Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, August 21, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

On Aug. 23, thousands of Disney’s most faithful fans will trek to D23 Expo in Anaheim, where they’ll be treated to sneak peeks of the new live-action Lady and the Tramp as well as Star Wars series The Mandalorian and a High School Musical reboot, all of which are headed for Disney+, the streaming service set to launch Nov. 12. They’ll also hear from CEO Bob Iger, and, unknowingly, they might be given a shot at mingling with Iger’s eventual successor. Some observers now believe the inside track may belong to Kevin Mayer, chairman of direct-to-consumer and international who is expected to appear at the convention to showcase Disney+. That Iger has called the upcoming streamer the “most important product” to launch since he became CEO in 2005 speaks volumes…

How long will ViacomCBS’ top duo stay at the helm? When the merger closes at the end of 2019, the board of directors, to be led by non-executive chair Shari Redstone, wants CEO Bob Bakish to stay for at least four years while acting CBS CEO Joe Ianniello gets a guarantee of only 15 months, per an Aug. 19 SEC filing. On the surface it may seem like a slight to Ianniello, who will oversee most of the CBS assets after the merger, though he’ll be well compensated for it as he’s due $70 million at the close of the transaction. That’s Leslie Moonves money, and he was among the best-compensated executives in America until his CBS exit over sexual misconduct claims. “The terms of Ianniello’s new employment agreement seem…

Co-dependency. I’ve C been struggling with her since the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympic Games nearly robbed me of the ability to leave my house at age 5, largely thanks to the American women’s gymnastics team’s heroic bronze medal. Sometimes we can’t help but be overly invested in someone else’s successes and setbacks. I only recently got out of a thrilling but sometimes toxic relationship. I know. Me? Single? It’s a crime! Anyhoo, my partner? HBO’s Game of Thrones. How I loved them! They were stunningly beautiful, brilliant, sometimes problematic, exciting and heartbreaking. Without Game of Thrones, Gay of Thrones would just be Gay — which honestly isn’t a bad idea for a show, but it’s not what we were there to do. At Gay of Thrones, we recapped every single…

It’s 6 a.m. and before heading to Participant Media, where he’s senior vp of creative marketing, Alex Kostich is at Culver City Plunge getting in his laps. Nothing unusual about that. Hollywood is full of driven, health-conscious execs who hone their edge training for triathlons and CrossFit competitions. At Participant alone, “Our head of narrative production, Robert Kessel, has run 33 marathons and our COO, Gabriel Brakin, just climbed Kilimanjaro,” says Kostich, 49. But unbeknownst even to most of his colleagues, Kostich — who worked on Oscar winners Green Book and Roma and was admitted to the film Academy this spring — is an accomplished open-water swimmer who tends to win his races. Lots of them. He won a 5-kilometer swim in Santa Barbara this summer and placed second in…

Weddings Dwayne Johnson married music producer Lauren Hashian in Hawaii on Aug. 18. The couple began dating in 2007 and have two daughters. ICM Partners literary agent Andrew Murphy married Tiffany Mui at Zorvino Vineyards in New Hampshire on June 29. The couple will honeymoon in Indonesia. Sarah Shyn, a talent manager at 3 Arts Entertainment, married Gabriel David Ayala, coowner of Enovative Group, on June 22 at The Hollywood Roosevelt. They honeymooned in Rome, Sorrento and Paris. Births Alex Hedlund, a principal at production banner Eat the Cat, and wife Sophia Hedlund, an executive at Netflix, welcomed daughter Akira Khazee Hedlund on July 27 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Congrats Alexis Martin Woodall was tapped president of Ryan Murphy Productions on Aug. 16. Eric Green was upped…

Let me be frank: Megan Ellison is a pain in the neck. From a reporter’s point of view, she’s aloof, unconcerned with branding, as secretive as the Kremlin. She’s that worst of all creatures when it comes to dealing with the press: someone who has no desire for press. Then why do I admire her so much? Because there’s no executive now who has a greater passion for film — and not just the medium but a particular kind of moviemaking that’s becoming an endangered species: the specialty release, the thoughtful, character-driven drama that the majors long ago turned their backs on. There aren’t many who share her devotion: a few execs in the art house world (Sony Pictures Classics’ Michael Barker, Fox Searchlight’s Nancy Utley) and even the occasional…

