Innholdsfortegnelse for July 20, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

Deals UTA’s Big Move The agency takes private equity cash to grow p. 12 ↑ TV Vote of Confidence HBO chief Casey Bloys gets a five-year deal p. 18 Steven Knight The Peaky Blinders creator’s BBC/Netflix show hits No. 2 on Nielsen’s streaming chart, up 40 percent week-to-week, as Apple TV+ gives a series order for his Ferrari project. Zack Snyder The Justice League director is hit with a Rolling Stone report citing a 2021 internal WarnerMedia memo raising concerns about bots fanning the flames for the Snyder Cut. Bad Bunny The rapper’s Un Verano Sin Ti nabs nearly 1.6 billion streams since May, competing with the Encanto soundtrack for most listened-to album in the first half of 2022, per Luminate. Garth Drabinsky Company members of Paradise Square rallied to…

Mark Zuckerberg came with bad news. In a meeting with employees in July, the Meta CEO, who has turned his company’s focus, and investments, toward the metaverse, told staff to prepare for one of the “worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” as Reuters reported. Employees used to bountiful resources would need to work with less, and those unable to rise to the occasion and prove their worth at the company would be headed for the exit. It was a bleak reminder of the foreboding year ahead for the tech giants, which are heading into another earnings season with tumbling stock prices and downturn in advertising. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, will be the first of the major social and tech platforms to report earnings, on July 21.…

Movie theater giants may be on top of the world right now … but they are also staring off a cliff. It’s been a blockbuster few months for, well, blockbusters, and films like Top Gun: Maverick and Minions: The Rise of Gru proved that groups that may have been wary of returning to theaters (older moviegoers and young families) are willing to go back for the right film. And yet, there’s a sense of foreboding in the air, as theater chains like AMC, Cinemark and Marcus Corp. reconcile great first-half momentum with what is shaping up to be a momentum-stopping second half of the year. B. Riley analyst Eric Wold writes that after the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, the only Q3 films with box office potential are the…

Imagine you’re a senior citizen who, with a few contemporaries, hosts an annual end-of-the-summer luncheon at your retirement community. One year, a group of much younger people crashes the party and helps itself to some of your food and drinks. As a kind gesture, you invite them back the next year, only this time they show up with more friends and consume a much larger share of your food and drinks. You’re a little annoyed, but you invite them back again. This time, they and even more friends make off with virtually all your food and drinks. And then you invite them back again. That wouldn’t make much sense, but it’s essentially what’s happened with the Emmys. First presented in 1949, during television’s infancy, to celebrate Los Angeles-area shows, the…

War is certain — or so Daemon Targaryen hopes. The cunningly arrogant prince leads a strategy meeting inside the torchlit gloom of Dragonstone castle. “I want patrols a long the island’s perimeter,” declares the glowering Daemon, clad in all black with long, silver-blond hair. “Conscript the dragon riders, they’re capable fighters … we have Syrax, Caraxes and Tyraxes, and …” Daemon, played by actor Matt Smith, pauses. What’s the name of the fourth dragon again? “Ah, for fuck’s sake!” Smith yells. “No fucking fuck! I want … ah fuck it!” Actor Emma D’Arcy, who portrays the free-spirited princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, sympathizes: “All the dragons have weird names with Xes in them!” “I literally got to the point where I thought I was naming Santa’s reindeer,” Smith admits. House of the…

“Crooks and ciminals.” That’s how Issa Rae described the music industry to the Los Angeles Times before the 2021 finale of her landmark HBO series Insecure. “It’s probably the worst industry that I have ever come across,” Rae said of her experience. (She founded a record label in 2019.) Indeed, the music business is known to be punishing. Early support and mentorship are hard to find; label contracts can be vampiric. Success comes with its own set of troubles, too. It’s this process that Rae portrays in Rap Sh!t, her anthemic new HBO Max comedy series about two friends who form a rap group after their drunken freestyle goes viral. It’s a glossy, entertaining show that prioritizes quick wit and fun; it’s less moody than Atlanta and not as satirical…

Marvel Studios — which returns to Comic-Con this year for the first time since 2019 — is known for Hall H presentations that devolve into Beatlemania-esque hysteria. But 15 years ago, Marvel was an underdog with a lot to prove. The company had just started making its own movies based on the so-called second-tier heroes it still had rights to, since characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men were spoken for by the major Hollywood studios. In 2006, at its first Comic-Con panel as a production company, Marvel had outlined a slate of movies with directors such as Jon Favreau, Edgar Wright and Louis Leterrier. The following year, its first movie, Iron Man, was in postproduction, so Marvel decided a Comic-Con showcase was in order, even though the film wouldn’t be…

It’s the economy, stupid. The phrase made famous in the 1992 presidential campaign could well be on Wall Street’s mind as entertainment giants report their second-quarter earnings in late July and August. After all, the upcoming quarterly results might not look so bad, as streaming hits like Stranger Things and Obi-Wan Kenobi respectively boost viewership at Netflix and Disney+ and box office smashes like Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick and Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion roll through theaters. But these titles may be a mirage obscuring headwinds this fall, meaning investors will listen at least as closely to executive forecasts, expectations and commentary for hints of what’s happening in the current third quarter. Meanwhile, inflation and economic pressures could come to a head during the back half of 2022 amid talk of…

