The all-new Hollywood Reporter offers unprecedented access to the people, studios, networks and agencies that create the magic in Hollywood. Published weekly, the oversized format includes exceptional photography and rich features.
MY DREAM WAS GETTING ED O’NEILL to reprise his Married … With Children character, Al Bundy, with his current co-star Sofia Vergara as Peg Bundy,” says THR awards and special projects editor Stacey Wilson Hunt, who, with assistance from 20th Century Fox Television, helped re-create several beloved series on THR’s list of Hollywood’s 100 Favorite TV Shows (page 116) with the stars of Modern Family. O’Neill’s heart was set on Tony Soprano, but after some coaxing, he eventually agreed. In the end, the Dunphys paid tribute to six classics, including tableaus from Cheers, I Dream of Jeannie, Frasier, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Breaking Bad. All were shot Sept. 2 on the Fox lot during a five-hour session that Hunt says was “incredibly calm.” Adds THR creative director Shanti…
TELEVISION TASSLER’S EXIT Inside a CBS executive shake-up ..................26 TRIBUTE MERV ADELSON Bob Daly on a television legend ......................28 RATINGS COLBERT VS. FALLON Late-night’s new rivalry ..............................30 UNIVERSAL PICTURES’ DECISION to let Thomas Tull’s Legendary Pictures take its Kong: Skull Island project to Warner Bros. in the midst of a five-year production and financing deal is being read as a symptom of relationship trouble between the companies. Several sources say there has been strain, in part because Tull kicked off the deal in 2014 with a couple of clunkers that he put through Universal’s distribution system and then upset some at the studio who feel he has indulged a bad habit of wrapping himself in credit for hits that he merely helped finance. In this case, the film at issue…
OUT ! IN! WHEN CBS ENTERTAINMENT chairman Nina Tassler asked her boss of 25 years to lunch in July, Leslie Moonves knew something big was afoot. “We never have ‘official’ lunches,” he tells THR. “I think I want to go,” he says Tassler told him over a misty-eyed meal on the CBS Radford lot. “I’m writing this book, I have a couple of plays I want to do, I have a couple of movie projects, and my daughter is starting high school — and I don’t want her to leave the house before I have more time.” Moving on was something Tassler, 58, says she had given thought to since she lost a dear friend to cancer a few years ago. “I began to think about life and became more…
MERV ADELSON MADE AND LOST A fortune. He co-created Lorimar Productions, which produced such hits as The Waltons and Dallas; sold it for $1.2 billion in 1989; and by 2003 was $112 million in debt — and living in a 500-square-foot apartment in Santa Monica. The mogul, who was married four times (including to Barbara Walters), died Sept. 8 at age 85. Former Warner Bros. chairman Bob Daly remembers him. I did a lot of negotiating with Merv over the [Lorimar] acquisition. He was tough, tough, but he was terrific. If I made a deal with him and we shook hands, that was it. It wasn’t like you got the paperwork and it was [different]. In those days, there really were only three networks, and they had a tremendous amount…
WHAT HAPPENED TO Annie Mumolo’s writing credit on Joy? The Bridesmaids writer-actress was hired by Fox 2000 and producer John Davis to adapt the life of Joy Mangano (creator of the Miracle Mop). After working on it for a year or more, Davis had an idea: What if they showed the script to David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)? To everyone’s surprise, the filmmaker took the bait and reworked the whole screenplay, abandoning some biopic elements and fictionalizing part of the tale. “David is like an impressionistic artist,” says Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler. “[Artists] take real things, put them through their imagination and create something unique.” Just how unique is a matter of debate: When Fox 2000 looked at Russell’s rewrite, it decided he should receive sole credit, but…
EVEN AS THE VOLUME OF scripted TV surges, broadcast execs share a universal gripe each fall about the futile act of promoting dozens of new series at the same time. Which shows get an extra push may reveal the ones with the best chance of survival. “If you try everything at once, you will end up accomplishing nothing,” says Fox Television Group COO Joe Earley. Thanks to a long lead time and the involvement of celebrity showrunner Ryan Murphy, Earley has been promoting the horror-comedy Scream Queens since February. A flow of viral teases and a variety of stunts — like the pop-up roller coaster debuted at Comic-Con — have given Scream Queens the highest awareness (32 percent) of any new show not based on existing intellectual property. “Because of…
