Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/16/2016 i The Hollywood Reporter

 IN THE LATE EVENING OF JAN. 25, teams from Fox Searchlight, Netflix, The Weinstein Co. and Sony converged in a lounge off Main Street in Park City to begin their pitches for Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation. Hours earlier, the Nat Turner biopic had premiered to uproarious applause at the Eccles Theater, and WME Global head Graham Taylor was ready to spearhead a monster sale. Parker, who actually had moved from WME to rival CAA only weeks before Sundance (Taylor continued to rep the film), also was busy consulting with his new agents, CAA’s Joel Lubin, Franklin Latt and Scott Greenberg. Searchlight executives made their formal pitch at around 11 p.m. to the film’s producers, including Aaron L. Gilbert, who as the primary financier was responsible for bonding…

AMERICAN PROGRAMMERS WHO doubt the ratings prowess of reality shows need only look across the pond for hope. The Great British Bake Off, a modest hit when it premiered in 2010, now ranks among the biggest shows in U.K. history. BBC One’s cooking competition returned for a seventh season Aug. 24 and drew a whopping 10.4 million live viewers for a 47.5 share. That means nearly half of British TVs on during the hour were tuned in — a bigger percentage than the Rio Olympics or Pop Idol in its heyday. Nothing, save the Super Bowl (a 73 share), matches that level of saturation with U.S. audiences. The Oscars and NBC’s most watched night of Olympics coverage couldn’t even muster a 40 share. GBBO’s growth is all the more…

BEAT BUGS NETFLIX Released Aug. 3, the animated comedy is set to modern-day recordings of Beatles hits that creator Josh Wakely nabbed through a lengthy negotiating process with the band’s catalog owner, Sony/ATV. GRATEFUL DEAD PROJECT AMAZON The project, currently in development, would be a limited bio series about the legendary jam band based on Steve Parish’s 2003 book Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road With the Grateful Dead. TIME OUT OF MIND AMAZON Also from Wakely, the series is being developed as an hourlong drama based on the songs of Bob Dylan, who gave broad permission for anything in his catalog to be used for the project. DRAWN & RECORDED SPOTIFY Part of the music streaming service’s first slate of original videos, which focuses heavily on music-themed…

“I have found myself in a state of stomach-churning confusion.” GABRIELLE UNION The actress, in an L.A. Times op-ed, describing her feelings about the controversy surrounding Nate Parker. Union, a rape survivor, agreed to star in his film The Birth of a Nation because she “related to the experience” of her character (who is raped in the movie). “Everyone smiles a lot here. It’s so nice.” NATALIE PORTMAN The actress, telling Jimmy Kimmel how pleasant it is to have moved back to Hollywood after living in France since 2014, where people tend to be “cool.” “It wasn’t a $300,000 dinner. It was three eighty, plus tip. I broke the Vegas tip record.” SHANE SMITH The Vice chief, on the size of the check and gratuity — reported to be $300,000…

Recent arrivals at the new Laurel Point in Studio City: Elizabeth Banks, Constance Zimmer, HBO’s Kathleen McCaffrey, UTA’s David Park, Dave Grohl and William Shatner. … CAA’s Tracy Brennan rendezvoused with David Boreanaz at Soho House Malibu. … Jonah Hill met publicist Jodi Gottlieb at Fatburger. … Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell dined al fresco at Blue Plate Oysterette in Santa Monica. … Adam Sandler hit the Pinkberry at Westfield Century City. … TV producer Ken Olin visited Jar. … Mario Lopez ordered dumplings at Din Tai Fung in Glendale. … Green Day piled in to Cavatina at the Sunset Marquis. … Clark Gregg alighted at Farm Shop. … Wilmer Valderrama popped by Cecconi’s. … Giada De Laurentiis stopped in to Jack’s Stir Brew in the Hamptons. The Quick Pitch…

