Innholdsfortegnelse for December 7, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

At the blockbuster event of the fall — Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie premiere, of course — diehard Swifties were reveling in the opportunity to not only see the movie but also to get all the souvenirs. My date for the evening, senior film editor Rebecca Keegan, made sure to grab the prized Eras Tour popcorn tin, but it wasn’t for selfish reasons: She was saving the collectible for a special person, her Women in Entertainment mentee whom she would see just a few days later. Her bond with Madeline was deeper than the Swift songbook: Over 12 months, the pair connected through biweekly meetings, phone calls and emails in which advice on life, school and career was shared. The impact was evident when they met for Keegan’s second…

Once the writers strike ended in late September, president of FX Entertainment Nick Grad and his colleagues began to clear their schedules. After a 148-day stoppage, the second longest in Writers Guild of America history, surely there would be a deluge of writers with fresh ideas and new spec scripts coming through, and Grad and team were ready. But here we are, nearly two and a half months later, and that deluge never came. Not for those FX executives, or, as an informal survey of the television industry suggests, their rivals across the landscape. “It’s eerie, nobody’s buying anything,” says one top producer, echoing a chorus of sources who express surprise at how quiet the marketplace has been since Hollywood’s writers went back to work. Everybody seems to have a…

The last time Nelson Peltz and his firm Trian Partners waged a proxy battle against The Walt Disney Co., less than a year ago, they laid out their concerns in a PowerPoint presentation. Disney needed to cut costs, Trian said. It needed to bring back its dividend and get its free cash flow back on track. Disney was “over-earning” at its theme parks, gouging guests and not investing enough. Bob Iger’s return as CEO in November 2022 and the stock surge that followed ultimately called Peltz off. “This was a great win for all the shareholders. Management at Disney now plans to do everything that we wanted them to do,” Peltz told CNBC in February, announcing that he was dropping his proxy fight. Indeed, Disney did tackle essentially all of…

In the days leading up to the Oct. 20 release of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, The Lyric cinema in Fort Collins, Colorado, fielded some unusual calls from customers. They all wanted to know if the Western crime epic, which runs three hours and 26 minutes, would have an intermission. And, if not, could one be added? The art house cinema obliged and inserted an eight-minute break. It wasn’t long before a customer’s photo of an ad highlighting the intermission went viral and The Lyric received a call from Paramount, which is distributing the film, saying it had violated the booking contract and fines could be levied. “We didn’t know we had done anything wrong,” says Lyric manager Aaron Varnell, who recently added “chaos cultivator” to his title…

Even on her day off, Adele, the regular person, can’t escape Adele, the superstar singer. It’s Monday, and she rolls into one of her favorite Beverly Hills restaurants for lunch, makeup-free with her hair pulled back. She’s in an oversized, comfy, long black coat, and the only real giveaway are her long sharp black nails. And, of course, her screeching But then her song, the sweeping ballad “One and Only,” from her 21 era, comes on. She laughs. “Every time Richard travels,” she says of her partner, sports super-agent Rich Paul, with whom she lives in Beverly Hills, “the airplanes always play my music, and we can’t work out if it’s because they know that we are together, or if it’s just what they do.” Later, the power pop ballad…

Lindsay Dougherty SECRETARY-TREASURER, HOLLYWOOD LOCAL 399 Dougherty’s staunch support of both strikes, signature fiery rhetoric — “Fuck around and find out” is a favored phrase — and her Local 399’s trucks shutting down productions by refusing to cross picket lines made her an unlikely 2023 breakout. But expect even more of her in 2024. The Teamsters’ contracts are up for renegotiation. Strike-era performance that deserved more attention: “Scabby the Rat.” Fran Drescher PRESIDENT, SAG-AFTRA The Nanny star turned labor leader set the tone when she said Hollywood companies “stand on the wrong side of history” during an improvised speech at the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike. That didn’t waver over the course of the 118-day work stoppage, with Drescher managing to unite SAG-AFTRA’s political sects to back her in the…

“AND I WOULD LET HER GO H.A.M. WITH THE AD LIBS.” “SHE’S GOT SUCH WONDERFUL POSITIVE ENERGY AND ISN’T AFRAID TO WEAR HER HEART ON HER SLEEVE.” “HE’D MAKE THE MOST MUNDANE PARTS OF MY LIFE STILL SOUND COOL.”…

