Innholdsfortegnelse for November 10, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

BEST PICTURE Kenneth Branagh’s charming film about his childhood in Northern Ireland has screened at Telluride, Toronto and numerous other fall film fests, establishing itself along the way as the film to beat. On Nov. 8, it was finally unveiled in Los Angeles with a grand premiere at the Academy Museum. In the run-up to this crowd-pleasing film’s AFI Fest premiere on Nov. 14, stars Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton began making the publicity rounds, with sisters and executive producers Venus and Serena Williams in tow for the global news conference. DIRECTOR Less than a year after the Nomadland helmer became only the second woman to win the directing Oscar, the filmmaker took flack for this larger-scale film, which clocked in at just 48 percent on…

Big Deal “The upward trend is clear and unmistakable,” AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron crowed during a Nov. 8 earnings call. The world’s largest theater chain shrunk its red ink to a $224.2 million net loss for its latest quarter, down from $905.8 million during the same period last year, while attendance at its locations globally hit 40 million and food/beverage revenue climbed sharply. October was a boom month for exhibitors. Rivals Imax and Marcus Theatres both narrowed losses as North American revenue hit $637 million, the highest monthly total since February 2020. But AMC’s top brass is also looking beyond box office to diversify its brand. Ideas include: competing on retail shelves with AMC branded popcorn; exploring how to accept cryptocurrencies for online payment; teaming with studios to use…

Aretrospective of Nina Mae McKinney films running Nov. 10 to Nov. 30 at New York’s Film Forum will provide viewers with glimpses of the multihyphenate whose barrier-breaking career, like so many other early cinema Black artists, has been largely forgotten. Five of the nearly 20 films the actress turned out in as many years will be shown, as well as two shorts (Pie Pie Blackbird and Black Network) that the South Carolina native made with the Nicholas Brothers, the famous Black dancing team. Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood’s First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of King Vidor’s all-Black musical Hallelujah!, her feature debut from 1929, in which she starred as a wisecracking Jazz Age flapper who gets caught in a deadly love triangle. McKinney…

Inside Netflix’s Priciest Premiere for Its Most Expensive Film “This is the biggest event Netflix has ever had — ever!” boasted Dwayne Johnson before the Nov. 3 premiere of Red Notice at L.A. Live. It was the priciest movie premiere in Netflix history (insiders estimate it cost north of $1 million) for the streamer’s most expensive film to date (reportedly more than $200 million). Part of that was caused by a production halt because of the pandemic, and producer Beau Flynn praised Netflix for keeping everyone safe, saying, “They paid our crew for two months while we were down, over 700 people.” And don’t tell Vin Diesel, who has just asked Johnson to return to Fast & Furious 10 despite their feuding, but the movie features a one-liner aimed at…

Finally, after last year’s Oscar season — or, technically, this year’s first Oscar season, which stretched into April — the cinephiles among guild voters and the media have reason to rejoice. Movie theaters (and screening rooms) are open once again, and awards hopefuls can be seen the way they were meant to be: on the big screen. After months of watching via screening links on laptops, hoping that precarious Wi-Fi networks could stream an Oscar contender without endless buffering (after navigating logins and two-step verification), the movie screening is back in full force — even if there are plenty of adjustments in a post-COVID landscape. Proof of vaccination is required, as is mask-wearing in theaters and screening rooms. Netflix, taking extra safety measures, has required all attendees at screenings and…

For the past eight years that Logan Paul has been in the public consciousness, he’s been many things: a Vine turned YouTube star; an online influencer; a boxer; and a seemingly endless source of social media controversy. But recently, Paul has been diving deeper into an unexpected part of his brand: digital currency entrepreneur. He has 100 NFTs (nonfungible tokens) for which he’s invested more than $4 million; he has multiple cryptocurrency projects in development (including CryptoZoo, a digital zoo where users can breed, collect and trade exotic hybrid animals as NFTs that was delayed after some initial criticism); and he has become a prominent figure in the Pokemon collector world after loving the game since childhood — now owning a Charizard card he says is worth $1 million (after…

