Innholdsfortegnelse for Oct-16-15 i The Hollywood Reporter

WHEN UNIVERSAL and Sony revealed they would open Everest and The Walk, respectively, in 3D Imax theaters one week before going wide, some proclaimed it the birth of a new distribution model. But that strategy might be backfiring. Over the Oct. 2-4 weekend, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk — a love letter to French artist Philippe Petit, who walked on a wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974 — grossed only $1.6 million from 448 Imax and premium large-format theaters. (Even the Oct. 3 live transmission of The Metropolitan Opera’s Il Trovatore earned more.) The Walk’s poor showing doesn’t bode well for its nationwide bow Oct. 9, and Sony essentially is having to pay to promote two wide opening weekends in a row. In addition, Imax operators aren’t happy…

American Horror Story: Hotel Los Angeles, Oct. 3 THE RED CARPET FOR THE FX ANTHOLOGY SERIES American Horror Story: Hotel was unusually starstudded for a fifth-season premiere. Lady Gaga, who stars in the Ryan Murphy drama as The Countess, a bloodsucking hotel owner, stunned in an appropriately red dress, with fiance and Chicago Fire star Taylor Kinney at her side. “There is a journey for my character through hemophilia and her need to drink blood to survive and stay young, and that’s entwined with other stories about [addiction],” she told THR of the core theme of the season. Gaga makes her acting debut in the first episode with a bloody foursome sex scene. Says co-star Matt Bomer of his reaction to the script, “I freaked out a little bit, for…

ON SEPT. 24, EXECUTIVES FROM OCULUS, the virtual reality technology company that Facebook paid $2 billion to acquire last year, stood in front of a packed room at the Loews Hotel in Hollywood and made a revealing admission: Virtual reality companies like Oculus are finding top-quality content to be the most vexing challenge. Now Hollywood is ready to tackle that problem. The gaming industry was the first to see the potential in VR’s immersive, 360-degree experience, but filmmakers increasingly are eying the space as the next frontier, even as VR headset makers are waiting until 2016 to launch their products. Since Facebook bought Oculus, Hollywood funding into VR has grown, with Disney co-leading a $65 million investment in VR technology company Jaunt and Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures backing content company…

WHEN THE NEW all-female Ghostbusters reboot arrives in theaters next summer, nearly all the living actors from the original 1980s films — Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, et al. — will be doing cameos. But not Rick Moranis, who was offered the chance to appear in a walk-on role but turned it down. “I wish them well,” says the 62-year-old comedic legend, who’s so stunned by the outcry over his absence in the film that he decided to grant a rare interview with THR. “I hope it’s terrific. But it just makes no sense to me. Why would I do just one day of shooting on something I did 30 years ago?” Contrary to what it says on his Wikipedia page — and to the fact that he barely…

AFEEL-GOOD COLD WAR melodrama, Bridge of Spies is an absorbing true-life espionage tale smoothly handled by old pros who know what they’re doing. In its grown-up seriousness and basis in history, Steven Spielberg’s first feature since Lincoln (2012) joins the director’s halfdozen previous war films, but in its honoring of a U.S. civilian who pulled off a prisoner exchange between the East and West during atense period, the film generates unmistakable nostalgia for a time when global conflict seemed more clear-cut than it does today. For their focus in this impeccably rendered re-creation of the early years of the nuclear era, Spielberg and screenwriters Matt Charman and Ethan and Joel Coen have chosen a sort of Atticus Finch of the north: principled American insurance attorney James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks),…

THE CALIFORNIA ON Location Awards — presented each year by Film Liaisons in California Statewide — will for its 21st year honor the location managers and scouts, public servants and production companies who create “exemplary locations work in California,” now aided by the expanded incentives of Film & Television Tax Credit Program 2.0, which was announced by the California Film Commission in March. Here, FLICS chair Janice Arrington breaks down how the 600-guest event — emceed this year by actors Anthony Denison (TNT’s Major Crimes) and Geoff Stults (Warner Bros.’ upcoming thriller Unforgettable) — celebrates the location pros who make the most of the Golden State. What’s changed about shooting in California in recent years? Technical advancements have created opportunities and challenges. While ways to scout for locations have been…

ANEW DATE HAS BEEN SET FOR THE OPENING OF the Academy’s long-planned movie museum: Once promised for mid-2017, it now is slated for spring 2018. While the Los Angeles City Council voted to approve the controversial project in June, building permits were delayed until the Academy reached a September settlement with community group Fix the City, which had threatened to sue until the Academy promised to reduce signage and monitor traffic and noise. Demolition work finally is beginning at the old May Co. Streamline Moderne building at Fairfax and Wilshire. And construction on architect Renzo Piano’s ambitious design is set to begin in March. On Oct. 6, the Academy kicked off a $349 million tax-exempt bond offering so that it will have funds on hand for construction while pledges to…

Ron Meyer Reveals His Biggest Regret Universal Pictures already has broken the calendar-year studio boxoffice record in 2015, keyed by the success of Jurassic World and Furious 7. But during a Sept. 30 THR talk at Loyola Marymount University, NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer recalled a year that also could have been one for the record books. Asked about his regrets, the normally press-averse Meyer said he has only one: “Early on, I said no to Titanic. That was my colossal error. You know, I’m just getting over it.” Then-film head Casey Silver and studio owner Edgar Bronfman Jr. share the blame for losing out on James Cameron’s 1997 hit that grossed nearly $2.2 billion worldwide, but Meyer said he took responsibility for passing on the project, on which Paramount…

