Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/12/2016 i The Hollywood Reporter

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.” THAT WAS ONE Warner Bros. executive’s reaction to the excitement at Suicide Squad’s splashy Aug. 1 premiere in New York. Tracking indicates the film could open to more than $140 million domestic and potentially hand the studio its first unequivocal megahit since American Sniper’s $547.4 million in December 2014. With March’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice grossing $873 million worldwide but failing to impress audiences or reach the hoped-for $1 billion mark, Warners still urgently needs to jump-start its critical DC Comics universe, raising the stakes on Suicide Squad, which cost at least $175 million to make. Yet if the villain team-up ultimately works — and it has drawn some harsh early reviews (see page 62) — it will be in spite of the kind…

THE CHURCH OF Scientology’s controversial boss, David Miscavige, may be an unwitting catalyst for a dramatic power shift in the U.K. media landscape. In December, a story ran on the website of the U.K.’s Daily Mail tabloid titled “Exclusive: Inside the ‘bromance’ of Tom Cruise and Scientology leader David Miscavige.” It laid out the usual tale of the star’s links to the church and his unusually close relationship with Miscavige. Upset by the story, Miscavige filed a complaint with the U.K.’s Independent Press Standards Organization, arguing that many of the claims previously had been disproved. U.K. law is much less tolerant of press freedoms than American law, so IPSO upheld the complaint, but in an unexpected turn, Mail Online argued that since the article originated in its U.S. division, it…

Lost Along the Way (William Morrow) BY Erin Duffy AGENCY WME Duffy’s recently published comedic third novel (her first, Bond Girl, is in development with producer Mark Johnson) finds a trio of estranged high school BFFs reuniting in Montauk when their marriages flounder. A God in the Shed (Inkshares) BY J-F. Dubeau AGENCY UTA Venus McKenzy and her friends have trapped an evil, ancient transdimensional god — who might be connected to a local serial killer responsible for 60 deaths — in her backyard shed. Unfortunately, they can’t figure out what to do next.…

“Accurate.” SUSAN SARANDON The actress and outspoken Bernie Sanders supporter, responding to a gif posted to Twitter that described her as “having literally the worst time” at the Democratic convention. “She gets too upset when she sees images of her dead son’s face, you f—ing asshole.” JOHN OLIVER The HBO comedian, addressing Donald Trump’s pointed questioning of Ghazala Khan’s silence while standing next to her husband, Khizr Khan, at the DNC. “We’re going to kill everybody.” CASEY BLOYS The new HBO chief, quipping at TCA about equal-opportunity victimization after journalists criticized the network for relying on sexualized violence against women to advance storylines. “I remember doing the interview and being like, ‘That was an odd one.’ ” MARGOT ROBBIE The Suicide Squad star, recalling how she felt after speaking with…

At Mr Chow: Lionsgate COO Sandra Stern with ICM’s Carter Cohn, Nigel Lythgoe with CBS’ Chris Castallo and producer Randall Emmett with 50 Cent. … Woody Allen joined his agent John Burnham at Bouchon. … Brad Pitt and son Maddox chowed on burgers and truffle fries at Umami Burger in Hollywood. … Jeffrey Katzenberg made an appearance at Madeo. … Cameron Diaz and Jaden Smith popped in to Croft Alley on separate days. … Drew Barrymore ordered a burger without a bun at Hinoki & the Bird. The Quick Pitch Right out of the gate the most ambitious and accomplished restaurant in Hollywood by a mile, TV chef Curtis Stone’s successor with brother Luke to the far tinier Maude in Beverly Hills is likewise tasting-menu-only. The five-course dinner in the…

THE BIG BOMBSHELL OUT OF BILL CLINTON’S speech at the DNC on July 26 — that during his term as president, he once played hooky from the Oval Office for two days to watch “all six Police Academy movies” (in fact there were seven) with daughter Chelsea — surprised nobody more than Pat Proft, the 69-year-old filmmaker who created the wacky 1980s cop comedy franchise. “I was watching a Canadian football game,” says Proft, who now lives in Minnesota, where his old comedy buddy Al Franken is his senator, “and all these texts started happening. It’s just so weird to come out of the blue that the president of the United States sat and binge-watched these movies. What was he doing that day? What was happening in the world that…

