A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

There must be something in the air.

Although the Primetime Emmys are a few weeks away, you might not be crazy to think they are actually happening this weekend as networks and streamers (mostly streamers) are gathering just about every nominee they can find to put in one place as if it was Emmy night(s) itself.

The second annual Televerse, which entices fans to shell out for passes and tickets, will again be taking place at the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles, a stone’s throw from the Peacock Theater where the actual Emmy show(s) will be taking place over the course of Labor Day weekend (for the formerly called Creative Arts Emmys), and then finally September 14 for the big NBC Primetime show where the final 19 categories will be handed out.

The Creative Arts ceremony before that will feature about 80 categories including the controversial move of four Limited Series (writing, directing, supporting), and a Variety category now off the big show and relegated to the one that most viewers don’t see.

This weekend the Television Academy aims to make it an even playing field, offering up panel after panel after panel after panel of nominated shows and stars (even Harrison Ford is showing up for the Shrinking get-together Saturday). A look at the lineups for the event running Friday-Sunday is a who’s who of who’s nominated, making it appear that if you want to win an Emmy you better show up here — first because all of this is timed to balloting starting August 17 (through August 26). The hope is this event will be big enough to grab the attention of voters.

Among the flood of stars and creatives will be groups from the likes of Abbott Elementary, Beef, Dancing With the Stars, Hacks, Love Story, Paradise, Pluribus, Remarkably Bright Creatures, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Shrinking, Survivor, The Bear, The Diplomat, The Pitt, The Traitors, Top Chef, Widow’s Bay, Your Friends & Neighbors, DTF St. Louis, All Her Fault, Miss You Love You, Summer House, Muppet Show and more if all that is not enough. The Academy is trying to entice sales of passes by automatically entering buyers into a pool to win a pair of Emmy tickets each day of the event, but what do they need those for after hanging out with the nominees right now? So far though, free show tickets is as far as the Academy goes since I have not heard of any plans to raffle off actual Emmys, but give it time. It is only the second year for this.

Of course Deadline has been doing a similar kind of event for many years, as we did in April with our patented The Contenders Television, and will be jumping into the fray in this season-ending campaign weekend with our own hosted panels and photo ops for The Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio, and you can see them popping up on our site all weekend. It makes sense the Television Academy wanted in on this action as well in their own unique way. After all, the Emmys are their thing, so why not capitalize on it and try to make their own season a little more exciting?

Deadline started Contenders by focusing on the movie awards season. But it didn’t take long to realize with all the content out there, the television season, including all the other awards groups like Golden Globes, Critics Choice and SAG-AFTRA, was just as ripe, if not more so. Televerse, however, is looking more to be like a three-day summer camp for the small screen by throwing in practical workshops on directing, editing, musical scoring, and an acting class taught by Henry Winkler(!) There will also be reunions of series including Band of Brothers, Homeland, My So Called Life and Revenge.

Not to be outdone this weekend is HBO, competing directly in Hollywood at NYA Studios West with its own specific event, as it has done in the past, featuring panels and mingling for voters all day Sunday with their long list of nominated shows — a few like Hacks, DTF St. Louis and The Pitt doing double duty with Televerse. Over in Anaheim, Disney, the king of this sort of thing, will again be throwing its huge D23 fan event all weekend with an endless list of panels and marketing opportunities that is always mind-boggling to experience. It actually got going Thursday night with an unprecedented Disney Princess concert featuring the originals from a host of animated classics doing their greatest hits, culminating with a group sing on “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Maybe next year Televerse can get all the performers of TV’s greatest theme songs for a similar concert. Just a suggestion.

The Television Academy, like D23, did get a jump on it all Thursday night with the annual Television Hall of Fame ceremony honoring new inductees Jean Smart, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Teds Danson and Sarandos, and the late Ed Bradley. Smart is going for a record this Emmy season since a win for Hacks will tie her for most performer wins with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman at eight each. This Hall of Fame honor won’t hurt her chances.

Whether Televerse, the HBO extravaganza or any of this actually translates into hardcore votes, well it is tough to say because all this is coming at the tail end of a very loooooong campaign season that has been going on officially since the beginning of the year when FYCs started. These are the shows that are the ones left standing, and with enough in their marketing budgets to give it one last-gasp whirl.

