Innholdsfortegnelse for March 8, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

Everything Everywhere All at Once continued its awards season domination at the Film Independent Spirit Awards on March 4, picking up seven wins, including best feature, best performance for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, best breakthrough performance for Stephanie Hsu and best director for Daniels. “Thank you to everybody who makes crazy-weird independent movies,” co-director Daniel Scheinert said. “Those movies changed my life.” The show, hosted by Hasan Minhaj, also recognized (not-very-indie) TV winners The Bear and Abbott Elementary and their respective stars, Ayo Edebiri and Quinta Brunson. Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

Few, if any, stunt doubles go on to direct their A-list counterparts in a string of blockbusters, but that’s been the curious trajectory of Chad Stahelski. The exceptionally fit filmmaker, who stood in for Keanu Reeves in the first Matrix movie before becoming the trilogy’s martial arts coordinator, has now collaborated with the star for each movie in the John Wick franchise — the latest of which, John Wick: Chapter 4, lands in theaters March 24. But the Massachusetts-bred Stahelski has much more on his plate than the hit-man film series, which has grossed $586 million. In addition to managing the production company 87Eleven Entertainment in Manhattan Beach, he’s also got 87Eleven Action Design in nearby Inglewood. The training house he co-founded with fellow stuntman turned director David Leitch back…

Brian Tyree Henry makes an altar everywhere he goes. Oftentimes those sacred tableaux are fashioned from incense, candles and little totems that keep him grounded while traveling around the world to work on different projects. The actor puts the same depth of feeling and intention into his portrayal of different characters, which has resulted this year in his first Academy Award nomination, for his performance opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Causeway, an intimate drama that explores humanity, trauma and the healing kindness of strangers. His character, James Aucoin, is a working-class New Orleans native “with a greasiness to him,” Henry says, and is often seen wearing clothing and jewelry throughout the film that demonstrate his loyalty to home. In the New Orleans-shot film, “all those T-shirts [I wore] were from local…

Jean Dujardin and George Clooney The two best actor nominees — Clooney for The Descendants and Dujardin (who went on to win) for The Artist — became fast friends on the awards circuit, which included cozying up at the 2012 Oscar Nominees Luncheon. They would go on to work together on 2014’s The Monuments Men, and Clooney enlisted Dujardin for a 2022 Nespresso ad that continued the friendly rivalry they had established during the Oscar race. An honorary mention for a Clooney awards-partner-in-crime goes to Brad Pitt, a longtime BFF, also nominated for best actor that year for Moneyball. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain Both stars picked up Golden Globe wins to kick off the 2013 season, culminating in a best actress Oscar nomination for Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty…

On March 12, once the curtain comes down on the 95th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre, the must-stop afterparty will just be getting started for Oscar nominees — winners and losers alike. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Governors Ball, but it wasn’t always a coveted invitation — or even a tradition. The first Academy Awards statuettes were handed out in 1929 at a banquet in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, but the annual banquet was discontinued during the war years and, by 1958, the ceremony had migrated farther down Hollywood Boulevard to the Pantages Theatre. This meant that once the show was over, the stars were left to fend for themselves. So that year, the Academy charged actor and future California senator George…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An irascible, down-on-his-luck coach is reluctantly put in charge of a ragtag team of misfits who can barely play the game. Although he can hardly disguise his initial disgust, the players’ enthusiastic attitudes and general lovability soften him up until he becomes not just their coach but also their most ardent cheerleader. In the process, he becomes a better person. That’s the Bad News Bears-style template for the latest cinematic variation on the subject, starring Woody Harrelson in a role he was seemingly born to play. You don’t need to have seen the 2018 Spanish hit comedy Campeones, which won multiple Goya Awards, to think that its U.S. remake, Champions, feels overly familiar. But that doesn’t make this crowd-pleaser any less winning.…

If last year’s SXSW was driven by panels and events around Web3, NFTs and the metaverse, this year’s has decidedly cooled on the crypto craze and is instead focused on something entirely different: chatbots. Though chatbots are by no means new technology, the launch last fall of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has sparked renewed interest in — and anxiety over — the use of AI-powered chatbots across multiple industries, in part because of their growing sophistication. (See “Faith Against the Machine,” right.) Screenwriters in film and TV have become more wary of the impact ChatGPT could have on the scriptwriting process, given that the chatbot is already capable of churning out short scripts; organizations like the Writers Guild of America West say they are actively monitoring the technology “in the event they…

LOVE AND DEATH (HBO MAX) From 11-time Emmy winner David E. Kelley comes this true-crime limited series about rural Texas housewife Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen), who was accused of ax murdering her friend in 1980. March 11, Paramount Theatre RABBIT HOLE (PARAMOUNT+) Kiefer Sutherland returns to TV in a role that’s right in his action-thriller wheelhouse. The 24 star plays a master of corporate espionage framed for murder by a shadowy organization. March 12, Stateside Theatre SWARM (PRIME VIDEO) The horror series from Donald Glover and fellow Atlanta vet Janine Nabers follows a young woman (Dominique Fishback) who’s obsessed with a Beyoncé-like pop star. March 10, Paramount Theatre…

When Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel opened his company’s earnings call with prepared remarks Feb. 28, a casual listener hearing him tout the UFC and WME might have missed the most interesting part: Emanuel wasn’t speaking at all. Well, he sort of was. The words were his, and the voice was his, but rather than Emanuel speaking into a microphone (opening remarks on earnings calls are often pretaped), the comments were the product of a generative artificial intelligence firm called Speechify. So why did Ari Emanuel (er, “AI Emanuel”?) use his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call to bring machine learning to its financial report? “We’re in business with them, we think they’re a really good company,” Emanuel said of Speechify (and yes, Endeavor disclosed in its earnings press release that the comments…

Hollywood’s bloated egos require some manner of annual deflation, especially during Oscar season. For more than 40 years, that has been the objective of the Golden Raspberry Awards. The Razzies, as they’re (un)affectionately known, have celebrated the best of the worst in film since 1980. The dubious honor has been accepted by such self-deprecating luminaries as Halle Berry (Catwoman), Ben Affleck (Gigli) and Sandra Bullock (All About Steve). But evolving sensibilities have recently cast a shadow over the operation. In January, in response to social media backlash, the group rescinded its 2023 nomination of a 12-year-old actress (Firestarter star Ryan Kiera Armstrong). Not a year earlier, a fresh win for Bruce Willis and a decades-old nomination for Shelley Duvall were taken back — the former in light of his aphasia…

Everyone loves a gimmick, even the über rich. The controversial Measure ULA — which was opposed (futilely) by top real estate agents — is set to go into effect April 1. Known as “the mansion tax,” the L.A. City measure will require sellers of properties of more than $5 million to pay a 4 percent transfer tax, while sales of more than $10 million will pay a 5.5 percent tax. All funds raised will be used to fund sorely needed public housing. Now, just under the gun, blue chip sellers are using the looming deadline to try to goose sales. The undeveloped 260-acre Senderos Canyon in Bel Air is being auctioned off by Paramount Realty USA. In an attempt to woo buyers quickly, owner Giro Properties has announced a $2…

Mo’Nique is beaming. She’s seated on a sofa in the sunlit living room of her Atlanta home, and she’s positively glowing. “I’m pregnant,” she says after I point out her aura. “No, just kidding.” What she is, it turns out, is happy — happier than she’s been in a while, says the 55-year-old Oscar-winning comedian and actress. “I’m grateful for that feeling. When you are good on the inside, I believe it shows up on the outside. “It’s a new chapter,” she says, “but not because of Hollywood. It’s a new chapter because my babies are graduating high school. It’s a new chapter because my grandson will be going to kindergarten next year, and my granddaughter to the fifth grade. Those things, for me, are the priority.” But her career,…

Twenty-five years ago, both Titanic and the 70th annual Academy Awards at which it was crowned best picture made history. The film’s victory, however, was not preordained. Its Oscar campaign had to overcome naysayers who first doubted the film would be a success and then held its success against it. As for the ceremony itself, to borrow the title of an earlier British film about the ship that couldn’t sink, and then did, it was a night to remember. TITANIC SETS SAIL AMID PREDICTIONS OF DISASTER After hitmaker James Cameron pitched News Corp. president and COO Peter Chernin “Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic,” the exec authorized his company’s subsidiary 20th Century Fox to make Titanic for $110 million, a sizable but not unprecedented budget. But after production got underway, it…

Julio Torres extracts the fanciful from the mundane. In his HBO special My Favorite Shapes, the stand-up riffs on a collection of random plastic objects. Perhaps the most famous of the deeply original, often moving sketches he wrote in his tenure at SNL centered on a man (Ryan Gosling) tormented by the Papyrus font and its perplexing use in the marketing material for Avatar. The hero of his children’s book, I Want to Be a Vase, is a toilet plunger. “I joke that we’ve had it up to here with magical children in prep school,” says the 36-year-old comedian of high-concept fare. “How is that genre so much bigger than the I-don’t-know-how-I’m-gonna-make-rent genre?” It was with this mindset that he made Problemista, his feature directorial debut, in which he stars…

In the latest twist in its lengthy development résumé, The Devil in the White City, the limited series from producers Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, is no longer moving forward at Hulu. However, sources tell THR that producer ABC Signature remains committed to the drama and will be shopping the show to new outlets. The news comes months after leading man Keanu Reeves and director Todd Field (Tár) dropped out of the drama in October. Sources say Hulu and Paramount Television Studios and Disney’s ABC Signature, who together were on board to produce the series, had been in talks with The Bear star Jeremy Allen White and Jude Law and director Matt Ross for the project. White, Law and Ross are still in talks for it, sources say, though it’s…