SIMON KINBERG ISN’T OPPOSED TO making small movies. The tentpole maestro behind Cinderella (produced), Sherlock Holmes (wrote) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (produced and wrote) says he’s attempted an intimate drama, but inevitably it turned epic. “When I wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith in film school [at Columbia University], I was trying to write my version of Ordinary People or Kramer vs. Kramer — people in a bad marriage who have to get through problems. But for me, that’s two spies trying to assassinate each other,” he jokes. When Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy was pulling together her team for Star Wars, she turned to Kinberg to be a creative consultant on Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Dec. 18), to produce and write a spinoff movie, and to create the TV…

WHEN THE LOS Angeles Dodgers kick off their postseason push Oct. 9 at Dodger Stadium, not everyone in showbiz will be rooting for them. For every Bryan Cranston, George Lopez and Larry King loyal to Hollywood’s home team, there is a Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin James and Matthew Broderick sporting orange and blue — the colors of the New York Mets, the Dodgers’ National League Division Series opponents. The showdown is a rematch of an NLDS matchup in 2006, the last time the Mets made the playoffs. Mr. Robot creator Sam Ismail and Warm Bodies director Jonathan Levine went to Game 3 at Dodgers Stadium clad in Mets gear. (“It was a huge mistake,” says Ismail. “Beer bottles were thrown.”) Meanwhile, 3 Arts manager Oly Obst brandished a smuggled broom in…

AS THE ROME FILM FEST ENTERED ITS 10TH YEAR, it was clear the event needed a jolt of energy. That arrived in February in the form of Antonio Monda, the festival’s charismatic new artistic director. The 52-year-old Italy-born NYU film professor and writer has been a fixture in New York arts circles for years thanks to legendary salons at his house and a contact list that includes everyone from Terrence Malick (whom Monda interviewed in 2007 in Rome, one of the auteur’s few public appearances) to Wes Anderson (who gave Monda a cameo in 2004’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou). Plagued during its first decade with budget cuts, a dearth of talent and competition with other fall festivals, Rome again is branding itself as a festa, or celebration, of…

THINK EMPIRE …” THAT is how dozens of pitches for new TV shows have begun this development season. “You name it, we’ve probably heard it,” jokes one network exec, who rattles off examples including a “Latina Empire” and “Empire set at a winery.” But the deluge of Empire offshoots isn’t the only theme to emerge this season, which is off to another late start as networks still are vying for several projects well into the fall. As the broadcast nets look to populate their pipelines with projects that can cut through in an increasingly crowded landscape, This American Life’s popular Serial podcast has supplanted Homeland as the frequently touted thriller archtype being pitched around town. Not unlike their film studio counterparts, network execs also are relying heavily on big stars,…

BROADCAST TELEVISION EXECUTIVES CONTINUE TO PREACH patience, but early data from the first two weeks of the 2015-16 season paints a clear picture of which new series are thriving — and which already are on borrowed time. Clear breakout Blindspot shows no signs of slowing in time-shifted viewership: The second episode of the NBC drama garnered an even bigger bump than the premiere, rising 63 percent in live-plus-3-day data to average a 4.2 rating among adults 18-to-49. Meanwhile, no amount of DVR use likely can enliven Fox’s Minority Report; the second episode of the futuristic procedural couldn’t crack a 1.3 rating in the key demo after three days. It’s becoming a familiar dichotomy of fall: Time-shifting makes a good ratings narrative even better (see ABC’s Quantico) and can boost series…

ON SEPT. 28, 2011, SONY ENTERTAINMENT CEO Michael Lynton left his Culver City office and made the four-and-a half-mile trek to Century City, ready to open his wallet. Lynton, along with producer Mark Gordon (Saving Private Ryan), was being given a unique opportunity to read one of the most anticipated manuscripts in publishing history: Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs. The brilliant but mercurial founder of Apple Inc. was on his deathbed — he would die days later, on Oct. 5 — and Simon & Schuster was rushing the book into stores, which meant the publisher did not want it read widely in advance of its Oct. 24 release: Secrecy was crucial to giving Steve Jobs the type of splash that would propel it to sales of more than 379,000 copies…

ON SEPT. 22, IN THE face of his city’s escalating homelessness crisis, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti took an unprecedented step: He declared a state of emergency. Part of that was semantics, as the term legally allows for the early opening of wet-weather shelters ahead of the heavy rainfalls predicted this winter. “But,” Garcetti tells THR, “we kind of figured it’s an honest assessment of where we are.” Where we are is in dire and uncharted waters, with a record 46,000 homeless in the city, a 12 percent increase in the past two years — victims of the recession and soaring rents amid a real estate boom that has raised L.A. home prices by 27 percent in just three years. Three groups in particular have swelled the ranks, Garcetti says:…

CLIVE OWEN MAKES A RIVETING BROADWAY DEBUT IN Harold Pinter’s Old Times, playing a man whose cocky suavity unravels as he negotiates his hold on two elusive women, who may be different sides of the same person. That’s just one interpretation of this slippery 1971 three-hander about the mutable recesses of memory and the evanescent nature of erotic possession. Director Douglas Hodge proclaims from the outset that the drama is unfolding in a disorienting void adjacent to reality. Strobes blast out from a howling vortex while Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s ambient music further emphasizes the unsettling atmosphere. The play takes place in a converted English farmhouse, where film director Deeley (Owen) lives with wife Kate (Kelly Reilly). Designer Christine Jones strips the set down to a slow-moving turntable with sectional…