Innholdsfortegnelse for Friday, January 3, 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

If Walt Disney Studios cochairmen Alan Horn and Alan Bergman were in a Las Vegas casino, they’d be accused of card counting. The company’s jaw-dropping hand in 2019 resulted in record-shattering winnings: an estimated $11.1 billion worldwide — including seven films that soared past $1 billion, and a soon-to-be eighth, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That’s north of $13.1 billion when accounting for the Fox and Fox Searchlight titles it inherited in the March merger (Disney set the previous industry record of $7.6 billion in 2016 and has been No. 1 since). The 2019 deck was carefully engineered to coincide with the November launch of Disney+, CEO Bob Iger’s top priority. What better value proposition than to offer streaming customers access to a bevy of branded blockbusters, including Avengers:…

The prevailing wisdom that a Hollywood tentpole needs China to become a blockbuster was upended in 2019 as a cluster of pics did more business — or almost as much — elsewhere as they did in the Middle Kingdom (including Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which should cross $1 billion in the coming days). Joker is among only a few films to have joined the billion-dollar club without playing in China at all. And Japan, Germany and Latin America saw big gains, while emerging markets such as Indonesia impressed. “I couldn’t find one territory where Joker didn’t overperform,” says Warner Bros. international distribution chief Andrew Cripps. “There are a lot of cinemas outside of China, and a lot of people.” ALADDIN  Worldwide gross: $1.05B  International gross: $695.1M JOKER  Worldwide…

On Dec. 20, as Cats opened in theaters domestically, Universal made an unprecedented decision to send exhibitors a new version of the film with “some improved visual effects.” By then, however, it was too late. Tom Hooper’s star-studded musical bombed amid a sea of dreadful reviews, earning at press time just $40.5 million globally and facing a loss of $50 million to $75 million against a budget of roughly $100 million before marketing. Signs of trouble were there early on. Production began in December 2018 and wrapped in April. That’s a tight post-production schedule for a film featuring extensive and complex visual effects and a full cast rendered as performance capture-based, digital, fur-covered humanoid felines who perform dance moves in environments that combine live-action and digital sets. When the first…

As streaming chips away at linear TV, many on Wall Street are surprisingly bullish on companies saddled with myriad traditional channels. Barron’s, for one, included Comcast and ViacomCBS among its top 10 stock picks for 2020. And ISI Evercore’s Vijay Jayant in December gave ViacomCBS an “outperform” rating, calling it “a content powerhouse in an era of peak content.” While cord-cutting for cable TV is a challenge, Comcast has increased “customer relationships” to 31.2 million at the end of the third quarter from 30.1 million a year earlier courtesy of high-speed internet connections, and several analysts note that Comcast has underperformed rival Charter Communications when it comes to stock price, with the latter up 44 percent in the past two years while the former is up 18 percent over that…

Deal of the Week While other Hollywood giants stake their future on subscription streamers, Comcast is betting that its upcoming Peacock service can score with both paid subs and another traditional TV business model: advertising. Ahead of a Jan. 16 investor event to unveil details of Peacock, Comcast is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire ad-supported video streaming firm Xumo. Analysts took the news as the latest sign that Peacock is looking to differentiate itself from the likes of Disney+ and Apple TV+, which, like Netflix, don’t offer ad-based versions. Benchmark analyst Matthew Harrigan noted that Xumo’s free ad-supported service is similar to Pluto TV, which Viacom acquired for $340 million in January 2019 and which ViacomCBS management has positioned as a key growth business. “Xumo largely repackages traditional TV…

Social Action On Dec. 23, Just Mercy producer Scott Budnick surprised 11 incarcerated young men and women (ages 17 to 22), taking them from the Ventura Youth Correctional Institution for a day with the Lakers. The kids — some of whom are computer coders or college students — got to play ball at the practice facility and meet LeBron James and Just Mercy lead Michael B. Jordan. “Many of the [participants] said it was the first day they felt free in years,” says Budnick, who is under investigation for allegedly going to improper lengths to help in the legal defense of a teen accused of playing a role in the death of a police officer; the producer’s lawyers say the action is a retaliatory move related to Budnick’s activism. Continues…

Awards Season Crunch: ‘Like Being Hit By a Mack Truck’ This year’s incredibly shrinking awards season may be a blessing to some — “It’ll make it a wonderful, thrilling journey,” says Shannon McIntosh, a producer on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — but the rest of the town couldn’t sound more stressed. With the Oscars Feb. 9 (its earliest date ever), and all the other events squeezed in the weeks ahead of it (Globes on Jan. 5, Critics’ Choice on Jan. 12, SAG on Jan. 19, WGA on Feb. 1, BAFTA on Feb. 2 and Spirits on Feb. 8), there’s barely time to get tuxedos and gowns dry-cleaned between ceremonies. Emma Tillinger Koskoff, a producer on Joker and The Irishman, estimates she’ll need 16 dresses for the next six…

