Innholdsfortegnelse for March 1, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

When Amazon debuted its highly anticipated Most Expensive TV Series Ever Made — The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — last fall, the company had to contend with a bothersome rival from Warner Bros. Discovery: the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. Warners picked a debut date for its prestige TV drama 12 days before Amazon’s $1 billion gamble launched, ensuring nonstop media and fandom comparisons, many of which were less than favorable to the family-friendly Rings. For Amazon, the head-to-head rivalry was all the more galling because Warners is a minority licensee stakeholder in Rings, so they’re ostensibly supposed to be on the same side. Team Rings’ public reaction to the matchup went like this: None of this matters because these shows are totally…

James Cameron, Jon Landau Convene Avatar 2 Fans for Unfiltered Feedback: ‘We’re Not Looking for Praise’ James Cameron spent Feb. 16 on the Walt Disney lot in Burbank doing something he said he’d never done before: getting constructive criticism directly from fans of Avatar: The Way of Water. Joined by producing partner Jon Landau, he fielded feedback for more than an hour from an audience filled with people who had seen the film once or more — one man admitted to seeing the three-hour, 12-minute film seven times — with Cameron personally passing the mic as the duo asked questions about plot points, frame rates, character development and even if it looked too “video gamey” in parts. As the session went on, Cameron said they weren’t expecting praise, but rather,…

In a scene from Edward Berger’s adaptation of the classic World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which is nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, Paul (Felix Kammerer) and other young soldiers face a new threat: the menacing French Saint-Chamond assault tanks, something they had never before seen. The sequence in the Netflix film begins with the soldiers in a field kitchen when suddenly the table begins to shake violently. Something isn’t right, but they don’t know what it is. They rush to the trenches with their arms. “We felt the best way to tackle that scene is to just stay with the soldiers and keep up the unknown,” explains sound supervisor/designer Frank Kruse of the movie’s Oscar-nominated sound team. “We decided to only [allow the…

With more than 50 years of credits, two Tony Awards, a pair of Emmys, a Golden Globe and now his second Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans — more than 40 years since the last one, for 1980’s Ordinary People — Judd Hirsch is one of the most respected and hardest-working actors out there. But his reasoning for always working is pretty simple: “When I act, I’m alive — and when I’m not, I’m, uh, just me, who just hangs out.” The length of Hirsch’s career is one thing, but he’s quick to remind that it took him a bit to find success. “I didn’t get on the boards until about 30,” he says of when he started getting roles on the stage, screen and…

Peter J. Devlin — who started his career as an audio assistant at the BBC and went on to work on big action movies including Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and smaller dramatic films such as Frost/Nixon — will accept the Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award. Devlin has worked on more than 70 films and received Oscar nominations for five of them, including Star Trek and Pearl Harbor. Last year, he became the first production sound mixer to be elected a governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Regarding working on the Black Panther series, Devlin says it was important to be involved early on, with collaborators including costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who “spent so much time with me, weeks ahead of the project, to go through…

Adecade ago, the visual effects industry hit a creative high note when Ang Lee’s adaptation of Life of Pi — highlighted by an extraordinary photoreal CG Bengal tiger — won the VFX honor at the 2013 BAFTA awards. But the celebration quickly turned to devastation when, shortly after, in Los Angeles, the film’s lead VFX company, Rhythm & Hues (R&H), began calling artists to let them go. Recalls Academy member and former employee Gene Kozicki, “It didn’t matter if you were an Academy Award-winning VFX supervisor or a production manager with 13 years’ tenure — if you weren’t working on a show right then, you were laid off.” Weeks before its work collected the VFX honor at the Oscars, the 25-year-old studio filed for bankruptcy. The shocking occurrence led to…

While Warner Bros. Discovery holds the film rights to The Lord of the Rings and Amazon holds the TV series, the two companies are not necessarily at odds over the J.R.R. Tolkien franchise when it comes to streaming. Ahead of Amazon’s LOTR series last year, the tech giant struck a deal with WBD to license the original Peter Jackson trilogy, as well as the Hobbit films, for Prime Video. But the ties between WBD and Amazon run deeper. WBD is a client of Amazon Web Services. (WBD engineers delivered a presentation called “How Warner Bros. Discovery uses Amazon Personalize to drive cross-brand marketing” at an AWS summit last year.) And WBD and Amazon cut a deal to return HBO Max to Prime Video Channels, which uses the Amazon platform to…