WITH THE RAMS’ RETURN TO L.A., TEAM OWNER STAN Kroenke received a warm industry welcome: Among the celebrations was an April dinner hosted by CAA agent Michael Kives, with Ron Meyer, Katy Perry, Jerry Bruckheimer, Elon Musk, Kate Hudson, Scooter Braun and Steve Wynn in attendance. But the low-profile Kroenke (whose media reticence has earned him the nickname “Silent Stan”) was no stranger to Hollywood: Daughter Whitney Kroenke Burditt is a film producer (The Power of Few) and philanthropist who lives on the Bird Streets above the Sunset Strip. And Kroenke himself is a longtime Malibu homeowner, having paid $9 million in 1998 for the estate of Princess Diana’s lover Dodi Fayed. Kroenke was born for sports moguldom: His father, who owned a lumberyard in the rural Missouri town…

CONTRADICTING THE town’s reputation for going further than anywhere else in its blind pursuit of a youthful appearance, Los Angeles is experiencing a decrease in underthe-knife procedures like never before. And anecdotal evidence indicates that L.A., usually on the cutting edge of cosmetic trends, might even lag behind the 31 percent drop in face-lift procedures in the western U.S., according to a study by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons published in 2015. Beverly Hills dermatologist Harold Lancer says that his surgical “colleagues have shared that traditional face-lifts are down 10 to 15 percent.” Explains anti-aging researcher and physician Barbara Sturm, whose clients include Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jada Pinkett Smith and other A-list actors and producers: “Nobody wants a face-lift anymore; all of my patients are scared.” To pointedly avoid stretched…

EVEN IF YOU ONLY SPEND TIME in Toronto for the film festival, chances are you’ve come in contact with one of the city’s many nocturnal animals. No, we’re not talking about the new Tom Ford film. We’re talking about Procyon lotor, or the raccoon. The city’s epic battle with the socalled ring-tailed bandit has raged for years now. With an estimated 100 raccoons per square kilometer, nighttime encounters are frequent. As a result, city dwellers have developed a love-hate relationship with the critters, with some considering them a menace, others cute and harmless. (The former camp has a slight edge: A 2014 poll found 52 percent of Torontonians support euthanizing them.) Omnivores who will eat just about anything, raccoons are frequently found foraging in garbage bins. With restaurant dumpsters full…

Hipster cred never has been the Oldenburg Film Festival’s problem. Star power? That’s another story. But this year’s edition will have both with a double bill of Nicolas Cage and Amanda Plummer, both of whom will receive lifetime achievement awards during the 2016 event. Cage, whose films have grossed more than $4.7 billion worldwide, is, by a long stretch, the “biggest star we’ve ever had,” says festival director Torsten Neumann. But, he insists, the star of Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (not to mention countless action movies) has earned a place as an icon of independent cinema. “Somehow he’s managed to move between studio projects and his roots in indie cinema,” says Neumann. In addition to Leaving Las Vegas and Wild…

TELLING THE STORY OF NAT TURNER’S 1831 slave rebellion seems to have a cursed history. In 1967, William Styron wrote the bestselling novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which won the Pulitzer Prize. However, despite popularizing an important event in American history, the novel was met with angry criticism from some African-Americans in part because Styron, who told the story from Nat Turner’s point of view, was white. Today, African-American Nate Parker, the co-writer, director, co-producer and star of the Nat Turner biopic The Birth of a Nation, faces an equal level of harsh public scrutiny that threatens to overshadow his impressive, important and flawed film. I want to address the controversy about whether or not people should go see a movie made by a man who 17 years ago…

THINK OF IT AS THE Black List, but for upand-coming women directors. On Sept. 7, a group of female film executives launched The Alice Initiative (named after French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blache) to highlight 30 promising untapped talents, as voted on by more than 40 top industry players. The list — which includes 20 women who have directed at least one (nonstudio) feature and 10 who have earned attention for their work in TV or short films, comes after a report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film concluded that female filmmakers directed just 9 percent of the top 250 movies in 2015. The group members had found that when searching for directors for their projects, they ended up calling one another for suggestions of talented…

