Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, October 2, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

It was past 4 p.m. on Sept. 26 and the stock market had closed for the day as WME president Ari Greenburg and other executives sat in a car making their way to the New York Stock Exchange. In the car was a banner bearing the name of his agency’s parent, Endeavor, that was to be unfurled when the markets opened the next morning as the company made history as the largest Hollywood agency to go public and the first to do so since ICM’s brief foray in the ’80s. Then Greenburg got the call: The banner would not be needed. The bold plans of Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, executive chairman Patrick Whitesell and their backers at Silver Lake Partners had abruptly gone from dream to debacle. The dramatic last-minute…

Since its 1984 bow, The Terminator has spawned five sequels grossing $1.8 billion globally. The latest, Terminator: Dark Fate (Nov. 1), again will have the future messing with the past. And that plot extends into real life as Gale Anne Hurd, the original’s writer, has moved to terminate a copyright grant made 35 years ago, THR has learned. As a result, per records filed at the U.S. Copyright Office, David Ellison’s Skydance Media —which acquired the rights from his sister, Megan Ellison, who bought them for $20 million in 2011 at an auction — could lose rights to make Terminator movies starting in November 2020. Terminator isn’t an anomaly, it’s a preview of what’s to come. Records show a flurry of termination notices in the past year — under law,…

Big Deal Nearly six months after the first rumors of a business union, Elisabeth Murdoch and Stacey Snider have officially debuted their new global content company, Sister. Their third partner is British TV producer Jane Featherstone (Chernobyl, Broadchurch). Murdoch is putting up virtually all of the financing for Sister, which will open offices in Los Angeles and London and will absorb and build upon Featherstone’s Sister Productions, launched in 2014 with a minority investment from Murdoch. Sister will develop and produce material for multiple platforms. The trio aren’t saying how many projects they’ll turn out a year, or at what budget range, but say they are well capitalized. Despite the name, Sister will not focus solely on female-centric projects. “We embrace it for its values; it’s joyful and it means…

Decision 2020 What are you bingeing on TV between campaign stops? Not a lot of time for bingeing, but I’ll catch a show before bed sometimes. Usually Family Guy or Rick and Morty is on as I’m drifting off. I’m trying to get into Succession, but I need a character to root for and I haven’t decided if any of them are good people. [My husband] Chasten and I do have different tastes. When I get home there’s a lot of How to Get Away With Murder and Handmaid’s Tale on. I thought I might be able to get into Handmaid’s Tale, but I just don’t have the moral energy for it. You’ve called Game of Thrones one of the best shows about politics. Whom do you relate to? Tyrion…

The Irishman New York, Sept. 27 Joker Hollywood, Sept. 28 Dolemite Is My Name Los Angeles, Sept. 28 Lucy in the Sky Los Angeles, Sept. 25…

On Sept. 22, Ken Jeong took the Emmy stage alongside Masked Singer colleague Nick Cannon for a bit about the red-hot app TikTok. The act fell flat, and those inside the Microsoft Theater had good reason to be somewhat perplexed. Though most in Hollywood likely know a teenager who has been hooked on the video-sharing app since its U.S. debut in August 2018, dealmakers have largely watched from the sidelines as the service has exploded on social media. But that’s starting to change as usage of the app, which analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates has been downloaded more than 100 million times in the U.S., is skyrocketing. UTA, for instance, recently signed Brittany Tomlinson, whose August video that showed her trying kombucha for the first time went viral with more…

Pimp on steroids,” is how Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther) describes the strutting patchwork suits, homburg hats, maxi coats and matador pants that mark the ’70s peacock styles of the Netflix dramedy Dolemite Is My Name, out Oct. 4. “Even if people didn’t adopt the practice of pimp or whore, they wanted the coolness of the style,” she says. “I didn’t want the costumes to be a sideshow; I had to make it something that I remembered and was real to life.” The biopic stars Eddie Murphy as comedian and “Godfather of Rap” Rudy Ray Moore, who created Dolemite, an over-thetop stylized persona who filled a blaxploitation franchise. Carter looked to Moore’s 1976 second installment Human Tornado and such 1970s icons as Shaft star Richard Roundtree for…

ALBUM OF THE YEAR It’s not going out on a limb to predict Taylor Swift’s Lover will be nominated. True, her last album was snubbed, but this one is getting rave reviews and already has sold the equivalent of 2.5 million copies. Other possibilities: Ariana Grande for Thank U, Next, Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and Lady Gaga’s A Star Is Born (which squeaked into this year’s eligibility period). Longer shots include Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell and Maren Morris’ GIRL. RECORD OF THE YEAR Lil Nas X’s viral “Old Town Road,” the longest-running Billboard No. 1 hit of all time, seems like a sure thing for this category (which recognizes performance as well as work by producers and engineers). So does the…

