Behind The Scenes Buzz

EIGHT ARE CHARGED IN ILLEGAL FILM PROBE: Jetflicks claims to have more than 183,200 different television episodes. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted eight people with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law by running two of the largest unauthorized streaming services in the U.S., according to The Hollywood Reporter. The eight are accused of running the online subscription-based service Jetflicks. “One of the defendants, Polo, left Jetflicks and created a competing site based in Las Vegas called iStreamItAll (ISIA) that at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies,” according to the Dept. of Justice. “Like Jetflicks, ISIA offered content for a regular subscription fee to viewers around the United States, and ISIA publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime.”

FIRST LOOK AT THE SPY: Fans are getting their first look at Sacha Baron Cohen, who is playing legendary Mossad agent Eli Cohen in Netflix‘s The Spy. The six-episode limited series drops September 6^th. In the trailer, viewers will see him struggling with his double identity: “Taking off the clothes, it doesn’t work anymore. I can’t put him away.”

ROTTEN TOMATOES ADDS 600 CRITICS: Responding to a call for greater inclusion and diversity among its pool of approved critics, review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes has added 600 new film commentators. The company also renewed $100K in grants for 2020 to help critics from underrepresented groups attend film festivals and events. “Rotten Tomatoes is connecting audiences with authentic, trusted information from professional critics and fellow fans, to help them discover entertainment and decide what to watch in theaters and at home,” said Paul Yanover, president of Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company. “Significant advancements are happening across Rotten Tomatoes, from the team’s work to increase critic diversity in the Tomatometer to expanding consumer confidence with the new Verified Audience Score. We are especially proud to commit to another $100,000 grant in 2020 to support film festivals and industry initiatives that further inclusion in entertainment criticism.”

STEVEN SODERBERGH’S THE LAUNDROMAT TRAILER DROPS: Gary Oldman‘s Jrgen Mossack opines that “bad is such a big word for being such a small word,” in the first trailer for Netflix‘s The Laundromat, the new Steven Soderbergh Panama Papers scandal-movie that is having its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The Laundromat, starring Antonio Banderas and Meryl Streep, will hit theaters in the U.S. on September 27 before it lands on the streaming October 18.