Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, July 8, 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

Over one week in June, the dismissals came almost daily. Eight castmembers from five popular reality TV franchises were expeditiously fired over racist social media posts and, in one particularly damning revelation, news of a malicious act toward their lone Black co-star. Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute, longtime stars of Real Housewives spinoff Vanderpump Rules, called the police on former castmate Faith Stowers in 2018 in an attempt to implicate her in a crime she did not commit. Bravo axed the pair, along with two co-stars with a history of racist tweets, Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni, days after Stowers recounted the event during a June 2 Instagram Live — but the need for such a purge on a nearly exclusively white series highlights a pervasive problem facing TV’s most…

Deal of the Week The WGA, with WGA West executive director David Young as chief negotiator, reached a June 30 agreement on a three-year TV/theatrical deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, topping off a triennial negotiating cycle like none in recent memory — even though ultimately the guild’s wage, benefit and residuals improvements followed the pattern set by the Directors Guild and mirrored those of SAG-AFTRA. The DGA usually reaches an agreement in December in advance of a June 30 expiration, but this time the directors’ pact didn’t arrive until March 4. This signaled that achieving a deal on streaming residuals had been difficult as the industry pivots to platforms like Disney+ and HBO Max. And it heightened fears that the WGA — under the leadership…

Oh, the Drama Between Competing Reality TV Awards Shows On June 29, the Critics Choice Association announced the winners of its second Real TV Awards, a long list that included Survivor host Jeff Probst, Netflix’s Queer Eye and Cheer, and NBC’s The Voice. The latter also picked up honors just days earlier from the Reality Television Awards. Founders of that 8-year-old event are crying foul, saying they’ve yet to receive respect from the CCA for planting the first flag. “People in Hollywood often steal ideas, and this is a clear example,” says reality TV vet Andrew Ward, who founded RTA with casting director Kristen Moss. At least one person — Dr. Pimple Popper’s Sandra Lee, an RTA Guilty Pleasure winner — has confused the two, thanking Real TV Awards instead…

We first met Nick when [De Niro’s co-director] Jerry Zaks invited him to come in and sing, and we were just blown away by how beautiful his voice was and how much his physical presence and magnetism felt like Sonny’s. And, after we cast him, he just got better and better — he was perfect, and such a lovely guy. It’s very upsetting to us what happened to him [Cordero died July 5 of COVID-19 complications at age 41]. Even though he got sick at the beginning of the pandemic, this didn’t have to be. If President Trump had heeded the warnings he was being given — if he and his administration believed in science, fact and telling the truth — this might never have happened; the way Trump has…

On June 8, an obscure Polish film appeared on Netflix’s U.S. Top 10 chart, which tracks the most popular TV shows and movies on the streamer each day. 365 Days has little in common with the Netflix originals and years-old library fare that usually trend on the service. The English-language erotic thriller, based on a Polish novel in which a young woman is kidnapped by a member of the Sicilian Mafia and given 365 days to fall in love with him, has been obliterated by reviewers and criticized for romanticizing sex trafficking but was released in theaters in Poland (where it made nearly $9 million) before it began streaming on Netflix. By mid-June, it had clinched the No. 1 spot on the list, which it held for four straight days.…

The Old Guard is a thrillingly assured step for Gina Prince-Bythewood after her romantic dramas Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights. But what makes this graphic novel adaptation so distinctive are the quiet, character-building interludes threaded among exciting fight scenes that crescendo in an expertly choreo-graphed showdown. Led with take-charge authority by Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne, this is an unusually soulful superhero film rooted in the real world — a gift for those craving more emotion and less generic comic-strip wham-kapow. Adapting his graphic novels, screenwriter Greg Rucka also adds texture through his sensitive observation of the lingering trauma of war while grounding the story’s villainy in a portrait of 21st century capitalism. Making the chief antagonist (Harry Melling) a maniacal misfit who heads a Big Pharma corporation…

Within days in late June, four animated TV shows that featured white actors voicing characters of color pledged to make changes, all with the actors’ support. Netflix’s Big Mouth creators said June 24 that they would cast a Black actor for the role of Missy, currently performed by Jenny Slate, while Apple TV+’s Central Park creative team said it will recast biracial character Molly, voiced by Kristen Bell. Meanwhile, Fox’s long-running The Simpsons, which had faced criticism for years over the portrayal of the Indian character Apu (Hank Azaria announced he was stepping away from the role in January), said June 26 that the show “will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters.” And Mike Henry, who portrayed the Black character Cleveland on Family Guy, said he would stop…

