Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, October 30, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

BEST PICTURE The Irishman Previewing its awards campaign, Netflix pulled out all the stops for its $159 million hopeful at a black-tie premiere (attended by director Martin Scorsese and stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino) Oct. 24 at the famed Chinese Theatre, just steps from Oscar’s home, the Dolby Theatre. 1917 Sam Mendes’ anticipated World War I saga, filmed to look like one continuous take, will not be screened for press until the end of November. That’s a very late start for the Universal awards hopeful, especially in a year in which the Oscars have moved up to early February. ACTOR Matt Damon Ford v Ferrari Damon’s chances for a best actor Oscar nom got tougher when co-star Christian Bale, who many expected would enter the supporting actor race,…

Big Deal Networks are finding new life in established series that are winding down. A new crop of offshoots of long-running hits is coming together for the 2020-21 broadcast season. In the past month, The CW — which currently has six shows in its DC Comics-inspired franchise — announced plans for two more: Superman & Lois and a female-driven take on Arrow, which is ending this season. Both new dramas, from exec producer Greg Berlanti, star actors (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch for the former, Katherine McNamara, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavay in the latter) who already have established their characters throughout the franchise. Meanwhile, the Mark Pedowitz-led CW also plans to keep The 100 around with a prequel from creator Jason Rothenberg after it, too, wraps its run this…

Governors Awards Hollywood, Oct. 27 Britannia Awards Beverly Hills, Oct. 25 Mark Twain Prize Washington, D.C., Oct. 27 Party Crawler Oscar Firsts “She would like to change the Oscar to a feminine name,” Isabella Rossellini (1) said, translating as Italian auteur Lina Wertmüller (8) (who in 1976 became the Academy’s first female directing nominee) took the Ray Dolby Ballroom stage to accept her honorary Oscar. The Governors Awards also feted Geena Davis (10), who called for gender parity, director David Lynch (4) and Cherokee American actor Wes Studi (9). “I’d simply like to say, it’s about time,” Studi said. “I’m really proud to be here tonight as the first indigenous Native American to receive an Academy Award.” — REBECCA KEEGAN Fonda in Cuffs Top talents in film and TV claimed…

Weddings Katie Johnson, an actress and TV writer, married Nick Stone, a classical percussionist, on Sept. 1 at the Four Seasons Oahu at Ko Olina in Hawaii. Maura McGreevy, senior vp communications at IMG, married Walter Klinke on Sept. 21 at M&D Farm in Westerlo, New York. They honeymooned in Greece. Births Darin Brooks, an actor on The Bold and the Beautiful, and his wife, actress Kelly Kruger, welcomed daughter Everleigh Jolie Brooks on Sept. 22 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Congrats BET Networks upped Sean Gupta to senior vp strategy and business operations Oct. 15 and Connie Orlando to executive vp specials, music programming and music strategy Oct. 22 and named Traci Lynn Blackwell executive vp scripted programming Oct. 23. Bad Robot named Hannah Minghella head of…

BOMBSHELL Director Jay Roach’s $35 million film (Dec. 20) follows Roger Ailes’ downfall at Fox News. It was greenlit and then dropped by cash-strapped Annapurna before Lionsgate picked it up. SUCCESSION HBO’s fictionalized take on the Murdochs — the tale of the scheming Roy family — was nominated for three Emmys for its first season and drew 1.2 million viewers for its second-season premiere in August. INK James Graham’s play about a young Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) buying a struggling British newspaper in 1969 earned six Tony nominations and a win for Carvel after its Broadway debut in April. THE LOUDEST VOICE Russell Crowe played Ailes in Showtime’s June series based on Gabriel Sherman’s 2014 book about how the Fox News CEO became one of the most prominent figures in…

Making septuagenarian screen legends Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci look decades younger was one challenge that Martin Scorsese faced for his Netflix crime drama, The Irishman. Making them sound younger was a whole separate bridge to cross. Luckily, Scorsese had his sound team, including Oscar-winning rerecording mixer Tom Fleischman, on hand. The two have worked together since 1982’s The King of Comedy — which incidentally starred a much younger De Niro. Fleischman and the sound team, including supervising sound editor/rerecording mixer Eugene Gearty and supervising sound editor Philip Stockton, revisited the movie, as well as Pacino’s 1973 film Serpico, to research the actors’ voices from three decades ago. “We experimented a lot,” Fleischman says. “[We] tried to match the pitch of the voices. That was too extreme.”…

