Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, September 2, 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

On Aug. 28, Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige received an urgent email regarding Chadwick Boseman, with no further information. Unbeknownst to anyone at the studio, the Black Panther star had been battling colon cancer privately for four-plus years and had taken a sudden turn for the worse. By the time Feige read the message an hour later, Boseman already had died, sending shock waves through Disney and the tight-knit Marvel Cinematic Universe. A source close to Boseman tells THR that the 43-year-old actor, who had become noticeably thin in recent months, was convinced until about a week before his death that he was going to beat cancer and would be able to gain the weight back for a Black Panther sequel that was scheduled to go into production in…

A sigh of relief swept through Hollywood on Aug. 28 when Warner Bros. reported that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet grossed more than $53 million in its international debut from 41 markets. The number came in well ahead of expectations as the domestic box office braces for a long and slow recovery amid the ongoing pandemic. Tenet is the first major test in terms of how many moviegoers are willing to return to theaters in the U.S., where the $200 million film lands Sept. 3. The country lags behind much of the rest of the world in terms of cinema reopenings because of the rising number of novel coronavirus cases in 26 states, with Los Angeles and New York City theaters still off-limits. In normal times, it would be unthinkable to unfurl…

Typically at the end of summer, organizers of fall film festivals are completing their yearlong to-do lists. Shuffling the schedules of anticipated world premieres, arranging travel for A-list directors, planning the glittering parties that serve as quasi proms for the film world. But at the end of this summer, says New York Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez, “We’re becoming very familiar with big parking lots around the city.” That’s because instead of packing 1,000 black-tie-clad film fans inside Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall this fall, the NYFF will be sending them to New York’s outer boroughs to catch the latest buzzed-about new films from their cars at various pop-up drive-ins around the city. Like every other facet of life during the pandemic, fall film festival season is wildly different this…

As it becomes safer to resume production in L.A., Haven Entertainment manager-producer Rachel Miller (Ben Schwartz is a client) is making sure her filmmakers have what they need to do their jobs. Recently, the creatives in question have included 25 high school students from Film2Future, Miller’s nonprofit launched in 2016 to help pump Hollywood’s pipeline with talent from underserved communities. All were given “tech pods” — laptops, headphones, Wi-Fi hotspots, Adobe and Final Draft software, comfortable chairs and even a weekly delivery of fresh produce from CropSwap. “The system is rigged, but Hollywood is finally waking up. We specifically look for students who don’t know or don’t believe they have access to the industry,” says Miller, whose applicants hail from L.A. charter and public schools. The kids receive filmmaking and…

Back in June — when uncertainty reigned — the Cannes Virtual Film Market offered a reason for optimism, with strong presales for in-development titles hoping to hit theaters in 2021 or 2022. “Cannes was a huge success, and we were selling movies internationally like we haven’t done in years,” says CAA’s Roeg Sutherland. “There were a lot of unknowns. We didn’t know what was going to happen. But the world was buying. Buying for the present. Buying for the future.” Fast-forward three months, and the COVID-19 picture is still murky. As such, the Toronto (mostly virtual) market, which kicks off Sept. 10, will test the worldwide appetite for finished films ready for release. The accompanying festival, which will allow only Canadian citizens to attend, is typically packed with big commercial…

In 1963, the FBI beganwire tapping Martin Luther King Jr. with the aim of “neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader,” as an FBI memo put it at the time. Relying on recently declassified files, Sam Pollard’s new documentary, MLK/FBI, takes account of that surveillance, the motives behind it and its impact on King. “We felt it was important to really look at how King was looked at from the perspective of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, that they considered him a very dangerous man,” says Pollard, who is best known for editing Spike Lee’s films. “They were going at him by any means necessary to destroy him. At the same time, we wanted to convey King’s trajectory as we see the FBI is really digging into him, wiretapping,…

In a normal year, scoring a big U.S. sale out of Toronto would be every indie filmmaker’s dream. But 2020 is far from normal. As the U.S. box office reopens and struggles to recover after a five-month shutdown, and with California and New York theaters still closed, it’s still possible that a hot TIFF title, if it doesn’t go straight to a streamer, could stay on the shelf for months before receiving a domestic release. In contrast, cinemas in several international territories, including Korea, Japan, China and much of western Europe, have been open for months now. Business isn’t exactly booming — social distancing requirements and other measures continue to put a damper on the box office — but business is being conducted. For sales companies shopping their films in…

