Innholdsfortegnelse for May 26, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

When ViacomCBS chief Bob Bakish announced during an earnings call May 6 that the Mark Wahlberg movie Infinite would bypass theaters for a debut on the company’s fledgling streamer Paramount+, the CEO said the film would “create a lot of noise.” But the noise it created was the sound of angry phone calls. Wahlberg, director Antoine Fuqua and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura had no inkling an announcement was coming, sources tell THR. The movie’s team was said to have received calls from Paramount brass the day before that outlined a move to streaming as a “possibility.” One person close to the Infinite team noted: “It was not handled well.” This sequence of events should sound like deja vu for many dealmakers in pandemicera Hollywood. Universal caught talent off guard when…

The 2021 Emmys were always going to be an exercise in anarchy. Between an eligibility window marred by COVID-impacted disappearances — count Atlanta, Succession, Euphoria, Ozark and Better Call Saul among shows taking the year off — and the conclusion of other favorites, there won’t be a single acting or series winner available to repeat in the drama, comedy or limited fields. On the comedy side, that vacuum was largely caused by the end of Schitt’s Creek, which celebrated an unprecedented sweep last fall. But that’s only a start. For various reasons, the only 2020 comedy series nominee to even air in this Emmy period was The Kominsky Method. No enthusiasm was curbed, no things were done in the shadows, and Mrs. Maisel got no opportunity to be marvelous. This…

CBS TV STUDIOS 7 New shows 15 Returning shows including NCIS 20TH TELEVISION 5 New shows 9 Returning shows including This Is Us UNIVERSAL TV 5 New shows 15 Returning shows including Brooklyn Nine-Nine WARNER BROS. TV 4 New shows 15 Returning shows including Young Sheldon ABC SIGNATURE 2 New shows 8 Returning shows including Grey’s Anatomy SONY PICTURES TELEVISION 1 New show 4 Returning shows including The Goldbergs Source: THR research; tallies include co-productions for each studio and are through May 21, with The CW series orders and midseason pickups/renewals still to come.…

TALENT James Adams Schreck Rose CORNELL LAW SCHOOL Adams likes helping clients who don’t want to be just one thing — like Kevin Hart, who started in stand-up and this year landed a four-year nine-figure acting and producing deal at Netflix. Or John Krasinski, whose transition to writing and directing with the Quiet Place movies was so successful that he secured a first-look overall deal at Paramount. “Everybody on this list can do the job,” Adams says, “but I most enjoy representing multi-hyphenates and making all those negotiations work together.” What’s the power lunch spot you can’t wait to get back to? “I say, ‘Thank God for no more lunches!’ ” CORPORATE Tom Ara DLA Piper LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL Ara added Apple and TikTok to his list of longstanding clients…

In early January, an anonymous poster began publishing screenshots of text and direct messages apparently involving Armie Hammer on an Instagram account dubbed HouseOfEffie. The contents were graphic and embarrassing, featuring the Social Network actor musing about cannibalistic and rape fantasies. Soon thereafter, another equally mysterious Instagram account called deuxmoi began amplifying HouseOfEffie’s posts to its much larger following, which is close to 900,000 and includes a number of influential journalists. Given the current media ecosystem, in which social media tsunamis often spawn mainstream news coverage, it didn’t take long for reputable outlets to begin publishing stories about Hammer even though it was unclear at that time who was behind the HouseOfEffie blitz and if the messages were genuine. For attorneys who represent the accused in the post-#MeToo era, Hollywood…

Jordan Bromley Manatt Phelps & Phillips In 2020, Bromley’s team negotiated over $1 billion in catalog sales — and, with clients Neil Young, Migos and Diplo, he helped secure benefits for entertainment workers and companies during the pandemic under the CARES Act. David Byrnes Ziffren Brittenham Client Beyoncé released Black Is King for Disney+, winning a Grammy for best music video for one of its clips, “Brown Skin Girl.” Byrnes also reps Blake Shelton, Travis Scott and the late Mac Miller. Rosemary Carroll Carroll Guido Among Carroll’s clients are The Strokes, who won a Grammy for best rock album, and Phoebe Bridgers, who recently started her own label, Saddest Factory. David Eisman Skadden Eisman was involved in several of the splashiest music deals in the past year, including representing Shamrock…

