Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, December 4, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

After Jeff Bewkes was made CEO of Time Warner in 2007, he sold off AOL, Time Warner Cable and even corporate namesake Time Inc. to focus the firm’s energies on the creation and distribution of film and TV content (and aggressively position it for an eventual sale to AT&T). Rupert Murdoch, for decades an acquirer, sold most of 21st Century Fox to Disney this year for $71.3 billion to concentrate on live sports and news with Fox Corp. Now, as ViacomCBS officially forms (expected on Dec. 4), Wall Street analysts and insiders are predicting that controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, CEO Bob Bakish and president and acting CBS CEO Joseph Ianniello are pondering a similar strategy — call it slimming down to scale up. To be sure, investors are clamoring for…

Did a Black Friday to Cyber Monday digital video game frenzy help tamp down sales of an aging generation of consoles? Despite myriad bundle deals for Xbox One S ($150 discount) and PlayStation PS4 ($100 discount), there were no “meaningful hardware sellouts” from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2, per Wedbush Securities. But while many gamers bypassed brick-and-mortar retailers, purchases on in-home devices drove overall digital spending in the U.S. to a record $4.4 billion in one weekend, Nielsen’s SuperData division estimates. The figure represents a 9 percent bump year-over-year. Launched in October and marked down from $60 to $38, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was the weekend’s top item on the software side, Wedbush found. Nintendo led on the console side with its $299 Switch console bundle alongside…

Middle School’s a Drag (PUTNAM, FEBRUARY 2020) BY Greg Howard AGENCY UTA RuPaul’s Drag Race meets homeroom in this novel that follows a 12-year-old aspiring talent agent who signs a 13-year-old aspiring drag queen as his first client. The story tackles sexuality and identity from a young adult point of view. What Rose Forgot (MINOTAUR, SEPTEMBER 2019) BY Nevada Barr AGENCY APA, Dominick Abel Mystery thrillers rarely center on older women, but Barr’s novel follows Rose, a gradmother who must escape from a would-be murderer and the Alzheimer’s unit in a nursing home to which she is wrongly committed.…

“This book is a massive look inside my brain,” says photographer Frank Ockenfels 3 of the first collection of his works, Volume 3: Frank Ockenfels 3 (teNeues, $80). Distilling a career that spans more than 30 years wasn’t easy. He began by pulling the many shoots he had done over the years with David Bowie. Working with L.A.’s Fahey/Klein Gallery (which opens a show of images from the book Dec. 5), “we found the common thread throughout all the bodies of work, from celebrities to my kids. It’s the arc of seeing,” says Ockenfels, a THR contributor who has shot Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Brad Pitt for the magazine. Around a quarter of the images are of stars, while the rest is a mix of nudes, charcoals, multimedia and photo journal…

IFP Gotham Awards New York, Dec. 2 Party Crawler Independent Minded Noah Baumbach’s (1) Marriage Story took the best film honor at the 29th annual IFP Gotham Awards, which paid tribute to honorees Laura Dern (1), Sam Rockwell (5), Ava DuVernay and Glen Basner at a packed Cipriani Wall Street. Awkwafina (4) was named best actress, quipping from the stage, “I’ve never won anything. I can’t even win an argument in the Instagram comments.” Female filmmakers in particular opined on the struggle and importance of bringing indie movies to the masses. “It was a long process to get the directing job,” Hustlers helmer Lorene Scafaria (2) told THR. Honey Boy director Alma Har’el, added: “I’m here to show that women who do get opportunities could take it all the way to…

Weddings Brittney Segal, director of original series at Netflix, married Patrick Chu, senior vp TV development and production at Annapurna, at the Parker Palm Springs on Nov. 9 in front of 160 guests. The couple honeymooned in South Africa and Mauritius. Director James Wan married actress-producer Ingrid Bisu on Nov. 3 at their home in Los Angeles in front of only their two dogs. Cynthia Raza, a publicity manager at Crown Media Family Networks, married entertainment journalist Scott Huver at the Grand Ledge (Michigan) Opera House on Nov. 16 in the groom’s hometown. Births Daniel Kellison, cofounder of Jackhole Productions and founder of comedy collective Jash, and wife Dyan Kellison, talent booker at Jimmy Kimmel Live!, welcomed son Matthew Carey Kellison on Oct. 22 in Santa Monica. Hayden Goldblatt, partner…

