Innholdsfortegnelse for Monday, May 13, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

Joan Graves watched thousands of movies during her three-decade career at the MPAA’s ratings board before turning over the top job May 3 to Kelly McMahon, an MPAA lawyer. That also was the day that Graves, 77, watched her final movie submitted for a rating: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (rated R). Here she recalls some highs and lows. WHAT SHE’LL MISS Quentin. When Graves first spoke to Tarantino in the early ’90s, she explained how the film he’d submitted (she doesn’t remember which one) would need to tone things down to get an R. “And he started to laugh and he said, ‘OK, OK, I get it.’ He looked at that as a creative opportunity instead of calling me names like some of them did. He…

FILM The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ Mackenzie Foy (Coast to Coast, Lighthouse, Myman Greenspan) and Kate Winslet (CAA, the U.K.’s United) will star in a new adaptation of Black Beauty from Adolescence director Ashley Avis. Richard Madden (WME, the U.K.’s Troika, Sloane Offer) is in talks to join Angelina Jolie in Marvel’s The Eternals. Mel Gibson (CAA) will suit up as a rowdy Santa Claus in action comedy Fatman. Chris Hemsworth (CAA, Fourward, Greenberg Glusker) and Tiffany Haddish (UTA, Artists First, Del Shaw) will star in buddy-cop action comedy Down Under Cover. Andy Garcia (CAA, Brillstein, Loeb & Loeb), Emory Cohen (CAA, Harvest, Jackoway Austen), Megan Fox (ICM, Jackoway Austen) and Lucy Hale (ICM, Reel) will star in Big Gold Brick from new director Brian Petsos. Jessica Chastain (CAA, Mosaic,…

ART SCENE L.A. EXHIBIT When I was in high school in the ’60s, my outrage at social injustice was articulated by activists Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. But my pride in my African American culture was expressed by musical artists like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. And I spent a lot of time at the Schomburg Center Library in Harlem, which had a vibrant mural called Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction (1934) by Aaron Douglas. Whenever I saw it, I felt a surge of cultural pride. I feel that same joy and communal dignity when I look upon the works in the exhibition “Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective” at L.A.’s California African American Museum (through Sept. 8). I have a special fondness for pro…

The Other Gay Candidate Coming to Beverly Hills The first openly gay contender for president will be in L.A. on June 19 — and no, it’s not Pete Buttigieg, although he’ll be in town too. Fred Karger, the onetime Welcome Back, Kotter actor who ran in the 2012 Republican primary, has added his name as a co-host for a Buttigieg fundraiser being held at the Beverly Hills home of Ryan Murphy and husband David Miller. Karger, who’s been on what he calls a “correction binge” — calling media outlets whenever they falsely report that Buttigieg is the first gay candidate — got involved in the fundraiser after he ran into co-host John Gile at an L.A. gym (“of all places”) and volunteered his services. “[Buttigieg] was an asterisk 13 weeks…

“The right words at the right time gave me a powerful shot of motivation and happiness,” tweeted Shonda Rhimes recently of what fitness instructor Robin Arzon exhorted via the showrunner’s Peloton bike screen: “Put your crown back on your head and remember who you are!” Reese Witherspoon, Richard Branson and Hugh Jackman are also devotees of the at-home cycling cult that is reportedly on the verge of going public. Financiers have estimated Peloton ($2,245 for the bike, plus $39 monthly subscription), which streams 24 hours of live digital content around the world daily, to be worth $8 billion. Together with other at-home equipment like Tonal and Mirror, these tools are changing the way Hollywood stays fit. Tonal, which just received another round of funding from investors including Serena Williams, has…

TV AND MOVIES A 1997 adaptation of Private Parts made $41 million ($62 million in today’s dollars). Then came No. 1 summer series America’s Got Talent in ’12, which earned Stern eight figures a season and prompted offers from game shows (including a Star Search reboot) to talk shows. BOOKS In ’93, Private Parts became Simon & Schuster’s fastest seller, with more than 1 million copies sold. Follow-up Miss America (’95) went faster, with Barnes & Noble recording 33,000 sold on pub day alone. No. 3 is already on track to be Simon & Schuster’s best-seller of ’19. RADIO After decades on terrestrial radio, he moved to Sirius in ’06 with a five-year, $500 million deal. Despite reported interest from deep-pocketed players like Apple, he’s inked two more nine-figure Sirius…

