Innholdsfortegnelse for December 15, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

As the streaming industry has come down from its blank-check era, it has rediscovered a time-honored way to keep revenue flowing: licensing TV series and movies to other outlets. Acquired shows are among the most watched programming on streaming — it’s the year of Suits, after all — and shows with high episode counts help keep users inside a streamer’s ecosystem. Just as reliable is the uproar when streamers remove shows for tax write-downs or other cost savings, whether it’s a signature series (à la HBO’s Westworld being removed from Max last year) or originals that seemingly never had much chance to find an audience (as with Disney+ and Hulu purging Willow and Y: The Last Man, among others, this year). The perception, fueled by big content removals, is that…

Party Down: A Much Less Merry Christmas in Hollywood The ripple effects of this year’s dual strikes are crashing into the holiday party circuit. There are fewer invites for the month of December compared to years past, and sources say there’s a variety of reasons for the bah humbug. First, finances have forced many to scale back big holiday bashes. “Nobody wants to spend any more money this year,” says one insider. Some blame a still-sour post-strike mood, but others, paradoxically, point to an overwhelmed calendar. The SAG-AFTRA strike ended Nov. 9, leaving about five weeks to fit in all the promotional events before the town unofficially shuts down Dec. 15. That’s not to say there aren’t any gatherings. Seth MacFarlane took over Pacific Design Center for his annual holiday…

I was about 8 years old when I first met Norman Lear. My dad, Carl Reiner, was working on Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows and Norman was writing for Colgate Comedy Hour, so they were both in New York. In those days, it was a small world of people who trafficked in sketch comedy. Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart, Dom DeLuise — all these guys and their families would hang out together. My family and Norman’s family used to have summer houses near each other on Fire Island, and Norman had a daughter, Ellen, who was around my age, so we used to play together. One day, Ellen and I were playing jacks — I was teaching her how, explaining the rules, showing her what to do. Norman came over to…

For the past year and a half, Netflix’s Minyoung Kim, the Asia-based executive commonly credited with building the company’s winning strategy in Korea, hasn’t been spending much time in Seoul. Instead, the content vp who famously greenlit Squid Game has been living full-time in Tokyo, where she has been laying the groundwork for Netflix’s next bold bet in the international content space: Japanese entertainment, which is poised for a major revitalization. “You know, not long ago there wasn’t much interest in Korean culture, but thanks to the strength of our pop entertainment, we were able to earn that curiosity from people around the world,” Kim says during an interview at Netflix’s offices in central Tokyo. “Japan right now is almost the opposite. There has never been more global curiosity and…

In the spring of 2022, Freeform handed veteran comedy writer Kristin Newman a series order for While You Were Breeding, based on her Eat Pray Love-esque memoir. By the time the writers strike hit, she’d wrapped production on season one but in solidarity hit pause on postproduction, which meant she’d miss the show’s August premiere date. By September, Freeform had shifted its strategy, and Newman’s series no longer fit.…

The preshoot rituals they can’t live without, the studio negotiations they’ve learned to finesse and the creative choices they still can’t believe they got away with — the directors of six of this year’s most remarkable movies got together and talked shop. In November, Blitz Bazawule (The Color Purple), Bradley Cooper (Maestro), Ava DuVernay (Origin), Greta Gerwig (Barbie), Todd Haynes (May December) and Michael Mann (Ferrari) convened for THR’s annual Director Roundtable. How do you like to start on set? Do you actually call action? GRETA GERWIG I guess I say, “When you’re ready.” It seems less aggressive. AVA DUVERNAY I call action. Or I have action called. It took me a long time in my filmmaking to feel confident not to be the one calling action. Now I’ll just…

In a scene early in the movie Poor Things, Emma Stone gleefully flings some kippers across a dining table at Ramy Youssef’s face. It’s a weird and important moment, one in which Stone is establishing her character as a childlike Victorian woman, someone oblivious to social mores and free of shame. Stone and her director, Yorgos Lanthimos, were anxious about getting this section of the film right, because it sets the tone for all that is to follow. To help his actors shed their self-consciousness, Lanthimos deployed a trick. Before the official start of production, Lanthimos planned to do what he was calling a camera test on the scene. Yes, everyone would be in costume, the sets were finished and there was film in the cameras, but cast and crew…

