Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, May 6, 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

Universal’s experiment with releasing Trolls World Tour on demand in the midst of a pandemic has been full of surprises. For starters, NBCUniversal shocked theater owners by not notifying them in advance that it was going to offer the title on premium on demand. They reacted badly to the perceived attack on their traditional windows. But the studio also caught its own talent off guard when it revealed early on-demand plans for the animated tentpole. Sources tell THR that the Trolls sequel’s top voice stars, including Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick, also were not informed ahead of the March 16 announcement that the film would be available to rent for $19.99 online. This is not the sort of surprise such people usually like, and it’s a sensitive matter because compensation…

Since mid-March, many CEOs across the entertainment and media landscape have made headlines by pledging to forgo their salaries amid fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic. Eventually, however, attention will be diverted elsewhere, at which time experts say some of them will be repaid, making their current cuts merely a loan to the company disguised as a financial sacrifice. Take Disney, which has furloughed more than 100,000 employees. On March 30, the company disclosed that executive chairman Bob Iger would forgo his $3 million salary and other top executives like CEO Bob Chapek — who makes $2.5 million in base salary — would have their pay cut in half. While relinquishing base salary may have been a move toward forging solidarity with employees, Iger makes much more annually in additional…

The Buddhist on Death Row (AUG. 4, SIMON & SCHUSTER) BY David Sheff AGENCY ICM Partners The Beautiful Boy writer pens the story of Jarvis Jay Masters, who after being framed for murder was sentenced to death row, where he became a renowned Buddhist practitioner. It’s evocative of the recent screen stories Just Mercy and When They See Us. We Came Here to Shine (JUNE 16, ST. MARTIN’S PRESS) BY Susie Orman Schnall AGENCY UTA A period piece about female friendships, the book is set against the 1939 New York World’s Fair and follows a journalist and a down-on-her-luck actress as they work together to realize their aspirations.…

With social distancing in place, L.A.’s private social clubs are waiving fees — from $2,160 to $6,000 a month — and getting creative in engaging their members. “You log in to Instagram and there’s seven people live and John Krasinski has a late night show and you’re bombarded with this amazing programming — our focus is to do things that could be meaningful to our members,” says h Club LA’s director of membership and marketing Heather Bardocz. As a result, the club, which is not charging membership fees during the pandemic, has stacked its virtual programming with sound baths, DJ sets and family sing-alongs. On April 30, it hosted its first remote member meal: The club’s GM dropped off ingredients at the homes of members, who then jumped on Zoom…

What Will the New Normal on Red Carpets Look Like? Plastic shields separating media from stars, the elimination of entourages plus drive-in and virtual fan experiences — these are just a few proposals from event insiders for putting Hollywood’s once-booming red carpets back on track. Under Safer at Home directives, events have been shuttered since mid-March, with no end date in sight. 15/40 Productions, a firm that has produced 350 events annually (including Game of Thrones’ final-season premiere in New York) shared renderings (above) that show how drastically modified a carpet could look. Says company president Craig Waldman, “We’ve been meeting with L.A. city officials to redesign the red carpet experience in a way that works while accommodating social distancing to make talent more comfortable.” He adds that medical staff…

In April, during coronavirus stay-at-home orders around the world, Chris Hemsworth’s 1-year-old Centr fitness app grew its audience by 300 percent, adding hundreds of thousands of users. On YouTube, average daily views of content with “workout at home” in titles shot up more than 200 percent from March 15 to 30 compared to the rest of 2020. “During quarantine, one of the things we can control is self-care, so focusing on fitness and well-being couldn’t be more important, ” says Jillian Michaels, founder of the Jillian Michaels Fitness app. Here’s the gear that trainers say is helpful to have at home, plus ways that Hollywood is working out now. GEAR Most trainers say effective workouts can be done using body weight alone. However, “if I was to select my ideal…

This year, one word requires extra emphasis in Emmy season’s ubiquitous “for your consideration” slogan. With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing the voting window by nearly a month and plenty of talent still reticent about the prospect of either literal or figurative glad-handing, some awards strategists are at a loss about how to stage sensitive, self-aware campaigns. “There’s a symbiotic relationship between TV and America, especially during this pandemic,” says one talent publicist, who is still holding back on making commitments for clients. “It’s a relationship worth celebrating, but nobody wants to be the first one through the wall. You might get bloodied.” Rethinking advertising messaging, putting a greater focus on May premieres and finding a way to incorporate fundraising are all being discussed as ways to soften the industrywide attention…

On Jan. 27, actress Ashley Jackson felt the first symptoms of a nasty bug — fever, clammy skin, fatigue and shortness of breath. Given her current locale — Park City — she chalked it up to altitude sickness and toughed out her final day at the Sundance Film Festival, where she had attended the world premiere of Blast Beat, a family drama in which she co-stars, as well as a dizzying array of parties and lounges. The next day, the 20-year-old college student flew home to Atlanta, just as more intense symptoms began to emerge, including sore throat, aches and pains and a cough so violent, her neck swelled. Within 24 hours, she made her first of multiple visits to an urgent care facility or emergency room and was diagnosed…

Cannes, the film festival, won’t be happening this year. But while the French government’s extended ban on large gatherings because of the COVID-19 pandemic killed all hope of a return to the Croisette in the spring, the industry has responded with two virtual events to keep the Cannes Film Market alive. One is run by the official Cannes Marché du Film and the other is organized by the film sales divisions of the top four agencies — CAA Media Finance, UTA Independent Film Group, ICM International and Independent Group and Endeavor Content — as well as several indie production and sales operations, including STX Entertainment, AGC Studios and Sierra/Affinity. Details of the entertainment industry’s first-ever virtual film markets still are being worked out. But the two markets are set…

