Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday February 14 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Get Out Writer-director Jordan Peele’s study of racial tensions in America — seen through the prism of horror blended with comedy — buffed up its credentials as a serious movie when it was recognized as the year’s best original screenplay at the Feb. 11 Writers Guild of America Awards, where it fended off Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, among other contenders. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Writer-director Martin McDonagh didn’t win the WGA’s best original screenplay award, but his profile got a boost as his latest play, the pitchdark executioner comedy Hangmen, opened off-Broadway to rave reviews Feb. 5 and is now strongly rumored for a Broadway transfer before the end of the current season. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Call Me by Your Name Veteran filmmaker James Ivory visited Hollywood and…

The Escape Artist (GRAND CENTRAL, MARCH 6) BY Brad Meltzer AGENCY WME The talented Meltzer has had success in books (more than a dozen best-sellers), comics (Identity Crisis) and TV (gone-too-soon cult hit Jack & Bobby). The female hero in his first novel in three years is being likened to a mix of Lisbeth Salander and Carrie Mathison. Layover (CROWN BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS, FEB. 6) BY Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer REPS UTA, Principato Young The Step Up 3D screenwriters (and best friends) are moving into the literary world with this novel about three siblings from a blended family who learn about their parents’ impending divorce.…

“No, it’s going to not be OK. It’s not. It’s so bad.” OMAROSA MANIGAULT-NEWMAN The ousted White House staffer and Celebrity Big Brother castmember, after co-star Ross Mathews sought reassurance about the Trump administration. “I just walked away from a TV show deal because the studio wouldn’t agree to equal pay for me and the male co-lead. #TimesUp, pilot season.” GENEVIEVE ANGELSON The actress, on Twitter. She starred on Good Girls Revolt, a 1970s drama that was canceled by Roy Price at Amazon before his dismissal over harassment allegations. “If Sacha makes this a comedic effort, his victims will be personified as a joke. Shame on him.” TANYA BROWN The sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, in response to tabloid reports that Sacha Baron Cohen paid O.J. Simpson $20,000 to appear…

COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE As part of a $100 million megadeal that included stand-up specials, Netflix bought the library as well as a new season of Jerry Seinfeld’s shortform talk show. Forthcoming episodes could run longer than previous seasons. MY NEXT GUEST NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION Letterman’s next act became six 60-minute interviews with people who interest him, from George Clooney to President Barack Obama. Asked whether she’d like more, Bajaria says, “If he’ll do more.” THE JOEL MCHALE SHOW WITH JOEL MCHALE Consider the weekly topical half-hour, launching Feb. 18, the Netflix-ization of his show The Soup. McHale will take a sharp, absurdist look at global pop culture, with star guests, comedy sketches and clips. AN UNTITLED MICHELLE WOLF SHOW While the details are still being sorted, the Daily…

The key sequence in I, Tonya, when Shane Stant, a thug for hire played by Ricky Russert, whacks Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) is a stylistic departure from most of the rest of the movie, which stars Margot Robbie as disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding. Director Craig Gillespie mostly plays fast and loose, using documentary-style interviews with the principal characters and lots of voiceover, plus moments that break the fourth wall — but for the attack itself, he wanted a suspenseful sequence that plays out in real time. “We take the time to walk with him through the arena past everyone, to build tension, suspense and to watch this guy do what he unbelievably did — not just go up and hit Nancy Kerrigan, but also his escape,” explains film editor…

Closer now, we cross San Pedro’s Vincent Thomas Bridge, recognizable for its many appearances in movies and television shows, and move past a graveyard of massive multicolored shipping containers. Just ahead awaits a peculiar Southern California landscape of palm trees and barbed wire, and then a cheerless, pitiless site: Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution. As one would expect, the building is grim, too, home to about 1,240 inmates. Among them: Anthony Joseph Pellicano, Prisoner No. 347869. The former private eye to the rich, famous and distressed resides in a cell less than 40 miles from the Hollywood office he rented at 9200 Sunset Blvd. — but it might as well be 40 light-years. Some may find it difficult to recall just how looming a figure Pellicano, 73, was in Hollywood…