JON FROSCH As we reconvene for our annual back-and-forth about the year’s greatest film performances, I’m struck by how many of my faves found actors playing characters who range from downright villainous to — let’s put this mildly — disagreeable. Much has been made of Annette Bening’s “fearlessness” as the egocentric eponymous swimmer in Nyad. But Diana Nyad’s story is really a hero’s journey; there’s an arc that invites us to root for her despite, or perhaps because of, her stubborn self-absorption and brashness. I’m more impressed by performances that don’t have that crutch — that can’t comfort or inspire us with the character’s admirability or accomplishment but, through the skill and magnetism of the actor, earn our investment, making us hang on every word, glance and gesture. I’m thinking…

On Dec. 5, SAG-AFTRA members wrapped Hollywood’s season of labor turmoil by ratifying the contract deal that ended the 118-day actors strike. Voting 78.33 percent to 21.67 percent to approve the compromise reached by their negotiators, actors sent a resounding, if not overwhelming, message that the agreement — the merits of which had inspired heated debate online for weeks — was sufficient to end a fraught negotiation period. The contract, valued at over $1 billion, is the result of the 160,000-member union’s stand over the changing nature of employment for performers in the streaming era and the rising threat of artificial intelligence. “I hope [this deal] sends a clear message to anyone who thought that ultimately SAG-AFTRA wouldn’t go on strike or its members weren’t willing to take that hit…

If your idea of the perfect holiday show involves dancing sugar plums and family-friendly carols, there’s no shortage of options. But if you’re looking for something a little different — say, a drag queen doing a pas de deux with a very sexy Krampus, set to “Santa Baby” — you’re in luck this holiday season. You’ll find exactly that at the Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show, the sixth annual Christmas spectacular from RuPaul’s Drag Race vets Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme that kicked off in mid-November in the U.K. and takes them across 30 cities in Europe, Canada and the U.S. —landing in L.A. on Dec. 16 at the Dolby Theatre. They’re one of several drag and otherwise left-ofcis shows hitting the road that run the gamut, as Monsoon teases, “from…

Tom Holland Reveals Whose Opinion He Trusts Most When It Comes to His Acting With the actors strike over, Tom Holland is out promoting his Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room. During a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event moderated by Rambling Reporter, the 27-year-old revealed the shortlist of peers he relies on for feedback about his acting chops. “Zendaya is probably the most honest with me,” he said, referring to his longtime girlfriend. “[Robert Downey Jr.] is very honest, sometimes a little too honest, and I’ve seen Dolittle, bro,” he joked. “I love the guy, I admire him.” Holland went on to praise Downey’s work in Oppenheimer as “absolutely staggering,” adding, “He steals the movie for me.” He also name-checked another MCU veteran, Benedict Cumberbatch, who he said has given him tips…

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Michael Mann’s Ferrari are facing allegations — surprising for two films focused on straight white male protagonists — of cultural appropriation. French and Italian critics have taken offense at the directors’ decisions to cast American actors to play national icons — Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte, the general who became French emperor, and Adam Driver as visionary Italian carmaker Enzo Ferrari — and, adding insult to injury, having them speak in English. “It’s original sin,” wrote a Ferrari reviewer for Italy’s Movieplayer magazine on the casting of Driver, alongside Spanish actor Penélope Cruz as Ferrari’s wife, Laura, and American Shailene Woodley as his mistress. “Not just to have them speak English, but with a dodgy Italian accent.” “Deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny” was French GQ’s…

Akela Cooper WRITER In a weird year for writers, Cooper managed to have one of the best runs of any film scribe — starting with the $181 million surprise M3GAN. Blumhouse’s killer-doll drama — based on an original idea (gasp!) by James Wan and Cooper — is set for a 2025 sequel, also written by Cooper. Speaking of horror, she has story and screenplay credits on the $268 million-grossing The Nun II. The twofer has made her incredibly in-demand, one reason why she’s attached to the first project sold at auction when the WGA strike ended. I can’t believe I got sucked into … “Taskmaster (U.K.). I binged all 16 series and loved it. Highly entertaining and rewatchable.” Sofia Coppola FILMMAKER Offering a female counterpoint to Baz Luhrmann’s recent Oscar…

