Innholdsfortegnelse for June 21, 2017 Double Issue i The Hollywood Reporter

In November, Toby Emmerich was announced as president of the Warner Bros. film studio, and Hollywood has been watching since with interest, not to say wariness, for signs of how he will run the place. Insiders are hoping some light will be shed June 22 when executives gather at the Montage Laguna Beach for an off-site retreat. Emmerich, 54, has yet to greenlight a movie that truly bears his stamp: Sources say that first project will be The Goldfinch, an ambitious film based on the Donna Tartt novel, with John Crowley (Brooklyn) directing. That should stir some excitement. It may also soothe some who have business with Warners and who have been concerned that Emmerich plans what one important producer calls the “New Line-ization” of the studio. That would mean…

The power of one voice is strong, but when it comes to social justice, the power of our collective voices is unstoppable. Now is the time to recognize that through our voices we really can effect change. Some of us will do the important work locally at the micro level to awaken our neighbors. Some of us will work for progress regionally. And a few of us will be like Kalief Browder, a modern-day prophet whose death two years ago started a discussion that continues today about how poor, black juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system. Kalief grew up in the Bronx and started out like so many kids I grew up with in Brooklyn, kids who have to choose the right fork in the road every day.…

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine (DOUBLEDAY, SEPT. 26) BY Mark Twain, Philip Stead & Erin Stead AGENCY ICM Twain’s just-discovered fairy tale (finished by the Caldecottwinning Steads), about an orphan who saves a kidnapped prince from giants, started as a bedtime tale for his daughters. The Graybar Hotel (SCRIBNER, JULY 4) BY Curtis Dawkins AGENCY APA This powerful short-story collection from an author serving life in prison for murder presents incarcerated characters as colorful as the shut-ins on Orange Is the New Black while exploring their emotional struggle in facing the monotony of prison life.…

Six weeks after roundly kicking breast cancer’s ass, I began the writers room — with my best friend and co-showrunner Lennon Parham — for season three of USA’s Playing House. Lennon and I had not yet decided whether we were going to bring what we had been through into the show. That past year, when I wasn’t busy Googling “What did Debra Winger die of in Terms of Endearment,” I had kept a mental list of all the moments, both funny and sad, that we could potentially write about. There was no more high-stakes story we could tell to show the fierce way women show up for each other. I have always turned to TV for comfort (Gilmore Girls got me through a rough patch in my 20s — so…

“Go see Wonder Woman, bros. Happy Father’s Day. I guarantee your LENA DUNHAM The Girls creator, in an Instagram post reflecting on the continuing misogyny she encounters online for being an outspoken feminist. “I’m not going to turn into a drama critic.” JEFF BEWKES The Time Warner CEO, defending its financial support of New York’s Public Theater, which is staging a Central Park production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which a Donald Trump look-alike gets stabbed to death. “She’d want her death to encourage people to be open about their struggles.” BILLIE LOURD Carrie Fisher’s daughter, putting a hopeful spin on the June 19 coroner’s report on the star’s death, which revealed cocaine and opiates in her system. “OpenTable, I have a few things to tell you.” RONAN FARROW The…

1BOB IGER CHAIRMAN/ CEO ? WALT DISNEY CO. Film, TV, theme parks, products: No Hollywood exec oversees more and with as much success as Iger. The Disney board in March extended his contract through July 2, 2019, as the hunt for a successor continues. Revenue for fiscal 2016 was up 6 percent to a record $55.6 billion, and net income increased 12 percent to an all-time high of $9.4 billion. But not everything was rosy for Iger, 66: ABC ranks fourth among adults 18-to-49, and ESPN, which lost 10 million subscribers in the past five years, continues to drag on the stock price. BIG WIN Its global box office hit $7.6 billion in 2016. BIG BET Leaning on his entire portfolio — channels, digital entities, parks — to ensure ABC’s…