Marrow, blood and fat crank out of a rare antique press into a gilded ceramic teacup below. Intrigued? Repelled? A little of both? Regardless, it’s tres old-school French, and that’s very much the point at Pasjoli, the time-traveling Santa Monica bistro that opened in late September. This highly Instagrammble tableside performance is one act in an elaborate, exquisite whole roast duck preparation for two based on a century-old recipe by Auguste Escoffier, one of the forefathers of French haute cuisine. A dish that servants once prepared for noblemen Santa Monica following a hunt is, for $165, now available after a day of dealmaking at the American Film Market — at least for the 10 tables fortunate enough to order it in advance. Chef/owner Dave Beran, who made his name as…

JON FROSCH 2019 hasn’t been a stellar year for movies. But it has been rich in striking feats of acting — from big and bravura to subtle and shaded to whatever the hell Robert Pattinson was doing in The King (a performance so exuberantly bad, it goes beyond bad and circles back to good?). Part of our job is to tune out the din of awards buzz and point people to work they may have overlooked. But sometimes performances are “in the conversation” because they deserve to be. Case in point: my favorites of 2019, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in Noah Baumbach’s simultaneously mournful and mirthful, exhilaratingly great Marriage Story. I’m among the Driver faithful — those who have been rhapsodizing about his odd magnetism (the overripe features and…

If there’s such a genre as the marriage-dissolution movie, Netflix’s Dec. 6 release Marriage Story can only hope to emulate the success writer-director Robert Benton had in 1979 with Kramer vs. Kramer. The Columbia release was the year’s highest-grossing film, won four Golden Globes, five Oscars (including the firsts for Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep) and was named best picture at both ceremonies. The film tells the story of a work-obsessed ad exec (Hoffman, then 42) who, on the same day he lands a huge account, is told by his wife (Streep, then 30) that she’s leaving him and their son. The stress of being a single parent causes Ted to lose his job but also strengthens his relationship with his 6-year-old, played by Justin Henry, now 48 (Kramer gave…

Tinseltown’s top-selling book this fall? It’s Elton John’s Me, which was likely buoyed by biopic Rocketman and the singer’s presence on the new Lion King soundtrack, notes NPD BookScan industry analyst Kristen McLean, who adds that the tome has “done extremely well” since it hit stores Oct. 15. Source: The NPD Group | NPD BookScan (through Nov. 23, 2019)…

Johnny Depp and Michael Jackson: A Glove Story Michael Jackson, of all people, seems to be making a comeback. The late and controversial pop star is about to get his own Broadway show (MJ: The Musical, set to open July 6) as well as a biopic (producer Graham King has been working with Jackson’s estate), and now Johnny Depp is producing an L.A. stage play about the King of Pop … or, rather, his famous glove. “There’s collective trauma of everyone who grew up a Michael Jackson fan,” says Julien Nitzberg, the L.A. scribe behind For the Love of a Glove, a surreal-sounding part-puppet show in which Jackson’s alleged history of child sex abuse is blamed on a glove-shaped alien forcing Jackson to feed on “virgin boy blood.” Nitzberg, 54,…

In the summer of 2013, word began to spread about a new film soon to unspool at the Telluride Film Festival and an extraordinary young actress making her debut in a major role. She was newly out of Yale drama school, was appearing in a lowish-budget period piece directed by a filmmaker on the rise, and the odds against her getting any recognition were immense — and yet six months later, she won an Academy Award. Lupita Nyong’o’s journey to the Oscars was fueled not only by her talent but by an awards environment notably more hospitable to newcomers than it is today. In the half-decade since her victory for 12 Years a Slave, you can count on the fingers of one hand the outsiders who’ve become serious contenders in…

