BroadwayCon 2019 is in full swing, and fans, actors and theater industry insiders alike have converged on the Hilton Midtown from Jan. 11 – Jan. 13 to celebrate Broadway. Since BroadwayCon’s inaugural year in 2016, one of the most popular main stage programming events is BroadwayCon First Look, an hour-long preview of snippets of some of the season’s most anticipated arrivals.

From ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to ‘Mean Girls,’ Broadway broke records this holiday. The holidays brought a record-breaking week for more than a few Broadway shows, as well as for Broadway as a whole. The week ending in Dec. 30 saw a record number of theatergoers flock to the Great White Way for the holidays, with an astonishing 378,910 seats filled in what was also the highest-grossing week in Broadway history.

Harry Potter, Walter White and Olivia Pope walk into a bar in midtown Manhattan. Though it sounds like the setup for a pop culture junkie joke, thanks to this season’s packed lineup of name-centric Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, the scenario could happen any day now.

160 million theatergoers, 20 Tony Awards and 5 Olivier Awards. These distinctions could never belong to one show alone, but Disney Theatrical Group – which lays claim to these accolades, and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year – did, in fact, begin with just one show. At a special anniversary panel on BroadwayCon 2019’s main stage, DTG’s President and CEO, Thomas Schumacher, was quick to dispel the notion that the organization was masterminded as a vehicle for adapting Disney films into hit after hit on the Broadway stage and beyond.

On the show’s 15th anniversary, ‘Wicked’ fans enjoyed a VIP reception. On October 30th, Wicked celebrated its 15th Anniversary on Broadway. This worldwide phenomenon, however, would not be possible without Wicked superfans across the globe. On the evening of the show’s 15th Anniversary performance, a select group of Wicked fans gathered at the Gershwin Theatre for a special anniversary reception.

At 20 feet tall and 2,500 pounds, Kong is easily the biggest star on Broadway this season. This fall, a New York icon as famous as the Empire State Building itself will take center stage at the Broadway Theatre. King Kong: The Musical will bring the eponymous gorilla – who originated in the 1933 black-and-white film King Kong, which was adapted into a successful stage musical in Australia – back home.

As The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani’s autobiographical rom-com, satisfies summer moviegoers like Trainwreck did several summers before it, are we entering the age of a new kind of romantic comedy, or hearkening back to an older one?

Actresses and other public figures have long had the option of publicly parading around in designer gowns to drum up press coverage. But Stone—or, perhaps more accurately, her stylist Petra Flannery—took this tactic a step further, turning the outfits she wore at her many public appearances leading up to the Oscars into a subtle series of allusions to both iconic Hollywood eras AND the ensembles of past Best Actress winners, subconsciously painting her, in the minds of voters, as “Best Actress” material.

With several near-replications of scenes from movie musicals from several decades of Hollywood – among them Top Hat (1935), Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), West Side Story (1961), Sweet Charity (1969), and Moulin Rouge (2009), – is La La Land innovative in its intertextuality, or derivative in its repetition? Watch our video below and decide for yourself.

With 22 Emmy nominations and the coveted Television Critics Association for Program of the Year, FX’s The People V. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story is the undisputable critical darling of the 2016 TV awards season. At an event on the Fox Studios lot on August 16, FX paraded these accolades—with a special focus on actress and Emmy nominee Sarah Paulson, who also won the TCA award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Drama—in front of potential Emmy voters and the press with a screening of episode 6 of the series, followed by a conversation between Executive Producer Ryan Murphy, Paulson and Marcia Clark herself.

“The film wants to be what it is,” said editor John Axelrad (Rudderless; The Lost City of Z) during “Cutting it in Hollywood,” a panel featuring veteran editors describing their experiences in the cutting room. “It’s often times different from what is shot.” Each panel member presented a clip that showcased the importance they, as editors, had in shaping wayward footage into a story – in Axelrad’s words, “pulling the editorial rabbit out of the hat.”