Innholdsfortegnelse for March 6, 2024 i The Hollywood Reporter

Chris Winfrey The Charter CEO vaults into the ranks of Hollywood’s top-paid execs with $89 million in 2023 pay, much of it in option awards, a rise from $15 million a year before. Andrew Wilson The CEO of video game giant Electronic Arts tries to right the ship by cutting more than 650 staffers and axing a major Star Wars tentpole game. Maya Erskine, Donald Glover The stars of Mr. & Mrs. Smith rang up 964 million minutes of watch time for Prime Video over three days after the show’s premiere, a strong bow on Nielsen’s streaming chart. Brad Falchuk, Byron Wu Despite good reviews and a solid opening on Nielsen’s streaming charts, Netflix cancels the creators’ action series The Brothers Sun after a single-season run. Showbiz Stocks $859.64 (+10.7%)…

The Fetishist (JAN. 9, PUTNAM) BY Katherine Min AGENCY UTA When the decorated author died in 2019, she left her readers one final manuscript, brought to shelves by her daughter. The novel follows three characters as a kidnapping plot goes awry. The Truth About the Devlins (MARCH 26, PUTNAM) BY Lisa Scottoline AGENCY IAG Scottoline returns with another propulsive thriller, this one about a family of lawyers whose golden child — and star of the law firm — gets tangled up in a deadly embezzlement dispute.…

Jean-Michel Basquiat burst onto the New York art scene in the early 1980s and has been claimed as an NYC legend ever since. “The rap on Jean-Michel was he’s a street kid from New York and the work all comes from his experience of the New York streets,” says art dealer, curator, writer and Basquiat expert Fred Hoffman. In reality, Basquiat would spend some of the most pivotal years of his short life working in Los Angeles. Made on Market Street — opening during Oscar Week at Gagosian in Beverly Hills on March 7 and curated by Hoffman and Larry Gagosian — is the first exhibit to focus exclusively on works the artist produced in L.A., from 1982 to 1984. In 1982, Gagosian presented the first West Coast solo show…

“You might have seen me in Anyone but You or Euphoria. You definitely did not see me in Madame Web.” SYDNEY SWEENEY The actress, on Saturday Night Live, introducing herself to the audience with a jab at her recent commercial and critical flop. “It’s hard to believe that’s ideal.”BOB BAKISH The Paramount Global president, during a Feb. 29 earnings call, throwing a little shade at the forthcoming ESPN/Fox/WBD sports streamer — which lacks “half the NFL, a lot of college and [has] virtually no soccer or golf.” “Maybe I won’t be able to get this one made.”DAMIEN CHAZELLE The filmmaker, on the Talking Pictures podcast, suggesting that he might have trouble securing financing for his new project after $80 million Babylon scraped together only $15.4 million at the U.S. and Canadian…

Like everyone else during the pandemic, Paul Giamatti found solace on Zoom. The veteran actor caught an online talk presented by Stephen Asma, an author and philosophy professor at Columbia College Chicago. Giamatti liked what Asma had to say about imagination and consciousness, so he did what any well-connected fan would do and reached out. “We were Zooming when Zoom was a new thing. It was nice to chat with this guy, and we found each other having these longer and longer chats,” says Giamatti during a rare break from his best actor Oscar campaign for his role in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. “Stephen jokingly said, ‘We ought to do something with this.’” The joke then turned serious. To craft their pitch, they sent one of their chats to visual…

Few people better capture the sublimity and silliness of today’s red carpet spectacle than the artist Angelica Hicks. The 31-year-old Brooklyn-based Brit started her career as a cheeky illustrator, making a name for herself with fashion drawings that featured winking wordplay, like a model wearing YSL logo earrings with the caption “Yves Dropping.” (Get it?) But one day, on a whim, she took to Instagram to replicate a runway look she saw by cutting a hole in a shopping bag and wearing it as a squared-off top. Her ingenuity garnered enthusiastic online praise, so she continued, duplicating a model in a ruffled blouse and cloche hat using crumpled tissues and a mixing bowl. “The humor is in approximating the look as closely as possible,” Hick says. “So it’s this perfectionism…

Gold statuettes may be the Oscars’ ultimate status symbol, but what of the envelopes that reveal the big winners? Three sets of cards, designed by Marc Friedland since 2011, are produced for each category — two of which are taken to the venue. Winners are allowed to keep their cards and envelopes. Those that are left behind, as well as extras, are recycled. But Friedland’s envelopes are meant to be keepsakes. Catherine Zeta-Jones shared that she keeps her winning envelope for Chicago on the mantel in her home office, framed next to her statuette. Francis Ford Coppola says his winning envelopes and statues are on display at his Sonoma County winery. And Steven Spielberg keeps his three winning envelopes framed in his Amblin Entertainment office. Christopher Lord and Phil Miller…