LOCAL Malibu hikes are a favorite of Regina King and Alison Brie at The Ranch 4.0 (stays from $4,200 for four days). New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch was “the most memorable hike,” says Nikki Reed of the place she and husband Ian Somerhalder drove to in their Airstream. In Colorado, the 10.5-mile Maroon Bells hike from Aspen to Crested Butte was taken on by the Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell clan, including Oliver Hudson: “It was epic!” Veep’s Reid Scott says his all-time favorite hike is the Napali Coast Trail in Kauai, aka Kalalau: “The secret beach, the waterfall: There’s not a more beautiful place on the planet.” ABROAD “The infamous Grouse Grind” in Vancouver is Emile Hirsch’s top climb. Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro has drawn many, including Jessica Biel (with Thomson Safaris; from…

• Who’s afraid of poor optics? Apparently, not the Venice Film Festival. One year after signing a gender-parity pledge as #MeToo and Time’s Up concerns swept the film industry, the festival has raised eyebrows with a series of moves that are being met with condemnation. First, fest director Alberto Barbera drew fire by inviting Roman Polanski to premiere his latest film, An Officer and a Spy, in competition at this year’s edition. He then upped the ante by adding Nate Parker’s American Skin to the official lineup, in the (noncompetitive) Sconfini section. The film marks Parker’s first since his debut feature, The Birth of a Nation, which Fox Searchlight bought for a record-breaking $17.5 million after its 2016 Sundance premiere, only to see the movie tank amid renewed scrutiny of…

ALL’ ARCO Sestiere San Polo 436, 30125 Near the Rialto bridge, this bacaro is “simple but true,” says Venice native Matteo Perale, co-founder of Wiip. It’s “where Venetians go more than tourists.” Highly rated for its wide array of scrumptious cicchetti, it closes at 2:30 p.m., so go for lunch. CANTINE DEL VINO GIA SCHIAVI Fondamenta Nani 992, Dorsoduro, 30123 Canal-adjacent, Schiavi’s cicchetti with baccala mantecato (whipped salt cod) are a draw, says Massimiliano Zavagli Ricciardelli, another Venice native and a former Sony marketing exec. Open until 8:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. VINO VERO Fondamenta de la Misericordia Cannaregio 2497 Producer Robert Salerno, who enjoyed late-night treats here in 2018 with his Vox Lux crew, including Natalie Portman and director Brady Corbet, recommends the cicchetti with buffalo mozzarella, fig, walnut…

The American Dream is alive and well in Florida, at least on cable this summer. Or, rather, as represented on shows like TNT’s Claws, Pop’s Florida Girls and Showtime’s new hourlong dramedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida, the American Dream is accessible through an alligator-filled swamp, patrolled by organized-crime lords and populated by tourists, swarms of mosquitoes and lots and lots of Spanish moss. Creators Robert Funke and Matt Lutsky have stuck with their show from its first intended home on AMC to its second intended home on YouTube Premium — and now on to Showtime, where this pitch-black portrait of multilevel marketing is finally emerging as a tremendous star vehicle for Kirsten Dunst. Powered by that superb lead turn, the series also boasts enough twists to maintain…

Do you support or oppose Universal’s decision to cancel The Hunt?* Set to open Sept. 27, the film — which features elites hunting “deplorables” — was pulled by the studio amid criticism, including from President Trump. What type of movie content bothers you? Source: THR/Morning Consult poll conducted Aug. 15-18 among a nationally representative sample of 2,200 adults; percentages don’t add up to 100; *asked of those who have heard of The Hunt.…

A Guest of the Reich (PANTHEON, SEPT. 24) BY Peter Finn AGENCY ICM Partners The true story of an heiress turned spy who was captured by Nazis and witnessed the collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich. As big-name directors continue to mine World War II for stories, Finn’s novel is a chance to portray the rare female perspective. Each Tiny Spark (KOKILA, AUG. 6) BY Pablo Cartaya AGENCY UTA, Foundry Literary & Media A sixth grader who suffers from ADHD and her father, recently back from military deployment, bond over a love of auto repair and welding in the middle grade book. Like The Hate U Give or Love, Simon, the novel tackles larger social and cultural issues.…

