Category: TV

The Rembrandts’ ‘I’ll Be There For You’ may be one of the world’s most instantly familiar TV theme tunes, but its success split up the band, amid fears they’d lost everything about them that was cool. 

Danny Wilde, one half of the alt-rock duo, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the band were initially asked to record a 43-second version of the song for the pilot of Friends – something with the same tempo as R.E.M.’s ‘Shiny Happy People.’

Wilde explained why the band, comprising himself and Phil Solem, were initially reluctant to have their name associated with the sit-com:

“It didn’t have our name on the credits. We were a pretty hip band, so stipulated that we didn’t want anyone to know we’d sold out.”

Then, when the show quickly found its mark, the cast and band joined together in the studio to record a video. Wilde remembered:

“Courteney Cox really could play drums but it was mostly improvised mayhem.”

And the show’s huge success didn’t help The Rembrandts’ brand and even led to a temporary split. 

“Once people realised it was us, it killed our cool vibe,” said Wilde. “We went from doing cool clubs to matinee shows where parents would bring their kids. The song became an albatross round our necks and broke up the band for a few years.”

In better news, the band reunited and are now happy to play the song at anniversary shows, special Friends events and wherever requested. Wilde reflected, “If people are willing to pay you to do something you’re proud of, why not?”

The song was used on all 236 episodes of Friends, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004. It was written by David Crane, Marta Kauffman, Michael Skloff and the late Allee Willis, after R.E.M. were asked for a song, but rejected the offer. 

Audible’s BREAKTHROUGH

Co-Creator/Executive Producer: Will Malnati

Executive Producer: Ethan Russell
Panelists: Sara Bareilles (judge); Daveed Diggs (host)
Logline: In a genre-redefining first, Breakthrough bursts onto the singing competition scene with an electrifying, audio-only series that strips away the superficial to reaffirm what matters most: pure talent. The captivating new Audible Original invites listeners on an intimate musical journey where it doesn’t matter what you look like or who you know, just how you sound. Based solely on what they hear, expert celebrity judges Kelly Rowland (Destiny’s Child, The X Factor) and Sara Bareilles (Waitress, Into the Woods, Girls5eva) coach and evaluate five undiscovered artists as host Daveed Diggs (Hamilton, Blindspotting, The Little Mermaid) leads competitors through a series of high-stakes singing and songwriting challenges for one top spot. 

Key Quotes: Sara Bareilles on “blind” judging of performers: “I don’t know if we really notice how much judgment we put on the visual. And we sort of think that we like or dislike someone based on visual cues. We make judgments and we have preferences and, and so taking that out of the equation really opens up just this other space to experience… It’s a great sort of equalizing force.”

Daveed Diggs on working with Halle Bailey (“Ariel”) in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid: “I got to be in the studio with her recording and also like watch her develop that role and just — it’s a game changer.”

Sara Bareilles on Girls5eva moving from Peacock to Netflix for season 3: “We all feel so grateful because we’re so lucky we got our first swing on Peacock and they were huge supporters. And now to get this sort of like second life on Netflix and to have even a wider audience just feels like we get a ‘third second chance.’”

The Deadline Studio at SXSW runs March 10-13, where the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sit down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Austin, Texas.

More than 10 of the BBC’s highest-profile sports stars have staged an unprecedented walkout over the British broadcaster’s decision to suspend Gary Lineker. Below is a list of those who have walked out, with links to tweets explaining their reasons for joining the protest.

Alan Shearer, BBC’s top football pundit and former Newcastle United striker

Ian Wright, former Arsenal player is a Match of the Day regular

Jermaine Jenas, ex-Spurs player is a presenter and pundit

Alex Scott, Football Focus host and former Arsenal player

Mark Chapman, anchors live sports coverage on 5 Live and presents Match of the Day 2

Colin Murray, presents Fighting Talk on BBC Radio 5 Live

Dion Dublin, former Manchester United player and 5 Live regular

Jason Mohammad, presents Final Score for BBC1

Micah Richards, former Manchester City defender and one of the BBC’s top football pundits

Glenn Murray, ex-pro is a Football Focus pundit and 5 Live regular

Kelly Somers, football presenter and journalist

Steve Wilson, one of the BBC’s top football commentators

There’s been yet another change at the helm of Dick Wolf’s Law & Order: Organized Crime. Sean Jablonski is stepping down as showrunner of NBC’s police procedural, Deadline has confirmed. Jablonski is the fourth showrunner to depart the Law & Order spinoff in the past year.

