Universal Pictures has optioned “Uncanny Valley,” a novel about life in the tech bubble, Variety has learned. The studio snagged the rights to the unpublished book in a highly competitive bidding situation, one that drew interest from several suitors.

Michael De Luca, the man behind the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, and Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman, the duo responsible for the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, are set to produce the picture through their Universal-based Michael De Luca Productions and Brownstone Productions, respectively.

“Uncanny Valley” originally started life as a 2016 blog post from author Anna Wiener. It detailed her life at a startup on its last gasps, as the workers grapple with their Ipo dreams evaporating and dust off resumes. The novel version of that initial post is said to deal with Weiner’s transition from the world of publishing to Silicon Valley life. The book is tentatively set to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

When are we getting the new season of Rick and Morty? Recently, writer Ryan Ridley revealed season four of the Adult Swim TV show might not premiere until 2019, CinemaBlend reports. From Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, the animated series follows the adventures of Morty and his eccentric scientist grandfather, Rick. The voice cast includes Roiland, Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell, and Spencer Grammer.

Shondaland is about to get a lot smaller — well, more compact — as ABC announced Wednesday that crossover episodes for “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder” are headed to TGIT this spring. How to Get Away with Scandal?

Kerry Washington and Viola Davis posted the news on social media early in the morning with pictures of the two swapping sets. Washington, who plays D.C. fixer Olivia Pope, was seen in a courthouse and Davis, who plays law professor Annalise Keating, was sitting pretty in the Oval Office.

The news was then confirmed by Shonda Rhimes and Pete Nowalk,

Freeform's The Fosters is ending one chapter and beginning a new one.

The younger-skewing Disney-owened cable network is set to end its run with a three-night limited series event next summer, bringing an end to the five-season run of the GLAAD Award-winning drama. At the same time, Freeform has handed out a straight-to-series order for a spinoff starring Maia Mitchell (Callie) and Cierra Ramirez (Mariana) as they embark on the next phase of their young adult lives.

“First and foremost, we want to thank our fans — our supportive ‘Fosters Family’ — and Freeform for fostering this show," creators and exec...

Stephen Dorff has joined the cast of “True Detective” Season 3, HBO announced Wednesday.

Dorff will play Roland West, an Arkansas state investigator who gets caught up in a baffling crime for more than 30 years. Dorff joins Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”), who the network previously announced will play the lead role of state police detective Wayne Hays, and Carmen Ejogo (“Selma”), who will play Arkansas school teacher Amelia Reardon.

Season 3 of “True Detective” will take place in the Ozarks and tell the story of a “macabre” crime that.

Netflix has taken a shine to Bright, the streamer's fantasy cop drama that debuted this December.

The streaming giant has greenlighted a sequel that is expected to reunite stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, along with director David Ayer. 

Bright takes place in a fictional Los Angeles filled with fairies, elves and magic wands while acting as an allegory for real- world race relations. It follows a veteran cop (Smith) who reluctantly takes on a new partner, an Orc played by Edgerton, and has to protect a magical wand from law enforcement, criminals and an array of supernatural characters.

Eric Newman and Bryan Unkeless are...

Amazon and ITV have given an eight-episode order to the thriller series “The Widow,” starring Kate Beckinsale. The series hails from writers Harry and Jack Williams, who also executive produce the Amazon comedy “Fleabag” and most recently co-created the SundanceTV series “Liar.” Beckinsale will star as Georgia Wells, a woman who has cut herself off from her previous life, but is pulled back in search of the truth after seeing her “late” husband on the news. The series will begin production later this month in South Africa, Wales and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

The next installment of the loosely connected “Cloverfield” film series, titled “God Particle,” has had its release date postponed yet again, Variety has confirmed. The film is now slated for an April 20, 2018 release.

“God Particle,” which is produced by Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, was already shifted from its original Feb. 24, 2017 release date to Oct. 27, 2017 after Paramount took it off its schedule, and it was renamed “2017 Cloverfield Movie.”

The project was then moved again to Feb. 2, 2018, but without any marketing surrounding the film only one month away from the release, it was unclear whether it would be proceeding.

“God Particle,” directed by Nigerian-American filmmaker Julius Onah with a screenplay by Oren Uziel and Doug Jung, is set in the near future and tells the story of a team of astronauts on a space station who make a terrifying discovery involving a new energy source — the “God Particle” — and their desperate fight for survival. The film boasts

After more than a decade of residing on the Sony lot, Overbrook Entertainment principals Will Smith and James Lassister have chosen not to re-up their deal with the studio, insiders tell Variety.

The deal recently ended, and while there were rumors of Overbrook possibly moving its deal to Netflix, given the recent success of “Bright,” sources say Overbrook plans to stay independent. The company remains partnered with Sony on several projects in development including “Harlem Hellfighters” and “Bad Boys For Life,” while also working on “Uptown Saturday Night” at Warner Bros. and “The City That Sailed” at Fox. Overbrook is also a producer on the YouTube Red “Karate Kid” series “Cobra Kai,” which is also a Sony project.

Overbrook and Sony’s relationship goes back nearly 20 years and has led to a slew of hits that have included “Hitch,” “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “Hancock” and “The Karate Kid.” As of late Overbrook’s projects have underwhelmed with “Concussion

Frank Buxton, who wrote and directed episodes of The Odd Couple and Happy Days and provided the voice of the 1960s cartoon superhero Batfink, has died. He was 87.

Buxton battled heart issues for some time and died Tuesday at Harrison Medical Center on Bainbridge Island in Washington, his friend John Kenyon Ellis told The Hollywood Reporter. "He was a hell of a guy and will be sorely missed," Ellis said.