The Showbiz Doc Crunch

The superb John Candy documentary I Like Me, from director Colin Hanks, has been on the trail for months it seems and will be at Televerse as well making its case. As far as I can tell it is the only one of the five nominees for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special that will be showing off at the Marriott this weekend. But if you ask me, this race, not as high-profile as some others, will be a nail-biter, one where every one of the nominees has a genuine chance to win.

What makes it so interesting is the showbiz-centric nature of what makes the final cut here, as opposed to what gets nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars where a docu about a show business personality almost never gets nominated, and rarely even makes the shortlist. If your movie is about Ukraine, Gaza, Putin or an octopus you are in like Flynn at the Oscars. If it is about someone who likely was or maybe still is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, fuggedaboudit, don’t even bother But be sure you submit to the Emmys because they love their own.

This year, and it is increasingly common, four of the five nominees are about show business personalities: Jayne Mansfield, Martin Short, Candy and Mel Brooks. The fifth nominee is National Geographic’s Oceans, which likely edged out Ben Stiller’s Stiller & Meara docu for the slot. Over in Docu or Nonfiction Series the frontrunner is Mr. Scorsese.

All of these nominees are terrific, really good by the way, and deserve to be in there, but clearly it helps to have a recognizable name when it comes to impressing Emmy voters. I could make a case for each one of them. The Mansfield docu, which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, is a fascinating look at the ’50s blonde bombshell through the eyes of her daughter, filmmaker and Emmy-winning star Mariska Hargitay, who also puts herself at the center of her search to get to know her mom who tragically died when Hargitay was just 3. It is a hell of a story and this one won the PGA and Critics Choice awards when it was angling for an Oscar nomination but is no doubt one of the best this year no matter the medium. It may not hurt that Hargitay was also a left-field choice to host the NBC Emmy broadcast, too.

The Martin Short docu is hilarious and heartwarming, a man who has had his share of tragedy but keeps going no matter what, and it comes from Lawrence Kasdan, a director who rarely has ever done TV. Judd Apatow turned out a fun and lively look at the “99 Year Old Man” (he is now 100) Mel Brooks, split it into two parts — and there could have been more . The Candy docu makes you laugh a lot too, but also weep at losing this great star so soon. That leaves Oceans, and the fact it is hosted by another 100 year old, David Attenborough, gives it a real shot. But the fact that it is almost impossible to choose between Short, Brooks, Mansfield and Candy could well make it the winner by default. Oceans are better known than anybody.

Good luck all. Hope it is a five-way tie.

As De Noche is revived following the casting of a new leading man, Christine Vachon is happy with the new version of the film.

The producer of Todd Haynes‘ upcoming queer romance recently praised Pedro Pascal as “born to play” the lead, a year after the Golden Globe nominee stepped in for original star Joaquin Phoenix, who exited the set in 2024 and seemingly doomed the project at the time.

“If you take the Pollyanna, glass-half-full version of everything happens for a reason, maybe the reason was that this was a role Pedro was born to play. So was Danny [Ramirez],” said Vachon in an Edinburgh International Film Festival talk with Screen Daily. “Both of them are a revelation.”

Although she admitted it wasn’t “an easy situation” when Phoenix departed the project, and “it was devastating” Haynes wasn’t able to complete the film that year, the “do-over” was ultimately a benefit to the movie.

“Todd was working on some other things, and he met Pedro on the awards circuit when he was doing May December,” she recalled. “People always say to me, ‘Is Pedro as nice as he seems?’ And he is. People are so invested in him.”

Vachon added, “We’ve worked together on Materialists. It started to be one of those things that was like ‘I wonder if [Pascal would do De Noche],’ and it worked out.”

In addition to the casting change, Vachon noted that they’ve updated the film’s locale from Guadalajara to Mexico City, “which ended up being better creatively.”

Since producing Haynes’ 1991 “new queer cinema” directorial debut Poison, Vachon has since worked with the auteur on Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far From Heaven (2002), I’m Not There (2007) and Carol (2015). She has also produced such films as Stonewall (1995), Kids (1995), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Camp (2003) and Party Monster (2003).

Phoenix reportedly stormed off the set of Haynes’ movie in July 2024 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was set to star alongside Ramirez (Top Gun: Maverick) as two men in the 1930s who develop an intense romantic relationship and leave Los Angeles for Mexico. Vachon was producing alongside Pam Koffler.