On June 6, as former Disney Studios president Rich Frank and his wife, ex- KABC reporter Leslie Frank (nee Miller), packed up their Beverly Hills house — severing a final permanent tie to the entertainment business — the owner of Napa Valley’s Frank Family Vineyards mused on how making wine is like making films. “You can’t make a great movie without a great script and director. In the wine business, you must start with great grapes and have a winemaker who can execute what you give him,” says Frank, 74, who, in the 1980s and 1990s, worked alongside Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner — who told THR: “Rich walked into my office at Paramount about 40 years ago, and I knew within five minutes he was a star executive” —…

Steve Koonin has come full circle. The lifelong Atlanta resident, whose family has been a presence in the southern capital for nearly a century, had always wanted to make his civic mark on the community. An opportunity arose in April 2014, a few months after the then-president of Turner Entertainment was invited to be an investor in the Atlanta Hawks. During conversations about the NBA team’s future growth, “I was asked if I could recommend somebody” for the CEO position, Koonin tells THR, “and I did: I recommended me.” Koonin, 60, may have traded upfronts for draft days, but as he told his Turner colleagues in a letter announcing his departure, he considers the move “a transfer to another division.” It was the third such “transfer” for the marketing whiz,…

DRAMA DANIEL J. FIENBERG This year we’re going to have a new drama series winner, since Game of Thrones is ineligible. The Crown, Westworld and Stranger Things were big players with the guilds and Globes last winter. Since Downton Abbey is also gone, how much new blood do you expect to see in the field? Or are you only worried about this being The Americans’ year? TIM GOODMAN The Americans better be in the mix. I hope Better Call Saul makes it. The Leftovers should, but won’t. The two shooins seem to be The Handmaid’s Tale and The Crown. I wouldn’t mind seeing Westworld in there because it was so ambitious. I’m worried that Stranger Things, a series I enjoyed but doesn’t merit a nom, will get in. That said, I…

KATHRYN ROMEYN writes about hair loss in Hollywood and the extensive and expensive ways men are dealing with it (page 58). “No one is willing to talk about the problem or what they have done to fight it,” says the 33-year-old L.A.-based journalist. “There’s such secrecy around this topic.” DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN, 44, photographed ABC’s Channing Dungey, the first black president of a broadcast network, with the first black Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, for the THR 100 list (page 86). The shoot incorporated “incredible” vintage studio equipment. JAY Z, 47, penned an essay about the vitality of TV for enlightening audiences about the systemic forces working against black men in America (page 24). He is an executive producer on Time: The Kalief Browder Story and producing a TV doc about Trayvon Martin.…

VICE’S $450 MILLION BOOST: ‘IT’S WHAT WE WOULD DO IF WE WERE GOING PUBLIC’ Vice Media’s latest cash infusion could signal that the brash digital firm is eyeing an IPO. A $450 million round of funding from TPG Capital, announced June 19, has given Vice a valuation of $5.7 billion, up from the $4 billion price tag it had in late 2015 following Disney’s dual $200 million investments. Vice is positioning the deal as crucial to its plans to ramp up the production of scripted programming through Vice Studios, which will make shows and features for digital and linear distribution. The company’s first such effort in this space is the satirical series What Would Diplo Do?, starring James Van Der Beek (who executive produces) as the DJ. It’s set to…

Big Number Peikoff Mahan) will join Steve Carell in Universal’s untitled Robert Zemeckis drama. Patti Cake$ breakout Danielle Macdonald (CAA, Justice & Ponder, Felker Toczek) will star as Jennifer Aniston’s daughter in the YA adaptation Dumplin’. Isla Fisher (UTA, Australia’s Shanahan, Sloane Offer) will join Ed Helms in the New Line comedy Tag. Glee grad Chris Colfer (ICM, Creative, Myman Greenspan) will make his directorial debut adapting his fantasy series The Land of Stories for Fox and Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk star Joe Alwyn (CAA, the U.K.’s Independent, Peikoff Mahan) will join Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots. Reginald Hudlin (CAA, Fox Rothschild) will direct Valiant Entertainment’s comic book adaptation Shadowman and will co-write with Salem grad Adam Simon. Lionsgate and Temple Hill are…