Law & Order: SVU’s David Graziano will oversee the remaining three episodes of Season 3 of Law & Order: Organized Crime, starring Christopher Meloni, Danielle Moné Truitt, Ainsley Seiger, Brent Antonello and Rick Gonzalez. 

Sources tell Deadline Jablonski is exiting due to creative differences.

Jablonski took over as showrunner in September 2022 for Bryan Goluboff. Goluboff replaced Barry O’Brien, who was named interim showrunner in late February 2022. O’Brien had been asked to step in and finish the season after the exit of previous showrunner Ilene Chaiken.

Organized Crime follows the detectives of the Organized Crime Control Bureau as they work to dismantle New York City’s most vicious and violent illegal enterprises. It’s produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Wolf Entertainment. EPs are Dick Wolf, Jablonski, Goluboff, O’Brien, Arthur Forney, Meloni and Peter Jankowski.

Meloni stars as Det. Elliot Stabler, who returned to the NYPD after a decade away and must rebuild his life after a devastating personal loss. Meloni first played the role as an original cast member on Law & Order: SVU.

Amazon Prime Video may be rethinking its relationship with Jeremy Clarkson, but it has doubled down on James May.

The Grand Tour presenter will return for a second helping of his rudimentary cooking show Oh Cook!, while Amazon has also confirmed Deadline’s story that May will travel to India for a third season of Our Man In…

The second season of Oh Cook! will premiere on May 24, marking another stage in his journey from kitchen klutz to capable cook.

For Our Man In India, May will start his journey in Mumbai before traveling north through Udaipur, experiencing the Holi festival, and heading to Rajasthan. He’ll then cover Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur, rounding off his trip in Kolkata and the Sundarbans.

“I’ve been to India before, and it’s mesmerising. I can’t wait to go back for series three of Our Man In…,” said May. “And for Oh Cook! fans, it’s also the perfect opportunity to perfect my daal.”

Plum Pictures makes both series. Tom Whitter directs Our Man In India and the executive producer is Will Daws.

Robert Blake, the controversial actor who won a Lead Actor Emmy for Baretta and starred in films including In Cold Blood and Lost Highway before a murder trial ended his career, died today of heart disease in Los Angeles. He was 89. His niece, Noreen Austin, confirmed the news.

Blake’s long career ranged from a childhood stint in “Our Gang” at age 5 through major films and television before he was acquitted of murder in the 2001 death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Over the course of 60+ years of working in Hollywood, Blake appeared in such classic films as Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) alongside Humphrey Bogart; In Cold Blood (1967) with John Forsythe; as well as a range of studio Westerns using the stage name of “Bobby Blake” during the 1940s. His final feature film role was in Lost Highway (1997), directed by David Lynch.

In television, Blake was best known for his role as streetwise New York City undercover detective Tony Baretta in Baretta, which aired for four seasons on ABC from 1975-78. He was an Emmy Award For Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1975 and was nominated again for the role in 1977. He also earned two other Emmy noms during his career, for lead actor in the miniseries Blood Feud (1983) and Judgment Day: The John List Story (1993). 

Baretta was created by prolific TV writer/creator Stephen J. Cannell and featured the memorable theme song “Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow,” sung by Sammy Davis Jr. It was a spinoff from another ABC crime darma, Toma, that debuted in 1973. But its star, Tony Mustane, grew weary of the weekly production grind, so ABC brass decided to recast Blake in the role and retitle the series Toma Starring Robert Blake. But a few format tweaks later, Baretta was born.

The series debuted as a replacement show in January 1975 and finished its first season in Top 25 among primetime shows. It leapt into the Top 10 for Season 2 — fueled by the lead characters catchphrases including “And that’s the name of that tune” and “You can take that to the bank — but would be canceled in 1978 after 80-plus episodes.

