President Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel that he was disappointed by Patel’s behavior while partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team during the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, NBC News reported Friday. The team had won the gold medal after defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime. Patel, a hockey fan, was seen yelling, banging on a… Source link
Penn Entertainment has reshaped its boardroom, bringing in three independent directors as part of a settlement with activist investor HG Vora Capital Management. The changes take effect right away and draw a line under a dispute that had been simmering for months. The new directors are Heather Ace, Jeffrey Fox and Fabio Schiavolin. Each arrives with a different skill set, spanning human resources, technology leadership, finance and international gaming, as Penn works to steady its strategy and reassure investors. David Handler, chair of Penn’s board, welcomed the additions and said the company is “pleased to welcome Heather, Jeff and Fabio, highly accomplished individuals who each bring deeply relevant experience.” His comments came alongside the formal announcement of the appointments. The agreement with HG Vora was outlined in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It brings an end to a proxy fight that began in 2025 after the hedge fund built a stake in the company and sought seats on the board. HG Vora had zeroed in on Penn’s performance and strategic direction, with …
Oscar-nominated Iranian director Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident) used a rare public appearance at the Berlin Film Festival to denounce what he described as an “unbelievable crime” unfolding in his home country, as independent filmmakers mounted a parallel campaign to spotlight artists killed and detained in a sweeping crackdown by the Islamic Republic. In an on-stage discussion with The Hollywood Reporter’s European Bureau Chief Scott Roxborough in Berlin on Thursday, Panahi said the festival wanted to retroactively present him with the Berlinale Golden Bear honor he won in 2015 for Taxi [the director, under a travel ban at the time, was unable to attend in person]. He said he declined, wanting to keep attention fixed on the Iranian regime’s violent repression of protestors, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. “They wanted to give me the Golden Bear I had won for Taxi, and I refused it, because of the situation in Iran,” Panahi said. “An unbelievable crime has happened. Mass murder has happened. People are not even allowed to mourn …
The bake-off videos, which featured clips from each film along with interviews with the casting directors, felt like a necessary step in order to showcase the complexities and challenges of casting. Other Oscar categories—makeup and hairstyling, visual effects, sound—also have bake-offs for the same reason. “Everyone was also way more forthcoming than I was expecting them to be, because I wasn’t sure even what we could tell,” says Kulukundis. “It is a nerve-racking situation when, all of a sudden, you’re about to shoot in two weeks and you’ve lost a major lead. So my heart went out to them, watching them tell the stories.” For Brazilian casting director Domingues, attending the bake-offs in Los Angeles was particularly surreal: It was also his first time ever in the US. “The cultural shock [of that experience] was bigger than the shock of receiving the news of the nomination while I was in my own house,” says Domingues. Though he’s the only nominee from an international feature, Domingues wasn’t the only casting director from an international film at …
The Directors Guild of America is recognizing the best film, TV and commercial directors of the past year at the 2026 DGA Awards. Heading into Saturday night’s ceremony — hosted this year by Kumail Nanjiani from the Beverly Hilton — Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Guillermo Del Toro (Frankenstein), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme) and Chloé Zhao (Hamnet) are up for the top prize of outstanding directorial achievement in theatrical feature film, in what tends to be a major predictor for the best director category at the Oscars. (At the Oscars though, Sentimental Value‘s Joachim Trier is nominated in Del Toro’s place). The evening will see additional honors handed out for first-time feature filmmakers, as well as in a number of TV categories and special honors for associate director/stage manager David Charles and assistant director Gregory McCollum. It’s also the first show to be presided over by new DGA president Christopher Nolan, who was elected to helm the Hollywood union in September. A complete list of this year’s DGA nominees follows. Winners will be updated as they’re revealed …
Last year, Cate Blanchett and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund unveiled the Displacement Film Fund, a scheme set up to provide five displaced directors with grants for short films that are worth €100,000 ($120,000) each. And on Friday evening, IFFR presented the world premieres of the first five shorts, made by directors from Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ukraine, in the Dutch port city on Friday. The grant recipients were Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), Maryna Er Gorbach, the Ukrainian director of Klondike, Somali-Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe (The Village Next to Paradise), Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, who fled to Germany and will next month open the Berlin Film Festival, and Syria’s Hasan Kattan (Last Men in Aleppo). In a conversation with THR and during a Rotterdam press conference, Kattan and Harawe discussed their inspirations and hopes for their respective films. Kattan’s 40-minute-long Allies in Exile, from production company Grain Media that is also handling sales, stars himself and his best friend Fadi Al Halabi. “For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together …
Elli Hakami and Julian P. Hobbs, directors of the new TLC docuseries The Cult of the Real Housewife — about The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Mary Cosby allegedly running a mind control cult — say they took their cue to investigate the reality TV star from the Bravo series on which she stars. “They arrived there before we arrived there,” Hobbs tells The Hollywood Reporter about the Salt Lake City-set version of the Real Housewives series, which is now in its sixth season. RHOSLC went into its second season with a trailer where co-star Whitney Rose teased “all of the rumors are that Mary is a cult leader,” and that season included an appearance by Mary Cosby whistleblower Cameron Williams, a former member of her Faith Temple Pentecostal Church. “Then we thought, ‘All right, let’s stress test this. Let’s dig deeper than just letting the series itself answer this question.’ And therefore, the door opened,” adds Hobbs, who runs Talos Films with Hakimi. Among the allegations in the TLC docuseries (trailer, above) is that …
