Innholdsfortegnelse for September 28, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

It began with an anonymous note and ended with the scuttling of a $35 million feature. Skydance was about two months away from starting production on Dallas Sting, an inspirational true-life tale that was to star Matthew McConaughey, when the film was scrapped Sept. 14. It was to focus on a high school-age girls soccer team that in 1984 defeated some of the best women’s teams in the world, and their coach, Bill Kinder. McConaughey’s representative at WME received an anonymous complaint about Kinder, forwarding it to producers at Skydance and Berlanti Productions. In an interview with the Daily Mail on Sept. 15, Kinder said the letter accused him of inappropriate touching and name-calling. (Kinder, who was alerted to the letter Aug. 29, denied the claims.) Sources tell THR that…

Netflix 1.2B minutes viewed The wind-down of summer brought a surprise No. 1 to Nielsen’s streaming charts: Echoes, a lightly promoted thriller series that features Michelle Monaghan playing a set of identical twins. After finishing its debut weekend (Aug. 19-21) in eighth place among original streaming shows, it more than doubled its viewing time the following week to lead all titles on the chart with more than 1.1 billion minutes of viewing time. Netflix’s internal rankings show it hit No. 1 in more than two dozen countries that week.…

Steven Levitan on the 48-Hour Stretch From Wedding to Premiere: ‘Holy Cow’ Talk about a big week. Two days before premiering his new Hulu sitcom Reboot on the Fox lot Sept. 19, Modern Family creator Steven Levitan tied the knot with fiancée Kristina in a backyard ceremony. “Holy cow,” the 60-year-old exclaimed to THR of the hectic 48 hours. “As if I didn’t have enough pressure in my life. But I think it was a good thing because it allowed me to split my focus these last couple of weeks.” He did the same at the podium inside the Darryl F. Zanuck Theater, alternately shouting out Reboot collaborators and introducing his bride. “My wife, Kristina, is very shy and doesn’t like a lot of attention on her,” he said. “Let’s…

Weddings Actress Sabina Chavez married James Glover, a co-executive producer on CBS Media Venture’s Hot Bench, on June 15 at the Marina del Rey Hotel. Births Alana Yankowitz, vp marketing and events at The Impact Agency, and Nassif Dow, a vp and senior financial adviser at Merrill Lynch, welcomed Margot Louise Dow on Aug. 2. Jon Ringquist, head of TV business affairs at CAA, and Lajoie St. George, vp development and production, film and TV at Conde Nast Entertainment, welcomed Charlotte Marion Ringquist on July 14 at Cedars-Sinai in L.A. Congrats Mike Moon joined Illumination Entertainment as president of a new label, Moonlight, and senior creative adviser Sept. 23. Chris Winfrey was tapped as president and CEO of Charter Communications, effective Dec. 1. Fernando Szew was named head of Fox…

Some people say, ‘I don’t know why I’m into cars,’ but for me, it was crystal clear,” says Robert Herjavec, one of the Sharks on ABC’s long-running Shark Tank, as he sits on the back of his Rolls-Royce Cullinan’s tailgating seats on a late summer morning, at a location he’d prefer not to disclose for safety purposes. “I’m an immigrant. I came here with my dad and I’m an only child who escaped from a communist country [Yugoslavia], and we came to Canada with one suitcase and no money. The whole melodramatic story. A few years later — I must have been about 10 years old at the time, and I’m walking down the street with my dad and we see this thing coming down the road and I say…

Amid the torrent of accusations leveled against powerful Hollywood men in the frenzied first few months of the #MeToo era, industry observers often shared the same jaded expectation. Short of arrest or indictment, the thinking went, the accused would be back on their feet after a brief time-out and a few memory-cleansing news cycles, carrying on with their careers unaffected. The dollar is king; Hollywood always forgets; etc. This hasn’t happened. In fact, comebacks — if they materialize at all — are strikingly and significantly circumscribed. One of #MeToo’s greatest victories, at the practical level, has been its unrelenting administration of professional punishment. Think about how few prominent individuals felled by sexual harassment or assault allegations in the post-Weinstein era have returned to an equivalent stature. The category excludes the…