OSCAR PACT GIVES ABC A BIT MORE INFLUENCE DEAL OF THE WEEK THREE SMALL CONCESSIONS, ONE GIANT LEAP. ABC’s new megadeal to broadcast the Oscars through 2028 includes gains in a trio of key areas — creative input, distribution and revenue streams — that are considered victories for the network, considering the Academy’s ironclad grip on its biggest night of the year. The ceremony always has been challenging from a programming standpoint, in part because it must serve both industry insiders at the Dolby Theatre and civilians at home. That’s why it’s significant that ABC now will have more input on the choice of producer and host, although the Academy retains final say. Sources close to the negotiations tell THR ABC plans to address the show’s bloated length. The 2016…

Venice Film Festival Venice, Aug. 31-Sept. 10 DESPITE THE CANCELLATION OF THE opening gala out of respect for the victims of the Aug. 24 central Italy earthquake, Oscar hopefuls were still out in full force at Venice. Emma Stone hit the Lido for La La Land, as Amy Adams pulled double duty for Arrival and Nocturnal Animals. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander appeared for The Light Between Oceans, as did Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber for The Bleeder, for which the actor took 800 punches for his role as a boxer. “Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the insurance company, he said, ‘I’m going to take real punches,’ ” said director Philippe Falardeau. “I’m very proud. … The boxing sequences [are] spectacular because they’re raw and true.” — ARISTON ANDERSON…

EK & LEVANDER Spotify founder Daniel Ek married writer-reality TV star Sofia Levander on Aug. 27 in Lake Como, Italy, in front of guests including Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Chris Rock officiated, Levander walked down the aisle to Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” and, following a fireworks display, Bruno Mars performed “Marry You” and other songs during the reception. The couple has two children. WEDDINGS Ben Lyons, a producer and on-air host for ESPN, The Players’ Tribune and Oscars.com, married wellness coach Mariah Perkins on Aug. 27 at Triunfo Creek Vineyards in Agoura Hills, Calif., in front of 100 guests. The couple met at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. BIRTHS Jamie Skinner, a publicist at Image Management Public Relations, and Primary Wave Entertainment talent manager Eric Skinner…

 MIXED MESSAGES ABOUNDED AT THE 2016 summer box office. Moviegoers feasted on sequels but in many instances halfheartedly embraced or outright snubbed franchise installments, remakes and reboots. R-rated comedies flopped one after another, then Bad Moms hit $100 million. Family films ruled, but Steven Spielberg’s kid-friendly The BFG bombed big-time. What’s a nervous studio chief to take away from this summer? “It’s tough out there,” says Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn. “I don’t think the competition for people’s time and attention has ever been more intense.” Despite the anxiety, domestic revenue for the summer period of May 1 through Labor Day is expected to end on par with or slightly ahead of 2015’s $4.48 billion, even with last year having the advantage of an extra week. That’s the second-best…

 IT’LL BE A LONG DAY, I KNOW THAT! WE get to the stadium about 3½ hours before the historic kickoff at 1:25 p.m. My daughter Trudy, who’s 17 and a junior in high school, is coming out and hanging with my wife, [ESPN reporter] Michelle Beisner, but they’re going to duck out and leave early to get their makeovers and put their ball gowns on. They’ll go from the stadium to our hotel and have a car take them to the Emmys [which begin at 5 p.m. sharp] while I’m doing the rest of the game. As the second half is winding down, I’m going to be checking the time, looking at my watch and wondering what the escape is going to be like. I’ll bring my tuxedo. I might…

TOM HANKS, WHO GETS his feet wet again in Sully (Sept. 9), was baptized into a long line of watery roles — Cast Away and Captain Phillips among them — with 1984’s Splash. The boy-meets-mermaid tale was the first release from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures label. It also was a second hit for director Ron Howard following 1982’s Night Shift, which prompted The Hollywood Reporter to note that “beneath that Opie Taylor/Richie Cunningham persona, there’s a wild and crazy spirit.” The $8 million film brought in $69.8 million domestically ($160 million today), making it the studio’s biggest success since 1969’s The Love Bug. Splash came at a time when Disney’s film division was moribund and theme parks generated 70 percent of revenue. It hit the sweet spot for the label: a…

