TV News

The final season of “Game of Thrones” might be bringing in a record number of viewers, but now more than a million of them are calling for a do-over of the last episodes.

As of Saturday, more than a million people have signed a Change.org petition for the hit HBO series to remake its final season, calling series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss “woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on.”

Dylan D., the petition author, explained Saturday that he started the movement out of disappointment and frustration, and that he’s not expecting HBO to react to the massive call for change.

A rep for HBO did not respond to a request for comment.

“I love this story, and I, like most of you,

‘Black Sails’ co-creator Jon Steinberg and his producing partner Dan Shotz have signed an overall deal with Fox 21 Television Studios.

Under the three-year deal, the pair will develop and run series for the studio. The deal is the twelfth such agreement that the combined Fox 21 TV and 20th Fox TV have signed since the Disney takeover.

Other creatives who have signed with Disney’s new TV acquisition include Wendy & Lizzie Molyneux, Drew Goddard, Jason Winer, Octavia Spencer, Nora Smith, Jake Kasdan & Melvin Mar, Marlene King, Liz Meriwether, Amy Holden Jones, Dan Fogelman and Jon M. Chu.

“Jon is both

After a nearly four-hour show (including voting time), Duncan Laurence snagged the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest for the Netherlands with the song ‘’Arcade,” written and composed by Duncan Laurence, Joel Sjöö and Wouter Hardy.

Laurence won a total of 492 points from the expert juries and televoters in a contest that was touch and go from the beginning, with North Macedonia a surprise frontrunner until the collective votes were tallied. Italy finished in second place with 465 votes and Russia came in third with 369 votes. It was the fifth win for the Netherlands in Eurovision history. The last time the Netherlands won was

DJ Khaled proved his clout by recruiting nearly a dozen giants of hip-hop and R&B for his two-song performance on the season finale of “Saturday Night Live.”

The rapper-producer-dj released his latest album, “Father of Asahd,” on May 17. It features many of the rappers who joined him on stage for a succession of medleys, including Lil Wayne, Big Sean, Meek Mill, J Balvin, Jeremih and Lil Baby as well as John Legend and Sza.

An image of the late Nipsey Hussle, who died on March 31, was projected behind the performers during a medley of “Just Us,” “Weather the Storm

Pete Davidson’s favorite TV show has a pair of queens… but no dragons.

In this digital short from Saturday Night Live‘s season finale, Davidson starts out rapping about his love of HBO’s Game of Thrones, spitting a rhyme about “dragons,” “wolves” and a “big-ass wall.” But when castmate Kenan Thompson joins him to share his own GoT fandom — he even brings along Grey Worm himself, Jacob Anderson! — they quickly deduce that Pete hasn’t actually ever seen Game of Thrones. So Pete decides to do “an epic rap song” about his actual favorite show instead: Netflix’s senior-ladies sitcom Grace and Frankie.

Madonna’s controversial performance may have grabbed the headlines, but Duncan Laurence won the nearly four-hour-long 2019 Eurovision Song Contest for the Netherlands with the song “Arcade,” which he cowrote with Joel Sjöö and Wouter Hardy.

Laurence won a total of 492 points from the expert juries and televoters in a contest that was touch and go from the beginning, with North Macedonia a surprise frontrunner until the collective votes were tallied. Italy finished in second place with 465 votes and Russia came in third with 369. It was the fifth win for the Netherlands in Eurovision history, although the country’s first in 44 years.

The cold open for the season finale of “Saturday Night Live” saw the Trump administration taking some liberties with a rock classic.

Alec Baldwin returned as President Donald Trump, letting America know that he is going to be taking it easy now that summer is nearly here. He then said he was going to do all of things he never has time for anymore: “golf, visiting friends in prison, and enjoying all the new tariffs from China.”

Trump then said he was on “cruise control” until being elected to his second term before launching into a rendition of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.

With the Source now inhabiting Macy’s body, Sunday’s Charmed finale (The CW, 9/8c) pits the sisters against their most dangerous foe yet — one of their own.

TVLine caught up with the show’s titular trio — Madeleine Mantock, Melonie Diaz and Sarah Jeffery — on The CW Upfront carpet in New York earlier this week to discuss what the future holds for the world’s most powerful witches.

As Mantock explains it, power-mad Macy attempts to use her newfound powers to reshape reality, realizing very quickly that such actions can have dire — and perhaps deadly — consequences. She also has some

Rita Moreno, Hasan Minhaj, Michael Schur, Janet Mock and Dolores Huerta were among the honorees at the 78th annual Peabody Awards who spoke movingly about the power of the medium to change lives and drive social change.

The list of 30-plus Peabody winners ranged from entertainment series such as FX’s “Pose,” NBC’s “The Good Place” and HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness” to documentaries, podcasts and local investigative reports. Hosted by investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, the ceremony held Saturday night at Cipriani Wall Street featured calls to action and words of praise for mentors and supporters.

Mock, executive

Alejandro Aranda, Laine Hardy and Madison VanDenburg will take the American Idol stage one last time on Sunday (ABC, 8/7c) to sing for your votes — but until those lights are dimmed, it’s still anyone’s game. All three finalists have proven themselves to be fan favorites this season, effortlessly sailing through week after week, but you can only rest on your yannis for so long.