CBS’ page program may lack the cachet of NBC’s storied apprenticeship (highlighted on 30 Rock, it counts Michael Eisner and Aubrey Plaza as alumni). But since its 1952 launch, the Tiffany Network’s program has trained the likes of CAA’s Bryan Lourd and Warner Bros.’ Sue Palladino. More than 70 current and former pages will gather Aug. 24 at L.A.’s Hollywood Roosevelt hotel to reminisce about their days in the iconic red blazer — the third reunion since 1989, all organized by 1978-1980 page Joan Powers Denney. “She’s the den mother who gets us all together,” says 1978 page David Roessell, a producer on Hulu’s Future Man. Mike Gutierrez, a 1976 page who appears on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow, still laughs about the time when he was an usher on The Price…

Remember that time Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. kidney-punched a waiter for serving soggy croutons in his tomato soup? How about the time the Dalai Lama got wasted and spray-painted “Karma Is a Beach” on the Tibetan ambassador’s limo? Probably not, since they never happened. But they could happen if a filmmaker decides to write those scenes into his or her movie. And, even though we know the movie is fiction, those scenes will live on in our shared cultural conscience as impressions of those real people, thereby corrupting our memory of them built on their real-life actions. That’s why filmmakers have a responsibility when playing with people’s perceptions of admired historic people to maintain a basic truth about the content of their character. Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of Bruce Lee…

To save the land that he cherished, Clint Eastwood knew he had to build some houses — not too many, but just enough. The result is Tehama, a one-of-a-kind community in the hills above Carmel-by-the-Sea on California’s Central Coast. This summer marks the listing of the final batch of Tehama lots, which when sold will cement Eastwood’s singular legacy in the region. “We thought someone might take the land and turn it into a much more congested area or just not take care of it,” says Eastwood. “I thought, someday people are going to want some privacy and they’ll get tired of living crammed in next to each other. And that’s really it.” A total of 90 lots are planned within Tehama, which unfolds across 2,000 acres of rolling hills…

Chez Jay, the legendary Santa Monica hangout that turns 60 this year, has opened a back patio with a new menu that moves the bill of fare beyond sand dabs almondine to kimchi guacamole and truffle fries. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently dined in the main restaurant. … The late, longtime West L.A. site of Junior’s Deli, briefly Lenny’s, soon will be taken over by acclaimed genre practitioner Wise Sons of San Francisco. Just in time for Google to move in down the street. … Now that its DTLA factory is running, Tartine is on the expansion march. Its next outpost will be in the Hollywood Media District.…

CITIZEN K Alex Gibney’s latest doc looks at the strange case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once believed to be Russia’s richest man before serving a decade in prison for fraud and becoming an unlikely martyr to the anti-Putin cause. THE KING Aussie David Michôd has assembled a deluxe ensemble for his fresh take on Shakespeare’s Henriad: Timothée Chalamet as wayward prince Hal, Robert Pattinson as the Dauphin of France and Joel Edgerton, who co-wrote the screenplay, as Hal’s dedicated companion in drunken debauchery, Falstaff. MARRIAGE STORY Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson face off as an experimental New York theater director and his actress wife, an L.A. transplant, negotiating a supposedly amicable divorce that turns into a cross-country custody battle. AN OFFICER AND A SPY Roman Polanski may not be able to…

• Back in 2011, director James Gray happened upon two science articles that provided the seedling for his latest film, Ad Astra. The first chronicled an experiment to split the atom that posed a small, but real, risk that all known matter in the universe would be destroyed. The second dealt with NASA’s quest to enlist astronauts with schizoid personality disorder, who would be ideal for deep-space missions because they wouldn’t have to interact socially. Enter Brad Pitt as the space thriller’s protagonist, and suddenly Gray, who is best known for indies like The Immigrant and Two Lovers, was working with a budget much bigger — $87.5 million — than any of his previous outings. Ahead of Ad Astra’s world premiere in Venice, Gray, 50, talked with THR about whether…

