Innholdsfortegnelse for April 21, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

David Greenbaum/Matthew Greenfield As Searchlight Pictures’ leaders Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula retire, the studio’s heads of production have both been promoted to president. Ted Sarandos/Reed Hastings The Netflix co-CEOs can’t sustain the rapid growth of 2020, as the streamer adds only 4 million subscribers in its latest quarter, bringing its global total to 208 million. Malcolm Spellman The Falcon and the Winter Soldier showrunner’s series debuts to 495 million minutes of view time on Nielsen’s streaming chart, above the start for WandaVision. Damon Whiteside The ACM Awards, led by the ACM chief, couldn’t shake awards shows’ ratings woes, as the April 18 ceremony on CBS drew 6.28 million total viewers, an all-time low. Showbiz Stocks $54.13 (+1.2%) COMCAST (CMCSA) Universal Studios Hollywood reopened to sold-out crowds as the NBCUniversal…

Just a few years ago, acting was far from Jessie Mei Li’s mind. She had dropped out of university at Reigate College in Surrey, England, and was working as a special-education teaching assistant when she decided to try a few acting classes. Li was instantly hooked. “I went to loads of open auditions [and] got rejected,” Li, 25, recalls with a laugh. The British actress eventually landed an agent on the recommendation of a director from one of those failed auditions. Soon, she had a role on the West End in a production of All About Eve and a small role in Edgar Wright’s upcoming horror film Last Night in Soho. Now she awaits her biggest stage yet with the April 23 debut of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone series, an…

Wayman Bannerman and Micah McDonald, the stylist duo known as Wayman + Micah, remember their first meeting with Daniel Roseberry after he had been named creative director of Schiaparelli in April 2019. Immediately following the debut of his Fall 2019 haute couture collection, Roseberry transported the clothes from Paris to a suite at the Chateau Marmont, where he met with A-list stylists and stars. “We just loved that his designs felt fearless and unafraid,” says Bannerman. “While it did feel like luxury wear, the pieces also had a streetwear attitude that we hadn’t seen in haute couture before.” Fast forward nearly two years, and Roseberry, 35, has vaulted to become Hollywood’s designer of the moment. Beyoncé wore his custom leather minidress when she accepted her record-setting Grammy Award in March,…

For more than a decade now, the skinny suit has reigned supreme on fashion’s runways. Whether you originally credit it to designer Hedi Slimane in his early aughts Dior days or Thom Browne with his iconic man-in-the-shrunken-gray-flannel suit, it’s long been the tailored grail. In Hollywood, slick agents routinely take meetings in ultra-slim turnouts, and hot young male stars seemed to be in competition for who could wear the tightest tuxedo. But, for some style setters, this tight hold on all things sartorial is losing its grip. Case in point, Dan Levy, who continued his ultra-fashionable awards run for Schitt’s Creek by donning a breezily fitted custom-made suit from The Row for the SAG Awards. On his Instagram, the actor called the outfit a “cream dream,” and his slouchy pose…

The pandemic has given us the most drawn-out awards season in recent memory with the fewest social events, the most Zoom time, a reduced theatrical slate and a roster of passion projects offering rich insights into these turbulent times Producing the Oscars during a normal year is one of Hollywood’s most thankless jobs. It involves handing out 24 awards while pleasing nervous nominees in the theater, engaging distracted audiences at home and delivering a win to ratings-driven TV executives. This year’s Oscar producers, Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh, are having the complexity of COVID-19 added to the task. The producers spoke with THR on April 10 about their evolving plans for the Academy’s big night on April 25. This year, it's unfolding at L.A.’s Union Station, where, says…

Nomadland might appear to have Oscar best picture trophy all wrapped up. With Chloé Zhao’s nominations for directing, writing and editing, plus top honors from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Producers Guild and a host of others, the final Academy Awards category seems like a foregone conclusion. But is it? In the past two decades, Crash and Spotlight, respectively, shocked frontrunners Brokeback Mountain and The Revenant. And who can forget how Moonlight emerged over La La Land? In total, there have been 15 upsets for best picture over the past 72 years, according to a mathematical model I built using historical Oscar data. My model, much like the one I use to predict the Oscars each year, uses various precursor victories during awards season (e.g., the Directors Guild, the…

