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.
Ryan Murphy As both Dahmer and The Watcher score with viewers, Netflix locks in the producer’s services for two more editions of the Monster anthology and season two of The Watcher. Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan After Westworld shed nearly 8 million viewers, HBO pulled the plug on the creators’ pricey and confusing sci-fi drama two seasons shy of their master plan. Kelly Clarkson The singer’s daytime TV show, the only syndicated talk series to grow viewers in consecutive seasons, gets picked up through 2025 from NBCUniversal. Shepard Smith After hiring the Fox News anchor to launch a flagship evening newscast, CNBC cancels The News before the midterms, citing a pivot to more financial programming. Showbiz Stocks $96.47 (+2.4%) META PLATFORMS INC. (META) As the tech giant prepares for massive layoffs,…
Elon Musk’s journey as owner of Twitter was fraught from the beginning. But, after seven months of negotiations and a lawsuit, he’s now officially in charge of the microblogging platform and is facing a new wave of headaches. There are legal threats over mass layoffs, advertisers fleeing the platform and widespread backlash after his proclamation that blue checks would cost $20 per month — which Musk lowered to $8 after a public exchange with author Stephen King whose response was, “Fuck that, they should pay me.” Then, of course, there’s his $44 billion investment. Musk — who brought on outside backers including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, VC fund Sequoia Capital and cryptocurrency exchange Binance; convinced current equity holders Jack Dorsey and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to retain their stakes in the…
Hollywood’s largest studios are backing away from blanket vaccine mandates on some productions. Disney confirmed Nov. 7 that it had informed 12 TV projects that it will no longer require cast and the crew to be vaccinated. The projects were told vaccines were no longer required for those in “Zone A” — typically the project’s main actors as well as key crewmembers who work closely with them in the highest-risk areas of the set. (A company rep says mandates remain in place on U.S.-based film productions.) Similarly, Netflix has dropped vaccine mandates on all new and returning shows from previous seasons, say people with knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Paramount has done the same for some categories of productions since February. Policies allowing producers…
Paramount has hired CNN audio producer Megan Marcus to oversee CBS News’ audio portfolio — including My Life of Crime, Unsung Science and The Takeout — as the studio builds its podcasting slate. PodcastOne, with a slate that includes shows from Jordan Harbinger and Adam Carolla, lost audience and fell month to month from 7.3 million to 3.8 million unique listeners, per PodTrac’s analytics. Vox Media nabbed the sales and distribution rights for Josh Muccio’s The Pitch, a former Gimlet-produced show that left Spotify this summer. (The show will stay independently owned.)…
As Hollywood executives ponder the next phase of streaming strategy, the major services will see just how loyal their customers are as subscription prices creep up during an economic downturn. Such services as Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video have all brought up their monthly prices by $2 to $3, signaling the end of a honeymoon period when entertainment companies, fully aware of the competitive streaming landscape in front of them, were willing to price their streamers low to attract subscribers. HBO Max, now run by David Zaslav’s Warner Bros. Discovery, will also see a price hike of some kind in 2023 as the company prepares to merge the prestige streamer with Discovery+. Raising prices when consumers may be more conscious of their spending may seem counterintuitive, especially…
THE BATMAN The Warner Bros. franchise relaunch capitalized on a spring date, and its only major rival was Sony’s Uncharted… DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS … while the Marvel Studios sequel opened in a May corridor ahead of Top Gun: Maverick’s Memorial Day weekend launch… BLACK ADAM … and the Dwayne Johnson DC Comics film, the lowest grossing of the hat trick trio so far, had three weekends mostly bereft of major releases, save for Ticket to Paradise, which served as counter programming. What About Top Gun: Maverick? While the sequel is the No. 1 film domestically with $716 million and won three weekends, they weren’t in a row: One was in May, one was in June and one in September, a feat unto itself.…
