Innholdsfortegnelse for May 15, 2017 i The Hollywood Reporter

Behind the Headlines Like a phoenix with a short attention span, the broadcast television lineup has again self-immolated — only to re-emerge from its smoldering remains in front of Madison Avenue media buyers for the annual upfront bazaar. Beginning May 15, execs from the Big Four take Manhattan to tout new projects, returning series and refined schedules, ignoring the past year’s missteps amid nearuniversal linear ratings declines and an upfront sales market that buyers say is shaping up to be less bullish than the estimated $9 billionplus spend from 2016. Behind the scenes, the newest orders reflect an escalating push for vertical integration. On stages, the message is uniform: TV is still the safest buy (advertisers won’t find their spots next to anti-Semitic videos, unlike on YouTube). Forget gains, these…

Births David Schwarz, senior vp communications at Spike TV, and his wife, Jennifer, welcomed daughter Olivia Harper Schwarz on April 16 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Christopher Spicer, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and his wife, XYZ Films director of business affairs Cheryl Hebert, welcomed son Cameron Ray Spicer on March 18 at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. Congrats Conde Nast Entertainment named Joanna Massey as head of communications May 9. Hulu tapped AMC’s Joel Stillerman as chief content officer May 10. NBCUniversal promoted Tracy Cohen to senior vp corporate affairs May 9. ICM Partners hired Loni Drucker as a manager in corporate communications May 8. Deaths Michael Parks, who starred on TV’s Then Came Bronson and appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill…

Digital Gawker may be gone, but Michael Lynton hasn’t forgotten a story that ran on the now-bankrupt gossip site following the 2014 hack at Sony Pictures. In fact, Sony’s outgoing chairman has in recent weeks taken advantage of the troubles that befell Gawker — in the wake of Hulk Hogan’s stunning $140 million judgment against the site — to have an unflattering story about his family quietly wiped from its archives. Not only has the post vanished, but Gawker’s administrators have attempted to “de-index” it using special metacode to ensure it isn’t cached by search engines or captured by digital preservationists. The article in question, written by former Gawker senior writer Sam Biddle and published April 21, 2015, was largely based on Lynton’s emails at a time when Sony was…

ARE YOU ANYBODY? By Jeffrey Tambor (Crown, May 16, 304 pages, $27) LOGLINE The actor chronicles his memorable career, from playing second banana on The Larry Sanders Show to winning two Emmys, a Golden Globe and a SAG award as lead of the groundbreaking Transparent, as well as his childhood as a self-described “fat kid with a lisp.” BUZZ Few have enjoyed both the longevity (200-plus credits over 40 years) and the late-career renaissance of Tambor; this is bound to be full of juicy anecdotes and pearls of wisdom. DRAGON TEETH By Michael Crichton (Harper, May 23, 304 pages, $29) LOGLINE A fictional take on the “bone wars,” the 1870s rivalry between paleontology pioneers Edward Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, as they hunt for dinosaur skeletons in the Wild West.…

Three big questions face Sony Pictures Entertainment following the May 11 appointment of Tony Vinciquerra as its chairman and CEO: Will the longtime Rupert Murdoch associate and Fox TV executive slash personnel and expenses? Will he cut loose former Fox colleague Tom Rothman, the polarizing head of Sony’s struggling movie division? And, perhaps the biggest: Is his job ultimately to prepare the studio for a sale? Sony Corp. CEO Kazuo Hirai might have hoped to put an end to such questions by naming Vinciquerra, 62, to replace Michael Lynton when the latter departs June 1. (Vinciquerra will oversee film and TV but not Lynton’s music portfolio, which is now Rob Stringer’s domain.) Instead, questions are likely to heat up, especially given the whopping $962 million write-down Sony took on the…

Executive Suite One week out from ABC Entertainment’s May 16 upfront, Robert Mills’ Burbank office is a kitsch-covered sanctuary in the midst of whitecollar chaos. Decisions about renewals, pilot fates and the fall schedule are being weighed across the 10th floor of the company’s headquarters. But for the 43-year-old reality chief, surrounded by framed New England Patriots jerseys and ephemera from his Bachelor franchise, the big work is done: He just wrapped the deal of his career to date with ABC’s acquisition of American Idol. The resurrected singing competition, which ended a 15-season run on Fox in 2016, will add an anticipated 40 hours of programming to an already meaty alternative slate that includes Shark Tank, Dancing With the Stars and a suite of rebooted game shows. R ÉSU M…