The epicenter of Emmy campaigning now resides 15 miles due east of the TV Academy’s North Hollywood headquarters. In lieu of the organization’s state-of-the-art cantilevered theater, home before the pandemic to an annual marathon of screenings and cocktail hours, what in-person schmoozing is to be found this FYC season is taking place in the parking lot of a 99-year-old stadium. At Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, a handful of programmers are courting Emmy voters almost nightly with that COVID-era novelty — the drive-in. On a recent May evening, some 250 cars, 100 of them carrying at least one Emmy voter, rolled down the Arroyo Parkway for a screening of Bravo’s Top Chef. There was a drive-up photo booth, a taped message from Padma Lakshmi and company at the top of the episode…

In case you needed reminding: The One Hundred and One Dalmatians franchise has never been about the dogs. No — its real star is Cruella de Vil, the acerbic, deliciously biting antagonist with an unhinged fur obsession. Betty Lou Gerson voiced the character in the 1961 Disney animated film, investing the villain with wit, haughtiness and an understated charm. Glenn Close came next in 1996’s live-action 101 Dalmatians, all but — excuse the hyperbole — revolutionizing the role (see page 104). Cruella, in Close’s claws, was sharper, more menacing and, with her untamed two-toned black-and-white hair, scarlet lipstick and maniacal laugh, frankly iconic. To fill her shoes — or should I say her furs — is a daunting undertaking. But it’s one Emma Stone tackles with admirable hustle and considerable…

Footage at the end of Oslo shows President Bill Clinton witnessing the 1993 handshake of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. That moment marked a landmark agreement in which the two adversaries recognized each other’s legitimacy for the first time. The solemn impact of the image is fueled by the knowledge that Rabin would be killed two years later by an Israeli extremist and that the accord would be shattered as violence erupted again in 2000 with the Second Intifada. The current Gaza conflict makes the reminder of the historic encounter cut even deeper. Playwright J.T. Rogers won the top Tony Award in 2017 for his dramatic distillation of the nine months of back-channel negotiations known as the “Oslo Accords,” directed by Bartlett Sher…

One of the biggest streaming players said to me recently, ‘If I had you, my churn would be zero,’ ” Discovery CEO David Zaslav told Wall Street on May 17 about streamer Discovery+’s ability to retain subscribers with popular reality shows like 90 Day Fiancé and Deadliest Catch. Active Discovery+ users spend “over three hours with us” each day, the exec noted. The planned $43 billion merger with WarnerMedia — with its scripted TV crown jewel HBO and historic Warner Bros. film studio — will only further boost consumer appeal, Zaslav crowed: “You add to that Batman, Wonder Woman, King Kong, Sex and the City, Friends. It’s an unrivaled combination.” Zaslav, who will lead the merged giant, told CNBC it could ultimately reach “two-, three-, 400 million homes” worldwide. So,…

On May 19 at the AMC Century City multiplex in Los Angeles, Arnold Schwarzenegger took to the stage with his usual bravado to promote the theatrical experience. “Now is the time to wind down the pandemic period and get back to the big screen,” he said before asking the audience — mostly entertainment press — to chant, “we’re back, we’re back.” After months of cinema closures and sending high-profile content directly to homes, Hollywood is jumping back into the box office trenches and supplying a steady stream of big movies. In the U.S., the campaign begins Memorial Day weekend with Disney’s Cruella and Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II. There are good, as well as ominous, signs. As the pandemic eases in many parts of the globe, the number of…

Queen’s Gambit Co-Creator Follows Up Success With Music Video When singer-songwriter Lukas Frank, 27, needed a creative collaborator to bring to life the vision he had for a music video for his song “Us Against Us,” he called an Oscar-nominated writer and the director of one of the biggest TV shows of the pandemic — his dad, Scott Frank, co-creator of The Queen’s Gambit (in which Lukas has a cameo). His in-demand dad was available and helped him shoot it in one day from a Williamsburg soundstage. “Lukas was so difficult and wouldn’t come out of his trailer. Except he didn’t have a trailer,” Scott Frank jokes. “It was fun to direct him because being a director is being a father anyway. What [they’re] really looking for is reassurance that…

