Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday October 17 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

On Oct. 11, nine days after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi went missing, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel had made up his mind. As news reports implicated the Saudi government in the disappearance and likely murder of the U.S. resident, Emanuel began exploring the company’s options for extricating itself from a $400 million investment made in March by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The only problem: The deal had funded, and finding an out wouldn’t be simple. Four days later, Emanuel said during a keynote session at the MIPCOM conference in Cannes that he was “monitoring” the situation and the events were “very, very concerning” and “upsetting,” as the deal unwinding continued behind the scenes. Endeavor found its out, and the $400 million,…

As Disney’s blockbuster acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets enters the home stretch, one lingering risk to the deal has some industry watchers holding their breath: pending regulatory clearance from China. With President Trump escalating his trade war against China by the week, Beijing has been scrambling to retaliate. Multiple U.S. investors are on edge over the prospect that China could resort to weaponizing its antitrust approval process to stymie the ambitions of America’s corporate giants. By far the most high-profile such deal under review by Chinese market regulators is the $71.3 billion Disney-Fox merger, which has a deadline of Oct. 19. “The talk is that China will consider all available options to respond to Trump’s tariffs, including using Chinese antitrust laws to target deals that are perceived to have…

Guest Column As I walked into the room, a screenwriter approached, proudly showing me his script — an original story he and his production company had developed: Donald Trump was being racist to immigrants, his wife divorced him because she would not tolerate hate, and it ended with Trump apologizing to the country for his bigotry. The screenwriter was 9 years old, and his team was made up entirely of fourth-graders. This is the work of the Youth Cinema Project (YCP), the Latino Film Institute’s signature education program. Founded by Academy Award nominee Edward James Olmos, the program focuses on giving children of color, young women and immigrant students the skill set to tell their stories. Because when we don’t empower them, their realities are at best ignored on our…

Have You Partied With the Party Goats? The most popular party guests these days — note Lil Wayne’s 36th birthday bash at L.A.’s Hubble Studios — are Spanky and Pippin, Nigerian Dwarf goats of Party Goats L.A. The company, which provides the animals to events (or yoga sessions) for $99 per hour, was founded in 2017 by animation producer Scout Raskin. As a result of Saturday Night Live’s Oct. 6 episode in which “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost made light of the craze, Raskin says the goats are now booked out four to six weeks. Spanky and Pippin, who live with Raskin in Sun Valley’s La Tuna Canyon, have already partied with DJ Khaled, Steve Harvey, Drew Carey, NBA star Blake Griffin, rapper Eric Bellinger and the cast of Crazy…

Want to check out the new Lost in Space? You’ll need Netflix. New Star Trek? Get a subscription to CBS All Access. Cobra Kai, the series based on the Karate Kid movies? That one requires a YouTube Premium subscription. Jonesing for access to a Marvel superhero show still in the planning stages? That one likely will require you to pay for the upcoming streaming service from Walt Disney yet to be named. Indeed, with all the disparate digital offerings — which also include Hulu, Amazon, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s forthcoming shortform TV platform Quibi and more — consumers will need to pay for so many different subscriptions that some may throw in the towel and simply stick with the much-maligned cable bundle. This is the challenge faced by WarnerMedia, which announced Oct.…

“There are people in the business who think we are boutique, yet we are 650 employees or so,” says Sam Gores, CEO of Paradigm Talent Agency, which represents Stephen King, Laurence Fishburne, director James Wan, Coldplay, Halsey, Ed Sheeran, the Duffer brothers, Night School director Malcolm D. Lee and Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding, among more than 4,000 other clients. “We are not boutique, but we are a very special place, and I wanted people to get that impression the minute they stepped in.” To accomplish this, Paradigm, which launched in 1992, relied on Richard Riveire, a partner at international architecture firm Rottet Studios, to transform the 82,000-square-foot Wilshire LaPeer monolith, once the offices of the ICM Partners talent agency, into vibrant new headquarters (to the tune of high-teen millions,…

