Innholdsfortegnelse for Friday, December 13, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

After eight years running NBCUniversal and serving as executive vp of parent company Comcast, Steve Burke is preparing to step down when his contract expires at the end of August, sources tell THR. A spokesman for NBCUniversal declined comment. There has been speculation that Burke may take a fuller role at Berkshire Hathaway given his close ties to that company’s 89-year-old chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett. That relationship goes back decades. In 1986, Burke’s late father, Dan Burke, and business partner Tom Murphy pulled off the surprise purchase of ABC for $3.5 billion with Buffett’s backing. Burke sits on the Berkshire Hathaway board. Burke, 61, will leave Comcast’s sprawling media unit at a pivotal time as the company launches its most aggressive foray into streaming in April with its ad…

The NBA is throwing up bricks in national TV ratings over the first quarter of the regular season. A combination of big stars being absent from national telecasts, a marquee team mostly missing from the league’s two biggest broadcast partners and the fall of a recent dynasty have all factored into the drop. But there’s still time for the league to find its touch. Through Dec. 6, viewership on the NBA’s three national TV platforms — ESPN, TNT and NBA TV (which is jointly owned by the league and Turner Sports) — is down 14 percent compared with the same period in 2018. ESPN is averaging a little less than 1.5 million viewers per telecast, down 16 percent year-to-year. TNT, at 1.3 million viewers per game, is also off by…

BEST PICTURE Parasite No film outperformed expectations more than this South Korean dramedy, which landed not just a foreign-language Globe nom but director and screenplay nods, too. It then became only the second non-English-language film ever — the first since Life Is Beautiful in 1998 — to score a SAG Award ensemble nomination. Bombshell This sexual harassment drama had its L.A. premiere Dec. 10, a day after lead actress Charlize Theron and supporting actress Margot Robbie were Globe-nominated and a day before the two were joined by supporting actress Nicole Kidman and their entire ensemble in receiving SAG Award noms. Little Women Greta Gerwig’s follow-up to Lady Bird had a rough week, registering just two Globe noms, for leading lady Saoirse Ronan and Alexandre Desplat’s score. It then was completely…

Big Deal Amazon is investing further in the Beautiful Game. A year after inking a three-season pact with the English Premier League, the streamer has secured rights to select matches in the UEFA Champions League for the German market. Starting in 2021-22, Amazon will get “first pick” of Tuesday night matches. DAZN, a sports streaming service owned by Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, snatched up the remaining games for the tournament. Champions League rights are sold in three-year packages and typically split among multiple providers. Amazon and UEFA did not provide financial details of the deal, but Germany is Amazon Prime’s biggest market outside the U.S. (followed by the U.K.), and the company clearly sees soccer as a way to boost subscription numbers. The UEFA and EPL pacts also signal that…

Lana just, like, loves Duke,” says film director Nicholas Jarecki. “I think in the same way that we all do.” Janecki is referring to chanteuse Lana Del Rey and Duke Nicholson, 20, whose résumé so far boasts one significant credit (as a creepy carny in Jordan Peele’s Us) plus a modeling gig for the cover of Del Rey’s Grammy-nominated album, Norman Fucking Rockwell. Oh, and Duke is the grandson of Jack Nicholson, 82, who hosted family Thanksgiving this year at his Mulholland Drive compound. “It’s usually pretty small. Me, my Uncle Ray, my Aunt Lorraine, my mom,” Duke explains. On the subject of the health of his grandfather — whose public appearances have grown scarce — Duke assures, “He’s doing great. He’s 100 percent.” Duke’s mom is Jennifer Nicholson, 56,…