ALL OF US STRANGERS Searchlight WINS 7 British Independent Film Awards, including best film, director and screenplay (Andrew Haigh), supporting performance (Paul Mescal); L.A. Film Critics Association Award for best screenplay NOMS 4 Indie Spirit Awards, 4 Gotham Awards 1 Critics Choice Award THE HOLDOVERS Focus Features WINS AFI movie of the year; National Board of Review top film, actor (Paul Giamatti), supporting actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), original screenplay (David Hemingson); L.A Film Critics Association Award for supporting performance (Randolph); New York Film Critics Circle supporting actress (Randolph) NOMS 8 Critics Choice Awards; 4 Indie Spirit Awards; 1 Gotham Award PAST LIVES A24 WINS AFI movie of the year; National Board of Review top film, best directing debut (Celine Song); Gotham Award winner for best feature NOMS 5 Indie Spirit…

Jon Frosch 1. Killers of the Flower Moon 2. Anatomy of a Fall 3. Passages 4. Afire 5. May December 6. Fallen Leaves 7. Showing Up 8. The Zone of Interest 9. Kokomo City 10. All of Us Strangers Lovia Gyarkye 1. Showing Up 2. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt 3. Earth Mama 4. Passages 5. Our Body 6. Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros 7. Anatomy of a Fall 8. Fallen Leaves 9. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret 10. Totem Sheri Linden 1. Showing Up 2. May December 3. Anatomy of a Fall 4. Killers of the Flower Moon 5. Past Lives 6. Oppenheimer 7. Pacifiction 8. Asteroid City 9. Passages 10. The Disappearance of Shere Hite…

1. Victoria Monét, Jaguar II The songwriter behind hits for Ariana Grande and others delivers her major label debut album, and it’s a masterpiece. By turns bold and bombastic, soothing, sultry and hilarious, she’s a Jill of all trades. “That’s just ’cause I’m heaven sent,” she sings on “On My Mama.” Damn right. 2. Kali Uchis, Red Moon in Venus “It’s like Valentine Day’s every day,” Uchis sings on her extraordinary album, and that’s just how it feels listening to it. Uchis’ brand of Latin R&B is sexy, exquisite and elegant. 3. Sam Smith, Gloria From mid-tempo numbers (“Six Shots,” “No God”) to upbeat gems (“I’m Not Here to Make Friends”) to the guitar-tinged “How to Cry,” Smith’s Gloria is glorious. 4. Various artists, Barbie: The Album The singles —…

Don’t be surprised if top Hollywood studio executives and theater owners aren’t feeling the Christmas spirit this year. They’re bracing for a tumultuous 2024 ride at the domestic box office after a slew of high-profile tentpoles were pushed to 2025 because of the lengthy writers and actors strikes. In a major blow to the post-pandemic recovery effort, domestic box office revenue in 2024 is now expected to come in behind 2023, a reversal of fortunes no one saw coming. If projections are right, domestic box office in 2024 could top out at $7.5 billion to $8 billion, compared to an expected $8.8 billion to $8.9 billion this year, say multiple studio executives who spoke with THR (a few are more bullish in thinking $8 billion to $8.5 billion is possible).…

To understand the connection between sports and streaming video, consider this: Amazon’s $1 billion per year deal to stream Thursday Night Football is literally changing U.S. internet habits. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh, speaking Dec. 4 at a UBS conference, said Amazon’s TNF game “comprises roughly 25 percent of all internet traffic on Thursday nights” and that it single-handedly “moved peak data usage on our broadband network from Sunday night to Thursday night.” And Comcast, with more than 32 million broadband internet subscribers, knows where users are spending that valuable bandwidth. It’s a cliché to say that sports is the glue holding together what’s left of the pay TV bundle, but while the bundle isn’t dead yet, every media company with sports rights has decided to go all in on streaming.…

As All of Us Strangers begins to rack up awards-season accolades, stars Andrew Scott, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell premiered their film Dec. 9 in Los Angeles alongside writer-director Andrew Haigh. The project stars Scott as a gay writer who begins a relationship with his mysterious neighbor — played by Paul Mescal, whom Scott called “such a soulful and intelligent and hardworking actor … couldn’t have imagined doing it with anyone else” — while at the same time discovering his parents (played by Foy and Bell) appear to be living just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before. “I read one review that said this is a nuclear-grade tearjerker, and I think that’s appropriate,” Bell jokingly told THR. “I’ve read the synopsis of this to people,…