Alan Yang graduated from Harvard at 19. At 25, he was already on staff at comedy favorite Parks and Recreation. And by 2016, he’d won his first Emmy for his celebrated co-creation, Master of None. Alan Yang rarely takes his sweet time with anything. That is, until it came to the latest season of the Netflix comedy. The writer, producer and director, now 37, along with longtime collaborator Aziz Ansari, released Master’s third installment May 23 after a four-year break. During the lengthy hiatus, Yang managed to produce two other series (Little America for Apple and Forever at Amazon), direct his first feature (Netflix’s Tigertail) and, for the past year, work in relative secrecy to reinvent the show that jumpstarted his career. “We wanted it to feel like season one,…

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THE FIRST TIME ANTHONY RAMOS AUDITIONED FOR IN THE HEIGHTS WAS EXACTLY A DECADE AGO. He was 19 and trying out for an ensemble part in a nonunion national tour of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ musical about dreaming, striving and surviving in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood; he made it four rounds and danced for Miranda in the final audition but didn’t make the cut. Miranda has no memory of this first encounter, not that he would be expected to: In 2011, Ramos was just another drama school graduate amid a sea of chorus line hopefuls trying to get a gig — a hard enough task already but made even more difficult in an industry where Latino roles were scarce. He would try out once again for…

Nina Shaw has long stood as a tireless trailblazer and beacon of hope for diverse representation in Hollywood, but 30-plus years ago, when she was trying to break into L.A.’s talent law community, she felt as if she had to whitewash her résumé to get her foot in the door. The Columbia Law grad was already working in the entertainment group at O’Melveny & Myers, but every application for a new job was met with the same rejection: You don’t meet our qualifications. “I didn’t understand how much who you knew mattered,” says Shaw. “It’s one of the issues you face if you’re not an insider: You don’t know it matters, and you don’t necessarily know anyone to refer you.” So when she answered an ad in the trades from…

WHEN DO YOU EXPECT TO RETURN TO THE (PHYSICAL) OFFICE FULL TIME? ARE THEATRICAL WINDOWS AS WE KNOW THEM A THING OF THE PAST? WHAT GRADE WOULD YOU GIVE ENTERTAINMENT LAW ON DIVERSITY WITHIN ITS RANKS? WHO’S WINNING THE STREAMING WARS?…

FARGO (FX) The series’ previous three seasons earned a slew of nominations, including three in the limited series category (winning in 2014). The latest season, set in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1950, stars Chris Rock and Jessie Buckley. GENIUS: ARETHA (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC) For its third season, the anthology drama focuses on the life of Aretha Franklin, played by Oscar nominee and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo. Its first two seasons (on Einstein and Picasso) were nominated for the limited series Emmy. THE GOOD LORD BIRD (SHOWTIME) Ethan Hawke delivers a showstopping turn as the eccentric abolitionist John Brown in this historical dark comedy, adapted from James McBride’s award-winning novel. HALSTON (NETFLIX) Three-time Emmy nominee Ewan McGregor transforms into the iconic fashion designer for the Ryan Murphy series. I MAY DESTROY YOU…

Apple TV+ has been touting its version of Stephen King’s 2006 novel Lisey’s Story as having been written, in its eight-episode entirety, by the Master of Horror himself. It’s a rarity, but it also turns out to be a mixed blessing. The limited series is one of the most literary-feeling of King adaptations, indulging many of the book’s extended metaphors and featuring characters who speak in distinctly Kingian rhythms. This Lisey’s Story is indeed overflowing with ideas — from the grandiose to the goofy — that work better on the page than the screen. It’s up to director Pablo Larraín and a splendid cast led by Julianne Moore and Clive Owen to make the series feel like a series; that effort is sometimes all-too-palpable, especially in a clumsy back half.…

