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.
If we’re being completely honest, it’s been a little quiet on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion front compared to just three years ago. To be sure, the dizzying events over the past few months — from the struggles of streaming to the budget cuts across Hollywood to the labor strife, including the WGA strike — have edged out such stories from the headlines. But if we are really keeping it real, it grew quiet even before that. After the police murder of George Floyd shook the world and gave us a racial reckoning not seen in generations, there was a flood of dollars pledged to help eradicate the racial disparities that have been built into the fabric of this country. There were lots of promises made, seminars held and sentiments…
↑ Deals ‘Time to Monetize’ The merging WWE and UFC eye TV rights sales p. 22 Theater Post-COVID Rebound A closer look at Broadway’s 2022-23 season p. 18 Heat Index Casey Bloys In a win for the newly rebranded Max, the HBO chief sees the Succession series finale hit a ratings high of 2.9 million viewers on all platforms. Shari Redstone It’s not a sign of great stability when National Amusements, the owner of Paramount Global, needs to turn to outside financiers for an extra $125 million in liquidity. SZA The artist’s “Kill Bill” breaks Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart record held by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” with 21 weeks in the No. 1 spot. Elon Musk As the mogul tries to position Twitter as a rival to…
Right now, Warren Leight — the veteran showrunner of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Writers Guild strike captain — is losing sleep to make sure a TV program doesn’t make it to air. He’s a key figure in his union’s pivot to embrace a more targeted picketing strategy, which seeks to shut down productions. “This morning we had two dozen people at 2 a.m. out on the street, blocking Billions, which is metaphorically perfect,” he told THR’s TV’s Top 5 podcast on May 24, discussing a recent expansion from show-of-force protests at corporate headquarters to more disruptive actions meant to affect bottom lines and reorient power dynamics. The strategy change-up emerged from the membership’s rank and file, he says, although the guild brass now “realizes that this is…
On May 19 at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, Sean Penn railed against the Producers Guild of America and called us the “Bankers’ Guild,” which is hilarious, because we’re anything but the Bankers’ Guild. Sean admittedly confused us with the AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a group that negotiates on behalf of studios, streamers and networks with all the guilds that are labor unions. That moment presents an important opportunity to clarify the difference between the PGA and the AMPTP. The PGA is not a union. It is a nonprofit trade organization. We do not have a collective bargaining agreement with the AMPTP. We advocate for and educate our members, and expose them to new ideas so they can work to improve their…
Many comedy writers view AI as no laughing matter. “It’s horrific,” Seth Rogen explained to THR at the May 10 premiere of Apple TV+’s show Platonic, in which he stars. “Any use of AI seems terrifying and also just unfair from a financial standpoint because it’s all being input with things that they’re not keeping track of,” referring to how the technology is trained on material without its creators’ consent. The wariness has intensified during the ongoing writers strike. A key sticking point in the broken-down contract negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP, which bargains on behalf of studios, is a proposal to regulate the use of artificial intelligence. Machines wouldn’t be allowed to write or rewrite literary material, or to be used as a source, and union-covered output…
In the 2022-23 season — Broadway’s first full season since the pandemic began — the industry almost bounced back to pre-COVID levels. The total gross for the season reached nearly $1.6 billion, which is a marked improvement from the previous two seasons but still below the pre-pandemic total of $1.8 billion in 2018-19, according to new data from the Broadway League. Attendance reached 12.3 million, above the previous two years’ totals but also below the 14.8 million in 2018-19, which was the highest-grossing and best attended season ever. Total capacity reached 88.4 percent, largely in line with pre-pandemic levels. This past season was the first without major disruptions from COVID-19 — in contrast to the 2021-22 season, which began later than the usual May opening, with the first show starting…
