MICHELLE OBAMA ANNOUNCES PROMA-ATHON: Michelle Obama is teaming up with MTV for a Class of 2020 Prom-athon. The daylong on-air takeover will feature all things prom, Deadline reports, including throwback films, short-form originals and a 90-minute prom party with virtual streaming available on MTV’s YouTube channel. Celeb appearances and live performances will be announced soon. The show will hit the air on MTV on Friday, May 22.
THESPIE BOWS: A new multimedia platform dubbed Thespie has been launched for theater lovers. It will allow viewers to watch more than 1,000 theater performances, artists talks, shows and livestreams. Fleabag and Miss Saigon are among those on offer. Founder and Amazon and Disney alum Tyler Stoops said: “I’ve been so humbled by the generosity of spirit displayed by artists and theater-makers during this crisis, and our ambition at Thespie is to amplify their work so it can reach as broad an audience as possible. When COVID-19 hit, we quickly saw that building Thespie’s work to a global, multimedia scale could help audiences continue their journey of exploring theater during this time where we can’t be together in person.”
BRUCE BERESFORD TO HELM BUDDY HOLLY BIOPIC: Driving Miss Daisy director Bruce Beresford has signed on to direct Clear Lake, the Buddy Holly biopic. The story will follow Holly’s teenage years, up through his 1958 Biggest Show of Stars tour. “The undertone of the story is how black, Hispanic and white artists came together on the first truly integrated music tour to begin to break down color barriers, in much the same way Jackie Robinson did in professional baseball. That’s a particularly relevant story for me to tell because I co-own the minor league baseball team in Daytona Beach, Florida, where Jackie Robinson first broke baseball’s color barrier,” Rick French, who executive produces Clear Lake, told The Hollywood Reporter.
NEW STAR TREK SERIES IN THE WORKS: CBS All Access is greenlighting the straight-to-series order for Star Trek: Discovery spinoff Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The drama will star Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romjin as Capt. Christopher Pike, Spock and Number One. The show will follow their story in the decade before Captain Kirk came aboard Enterprise. TBD when it will bow.
