Innholdsfortegnelse for March 18, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

James Cameron only found out a few days beforehand that Avatar would be rereleased March 12 in China in a move that pushed his 2009 science fiction epic back into the highest-grossing film of all time slot, not adjusted for inflation. The China Film Board first reached out to Cameron and Disney in March 2020 about the possibility of rereleasing some older films as a way of encouraging theatergoing in a period when new product from both Hollywood and Chinese studios has been scant. Cameron offered Avatar and Titanic, both of which had been produced by Fox and now owned by Disney. “We got on board quickly,” says Avatar and Titanic producer Jon Landau. “We’ve been very vocal in voicing our opinion that we have to support brick-and-mortar theaters during…

Director Thomas Vinterberg Another Round Not only is the Danish auteur’s film nominated for international feature, but he follows in the footsteps of recent nominees Bong Joon Ho, Alfonso Cuarón and Pawel Pawlikowski with a directing nom for a non-English-language film. Original Screenplay Aaron Sorkin The Trial of the Chicago 7 He missed an expected directing nom, but one of his competitors in this category, Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell, did get one. Will that lead voters to compensate by giving Sorkin a victory over Fennell here? Original Song Diane Warren “Io Sì (Seen),” The Life Ahead Warren landed her 12th nomination — she’s been nominated in each of the past four years — for this tune, which she wrote with Laura Pausini, but the film received no other noms, which…

After a year of social distancing and lockdowns, the travel industry is bouncing back just as spring break approaches for L.A. schools. “Everything has blown out in the last few weeks as far as bookings, thanks in part to the vaccine,” says luxury travel curator Jack Ezon, founder of Embark Beyond. “Current rates are higher than holiday time, and now it’s just about finding suitable remaining space at fine hotels.” But some industry names are being more cautious about dipping their toes into venturing out in coming weeks. “My comfort level is still low,” says TV producer Patrik-Ian Polk (P-Valley, The Chi). “Driving to the destination feels best right now, so I’m looking at Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur.” UnbeliEVAble Entertainment’s Ben Spector (Eva Longoria’s producing partner) tells THR…

‘Welcome Back to the Movies’: L.A. Theaters Return to Business After a yearlong shutdown, Hollywood is finally back on the big screen on its home turf. Effective March 15, L.A. County moved into the “red tier,” allowing for theaters to open at capacities capped at 25 percent. AMC Entertainment, the largest U.S. chain, opened two of its highest-grossing locations that day: AMC Century City 15 and AMC Burbank 16, with others to follow. Inside Century City’s theater No. 9 showing Nomadland, a message popped up with voiceover that said, “Welcome Back to the Movies,” to the sound of the audience erupting in cheers. Most first-day screenings were sold out as Christopher Nolan was sighted at Burbank and Century City hosted Boogie director Eddie Huang. Retired (and vaccinated) film editor Judy…

Prior to the pandemic, Frank Patterson would spend most days at the sprawling production facility, formerly known as Pinewood Studios, that he runs outside of Atlanta. Then COVID-19 hit, and not even he was able to make the cut of his health and safety team’s essential on-site personnel. “They were like, ‘Frank, why are you here? You’re setting a bad example,’” says the president and CEO of what is now Trilith Studios, the in-demand filming location known for hosting a suite of Marvel projects, including WandaVision and Avengers: Endgame. Since Patterson took the reins in 2016, he’s transformed the place from a set of soundstages to a full-fledged film community. The 935-acre master development includes the studio as well as a European-inspired town that has its own homes, restaurants and…

One of the biggest challenges Mank production designer Donald Graham Burt — recently nominated for an Oscar for his work — faced was that the production was not granted access to Hearst Castle on California’s Central Coast. But interiors and exteriors of William Randolph Hearst’s extravagant estate were needed for key scenes in director David Fincher’s biopic about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman, during the period in which he wrote the screenplay for Orson Welles’ 1941 classic, Citizen Kane. So, with the real San Simeon off-limits, Burt went about designing elaborate sets at Los Angeles Center Studios for interiors like the castle’s dining room, where a messy confrontation occurs during a party. “There’s no way to replicate Hearst Castle, and we weren’t trying to,” says Burt, who…