Were it up me, I’d hand the victory to Aranda, who I believe has the most potential as an artist to put out interesting music. Between his studio-ready originals and reinterpretations of classic jams,

U.K.-based Great Point has bought into Seven Seas Films, the British indie producer that recently teamed with BBC Studios for a drama series about the final months of Marilyn Monroe. Great Point has a new “enterprise investment scheme” fund, Great Point Ventures, and is primed to invest in several more film and TV producers in the U.K.

The U.K. has rejigged the Eis funding mechanism, which in the past has been extensively used to back slates and individual projects. That is no longer possible, but the new rules do allow for investment in media firms.

Demand for content is high,

Is Jonah Simms’ biological clock ticking?

In Superstore‘s Season 4 finale, the Cloud 9 employee was caught off guard when girlfriend Amy suggested that she was done having children. This led to an awkward exchange between the series’ central couple that took place in front of the entire staff:

Amy: I’m never getting pregnant again, so…

Jonah: Sure, but other people might be— wait, never?

Amy: I don’t know.

Jonah: I mean, I don’t know where this is going, but…

Amy: I just, I haven’t thought about it.

Jonah: Yeah, I haven’t thought about it either,

CBS’ effort to buy pay TV service Starz from Lionsgate seems on the surface to be a head scratcher.

CBS has told Wall Street for years that it has prospered because it brings only two must-have services to the table in negotiations with MVPDs, allowing the Eye to drive a hard bargain. Why would CBS want to take on a lower-profile rival to Showtime?

Meanwhile, Lionsgate has presented Starz, which it acquired in 2016 for $4.4 billion, as central to its strategy of diversification with a premium TV network that can serve as the launching pad for new programs from its TV studio.

This weekly feature is in addition to TVLine’s daily What to Watch listings.

With nearly 500 scripted shows now airing across broadcast, cable, streaming and whatever “Bitmovio” is, it’s easy to forget that a favorite comedy is returning, or that the new “prestige drama” you anticipated is about to debut. So consider this our reminder to set your DVR, order a Season Pass, pop a fresh Memorex into the Vcr… however it is you roll.

This week, you’ll find a whopping 32 season — and series — finales (including Game of Thrones and NCIS), nine premieres (including Elementary and What/If) and so much more.

Before she was Scarlet Witch or even Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen had a chance to be Daenerys Targaryen. “When I first started working, I just auditioned for everything, because I like auditioning. And I auditioned for Khaleesi. I forgot that,” she told Vulture. “It was the most awkward audition I’d ever had.”

As part of the tryout, she was asked to perform a monologue that takes place at the end of the first season “[from] after she just burned. And she’s making this speech to thousands of people about how she’s their queen. They didn’t know if they wanted a British accent or not. So you did it in both. It was terrible. Anytime someone says, ‘Bad audition story.’ That’s one I remember.”

As fate would have it, Emilia Clarke didn’t originally get the role either. Tamzin Merchant played Dany in the original pilot,

Now that the fog that rolled in with the finale of Grey’s Anatomy has begun to dissipate, we’re looking back and seeing more clearly the 25 tumultuous episodes that made up the Season of Love. They were doozies, no?

Between the hookups and letdowns, the true confessions and insurance fraud, there was nary a dull moment — and so! Many! Memorable ones!

So, to bridge the gap between Season 15’s conclusion and Season 16’s beginning — why must summers be so damn long?!? — we’re counting down the 15 sexiest, sweetest, saddest scenes of the season that we just finished. Keep in mind,

The Doha Film Institute, which is at Cannes as a co-financier of Elia Suleiman’s competition entry “It Must Be Heaven,” has announced the 37 projects receiving its Spring Grants, roughly half of them to be directed by women.

The latest batch of mostly Arabic fare set to tap into support from the Dfi, a key driver for Middle East filmmakers, will comprise a slew of documentaries and two TV series, which “reflects the type of content currently in demand from streamers,” said Dfi director of financing Hanaa Issa.

TV series represent a new strand of funding for the Dfi, initiated with the previous grants cycle.

Producer Dana Brunetti filed suit on Friday seeking to block the second season of the anthology series “Manhunt,” which is set to dramatize the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Brunetti sued Lionsgate, the production company, as well as Discovery Communications and Charter Communications. Brunetti, the producer of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and many other films, was an executive producer on the first season of “Manhunt,” which dealt with the Unabomber case. The show ran on Discovery Channel in 2017.

In the suit, Brunetti said he pitched the show to John Goldwyn, then the executive producer of scripted content at Discovery, in

NBC’s The Blacklist wrapped Season 6 on Friday with 4.45 million total viewers and a 0.6 rating, hitting a season high in audience while holding onto its Friday high in the demo.

As such, Blacklist and Dateline (4 mil/0.6) tied for the Friday demo win.

TVLine readers gave the Blacklist finale an average grade of “A-“; read post mortem.

Over on CBS, Hawaii Five-0 (5 mil/0.5; TVLine reader grade “B+”) ended Season 9 on low notes, airing an hour later and randomly leading out, as it did, of two “news” specials that averaged 4.2 mil/0.5.

Elsewhere, ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Performer | Jim Parsons

The Show | The Big Bang Theory

The Episode | “The Stockholm Syndrome” (May 16, 2019)

The Performance | “This honor doesn’t just belong to me,” said Sheldon as he began his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. And neither does this Performer of the Week distinction just belong to his portrayer; Parsons wouldn’t have been as brilliant as he was in the finale had he not been buoyed by an ensemble for the ages.

That said, Parsons was spectacular, imbuing Sheldon with the childlike wonder that for 12 seasons has made him so lovable, the incomprehension of social mores that has made him so challenging,