For Focus Features’ biopic of Harriet Tubman, who freed some 300 slaves via the Underground Railroad, Harriet costume designer Paul Tazewell relied heavily on photographic research (as he did for his Tony-winning designs for Hamilton). Fortunately, daguerreotypes, an early photographic process that offered up “haunting images of slaves and the humanity that resonated from them,” were “becoming very popular” in 1840, according to the Emmy-winning designer. Played by British actress Cynthia Erivo in the film (out Nov. 1), Tubman journeys from life as a Maryland plantation slave to Philadelphia abolitionist and freedom fighter. “We would talk about the characters in both general and very specific terms,” says director and co-writer Kasi Lemmons. “We’d talk about the fact that enslaved people often [wear] work clothes and underclothes cast away or handed…

The Grill on the Alley’s Beverly Hills outpost has been sold by its parent company, which declined to name the new owners. It’ll retain its name. … Nationally acclaimed Venice chef Travis Lett will leave his restaurant group, which is responsible for Gjelina, Gjusta and MTN. … The Montage in Beverly Hills is now serving a $100 take on an eggs Benedict (left) on its rooftop as well as a $100 baked potato at its ground-floor pop-up restaurant, Gilles. Both involve caviar. … Jon & Vinny’s will soon open in South L.A.’s View Park neighborhood, not far from an Inglewood catering facility used by owners Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo.…

Thanks in no small part to the emergence of online submissions platforms, thousands of minor film festivals have sprung up around the globe in recent years, with several websites allowing festival organizers to easily attract filmmakers to their events. FilmFreeway, which dominates this space, boasts more than 8,000 festivals of all shapes and sizes on its service. And for any budding Thierry Frémaux operating on a tight budget, the smallest events can be launched, according to experts, on a shoestring and still turn a profit. According to Katie McCullough, founder of consultancy Festival Formula, some can be set up for as “little as a few grand.” Venue and equipment costs are the biggest outlays, but McCullough says for a conference room in a hotel with a projector (many festivals offer exactly…

You’ll never hear Noah Baumbach shouting “action” on a film set. Instead, he’ll start a scene by quietly whispering the words “when you’re ready” or — even more softly — “begin.” “I find if we can almost eliminate that line between when we’re shooting and when we’re not, it makes it more naturalistic,” says the famously meticulous 50-year-old director. Of course, there’s never been much of a dividing line between Baumbach’s real life and his onscreen one. His 1995 directorial debut, Kicking and Screaming, was inspired by his own post-college malaise; he revisited the trauma of his parents’ divorce in his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale (Jeff Daniels even wore Baumbach’s father’s clothes); and with 2014’s While We’re Young, a 40-something Baumbach explored his fear of aging. But…

Thumbs (IMAGE COMICS, FEB. 4, 2020) BY Sean Lewis AGENCY WME A heightened version of the battle being waged in D.C., Thumbs is a genre take on Big Tech vs. Big Government. It centers on a teen in an army led by a rock-star digital CEO who recruits users who have honed their warfare skills with his video games. Tiny Imperfections (G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS, MAY 2020) BY Alli Frank and Asha Youmans AGENCY ICM As a ’90s “It” girl turned director of admissions, Josie is too busy managing her teen daughter’s future for a relationship. The story lampoons the current ultracompetitive educational landscape while providing a romance plot fit for the rom-com resurgence.…

Cornered by a studio chief, the assistant deftly escapes his lunges … It could be an excerpt from a #MeToo memoir, but the scene was written more than 80 years ago, in the 1938 comic novel I Lost My Girlish Laughter — a secretary’s perspective on studio politics and high jinks — whose publication set Hollywood abuzz (a reissue from Vintage Books bows Nov. 5). There was no doubt that villain Sidney Brand, with his fevered efforts to secure Clark Gable for a “women’s picture,” was based on David O. Selznick, the high-flying producer of A Star Is Born and Gone With the Wind. The book’s author, Silvia Schulman, had spent the mid-’30s as personal secretary to Selznick. She and co-author Jane Shore used the pseudonym Jane Allen. But soon…

Mimi Leder has three offices: one on the Sony lot, another at her weekend house in Ojai and a third in the hillside Los Feliz home she shares with her husband, actor Gary Werntz. But when she’s not on set, the prolific director-producer says she gets most work done in her living room — where a glance up from her MacBook offers panoramic views of L.A., from downtown to Hollywood. Though she was born in Manhattan, this is very much Leder’s town. She arrived on the West Coast in 1958, growing up on sets with her filmmaker father, Paul Leder, whose credits include such colorful titles as The Baby Doll Murders and I Dismember Mama. “They were B movies,” Leder, 67, says over coffee at her dining room table one…