“MOST CONGENIAL” An hour before Chelsea Clinton took the DNC stage, Bill Clinton was spotted near the NBC News booth taking selfies with millennial female admirers, who did not shower the same kind of attention at other times on The Bachelor’s Chris Soules (found wandering the Marriott lobby bar) or Chris Cuomo (coming off a workout, holding a towel). 1 DAY, 2 STAR ANCHORS On the last day of the DNC, Megyn Kelly was ushered through a crowded Wells Fargo Center lobby by a security detail of a halfdozen giant, yelling men; the same day, Savannah Guthrie laughed about wearing yellow, the same color as the Bernie protesters. HOT AND COLD AT FOX Backstage at the RNC, Trump scions Donald Jr. and Eric impressed with their politeness as Scott Baio…

ONE DAY IN 1997, A TEAM OF WAX ARTISTS FROM MADAME TUSSAUDS ARRIVED AT DONALD TRUMP’S OFFICE AT Trump Tower in New York and took measurements and impressions of various parts of the real estate mogul’s body — including his hands — to help them construct a life-sized wax replica for the museum’s New York branch on 42nd Street. That Trump replica, dressed in a blue business suit, stood in Tussauds’ halls for years until, in 2011, it was retired without much fanfare. But for reasons only known to those at Tussauds — “no comment” is all a spokesman for the London-based company would say — this impression of his 7¼-inch-long right hand still hangs on a plaque on a wall near the museum’s exit. Not surprisingly, in recent months…

IT’S A SMALL V ILLAGE BUILT BY V ISIONARY Abbot Kinney,” says Matthew Modine, star of Netflix’s Stranger Things, of the tobacco millionaire who conceived of the now-hip area (oceanfront property prices at $2,400 a square foot) as a tribute to Venice, Italy — canals and all. Adds The Agency partner David Solomon, “Venice was a rough place, but now it’s bringing in creative types open to a less cookie-cutter neighborhood.” They include Robert Downey Jr., John Slattery and Fiona Apple. HISTORY By 1929, Venice was popular with stars who purchased summer cottages and threw parties: Carole Lombard hosted one at the pier’s Fun House, with Cary Grant among the guests. After World War II, it was the backdrop for Grease, American Gigolo and Speed. Postgentrification, Silicon Beach startups moved…

WHEN FORMER ELEKTRA A&R HEAD PETER Jay Philbin (who repped Bruce Springsteen) moved to the beach in Santa Monica as an infant during the late 1940s, the city “was the home of the newly wed and the nearly dead,” says the lifelong resident. The 3.5-mile stretch of deep sand has been a tony, familyfriendly haven for Brian Grazer and Dennis Quaid. Says jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer (wife of Tobey Maguire and daughter of NBCUniversal’s Ron Meyer), “Santa Monica has it all: mountains, ocean, palm trees, amazing restaurants and adorable shops.” Adds director Samuel Bayer: “I’m raising a family, and I dig it. Everyone needs a refuge, and that’s what I’ve found in Santa Monica.” Price per square foot is up to nearly $3,000 for an Ocean Avenue condo, but a…

ANIMAL-CENTERED SPECIALS Since the launch of the annual Hero Dog Awards in 2011, Hallmark increasingly has employed four-legged friends for specials, including Kitten Bowl and Kitten Summer Games, the latter of which will debut Aug. 5 opposite the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics. “It’s very family-friendly programming,” says Hallmark CEO Bill Abbott. “It’s the type of content that catches fire, literally and socially, and provides us great opportunities to expand our business. It’s an area that we think we can do even more in moving forward.” DAYTIME PROGRAMMING The bedrock of Hallmark’s daytime programming is Home & Family, which airs five days a week, two hours a day. Originally on The Family Channel from 1996 to ’98, it was revived with new hosts by Abbott, who previously had worked…

THIS YEAR, THE HOST OF THE Television Critics Association Awards will have a dual personality. For part of the ceremony, he’ll be 43-year-old Mexican actor Jaime Camil; during other parts, he’ll be Rogelio de la Vega, the preening, self-involved telenovela star Camil plays on The CW’s Jane the Virgin. “At some point Rogelio is going to jump in on the hosting, push me out of the way and do some funny stuff,” promises Camil. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.” Before his turn at the podium, the first-time TCA host spoke with THR about playing to a roomful of critics, Jane’s upcoming “blue” season (as in sad, not dirty) and what it takes to fill Ellen DeGeneres’ shoes. Did you have any hesitation about hosting an awards show…

