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.
STILL TALLYING ITS STAGGERING LOSS ON Pan, Warner Bros. is said to be facing an unusual challenge on its next mega-budgeted fantasy reboot: Tarzan. With the film still needing considerable work before its July 1 release date, director David Yates has started shooting his next Warners project, J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Warners sources say the move from Tarzan to Beasts always was planned. “While it’s somewhat unusual, we are extremely comfortable with the production timelines, which were set in advance, and have total confidence in the skill of David Yates — who is a four-time Harry Potter director — to deliver both of these pictures,” says a Warners studio executive. But one source involved with the project is concerned that Tarzan, with a budget of…
THE MORNING TV WARS HAVE TAKEN ANOTHER TURN. NBC’s Today topped ABC’s Good Morning America in the critical 25-to-54 demographic for five weeks in a row, beginning Aug. 31. And when Nielsen delivers final numbers for the week ending Oct. 9, the NBC program is expected to best GMA again, extending its streak to the longest in more than three years. It’s not that Today is surging. So far this year, both shows are down in viewers 25-to-54. Today is just down less; 8.5 percent compared to GMA’s 13 percent. For the first two weeks of the 2015-16 season, Today is down 1 percent, while GMA is down 21 percent in the demo and 11 percent in total viewers. (CBS This Morning is the only show up in both measures.)…
THE CENTRAL MEDIA currency is not audience, but trustworthy measurement. The television business was built on wide adoption of such a single standard. Nielsen’s sampling method determined the size and basic demographics of the audience an advertiser reached and therefore what the advertiser paid. But in the competition with digital, which uses different measurement standards, and in the shift to new screens without reliable measurement protocols, measurement has come unstuck and the currency is in something of an existential freefall. Nielsen has lagged in its efforts to standardize this new video marketplace. Its evermore disputed measurements helped cause this summer’s deep dive in television stocks and have provided the basis of reports that TV watching is imperiled. Now, in a major, if not inevitable, challenge to Nielsen and in an…
MYSTERY SHROUDS Michael Moore’s new movie, Where to Invade Next. After a splashy opening-night premiere Sept. 10 at the Toronto Film Festival, Moore was forced to wait nearly a month to announce a buyer. And now the distributor, a new label headed by former Radius-TWC chiefs Tom Quinn and Jason Janego and Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, has yet to announce a release date for the hot-button documentary, raising questions about the unnamed company’s financial backing. Sources say Moore’s film — which makes a satirical argument that the American dream is alive and well everywhere but America — will get an Oscar-qualifying run in December in New York and Los Angeles, followed by a wide release in January. But speculation is mounting that Quinn, Janego and League still are putting…
KA-CHING! WHO’S INKING ON THE DOTTED LINE THIS WEEK ANOTHER BIG personality is trying her hand at daytime television. Country superstar Faith Hill is executive producing a syndicated entry to be co-hosted by American Idol alum and fellow country singer Kellie Pickler (CAA). “Kellie possesses the ability to reach far beyond the camera and into the hearts of people, allowing you to feel immediately connected to her,” says Hill (CAA, MFO, Jackoway Tyerman). “There was no question in my mind that she should be a big part of this show.” Also executive produced by The Oprah Winfrey Show veteran Lisa Erspamer and Hill’s manager, Sandbox Entertainment’s Jason Owen, the untitled lifestyle show will cover such topics as cooking, home design, gardening and entertaining. Five to 10 experts from those fields…
Gold Fame Citrus (Riverhead) BY Claire Vaye Watkins AGENCY RWSG Watkins’ debut novel has been building heat with its scarily timely premise: Set in a drought-stricken wasteland that was Los Angeles, a young couple takes in a mysterious child and sets out to escape the scorched, dystopian Southwest. The Orion Plan (Thomas Dunne) BY Mark Alpert AGENCIES APA/Writers House Science meets science fiction in this hotly anticipated February novel from an editor at Scientific American: A lone NASA scientist discovers aliens are using nanotechnology to enslave humans and turn Earth into a colony.…