Several years later, Blake was cast as the lead of NBC drama Hell Town. He played Father Noah Rivers, aka Hardstep, who pretty much was Baretta in priestly garb, trying to bring hope to the East L.A. parish of St. Dominic’s. The series lasted only a handful of episodes in 1985.

On television, fans also watched Blake on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he was a recurring guest who appeared in funny skits with longtime friend Johnny Carson and other featured celebrities.

He is also remembered as a pitchman in commercials for STP, Geico and others.

But there was also a darker side to the Blake story.

Bakley, Blake’s second wife, was found shot to death outside of Vitello’s restaurant in the San Fernando Valley in 2001, after the couple had dined there. Blake told police that he had gone back into the restaurant to retrieve a handgun he’d left on the floor of their booth.

Blake was charged with Bakley’s murder in 2002, along with solicitation of murder, conspiracy and special circumstances of lying in wait. But a jury found him not guilty of the crimes in 2005 after a sensational trial. And though Bakley’s children brought a wrongful-death suit against Blake shortly thereafter, her killing officially remains unsolved.

The highly publicized, three-month trial saw Blake weep into the shoulder of his lawyer after the jury acquitted him. The seven men and five women found him not guilty of soliciting a former stunt double whom he met on the Baretta set to kill his wife.

During the course of the trial, their unhappy marriage details became sensational news fodder.

Bakley, it was revealed, had at least a dozen aliases and 10 former husbands. The defense contended she had trapped Mr. Blake into an unloving marriage by becoming pregnant with his child. Thus, the motive for Blake, who referred to his wife as “pig,” was established. But the jury didn’t believe the stuntman’s testimony, thanks to his history of drug abuse.

The judge ordered that Mr. Blake be given back his passport and $1.5 million bail.

In his later years Blake wrote his memoir, The Life of a Rascal, and lived quietly in the Los Angeles area, enjoying jazz music, playing his guitar, reading poetry, and watching many Hollywood classic films.

A private memorial service will be held to honor his life. In lieu of flowers, his family requests that donations be made to City of Hope.

EXCLUSIVE: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has responded to Reed Hastings’ claim Netflix is the “biggest builder” of cross-country culture in the EU.

The EBU, which represents Europe’s public broadcasting networks, said its members spend €20BN ($21BN) a year on “homegrown” content, well above the investment of SVoD services.

This came after Hastings on Monday talked up the cultural capital of Netflix, especially its ability to attract viewers from one country to content from another.

At a talk at Netflix’s Amsterdam HQ, the company’s co-founder and Executive Chairman quipped it was “ironic” a U.S. company had achieved such a position and said tis was “partially because all the other networks are national networks who specialize in one language group. We specialize in connecting.”

However, in a statement issued to Deadline, the EBU pointed to several metrics by which Europe’s networks lead international streaming rivals.

“Public service media are proud to be the biggest investors in European content,” said the org. “Our members finance 43% of all European content, excluding news and sport, whereas the SVoD services cover less than 2% of content financing. Public service media are producing as well as just distributing original European shows.”

The statement also noted its members — who include the BBC, France Televisions and ZDF — were “prioritizing European content on our VoD platforms with 95% of programming originating from a European country, compared to just 31% of the content available on Netflix.”

It fulfils its 30% content quotas in most major European territories, an Ampere report last year revealed, quietly building its European content library without impacting its regional business.

Netflix spent around $16.8BN on content last year globally, and has been pushing hard in the EMEA region, which last year became the streamer’s biggest by subscribers with 76.7 million.

The EBU has 68 members in 56 countries across Europe.

It’s transfer time for Phil Dunster, who has played AFC Richmond’s star striker Jamie Tartt on the Emmy-winning comedy drama Ted Lasso for three seasons. The actor is joining Gugu Mbatha-Raw on Season 2 of her psychological thriller Surface, Breaking Baz can reveal.

Both Ted Lasso and Surface are part of the Apple TV+ universe.

Surface launched on the streamer last summer and audiences were intrigued with the tale created by Veronica West (High Fidelity) about a woman called Sophie (played by Mbatha-Raw) who has amnesia after a suicide attempt in San Francisco. 