Michael Kassan is tired of consulting firm MediaLink being described as the mafia of the media industry. “Please, please, please, I hate that word,” the chairman and CEO appealed from his Century City office in early December. Sure, the former lawyer acknowledges that there’s mystery surrounding MediaLink’s work in strategic planning, M&A integration and executive recruiting. After all, his clients are some of the biggest media, entertainment and advertising entities in the world, and he offers that the company has been “very fortunate to position ourselves at the center of many conversations.” As he prepares for January’s CES technology confab in Las Vegas, where he’ll broker scores of meetings, he says, “If there’s an implication [that our work] is done somehow through something untoward, I haven’t figured out what it…

This year’s Oscar acting hopefuls include a mix of roles based on historical figures, such as Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in Judy and Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman in Harriet, as well as fictional roles, such as Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in Joker. As they vie for the statuettes, it begs the question: Does one group have an advantage over the other? Before going through all 1,708 acting nominees over 91 years in four categories (lead and supporting actor and actress) and using historical data to calculate the answer, I laid out the following criteria for what constitutes a real-life person versus a fictional character: 1. A historical figure is any character based on a real-life person. That includes not only famous people — like Ben Kingsley’s Oscar-winning portrayal…

One of the great joys of my life is that I got to make A League of Their Own with Tom Hanks. He and Penny Marshall, our director, were friends from doing Big together a few years earlier — but I don’t think I’d met him before we started making the movie. Now, A League of Their Own was rather unusual at the time. Still is, really. Not only was it about a nearly forgotten chapter of history on the homefront during World War II, it was an almost exclusively female ensemble, directed by a woman. Tellingly, I never heard Tom make a single joking remark about how many women he was working with. In my experience, on the very rare occasions where there’s only one man in a group…

The Golden Globes ceremony is 86’ing the awards-circuit chicken dinner. As part of its sustainability efforts, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will be serving a plant-based meal, making it likely the first major awards show to go all-vegan. The appetizer (pictured) is chilled golden beet soup with locally grown chervil and amaranth. “We had a menu with fish. Then we got together with the HFPA and they wanted to make this change to send a good message,” says Beverly Hilton executive chef Matthew Morgan. The HFPA is also planning to reuse this year’s new red carpet at other events and, to reduce plastic waste, has a partnership with Icelandic Glacial to serve water in glass bottles (a year after the appearance of Fiji Water Girl). “The climate crisis is surrounding…

In 2019, Disney collected $11.1 billion, a 50 percent spike over 2018 ($7.3 billion). And that tally swells to $13.2 billion when including the Fox titles it has released since late March. Every other major studio was down from the previous year in terms of worldwide revenue — save for Sony, which made its best showing domestically since 2012 and came in third in market share. Universal had a solid year, considering its only live-action franchise installment was Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. Paramount had a rough go after Rocketman; ditto for Fox.…

BEST PICTURE Jojo Rabbit Fox Searchlight and the USC Shoah Foundation have announced an initiative to develop classroom curriculum tied to Taika Waititi’s Holocaust dramedy—described as an “anti-hate satire” — which Armie Hammer will help honor at a Jan. 3 reception in Los Angeles. Cats Tom Hooper’s $100 million take on the Broadway musical tanked, grossing just $6.6 million on opening weekend, one of the 20 worst wide openings ever, even after last-minute replacement prints were sent to correct VFX issues. Universal then quietly removed the film from its FYC page, sealing its fate. Uncut Gems The Safdie brothers’ eccentric adrenaline-filled drama, which stars Adam Sandler, went wide over the holidays and crossed the $20 million mark, setting a new five-day record for an A24 release. But its C+ CinemaScore…

From Ronald Reagan costar Bonzo to the Today show’s J. Fred Muggs and Bear in B.J. and the Bear, chimpanzees have been appearing in movies and on TV for more than eight decades. That all but came to an end in 2018, the year that Eli, the last chimpanzee professionally trained to act in Hollywood, appeared in his final movie, the Bollywood film Zero. Eli — whose key trick was taking someone’s glasses and putting them on — is now awaiting placement in a forever home. Having been let go by Working Wildlife (which specializes in providing exotic species for entertainment productions), he was dropped off in March at a financially struggling nonprofit sanctuary near Angeles National Forest, just outside of Los Angeles. The facility shut down in August, and…

