Innholdsfortegnelse for January 5, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

Deals Strauss’ Next Sell Veteran Disney marketer joins Apple TV+ p. 14 CES 2023 in Focus Hollywood’s technologists offer forecasts p. 10 Jeremy Zimmer The UTA chief is on an acquisition tear, buying boutique literary agency Fletcher & Co. to gain a bigger foothold in the market for top authors. Adam Aron As AMC Theatres stock declines, the CEO pledges to freeze top exec salaries and to not sell anymore shares “anytime soon” in an attempt to win back retail investors. Anthony Wood Wall Street initially greets Roku’s plan to manufacture its own TV line — starting in the spring — with optimism as the company halts a stock slide. Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar The Dark creators took a swing with 1899, but plans for a second and third…

2012 A mega slate of tentpoles — from The Avengers to The Dark Knight Rises to Twilight and Hunger Games installments — resulted in combined ticket sales hitting a new record. 2014 Domestic revenue dipped when no event pic grossed $350 million or more at the domestic box office. Guardians of the Galaxy, introducing a new team of heroes, led with $333 million. 2016 Combined ticket sales clocked in at more than $11 billion for the second year in a row. Finding Dory swam to the top of the domestic chart with an impressive $486 million. 2018 North American box office revenue hit an all-time high thanks to a trio of films earning $600 million to $700 million. Black Panther was No. 1, followed by Avengers: Infinity War and Incredibles 2.…

1 Everything Everywhere All at Once A24 (APRIL 15) $70M 2 The Fabelmans* UNIVERSAL (NOV. 11) $11.8M 3 Bodies Bodies Bodies (A24, NOV. 19) $11.4M 4 Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris FOCUS (JULY 5) $10.4M 5 The Banshees of Inisherin* SEARCHLIGHT (OCT. 21) $9.1M 6 Till MGM/UAR (OCT. 14) $9M 7 Bones and All* MGM/UAR (NOV. 18) $7.8M 8 Marcel the Shell With Shoes On A24 (JUNE 24) $6.3M 9 Tár FOCUS (OCT. 7) $5.6M 10 The Whale* A24 (DEC. 9) $5.3M Everything Everywhere All at Once did mind-bending business at the North American box office, earning $68.6 million domestically after its March release to rank as the top-grossing specialty film since La La Land in 2017. Otherwise, most specialty films released last year weren’t able to break out. That includes Steven Spielberg’s…

Apple, the world’s largest company, has always had a soft spot for that Disney magic. That’s why Steve Jobs asked Bob Iger to serve on Apple’s board (Iger resigned when Apple officially entered the content business) and why it was eager to work with former Disney/Pixar executive John Lasseter as part of its multiyear deal with Skydance Animation. With Apple TV+, the tech giant is taking a page from HBO, ordering fewer TV shows and movies but aiming for a quality that’s a cut above the rest. But the Apple brand has always been a bit more family-friendly than HBO, and the Disney envy is still apparent. Enter Ricky Strauss. When Disney launched the marketing campaigns for such films as Frozen, The Avengers, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Incredibles…

While much of Hollywood was on holiday, some stars went back to work early, hopping on TV to help ring in 2023. Miley Cyrus returned to NBC for her second New Year’s Eve special, this time co-hosting with godmother Dolly Parton with appearances by Sia, Paris Hilton, David Byrne and SNL castmembers. Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper led CNN’s NYE broadcast for the sixth time — and, for the first time, were required to remain sober — with celebrity guests Kevin Hart, Brian Cox and Jean Smart. Ryan Seacrest also hosted his 18th NYC celebration on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, with an appearance by Quinta Brunson, as Ciara tag-teamed from Disneyland and introduced performers like Ben Platt and Halle Bailey. Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

It’s shaping up to be particularly interesting year in the race for the Oscar in sound. The sound branch reinstated its shortlist and bake-off a year ago (one year after combining sound editing and mixing into a single category), and this season it narrowed the field for its Oscar to a fascinatingly diverse shortlist of stellar work on 10 movies. Notably, the shortlist includes both an international and documentary feature: Germany’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s adaptation of the classic novel for Netflix (which also made the shortlists for international feature and for score, makeup and hairstyling, as well as visual effects), and Brett Morgen’s David Bowie documentary, Moonage Daydream (also shortlisted in the doc feature competition). Historically, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Mexico’s entry in what was then…

