Innholdsfortegnelse for July 19, 2017 i The Hollywood Reporter

Behind the Headlines Film Franchise Fatigue Summer’s impact on sequels and spinoffs p. 18 Television Upfronts Scorecard How the networks’ ad sales stack up p. 18 Heat Index John Stankey The AT&T veteran is expected to lead Time Warner’s film and TV business if and when the $85.4 billion takeover is done, giving him power over Warner Bros., Turner and more. Tony Vinciquerra The new Sony Pictures CEO loses LStar Capital as a major financing partner, a blow to his efforts to turn around the struggling film division. Jodie Whittaker The Broadchurch actress is named the BBC’s 13th Doctor Who star, the first woman to play the iconic role. R. Kelly The R&B Grammy winner is under fire after parents of several young women accuse him of holding them in…

Good news for multiple networks from the TV upfronts (the recently wrapped selling season). Despite ratings dips, analysts predict the broadcast nets’ haul will be up from 2016, when the upfronts brought in $18.5 billion across cable and broadcast, according to Standard Media Index. Jefferies & Co. estimates primetime commitments will be 3 percent higher, and Pivotal Research Group is looking at a 4 percent increase. This comes as the promise of digital advertising has hit a wall, the result of major brands pulling ads from Google platforms, afraid they might run next to offensive content. Says NBCUniversal ad sales chairman Linda Yaccarino: “The inability of companies of that magnitude to guarantee brand safety was truly the straw that broke the camel’s back.”…

CHINA’S WANDA CRACKDOWN DIMS A BRIGHT HOLLYWOOD FUTURE Deal of the Week Billionaire Wang Jianlin’s dreams of owning a major U.S. film studio may have just gone poof. Now China’s second-richest man is probably working all of his government connections and industry acumen simply to retain the global entertainment portfolio he already has amassed. Pressure mounted on the tycoon’s Dalian Wanda Group when news emerged July 16 of a banking document circulating on Chinese social media alleging that China’s biggest financial institutions had been instructed by state regulators not to supply financing to several of the conglomerate’s overseas acquisitions. The provenance of the memo (which THR has reviewed) has yet to be verified. Some have questioned its authenticity (it was erased from the internet by Chinese censors, just as mysteriously…

Game of Thrones Los Angeles, July 12 Girls Trip Los Angeles, July 13 Ford Theatre Grand Opening Gala Los Angeles, July 15 Party Crawler Winter in Summer The extravagant world premiere of season seven of Game of Thrones took over Walt Disney Concert Hall, with stars and showrunners D.B. Weiss (2) and David Benioff (2) holding court. “This season is all about the alive human beings coming together and sensing that there’s a greater threat here,” Sophie Turner (1) told THR before the screening of the first episode with a live orchestra. The lavish afterparty was studded with displays of costumes and props from the series, with performers dressed in white garb on stilts, while a DJ on an ivory-colored Iron Throne played a set in front of a dance…

Fashion…

Costumes and Set Design T he closest template was always going to be a Downton Abbey,” says writer-director Billy Ray (whose screenplay credits include The Hunger Games and Captain Phillips) of the look of Amazon’s adaptation of The Last Tycoon, out July 28. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished roman a clef of Hollywood’s golden age during the Depression, the series deployed a dream team of Oscar-winning production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein (Amadeus) and Emmy-winning costume designer Janie Bryant (Mad Men). Both drew inspiration from MGM photographer George Hurrell, known for his black-and-white images of 1930s stars, to dress and give visual context to Matt Bomer’s Irving Thalberg-inspired studio head, Monroe Stahr, who goes head-to-head against boss Pat Brady, played by Kelsey Grammer. Says executive producer Chris Keyser: “I wanted to…

I n 2013, a strange and creepy screen test started making the rounds in Hollywood. It showed an extremely tall and very lean figure in a long black wig and white face mask crawling on the floor, contorting freakishly long limbs and fingers in ways human skeletons aren’t supposed to bend. A lot of people thought it was a puppet. Others figured it was CGI. It turned out to be Javier Botet, a Spanish actor who has since become the most in-demand monster man since Boris Karloff stomped around the Universal lot with bolts sticking out of his neck. “My body is different, very peculiar,” says Botet, 39, who most recently played an Egyptian god in The Mummy and a space xenomorph in Alien: Covenant and will soon appear as a…

FLOYD NORMAN The first African- American animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios delivers a keynote speech on July 31. MANDY WALKER The Hidden Figures cinematographer participates in an AMPAS panel on the movie on July 30. TINY THE GIRAFFE The newborn appears at an animal sketching course organized by Otis College of Art and Design on Aug. 1 and 2.…

