Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/23/2016 i The Hollywood Reporter

In the days following Donald Trump’s stunning presidential win, ABC Studios chief Patrick Moran called Black-ish creator Kenya Barris. The men had a project at ABC about a pair of politically divided pundits who fall in love. Suddenly it felt more relevant. But now Moran wanted to be sure both sides of the spectrum were being presented with equal credibility. “In years past, it would be very easy to let one side feel like the cartoon and have the show assume that the audience is siding with the other,” Moran says of the liberal slant that often permeates Hollywood output. Barris agreed and has begun courting right-wing voices for his writers room: “There was no way I wanted to do something that was going to further the divide in this…

Like contestants on a reality show, the political media are being forced to play a waiting game until President-elect Donald Trump picks a press secretary and begins to set the rules of his communications policy. “Is he even going to have press briefings?” asks one TV news executive. “Who knows?” Until the networks get some clarity, they seem to be girding for an especially adversarial relationship with a commander in chief known for making false statements and turning the media into the story. Some news organizations are doubling down on fact-checking; ABC News is partnering with Facebook on an initiative to debunk fake news. At the same time, many newsrooms are working to lock down star anchors: NBC News recently re-signed Today anchors Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie, CBS…

People, Places, Preoccupations Three weeks out from its Jan. 2 season premiere, The Celebrity Apprentice understandably is having trouble escaping the shadow of its 11-year host. NBC’s longest-running reality franchise, now fronted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, returns the same month that the man who made it a hit is scheduled to be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Much to NBC brass’ likely chagrin, it was revealed Dec. 8 that Donald Trump will retain an executive producer credit and profit participation on the MGM-and Mark Burnettproduced Apprentice. Trump’s camp even said he might take a role in the show, though the president-elect blasted that suggestion (which originated with adviser Kellyanne Conway) during a Dec. 10 Twitter outburst. Schwarzenegger, who was vocal in his lack of support…

To hear more about The Hollywood Reporter’s mentorship program, go to THR.COM/VIDEO The day started promisingly enough. I woke at the crack of dawn, anxiously ripped through my emails and texts, pulled on my best suit and shiniest shoes, and set out for Milk Studios, where three girls from THR’s 8-year-old Mentorship Program that I help run were about to receive lifechanging scholarships to Loyola Marymount University. Then, just as I was rushing inside for THR’s Women in Entertainment breakfast, a photographer called my name, I posed for a snapshot, turned — and fell headlong into a pool. Thirty-six teenage girls in our Mentorship Program gaped in horror. What can you say? Sometimes luck just isn’t on your side. But it was for the girls who, a couple of hours…

Birthdays DEC. 15 Michelle Dockery, 35 DEC. 16 Shane Black, 55 DEC. 17 Peter Farrelly, 60 Milla Jovovich, 41 Sarah Paulson, 42 ← DEC. 18 Brad Pitt, 53 Steven Spielberg, 70 DEC. 19 Jake Gyllenhaal, 36 DEC. 20 Jonah Hill, 33 Dick Wolf, 70 Weddings Jad Dayeh, an agent in WME’s nonscripted department, married Jessica Sebastian, senior vp development at ITV, on Nov. 26 at the Kamalame Cay resort in the Bahamas. Sheraton Kalouria, president and chief marketing officer of Sony Pictures Television, married Gary Bradhering on Dec. 2 in Beverly Hills. The couple will honeymoon in Rajasthan, India. Actors Patrick J. Adams of Suits and Troian Bellisario of Pretty Little Liars were married Dec. 10 at Rancho Dos Pueblos near Santa Barbara. The couple met in 2009 when…

The value of The Voice to NBC cannot be overstated. TV’s most popular reality show has made its network the most consistently top-rated on the dial, sparked an unscripted buying spree that the Big Four networks hadn’t seen since the early 2000s and continues to serve as the go-to launchpad for NBC’s most promising dramas, including fall breakout This Is Us. But much to NBC executives’ chagrin, The Voice, like most alternative programming from Big Brother to Dancing With the Stars, is a borrowed property. Future hits likely won’t present the same obstacle. Media companies increasingly are looking to own the unscripted series they air, much as they do the scripted ones. In fact, 2016 saw NBCUniversal and CBS Studios form their own alternative operations in an effort to get…