Disney’s Emma Stone-starring Cruella — in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access on May 28 — will be the third live-action spinoff of the 1961 animated classic, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, itself based on the 1956 Dodie Smith novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. The first, 1996’s 101 Dalmatians, was the studio’s second attempt at turning a hand-drawn property into flesh and blood (its first was 1994’s The Jungle Book, which was later remade by Jon Favreau in 2016). Disney then-chairman Joe Roth championed Dalmatians, seeing a profitable path in liveaction remakes (and how right he was). The legendary John Hughes wrote the script, updating the plot somewhat (Pongo’s dad, played by Jeff Daniels, is a video game designer) and, more notably, rendering the spotted stars unable to speak.…

The surprise May 17 reveal of WarnerMedia’s merger with Discovery Inc. was met by a mixture of excitement and trepidation by employees at both companies, sources at each say. There was excitement at the prospect of building a competitor to streaming juggernauts like Netflix, and trepidation over that dreaded term “synergies.” The two companies say they expect $3 billion in cost-saving synergies after two years and plan to pour that cash back into creating streaming content. But where will those savings come from? The most obvious place is layoffs associated with the merger. The bright side: There is little to no overlap on the creative or content side of the businesses, as WarnerMedia offerings like HBO and Warner Bros. focus on more scripted content while Discovery has leaned into reality…

In July 2014, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz signed an open letter accusing Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinians during the Gaza War. Days later, the married A-listers walked back their sentiments, with the No Country for Old Men actor apologizing for both as they faced a Hollywood backlash. “My signature was solely meant as a plea for peace,” Bardem stated at the time. Fast-forward seven years, and the headlines out of the fraught region are similar, with hundreds dead, mostly Palestinians. Unlike with past hostilities in the region, this year’s conflict exposed a fissure thousands of miles away in Hollywood, where public support for Israel is shifting and a counter viewpoint is increasingly finding traction, with notables from Viola Davis to Michael B. Jordan to Zayn Malik using their…

Deal of the Week It wasn’t all that long ago that the finale of every upfront presentation was the reveal of the network primetime schedule. What show would get the coveted post-Friends time slot on NBC? Would CBS create a new night of drama series? Those schedule reveals aren’t gone quite yet, but just as the pandemic scrambled the TV development process and forced ad sales meetings to move to Zoom, this year’s upfronts deemphasized broadcast primetime while building up streaming. Or, as WarnerMedia head of ad sales JP Colaco said during the upfront, “We believe IP is the new primetime.” The pitch: Yes, broadcast TV is on the decline, but streaming makes up for it. NBCUniversal touted Peacock, Fox pitched Tubi, WarnerMedia debuted HBO Max With Ads, ViacomCBS highlighted…

The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment event, entering its second decade, looked a little different without its typical in-person Los Angeles celebration. This year, it brought the star power to an hourlong Lifetime special on May 24. Women in Entertainment: The Next Generation, tied to THR’s annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 list, was hosted by Padma Lakshmi, with virtual celebrity appearances from Elizabeth Olsen, Kathryn Hahn, Jurnee Smollett, Gillian Anderson, Emma Corrin, Lana Condor, Anitta and Anna Kendrick. The special highlighted THR’s pioneering Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program, which, in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, grants $1 million in scholarships to L.A. high school seniors from underserved communities. More than $10 million has been given away since the program’s inception, which matches teen…

Hulu is moving forward with its commitment to correct the dearth of public statues honoring women with the launch of Made by Her: Monuments. The initiative will see the streamer mount public works honoring civil rights activist Coretta Scott King in Atlanta, journalist and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Miami and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Los Angeles. Made by Her: Monuments was made possible through a partnership with visual artist Saya Woolfalk, city officials in L.A., Miami and Atlanta and reps for the estates of the three women. The Douglas and King monuments will be unveiled this summer, with the Ginsburg artwork slated for 2022. Says Hulu president Kelly Campbell: “Now more than ever, it is crucial to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of women and other underrepresented groups, and…

Juggling rising production costs and declining series orders with a new year-round development cycle, no one had to be more nimble during the recent broadcast upfronts than those in the seats of power at the studios. THR caught up with seven studio chiefs, four of whom just wrapped their first upfronts in new roles, as the frenzied week of virtual presentations wrapped to get their takes on the year’s victories (and stinging losses), unsettling trends and the odd talent requests that emerged during the pandemic. A lot of deals had to be renegotiated because of the pandemic. How are you approaching contracts with talent now? JONNIE DAVIS (ABC SIGNATURE) We’re showing more flexibility in letting people do multiple projects for multiple outlets. CHANNING DUNGEY (WARNER BROS. TV GROUP) There’s more…