Buxton wrote seven episodes of The Odd Couple, the 1970-75 ABC sitcom co-developed by Garry Marshall; the first one was the classic season-three installment "Password," which cleverly...

Albert Schultz, the artistic director and co-founder of Canada’s Soulpepper Theatre Company, has been accused of sexual assault by four women in separate civil lawsuits. The four actresses, Patricia Fagan, Kristin Booth, Diana Bentley and Hannah Miller, filed their lawsuits in Ontario Superior Court on Tuesday, accusing Schultz of repeatedly groping and kissing women without their permission and exposing himself to them on stage. In total, the women are seeking 3.6 million Canadian dollars, or $2.9 million, in damages from Schultz, as well as 4.3 million Canadian dollars, or $3.4 million, from the theatre company, which they say enabled his behavior and...

Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett has been named the President of the Jury for the 71st Annual Cannes Film Festival. The “Carol” and “Thor: Ragnarok” star will be the first female jury president since Jane Campion served in 2014. Other women to take on the role this century include Oscar nominee Isabelle Huppert and Liv Ullmann. It is the 12th time in festival history a woman has headed the jury. Director, screenwriter and actress Jeanne Moreau served twice, with all others putting in one year each. Also Read: Cannes Film Festival to Start One Day Earlier in 2018 “I have been to Cannes.

Cate Blanchett has been named the jury president of the 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

The Australian actress follows Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who presided over the jury for the festival's 70th edition which awarded the prestigious Palme d’or to The Square by Swedish director Ruben Östlund.

Responding to the announcement, Blanchett said: “I have been to Cannes in many guises over the years; as an actress, producer, in the marketplace, the Gala-sphere and in Competition but never solely for the sheer pleasure of watching the cornucopia of films this great festival harbours.”

Festival president Pierre Lescure and delegate-general Thierry Frémaux said they...

President Trump’s attorneys have warned Steve Bannon that “litigation is imminent.” The statement was made in a cease-and-desist letter sent from Charles J. Harder of the firm Harder Mirell & Abrams Llp to Trump’s former top adviser after excerpts from an upcoming book by journalist Michael Wolff were made public Wednesday. “This law firm represents President Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. On behalf of our clients, legal notice was issued today to Stephen K. Bannon, that his actions of communicating with author Michael Wolff regarding an upcoming book give rise to numerous legal claims including defamation by.

A Beijing court on Wednesday said that it will hear a case requiring China's media regulator to justify a recent classification of homosexuality as "abnormal."

Fan Chunlin, a 30-year-old man from Shanghai, filed a lawsuit Wednesday with Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court demanding that China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (Sapprft) clarify the policy basis for a regulation introduced last summer banning depictions of homosexuality from online video platforms. The court accepted Fan's case and is now required to hold hearings and issue a decision within six months, the plaintiff's lawyer, Tang Xiangqian, told local...

Barry Jenkins could see “Notting Hill” while sat on a flight Wednesday night, but couldn’t hear the beloved romantic comedy — so he invited the Twitterverse to help him understand the plot. The “Moonlight” director was clearly bored on a transatlantic Delta flight as he watched the 1999 film starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts over the shoulder of his seat neighbor. After first complaining about the bumpy flight from Paris to Los Angeles, Jenkins wrote: “In other news, the woman next to me is watching Notting Hill. A few choice folks will get the irony of this happening on my.

(Note: This post contains spoilers for the first episode of “The X-Files” Season 11.) The Season 11 premiere of “The X-Files” went a little crazy with retcons and twists as it picked up where Season 10 left off — or more accurately, as it rewrote the major conspiracies that happened at the end of Season 10. The episode was full of exposition that recontextualized most of the rest of the show, between shots of Mulder (David Duchovny) racing around America in a series of car chase shots. “The X-Files” dialed back from the apocalyptic conclusion of Season 10, which ended with...

As far as Mira Sorvino is concerned, her father is a stand-up guy, even if — or perhaps especially if — he wants to lay Harvey Weinstein out flat. Sorvino took to Twitter on Wednesday to heap praise on her dad, “Goodfellas” actor Paul Sorvino, after the elder Sorvino threatened to kill scandal-plagued producer Harvey Weinstein. On Wednesday, TMZ published video of the elder Sorvino railing against Weinstein, who Sorvino has accused of damaging her career after she refused his advances. Also Read: Paul Sorvino on Harvey Weinstein: 'I Will Kill the Motherf--er' (Video) “He’s gonna go to jail. Oh, yeah.

Jackson “Jackie” Hunsicker, best known for helming “The Frog Prince” and “Oddball Hall,” died at her Studio City, Calif. home on Dec. 29 after a long battle with cancer. She was 69.

Hunsicker’s first major project in entertainment was directing and writing 1988’s “The Frog Prince.” The musical, starring Helen Hunt, was based on the Grimm fairy tale. In 1989, she wrote the screenplay for “Ten Little Indians,” followed by directing and writing “Oddball Hall” in 1990.

In addition to her film background, she was a writer on ABC’s drama “The Marshal” in 1995.

Outside of entertainment, Hunsicker was also an inventor. She created the Memo-Mate, a small tape recorder that attaches to a key chain, which earned her a spot in the Women Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she created the book “Turning Heads,” where she had top photographers take pictures of women who were bald from chemotherapy doing activities they love

(Note: This post contains spoilers for the first episode of “The X-Files” Season 11.) The first episode of “The X-Files” Season 11 started with a major reveal fans have been waiting to find out for years: the identity of the Cigarette Smoking Man, also known as “the Cancer Man.” The lead antagonist of “The X-Files” has been a major part of the show since its original run, often at odds with Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and pulling the strings of the show’s conspiracies. In the cold open of the first episode of Season 11, “My Struggle III,” the Smoking Man finally...