Latest in Behind The Lens

While at the Cannes Film Festival last month I got the chance to sit down on the beach and talk with the multi-talented Lee Jung-jae, the SAG Award-winning and heavily Emmy-buzzed star of Netflix’s international phenomenon Squid Game. He was at the world’s most famous film festival though to premiere his first…

With 25 Emmy nominations, six wins, induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2017, and as a past two-time president of the Writers Guild, John Wells is one of the most respected and honored members of the industry. His string of successful shows speaks for itself and includes such titles as The West Wing…

Jessica Biel not only is finding numerous meaty roles for herself these days, she has, with producing partner Michelle Purple, found a way to get them made. Her latest is the Hulu limited series Candy, which details a shocking crime that happened 42 years ago in a small Texas town where a wife and mother took an ax to…

Ozark fans are in mourning this Memorial Day with the realization that this highly acclaimed Emmy winning series has come to an end on Netflix, but Chris Mundy, Executive Producer and Showrunner for all its 44 episodes since its 2017 debut  as well as writing credits on several episodes including the finale, believes…

From his long-running gig doing “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live to hosting his own successful talk show in Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC, you might say the star has carved out a similar career trajectory as his predecessor in both jobs, Jimmy Fallon. But Seth Meyers marches to his own drummer and has…

A new season of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens begins today with my conversation with Danny Strong, a writer, director, producer and actor who has become one of the most prolific creators in television. His current limited series for Hulu, Dopesick, is heavily buzzed for Emmy attention and has already…

So what does esteemed director Joe Wright have in common with Steven Spielberg? After a long career behind the camera they both finally made their first musical this year, Spielberg of course with his West Side Story remake, and Wright taking on a stage musical version of the evergreen story of Cyrano…

There can be no question that Aaron Sorkin is one the most prolific screenwriters out there, if not the most prolific. I would say he is right up there with the late great Paddy Chayefsky in terms of consistently turning out brilliant movies on the page, and that of course includes Sorkin’s Oscar-winning script for The…

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival gets underway later this week, but it will be hard to imagine any movie in the current lineup making quite the impact CODA did in 2021, when it landed an unprecedented and historic four major awards there to dominate the festival, and also made a huge sale to Apple for $25 million. Siân…

Even for Lin-Manuel Miranda, you have to admit he had a hell of a 2021 — moviewise at least. Part of all that has to do with timing, as the film adaptation of his Tony-winning musical In the Heights had been delayed a year to Covid delays in its release, but nevertheless it kicked off a remarkable year when it finally…

After first winning a prize in Cannes in July and then successfully hitting the fall festival circuit, Iranian-born director Asghar Farhadi’s latest critically acclaimed film A Hero opens today through Amazon in theaters before streaming starting January 21. The wait is well worth it for fans of the filmmaker, whose…

Ridley Scott just turned 84 years old on November 30 and he must be slowing down. He only had two, count ’em, two major, star-laden, big-scale movies he directed that were released this fall: House of Gucci and The Last Duel. Oh, and he has already prepped, storyboarded and cast his next massive epic about Napoleon…