Roger Deakins tends to discuss his work in a calm and methodical way, but even the veteran director of photography can’t stop a big smile from spreading across his face as he recalls a particularly tricky method of keeping the camera in motion on Sam Mendes’ war epic 1917. “The camera comes off a 50-foot Technocrane, it gets carried up the hill and walked backward [with a] Mini Libra head,” Deakins says of the choreography required in the shooting of a take of the film’s climactic final run across a battlefield. “Then it gets put on another Technocrane that’s on the back of a truck, and it goes racing off, and the grips who carried it are in uniform, so they got paid as being extras. There were probably 13…

Once upon a time in Hollywood, the Globes delivered the most dizzying afterparty situation inside the Beverly Hilton — where the halls literally overflowed with A-listers hightailing it from one shindig to the next. Times have changed, and so has the scene. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see stars make one cameo at an obligatory event before moving on to a private agency party, gatherings that are always hosted off-site. “They’re more exclusive,” says one top publicist of the post-Globes agency parties that are off-the-record and free of selfie-seeking fans and reporters. “At the big studio parties, you’ll have tons of sponsors and executives, and those executives bring their wives, husbands or children. It gets crowded.” Not so much at agency parties where, says one person familiar with the…

Nearly every day for the past three months — since Joker’s Oct. 4 opening — fans have been gathering on a grimy outdoor staircase in the Bronx. Often clad in red suits and green wigs, they re-enact one of the film’s most memorable scenes, the one in which Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck performs a revelrous dance as he finally emerges as the full-blown Clown Prince of Crime. “They all told us weeks before anybody saw the movie that it would inspire mass mayhem,” says director Todd Phillips. “Now we realize it’s just inspired people to dance on a staircase in the Bronx.” The Warner Bros. movie has raked in more than $1 billion at the global box office, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, and collected accolades like…

The end of the first season of True Detective disappointed a subset of viewers because the mystery was resolved in concrete terms and not on the loopy, transdimensional wavelength some were expecting. Those viewers might be the target demo for HBO’s new limited series The Outsider. Like the Stephen King novel it’s based upon, The Outsider is an interesting but not completely satisfying experiment. It’s a blend of incompatible genres, an answer-driven police procedural intersecting with supernatural elements. With novelist/screenwriter Richard Price (The Deuce, The Night Of) developing the book for TV, it’s no surprise the former genre dominates the first six episodes sent to critics. Ben Mendelsohn plays Ralph Anderson, detective in a town that has been rocked by the murder, tinged with sexual violence, of a young boy.…

Domestic revenue tumbled behind both 2018’s record $11.88 billion and 2016’s $11.38 billion, according to preliminary estimates. Yet global ticket sales narrowly set a new record, due to an uptick at the international box office. Source: Comscore estimates.…

When Fox Sports coverage of Super Bowl LIV kicks off Feb. 2 in Miami, there are two certainties. The game will reach the biggest live TV audience of the year by far, and it will set a streaming record — the question is by how much. Live sports have been a TV ratings bulwark in an increasingly on-demand universe. Fox Sports unloaded all 77 of its in-game ad units before Thanksgiving, with prices for a 30-second spot topping out at $5.6 million, compared with $5.3 million in 2019. It was an extremely early benchmark for the Super Bowl, which typically sees in-game inventory available through December and into January. “That’s about as strong an endorsement of the Super Bowl as an ad-delivery platform as there could possibly be,” says Mike…

FILM Zachary Levi (UTA, Untitled, McKuin Frankel) has joined Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster in legal drama Prisoner 760. ViacomCBS will acquire 49 percent of Miramax for $375 million. Issa Rae (UTA, 3 Arts, Hansen Jacobson) and her ColorCreative banner are developing Bollywood crime comedy Badmash. Little’s Marsai Martin (WME, The Movement, Morris Yorn) will produce the Universal comedy Queen through her Genius Productions banner. Late Night director Nisha Ganatra (ICM, Morris Yorn) will helm an untitled Universal feature about an Indian boy band, inspired by the life of American music producer and songwriter Savan Kotecha. How to Train Your Dragon’s Dean DeBlois (WME, Lichter Grossman) has signed a first-look deal with Universal and DreamWorks Animation. Gal Gadot (WME, Sloane Offer) is partnering with Keshet International to adapt 2014 Hebrew novel…

OK, so you’ve landed downtown for a game. Lakers … Clippers … not even wading into those waters, but regardless of your team of choice, it’s time for a well-apportioned spirit at one of DTLA’s finest haunts. These are a few of my favorite places to go near Staples, before or after the game. FOR UNSEASONABLY WARM NIGHTS Sometimes it’s right to eat light, and at Mediterranean-inspired Pilot at the Hoxton, with its sweet live-fire cooking, I dig right into the “Grand Aioli” for vegetables and tableside aioli. When I mix that with a fine G&T … it’s summertime every time. 1060 S. Broadway FOR A NEW YORK-STYLE NIGHT OUT I spend a fair amount of time in NYC, and sometimes I crave that city’s shoulder-to-shoulder energy. The NoMad L.A.’s…