Cable news always has been well suited to partisan combat. But as the battle zone has increasingly spread into broadcast as well, Donald Trump’s surrogates, among them attorney Rudy Giuliani and political strategist Corey Lewandowski, are stress-testing TV news outlets across the board in the run-up to possible impeachment, raising questions about how networks should tolerate guests who, as in Lewandowski’s case, have admitted to lying to the media. “Sir, the $1.5 billion is simply not true. It is not true,” George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC’s This Week, told Giuliani during a Sept. 29 segment on the activities of Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter. “Maybe I’m wrong,” responded Giuliani, who was even testier with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan on CBS the same morning. Those two appearances — on…

Perhaps the most monstrous figure in history was a movie buff who watched two to three pictures a night and learned what limited English and French he knew from flicks he screened in his private projection room, including ones banned by the Nazi regime. But which Hollywood film was Adolf Hitler’s favorite? Despite widespread reports that he loved 1933’s King Kong and 1935’s The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (reports based on a disgruntled aide’s memoir), there’s no evidence he ever saw them, according to Bill Niven, the author of Hitler and Film: The Führer’s Hidden Passion. “We don’t know if he had a favorite Hollywood film,” says the historian, a professor at England’s Nottingham Trent University. “From research I did in the Federal Archives in Berlin, it’s clear he…

Soon after Mr. Robot launched in 2015, anointing Sam Esmail as one of TV’s most in-demand writers, the USA drama’s creator (an East Coast transplant) admitted to THR that he hated Los Angeles. As his series heads into its fourth and final season, premiering Oct. 6, Esmail says that’s still true. But with a massive new deal at Universal Content Productions, three series in production and at least six other projects in various stages of active development, the 42-year-old has become — at least contractually — an Angeleno. During a recent late-summer afternoon inside Anonymous Content’s labyrinthine Culver City headquarters where his shingle Esmail Corp. is based, the tall New Jersey native is visibly amused at the suggestion he’s gone full Hollywood. A quintessential film school nerd, the NYU Tisch…

THE RESTAURANT IS CALLED DOTGOGI, which means either Sesame Meat or Aged Pork, depending on which online translator I consult. Normally there’s a weeks-long waiting list to get in (it’s famous for its dry-aged pork belly), but on this humid August evening in Seoul, South Korea, I waltz straight to a table in the VIP private lounge. That undoubtably has something to do with my dining companions: BTS, the super-magnetic, mop-topped K-pop boy band that is currently among the most successful music acts on planet Earth. How successful? BTS is the first group since The Beatles — to whom they also are compared for the hysterical fan mania they generate — to score three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart in less than a year, a feat that’s…

Expendables 2 Stunt performer Kun Lieu died in an incident involving an explosion and an inflatable boat in Bulgaria in October 2011. His parents later sued. American Made Pilots Carlos Berl and Alan Purwin died in September 2015 when their Cessna crashed in Colombia. Their families settled for an undisclosed sum. The Walking Dead In June 2017, John Bernecker died filming season eight after falling from a balcony onto an unprotected floor. His mother has sued AMC. Deadpool 2 Joi Harris, a motorcycle rider with no on-set experience, died on the film’s Vancouver set in August 2017. Her family settled with 20th Century Fox.…

New York Film Festival “Sinful and sorrowful.” These words from a priest’s prayer are loaded with weight when repeated by Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran, living out his days in a Catholic retirement home. He’s a dinosaur whose mob cohorts have been killed or died out, and his family members have detached themselves from him. A sense of looking back also pervades the best parts of The Irishman, in which Martin Scorsese reunites with his most totemic actor to tell a gangland saga that’s by turns flinty, amusing, nostalgic and rueful. This is a big swing for Netflix, and the movie’s self-indulgent running time of 3½ hours will pose challenges for home-screen viewing. Scorsese’s choice to make it a stand-alone feature and not a limited series seems mildly perplexing.…

The Hollywood Reporter hosted its annual portrait and video studio presented by The St. Regis Toronto, MAC Cosmetics, Martell Cognac and Perrier-Jouët Champagne during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. The THR studio welcomed more than 400 of the festival’s most notable stars, directors and filmmakers to the new St. Regis Toronto, where THR’s award-winning editorial team conducted original video interviews and photo shoots. In addition to THR’s signature festival lounge, two of the biggest names in entertainment came together for the first time to form the ultimate Hollywood partnership at the HFPA & THR TIFF Gala. The co-hosted event dominated the cultural conversation surrounding TIFF, gathering the biggest actors and filmmakers for a star-studded red carpet event held at the Four Seasons Toronto. THR thanks gala sponsors Dior, Four…

