Innholdsfortegnelse for September 15, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

When Jim Gianopulos held his farewell Zoom call with Paramount senior staff Sept. 13, the entire group had as their backgrounds an image of The Godfather — Marlon Brando with Robert Duvall whispering in his ear. This silent, multilayered tribute to movies (and allusion to betrayal?) added intensity to an already emotional call. Choked up, Gianopulos ended the meeting early. If you look between a rock and a hard place, there you will find his remains. You might say the former Paramount chief was stuck between ViacomCBS chairman Shari Redstone’s determination — even desperation — to feed and build Paramount+ on one side and, let’s say, Tom Cruise franchises like Mission: Impossible or sequel Top Gun: Maverick on the other. Obviously, Cruise is not the only major talent in business…

AFC Richmond may have been relegated at the end of season one, but the cast, producers and writers of Ted Lasso have won big when it comes to their paychecks. Key creatives behind Apple TV+’s Emmy-nominated comedy series have secured hefty pay increases for its third season. Following a round of talks with producer Warner Bros. Television, star Jason Sudeikis is said to have a $1 million-an-episode payday for the series’ upcoming season, which includes fees for his role as creator, head writer and executive producer as well. That’s up from the $250,000 to $300,000 per-episode sum he earned for seasons one and two in a deal that was negotiated before Ted Lasso premiered to rave reviews and awards attention. Co-stars and fellow Emmy nominees Hannah Waddingham (who plays Rebecca),…

While many of the outfits didn’t seem to fit into the night’s theme of American independence, the Met Gala brought out a host of stars for its 2021 return on Sept. 13, after being canceled last year due to the pandemic. Benefiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute — which will open the exhibit “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” on Sept. 18 — the event this year was chaired by Timothée Chalamet (the Dune star wore Converse sneakers along with a blazer by Haider Ackermann and a Rick Owens top), Billie Eilish (in Oscar de la Renta), Amanda Gorman (in Vera Wang) and Naomi Osaka (in a Louis Vuitton gown celebrating her Haitian and Japanese heritage). “We’re just excited to support art and to support fashion,” Adam Mosseri,…

COVID-19 Casts a Pall on the Emmys Party Landscape “Where’s the party?” Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the answer this Emmy week is … good luck finding one. Absent from the party scene are Disney, NBCUniversal, Amazon Studios, CAA, WME, UTA and ICM Partners. Most industry players are forgoing large-scale gatherings — after all, hosting an event filled with actors who might be needed on set come Monday morning could create major production disruptions should anyone test positive. HBO, which usually hosts a lavish bash, is opting for a smaller, private outdoor reception following the Sept. 19 telecast with proof of vaccination/PCR testing required. Netflix, meanwhile, went virtual with its nominees’ toast Sept. 10. And the TV Academy scrapped its Governors Ball celebrations in favor of a more select…

I was recently home recovering from a brief illness — not COVID — and had a lot of time to watch TV. But I didn’t want to watch only my familiar shows. The combination of tedium and stress from the illness had left me drained, and I needed a boost. So, like a museum curator, I selected a collection of shows that would make me feel better physically and mentally. I started the process by remembering Norman Cousins’ book Anatomy of an Illness, in which the journalist treated his depression with a regimen of hundreds of hours of sitcoms and comedic movies. While comedy was part of my plan, I knew that I also needed to include dramas to engage my mind and reality shows to engage my compassion, in…

It’s not for the timid,” says Douglas Elliman’s Elisabeth Halsted of L.A.’s supercharged market, where many agents are on track to have their best sales year ever and buyers “need to have a strong stomach,” she adds, given the premium prices that blue-chip houses are commanding. Malibu’s average sales price, for example, jumped to $5.5 million in the second quarter of 2021, up from $3.4 million in the same period a year earlier (per Douglas Elliman), while the greater L.A. region hit a new record high median sale price in July of $682,000. “It’s as active a year as we’ve ever had,” says Westside Estate Agency’s Kurt Rappaport. Adds Coldwell Banker’s Joyce Rey, “People have wanted to move up and have a house with a gym, a house with dual…

