The all-new Hollywood Reporter offers unprecedented access to the people, studios, networks and agencies that create the magic in Hollywood. Published weekly, the oversized format includes exceptional photography and rich features.
In early August — two days after David Zaslav terminated his brief honeymoon with Hollywood by dumping the HBO Max film Batgirl — the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO was still sounding confident about the future of one of the studio’s most important properties. “You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — these are brands that are known everywhere in the world,” Zaslav told investors. “We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business where we are going to focus, where there is going to be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC.” But the declaration of the DC reset was premature. Zaslav is continuing to meet with prospective candidates to lead the effort, but surprising to no one, he has not found a Kevin Feige…
Laura Poitras The filmmaker’s doc portrait All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, centering on an activist pursuing Purdue Pharma, took the top honor at the Venice Film Festival. Chris Licht In a move that raises more questions about CNN’s strategy, the network chief creates another primetime hole by moving Don Lemon to a morning co-host role. Andrew Kosove (left) and Broderick Johnson The Alcon co-chiefs land an Amazon green light for a Blade Runner series, insulating the franchise after an acclaimed 2017 sequel disappointed at the box office. Dan Loeb The activist investor backs off of an effort to get Disney to spin off ESPN, saying he now has a “better understanding” of the business after CEO Bob Chapek shot down the idea. Showbiz Stocks $32.03 (+3.1%) FOX (FOX) The…
Amazon was launching its own $500 million Lord of the Rings TV series, and it was in the market for a way to hook potential viewers of its fantasy epic. So, naturally, it called Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of Amazon Prime Video’s competitor, HBO Max. The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films are controlled by Warner Bros. and had been locked up exclusively for streaming on HBO Max by the company’s previous owner. The trilogy, which generated nearly $3 billion in box office revenue and comprised some of the best-known IP in the HBO Max film library, was now up for grabs, at least on a nonexclusive basis. Whereas before, WarnerMedia zealously guarded its films for HBO Max, now Warner Bros. Discovery is open about the fact that,…
Hopes that art house haven ArcLight Cinemas and the adjoining Cinerama Dome — a high-profile destination for Hollywood’s most respected directors — will reopen in time for the 2022 awards season and the year-end holidays are waning. Numerous studio sources tell THR that the Sunset Boulevard complex won’t reopen until the latter part of 2023, after they were informed it could happen this year. In April 2021, the Decurion Corporation said it was shuttering the Dome and its Pacific Theatres chain, which includes ArcLight Hollywood cinemas. Decurion owns the land underneath the Dome and made it clear to suitors that it planned to hold on to the iconic location. Social media lit up in December when a public notice of an application to sell alcoholic beverages was posted outside the…
The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing Sept. 7 from Cineworld, the world’s second-largest movie theater company and owner of Regal Cinemas in the U.S., didn’t come as a surprise to close observers. For many of its Hollywood studio partners, it was almost a relief. “Look back to the late ’90s, early 2000s,” MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler says. “History has shown us it is unwise for theater operators to over-leverage their balance sheets. In a mature industry, it leaves companies in a precarious position in the event of a shock.” In this case, that shock was the COVID-19 pandemic. While the box office made a notable recovery this summer — although not to pre-pandemic levels — the debtladen Moshe “Mooky” Greidinger-run Cineworld, which operates 747 sites and 9,139 screens in 10…
About 95 percent of respondents in an industry survey unveiled Sept. 8 by advocacy group #PayUpHollywood — co-founded by TV writer-producer Liz Alper — self-reported that they made less than $70,000 in 2021. Notably, when it comes to overall compensation, the survey finds that 49 percent of support staff (including assistants and coordinators) claim they were pressured to underreport their hours on time cards to keep costs down. And about 64 percent of respondents reported being required or “strongly encouraged” to pay out-of-pocket expenses such as fees for cloud storage, dry cleaning, computers and streaming services. 2021-22 Industry Support Staff Pay $50K or less The number of respondents who say they made $50,000 or less increased between 2020 and 2021, from 79% in 2020 to 91% in 2021. $79,524 What…
