Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec-25-15 Double i The Hollywood Reporter

JUST WHEN IT LOOKED AS IF THE MOST wide-open Oscar race in years couldn’t become more unpredictable, J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered Dec. 14 and was met with enthusiastic reactions from Academy members and early critics (“The Force is back. Big time,” wrote THR’s Todd McCarthy). Many of them grew up on George Lucas’ first trilogy and had braced themselves to be disappointed by the Disney relaunch, as they were with Lucas’ own prequel films. But their reactions suggest Force Awakens could become the franchise’s first installment since the 1977 original to land not only below-the-line nominations but also a nom for best picture. Still, Force Awakens faces awards challenges, even as it likely will break several box-office records. Sequels always face hurdles, and the film didn’t…

Oprah Winfrey TBD (2015) PUBLISHER Flatiron FIRST BOOK The Life You Want, Winfrey’s memoir, scheduled for January 2017. IN THE PIPELINE Nothing announced, but will focus on nonfiction picked by Winfrey. Johnny Depp Infinitum Nihil (2012) PUBLISHER HarperCollins FIRST BOOK House of Earth by Woody Guthrie, the folk singer’s never-published novel. IN THE PIPELINE A memoir from record producer Jack Douglas. Chelsea Handler Chelsea Handler Books (2010) PUBLISHER Grand Central FIRST BOOK Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, comedic essays about Handler’s life. IN THE PIPELINE Nothing announced since 2014’s Man Up! by Ross Mathews. Viggo Mortensen Perceval Press (2002) PUBLISHER Independent FIRST BOOK Just Another War by singer Exene Cervenka and photographer Kenneth Jarecke. IN THE PIPELINE San Lorenzo de Almagro Gwyneth Paltrow Goop Press (2015) PUBLISHER Grand Central FIRST BOOK It’s All Easy: Delicious Weekday Recipes…

KA-CHING! WHO’S INKING ON THE DOTTED LINE THIS WEEK MGM’S BURNETT BET: TV PLUS FAITH-BASED DIGITAL PLATFORM IN A TRANSACTION involving complex stock swaps and buybacks, MGM said Dec. 14 it is restructuring its TV business to be run by Mark Burnett, the reality TV pioneer behind such hits as Survivor, The Apprentice, Shark Tank and The Voice and the driving force — along with wife Roma Downey — of The Bible miniseries and other faith-based programming. The deal has Hearst Corp. selling to MGM for $113.5 million its 22 percent stake in United Artists Media Group, the label that was revived in part to house MGM’s television assets. (MGM already owns 55 percent of that entity.) At the same time, Burnett and Downey are trading their 23 percent stake…

NPH’s Oscar Advice for Chris Rock In the 10 years since Chris Rock hosted the Oscars, awards shows have become measured by their headline-provoking social media stunts. Oscars 2015 host Neil Patrick Harris naysayed such gimmicks for the 2016 emcee. “Chris Rock, he’s amazing,” said Harris at the Dec. 3 Broadway opening of The Color Purple. “The most effective hosts are people who know comedy innately, and he is one of the smartest comedians around, so it allows him free rein to speak his mind.” Seth MacFarlane, on the other hand, knows a thing or two about Internet frenzy after his 2013 turn fueled feminist ire, and declined to give hosting advice: “There’s no way that question won’t bite me in the ass!” Gustavo Dudamel’s Acting Debut The Hollywood Foreign…

TAKE A STEP BACK FROM THE day-to-day horse races of modern Hollywood — the liveplus-7 Nielsen ratings, the weekly China box office, the streaming music plays — and a larger narrative emerges. The entertainment industry is simultaneously getting bigger and more challenged as the overall consumption of so-called “premium content” grows but massive shifts in distribution and financing reshape the content that’s produced (and who’s getting paid for it). For THR’s look at the year’s biggest stories and, more importantly, how they will impact the business in 2016, editors examined that changing landscape and the players who are influencing it. In television, “viewers are migrating to alternative viewing platforms that are not being measured by Nielsen Media Research,” says Derek Baine, research director for SNL Kagan. And despite a possible…