Pablo Larraín was attending the 2019 Toronto Film when fate intervened. The Chilean director was there with a new film, Ema, but was already preoccupied with his next project, Spencer, a genrebending impressionistic portrait of the late Princess Diana in which he wanted Kristen Stewart to star. He happened to be having a coffee meeting at the Hyatt Regency when he spotted the actress’ agent, WME’s Elyse Scherz. He quickly excused himself and chased her down, quite literally. “I ran across the lobby and said, ‘I need to talk to you.’ We knew each other because she also represents Gael García Bernal, whom I have made many movies with,” Larraín recalls. Would Stewart be interested in playing one of the most famous women of the 20th century? Larraín kept pressing.…

The prolific Lin-Manuel Miranda has had a busy year, with Warner Bros.’ adaptation of his musical In the Heights hitting theaters and HBO Max in June; writing songs for two animated features, Netflix’s Vivo (for which he also lent his voice as the title character) and Disney’s Encanto; and making his feature film directorial debut with Netflix’s tick, tick… BOOM!, which stars Andrew Garfield as Rent creator Jonathan Larson. (He also picked up yet another award for Hamilton: an Emmy for outstanding variety special.) The multihyphenate spoke with THR about how his songwriting process for a film compares to his work on Broadway and how Larson’s talents still inspire him today. Which of the two animated projects came your way first? And what made you excited to work on them?…

Chris Columbus was so determined to direct Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that he pulled out all the stops to land the coveted project. He was just one of many helmers hoping to bring literature’s best-selling boy wizard to the screen, so he conjured up a plan to put himself at the top of the list. Columbus asked to be the last director to meet with the studio, spent 10 days penning a 130-page director’s version of screenwriter Steve Kloves’ script and gave an impassioned 45-minute speech to studio executives about his conception of the film. Though the studio was duly impressed, Columbus had one more hurdle: convincing author J.K. Rowling that he was right for the job. He flew to Scotland to meet with Rowling to discuss how…

BROADWAY The New York production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ranks as Broadway’s highest-grossing play ever, with $174 million in tickets sold. MERCHANDISING On top of selling 500 million books, Potter merch is sprawling — and, as of June, available at one-stop flagship store Harry Potter New York. THEME PARKS Four Wizarding World attractions across the globe at Universal theme parks and a Making of Harry Potter tour at Warner Bros. London Studio draw millions of annual visitors. SPINOFFS The first two Fantastic Beasts films, starring Eddie Redmayne (below), have grossed $1.4 billion at the global box office. No. 3 arrives in 2022.…

Like Laurence Olivier, whose 1944 film version of Henry V inspired a wave of Shakespearean films by the likes of Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa, Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, his first film (his latest, the autobiographical Belfast, comes out Nov. 12), ignited its own era of Bard-mania in Hollywood in 1989. Unlike Olivier, however, Branagh grew up loving American movies, and he’s credited with infusing the language of mainstream cinema into Shakespeare’s text. When he was 9, Branagh and his working class family left Belfast, Northern Ireland, amid the violence of the Troubles and settled in Reading, England. After studying acting at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where in 1984 at age 23 he became its youngest player to take on the title…

Seduced and Abandoned, a 2013 mock documentary about the absurdities of indie film finance that was directed by James Toback and stars Alec Baldwin, hasn’t aged well. Baldwin and a pre-#MeToo Toback (the director’s career was derailed in 2017 after hundreds of women accused him of sexual misconduct, charges that he’s denied) are seen at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, lurching from one fabulous lunch to another as they wine and dine assorted film executives and billionaires. They are supposedly trying to drum up money for a modern-day remake of the 1972 erotic drama The Last Tango in Paris set in contemporary Iraq (working title Last Tango in Tikrit). Their desired budget: $15 million to $20 million, and Baldwin to star alongside Neve Campbell. Again and again, Baldwin and Toback…