At its Hollywood premiere, Black Panther received a rousing standing ovation. What’s impressive is that this ovation occurred before the movie was shown. Equally significant is that presales for tickets have broken Fandango’s record for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also, in the weeks before the film was set to open Feb. 16, more than 200 grassroots campaigns in black communities from Denver to Toronto to Ghana were arranging screenings in order to commemorate the movie event. This is an unprecedented global rallying for something that doesn’t include Beyonce. All this fuss over a superhero movie? Black Panther is not just another comic-book film but a cultural spearhead disguised as a thrilling action adventure. You may go for the hard-core action and hard-muscled bodies, but, if you’re white, you’ll leave with…

Those who have been working on behalf of change at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whether in regard to the age, gender or race of the nominees, have to be quite pleased with the lineup of five finalists in the director category this year. Voters have continued the recent trend of singling out new names; for the fourth year in a row, only one of the anointed talents has ever been nominated before. Two of the five this year could never have been previously nominated for the simple reason that they’d never before directed a feature film. And of those two, one is a woman and the other is African-American. The result is the sort of group portrait the Academy began longing for some years back and…

More than knowing how to thread a needle, costume design involves historical research, collaboration with actors and directors, keen attention to detail, the art of narrative storytelling through clothes … and that’s just the beginning. A bachelor’s (B.A.) or master’s in fine arts (MFA) can give a leg up. (Although some, like Jacqueline Durran, who won an Oscar in 2013 for her work in Anna Karenina, do not major in costume design.) “I don’t know if there is anything that can prepare you for your first forays into theater and Hollywood,” says Hamilton costume designer Paul Tazewell. “Both formats are terrifying — you just jump into the trenches and keep your head above water long enough for the next job offer.” UCLA chairman of costume design Deborah Nadoolman Landis advises…

Mark Lazarus The NBC Sports chief can celebrate strong early TV ratings for the Pyeongchang Olympics and especially robust digital ad sales. Susan Wojcicki The YouTube CEO is forced to suspend ads for star Logan Paul’s channel and tighten content standards as she lashes out at Facebook: “Get back to baby pictures.” Chris Brearton The veteran showbiz lawyer joins client MGM as its new COO, overseeing business development for the studio. Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove (left) The Alcon Entertainment leaders preside over layoffs after Blade Runner 2049 results in an estimated $80 million loss. Showbiz Stocks $30.95 (+23%) TWITTER (TWTR) The social network giant reports $91 million in net income, the first time it does not lose money in a quarter. $27.05 (-18%) LIONSGATE ENT. (LGA-A) Jon Feltheimer, CEO…

SAG-AFTRA’s new sexual harassment code of conduct, issued Feb. 10, is the latest of its kind in recent weeks. How do these policies differ? Three unions — WGA West, DGA and SAG-AFTRA — are struggling to reconcile duties to accused members with obligations to members and others who might be victims. So while all three unions vow to enforce a zero tolerance policy, the SAG-AFTRA code and the directors’ recently issued procedures note that accused members facing employer discipline might be entitled to union representation. Only the SAG-AFTRA code says that members can be disciplined for harassment. The Writers Guild takes the opposite tack, declaring itself “a union, not judge or jury” in its FAQ. And “personal criminal history” has no effect on WGAW membership. That hands-off approach might stem…