Film Disney ‘Hangover’ After Endgame, 2020 is less certain for investors. p. 12 Digital Netflix Poll What it would take for subscribers to cancel. p. 16 Kenya Barris The showrunner will star in his first Netflix show, Black Excellence, and nabs a Black-ish renewal from ABC and a pickup for its second spinoff, Mixed-ish. Taylor Swift The pop star’s new single, “Me!,” fails to unseat Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” on the Billboard Hot 100, settling for No. 2 in its first full week. Billy Bush What Access Hollywood tape? The embattled host will return to TV this fall to anchor a new version of Extra called Extra Extra. Adam Fogelson The STX film chief weathers another U.S. bomb with his UglyDolls animated tent pole, which opened to a…

Conventional wisdom may hold that the Walt Disney Co. has been firing on all cylinders, with its $71.3 billion partial merger with 21st Century Fox closed, streaming service Disney+ on pace to launch Nov. 12 and Avengers: Endgame rewriting the record books. But there are signs that a perfect storm of (gasp!) mediocrity for the $240 billion conglomerate may be on the way thanks to digital investments and the film calendar — at least for the short term. Disney CFO Christine McCarthy disclosed May 8 that the creation of Disney+ and ramp-up of ESPN+ will dent operating income to the tune of about $460 million in the current quarter alone. The company intends on spending about $2.5 billion on original and licensed content for Disney+ in fiscal 2020, rising annually…

When Toy Story 4 unspools in theaters June 21, moviegoers may notice that the sequel boasts a large number of “story by” credits — eight — including the former Pixar chief creative John Lasseter and writing partners Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who left the project in 2017. Others credited include director Josh Cooley, story supervisor Valerie LaPointe, writer Stephany Folsom (Thor: Ragnarok), writer Martin Hynes (The Go-Getter) and writer-director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E). Stanton and Folsom share the screenplay credit. Those names reflect the long road to development for the sequel. When Toy Story 4 was announced in November 2014, Lasseter — who helmed the 1995 original — was to direct from a script by Jones and McCormack. Lasseter Jones said the project was jump-started by a treatment…

TWA HOTEL’S 3 HOTSPOTS Thirteen miles beyond midtown at JFK Airport and nestled within the Trans World Flight Center — the wing-shaped terminal designed by Eero Saarinen — Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Paris Café and The Sunken Lounge debut May 15, when the TWA Hotel in which they reside opens. Have a cocktail at The Sunken Lounge or inside the “Connie,” a 1958 Lockheed Constellation plane, for the retro-glam vibe alone, then head to the rooftop Pool Bar & Observation Deck. “Despite heavy runway traffic, the space is surprisingly quiet,” assures The Gerber Group CEO Scott Gerber (brother to Rande, George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila partner). “We’ll also have great music and know that anyone who loves watching planes won’t mind a little noise.” JFK Airport — LAURIE BROOKINS L’AVENUE Located close to…

Nearly three years after it premiered in the U.S. on Amazon, the critically acclaimed British series Fleabag, which launched its creator, writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, returns for a second season. And if Fleabag the character is as great as ever, Fleabag the series struggles to land as forcefully as it did the first time around. That’s not surprising. The inaugural season found Waller-Bridge workshopping her 2013 one-woman play of the same title to small-screen perfection; sophomore efforts often disappoint. Given that Waller-Bridge has openly said she never expected to make a second season — in the meantime, she wrote and executive produced the BBC America hit Killing Eve — it’s no wonder that the new episodes are missing the kind of taut, unpredictable storytelling that marked season one. The…

