Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday September 25, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

In 2011, when Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos invested $100 million in House of Cards, it was considered a seismic shift in television. Until that point, Netflix had been known for red envelope deliveries of studio-produced films and TV library content. HBO, when it launched in 1972, was the home of features from major studios. And when FX debuted in 1994, it did so with the familiar, too: repeats of favorites like Batman and Eight Is Enough. So it’s perhaps no surprise that Comcast, Disney and WarnerMedia are looking for those proven hits — many of which they already own — to serve as the backbone of their new streaming services. These conglomerates made millions by licensing popular titles like Friends to Netflix — allowing Hastings and Sarandos to enjoy…

There was no marketing, no billboards and no social media campaign. But on Sept. 12, the 17 million residents of the Netherlands became the first people in the world to see Disney’s high-profile streaming offering Disney+, for free, before it launches stateside Nov. 12. Why the Netherlands? For global conglomerates seeking to test drive a new streaming service, this tiny nation, squashed between Germany, Belgium and the North Sea, is close to ideal. “We are small and densely populated and we have just around 7.5 million households in the whole country, so no matter how popular Disney+ is, Disney’s servers won’t get overloaded,” says Sanne de Bruyckere, a market researcher with Dutch group Telecompaper. “And the technical infrastructure is great.” Broadband internet penetration in the Netherlands is 98 percent, compared…

In an industry where social and professional clout are often defined by access to exclusive spaces, San Vicente Bungalows stands out as the membership club you definitely want to be a member of. Officially, what stands in your way are just three simple questions that — along with a forward-facing photo and member nomination — make up the application to Jeff Klein’s 10-month-old hotspot in West Hollywood: What would your autobiography be called? What is your favorite restaurant and why? What would your unique contribution to SVB be? “It doesn’t matter if you have money, it matters if you’re interesting,” says one of the club’s 1,100 members (fees are in line with other L.A. clubs: $1,800 to join and $4,200 annually, with reduced rates for younger members). From the 12-person…

Robert Osborne’s Hollywood Treasures on the Block It turns out the late TCM host Robert Osborne was gathering more than hot scoops and exclusive interviews when he wrote THR’s Rambling Reporter column from 1988 to 2007. He amassed a museum-size stash of memorabilia, including a gold record album that once belonged to Samuel Goldwyn, a copy of his own 1979 history of the Oscars signed by more than 380 stars and even an Oscar statuette (from 1936, before they had to be returned to the Academy for a dollar). And now his collection is going to auction, with proceeds benefiting Osborne’s three SoCal-based nieces. “You can see with Bob’s stuff that it had nothing to do with money,” says Grant Zahajko, whose Washington state-based auction house is expecting to rake…

In 2014, at the age of 19, Michael Grzesiek landed a job that most kids only dream about: playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as part of e-sports team Cloud 9. Grzesiek quickly made a name for himself as a top performer, but by 2018, at the tender age of 23, he announced his retirement. “When I was competing, I was young, I had that drive and I really enjoyed traveling,” Grzesiek tells THR. “Now I hate traveling.” Retirement is not a reality for most 20-somethings (or 60-somethings), but for e-sports athletes, most of whom begin their careers as teenagers, the quarter-century mark is a major impasse in their professional trajectory. With the average competitive career of an e-sports star lasting just four to five years, many turn to live-streaming their gameplay…

So your friends and family have heard all the stories. Over and over and over. But tonight’s the night, the moment you get to share with them exactly what you were up to during all that time. Viewing parties mean different things to different people. To me, they’re an intimate affair. Assuming you’ve already had a big cast and crew screening, about 20 to 25 people works best. You want your cast and a few members from the crew by your side. I can get nervous hosting — I mean, like, “I’m going to wait in the closet, tell me when it’s over” nervous — so having my work compadres around keeps me steady anyway. Our viewing parties usually last about five hours. We begin an hour to an hour…