People, Places, Preoccupations “We didn’t know what kind of show it was. We didn’t know what HBO was. We were kind of jumping into the deep end in the dark,” says Turner of being cast in GoT at age 13. She was photographed July 6 at Eloi Studios in Montreal. Styling by Juliana Schiavinatto Rosetta Getty dress (available at ssense.com). N ot unlike her Game of Thrones character, who has gone from being a pawn to a shrewd player in the drama’s intrigues, Sophie Turner has grown up on the HBO drama, which premiered its penultimate run on July 16. “I got my sex education from this show, and a historical education,” says the U.K.-born actress, 21, who lives in London. After her character, Sansa Stark, was brutally raped in…

Fire up those expense accounts: L.A.’s most anticipated restaurant of the year opened July 6. Specializing in a rustic futurist cuisine, Vespertine is the brainchild of Jordan Kahn, 34, who first gained notice at Michael Mina’s late XIV in West Hollywood. Now, across from his lunch spot Destroyer in Culver City, he has unveiled this earnest, doleful avant-garde tasting menu: Expect out-there creations (crystalline ice plant, smoked lamb’s heart) served in minimalist ceramic amid an end-of-the-world vibe. The sense of play that generally comes with such calculated culinary experiences (and prices: A THR duo dined July 11 for $995) is not in evidence here, as diners navigate from course to course on the restaurant’s four levels, tended to by servers in goth-tribal attire. “You’re in this very industrial neighborhood, eating…

Digital N etflix’s recent cancellation of the big-budget series The Get Down and Sense8, along with its growing investment in original programming, have ignited new criticism about the streamer’s spending habits and financial health. As CEO Reed Hastings invests approximately $7 billion in content in 2017, some in the media are painting Netflix investors as credulous, sitting idly by while the company spends like a drunken sailor. At the recent ATX Television Festival in Austin, The New York Times reported that Freeform programming and development executive vp Karey Burke said she viewed Netflix’s spending “with disdain.” Another exec suggested invoking a television industry rule that “everyone has to be profitable,” a dig at Netflix’s negative free cash flow. Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst who remains an unrepentant Netflix hater…

Guest Column I ’ve lived for exactly seven years now in Los Angeles, a town whose many well-heeled denizens consistently, comically panic over two things: aging and rainy days. The latter we can’t stop. But the former? Doctors wielding injections, acid peels, scalpels and lasers have turned tony enclaves in the City of Angels into a living, breathing canvas, a modern-day Renaissanceera Florence where the works (21st century surrealism) are displayed on faces alternately beautiful and grotesque, strange simulacra of youth. Until recently I edited The Hollywood Reporter, where I mandated that ages of the female executives on our annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 list be included. Oh, my God! The begging, the tears, the cries of sexism! I once wrote of the topic in the magazine’s pages: “As a…

The morning of July 13 started like any other, with Elisabeth Moss trying to eke out a little more time in bed. She is not, by all accounts, an early riser, and this sticky Thursday was no different, save for the locale, South Florida, where she was enjoying a rare few days off. Then came the midday text from her publicist: a GIF of Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo, shirtless and clapping. “I knew it was good news,” says Moss, a fourth-generation Cubs fan, “because a shirtless Anthony Rizzo is always good news.” And it was: The Handmaid’s Tale had just scooped up 13 Emmy nominations, including a best actress nom for Moss, the dystopian drama’s producer and star. In short order, she began scrolling through the 49 congratulatory…

GAME OF THRONES Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss won’t be there and neither will top-tier stars Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington, but the panel comes as the HBO show has never been bigger (the seventh season premiere saw a series high 16.1 million viewers). Eyes will be on Sophie Turner, fresh from the Montreal set of X-Men: Dark Phoenix. JULY 21, 1:30 P.M. WARNER BROS. The big event this year. With Wonder Woman reenergizing the DC universe, what kind of victory lap will the studio take? Will a sequel be announced? Justice League, the next big DC movie, will bring its lineup of heroes, including Jason Momoa (does that portend a showing of Aquaman footage?). Also, Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford will be there with footage of Blade Runner…

T he villagers saw lights flashing through thick clouds. Then they heard a sound like an explosion. When they stumbled upon the wreckage of a small plane close to a dairy finca near the village of La Clarita, in the Colombian province of Antioquia, there were three men inside, trapped in the fuselage and badly injured but alive. The plane’s tail had sheared off, and the cockpit was a mangled lump of glass and metal. The fuselage and wings were warped and bruised, covered by fallen branches, just a hundred yards below a ridgeline. The villagers ran to get help. When they returned with rescue workers, only one of the occupants was still breathing. He flashed them a thumbs-up sign and even talked. The other two had died. Plenty of planes…

Warner Bros. can only hope that Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which opens July 21, does as well as the first Hollywood movie to touch on that eight-day World War II battle/evacuation: Mrs. Miniver won six Oscars, including best picture. While 1942’s $1.34 million ($20 million today) MGM production focused on an upper-middle-class British family trying to survive the war, one key plot element is the father sailing with the 800 boats that in 1940 rescued about 340,000 British and French troops surrounded by the German army in the French port of Dunkirk. The film is unabashedly pro-British. “I was concerned about Americans being isolationists,” said director William Wyler, who died in 1981. He said his attitude on making movies during the war was: “Let’s make propaganda pictures but make them good.”…

