Innholdsfortegnelse for August 10, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

NBC’s La Brea, which revolves around a massive sinkhole opening in the middle of Los Angeles, is doing its part to ensure that world-ending disasters remain a fictional, onscreen occurrence. The drama, now shooting its second season in Australia, is one of a few early film or TV productions to use a hybrid lithium-ion battery system to power its unit base. In an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the production and make the industry more sustainable, production firm Red Fox Unit Services and energy company Aggreko worked together to trial two hybrid battery banks (manufactured by POWR2). Though Hollywood has made significant sustainable changes in recent years, clean energy has remained the biggest problem, with battery generators not having been powerful enough to replace diesel and fuel entire…

NBC (America’s Got Talent), CBS (Big Brother) 7.74M Viewers (AGT), 4.6M Viewers (BB) Amid declines for linear TV, both America’s Got Talent (top) and Big Brother are down year-over-year — but the two long-running series are holding up better than most of their broadcast counterparts. AGT is averaging better than 7.7 million viewers for NBC, and the three weekly Big Brother telecasts on CBS are at 4.6 million (including a week of delayed viewing for both, but not counting streaming). Both are off by about 8 percent year-over-year but pacing well ahead of the 14 percent declines network series had on average in 2021-22.…

Pickleball Craze Reaches New Heights With Riviera Tourney, Network TV Debut Pickleball is ready for its close-up. The paddle sport — which saw its popularity skyrocket during the pandemic and is now an obsession of such stars as Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew Perry and Jamie Foxx and power players including Ari Emanuel, Jeremy Zimmer and Brian Grazer — is stepping up to the big leagues. CBS will broadcast the Skechers Invitational Summer Championship on Aug. 13, a Pro Pickleball Association Tour stop (that also features a celebrity competition with star players to be determined) at Hollywood-favored Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. The showing marks the sport’s first network TV broadcast and comes ahead of Pickled, a two-hour primetime celebrity tournament from Stephen Colbert’s Spartina Prods., CBS Studios and Funny or…

The Quick Pitch Avant Garden Bistro, the first West Coast expansion by Ravi DeRossi’s Overthrow Hospitality, has landed in a delightfully overgrown and fanciful section of Melrose. The restaurant, which serves New American vegan cuisine, is led by chef Sarah Stearns (Mírame, Joe’s Restaurant); the menu is divided into “cold,” “toast” and “hot,” featuring dishes like shaved Brussels sprouts with turmeric miso goddess dressing, cremini mushroom topped with onion marmalade and walnut puree, and a cavatelli pasta in each section. Natural wines and low-ABV cocktails abound, rounding out a menu that mimics the natural, forestlike setting of the restaurant’s patio. 7469 Melrose Ave.…

“There’s no version of myself that makes sense for the world,” Max (Chanté Adams) says in Amazon’s A League of Their Own, and it’s plain to see why: She’s a Black woman in a country run by white men, a queer person still figuring out her own identity, a baseball phenom barred from the all-female league on account of her race and shunned by the integrated local team on account of her gender. She’s confiding this to Carson (Abbi Jacobson, who also cocreated the series with Will Graham), another queer ballplayer who’s never quite fit in. They get each other, even if not everyone else does. A League of Their Own carves out a space in this hostile world where women like Max and Carson don’t have to try to…

Fast Times at Ridgemont High’s ascension to comedy classic was a slow process. Amy Heckerling, who had only directed student work, was set to helm an MGM project when it was scrapped amid an actors strike. During the hiatus, producer Art Linson introduced her to Cameron Crowe’s 1981 book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, which the young journalist wrote after going undercover as a high school student. Linson asked Heckerling to direct Crowe’s screenplay, a fictionalization of real students that focused on Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a sophomore navigating social dynamics and early sexual experiences. The comedy launched the careers of future school student. Linson asked Heckerling to direct Crowe’s screenplay, a fictionalization of real students that focused on Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a sophomore…