Seven TV series — five new and two relocating — have been selected to receive $90.8 million in tax incentives for shooting in California, the state’s film office said July 18. The shows — headlined by Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Netflix’s The Residence (produced by Shonda Rhimes) — are on track to spend a total of $713 million in California during production. They’re projected to generate a combined $468.2 million in qualified spending (defined as wages to below-the-line workers and payments to in-state vendors). The five new shows, including David E. Kelley’s Presumed Innocent for Apple TV+ and HBO’s The Sympathizer, starring Robert Downey Jr., are the first to be accepted into the tax incentive program since 2019. The absence of new series selected to participate was due…

Steph Curry Consulted Drake, Peyton Manning About ESPYs Gig After the Golden State Warriors picked up another NBA championship in June — the team’s fourth title in eight years — no one could fault MVP Steph Curry for taking it easy in the off-season. But coasting isn’t Curry’s style, so on July 20, he’ll hit the Microsoft Theater as the host of the ESPY Awards. Before he signed on, Curry sought guidance from two VIPs and former hosts. “I texted Drake and Peyton Manning about what their experiences were like. They both spoke very highly and positively about it and how much fun they had,” he revealed. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a ‘Hell no, don’t do it’ situation.” What kind of host will he be? “Peyton…

Moments into Nikki Glaser’s latest comedy special, Good Clean Filth, she poses a hypothetical to her audience: If you had to perform oral sex on one of your parents, who would it be? That’s one of the more innocent bits during the hour, which dropped July 16 on HBO. But none of her new material will shock Glaser devotees. She’s built a following for her ability to marry crass and clever. She’s also built a career out of it. Glaser recently starred in an E! Network reality show (Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?), hosts the HBO Max dating competition show FBoy Island and is even mulling a sitcom. That she’s gotten that much busier after a 2020 move back to her hometown of St. Louis is a testament to both her…

Sister act Sara and Erin Foster may be “Barely Famous” — the title of the VH1 reality show parody series they created a few years back — but the comedic writing-acting-producing duo have made quite a name for themselves as multihyphenates with a collective following of 1.3 million on Instagram. “It’s not like we set out to be these relatable big sisters that you never had,” Sara says, “but we try to put out as much of an unfiltered life as possible to people. I think that is a big part of why our different ventures have been successful. Women don’t feel intimidated by us. They feel like they’re our girlfriends.” The Foster sisters had those loyal “girlfriends” in mind when they created Favorite Daughter, a contemporary clothing line whose…

Kelsa, the protagonist of Billy Porter’s sweet and blazing directorial debut Anything’s Possible, doesn’t want you to call her brave. As a Black trans girl growing up in Pittsburgh, she’s heard the adjective one too many times. There’s indeed more to this charismatic and self-possessed high school senior, played by the magnetic Eva Reign. She loves fashion — her wardrobe pops with bejeweled accessories, miniskirts, funky shoes and colorful blouses. She has a YouTube vlog, where she details her transition, talks about growing up in Pittsburgh and waxes poetic about her mom. Above all else, Kelsa adores animals. The film opens with the teen explaining her fondness for creatures whose names reflect their traits. The pink fairy armadillo, the blue-footed booby, the Scaptia beyonceae (or the Beyoncé fly) and the…

Name a blockbuster Hollywood property from the past decade and there’s a good chance that BOND was behind its success. The average person’s streaming queue is likely full of key art from the entertainment marketing agency — to say nothing of the trailers and original videos that TikTok and Instagram algorithms are serving up courtesy of BOND, which just won back-to-back Clio Awards (the first agency to do so). The company launched 10 years ago after its founders — entertainment marketing pros Seth Phillips Althoff, Luke Silver-Greenberg, Brian Setzer and Patrick Dillon — met and quickly realized they were aligned not only in their creative visions, but also in their unshakable belief that good-quality advertising needs even better-quality resources. The group set up shop in the same office building where…

Amid upheaval in Hollywood, the major talent agencies are scaling up, betting that the demand for content — and top-shelf talent — will keep growing. And it’s all backed, at least in part, by private equity cash betting that “peak content” concerns are overblown. On July 18, UTA revealed an investment from the Swedish firm EQT. UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer said he and his leadership team chose EQT as an investor because they felt the firm “would really help us drive growth while protecting our culture.” UTA’s investment, meanwhile, arrived shortly after CAA, led by Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett, completed its June 28 acquisition of ICM, which is topped by Chris Silbermann, forging a representation giant backed by its majority owner, TPG. And the Ari Emanuel-led Endeavor, owner of…