Last spring, as most of the country was shutting down, Tabitha Brown’s life was speeding up. At the urging of her teenage daughter, the aspiring actor had posted her first TikTok video mere days before COVID-19 would materialize as a real and powerful threat to normal life. Less than two months later, as others continued to navigate their new work-from-home realities, Brown found herself with more than 2 million followers on the social entertainment app, the attention of CAA, and no free time to speak of. “At the beginning, when the shutdown first happened, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be nice.’ My son was home, we were cooking together. Then the TikTok thing took off, and, honey, I never had an hour off from Monday through Friday…

FILM FAVORITES A black-and-white Hollywood tale (Mank) earned the most love from the Academy, but other frontrunners also performed well 11 First-Time Acting Nominees Some, like Youn Yuh-jung, have been acting for decades. Others, like Andra Day, are new to the screen. But now all have earned the ‘Oscar nominee’ moniker Returning Champs These five nominees already have a golden statuette (or two!) on their mantles and could add another this year STUDIO SCORECARD Thanks to COVID-19, theaters closed, studios relied on their streaming services, and two streaming giants came out on top…

By the time this review appears in print, the web should offer many breakdowns of differences between Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the 2017 Justice League, which is credited to Snyder but was largely helmed and written by Joss Whedon. So let’s focus on how the two films are alike: Each, at the time of its release, could reasonably be called the most needlessly solemn, chore-like and joyless feature ever made about superheroes. The HBO Max version is better in some ways. Its plot and tone are more coherent. Effects are improved, though still sometimes fakey, and the photography looks better — though viewers may resent the frame’s nearly square aspect ratio that was designed with Imax, not widescreen TVs, in mind. But the movie’s core remains unimproved, and at…

Was the 78th Golden Globe Awards on Feb. 28 the last one that will feature the participation of top Hollywood talent? That’s the question industry insiders are pondering as the organization that puts on the annual kudosfest, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, faces growing criticism and calls for boycotts of future events if it doesn’t address significant concerns about the diversity of its membership. Now, THR has learned, famed “fixer” and crisis management expert Judy Smith, who inspired the character of Olivia Pope on Scandal, has been consulted by the HFPA amid the firestorm. The fallout initially stemmed from a Feb. 21 Los Angeles Times article that identified questionable ethical and financial behavior by members — of the sort that twice previously resulted in the Globes being kicked off the…

When Chloé Zhao won the best director award at the Golden Globes on Feb. 28 — a first for a Chinese woman — the moment was as widely celebrated in China as it was in the U.S. Within a day, however, the mood darkened. Internet sleuths unearthed interviews in which Zhao appeared critical of her country, and before long, debate over her “attitude toward China” was spreading. Beijing’s internet censors were next to enter the fray, blocking most publicity for Nomadland on social media and deleting many references to the film’s April 23 China release date. Chinese industry insiders tell THR that regulators seem to be waiting before making a final judgment on the fate of Zhao’s movie in China. “It will depend on how she and her allies manage…

Last summer, Disney CEO Bob Chapek called the Disney+ debut of the filmed version of Broadway musical Hamilton “a huge success.” Just how successful? Disney, like many of its streaming peers, won’t say. One-year-old analytics startup Antenna, however, has found a workaround. The company has access to a trove of consumer purchasing data, which it uses to figure out which movies and TV shows entice people to subscribe to streamers. Antenna says it can calculate the percentage of those new subscribers who stick with a service, a holy grail for determining a project’s long-term value. Hamilton, according to Antenna, drove more signups during its opening weekend than any other 2020 film released via streaming except HBO Max’s Wonder Woman 1984, and 59 percent of those subscribers were still paying for…

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt realized the world was about to change while celebrating his 61st birthday. It was March 8, 2020, and Holt was with his wife, children and grandkids. By then, everyone knew the SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading throughout the world, but the magnitude of what was to come hadn’t yet sunk in. “We had a lovely dinner and were sitting around having the cake. At some point, I checked my phone, and there was news that Italy was going into lockdown,” Holt recalls. “I remember this feeling in the pit of my stomach … that was kind of the moment like, ‘Oh my God, that is going to happen here.’” The novel coronavirus pandemic is one of those once-in-a-century stories that is nearly impossible to prepare…

