Warner Bros is looking like the favorite to capture King Richard, a spec script by Zach Baylin that has Will Smith poised to play Richard Williams, Â the father of Venus and Serena Williams. This deal will fall in the $60 million budget range, making it as big an auction as we’ve heard of this year, this side of the…
EXCLUSIVE: Even though there were no major tennis tournaments last weekend, the minds of industry leaders were courtside anyway. They were reading King Richard, a spec script by Zach Baylin that has Will Smith poised to play Richard Williams. He is the father of Venus and Serena Williams. Despite having no tennis…
Steve McQueen's female-centric heist movie Widows might be packed with familiar and accomplished women like Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki and Michelle Rodriguez, but magnetic breakout Cynthia Erivo still jumped off the screen in her first ever feature. Erivo is a storied stage actress, and has already won an Emmy, a…
Naomi Osaka, the young tennis star whose mortification across the net from her idol, Serena Williams, added to a memorable TV spectacle at the U.S. Open Saturday night, has rebounded to score a major endorsement deal.
Nissan held a news conference to announce it had signed the 20-year-old Japanese player as a brand…
US Open Women's Championship already had been drawing a lot of attention as tennis great Serena Williams was going for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam title and looking to become only the fourth mom to win a Grand Slam. While the big anticipation and the intriguing matchup of Williams and hot upstart Naomi Osaka were…
Serena Williams had an epic meltdown live on ESPN at the US Open final, shouting at the chair umpire over a penalty and eventually spiraling into a rage that led to a larger game penalty, which resulted in a massive upset loss. It marked the third time in Williams’s US Open career that her anger led to an eventual…
Hours after President Donald Trump played into Nike’s hands this morning when he trashed the company for featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick in its latest "Just Do It" campaign, Nike delivered its nuts-to-you response. It unveiled a two-minute video ad featuring the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback…
The last day of August and the start of the Labor Day weekend produced the kind of calm in the ratings wars that you might expect.
Friday night’s primetime ratings saw  a five-way tie for the no. 1 spot in ratings/share on the night for adults 18-49. The big five included NBC's American Ninja Warrior rerun and Dateline…
U.S. Open tennis is serving up better numbers for ESPN so far this year. The Worldwide Leader said today that overnight ratings for its first three days of coverage are up 20% from 2017 — a 0.6 vs. 0.5.
The highest-rated telecast so far was Wednesday night's six-hour, 15-minute block that featured Serena Williams…
EXCLUSIVE: If you’re looking for greatness, then you might want to watch Gabe Polsky’s upcoming sports documentary In Search of Greatness. The film, which marks the first project for the sports-oriented distribution company AOS (Art of Sport), has scored a Nov. 2 release
Polsky, who recently served as EP of NatGeo’s Ge…
Saturday's Wimbledon Ladies' Championship on ESPN was the network’s highest-rated match since 2015, earning a 2.1 overnight rating from Nielsen, up 27% from a 1.7 in 2017 (Garbine Muguruza vs. Venus Williams). The 2015 match garnered a 2.2 for Serena Williams vs. Muguruza.
The rating for Saturday’s 75-minute match…
Serena Williams gets personal in Being Serena, a new five-part documentary series set to premiere exclusively on HBO. From HBO Sports and IMG’s Original Content Group, Being Serena chronicles the tennis icon at a pivotal moment in her personal and professional life. It debuts Wednesday, May 2 at 10 PM exclusively on…
