Innholdsfortegnelse for April 27, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

Before we get to the deep dive on the internal drama at Netflix — the interne-cine battles among top leadership that more than one source calls “the Hunger Games” — let’s pause to let the town enjoy this moment. The thing about schadenfreude is that the freude (joy) is usually savored when the schaden (the bad thing) happens to someone else. In the case of Netflix’s ongoing debacle, however, the streamer’s competitors acknowledge that they are damaged themselves by the sudden discovery that maybe the sky is not the limit when it comes to streaming. But they are relishing the bad news anyway. Yes, says a top executive at one of Netflix’s legacy-studio rivals, the news has dinged valuations and been bad for his business, but “it sure fucking feels…

Not having commercials during its programming has been a hallmark of Netflix’s corporate image as a disruptive force in TV. Even as the company moved ever closer to the broadcasting ideal of offering something for everyone, it resisted — or even scoffed at — the idea of bringing in ads. But after the release of a rough quarterly earnings report April 19, in which Netflix had its first net loss of subscribers in more than a decade, the streamer is making plans to launch a less expensive, ad-supported subscription tier in the next couple of years. A company used to leading the streaming space will now be playing catch-up in the advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) field, as nearly all of Netflix’s major competitors either already have ad-supported options or announced plans…

This year’s IAB NewFronts returns to New York City in person after a two-year delay, with a focus on the growth of ad-supported digital video, which saw a 51 percent increase in ad revenue in 2021. The event, running from May 2 to May 5 in locations around the city, is bringing in companies like Roku, Peacock and Amazon — which rebranded its free advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) service earlier in April — as well as social media giants like Meta, TikTok, Twitter and Snap. AVOD will be a reinvigorated discussion at this year’s NewFronts, thanks in part to Netflix’s poor quarterly earnings showing that led co-CEO Reed Hastings to say that Netflix needs to explore an ad-supported subscription tier. But all eyes will likely be on Twitter, which hosts its…

In the fall of 2016, the Disney board of directors gave CEO Bob Iger the green light to buy Twitter. But then Iger got, in his own words, “cold feet.” Writing in his 2019 memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, he said that “managing hate speech” and making decisions about “fake accounts” and misinformation would be too much of a headache. Twitter’s soon-to-be-owner Elon Musk appears to have no such concerns. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization; I don’t care about the economics at all,” Musk said April 14 at a TED conference in Vancouver. In the TED talk, his only public comments on the deal (aside from his sometimes snarky…

Tammy Williams, set to become the first Black woman to own a major production studio in Georgia, started with a vision. She wanted to build a facility where stories that are too often ignored could be told. Beyond that, she longed for a place where people in underserved communities could get job training in an industry that she’s built her life around. Williams saw her goal start to come to life in March, when Cinema South Studios, a $135 million project, broke ground. Located on 85 acres (not far from Trilith and Tyler Perry studios), the complex will be spread over 1 million square feet, consisting of 17 buildings with numerous soundstages. It will house various set pieces along with a wardrobe rental facility, transportation company and a three-story office…

Weddings NBC News NOW anchor Morgan Radford married David Williams, vp real estate, impact and partnerships at investment platform Lafayette Square, on Jan. 8 in Cartagena, Colombia. Births Howie Tanenbaum, co-head of the ICM Partners lit department, and his wife, Lian, welcomed their fourth child, Annie Pearl Tanenbaum, on March 21. Congrats Joe Kahn was named executive editor of The New York Times, effective June 14. Ben Spector joined Jenna Bush Hager’s Universal Studio Group-based production company as president of film and television April 21. Kyle Chalmers joined Fox Entertainment as vp drama programming and development April 18. David H. Wright III was promoted to senior vp casting and talent relations at Disney Television Animation on April 21. Former Tribeca Film Institute head Beth Janson was tapped as COO of…