LEBRON THROWS A NEW HOUSE PARTY AS HOOPS STARS CRASH HOLLYWOOD Deal of the Week As Los Angeles hosts its first NBA All-Star shindig in seven years, LeBron James is prepping a Hollywood bash of his own. The megastar and his SpringHill Entertainment partner, Maverick Carter, are producing a new House Party, which will revive the Kid ’n Play-fronted New Line comedy franchise that started in 1990 and was followed by sequels in 1991 and 1994. Atlanta’s Stephen Glover and Jamal Olori will pen the screenplay. “This is not a reboot. It’s a new look for a classic movie,” James tells THR. “Everyone I grew up with loved House Party.” Fans can expect a star-studded soundtrack, perhaps even James’ good pal Drake, with whom SpringHill is collaborating on Netflix’s crime…

People, Places, Preoccupations I like to put him in a movie once in a while,” says Frank Marshall of Jimmy Buffett, who has uncredited cameos in both Jurassic World movies, including June’s Fallen Kingdom. “And he puts me onstage once in a while at his concerts. But we’ve never put our heads together and created something from scratch until now.” What the longtime pals, both 71, have created is Escape to Margaritaville, a musical centered on Buffett’s oeuvre — and the beach-bum lifestyle he trademarked (literally, with his empire of restaurants, products, even a retirement community) — that starts Broadway previews Feb. 16. The two met 38 years ago at Harrison Ford’s New Year’s Eve party in Aspen, Colorado, where Buffett was performing. They bonded over sailing, sports and guitars.…

Held in L.A. for the first time since 2011, NBA All-Star Weekend comes with all the trimmings of an awards season extravaganza. Festivities kick off Feb. 15 at the “Let It Fly” fete benefiting the Precious Dreams Foundation at The District by Hannah An with NBA stars Andre Drummond and Kevin Durant, plus Shaquille O’Neal and Kevin Hart (who’ll introduce the players on Feb. 18 at the main event). … On Feb. 16, watch Hollywood hit the court at the All- Star Celebrity Game with coaches Common and Michael B. Jordan leading their “Lakers” and “Clippers” teams, with players including Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin, Black-ish’s Anthony Anderson, Orange Is the New Black’s Dascha Polanco and Jamie Foxx. … Kendrick Lamar will take Turner Sports’ AmEx stage at L.A. Live’s Microsoft…

Film executive and producer Jill Messick, a veteran of Miramax and Lorne Michaels Productions who was instrumental in helping Tina Fey bring Mean Girls to the screen, took her own life Feb. 7. She was 50. Compounding the tragedy was a statement from Messick’s family, calling her “collateral damage” in Rose McGowan’s war against Harvey Weinstein. Messick initially set up the 1997 Sundance meeting with Weinstein that McGowan says led to rape and has been cited by both McGowan and Weinstein in their ongoing legal battles. Messick was a longtime sufferer of bipolar disorder; the unwelcome media scrutiny, the family contends, is what drove her to suicide. “Jill was victimized by our new culture of unlimited information sharing and a willingness to accept statement as fact,” they wrote. “The speed…

The 2002 arrest and subsequent trial of private investigator Anthony Pellicano exposed the worst of Hollywood, showing how A-listers, moguls and the lawyers they employed used the PI to dig up dirt on their enemies and one another, often illegally. THR profiles some of the major players in the sensational scandal By Pamela McClintock Anita Busch In June 2002, the entertainment journalist found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on the cracked windshield of her car along with a note: “Stop.” The ensuing investigation led to Pellicano’s downfall. Busch later sued Michael Ovitz for hiring Pellicano to harass her. After years of delays, the lawsuit was set to go to trial in early February, but Busch and Ovitz settled in January. Busch now works at Deadline Hollywood. Brad Grey…

Lady Bird Greta Gerwig imagines a spinoff about the emotional priest Father Leviatch (Stephen Henderson) who serves as Lady Bird’s (Saoirse Ronan) acting coach, encouraging his students to cry out their emotions. “I would want to do an entire movie about Father Leviatch,” says Gerwig. “I’m interested in building cinematic worlds in a lateral way. I’m interested in every character in the movie, and that was due to such great actors who drew such compelling characters with the smallest brush strokes.” The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro jokingly imagines a TV series revolving around neighbors Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and Giles (Richard Jenkins). “The TV spinoff would be the strangest version of The Odd Couple ever,” he says, adding that Elisa’s fish-man boyfriend (Doug Jones) would make it unique. “It’d…