1 MTV’S OWN GOT GAMBLE It’s not HBO. It’s MTV? On Jan. 5, the network known for Teen Mom and Teen Wolf launches the megabudget fantasy The Shannara Chronicles. Its reception could affect other networks’ willingness to bet big. 2 VICELAND TO LAUNCH On Feb. 29, A+E Networks’ H2 channel becomes Viceland, and Shane Smith’s redhot Vice will see if a digital media brand some have valued at $4 billion can translate successfully to a cable network. 3 ADELE’S TOUR KICKS OFF The chart-topping singer kicks off her 2016 tour Feb. 29 in Belfast and will tour the U.S. in the summer. Her album sales are outpacing Taylor Swift — will her concert grosses do the same? 4 CABLE’S NEW MEGAMERGER? On March 9, the FCC is expected end its…

WITH STAR WARS: THE FORCE Awakens, box-office revenue in North America still has a shot at hitting $11 billion for the first time in 2015. But the real story of the year has been the dramatic highs and lows that have become the new normal. Titles that click with audiences — Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Inside Out, Furious 7 and Minions, among them — drastically overperform expectations. At the same time, 2015 has seen the worst wide openings in history, despite expensive marketing. Blame social media. “You can’t cheat an opening weekend anymore,” says Paramount vice chair Rob Moore. “And anyone under 30 is checking Rotten Tomatoes and telling their friends what the score is on a Thursday. You saw it with Fantastic Four: Fox actually had good…

ROMAN POLANSKI IS SINGING AN old German show tune in the middle of a horrific, detailed anecdote about the distilled darkness of concentration camps. He recalls a night after the war when he walked into a hotel room and found his father weeping as “O mein Papa” played on the radio. It brought back a nightmare of the day on which prisoners had been forced to stand in the camp’s public square, helpless, as Nazi guards shoved their children onto trucks for liquidation. As the 82-year-old filmmaker recounts, mothers and fathers were “swaying and waving and moaning and screaming and crying and falling on the ground and tearing the mud on the ground” as their kids were forever taken from them while the Germans played music over a public-address system.…

1. THE JINX (HBO) Imagine if Finding Bigfoot actually found Bigfoot. Andrew Jarecki set out to learn the truth about Robert Durst, and, in pulse-pounding fashion, did just that. 2. FARGO (FX) The only thing crazier than adapting a Coen brothers classic for TV was doing a second season — featuring Ronald Reagan and a UFO — and making it work. 3. THE LEFTOVERS (HBO) The polarizing look at inexplicable loss found a new structure and new confidence in its bold second season. 4. MAD MEN (AMC) Don’s search for meaning led him to an unexpected place as Matthew Weiner’s indelible modern classic closed strong. 5. REVIEW (Comedy Central) Andy Daly’s mockumentary about a critic exquisitely mixed humor and pain. 6. BOJACK HORSEMAN (Netflix) The animated sitcom remains a marvel…

WHEN HAMLET DEBUTED IN MAY 1600, a funny thing happened — no one went home and killed their uncle. Yet with the recent spate of mass shootings in Oregon, Colorado and now San Bernardino, Calif., the debate has begun anew, just as it has since the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999: Do we need stricter gun laws, and do we need to decrease violence in the movies and on TV as a way to help prevent these tragedies? There is no question that fewer guns will result in fewer gun deaths. This has been proved in every country that has decided to decrease or remove guns from civilian ownership. In the 1980s and ’90s, Australia had a series of mass shootings, and finally there was an awful one…

“I’m 58. And I’m in Hawaii Five O playing Scott Caan’s mom. Go ahead… Say some more mean things. Merry Christmas.” MELANIE GRIFFITH The actress, in a caption to an Instagram photo of herself. Caan is 39. “Oh, J.J. is terrified.” STEVEN SPIELBERG The Bridge of Spies director, on the pressure facing director J.J. Abrams with the debut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Analysts say anything less than a $1.5 billion worldwide gross would disappoint “Hold up a paper bag to your face. If your skin is lighter, you’re all the good things: smarter, prettier. If you’re darker, you’re ugly.” VIOLA DAVIS The How to Get Away With Murder actress, on the “paper bag test” that African-American actors used to give themselves to evaluate the chance they would get…