Just about one year ago, I left my office on the Sony lot in Culver City around 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night, expecting to return the next morning to pick up again on the latest Sisyphean tasks. I love that office, belonging as it did to Louis B. Mayer himself. But I have not darkened its door for some 365 days. It has been the quintessential tale of two cities: the best of times and the worst of times. While some companies were pandemic prize winners, most businesses faced unprecedented challenges. The theatrical movie business was very much in the latter category, hit by the double whammy of an immediate shutdown of both the means of production and the means of distribution. But it was in this crisis that…

Diana Romero had reached what she thought was a pivotal moment in her entertainment career in the early months of 2020. Romero, who started in physical production but pivoted to screenwriting a few years ago after she lost her mobility due to an illness in 2018, had written a vigilante-style pilot that caught the attention of producer Gary Lucchesi (Underworld, Million Dollar Baby) in the summer of 2019. He offered to help her with the project. But when the pandemic prompted California’s stay-at-home order March 19, Lucchesi advised Romero to halt efforts because of the subject matter and state of the marketplace. “It was heartbreaking,” she says. While the pandemic overturned the lives of workers industrywide, those just beginning to establish their careers in an industry that is notoriously difficult…

One year ago, PGA co-president Gail Berman had two of her projects — a TV pilot and Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis Presley biopic — shut down on the same day. The latter made the coronavirus feel real for many in America when Tom Hanks, who plays Colonel Tom Parker, confirmed March 11, 2020, that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 during production. As the virus reshaped the world, it also reshaped the entertainment industry, with producers scrambling to implement protective measures and get back to work. “If you can’t go down the straight road, you’ve got to figure out how to go left or go right,” says Berman. A year into the pandemic, the Producers Guild of America is using that as a mantra as it honors its own with…

As fandom prepares for the March 18 unveiling on HBO Max of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Snyder’s first comic-book movie star, Gerard Butler, looks back fondly on his breakout role in 2007’s 300. “I met him for coffee in the valley,” recalls Butler, now 51, of his first encounter with the director, now 55, to discuss playing King Leonidas, the musclebound alpha warrior who leads an army of 300 Spartans into battle with Xerxes. Says Butler, “I came in like a force of nature, but I was met with an equal force of nature, and the two of us came together like a whirlwind.” Butler marched back and forth outside the Starbucks that day demonstrating what he thought “the Spartan walk” should look like. “And Zack’s jumping up and down…

Shuttered cinemas, closed theme parks, lower advertising spending — one year ago, the realization sank in across Hollywood that the pandemic would cause a hit to earnings and cash flow for an unknown duration. At the time, entertainment giants pivoted to raise capital and started preserving cash by freezing stock buybacks or dividends, and drawing up plans for cost cuts and layoffs. As ratings agencies handed out downgrades, debt burdens and cash war chests moved into Wall Street’s focus. Now, in the wake of those decisions, the industry’s balance sheets are showing higher debt-to-earnings ratios. But that may not be worrying executives. Wall Street observers say most entertainment giants are in solid financial positions, despite higher debt, and express hope that the worst pain of the pandemic is in the…

On March 3, Ben Mauro, a concept artist who worked on the Hobbit films, Man of Steel and the upcoming Halo Infinite video game, made more money in seven minutes than he has in 12 years of entertainment work. That’s when he sold a dozen pieces of his digital art for $2 million, each authenticated with unique codes called NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Eight days later, the NFT phenomenon exploded when an artist known as Beeple sold a montage of his digital files for $69 million at auction at Christie’s. Now, many who make their living in Hollywood are seeking to capitalize on an innovation some consider as significant for visual media as the founding of Napster was for digital music. “This is a revolutionary moment,” says Mauro. “It’s what…

On her half-hour Peacock series, Amber Ruffin’s sunny spin on the late night talk format helps lighten the weight of the week’s news, mixing monologue, original music and sketch. But as NBC gives The Amber Ruffin Show a broadcast run on Friday nights (since February), the Nebraska native, 42, isn’t just smiling because of her innate effervescence. Ruffin, who started out in improv, is co-writing the Broadway musical version of Some Like It Hot. She recently released her first book, You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism, with sister Lacey Lamar. And she continues writing and appearing on Late Night With Seth Meyers (when she joined in 2014, she was the first Black woman to write for a late night talk show). Ruffin is enjoying the…

