Innholdsfortegnelse for January 26, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

There were no elves, dwarfs or hobbits shown — not even a few crumbs of lembas bread. And yet, Amazon’s teaser video Jan. 19 revealing the mere title of its upcoming The Lord of the Rings TV series managed to rack up an estimated social reach of 1 billion impressions and trended in markets worldwide on Twitter and YouTube, the studio claims. “To already see this much enthusiasm for the series is incredible and gets us even more excited for what we’ll be sharing with fans in the near future,” says Ukonwa Ojo, global CMO of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. The show’s title, The Rings of Power, revealed to fans that the secretive prequel series would focus on the forging of the Dark Lord Sauron’s instruments of control —…

BEST PICTURE Nightmare Alley Martin Scorsese gushed about Guillermo del Toro’s latest film in a Jan. 21 Los Angeles Times op-ed, and the film got a top Art Directors Guild Award nomination and tied for most noms from the Motion Picture Sound Editors on Jan. 24. BEST ACTOR Mahershala Ali Swan Song Oprah Winfrey, who posted a video over the holidays of her and friends raving about the Oscar winner’s portrayal of a man and his clone, taped a convo with him, which was uploaded to Apple’s FYC site and sent to Oscar voters Jan. 19. BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE Flee Beloved Parasite Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho’s endorsement of this film was emailed to members of the press Jan. 21. It reads in part: “It directly penetrates your heart and…

While case counts continue to surge in parts of the U.S., omicron is leveling off or declining in portions of the East Coast, California and Colorado. And many industry execs are feeling more at ease about traveling. “I canceled a trip to Europe over Christmas, but I feel comfortable traveling within the U.S. now,” says Laurie Zaks, president of her newly formed production company, Rosewood TV. “Cases are down in New York, my family is there, and my last visit was at the very beginning of COVID two years ago when the world shut down. I want to get back and enjoy a nice, pleasant trip in the city.” On NYC’s Upper East Side, the legendary Carlyle Hotel (from $795 a night) just debuted reimagined guest rooms with art deco…

Eviction Lawsuits Hit ‘Hottest Apartment Building in L.A.’ One of L.A.’s priciest apartment buildings may soon have “For Rent” signs in the window. An attorney for Ten Thousand, located at 10000 Santa Monica Blvd. in Century City, filed 11 eviction lawsuits recently in Superior Court of California over claims of unpaid rent. The suits target several high-profile tenants including Chicago rapper G Herbo and two Instagram influencers, personal brand-builder Jas Mathur and sneaker guru Benjamin Kapelushnik, aka Benjamin Kickz. Ten Thousand launched in 2017 with a reported 2,000 people on a waiting list ready to fork over anywhere from $10,000 to $65,000 a month for one of 283 units in the 40-story building. One renter notified the court of an intent to declare “COVID-19-related financial distress.” A Ten Thousand official…

Until the #OscarsSoWhite controversy exploded in 2016 — when, for the second consecutive year, no non-white performers were nominated for acting Oscars — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was inviting roughly 300 people to become new members each year. Afterward, it welcomed considerably more diverse classes of 683 in 2016, 774 in 2017, 928 in 2018, 842 in 2019 and 819 in 2020, the year its “A2020” equity and inclusion goals were met, before returning to a more traditional 375 in 2021. In other words, 4,421 of the Academy’s approximately 9,400 current active members — or 47 percent — weren’t part of the organization just six years ago. A byproduct of the Academy’s diversity push has been a huge increase in the number of its members who…

Born out of skate-culture shock videos, Jackass featured a lovable gang of ne’er-do-wells — including clown-college grad Steve-O, thong-loving exhibitionist Chris Pontius and occasional Oompa Loompa impersonator Jason “Wee Man” Acuña — performing a three-ring circus of Candid Camera-style pranks, gag-inducing dares and flat-out lunatic stunts. Something about its bum-fights-meets-Three Stooges energy instantly clicked with MTV audiences, giving the network its highest ratings in history (2.4 million among 12-to-34-year-olds) while sending lawmakers like Sen. Joe Lieberman into apoplectic fits. Knoxville pulled the plug on the show after just three seasons and 25 episodes, but corporate sibling Paramount Studios found a way to keep the money-minting franchise alive in the form of three feature films: 2002’s Jackass: The Movie (which grossed $80 million worldwide); 2006’s Jackass Number Two ($85 million); and…

The Visual Effects Society at press time was weighing the format for its 20th annual awards presentation because of the omicron surge. Whatever form it takes, this year’s awards coincide with the 25th anniversary of its founding in early 1997, at a time when VFX on movies such as Titanic were in production. Reflecting advances in diversity within the society’s leadership, in 2021 VES elected its first woman board chair, Lisa Cooke, a VFX veteran and producer at Tippett Studio. And, with this month’s election, the society now has its first slate of all-female VFX veterans as board officers: first vice chair Emma Clifton Perry, second vice chair Susan O’Neal, treasurer Laurie Blavin and Rita Cahill, who is serving her seventh term as secretary. “I’m thrilled to have a wonderful…