Aprosthetic nose tip, bold red lips, pixie wigs and bateau necklines are just a few of the tools used to transform Renée Zellweger into screen icon Judy Garland for Judy. The biopic focuses on the middle-aged singer’s tumultuous time in 1960s London where, broke and broken, she accepts a gig at the club The Talk of the Town. “For me, she is in a situation similar to Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse,” says British director Rupert Goold. “I wanted that cool, hip quality rather than someone who your granny is friends with.” French costume designer Jany Temime divided the looks into “two Judys,” she says. “She was always dressed casually for ‘mom time,’ and on the stage, she was flashy, showy and very couture. You could feel from an early…

Fergus Henderson’s influential nose-to-tail London restaurant, St. John, announced it’ll open a branch at Platform in Culver City. … Helene An (pictured), the matriarch of Beverly Hills Vietnamese restaurant Crustacean who’s been honored by the Smithsonian for her pioneering contributions to fusion cuisine, is set to open a $225-per-person tasting-menu-only annex, Da Lat Rose, at the end of October. … The Eataly outpost in Century City officially cut its ties with Mario Batali, two years after sexual misconduct allegations against him first surfaced.…

Taking a traditional approach to American Trial: The Eric Garner Story never occurred to first-time filmmaker Roee Messinger. Five years ago, Garner, 43, died after an intensely physical arrest involving multiple NYPD officers. A video of the arrest went viral, and “I can’t breathe” — which Garner said nearly a dozen times while being held facedown on a Staten Island sidewalk — became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the officers, Daniel Pantaleo, was fired in August after it was determined that he violated protocol by using a choke hold on Garner. Messinger’s film, which lands somewhere between documentary and unscripted alternate history, imagines what would have happened if a grand jury had indicted Pantaleo. Except for the officer, who is played by Anthony Altieri,…

Q+A There have been lots of movies about fictional commanders in chief. Which is best? The first to pop to mind is Dave. [Kevin Kline] plays the look-alike of the president and he’s brought into the White House and he does a really good job. Morgan Freeman has been a great president in a couple of movies. And Michael Douglas as the bachelor president [in The American President] trying to date. That speaks to me as potentially being a bachelor in the White House. Who controls the remote, you or your girlfriend, Rosario Dawson? That’s tough because we are both alpha TV watchers. I have a wide swath of taste. I like everything. I really want to see Toy Story 4. I’m excited about Frozen 2. But she has more…

It’s tempting to open this column by repeating the homophobic, anti-Asian and misogynistic slurs that got Shane Gillis fired from Saturday Night Live to show just how desperately unfunny, derivative and dripping with flop sweat they are. But their level of funniness is not the point. Comedians have the right to be unfunny sometimes, just as athletes have the right to lose games, and actors to be in bad films. But when a comedian makes hate-based comments, as Gillis did on his podcasts, we do have an obligation to take a closer look to see whether the performer is an insightful provocateur of culture and the human condition or just another middle schooler blowing milk out their nose for a quick laugh, not caring who they spatter with milky snot…

Noted Rustic Canyon chef Jeremy Fox’s latest, Birdie G’s, is a combination of two throwback institutions — the bigcity grill and the Midwestern supper club — as well as an irreverently modern take on secular Jewish cooking. Westsiders could already thank Fox and his Rustic collaborators, husband-and-wife restaurateurs Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan (Cassia, Milo & Olive, Tallula’s), for largely ensuring that Santa Monica — famously progressive in politics and conventional in palates — isn’t forgotten amid L.A.’s rising stature as a global food capital. At Birdie G’s, they have found a canny way to break new ground, even at a comfort-food spot. Fox offers a something for-everyone menu (Mongolian tri-tip! Stuffed poblano peppers! Crab cakes!), an approach most chefs with his clout avoid. And while mileage varies — the…

