Innholdsfortegnelse for August 23, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

For nearly 20 years, Karla Ortiz has worked as a concept artist, bringing to life an entire universe of characters in projects like Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Thor: Ragnarok. She’s credited with coming up with the main character design for Doctor Strange in her own blend of impressionist and magic realism styles honed by decades of practice. She was horrified to learn last year that her work at the forefront of multibillion-dollar franchises is being used to train generative artificial intelligence systems without her knowledge or consent. Imitations of her work are now floating all across the web. Her name has been fed into Midjourney, an AI art generator, more than 2,500 times to create art that looks like hers. She’s been paid nothing. “You work your entire…

ABC 43 episodes 7.41M weeknight viewers The show of the summer is … a network newscast? ABC’s World News Tonight has been the most watched program on linear TV — regardless of daypart or type of show — every week for the past two months, averaging 7.41 million weeknight viewers during that time. (If live sports are taken out of the equation, the streak extends into the spring.) The newscast, anchored by David Muir, has had a stranglehold on the news leader board for the past four years, having topped NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News in total viewers in all but one week (out of 247) since December 2018.…

Yvonne Orji, like so many of her peers, is eager to get back to work. But as she Zooms from her Los Angeles home office in mid-August, she’s mostly itching to get out of town. “When the strikes end, and I think it’ll be soon, everyone is going to be bat-crap crazy — so get away while you can,” warns the 39-year-old, who inked a first-look deal with Sony just before the WGA strike put everything on hold. “Everyone’s going to start up with the same urgency they had during COVID. We have to show that our jobs are still valuable.” Thus far, Orji has proved her worth in Hollywood. As a member of striking SAGAFTRA, she spoke on the condition of promoting only the Sept. 12 paperback release of…

In 2014, my son’s mother and I took our 3-year-old Noah to Bali. I had judged a film contest with IHG Hotels and they compensated me with points to use at any of their resorts. After a while at their lovely InterContinental Bali on Jimbaran Bay at the southern tip of Bali, we yearned for a more offbeat jungle experience and discovered through Airbnb the astounding Green Village Bali, a sustainably built housing community near Ubud. Before we even checked in, they assumed we were there to see Green School Bali, which we had never heard of. A quick, deep jungle walk later we entered into a clearing where massive twisted bamboo buildings poked through the trees like giant foraging dinosaurs. A small group was gathered with designer John Hardy,…

The death of Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16 would shake Iran to its core. In what proved to be a tinderbox moment that led to what experts have asserted was the greatest challenge to the hardline Iranian government since the 1979 revolution, the 22-year-old died in Tehran, having allegedly been beaten by the police after she’d been arrested for not wearing the mandatory hijab. The news sparked widespread protests across the country as thousands took to the streets over the following weeks and months to demand an end to the hijab rule and for wider social freedoms, particularly for women. The brutal crackdown by authorities that followed resulted in more than 500 people reportedly killed by security forces and tens of thousands detained. Amini’s death would also shake up the…

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL DIRECTOR William Friedkin STARS Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Clarke, Lance Reddick BUZZ Friedkin’s modern-day update of Herman Wouk’s acclaimed novel (made into the 1954 classic film starring Humphrey Bogart) was always going to attract interest, but the recent deaths of Friedkin and co-star Reddick lend the project a new poignancy as the final work of two great artists. SALES Paramount Global Content Distribution FINALLY DAWN DIRECTOR Saverio Costanzo STARS Lily James, Rebecca Antonaci, Joe Keery, Alba Rohrwacher, Willem Dafoe BUZZ This coming-of-age drama, set over a single night at Cinecitta in the 1950s, when the Rome backlot was known as “Hollywood on the Tiber,” looks to be a nice fit for mainstream art house buyers and could be a darkhorse awards contender. SALES Filmnation/UTA HIT MAN DIRECTOR…