The premiere for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was as star-studded as any red carpet for a live-action film. Walt Disney knew the event, staged on Dec. 21, 1937, at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, had to be big. Lore has it that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard wept during the movie, which marked Disney’s first animated feature with sound, as well as Disney’s first feature-length movie. Charlie Chaplin and Judy Garland also were among the notable names who attended. “It was a turning point. Before that, animation was just a novelty and a parlor trick,” says Disney historian Don Hahn. “There had been concern among some studios and audience members that you couldn’t sit and watch a cartoon that long.” The worry was for naught. The…

A good mystery often begins with a clue that’s right out in the open, even if no one recognizes it at first. In a similar way, the extravagant Greek villa that serves as the principal setting for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery impressed production designer Rick Heinrichs when he first visited it early in his location search, but it wasn’t immediately selected for the movie’s game of murder that turns deadly. “It was a place that had a modernist take on classical architecture and had a hierarchy of stairs that led up to it, and I could see us placing a dome on top of it,” Heinrichs tells THR. “But our experience always tells us that the first place is never the one you end up with.” Instead, he…

Almost two decades ago during his freshman year at Harvard, Justin Hurwitz wanted to form a rock band and heard of an incredible drummer named Damien Chazelle. “Somebody gave me Damien’s phone number,” Hurwitz recalls, “and I called him up cold and asked, ‘Do you want to be in a band?’ And we started a band with three other classmates.” A year later, Hurwitz and Chazelle decided they had another passion they wanted to pursue: film. They began working on what would eventually become their first movie, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. But their former bandmates, D.A. Wallach and Maxwell Drummey, were at work too — garnering interest from the likes of Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, who ultimately signed them to a record deal as indierock duo…

Over its nine-season, 193-episode run, NBC’s Night Court had a lot going for it. The Manhattan courtroom setting offered an array of cases that let the show shift from outlandish to topical, ridiculous to borderline sincere. The ensemble was solid and, in the case of four-time Emmy winner John Larroquette, occasionally spectacular. One thing it didn’t have going for it was consistency. The broad humor could veer into hackiness, the attempts at candor could stray into mawkishness. Shifts within the supporting cast meant that writers were constantly trying, not always successfully, to tailor new parts to new actors, knowing that they would always be behind Larroquette in punchlines and Harry Anderson in screen time. Audiences can look forward to experiencing the inconsistencies of Night Court anew with NBC’s reboot: Through…

The ups and downs at the 2022 box office were certainly dramatic. Recovery from the COVID-19 crisis was in full swing during the summer, only to crash in the fall. There were high hopes for the year-end holidays, but the merriment didn’t quite materialize outside of Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Throughout the pandemic era, such films have fared the best because they appeal to a broad swath of people, including those between the ages of 18 and 34, who were the most likely to return to the cinema. Families and older adults, however, may have become more discerning in terms of how they spend their leisure time — and money. Animated films, once a bankable staple for Hollywood, kept facing headwinds in 2022. And…

Matt Reeves’ The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, was a needed hit for Warner Bros. So was the studio’s biopic Elvis, which was the most successful adult-skewing title of the year. Austin Butler plays the iconic Elvis Presley. The performance of the J.K. Rowling spinoff means that there likely won’t be a fourth Fantastic Beasts movie, even as Warner Bros. hopes to revive the Harry Potter franchise. The Bad Guys was among a string of solid hits for Universal. The CGI pic did big business in China, where it grossed nearly $50 million, while most Hollywood pics were shut out. Source: Comscore, Jan. 1, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022. *Still in release.…

The evolution of the metaverse, virtual reality and TV technology are just a few of the buzziest trends that will be on display at the 2023 CES Show, which gets underway Jan. 5 in Las Vegas. Organizers are hoping to reach 100,000 attendees, which is far below pre-COVID levels (the org reported 171,000 at its January 2020 show) but nevertheless would be a strong showing for a pandemic-era trade event. Speaking with THR, tech leaders at major studios outlined promising developments — like one day seeing Avatar: The Way of Water at home in a format as it’s shown in theaters or having easier access to Filmmaker Mode on your TV to preserve the director’s intent and remove the “reality TV”-like quality of high-def viewing — as well as incoming…