When such stars as Tracy Morgan and Kate McKinnon take the stage at New York’s Apollo Theater on June 25 to tape Spike’s One Night Only special with Alec Baldwin (it’s a comedic tribute, but please don’t call it a roast, says Spike), they’ll perform before a backdrop of murals featuring the star by cartoonist and THR contributor Steve Brodner. It’s the first One Night Only since 2014, and Baldwin — with his Trump parody on Saturday Night Live, box-office hit The Boss Baby ($491 million worldwide) and best-selling memoir Nevertheless — is the perfect focus for the returning franchise, says exec producer Casey Patterson. “It’s the year of Alec,” she declares, noting that Spike has pursued Baldwin, 59, for the tribute since its inception (past honorees include Don Rickles…

Although John Skipper became president of ESPN in January 2012, he made so few changes at the top that it seemed as if George Bodenheimer, his predecessor, had never left. His earthshaking June 16 announcement of promotions, realignments and farewells among senior executives is part admission that the old architecture wasn’t working and part bold blueprint for the future. ESPN’s “new world order” finally looks like a company run by Skipper. Though still hugely profitable (Disney reported $6.7 billion in 2016 operating income for its cable division), the “worldwide leader” has appeared in recent years a somewhat shaky ship. The company has lost roughly 12 million households paying about $7 a month. Add to that ever-increasing rights fees, the fact that its premier franchise, SportsCenter, no longer is the go-to…

U nder the gaze of a caramel-mottled pit bull named Dempsey, Peter Berg is slugging his way — literally — through his morning ritual. After a warm-up of stretching and working the bags, the Patriot’s Day director is sparring with Julian Chua, a former Golden Glove champion and taekwondo black belt. Chua works as a trainer at Berg’s Wild Card West Boxing Club in Santa Monica, which counts some of the biggest names in Hollywood as regulars. Padded in protective gear, Berg, 53, ducks and crouches his way around the ring, throwing a pattern of jabs, hooks and crosses at the much younger Chua. It is a surprisingly friendly affair, considering that these two men are trying to make contact with each other’s face. It’s been four years since Berg…

Ididn’t have anger,” says Tal Rabinowitz about the day in May 2014 when she was fired as executive vp comedy development at NBC, leaving the nearly 20-year veteran of Sony and Warner Bros. Television out of a job. “I had ego issues.” But by 2016, she had gotten them out of her system, turning her executive experience on such shows as The Mindy Project and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt into an entrepreneurial endeavor. Last February, Rabinowitz launched DEN Meditation, a studio offering daily classes in mindfulness and healing, as well as yoga and sound baths, to such students as Anna Kendrick and Amanda Seyfried. It was at NBC where she first learned how to meditate with then-co-worker Renate Radford, currently senior vp television at Brownstone Productions, who praises Rabinowitz, 41, for…

The good news in the new Transformers flick is that — spoiler alert! — the world is saved at the end. The bad news is that it leaves an opening for more Transformers flicks. This profitable franchise has not exactly enjoyed critical praise since its first installment in 2007, and Transformers: The Last Knight is unlikely to change that. But reviews won’t dissuade fans who enjoy seeing lots of things blown up, with director Michael Bay again happy to oblige. Anyone capable of explaining the storyline deserves a prize of some sort. Suffice it to say that the world is in peril; there are battles involving robots good and bad; and Mark Wahlberg, who returns after making his first appearance in 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction, clearly hasn’t forgone his…