Growing up in a “big, loud Italian-American family” in Bedford, New York, NBC Sports Group president Pete Bevacqua had two passions: golf and movies. The youngest of five and the only boy, his mother, Lee, was a nurse and his dad, Arthur, aka Doc, was a dentist and an avid golfer. He encouraged Pete to learn the game by becoming a caddy at the neighborhood club. After he graduated from Notre Dame in 1993 — the alma mater of his father and two of his sisters — Bevacqua was at a crossroads. Should he go to film school or choose the practical path and law school? He chickened out and went to Georgetown Law. A grueling stint at the white-shoe Manhattan firm Davis Polk followed. Then on Dec. 14, 1997,…

Oregon-based Laika already undertakes a mountainous task with each film it makes; the stop motion animation and digital effects house is known for painstakingly creating its puppets and miniature sets by hand. But when it came to its latest film, Missing Link, the studio was faced with one of the most daunting scenes it has ever executed — a chase across a crumbling ice bridge. Missing Link is a globe-trotting adventure that follows explorer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), who encounters a yeti named Mr. Link (Zach Galifianakis) and agrees to help him find his relatives in the Himalayas and the fabled Shangri-La. It’s the fifth film from Laika, following Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings — all of which received Oscar nominations. The new movie features…

Greta Gerwig is ordering breakfast. This will take a while. “Scrambled eggs,” she says, beginning a long slog through the menu, ordering, among other dishes, a full plate of avocado toast, a side of sauteed kale and a raft of bacon. “So many things,” she marvels at her selections before adding a cup of coffee to the list. “With cream!” she shouts after the waiter. By the end of this two-hour meal in the restaurant at the Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village on a chilly November morning, Gerwig, 36, will leave not a single crumb uneaten. Meanwhile, her 50-year-old boyfriend of eight years, filmmaker Noah Baumbach, will sit quietly across the table, a bemused grin on his face, spooning into his own breakfast, a small bowl of Greek yogurt. She’s…

Ever since California revamped its tax credit program in 2015 to include additional incentives, the state has seen a rise in filming outside Los Angeles. In turn, productions in the program have spent more than $130 million across 19 counties outside the city. Studio projects that do so are eligible for an additional 5 percent back, not to mention the supplemental local incentives offered by cities and counties. “We’re now reaping the benefits of the tax credit coming in, and across the state we are seeing so much more production work, including large films like Captain Marvel, Birds of Prey, Ford v Ferrari and a lot of other films that may have been lured away before the expansion of the state program,” says Orange County film commissioner and California on…

A Tender Thing (PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, APRIL 2020) BY Emily Neuberger AGENCY UTA Set on Broadway in the 1950s, the story centers on the production of a controversial musical, a love story between a white woman and black man. A Tender Thing looks at Broadway’s golden age through the lens of civil rights and social activism. Admission (DELACORTE, MAY 2020) BY Julie Buxbaum AGENCY ICM Partners While a Lifetime movie has been released and Annapurna has set a TV project about the “Varsity Blues” college admission scandal, Admission is told from the point of view of an unwitting high schooler who has to live with her mother’s choices.…

The boys!” Robert Pattinson boomed, flanked by two pals at an intimate screening of A24’s The Lighthouse. His boys were Rami Malek and Chris Evans, who threw the screening. “I’ve been friends with these guys for ages,” said Pattinson, “and it’s cool that they come to support little tiny weird movies.” Harnessing names to host FYC screenings began in the 1990s with Harvey Weinstein. Ever since, contenders (and campaign strategists) have recruited famous friends to helm invites. In 2005, anchors of the three nightly network newscasts hosted Good Night, and Good Luck’s George Clooney. This season, hosts have included Donald Glover (Parasite), Hugh Jackman (Ford v Ferrari) and Ava DuVernay (Jojo Rabbit). Deep-pocketed streamers are leading the charge, particularly Netflix, which is pushing multiple contenders with hosted events: The Irishman…

