Innholdsfortegnelse for January 12, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

National broadcast TV networks don’t go on the market very often. So when the news broke that ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia were shopping a majority stake in The CW network, and that local TV giant Nexstar was the lead bidder, eyebrows instantly raised. The deal, assuming it goes through (one source familiar with the talks says that while they were advanced, they could fall apart), would reshape the network TV landscape at a time when the very idea of what network TV should be is in question. For ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia, the deal would give them much-needed cash to invest in their owned streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max (both companies have been divesting “noncore” assets over the past few years for that reason), and multiple sources tell THR that any…

The great cable news recalibration of 2022 is beginning. On Jan. 10, MSNBC revealed that Symone Sanders, who up until December was the chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, would host a weekend show and streaming program. CNN, meanwhile, poached NPR’s Audie Cornish to host a CNN+ streaming show and work as a correspondent on its linear channel. And Fox News promoted The Five co-host Jesse Watters as its permanent 7 p.m. host after a year of rotating guest hosts. MSNBC’s and CNN’s hires are focused on streaming but with a linear component, putting the emphasis on where they see their business going while maintaining a connection to cable, where most viewers remain for now. Fox News continues to focus on its TV offering, where its bread is buttered,…

Over the decades, Hollywood has had its share of efforts at revitalization. Front and center was the massive Hollywood & Highland shopping center (opened in 2001), which didn’t exactly turn the area into a hip hood; the mall is now in the midst of a $100 million makeover and will be relaunched as Ovation Hollywood. The neighborhood also faced a tough time during the pandemic, with tourism largely disappearing in 2020. Now, though, an area a bit to the east of Ovation — not far from where Netflix and Viacom opened L.A. headquarters in 2017 — is enjoying an upswing, in significant part due to the investments of one developer, Relevant Group. Centered on a few blocks around the recently inauspicious intersection of Selma and Wilcox avenues, it’s been branded…

In 2007 or ’08, when Barack Obama was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sidney Poitier was watching the process with a mixture of hope and anxiety. Poitier was following Obama not just as a voter and a Black man, but as someone aware of the pressures — and dangers — of being a “first.” Poitier, born in Miami and raised in the Bahamas, was worried about the young senator from Illinois. That concern surfaced at a dinner with friends, producer Mike Medavoy and his wife, Irena, and record executive Berry Gordy. “I brought up that I think that Obama could really win. He could make a difference here, and how exciting it was and how wonderful,” says Irena. “Sidney said, ‘I’m scared for him. I don’t want him to…

Ever since the Oscar category for best picture was expanded to include 10 potential nominees (a response to the outcry when commercial and critical hits The Dark Knight and Wall-E failed to claim one of the category’s five slots in 2008), the Academy has attempted to balance its top category with typical awards season fare and crowd-pleasing box office successes. For the second pandemic-era Oscars, however, the latter category is still limited given that newly reopened theaters across the country saw hesitant audiences make slow returns to the multiplexes. While this year’s race, like 2021, is dominated by streaming titles, the distributors who did land their features on the big screen are hoping their box office gambles will pay off when the Oscar nominations are announced Feb. 8. The PGA…

THR’s Raising Our Voices series is produced and curated by THR editors and presented by Walmart. The road to Respect began with the Queen of Soul herself, who was involved in discussions about her biopic several years before her passing in 2018. Ultimately, it took a village to bring the life story of Aretha Franklin to the big screen for the first time. With the legendary singer already having anointed Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson to play her, in 2019 MGM tapped South Africa-born theater director Liesl Tommy — a 2016 Tony nominee for Danai Gurira’s Lupita Nyong’ostarring play Eclipsed — to helm. The film’s screenwriter, Tracey Scott Wilson, is also an acclaimed theater vet (The Story, The Good Negro), whose screen credits include FX’s The Americans and Fosse/Verdon. Tommy and…