The project was rescued last August when Pascal took over the leading role, with production planned for earlier this year.

Haynes previously told Deadline that he and partner Jon Raymond “wrote the script with Phoenix” and would “all be sharing story credit on it together,” adding, “The earliest ideas around the story and the setting were things he came to me with a couple of years ago. We started to talk and share these conversations.”

At a smaller, more exclusive and intimate event hosted at LAYA Restaurant Thursday evening, Netflix took the opportunity to remind viewers of its roots in the YA genre by gathering talent from projects past, present and future that have become hits in the space.

Attendees were greeted by a tunnel plastered with posters from Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, Heartstopper, Ginny & Georgia, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, XO, Kitty, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, On My Block, Forever, My Life With The Walter Boys The Kissing Booth, Élite, Outer Banks, Young Royals, Sex Education and newer releases like Don’t Say Good Luck interspersed with placeholder title cards for shows and films not yet released like The Sticks, Poster, Just Picture It starring Millie Bobby Brown, The Body and Crew Girl. Not all posters or stills that made up the collage had talent present to represent them, though.

In what could be looked at as a response to Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest at the end of June at Nya Studios, the streamer trotted out talent from films dating as early as 2018 like Sierra Burgess Is A Loser and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before alongside the main trio of stars of My Life With the Walter Boys on a small red carpet of which Deadline was not a part beyond filming arrivals. Not only were talent mingling up close, but various stations set up throughout the venue offered custom goodies to take home.

A perfume station mixed various scents with bases inspired by Outer Banks, Ginny & Georgia, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, Never Have I Ever, and On My Block to top off with other notes along the lines of empowering, graceful, creative, spontaneous and more. A charm bracelet station had wristlets with charm options of ice skates, hockey sticks, cowboy boots, books, evil eyes, hearts and more to create combinations to string onto phones or wear as jewelry. And last, but certainly not least, there were tattoo stations offering permanent smaller flash tattoos as well as temporary ones. Talent visited tall stations.

A curious note that the playlist soundtracking the event contained needle drops from films like To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and XO, Kitty (Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” & “Anna of the North – Lovers”), People We Meet On Vacation (Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl”) and Voicemails for Isabelle (Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”), but other songs that stood out were Audrey Hobert’s “Sue Me” which features in Off Campus and Tame Impala’s “Dracula,” which features in a club scene in Megan Park’s Sterling Point, both Prime Video shows.

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With the splash that Prime Video made this summer in terms of young adult and new adult series and films, many based on beloved books, it is worth noting that Netflix had a moment like this about a decade ago, but it started more with book to film adaptations like the previously mentioned To All The Boys I’ve Loved before movie trilogy based on the books by Jenny Han. Han then took The Summer I Turned Pretty to Prime Video as a trilogy adaptation of three seasons as well, and a movie conclusion is on the way.

As Deadline noted, a similar wrap-up is in talks for XO, Kitty, the spinoff series of the To All The Boys films starring Lara Jean Song-Covey’s (Lana Condor) younger sister Katherine ‘Kitty’ (Anna Cathcart). Cathcart was in attendance, but no sign of Condor, who did just star in Prime Video’s The Devil’s Mouth.

Emma Pasarow, co-star of another notable Netflix film adaptation of Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride (2022), which also starred Off Campus’ Season 1 lead Belmont Cameli, was in attendance. Leah Lewis, who starred in Alice Wu’s The Half Of It (2020), also provided a bit of a blast from the past.

Some overlap could be seen with Isaac Arellanes, who features in My Life With the Walter Boys, promoting the upcoming show The Sticks alongside castmates and teammates Costa D’Angelo (East of Eden, Tell Me Lies, Season 2 of We Were Liars), Josh Macqueen (Motorheads), Shai Chase and more. Note here that We Were Liars and Motorheads are Prime Video shows.

A quick tangent to remind that some of Prime Video’s recent YA endeavors have ended up being canceled after their first seasons like Motorheads starring Michael Cimino, Melissa Collazom, Uriah Shelton, Josh Macqueen — who has transitioned to The Sticks — as well as The Runarounds from Outer Banks creator Jonas Pate. And on the Outer Banks wave, Madelyn Cline appeared in The Map That Leads To You for Prime Video, a book adaptation of sorts from Temple Hill who have a presence in the YA book adaptations world as well.