Peter Berg didn’t know how to respond to the 2020 murder of George Floyd. It was not the Minneapolis that the filmmaker, a graduate of Saint Paul’s Macalester College, thought he knew. Eventually, he turned to football, as he had before in his career — following the predominantly Black players at the city’s North Community High School along with their coaches (also members of the Minneapolis PD) for a football season that proved fraught on and off the field. Boys in Blue, the resulting four-part Showtime series (out Jan. 6), may signal a softening for the 57-year-old director. Best known for such machismo-fueled features as Friday Night Lights, Hancock and Battleship, Berg is also readying a Netflix limited series about the opioid crisis (Painkiller) and a long-gestating Rihanna doc for…

In the past decade, Atlanta has earned the moniker Hollywood of the South. The city boasts a population of around 500,000 in Atlanta proper and roughly 6 million in the greater metro area, with a rising number of full-time and part-time residents who are entertainment industry professionals. Many have been lured to work on productions like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Walking Dead and the new Father of the Bride, or to find more stable work at the 700-acre Trilith Studios or Tyler Perry Studios in the heart of Atlanta. Long a mecca for hip-hop artists and Black creators, Atlanta has also become increasingly popular with public figures from all walks of life. The undisputed media king of Atlanta — Tyler Perry — recently completed an astounding $100 million estate…

There is nothing more precious to a Hollywood studio than IP — of which Disney has plenty. Just as characters from Disney movies are featured at the company’s theme parks, so do the attractions crosspollinate and become movies. Many were dubious when the studio announced plans to make a movie based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The Johnny Depp-led franchise transformed into a giant box office success following the first movie’s release in summer 2003. Later that year, The Haunted Mansion, starring Eddie Murphy, also hit theaters. The film earned a so-so $182 million at the global box office against a $90 million budget (the film has since become something of a home entertainment Halloween classic). Disney will have another go this summer, when Justin Simien’s star-packed Haunted…

Before making EO, their dreamy tale of a donkey traveling across Europe, director Jerzy Skolimowski and his partner/co-screenwriter Ewa Piaskowska had been playing with the idea of making an animal the protagonist of their next film, following their 2010 award-winning drama Essential Killing. But they couldn’t decide on the species. “We eliminated cats and dogs. There are too many movies about cats and dogs already,” Skolimowski says. “But otherwise — pigs, sheep, cows — it was all open.” Then, on holiday in Sicily over Christmas, they stumbled on a reenactment of the biblical story of the birth of Jesus. The manger scene involved hundreds of extras, both human and animal. “There were chickens and geese, pigs and sheep. A cow. It was a whole zoo,” Skolimowski recalls. “In the midst…

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER $1.4 billion James Cameron, Jon Landau The sequel to the 2009 box office behemoth (which earned Cameron and Landau their second nom for the PGA award; they won in 1998 for Titanic) is a similar critical success — and its box office totals will likely rise as audiences keep returning to Pandora. THE BATMAN $771 million Dylan Clark, Matt Reeves Reeves’ gritty, three-hour action epic brought audiences a new version of the caped crusader (this time played with brooding magnetism by Robert Pattinson), effectively relaunching the superhero franchise once again for Warner Bros. and DC. BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER $820 million Kevin Feige, Nate Moore Disney/Marvel’s return to Wakanda — a film that also serves as a tribute to late actor Chadwick Boseman — recaptured…

THE ART OF EATING: THE LIFE OF M.F.K. FISHER Gregory Bezat’s doc pays tribute to the life and influence of the celebrated author of books like The Gastronomical Me. THE BLUE CAFTAN On the international Oscar shortlist, this Moroccan film features a shopkeeper and her closeted husband. CLOSE Also on the international Oscar shortlist, this Belgian film about two 13-year-old friends is Lukas Dhont’s follow-up to Girl. THE GRAB From the director of Blackfish comes an exposé about the world’s superpowers’ control of water and food supplies. MARS ONE Gabriel Martins’ drama centers on a Brazilian family’s struggles after the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.…

Under Donna Langley’s leadership, Universal’s film empire — including Focus Features, Illumination and DreamWorks Animation — released 40 titles of all shapes and sizes, far more than its rivals. Disney ultimately kept its long-running lead in terms of market share, capped by Avatar: The Way of Water Source: Studios, THR research Another big headline was Paramount. The studio came in dead last in 2021 in terms of market share but made big gains in 2022 after nearly every film — such as Top Gun: Maverick and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — clicked with its intended audience (the lone exception was Christmas release Babylon).…