Ariana Grande’s 2013 debut album, Yours Truly, not only marked a seminal breakthrough for the former Nickelodeon actress, but it also helped launch the careers of its creators behind the scenes. A decade later, two of those acts are taking center stage at the Grammy Awards. Victoria Monét co-wrote two songs on Grande’s debut and has written on every Grande album since. She’s competing for a whopping seven Grammys, including best new artist and record of the year, “On My Mama.” Leon Thomas, who starred on the Nick sitcom Victorious alongside Grande, co-wrote and co-produced four tracks on Yours Truly, and he’ll likely add Grammy winner as a prefix to his name. SZA’s megahit “Snooze,” which Thomas co-produced, is the frontrunner in the best R&B song category. “I respect everybody…

How exactly would a bear on cocaine act? That was a central question that the team at Weta FX had to answer when they created the 260 shots of the fully CG omnivore in Elizabeth Banks’ zany Cocaine Bear, which, as the title suggests, introduces a black bear who stumbles upon a shipment of cocaine as chaos ensues in a Georgia national forest. Now, the filmmakers hope to get some awards-season attention, following in the paw-steps of the photoreal CG bear whose tussle with Leonardo DiCaprio helped support The Revenant in 2015. Believability was critical in developing the bear, dubbed “Cokey” by the team, and so the work started with Weta’s customary extensive research. “We were looking to the animal world as a whole — some pretty daunting footage of…

With its lush golden beaches, whale-studded waters, rugged mountains and the laid-back urban equivalent of Los Angeles, New South Wales — home to Sydney as well as perhaps the planet’s coolest surf town, Byron Bay — is an attractive proposition. And that’s not even taking into account its culinary and cultural scenes, or its draw as a filming location. “Australia has ruined me for shooting anywhere else,” says Glen Powell, who shot Anyone But You in Sydney. “The crews are top-notch, everyone seems happy, and there’s a great work-life balance that makes set a place of joy.” Other films that have recently shot in New South Wales (NSW) include George Miller’s Furiosa, starring native son Chris Hemsworth; The Fall Guy; and Thor: Love and Thunder. Adds Alison Brie, who recently…

Veteran celebrities being unable to promote their latest projects during the strike was one thing. Xolo Maridueña dutifully staying out of the limelight was another level of sacrifice. The 22-year-old Cobra Kai actor landed the breakout role of a lifetime when he was cast as the lead of DC Films’ Blue Beetle, becoming the first Latino to be the star of a live-action superhero film. Not only did he miss a tidal wave of personal publicity opportunities for the Aug. 18 release but also the chance to represent Latinos in a uniquely visible way that, to hear him tell it, was just as important, if not more so. As Maridueña said to THR last year: “Blue Beetle isn’t to make me the next heartthrob or biggest star. It’s to show…

A globe-trotting rom-com. An intimate family dramedy. A bloody Comic-Con panel. And even a scrapped THR cover. Each was a casualty of the strike, never to be seen … until now This past summer, Paramount president of global marketing and distribution Marc Weinstock had planned to do huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem takeovers in Los Angeles and New York City that would be attended by talent, including writer and producer Seth Rogen and voice cast Rose Byrne, Jackie Chan, Paul Rudd, Ice Cube and Maya Rudolph. There were also plans for a Comic-Con event. But any plotting came to a full stop when the strike commenced July 14, roughly six weeks before Mutant Mayhem opened. Cast participation is especially crucial for an animated film. “We could tell people…

In 2019, Lizze Broadway was at San Diego Comic-Con when the whispers began. “The Boys are coming. The Boys are coming.” A few minutes later, castmembers including Karl Urban and Jack Quaid walked by. “For a show I knew nothing about, this moment stuck with me big time,” says Broadway, who plays size-changing student Emma. Four years later, Broadway and her fellow cast were preparing to show off Amazon’s college-set The Boys spinoff, Gen V, at their own Comic-Con panel — a chance to assure the 4,800 or so fans of The Boys who were packed into the convention center that the new series would be just as raunchy and violent as the mother ship. The strike derailed that. But, months later, the Gen V team tells THR how it…

MATTEL HEADQUARTERS, IN El Segundo, is some three freeways removed from the heart of Hollywood. It shares a parking lot with a DoubleTree, and the Stamps.com headquarters is across the road, but given the hold that Barbie has on the entertainment industry, it might as well be the center of the universe. Inside, Hot Wheels decorate the walls, a giant Magic 8 Ball sits by the elevator, Barbie-centric Warhols and Basquiats are housed on the upper floors, and Robbie Brenner is navigating future projects after producing the movie that became the cultural touchstone of 2023. It’s a world away from her former indie film realm, one that saw her triumph with Dallas Buyers Club, the Oscar-winning AIDS drama, but also struggle to get funding for stories fewer and fewer in…