THR’s 10 Years of the Women Mentor Program Los Angeles, Dec. 9 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel New York, Dec. 3 Little Women New York, Dec. 7 Party Crawler WIE Turns 10 Sherry Lansing (1), Dana Walden (2) and Anne Sweeney (1) were among the execs feting 10 years of THR’s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program, presented by Lifetime. Amazon Studios’ Jennifer Salke (2) was joined by WME’s Nancy Josephson (3) on a panel moderated by THR’s Stephen Galloway (4) at Sunset Tower to reflect on the program, which has paired more than 200 students, through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater L.A., with industry leaders. “I didn’t really know what a mentor was,” said Netflix’s Paola Franco (2), a former WIE mentee. “This program really showed me how to [give…

Weddings Alexander Raiman, a writer on Netflix series The Magicians, married entertainment consultant Jorey Worb on Nov. 17 in front of 250 guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They will honeymoon in Asia. Rebecca Sun, senior reporter at THR, married product director Michael Kim on Nov. 9 in front of 120 guests at the Ebell Club in Santa Ana, California, then honeymooned in Maui. The two became engaged in March 2018. Engagements Emma Stone and Saturday Night Live writer Dave McCary announced their engagement via Instagram on Dec. 4. Births Jamie Canniffe, senior vp alternative and syndication programming at Sony Pictures TV, and wife Rebekka welcomed daughter Helena Mae Canniffe on Nov. 1 in Beverly Hills. Congrats Frances Manfredi was upped to president of content acquisition and strategy at NBCUniversal’s…

You try to be as invisible as possible, because all this paraphernalia and lighting can be distracting for actors,” says Rodrigo Prieto, 54, of working on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Also sharing their trade secrets in THR’s Sept. 29 cinematographer roundtable in downtown Los Angeles was Roger Deakins, 70 (1917 and The Goldfinch), Caleb Deschanel, 75 (The Lion King), Robert Richardson, 64 (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), César Charlone, 61 (The Two Popes), and Natasha Braier, 44 (Honey Boy). Diversity (and the lack thereof) was discussed, with Mexico-born Prieto saying, “The seeds are being planted right now. I find that [what] I appreciate about the film business [is] that I don’t feel the borders that might exist in other businesses.” Braier reports that she’s seeing more women who are…

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit is Roman Griffin Davis’ first movie, and it has now landed him a Golden Globe nomination. The 12-year-old British actor, who plays a boy with an imaginary friend who looks a lot like Hitler, is this year’s youngest nominee. He shares some thoughts on his nomination and the oddities of awards season. What was the morning of the nominations like for you? We were watching it, and they said, “Best actor in a musical slash comedy.” Then we heard the “R” and I started screaming and running around the house. I was really thri — how do you say the word? — thrilled. I am still having to — what’s the word? — process it. Is there anyone that you still want to meet during awards…

It’s a subject so juicy that filmmakers just can’t stay away from it — especially not political junkies like Jay Roach and Charles Randolph. The director of Recount and Game Change and the writer of The Big Short have, in Bombshell, set their sights on a powerful old lech and generate great delight in dramatizing his takedown. This live-wire yarn about the fall of late Fox News despot Roger Ailes can’t claim to offer up fresh subject matter, as a recent miniseries (Showtime’s The Loudest Voice) and a very fine documentary (Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes) got there first. But the film delivers the goods, in part thanks to its highly engaging performances. The movie tosses us right into the high-pressure scramble of final preparations for the…

Black Christmas, the holiday horror film out Dec. 13, appears headed for a smoother release than its genre predecessor Silent Night, Deadly Night received in 1984. Back then, something about a serial killer Santa Claus touched a nerve with the public. “Deadly Night wasn’t the first killer-Santa film — that credit goes to 1972’s Tales From the Crypt starring Joan Collins,” says author Jeffrey Miller, who’s writing a book about Christmas horror films. “But it took naughty to new levels of not nice.” The Hollywood Reporter wrote that ABC affiliate KETV in Omaha was “besieged by complaints” over the film’s primetime advertising. Protesters picketed theaters while singing Christmas carols. Film critic Gene Siskel read the names of the filmmakers on air and added, “Shame on you!” THR was one of…