With two straight years of all-white acting nominees hanging like an albatross around the 2016 Academy Awards, producers of the telecast that year went to lengths to show that the Academy could take the heat, inviting Chris Rock as host not just to address the controversy directly but also to skewer the industry’s long-standing failure to diversify. And he didn’t disappoint, ridiculing the ceremony as the “White People’s Choice Awards,” diagnosing Hollywood as “sorority racist” and generally laying out the sad state of diversity in show business. And yet, for all the catharsis and validation that the airing of grievances was intended to provide, to one specific community, the #OscarsSoWhite Oscars is still remembered for one thing: three silent Asian children in tuxedos onstage, standing in as the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants…

The latter half of September is historically a sleepy corridor at the box office as the summer tentpoles finish their runs and go home. Not this year. The weekend of Sept. 24-26, for example, symbolizes Hollywood’s mad dash to release the films that were waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic. Set to open that weekend are no fewer than four high-profile titles: Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage, the Sopranos origins pic The Many Saints of Newark, the teen musical Dear Evan Hansen, and Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi adventure Infinite, starring Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Venom 2 and Infinite are part of an action genre glut that lasts all through October. Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune launches a week later, on Oct. 1, followed by the James Bond installment No Time…

Big Deal More television shows are relocating their production to California thanks to the state’s film incentives program. The HBO Max dramedy The Flight Attendant will relocate from New York, and the TBS comedy Chad will move from British Columbia (assuming it gets renewed), the California Film Commission said April 19. Both are about to film their second seasons. With these moves, California’s tax credit program has welcomed 23 relocating TV series since 2015. In the past year alone, that’s included Amazon’s Hunters (from New York), HBO’s In Treatment (New York) and TBS’ Miracle Workers (Czech Republic). In all, seven series have relocated from New York and five from British Columbia. For their first season in California, Chad and The Flight Attendant are on track to generate a combined $58.3 million…

While this year’s Oscar Sunday will look different from any before it, that doesn’t mean the celebration is off. Hotels and restaurants throughout L.A., open with lessened COVID-19 restrictions, are offering a wide variety of themed cocktails to celebrate this year’s nominees and an end to a topsy-turvy awards season. For wine and champagne lovers, the Francis Ford Coppola Winery will mark its fifth year of partnership with the Academy with two 2019 vintages from Sonoma County — a chardonnay and a cabernet sauvignon — that are encased in statuettelike gold bottles, while Piper-Heidsieck will serve as the Oscars’ official champagne partner for the seventh year. AKASHA The Culver City favorite will offer five cocktails ($20-$25) on its Oscars Watch Party menu including The Minari Mule and The Nomad (aka…

As awards show ratings continue to sink year by year, the Oscars face a fundamental question: How to go viral? Last year’s show hit an all-time low with 23.6 million viewers and a 5.3 rating among adults 18 to 49, missing out on a younger demographic that is increasingly without cable and less interested in traditional media than the digital world. In a year when the nominated films lived almost solely on streamers, THR talked to top creators across platforms for ideas on how to make the Oscars connect with Gen Z. They should have a whole segment that’s just following a seat filler around, that would be so fucking funny, like, ‘Oh, I’m sitting in Beyoncé’s chair, now I’m going to go sit in this chair.’ We all know that…

On May 15, 1975, Dalton Trumbo was vindicated. One of Hollywood’s top screenwriters — a committed leftist whose career had cratered under the blacklist before his back-channel maneuvering helped defeat it — lay in ill health at his West Hollywood home when there was a knock on his door. It was the producer Walter Mirisch, then the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Oscar in hand. The two had worked together years earlier, and Mirisch was aware that Trumbo had written under assumed names. “I also knew that one of those scripts had gotten an Academy Award for writing and nobody had picked it up,” says Mirisch, now 99, referring to The Brave One, released 65 years ago and the last film to receive the best…

FILM Laura Dern (CAA, Untitled) and Hugh Jackman (WME, the U.K.’s Lou Coulson) will star in The Son, Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father for See-Saw Films. Mads Mikkelsen (UTA, Art) has joined Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Indiana Jones 5. Vin Diesel (CAA, Linden, Felker Toczek) will star in and produce a live-action feature version of tabletop boxing game Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. Brad Pitt (CAA, Brillstein) will have a cameo role in Paramount’s romantic action-adventure comedy Lost City of D, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Bridesmaids duo Kristen Wiig (CAA, Jackoway Austen) and Annie Mumolo (UTA, Thruline, Jackoway Austen) will write a Disney live-action musical comedy centering on Cinderella’s evil stepsisters. Dev Patel (WME, the U.K.’s Curtis Brown, Magnolia, Lichter Grossman) has signed a first-look film…