In 2015, David Zaslav compared the industry’s rush to scripted TV to a kids’ soccer game — the players are clumped around the ball, while the rest of the field is wide open. “It’s quite crowded, it’s pretty expensive, and it’s looking more and more like the movie business,” the then-Discovery CEO said, explaining why his executive team wouldn’t join the Peak TV fray. Fast-forward to 2022, and Zaslav, as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, is running a scripted powerhouse and betting on movies as a key content engine. But — along with CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels — he still vows to zag where the industry zigs. “We have no intention of being beholden to anyone in particular or to a specific business model,” Zaslav said in an Aug. 4 earnings…

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron is known for his rhetorical flourishes, whether in interviews with CNBC, appearances at CinemaCon or on earnings calls. But for the company’s second-quarter 2022 investor call on Aug. 4, he went full Braveheart. “Today, we pounce,” Aron declared, a reference to retail investor questions about when the company would make its next move. “It is now time for us to take decisive and even valorous action,” he added, encouraging listeners to look up the word in the dictionary. As he has before, he framed his latest move as part of a larger battle between the good guys of AMC and unnamed “prophets of doom who may be rooting against us.” And what was this “bold, decisive” move, one that could “transform” the company? It was…

As more and more media conglomerates shift their business models to subscription streaming platforms, the borderlines between “film” and “television” continue to dissolve. Methods of distribution are no longer concretely disparate as studio-made feature-length films now often debut exclusively on streaming sites and many TV creators describe their shows as “10-hour-long movies.” These newly permeable boundaries are rendering the taxonomies of awards season just plain weirder than ever. Case in point: the utter grab bag that is the Emmy category for this year’s outstanding television movie, which has washed-up cartoon chipmunks competing against Auschwitz survivors. I suppose Emmy voters took the term “television” seriously, as most of the nominations center around cult-favorite TV wrap-ups and reboots. The lineup, quite frankly, is a bit bonkers. First, there’s Disney+’s Chip ’n Dale:…

Kiki Man Ray (W.W. NORTON & CO., AUG. 9) BY Mark Braude AGENCY Aevitas Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin and muse to Man Ray, finally gets her literary due in this, the very first biography to center her story — it’s filled with tales of artistry (and partying) in the Roaring ’20s of post-war Paris. Fruit Punch (ECCO, AUG. 9) BY Kendra Allen AGENCY Janklow & Nesbit Associates The poet goes longform with a memoir that uses conversations with her therapist and flashback scenes of her childhood in Dallas to excavate lessons from her life as a sexual assault survivor and a Black woman who navigated the politics of the Deep South.…

Coming soon to L.A.: the end of gas appliances in new construction. As voted on by the Los Angeles City Council in May and set to start Jan. 1, 2023 (in a tiered phase-out), no new buildings, including residences, may include gas stoves, water heaters, furnaces or clothes dryers. Following in the footsteps of Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Monica, the move is an effort to reduce the use of fuels that generate greenhouse gases and contribute to climate change. Already, though, some Los Angeles designers and their clients are shifting to electric-powered induction stovetops and finding they love the cooking experience. “Induction is the best,” says chef Ludo Lefebvre (Petit Trois), who first cooked with induction at L.A. Live’s All Star Chef Classic in 2014. “It’s fast. It’s powerful.…

Geena Davis, star of 1992’s A League of Their Own, joined Abbi Jacobson, Chanté Adams and D’Arcy Carden, stars of Amazon’s upcoming series adaptation of the film, on Aug. 6 for Cinespia’s 30th anniversary screening of the female baseball classic at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. “There weren’t really that many female sports movies at all that had ever come out, so we didn’t know how people would respond,” Davis reflected to THR at the event. “It was kind of overwhelming how much people loved it, and over the 30 years, I’ve had so many women and girls come up and say, ‘I play sports because of that movie.’ ” Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