Jim Gianopulos Headlines at the Vatican Looks like Jim Gianopulos has friends in very high places. The 68-year-old Paramount chief was at the Vatican on Nov. 14, rubbing elbows with no less an A-lister than Pope Francis. As the sole Hollywood representative at a conference on “Promoting Digital Child Dignity,” Gianopulos joined tech execs from Google, Apple and Facebook, as well as law enforcement officials, for a discussion about how to shield children from harmful media. Sources say the event was low-key for a papal affair, with speakers remaining seated, UN-style, as they delivered remarks to the Holy Father. The exact words Gianopulos — who isn’t Catholic — told the pope are not known. But Francis reportedly took the opportunity to chastise the tech industry attendees, saying they should be…

Two years ago, Golden Globes presenter Natalie Portman took a jab on live TV at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — and by extension the whole of Hollywood — when she announced, “Here are the all-male nominees” for director. The actress-filmmaker might not want to be onstage Jan. 5 when the next Golden Globes best director winner takes the podium. In a year with a significant number of women drawing acclaim for their movies, not one received a nom from the HFPA. Among those excluded were Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers) and Alma Har’el (Honey Boy), who, after the nominees were unveiled Dec. 9, tweeted: “They vote by comfort and star fucking. They don’t care about…

Netflix has been a dominant awards player in the TV space for several years now, but it was only three years ago that the streaming giant was pushing its first narrative film contender, Beasts of No Nation. The company has earned more film nominations every year since (it landed six Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award noms in 2018). And this year it’s so far the industry leader, with a total of 54 Globe and SAG Award nominations (announced Dec. 9 and 11, respectively). The streamer earned an equal number of Globe nominations (17) for movies and TV, leading the film distributor pack for the first time (thanks to strong performances by Marriage Story and The Irishman). Of course, Netflix isn’t the only success story. New streamer Apple TV+ nabbed…

In September 2015, Anthony McCarten was on vacation in Rome when he got some bad news: His cousin had died. The 58-year-old writer, a former altar boy from a devout New Zealand family (a lapsed or rather “collapsed” Roman Catholic, as he puts it), went in search of a church where he could light a candle and found himself in St. Peter’s Square, surrounded by thousands of people “of all denominations, races and creeds,” jammed into the open space for Pope Francis’ weekly mass. The atmosphere was electric, the pontiff’s presence overwhelming, even though McCarten (Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything) couldn’t understand a word the cleric said in Italian. He began to wonder how such a liberal figure had ascended to the papacy in 2013 after the eight-year pontificate…

Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill was a combination of intensely personal female introspection and universal reflections that made young women, in particular, hear their own roller coaster of emotional experience in the songs. Hats off to writer Diablo Cody and director Diane Paulus for weaving that thematic core into a narrative that speaks to the reality of American life almost a quarter century later. The bid for now-ness is both a blessing and a burden in this overstuffed but affecting show. Wearing its woke sensibility on its sleeve with a sincerity that sometimes borders on cringey, the musical addresses a curriculum of hot-button bullet points — climate change, opiate addiction, gender and racial identity, rape culture and social media shaming, just for starters. Oscar-winning screenwriter Cody’s book to…

The first Streamy Awards were handed out in 2009 at a moment when Hollywood was just coming around to online video. The writers strike a year earlier had led to a proliferation of side web projects from unemployed TV scribes, from Childrens Hospital to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog to Web Therapy. And the homegrown stars being minted on YouTube — creators like beauty guru Michelle Phan and vlogger iJustine — had started to amass big audiences. But in every way, online video, with its viral cats and less-than-10-minute webisodes, still felt very quaint. A lot has changed in the decade since those first 1,300 people crowded into Wadsworth Theatre to see Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris take home awards for their Dr. Horrible work. Today, streaming has become central to…