As if Netflix’s The Politician and her dozen other TV projects weren’t keeping Alexis Martin Woodall busy enough, the Emmy-winning TV producer and president of Ryan Murphy Productions is moonlighting (again) as a restaurateur. With her husband, chef Dave Woodall, she’s premiering Red Herring DTLA, serving comfort food and cocktails. The first iteration opened in Eagle Rock in 2016 and closed in March for this more robust sequel. “It’s like we were an indie film, and a big, old network said, ‘Hey, we’re going to put you on the air,’ ” she says. The deco-inflected space featuring brass inlay, terrazzo tables and a Mike Willcox mural is amplified yet accessible, “like a Ryan Murphy show,” she says. An expanded menu features new dishes like sweetbreads and crispy quail. “The duck…

By any measure, Jon Favreau has had a very good year. But visit him at his Playa Vista studio and he’ll tell you he’s much more interested in what 10 years from now will look like in Hollywood. The technology deployed on his photoreal retelling of Disney’s The Lion King, which he directed and produced, helped it earn $1.65 billion at the worldwide box office. More important to Favreau, however, is the tech is at the heart of his new venture, Golem Creations, which he says is designed to advance the virtual production systems he took to new levels on Lion King and the Disney+ flagship Star Wars series The Mandalorian (which introduced the world to “Baby Yoda,” now melting the internet). The tech allows filmmakers to use virtual sets…

MEXICO THE CHAMBERMAID It took just three weeks to film her feature debut, The Chambermaid, but before the shoot even began, writer-director Lila Aviles had spent years interviewing Mexican maids and researching what happens behind the closed doors of a luxury hotel. The film, which has drawn comparisons to Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma for its humanistic look at the lives of young working-class women in Mexico City, centers on Eve, a struggling single mom working as a maid in a glossy high-rise hotel. The job allows her to peer into the lifestyles of wealthy hotel guests but also makes her feel as though her dreams of a better life are unattainable. Aviles, 37, describes the research and film making process for the drama — which is being released in the U.S.…

European Film Awards Dec. 7 Berlin Scandal — in the form of acclaimed, and notorious, director Roman Polanski — threatens to overshadow this year’s European Film Awards. European cinema is coming off a spectacular year in terms of quality, diversity and performance of art house cinema — the EFAs’ forte — but the Academy’s decision to hand Polanski’s new feature, An Officer and a Spy, four nominations, including best film, best director and best screenplay, guarantees that discussions will center on whether the EFA should honor a director accused of sexual assault and rape and who remains a fugitive from U.S. justice for a Polanski statutory rape conviction in Los Angeles more than 40 years ago. It’s a discussion the EFA would prefer not to have. For most of the…

BEST PICTURE 1917 It’s been 20 years since Sam Mendes’ directorial debut, American Beauty, won picture and directing Oscars, and now it seems his World War I drama has a shot to do the same, based on the tremendous response to its early screenings in New York and L.A. Marriage Story Noah Baumbach’s unwincing exploration of a divorce got a big boost in the Oscar race after dominating Dec. 2’s Gotham Awards, winning all four of its noms: best actor (Adam Driver), best screenplay (Baumbach), the audience award and the top prize of best feature. ANIMATED FEATURE Frozen 2 Six years after Frozen became the highest-grossing animated film of all time (The Lion King passed it this year) and won this category’s Oscar, its sequel looks poised to follow, notching…

Big Deal Netflix is staying in the Ali Wong business. The comedian, 37, has scored what sources describe as eight figures in the teens for a pair of stand-up comedy specials at the streamer, following a competitive situation, with HBO also bidding. The first special will launch in 2020, with a second to follow at a date to be determined. The deal continues Wong’s relationship with Netflix, which has included 2016’s Baby Cobra (the stand-up special that launched her to fame), 2018 follow-up Hard Knock Wife, and, this past May, the dual debuts of animated series Tuca & Bertie (which she voice starred in and executive produced alongside Tiffany Haddish) and romantic comedy feature Always Be My Maybe (which she also co-wrote and produced). Sources say HBO was pursuing Wong (UTA,…

