Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, October 7, 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

There’s a new public enemy No. 1 among theater owners and some Hollywood studio executives: Andrew Cuomo. The New York governor, who generally has received praise for his handling of the pandemic, so far has refused to let theaters open even as indoor restaurants, casinos and gyms are allowed to flip on the lights. “We’ve had a request to put all of our CEOs on a conference call. He wouldn’t schedule it. And there are very senior Hollywood executives who have placed calls to him and ended up speaking with his staff, not him. Nothing. Crickets,” says John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “He’s put us in a category with big music concerts. That’s absurd.” New York is just one front in the battle…

The Heatwave (GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING, AUGUST 2020) BY Kate Riordan AGENCY UTA Set in France during a heat wave with wildfires raging, the story follows Sylvie, who has to return to her family home after a tragedy 10 years earlier. Like Sharp Objects and Little Fires Everywhere, it is a mystery that entwines mother-daughter relationships. “How Police Unions Fight Reform” (NEW YORKER, AUGUST 2020) BY William Finnegan AGENCY ICM Like Oprah Winfrey teaming with The New York Times to adapt The 1619 Project, Finnegan’s deep-dive article on how police unions defy change could bring narrative life to longform reporting.…

ICM Partners CEO Chris Silbermann and the agency’s senior political strategist Hannah Linkenhoker, head of ICM Politics, tell The Hollywood Reporter exclusively that they are starting a political consulting and social impact company called Vivify. “It’s an independent company,” says Silbermann, who adds that Linkenhoker, who joined the agency in 2017, will continue to oversee ICM Politics (which works on issues-based advocacy on behalf of clients), splitting her time with the new firm. “I’ve always believed in Hannah and am happy to back her,” he adds. “She has this expertise that is really unique and so much experience and depth of relationships. You can walk through the Senate floor, and Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, whoever, everybody knows her.” Linkenhoker — who ran NMA Consulting Partners and worked for political strategist…

Sunset Boulevard Country Western Staple Now a TikTok Hotspot The line outside Saddle Ranch stretching down Sunset Boulevard of late isn’t to ride the 21-year-old institution’s famed mechanical bull, which has stood unused since indoor dining stopped in March. No, these are TikTokers waiting to hit their latest hotspot. In recent weeks, Addison Rae (63 million followers), Dixie D’Amelio (40 million), Josh Richards (22 million) and Noah Beck (15.6 million) have been spotted on the eatery’s COVID-compliant parking-lot patio; YouTube phenom Emma Chamberlain and tabloid couple Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly also step out there. Paparazzo Fletcher Greene likens the atmosphere to a more raucous “high school lunchroom.” The chop house, which has appeared in Sex and the City, has long done steady business, but Greene says the digital…

Back in 1993, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein launched management company The Gotham Group out of a guest bedroom in her Hollywood Hills home. With a clientele almost entirely focused on animation, the San Diego native became the go-to rep in the long-neglected space. “Animation was considered the bastard stepchild of the entertainment industry,” she says. “Now, of course, it’s a multibillion-dollar business, and everybody wants to be in.” Like Jordan Peele, who co-wrote, produced and stars in the upcoming Wendell and Wild, directed by her longtime client Henry Selick and which she is producing. “It’s sort of if Henry and Jordan had a baby,” she says. In the late 1990s, Gotham Group merged with Michael Ovitz’s AMG. Though the AMG experiment was short-lived, the partnership helped Gotham expand into representing such authors…

2021 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster Perfect for the long solo drive up the coast with the top down … Aside from the snarling 503-hp twin-turbo V8 and zero-to-60 time of 3.7 seconds, the best part of the new Roadster is a roof that can be opened or closed in less than seven seconds. From $147,000 2021 Mercedes AMG GLE 63 S Perfect for when you want to go fast, but still need to take the kids around … It may look docile, but it’s probably the fastest SUV in the Brentwood Country Mart parking lot, offering a 602-hp engine and a top speed of 174 miles per hour. From $113,950 2021 Porsche Panamera Turbo S Sport Turismo Perfect mobile office that also goes 196 mph … One of the oddest,…

In 2018, Ariana DeBose took her high school prom date with her to see the Broadway show The Prom. At the time, DeBose was a thriving theater actor in New York, who had appeared in the Broadway production of Hamilton and received a Tony Award nomination for playing the title character in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. But watching the production of The Prom touched her in a personal way, and took her back to her high school experience in Raleigh, North Carolina — like Emma, the lead character in the show who isn’t allowed to bring her girlfriend to prom, DeBose is queer (though she doesn’t claim any label) and her prom date had been a boy, a friend from the high school theater group. “We just cried,” DeBose…

ON A LATE SEPTEMBER afternoon, Miky Lee is sitting in a makeshift office in her home in Orange County, watching footage from the new K-pop reality show I-Land. Sporting a black sweater, white T-shirt, black leggings and a messy ponytail, she pushes back loose strands of hair with her headband as her Japanese Akita named Sasha walks into the frame during the Zoom call. The Tennessee-born, Seoul-raised mogul easily could be mistaken for a SoCal dog walker, given her casual vibe and the quartet of canines in her charge. But looks can be deceiving. Lee, in fact, presides over one of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates with CJ Group, which she has built into a globe-spanning media powerhouse over the past 25 years. In terms of female-led entertainment empires, Lee’s…

