Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/19/2016 i The Hollywood Reporter

IT’S THE HEARTWARMING COMEBACK STORY OF the summer: A year after a Walt Disney Co.-induced panic decimated shares of Hollywood conglomerates, stock prices for most companies have inched back up. The latest batch of financial results from the seven major studios have helped assuage investor fear that the business was in a long-term funk thanks to cord-cutting. One by one, CEOs pointed out that TV has been on an upswing. CBS blew past Wall Street expectations, while Time Warner and 21st Century Fox boasted of Donald Trump-fueled surges in viewership at news networks. Disney notched steady growth from its networks, too. Another takeaway: Comcast said paid cable subscribers dipped by just 4,000 between April and August — the smallest loss in more than a decade. By contrast, Netflix added just…

IMMEDIATELY UPON THE OPENING OF Ghostbusters in mid-July, top Sony executives boldly declared a sequel to Paul Feig’s all-female reboot of Ivan Reitman’s 1984 classic was a given. “While nothing has been officially announced yet, there’s no doubt in my mind it will happen,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony. That was the studio’s last public mention of a sequel. As of Aug. 7, Ghostbusters had earned just under $180 million at the global box office, including $117 million domestic. The film still hasn’t opened in a few markets, including France, Japan and Mexico, but box-office experts say it will have trouble getting to $225 million despite a hefty net production budget of $144 million plus a big marketing spend. The studio has said break-even would be…

DEAL OF THE WEEK THERE’S NOTHING cursed about J.K. Rowling’s return to the world of wizarding. Over 10 days, the author sparked pandemonium on the stage and page and generated a flurry of new deals in the process. On July 30, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two debuted at London’s Palace Theatre to stellar reviews and sold-out crowds, with a Broadway transfer all but assured. The next day, the script book launched, selling more than 2 million print copies in North America in its first 48 hours and another 1.3 million in the week that followed, becoming one of the fastestselling literary works in history. On Aug. 3, Warner Bros. revealed Rowling will write the script for a sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find…

FILM Mel Gibson (RP Media) will star in and produce Professor and the Madman, with Sean Penn in negotiations to co-star. Brie Larson (WME, Authentic, Sloane Offer) will make her directorial debut with the indie comedy Unicorn Store. Reese Witherspoon (CAA, LBI, Hansen Jacobson) will star in the indie Home Again, produced by Nancy Meyers and directed by Meyers’ daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Ruby Rose (WME, Art2Perform, Hirsch Wallerstein) and Masi Oka (UTA, Luber Roklin, Ziffren Brittenham) are in negotiations to join Warner Bros.’ monster movie Meg. The Big Number $956K Winning bid at an Aug. 4 auction for a copy of Action Comics No. 1, which features Superman’s first appearance and originally cost 10 cents. The Star Wars lead will topline the film adaptation of Patrick Ness’ dystopian YA novel…

Sir Ian McKellen Doesn’t Get a (Bathroom) Pass Ian McKellen was so concerned about being caught short in his new play without a bathroom break, he attempted to insert one into the script, according to sources close to the production. In Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land — which opened in Sheffield on Aug. 3 and will travel the U.K. before a three-month stint in London starting Sept. 8 — McKellen plays a down-at-heel poet who spends a heady evening imbibing heavily with an acquaintance (played by real-life BFF Patrick Stewart). For purposes of the play, the booze is fake, but the liquid is very real. And while McKellen is a producer of the play that has been revived several times since debuting at the Old Vic Theater in 1975 without…

SINCE ARRIVING AT FOX SPORTS in May 2015, Jamie Horowitz has upended the programming philosophy, rejecting the news and highlights genre epitomized by ESPN’s iconic SportsCenter in favor of hostdriven opinion and debate programming — a kind of Fox News for sports compared with CNN’s more traditional news product. “Sometimes I get positioned as anti-SportsCenter,” he admits. But his repudiation of the ESPN strategy is purely analytical, given how ubiquitous highlights are online. “SportsCenter’s ratings are as low as they’ve been since Facebook was exclusive to Harvard students,” he says. “The producers are great, the talent is great. It’s a genre problem.” And Horowitz, 40, wasted no time hiring key ESPN personalities with whom he worked during eight years at the network, including Colin Cowherd, Jason Whitlock and Skip Bayless,…