Big Deal With All Eyez on Me’s surprise $26.4 million opening, all eyes should be on the savvy deal that put distributor Lionsgate in the black two days after the film’s June 16 release and the onslaught of Tupac Shakur projects on the horizon. In January, Lionsgate picked up the film in a prints-and-advertising deal backstopped by producer Morgan Creek. Any opening in the mid- to high-teen millions would have made it profitable for Lionsgate, according to sources. Jeff Clanagan, president of Codeblack, the urban-focused Lionsgate division that released All Eyez, says social media was key to the film’s marketing strategy: “The real feedback is from Twitter. On Rotten Tomatoes, the reviews are bad, but consumer feedback is 80 percent positive.” Despite the pans, director Benny Boom (ICM, Principato Young,…

There’s an eastward shift afoot in the industry. In January, Viacom moved eight of its cable channels into a brand-new, six-story Columbia Square office tower in Hollywood, leaving behind longtime digs in Santa Monica. The next month, Netflix said goodbye to Beverly Hills and hello to its own new office tower in Hollywood, the 14-story Icon. For producers in the San Fernando Valley, the moves have been a godsend. “Pitching used to mean a lot of time in your car traveling from Burbank to Santa Monica to Century City and Hollywood or any combination thereof,” says Stuart Krasnow, executive vp creative at Burbank-based Telepictures, part of Warner Bros. Television. The other day, though, he recalls, “My vp and I went from Burbank to MTV in the new Viacom building in…

When Markus Persson beat out Jay Z and Beyonce in 2015 to nab the massive spec home at 1181 North Hillcrest Road with a winning bid of $70 million, the Swedish programmer could not have known that he was ushering in a new era for Los Angeles’ luxury real estate market. Not only was the Minecraft home — as it came to be known, named after the gaming company that Persson had just sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion — a record sale that defied all expectations, but it also created a new template whereby the traditional rules that had long governed L.A. real estate were upended. “That really was the perfect storm,” says Coldwell Banker’s Joyce Rey, who has been a topperforming broker in the L.A. market for a…

Success After Hollywood Admit it: You think about chucking it all and starting over outside the industry. Not possible? Meet six former insiders who did exactly that, including a talent manager turned SoulCycle co-founder (she sold for $90 million), a studio head who became a winemaker and a duo who traded bad scripts for bakeries: ‘Everyone is looking for an exit ramp’ Edited by Jeanie Pyun Lisa Olin’s breaking point came after a deal-breaker. It was 2006, and Olin, then an independent producer partnered with Graham Ludlow (The Condemned), was in the final stages of negotiating a deal with Lifetime on a book adaptation. The network wanted a different writer, and the pair scrambled — only to see it all go south. “They just changed their mind,” recalls Olin, who…

Bob Oswaks’ second act began in 2011 out on his patio. “I had just been laid off from a really big job,” says the onetime president of worldwide marketing at Sony Pictures Television. “And I started making bread and pizza in my backyard — a wood-fired oven — as therapy. I was struck by the visceral pleasure of doing something with my hands.” Oswaks, who helped launch such shows as Seinfeld and Jeopardy! and worked in TV marketing for 32 years, initially assumed that he’d get another top marketing job for a network, studio or cable company. But conversations with recruiters were not going well. “That whole time I was waiting for headhunters to call me back,” he says. “One of them finally told me, ‘You’re 50 years old —…

Memorable moments from a storied history Netflix’s resurrection of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling — in the form of a Jenji Kohan-produced comedy — is proof you can’t keep a good woman pinned to the mat. GLOW, as it was called, was “a circus with one squared ring and a menagerie of wild personalities,” says co-creator David McLane. The syndicated show, which aired from 1986 to 1990, offered flamboyantly stereotyped female grapplers performing musical numbers, anti-drug PSAs and comedy sketches — when they weren’t catapulting each other through the air. “It was wrestling mixed with Hee Haw — but with more sex appeal,” says Jeanne Basone, who wrestled as Hollywood in the animal-print-wearing Hollywood & Vine tag team. Former fan club president James Maybury, who has the world’s largest collection of…