Meghann Fahy The White Lotus Some of us have been fans of Fahy since her days on Freeform’s goofy magazine series The Bold Type. Her turn as Daphne on The White Lotus made so many more take notice. Fahy has a tough job that she executes flawlessly: Daphne has to at first seem cheerily airheaded, before slowly revealing that she’s much more conscious of everything going on around her than previously suspected. Storm Reid The Last of Us Reid has shown her talent in the likes of A Wrinkle in Time and Euphoria, but her best, most moving role to date might be her stint on HBO’s drama. In this flashback episode, we learn about Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) life pre-Joel (Pedro Pascal) through her friendship with Reid’s Riley, a girl…

The plot of the latest Liam Neeson thriller (stop me if you’ve heard this one before): A type-A business executive based in Berlin is driving his two kids to school when he receives a call from an artificially disguised voice informing him that there are bombs under the seats — and they’ll go off if anyone attempts to get out of the car. Don’t you hate when that happens? Anyway, Speed — sorry, Retribution — proves to be the sort of high-concept actioner designed to appeal to both international audiences (this is the third remake of 2015 Spanish film El desconocido, which was followed by German and South Korean versions) and couch potatoes seeking 90 minutes of streaming distraction on a Saturday night. It arrives in theaters the last week…

During Disney’s most recent quarterly earnings call, on Aug. 9, CEO Bob Iger waited until the end of his opening remarks to drop the hammer: His company’s streaming business was introducing price increases. Big ones. The monthly cost of the Disney+ and Hulu ad-free tiers would be rising by nearly 30 percent, or $3. For a company desperately trying to turn its money-losing streaming business into a moneymaker, the pivot marked a critical strategic shift in its path to profitability. However, Iger added that “maintaining access to our content for as broad an audience as possible is top of mind for us, which is why pricing for our stand-alone ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu offerings will remain unchanged.” Price hikes are never subtle, but the move by Disney was the latest…

As a Democrat who works in professional politics, I live in a perpetual state of worry — an occupational hazard that became more acute in 2016. Ever since Jan. 6, 2021, many of us added a new fear to our lists: election interference. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, teams of lawyers, election experts and grassroots organizers in D.C. prepared for increasing threats to the administration of the election. As an adviser to former President Barack Obama, I attended briefings, strategy sessions and tabletop exercises designed to mitigate and overcome those risks. Against that backdrop, in the spring of 2022, executive producer Frank Rich asked me if I would advise the Succession writers on political storylines in the fourth season. I had worked in politics for 20 years, including in Congress…

June Diane Raphael and Jessica St. Clair launched their podcast, The Deep Dive, in the midst of the pandemic as a way to compensate for the loneliness and disconnect of lockdown. Each week, the two longtime friends and creative collaborators discuss their pursuit of joy amid a bevy of challenges both relatable (motherhood, aging) and aspirational (finding the correct poolside attire for Miami Beach Pride). Doing the podcast helped lift the actresses out of their own post-lockdown voids, and their motto — “Let Us Live!” — echoes through Apple reviews posted by their ever-expanding listening community. When the abrupt work stoppage of this summer’s double strike threatened to trigger a similar existential crisis, they were ready with an antidote: They launched the Deep Dive Academy of Significance. “We started a…

WGA Scribe on Why He Co-Created a Play With ChatGPT The lights went down inside Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre on Aug. 13 ahead of the sixth and final 10-minute play of the evening program at the Brisk Festival. An artificial intelligence robot, played by Tom Szymanski, walked to center stage outfitted in a gray bodysuit, sneakers covered in red web lighting and an oversized power button in the center of its chest. A scientist, played by Julia Finch, endows the robot with advanced AI and watches it flourish — before suddenly feeling the weight of what she’s created. The production — directed by actor and writer Will McFadden — speaks directly to a threat at the heart of the WGA strike. Not to spoil the ending, but My Little A.I.…