Source: The week’s most active and talked-about entertainers on leading social networking sites Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for the week ending date Feb. 8. Rankings are based on a formula blending weekly additions of fans as well as cumulative weekly reactions and conversations, as tracked by MVP Index…

Big Deal The city of Los Angeles is pledging to help Hollywood evolve. On Feb. 12, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Ava DuVernay and producer Dan Lin unveiled the Evolve Entertainment Fund, which aims by 2020 to raise $5 million in grants to help women, people of color and low-income Angelenos gain entry to industry careers through internships, focused mentoring and an ongoing series of workshops and panels. THR and Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program is the first recipient and will receive $172,000 for scholarships and other costs. EEF also will create 250 paid internships this year (with the goal of doubling that number by 2020) for students in Hire LA’s Youth, which partners with companies including DreamWorks Animation, Ryan Murphy Television, Film Independent, CAA and Anonymous Content.…

GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY Michael Chow was creating restaurants-as-theater before Gordon Ramsay was in short pants. On Feb. 16, he’ll celebrate 50 years of his Mr Chow empire with a party for 700 of his nearest and dearest, including Anjelica Huston, Michael Keaton, Sterling Ruby, Nicolas Berggruen and Heidi Klum, at his new 60,000-square-foot art studio just south of downtown Los Angeles in Vernon, complete with plenty of his famous Peking duck. “We’ll be combining the opening of my new studio with an exhibition of my work with a celebration of Chinese New Year,” says Chow, 79, who split from his third wife, LACMA trustee and Art + Film gala co-chair Eva Chow, late last year. The artist and restaurateur has managed to stay at the center of pop culture from swinging…

Social Action Nanci Ryder has visited my lab at USC two times. The first time she could walk and talk a bit, and write on a sketch pad. The next time, a year and a half later, she couldn’t move at all. She’s always brought Team Nanci members, friends like Renee Zellweger, Courteney Cox and Don Diamont. It’s been a phenomenal exchange of information, but seeing Nanci is also a reminder of how fast ALS progresses. That is why sharing this news is so exciting. We have made a major discovery, published Feb. 5 on Nature.com, in our search for a cure: We have used stem cell technology to create nerve cells in a petri dish from an ALS patient — cells that can recapitulate all the things we see…

Jennifer Meyer and Courteney Cox lunched at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Fountain Coffee Room. Sharing the room at the Polo Lounge were Monica Lewinsky, Mel Gibson and Dana Walden. … Simon Halls broke bread with longtime client Tom Ford at Lucques. … Over at Mr Chow, Jim Berkus shared a table with Martin Lawrence. Rachel Griffiths sat with Gersh Agency’s Allison Band. … Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira celebrated the Black Panther premiere at TAO L.A. Daniel Kaluuya also was there. … Margot Robbie checked out E.P. & L.P. … Don Johnson popped by Croft Alley. HOT NEW RESTAURANT Pollen The Quick Pitch An Australian restaurant group has taken over the former Fix, providing the same fervent laptop-toting Eastside coterie that’s made daytime hits out of Sqirl and Botanica with…

For as long as Bela Bajaria could remember, she had wanted to run a studio. “That was the track,” she says, “the goal from the moment I got into the entertainment business.” And for half a decade as president of Universal Television, she did just that. “And it was everything I wanted it to be,” she says now, before recounting the personal and professional recalibration that she underwent in the spring of 2016, after that dream job was taken from her amid tensions between the studio and its sibling network NBC. “You go through the reflection of where your identity is wrapped up and not wrapped up and all of the things you want to achieve,” explains Bajaria, 47, suggesting it was “liberating and terrifying because suddenly I didn’t know…