All in at Culina at once: Bonnie Hammer, Netflix vp original content Cindy Holland and new ITV America chief Brent Montgomery with Greg Lipstone, now CEO of All3Media America. Later, Nancy Dubuc held court while Mark Harmon swept in to the bar. … Sharing the room at Mauro at Fred Segal: Roland Emmerich, Michael Rapaport and producers Beau Flynn with Craig Flores. … At The Palm, Brian Grazer and Imagine colleague Michael Rosenberg met with Interscope Geffen A&M’s John Janick and Steve Berman. … Producer Matt Baer stopped in to The Larder. … Of late at Bouchon: Ryan Seacrest, Rick Rosen, Simon Fuller and Chris Silbermann with Antonio Villaraigosa. Toni Collette and Scandal’s George Newbern were in at other times. Meanwhile, Esquire executive vp original programming Matt Hanna stopped in…

WITH RARE EXCEPTIONS, “fatigued” again was the watchword for cable networks in 2015. Ratings plummeted across the board, and with all but December taken into account, AMC stands as the lone top 10 net to post significant growth. “We had every type of show this year, but they all have strong voices,” says AMC and SundanceTV president and GM Charlie Collier, whose flagship net is up 10 percent in the key demographic thanks in part to the year’s three biggest launches: Fear the Walking Dead (6.3 million adults 18-to-49), Better Call Saul (4.4 million) and Into the Badlands (4 million). “If I had to take anything away from 2015 and apply it to 2016, it would be to keep investing in that kind of creative.” AMC also benefited from the…

IDON’T KNOW HOW MANY REALLY GOOD IDEAS you get in a lifetime, but the idea of telling Hamilton as a hip-hop story was definitely one because you get to do everything: love and death and a war and duels and revenge and affairs and sex scandals. On opening night at the Public Theater in February, I remember thinking, “Soon everything will go back to normal” — and that just never happened. The success of the show caught everyone off guard, and there were a lot of people pushing us: “Go to Broadway now, go sweep the Tonys, and you’ll run forever.” But they didn’t know that I had a better version of the show in my head. So we bet on ourselves. We took our time — and we didn’t…

IN APRIL, OUR TEAM AT USC Shoah Foundation sat down to photograph five survivors of the Holocaust, the Rwandan, Armenian, Cambodian and Guatemalan genocides, and the common idiom, “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” took on a whole new meaning for me. In today’s world, the violence behind genocide is not given the airtime, the space in some publications or its victims the consideration of our collective conscience. It’s thrust into the spotlight with a short-lived moral obligation and then disappears as abruptly as it was brought to our attention. Defined primarily by its statistics instead of its impact on each victim, genocide has become an out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem, increasingly acknowledged with apathy in the face of atrocity. At USC Shoah Foundation, we are tackling that apathy, by individualizing these…

Production nearly had wrapped on the second season of Netflix’s Narcos — with most of the actors and producers already departed from the Bogota, Colombia, set — the day Golden Globes nominations were announced. That left Brazilian star Wagner Moura alone to celebrate the series’ recognition and his own for playing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He spoke to THR about the show’s unique global footprint and how it’s evolving for season two. Why do you think this particular show was so well received by the HFPA? Narcos has this mix of documentary and fiction, and it’s a real story. It’s a bilingual show, it’s both in Spanish and in English, and we have an international cast — actors from Colombia, Mexico, the U.S., England, Chile, Brazil. The director, Jose Padilha,…

Christopher Abbott, James White Just try averting your eyes from Abbott as he peels back layer upon layer to expose his dissolute Manhattan hipster’s panic in this thorny pas de deux with Cynthia Nixon as his dying mother. — DAVID ROONEY Zac Efron, We Are Your Friends The DJ dramedy’s boxoffice returns hardly pumped up the volume, but its dreamboat leading man exuded genuine movie-star charisma, proving he’s among the most exciting actors of his generation. — NEIL YOUNG Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation As the leader of a battalion of child soldiers in Africa, Elba managed to convey fatherly warmth, sadistic, sexually twisted evil and just a hint of Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. — STEPHEN DALTON Rooney Mara, Carol No one can throw a stole around…

CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT Actor, James White Sicario. I loved it! It has an incredible ensemble. And the 15-minute convoy scene, when they go to Mexico and bring the drug dealer back across the border — to make a scene that exciting is a feat in and of itself. JENNIFER JASON LEIGH Actress, The Hateful Eight and Anomalisa I saw Room and really loved that movie. I loved Brie Larson’s performance, and the little boy [Jacob Tremblay] just broke my heart. SEAN BAKER Director, Tangerine The Revenant had a profound effect on me. I found myself in a depressed state after, because those heights of filmmaking ambition seem unobtainable. Yet at the same time, incredibly inspiring. James White also impressed me beyond words. DAMON LINDELOF Co-creator, The Leftovers Rami Malek from Mr.…