As studios debate how to handle COVID-19 vaccine resistance, the Biden administration is moving forward with its own mandates that are pushing Hollywood to toe the line. Though a federal court recently halted vaccine and testing requirements for private businesses with 100 or more employees pending review, the White House said Nov. 8 that the private sector “should not wait.” While that case is expected to head to the Supreme Court, a flurry of actors and actresses have quietly pushed back on studio mandates, which increasingly require those in Zone A on a production — where cast and crew work in close proximity — to be vaccinated. (Studio sources say some religious exemptions are being given, though they are rare.) “We’re really only considering those who are vaccinated,” one prolific…

A Day Like This (LAKE UNION, NOV. 1) BY Kelley McNeil AGENCY Writers House While driving her young daughter, a woman gets in a car accident; upon waking up, she’s told she doesn’t have a child. The woman then has to decipher if her new reality — one where she is also a successful Manhattan artist — is a lie everyone is in on. The Survivors (DOUBLEDAY, OCT. 5) BY Alex Schulman AGENCY WME The melodrama, which has been compared to Atonement, revolves around three brothers who return to a lakeside cottage to scatter their mother’s ashes and confront a tragic family accident that occurred and sent the boys into separate spirals.…

When Ray Vega opened his festive restaurant in 1956, Casa Vega was one of the few places to bring authentic Mexican cuisine beyond Olvera Street all the way to Ventura Boulevard. Thanks to the Vega family’s traditional recipes and garnet-colored booths arranged perfectly for conversation, Casa Vega quickly became a Hollywood hotspot, welcoming stars like Cary Grant and Marlon Brando (the latter always had a quesadilla at table two). “We were just a family from Mexico that loved our food and loved our heritage and loved you,” owner Christy Vega tells THR. In celebration of its 65th anniversary, Casa Vega is rolling back its menu to 1956 opening prices on Nov. 10. Ray Vega died of COVID-19 in January, but Christy, his daughter, continues to draw in a host of…

Encanto, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ feature set in Latin America, premiered Nov. 3 at the El Capitan with the help of stars Stephanie Beatriz, Wilmer Valderrama, John Leguizamo, Diane Guerrero and Lin-Manuel Miranda. “I never in a million years could have imagined this,” Beatriz told THR of working on the film about a Colombian family. “For many of us, you watch media, you watch TV, you watch films and you go, ‘Wow, I love that story. I connect so much with that hero. Too bad there’s nobody that looks like me as the hero.’ And that is changing.” Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

Before Insecure launched in 2016, showrunner Prentice Penny likes to say that he was in the “outgoing call business.” Five years and as many seasons later, the longtime comedy writer with credits on Scrubs, Happy Endings and Brooklyn Nine-Nine finally finds himself firmly in the “incoming call” one. Now, with the Emmy-winning HBO comedy created by and starring Issa Rae set to end, the 48-year-old producer is focused on what he wants to say when that phone rings. Already, the South L.A. native who got his start on 2000’s Girlfriends has written and directed his first feature (Netflix’s Uncorked), explored his love of finer things as host of late TruTV docuseries Upscale and, as of August, signed a new deal with Disney’s new POC-focused content brand Onyx Collective. There, if…

Edgar Wright’s thriller Last Night in Soho follows fashion student Eloise, played by Thomasin McKenzie, as she is transported between 1960s London and the city in the present. When in the past, she follows (and sometimes inhabits the body of) aspiring singer Sandie, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. To do this, Wright and his team, including his longtime editor, Paul Machliss, developed a unique multifaceted workflow to synchronize director of photography Chung Chung-hoon’s images with the sound and Oscar-winning composer Steven Price’s score. “A big part of the movie is that you see [it] through Eloise’s eyes,” says Wright. “To put the audience under the same spell that she is [under], we designed the sequences so that, in the same way the character might be thinking, ‘What is happening?’, the audience…

