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EXCLUSIVE: The 26th Annual Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference is putting some shine on the often unsung and overlooked heroes of film: the writer. This year, the fest revealed that they will be honoring Oscar-winning screenwriters James Ivory with the "Extraordinary Contribution to Film" Award and Ron Bass with…

With four Emmy nominations for his work on Barry this year—comedy series, acting, writing and directing—Season 2 of the HBO series really allowed Bill Hader to show his riveting helming finesse across two episodes: "ronny/lily" and the finale "berkman/block". In the nominated "ronny/lily", Hader's hitman Barry is…

HBO has announced via social media that the second season of dark comedy Barry will start on March 31. Bill Hader stars as a depressed, low-rent hitman from the Midwest. Lonely and dissatisfied in his life, he reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an aspiring actor. But when he follows his would-be…

For five years now, Silicon Valley executive producer Alec Berg has celebrated Emmy nominations day with multiple noms for the HBO series. Each year, they have included a writing for a comedy series nom and a best comedy series nom — shared with the rest of the show’s producing team — along with a directing mention in…

You'd think writing, producing, directing and starring on a television would give anyone frayed nerves. But Bill Hader says it's nowhere near as exasperating as working on Saturday Night Live. "It's way less stressful than being on Saturday Night Live, because it's not live and you're not in front of the nation,"…

The Producers Guild of America’s annual Produced By Conference next month in Los Angeles has rounded out its list of participants including adding Barry co-creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg for a “Conversation With” session. Skydance Television president Marcy Ross and Hyde Park Entertainment group boss Ashok Amritraj…

When it came to creating a half hour comedy series about a hitman who finds himself in Hollywood and gets caught up in the theatre arts scene, Bill Hader didn’t draw from his experiences as a burgeoning sketch actor at the local Second City, rather from his time at Saturday Night Live.  How can his new HBO show <a href="https://deadline.com/tag/barry/" id="auto-tag_barry"…

No, it wasn’t the movie Get Shorty which served as Bill Hader’s inspiration for his upcoming action comedy series Barry, rather an experience he would go through when starring and writing on NBC’s Saturday Day Live.  On Barry Hader plays a low-rent hitman who upon making his way westward to Hollywood, learns that his…

Working as an EP and writer on cultural staples including Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm—and now, Silicon Valley—Alec Berg is something of a comedy legend. On his latest HBO series, in line with a career evolution stemming from Curb, Berg has taken on even more hats, as the director of a great number of episodes. This…

The pact calls for the Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm alum to develop and supervise projects for the pay cable network. Berg serves as executive producer/showrunner, along with Mike Judge, on Judge’s upcoming HBO comedy series Silicon Valley. Additionally, he has directed a couple of episodes of the series. Berg…

Paramount Pictures has released an early image of Sacha Baron Cohen as The Dictator, the comedy in which he plays the dual roles of a ruthless dictator who heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations and finds that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the…

EXCLUSIVE: Anna Faris has been offered and is in negotiations for the female lead in The Dictator, the Paramount Pictures comedy that has Sacha Baron Cohen starring in dual roles. Baron Cohen’s Borat and Bruno director Larry Charles is helming, and Paramount has set a May 11, 2012 worldwide release date. Scripted by…