Innholdsfortegnelse for November 8, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

How intense is the pressure of being CEO of HBO? You’re constantly calling Kim Cattrall, enduring the servers at Craig’s asking how “Max” is going, and ever since his show ended, dealing with John Wilson filming outside your house. But the worst part of the job is that TV critics can just say whatever they want, like it’s a college campus before 2010. So who can blame the HBO head for carving out a few hours of his day to seek revenge on those critics? But it all fell apart Nov. 1, when Rolling Stone revealed that six tweets mocking TV critics who wrote negative reviews about HBO shows were actually composed at the direction of Max CEO Casey Bloys under fake names. Most were posted by the account @KellySh33889356,…

Louise Linton to Premiere New Film — and a Baby Girl Louise Linton is getting ready for what she calls her “double feature.” The Scottish actress (Cabin Fever), who is married to producer and former Trump administration treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, is about to welcome a baby girl, as well as her new raunchy rom-com Chick Flick, which she wrote, directed, produced and stars in as a bride who leaves her cheating groom at the altar before “diving into the chaos of online dating and then having [her] misadventures go viral,” as she describes the plot to THR. Linton never online dated but has some experience in viral misadventures, having faced a social media firestorm in 2017 over Instagram posts and comments in which she flaunted her government-jet-setting lifestyle with…

Weddings Michael Gagliardo, president of talent at 42West, married Ama Koi-Larbi, a procurement officer, on Sept. 8 at Loch Aerie Mansion in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Births Lippin Group executive vp Kevin Broderick and wife Christine So, senior lead business analyst at Paramount Global, welcomed daughter Evelyn Kyler Broderick on Sept. 25. Congrats Shayla Cowan was tapped to run Will Packer’s new Collective Edge management company Nov. 1. Jennifer Remling was hired as chief people and culture officer of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 31. Searchlight head of distribution Frank Rodriguez joined Amazon MGM Studios as general sales manager Nov. 2. Jim Berk was tapped as CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, effective Jan. 1. Baratunde Thurston and Chi-hui Yang joined Participant’s Impact Advisory Council on Nov. 2. Shelley Elkins was named chief…

This year has been a melancholic one for collectors of physical media. DVDs and Blu-ray discs, once a source of billions in revenue for Hollywood companies, are at risk of becoming obsolete, or at least irrelevant. The first blow came at the end of September, when Netflix mailed its last DVD (a copy of the 2010 film True Grit, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen). As of Nov. 1, the DVD Netflix website functions as an interactive in memoriam page. Netflix’s DVD business had dwindled in recent years (falling from over $1 billion in revenue in 2012 to $146 million by 2022), but it was a safe space for film fanatics who loved its immense library of new releases and classic films and shows that aren’t available to stream. The…

Miami Beach has had successive waves of hotel development in recent decades, starting in the late 1980s when developers began restoring South Beach’s art deco gems. Now a number of new urban beach resorts from prominent hospitality groups are set to lure visitors to Miami Beach, which saw a post-COVID-fueled boom. Across greater Miami, there were 17.1 million hotel room nights sold in 2022, up 12.7 percent from the year before. Leading the pack is the re-development of a 1940 property whose 1990s renovation helped propel South Beach’s resurgence: The Raleigh. In 2019, Michael Shvo (whose firm SHVO owns Beverly Hills’ Mandarin Oriental Residences) and partners purchased The Raleigh for $103 million from Tommy Hilfiger, as well as two adjacent hotels (The Richmond and South Seas) that combined will become…

GUEST COLUMN RUBEN GARCIA Conversations about the state of Latinos in media can be so depressing. Year after year, researchers remind us of the total lack of progress — just this week, USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative shared that “Hispanic/Latino representation in film has not improved in 16 years.” This after years of advocacy groups explaining that our demographic is a growing consumer and cultural force. We’ve been stuck in these circular conversations for too long, going as far back as October 1978, when Time published a cover declaring “Hispanic Americans — Soon: The Biggest Minority” and with it, the prediction that the 1980s would be the decade of the Latino. Then and now, it’s clear that the Latino community represents the future. We contribute trillions to the national GDP, and…

Cris Abrego, quite fittingly, has had one of the more surreal career trajectories in entertainment. A reality producer who got his start logging tapes for Road Rules before going on to create aughts hits such as Flavor of Love, Celebrity Paranormal Project and The Surreal Life, he segued to the C-suite after the 2008 acquisition of his 51 Minds Entertainment shingle by Dutch-based multiplatform media company Endemol. “I certainly felt something shift when I sold my first business,” says Abrego, who was 36 at the time. “To have that kind of windfall at that age was life-changing.” Rather than rest on those early laurels, the East Los Angeles native was “hungry to do it all again,” and he not only survived subsequent corporate mergers and acquisitions but steadily rose through…