Were Ryan Murphy a more confessional storyteller, it would be easy to read autobiographical elements in his new Netflix series The Politician. It’s the story of a prodigy with a gift for flash and occasional glibness (Popular, Nip/Tuck) who learns to expose his heart (Pose, American Crime Story) in order to pursue a path to world domination (a lucrative deal with Netflix). But Ryan Murphy isn’t a confessional storyteller, and The Politician isn’t his 8½. With a wandering focus and erratic sense of tone, the eight-episode first season doesn’t come together, even if it remains generally watchable throughout and teases a promising second season. Overall, it’s a missed opportunity for good satire. A reunion of Glee creators Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, The Politician focuses on high school senior…

It’s been only two years since the release of his pitch-black comedy The Death of Stalin, but now Armando Iannucci — also known as the driving creative force behind the equally vicious political satires Veep, The Thick of It and In the Loop — has served up his most un-Iannucci project to date. The Personal History of David Copperfield, based on Charles Dickens’ semi-autobiographical tale of a life from childhood to maturity in Victorian England, received an enthusiastic response in Toronto, where it had its world premiere. THR’s John DeFore said it “pleases without pandering,” and singled out the lead performance of Dev Patel, who heads an impressively diverse cast that includes veterans Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie alongside up-and-comers Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) and Anthony Welsh (Fleabag). Now British Dickens…

Thanks to a Palme d’Or win and Oscar buzz for Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed thriller Parasite, South Korean cinema is finally getting some overdue awards recognition in the West. But just as Academy voters are belatedly waking up to the long-rolling “Korean Wave,” industry figures in Seoul are growing concerned over a troubling new tendency toward less creative risk-taking. Driven by what some see as corporate ethos within the country’s major studios, it’s a pattern that threatens to stifle the very same storytelling daring that has made Korean filmmaking so beloved by international cine-philes over the past two decades. To some extent, the reality of this trend has been masked by South Korea’s impressive collection of master auteurs, most of whom arrived on the scene during the late 1990s and continue…

What does Fox’s 2019 Emmy Awards telecast have in common with a typical episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU? An uneventful 6.9 million viewers. Insiders approached the Sept. 22 TV awards bracing for another ratings slide, yet the dip’s severity proved just as surprising as the night’s cavalcade of unexpected victories. Going hostless likely contributed to the 32 percent audience hemorrhage, but Fox had other problems luring viewers — namely exposure. The Emmy marketing spend is dwarfed by the other big awards shows, and Fox’s window to court an audience came during its recent NFL coverage. As the evening’s 16.3 million haul for NBC’s competing Rams-Browns gamecast shows, football fans were otherwise engaged. UNPACKING AN ALL-TIME VIEWERSHIP LOW…

The Water Dancer (ONE WORLD, SEPT. 24) BY Ta-Nehisi Coates AGENCY UTA Coates’ first novel (and Oprah Winfrey’s first selection for her Apple-backed book club) follows a man born into slavery with a mysterious power, who escapes from the plantation with the hope of returning to liberate those he left behind. Raven Lane (LAKE UNION, NOV. 12) BY Amber Cowie AGENCY APA The mystery set in a cul-de-sac community is reminiscent of Desperate Housewives and Big Little Lies, focusing on one woman’s struggle to keep her sanity and secrets in check as her husband is arrested for the tragic death of a beloved neighbor.…

First Look “We make a massive point of diversity of our members,” says Debbie Wosskow, who along with Anna Jones, former chief executive of Hearst Magazines U.K., is opening women-focused membership club AllBright on Melrose Place — with a VIP launch on Sept. 25 — after starting two AllBrights in London last year. “I’m a member of Soho House in London and my kids are all mini members, but my husband is a doctor and is the only nonmember in our family because he’s not in the creative industry,” Wosskow continues. “We believe the joy of it is all in the mix.” The mix of WeHo AllBright members (who pay a $300 joining fee and $2,050 in annual dues) includes Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, CAA’s Maha Dakhil and Live Nation…