After two years of lockdowns and disruptions, Canada’s production sector appears to be entering into a post-COVID boom. As proof, look no further than the fact that American streaming giants and broadcasters are not only returning to Canada for location shoots — they’re setting up shop for good with new builds of production stages, soundstages and studios. “The fact that Netflix is taking long-term leases and buying studio space, the fact that CBS did that as well, you’re seeing big international entities seeing value in investing in real estate to service their productions here and are committed to staying,” says Mark Bishop, co-CEO of Toronto-based indie producer marblemedia, creator of the reality glass-art competition series Blown Away on Netflix. The boom is being driven in part by Canada’s robust VFX…

In May 2016, Disney sent shock waves through the video game sector when it ended its stint as a publisher of console titles to, it said, “transition exclusively to a licensing model.” It later replicated that move in the mobile games space and let outside studios create projects built on its intellectual property like Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar. “We are good at making movies and television shows and theme parks and cruise ships and the like,” then-CEO Bob Iger said in 2019. “We have just never managed to demonstrate much skill on the publishing side of games.” Most Hollywood giants have similarly retreated from video game ambitions. NBCUniversal shut down its game studio in 2019, before its current CEO, Jeff Shell, took over. And Discovery chief David Zaslav hasn’t…

The streaming wars fueled a surge in L.A. County TV shoot days in 2021, as feature filming continues to struggle to catch up to pre-COVID-19 years. “L.A.’s vast production support infrastructure, including its talent and crew base, makes it easy to spin up a new series project here,” says FilmLA’s Philip Sokoloski, who notes that “features remain more vulnerable to runaway production” given incentives in other locales. NUMBER OF SHOOT DAYS Source: FilmLA Q4 2021 report.…

There are few people in Los Angeles who straddle the worlds of political activism, Hollywood and art the way Patrisse Cullors does. A co-founder of Black Lives Matter — the movement that arose following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013, after he killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin a year earlier — she went on to write a best-selling 2018 memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, in 2018. “That was the height of when Black Lives Matter was being called a terrorist organization,” she says. Cullors also became a writer on the Freeform show Good Trouble, which led to an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV Group in late 2020. That same year, Cullors — through her work as an artist, she has presented performance pieces at the Broad and…

While U.S. events are still on hold amid the omicron variant surge, Italy and France have returned to near normalcy, hosting Milan Men’s Fashion Week from Jan. 15 to Jan. 17 and Paris Fashion Week from Jan. 18 to Jan. 27. Among the Hollywood stars taking in the new collections were Jeff Goldblum and Kyle MacLachlan (who both walked in the Prada show); Dave Chappelle and Gossip Girl’s Thomas Doherty (attended Dior); and Venus Williams, J Balvin and Tyler, the Creator (at Louis Vuitton). Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

Set in Montana during 1925, Jane Campion’s Netflix drama The Power of the Dog, centering on rancher Phil Burbank, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, was lensed on location in New Zealand. The soundscape was of prime importance to the director. “In early conversations with Jane, we were very focused on the sound of the landscape and of the winds and how the sound would travel over those plains and how we would perceive how deep the landscape is,” says supervising sound editor Robert Mackenzie. “It’s almost like the house is a boat on the ocean — it’s a relatively small object in a wide expanse.” Also key was character, such as how Burbank’s tense presence was presented through his whistling, his banjo playing and with his boots. “Benedict used the boots…

There’s a saying that you should never meet your idols, but Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose beg to differ. It was the spring of 2019 when Rita Moreno showed up to rehearsals for the new West Side Story movie at Gelsey Kirkland dance studios in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. She is an actor and executive producer on the film, but to many of the young members of the cast, the first Latina actress to win an Academy Award meant so much more than that. Moreno strode into the room and asked to meet the person playing Anita, the heir to her Oscar-winning role from the 1961 adaptation of the musical, but she was nowhere to be found. “I was having a full-fledged panic attack,” DeBose admits. “I hid underneath the bleachers…

For Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan, working on Focus Features’ Belfast was unlike anything they’d done before. The actress, who plays Ma in Kenneth Branagh’s film based on his childhood, felt drawn to the story when she saw that the script was focused on ordinary people instead of the politics and ideology of Northern Ireland — which she often sees in projects that come her way. For Dornan, who plays Balfe’s husband, Pa, Belfast was set in his hometown, and he was enticed by the truthful story of a family struggling with crippling decisions, grief and unconditional love. Plus, they got to work with a cast that included Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds and 11-year-old newcomer Jude Hill, whom Balfe and Dornan describe as a joy to work with. The duo…

