, like $20 million-per-special Netflix contracts scored by Rock and Seinfeld, are what boosted the income of most of the top comedians.
Rounding out the top 10 list is Jim Gaffigan ($30.5 million), Terry Fator ($18.5 million), Jeff Dunham ($15.5 million) and Sebastian Maniscalco ($15 million).
Source: EURWEB
On this day in comedy on May 2, 1986, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling was released by Columbia Pictures
Richard Pryor stars in and directed this take on his own life. Starting once he’s set himself on fire freebasing cocaine, his spirit leaves his hospital bed-confined smoldering body to relive his existence and see where he went wrong. Up from his youth raised in a brothel to his early struggling stand up days on the chitlin circuit, the film hits all the major beats of the legendary entertainer’s true story.
Jo Jo overindulges once he makes it. Sound familiar? Then again, it’s hard to overindulge before you make it because – how? Anyway, Pryor’s character overdoes it with women, drugs and his own ego. After he’s made his journey through his life, Jo Jo returns to the hospital and climbs back into himself; hopefully a better and more enlightened man.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling is the only film Richard Pryor ever directed. It co-starred Paula Kelly, Carmen McRae, Billy Eckstine, Debbie Allen, Art Evans, Diahnne Abbott, Barbara Williams. Michael Ironside and Wings Hauser. The film was written by Paul Mooney, Rocco Urbisci and Pryor with music by Herbie Hancock. It made $18,034,150 at the box office.
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
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Jordan Peele and Tracey Morgan have created a new comedy set to air on TBS and it is sure to make a splash.
Starring Morgan, alongside Tiffany Haddish, Cedric the Entertainer, Dante Hoagland (Young Michael Bivins in The New Edition Story), Allen Maldonado (black-ish, Survivor Remorse) The Last O.G. is Morgan’s return to television. Haddish, who also starred in the recently-canceled, yet critically acclaimed The Carmichael Show, is having a moment, coming off of what is her breakout performance in Girls Trip.
The Last O.G. revolves around Tray (Morgan), an ex-con who is shocked to see just how much the world has changed when he is released from prison for good behavior after a 15-year stint. Returning to his newly=gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, he discovers that his former girlfriend, Shay (Haddish), has married an affable, successful white man (Ryan Gaul) who is helping raise the twins (Taylor Mosby & Hoagland) Tray never knew existed. Wanting nothing more than to connect with his kids, but having neither the money to support them nor himself, Tray falls back on the skills he learned in prison to make ends meet while treading unfamiliar territory.
Cedric the Entertainer stars as the head of the halfway house where Tray is staying, and Allen Maldonado as Tray’s cousin Bobby, who helps him adjust to life on the outside. Guest stars will include Edi Patterson, Chrissy Metz (This is Us), Malik Yoba, Heather Simms and more. Executive-producing with Morgan, Peele and co-creator John Carcieri are Eric Tannenbaum, Kim Tannenbaum and Joel Zadak of Principato Young.
Source: Shadow And Act
On this day in comedy on April 27, 1984, Cheech & Chong’s The Corsican Brothers was released by Orion Pictures
The Alexandre Dumas classic gets the Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong treatment in response to Nancy Reagan’s “Just-Say-No-To-Drugs campaign. She used them as poor societal role models and so they made a movie where they never mentioned weed or the smoking of it. Take that, marijuana prude.
The plot takes place in old France and revolves around a rock band (where Cheech and Chong are members) who play music nobody in the village wants to hear and the villagers pay them to stop and leave. Before departing fully, a gypsy tells Cheech and Chong the story of the brothers who tried to overthrow an evil member of the monarchy. Once the story ends the music resumes without complaint.
Other actors involved were more or less related to Cheech and Chong (Shelby Chong, Robbi Chong, Rae Dawn Chong and Rikki Marin) or they were Edie McClurg, Kay Dotrice or Roy Dotrice. This was the duo’s sixth film and it grossed $3,772,785.