Shari Redstone has denied plans to launch a conservative-leaning TV channel to battle Fox News, but the mogul’s Viacom dipped its toe into the space Oct. 15. That day, the company’s Pluto TV free streaming service — which Viacom bought in March for $340 million and has 18 million users — debuted a beta version of the channel The First, featuring right-wing talkers Buck Sexton and Jesse Kelly. Not exactly the name recognition of Fox News’ Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson. But The First is set to add three more shows by January when it officially enters a crowded space that includes BlazeTV, Newsmax TV, One America News Network, Daily Wire, Breitbart News and Salem Media Group, all of which are positioning themselves as an alternative to Fox News, which…

The 29-year-old upstart L.A. restaurateur Jeremy Fall has garnered attention and industry support with a slew of high-concept spots. First, he opened a “breakfast bar” called Nighthawk in Hollywood that served dishes like “Drunken French Toast” featuring pear brandy. Then a short-lived Highland Park bodega with a speakeasy-style sandwich shop in the back. More recently, he debuted a high-gloss retro burger stop at the Beverly Center with custom ViewFinders at each table. Some find Fall’s larkish sensibility winning, others grating. It’s unrestrained at his first full-scale endeavor, Mixtape, situated in the longtime BLD space along Mid-City’s Beverly Boulevard, which since opening in August already has lured an eclectic crowd. (On any given night you’ll find, say, Judy Greer seated beside a group of DJs and CBD oil entrepreneurs.) It perhaps…

By most accounts, the traditional film business is under siege. Netflix and its competitors have commodified the moviegoing experience, placing an increasing premium on the “theatricality” of studio product — meaning films that people will actually pay money to see in theaters. That, in turn, has created a Dickensian economy of the haves (pre-branded gotta-see blockbusters, dominated by Disney) and the have-nots (with exceptions, the rest of studio slates, which fight for audience scraps). By some estimates, the “Big Six” studios, which shrank to five this year with Disney’s absorption of 20th Century Fox, will atrophy even further in the next five years, replaced by Netflix, Amazon and other nascent streamers — including those from Disney, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal that will compete with, and be seeded by, their studio siblings.…

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced in August 2018 that the 92nd Oscars would take place on Feb. 9, 2020, it marked the earliest date ever for the awards. The move also set Hollywood abuzz with talk of a truncated campaign season: three weeks shorter than in recent years. It remains to be seen how this shorter race will affect a film’s momentum, but as the season kicks off in earnest, the field remains crowded with plenty of hopefuls. Todd Phillips’ Joker took the season’s first big prize when it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in August. It’s unusual for a Hollywood studio production to be lauded at the fest, which favors international auteurs, let alone a comic book movie. The victory…

Nearly every TV show or movie has seams. A moment of hastily rendered CG. A line of ADR dialogue meant to smooth over a plot hole. A mismatched bit of lighting from a reshoot. The trick is to get viewers so swept up that they don’t notice the seams. For at least its first two episodes, The Morning Show, the most star-studded and vaunted offering of the Apple TV+ originals, is perhaps the seam-iest drama you’ll ever see. One needn’t know the show’s bumpy creative history — rare separate “created by” (Jay Carson) and “developed by” (eventual showrunner Kerry Ehrin) credits give some indication — to notice it’s struggling and floundering to find its focus. After a brutally dull pilot and a meandering second episode, there are hints in the…

For new entrants to the streaming wars, a clear plan has emerged in the fight to take on Netflix and its 158 million subscribers worldwide (including 60 million in the U.S.). The strategy? Go free. On Oct. 22, Verizon unveiled a deal to give Disney+ (priced at $6.99) for free to unlimited wireless customers. “It creates loyalty,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg says of the deal. Apple will offer a year of Apple TV+ ($4.99) gratis to buyers of its devices. WarnerMedia will give HBO Max at no extra cost to millions of AT&T and DirecTV subscribers. “It is about scale, trying to make a big splash quickly and get into the market with as many users as you can to start with, ideally without having to pay to acquire them,”…