Philip Kaufman’s 1983 screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff is a borderline perfect film, from tone to casting to ahead-of-the-curve effects work. And yet it isn’t close to being definitive. Even with a running time of 192 minutes, the movie barely dips into the wealth of stories and characterizations in Wolfe’s free-wheeling account of the Project Mercury astronauts. So it was with a mix of trepidation and excitement that I approached Disney+’s new series adaptation of The Right Stuff. Sure, it probably wouldn’t live up to the film, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t succeed on its own terms. Critics have been sent the first five (out of eight) hour-long episodes, and thus far, this Right Stuff is … disappointingly fine. Approach it simply as Hunky Young…

Battered by the pandemic and growing political headwinds, Hollywood’s business prospects in China are becoming bleak. A state of tumult in Washington-Beijing diplomatic relations is putting greater scrutiny on film activities in the country, while the United States’ failure to contain COVID-19 is forcing the industry to take its pedal off the accelerator in China’s theatrical market. “The trade and political environment has created a perfect storm of uncertainty,” says Stephen Saltzman, an attorney for law firm Paul Hastings who often represents Chinese studios in dealmaking. The feverish partnerships that characterized relations between the world’s two largest entertainment markets over the past decade are not only gone for now, but unlikely to return soon, Saltzman adds. The studios’ weakening position in Beijing also is hitting the industry just as China…

Despite having more than 25 years of publicity and marketing experience, BazanPR founder Jackie Bazan still finds it challenging to encounter people in the entertainment industry who “understand that the color of my skin does not define my capability in this space.” Bazan’s firm has worked on Black Panther, Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, Adam Shankman’s Hairspray and the upcoming Concrete Cowboy starring Idris Elba. But she recalls becoming a consultant for Lionsgate’s Midway, a war epic released in November whose cast was almost entirely white, only after months of “convincing why we were the best people for that job.” It was the first time the education division of the publicist’s company represented a title not targeted to African Americans. “It shouldn’t be, ‘Oh, Jackie’s good to do this campaign, because there’s…

Steve Savitsky’s clients routinely make headlines for landing eye-popping overall deals, winning Emmys and dominating the global box office, but he has no interest in sharing their spotlight. “My clients know, as much as I wish them all the success in the world, I am not the type of person who needs to be invited to pilots and premieres,” says Savitsky, who in a business that puts a premium on privacy, remains one of the most tight-lipped. It’s a big part of the reason The Hollywood Reporter chose him as this year’s Business Manager Icon, and why he’s so respected in the industry. “He is so protective of his clients,” says CAA agent Brett Loncar, who has known Savitsky since high school and has worked closely with him on shared…

In May, TNT’s series Snowpiercer became the latest title to migrate from CJ Entertainment’s library to a U.S. studio or network. Based on the 2013 film directed by Bong Joon Ho, the Snowpiercer series will return for a second season in the winter. With more CJ adaptations in the works, here are four highlights: SAVE THE GREEN PLANET It’s an English-language remake of the 2003 Korean movie and will see the original’s helmer, Jang Joon-Hwan, back in the director’s chair. Ari Aster (Midsommar) is producing the film about a man who believes the world is on the verge of an alien invasion and sets out to save the planet. EXTREME JOB As perhaps the hottest film prospect on the CJ horizon, Extreme Job is in development at Universal with Kevin…

With much of the 2020 U.S. fall TV season postponed amid COVID-19 production delays, international television channels and streaming platforms are looking elsewhere for their small-screen fix. Going into this year’s international TV market MIPCOM — which will be an online-only affair because of the pandemic — European and Canadian series look ready to fill the gap. “It will be interesting to see if tastes change as [international channels] lose their dependence on American content,” notes Stephen Mowbray, head of acquisitions for Swedish public broadcaster SVT, which has only one new American series on its fall schedule (USA Network’s The Sinner) and has seen impressive results with European shows, including the BBC’s Normal People, which drew more than 500,000 viewers to SVT’s online streaming platform. “I’m not sure things will…

The quintessential comedy about ’80s-era greed, 1983’s Trading Places is historically significant for a few reasons. Foremost, it cemented Eddie Murphy’s film career. Murphy had starred in one picture for Paramount, 1982’s 48 Hrs., but the studio was iffy on the Saturday Night Live star’s appeal. It was only after test-screening audiences went bonkers for him that Paramount’s then president of production, Jeffrey Katzenberg, realized he was sitting on the next superstar. Director John Landis, coming off the success of 1978’s Animal House and 1980’s The Blues Brothers, had been given a screenplay by Katzenberg called Black and White — “I was attracted to its obvious debt to Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper,” Landis says — and at Katzenberg’s urging flew to New York to meet Murphy, then…