Hollywood A-listers are traditionally in the spotlight ascending the steps of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for its annual Met Gala, set to take place May 2, with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, Regina King and Lin-Manuel Miranda as co-chairs. But this year the film industry also will step off the red carpet and into the exhibition’s design, with eight directors, including King, crafting tableaux that blend fashion, historic interiors and each filmmaker’s unique aesthetic. The “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibit, which opens to the public May 7, has been conceived as the companion to “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” which opened in 2021. (Both shows will be on view through September.) “‘Lexicon’ focuses more on language and primarily on contemporary designers, the idea of developing…

As the proverbial woman behind the most powerful man on earth, the first lady plays an often undefined role as political ally, emissary, hostess and, in some cases, arbiter of style. Showtime’s new series The First Lady takes a look at three women who lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in the years spanning 1933 to 2020, starring Gillian Anderson as the longest-serving first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt; Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford; and Viola Davis as Michelle Obama. Their private and personal journey is often depicted by their costumes, with the common denominator being their shared love of pearls. Created by Danish costume designer Signe Sejlund (The Undoing, Bird Box), the fashion in the series has a supporting role, portraying not only the period but the character’s point of view as…

1.66B minutes watched 8 episodes The title of Netflix’s culinary game show Is It Cake? is also its premise: Highly skilled bakers make cakes designed to look like other objects, and contestants try to guess which of those objects are, in fact, cake. Sometimes a simple idea, easily conveyed via a thumbnail on the Netflix home screen, can work really well: In the 10 days following its March 18 premiere, Is It Cake?, hosted by Mikey Day (Saturday Night Live), amassed 1.66 billion minutes of viewing time, per Nielsen, which equates to an audience of more than 5.4 million viewers.…

Romantic comedies and young adult fare are bigger than they’ve been in years — at least on Netflix, where some of the most popular titles in the genres have come from Wonderland Sound and Vision, the production banner run by filmmaker McG. Née Joseph McGinty Nichol of Kalamazoo, Michigan, McG ascended from the 1990s music video scene to make his feature directorial debut with Charlie’s Angels. An instant megahit with a $260 million gross in 2000, it minted him as one of the town’s hottest directors. Movies such as We Are Marshall and Terminator Salvation followed, as did executive producing TV hits The O.C., Supernatural and Chuck. But questions of whether he was lucky or actually talented gnawed at his heels. “I had good luck with the first Charlie’s movie,…

I’m worried I came off like an asshole,” Bill Burr says. “I hope I didn’t.” Burr is standing in his trailer on the set of his directorial debut movie, Old Dads, and looks worried. The actor-comedian is wrapping up our wide-ranging interview in which he talked about such topics as the early days of his career, cancel culture, the firing of his Mandalorian co-star Gina Carano and his controversial SNL hosting gig. It all culminated with one of Burr’s trademark impassioned monologues (don’t call it a “rant” — he has a whole not-a-rant about the hyperbolic use of that word). In fact, even a compliment can potentially rub Burr the wrong way. “When I was younger, I would really feel uncomfortable around healthy people,” he says. “If someone was really…

More than once in FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven, characters with troubling or inconvenient questions are told to “set them on the shelf” — to shove them aside and look instead to the guidance of the hierarchy above them. And over and over, they find that they can’t. Their questions have a way of haunting them, of keeping them up at night, of nudging them toward strange, thorny, even horrific roads. The miniseries (which will stream on Hulu) asks some very hard questions of its own, starting as a gripping murder mystery set in a seemingly quiet community of Latter-day Saints. But it’s the series’ insistence on asking not just who did it but why that turns it into something bigger — something more complex, thoughtful and ultimately far…

When the upfronts return to New York City in mid-May after a two-year pandemic hiatus, broadcast TV is expected to play second fiddle. Though ABC, NBC and CBS will still get their moments, Disney is expected to introduce the ad-supported tier of Disney+, while Paramount will pitch Paramount+ and NBCUniversal will tout Peacock. After years of preparing to go all in on streaming, linear is no longer a corporate priority for Hollywood giants. But at least a handful of companies are bucking the trend and leaning into linear TV, hoping that it can help them stand out in a world where everyone else seems to be trying to chase Netflix, which is itself undergoing a rocky period as its subscription growth slows. “You have to be willing to be a…