When Brinda Adhikari first heard Jon Stewart was in search of a showrunner for his Apple TV+ series, she assumed her newswoman background would preclude her. Up to that point, the only crossover she’d had with Stewart was many years earlier, when some silly weather segment she’d produced for ABC News landed in a shame reel on The Daily Show. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to end up on The Daily Show,’ and it fucking did,” she recalls. “In the newsroom, we never wanted to end up on The Daily Show, it was a huge motivator for us to try to be better.” What Adhikari would soon learn is that Stewart had no intention of repeating himself. Sure, he wanted to hire those with Hollywood experience…

AFTER HAVING WORKED IN television as a writer and also having reported on the industry for more than 20 years, I thought I knew all the steps in production. But I had never met a looper. Or, more accurately, someone who told me they were a looper. On countless sets, watching background actors mouth words at crowded bars, newsrooms and renaissance fairs, I never thought to ask: “Isn’t it going to be weird to see a bunch of silent people at a crowded bar?” I didn’t have much time to wonder because by the time I watched the edit, a sound engineer had gotten a bunch of improvisational voice actors to come in and sync incredibly banal things for them to say. I also didn’t notice that sometimes, they weren’t…

It wasn’t the #SaveManifest hashtag. It wasn’t the petition. It wasn’t the letters or media coverage. And it wasn’t even the effort to buy a protest billboard outside Netflix headquarters. What scored Manifest a critical fourth and final season — which salvaged NBC’s airline mystery drama from the canceled broadcast show scrapyard — were those top-secret numbers created by viewers clicking onto the show’s first two seasons after they debuted domestically on the service June 10, just a few days before NBC axed the show. “Fan enthusiasm is always great to see, but it really wasn’t the emails or tweets — it was all about the viewing,” Netflix head of global TV Bela Bajaria tells THR. At first, Netflix declined to pick up the Warner Bros. TV-produced series despite fan…

In NBC’s new drama La Brea, premiering Sept. 28, L.A.’s Miracle Mile becomes a mysterious primeval world when a massive sinkhole opens, pulling some people below the city’s La Brea Tar Pits and leaving others shaken aboveground. Beyond this literal divide, Zyra Gorecki, who plays Izzy Harris, illuminates the oft-underdiscussed divide between actors with and without disabilities in broadcast television (her leg was amputated below the knee after a log crushed her foot at age 14). A Michigan native, Gorecki explored modeling before landing a spot on an episode of Chicago Fire in 2016. She spoke with THR about being one of the first limb-difference actors with a series regular role. What role does Los Angeles play in the show? L.A. and the La Brea Tar Pits [are] the playing…

Shop Talk The word “pop-up” doesn’t do justice to the scale of Louis Vuitton’s temporary shopping experience. Open by private appointment only and located inside Goya Studios at 1541 North Cahuenga Blvd., the installation sprawls across three production stages. One stage, designed to look like a Parisian apartment, features dresses worn by A-list actresses, including the black gown with metallic braid that Nicole Kidman wore to the 2021 Golden Globes. Other areas showcase LV’s famed hardshell trunks, furniture line with Fornasetti and signature handbags. The wow moment: a lifeguard tower that sits on a faux beach complete with a custom Louis Vuitton surfboard designed by artist Alex Israel. Open through Sept. 25.…

A lot of people didn’t understand the impact of what would happen when documentaries had distribution at this scale,” says Bryn Mooser, the founder of prolific nonfiction film and television studio XTR. In recent years, Mooser, like many who work in nonfiction filmmaking, has watched the appetite for documentary content grow exponentially — and, amid the streaming wars, titles are now boasting eight-figure price tags. As with any surge in a onces-overlooked medium, trends emerge as the industry explores a newfound fervor. One of those trends is the uptick in talent-produced biographical documentaries. Though stars have been involved in depicting their lives onscreen for years, the nonfiction boom has sparked increased interest among talent in producing features about themselves. These moves have raised questions in the nonfiction community, not just…