During 2020, the first year of the pandemic, spending on outdoor advertising slumped big-time when folks were home and spending far less time in their cars. But in 2022, according to Insider Intelligence, spending on out-of-home advertising rebounded to an estimated $7.93 billion in the U.S., up from $6.08 billion in 2020 (though still not back to the $8.65 billion spent in 2019). Car-centric Los Angeles — where significant FYC campaigning takes over billboards across the city — factored into that recovery, says Philip Berardi, president and CEO of Regency Outdoor Advertising. According to Berardi, “2020 saw revenues decline by approximately half, and this revenue decline persisted until approximately the end of Q2 2021, after which the market for FYC and entertainment ads took off like a rocket.” He adds…

Where in the World Is Jenny the Donkey? She’s one of the most talked-about stars of awards season, yet Jenny the miniature donkey — who went hoof-to-toe with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin — has been absent from the campaign trail. After filming, she’s said to be enjoying early retirement at a sanctuary in Ireland, paid for by the movie’s producers. (“We just didn’t want her to be doing any shit films,” director Martin McDonagh once said to THR.) Finding itself on the Emerald Isle, THR hoped to track Jenny down so she could receive at least some of the attention. Searchlight Pictures, the local film board, Banshees’ producers and local industry folk were contacted, but no luck. (One publicist deceptively claimed…

This year’s Brutally Honest Balloter, a male member of the Academy’s 867-person short films and feature animation branch, tells THR how — and why — he filled out his final Oscar ballot. BEST PICTURE A lot of the fanfare around Avatar: The Way of Water comes from the backstory — how long it took to make — rather than the actual quality of the movie. Women Talking was not bad; the acting and directing were really good, but I didn’t love it. [Steven] Spielberg did his Spielberg thing and directed the hell out of The Fabelmans, but it was a little long. Triangle of Sadness was so funny and well-written, and I love its commentary about class — the best since Parasite. Cate [Blanchett] was absolutely incredible in Tár, but…

At a stage that for most actresses signals the beginning of the end, it’s perhaps no accident that Michelle Yeoh is reaching even higher heights, 40 years into her career. There’s something about Yeoh as Mother that transcends, in every shading and variation: cool and elegant in Crazy Rich Asians, imperious and twisted in Star Trek: Discovery, harried and bewildered in Everything Everywhere All at Once. In every version she is elementally familiar, particularly to my generation. She resembles the mother we have or the one we want, the kind we fear or crave, or both. Four years ago, after I got engaged initially without my parents’ blessing, I wrote about how Crazy Rich Asians brought painful clarity to my own standoff, caught between romance and family. Much of my…

WHO WILL WIN By Scott Feinberg The Academy’s preferential ballot wouldn’t seem to favor A24’s polarizing Everything Everywhere All at Once, but the film swept the guilds’ top honors, including the Producers Guild’s, which is decided on a preferential ballot. But BAFTA’s top prize went to Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, indicating strong European support. It’s the nominee with the best shot of pulling off a shocker. WILL WIN Everything Everywhere All at Once There are constituencies for critics’ darlings Todd Field (Tár), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Globe winner Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans). But Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert) won the DGA’s top prize, which has predicted this Oscar all but eight times in the past 74 years. WILL WIN Daniels,…

Like any good shrink, Hulu’s UnPrisoned begins by meeting its characters where they are — and where they are at first seems to be an odd-couple comedy. Paige (Kerry Washington) is a therapist whose Instagram-friendly polish masks a messy life; her father, Edwin (Delroy Lindo), is a natural charmer fresh off a 17-year prison sentence. It doesn’t take a relationship expert to foresee the battles to come over old grudges, new boundaries, or Paige’s teenage son, Finn (Faly Rakotohavana). But also like a good shrink, UnPrisoned has no interest in sticking to the surface. It wants, over the course of its eight episodes, to dig and dig and dig, all the way down to the kinds of formative childhood traumas that take a lifetime to unpack. The journey isn’t always…

BLACKBERRY Based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book Losing the Signal, BlackBerry stars Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton and traces the rise and steep decline of the now-bygone Canadian proto-smartphone, which flourished in the liminal space between flip phones and the iPhone. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES Created in 1974, the role-playing fantasy board game was long considered impossible to adapt, given its lack of a central storyline. Warner Bros. and Universal have both taken stabs. Now it’s Paramount’s turn, with a version set inside the world of the game, from writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. FLAMIN’ HOT Eva Longoria’s directorial debut follows Richard Montañez, who claimed to have invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while a janitor at Frito-Lay. In 2021, after the film wrapped, the Los…

SANS SOUCIS To understand why the music press is raving about the Italian Congolese singer right now, just listen to her recently released “Merchants.” March 14 at The Courtyard; March 17 at The Stay Put JADE NOVAH She’s already garnered nearly a million followers on Instagram thanks to her hilarious impersonations of Beyoncé and Toni Braxton, but Jade Novah is a major R&B talent in her own right, with songs like “Trip” and “Lost in You” as proof. March 17 at The North Door EMILY NENNI Of course this California-born and Nashville-based performer was going to have a future in music: Her first concert was Bruce Springsteen — in utero. With her knack for storytelling, she’s a boss in her own right. March 18 at Mohawk Outdoor SUG DANIELS Blending…