THE FACT THAT HOT comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney immediately sold out a three-week December residency at Greenwich Village’s intimate Cherry Lane Theatre is not shocking. What might prompt curiosity is that the duo is performing the entire 70-minute set dressed as elderly men, characters they’ve played in sketch, in Funny Or Die clips and even on Kroll’s former Comedy Central series for more than a decade. “We saw these two guys buying individual copies of Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, Alan Alda’s autobiography, at the Strand [bookstore] back in 2005,” says Kroll, 37, explaining the origins of wouldbe cosmopolitans George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon — the hosts and stars of Oh, Hello. “We followed them around for a bit and just fell in love. They typify a…

BEST PICTURE The Big Short No film, with the possible exception of Trumbo, got a bigger boost from the most recent wave of nominations than Paramount’s best hope, which scored noms in all the top SAG, Globe and Critics’ Choice categories. Beasts of No Nation Netflix’s motion picture had a roller-coaster week, landing SAG noms for its ensemble and Idris Elba, then a Globe nom for Elba, before being shut out from the major Critics’ Choice categories, except for young actor, where Abraham Attah appeared. BEST ACTOR MICHAEL CAINE | Youth It’s looking unlikely that the two-time Oscar winner will be returning to the show for his role as an aging maestro, having been left off the SAG, Globe and Critics’ Choice lists. BEST ACTRESS CHARLIZE THERON | Mad Max…

IN A YEAR OF UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE IN LATE night television, one date stands out as the defining moment. No, not Sept. 8, the night circled on most calendars — the premiere of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS. Colbert, a Comedy Central alum flush with a second Emmy for outstanding variety series, did arrive with plenty of fanfare. But none of that mattered — for long. D-day for latenight TV was Sept. 9, when Colbert’s splashy, classy introduction to the Ed Sullivan Theater was upstaged abruptly by a commotion a few blocks south at 30 Rock. NBC’s Jimmy Fallon came crashing through TV screens with the most boisterous blockbuster hour of entertainment he could fashion. Opening with a blast of dance and song — “History of Rap 6,”…

WHEN MARK ITKIN BEGAN HIS CAREER AT WILLIAM MORRIS in 1982, the nonscripted television business still was in its infancy. “Nobody cared about it at all,” he says, seated in his corner office at WME’s Beverly Hills headquarters just weeks after he announced he’d be stepping down at year’s end. He lets out a deep sigh and then adds: “They didn’t even know how to pronounce half the companies’ names, but they saw the money that it brought in.” In those early years, Itkin, 62, says he struggled just to lure trainees to his department, which lacked the prestige of scripted TV. But it was that ability to fly under the radar and to innovate in the reality genre that appealed to the Los Angeles-reared agent, who got his law…

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Ruth Posner London-based Posner, an 82-year-old Polish survivor who arrived in the U.K. after the war and went on to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, escaped the Warsaw Ghetto with her aunt at the age of 9 with falsified passports. (Her nonobservant parents subsequently were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp.) “Now when I talk about it, it seems like I’m describing my role in a play,” she says of the day on a march to a public bathhouse in the center of town when they casually walked from the Jewish to the Aryan sides of the street without being seen by SS patrolmen. There, they shed their yellow-starred armbands and disappeared into their new identities — in her case, as Irena Slabowska (a name her aunt…

THE ACTING NOMINEES: WHERE IN THE WORLD THEY COME FROM At the Globes, they may be singing “Born in the U.S.A.,” but the SAG contenders are truly international — from Canada’s Rachel McAdams to Australia’s Cate Blanchett Maybe it’s a case of the grass is always greener: The 82 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association bestowed the majority of their Golden Globe acting nominations on Americans — 18 of the 29 stars they singled out hail from the States. By contrast, the 2,000 U.S.-based SAG-AFTRA voters on the nominating committee were more open to looking abroad: 63 percent of the 19 actors they nominated come from outside the USA. The Double-Dippers They may have increased their odds of winning, but they also risk twice the number of losses ALICIA…