Keep an eye out for these actors, who could beat the odds with their critically adored performances RACHEL MCADAMS Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret The actress, a previous Oscar nominee for Spotlight, earned her Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best supporting performance for her role as an overextended mom in Kelly Fremon Craig’s Judy Blume adaptation. ALMA PÖYSTI Fallen Leaves The star of Finland’s Oscar submission might just be the most surprising entry among the Golden Globe noms. But as the film gains momentum as an international contender, more Academy voters will be exposed to the actress’ deadpan performance in the romantic comedy. FRANZ ROGOWSKI Passages The German actor was named best actor by the New York Film Critics Circle, which highlighted his performance as an…

1. Reservation Dogs Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s FX-produced Hulu series completed its elegant three-season evolution from a raucous comedy about four Indigenous teens desperate to leave their Oklahoma reservation into TV’s most soulful half-hour about the value of community and connection across generations. Reservation Dogs became a show with no boundaries and no limitations — a wholly personal yet increasingly expansive vision capable of shifting gears from a ’70s-set flashback to a mental hospital heist to a silly fishing trip to an emotional father-daughter reunion. 2. Succession HBO’s scathing satire of family dynamics and corporate dysfunction stuck the landing with a finale of unexpected sweetness, expertly undercut by creator Jesse Armstrong’s trademark bleakness. The fourth season found its traumatizing momentum with “Connor’s Wedding,” perhaps television’s most perceptive depiction of…

The future of Paramount Global — or the pieces of it — is shaping up to be among the biggest stories facing Hollywood in 2024. Shari Redstone, who’s considering whether to relinquish her family’s stake in National Amusements, holds a controlling interest in the conglomerate. Among those kicking the tires is Top Gun: Maverick producer David Ellison and his Skydance, which is reportedly working with Gerry Cardinale’s private equity firm RedBird on evaluating potential deals. But Skydance and RedBird are far from alone, should the Redstone stake in National Amusements or Paramount as a whole hit the block. The company’s distress has also been top of mind for John Malone, the cable tycoon, Warner Bros. Discovery board member and mentor to WBD CEO David Zaslav. Media insiders have been buzzing…

Class Superlatives PROM QUEEN AND KING Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce The most talked-about entertainer of the year and the Super Bowl-winning podcaster combined their forces — and audiences — to forge the kind of four-quadrant cultural phenomenon the industry hasn’t seen in ages. Well, except for —> MOST POPULAR Barbenheimer Combined global box office gross: $2.4 billion WORST HOMECOMING PERFORMANCE Bob Iger He rode back into town last year like a high-EQ white knight to rescue the Magic Kingdom from his flailing handpicked successor, only to be cast as one of the principal villains of the strikes and architect of Disney’s “Dewokening.” MOST UNSETTLING YEARBOOK PHOTO MOST INVINCIBLE MARVEL VILLAIN Audiences Tepid reviews and lackluster box office for the latest entries in the franchise — particularly November’s The Marvels…

With months-long WGA and SAG strikes, 2023 was a doozy for Hollywood: One estimate pegs the economic cost of lost wages and other business impacts at $6 billion. And while the holidays in years past have been primetime in Hollywood for flexing those big-spender muscles, some industry observers believe that gift-giving is more restrained this season. “I think it’s generally a tough time for people in the industry after the repercussions of the strikes,” says Laurie Zaks, president of Rosewood Television. Producer Irena Medavoy agrees. “This holiday season is different,” she says. “It just feels a little bit more quiet.” In other years, she notes, “We used to get Hermès cashmere monogrammed blankets or those big tins of caviar where you could feed 30 people. I don’t see that happening.”…

2024 marks the 15th cohort of THR’s Women in Entertainment mentorship program, a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles that welcomed its first class in 2010. This coming year, 20 pairs of women — each pair consisting of a high-level executive and a high-achieving teenager — will embark on what could become long-lasting friendships, as so many WIE matches over the past decade and a half have proven to be. In addition to professional exposure and college prep guidance — much of the latter provided by WIE’s other nonprofit partner, Latinx Education Coach — mentees will get to know their powerful mentors in a personal way that will hopefully reveal how much they have in common. For example, we paired 20th Television president (and WIE Power…

