THE COMEY RULE TRAILER DROPS: The first trailer for Showtime’s The Comey Rule has dropped, with Brendan Gleeson appearing as Donald Trump. The two-part limited series will air September 27th and 28th, and is based on New York Times bestselling book A Higher Loyalty. Jeff Daniels plays FBI Director James Comey.
MANGROVE TO OPEN LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: Steve McQueen’s Mangrove will open the 2020 BFI London Film Festival, the second time his work will open the festival, following Widows’ debut in 2018. Mangrove will bow October 7th, in a hybrid version of the mostly online festival. Starring Letitia Wright, Shaun Parkes and Malachi Kirby, Mangrove — co-written by McQueen and Alistair Siddons — follows the story of a group of Black activists who protested London police violence in 1970.
BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL GOES GENDER-NEUTRAL: The Berlin International Film Festival has decided to go gender-neutral with awards next year. “We believe that not separating the awards in the acting field according to gender comprises a signal for a more gender-sensitive awareness in the film industry,” festival directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian said in a joint statement.
CNBC SETS SHEPARD SMITH PREMIERE: Shepard Smith’s nightly CNBC newscast will begin September 30th at 7 pm. The show will be broadcast from CNBC’s HQ in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Dan Colarusso, CNBC’s senior VP of news, said in a statement that the show “will deliver the day’s news that goes well beyond headlines and political punditry. We are going to tell stories and show images that make sense of an increasingly complicated world.”