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.
Tom Hanks The star’s Sony Pictures dramedy A Man Called Otto earns a better-than-expected $15.3 million over the holiday weekend in a much-needed win for adult-skewing movies. LeBron James/Maverick Carter The SpringHill producers who backed Warner Bros. comedy House Party can’t guide the reboot to a theatrical win as it lands at a $4.7 million domestic bow. Rebecca Blumenstein The New York Times veteran takes over as president of editorial for NBC News, reporting to top exec Cesar Conde, as the network looks to a multiplatform future. Bill Morrow After losing NFL Sunday Ticket to YouTube, the DirecTV chief plans to lay off hundreds as the company navigates the decline of the linear pay TV landscape. Showbiz Stocks $96.05 (+9.7%) AMAZON (AMZN) The tech giant reported a strong debut season…
In 2004, Roy Disney — Walt’s nephew — summoned Disney shareholders to the company’s annual meeting, asking them to oust then-chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, who had been running the place for 20 years. Roy had Walt’s face, and his “save Disney” movement brought 4,000 emotional Disney-loving individual shareholders of all ages to chilly Philadelphia, some leaning on canes and others with babies in strollers. After a stunning 43 percent voted against reelecting Eisner to the board, a new chairman was named immediately and Eisner, despite vowing to remain as CEO until the end of his contract in 2006, departed in 2005. At age 80, Nelson Peltz is old enough to remember one of the most successful shareholder revolts in corporate history. Presumably he also knows that he is no…
After news broke that Justin Roiland was charged with felony domestic violence in Orange County, several questions remain unanswered about the fate of his sprawling animation empire. As NBC News first reported Jan. 12, Roiland, the cocreator of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty and Hulu’s Solar Opposites, was charged in 2020 with one count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud or deceit after an alleged incident that year with an unnamed woman whom Roiland was dating. (Roiland has pleaded not guilty, and in a statement, his attorney T. Edward Welbourn called the media coverage of the charges “inaccurate,” adding, “To be clear, not only is Justin innocent, but we also have every expectation that this matter is on course to…
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group of journalists for non-American outlets that organizes the Golden Globes, has long been controversial, but the industry worked with it because its telecast proved a marketing boon for films and TV shows. After a year off the air while grappling with the fallout from a Los Angeles Times report that detailed the absence of Black members at the HFPA and questionable practices by the organization, NBC hosted the Globes on Jan. 10, but only after renegotiating its deal with the HFPA and its production company, Dick Clark Productions, so that it would end after that telecast, rather than stretch through 2026. The Globes’ search for a new home comes at a potentially opportune time. With streaming now embracing advertising, services are on the…
Depending on whom you ask, Hollywood is already in a recession: Studios are reining in budgets and implementing hiring freezes and layoffs. And the podcast industry, which is still settling into its sweet spot in the entertainment-company pantheon, appears poised to follow suit both as a reaction to the economic downturn and as a reflection of audio’s past years of massive growth fueled by cash from Spotify, Amazon, iHeartMedia, SiriusXM and other major players. How could a downturn impact the industry? Let’s look at the deals. Two podcast dealmakers who spoke with THR noted that companies have been more judicious in closing deals but were careful to note that those changes weren’t, in their opinions, reflective of an overall decline for podcasting. “Now, there’s a little bit more selectivity,” says…
The Mayor of Kingstown boss has called the Paramount+ series “the most dangerous show on television,” but its marketing campaign is suddenly timid. Before series star Jeremy Renner was critically injured in a Jan. 1 snowplow accident, his character appeared in season two key art with a severely scuffed-up face. But now that the actor’s face is in alarmingly similar shape, as he showcased in a photo posted from his hospital bed, the marketing has been adjusted. While the same image and language appear, out of respect for Renner and his recovery, Paramount+ removed the bloody wounds. “It’s good of the network,” co-creator Hugh Dillon tells THR, adding of Renner, who stars in the exceedingly bleak crime drama as the unofficial mayor of a prison-filled town: “Everybody is sensitive to…