Six emerging heavy hitters on the Hollywood real estate scene — Aaron Kirman Group’s Dalton Gomez, RE/MAX’s Shavonda Hill, Compass’ Lily Harfouche, The Agency’s Cooper Mount and Douglas Elliman duo Learka Bosnak and Heather T. Roy — all emphasize one marker of success in the business: discretion. Hill, who represented Kenya Barris in two transactions this year, has established herself as a go-to for high-profile buyers through word-of-mouth. “A lot of them want privacy and anonymity for where they’re buying,” Hill says of her celebrity clients. “If this is where their kids are going to be laying their heads, they don’t want everybody to know that.” Harfouche — who recently sold to Pink, along with star couple Chris Martin and Dakota Johnson — agrees: “I prefer to be as much…

Getting tapped to host the Emmys, long a coveted milestone for any comic, can feel a bit like drawing the short straw these days. With live viewership in a free fall and COVID-19 safeguards still making traditional celebrations untenable, awards shows are hot potatoes — and it’s the host left holding the tuber when the ratings and reviews come in. Cedric the Entertainer, who will host the 2021 Emmys telecast on Sept. 19 on CBS, says that’s all the more reason to rise to the occasion. “The attitude you’ve got to take with anything these days is that people have unlimited choices for what to do with their time,” says the veteran stand-up and star of CBS’ sitcom The Neighborhood. “So if you do turn on the Emmys, I have…

Drama Series I don’t get why The Boys is nominated, and I could only do about a half-hour of Bridgerton. It’s not my thing, but I will say that Shonda Rhimes is the only one who signed a big deal with Netflix who has actually delivered — Ryan Murphy’s stuff has been god-awful — so kudos to her. I never watched this season of Pose because Ryan’s shows are so incredibly self-indulgent. Lovecraft Country would never have been nominated if it didn’t have J.J. Abrams’ name on it. The Handmaid’s Tale is great, but its best days are behind it. This Is Us continues to be really well done. And Olivia Colman’s and Gillian Anderson’s The Crown performances are so extraordinary that I almost voted for it. However, The Mandalorian…

Another World (VENICE) Cannes best actor laureate Vincent Lindon reteams with The Measure of a Man director Stephane Brize for another exploration of the demise of France’s working class. In this nerve-racking look at a factory boss obliged to make layoffs, Lindon channels the tremendous strain faced by a solicitous man who’s been backed into a corner beneath the crushing weight of global capitalism. — JORDAN MINTZER The Box (VENICE, TORONTO) This quietly devastating drama from Lorenzo Vigas (From Afar) recounts the reckoning of an orphaned teenager (Hatzin Navarrete) with a man he’s convinced is his father (Hernan Mendoza). Set against the bad-lands and manufacturing plants of northwestern Mexico, the slow-burn coming-of-age story draws its sorrow from the dehumanizing supply chain of cheap labor. It’s an acutely observed chamber piece…

In an era of consolidation to prioritize streaming, ViacomCBS has been reluctant to merge its studio operations even as rivals made similar moves. While Dana Walden and Pearlena Igbokwe oversee multiple TV studios for Disney and NBCUniversal, respectively, Paramount TV Studios and CBS Studios are housed under different execs in the ViacomCBS fold. David Nevins, the Showtime chief who earlier this year added oversight of originals at streamer Paramount+ to his portfolio, also absorbed Paramount TV Studios on Sept. 13. It’s the first time the studio has, since it was revived in mid-2013, reported to anyone other than the head of Paramount Pictures. Nicole Clemens and the studio previously reported to film chief Jim Gianopulos (and before him, Brad Grey). Meanwhile, the David Stapf-led CBS Studios shifted in June from…