The Girl From Widow Hills (SIMON & SCHUSTER, JUNE 23) BY Megan Miranda AGENCY WME The story follows Arden Maynor, who changes her name following a lifetime of fame after surviving a storm that left her missing for days. The story is a high-concept take on what happens to children who were once nightly news obsessions once they grow up. Jenna Takes the Fall (SHE WRITES PRESS, SEPT. 1) BY A.R. Taylor AGENCY The Unter Agency A coming-of-age comedy that can be likened to Devil Wears Prada and Bombshell centers on a 24-year-old who goes viral after a photograph of herself under her dead, half-naked publisher boss gets posted online. But she staged the shot to cover for his real lover.…

While Disney is shifting The King’s Man — the prequel in the Matthew Vaughn spy series — from Sept. 18 to Feb. 26, a high-end clothing collaboration with Mr Porter will still come out (mostly) as planned. Part of the collection debuts Sept. 9, with an edited release now held back for 2021. Co-created with Michele Clapton, the film’s costume designer, the pieces include suiting and outerwear (like the burnished leather jacket, $1,950, below), all drawn from the film’s World War I-era styles. Says Vaughn, “Classic tailoring is hard to beat.” mrporter.com…

Vanessa Kirby was two days away from shooting Mission: Impossible 7 in Venice — reprising her role as the glamorous gunrunner known as the White Widow — when Paramount halted production. It was late February, and Italy had just recorded Europe’s then-worst outbreak of the novel coronavirus, at the time not officially labeled a pandemic. Tom Cruise’s billion-dollar blockbuster franchise had become the first major Hollywood casualty. Seven months on, and with the film industry appearing irreversibly changed, Kirby is preparing her return to Venice. But it’s not for Mission: Impossible (she starts shooting that later in September). With The World to Come and Pieces of a Woman, filmed almost back-to-back in late 2019 and early 2020, the British star, 32, has the rare honor of having two films compete…

Three years after the runaway success of Get Out, directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz have followed in Jordan Peele’s footsteps with another allegorical social thriller about the state of race relations in America. Much like the earlier film, Antebellum is a feature directorial debut that takes a big swing. But instead of just making reference to slavery, Bush and Renz have constructed a film that appears to take place in that painful past and our present simultaneously. Too bad the result is shallow, more interested in making a Big Point than digging into its subject. Because of the widely buzzed-about trailer, many viewers have been expecting Antebellum to be a story akin to Octavia Butler’s seminal 1979 time-travel/slave-narrative novel Kindred. The truth is that the new movie rather takes…

One unexpected side effect of the coronavirus pandemic making an in-person Emmys impossible: The infamously long Creative Arts presentation will now be even longer. Stretching five nights and culminating with a two-hour televised event on FXX, the marathon reimagining of the annual Primetime Emmys appetizer will be hosted by comedian Nicole Byer and will hand out awards in a very chill 101 races. Beginning Monday, Sept. 14, and initially streaming on the TV Academy website, the ceremony will be divvied up by genre. For those reluctant to tune in every night, here’s an easy guide to when the top categories will be called. MONDAY, SEPT. 14 REALITY AND NONFICTION A few top reality categories will hold for Saturday’s main event, but night one of Creative Arts includes two marquee races.…

All of you here today are helping save the world,” said singer-songwriter Tim Bendzko to a crowd of about 1,500, not a hint of irony or pathos in his voice. “This song is for you.” The audience roared in recognition at the first bars of the artist’s platinum-selling hit single “Nur mal kurz die Welt retten” (“Just Save the World for a Moment”). Or rather, they tried to roar. What came out was a muted cheer, muffled by masks worn by all concert goers. This performance, held Aug. 22 at the Quarterback Immobilien Arena in Leipzig, Germany, was not a case of a music venue flouting public health concerns in order to get back to business. All the fans were volunteers, part of Restart-19, a study to see if and…

Red Carpet Photographers Ponder Hollywood Life After COVID-19 When showbiz events vanished overnight in mid-March because of the lockdown, countless photographers’ livelihoods were put on hold. As the crisis stretches past six months, many are concerned with financial survival, and others — especially those who worked while packed in behind red carpet stanchions — wonder about their future safety. An informal THR survey indicates that nothing will look the same: Fewer photographers and plastic barricades will define the new normal; the virus-propelling shouting of stars’ names now seems impossible. Birdie Thompson, who has shot HBO’s Golden Globes fete and the Indie Spirit Awards, says she’s missing out on 10 to 30 events per month: “It’s so unfortunate, because I love what I do.” Getty Images’ Neilson Barnard, who oversees 600-plus…

