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.
The week of Aug. 3 may go down as the time when shit got really real in Hollywood. Changes underway in the industry were accelerated by a global pandemic, and suddenly giants were paralyzed yet trying to take advantage of the times — rushing to transform organizational structures and slash jobs while hurtling toward an uncertain future. “It’s the great reckoning now,” says Kevin Reilly, who was swept out in the WarnerMedia reorganization that rocked the industry Aug. 7. (Reilly’s unwieldy title — which said a lot about this moment — was chief content officer of HBO Max and president of TNT, TBS and truTV.) “This has been a decade-plus of the legacy system bound to quarterly profits generated by the same paradigms. We’ve only recently begun pivoting meaningfully into…
Morgan Cooper The filmmaker, who made a viral 2019 teaser depicting Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a drama, teams with original star Will Smith to develop and shop the idea as a series. Dara Khosrowshahi and Logan Green Ahead of a November ballot initiative, the Uber and Lyft CEOs take a hit as a California judge rules Aug. 10 that ride-share drivers should be classified as employees. Martin Scorsese The director formalizes his deal with Apple, which picked up his Killers of the Flower Moon, to develop film and TV projects for the tech giant. Tom Lehman A New York judge deals a blow Aug. 10 to a lawsuit brought by the Genius CEO’s website, which had alleged that Google had copied its vast collection of song lyrics. Showbiz Stocks…
The reorganization gives 30-year company veteran Frances Berwick oversight to set the broader tone and budgets for the company’s entire TV portfolio, including all cable networks and broadcaster NBC. Paul Telegdy, who served as NBC Entertainment chairman, will not be replaced. Instead, a search is underway for one exec to oversee entertainment programming for linear networks and streamer Peacock. 10M Number of signups for NBCU’s Peacock. The streamer debuted April 15 to Comcast customers and July 15 nationally.…
Entertainment and direct-to-consumer chair Bob Greenblatt and HBO Max content chief Kevin Reilly are out as Jason Kilar consolidates executive ranks while making the upstart streaming platform the company’s top priority. Formal titles for Kilar’s new regime are still being ironed out. 600 The expected number of WarnerMedia staffers impacted by layoffs in the first wave reported Aug. 10.…
When Disney removed Mulan from the release calendar in late July, the company tacitly acknowledged that it was hard to pin down a date when Americans would be able to return to theaters. That decision set the stage for an even more dramatic move from Disney, which Aug. 4 said it would release the live-action remake on Disney+ beginning Sept. 4. Disney’s plan to sell Mulan for $29.99 to the streamer’s customers in the U.S. and other select countries makes the film — whose big-screen release was thrice delayed because of the novel coronavirus and widespread cinema closures — the centerpiece of the premium video-on-demand revolution. Like Universal, which signed an unprecedented pact with AMC Theatres on July 28 to create a 17-day PVOD window, Disney is experimenting with top-tier…
The months of June and July brought an unprecedented milestone in TV ratings: Fox News was the most watched network in primetime across all of broadcast and cable TV. Fox News edged out CBS as the No. 1 destination for primetime viewers over those two months, leading a surge across news programming over the summer. Meanwhile, ABC’s evening newscast, World News Tonight, was the No. 1 program in total viewers across all dayparts in July. In a summer full of massive news stories — from nationwide protests to the pandemic to the presidential campaign — news programming has seen big increases in overall viewership. Fox News, MSNBC and CNN have all had record-breaking audiences in recent months; the three combined to average 7.2 million viewers in primetime in June and…