What a year. A mother-fucker for sure. We’ve all had the same internal monologues: from “I’m so ready for things to get back to normal” and “Nothing is ever going to be normal again,” to “What the hell does normal even mean?!” The good news is things are changing. The fog we’ve been walking through this past year has handicapped my memory, but the thing I haven’t forgotten how to do is have a good time with my friends. The question then becomes … where the fuck do I go? The conversations I have with my family tend to go like: “What about so and so,” or, “Remember that outdoor patio at …” to, “I know … damn, it closed.” And that’s when it hits you. So many incredible restaurants…

For an hour in early May, six enormously talented men convened on Zoom to swap stories and praise. Mr. Mayor’s Ted Danson, something of a legend in sitcom-land, had watched The Office for the first time during the pandemic and was all too eager to tell Ed Helms, now the co-creator and star of Peacock’s Rutherford Falls, how fabulous he had been. Helms, ever the mensch, repaid the compliment by telling the entire virtual table that Danson has always been an inspiration to him. Later in the same wide-ranging conversation, part of The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Emmy Roundtable series, Woke’s Lamorne Morris described the talent toolbox of Ben Platt, the Tony winner who stars on Netflix’s The Politician, as genuinely “mind-blowing” and then tried to convince Danson to guest star…

Harold Brown Gang Tyre In the mid-1980s, Brown cut an unprecedented theme-parks pact for Steven Spielberg with Universal, and more than 30 years later the helmer is still a client — along with Robert Zemeckis, Michael Mann, George Miller and Dwayne Johnson. Joseph Calabrese Latham & Watkins Calabrese spent most of his career at O’Melveny & Myers, becoming one of the industry’s top gurus in M&A and finance, before making a stirring move to Latham & Watkins in 2014. Over the years, he’s repped everyone from the International Olympic Committee to Legendary Pictures and pro sports teams. Patti Felker Felker Toczek Felker knows how to fight for clients. In 2016, Emmy Rossum wouldn’t return to Shameless unless she was paid full parity. In Felker’s early years, agents would send her…

Two years after the war between writers and agents went nuclear, as David A. Goodman completes his final months as president of the Writers Guild of America West, he thinks about the moment the fight ended — when, in February, WME was the last talent agency in town to agree to sunset packaging and divest ownership in production entities. “It was COVID, I was at home,” says Goodman. “I probably had a few drinks. It was out of a sense of relief because, even though it was the guild that did this, I was leading it. I felt enormous responsibility to our members who wanted their agents back.” Mass firings are supposed to be the thing that every union dreads and, in the annals of international labor history, very few…

Each year, The Hollywood Reporter spotlights the top schools for entertainment law, determined by how many alumni are among the ranks of Power Lawyers. This time, THR expanded its criteria to factor in specialized courses, externship opportunities and more program essentials that give students an edge in handling the complex deals and high-stakes litigation that comes with the Hollywood territory — even if nothing could prepare young attorneys for doing so in a pandemic. 1. UCLA School of Law A longtime training ground for Hollywood attorneys, UCLA tops the list with an impressive offering through the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law that includes a media and entertainment specialization, a documentary film legal clinic and sports simulation program — plus, the school has a dedicated entertainment law…

DOCUMENTARY SERIES When it comes to the doc categories, Netflix always delivers an assortment of contenders, and this year is no different, with its offerings including Pretend It’s a City with Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese; Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, about Richard Ramirez; medical series Lenox Hill; and Song Exploder, based on the hit music podcast. They’ll face off against HBO Max’s Expecting Amy, which focuses on Amy Schumer’s fertility journey, HBO’s six-part Golden State Killer doc I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and the much discussed Allen v. Farrow. DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL Music documentaries often rule this category, with Netflix’s Biggie and HBO’s Tina and The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart numbering among the contenders this year. Plus, Netflix has the buzzy…