However the Academy Awards play out when they are finally distributed April 25, the 93rd Oscars is guaranteed to be one for the record books. Already, the nominations have achieved several historic firsts: Two women, Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao and Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell, were nominated for director — a category that rarely sees even one female in the ranks — while nine actors of color were nominated, including the first Asian American, Minari’s Steven Yeun, as best actor. But, needless to say, 2020 also was an atypical year. With theaters closed and releases postponed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relaxed its rules, allowing some streaming features into the party and extending its qualifying deadline by two months. Even then, only about two dozen films, which as…

PICKING UP THREE Grammy Awards, Megan Thee Stallion was among the night’s most-discussed style stars in custom tangerine Dolce & Gabbana and Chopard jewels. Here’s how her look came together. 1. THE MAKEUP AND NAILS Makeup artist Priscilla Ono opted for “a bronzy and fresh look to keep it beautiful, since the dress color was so vibrant,” she tells THR. “[And] golds and bronzes look great on her skin.” Manicurist Coca Michelle did her nails in a custom nude shade in Megan’s signature lipstick shape. “The lipstick shape is a long nail with a taper at the tip,” she explains. “I thought the lipstick shape fit with her quirky personality.” 2. THE HAIR Kellon Deryck created “a romantic, whimsical updo that embodies Old Black Hollywood glamour,” he tells THR. 3.…

I’ve worked with the Cameron family for over 20 years — I produced Aliens of the Deep, Expedition: Bismarck and Last Mysteries of the Titanic. That’s how I met the Camerons and [Jim’s brother John David], who is a visionary with technology, just as much as his brother is for film. So J.D. says, “Dude, I need your help, let’s get some PPE to Jim!” We found a factory in China to help produce masks, gloves, booties, the whole nine yards, for the Avatar sequels shooting in New Zealand. Then J.D. got a couple of doctors on board and we started looking into [COVID-19] testing for other projects. [Netflix] bought a bunch of tests from us. One of my friends is the president of television at a mini-major and they were our second customer. They…

Even the most cynical Hollywood insider was stunned in February 2020 when word spread that MGM and Eon — home of the James Bond film franchise — were postponing the release of No Time to Die because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was the first big Hollywood movie to be delayed — and then the wheels came off,” recalls Erik Lomis, a veteran exec who is president of United Artists Releasing, a joint distribution venture of MGM and Annapurna that is rolling out the Bond pic in North America in October. By March 20, almost every indoor theater across North America was ordered shut, sparking the biggest box office disruption in Hollywood history. It’s been a roller-coaster ride ever since. Lomis, Paramount domestic distribution president Chris Aronson, Universal domestic distribution…

The March 15 Oscar nominations presented the most diverse collection of nominees in history, with many barrierbreaking nods among them. But for the actors and filmmakers whose nominations are history-making, their accomplishments come with mixed emotions, steeped in the knowledge that it took 93 years for some of these firsts to come to fruition after decades of exclusion in the industry. Judas and the Black Messiah director Shaka King is part of the first all-Black producing team to ever be nominated for best picture (he shares the nomination with fellow producers Charles D. King and Ryan Coogler). He likens the experience of being “the first” to his own upbringing and the opportunities afforded him and his family. “I grew up vegetarian in Bed–Stuy. My whole life, my parents were traveling…

Cullen Hoback’s six-part HBO docuseries Q: Into the Storm (executive produced by Adam McKay) wastes little time getting to Jan. 6, 2021. The domestic terror attack on the U.S. Capitol — with many participants identifying as believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory — is so fresh in our memory that one might blanche at the prospect of spending hours delving into the minds of Americans who latched on to sub-Nostradamus prophecies about our supposedly messianic 45th president as well as leftwing, child-eating pedophiles. But to reduce Hoback’s doc to simply a QAnon explainer would be to ignore the dizzying number of things it attempts. Yes, it’s a basic primer on the kind of nuttiness that helped create a new fanaticism around Donald Trump, launched thousands of amateur-sleuthing YouTube channels, spawned…