1917 Hollywood, Dec. 18 Baby2Baby Holiday Party Beverly Hills, Dec. 15 Party Crawler Sam Mendes’ Family Inspiration For Sam Mendes (5), 1917 isn’t just another project; it’s one that he’s been waiting to make since childhood. At the TCL Chinese premiere, the director spoke candidly about how his grandfather, a World War I veteran, inspired the film. “The movie isn’t about my grandfather, but it’s because of my grandfather that it is made,” he said. The war drama, starring George MacKay (3) and Dean-Charles Chapman (3), is generating buzz for its cinematography and style that appears as though it were shot in a single long take. As for the subject of the war, Mendes told THR: “It was 100 years ago, the last survivors are gone, and the situation in…

As regulators eye tech giants amassing stockpiles of consumer data, it’s unlikely that the duopoly — Google and Facebook — will lose its commanding market share of digital advertising spending any time soon. Globally in 2019, the two companies “are likely to generate somewhere around $175 billion on a net basis, or perhaps around $210 billion on a gross basis,” GroupM analyst Brian Wieser wrote in a December report. “Other large sellers of digital advertising — including Microsoft, Amazon, Verizon, Twitter and Snap — will generate approximately $25 billion to $30 billion in digital ad revenue this year.” Digital Will Dominate Market Share Global internet advertising spend is poised to grow significantly through 2024 U.S. Digital Ad Spending Amazon is making inroads on the duopoly of Google and Facebook U.S.…

Louis Roederer et Philippe Starck 2009 Brut Nature $90 From the house behind Cristal — the original “bling” bottle — comes its polar opposite of sorts, a champagne collab with designer Philippe Starck. With no added sugar, it’s clean and kinetic, much like Starck’s designs, with mouthwatering intensity. wallywine.com Chartogne-Taillet Cuvee Sainte Anne NV Brut $47 Grower producers who have backed away from selling their fruit to large champagne houses and began productions of their own include Chartogne-Taillet. Its superb entry-level Sainte Anne NV Brut from the Montagne de Reims is a perfect balance of gingery, salty tang and mouthwatering apple flavors, hinting at richness. klwines.com Under the Wire 2014 Alder Springs Brut Rosé $60 Part of a new wave of artisan sparkling wine production in California, Chris Cottrell and…

Anyone who’s thrown a wedding or bar mitzvah knows the headaches of mapping tables, a thankless task that requires being mindful of feuds while coddling fragile egos. The stakes are that much higher for the Golden Globe Awards, whose seating plan falls to Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Meher Tatna. It’s a process that begins the moment the nominations are determined. That’s when the seating team convenes to divide the guests into three sections of the 16,000-square-foot International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton, which has a capacity for 1,300 people: The nominees — each of whom is permitted one guest (usually an agent or manager) — and major studio execs sit closest to the stage in the sunken area known as “the pit,” specially designed to accommodate TV cameras. Lower-profile…

Like a modern-day Irwin Allen, Armando Iannucci is a crafter of disaster epics, using precisely written profanity in place of everyday heroism. What are Veep and The Thick of It if not chronicles of slowly unfolding civic catastrophes? It’s in this spirit that Iannucci’s latest HBO offering, Avenue 5, is perhaps best approached — as a comic Poseidon Adventure set in space. Such a perspective might especially benefit the first couple of episodes, which don’t stumble so much as unfold in ways that aren’t always quite as funny as they should be in the moment (though things become more amusing as the chaos mounts). Avenue 5 largely takes place aboard the eponymous mammoth vessel as it embarks on an eight-week maiden voyage around Saturn. Under the reassuringly watchful eye of…

Doing something well and getting people to watch are different things. The latter will be NBC’s challenge with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, a warm, often inspired musical dramedy led by a never-better Jane Levy. It just may be too quirky for broadcast and not quirky enough for cable. Levy plays Zoey, a coder at a Bay Area startup run by Joan (Lauren Graham). Zoey’s work advancement is jeopardized by the need to help her mother (Mary Steenburgen) care for her dad (Peter Gallagher), who is nearly incapacitated by a neurological condition. Experiencing headaches, Zoey submits to medical tests and finds herself trapped in an MRI machine when an earthquake hits. Somehow this leaves her as something of a human antenna, picking up on people’s feelings via tunes that range from brief…