Disruption has become the status quo, with evolving distribution models, a new round of megamergers and, of course, the ongoing global pandemic — but Hollywood continues to adapt and thrive thanks in part to the money managers featured in THR’s 2021 spotlight Back in 2019, WarnerMedia struck a deal for its soon-to-launch streaming platform HBO Max that secured exclusive domestic streaming rights to The Big Bang Theory for five years. The pact, which sources pegged in the billions, also included an extension of an existing syndication deal with TBS in which the comedy will continue airing on the WarnerMedia-owned network through 2028. While the syndication side of the deal allows creators, profit participants, reps and even industry observers to gauge how big the TBS audience is, just how many people…

Ask anyone who knows him, and they’ll tell you Andrew Meyer is the best, both as a business manager and as an all-around good guy. The Freemark Financial co-founder has built a reputation for being grounded, methodical, empathetic and kind — while representing some of the flashiest names in entertainment, including Jon M. Chu, Anna Kendrick, Adam Driver, Kathryn Hahn, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ellen Pompeo, who presented him with The Hollywood Reporter’s Business Manager Icon Award during a Nov. 9 virtual celebration. Meyer grew up in Monrovia, barely 30 miles from his current Beverly Hills office, but says, “I might as well have grown up 5,000 miles away because there was no connection to this business at all.” There were many stops on his path to launching the firm…

TENNESSEE There may be no better match for Hollywood expats than Music City. “There are a ton of artists and industry folks already here, says Tara Moore of Nashville, which she now calls home. “No state income tax, great education, a clean, beautiful, affordable city and nice people. It’s a dream!” Adds Alex Smith, “There’s an appetite for the no-state-income-tax states. Tennessee’s an especially good one because there’s still an entertainment hub there, especially for folks in the music industry.” NEVADA While multiple managers mentioned Nevada as a relocation destination because of its tax benefits, no one gave specifics. Its proximity to L.A. (on the Las Vegas side) and Silicon Valley (up near Reno and Lake Tahoe) certainly can’t hurt. TEXAS Austin also is still drawing a crowd. Says Josh…

BRETT ANDERSON SAVITSKY SATIN BACON & BUCCI A partner at one of Hollywood’s most respected firms, Anderson’s clients include Emmy-winning showrunners, Oscar-nominated writers and top digital creators. He says limiting financial exposure through insurance is vital: “Take a hard pass on the heated rear-seat upgrade in your new SUV and use the money you’re saving on an EPLI policy.” ISAAC GORDON GORDON & ASSOCIATES A former pro basketball player (he played in the EU while earning an international MBA from Griffith College in Dublin), second-generation business manager and CPA, Gordon works with athletes, writers and talent. He often tells clients that “money is much more about their mental relationship with finances than it is a math solution.” JORDAN JOSEPHS SINGER|LEWAK Josephs tells his clients — who include touring musicians, recording…

Achild refugee’s survival story, a maniacal virtual assistant voiced by Olivia Colman and several musicals — including two featuring original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda — all factor into this year’s crowded animated feature Oscar race. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated feature documentary Flee, the intimate story of a man who as a child made a harrowing escape from Afghanistan, already sits in a unique position, having been selected as Denmark’s entry in the international feature competition. The film has collected numerous awards, including the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Cristal for best feature at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. A Dec. 3 release is planned by U.S. distributors Neon and Participant. The Oscar for best animated feature was first awarded in 2002, and since then, Walt…

From the colorfully painted Redwood City to the monochromatic all-white Maysville, the mandate for Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall was to have “a really strong identity for each of the different towns,” says production designer Martin Whist, who collaborated with cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. and others on the production team to give the Western a unique visual language. “We all really worked together closely in order to make each particular town sing its own song.… It took a lot of teamwork, and we just had such a great team.” The Netflix film — featuring an ensemble cast that includes Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Regina King and Idris Elba — was lensed at locations in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. The fictional Redwood City, the…