Right now, the most unenviable job in Hollywood belongs to Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, who are producing the 90th annual Academy Awards that air March 4. It’s their second time at bat, and they proved last year that they could orchestrate a smart, smooth ceremony — at least, up until its chaotic finale, when circumstances spiraled out of their control and the wrong film was named best picture. When it comes to producing the Oscars and juggling the myriad political considerations that surround lining up presenters and giving everyone their turn in the limelight, the second time around should be easier. But not this year, when the challenges are even more complicated than usual. So, not that they asked for it, but here are some words of advice.…

I ’ve been a Marvel comics fan since the age of 10, when I discovered that the world of the X-Men comics was an allegory of the Civil Rights and LGBTQ movements. And I was more than excited to see Black Panther — having had it marked on all of my calendars for months. Sitting with my family, in a theater of equally excited moviegoers, actors, musicians, professors, supporters and filmmakers — iconic in their own right — was surreal, as we collectively reveled in the black magic brought to life by Ryan Coogler. To understand that a film like Black Panther is possible speaks to the bigger implication that we now have a movie that utilizes a predominately black cast securing the same press, the same funding, the same…

James Ivory • Call Me by Your Name (ADAPTED) At the very end of the film, Elio [Timothee Chalamet] has his phone conversation with Oliver [Armie Hammer], who says he’s going to get married. In the script, I had him return to decorating a Christmas tree and lighting those little candles. His face was up in the branches, and you see him begin to weep a bit as the meaning and the significance of what Oliver just told him really takes over. That was to have been the final image. The wonderful thing that changed in shooting the film was him now looking into the fire in the fireplace. One reason it changed was because the dinner became a Hanukkah rather than Christmas dinner, so there was no tree to…

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? RUNGANO NYONI DIRECTOR Nyoni made a splash at Cannes with a unique mix of magical realism and deadpan satire in her debut I Am Not a Witch. NICOLE TAYLOR WRITER A rising star in TV, Taylor makes her film debut with eOne’s Country Music, directed by Peaky Blinders helmer Tom Harper. JESSIE BUCKLEY ACTRESS Following success on the stage (Kenneth Branagh’s The Winter’s Tale), she shined in the Torontobowing Brit indie Beast. NICK EMERSON EDITOR Emerson’s skill has contributed to the success of recent indie hits Lady Macbeth and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. JOSHUA JAMES RICHARDS CINEMATOGRAPHER His striking work on U.K. indie hit God’s Own Country got him a London Critics’ Circle nomination.…

Russell Carpenter, 67, is working with James Cameron on the first two of his planned four Avatar sequels, but the cinematographer, who will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 32nd American Society of Cinematographers Awards, is still best known for his Oscarwinning work on Titanic. Most of Cameron’s 1997 epic was shot at Fox Baja Studios in Mexico, where an enormous set of the Titanic was built. “It was just a few feet shorter than the real Titanic,” recalls Carpenter. “What was extraordinary was that as much as it looked like a real ship from one side, the other side was a total mishmash of scaffolding, lumber, cabling and wiring.” The ship set had around 650 portholes, and each needed a light — on top of all…

It was front-page news when THR announced on Oct. 27, 2000, that Quentin Tarantino, then 37, was working on “a starring vehicle” for Uma Thurman, also 37, called Kill Bill. The Miramax production was described simply as a “revenge film,” which would ultimately prove both a vast understatement and extremely accurate. By the time THR reviewed the film in September 2003, Bill had become a two-part release, with the first having “a torrent of blood and dismembered bodies” in which Thurman was “quite wonderful, if one wants a humorless, strong-willed gymnast for a heroine.” For both Tarantino and Thurman, the three years between the announcement and the Kill Bill: Vol. 1 premiere were pivotal. Thurman became pregnant with her second child with then-husband Ethan Hawke, delaying production. (Tarantino told the…