After March’s coronavirus pandemic shutdown, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Greig Fraser did some commercial work in the U.S. before returning to the U.K. to resume production on Warner Bros.’ The Batman. During one of these commercial shoots, a crewmember tested positive for COVID-19. “When he tested positive, we shut down,” Fraser says, noting that everyone on set immediately began to quarantine. “Nobody [else] tested positive; we were all following the correct PPE procedures, washing our hands and wiping the equipment down. We went back after we all had tested negative a few times.” While Fraser declined to discuss Batman, that film also temporarily hit the pause button after star Robert Pattinson tested positive. (It has since resumed production.) Fraser, who also wrapped work on Legendary’s upcoming sci-fi epic Dune, is among multiple…

In Washington, when the future of TV comes up, talk often turns to future viability of local news outlets, whose reporters are needed to serve their communities, especially during a pandemic. But there’s another reason Beltway power brokers care about local newscasts: The streaming giants don’t. For some in the broadcast industry, Netflix and Hulu aren’t just competitive threats; they’re the entities that legitimize bold dealmaking of the type that could combine historic TV rivals. Picture ViacomCBS and Fox Corporation under one roof, or Comcast’s NBCUniversal merging with PBS. The next time a media corporation seeks government approval for a megamerger, expect to hear “Save Local News” as the rallying cry. The future of M&A in the industry figures to be impacted by a coming decision from the Supreme Court.…

There are many reasons these days to want to get away from it all: being cooped up too long with a bad case of Zoom fatigue; the family’s constant chattering finally getting on that last good nerve; needing a break from endless doom scrolling. For some people in Hollywood, cars during stay-at-home orders in California represent, more than they ever have, a way to escape. That break often can take the form of long drives. Actor and director Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands, 2021’s Reminiscence), who lives in San Francisco, was in the middle of budget negotiations to direct a film in China when COVID-19 hit. “This is the most I’ve ever been unemployed my entire adult life,” says Wu. “It feels weird, but at the same time, I have…

In the past two years, L.A.-based fashion designer Claude Kameni has seen her 8-year-old West African-textile-inspired line, Lavie by CK, embraced by Hollywood. In 2018, Tracee Ellis Ross wore a custom Kameni dress to host the American Music Awards after the star’s stylist Karla Welch discovered the label via Instagram. The label outfitted Viola Davis in a shoot for the July issue of Vanity Fair, while Amanda Seales wore a custom dress when she hosted the BET Awards this June. Says Seales’ stylist Bryon Javar of his client’s BET look, “I was really inspired by the movie Coming to America when Vanessa Bell Calloway was going to be marrying Prince Akeem. She had on the big gown and the ponytail with the gold hair accessories. I wanted to do a…

CALIFORNIA “Both in NYC and L.A., clients have moved within about 45 minutes outside of the city since they now realize that meetings can be done remotely,” says Fulton Management’s Eric Fulton. “The areas are attractive because of their privacy, the ability to raise a family in a safer, less hectic environment, and your money buys more home [or] land the farther you go out.” Palm Springs, Ojai and Santa Barbara are popular locations in Southern California, and Sacramento is drawing some attention up north. TEXAS “Texas seems to be near the top of everyone’s list,” according to THR’s anonymous survey of the industry’s top money managers. The Lone Star State, and Austin specifically, continues to be attractive to both individuals and businesses. The longtime home of South by Southwest…

As nationwide protests in the wake of the high-profile police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have revived conversations about racial inequality, Hollywood is grappling with its own systemic and sustained racism. In cataloging their shortcomings, studios, networks and agencies began outlining charitable giving to social justice causes and upping POC talent to positions of power. Many business management firms that service the entertainment sector are also looking internally at how they can become more inclusive in their own ranks, which would in turn allow them to better manage the money of a diversifying industry. Like Hollywood at large, insiders note that the upper echelons of top-tier business management firms remain overwhelmingly white. “In any school I have ever gone to and in any professional organization, I am usually…

Even without having seen all five films in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology for Amazon/BBC, which surveys two decades of West Indian experience in London, it seems appropriate that the series concludes with a story of resistance. After celebrating community in Lovers Rock and the power of protest in Mangrove, McQueen focuses on individual action in Red, White and Blue. The subject is Metropolitan Police Force vet Leroy Logan, played with smoldering gravitas by John Boyega. (The three aforementioned entries premiered, out of order, at the New York Film Festival; two are still to be seen.) Logan is credited as a key figure in promoting communication between Britain’s law enforcement and its minority communities, his advocacy helping bring about reforms. Co-written by McQueen (a Brit born in 1969 of West…

At a time when the majority of productions are still shut down and the theatrical calendar has shifted a full year, Julia Hart is in the unique position of prepping for her second pandemic premiere. The filmmaker, whose Disney+ offering Stargirl debuted March 13, the week lockdown started, opens the 2020 AFI Fest on Oct. 15 with the new feature I’m Your Woman before it bows in theaters in December followed by a release on Prime Video. Co-written by Hart and her husband, Jordan Horowitz, the Rachel Brosnahan vehicle is a riff on classic late-1970s crime dramas from a female POV — one Hart says was partially informed by Diane Keaton’s character in The Godfather who gets starkly cut off from her husband’s Mafia life in the final scene: “When…