EMMYS: THE RACE T he culmination of an expensive and overwhelming campaign season, the 2017 Primetime Emmy nominations offer something for most everyone — and, with few exceptions, as open a race as the awards have seen in some time. A record five first-year series — The Crown, The Handmaid’s Tale, Stranger Things, This Is Us and Westworld — join familiar entries House of Cards and Better Call Saul in the top drama race. That means there’s no category consensus leading into the final round of voting, open Aug. 14, though HBO’s Westworld leads with 22 noms. Newcomer Atlanta seems to pose the most serious threat to Veep’s recent comedy reign, but the fervor for the whirlwind election season of Saturday Night Live (which tied Westworld for the most noms) may…

People, Places, Preoccupations B lack Girl Magic is real,” says Girls Trip director Malcolm D. Lee. “People want to see it, they want to be empowered by it.” For Universal’s R-rated comedy, out July 21, Lee aimed to capture that magic — a notion popularized by a 2013 hashtag and disseminated by figures from Solange Knowles to Barack Obama — with an authentic rebuttal to reality shows like Love & Hip Hop. “I wanted a counterbalance to women sniping or throwing drinks. My wife’s book club watched the movie as one of my first audiences, and they laughed and said, ‘I love how soft they are with each other.’ If that’s part of the takeaway of this bold, outrageous comedy, that’s great.” Another takeaway he’d like: “To prove to the…

Quotes “I was in Joshua Tree, totally sober — completely fucking sober — I look up in the sky and there’s a bunch of spaceships.” KESHA The singer, explaining to Billboard the inspiration for her new album, Rainbow, which features several UFOs on the cover and includes a song titled “Spaceship.” “No one wants you here you absolute boner killer.” MAX LANDIS The screenwriter, tweeting his disapproval of singer Ed Sheeran’s cameo on the July 16 Game of Thrones. Sheeran later deleted his Twitter account. “For me the Muppets are not just a job. They are a calling, an urgent, undeniable, impossible to resist way of life.” STEVE WHITMIRE The Kermit the Frog puppeteer, in a blog post in which he relayed how “devastated” he was to be fired by…

HOT NEW RESTAURANT Armie Hammer lunched at Croft Alley. On a different day, Kristen Wiig and Sofia Boutella were in. … Brett Ratner checked out The Rosy Oyster. … Jamie Foxx popped by Little Beach House Malibu. … CAA’s Jim Toth was at Georgie. … Lana del Rey and Robin Thicke had dinner at TAO LA. … Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell were at Crustacean, separately. … Gersh literary agent Jeff Greenberg stopped by Walter’s Cafe. … Robert Wagner sat with wife Jill St. John at Mr Chow. … Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre shared a table at Jean-Georges Beverly Hills. ... Dolly Parton held court at Cecconi’s. Woodley Proper The Quick Pitch The San Fernando Valley’s most ambitious chef, Phillip Frankland Lee, has added to his Encino strip mall…

I can’t even remember not knowing Martin. I first saw him on Mission: Impossible years ago, and then we met at the Actors Studio. I became a member in ’67, and he was a member before that. Some enormous number of people auditioned the year that he did, like 1,500 or 2,000, and only he and Steve McQueen were accepted. As an actor, he had a real sense of reality — he never seemed to be acting; he was just always one with the character he was playing — something that I got to know better and more deeply when I eventually worked with him [on the 2008 film Lovely, Still]. When you look into the eyes of another actor and you see that he’s totally there — that he’s not…

Moguls N ot long after Roger Ailes was forced out of Fox News — a year ago — he and I started to speak on a regular basis. Sitting on his couch in his modest suburban home in Cresskill, New Jersey, or in his much grander home overlooking the Hudson and West Point in Garrison, New York, he could seem like a genial retiree, his wife, Beth, hovering nearby, making jokes and supervising his diet. When, in a sudden decision this winter, the Aileses bought a home in Palm Beach, Florida, we’d chat on the phone — sometimes a few times a week — about his health, the weather, the news of the day. This was, of course, a window into the fleetingness of power. The single most influential person…

W hen Michael Green first started out as a screenwriter, he read every script he could get his hands on. When he finished a screenplay, he’d toss it into one of two piles. There was a pile for scripts he thought were better than what he himself was writing and another for scripts he believed were worse. “I thought I could start to tell where I ranked as a writer,” he recalls. “But back then, the ‘better than me’ stack was a lot higher than the ‘worse than me’ stack.” ” Twenty years later, there’s a third stack — his own produced screenplays — and it’s getting taller all the time. In fact, Green, 44, may well be in the middle of the best year any Hollywood screenwriter has had in…