Despite a red-hot career running Todd Phillips’ Green Hat Films, Scott Budnick abruptly left the film business following the 2013 release of The Hangover Part III. After 16 years, Budnick was ready for a different calling. “It was clear to me that my mission was to work in the criminal justice space,” he says. “I went to Todd and asked him if I could leave to start a nonprofit. He was a total mensch and let me ride out the rest of my contract.” In 2013, Budnick launched the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), which advocates for policy change and provides mentoring for the incarcerated and recently released. ARC helped get 14 bills signed into law by former California Gov. Jerry Brown, including one that gives a shot at freedom to 20,000…

After more than 20 years at the New York Post, Jesse Angelo crossed the East River in June, joining Vice Media as the Brooklyn-based company’s first president of global news and entertainment. Angelo, who opted to take a desk in the middle of the company’s newsroom, is still getting his bearings in the world of digital. The Manhattan native, who oversees a 200-person news staff, is one of CEO Nancy Dubuc’s top lieutenants as she looks to turn the onetime digital darling into a profitable and lasting media business following a round of layoffs in February and its uncoupling with HBO. The news group has rebounded with a docuseries on Hulu and plans to revive Vice on Showtime. Cable network Viceland, meanwhile, is moving in a more news-heavy direction with…

When tasked with dressing the beloved March sisters in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (out Dec. 25), Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran was inspired by artists that captured the shifting tides of life in the 19th century. The U.K. native looked to the vivid works of Massachusetts painter Winslow Homer and soft portraitures of British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Gerwig’s design cue, Durran notes, was that Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy “lived in genteel poverty.” No stranger to period costume (Atonement, Anna Karenina), Durran designed dozens of outfits for the two worlds of the March girls — their bohemian utopia at home and the resilience they portrayed in the outside world. Character-defining contrasts and color palettes were created for each sister. Durran used a fiery red and indigo blue palette for…

Chef Travis Lett has parted ways with the restaurant group behind his Venice troika Gjelina, Gjusta and MTN. His next act: a concept in West Adams at the former address of Johnny’s Pastrami. … Ludo Lefebvre and his partners Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo are turning a Sherman Oaks corner storefront next to Petit Trois Le Valley into a kebab shop. Its meat will be sold not in pita bread but, fittingly, French baguettes. … Curtis Stone (left), who received a Michelin star this year for Maude in Beverly Hills, announced he’ll open a restaurant on the ground floor of a historic art deco building in downtown L.A. next year.…

THE LION KING To create the virtual reality environment for The Lion King, VFX house MPC produced an estimated 58 square miles of CG landscapes. Additionally, 63 unique species in 365 variations were conceived for the film. THE CHEF SHOW A spinoff of Favreau’s 2014 film Chef, this Netflix cooking show, in which the director and celebrity chef Roy Choi whip up comfort food like Cubano sandwiches and breakfast burritos, debuted in June. THE MANDALORIAN While no viewing numbers are available (yet), the highly anticipated Disney+ Star Wars series has nevertheless accomplished the feat of impacting the zeitgeist, in no small part because of the introduction of Baby Yoda. According to Axios, in the week following its debut, the little green one drove twice as many social media interactions or…

Roger Ross Williams’ HBO documentary The Apollo tracks the complicated 85-year legacy of the Harlem theater via archival materials and contemporary footage, including a 2018 staging of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Williams, an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ documentary branch governor, spoke about his personal connection to the Apollo’s amateur night, the scramble to find historical materials lost during the years from 1976 to 1984 when the building had to shut its doors and the major barrier the Academy’s documentary branch just cleared. Had you grown up going to the Apollo or watching Showtime at the Apollo on TV? Yes, when I was an NYU student. The first time I went to the Apollo was amateur night. What blew me away was that interaction between…

In the fall of 2018, just two weeks before the start of production on Bombshell, Jay Roach was scouting a location at The Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, with some 50 members of his crew and executives from Annapurna when his cell phone rang. “I get a call from my agent saying, ‘Don’t say anything because we don’t want everyone to panic, but your studio’s out,’ ” Roach says. “I looked around and realized that our executives on it didn’t even know.” For the previous eight months, Roach and Bombshell’s producer and star, Charlize Theron, had been in intensive preparations to shoot the timely movie about the women of Fox News who brought the sexual harassment case that toppled former CEO Roger Ailes. Now the project, with its…