It would be reductive to say podcasts are having a moment right now. The industry, which is expected to generate $4 billion in revenue by 2024, can trace its roots back to the days of radio, when creators were making podcasts long before Ben Hammersley coined the name. But the format’s impact and moneymaking potential have arguably never been higher, as evidenced by the entry of new megawatt voices like Meghan Markle, whose Archetypes dominated the charts shortly after launch. For this year’s inaugural Podcast Power Players list, THR examined the medium’s current landscape, taking reach and influence into account to determine the leading dealmakers and creatives pushing the industry forward. TALENT WILL ARNETT, JASON BATEMAN, SEAN HAYES SmartLess Introduced at the height of the pandemic, SmartLess provided much-needed laughs…

Paramount’s Smile, in theaters Sept. 30, is the latest fright flick to benefit from a sinister grin. But the granddaddy of all scary smile films dates back to 1928, when Universal Pictures released The Man Who Laughs, an adaptation of the 1869 Victor Hugo novel. The studio had success with another Hugo novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which it had adapted into a Lon Chaney showcase in 1923. Chaney would physically transform once again into a deformed gothic antihero — this time, Gwynplaine, a nobleman’s son who is hideously disfigured when the king orders a permanent smile carved into his face. But the project was sidelined because of a rights issue, and Chaney instead made 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, based on the 1910 Gaston Leroux novel. That film…

As creators increasingly diversify their presence across all major social platforms, companies like YouTube and Twitch are rewriting the rules around revenue sharing and rethinking just how generous they should be with their content partners. On Sept. 20, YouTube, led by Susan Wojcicki, unveiled a series of creator-driven announcements, including a plan to bring its “secret sauce,” its revenue-sharing model, to its shortform product, Shorts. But there’s a catch: While longer-form YouTube videos pay out 55 percent of their ad revenue to creators and 45 percent to YouTube, the shortform version flips that, with only 45 percent of total revenue going to creators (the rest covers costs of music licensing). Creators’ payouts will be determined by their contribution to the total Shorts views every 30 days, which means that as…

The Roger Goodell-led NFL, which long has been among the most conservative of major sports leagues, suddenly finds itself deep in business with big tech. Amazon is now a national media partner, and tech companies are among the bidders on a sliver of its media businesses, including its new subscription service, NFL+. The latest tech team-up? Apple, in a deal that will see the Apple Music service become the official sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, replacing Pepsi after a decadelong run. The deal is the culmination of a long effort by the NFL to not only turn the halftime show into a major revenue generator (the deal is said to be in the five-year, $50 million-a-year range) but to further expand its place as a cultural moment. Or,…

The Book of Goose (FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, SEPT. 20) BY Yiyun Li AGENCY The Wylie Agency The prolific author’s latest novel borrows a bit of mood and background from Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (two girls growing up in a European town eventually grow estranged) but adds a juicy secret about literary fraud to the center of the story. Creep: A Love Story (CLARION BOOKS, SEPT. 27) BY Lygia Day Peñaflor AGENCY Grandview This YA thriller follows a private high school’s golden couple, Laney and Nico — they’re gorgeous, popular and seemingly in love — from the perspective of an interloping fellow student whose admiration quickly spirals into dangerous obsession.…

Bryn Mooser, CEO and founder of nonfiction entertainment studio XTR, says he wants to see more production on L.A.’s Eastside, a historic area for movie filming. “Echo Park in particular is sort of where the center of the creative community is, especially for documentary filmmakers,” says the Oscar-nominated producer (Lifeboat, Body Team 12). “The neighborhood used to be called Edendale, and that’s where the first Hollywood studios were. Charlie Chaplin’s studio, the Keystone Studios, Mary Pickford, everybody was here. The first talkie was filmed probably a mile or so away. So there’s this history of making things here, which is really exciting.” That’s what drew Mooser, a fifth-generation Angeleno, to open XTR’s new 35,000-squarefoot production facility and headquarters on a cul-de-sac in Echo Park (in the former home of BelleVarado…