Sophie is a medical professional and resides in a swanky house in a tony district of San Francisco. The Hitchcockian mystery of it all is: If Sophie’s life was so seemingly perfect, why did she try to end it by jumping from a boat into the ocean?

“It’s like I’ve woken up in someone else’s life,” Sophie complains to her therapist, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Season 2 will shoot in and around London, where I hope the property porn is as good as it looks in San Francisco for Season 1.

Apparently just two characters will resurface in Season 2 of Surface. One of those will clearly be Mbatha-Raw.

I haven’t viewed all eight episodes yet, so it’s difficult for me to hazard a guess as to who else will reappear.

Except, I do know Dunster’s in it but it’s not me for to spoil it all by spilling the beans on what kind of character he’ll be playing.

Nor will I offer thoughts about another role that’s very likely to go to Suki Waterhouse; that deal hasn’t finalised yet.

Waterhouse is piping hot right now thanks to her portrait of a Brit rock musician in Amazon’s Daisy Jones & The Six, which also stars Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Will Harrison, Josh Whitehouse, Camila Morrone, Sebastian Chacon and Nabiyah Be. Oh, and a shout-out to Tom Wright who plays fictional record producer Teddy Price — he’s a no-bullsh*t kinda guy and I like that. 

And good for Dunster for adding depth to Jamie Tartt. That kind of numbskull, egotistical footballer could have been a monumental bore, but a combination of brilliant writing plus an an actor with enough smarts to imbue the role with truth and humanity made him fun to watch. Also great when he hit one into the back of the net.

That goes for the whole company of artists in Ted Lasso; each and every role is so well cast. I mean that. Not just the main players such as Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Jason Sudeikis, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Toheeb Jimoh, Nick Mohammed, Jeremy Swift, Sarah Niles and the rest, but how bloody clever was it to cast Annette Badland, a super British actress, as Mae the pub landlady? It’s a small part that goes a long way.

One year at the Cannes Film Festival I remember someone asking Sean Penn why he’d cast Vanessa Redgrave in a tiny role in his film The Pledge. “I wanted an actor who could go from A to Z like that,” he responded, snapping his fingers.

It’s the same with Badland. She put a stamp on Mae the moment we saw her behind the bar; we knew who she was.

The beauty of Ted Lasso, for me at least, is that I know who they are because of the effortless work those actors do.

Bumped into Edward Berger, director of Netflix’s Oscar-nominated All Quiet on the Western Front, who was deep in conversation with Robert Pattinson, The Batman star, on the back terrace of Ospero on Sunset.

Actually, I was trying to be unseen, but both Berger and Pattinson greeted me before I could disappear.

We quickly shot the breeze about the weather. Yes, yes, and about Sunday’s Academy Awards. We agreed that, hey, maybe there’ll be some surprises and that the glory might not all go to A24s front-runner Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

RELATED: Pete Hammond’s Final Oscar Predictions: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’, ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’, ‘Elvis’, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Could Be Multiple Winners

If there’s going to be an upset, Berger suggests, let it be in All Quiet on the Western Front’s favor, mirroring what happened at the BAFTAs.

“That would be one helluva upset,” I say.

And so would Top Gun winning, I throw in for the heck of it. Though wouldn’t that be ridiculously delicious (improbable) fun!

We debate a little more.

As I’m about to scoot away, I ask if their meeting is likely to result in anything further down the road. I say that knowing of Pattinson’s cool habit of linking up with filmmakers he admires.

“We’re just having coffee. It’s coffee, Baz,” the actor says.

David Kane, lead writer on the BBC’s Shetland, is developing Denise Mina’s Morrow book series into a multi-season TV show.

Set in Glasgow, Morrow, which consists of five books, follows DS Alex Morrow, a formidable detective who can’t face talking to her husband or bear to sleep in the family home following a recent trauma. As she investigates a crime with partner Bannerman for season one titled Still Midnight, questions arise about whether their ambitious Machiavellian boss McKechnie has their backs.

Morrow doesn’t have a broadcaster attached yet but Kane envisages it running for multiple seasons. He is the lead writer on hit Scottish BBC series Shetland, which has run for seven seasons and for which he has been nominated for a BAFTA Scotland Award.