J ERRY SEINFELD WAS JUST AS SURPRISED as everybody else to hear that his Crackle series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, was nominated for an Emmy alongside Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I feel like Lewis and Clark here paddling down the river to find the new world, and I can’t believe I’ve found it,” he says of the Sony-produced show in which he interviews comedy heavyweights including Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin and the late Garry Shandling over a car ride and coffee. The show’s nomination in the variety talk category — Comedians has been nominated twice before, but both times in shortform categories — comes eight seasons into its run and has snagged a spot that might otherwise…

UNSTRUCTURED REALITY Deadliest Catch (Discovery) R. Decker Watson Jr., executive producer “I’ve encountered massive seas, childbirth, death, marriage, divorce and heroin addiction producing Deadliest Catch. But above all there is a heartwarming sense of community up there [in Alaska], and that’s what impresses me most. When [Capt.] Sig Hansen suffered a massive heart attack, he was in denial. He insisted on driving the Northwestern back to Seattle himself. In a tense off-camera moment, if he couldn’t be convinced to get help, we would have lost him. It was his brother Edgar, producers Kelvon Agee and Lisa Roberts and several Dutch Harbor locals who came together and saved Sig’s life.” Gaycation (Viceland) Ian Daniel, co-host “I went to Ted Cruz’s Rally for Religious Liberty in Iowa to try to talk to…

Splash Channing Tatum will star in the mermaid role made famous by Daryl Hannah in the 1984 film, while actress Jillian Bell will play Tom Hanks’ part for Disney. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels In the MGM remake, Rebel Wilson will star as one-half of the con artist team, originally played by Steve Martin and Michael Caine. Ocean’s Eleven WB’s female-driven spinoff, dubbed “Ocean’s Eight,” has a rumored ensemble with Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock. The Rocketeer Disney is developing a modern-day take on the 1991 action-adventure that will be fronted by a black female.…

The Underground Railroad (Doubleday) BY Colson Whitehead AGENCIES Aragi, RWSG The week of its Aug. 2 publication, Oprah Winfrey made Whitehead’s science fiction-meets-slavery history tale (imagine a real subterranean railroad, for starters) the newest pick for her book club. Children of the New World (Picador) BY Alexander Weinstein AGENCY UTA The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing director’s debut short story collection, out Sept. 13, is set in a near future transformed by technology. With its strong Black Mirror vibe, multiple stories could be optioned.…

“No, I didn’t get a divorce.” DANA WALDEN The Fox TV Group chairman and CEO, noting the onstage absence of longtime co-chief Gary Newman during the network’s TCA presentation Aug. 8. He was at the back of the ballroom. “If every superhero film is not The Dark Knight, they’ll bitch.” JOHN OSTRANDER The Suicide Squad comics creator, rationalizing critical response to the film that targeted the confusing plot among other flaws. “None of my agents wanted me to do it. They said, ‘Why would you be Taylor Swift’s boy toy?’ ” SCOTT EASTWOOD The Suicide Squad and Fast 8 actor, revealing his reps’ hesitation about him appearing in the pop star’s “Wildest Dreams” music video. “If you came to our house, you’d think we’d been living in Brazil.” TOM BRADY…

Aaron Sorkin met Stacey Snider at The Palm. … Sam Esmail and fiancee Emmy Rossum visited Nate and Al’s on Aug. 6 ahead of the Mr. Robot team receiving the TCA award for outstanding new program that night at the Beverly Hilton. … Randall Emmett joined fellow Power executive producer 50 Cent at Mr Chow. Also in of late: Sharon Stone, Tom Hoberman, Bob Daly, Mariah Carey and Terry Semel. … Bonnie Hammer partook at Culina. … Aleen Keshishian rendezvoused with Toni Howard at BLVD. … Cassandra Grey took a seat at AOC. … Former Paramount marketing colleagues Arthur Cohen and Allison Jackson broke bread at Porta Via. Bob Gersh was at another table. … Adam Scott stopped by Yamashiro. … P. Diddy sauntered through Soho House. … Effie T.…

