Daniel is a freelance writer and the reason Startefacts has a standing opinion on The Traitors.
He joined the site in 2023 after a few years of writing about local government, which turned out to be solid preparation for Real Housewives reunions: the same amount of shouting, but here you're allowed to say who was lying.
His beat is unscripted television in all its forms — Survivor, Big Brother, Love Is Blind, Below Deck, the entire Bravo ecosystem, and whichever true-crime docuseries Netflix has just put at number one. He has watched every season of Survivor, including the ones nobody defends, keeps a spreadsheet ranking the winners that he refuses to publish, and has a firm rule about finishing the episode before opening Reddit. He has broken that rule exactly twice and regretted it both times.
He also covers the game shows nobody files under reality TV until Wheel of Fortune changes a rule that hasn't moved since 1975, or Jeopardy announces a new host and half the country has feelings about it. He has been to one BravoCon. He came back with a tote bag, no voice, and a new respect for people who do that three days in a row.
When something is trending because "fans are furious," Daniel goes and counts the fans. When a show is "cancelled," he waits for the network to say so. When a reality star "breaks silence," he reads the whole caption, including the part after the ellipsis.
Coyote vs. Acme passed $100 million worldwide, three years after Warner Bros. wrote it off for a tax break
A studio decided this film was worth more unreleased than released, and wrote it off accordingly. The distributor that bought it afterwards has just watched the ninth digit tick over, and the campaign that got it there was built on the humiliation rather than around it.
Jensen Ackles will play Lucas Davenport for MGM+, the third actor in the role and the first to start at book one
A detective invented in 1989 has been on screen twice, both times as a one-off television film, and both times starting somewhere in the middle of a thirty-five-book shelf. The third attempt goes back to the first page, runs eight episodes, and starts shooting in Toronto within weeks.
Hayden Panettiere's death was ruled an accident five weeks after she was found, and the investigation is still open
Five weeks passed between the morning she was found and the sentence that names what happened. The office in South Carolina has now published its conclusion, and it closes one question while leaving the one the federal agents are working on wide open.
The ending of Resident Evil was Zach Cregger's plan B, and the shot that saved it was filmed on a hunch
Austin Abrams turns into a monster either way — that was locked in the first draft. What the director changed is how long you are allowed to believe somebody might stop it, and the change was only possible because of a piece of footage that had no purpose when it was filmed.
Adele Zaikman won a spinoff for the right to be a DWTS pro, then went out first on a night the voting site crashed
Two men in this cast have the same first name spelled one letter apart, and American fans vote by texting a first name to a five-digit number. On premiere night the online ballot collapsed and those texts were all that counted. The professional who went home has finally given her account of it.
Netflix is donating the novels behind Frankenstein and Heartstopper to 100 UK public libraries
Six novels, a hundred public libraries and an undisclosed cheque for the archives. Netflix has signed a national partnership with the British Library in the year Britain recorded its lowest ever appetite for reading, and the books going out to borrowers are ones the company has already filmed.
Melissa McCarthy says Gilmore Girls scripts ran 93 pages and she could not change a contraction
Everyone who has watched Stars Hollow knows the sound of it: talk that never lets up, references stacked three deep, jokes that land before you have finished the previous one. Somebody had to stand there and produce that every day, from paper handed over at breakfast, and one of them has finally described the job.
Live shows are back on The Voice after disappearing entirely in season 29, and the vote is now same-night
NBC spent several years quietly stripping its biggest reality format back: fewer nights, fewer weeks, and eventually no live episodes whatsoever. The thirtieth season reverses that, and it hands the audience something it has not had in a while — a result on the same night it votes.
Daredevil: Born Again will end with season 3, and Marvel has not said who is finishing it
Charlie Cox has played this character across two studios, two streamers and three separate writing teams since 2015. The run now has an end date, and the person who was steering it toward that end is no longer employed on the show.
Stephanie Nur did not know Lioness was bringing Aaliyah back, and says she found the clues by rewatching season 1
Lioness spent eight episodes asking who took Joe McNamara, and answered it in the last two minutes with a face from season 1. The actor attached to that face has now explained how the show kept it from her, and what she still has not been told.
