Seven years ago, writer, director and producer Shaka King accepted the Film Independent Someone to Watch Award for his quirky comedic debut, Newlyweeds. After years directing shorts and episodes of TV shows Shrill, High Maintenance and People of Earth, the 40-year-old filmmaker returns to the big screen with Judas and…

Regina King has built her award-winning acting career on a rock-solid foundation of memorable roles, and, after a host of small screen directing gigs on shows like Southland, This Is Us and Insecure, her smash directorial feature debut, One Night in Miami—which made its virtual premiere on King's 50th birthday—shows…

In Judas and the Black Messiah, Daniel Kaluuya is the late Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther party, who was assassinated over 50 years ago, at the age of 21. The British-born, Oscar-nominated Kaluuya has featured in such screen gems as Get Out and Black Panther, Widows and Queen & Slim. For this…

 WHO Helena Zengel Age: 12 Hometown: Berlin  WHAT After winning the German Film Award for Best Leading Actress with 2019's System Crasher, Helena Zengel made her American film debut alongside Tom Hanks in News of the World. To star opposite Hanks, who plays Captain Jefferson Kidd, a war veteran widower traveling…

J.J. Villard's debut animation series for Adult Swim may have won the network its first ever Emmy for animation, in 2015, but the creator wasn't given free reign for his follow-up show, JJ Villard's Fairy Tales, which he produced and directed. "After King Star King, they just told me, ‘This show is way too perverted,'&#8221…

Before Josh Gad was the Book of Mormon-acting, Olaf-voicing, YouTube reunion-hosting star he is today, he was a nervous young prospect, hoping to make it on Broadway. "New York, before LA was even a twinkle in my eye, was my end game," he tells Deadline. But on the day he auditioned in the city for his dream school…

The day Shira Haas auditioned for the role of Esty Shapiro on Unorthodox, she got drenched in the rain. When she arrived at the venue, she cleaned herself up, took a few deep breaths, walked into the audition and sang Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. A year and-a-half after the Israeli actress nailed the audition, she's…

When Genndy Tartakovsky was wrapping up the final season of his Emmy-winning series Samarai Jack, he pitched an idea he'd long been playing with to his former boss at Cartoon Network, Mike Lazzo—the man who'd green-lit the Moscow-born, Chicago-based animator's career-setting Dexter's Laboratory, more than 20 years…

It has been a busy time for Alfre Woodard, beginning in January, when Chinonye Chukwu's Clemency debuted at Sundance to critical acclaim, winning the Grand Jury Prize. Although the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Woodard has had a number of noteworthy performances this year—from a dramatic rendering of the Mueller…

Director John Crowley is no stranger to taking a book from the page to the screen, as he did for his BAFTA-winning film Brooklyn in 2015. But Donna Tartt's 800-page 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner The Goldfinch presented him with a new opportunity. "It's such a brilliantly original study of grief," he told Deadline. "The…

Jessica Lange hasn't been a regular on American Horror Story in four years, but all it took for her to snag her ninth Emmy nomination was just a few minutes on screen over two episodes in Season 8, Apocalypse. For this short but brilliant turn reprising her Season 1 role as Constance Langdon, Lange could potentially…