The lawsuit launched by the Department of Justice on Nov. 2 to block Penguin Random House from acquiring Simon & Schuster is undoubtedly bold. As the first government case to explicitly challenge the creation of a “monopsony” — where a single buyer controls the market — this antitrust case is destined for business books and law review articles regardless of the judge’s determination. But those attempting to decipher what the lawsuit means for Warner Bros. Discovery and other proposed mergers may be thinking too narrowly. For decades, influenced by legal scholars led by Robert Bork, antitrust cops were mainly focused on one thing — consumer welfare, and in particular, the cost of products and services. There was an emphasis on preventing monopolies and stopping naked price-fixing. Through that time, many…

Deal of the Week In 2016, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer heralded the company’s $4.4 billion purchase of Starz as a move that would create a “global content powerhouse.” Now, Lionsgate is eyeing a Starz separation, with its board disclosing Nov. 4 an exploration of a sale or spinoff as Lionsgate’s leaders say the combined company is “seriously undervalued,” as Feltheimer told analysts during an earnings call that day. This isn’t the first time Lionsgate has mulled offers for Starz. In 2019, CBS made an informal $5 billion bid. The deal never went through, but Lionsgate has remained an M&A target amid larger industry consolidation. Since 2019, Starz has slowly grown its subscriber base to 18million global streaming subscribers and 30million total subs, including linear offerings. But the TV network is…

Between The Forum, the new SoFi Stadium (home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers) and the Intuit Dome (the 2024 home of the NBA’s Clippers), Inglewood is properly making good on its “City of Champions” nickname. So where to eat before or after a game or concert? At SoFi, chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Jon & Vinny’s are consulting on the culinary program, and next year the 300-acre Hollywood Park, in which SoFi is located, will debut an outdoor mall with a slew of new dining spots. In the meantime, here are 10 Inglewood restaurants to try now. Bruno’s Burgers 450 E. Manchester Blvd. This classic California burger joint’s Colos Burger features a beef patty and pastrami. Get the chili cheese fries as well. Coni’Seafood 3544 W. Imperial…

The massive international success of Netflix’s Squid Game has significantly raised the profile of subtitling, a traditionally overlooked craft that is becoming more and more essential to an increasingly globalized entertainment sector. Multinational streaming platforms are investing huge sums in local-language series and movies, with Netflix spending more than a half-billion dollars on Korean content alone this year, and Disney+ and HBO Max radically increasing their own international output. As such, ensuring this type of fare can be fully understood and appreciated by audiences worldwide is taking on growing significance. The streamers undoubtedly have helped drive the popularity of content across borders and languages, especially the relatively new phenomenon of foreign-language hits in English-language markets. But insiders in the subtitling industry say those same platforms, and Netflix in particular, have…

“Iconic brands and franchises,” “complementary assets,” “one of the largest global streaming players.” The buzzy phrases offered up to tout the megamerger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia when the companies unveiled it May 17 just rolled off the tongue. The same can’t quite be said about the type of deal the partners agreed on to pull off the marriage: a so-called Reverse Morris Trust transaction. “It’s an extremely rare structure for media/communications/entertainment,” a representative of M&A data and analytics provider Dealogic explains to THR. The firm’s data going back to 1995 finds only eight sector deals on record that have used it. Among them are the 2017 takeover of CBS Radio by Entercom (now known as Audacy) and Walt Disney’s 2007 divestiture of ABC Radio to Citadel. The fact that…