The global reckoning that took aim at a misogynistic culture of impunity may have been millennia overdue, but when it happened — starting in October 2017 — it happened all at once, with Hollywood as its epicenter. A half-decade later, survivors and journalists look back on its origins and take stock of its fallout — and its future For nearly two decades, Harvey Weinstein’s predatory tendencies were legend in Hollywood. And until a news organization could gather the sourcing and the courage to take on the mogul, that’s what they would remain. In 2017, 29-year-old NBC reporter Ronan Farrow was convinced he had the goods, with several of Weinstein’s victims willing to go on the record. Then his higher-ups held up the story. Undaunted, Farrow turned to The New Yorker.…

Is angrily swearing at your spouse domestic violence? Under a recent California law, it could be. In September 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills intended to enhance protections for survivors of abuse. One of them, which was enacted in part because of an increase in isolation-related domestic violence amid the pandemic, allows a party to request a restraining order in response to not only things like assault, battery, destruction of property and harassment but also if someone is destroying “the mental or emotional calm of the other party.” The new standard, which became effective Jan. 1, 2021, also adds to the family law code “coercive control,” which is behavior that “unreasonably interferes with a person’s free will and personal liberty.” That includes, but isn’t limited to, isolating someone from…

BY Nomi Abadi, founder of the Female Composer Safety League Composing is not a field where I would recommend any woman go public with a story of sexual abuse, and I chose not to go public with mine. First things first, we need to change the institutions — studios, corporations, managers, agents. There needs to be a zero-tolerance platform for sexual abuse. There needs to be a path for survivors to work. My industry isn’t ready to hear anyone’s personal story and be able to offer a path to get hired. We are still an industry that shames women. One voice coming out and outing one person — what good would it even do, other than bring me more shame? Every week I hear 30 more stories. It was more…

In the wake of #MeToo, employers across Hollywood turned to morals clauses as an attempt to deter bad behavior. While these provisions have been criticized by talent reps for being too broad and too subjective, there’s actually a bigger problem with their presence in many contracts: They’re prohibited by the directors and writers guilds’ collective bargaining agreements — and they have been for decades. “The origin was the Red Scare,” says talent lawyer Linda Lichter, explaining that the clauses first became popular when McCarthyism hit Hollywood. “Companies put them in contracts so they could fire people if they were accused of being a Red. They’ve come back in the context of #MeToo.” The clauses — which use language such as “public disrepute, humiliation, contempt, scandal or ridicule” — essentially mean…

Anne Rice’s lusty, tormented vampires reshaped popular blood-sucking narratives for four decades, establishing a tone and template that influenced everything from True Blood to The Vampire Diaries and Twilight. At the same time, Rice’s saga inspired attempts at contrast — stories about the undead that aimed to make vampires terrifying again or to giggle at their torment (see the horror film 30 Days of Night for the former approach, or both movie and series versions of What We Do in the Shadows for the latter). What’s perhaps most interesting about AMC’s adaptation of Rice’s seminal novel Interview With the Vampire is the sense that series creator Rolin Jones (HBO’s Perry Mason) is trying to split the difference — to give fans of the book versions of Louis and Lestat that…

What happens when a made-up, virtual rapper signs a deal with a major record label? In the case of FN Meka, a digitally rendered Black artist largely controlled by artificial intelligence and non-Black creators, major missteps and public backlash over “digital blackface” quickly led to a fiery end. Within weeks, Capitol Records scrapped his deal, his Instagram went private and most of his TikToks were deleted. The saga resurfaced ongoing conversations about cultural appropriation and racism in AI, given Meka’s use of the N-word and fabricated backstory about his time spent in prison. That the “robot rapper” even received a record deal and amassed more than 10 million followers on TikTok, though, shows that the interest in virtual influencers has persisted, six years after another virtual project — Lil Miquela,…