‘Make Donald Drumpf Again’ For months, Oliver stayed out of the Trump mockery business, using his longer segments for topics more esoteric than the orange-skinned gorilla in the room, but his extended deconstruction (Feb. 28) of Trump’s branding practices, from his steaks to his surname (changed by his ancestors from Drumpf) was worth the wait. Michael Moore Gets Doomy A big part of Bill Maher’s brand is telling his audience information they don’t want to hear, an edginess embodied by the recent live post-RNC episode (July 20) featuring Moore’s mournful, instantly booed prophesy: “I’m sorry to have to be the buzzkill here so early on, but I think Trump is going to win.” FLOTUS on ‘Carpool Karaoke’ The July 20 segment violated many of the viral franchise’s rules — Michelle…

THERE WERE ROUGHLY 3,600 runners who, in 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) segments over 82 days, carried the Olympic torch from New York to Los Angeles in 1984. But none looked as good as then-37-year-old O.J. Simpson, who at 10 a.m. on July 21 was handed the flame on the Pacific Coast Highway. His section was Santa Monica’s steep California Incline, which he ascended effortlessly — bounded up, really, his feet high above the ground like an athlete-god — smiling to spectators with the two-pound torch held aloft. “You don’t want to drop it; you don’t want to fall down,” says 1960 decathlon gold medalist Rafer Johnson, who, as the final torch relay participant, lit the cauldron to open the Games. “It’s tense when you have to do something that needs to be…

RYAN MURPHY CREATED LIGHTNING in a bottle with the first season of FX’s American Crime Story, breaking ratings records and earning 22 Emmy nominations for The People v. O.J. Simpson. Now he’s begun work on perhaps a bigger challenge in season two: Hurricane Katrina. After all, the 2005 storm lacks the many entry points — sports, celebrity, distance — that drew viewers to O.J. But Murphy, who’s using Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge as source material, is confident Katrina is as much a story of survival as it is of devastation. “We’re laying into: What do you do when you’re in a city and your government has abandoned you? How do you live? How do you get out?” he says. “You get out by climbing up and pulling up people…

TWO TOP MUSIC COMPANIES might soon be boogying in new offices. THR has learned Warner Bros. Records (Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers), which has called its ski lodge-like base on Warners’ Burbank studio lot home for more than 40 years, is considering relocating to the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles. According to sources, parent company Warner Music Group might take a substantial lease at the renovated Ford Factory building at Seventh and Santa Fe when its lease expires in 2017. A move by one of the “big three” music firms into one of the formerly downtrodden area’s marquee buildings would mark the first high-profile Hollywood entrant to the neighborhood. Last year, talks between the Shorenstein-owned Ford Factory and BuzzFeed for a massive lease in the 250,000-square-foot space fell…

EMERIE MARY STONE Stephanie Paciullo, an agent for commercial endorsements at CAA, and husband Ben Stone welcomed daughter Emerie Mary Stone on Aug. 2 at NYU Langone Medical Center. BIRTHS MPRM Communications vp Karlyn Nelson and her husband, actor and realtor Tom Lind, welcomed son Theodore Richard Lind on July 14 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. Ellie Kemper and husband Michael Koman welcomed a son Aug. 1. The Birth of a Nation filmmaker-star Nate Parker and wife Sarah Parker welcomed daughter Justice. 42West publicist Julie Mathis and tour manager Jerome Crooks (Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Tool) welcomed son Bowie King Crooks on July 20 at Cedars-Sinai. CONGRATS Cheryl Boone Isaacs was re-elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a fourth one-year term Aug. 2.…

GOOD THING THE outstanding variety sketch series expanded from five to six contenders this year because otherwise the narrative would have been one of relative boredom, as Inside Amy Schumer, Drunk History, Key & Peele, Portlandia and Saturday Night Live all are repeat nominees. The category’s newcomer is Documentary Now!, and even this IFC comedy isn’t exactly an outlier, given that it’s the third offering in this category from Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video and features SNL veterans Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers as creators. Last year’s narrative was about the huge breakthrough for Inside Amy Schumer and its star — and the biggest question was whether Schumer also would score a win for comedy lead actress. She didn’t, but her show did win variety sketch series honors (and…