Aleen Keshishian FOUNDER & CEO, LIGHTHOUSE With Olivia Rodrigo alone — whose sophomore album Guts had all 12 songs chart on the Billboard Top 40, the Lighthouse Media + Management boss could count her year as a win. But longtime client Jennifer Aniston continues to benefit from her lucrative Morning Show deal as star-producer of the Apple TV+ flagship series, and client Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty is now expected to exceed $300 million in sales for 2023. I can’t believe I got sucked into … “Wordhunt.” Samantha Kirby Yoh & Shani Rosenzweig AGENTS, UTA It’s been a very strong year for Rosenzweig’s enviable slate, with Paul Rudd filming Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Owen Wilson booking the Apple TV+ series Pryce Cahill, Mark Ruffalo starring in Poor Things and the Seth Rogen…

Martin Scorsese had already been working on Killers of the Flower Moon for a few years when he had a startling revelation. He and screenwriter Eric Roth were adapting David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book about a series of murders of Osage people in Oklahoma in the early 1920s with the intention that Leonardo DiCaprio would play the FBI agent who solves the crimes. Scorsese, who grew up watching and loving Westerns, could see it all in his head: “He gets off the train,” Scorsese says. “We see his boots, we tilt up, he’s got a Stetson hat, looks around. He doesn’t say anything.” It was just so easy to picture. And that was the problem. “I really felt I had seen the film before,” Scorsese says. “It’s Harry Carey Sr.…

Paul Garnes had worked as a producer with writer-director Ava DuVernay in the past, but it had been some time since the pair had operated outside the studio system. “In the early days, we were at Netflix,” he says. “[Origin] got caught up in the industry slowdown. Ava made the really bold choice to go out and make this independently.” That decision made things more exhilarating and terrifying, Garnes says. “In every production, there’s some executive that you can call and say, ‘Hey, this is happening, what do we do?’ We didn’t have that. It was just me and Ava. We could really only depend on each other.” The film spans centuries and continents, with scenes in Berlin at the height of World War II, aboard slave ships in the…

Stories about fine-dining chefs, tobacco artisans and detective bloggers have burst into life on screens across Southeast Asia. Streaming giants in the region are increasingly placing their series bets on creators armed with a glittering list of prizes from the international festival circuit, and independent filmmakers and producers are making high-production-value shows with small-to-midrange budgets. The result? A veritable “prestige TV” wave on streamers. It’s a development sure to drive chatter at the Asia TV Forum & Market, which is part of the larger Singapore Media Festival umbrella running from Nov. 30 to Dec. 10. After winning awards at the Berlin and Toronto festivals, Indonesian director Kamila Andini has kept busy with the Netflix series Cigarette Girl and the Amazon film 4 Seasons in Java. An ambitious period drama revolving…

The entertainment industry’s rabbis say that in the eight weeks since Oct. 7 — a horrific chapter in Jewish history encompassing Hamas’ massacre, Israel’s ensuing Gaza invasion and the worldwide response to it all — their congregations have been roiled by crises of identity and safety not experienced in America since the Holocaust. These faith leaders tell THR that, on the eve of Hanukkah (for many a Christmas-adjacent holiday of gift-giving but also more consequentially the commemoration of a biblical battle over Jewishness in the land now known as Israel), their temples’ members are confronting anew millennia-old questions about assimilation, antisemitism and the fraught notion of Jewish power itself. “This has been the hardest period for the Jewish people since the Shoah,” says Rabbi Joshua Aaronson of Temple Judea in…

The October dinner feting Brunello Cucinelli was one of the starriest L.A. events to take place during the actors strike. Demi Moore, her chihuahua Pilaf tucked into a purse, chatted with Kathryn Hahn. Oprah Winfrey and Quinta Brunson cozied up on a banquette. Jennifer Lopez punctuated the starry procession to kiss the Italian designer’s proverbial ring. But the evening’s venue, chosen for its ambiance and air of exclusivity, prompted confusion among some guests. What’s the deal with Chateau Marmont these days, anyway? Colman Domingo wondered aloud whether the legendary hotel, as has been reported, was now a private club — a la Soho House and San Vicente Bungalows. Nobody is more eager to clear up this narrative than owner André Balazs. “We are not a members-only, nor do we intend…