Kane and Mina are exec producing Morrow, having combined on BBC drama cult hit The Field of Blood, which starred Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey and was also BAFTA Scotland nominated. Channel 4-backed Freedom Scripted is the indie behind Morrow and Mike Ellen is EP.

“I’m very attracted by the opportunity to present a version of modern multi-cultural Glasgow, but one that doesn’t shy away from the city’s past,” said Kane. “It is different, more diverse, but still has that dark underbelly of crime.”

The 2023 Kids’ Choice Awards made quite a splash for Nickelodeon.

Saturday’s simulcast drew 3.1M viewers across linear and digital platforms, which is up 40% over last year, according to Nickelodeon. On cable alone, the telecast gathered an audience of 637,000, which ranked as the top cable telecast among kids 2-11, kids 6-11, and tweens 9-14.

The awards show also drove its fair share of co-viewing. It was the highest co-viewed Kids’ Choice Awards since 2017, with 54% of adults 18-49 (which is the key entertainment programming demo among advertisers) watching with kids 2-11.

Saturday’s show marked the biggest live production of the show in three years, and it ranked as the most social Kids & Family telecast year to date.  

Across social platforms, Kids Choice Awards content has driven nearly 180M views and 25M engagements across owned, talent & influencer posts. More than 102M votes were cast globally across this year’s categories, according to Nickelodeon.

Hosted by Nate Burleson and Charli D’Amelio, who also was named Favorite Female Creator, the show aired live on Nick from L.A’s Microsoft Theater. Highlights included Awkwafina and Halle Bailey sliming their The Little Mermaid co-star Melissa McCarthy in a dunk tank filled with over 1,500 gallons of Slime, and a performance of “California Breeze,” by Lil Baby, from his chart-topping third studio album, It’s Only Me, joined by his kids.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was named Favorite Movie at the 2023 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards tonight. Other big winners include Wednesday as Favorite Family TV Show, and its star Jenna Ortega as Favorite Female TV Star (Family), along with kid-fave SpongeBob Squarepants as Favorite Animated Show and Stranger Things alum Millie Brown Brown, who scored the Favorite Movie Actress award for Enola Holmes, and Enola Holmes 2. The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder landed the top Favorite Kids TV Show honor. See the full list here.

The percentage of female characters portrayed in the 100 top domestic grossing films increased only “slightly” last year compared to 2021, according to the latest report from San Diego State. Last year, they accounted for 33% of the protagonists – up from 31% in 2021, but well below the 40% high-water mark achieved in 2019.

Women also made of 38% of the major characters – up from 35% in 2021, and 37% of all speaking roles – up from 34% the year before. The percentage of female speaking roles last year was an all-time high since the school began collecting data in 2002, when they received only 28% of all speaking roles.

Even so, only 11 of the top 100 films had more female than male characters; 9% had an equal number of female and male roles, while 80 of the films featured more male than female characters.

Read the full report here.

Black actresses in major roles fared well last year, accounting for 21.6% of all major female characters, which was up from 16.4% in 2021.  The percentage of major Latina characters, however, declined from 12.8% in 2021 to 7.0% in 2022, while the percentage of major Asian and Asian American females declined from 10% in 2021 to just 6.6% in 2022.

Dr. Martha Lauzen, the author of the report and founder and executive director of the school’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, noted that from 2020 to 2021, “The increases in the numbers of major Latina and female Asian American characters were due to films featuring higher concentrations of characters in these groups, such as In the Heights, West Side Story, and Raya and the Last Dragon.  However, the absence of similar films in 2022 caused the percentages of females in these groups to drop.”

With respect to all speaking roles, female characters of color were down in all but one racial or ethnic category last year, when 18% were Black – down from 19.3% the year before; 6.9% were Latina – down from 9.5% in 2021; 8.1% were Asian or Asian American – down from 8.4% a year earlier; 0.4% were of multiple races or ethnicities – down from 1.4% in 2021; 1.5% were of some other race or ethnicity, and none were Native American – down from 0.3% in 2021. The only group that saw any percentage gain last year was actors of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent – who got 0.8% of the roles compared to 0.5% in 2021. White female actors, meanwhile, got 64.2% of all female roles, which was up from 60.6% in 2021.