As artificial intelligence continues to be a focal point in Hollywood amid the actors and writers strikes, terms such as “responsible AI” and “ethical AI” became key messaging for computer graphics thought leaders gathered in Los Angeles for the 50th SIGGRAPH conference. “The generative AI era is upon us, the iPhone moment of AI, if you will,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said during his Aug. 8 keynote. Before thousands of delegates, he introduced the tech giant’s newest related tech, including its GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and AI Workbench toolkit. “Startups are doing amazing things,” Huang added. “Of course they’re doing content creation, but they’re also using generative AI to steer a selfdriving car … generate proteins, chemicals, discover new drugs.” The CG and VFX community has been…

PRISCILLA PRESLEY WAS TRYING on clothes in the fitting room of a Beverly Hills boutique when she overheard two women whispering about her. It was the mid-1960s, and Priscilla — who had met Elvis in 1959 when she was 14 and he was 24 — in some people’s eyes was living out the fantasy of every teenage girl in America. She was staying at Graceland while finishing high school, wearing sophisticated clothes and dramatic makeup, and traveling on the arm of one of the most charismatic men in history. Her life was thrilling — and often lonely. “I heard the girl saying, ‘You know who that is? That’s the girl Elvis is dating and they’re getting married,’ ” Priscilla recalls. “ ‘She’s pregnant.’ ” Priscilla was not, in fact, pregnant,…

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows Drive My Car, his exquisite, Oscar-winning 2021 masterwork about art and work as pathways through grief, with this story of a single father and his young daughter who live in a rural village outside Tokyo. The serenity and simplicity of their lives in harmony with the cycles of nature, and the ecological balance of the area, with its untouched woodlands, mountains and lakes, are jeopardized by corporate plans to build a luxury camping site there as an escape for city dwellers. ↑ FERRARI Known for the dynamic energy, visceral textures and virtuosic technique of his stylish dramas, Michael Mann seems an ideal choice to tell the story of Italian sports car entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari, based on auto-sports journalist Brock Yates’ 1991…

Being an independent producer was never easy. But these days, it’s near impossible. Even before the dual writers and actors strikes, changes in the international film and TV market had made life tough for the indies. Old models of art house moviemaking have been ravaged by a combination of decline in the specialty box office, the collapse of ancillary revenue for home entertainment and TV licensing, and the more recent pullback by streaming companies, who have begun to back fewer, and more mainstream, movies. But one indie production company has gone from making just a handful of movies a year to dozens, finding a way to turn the turbulent new reality into a business model for making cutting-edge art house cinema that, shockingly, can actually turn a profit. It’s the…

Media and entertainment giants have wrapped up their latest earnings parade, which highlighted advertising challenges and cord-cutting problems. But these four companies have emerged with wind at their backs from Wall Street analysts, who have made their case for which firms are well-positioned for the second half of this year. Comcast The cable titan and owner of NBCUniversal and European pay TV powerhouse Sky scored with better-than-expected results across various units, but especially with lower-than-projected subscriber losses and improved profitability in its core cable broadband business. Goldman Sachs analyst Brett Feldman maintained his “buy” rating on Comcast shares after the company’s second-quarter earnings report and call while raising his stock price target by $6 to $51 (it closed at $45.86 on Aug. 21). Bank of America’s Jessica Reif Ehrlich also…

After Rep. Barbara Lee was the lone member of Congress to vote against the war in Iraq in 2001, she became a target of death threats. Now, years later, as she strives to become just the third Black woman in American history elected to the Senate, her willingness to take a stand in the face of such adversity has emerged as a political asset, landing her endorsements from colleagues like Rep. Ro Khanna. She recently spoke to THR about her life and views. Can you talk about some of the repercussions you faced from voting against the war in Iraq? I was called a traitor, and the penalty for treason is death, so a lot of people felt that’s what I deserved. You just have no idea how many death…

