Kevin Hart

Hart rose from the open mics and comedy clubs of his native Philadelphia to become one of his country’s most recognizable performers — honing a signature style that combines his diminutive height, expressive face and motor-mouth delivery into an arena-packing stand-up act. He became the latest recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in a raucous ceremony at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday.

Kevin Hart’s Lift delivered a strong debut with 32.8 million views following its Jan. 12 premiere, making it the most-viewed title this week on the Netflix Top 10 chart and soaring to No. 1 on the English Films List. Falling just beneath that is J.A. Bayona’s survival story Society of the Snow, which landed another 28.1 million views and joins Netflix’s Most Popular Non-English Films List after just 11 days of viewing. The film currently ranks No. 1 on the Non-English Films list.

Kevin Hart will be awarded the 25th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts next March, joining a roster of previous recipients that includes Carol Burnett, Bill Murray, David Letterman, Dave Chappelle and last year’s honoree Adam Sandler.

Not even the ubiquitous stand-up’s new VitaHustle energy drinks can perk up his latest buddy comedy, Me Time, which debuted to a tepid 59 million streaming hours and a 7% Rotten Tomatoes score.

The deal with Abry Partners is the latest example of private equity’s pushing into Hollywood to cash in on the demand for streaming shows.

Norman Lear is heading back to the Sony lot. The television veteran and Jimmy Kimmel will revive their Emmy-winning Live In Front of a Studio Audience series on Dec. 7 with live episodic reenactments of the classic sitcom Diff’rent Strokes and its spinoff The Facts of Life.

The deal calls for Hart to star and produce four features for the streamer and then enter into a first-look deal via his production banner, HartBeat Productions. The comedian previously had a first-look deal with Universal, for whom it made the comedy Night School, and a deal with Nickelodeon.

Once a Labor Day weekend tradition, the telethon is coming back in October to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and its new host’s Help From the Hart charity.

Hart stepped aside just about an hour after refusing to apologize for homophobic tweets that resurfaced after he was announced as Oscars host on Tuesday. In a video on Instagram, Hart said the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave him an ultimatum: apologize or “we’re going to have to move on and find another host.”