With more streaming services on the market than ever and a global pandemic incentivizing people to stay at home, it’s not a leap to assume the amount of data being collected about viewing habits has hit a fever pitch. And it’s happening as California’s newest data privacy law has become ripe for enforcement and an even stronger version has been approved for the November ballot. July 1 marked the first day California Attorney General Xavier Becerra could enforce the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a law that aims to protect personal data and increase transparency about what information is collected online and sold to third parties. “Companies make money by serving the right ad to the right person at the right time,” says Loeb & Loeb Privacy, Security & Data…

A few weeks ago, I found myself reading the Emmy forecast in The Hollywood Reporter — as I always do. Then I found myself being a little bewildered, but not surprised by the usual “front-runners”: Succession, Ozark, The Crown, Better Call Saul, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Morning Show. All fantastic shows. All white as fuck. (Yes — This Is Us and Westworld are on the list, and I dig those shows, but right now I’m talking about shows with Black creators.) When it comes to comedies, except for Insecure, the list is even whiter. These lists aren’t just a fun guessing game. These lists tell the TV Academy who to vote for. Awards campaigns aren’t that different from political campaigns. The more visible you are, the more likely it’ll be…

It wasn’t supposed to be a novel. When Jim Carrey swung into writer Dana Vachon’s orbit eight years ago, the star of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Cable Guy and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was simply searching for someone to pen essays inspired by his paintings, which had not yet become those grotesque caricatures mocking Donald Trump that would go viral online. While that idea didn’t quite pan out, the pair instantly bonded over a shared obsession — bingeing quasi-scientific reality shows on Netflix. “You could watch the destruction of Pompeii, you could watch the supposed alien origins of the race, and you could learn about the Megalodon, ‘terror of the ancient seas,’” says Vachon. “That set us off in the right direction.” And so that’s how we…

When Netflix nonfiction head Brandon Riegg greenlit Floor Is Lava two years ago, he couldn’t have predicted how captive his 2020 audience would be. But with little else to do in the face of the novel coronavirus, Netflix subscribers (and many of their children) have devoured the streamer’s first family-friendly game show, which quickly vaulted to No. 1 on the service, just as Riegg’s other shows The Circle, Love Is Blind and Too Hot to Handle. Now, as rivals scramble to fill slots with foreign transplants and virtually shot fare, Riegg and his staff of 45 have a slate of new programming, including another season of Queer Eye and two new dating series, Indian Matchmaking and Love on the Spectrum, that will take them through year’s end. It’s enough to…

Here in America, it’s a ritual — you don’t go in to a movie’s second or third week, you go right away because there’s that excitement in the air. For me, seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind was nearly a religious experience. I saw it on the first day in Paris on the Champs-Élysées in a huge theater and in English. And after I saw it, I immediately got back in line and saw it again. It’s still my favorite film of all time. All my films are somewhat modeled after that film. They follow relatively regular people, from all walks of life, who go on their journey — which can involve aliens attacking or climate change or it could be Godzilla marching through the city. But it is…

I see movies from the perspective of a fan, always. And when I look at summer movies, they are like markers in time — Raiders of the Lost Ark or Jaws. I’m just going back to when I was a kid. Or Top Gun, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They became markers through our lives. All my movies opened in the summer, so I’m very familiar with that rhythm and packed theaters and the fun of it all. It’s a time for wonder and thrills and heroes and laughing and spectacle. On the other hand, when I say they are markers in time, I haven’t talked to anybody who doesn’t want to forget this year. We don’t have these kind of movies right now. But here’s the good…

I didn’t know Carl that well — I met him a few times with Rob — but everyone who has ever worked in the sitcom world was amazed by him. Desi Arnaz, with Lucy, created the sitcom with I Love Lucy — he was the one who said, “Let’s have three cameras rolling and an audience!” And then Jackie Gleason did it. For me, growing up, the ultimate sitcom was The Phil Silvers Show — until The Dick Van Dyke Show came along. I loved the audience, the simplicity of it, the common problems, the innocence of the problems. For Dick Van Dyke, Carl assembled a cast of four that was just extraordinary — and I know from that, from Will & Grace, Cheers and Friends, you know? When your…

For a show about a young woman struggling to find her voice, Apple TV+’s Little Voice finds its own fairly quickly. Of course, a series finding its voice isn’t the same thing as a series being good — and it definitely doesn’t mean that voice will resonate with every viewer. In the first of nine half-hour episodes, our songbird heroine ponders, “Compared to what everybody’s listening to, I think my stuff seems, I dunno, earnest?” What else would you expect from a collaboration between the Waitress: The Musical partners, chanteuse Sara Bareilles and I Am Sam writer-director Jessie Nelson? (J.J. Abrams is an executive producer.) Little Voice is earnest and clunky, but those who dig it will forgive those flaws. I sometimes did. Brittany O’Grady (Star) plays Bess, an aspiring…