WHAT VERIZON/AOL HAS WHAT YAHOO BRINGS SPORTS Verizon is a partner of the NFL and streamed Super Bowl 50 for its customers on the go90 app, which now offers a mix of live games, highlights and sports-themed shortform web shows. Yahoo showed off the strength of its home page by attracting 15.2 million unique viewers to its live stream of an NFL game from London. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has teased future such content deals. NEWS Arianna Huffington’s The Huffington Post has grown under AOL to include a global roster of video and editorial content. In June, it had 75 million visitors in the U.S. alone, according to comScore. Yahoo’s top star likely is anchor Katie Couric, whose RNC videos drew more than 18 million views. But with her contract…

IN 2012, THE INTRODUCTION OF ONLINE VOTING FOR THE Oscars caused a panic among many Academy members. This year, THR has learned, a growing portion not only will cast e-ballots but will do so after streaming contenders online. It’s all part of a push by the group to increase engagement (50 percent of members are based outside Los Angeles, where most screenings take place) and crack down on piracy (DVD screeners often wind up in the wrong hands). The Academy first beta tested streaming last season. Prenominations, short films and feature animation branch members were able to stream films eligible for best animated feature and animated and live-action shorts. Then, postnoms, members outside L.A. were able to watch all nominees for documentary feature and short, animated short, live-action short and…

FOR JAMES PATTERSON, LESS IS more. The prolific author’s BookShots imprint, which launched in June and publishes 150-page novellas priced at $5 or less, already has produced four New York Times best-sellers, recently sold its millionth copy and caught Hollywood’s attention. First up is a sixepisode Investigation Discovery scripted series based on the cabler’s true-crime stories. “Imagine me saying this,” jokes Patterson, 69, of his rare foray into nonfiction, “but truth can definitely be stranger than fiction.” The author will host the show, set to debut in 2017, a la Alfred Hitchcock on his 1960s series. “We want this to shout, ‘James Patterson’s here!’ ” says Henry Schleiff, group president of Investigation Discovery, American Heroes Channel and Destination America, adding that the partnership “will bring new readers to James and…

SHIMMEL & GLICKSTEIN Mark Shimmel, head of talent at Dick Clark Productions, married Jill Glickstein, lead counsel at advertising agency Leo Burnett Worldwide, on July 9 in Los Angeles. The couple, who became engaged in September, will honeymoon in Vietnam and Hong Kong. WEDDINGS Dara Gordon, a manager at Anonymous Content and a member of THR’s Next Gen class of 2014, married writer-director Chris McCoy on July 30 at Foxfire Mountain House in Mount Tremper, N.Y., in front of 150 guests. The couple, who became engaged in December, will honeymoon in France and Italy. BIRTHS Carolyn Cassidy, senior vp current at 20th Century Fox TV, and husband Zach McGee, senior vp business affairs at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, welcomed daughter Julia Rose McGee on July 3 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center…

THE NATION DIVIDES over many lines, but a basic split is between Lena Dunham, who made a primetime appearance July 26 at the Democratic National Convention, and Willie Robertson, a star of Duck Dynasty and a celebrity endorser at the Republican convention. No longer an actual aspect of political decision-making, party conventions are wholly symbolic affairs, an elaborate messaging apparatus and targeted media platform. In this instance, Dunham represented a cosmopolitan, millennial, pansexual, womenfocused view, abhorrent to a significant part of the country, and Robertson a nativist, older, gun-associated, militaryinclined, white-male-focused view, abhorrent to the Dunham part. In any effort to achieve the political middle, or extend the base of support, both figures would seem supremely counterproductive, except that either side — in a world divided not just by politics…

OVER THE YEARS, THE HOLLYWOOD ELEMENT has come up to get out of Dodge or for more space,” says investor and resident Michael Braverman. Oprah Winfrey (whose gated 42 acres sit high on East Valley Road) is perhaps the most famous resident of the pristine enclave 95 miles northwest of L.A. Gwyneth Paltrow recently spent $4.9 million on a 2.4-acre compound with two 1980s teardowns, making her neighbors with James Cameron, Ivan Reitman, Kevin Costner, Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt and musicians Jack Johnson, David Crosby and Beach Boy Mike Love. HISTORY From 1910 to 1922, Santa Barbara was the “Hollywood of the North” thanks to silent-film studio Flying A. Since then, native sons and daughters have included Katy Perry and Kirk Douglas. Battles over the beach at Hollister Ranch…