Mike Mills was feeling depressed. Having completed his previous film, 20th Century Women, in 2016, he was searching for his next project, but the Los Angeles-based writer-director admits, “I was quite lost. I didn’t know what to do. It was a weird struggle.” The answer, though, proved to be right in front of him: “It started with being a dad, watching my kid, all the things being a parent showed me, what it did to my heart and my understanding of the world.” But though he was inspired by his child, Hopper, born to Mills and his wife, director Miranda July, in 2012, he still hesitated. He’d mined his family history before: 2010’s Beginners was inspired by his father’s decision to come out late in life, and 20th Century Women…

Over the past 20 years, America and its allies in Afghanistan helped finance and train a new generation of Afghan film and TV professionals in an effort to build a democracy in the country. Last summer, amid the rapid and chaotic U.S. military withdrawal, they abandoned them to the Taliban. Since then, a small group of volunteers has been trying to get them out. The Afghan actors, directors, producers, sound engineers and makeup artists had worked on series like Eagle Four, a police thriller modeled on 24, or the American Idol-style singing competition Afghan Star — all shows that received backing from the U.S. embassy and development agency USAID. “We had men and women working side-by-side together as equals. That was something new for the country,” says Muffy Potter, a…

Big Deal DNEG, the U.K.- headquartered visual effects and animation company that won an Oscar for Tenet and created VFX on Dune, is set to go public by merging with Sports Ventures Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisitions company. Unveiled on Jan. 25, the transaction has a combined merger value of about $1.7 billion. London-headquartered DNEG — whose effects credits also include The Matrix Resurrections, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and No Time to Die — has been expanding into feature animation and content creation in areas such as gaming. “We are perfectly positioned to exploit massive new opportunities in the metaverse and the convergence of all forms of content creation,” said DNEG chairman and CEO Namit Malhotra, who will lead the combined companies after the merger is completed. DNEG…

At age 19, Jenna Ortega is already one decade into her career. The actress — who rose to prominence playing Young Jane on The CW’s dramedy Jane the Virgin, followed by roles in You and Yes Day — stars in two movies out in January, Paramount’s Scream reboot, the first hit of 2022, and The Fallout (premiering Jan. 27 on HBO Max), which follows two teenage classmates navigating grief after surviving a school shooting. The Hollywood Reporter’s review of the latter — one of the most talked-about films out of SXSW last year — praised Ortega for her “beautifully nuanced” performance. Ortega, who was born in the Coachella Valley, spoke to THR about her new films and about the project she’s now filming with Tim Burton. How are you feeling…

Sam Richardson’s first paid acting gig quickly went south. Loading into a Ford Windstar with his mother, older brother and childhood friend Lamar, he headed down Interstate 75 from his hometown of Detroit for a semester work program at Disney World, where he was eager to join the cast of Festival of the Lion King. “Not the Broadway musical,” he clarifies, 19 years later. “It’s, like, inspired by that — those same kinds of costumes — but it’s a stage show at Animal Kingdom.” Once his travel companions had flown back north, leaving him in Orlando with the aging minivan he’d just put another 1,200 miles on, Richardson discovered that the theme park had something else in mind. “Oh no, no, no. Who told you that?” he recalls hearing, and…

Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos In Amazon’s backstage drama, set during a tense week of production on I Love Lucy, Kidman’s Lucille Ball and Bardem’s Desi Arnaz lob hard-edged zingers as frequently as compliments. Writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s examination of one of America’s most beloved couples, onscreen and off, is a witty look at a partnership that was both romantic and professional. Adam Driver and Lady Gaga, House of Gucci The tumultuous marriage between Mauricio Gucci (Driver) and Patrizia Reggiani (Gaga) is the center of this stylish and campy crime drama from director Ridley Scott that follows the pair’s love affair and eventual breakup, which resulted in Reggiani ordering Gucci’s murder. Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard Warner Bros.’ drama, which tracks the early years of Venus…

AM I OK? A tender, gently funny portrait of a friendship in flux, Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s dramedy centers on a woman (an excellent Dakota Johnson) who reveals she’s gay just as her BFF (Sonoya Mizuno) prepares to move abroad. The film has a finely tuned sense of the easygoing intimacy and chemistry between longtime companions. — ANGIE HAN CALL JANE Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy’s affecting drama tells the story of a suburban woman (stirringly played by Elizabeth Banks) who gets involved in the Jane Collective, an underground service that provided safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade. It’s a bracing and intimate view of a historical moment that’s less distant than we might think. — SHERI LINDEN CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH Building on the strengths of…

Kicking off 2022 with yet another online-only film market will be “bittersweet,” says Tamara Nagahiro of sales group Grandave International. She’s one of the hundreds of international film execs forced to exchange hotel suites for Zoom meeting rooms after Berlin’s European Film Market, which runs Feb. 10-17, went all-virtual in response to a surge in COVID-19 infections in Germany. The health of the indie film market will be put to the test at EFM 2022, as both sellers and distributors try to assess the impact of the pandemic on the global business. “You are seeing increasing business from the streamers, in places like Latin America and other major territories, with the rise of HBO Max and other new platforms,” notes Nagahiro, whose EFM slate includes the heist thriller Shelter from…