As Johnny Depp appears in a London courtroom throughout July to take on the U.K. publisher of The Sun for characterizing him as a “wife beater,” the actor finds himself facing what Hollywood observers increasingly regard to be a no-win situation. Consider what happened in the run-up to the defamation trial that will explore Depp’s 2015 to 2017 marriage to Amber Heard. A U.K. judge ruled that Depp had violated a court order when his attorneys failed to turn over a series of text messages between himself and his assistant over the procurement of drugs while staying in Australia, during which time an incident of domestic abuse is alleged to have occurred. The judge ruled that the trial would move forward anyway, but in the midst of these deliberations, word…

While it was a brutal first half of the year for most media stocks, Wall Street observers are bullish on a few Hollywood firms for the second half of 2020. Despite concerns about the impact of the novel coronavirus on advertising, production, moviegoing and theme park operation, analysts are seeing a near-term upside for a few entertainment giants whose stocks have taken a beating: Fox Corp. “The only media ‘buy’ here is Fox based on the presumption that the NFL will come back in the fall and that Fox News is a share gainer,” forecasts Moffett Nathanson analyst Michael Nathanson, noting that he “moderately” raised his earnings forecast for Fox amid commentary from industry executives that U.S. overall advertising trends were “not as bad as feared.” Comcast The fact that…

A Song Below Water (TOR TEEN, JUNE 2) BY Bethany Morrow AGENCY UTA Like Jordan Peele’s upcoming adaptation of Lovecraft Country for HBO, Morrow’s story dissects racism via fantasy. The story follows a Black siren and her best friend in a magical and tumultuous Portland, Oregon. All My Mother’s Lovers (PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, MAY 26) BY Ilana Masad AGENCY WME After her mother dies in a car crash, Maggie is tasked with hand-delivering sealed envelopes her mom has addressed to five mysterious men. Along the way, she is hoping to better understand the woman who never accepted Maggie’s queer identity.…

People are organizing out of necessity,” says a weary Kendrick Sampson of the intense hours he devotes to his nonprofit, BLD PWR, which focuses on facilitating entertainment industry support of grassroots organizations focusing on racial injustice. On May 30, BLD PWR, formally launched in 2019, co-led a demonstration at L.A.’s Pan Pacific Park to protest the killing of George Floyd, as well as killings of Black Angelenos by police (which one count puts at 886 since 2000). Later that day, a march through the Fairfax District made national news when the LAPD squared off with protesters. Police cruisers were set on fire while rubber bullets, batons and other means of excessive force were used on the crowd. Sampson, 32, said he was hit seven times by rubber bullets. Since then,…

Engagements Melissa Hunter, a writer on Santa Clarita Diet and Disney+’s upcoming She-Hulk, got engaged to Jeremy Belanger, a writer and producer, on Malibu’s Big Dume Beach on June 13. Births Hend Baghdady, former executive vp development and production at Fox’s SideCar Content Accelerator, and Michael G. Pasternak welcomed son Riyad Ali Pasternak on May 1 at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Congrats Amazon executive vp Naveen Chopra joined ViacomCBS as CFO, effective Aug. 10. Andrew Calof joined Justin Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios as president of production and development June 30. Cyril Drabinsky returned as CEO of Deluxe Entertainment Services on July Endeavor CMO Bozoma Saint John was named chief marketing officer of Netflix on June 30. Jannat Gargi was tapped as vp and head of documentaries in the U.S. at Vice…

In these sports-starved times when we’re all standing as attentive as meerkats awaiting Game Day — any Game Day—Netflix is offering two shows featuring international sports that will temporarily quench our competitive thirst. Home Game and Magnetic not only present a variety of sports to entertain us, but each also attempts to make universal observations about the nature of sports and the soul of the athlete, with mixed results. Each of Home Game’s eight half-hour episodes focuses on one sport that appears unusual to the average American but is hugely popular in its native country. The show could have been called Home Grown, because the games are as much about local identity as they are about the individual competitors. The first episode is the most startling: In Florence, Italy, 54…

When your parents are lovable and a touch insane, the euphemism “theatrical” is often employed to describe them. Growing up, nothing typified that theatricality more than my mom and dad’s interpretation of our Passover Seder. They’d dress in elaborate costumes (a robed Moses with a fake beard and a feminist Pharaoh, respectively) and literally drape dozens of sheets from the living room ceiling to give us an “immersive experience” of being the wandering Jews in our desert tents after fleeing from the Egyptians — just like the Jews in the Passover story we retell. I’m in my 30s now and we still do this every year. But this March, as New York City went into lockdown, it became clear that my favorite family tradition wouldn’t go on as planned. As…