“Don’t drink and DM.”LIZZOThe singer, on TikTok, admitting to her 14.5 million followers that she sent a series of messages while intoxicated to actor Chris Evans — who, in turn, replied, “god knows I’ve done worse.” “And are we ever going to see Regé-Jean again?”BILL CLINTONThe former president of the United States, in his iHeart podcast, pressing Shonda Rhimes for Bridgerton spoilers in the wake of star Rege-Jean Page’s exit. “When does he get the opportunity to not take every project that comes along … so he can keep pace with Ms. Hightower’s thirst for Stella McCartney?”CAROLINE KRAUSSRobert De Niro’s attorney, during a virtual divorce hearing, blaming the sartorial tastes of the actor’s wife, Grace Hightower, for the actor’s need to accept too many roles. “Our film is staying in…

Weddings The Real host Jeannie Mai married rapper Jeezy in an intimate ceremony at their Atlanta home March 27, a year after their engagement. Births Kellyn Parker, vp comedy development at ABC Signature, and wife Gabby Parker, a substitute teacher at the Warner Bros. Children’s Center, welcomed son Rustin Earl Parker on Feb. 20. Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song welcomed first child Dakota Song Culkin on April 5 in Los Angeles. Congrats Neeraj Khemlani and Wendy McMahon were named co-heads of CBS News and the CBS Television Stations on April 15. Sharon Klein was upped to executive vp casting at Walt Disney Television on April 13. Heather Brooks Karatz was tapped executive vp growth and operations for UTA on April 15. Cindy Gardner was upped to executive vp of NBCUniversal…

An Oscar-nominated male member of the Academy’s 614-person producers branch, granted a cloak of anonymity, reveals why he filled out his final Oscar ballot the way he did. His opinions are not necessarily representative of his fellow members’, but are shared to illustrate the sorts of things that voters think about when considering their options. BEST PICTURE This Oscars deserves an asterisk — because of the nature of the past year, with many movies moving off of their dates, it feels like a competition of the best Sundance movies. The fact that The Trial of the Chicago 7 has a chance of winning, given how mediocre and “television” it is, is all the evidence you need for this, and that’s why I’m putting it in my last-place slot. Aaron Sorkin…

West Hollywood Edition: $18.5M Sitting atop the Sunset Strip Hotel (designed by architect John Pawson), the 3,850-square-foot Edition Penthouse B offers a 1,000-squarefoot private deck in a full-service building that includes a rooftop pool and helipad. It’s listed by Branden and Rayni Williams of Williams & Williams at The Beverly Hills Estates. 8600 Wilshire Gardenhouse: $4.25M This inventive building, designed by MAD Architects and featuring a facade of living plants, includes this three-bedroom penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, terrace and a sculptural staircase connecting its two levels. It’s listed with Fredrik Eklund of Eklund | Gomes. Eastern Columbia Lofts: $4.5M Located inside downtown L.A.’s gorgeous art deco Eastern Columbia building — which opened in 1930 as a department store — this 3,320-square-foot penthouse includes four levels and two bedrooms and offers…

Past nomination 2021 nomination Past win 16THE NUMBER OF CAST AND CREW FROM THE CROWN WHO HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED BY THE ACADEMY Olivia Colman Queen Elizabeth (S3,S4) Supporting actress, 2021: The Father Lead actress, 2019: The Favourite Emerald Fennell Camilla Parker Best picture, Director, Screenplay, 2021: Promising Young Woman Vanessa Kirby Princess Margaret (S1, S2) Lead actress, 2021: Pieces of a Woman Laura Allen Makeup & Hair Makeup and hairstyling, 2021: Emma Celia Bobak Set decorator Production design, 2016: The Martian Art direction, 2005: The Phantom of the Opera Martin Childs Production designer Art direction, 2001: Quills Art direction, 1999: Shakespeare in Love John Lithgow Winston Churchill (S1, S2, S3) Supporting actor, 1984: Terms of Endearment Supporting actor, 1983: The World According to Garp Stephen Daldry Director/Executive producer Director: The…

In September 2012, Kevin Spacey injured his hand while holding a burning flag during a promotional shoot for the first season of Netflix’s House of Cards. A 20-something production assistant was tasked with driving the star to the hospital. Though Spacey was too wounded to work, he apparently wasn’t too impaired to sexually harass. Multiple onset sources tell THR that Spacey groped the PA, who later complained to a superior. That incident is part of explosive confidential arbitration that pits the disgraced actor against his former employer, Media Rights Capital. In 2019, MRC brought the initial claim against Spacey, seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages suffered as a result of #MeToo revelations about the actor. But Spacey then lodged a counterclaim against MRC, arguing that reports of his…