RON HOWARD AND Ringo Starr met during a chance encounter in the 1970s. “He and Keith Moon wandered onto the Happy Days set,” recalls Howard. Adds Starr with a laugh: “We were lost at the time. It wasn’t on purpose.” Fast-forward to July, and Howard, Starr and Paul McCartney were sitting in a villa at the Mirage in Las Vegas a few hours before the 10th anniversary celebration of The Beatles Love by Cirque du Soleil and talking about their collaboration on the new documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years. Hitting theaters Sept. 16 and debuting on Hulu the following day, Eight Days a Week offers a first-ever look into the period from 1962 to 1966, when the Fab Four lived on the road.…

RAISED NORTH OF DALLAS, where his mother was an accountant for an oil company, Trevante Rhodes dreamed of working in petroleum. But while at the University of Texas at Austin on a track scholarship, he was discovered by a casting agent. So he moved to L.A. in 2013, booking a Tyler Perry OWN series and Terrence Malick’s Weightless before landing the lead in Barry Jenkins’ Toronto entry Moonlight, a coming-of-age drama from A24 about a gay man in drugaddled Miami. Told from three points in life, Rhodes plays the eldest, a man coming out after years of struggle. What in Moonlight resonated for you? It’s a true love story. At a younger age, I struggled with identity because I didn’t know myself. I knew who I wanted to be, and I knew…

Ryan Coogler Just Saying No to Academy Invite In June, the Academy announced it had invited 683 new members — among them Nate Parker, Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba, America Ferrera, Regina King and Cary Fukunaga — to join the Oscarsgranting organization. It was a record number designed to help diversify the membership after the Academy faced harsh criticism in the wake of 2015’s #OscarsSoWhite. But now it looks like at least one of those invitees isn’t jumping at the chance to join. Filmmaker Ryan Coogler, whose 2015 film Creed many thought was overlooked despite a nomination for supporting actor Sylvester Stallone, has yet to send in his acceptance letter, and sources tell THR he’s not interested in joining. His reps declined comment. Oprah on Where Not to Talk about…

NO ONE HAS MORE VIVID MEMORIES OF GENE WILDER’S MAD genius than Peter Ostrum, who was chosen at age 12 from a pool of thousands of hopefuls to play Charlie Bucket opposite the actor in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Now 58 and living in rural New York, where he works as a dairy cattle veterinarian, Ostrum says between scenes, Wilder would break character and crack up the young cast. And when cameras rolled, Wilder — who died Aug. 29 of complications from Alzheimer’s at age 83 — repeatedly employed the element of surprise. During his grand entrance from the Wonka Factory, he limps down a red carpet, then falls face-first — only to somersault forward and land on both feet. “We had no idea he was going…

THE LAST TIME THE NFL’S RAMS PLAYED A regular-season game inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — a loss to New Orleans on Dec. 16, 1979 — Jerry Brown was California’s governor, gas was expensive at 86 cents a gallon, and the Iran hostage crisis was six weeks old. Thirty-seven years later, Brown is governor (again), Iran remains a hot spot, gas is cheap at $2.70 a gallon, and — after 15 seasons in Anaheim and 21 in St. Louis — the Rams are back, opening at home Sept. 18 against Seattle. David Arquette and Warner Bros. TV’s Peter Roth are slated to attend along with Fox Sports’ Joe Buck and Emmy-nominated Modern Family star Ty Burrell, who will attempt an athletic feat of their own: racing from the…