As streaming services keep duking it out for viewers and paying subscribers, some platforms like Amazon’s Prime Video are taking a cue from Netflix by adding a top 10 list to the homepage as another means to boost the discoverability of popular in-house shows. Prime Video’s top 10 list comes as part of a major redesign for the streaming service that was unveiled July 18, with the updates first hitting connected living room devices like the Fire TV and Android devices before rolling out across the web and iOS later this year. The chart is meant to “show what’s hot and tap into the social zeitgeist,” Helena Cerna, Prime Video’s global director of product management, told reporters at a press preview of the redesign. The company also touted the refresh…

As Los Angeles enters the dog days of summer, lawns and greenery are looking a little less green amid the city’s drought-induced water restrictions, which allow for outdoor watering only two days a week — in early mornings and nights, at eight minutes per station. In an effort to avoid having a brown front yard while still conserving water, more and more residents are turning to drought-tolerant landscaping. While there have been requests for low-water gardens for years, “with the new water restrictions, we are getting ‘take out my lawn’ calls and emails every day,” says Grow Outdoor Design’s Joel Lichtenwalter, whose clients have included Naomi Watts and Chelsea Handler. In place of lawns, he turns to such low-water current faves as grassy Lomandra “Breeze,” Whale’s Tongue Agave, purple Penstemon…

Netflix premiered its high-powered spy flick The Gray Man — its biggest-budget project ever — on July 13 in L.A., with stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Regé-Jean Page, Jessica Henwick, Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodard and directors Joe and Anthony Russo in attendance. Gosling told THR he “always wanted to make an action movie,” and in playing a skilled operative facing off against Evans’ villain, “I finally got to do it.” Of choosing their leads, Joe Russo said Gosling had “the right combination of physicality and humor” and that after their Marvel collaborations, “Evans we adore. We’d do every movie until we die with him.” Got tips or submissions? Email rambling@thr.com or hhh@thr.com…

In July 2021, Scarlett Johansson stunned Hollywood with a lawsuit accusing Disney of breach of contract for sending Black Widow day-and-date to Disney+, a move her lawyers said diminished its box office (and the star’s backend compensation). As that legal battle stretched into the summer, two other Black Widow stakeholders were quietly seeking what they believed they were owed. The comic book creators behind Yelena Belova, the character played by Florence Pugh, spent months in a back-and-forth with Marvel to receive payment for her appearance in the film. Writer Devin Grayson and artist J.G. Jones believed they would take home $25,000 each for her appearance in the film thanks to paperwork they signed outlining how much they would receive for films, TV shows, video games and action figures featuring Yelena.…

In the hot pursuit of perfect eyebrows, stars indulge in a ritual of tinting, tweezing, threading, waxing, laminating and microblading, boosted by an arsenal of serums, supplements, pencils, powders and gels. All on repeat, since results are temporary. Now, a permanent brow transplant procedure is trending thanks in part to Chrissy Teigen sharing her results on social media in November. The procedure is quietly being done by “tons of actresses and actors, some of the most famous A-list actors in the entire world,” says Century City hair restoration specialist Dr. Marc Dauer, who has performed it for over 15 years. Teigen’s hairstylist Jen Atkin vlogged about getting the procedure in 2021. She and Teigen saw Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Jason Champagne, as did actress Meagan Good after seeing Amber Rose’s…

As the capabilities of AI-generated content, including what is commonly referred to as deepfakes, continue to evolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the real from the synthetic. This can offer creative opportunities for actors and filmmakers — allowing Mark Hamill to regain his youthful appearance as Luke Skywalker on The Book of Boba Fett, for example. But there also are nefarious uses, as Jordan Peele proved in a 2018 deepfake of President Barack Obama describing how the technology can facilitate disinformation. SAG-AFTRA wants to help members maintain control of their likenesses in content, whether that be in a movie, TV series or video game — including after their death. “Protection of a performer’s digital self is a critical issue for SAG-AFTRA and our members,” says national executive director Duncan…

NICHOLAS BRAUN Best supporting actor in a drama series, Succession Fresh off his second Emmy nomination for playing the bumbling, babbling Cousin Greg on the HBO series, Braun is ecstatic: “It just feels very validating. And my 20 dreams about not getting [a nom] did not come true.” The actor reveled in Greg’s arc this season, where the frequently demeaned character finally begins to come into his own power. “I think season three was fun, because it felt like there were more opportunities for Greg to get batted around,” says Braun. “And from that, [he] comes out stronger and less naive. Not so bumbling and afraid if he’s doing things right. He was included in tighter circles. For me, it was fun to try to figure out: How did that…

The last time San Diego Comic-Con held an in-person convention, there was a different president and no one had heard of Baby Yoda. After the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the 2020 effort and forced 2021’s event into an entirely virtual — and Marvel Studios-less — endeavor, the beloved fan convention will return to what organizers hope is something reminiscent of the glory days. Here, some of the most anticipated announcements and reveals headed to the San Diego Convention Center. MARVEL STUDIOS Kevin Feige’s production company consistently reigns supreme at Comic-Con, with its star-packed (and highly secretive) Saturday evening panels considered the high point of the entire convention circuit. This year, the MCU has a number of big titles to tout, including Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.…