BECOMING Netflix Netflix is sure to suck up a lot of the nonfiction oxygen with its just-announced Michelle Obama project named after the former first lady’s 2018 memoir that sold 10 million copies. KILLING EVE BBC America It was set to return before the deadline, but moving its third-season premiere up two weeks gives voters more time with the Emmy darling that stars two-time nominee Sandra Oh and 2019 winner Jodie Comer. THE LAST DANCE ESPN An early premiere on Netflix garnered wild coverage for ESPN’s 10-part examination of the 1997–98 Chicago Bulls. Originally set to drop in July, it is now eligible for round two of voting. GENIUS: ARETHA National Geographic Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin is Emmy bait in any year, but the actress still has…

Should Catherine the Great have risen to power as ruler of Russia? History offers an enthusiastic yes — the 18th century monarch earned her epithet by reforming Russia, expanding its borders and presiding over its Enlightenment movement. But in Hulu’s The Great, starring Elle Fanning as a 20-year-old Catherine, the answer is less certain. Arriving six months after HBO’s Catherine the Great, starring Helen Mirren as an older queen who’s not only used to power but practically embodies it, this arch, hyper-verbose girl-power exercise, which bills itself as “an occasionally true story,” finds its titular character scheming to take her idiot husband Peter’s (Nicholas Hoult) crown for herself. The Great’s anachronisms, exoticisms and observations of the ways privilege breeds rot recall Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite — unsurprisingly, since that film’s…

On April 27, Saudi Arabia disclosed in an SEC filing that it has taken a 5.7 percent stake in Live Nation, led by CEO Michael Rapino, via its sovereign wealth fund. The $500 million move marked the Public Investment Fund’s first known buy-in of an American entertainment company since the October 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — a crime attributed to Saudi government agents that ended Hollywood’s love affair with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Now, the question looms: Was the investment a one-off or a sign of more to come? Sources familiar with the PIF’s strategy tell THR to expect more investment. Lots more. The $300 billion fund remains interested in the entertainment and sports sector and is close to completing a $380 million deal to…

When Hollywood talent lawyer Matt Johnson moved to Costa Rica in 2018 to enjoy a change of pace with his wife and kids, he never imagined a pandemic would return him to L.A. But, when he received a call from Mayor Eric Garcetti on March 15, that’s exactly what happened. “He asked me to be point person for his office coordinating their COVID-19 response with the philanthropic and business community. I packed up my family and we came back,” says Johnson of his work as L.A.’s Chief of COVID-19 Philanthropic & Private Sector Community Emergency Response. The attorney had met then-city councilman Garcetti in 2001 and went on to serve on his mayoral transition team and as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Johnson, who reps A-listers including Tyler…

With all the uncertainties swirling through my head — how will the world be different and how will I be different? — the one I keep coming back to is, “How will my neighborhood be different?” There are many things in my life that I want to stay exactly the same. I love the small section of city — Hollywood — I am fortunate enough to call my own. And beyond, across this varied landscape, L.A.’s restaurants and bars ground me. These are the spaces that give me a sense of belonging within the community, they are the reasons I and my family go east or west, north or south. In normal times, I’ll happily battle my way to the out-of-the-way places, because there is joy in just arriving (am…

DOUG VAUGHAN, MICHAEL CIONI, PAUL CHAPMAN • Executive vp specials and late night programming, NBC; senior vp innovation, FRAME.IO; VP engineering and technology, SIM During the COVID-19 crisis, necessity has indeed become the mother of invention as Hollywood trades in meeting rooms for Zoom, sets for living rooms, cameras for smartphones and studios for cloud-based technologies. The last innovation is something that the team behind One World: Together at Home — the global broadcast and digital special that aired April 18 and raised $128 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund — knows well. A centralized cloud-based production environment, provided by collaboration systems company Frame.io, allowed numerous players to work remotely — including a long list of performers from Lady Gaga to the Rolling Stones to Lizzo. Said to be…

Like the Wally Lamb novel it’s based on, Derek Cianfrance’s HBO limited-series adaptation I Know This Much Is True tells a tragic tale of the most spiraling sort — a torrent of misery so unrelenting, it passes from Strindbergian to Shakespearean to biblical. The family at the center of the story seems endlessly cursed, and the Blue Valentine auteur knows a thing or two about finding emotional truth in wallowing and wretchedness — a good thing, because if the performances in I Know This Much Is True weren’t as terrific as they are, the catharsis wouldn’t justify the exhaustion. If you are planning to watch all six-hour-ish installments of the show, you either have fond memories of Lamb’s 1998 best-seller and Oprah’s Book Club selection or you’re intrigued by the…

ASIA (Tribeca) Israeli writer-director Ruthy Pribar makes an assured feature debut, balancing maturity with emotional intensity, about the circumstances that coax a single Jerusalem woman (Alena Yiv) and her ailing teen daughter (Shira Haas, star of Netflix’s Unorthodox) to forge the connection previously missing from their lives. The film won three prizes. — DAVID ROONEY FREELAND (SXSW) Krisha Fairchild is riveting as a long-thriving Humboldt County pot farmer left on the outside looking in as the cannabis industry booms around her. Within its brief running time, writer-directors Mario Furloni and Kate McLean infuse this story of a changing culture and economy with an anguished depiction of generational displacement. — SHERI LINDEN MY DARLING VIVIAN (SXSW) In Matt Riddlehoover’s engaging and revelatory documentary, Johnny Cash’s four daughters set the record straight…