FX Limited Series The cabler jumped to the No. 2 spot in overall Emmy nominations (second to HBO, which always leads the pack) on the strength of its two horses in this category: The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (which nabbed 22 nominations) and the second season of Fargo (18 nominations). ABC Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Lili Taylor got a larger role in the second season of American Crime, which meant playing opposite co-star Felicity Huffman in several tense scenes, the strength of which earned them nominations in this category. NBC Guest Actress in a Comedy Series There always is a handful of Saturday Night Live hosts nominated in the guest acting category, but this year’s contenders include a never-before doublenom for co-hosts Amy…

FOR A TIME, COMEDIES — PARTICULARLY THE R-RATED VARIETY — COULD DO NO wrong thanks to uproarious hits including The Hangover (2009) and Bridesmaids (2011). But despite Bad Moms opening to a decent $23.8 million during the July 29 to 31 weekend for STX Entertainment, there’s been a downturn in comedy grosses in 2016. Behind the scenes, studios are re-evaluating comedy slates, even if they aren’t losing tons of money thanks to modest budgets. “What’s happened to the genre is like everything else: If something works, every other studio follows and does something similar until it becomes overkill,” says analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners. “We’re not seeing a big breakout hit.” Source: Box Office Mojo; all grosses worldwide. *Still in release…

DEAL OF THE WEEK IT’S BEEN A roller-coaster week for Dalian Wanda Group. On July 27, the conglomerate headed by Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, agreed to acquire Beijing-based film marketing and media company Mtime for $350 million. The move adds a powerful suite of movie-related internet services to Wanda’s burgeoning film empire, pitching it into even fiercer competition with BAT — the internet firms turned media and entertainment giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. “This is one more piece on the board in the rivalry,” says Manatt attorney Lindsay Conner. “But it’s also a very interesting and intelligent step in the evolution of Wanda’s business.” Relatively unknown in the West, Mtime was established in 2005 by former Microsoft executive Kelvin Hou as a listing site for movie times but has…

FILM Benedict Cumberbatch (UTA, the U.K.’s Conway van Gelder Grant, Sloane Offer) will star in and produce an adaptation of the 1939 novel Rogue Male. Disney will reboot the 1991 adventure pic The Rocketeer with a black female protagonist. Alfre Woodard (ICM, Circle of Confusion, Gochman Law) has joined DreamWorks’ Haunted. Rosamund Pike (CAA, the U.K.’s United, Magnolia) and Daniel Bruhl (WME, the U.K.’s Tavistock Wood, Germany’s Players Agentur) are in talks to star in Working Title’s terrorism drama Entebbe. The Big Number $ 3.1M The 2011 payout to silence former Fox News booker Laurie Luhn, who came forward to accuse Roger Ailes of 20 years of sexual harassment in a July 29 New York story. Morgan Freeman (CAA, Sloane Offer) is in talks to join Disney’s live-action The Nutcracker,…

DRINK Los Angeles’ Plan Check is serving up a KENTUCKY BUBBLE BATH with Buffalo Trace bourbon, cynar, lemon, agave syrup and lavender water; $13, plancheck.com ICE Dior Fine Jewelry La Rose Dior Pre Catelan rings in pink gold, diamonds and amethyst, $6,200 (far left) and $18,000 (second from left), at select Dior boutiques, 800-929-3467; Ana Khouri multicolor Mirian ring (second from right), $6,282, modaoperandi.com; Verdura rubellite, sapphire, ruby and gold ring (far right), price upon request, at Verdura, 212-758-3388 DRINK The Hungry Cat’s Hollywood location combines mezcal, reposado tequila, sweet and dry vermouths, Campari and angostura bitters for its ROSITA; $14, thehungrycat.com ICE Dior Fine Jewelry’s Archi Dior Diorama bracelet (left) in white gold and diamonds, price upon request, at select Dior boutiques, 800-929-3467; Tiffany & Co. spessartite ribbon ring…

“I went as part of the Creative Coalition. Elizabeth Banks, Dean Norris, Josh Gad, David Schwimmer — we all stayed at this flea-bitten hotel by the airport, the best the coalition could afford. In the morning, we’d all pile on the bus together and go to the CNN Grill, or go to meet-andgreets, and then we’d walk through the heat and the security and wander around the Democratic convention. It felt like a field trip. At one point, I was joking that it was like kindergarten — we needed the magic rope that we could all hang on to together.” REID SCOTT, Veep “During rehearsal [for the July 27 ‘What the World Needs Now’ musical number], after the bulk of the song had been sung, we were asked to walk…