While at L.A.’s Occidental College, Raiff tweeted at the elder Duplass, Jay, a link to a homespun movie he made with two college friends, writing, “I bet you won’t click on this link and then email me after.” Less than 24 hours later, he received an email. Using that movie as a creative jumping-off point, the 24-year-old Dallas native dropped out of school in his junior year to film Shithouse, a microbudget indie that Raiff wrote, directed, produced and starred in. With the guiding hand of the elder Duplass, he shot the movie guerrilla-style in and around the East L.A. neighborhoods Eagle Rock and Highland Park. At one point, Amy Landecker, who plays Raiff’s onscreen mother, asked the filmmaker if the kids playing in the park where they were filming…

While sales were expected to be subdued at Sundance in 2021 given the then-shuttered theaters and a COVID-19 vaccine still on the horizon, the fest’s first online edition boasted some record breaking sales for titles like current awards season hopefuls CODA and Summer of Soul. But those deals overshadowed what turned out to be an otherwise muted market. This year’s fest — once again online-only, thanks to the omicron surge — is stacked with streamer-friendly genre fare and nonfiction titles. No longer relegated to the Midnight section, zombies, stalkers and super natural specters have an outsized presence across the lineup. “More than any other year I have been at Sundance, we have more films in our U.S. competition that are genre-leaning,” notes director of programming Kim Yutani. Meanwhile, on the…

Peggy Sirota Photographed Sidney Poitier with Halle Berry for THR in 2010 (at left). “Mr. Poitier was everything you’d picture: approachable, humble, gentle, kind, and most of all regal. I remember when he arrived — everybody looking at each other feeling like there was royalty in the house. It was a very special day.” Joe Pugliese Photographed Poitier with his family, 2013 and 2017. “I knew I was photographing cinematic royalty and approached Mr. Poitier with reverence and care during the shoot. To my surprise, within minutes he made me feel like a family friend with his warm banter and smiling eyes. After the images were published, I sent a print to the family and Mr. Poitier sent me a personal, signed note to thank me. A true legend with…

Last year, Roku moved to expand its focus on original content, picking up the former Quibi library at the start of 2021 to help boost its 4-year-old streaming channel. With a robust ad business to back it up, a few analysts looked to Roku as a prime stock pick, while some observers predicted that the company — most associated with its hardware — would buy a film and TV studio in 2022. But on Jan. 7, Scott Rosenberg, a top executive who oversaw the launch of The Roku Channel and led the company’s move into content, announced he was leaving later this spring after nearly a decade with Roku. While Rosenberg, senior vp and GM of Roku’s platform business, will help with the transition, the news comes as Roku’s stock…

SOLD AT A LOSS BOSTON GLOBE (New England paper) Bought for $1.1 billion from Affiliated Publications in 1993, then sold for $70 million to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry in 2013. TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (New England paper) Acquired for $295 million from Chronicle Publishing in 1999, then sold as part of the $70 million deal with the Globe in 2013. ABOUT.COM (web portal) Bought for $410 million from Primedia Inc. in 2005; sold for $300 million to Barry Diller’s IAC in 2012. It since has rebranded as Dotdash. LEGACY DEALS DISCOVERY CIVILIZATION CHANNEL (cable TV) Bought a 50 percent stake from Discovery Inc. in 2002 for $100 million, rebranded Discovery Times Channel; sold back to Discovery in 2006 for $100 million. REGIONAL MEDIA GROUP (local papers) Bought 16 regional…

Big Deal While Illumination’s Sing 2 did solid business at the year-end holiday box office after its Dec. 22 bow, families still haven’t returned to the multiplex in full force. And what momentum there has been is now endangered by the highly infectious omicron variant. The struggling family marketplace prompted Universal to make Sing 2 available on premium video on-demand on Jan. 7, just 17 days after it opened on the big screen. And there was a twist: The studio upped its 48-hour rental PVOD price from $19.99 to $24.99. Consumers didn’t seem to mind. Sources close to the company tell THR the film marked Universal’s second-biggest opening weekend on PVOD behind Trolls World Tour. Also on Jan. 7, Disney said that Pixar’s early March event film Turning Red will…