In 2002, the Academy Awards first honored animated features with their own Oscar category — the inaugural winner was DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek. Before then, the stance on rewarding animated features was that there were too few to warrant a separate category; honorary Oscars were given to groundbreaking films like the animated/live-action hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the computer-animated Toy Story. But with the founding of DreamWorks — and the expansion of other studios, such as stop-motion houses Aardman and Laika, the Irish outfit Cartoon Saloon, and animation departments within Sony and Netflix — there arose an abundance of animated titles that could compete with the output of cartoon titans Disney and Pixar. While those two studios have led the pack with the most nominees and winners since the category’s…

I didn’t go to the premiere of our movie The Machine. At the time, the WGA had hazy yet oddly firm rules against promotion. I called writer friends, some on the WGA board, to see if there was wiggle room. There was. If I wanted to look like a dick and undermine the effort we were all sacrificing for, I could go. I did what I think was right. But I was bummed. It was the first premiere of a movie I’d written. I was going to take my wife. It’s been a rough year. This was gonna be our prize. Shit. Instead, I got yelled at by my mom. We were at the Terrace Theater in South Carolina the night of the premiere, seeing the movie with the first…

With the strikes, I didn’t have the chance to express my feelings around Reservation Dogs’ ending. What’s that expression, if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it even make a noise? How do you reckon with the show that’s really changed all our lives coming to a close? I think I’m inching closer toward processing it. Nobody really knew that it was going to be the end until halfway through the [third season]. That’s when we started hearing whispers. But Sterlin [Harjo] has been our leader. If he felt like this is where we close the story, then we have to respect him. For me, I knew that my character Elora Danan’s journey had to come to an end either way. If…

As Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody’s son, Gideon, tells it, his parents’ social media stardom began rather innocently. Grody-Patinkin had moved in with his actor parents early in the pandemic and began interviewing them for what would be a family archive. “I thought they might die from COVID maybe soon-ish, so I was getting them to tell me some stories,” he says via Zoom, to which his father jokes from another square (albeit from the same upstate New York property that they still share): “We’re big on positive thinking here.” Before long, Grody-Patinkin started uploading videos to social media of Mom and Dad bickering, snuggling, joking and obsessing over politics. They struck a chord. The couple of 45 years became unlikely social media stars, with more than 2 million followers…

Photographer David Needleman, who captured the busy trio on June 15 at the Four Seasons in New York, in a rare postproduction moment when they were all in the same city on the same day, recalls: “I had asked them literally to lean on each other as a means of support. They looked at each other, looked at me, laughed, then fell into pose. Within seconds, I knew we had the picture. While the cover itself couldn’t be published, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, with the far more important need to support the historic strikes. Symbolically, I took comfort in our greater concept of leaning on each other for support — something I was eager to do, in solidarity with the actors and writers from whom I’ve…

HBO’s Succession continued its awards domination, earning nine Globes noms and, following the trend of the July Emmy noms, pitting three of its performers — Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong — against one another for best actor in a drama. Plenty of other Emmy nominees found themselves with more awards recognition ahead of the Jan. 15 ceremony, which, breaking with tradition, will take place just a week after the Globes, thanks to a strike-caused postponement — among them The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White, Beef’s Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West, and The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. But because shows that premiered after the Emmys’ May 31 deadline are eligible for the Globes, new limited series…

1. Past Lives Playwright Celine Song’s directorial debut follows a writer (played by Greta Lee with an unerring balance of careful self-possession and emotional transparency) as her childhood crush from Korea (Teo Yoo) resurfaces in New York, raising questions about her choices and stirring anxiety for her husband (John Magaro). This is an exquisite film as even-handed as it is insightful, digging deep on relationships, fate, roads not taken and the phantoms of parallel existences. The writing and all three performances elegantly skirt every convention of the romantic triangle drama. 2. Poor Things Yorgos Lanthimos has been thumbing his nose at genre constraints since his breakout, Dogtooth. But nothing in his filmography can compare with this inspired riff on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Led by a spectacular high-wire act of a…

1. Reservation Dogs In its final season, the ambitious FX/Hulu show grew even fuller and richer, nudging its young leads into the future while digging into histories both personal and communal. May the impact of Sterlin Harjo’s dramedy reverberate for generations to come. 2. Succession The HBO favorite didn’t just keep its audience on the knife’s edge between repulsion and sympathy. It made that balancing act its very foundation, all the way through a thunderous series ending that felt at once shocking and inevitable. 3. Beef The Netflix drama/comedy/thriller’s understanding of the anguish propelling its characters made it not just one of the most entertaining watches of the year, but possibly the most cathartic. 4. The Other Two In its final season, Max’s showbiz fam-com delivered a feast of savagery,…