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU WANT TO be seen but also don’t want to be seen? On a sweltering morning in September, Jeremy Strong bounds into the sunlit dining room of the Sunset Tower Hotel and surveys the industry crowd. A wave of recognition ripples across the terrace. Patton Oswalt smiles and salutes; Strong waves back. Strong considers the setting for a moment then deems it too busy for an intimate conversation. Seconds later, he’s leading us down a cramped hallway and into the adjoining Tower Bar, currently closed for business. A harried hostess follows close behind. “It’s a bit of a whirlwind right now,” he says, taking a seat in the vacant wood-paneled lounge. “I was just in Telluride with the film.” The film is Armageddon Time. The…

The shocking accounts of sexism and harassment revealed in the early stages of the #MeToo movement exposed a toxic culture of abuse that had long gone unchecked in Hollywood. But the high-profile actresses and executives who lent their stories and celebrity to the cause were far from the only ones affected. Women in the crafts community — in roles from camera to sound to editing — said they, too, were subjected to such treatment, but without the platform of stardom to help them fight back. Most women behind the camera who were canvassed by The Hollywood Reporter — all of them speaking on the condition of anonymity — said that either they or a female colleague had been physically or verbally harassed in the workplace in the past five years,…

Reading isn’t only fundamental. Sometimes, it’s incredibly lucrative. Reese Witherspoon proved that in 2021 when she sold Hello Sunshine, the media company she built on the back of her own voracious reading and savvy book rights acquisitions, to Blackstone-backed Candle Media for a reported $900 million. Not too shabby for a production outfit that many might have been quick to write off as another actor’s vanity shingle. But Witherspoon’s tastes — and those of Lauren Neustadter, Hello Sunshine’s president of film and TV — have populated one of the most thriving content suppliers in Hollywood. Blending marquee ensemble vehicles for its founder (Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere and The Morning Show) with an aggressive slate of dramas starring the likes of Octavia Spencer (Truth Be Told), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Surface)…

As titles go, it doesn’t get much more generic than Amazon Freevee’s High School, which could suggest anything from a broad parody to a high-minded documentary. What it probably doesn’t suggest is what it actually is: a tender portrait of two teenage girls that draws its strength from its knack for unvarnished details and an uncommon sense of empathy. It’s also a music biopic of sorts, given that the series is adapted from Tegan and Sara Quin’s memoir of the same title. But you don’t have to know the Canadian indie pop duo’s work to appreciate High School. You just have to be familiar with that uniquely adolescent pain of realizing that growing up sometimes means growing apart from those you’ve loved, hopefully to find your way back again. Set…

The 2022 New York Film Festival is both the 60th edition of the event and the last one for executive director Eugene Hernandez. Before he departs to head up the Sundance Film Festival, the movie industry veteran spoke to THR about his best memories from overseeing NYC’s landmark movie conference and shares what to expect from this year’s lineup. How do you feel about this being your last New York Film Festival? It’s emotional. My relationship with this festival goes back 28 years. The organization [Film at Lincoln Center] and the festival really shaped, educated, informed and entertained me. The New York Film Festival has been such a formative part of my professional life and my life as a cinephile in New York. The last three years have been tough.…

WHITE NOISE (Opening Night) NYFF regular Noah Baumbach debuts his Don DeLillo adaptation starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. TILL (World Premiere) Director Chinonye Chukwu helms the story of Mamie Till-Mobley’s quest for justice after the lynching of her son. ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (Centerpiece) Laura Poitras explores the opioid epidemic through the activism of artist Nan Goldin. SHE SAID (World Premiere) Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan star in the retelling of the New York Times’ exposé of Harvey Weinstein. THE INSPECTION (Closing Night) A debut based on director Elegance Bratton’s experiences as a gay man in the Marine Corps basic training.…