Despite the writers and actors strikes that kept the film’s cast and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer from promoting it, Warner Bros. celebrated its latest DC entry, Blue Beetle, in Los Angeles on Aug. 15 with director Ángel Manuel Soto and DC co-CEOS James Gunn and Peter Safran. Soto, who walked the red carpet with a cardboard cutout of star Xolo Maridueña’s face, told the crowd at the TCL Chinese Theatre screening that his actors are “fighting the good fight. It’s very important that we understand that they are heroes right now.” And in introducing DC’s first Latino-led superhero movie, Soto had one message: “Don’t fear Spanish, don’t fear Mexican heritage, don’t fear Latino heritage. We want you guys to join the party with us.” To submit, send an email to hhh@thr.com…

Labor Day weekend once again marks the return of the Telluride Film Festival, which will celebrate its 50th edition when it kicks off Aug. 31 in Colorado (it runs this year through Sept. 4, one day longer than usual, in honor of the milestone). Though the turnout will no doubt be different than previous star-packed weekends — thanks to the ongoing writers and actors strikes that restrict promotion of work from AMPTP companies — the event will be the least affected of the fall fests because of its lack of formal red carpets and over-the-top premieres. And some things will remain the same, like the tradition of not revealing the festival program until attendees have arrived in the mountain town. Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

When most people hear “Indonesia,” they immediately think Bali. But the sprawling equatorial nation of 17,000-plus islands goes well beyond that one surfer-swarmed island. Indonesia is particularly special because of its place on the Coral Triangle marine area; Harrison Ford and Nina Dobrev are among stars who have ventured out to take in the Raja Ampat archipelago in the eastern part of the country, home to more than 1,500 species of fish. INDONESIA BY YACHT In January, Dobrev, along with friends including Abigail Spencer and Julianne Hough, chartered Prana by Atzaró (pranabyatzaro.com, from $14,000 a night inclusive), an uberluxe version of a traditional Indonesian phinisi yacht, to explore Raja Ampat. These yachts offer access to strikingly diverse landscapes and seascapes. “The most amazing experience I’ve had in Indonesia was aboard…

The first issue is the headline. As a culture journalist reporting the news of the 80th Venice Film Festival, should you lead with this year’s impressive list of directors, including Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Bradley Cooper and Yorgos Lanthimos, and stars — Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Penélope Cruz, Adam Driver, Mads Mikkelsen — speculating, perhaps, on who will and won’t make it to the Lido during Hollywood’s double strike? Or do you go for the all-important clicks by emphasizing scandal: Venice includes new films from Roman Polanski (The Palace), Woody Allen (Coup de Chance) and Luc Besson (DogMan) in the official lineup. “I really struggled with it, to go for the stars or to go for the controversy,” says Eric Randolph, arts & lifestyle editor for…

Just as the Venice Film Festival was establishing itself as one of the most thrilling red carpets on the festival and awards show circuit — in 2022, The New York Times called its fashion parade the “most glamorous” of the year thanks to wow appearances from Timothée Chalamet, Tessa Thompson and Florence Pugh — the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will likely stamp out both the Hollywood star power and its attendant style at the 80th edition of the event. But that hasn’t deterred a variety of luxury brands from forging ahead with their high-profile presence throughout the fest. CARTIERThe jewelry brand is back as one of Venice’s primary sponsors, alongside Armani Beauty, Campari and Mastercard. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award, which Cartier presented to Ridley Scott in 2021 and…

In Disney+’s Ahsoka, hulking vessels zip around space, landing on alien planets with an odd weightlessness — as if one could park on your foot and you’d never notice. Does this stem from a limitation in the show’s special effects budget? Is it a conscious effort to mimic the aesthetic of the series’ animated antecedents? Is it an unconscious metaphor for a show that, at least through two of its eight episodes, often suffers from a lack of dramatic gravity? That’s not to say Ahsoka is entirely without emotional heft. But most of that investment is dependent on familiarity with its predecessor, Star Wars Rebels. Viewers who haven’t watched that show (which aired from 2014 to 2018 on Disney XD) — or 2008’s animated film The Clone Wars or any…