Writer/director/producer John Ridley has signed a new five-year overall deal with ABC Studios. This is the longest-term pact for Ridley at the studio where he has been since 2014 with a two-year overall deal, followed by a three-year one. The long-term agreement reflects the desire by TV studios to secure their talent…

A second group of filmmakers have petitioned WarnerMedia to reconsider its decision to shutter FilmStruck at month’s end. Here is . the second letter To whom it may concern at Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks: Roger Ebert once said "the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a…

Oscar-winning writer-director John Ridley (American Crime) has been tapped to direct the first episode of Godfather of Harlem, Epix’s straight-to-series crime drama, starring and executive produced by Forest Whitaker. The series hails from Narcos creator Chris Brancato and Paul Eckstein, and ABC Signature…

EXCLUSIVE: Leslie Odom Jr., Freida Pinto, Cynthia Erivo, and Orlando Bloom have signed on to star in Needle In A Timestack, the latest film from John Ridley.  In addition, BRON Studios has boarded the project as a producer taking over after Miramax was originally attached. Oscar-winning Ridley is directing the pic…

EXCLUSIVE: John Ridley and Blumhouse Productions have teamed on a movie adaptation of his comic book series The American Way: Those Above And Those Below. The Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave writer and creator/exec producer of the ABC anthology series American Crime is writing to direct a film that uses superheroes to…

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker John Ridley, who won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay 12 Years a Slave, is taking over a building in what is known as the Pabst Brewery Complex in Milwaukee to create a creative hub for artists in his hometown. No Studios, a 40,000 square foot building, was purchased by Ridley and his business…

In the seven months since John Ridley's documentary on the LA Riots first hit theaters and then ABC, the nation has taken a turn, the director says—and not for the better. "I ask this as a rhetorical question—why have we regressed that much between April and November? It certainly seems that way," he tells…

A group of Hollywood filmmakers, sports teams and Deadline’s parent company Penske Media Corp are among those teaming to support the launch of this country’s first annual National Heroes Day today. The Day is designed as a celebration of every day Americans who perform courageous and selfless acts of heroism. National…

Last night at West Hollywood hot spot Catch LA, some of TV’s brightest stars came together for Deadline’s 2017 Emmy Season Kickoff Party. Hosting the heavily attended soirée were Deadline editors-in-chief Nellie Andreeva and Mike Fleming Jr., publisher Stacey Farish and awards editor Pete Hammond. As with last year’s…

As the 25th anniversary approaches of the riots that swept Los Angeles in the aftermath of the acquittal of four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, five documentaries are on the horizon examining what happened in 1992 and why. As I say in my video review above, the John Ridley-directed Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-19…

A television team-up between John Ridley and Idris Elba is a good idea that works on more than just paper in the April 16-debuting and 1970s London-set Guerrilla, but the real stars of this smart though sometimes slow effort are Frieda Pinto and Rory Kinnear. As a bohemian turned gun wielding urban revolutionary and…

John Ridley, whose documentary about the Los Angeles riots Let it Fall bows this month both theatrically and on ABC, has just sealed a deal with Miramax to write and direct his next feature. Entitled Needle in a Timestack, the film will be adapted from a the short story by Robert Silverberg about a devoted husband who…