PEACOCK 547M minutes viewed 4 episodes The Natasha Lyonne-led crime show had a strong opening week, racking up 547 million minutes of viewing time for its first four episodes. It’s only the second original series from Peacock to make the Nielsen streaming charts, following December’s The Best Man: The Final Chapters (acquired series Yellowstone and a handful of movies on the NBCUniversal-owned streamer also have charted). Poker Face’s performance also ranks as the third-best weekly total for a Peacock original, behind two weeks of the Best Man series (which had an all-at-once release).…

For Grant Cardone, wealth is the point. The real estate investor and motivational speaker starred in 2021 on the Discovery series Undercover Billionaire, on which he successfully created a marketing agency with a $5.5 million valuation in 88 days. Last year, he plunked down $40 million for an oceanfront house on Malibu’s Carbon Beach. And now he’s funding his own content company, 10X Studios, producing reality shows that he describes as “entrepreneurial, aspirational TV.” Taking its name from Cardone’s belief that entrepreneurs should set their ambitions 10 times beyond what they think they can achieve, 10X Studios — created in partnership with filmmaker and producer Aengus James (TLC’s I Am Jazz) — now has five shows in production, all focused on moneymaking. Cashing in With the Cardones is a Kardashian-inspired…

The NAACP Image Awards returned for its 54th year on Feb. 25, bringing together a star-studded group of nominees across TV and film despite the rain flooding L.A. The show, hosted by Queen Latifah and held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, recognized Angela Bassett (entertainer of the year), Will Smith (best actor in a motion picture), Viola Davis (best actress in a motion picture), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (outstanding motion picture) and Abbott Elementary (outstanding comedy series) as some of the top winners, and there were special honors for Serena Williams, Bennie Thompson, and Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, with appearances by Zendaya and Brittney Griner. The Image Awards also recognized Till and The Woman King — both of which were snubbed by the Oscars — with multiple nominations, as…

The hottest red carpet accessory in 2023? The influencer. With the explosion of TikTok, content creators have become mainstays at big premieres and awards shows, popping up at events for all the major studios and streamers as well as at Cannes, the Golden Globes, Grammys and Oscars. Film and TV red carpets in particular have transformed into two-hour-plus events, with portions devoted to influencers and their content, taking selfies, going live on social or filming dance videos and elaborate TikTok trends against the step and repeat for the first hour, followed by the project’s stars making their way down press lines for the second. Some creators are paid, some are not; some have millions of followers, others have smaller but highly engaged audiences in a demographic that the studio or…

Before 2004’s Sideways shined a spotlight on the Santa Ynez Valley, it was mostly in-the-know oenophiles and moguls seeking an out-of-the-way escape who were drawn to the unassuming charm of this California wine region. “There’s something about that moment when you’re driving into Santa Ynez where you just exhale,” says Warner Bros. TV senior vp Shannon Howard, whose family has purchased a home in the area after visiting over the past 17 years. “It’s a wonderful place to feel rejuvenated.” While the area’s unpretentious, neighborly ambience persists nearly 20 years after Sideways premiered, what was once a sleepy clutch of ranchland towns offering space and privacy for the wealthy has evolved into a celebrated wine and food mecca with a growing number of Michelin-approved restaurants, boutique hotels and architecturally striking…

Ana de Armas’ casting in Blonde was an intriguing risk from the get-go — she even says so herself: “It was against all odds that a Cuban actress was ever going to play Marilyn Monroe.” Add to that the nature of writer-director Andrew Dominik’s script — adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel, which does not shy away from speculation or the imagined darker, violent parts of Monroe’s life — and the movie was all but guaranteed to cause a stir. When Blonde premiered at the Venice International Film Festival over the summer, the NC-17-rated film garnered a 14-minute standing ovation, though reception to the movie since has been decidedly more polarized. Some critics and audiences have taken issue with the film’s creative liberties with Monroe’s story, including scenes of…

In one of their first arguments, Billy (Sam Claflin) bristles at Daisy (Riley Keough) reworking the lyrics to the song he’s just written. From his perspective, it’s fine as the straightforward declaration of love that it is; from hers, it’s missed potential to dig deeper. Their producer, Teddy (Tom Wright), sides with Daisy. “You wrote a good song,” he tells Billy. “Not a great one.” Daisy Jones & The Six, Amazon’s adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel about a fictional rock band in 1970s Los Angeles, is a good show, not a great one. There’s much about it worth celebrating, especially for readers who’ve long dreamed of seeing these characters brought to life and listening to their hit album Aurora for real. But somewhere in the process of trying…