“I Got You Babe.” That’s what Cher and Sonny Bono were singing to each other in the 1960s when they were married musical superstars. The following decade, however, the two divorced and had to split their assets. In 1978, three things happened. First, as part of the divorce agreement, Sonny assigned Cher a 50 percent share of his composition royalties. (He, not she, had authored the songs.) Second, Congress ensured that the royalties would be flowing well into the future by substantially increasing the number of years that copyrighted works would be protected. The third we’ll get to in a moment, as it’s become the subject of a new lawsuit in which Cher now alleges being robbed of royalties. Sonny and Cher illustrate a conundrum that’s common in the entertainment…

BLUSH Apple/Skydance Animation A horticulturist/astronaut crash-lands on a desolate dwarf planet. When another visitor arrives, he soon sees more to life. FAR FROM THE TREE Disney A young raccoon lets curiosity get the best of him when his parents try everything to keep him safe on a beach in the Pacific Northwest. FOOTSTEPS ON THE WIND Freak Famed rocker Sting supplied filmmaker Maya Sanbar with his refugee-inspired song “Inshallah” in this tale of two siblings who go on a mysterious journey after losing both of their parents. NAMOO Baobab Studios Written and directed by Erick Oh (the director of the 2020 Academy Award-nominated Opera), this short is a narrative poem inspired by the passing of Oh’s artist grandfather. NONA Pixar A grandmother plans to spend her day off watching her…

DANIEL FIENBERG In mid-October, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did an earnings interview dressed in one of the trademark teal tracksuits from the South Korean sensation Squid Game. Were you to stage a snapshot for television in the fall of 2021, you couldn’t contrive a more perfect image: a billionaire executive wearing a costume from a series about the life-and-death desperation of economic inequality. And he was doing so in an attempt to raise stockholder enthusiasm and boost that uniform’s promotional second life as a Walmart tie-in. Somebody is going to cash in on Squid Game, and it won’t be anyone who, like the series’ characters, is in such dire financial straits that they find themselves playing kids’ games where the options are unimaginable wealth if you win, and carnage if…

When fans tune in to Hogwarts Tournament of Houses, a four-part game show event debuting Nov. 28 on TBS and the Cartoon Network, they’ll be in for more than just a celebration of one of pop culture’s most enduring franchises. Warner Bros. head of unscripted programming Mike Darnell gets credit for the competition’s conception, part of the 20th anniversary celebration of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’s theatrical release. But big decisions — from the bracket-style quiz’s format and set design to its movie-clip selection and special appearances from franchise alumnus Tom Felton and celebrity fan Pete Davidson — were shaped by producing duo Robin Ashbrook and Yasmin Shackleton “in celebration of the whole Wizarding World,” as Ashbrook puts it. Making Hogwarts’ houses the basis for teams was the “most…

Ever since Insecure debuted five seasons ago, Los Angeles has gotten top billing alongside Issa Rae. But unlike most Southern Californiaset series, Rae’s HBO comedy has subverted cliche (i.e., the expected spots in Hollywood or the beach communities) by focusing on Los Angeles’ historically Black south side — particularly its thriving food scene. Choosing restaurants, bars and their environs in the Crenshaw, Inglewood, Ladera Heights, Leimert Park and West Adams neighborhoods has been an ongoing collaboration among locations staff, directors and producers, and now their work has staffer Carolyn Schultz in the running for location manager of the year (episodic TV, half-hour program) at the annual California on Location Awards. Ahead of both the Nov. 14 event and Insecure’s December series finale, Schultz highlighted some of her favorites among the…

The last time Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd shared screen time was in 2013, when they co-starred as chauvinist news anchor Ron Burgundy and field reporter Brian Fantana, respectively, in the satirical comedy Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Eight years later, they’re back together in decidedly different roles. Apple TV+’s dark comedy The Shrink Next Door, based on the popular 2019 podcast of the same name, explores the intense and heartbreaking relationship between real-life psychiatrist Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf (portrayed by Rudd) and longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz (Ferrell) that ultimately devolves into the former taking over the latter’s home, his finances and his family business. “For Paul and me, it’s a brand new thing — something you’re not going to expect to see us in, for all the right…