As Gucci, Tom Ford and Michael Kors ban fur in their fashion collections, and Bentley bends to the demands of its California customers by offering vegan leather interiors (made from mushrooms and jellyfish, no less), the desire for vegan decor is hitting home. “After coming to L.A. via New York City seven years ago, I noticed a significant shift in awareness and concern for animal rights and global health,” adds Studio Hus interior designer Tatum Kendrick, who recently completed a totally vegan L.A. residence for No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal and designed Moby’s Silver Lake vegan restaurant Little Pine. For DiMare Design’s Deborah DiMare, whose book Vegan Interiors debuts Nov. 2, “When I discovered the term ‘dog leather,’ it was a pivotal moment. I refused to continue designing spaces with…

THE POWER 50 MARA BROCK AKIL AND SALIM AKIL Black Lightning (THE CW); Love Is _ (OWN) After two years gestating in their move from BET to Warner Bros., married multihyphenates Mara, 48, and Salim, 54, returned to TV in 2018 with gusto. Black Lightning marked The CW’s highest-rated debut in two years, and on OWN, the loosely auto-biographical Love Is _ opened to strong reviews and a speedy renewal. The show we discuss most in our writers room Salim: Castle Rock The biggest challenge to staffing right now Mara: “Finding unique and experienced voices … oh, and being able to afford them … oh, and getting them to only focus on your show.” JESSE ARMSTRONG Succession (HBO) With breakouts increasingly difficult to come by, this British import bucked the…

There’s a sneaky freshness to Wanderlust, a Netflix/BBC co-produced series about a marriage fraying considerably around the edges — and what, if anything, can save it. Joy (Toni Collette) is a therapist who treats both couples and individuals. Her husband, Alan (Steven Mackintosh), is an English teacher. They’ve been married for more than 25 years. They have three kids, ages 25, 18 and 16. Joy and Alan are aware of the flaws in their relationship and, like most couples, probably have been for years. And then one day it happens. Joy, recovering from a bike accident that left her pelvis cracked, is attempting to have sex with Alan, who is very cognizant of the need to take things slow. Joy makes a joke, then suggests doing things differently, and Alan,…

Before he even landed the part as Gary Hart in Sony’s The Front Runner, Hugh Jackman boasted some unique qualifications to bring the former senator to life onscreen. The Australian national hadn’t followed Hart’s disastrous campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination — Jackman was backpacking through Europe at the time — but his college journalism studies gave him a strong perspective on the media circus around it. Today, his wife often calls him by the nickname “Senator Jackman” because of his diplomatic answers in interviews, he says. And, as it turned out, 2018’s news cycle would offer the actor decent preparation to dive into the frenzy of Hart’s campaign for director Jason Reitman. The similarities are uncanny: acrimony between politician and press, a sexual scandal being litigated in public,…

HBO Always protective of its brand, HBO held onto its library for standalone service HBO Now instead of selling streaming rights to other providers. As a result, the new offering will lean heavily on the network’s lineup, from current shows Game of Thrones and Insecure to library fare like Sex and the City to docs and films. WARNER BROS. When Warners licensed the Friends streaming rights to Netflix in 2014, reports suggested the library was worth north of $110 million. That’s revenue the studio would have to give up to make Friends and ER, now on Hulu, available. IP including Wonder Woman (now on HBO) and Harry Potter is also expected to land on the new service. TURNER An expansive licensing deal with Hulu for Turner’s animation library, including The…

When Josh Loeb opened Mexican restaurant Tallula’s last year at the base of Santa Monica Canyon, the restaurateur already was familiar with the space — as a kid growing up in Rustic Canyon, he ordered takeout from the previous establishment, Marix Tex Mex Cafe, hundreds of times. So when he and his pastry chef wife, Zoe Nathan, took over, they barely touched a thing. “The idea was never to do a total redesign but just to revitalize it with really great ingredients. It was very much a nostalgic thing for me to do,” says Loeb, 43, whose light touch seems to be baked in the local DNA of one of L.A.’s most desirable ZIP codes. Along the 2-mile stretch that runs from Pacific Coast Highway to San Vicente, noticeable changes…

Claire Foy is headed toward the molten center of feminine rage: Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 5, just hours before the vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The walk there is surprisingly pleasant. The 34-year-old British actress strolls through the National Mall casually dressed in white Chuck Taylors and a short-sleeved Zara shirt. Tortoiseshell glasses perch on her face, less densely freckled than her arms. “I’m not a stander-outer,” she says, humble words underlined by what Foy calls a “common” accent, acquired in her native Manchester and deftly manipulated into a Buckingham Palace-appropriate dialect for her breakout role: Queen Elizabeth II on Netflix’s The Crown. “You wouldn’t notice me walking down the street,” she says. Foy, who lives in London with her young daughter, Ivy Rose,…