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
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New Line Cinema’s horror thriller IT, directed by Andrés Muschietti (Mama), is based on the hugely popular Stephen King novel of the same name, which has been terrifying readers for decades.
When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
IT stars Bill Skarsgård (Allegiant, TV’s Hemlock Grove) as the story’s central villain, Pennywise. An ensemble of young actors also star in the film, including Jaeden Lieberher (Midnight Special), Jeremy Ray Taylor (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip), Sophia Lillis (37), Finn Wolfhard (TV’s Stranger Things), Wyatt Oleff (Guardians of the Galaxy), Chosen Jacobs (upcoming ³Cops and Robbers), Jack Dylan Grazer (Tales of Halloween) and Nicholas Hamilton (Captain Fantastic).
Muschietti directed IT from a screenplay by Chase Palmer & Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman, based on the novel by King. Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg and Barbara Muschietti are the producers, with Richard Brener, Dave Neustadter, Walter Hamada, Marty P. Ewing, Doug Davison and Jon Silk serving as executive producers.
The behind-the-scenes creative team included director of photography Chung-Hoon Chung (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), production designer Claude Paré (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), editor Jason Ballantine (The Great Gatsby), and costume designer Janie Bryant (TV’s Mad Men). The music was composed by Benjamin Wallfisch.
New Line Cinema presents a Vertigo Entertainment/Lin Pictures/Katzsmith Production, IT. Slated for release on September 8, 2017, the film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Entertainment Company.
Watch the new trailer below;
Tegna Media is stepping up the volume of original daytime programming for its TV stations with the September launch of a daily roundtable talk show “Sister Circle,” aimed at African-American women. Cabler TV One will also carry the show as part of its expanded morning news and lifestyle programming block.
Daytime TV vet Helen Swenson has been tapped as showrunner of “Sister Circle,” which bows Sept. 11 in tandem with another new Tegna production, “Daily Blast Live.”
“Sister Circle” will feature a panel of four women — Quad Webb-Lunceford (“Married To Medicine”), singer Syleena Johnson, sports reporter Rashan Ali, and standup comedian Kiana Dancie — discussing a range of lifestyle and relationship issues as well as topical subjects. The foursome will be joined by DJ Q, who will spin records and add a male perspective to the conversation.
The hourlong show will also blend in celebrity guests and expert commentary. It will air live in East Coast markets at 9 a.m. ET, originating from Tegna’s Atlanta outlet, NBC affiliate WXIA-TV.
Tegna plans to launch the show on 12 of its 46 stations. The company is not looking to expand the show’s lineup outside those stations. Instead, the focus is on fine-tuning the show during its first season on the limited Tegna footprint and TV One, in the hopes of developing a stronger series to offer in syndication in year two.
Bob Sullivan, Tegna’s senior VP of programming, said the company learned from its experience last season with the talk show hosted by T.D. Jakes. That show lined up about two dozen non-Tegna stations in its first year, which made it harder for the show to find its footing.
“This way we can control the gas pedal and the brake pedal” without having to meet the expectations of outside station partners, Sullivan said.
For TV One, which targets African-American viewers, “Sister Circle” is seen as a good fit with the cabler’s morning lineup of news and lifestyle programing, which is expanding to three hours in the fall with the 9 a.m. ET telecast of “Sister Circle.” The newsmagazine “NewsOneNow” will be relaunched as “Black America Today” in a two-hour format.
“This was a perfect opportunity to expand our morning block into a destination for our audience,” said D’Angela Proctor, TV One’s senior VP of original programming and production.
The goal is to make the daily discussion on “Sister Circle” stretch from linear TV to social media platforms.
“Our shows don’t get a greenlight without a live component and a multiplatform component,” Sullivan said. “I don’t mean ‘Oh we’ve got a website.’ I mean a plan for activating these personalities every day on digital and social. Every day we need to have moments on this show that will continue the conversation throughout the day on social platforms.”