Charlie Kaufman’s existential drama I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the Barack and Michelle Obama-produced documentary Crip Camp and a holiday romantic comedy aptly titled Holidate all have one thing in common: Lisa Nishimura. As Netflix’s vp independent film and documentary features, Nishimura oversees a dizzying breadth of content that includes mid-budgeted genre films like thrillers, family features and rom-coms (Kissing Booth 2), as well as nonfiction features and miniseries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich) and acquisitions from festivals (Sundance’s 40-Year-Old Version) and financiers (The Trial of the Chicago 7). Nishimura, 48, expanded her purview in March 2019 after seven years heading Netflix’s comedy and nonfiction business, during which time she helped the streaming giant win its first Oscar, for the doc short The White Helmets. Nearly a year to the day…

There’s a Cory Booker quote, shared by the New Jersey senator on his first day on the job in 2013, that has become something of an anthem for producer Jamie Patricof (I Know This Much Is True, Blue Valentine): “Never let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.” In that spirit, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to cripple industries in March, Patricof invited a few friends to join a Zoom event with his father, pioneering venture capitalist Alan Patricof. The reason was simple. “As everybody looked at his or her business getting turned upside down, I had a bunch of my friends asking what his thoughts were,” explains the younger Patricof. “People loved it and asked, ‘Well, who’s next?’ ” The answer revealed itself organically, he…

Three months after she accepted the Oscar for best actress in a gold-hued gown, Frances McDormand was spending the night in an Econoline van in Chloé Zhao’s driveway in Ojai, regretting her decision to eat barbecue for dinner. McDormand and Zhao were testing out what would become the primary set for their next film, Nomadland — a van in which McDormand’s character Fern, a 60-something wanderer in search of employment, was to live. That night in Zhao’s driveway, they had met up to figure out some practicalities of shooting in the confined space, where McDormand was going to sleep for character research. As her stomach rumbled, Zhao gently reminded the actor, “You wanted spicy chicken wings …” McDormand continues the story. “And so, I literally experienced the worst, not maybe…

If there ever was a year for the Toronto Film Festival to open with a musical pep talk for Americans, surely 2020 is it. American Utopia, the concert film of David Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee, provides a spark of optimism in the era of COVID-19 and civil unrest. Comprising songs from Byrne’s catalog, including some from his Talking Heads years, and performed by a diverse troupe of musicians wearing the veteran artist’s signature natty suit, American Utopia is “about immigration, civic engagement, voting — a celebration of what’s wonderful about this country,” says Participant Media CEO David Linde, whose company backed the film. For Byrne, American Utopia, which will premiere Oct. 17 on HBO after opening TIFF on Sept. 10, is an extension of an initiative…

It has been 15 years since Oscar-winning writing duo Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, of Brokeback Mountain fame, have seen one of their screenplays made into a movie. That stat changes Sept. 14 when Good Joe Bell — starring Mark Wahlberg and based on the harrowing true story of a father coming to terms with the suicide of his young gay son — makes its world premiere at TIFF in advance of awards season. As with Brokeback, it was Ossana who convinced McMurtry to take on the project when director Cary Joji Fukunaga cold-called them in 2014 asking if they would be interested in writing the screenplay. The film follows Joe Bell as he embarks on a cross-country walk in order to raise awareness for the death of his son…

If you’re going to watch Showtime’s uneven but entertaining miniseries The Comey Rule, you’re probably not tuning in to see if Jeff Daniels is able to convincingly play 6-foot-8 FBI beanpole James Comey. You’re probably more curious about how Irishman Brendan Gleeson (the Harry Potter films, In Bruges, Mr. Mercedes and much more) does getting under the apricot skin and flaxen comb-over of Donald Trump. What you should know is that writer-director Billy Ray (Richard Jewell) treats the Apprentice host turned POTUS like Harry Lime from The Third Man: a constant topic of discussion but, for a while at least, a figure captured only fleetingly in shadowy or partial glimpses. In fact, the full Trump is withheld until at least 15 minutes into the second of the two feature-length installments.…

The 27th Oldenburg International Film Festival almost became the world’s first art house cinema event “brought to you by Pornhub.” The quirky German fest, known for its eclectic programming, and the internet’s largest adult entertainment site were extremely close to becoming partners. In May, with the world in coronavirus lockdown and film festivals across the globe either canceled or in flux, Oldenburg festival director Torsten Neumann announced that even if Cannes, Tribeca, Venice or Toronto decided to cancel because of COVID-19, Germany’s leading indie fest was going to happen, both in person in local cinemas and online. Impressed with Neumann’s resolve and always looking for a way into the mainstream cinema industry, Pornhub, via vp Corey Price, offered the platform as Oldenburg’s streaming partner. Oldenburg would pick the films while…