Palm Springs’ real estate market has been booming in recent years, drawing an influx of new Hollywood homeowners led by Leonardo DiCaprio, who bought the old Dinah Shore compound in 2014 for $5.2 million. But when manager Will Ward of Fourward — clients include Chris and Liam Hemsworth and The Avengers’ Cobie Smulders — heads out to his second home in the desert, he doesn’t find it to be a social scene for entertainment insiders. “I don’t go out a lot when I’m there,” says Ward of his pedigreed 4,190-square-foot residence, the former home of late drummer Buddy Rich. “I just got an email from Ian Montone at LBI Entertainment. He’s a big music manager, and he told me he has a house just around the corner from me. We…

STEVE MC QUEEN strolls down London’s Portobello Road, past a diner where he once took breaks from managing a used-clothing store; alongside the Electric Cinema, the venerable art house theater where, long before he dreamed of making movies, he binged on the films of Francois Truffaut, Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien; then down a side street and near a nondescript restaurant that was once the celebrated Mangrove cafe, where a plaque boasts the names of the artists who gathered here — Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, among others — whom the young McQueen might have fantasized about joining, had he not been a poor black boy with dyslexia and a lazy eye and not a hope in hell. It’s been decades since McQueen, 49, left these mean streets of London,…

Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court fate is hours from being sealed when television icon Norman Lear gathers with his One Day at a Time show-runners Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce on a crisp fall morning in Boston. Having spent a six-decade career infusing political debate into his collection of sitcom classics, from Good Times to All in the Family, the 96-year-old would love to do the same with the ferocious judicial battle gripping the country — just as he would with whatever controversy Donald Trump is stirring up that week. But like so much else about the industry since Lear got his start in the 1950s, the way in which viewers consume content has changed dramatically, as has the way stories are told. “We can be topical but not timely,”…

Step into Jason Blum’s offices on the fringe of L.A.’s Filipinotown — just a few yards from a homeless shelter and light-years from the epicenters of Hollywood power — and you know something about this producer is different. It’s not just the bland bungalow that houses his company, Blumhouse (one of three buildings that hold his staff of 80), or the Ford cargo van (a souped-up mobile office) waiting for him in the parking lot; it’s the wall of fame that greets you in the lobby, with photos of several dozen directors covering one wall and showrunners an other. Giving these creators green-light power has helped generate an unparalleled slew of hits, including such movies as 2013’s The Purge and 2016’s Split (both with Universal, where Blum inked a 10-year…

When the Streamy Awards first started handing out honors to the best videos on the internet in 2009, web series like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog dominated the nominations. But as the YouTube creator community blossomed, the Streamys evolved with it. Today the show, with the help of producer Dick Clark Productions (which shares a parent company, Valence Media, with THR), has grown to feature more than 50 awards recognizing internet-specific categories such as live streamer and cover song. “We made the decision after our partnership with DCP, which started for the fourth show, that we would double down on native digital talent,” says Streamys creator Drew Baldwin. “They have their own unique form of content.” For its eighth edition, the Streamys has started to look similar to a lot of…

Weddings Christian Vesper, FremantleMedia executive vp, creative director of global drama, married Brian Moylan, who recently co-authored Pretty Mess with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne, on Oct. 5 at the home of Padma Lakshmi in New York. Lakshmi officiated the ceremony before 30 guests. The couple, who have been together for eight years, will honeymoon over Christmas in Sri Lanka. Jessica Reif, a managing director of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Manhattan, married Stephen Ehrlich, media and entertainment sales executive at IBM, on Oct. 13 at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. Strategic communications consultant Chris Day married Donna Pennestri, the associate publisher of Variety, on Oct. 13 at the Belmond El Encanto in Santa Barbara, California. Births Alana Kleiman, vp of Seth MacFarlane’s production company, Fuzzy…