A Long-Delayed Memorial for Jean-Marc Vallée Auteur Jean-Marc Vallée died on Christmas Day 2021, and, given the sudden nature of his death — from coronary artery disease — and a COVID-19 surge, his Hollywood family wasn’t able to gather to honor his life until a recent December day. In what was described as a “small, intimate and private” gathering, actors, writers, producers, crew and execs from Vallée’s projects like Dallas Buyers Club, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects and Wild headed to Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica for an afternoon service that was supported by HBO and Searchlight and organized by his two sons, Émile and Alex. After eulogies, guests took a stroll to the Pacific Ocean during magic hour to toss roses into the sea, and everyone went…

Births Actress GG Townson and Vontarrius Dora, who played in the NFL, welcomed daughter Kimberly Ann Devine Dora on Aug. 12 in L.A. Weddings Producer Dana Brunetti married lawyer Alexandra Bijan at their Northern California home on Dec. 22. They honey-mooned in Dubai. Congrats Former Sundance chief Keri Putnam and tech executive Dee Clark joined AMC Entertainment’s board of directors Dec. 29. Pamela Corante was hired as vp global communications, with an emphasis on anti-piracy initiatives, for the Motion Picture Association, effective Jan. 3. Raina Falcon was promoted to senior vp communications at HBO and HBO Max Content on Dec. 14. Netflix’s Amir Moini joined Fangoria Studios as its first chief marketing officer Dec. 19. Former Disney exec Cristina Fiumara was named global head of animation content development for film and TV at Riot…

When MGM’s Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s musical valentine to Hollywood’s silent film era as it transitioned into the world of talkies, opened in the spring of 1952, it instantly won over moviegoers. Writing in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther enthused, “Compounded generously of music, dance, color spectacle and a riotous abundance of Gene Kelly, Jean Hagen and Donald O’Connor on the screen, all elements in this rainbow program are carefully contrived and guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood.” The movie went on to become a box office hit, ranking as the 10th highest-grossing film of the year in North America. The Writers Guild awarded Betty Comden and Adolph Green its prize for best-written American musical.…

Like many others, Jennifer Lee remembers watching reruns of The Wonderful World of Disney as a kid growing up in the 1970s and feeling inspired by “Uncle Walt,” as he was known on the show. She dreamed of becoming an animator at the company — which she eventually did. Lee, who joined Walt Disney Animation as a writer in 2011, was named chief creative officer of the storied studio in 2018. “It felt like home. We have a portrait of Walt by the front entrance, and every time I pass it, I think of his legacy, innovative spirit, dedication to artistry and his commitment to ever-evolving storytelling. It drives everything we do,” says Lee, the first female director of a Walt Disney Animation film (Frozen). Walt Disney Animation’s Oscar-nominated Encanto,…

On first impression, AMC’s Mayfair Witches appears as lush as the overgrown yard of the New Orleans bungalow where much of it takes place. The plot, adapted from Anne Rice’s novels (the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy), centers on gifted surgeon Rowan (The White Lotus’ Alexandra Daddario), who discovers she’s heir to a dynasty of women with special powers. As she explores her family tree, each gnarled root seems to branch off into knottier tangles still, yielding a saga laden with sex, death and magic and spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles. But amid that sordid lore, creators Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) and Esta Spalding (On Becoming a God in Central Florida) make the mistake of prioritizing mythology and mystery over personality and plot. While there’s a…

How do you create suspense in a movie built around Super Bowl LI, the legendary 2017 matchup between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons, which saw the Patriots trail the Falcons 28-3 in the third quarter only to rally and win 34-28 in overtime? That was one of the challenges facing Kyle Marvin when he agreed to direct 80 for Brady, which will have its world premiere Jan. 6 as the opening-night film at the 34th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Marvin — who, along with his writing and producing partner Michael Angelo Covino, starred in 2019’s The Climb, which explored male friendship — tackles a different sort of friendship in Brady. It follows four old friends, spry octogenarians played by Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field and Rita…

M3GAN, the new Blumhouse flick about a homicidal robot doll (in theaters Jan. 6), is not Hollywood’s first foray into little-girl AI. A campy ’80s sitcom called Small Wonder followed the exploits of Vicki — an acronym for Voice Input Child Identicant — who was a child android played by Tiffany Brissette, then 10. The show was created by the late Howard Leeds, who wrote on Bewitched and The Brady Bunch. Leeds had also written on My Living Doll, a short-lived sitcom from 1964 starring Julie Newmar as a robot woman. He borrowed that premise for Small Wonder, which debuted in syndication on Sept. 10, 1985. (It aired on the newly launched Fox network from 1986 until its cancellation in 1989, then lived on in reruns.) After a nationwide search…