Rupert Murdoch has a long history of taking bold swings. Now his newly formed Fox Corp. is betting on, well, betting. The company, created in the $71.3 billion sale of large parts of 21st Century Fox to Walt Disney Co., unveiled a deal May 8 between its Fox Sports unit and online gambling giant Stars Group to launch Fox Bet this fall, the first national media and sports wagering pact in the U.S. While daily fantasy sports leagues like DraftKings allow players to place wagers on athletes’ performance statistics and ESPN’s Daily Wager provides analysis, Fox Bet will offer national free-to-play games with prizes for predicting match outcomes and live wagering in states that have legalized it. Fox also agreed to acquire a 5 percent stake in Stars Group —…

On April 25, Symone Sanders left her role as a CNN contributor to join Joe Biden’s presidential campaign as a senior adviser. “I didn’t want to sit this election out,” says Sanders, who worked as Bernie Sanders’ press secretary in the 2016 cycle. The revolving door from cable news to politics is getting into swing as national campaigns rev up for 2020, and Sanders is one of several TV newsers who are migrating. Marie Harf revealed May 8 that she’ll leave her Fox News contributor role to join Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton’s upstart presidential campaign. Republican strategist Steve Schmidt gave up his gig as an MSNBC contributor to strategize with potential candidate Howard Schultz. The Biden campaign also poached NBC News senior communications director T.J. Ducklo to serve as national…

Wine Country New York, May 8 Daytime Emmy Awards Pasadena, May 5 Billboard Music Awards Las Vegas, May 1 Party Crawler Poehler Power For Amy Poehler’s (2) directorial debut, Netflix’s Wine Country had only one rule on set: No real wine on-camera. “We’d still be shooting it if we were drinking real wine,” Paula Pell (5) told THR at the film’s Paris Theatre premiere in Manhattan. “This was definitely a grape juice sort of thing and then at night, we’d pour it on.” Starring Poehler alongside SNL friends including writers Liz Cackowski (1) and Emily Spivey (1), the film boasts a largely all-female cast and creative team. “We did it, we fooled ’em,” Poehler said from the stage. “This is a film that celebrates female relationships, which I think is…

Blanketing Instagram is the pout of the moment: an ample, upturned mouth revealing front teeth. It’s a look that has generated a new trend in plastic surgery: the lip lift. “Social media is driving a lot of esthetic choices,” says Andrew Jacono, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, but “the voluptuous lip is not something you can get with injections. Filling lips just makes them look like sausages but doesn’t change their shape. A lift turns the lip up and out.” The 30-minute office procedure excises tissue from just below the nose to shorten the distance between nose and mouth, causing the top lip to curl up a bit, exposing more teeth, or “tooth show.” In young patients, it gives the perfect selfie pout; in older candidates, it makes them appear…

Not 24 hours after The Big Bang Theory wrapped its 279th and final episode, creator Chuck Lorre whizzes by its soundstage in his golf cart, startled by what he sees. “They’re tearing the set down already?” he says. Having created 11 sitcoms over the course of his four-decade career, Lorre should be plenty familiar with studios valuing available space over sentimentality. But even the physical dismantling of his billion-dollar Warner Bros. franchise doesn’t dampen his mood. The 66-year-old comedy vet, once dubbed “the angriest man in television,” seems downright Zen. And why not? Big Bang signs off May 16 as TV’s No. 1 comedy with a stunning 17.5 million weekly viewers in its 12th season, leaving behind the enduring Lorre hits Mom and Big Bang spinoff Young Sheldon on CBS’…

The National Rifle Association, which has been in the news with the resignation of Oliver North as president, elevated Charlton Heston to that largely ceremonial position in 1998. (The real power is held by the CEO, who during Heston’s tenure — and today — is Wayne LaPierre.) If there was one defining moment of Heston’s presidency, it came on May 20, 2000, when at the NRA’s 129th convention the actor held up a Revolutionary War-era flintlock rifle and announced that if the government (and “especially you, Mr. Gore,” meaning Al Gore, who was running for president) wanted to confiscate the gun, they’d have to take it from his “cold, dead hands.” The video was played endlessly on the news. But Heston, who’d won an Oscar for 1959’s Ben-Hur, wasn’t always…