“ EVERYWHERE I GO, IT’S ‘GREAT JOB, ALEC!’ EVERY COP ON A HORSE, EVERY HOT DOG VENDOR, EVERY SQUIRREL IN THE PARK: ‘THANK YOU.’ BUT THERE’S A SMALLER BAND OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS. YOU CAN FEEL THE HATE.” Outside of a cadre of furious tweets, Alec Baldwin hasn’t heard a peep from the man he’s been portraying for the past eight months on Saturday Night Live. But Baldwin, who’s enjoying another career renaissance thanks to his casting as Donald Trump on NBC’s late-night staple, has heard from one member of the president’s inner circle. “I’m not going to name names, but a cabinet member walked up to me at a restaurant in Manhattan — Manhattan, that’s a hint — and he goes, ‘I gotta tell you something. This thing you’re doing…

I felt it immediately,” says Tyler Perry, tapping his heart with a fingertip. “I knew this is where I had to be.” He’s behind the wheel of his white Bentley Bentayga, giving a tour of his 330- acre studio at the old Fort McPherson Army Base on the southwestern edge of Atlanta. Perry, 47, bought the property in 2015 for $30 million; he won’t say how much he’s spending to turn it into his new state-of-theart production complex — except that it’s “a lot.” Winding the SUV past earthmovers and through mud puddles, he pulls up to four still-under-construction, 20,000-squarefoot gray concrete soundstages. Eight more will sprout up before the end of this year, for a total of 12, including one behemoth 60,000-square-foot stage with a built-in water tank. When…

Innovators, Events, Honors C alifornia set out to curb runaway production in 2015 with a revamped $1.55 billion incentives program. It’s been so impactful that the state has not only kept many new productions local, it also has lured back a handful of TV shows from afar. The program is sure to be one hot topic when the state’s regional film liaisons gather May 20 at the Film in California Conference. “The projects accepted into Program 2.0 thus far are spending $3.9 billion,” says California Film Commission executive director Amy Lemisch. Every 12 months, the state divides its $330 million annual payout: 40 percent is earmarked for TV pilots and series, with an additional 20 percent allocated for relocating shows — while films get 40 percent. But the cash shifts…

The stunning box-office success of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion — a sequel to a mythical tale about warring royal cousins in an ancient kingdom that opened April 28 in the U.S. and already is the topgrossing Indian movie import of all time with $17.2 million — was fueled by two factors: the boom in the Indian-American population and their disproportionately high use of social media. “The social media power of the Indian diaspora is incredibly strong,” says Imax Entertainment CEO Greg Foster, whose chain played Baahubali on 40 screens in North America. “Did you see one traditional commercial for this movie? No. [But] everyone who needed to know about it did.” Everyone” means the U.S.’ 3.7 million Indian-Americans whose population here soared 60 percent between 2005 and 2015 (the most…

Heard Around Hollywood Extreme Makeover, Toby Emmerich Edition? Toby Emmerich took the reins of Warner Bros. Pictures in January, replacing Greg Silverman. Now he’s taking a sledgehammer to the executive suite. As his executive team comes together — Courtenay Valenti was upped to president of production while Kevin McCormick has returned to the WB fold as a senior exec — Emmerich is intent on giving the office a makeover. A studio insider tells THR that Emmerich is in the process of overseeing a layout reorg in an attempt to create a more collaborative environment and increase the flow of ideas. That could include a communal kitchen, said to be a chief concern. Coming from New Line, Emmerich, known to have a good eye for design, is used to a more…

After a spring that brought us the low-key charm of HBO’s Crashing, the no-charm blandness of TV Land’s Nobodies and Amazon’s lively The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel pilot, Showtime is hoping the public’s appetite for insidery portraits of the comedy world is big enough for one more: The network’s new hourlong series I’m Dying Up Here is based loosely on William Knoedelseder’s nonfiction book about the ’70s Los Angeles stand-up scene. The series — developed by David Flebotte (Masters of Sex) with Jim Carrey among executive producers — weaves a fictional ensemble of aspiring jokesters into a well-acted sprawl that soars when it focuses on the boozy, smoke-filled desperation of its milieu and bombs when it strains to shoehorn other themes in. Goldie (Melissa Leo) runs the hottest comedy club in…

The Hollywood Reporter was a huge fan of Twin Peaks when it aired in 1990. The paper’s review called David Lynch’s serial drama “a provocative, stunningly photographed piece of storytelling” that was “television at its best.” Where THR might have gone a bit over the top was when it said the ABC show’s ratings were so good, it “creamed NBC’s first installation of the Jesus of Nazareth special.” But Peaks inspired that kind of enthusiasm. Lynch’s show focused on FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), who is sent to fictional Twin Peaks, Washington, to investigate the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). But that’s just the barest skeletal structure. Peaks also was about scrumptious cherry pie, large trees, dancing dwarves, extradimensional realms, the Meals on Wheels program…