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Taking a step back from specific talent crossover and returning to Netflix’s lengthier timeline in the coming-of-age category, still more shows that premiered a while ago — Chilling Adventures, Young Royals, Élite and On My Block — felt like a bit of a stretch to include in the current zeitgeist, though Esther Expósito of Élite will soon appear in Prime Video’s Drawn Together based on the book by Mercedes Ron and Edvin Ryding of Young Royals has just been cast in Season 2 of Heated Rivalry.

As the scoreboard stands, Neflix has more experience in the space, both with original content and book adaptations, and they have branched out into various other genres like horror, science fiction, thrillers, Western, sports and comedy while Prime Video’s entry into the arena this summer, which has proven strong, focuses on specific summery settings, love stories and book adaptations with heavy fanbases. For example, Lizzy Greene from Ransom Canyon, which definitely skews more adult compared to a show like My Life With the Walter Boys, was in attendance last night, and she will also appear in Netflix’s upcoming The 99’ers film adaptation about the 1999 U.S. Women’s National Team that won the World Cup.

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The cast of A Different World, coming Sept. 24, walked the carpet as well, but Netflix reboots and remakes are a conversation for another time.

Prime Video’s sample size of offerings is much smaller and therefore seems more cohesive right now, but here I will note that Netflix has the next Carley Fortune adaptation following Every Year After at Prime Video: they’ve just entered production on the This Summer Will Be Different show. They also have Elle Kennedy’s Girl Abroad in the adaptation process in the wake of Off Campus, signaling that they want pieces of both pies so far only served up by Prime Video. It’s worth remembering too that Netflix has a significant chunk of the Emily Henry adaptations with People We Meet On Vacation leading the bunch, though these stories feel more new adult in ways. As many creators have recently told Deadline, coming of age takes place across one’s lifetime.

Zooming back in on Netflix’s upcoming slate, Crew Girl out Sept. 10 might offer a love triangle to rival that of My Life With the Walter Boys. The drama series watches 16-year-old Teagan Tao become the coxswain of the all-boys rowing team at her new prestigious high school while she deals with family drama and fallout. Created by showrunner Vivian Lin, the frothy series has more Netflix YA power behind it in Jeff Norton (Geek Girl, Finding Her Edge). The Sticks will make its debut in the hockey rink to compete with Off Campus and Heated Rivalry sometime next year. Quinn Shephard’s The Body will likely scare up an audience of some sort starting Nov. 11 with its combination of Catholic high school drama and horror as well as stars like Sofia Wyle (High School Musical, The School for Good and Evil) and Gabby Windey making her acting debut.

A standout pairing in attendance on the red carpet yesterday evening was Beatrice Kitsos (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty, Jurassic World Rebirth) who will helm the upcoming film adaptation of Lynn Painter’s YA romance novel Better Than The Movies, directed by Julia Hart (Don’t Say Good Luck). Iacono marks another notable Prime Video and now Netflix crossover.

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Prime Video’s summer of obsession is nearly over after The Last Sunrise and Drawn Together, both film adaptations, arrive on the streamer this month, with The Love Hypothesis on the horizon in September and likely Clashing Through The Snow in December. Netflix will have more seasonal offerings from Crew Girl to The Body to the newly announced Sunshine Girls coming in December. Forever Season 2 is currently in production, and Finding Her Edge Season 2 will enter production later this month.

It will be interesting to see how both Netflix and Prime Video, and even HBO Max to a lesser degree, move forward in the YA genre as time goes on. With a slate as big as Netflix’s, it becomes simultaneously easy to connect the dots of youth, coming of age, first-time romance and more between their shows and films, but also unwieldy or diluted at times with such a large load. Again, as Prime Video moves forward with its considerably smaller menu thus far — though sequel seasons are in the works for shows like Off Campus, Every Year After and We Were Liars, the challenge the streamer may face lies between deciding to diversify or double down on certain subgenres of the YA — and New Adult in the likes of Off Campus and Every Year After — landscape.

The question is whether any one network or streamer has claim to talent or the YA genre, and how this flag-planting will shape trajectories of the actors at the height of this resurgence of sorts, especially those who don’t want to be defined by certain roles. But, one big takeaway — that is not new — is that YA does, undeniably, factor into stardom, aside from any streaming brand.

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