Omicron’s Calendar Chaos: ‘Nobody Knows Where This Is Going’ As COVID-fueled cancellations and postponements have piled up in recent weeks — including the Grammys and in-person Sundance Film Festival — Hollywood is staring down what could potentially be a jampacked February and March. Though the January calendar has been effectively cleared, “the Oscars have not postponed yet, so everybody has to get in before the Oscars,” says Judi Barker, owner of Barker Hangar, the event space scheduled to host the SAG Awards on Feb. 27. That leaves seven weekends for all of awards season to squeeze into before the March 27 Oscars, with major shows like Critics Choice, SAG, DGA, WGA and Indie Spirits jostling for oxygen. “Nobody knows where this is going,” Barker adds, as venues for accompanying awards…

After a somber showing for most of the year, there were finally signs of a real rebound at the box office for awards fare. MGM/United Artists’ Licorice Pizza secured a pandemic-era best opening per-theater average over Thanksgiving, while its House of Gucci sewed up nice numbers despite being an adult drama. Even 20th Century/Disney remained cautiously optimistic that December’s West Side Story could overcome a poor start ($32.2 million domestic as of Jan. 9) and stay in theaters long enough to see a boost from potential Oscar nominations. Distributors — particularly smaller indie outfits — have for years relied on the box office bump that begins with Oscar noms and lasts through the Academy Awards telecast. But now hopes for that are fading, thanks to the massively infectious omicron variant…

Hollywood Boulevard’s historic Musso & Frank Grill just made an upgrade. Known for serving legends such as Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt over the years, the 102-year-old eatery recently unveiled four new private dining spaces. Designed by global architecture firm Gensler, the rooms are the first addition of new dining space to the restaurant since 1955. “It was really important for us when we were designing these rooms that we made sure to look into the past [of Musso & Frank] and bring the past with us into the future,” says Mark Echeverria, COO and CFO of Musso & Frank. “We kept a lot of the same architectural and design elements that you already see in the existing dining rooms.” (The restaurant closed over the holidays…

As the founding director of the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at Arizona State University, Sidney Poitier’s passing on Jan. 6 acutely reminded me of the impact he’s had on the film industry and the Black community as a whole. Before Sidney became a name in the film industry, there were few opportunities for people of color. He often commented on how he was the only Black person on film sets and in production meetings. I was able to walk through many doors in my career because Sidney — as well as Quincy Jones, Harry Belafonte, Suzanne de Passe and my late brother, Ashley — walked through them first. My first impression upon meeting Sidney, many decades ago, was that he was a gentleman. Even though he was already…

Before his first film even was released, Guillermo del Toro already was pursuing his own version of Nightmare Alley, the 1947 film noir classic from 20th Century Fox, which ultimately would become his 11th feature. It would take 25 years, an Oscar best picture win and the culmination of a bromance and a romance before the opportunity would materialize — as it finally has in this year’s darkly seductive awards season contender starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett. In 1998, del Toro, then only 29, had just wrapped production on his debut feature, the genre-bending horror drama Cronos, starring Ron Perlman, his best friend in the business. Restless for their next project, del Toro and his leading man were watching old movies together and casting about for new ideas. Perlman…

BEN AFFLECK & MATT DAMON The Last Duel Damon and Affleck were breakout stars with Good Will Hunting, which earned them the Oscar for best original screenplay. They have separately produced several films since (with Affleck’s Argo winning best picture), and collaborated again on Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel as stars and producers. They also co-wrote the screenplay with Nicole Holofcener, based on the book by Eric Jager. MAHERSHALA ALI Swan Song Swan Song marks Ali’s debut as a lead actor in a feature film after twice winning the best supporting actor Oscar, for Moonlight and Green Book in 2017 and 2019, respectively. The sci-fi drama also marks his first producing credit on a feature. Previously, he served as a producer on the 2020 documentary We Are the Dream: The…