Broadway producer Bill Damaschke insists on standing at the back of the audience for nearly every performance of his musicals. For more than six weeks this summer, that meant racing between the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where Moulin Rouge! began previews June 28, and the Longacre Theatre, where The Prom closed its Tonynominated run Aug. 11. This routine was disrupted only on the night of July 13, when a blackout shut down all of Broadway as well as a large swath of Manhattan’s West Side (Damaschke hunkered down with the Moulin Rouge! cast, while writer John Logan was stuck for hours in an elevator). During his busy summer, Netflix greenlit a film adaptation of The Prom, with Ryan Murphy directing, that will star Meryl Streep, James Corden and Nicole Kidman (Damaschke,…

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB5 into law on Sept. 18, it seemed as if the end of the Hollywood “loan out” corporation was here, with ripple effects throughout the industry. But is that the case? Is the loan out — a separate business entity that “loans out” the services of a creative person and allows him or her to deduct expenses like agent commissions, manager fees and other business costs — really dead? Is it too late to do something? The short answer is that no one knows yet. But first, let’s look at two sections of the law in particular — the “Professional Services” exemption and the “Business-to-Business (B2B)” exemption. Each provision has several different criteria (six for Professional Services, 12 for B2B) that need to be…

Before Teressa Foglia, a bicoastal bespoke milliner, even opened her new jewel-box boutique in Malibu Village, Gerard Butler had already bought eight hats. The newest name in an L.A. line of star-loved makers (e.g., Pharrell’s famous go-to, Nick Fouquet, in Venice), Foglia brings hyper-personalization to the craft, drawing in such Hollywood customers as Owen Wilson (who ordered a pink topper). At her first showroom in Brooklyn, Foglia made John Mayer two chapeaux. “He loves Japanese fashion and Goro’s [a Native American-themed store in Tokyo], so we made a classic Montana ranch hat and another that’s super funky, covered in Japanese antique fabrics,” says Foglia. In August at Little Beach House Malibu, Will Smith saw the behatted Foglia and her partner and creative director Tyler Hays Wild and said, “Wow, I…

To celebrate her Emmy nomination for lead actress in a limited series or movie, Fosse/Verdon star Michelle Williams chose an elaborately embellished column by Louis Vuitton (she has been a face of the brand since 2013). “I love that it feels a little vintage and classic,” says Williams’ stylist Kate Young, who added antique Fred Leighton jewels, including an emerald and diamond ring, circa 1809. The star’s strapless gown required 650 hours of work for the hand-stitched floral embroidery to be completed. It featured 270,000 sequins, 65,000 beads — 35,000 of them hand-dyed — and 5,300 Swarovski crystals to create megawatt sparkle. Says hairstylist Chris McMillan of the inspiration behind the look: “Shanghai! The dress was so old school [in terms of] the details — 1940s, glamour, modern.”…

ALMOST FAMILY (Fox, 9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2) Likable performers including Brittany Snow and Emily Osment get torpedoed by an icky premise — a fertility doctor (Timothy Hutton) may have impregnated patients with his own sperm — that this drama doesn’t seem to grasp is icky. — DANIEL FIENBERG BATWOMAN (The CW, 8 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6) Ruby Rose’s magnetic turn as Kate Kane/the eponymous vigilante compensates for bumpy exposition in the latest superhero expansion. That Kane is a lesbian (and Jewish) could help the show stand out on a DC-glutted network. — D.F. BLESS THE HARTS (Fox, 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29) Fox’s North Carolina-set animated series created by Emily Spivey (Last Man on Earth) feels a bit like King of the Hill with its titular Southern family and…

While the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation has been assisting veterans of the entertainment industry for decades, a new affiliate initiative is turning its focus on Hollywood’s up-and-coming professionals. Officially launched in March, Film Row aims to foster a new group of industry leaders. “We hope to achieve our goal by providing education opportunities,” says Melanie Valera, Paramount vp theatrical sales and Film Row president. The group’s first enterprise, Lunch & Learn, is a bimonthly event in which assistants and other lower-level professionals partake in a conversation with industry leaders over a catered meal. The inaugural Lunch & Learn guest speaker was Paramount president of domestic distribution Kyle Davies, and Dave Neustadter, executive vp production at New Line Cinema, was in conversation with Warner Bros. president of distribution Jeff…