The crowd-pleasing opening of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land — all that freeway traffic giving way to a musical number before frustrated drivers Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) are even introduced — wasn’t inevitable. The originally scripted opening was very different, and at one point in postproduction, the number was cut out of the movie, reveals the film’s editor, Tom Cross, who won an Oscar for Chazelle’s 2014 feature, Whiplash. “Originally, Damien wanted to open with vintage-looking studio logos and a CinemaScope logo and then an elaborate main title sequence, which served as the overture,” says Cross. “And after the lengthy overture, it would open to the freeway and our characters stuck in traffic, and then we would pan past the cars, and then the number starts. But…

Map by Chris Philpot Unlike its tech forefathers Google and Facebook, both of which are fashioning large, contiguous campuses in Playa Vista, Snap has built a network of offices that more closely resembles an archipelago across Venice. Just blocks from the boardwalk and in some cases right on it, the company has been snatching up parcels of office and residential space that stretch north to Navy Street and south to Market Street. “They run a lean ship, but to become the company they want to become, they have to keep scaling,” says Ben Bajaran, an analyst for the market research firm Creative Strategies. Venice presents challenges for a operation that ultimately may be seeking a building big enough to fit hundreds of employees under one roof — which may explain…

There has been very little research to actually understand the biology of creativity. So in November, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, we presented the results of our Big C project to the Society for Neuroscience of Creativity. (“Little C” creativity can be found in nearly all people; “Big C” creativity is relatively rare, involves breakthrough thinking and can be associated with greatness.) The Big C project studied differences in creativity between internationally renowned artists and scientists who have been acknowledged by their peers as showing high levels of innovation in their work. We studied 30 people in each of three groups: scientists, artists and a control group — people recruited from around UCLA who are very smart but not selected for being particularly creative. Following a series of…

Charles Roven still was in his teens when he landed work as a stunt extra on Hawaii Five-0 and fell in love with the entertainment business. After studying economics and political science at UCLA, then switching to USC’s film school, his brother Fred persuaded the Los Angeles native to go into finance. He used that money to develop film projects and build a management company, then produced his first movie, 1983’s car-racing drama Heart Like a Wheel. Thirty-three years later, Roven, 67, is one of the industry’s preeminent producers, responsible for such major feature films as 12 Monkeys (1995), City of Angels (1998), Man of Steel (2013), the Dark Knight trilogy and the upcoming Wonder Woman and Justice League. Once overshadowed by his (late) wife, Dawn Steel — the famously…

The departure of Greg Silverman as Warner Bros.’ production head on Dec. 14 came as a surprise only in that it finally happened. For many months, Silverman-is-out rumors swept the industry, usually pegged to the release of such flops as Jupiter Ascending, Pan and In the Heart of the Sea. Sources say that months ago, talent reps and even some major filmmakers began lobbying Warners chairman Kevin Tsujihara to replace Silverman, 44, having lost confidence in his leadership as the studio suffered through a drought. This year, Warners began to do better at the box office, pulling in $873 million worldwide for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, $746 million on Suicide Squad and $685 million and counting on J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Warners recently…

President-elect Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to spend as much time as possible at his personal residences — namely his penthouse suite at Manhattan’s Trump Tower — during his time in office. But what happens when President Trump comes to L.A.? In 2007, Trump paid $7 million for a 5,395-square-foot Colonial at the corner of Canon Drive and Sunset Boulevard (in the one precinct on L.A.’s Westside that voted for him), where Michael Wolff interviewed him for THR in May. On short trips to L.A., he reportedly opts for a bungalow at the nearby Beverly Hills Hotel. Were he as president to bunk at his five-bedroom house, security could turn one of Beverly Hills’ busiest corners into a logistical hellscape. Neighbors of President Obama’s Hyde…

Paul Schrader: Why Ambien and Facebook Don’t Mix A recent late-night, anti-Donald Trump Facebook post penned by Paul Schrader prompted a visit from NYPD’s Counterterrorism unit. The Taxi Driver scribe dubbed the coming Trump presidency “a call to violence” and suggested “we should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown,” a reference to the 19th century abolitionist. He quickly deleted the post, but not before two plainclothes cops showed up. “A couple of cabernets and half an Ambien, and God knows what you’ll post,” he tells THR, standing by his general stance against intolerance. “Name-calling, racial profiling, bullying — these are not the hallmarks of freedom.” And while he’s bracing for “a culture of intimidation,” Schrader says he will be less “intemperate” and adds that the officers showed…

