Innholdsfortegnelse for February 15, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

The past five years saw every major Hollywood giant lean into streaming entertainment, pulling programming budgets from broadcast and cable channels and funneling them into wholly owned streaming services. But there also have been exceptions: sports and news, which TV executives have long argued hold the legacy pay TV bundle together. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, for example, told Wall Street analysts this past summer that linear TV is “a cash generator and a great business for us for many years to come.” So while such cable channels as TNT, Syfy and Comedy Central have dialed down their original entertainment output and reduced budgets for everything from staffing to marketing, with efforts focused on streaming, channels like ESPN and Fox News have stayed the course, benefiting from their ability…

Alison Brie’s Inspiration for Nude Scene in New Movie: Alison Brie In Prime Video’s new romantic comedy Somebody I Used to Know, actor and filmmaker Dave Franco directs his leading lady — wife Alison Brie — through several nude scenes, including a full-frontal streaking sprint across a golf course alongside co-star Kiersey Clemons. Turns out the inspiration for the scene was none other than Brie herself, who co-wrote the script with her husband. “That was an early addition to the storyline because I had a real penchant for streaking in my college years,” Brie told THR at the film’s Culver City premiere. “I kind of took a step away from that, but, in more recent years, I’ve gotten back into it.” Just how recent are we talking? “She did it…

Births CAA digital media agent Avi Wasserman and wife Ashley Silver Wasserman, an entertainment attorney and name partner at Brecheen, Feldman, Breimer, Silver and Thompson, welcomed Noah Wasserman on Dec. 13 at Cedars-Sinai. Sasha Levites, an attorney and partner in the entertainment group of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, and Zack Banton welcomed Lucy Pearl Banton on Dec. 15. Congrats Former Amazon Studios exec Christina Malach joined independent studio Media Res as senior vp development Feb. 2. Sharon Levy was tapped as the new CEO of Endemol Shine North America on Feb. 9, two days after Ben Samek took over as CEO of parent company Banijay Americas. Maura McGreevy was upped to chief communications officer for Endeavor on Feb. 6. Tom Martin was named head of business affairs and general counsel…

Working on the genre-bending Everything Everywhere All at Once meant that editor Paul Rogers had to jump from comedy to action to sci-fi to drama, all while following Oscar-nominated Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, a Chinese American woman just trying to run her laundromat and complete an IRS audit when she becomes entangled in an adventure that finds her traveling through the multiverse. But Rogers admits that throughout this complex edit, his overall approach was most akin to character drama. “The action scenes and the big crazy montages were almost like the kind of fun escape from the real work of the family drama and of making it connect emotionally,” he says. Which is not to say the action wasn’t a sizable challenge in cutting Daniels’ movie, which was released by…

Ant-Man and the Wasp may have the ability to get really small, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania goes really big. This third film revolving around the characters (and the 31st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series, for those keeping count) represents a departure from its two predecessors. While those were more lighthearted and relatively small-scaled compared to the behemoth films featuring the other superheroes, this entry clearly aims higher, taking place almost entirely in the Quantum Realm and rivaling the Star Wars films in its exotic worldbuilding. Imagine the cantina scene from Star Wars on steroids and expanded to feature length, and you’ll have some idea of what director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness are going for. Mileage will vary in terms of fan reactions; personally, I…

When the 27th annual Art Directors Guild Awards are handed out at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, Michael Denering, best known for his work in such movies as Die Hard, Batman Returns, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, will be one of several big-name artists receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. Ahead of the Feb. 18 event, Denering looked back at some of his prized work, including a piece seen in Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur classic. The scenic artist was a member of a small team that created a mural for the original Jurassic Park (left). The project was based on Picasso’s famous 1937 oil painting Guernica — the film version swapped out the original antiwar motifs of a gored horse, a bull and screaming women with…

In his first earnings report back as Disney CEO, Bob Iger unveiled a structure that returns power to the creatives but also raises questions about succession and the fate of two key company assets. Under Iger’s Feb. 8 plan, the empire is divided up three ways: Disney Entertainment, including the company’s streaming business, and all its non-ESPN media and content offerings under the leadership of Alan Bergman and Dana Walden; ESPN, led by Jimmy Pitaro; and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, with Josh D’Amaro still in charge. All of this, as well as a plan to cut costs to the tune of $5.5 billion, is in pursuit of achieving streaming profitability by fiscal year 2024, Iger emphasized. Of course, in segmenting out the company in this way, the new plan…