Last year, the end seemed near for police-focused reality TV. Public outrage over police brutality following the murder of George Floyd sparked fresh criticism over the whitewashed portrayal of police in many programs. Paramount Network would cancel Cops, which was also syndicated, in June, while A&E’s Live PD — one of the channel’s most-watched shows — was dropped a few days later. But now, those shows are set for a comeback. On Sept. 13, Fox News revived Cops for its Fox Nation streaming service (and picked up a slate of other first-responder shows in the process, including a series that will highlight “good deeds” that police do in their communities). The original producer of Cops, Langley Productions, led by Morgan Langley, son of the late John Langley, is back producing…

When Netflix’s Peter Friedlander hunkered down at his Palm Springs home at the start of the pandemic, he was overseeing a number of drama series and showrunners under Cindy Holland. A year and a half later, he and his dog, Pablo, remain in the desert, though Holland is long gone and Friedlander has a considerably bigger job. In June, the 46-year-old Duke grad was tapped as global TV head Bela Bajaria’s No. 2, charged with scripted series in the U.S. and Canada, a purview that also includes stand-up and overall deals. In late August, the once press-shy Friedlander, who arrived at the streamer in 2011 as its first dedicated employee on the original series team, opened up about the new gig. When you arrived at Netflix, it was not the…

When actor, writer and producer Brendan Hunt was helping get Ted Lasso off the ground, red carpets never crossed his mind. “We really did not envision a world where this was some kind of hit. We thought it was pretty good, but we’ve all had shows that we liked a lot that suddenly we hear were canceled,” he says. “So, the idea of doing a step-and-repeat was not something I was rehearsing.” Hunt first developed the pilot in 2018 with star Jason Sudeikis and fellow series creators Joe Kelly and Bill Lawrence after years spent in film roles like “Sketchy Dude” and “Bar Freak.” The actor and Sudeikis met in the ’90s on the comedy club circuit and stayed in touch as Hunt went off to Amsterdam to write and…

One year after host Jimmy Kimmel dubbed 2020’s audience-free awards “the Pandemmys,” a still-smoldering COVID-19 pandemic means another scaled-back ceremony — but he says the telecast, which will include more in-person attendees, is in good hands. “Cedric is going to do a great job,” Kimmel tells THR. “In fact, I know what he’s going to do. He’s got a great plan.” Guarding his successor’s blueprints, Kimmel did say that the lack of an audience can impact a host’s approach. “It’s not as much fun without an audience — there’s no question about that,” he says. “It’s less of a performance and more about broadcasting.” Kimmel may not be center stage Sept. 19, but he won’t be completely absent from the show as Jimmy Kimmel Live! again is nominated for outstanding…

On June 27, 2020, amid the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns and the trauma of George Floyd’s murder, Canada’s Drag Race premiered. For fans of the franchise — the spinoff aired in Canada on Crave (it would become the highest-rated original series in its history), in the U.K. on BBC3 and throughout the rest of the globe on the streamer WOW Presents Plus — it was a rare oasis from a seemingly unending onslaught of horrible news. For Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, it should have been a dream come true. Raised in a tiny town in Alberta, the 36-year-old actor and model — whose biggest credit was playing a manipulative reality TV producer on Lifetime’s UnREAL — was chosen to sit among its panel of judges. The openly gay, biracial Bowyer-Chapman already…

Milan Ray (left) and Elisha Williams play junior high classmates in 1960s Alabama. “One thing about being 12 that hasn’t changed over the decades is that it’s around 12 that you figure out what your place is in the world.” So says the narrator (Don Cheadle) in ABC’s The Wonder Years pilot, and it’s essentially a mission statement for the series. But the finer details of that journey can’t help but be informed by the world it’s taking place in, and so the series attempts to balance pointed cultural commentary with a genial coming-of-age narrative — and it largely succeeds thanks to its warm humor and winning cast. Like the original show, which aired from 1988 to 1993, the new series is set in the late 1960s. The narrative structure…