Latest in Best of 2016

There were close to a thousand limited-release titles that opened in 2016 in North America. Assessing the specialty box office is not as tidy as with the studios. The area requires some subjectivity given when factoring in cast, release strategy and any other number of factors. From well north of 100 distributors…

On Wednesday I revealed the first part of my annual list of the year’s best films. They are, in ascending order: Manchester by the Sea, The Edge of Seventeen and Sing Street (tied for No. 9), Moonlight, Captain Fantastic and Hidden Figures. So here then is the top five, my picks for the year’s best movies — and of…

If 2016 is remembered for anything from an international entertainment perspective, it will be noted as the year of the paradox: when waves of right-wing anti-establishment and anti-globalization camps did, in fact, accelerate the pace of globalization. It is possible that in 2017, for example, more British companies…

The clock is ticking down on 2016, but there’s still time to check out some of the great new TV series that premiered this year. To aid with what to watch among the plethora of pilgrims to the pantheon of Peak TV, a couple of days ago we showed you the first part of our Top 10 New Shows of 2016, and today we have Part…

Remember when the Oscars audience gave Stacey Dash the silent treatment, after she shimmered onstage to thank the Academy for naming her its "minority outreach director" in the thick of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy? No? Well, how about the Lesbian Death Syndrome that seemed to infect TV drama writers? Still drawing…

As the last films of 2016 are finally released in theaters this week, I can say that I found the year to be a very strong one in terms of quality. For every Dirty Grandpa-type disaster that was so jaw-droppingly awful, I  discovered maybe three other movies worth shouting to the skies about. That is what makes this…

This year  set a record for the number of scripted series on TV, but as Part 1 of our Top 10 New Shows of 2016 list makes HD-clear to both supporters and skeptics of this small-screen surge, the true name of the game in this Peak TV era is quality, not quantity. Deadline’s annual list reveals freshmen series from a…

It's easy to predict what will happen to the TV and movie businesses in 2017. Just figure out what Donald Trump will do as president and how that will affect the economy and regulation. OK, so it's not so easy. The media execs who helped to make Trump a national celebrity are as unsure as everyone else about what…

It's been a tough year for that large but elusive box office constituency, the religious believers. The biggest faith-market film to date, TriStar's Miracles From Heaven, did all right, with almost $62 million at the domestic box office; but it far underperformed the same company's Heaven Is For Real, which took in…

2016 will be remembered as the year Donald Trump won the White House by taking control of the television news cycle. One year after the reality TV star’s antics and debate performances nearly catapulted Fox News Channel to the top spot among basic cable networks, finishing within 300,000 viewers of ESPN, this year Fox…

Looking back on a year that offered an extraordinary range of shows, from intimate (Heisenberg, Blackbird) to spectacular (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812), it’s the performances by some of our most dazzling artists that stand out in the memory: Maryann Plunkett anchoring the Gabriel family, as she did the…