In the heat of the actors strike that had ground Hollywood to a halt for months, Fran Drescher told the 34 members of SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee a story about an aikido student in Japan who gets into a tiff with a drunk on a train. Throughout the strike, it has been Drescher’s practice to often open or pepper meetings with a Buddhist saying or tale, and in this one, the aikido student is bracing for a fight, titillated by the opportunity to use his new martial arts skills, when an old passenger on the train intervenes and settles the drunk down by talking to him gently about sake. The story’s takeaway is clear: There is more than one way to resolve a conflict. Now, 118 days into the strike, Drescher…

I’m Mattman.” Those were Matthew Perry’s last public words, in a cryptic Oct. 22 Instagram post accompanied by a photo of the Friends superstar reclining in his hot tub, the lights of the Pacific Palisades shimmering on the horizon. Six days later, Perry was found unresponsive in the same hot tub and soon after was pronounced dead at the age of 54. And the mystery of “Mattman” — Perry’s “Rosebud” — would only deepen. Was it code? An inside joke? TikTok conspiracy theorists questioned if it was a cry for help. In truth, Perry was obsessed with Batman. In 2017, he spent $20 million on a 10,000-square-foot “mansion in the sky.” It was the biggest condo sale of that year. Perry bought it, he has said, in part to live…

For decades, marijuana has hardly been considered luxurious. After all, many folks were introduced to cannabis in a dingy basement at a friend’s house. But the forward-thinking city of West Hollywood is aiming to change all that. With the opening of the destination consumption lounge PleasureMed on Oct. 26, the adult playground of WeHo is well on its way to its stated goal of becoming the Amsterdam of America. PleasureMed is the latest in a string of high-end cannabis businesses to open in the neighborhood. In 2022, partners including Woody Harrelson and Bill Maher opened The Woods, a lush tropical-themed consumption lounge featuring cabanas, koi ponds and private lockers where guests can store their stash. That same year, The Studio Cannabis Lounge opened atop The Artist Tree dispensaries. More…

The LACMA Art+Film Gala returned for its 12th star-studded year on Nov. 4, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, A$AP Rocky, Blackpink’s Rosé, Billie Eilish, Keanu Reeves, Andrew Garfield, Jessica Chastain and Pedro Pascal among those who attended the event, which raised $5 million to support the museum’s film-focused curatorial programming as well as its broader mission. This year’s gala — co-chaired by DiCaprio and Eva Chow and sponsored by Gucci — honored David Fincher along with artist and activist Judy Baca; after an introduction from Pitt, Fincher addressed the SAG-AFTRA strike affecting many of the night’s guests, saying, “We must get these supremely talented people back to work. We have to very soon.” Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

CRIS ABREGO CEO, HYPHENATE MEDIA GROUP; CHAIRMAN OF THE AMERICAS, BANIJAY See page 51. BAD BUNNY MUSICIAN, ACTOR He’s graced the Met Gala carpet, wrestled in WWE matches, hosted SNL and co-starred in this year’s lucha libre feature Cassandro and 2022’s Bullet Train. The Puerto Rican multihyphenate’s 2022 El Último Tour del Mundo was the fastest-selling tour since 2018, according to Billboard, and this April he became the first Spanish-language artist to headline Coachella. J BALVIN MUSICIAN The Prince of Reggaetón holds Guinness World Records for being the Latin Grammys’ most nominated artist in a single year (13, in 2020) and having the longest-running No. 1 song by a solo act on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart with 2017’s “Ginza.” He’s credited with opening the U.S. market to fellow Colombian…

IN THE EARLY 2010S, DIRECTOR DAVID FINCHER began pitching his first television project, a dark, Washington-set adaptation of the British political drama House of Cards, with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright attached. As he made the rounds, Fincher had one demand that the show’s writer, Beau Willimon, acknowledges was “hubristic”: He was not about to settle for a pilot but demanded a commitment for an entire 13-episode season, a flagrant violation of the way things were done. For HBO, Fincher’s first choice, this was a bridge too far. Netflix, primarily known for its DVD-by-mail service, was still regarded as Blockbuster on speed or, as Jeffrey Bewkes, CEO of HBO’s then-parent company Time Warner, put it in 2010, the Albanian army — far from a fearsome competitor, with only one original…

