Entertainment

On the Shelf Remain By Nicholas Sparks with M. Night ShyamalanRandom House: 352 pages, $30 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. On the surface, author Nicholas Sparks and filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan seem like unlikely collaborators. Sparks is a master…

Warner Bros. said Wednesday it will renew the contract for studio heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy after the two orchestrated a string of back-to-back hits at the box office. The news is a notable reversal of fortune for the co-chairs and co-chief executives of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. Only six months ago,…

About 200 people gathered on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot for a screening of “Red Alert,” a four-part scripted drama portraying the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel from the perspective of six victims. The host of the Sept. 30 event was Paramount Chairman and Chief Executive David Ellison, who shared how he had chatted…

Rugby star Ilona Maher is a two-time Olympian, a “Dancing With the Stars” alum, a social media favorite and now a Barbie doll. Mattel announced Monday that it had assembled a team of four international rugby athletes to help encourage girls to embrace their confidence and stay in sports. The new “Team Barbie” campaign is…

Christopher Soto, the founder of the Center for California Literature. Los Angeles is, historically, a haven for writers and poets. In its city sprawl and California light, L.A. has fostered legendary writers from Joan Didion to Octavia E. Butler, created countercultural literary communities like the Watts Writers Workshop, and inspired Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”…

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> This 1882 L.A. phonebook includes just 90 names. (William Liang / For The Times) On April 3, 1882, the city permitted the Los Angeles Telephone Co. to string lines within city limits. A week later, L.A. printed its first phone book. Most early directories were tossed once a new one arrived, but Peter…

The “Reading Rainbow” is officially back, with internet-famous librarian Mychal Threets at the helm. Following the reboot’s premiere last Saturday, the new host responded to the audience’s wishes for a Latino lead in a recent social media post. He wrote, “You’re not going to believe this… I am [Latino]! My dad is Black, my mom…

Paramount has acquired the Free Press, a four-year-old digital news platform, and will make its controversial co-founder Bari Weiss editor in chief of CBS News, the company announced Monday. The official announcement came after months of speculation on the deal and Weiss’ high-profile role within the news division. Weiss, 41, will report to Paramount Chief…

Over the last decade or so, publishers of American genre fiction have borrowed a page from Hollywood’s playbook by essentially packaging novels like films, grafting together collaborators from two different A-lists: those that feature bestselling novelists and major celebrities. Large commercial rewards have been reaped from these crossbred literary partnerships. Bill and Hillary Clinton, to…

In a pop era where personal messiness is the oxygen of fame, Dua Lipa is the rare unfazed professional. Just as Taylor Swift and Charli XCX’s (extremely asymmetrical) feud spilled over the Hot 100 trenches, in comes Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour for four nights at the Forum to reassert that it is, in fact, possible…