Tegna’s heightened focus on generating original series for its 46 stations, which serve 38 markets, is an effort to “control our own destiny,” according to Sullivan. TV stations have too long relied solely on outside syndicators for daytime programming beyond local news. Now that the economics of broadcast TV are squeezed by fragmentation in daytime, stations can’t count on a high volume of new shows coming from the largest studio suppliers.
“The days of the $35 million single-host talk show are grinding to a halt,” Sullivan said. Tegna’s original development push is an effort to “use the scale of the footprint of our stations and also be realistic about taking advantage of production assets we have in-house to keep costs inline with a realistic P&L,” he said.
The partnership with TV One partnership was a strategic move designed to increase “Sister Circle’s” exposure to its target audience.
“We can’t just put up the show and pray that people will watch it,” Sullivan said. “We have to look at the platforms that are out there and find strategic partners.”
Proctor said the strength of “Sister Circle” was rooted in the personalities that Tegna brought together through a lengthy casting process. Moreover, TV One’s parent company, Urban One, has a radio network and digital assets that reach some 85% of African-American households. The show and its personalities will be “cross-pollinated” throughout TV One and Radio One stations, Proctor said.
“We have a huge opportunity to make sure ‘Sister Circle’ is known throughout the country,” Proctor said. “The plan is for the show to really rise to something greater in the second year.”
Source: Variety
Here is an interview with actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish on the red carpet of the hit film Girl’s Trip last week in Hollywood. Check out the interview below by Blacktree Media!
Aarona Lopez has launched a video diary of astrology signs with some amazing responses as the public loves these video diaries. And we do too! Check out a sample as we kick off the start with the zodiac sign of Cancer.
Watch below;
Titled Headshop, its cast includes Deon Cole, Kris Marshall, Nicole Ari Parker, Loretta Devine, Reno Wilson, Kimberly Elise, Michael Jai White and Marla Gibbs.
Filming is currently taking place in Los Angeles, with additional scenes being shot in San Fransisco and Oakland, where the movie is set.
“We look forward to bringing this fun, yet meaningful story to fruition. The cast is amazing and I enjoy working with these phenomenal, professional performers. As always when possible, I am also proud to continue to bring good jobs to California-based film industry workers,” said Bass.
The film’s description reads: “HeadShop is a magical urban tale about a beautiful psychologist, based in San Francisco, who decides to end a stalled romance with her longtime, high-profile, psychiatrist boyfriend/business partner. She moves on with her life by opening her own private practice in a vacant, street-front office space in the middle of a small commercial block located across the bay in Oakland. The move turns the predominately African-American and psychologically ignored neighborhood on its emotional ear.”
A release date hasn’t been set.
Source: Shadow & Act
At HBO’s summer TCA presentation, president of programming Casey Bloys gave an update on the status of True Detective, which had been awaiting a Season 3 greenlight.
Bloys confirmed that Oscar-winning Moonlight actor Mahershala Ali has closed a deal to star in the potential third season of the anthology series. Bloys said he had read five finished scripts. “They are terrific. … I was very impressed and excited,” he said. “We are talking to directors, and when we have a director we want to hire, it will be a go.”
He noted that a third season of True Detective is much further along than a potential second installment of The Night Of.
Steven Zaillian has yet to pitch an idea to HBO. “The good news about Steven Zaillian is that he will come to you when he’s ready, and when he comes to us, we’ll know he’s locked.”
A third installment of True Detective, from creator Nic Pizzolatto, has been in the works for a while, with HBO veteran David Milch coming on board earlier this year to work with Pizzolatto.
The first season of True Detective was very well received and became a cult phenomenon, landing a slew of awards and nominations and triggering a swift renewal. The drama also earned a quick-turnaround second installment, which drew mixed reaction from critics and fans.
Ali won a supporting actor Oscar for his role in Best Picture winner Moonlight. His TV work includes a praised role as Remy Danton in Netflix’s House of Cards and a recent recurring gig on Luke Cage. Next up on the film side is a starring role in J.C. Chandor’s upcoming thriller Triple Frontier. He’s repped by WME.
Source: Deadline