There is so much being said, so much of the time, in FX/Hulu’s A Murder at the End of the World. Its characters are geniuses on a retreat hosted by Andy (Clive Owen), a tech billionaire who believes that “It is original thought, more than money, oil or even water, that will determine if there is a future to be had.” They loaf about their remote Icelandic hotel tossing out ideas, unveiling experiments, debating the finer points of climate change or surveillance and dreaming up new ways to save the world. Yet what becomes clear, in ways mostly illuminating but occasionally frustrating, is how little this chatter amounts to. At the heart of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s moody mystery is the conviction that what people claim to think matters…

For decades, the one identifiable stepping stone on the nebulous journey to becoming a TV writer was landing a job as support staff, which encompasses work as a writer’s production assistant, writer’s assistant and script coordinator, among other roles. Even these positions — which, depending on the role, can involve tedious tasks like taking copious notes in the writers room, grabbing coffee for the team or even letting a handyman into a showrunner’s home — have been hard to come by, relying on the time-honored system of knowing the right people or getting a tip on message boards. But now, these gigs feel like dues-paying that never actually, well, pays off. While the writers strike is over and rooms for broadcast hits have reopened, few jobs in this space have…

If you’re a sports league or a superstar athlete, it used to be that you wanted all eyes to be on the field, court or track. Now, the real action occurs as much after the game’s over, with cameras still rolling. The runaway success of Netflix’s Formula 1 docuseries Drive to Survive and golf docuseries Full Swing has sparked a mini frenzy from leagues, teams and athletes, all of whom are hoping that a hit docuseries of their own can drive new interest in their in-game performances, or at least provide an ancillary stream of revenue to an already lucrative sports business. Netflix, for its part, is happy to crow about its success in the genre. “After Drive to Survive took off, fans started packing the stands at the races,”…

Chip and Joanna Gaines may be approaching a saturation point in Waco. Since the couple first let cameras roll on their home renovation operation with 2013’s Fixer Upper, an unrivaled hit for then-network HGTV, the Gaineses have managed to transform their Central Texas town into the hub for a thriving entertainment and lifestyles brand. There, they’ve built a retail empire, started a successful magazine, launched a TV network and, as of this autumn, opened a hotel — all while becoming household names for a large portion of America. “We’ve only got 33 rooms,” says Chip, his Lone Star State modesty coming through during a late-October Zoom alongside his wife. “I don’t even think this qualifies as a boutique hotel.” “It’s still 50,000 square feet,” notes Joanna, who began renovating the…

BOUCHON Chef Thomas Keller has just debuted a Miami outpost of his acclaimed bistro, serving up steak frites and pâté de campagne inside the historic 1920s La Palma Building. 2101 Galiano St., Coral Gables CASADONNA The coastal Italian-inspired restaurant, designed by Ken Fulk, is the first-ever partnership between nightlife and hospitality moguls David Grutman and Noah Tepperberg. 1737 N. Bayshore Drive, Edgewater PASTIS The beloved brasserie in NYC’s Meatpacking District now has a South Florida sister restaurant, featuring a curved zinc bar, signature red banquettes and an outdoor garden. 380 NW 26th St., Wynnwood…

Following an Emmy campaign season impacted by a historic double strike (which forced the Television Academy to move the awards to January 2024), this year’s Oscar season is already off to a rocky start. While some contenders have been granted SAG waivers allowing castmembers to promote their films (such as Neon’s Ferrari and A24’s Priscilla), some of the biggest best picture hopefuls (like Warner Bros.’ Barbie, Apple/Paramount’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Universal’s Oppenheimer) have had to rely on their directors, producers, writers and artisans to give their films an awards push as Hollywood anxiously waits for a deal between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP. In the meantime, a major question looms: Which performers can rely solely on their starry aura to gain momentum in the acting races? One thing…

Even music schools aren’t immune to the impact of Hollywood’s labor disputes. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have led to the delay of some apprenticeship programs at the USC Thornton School of Music over the summer. A major element of those strikes — artificial intelligence — has also been on the minds of students and faculty working in media scoring and other programs around the country. For Sean McMahon, chair of the screen scoring program at Berklee College of Music, AI isn’t “there” yet, and he sees it relegated potentially to generating library music in the near future. Jeanine Cowen, professor of practice and chair of the screen scoring program at USC Thornton, likewise sees AI as both a threat and tool for composers. “I think AI is a concern…

OCTOBER 25 CUT | BEVERLY HILLS The Hollywood Reporter hosted its annual Power Business Managers breakfast presented by City National Bank. Comedian Tracy Morgan paid tribute to his longtime business manager Mark Landesman by presenting him with THR’s Business Manager Icon Award. CAA’s Ted Chervin also participated in a keynote conversation to discuss the intertwining of Hollywood and the sports world.…