On Oct. 16, viewers got their first glimpse of The Conners, a Roseanne spinoff without its once-titular matriarch. The premiere episode, “Keep on Truckin’,” picked up three weeks after the season 10 finale of ABC’s Roseanne, the No. 1 series on TV for the duration of its springtime run. The episode begins (spoiler alert!) with the family believing that Roseanne died at home in her bed of a heart attack after knee surgery. But a coroner’s office autopsy soon revealed the truth: Roseanne overdosed on opioids. By now, I’m sure there are people in remote villages in Brazil or on a research base at the North Pole who know about Roseanne Barr’s tweet and how ABC decided to cancel the show and ultimately require that she be removed from the…

Although the summer box office didn’t set any benchmarks, 2018 is heading toward a record haul — and all because studios that once viewed certain months as dead zones have relocated some tentpoles to less competitive corridors. For the first time in history, the year’s top-grossing movie in North America so far — Black Panther — didn’t debut in summer or during the year-end holidays but in February. Disney’s superhero pic opened to a massive $202 million on its way to grossing $700 million domestically, the third-best showing of all time. Then Venom struck with a stunning $80 million debut over the Oct. 5-7 weekend — the best opening ever for that month. Add A Star Is Born, also doing stellar business, and October has never looked so good. As…

Of all the projects that director-producer Doug Liman tackled in 2018 — he’s got several movies in the works, including the Tom Cruise Edge of Tomorrow sequel, and four TV shows, George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers and a Suits spinoff among them — one has tried him the most: programming the pingpong table’s LED screen in his Tribeca penthouse loft. “I started trying to wire this scoreboard during the editing of American Made,” he says, “and I couldn’t believe we finished that movie and it made it into theaters and this still wasn’t working. But I got it working during the edit of Chaos Walking,” his 2019 sci-fi feature starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley. Known for being obsessive and hands-on, sometimes to the detriment of his longevity on a project,…

Thanks to baseball, designer Katie Hodges had three months to renovate and furnish Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Chase Utley’s new Westside home before his family’s October 2017 move from a Beverly Hills rental. (The Utleys had rented for two seasons to ride out the risk of being traded before retirement, which Chase announced in July.) “When baseball’s over,” says his wife, Jennifer, “I like our family to be in a home environment.” Says Hodges, whom Jennifer found on Instagram, “It was game on from day one — there was nothing left untouched” after turning the 1930s four-bedroom, 3½-bath, 4,100-square-foot Monterey Colonial from a 1970s-era “dingy” residence into a family home whose “language” is “moody, not trendy, and keeps’em guessing.” The Utleys have moved often, from Philadelphia and Gladwyne, Pennsylvania…

Isaac Aptaker “It’s not really a show, but I wish Regis was back on TV. Can you reboot a person?” Issa Rae “Golden Girls, but with black women. I know someone with a great script.” Greg Berlanti “Please, please, The West Wing.” Courtney A. Kemp “Black Frasier. It’s a 30 Rock joke, but I would still love to see it.” Bill Hader “Crazy Like a Fox … You just need to find whoever the next Jack Warden is.” Nahnatchka Khan “ Dinosaurs, but make it gay.” Brad Falchuk “The Obama administration.” Kenya Barris “Is it shameless of me to say … Bewitched?”…

Following their award-winning triumph two years ago with The Night Manager, it comes as no surprise that the production company headed by John le Carre’s sons should want to adapt another of their father’s espionage thrillers into a deluxe TV miniseries. Based on the author’s 1983 novel of the same name, The Little Drummer Girl is a similarly prestigious package, with a high-gloss look and a starry international cast led by Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgard. South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) makes his TV debut behind the camera. As a teaser for its November debut on AMC in the U.S. (and the BBC in the U.K.), the first two of six hourlong episodes world premiered over the weekend at the London Film Festival. On this evidence, this slow-burner lacks…

From A-list fests in Cannes and Toronto to more niche events in Sarajevo and Locarno, festival organizers the world over are embracing gender parity in the #MeToo era. In Asia, however, the march toward greater equality has stalled. The Tokyo International Film Festival offers a case study: Statistically speaking, there’s less than a 7 percent chance a woman will win the Grand Prix at this year’s event. Brazilian Gabriela Amaral Almeida’s The Father’s Shadow is the only film by a female director out of 16 in the main competition. That probability is in line with female directors’ successes so far: two wins in 30 editions of the festival. Plus, the main jury has been headed by a woman just once. Tokyo is far from alone in this under-representation in Asia.…