The all-new Hollywood Reporter offers unprecedented access to the people, studios, networks and agencies that create the magic in Hollywood. Published weekly, the oversized format includes exceptional photography and rich features.
After watching hours of racist, violent footage in order to direct her projects Selma, 13th and When They See Us, Ava DuVernay is not easily shaken. But the video of George Floyd’s death that has inspired protests around the world over police violence impacted DuVernay differently — and sparked an idea. “I was surprised at how really traumatized I was after watching the George Floyd tape,” DuVernay says. “It was because of the framing of that tape, because I could see that officer’s face very clearly. He wasn’t obscured behind the body cam. It wasn’t grainy surveillance footage. It was his face looking right at me as the viewer and very unashamed, unaffected. The hand in the pocket, the sunglasses sitting on top of his head that never moved, this…
Lady Gaga The artist nabs her sixth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with Chromatica, which earns 274,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending June 4. Adam Aron The AMC Theatres CEO cites “truly unprecedented times” June 9 as the chain discloses a quarterly loss of $2.17 billion amid closures during the pandemic, as well as plans to “fully open” in July. Jeff Zucker The CNN president’s network leads cable news in the key adults 25-to-54 demo for six straight days (May 29-June 3) — the first time since October 2001. Hartley Sawyer The CW drops the Flash actor, who apologizes after several of his tweets containing misogynist and racist references surfaced. Showbiz Stocks $28.51 (+31.1%) VIACOMCBS (VIAC) CBS may not have NBA rights, but…
Images of protest have been all over television after the May 25 killing of George Floyd. But as to how systemic racism influences the TV industry itself, that’s something that Byron Allen has been attempting to probe in litigation for years. The head of Entertainment Studios attributes a refusal to license channels including Justice.TV and Comedy.TV to bias. On June 4, he took a step he hopes will result in trial — an amended complaint filed in California federal court against Charter Communications. The move comes several months after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt him a blow in an ongoing discrimination suit against Comcast. On March 23, the justices unanimously held that race had to be more than a motivating factor for Comcast; to proceed against the cable giant, Allen…
Guest Column Years ago, I sold a script to Fox Animation that included a character wrongly accused of a traffic violation (believe me, it was more entertaining than it sounds). A few days later, I received a call from Fox’s Standards and Practices department insisting that I change the wrongful accuser from a police officer to a private investigator. The reason: “We can’t portray police officers in a negative light.” In other words, the studio was actively enforcing the harmful and inaccurate narrative that police officers can never do wrong. What if, instead, those execs had looked across their network’s content and raised flags when communities of color were repeatedly the ones depicted as wrongdoers? Those fictional depictions matter in the real world. A mountain of research shows that audiences’…
DONATION: $10 MILLION To: Eleven groups including the ACLU, Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP 2019 revenue: $280.5 billion DONATION: $75 MILLION (over three years) To: Groups working to “eradicate injustice and inequity” like the National Urban League, Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund 2019 revenue: $109 billion DONATION: $5 MILLION To: NAACP and the United Negro College Fund 2019 revenue: $69.6 billion DONATION: $10 MILLION To: “Groups working on racial justice” 2019 revenue: $70.7 billion DONATION: $1 MILLION To: Center for Policing Equity 2019 revenue: $15 billion DONATION: $100 MILLION To: Groups that “foster equal rights” 2019 revenue: $4.2 billion DONATION: $5 MILLION To: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Equal Justice Initiative, Amnesty International, National Bail Out, The Bail Project, Community Coalition and others…
In late March, when Robert and Michelle King convened the writers room for their supernatural drama Evil, they plotted out a second season premiere in a haunted New York City subway station. Now, more than two months later, as the novel coronavirus continues to ravage so much of the world, the idea has been scrapped at the behest of their line producer, who warned that filming permits would be hard, if not impossible, to come by. When the CBS series does return, the season opener will explore the spiritual consciousness of its characters instead, with a storyline devoted to the “God helmet” and its virtual-reality-meets-peyote-style impact. It’s a plot perfectly suited for a post-pandemic world, explains Robert King, because it relies heavily on visual effects. “You have to look at…