Amazon is pushing resolutely into sci-fi and fantasy, and its latest offering, Carnival Row, ambitiously mixes elements of mythology with contemporary issues of race, immigration and sexual identity. The show already has been picked up for a second season, pre-premiere. Created by Travis Beacham (from his feature-film screenplay) and René Echevarria (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and directed by Jon Amiel (Seven Seconds), the series takes its time introducing and spinning out its strange universe — and may lose some viewers along the way — but works well enough when it gets going. Carnival Row benefits particularly from a strong cast and effective CGI. If you’re in the mood to see how humans, fairies and interspecies creations get along in a world of magical realism, serial murder and Jack the…

On Aug. 14, Crystal Liu, star of Disney’s upcoming live-action Mulan, weighed in on Hong Kong’s police crackdown of pro-democracy protesters. “I support Hong Kong’s police, you can beat me up now,” she wrote to her 65 million followers on social media platform Weibo, adding the hashtag “IAlsoSupportTheHongKongPolice,” with a heart emoji. Backlash, and talk of a boycott of Mulan, greeted Liu’s post. And while Disney has remained silent so far, the problem won’t go away any time soon for the studio, whose 10 tentpoles in the past year have earned 12 percent of their $8.85 billion in grosses from China. “Disney can’t support the protesters because their business in China is too important,” notes Stanley Rosen, a professor at USC who specializes in the Chinese entertainment industry. “But they…

David Geffen famously shuns interviews, so his Instagram account — which the mogul-philanthropist launched in 2016 — offers the only window into his private world. And what a view. That’s thanks in large part — 138 meters, to be exact — to Rising Sun, the superyacht he purchased in 2010 from fellow billionaire Larry Ellison, on which Geffen hosts some of the world’s most famous names from film, music, business and politics. With many of those guests smiling in photos against the backdrop of Ibiza, Mallorca or Capri for his 72,000 followers, poring over Geffen’s Insta has become a Hollywood pastime. C-suites were abuzz with this summer’s guest log: Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Katy Perry with fiance Orlando Bloom, Chris Rock with girlfriend Megalyn Echikunwoke, Karlie Kloss and husband Josh…

How Fox Kept BH90210’s Egos From Exploding Managing the Spelling-mansion-size personalities involved in Beverly Hills, 90210 has always been tricky business — stars Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth recently admitted to nearly exchanging blows during a moment in the 1990s — so for its new reboot Fox came up with a nifty way of defusing potential pecking order problems before they happened. Everybody on the call sheet — and that includes Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Gabrielle Carteris, Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering — was listed as No. 1. An on-set source tells Rambling Reporter that the rare seven-star-tie for the top slot was indeed an attempt to avoid conflict among the principal castmembers (all of whom are earning $70,000 per episode for their acting duties), although at a TCA…

The future of filmmaking is unfolding in a drab office park near a Whole Foods in Playa Vista. It’s where Jon Favreau assembled this summer’s $1.5 billion-grossing The Lion King using a gaming engine and a warehouse of cutting-edge artists and technicians, and it’s where the actor-writer-director-producer is sketching out season two of The Mandalorian, a Star Wars TV series set to debut Nov. 12 on the new Disney+ streaming service (and to be teased at the D23 conference Aug. 23). Favreau, 52, invited THR to a conference room lined with pictures of Tatooine’s finest to unveil his new endeavor, Golem Creations, named for the man-made creature from folklore that represents an artistic creation brought to life by magic. It’s a logical next step for a multihyphenate who, since writing…

It’s a narrow window of time when you can trek to Mount Everest: February to May, and October to December. Eddie Bauer alpine guide Melissa Arnot Reid and I were there at the end of the season to do an Everest viewing trek when most teams were on their way home. I first met Melissa in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and hearing her stories about Everest — she has summited six times and was the first American woman to do it without supplemental oxygen — was what put the bug in my brain. When she told me about the more doable trek to South Base Camp (17,600 feet, vs. the summit’s 29,000), I thought, “That’s what I want to do as soon as I’m done with work.” It was overwhelming to…