The Big Lebowski blew into theaters in 1998 like a tumbleweed on an empty street. Domestic audiences barely showed up, the film only earning $18 million. CinemaScore gave it a B. Critics sniffed that it wasn’t as good as Joel and Ethan Coen’s last release, the Oscar-winning Fargo. But that was just, like, their opinion, man. “I thought it to be a big hit,” star Jeff Bridges tells THR. “I was surprised when it didn’t get much recognition. People didn’t get it, or something.” Coming near the end of the indie cinema wave, Lebowski stood out among the decade’s quirky, quippy crime dramas with a detective tale that upended all the L.A.-noir tropes. Its tangled mystery — inspired by Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep — didn’t much matter. Its shaggy…

Chameleon: Dr. Dante PRODUCED BY Campside, Sony AGENCY UTA Hosted by Sam Mullins, the series (based on a true story) follows a hypnotist who scams women seeking selfimprovement. The schemes involve the launch of a fake university and the attempted murder of a rival hypnotist. Gone South: The Dixie Mafia PRODUCED BY Cadence 13 AGENCY WME Hosted by Jed Lipinski, this nonfiction series centers on the Dixie Mafia, which served as inspiration for characters on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, and is ripe for a focused adaptation, given interest in cult-like groups and unsolved murders.…

Over the years, the Oscar for best documentary feature has provided the Academy Awards with some of the ceremony’s most contentious and divisive moments: In 1975, when the Vietnam War doc Hearts and Minds claimed the prize, producer Bert Schneider read a letter of thanks from the Viet Cong, so incensing hosts Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra that they took it upon themselves later in the broadcast to apologize “for any political references.” In 2003, while accepting his Oscar for the anti-gun doc Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore was greeted with both cheers and boos when he cried “Shame on you, Mr. Bush” for launching the war in Iraq. In the past couple of years, as Academy membership has grown larger and more diverse, the feature documentary results have been…

Spoofs are all about volume. Deliver enough punchlines and there are almost guaranteed to be duds — but if you get enough big laughs, viewers will be too busy wheezing and wiping away tears to notice. As Mel Brooks spoofs go, 1981’s comedy film History of the World: Part I is right in the middle: It’s not Blazing Saddles, but it’s not Dracula: Dead and Loving It either. It has great bits and flailing duds and is generally less sacred than it is affectionately nostalgized. If you watch Hulu’s new History of the World: Part II under the impression that the original was untouchable, the show’s exceptional creative team and cast led by Nick Kroll, Ike Barinholtz and Wanda Sykes will probably disappoint. But more pragmatic viewers will recognize that…

In an unusual turn of events, this year’s recipient of the International Award at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards is also a nominee in its feature competition. Darius Khondji, who has been working as a director of photography for decades and earned his first Academy Award nomination for Evita (directed by Alan Parker) in 1996, is taking home the annual honor and competing for a trophy for his work on Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. While some DPs are known for longtime relationships with a single director, Khondji has amassed a remarkable body of work through productions with a range of helmers whose cinematic styles vary widely. Bardo was his first collaboration with Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whom Khondji describes as a very visual director who was…

HORROR FILMS The Academy seemed to shy away from the genre in this year’s nomination pool, but both The Menu (penned by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy) and Jordan Peele’s Nope will be up for WGA best original screenplay. ↑ FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE The FX limited series, written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, missed the 2022 Emmys window — now it’s up for best limited series in what will be its first big test. CHARLIE KAUFMAN The screenwriter — who also directs, produces and writes novels — will take home the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement 30 years after his first sitcom gig, on Get a Life. ↑ ROTHANIEL On the heels of his highly charged (and occasionally controversial) Golden Globes hosting gig, comedian Jerrod Carmichael will be up for best…

At this year’s Ambie Awards, the nominees competing for the top prize touch on everything from the lawlessness of international waters to classic British literature (specifically, retellings of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes). Submissions were first narrowed down by a blue-ribbon panel of judges, and members of the 1,000-strong Podcast Academy will cast their votes for podcast of the year, to be announced March 7 during an event that will stream on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. THR polled key podcast creators and TPA members to see whom they were rooting for, and while no clear winner emerged, several shared their thoughts behind their picks. Tangia Al-awaji Estrada, co-founder of BIPOC Podcast Creators, selected Pink Card as her podcast of the year. The ESPN 30…