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.
↑ Moguls Money Man Jeff Zucker on his private equity war chest p. 14 Tech AI’s New Job: Yours ChatGPT’s maker unveils a destabilizing video tool p. 12 Reinaldo Marcus Green/Kingsley Ben-Adir The Bob Marley: One Love director and star launch the Paramount biopic to an $81 million global bow, eclipsing its $70 million budget in six days. Anthony Wood As Walmart inks a $2.3 billion deal to buy TV maker Vizio, collateral damage may fall on the Roku CEO, who bet big on his firm’s devices as key to its streaming market share. Beyoncé As the star’s single “Texas Hold ’Em” clocks 19.2 million streams through Feb. 15, she claims a Billboard record as the first woman to top its Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. Bill…
Just over a year ago, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was set to take Marvel Studios to the next level. A new villain was going to be introduced, setting the stage for several years’ worth of storytelling. And the movie itself was a giant-sizing of a franchise that was previously modest in scope. Instead, the Peyton Reed-directed movie heralded a year’s worth of missteps, box office blunders and PR nightmares. It was all uncharted territory for Marvel, which had steadily been generating box office gold for 15 years. But the Disney division is in the midst of a pretty darn good February, all things considered, despite the general gloom that surrounds the superhero genre as of late. The Super Bowl trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine became the most watched trailer…
The trailer buzz was worrisome, advance ticket sales anemic. Then, on Feb. 13, the reviews for Madame Web arrived, and they stung deepest of all. Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff received the lowest average Rotten Tomatoes score (13 percent) of any major superhero film in nearly a decade, since 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four scored a dismal 9 percent in 2015. “You could actually watch advance purchase sales declining in real time as buyers were refunding their tickets,” marvels a major theater chain executive. “It really says something when you’d rather have Shazam! 2 numbers,” they add, referring to the DC sequel that grossed only $134 million globally. Web marked one of the lowest starts in Hollywood history for a film based on a Marvel character. Domestic box office for the first…
In the bowels of the Washington Hilton in April, just hours before the White House Correspondents’ dinner, several ABC News staffers were seen hastily carrying furniture, including couches and high-top tables, out of a room on the terrace level of the hotel that was about to host executives and talent at the network’s pre-dinner reception. The room that the No. 1-rated news network used for the previous year’s shindig was under construction, so they had booked another (albeit much smaller) space. ABC News boss Kim Godwin was ready to welcome two very special guests: Disney CEO Bob Iger and the person who is the leading candidate to one day succeed him, Dana Walden, the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment and Godwin’s boss, who along with Iger had flown in from Los…
Picture this: In a future not too far away, HBO is mulling whether to greenlight a new Game of Thrones spinoff but is on the fence about the project. So instead of dumping tens of millions of dollars to shoot a pilot it might wind up passing on, it uses a generative artificial intelligence system trained on its library of shows to create a rough cut in the style of the original. It ultimately decides not to move forward with the title. That process sans AI cost HBO troves of cash and time when it was mulling a potential successor to Thrones in 2018. A cast headed by Naomi Watts was assembled and massive new sets were built. All in all, HBO spent roughly $35 million to shoot a pilot…
It has been two years since Jeff Zucker resigned from the top job at CNN over a consensual relationship with a network executive. Since then, he’s headed up RedBird IMI, a joint venture between Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital and IMI, an investment fund backed by the UAE. With a massive private equity war chest behind him, Zucker, 58, has been relentlessly hunting for deals. In a little over a year, he has invested in TV studio and motion picture company Media Res and news site Front Office Sports and just made an audacious bid to buy the U.K.’s Telegraph, provoking an outcry from journalists and politicians. On Feb. 17, Zucker’s firm bought powerhouse producer All3Media (which backed 1917, Fleabag, Squid Game: The Challenge, The Tinder Swindler and Penny Dreadful, among…