One thing to know about Ben Foster is that he craves intense roles, such as the ones in films like Alpha Dog, 3:10 to Yuma and Hell or High Water (for which he won an Independent Spirit Award for supporting actor). Another is that the actor, 41, was a terrible student while growing up in Iowa but was drawn to acting, so he made a demo tape at age 14. He immediately landed a role in the Disney Channel series Flash Forward and hasn’t stopped working since. His newest film is director Barry Levinson’s The Survivor, a harrowing real-life story of Harry Haft, who survived Auschwitz by becoming a boxer and beating his fellow Jews to death at the behest of SS officers and went on to have a brief…

Joaquin Phoenix Secures Film Rights to PETA Founder’s Book Oscar winner and long-time vegan Joaquin Phoenix could soon be taking his animal activism to the big screen. The actor has acquired film rights to Free the Animals, the 1992 book by PETA founder and president Ingrid Newkirk, about the militant group Animal Liberation Front. Phoenix also penned the foreword for the 30th anniversary paperback edition, out May 5. “It’s a call to us all to take action,” writes Phoenix, who also references a pig vigil he attended outside a Vernon, California, slaughterhouse after winning a SAG Award for Joker. “Every one of us can and must fight injustice and push for animal liberation every chance we get.” Newkirk tells THR that she fielded “considerable interest” from two other stars but…

I’m so grateful that I’m not alone any longer,” Marlee Matlin told the audience at The Hollywood Reporter’s inaugural “Raising Our Voices: Setting Hollywood’s Inclusion Agenda” luncheon on April 20. Introduced by her CODA co-star Troy Kotsur — who in March became the second deaf Oscar winner ever, following Matlin’s historic win 35 years ago — Matlin delivered the keynote address at the event, which also featured appearances by Daniel Durant and Natalie Morales. The luncheon, presented by Walmart and held in compliance with local health and safety guidelines, was the culmination of a series of discussions with influential industry execs and storytellers and artisans in THR and on THR.com on the state and future of the industry’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement. THR editorial director Nekesa Mumbi Moody…

Many Hollywood CEOs saw their paydays increase in 2021, but a few — Endeavor mogul Ari Emanuel, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Amazon chief Andy Jassy — ended up in rarefied air by joining the nine-figure club. Special circumstances contributed to each of these cases. Zaslav oversaw the recently closed merger that created Warner Bros. Discovery and last year was awarded options valued at $202.9 million — with $246.6 million in total pay — thanks to a new employment agreement that keeps him in charge of the combined company. Emanuel received $293.7 million in stock awards as Endeavor went public last April as part of a $308.2 million package. Jassy saw nearly all of his $212.7 million pay package arrive via a stock grant tied to his elevation…

When we last checked in on the Crawley clan and their bustling household below stairs in the 2019 Downton Abbey spinoff movie, a royal visit caused more of a stir than a foiled assassination attempt, the gay butler’s secret was spared the harsh glare of exposure, and a cousin ruffled feathers by willing her estate to a maid revealed to be her illegitimate daughter, just in time for a whisper of romance with another upgraded servant. Heavens! The film managed to be low-stakes comfort food, a sugary dessert whipped up by series creator Julian Fellowes to appease fans still wanting more after six seasons. Despite the promise of change in its title, Downton Abbey: A New Era is more of the same, which will be just fine with devotees of…

Miles Teller, who currently plays The Godfather producer Albert Ruddy in The Offer (premiering on Paramount+ on April 28), broke out playing a jazz drummer in 2014’s Whiplash. But three years before that, he made his studio film debut as a rhythmically challenged high school student in 2011’s Footloose. The film, which set out to capitalize on the popularity of the Step Up franchise that kicked off in 2006 (and made Channing Tatum a star), was a remake of the 1984 hit about a big-city kid from Chicago named Ren (Kevin Bacon) who teaches a small Midwestern town to dance again after the activity is outlawed at the urging of an overzealous preacher (John Lithgow). The remake stars Kenny Wormald (a former Justin Timberlake background dancer who was cast when…