The report, called It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World, also found that ageism continues to hold sway in Hollywood, where female characters remain younger overall than their male counterparts, with the percentage of women in their 40s dropping from 20% in 2015 to only 14% in 2022.

“Age is not just an employment issue for actors,” Lauzen said. “When female and male characters are relatively young, they are less likely to hold positions of great personal or professional power. Viola Davis and Cate Blanchett are superb actors but they are also convincing, at least in part, because they have achieved the gravitas and life experience needed to play those roles.”

The report found that the majority of female characters portrayed in the top 100 films were in their 20s and 30s (56%), while the majority of male characters were in their 30s and 40s (59%). Male characters were more likely than females to be 40 or over – 53% males compared to 29% females.

And female characters portrayed in the top-grossing films experienced a precipitous drop from their 30s (36%) to their 40s (just 14%). The percentage of male characters in their 30s and 40s differed by only a single percentage point (30% vs. 29%). Male characters experienced a more substantial decline in numbers from their 40s (29%) to their 50s (15%), and there were slightly more male characters (9%) than female characters (7%) aged 60 and over.

According to the report, 12% of the top 100 films featured zero to four female characters in speaking roles; 51% had five to nine females, and 37% had 10 or more females. By comparison, only 4% of the films featured zero to four 4 male characters in speaking roles, 23% had five to nine males, and 74% had 10 or more males.

The report also found that female protagonists – characters from whose perspective the story is told – were most likely to appear in horror films (43%), followed by dramas (37%), action features (10%), animated features (3%), comedies (3%), and features in other genres (3%). Male protagonists were most likely to appear in action features (30%), followed by dramas (23%), comedies (19%), animated features (19%), science fiction features (4%), and horror features (4%).

Who directs and writes the movies – men or women – also plays a major role in who gets cast. According to the report, films with at least one female director and/or writer were more likely than films with no women in those roles to feature higher percentages of females as protagonists, in major roles, and as speaking characters. In films with at least one female director and/or writer, women accounted for 56% of protagonists, compared to 23% in films with exclusively male directors and/or writers; 45% of major characters compared to only 36% with exclusively male directors and/or writers, and 40% of all speaking characters, compared to 35% in films with exclusively male directors and/or writers.

The “Nepo baby” effect has been laid bare in the UK by Netflix/National Youth Theatre research that showed the vast majority of respondents believe connections rather than talent are required to make it big.

Unveiled alongside the research, the streamer and theater have launched the IGNITE Your Creativity program to “crack the class ceiling,” which will support 500 young people in South Wales, West Yorkshire and the North East to build industry connections and knowledge of behind the scenes careers in film, TV and theater.

Four out of five (79%) of the 3,000 young people surveyed believe they need connections rather than talent and determination to make it, and that the issue isn’t limited to on-screen success but covers a wealth of positions behind the camera. One respondent to the survey said “nepo babies” emerge at all levels, adding: “Most people don’t seem to realize that this kind of nepotism isn’t just for celebrities.”

A further two-thirds (68%)of respondents think they need to live in a big city to have a career in TV or film.

Anne Mensah, Netflix’s VP of UK Content, said: “Young people are brilliantly astute so it’s unsurprising that they believe connections rather than raw talent are key to success. Unfortunately the evidence proves that they are not wrong. Our industry has a pronounced absence of socio-economic diversity partly because it’s freelance, which makes it tough for those from less privileged backgrounds to gain a foothold.”

Mensah, who commissioned the likes of The Queen’s Gambit, Sex Education and Heartstopper, added that the IGNITE program “has been designed to raise awareness and aspirations, and build confidence and networks so that young people don’t need to have existing industry connections, live in a big city or have a degree for a career in TV and film.”

The program will begin recruiting in South Wales in partnership with War of the Worlds producer Urban Myth Films before moving to West Yorkshire and the North East later this year. An advisory panel featuring the likes of Oscar-winning designer Eve Stewart, BAFTA-nominated producer Luti Fagbenle and execs Johnny Capps and Chantal Rickards will support IGNITE.

Last week, Netflix unveiled its debut theater production – a Stranger Things sequel in the West End directed by Stephen Daldry and penned by Kate Trefry and Jack Thorne.