Running from Feb. 16 to 26, “Modernism Week is the perfect excuse for a winter escape to the desert,” says Lady Gaga’s interior designer, Jeff Andrews. Oliver Furth, who has masterminded the homes of Imagine Entertainment’s Michael Rosenberg and CAA’s Michael Rosenfeld, agrees. He’s headed out early Friday morning, Feb. 17, for the opening day of the four-day Modernism Show design fair. “At the show and around town, dealers bring out their best stuff,” he notes. Also on his agenda: a visit to Albert Frey’s Frey House II. Says Furth, “It’s an icon and not to be missed.” (Tours available through moderntour.com.) Modernism Week’s agenda of tours and talks, many of which have been sold out for weeks, includes such highlights as a keynote from Morphosis’ Thom Mayne (the architect…

Paul Rudd, Jonathan Majors, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas and Kathryn Newton kicked off Marvel’s Phase Five on Feb. 6 with the premiere of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which marks the beginning of a new stage of the MCU, the Multiverse Saga, following the Infinity Saga. The third Ant-Man flick sees Majors as villain Kang the Conqueror facing off against Rudd, who told THR that taking a punch from Majors “feels intense. He’s a great actor, and throughout the entire film, he really felt as if he was a formidable foe. He was also getting ready to go into Creed III, so any time we’re doing any of that fight choreography, it was real.” Director Peyton Reed added that in this third outing, “We wanted to beat [Rudd’s]…

For the past two awards cycles, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has implemented a “soft rollout” of its representation and inclusion standards, collecting demographic information about participants in front of and behind the camera for all Oscar best picture submissions before before next season, when films must meet a minimum of diversity benchmarks — for example, offering paid internships for people from underrepresented groups — to be considered eligible to compete. The inclusion standards, first announced in September 2020, were met with perhaps expected skepticism (or outright criticism) from those chafing at the idea of a personnel mandate on their commerce and creativity. But the Academy’s Jeanell English, who joined the organization in 2020 and was promoted to executive vp impact and inclusion in July, says there…

February is L.A.’s busiest art month, with no less than five fairs kicking off around the city. Among them, Frieze Los Angeles, owned by Endeavor, returns in a new and larger location at Santa Monica Airport (see guide on page 32). As the fairs open, THR catches up with four buzzy artists, all with new shows right now that explore the topography of Los Angeles. Refik Anadol Just days after his AI-based art was shown on screens surrounding the stage of the 2023 Grammys, artist and computer programmer Anadol opened a mesmerizing solo show, Living Paintings, at Jeffrey Deitch. The exhibit showcases the Istanbul-born artist’s large-scale LED-screen video works that harness millions of images and data points, transforming them into seemingly fluid cascades of imagery. The pieces include the work…

If there’s one thing Apple TV+’s Hello Tomorrow! knows, it’s how to paint a pretty picture. The exteriors of its retro-futuristic world are replete with sleek hovercars and friendly-looking robots, the interiors with tasteful midcentury furniture. Its characters conjure a rosier vision still: The Brightside sales team, led by Jack (Billy Crudup), push fantasies of affordable luxury on the moon — 200,000 miles away from Earthly drudgeries. So enticing is this dream that Jack himself frequently seems to lose sight of the gap between the pitch and the reality — much of the plot centers on his attempts to hide that the lunar time-shares he’s hawking aren’t all they’re made out to be. For Jack to get caught up in his ambitions is one thing. It’s another for the series…

When the 21st annual Visual Effects Society Awards are presented Feb. 15 at The Beverly Hilton, the question might not be will Avatar: The Way of Water win, but just how many awards will it collect? The juggernaut earned 14 nominations this year, a record for a feature — or any single project — in the society’s history. The noms include one in the top category of outstanding VFX in a photoreal feature. Alongside The Way of Water, the category nominees are Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Jurassic World: Dominion, The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick. This year, VES introduced a category for emerging technology, in which The Way of Water earned a trio of nominations for some of the innovations that helped propel the movie to more than…