Predictions and Analysis 2017 promises to be a year of dramatic import for the Hollywood talent agency ecosystem, one that could define the next decade. Long gone are the days when agencies could be judged solely according to lists of clients lost or stolen or, for that matter, tallies of agents who simply switched teams. Ever since the representation wonderland opened its doors to private equity money (first back in 2005 with Rizvi Traverse’s investment in ICM, then in 2010 with TPG Capital and CAA and Silver Lake’s 2012 purchase of 31 percent of WME), vocabulary about the business, evaluations of company performance and projections into the future have been in flux and in play. It’s a much more multifaceted world now, with outside money being put to work…

There are anomalies and outliers, and then there are beautiful freaks of nature like Dick Van Dyke and Norman Lloyd. When I arrived at Van Dyke’s Malibu home, Dixieland jazz blared as the 91-year-old sashayed around his kitchen, hips swaying and teeth gleaming. Later that morning, he would recite his daily gym routine, his passion to code 3D animation and his preparations for a Mary Poppins sequel. Not to be outdone by such a fledgling, Lloyd, who turned 102 in November, gleefully shared his improv duels with Amy Schumer on the set of Trainwreck, his chats with Judd Apatow about doing another movie and his deconstructions of the Dodgers’ pitching flaws — and that was before he sprung out of his chair to show me the exercise bike in his…

Members of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are facing a pretty impossible task. On Dec. 6, the Academy announced its shortlist of 15 feature-length documentaries, culled from 145 submissions. Now, the branch must winnow that list of 15 down to just five nominees, to be announced Jan. 24. The problem is that there isn’t a clunker in the bunch. And the quandary that the doc voters are likely to face is that there is no one set of standards against which all of this year’s very different films can be measured. Start with the question of length. Ezra Edelman’s epic O.J.: Made in America brushes past any limitations with a running time of more than 7½ hours. Purists may argue that the project,…

Film 1 O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA Who would have thought that 22 years after the most scrutinized murders in Los Angeles history — and landing at the same time as an FX miniseries — there would be a major work full of new insights about O.J. Simpson and the “trial of the century”? Ezra Edelman answers that with this staggering eight-hour documentary that places the crimes within the sorry historical context of troubled LAPD/African-American relations. 2 LA LA LAND An original musical in modernday Hollywood? What could be more unlikely? (Perhaps a blackand-white silent French film, and look what happened in 2011.) With an assist from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, Damien Chazelle resuscitates a moribund genre by relocating its potential for grace, beauty and romance and setting it in…

Memorable moments from a storied history With Hanukkah beginning on Christmas Eve, 2016 is the ideal year to embrace “Chrismukkah” — the concept of merging Christmas and Hanukkah, first brought to the world in a 2003 episode of Fox’s The O.C. The idea was put forward by the Seth Cohen character (Adam Brody), the son of a Christian mother and Jewish father, who decides the world needs “the greatest superholiday known to mankind, drawing the best of what Christianity and Judaism have to offer.” In his view, much of the benefit is material. He notes there will be “eight days of presents, followed by one day of many presents.” (This year, that would be reversed.) “The show’s concept was: If you’re a young Jewish man living in Orange County with…

Don’t get rid of those window coverings just yet. There might be a glimmer of hope for film studios aiming to narrow the theatrical window for consumers willing to pay as much as $50 to see a new release in their own homes rather than trek to the theater. The major theater chains — including Regal and Cinemark — no longer are steadfast in their opposition to a posh premium VOD service that would kick in about 17 days after a movie first hits the multiplex. “We’re having very constructive conversations with the exhibitors for the first time that we’ve had in a long time,” Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara told investors Nov. 29 when discussing AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner. “We are working with them to create…

Predictions and Analysis When the other signature Donald Trump issues — Mexican walls, Obamacare, trade deals — shortly become mired in legislative and fiscal reality, and when Hillary Clinton is locked up and forgotten in Chappaqua, Trump still will have the media to kick around. Of all his issues, the media and its near-feral opposition to Trump may be the most enduring, evocative and, for him and his supporters, the most entertaining one. His sweetest victory, accomplished through derision, mockery and artful baiting of the media — a strategy that, as a delicious byproduct, yields even more coverage by it — may be over the media itself. Little has been as bewildering and painful to journalists as Trump’s attack on them. The sense of horror and foreboding that this…