After four televised debates, dozens of fundraisers and thousands of dashed-off checks, the entertainment industry seems no closer to settling on a consensus presidential candidate to challenge President Trump than it was a year ago. “No clue yet,” says Ava DuVernay of whom she’ll be supporting in the primary. “Haven’t decided,” seconds Disney’s Alan Horn. “Anyone but Trump,” says Kenya Barris. Those featured on this year’s THR 100 — the annual ranking of Hollywood’s most powerful — mostly echoed the Black-ish creator’s response when asked for their 2020 pick. There’s no shortage of eagerness to get behind the right candidate, but even with the Iowa caucuses a mere three months away, it’s just that no one knows who that should be. (An Oct. 21 Suffolk University/USA Today poll of Iowa…

First Look Ian Schrager, the Studio 54 cofounder credited with inventing the boutique hotel category via his Morgans Hotel Group (the Royalton in Manhattan and Delano in Miami), has returned to the Sunset Strip. The latest outpost of his ultra-posh, Marriott-backed Edition brand opens Nov. 12 where Rat Pack hangout Scandia once stood — nearly a quarter-century after the debut of Schrager’s nearby Mondrian catalyzed the neighborhood’s gentrification in the first place. “The Edition is catapulting the area up to luxury,” explains Schrager, 73, who notes that the rates for its 190 rooms (starting at $495) and prices for its 20 condos (upward of $3,000 per square foot) are in line with Beverly Hills hotels. His go-to minimalist architect, John Pawson, drew inspiration for the West Hollywood Edition from Louis…

Josh Brolin Avenges Santa Monica Crime Fighters Turns out Thanos is even more powerful than a Santa Monica City Council member. Josh Brolin — the 51-year-old veteran actor and Avengers nemesis — recently stepped into a social media war between SMCC member Ted Winterer and Santa Monica Problems, a Twitter and Instagram group dedicated to uncovering crime and “other issues plaguing” the city. After Winterer blocked SMP from his Twitter feed (he has 2,479 followers), SMP responded with a terse post — “Blocking your constituents will not make [crime] go away” — that Brolin, a Santa Monica resident with wife Kathryn Boyd and young daughter Westlyn, saw and shared with his 2.8 million Instagram followers. Guess what happened next. “I got pilloried by people from around the world,” says Winterer,…

In March, former Fox News anchor Juliet Huddy met screenwriter Charles Randolph over drinks at the Royalton Hotel in New York to talk about the moment when her life imploded. The writer, best known for co-scripting The Big Short, wanted Huddy’s input for his next film, Bombshell, a Lionsgate drama about the women who exposed sexual harassment at Fox News, including Megyn Kelly (played by Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), who filed the lawsuit that led to the firing of network chief Roger Ailes. For Huddy, sharing her story meant returning to some painful history — and violating the nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2016 when she left Fox News over allegations that Bill O’Reilly sexually harassed her. O’Reilly denied the claims, and Huddy departed Fox with a…

Inspired by Fred Astaire and a look that he observed in old Hollywood films but could not find in stores, Ralph Lauren created a handful of wide ties in 1967; nearly 52 years later, his name has become globally synonymous with American style. The 80-year-old designer’s $6.3 billion empire — with more than nine brands, as well as restaurants in New York, Chicago, Paris and London — has shaped a vision of the American dream. “What I do is about living,” the designer tells THR. “Living the best life you can and enjoying every moment, from what you wear, to the way you live, to the way you love.” Now the creative lens has flipped to zoom in on Lauren himself, as a documentary of his work and life, Susan…

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS TOILING over her debut short film, Eternal Waltz, Cindy Marinangel made an eleventh-hour decision ahead of its U.K. premiere at the Eurocinema Film Festival in October 2018. Despite tight personal finances, as producer, writer and star of the centuries-hopping romance, she concluded that she needed to be there. Borrowing money from her parents to pay for the flights from New York to London, the filmmaker emailed organizers excitedly to tell them that she would be attending and would be able to take part in any Q&A discussions, as previously mentioned in her official invitation. “So sorry for the late reply!” she wrote, just four days before the screening was due to take place at the Royal Holloway University on Oct. 30. “Thanks for the update! We are…

With the release of Terminator: Dark Fate on Nov. 1, the mercenary brought to life by Arnold Schwarzenegger proves again to be one resilient robot. Dark Fate — which reunites Schwarzenegger with Linda Hamilton, who last appeared in the franchise in 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day — is the fifth sequel spawned by 1984’s The Terminator (and the first since T2 produced by James Cameron). Schwarzenegger, who was just coming off the success of Conan the Barbarian, thought it an iffy career move to play the emotionless killer. “There was no question it was a gamble,” says Lou Pitt, his agent at the time. “But it had the potential to take his career to a different place and another level.” The Austrian bodybuilder, then 37, was wooed into the role…