In the pandemic era, it wasn’t uncommon to see a major Hollywood studio abandon a traditional release and send a movie straight to streaming. Now the opposite is happening with increasing frequency, whereby a film made for a streamer instead ends up at the multiplex. There have been notable success stories — Smile, which grossed $216 million globally, and PAW Patrol: The Movie ($144 million) among them. But Magic Mike’s Last Dance, originally made for HBO Max, is harder to judge after launching to a franchise-low $8.3 million domestically from 1,496 theaters during Super Bowl weekend. The first Magic Mike, released in 2012, couldn’t stop dancing after opening to $39.1 million from nearly 4,000 locations on its way to grossing a sexy $167.3 million globally, thanks in large part to…

In a messy behind-the-scenes fight over Yellowstone’s season five, there may be only one thing that’s certain: Neither side looks particularly great right now. Star Kevin Costner has been painted by anonymous sources in reports as refusing to work more than a single week on the second half of the season debuting this summer, presumably because of his commitment to his Western passion project, Horizon, which is now shooting. Paramount+ comes across as if it doesn’t have its talent and scheduling acts together and that — unlike Yellowstone Dutton ranch hands wrangling cattle — it cannot keep its production herd on the trail. And the timing of this uncertainty — as Paramount Global seeks to overhaul its TV division, fold Showtime in with Paramount+ and focus more on franchises and…

As Oscar rituals become ever more calcified, the biggest news when the annual nominations are announced is not necessarily who’s made the cut but rather who’s been snubbed. While a nom is worth a momentary celebration, a snub can turn into weeks, if not years, of outraged commentary. Nominations, and even wins, are often soon forgotten. But a snub can be eternal. For example, die-hard Barbra Streisand fans haven’t forgiven the Academy for denying her directing noms for either 1983’s Yentl (for which she won a Golden Globe) or 1991’s The Prince of Tides (a best picture nominee) even as it showered gold on male stars like Robert Redford (Ordinary People) and Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves) for their directorial debuts. But not all so-called “snubs” are so obvious. In…

Is the screenplay a director’s medium? The Academy certainly seems to think so. Of the 10 Oscar-nominated screenplays this year, eight were written (or cowritten) by the film’s director. The nominees for best original screenplay are Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (co-written with Tony Kushner), Todd Field’s Tár and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. All five are nominated for best picture and also earned their helmers a best director nom. The adapted screenplay category features three scripts credited to their films’ directors: All Quiet on the Western Front (written by director Edward Berger with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson, earning his second Oscar nom) and Women Talking (Sarah Polley). The two…

The Sauron-like eye of awards season will shift its gaze to London on Feb. 19 for the BAFTAs, arguably the biggest film ceremony outside of the U.S. Change is afoot for the jewel in the British Academy’s crown, and not just with the increasing diversity of the nominations, which this year saw 45 films given noms and love to many performances and features snubbed by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ voters, including Decision to Leave and, perhaps most surprisingly, The Woman King. It should also be noted that AMPAS’ wide-ranging appreciation for The Fabelmans wasn’t matched across the Atlantic, with Steven Spielberg’s deeply personal feature getting a lone BAFTA nomination for original screenplay. The BAFTAs also has switched venues, shifting from the Royal Albert Hall to its new…

As TV audiences and Twitter users are delighting each week in the poignancy of the post-apocalyptic world of HBO’s The Last of Us, many also have been reflecting on another of the network’s doomsday dramas. HBO Max’s Station Eleven, the cult-favorite novel turned TV show, received critical acclaim but has failed to dominate on the awards circuit like many of its HBO counterparts — it didn’t win any of the seven Emmy categories for which it was nominated and was overlooked at this year’s Golden Globes. Now, thanks to a release schedule that spanned two eligibility windows, it’s up for another round of DGA Awards. Hiro Murai was nominated (but didn’t win) for directorial achievement in 2022, and on Feb. 18 Jeremy Podeswa and Helen Shaver will be up for…