Weddings Kino Lorber vp marketing Nicholas Kemp married social worker Jesse Yarbrough on May 14 at The Magnolia in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The day was preceded by a partial wedding group trip to Dolly Parton’s Dollywood. Births Beth Andrews, exec vp at Rogers & Cowan PMK, and Roger Pullis welcomed Rory James Pullis on May 26 at Cedars-Sinai. Congrats AMC Networks COO and CFO Christina Spade was appointed CEO effective Sept. 9. Joanna Popper was hired as CAA’s first chief metaverse officer Aug. 4. ICM agent Bart Walker joined Gersh as a partner Aug. 4. Mackenzie Mitchell was promoted to vp specials, music and live events at CBS on Aug. 5. Liam Buckley was upped to agent in WME’s motion picture literary department Aug. 4. Literary manager Jenna Sarkin joined…

Bodyguards have long been a Hollywood fixture, appearing alongside A-listers on red carpets, on nights out and occasionally onscreen (looking at you, Kevin Costner). But there’s more than meets the eye to these protection agents, who are being increasingly called upon in recent months as Los Angeles’ crime rate has ticked up. The LAPD reported in March that robberies involving firearms were up 57 percent from 2020 and homicides were up 29 percent for the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2020. As a result, says Kent Moyer, president and CEO of L.A.-based World Protection Group, “Our business revenues have doubled from January on, every month. And it’s due to the fact that people are scared.” Security experts say that’s sparked a change in…

We’ve done a reset.” That’s how Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav described DC on Aug. 4, days after he made the call to shelve the $90 million HBO Max film Batgirl. The mogul said there’d now be a team that would create a “10-year” plan for DC, although who’s on that team is unclear. And Zaslav took digs at former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s strategy of developing straight-to-streaming films. Zaslav added: “DC is something we can make better.” The remarks were not well received inside DC, according to multiple insiders who used the same word to describe members of the film division: “pissed.” And DC Films president Walter Hamada nearly exited after learning of the shelving of Batgirl before being convinced to stay on at least until the Oct.…

When Sharon Horgan writes at her Los Angeles home, she pivots between the office and a shady patio. In her primary London home, she has a writing attic. But that’s not usually where you’ll find her. “If I’m really honest, sometimes I write in bed,” she says. “Makes me feel like a bit of a pig — just shit all over the place!” Regardless of the locale, it’s working. The writer and actress is one of the most prolific creators working in TV today. Having created Pulling, Catastrophe and Divorce — as well as starring in such films as Game Night and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — the Irish multihyphenate has launched two series in 2022 alone. She co-created Starz’s Shining Vale and, come Aug. 19, debuts Bad…

BOB EINSTEIN The late comic and writer (right), who’d go on to create the Super Dave Osborne persona, shared a windowless office with Martin while the two wrote for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. Sharing an Emmy win for writing on the show, they would work together again on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. CARL REINER One of Martin’s mentors, the Hollywood legend helped the comic make the transition from stand-up to leading man. They had lunch together almost daily in the early 1980s, as Reiner (right) directed Martin in The Jerk, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Man With Two Brains, Martin’s first three screenplays. MARTIN SHORT Though they met (via Lorne Michaels) earlier in the 1980s, Short (right) and Martin’s friendship began in earnest…

The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina gets the Chernobyl treatment in Apple TV+’s Five Days at Memorial, a nightmarish, often damning eight-part limited series nearly undone by a poorly focused home stretch. Adapted from Sheri Fink’s 2013 book by the powerhouse duo of John Ridley and Carlton Cuse — each of whom did writing and directing duty on the first five episodes before sticking Wendey Stanzler at the helm of the undercooked closing three — Five Days at Memorial is set primarily in and around a New Orleans hospital. It’s technically two hospitals at once: Memorial is the main hospital, with an unrelated private facility, LifeCare, on its own dedicated floor in the same building. The lack of connection and communication between the two hospitals and their emergency preparedness coordinators —…