COLISEUM BASICS BUILT 1923 SEATING CAPACITY 93,607 MILESTONE EVENTS Summer Olympics, 1932 and 1984; Super Bowls I and VII. Its largest crowd (134,254) was for a Billy Graham crusade in 1963. TICKETS Thousands of seats for the season opener ($121 to $10,000) still are available from the team and on StubHub and other outlets. GETTING THERE BY CAR Official Rams parking is sold out to season-ticket holders. Be prepared to pay upward of $100 to park in a private lot nearby. BY RAIL The Expo Park/USC Station and Expo/Vermont Station are within a 10-minute walk of the stadium. Metro promises trains about every 6 minutes on game day. GO CLEAR, OR GO HOME A new NFL policy this season allows only clear plastic or vinyl bags no larger than 12…

$1B Approximate annual sales for Tom Ford clothing and accessories in 2013 $25M Worldwide gross for Ford’s first film, the 2009 festival favorite A Single Man $36 Cost of a single Tom Ford Lips & Boys lipstick. The lip category at Tom Ford grew nearly 50 percent in 2015, after he introduced lipsticks named after his celebrity friends (like “Drake,” which sold out within minutes of its release) 16 Number of collections Ford was in charge of each year when he worked for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent $20M What Focus Features paid for Nocturnal Animals after a bidding war at 2015’s Cannes Film Festival 500 Number of celebrities and other VIPs who attended Ford’s 2015 Oscar weekend runway show at Milk Studios in Los Angeles (Julianne Moore, Beyonce, Jay…

IT ALL BEGAN WITH A COLD. In 2009, Eleanor Coppola was accompanying her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, to the Cannes Film Festival when she fell ill and decided to stay behind and rest as he traveled on to Budapest. A French associate of Francis’ offered to drive her to the Paris airport. But what should have been a sevenhour trip turned into a three-day adventure filled with wine, truffles and sweeping vistas. It jolted the then-73-year-old out of her everyday ennui. For while Coppola was an accomplished visual artist and Emmy-winning director in her own right, she had stifled many of her creative ambitions to nurture the filmmaking careers of her husband and children, Sofia, Roman and the late Gian-Carlo. “It was just one of those experiences that you can…

IT’S UNLIKELY THAT EMMA Stone will take as glamorous a turn at Toronto as she did at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, where she descended the steps of the Sala Grande in a glittering custom Atelier Versace gown for the Aug. 31 premiere of La La Land. Why? Explains Torontoborn stylist Hayley Atkin, whose clients include Carly Rae Jepsen and Beth Behrs: “While the festival has grown over the years to host so many big-name celebrities and films, a certain modesty and casualness has remained, which I think is inspired by the people of Toronto.” The down-to-earth vibe infiltrates the entire fest: It’s hard to imagine industry insiders trudging multiple city blocks to go from premiere to afterparty at, say, Cannes (Atkins recommends tossing flip-flops into your bag). For what…

I’VE BEEN PART OF ROB’S 50 YEARS FOR 41 YEARS. WE MET ON All in the Family in 1975. I was cast as his best friend — Norman Lear had seen me at The Comedy Store a couple weeks before, created this part for me and brought me out for my first trip to Los Angeles. I hadn’t met Rob before, and here we were cast as best friends. Jean [Stapleton] and Carroll [O’Connor] weren’t on the show that week. What impressed me the most about Rob was, one, he was so genial, but two, he was so smart. It was Rob who was fixing the script with the writers and the producers; it was Rob who was making sense out of what we had to do in the piece.…

SNL ALUM TARAN KILLAM WAS WORRIED: HE NEEDED Vancouver to double as Miami for his comedy Why We’re Killing Gunther. “Our script is quite international, so we were worried about finding looks that wouldn’t read Pacific Northwest,” says Killam, who also is starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cobie Smulders. “The Surrey Operations Centre building is this beautiful, brand-new, blue-glass building that we were able to double for Miami, and it ended up being one of my favorite locations of the entire shoot.” Killam and other Canadian production players see the collapse of their dollar against the American greenback and generous tax breaks as helping draw Hollywood projects north for the convenience of filming amid a diverse array of streetscapes and landscapes. According to the Association of Provincial Funding Agencies, the…