Amid a years-long tide of declining viewership, same-day Nielsen ratings, once the benchmark of the TV business, have fallen precipitously. This year’s fall launches are bleak, and while some of the audience has migrated to delayed viewing or other platforms, some of it is just gone. Since 2014, the average adults 18-to-49 rating for a premiere-week show (excluding sports and news) has fallen by more than half (2.3 then to 1.0 now). Total viewership has fallen by 37 percent. “Any exec would be lying to you if they say that the initial ratings don’t matter, and these declines have to be somewhat troubling,” says former NBC and Fox exec Preston Beckman. Delayed viewing makes up only a little bit of lost ground: Three days of catch-up on the first few…

For three decades, Randy Haberkamp took advantage of starry nights at Paramount Ranch to screen classic silent films. “Silents Under the Stars” averaged two screenings a summer and was a respite for film buffs to watch old films beneath the stark beauty of a mountain sky. And then came the Woolsey Fire. The inferno swept across those mountains in November, ravaging some 1.2 million acres, destroying dozens of homes and film ranches — including much of Paramount Ranch, a part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The ranch’s Western Town, which had served since the 1930s as the backdrop to hundreds of films and TV shows, from 1938’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to CBS’ 1990s drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was burned to the ground. “It’s not the…

The Mystery of the Phoebe Waller-Bridge Party Photo It may be the most talked about post-awards photograph since Faye Dunaway slipped into a silk robe and stilettos at the Beverly Hills Hotel. But that picture of Phoebe Waller-Bridge lounging at the Chateau Marmont after winning an armful of Emmys for Fleabag — cocktail in one hand, cigarette in the other — never would have seen the light of day if Amazon Studios had anything to say about it. The photo was shot and posted on Instagram by Waller-Bridge friend Josh Cole, head of comedy at the BBC, which co-produced Fleabag. Sources at the Chateau say a professional photographer was on the scene and captured an identical image as well as others of Waller-Bridge smoking, only to have those shots stubbed…

Director Todd Phillips greeted the Joker premiere audience Sept. 28 at the TCL Chinese Theatre with a wry acknowledgement of his film’s noisy entry into the marketplace. “Enjoy the movie,” Phillips said. “Tell a friend. I feel like we have not gotten enough press and the word hasn’t gotten out.” Warner Bros. has been getting the word out for more than a year — and been aided in recent weeks by an uncomfortable confluence between the R-rated Joker and real-life violence. In the movie, Joaquin Phoenix plays bullied street clown Arthur Fleck, whose Gotham City reeks from a garbage strike and teems with destructive young men, a group Arthur is about to galvanize on his path to becoming Batman’s nemesis. Though set in 1981, Joker’s anarchical mood feels ripped from…

There were four days this summer — Aug. 15 through 18 — when it was nearly impossible not to overhear at least a snippet of Korean pop music in Los Angeles. Downtown, 103,000 K-pop fans mobbed the L.A. Convention Center for KCON LA, a Korean pop culture festival that featured performances by Seventeen, Mamamoo and a dozen other bands. Meanwhile, just 3½ miles east, in L.A. State Historic Park, another crowd of 25,000 music lovers was partying at Head in the Clouds, a slightly grittier festival — dubbed the “Asian Coachella” — that showcased acts like iKon and Korean-American rapper Dumbfoundead. And it’s not just happening in L.A.: K-pop is becoming harder to miss all over the planet, with KCON conventions sprouting up in Mexico, France, United Arab Emirates, Thailand,…

DAVID ROONEY When it was announced that Warner Bros. would premiere Joker at the Venice Film Festival in competition alongside various auteur-driven works, it seemed like a risk. But it paid off when the movie drew cheers from audiences and critics there, and a jury headed by Lucrecia Martel awarded it the top prize. You don’t expect the director of anti-colonialist mood piece Zama to anoint a product of the superhero universe that has colonized the world’s screens. The backlash was inevitable, an echo of the response after Fight Club premiered in Venice 20 years ago, and acclaim for the David Fincher drama turned to pearl-clutching from pundits fearful that the youth of our nation would be compelled to commit copycat violence. I don’t recall many bruised and bloodied faces…

While South Korean sensation BTS is music’s current reigning boy band, that position was once held by another foreign-language group: Menudo. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Puerto Rican act dominated Latin teen music. (In Puerto Rican slang, the name means “loose change” or “young ones.”) The group sold an estimated 60 million albums; made two movies and dozens of TV appearances (including on Silver Spoons in 1983 and The Love Boat in 1985); and easily filled a 105,000-seat soccer stadium in Mexico City in 1983. That year, The New York Times estimated there were 3,500 teenage girls screaming at JFK when their plane touched down. Though their 1982 movies Menudo: La Pelicula and Una Adventura Llamado Menudo are largely forgotten and went unreviewed by The Hollywood Reporter,…