On Dec. 7, billionaire investor Mark Cuban appeared before Congress and, in defending the $85.4 billion proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner, proclaimed that mobile apps have unseated TV as “the best alternative to boredom.” While idly pulling out a phone to watch a soundless video on Facebook instead of flipping on CNN hardly seems revolutionary, that change in consumer behavior is just the start of what many observers believe will be a radical shift this coming year as the cellphone replaces the cable box. “In the past, we went to our media,” the Shark Tank star noted during the hearing. “Today, our media comes to us.” And now it’s looking increasingly like the tech and telecom industries will control that delivery. That’s the motivation behind AT&T’s Time Warner…

The men’s restroom of the Landmark Theatres in West L.A. is as good a place as any to gauge the true sentiments of Oscar voters. Following a showing of Hacksaw Ridge a few Saturdays ago, I found myself washing my hands next to two gentlemen — both appeared to be about 63, the average age of Academy members, with one wearing a Kung Fu Panda 2 cap (the kind of hat a grown man doesn’t wear unless he worked on the movie) discussing what they had just seen. “Didn’t want to like that one but …,” the first man said, trailing off. “But Mel can direct,” the friend finished. I knew instantly why they were conflicted. This season, admiration for Hacksaw Ridge as an emotional and deftly staged World War…

Real Estate With Venice-based Snap eyeing an IPO at a reported valuation of $25 billion in the coming months, the stage is set for the greatest unleashing of homegrown tech wealth that Los Angeles has ever seen. For the past year, the technology company founded by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, formerly known as Snapchat, has been gobbling up office space around the famed Venice Boardwalk, and the ripple effect of an IPO will deeply impact nearby residential markets as well. Venice clearly is positioned as the greatest beneficiary of this influx of capital, but several factors now besetting the beachside community — a pushback against development, a brewing movement to secede from L.A. (aka Vexit) and a homeless epidemic — may push some newly minted millionaires to spend…

BBURNISHED BY THE LOW LIGHT OF GLASS-WALLED DISPLAYS, THEY seem like ancient artifacts, but the objects here are beloved contemporary icons. One case houses the massive Smith & Wesson Colt .44 wielded by Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” Callahan in the 1973 film Magnum Force. In another rests the Beretta 92F used by Bruce Willis in Die Hard. All the great shoot-’em-up classics — The Bourne Identity, Pulp Fiction, The Wild Bunch — are here. This exhibit, celebrating cinema, isn’t in Hollywood; it’s thousands of miles away, a museum at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Va. The NRA is proud of its “Hollywood Guns” exhibit. It’s the most popular of more than a dozen rooms and multiple showcases, which include the gun that Theodore Roosevelt took on…

In spring 2015, Peter Berg began having a series of lunches with survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing. The director had been thinking about making a film about the terrorist attack — dramatizing how, in April 2013, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shocked the nation by detonating a kettle bomb on Boylston Street in Back Bay, leaving three dead and about 260 injured. Still, Berg was having trouble finding the right story to tell and — just as important — the right tone for telling it. He reckoned that talking to people who had lived through the event might give him some inspiration. It turned out to be a good idea. “I had lunch with Danny Meng,” recalls Berg of his meeting with the immigrant Chinese tech entrepreneur who was…

A Final Look at the Industry Despite its proximity to Hollywood, the 28-year-old Palm Springs Film Festival often looks far afield for its signature films and has become a haven for lovers of foreign-language movies, with a whopping 43 of the 85 submissions for foreign-language Oscar consideration on this year’s schedule. And the festival’s slate opens Jan. 5 with the world premiere of CBS Films’ The Sense of an Ending, a British production from Indian director Ritesh Batra, whose first feature, 2013’s The Lunchbox (which he also wrote), was widely admired and awarded. “[Sense] is a film that I’ve been anticipating for a long time,” says Michael Lerman, who joined the fest as artistic director in September. “It’s great for our audience. It’s a great story.” Adapted from the novel…