The very title of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere suggests self-effacement, and in some ways the series seems to live up to that impression. Though it wades into painful topics like grief and addiction, it does not wallow in the depths of despair. Though it’s billed as a half-hour comedy, it inspires more smiles and chuckles than belly laughs. But it would be a mistake to assume such gentleness translates into a show that feels subdued or shallow. Blessed with an eagle eye for detail, a laid-back sense of humor and a disarming sense of compassion, Somebody Somewhere is a mostly low-key delight that occasionally spills over into sheer exuberance. Created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and inspired by autobiographical details from star and executive producer Bridget Everett’s own life, the…

New York may have had Studio 54, but Los Angeles had Spago. The game-changing trattoria from Wolfgang Puck — an affable Austrian who’d made a name for himself at the since-shuttered Ma Maison — opened it doors Jan. 16, 1982. It was an instant sensation, with 18 Rolls-Royces parked outside on opening night and an hours-long wait for a table. Inside, the Sunset Strip eatery — its name suggested by composer Giorgio Moroder after the Italian word for “string” (also a slang term for spaghetti) — became a culinary sensation in addition to a week-round bacchanal, where moguls and movie stars did drugs and had sex in bathrooms while overwhelmed line cooks (Mozza’s Nancy Silverton got her start there as a pastry chef) scrambled to turn out signature dishes like…

While COVID-19 has infected several late night hosts in the past month, the shows they front haven’t made many drastic changes in how they operate amid the latest virus spike. Seth Meyers and James Corden — who in January revealed positive COVID-19 tests — are staying out of the studio for now, while Jimmy Fallon has returned to full production on NBC’s The Tonight Show. And other late night shows are largely staying the course even as coronavirus cases are hitting previously unseen levels in New York and L.A. Fallon was the first major host to catch the virus, revealing that he tested positive on the first day of the show’s holiday break in December. He has since recovered and returned to his show, hosting a mix of in-studio and…

BEST PICTURE Belfast Kenneth Branagh’s semiautobiographical film, thought by many to be an Oscar frontrunner, was completely snubbed by the National Society of Film Critics on Jan. 8 and won only one prize (it was nominated for seven) at the closed-door Golden Globes on Jan. 9, best screenplay for Branagh. The Power of the Dog As billboards promoting this Western went up around L.A. featuring writer-director Jane Campion front and center, the film came up just short in a bunch of NSFC races but tied for the most wins at the Globes with three — best drama picture, director (Campion) and supporting actor (Kodi Smit-McPhee). West Side Story Jan. 9 wasn’t just any night for Steven Spielberg’s musical, as it, too, was awarded three Globes — best musical/comedy picture and…

A spen is the most buzzed-about, see-and-be-seen spot each winter, with the likes of the Kardashians, Kate Hudson and her family, and so many more holding court. But for stars and execs who wish to ski or snowboard in relative peace, these three other Colorado destinations beckon with charming mountains and new luxury après-ski offerings. VAIL Leading up to its 60th anniversary next season, the home of the Epic Pass (and the state’s largest ski resort) is focusing on its history. Vail’s refreshed Legacy Hut warm-up area is the place to catch a gratis themed Mountain Tour on skis — one that incorporates stories about the naming of trails, straight from the mouth of a veteran old dog mountain host. … The Avanti Skills Zone and Avanti Performance Center are…

Although big-scale premiere events have been largely scrapped for the time being amid record-breaking COVID-19 cases in New York and Los Angeles, the cast and crew of Euphoria were able to celebrate their second season with an intimate event Jan. 5. Castmembers Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Angus Cloud, Maude Apatow, Austin Abrams, Colman Domingo, Eric Dane and new addition Dominic Fike, along with creator Sam Levinson, posed on a photos-only red carpet at Hollywood’s Goya Studios ahead of the HBO drama’s season two premiere, which arrived Jan. 9, after a two-hear hiatus. Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