I’m an unlikely labor leader,” Fran Drescher acknowledges on a late November evening. Before this summer, Drescher long had been synonymous in the public imagination with her most iconic role, Fran Fine, in the popular ’90s CBS sitcom The Nanny, which she tailored to her comedic strengths, including her thick Queens accent. The sassy childcare worker to a posh New York family became inextricably linked with her persona, even after Drescher launched other sitcoms, started a cancer nonprofit and, eventually, was elected as the president of Hollywood’s largest union, SAG-AFTRA, in 2021. But her public profile took a dramatic turn after SAG-AFTRA called a strike in July, joining the Writers Guild of America in the first double work stoppage involving the two unions in more than 60 years. In the…

Well-versed in the modern period drama with a twist, director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Favourite) had a simple edict for the costume design of Poor Things. As British costume designer Holly Waddington notes, “He didn’t want it to be like a period drama, he didn’t want it to be like a sci-fi film, and he didn’t want it to be too ‘fashiony.’ ” The result is Age of Innocence meets surrealism meets couture. Adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel, Searchlight’s Poor Things is a fantastical feminist fairy tale on steroids, where the character Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is brought back to life with the brain of an inquisitive, no-holds-barred toddler by the Frankensteinish Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Set against a backdrop of London, Lisbon, Paris and Alexandria, the costumes support…

Adele SINGER See the cover story on the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award honoree on page 56. Jennifer Aniston ACTOR & PRODUCER Aniston and Adam Sandler’s Murder Mystery 2, produced by her Echo Films banner, made its mark as Netflix’s second-biggest opening weekend for a comedy in March. As for her Apple TV+ series, The Morning Show snagged an early renewal for a fourth season. Coming up, the LolaVie hair care founder will star in and produce an Amazon MGM Studios body-swap comedy alongside Julia Roberts. Biggest fumble I recovered from “Leprechaun.” Elizabeth Banks ACTOR & FILMMAKER In addition to starring in The Beanie Bubble and advancing her run of stirring voice work, Banks continues to cement herself as one of Hollywood’s busiest renaissance women — directing the surprise hit (and…

Simulating a wrestling arena, boarding school and concentration camp number among the tough tests facing top producers of these six Oscar contenders Producer Jermaine Johnson worked primarily as a literary manager for clients like first-time movie writer-director Cord Jefferson (whom he’s represented for close to a decade) before the pair collaborated on Jefferson’s darkly comic adaptation of the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, which Jefferson wrote on spec with Johnson’s encouragement. Naturally, first-time filmmaking meant an inherent learning curve. “Day one was a tough day because Cord didn’t really feel qualified to tell Jeffrey Wright how to act,” Johnson recalls. “He did not feel like he was the guy for the job.” That meant adding pep talks to Johnson’s job description. “The conversation was, ‘Hey, man, Jeffrey wants to be…

ANATOMY OF A FALL Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, “P.I.M.P.” Justine Triet’s drama about a woman (Sandra Hüller) accused of killing her husband might be the only Palme d’Or winner to feature a song co-written by American rapper 50 Cent. The director admits she’s obsessed with this steel band cover, which the husband blasts to annoy his wife and is playing on repeat when the couple’s son discovers his father’s body. “It’s the only thing you see from him when he is alive,” she says. The bombastic track is a contrast to the image of his dead body. DUMB MONEY Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion, “WAP” Craig Gillespie admits he loves finding the right needle drops for a film. But for his comedy about the January 2021 GameStop short…

The nominees for the 2023 European Film Awards (EFAs) are among the very best movies of the year, in Europe or anywhere. The five best picture nominees include Justine Triet’s legal thriller Anatomy of a Fall; Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust film The Zone of Interest; the refugee dramas Io Capitano, from Italian director Matteo Garrone, and Green Border from Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland; and dour romantic comedy Fallen Leaves, by Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki. Award winners all — Anatomy, Zone and Fallen Leaves picked up top honors in Cannes, while Green Border and Io Capitano won plaudits at this year’s Venice Film Festival — this lineup of critical hits could hold its own at any awards ceremony. The quality at the EFAs goes deep, including first-time filmmakers like Britain’s Mia McKenna-Bruce…