Resurrecting a classic restaurant is tricky business. Too much fealty to the past may result in tone-deaf earnestness; too much irreverence risks alienating nostalgists. West Hollywood’s now-80-year-old Formosa Cafe, born as an arch confection, had been betrayed by a previous renovation and management cycle. Now the preservation-minded hospitality group led by Bobby Green (Idle Hour, the upcoming Tail o’ the Pup relaunch) has completed a commendable two-year, $2.4 million recovery. While some of Green’s non-historic projects, like Sassafras Saloon on Vine, require a tolerance for twee, at the Formosa a nuanced sense of vintage and contemporary kitsch reigns. The rehabilitation doesn’t just hit the right chinoiserie pleasure points. This early exemplar of thematic dining — which lured Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Lana Turner and James Dean — attempts to atone…

“It’s really important that there’s a group of people who watch the show and think, ‘I see myself in this,’ ” says Singh of her new late night NBC entry, A Little Late. She was photographed July 17 at Quixote Studios in West Hollywood. When Lilly Singh runs a pitch meeting, she comes bearing gifts. “Live your best life in the office — you don’t have to wear shoes!” she announces to the writers she’s assembled on this scorching August afternoon in a drab conference room off Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, where they’ll be discussing ideas for her new NBC late night show, A Little Late, which premieres Sept. 16. She proceeds to toss out pairs of fluffy white unicorn slippers. Singh, dressed in a knee-length white vest and matching…

• Tarak Ben Ammar and Mark Burg think Nate Parker deserves a second chance. The two producers bankrolling American Skin, Parker’s follow-up to his 2016 directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation, say they have zero reservations about working with the writer-director despite the controversy — a 1999 college rape trial at which he was acquitted — that nearly sank Parker’s career. “We have to assume facts: One, he was acquitted and is innocent. Two, he’s a great film director and [American Skin] is a great movie,” says the Paris-based Ben Ammar, whose producer credits include 2007’s Hannibal Rising and whose company, Quinta Communications, distributed Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in France. Ben Ammar says he and Burg split the budget on Parker’s “under $5 million” film 50-50.…

The Venice Film Festival’s natural environs and its late-summer dates mean attendees likely will be confronted with one of Mother Nature’s fiercest forces — water. Venice’s historical acqua alta (high water) events can inundate parts of the lagoon later in the fall, but festival participants have been hit with early previews caused by sudden rainstorms that have sent them scrambling for higher ground. Former CBS Films exec Scott Shooman became stranded after a Vice party when it stormed so hard that boats stopped operating. “The water taxi phone numbers all hung up on me when I called,” he remembers. “I could see my hotel across the canal. Almost swam it. Three and a half soaking hours later I found a bridge and made my way home.” Next time, he says,…

In a townhouse in a gated community in Malibu, Gary Busey, 75, is posing behind his cluttered desk for a photographer. The process is not as simple as it sounds. Once considered one of Hollywood’s most promising leading men after his Oscar nomination for 1978’s The Buddy Holly Story, Busey suffered a major head injury in a 1988 motorcycle accident, resulting in an inability to censor himself. “The post-accident version of him turned his personality up to 11,” Jake Busey, Gary’s 48-year-old son and an accomplished actor in his own right (he had a recurring role on Stranger Things’ third season), later explains. “I feel like I lost my dad on December 4, 1988.” How Busey’s injury manifests itself can be amusing, or insulting, or downright disturbing. During the shoot,…

For a Broadway musical that debuted in 1957, West Side Story manages to stay in the news. Leonard Bernstein, who wrote the score, had his centenary celebrated in 2018 and would have been 101 this Aug. 25; its producer Hal Prince, 91, died July 31; a Broadway revival is coming; and Steven Spielberg is in production on a new screen version that’s said to hew closer to the stage production than the 1961 Robert Wise-directed film. Bernstein had been working on West Side Story since 1949, when choreographer Jerome Robbins casually mentioned the idea of doing “Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” Bernstein, then 39, composed the music while Stephen Sondheim, then 27, was hired to pen the lyrics. The deal was that music and lyrics together would receive…