To tell the story of Richard Williams — father of Venus and Serena — and their family’s path from late ’80s/early ’90s Compton to the daughters’ rise in the world of professional tennis, production designers Wynn Thomas and William Arnold artfully used sets and Southern California locations. “It’s a journey from the rough and tumble world of Compton, and as they advance, they travel into this world of various exclusive private country clubs and fancy tennis courts,” explains Thomas of the production design for Warner Bros.’ King Richard, starring Will Smith. Early work involved careful research and extensive location scouting, for instance, to find the neglected tennis court on which the sisters practice early in the movie. “It had to feel like it was in an urban area, so we…

As we begin to navigate this uncharted territory of life without my father, I realize that there is an infinite list of things I will miss. The memories that hold the most weight in my heart are not the larger iconic moments but rather the smaller private ones. I will miss hugging him in his cashmere sweaters and listening to him ponder the cosmos. I will miss his laughter, his smile and his silly sense of humor. I have so many family memories of us just laughing, the kind of infectious laughter that just won’t stop until the tears are streaming down our faces. I will miss being witness to his unbounded compassion. I often stood in awe of how generously he gave his undivided attention and genuine care to…

IS there a world in which…?” As The Harder They Fall co-writer (and director) Jeymes Samuel recounted how Idris Elba — his friend and one of the stars of his all-Black Western — prefaced his not-infrequent on-set requests to veer from the script, several of his fellow screen writers seated at The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Writer Roundtable knowingly chuckled along. In addition to Samuel (who penned his screenplay with Boaz Yakin), the Oscar-contending scribes who convened in mid-December at PMC headquarters included Maggie Gyllenhaal, who adapted Elena Ferrante’s 2008 novel about motherhood, The Lost Daughter, and made her directorial debut helming it; Sian Heder, who adapted the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier into CODA and also directed it; David Chase, who wrote Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark with…

CLINT BENTLEY Jockey Clifton Collins Jr. earned a special jury award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival for his portrayal of an aging jockey making one last go on the horseracing circuit. With a cast that includes real horse-racing pros, co-writer and director Bentley examines a close-knit world with which he is extremely familiar as the son of a jockey himself. A character-driven drama also featuring a memorable turn from Molly Parker, Jockey won the audience award at AFI Fest and was named a top independent film by the National Board of Review; it also is nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. REBECCA HALL Passing When Hall discovered Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella, it gave her fresh insight into the hidden life of her maternal grandfather,…

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR + AGUSTÍN ALMODÓVAR Parallel Mothers Pedro Almodóvar, who can count Oscar winners All About My Mother and Talk to Her among his credits, started production company El Deseo with his younger brother Agustín in 1986. Agustín Almodóvar has produced all of the director’s films since 1987’s Law of Desire. TODD HAYNES + CHRISTINE VACHON The Velvet Underground Vachon produced Haynes’ first feature, Poison (1991), and has since gone on to produce all his films, including Far From Heaven (which was nominated for four Academy Awards), Carol, Safe, I’m Not There and, most recently, the documentary The Velvet Underground. RIDLEY SCOTT + GIANNINA SCOTT House of Gucci Giannina Scott brought her passion project House of Gucci to husband and producing partner Ridley. She co-produced his 2003 film Matchstick Men,…

Long stretches of Peacock’s Wolf Like Me are basically a two-hander with characters played by Isla Fisher and Josh Gad embarking on a new romance while discussing the challenges of finding love in your 40s, opening yourself up and exposing your baggage to another person. They’re long conversations on park benches or across dinner tables, framed by writer-director Abe Forsythe to accentuate the emotional gulf between his protagonists. Indeed, you might be perplexed to discover that Wolf Like Me is a show about strained relationships and the healing properties of love and openness — more like Scenes From a Marriage than the genre-defying, supernatural-adjacent series Peacock wants people to think it is. That’s the challenge of both writing about and watching Wolf Like Me; there’s the story Forsythe is telling,…