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and hoping for a different result,” notes Oscar’s most nominated — and, alas, least winning — songwriter, Diane Warren. “So, I guess I’m certifiably insane.” This year marks Warren’s 15th nomination for best original song, this time for “The Fire Inside,” Becky G’s Latin-themed tune from Flamin’ Hot, Eva Longoria’s directorial debut about the Frito-Lay janitor who claims he invented the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto. It could be Warren’s first win (not counting her 2022 honorary Oscar). In a remarkable, odds-defying losing streak, the 67-year-old composer has been skunked on every nomination, including the past seven years in a row. Some of those losses are pretty hard to fathom. Her Celine Dion power ballad “Because You Loved Me,” from the…

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was inspired to host Wiser Than Me after watching the 2018 documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts. It occurred to the Veep and Seinfeld star that older women, despite having accumulated decades of wisdom, are rarely given the chance to share it. In each episode of the podcast, Louis-Dreyfus asks her eminent guests, including Fonda, Amy Tan, Isabel Allende and Carol Burnett, about their careers and relationships, as well as their views on sex, aging, body image and ambition. In turn, she shares her own anecdotes gleaned from her life and career, and ends each episode with a call with her mother. Produced by Lemonada Media, the show has been named Apple Podcasts’ 2023 show of the year, nominated for an Ambie Award for best interview podcast…

The very best thing that could possibly happen to The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen was garnering five Ambie Award nominations, including for podcast of the year. While the podcast’s creators are thrilled about the recognition, they’re more excited about what it could mean for the genre of audio fiction. “The fact that the most nominated podcast this year at the Ambies is a fiction piece is a really big deal to us. That’s the win,” says Alex Kemp, the series’ creator, writer and director. The podcast is a self-funded passion project for Kemp and his wife, Winnie, who jointly executive produced the show through their Venice, California-based studio, Wolf at the Door. The series follows a man named Raul, who is lonely living in Hong Kong until…

Despite a theatrical slate impacted by the writers and actors strikes — with AMC Theatres calculating domestic industrywide box office in the fourth quarter down 35 percent compared with 2019 — chains saw bright spots in Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour ($250 million globally) and Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé ($43.9 million). Crucially for theaters, the concert films came with higher ticket prices and boosted merch sales, earnings disclosures show. For AMC Theatres, the films also opened up a new revenue stream for the company, which was acting as both exhibitor and distributor. AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron said Feb. 28 his chain is planning more concert movies in 2024 and in 2025, adding that “our phones have been ringing off the hook” with pitches.…

MOST SOCIAL CAPITAL LOST IN 10 MINUTES JO KOY Proverbial gun to head, few awards show aficionados could name a more embarrassing monologue than Jo Koy’s turn at the 2024 Golden Globes — a slow-motion car wreck that will live in infamy for the crickets and cringes he drew from his A-list audience. Fellow comics have pointed to the emcee’s absence of established rapport with the crowd as reason for his undoing, but the fact remains that his big moment at bat was so bad, it even broke Taylor Swift’s iron curtain of composure. MOST INSUFFERABLE ONLINE CONVERSATION ‘SNUBS’ Sure, it would have been nice to see a few more Gretas in the Oscars mix — Gerwig for directing Barbie or Lee for her performance in Past Lives — but…

Frieze Los Angeles rolled into town Feb. 29, kicking off the fifth annual art fair — and with accompanying art events across the city — at the Santa Monica Airport. The fair, which ran through March 3 and featured more than 95 galleries, opened with a VIP preview packed with A-listers. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Rob Lowe, Jessica Biel, Tobey Maguire, Ryan Murphy, And Just Like That showrunner Michael Patrick King, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and WME co-chairman Richard Weitz were among those checking out the featured paintings and sculptures. Frieze LA attracted 32,000 visitors from 48 countries across its four days; two other concurrent Los Angeles art fairs, Felix and Spring/Break Art Show, also took place over the weekend, along with a…

There are drawers full of clutches, crossbody and tote bags, and lines of shoes that range from sneakers to over-the-knee heeled boots. In a separate cabinet are vintage pieces like a ’70s burnt orange toggle coat safely tucked away in plastic. On one of the worktables near a sewing machine is a sketch of a pink vest and pants set that were recently constructed for a photo shoot. This fashion closet is the home base for an Instagram influencer with nearly 3 million followers on social media — Barbie. “This is where the magic happens,” says Barbie’s stylist Rachel Ritter, who is standing in a pair of Tabis inside Barbie’s human-size closet (located in a studio near Mattel’s headquarters in El Segundo). It’s an expectedly small but exceedingly well-organized space…

To kick off our annual Oscars Issue, The Hollywood Reporter commissioned 11 leading artists — spanning North America, from L.A. to Guadalajara to New York City — to reinterpret the iconic Oscar statuette in paintings, drawings, sculptures, conceptual photography and performance. Their multimedia works, exclusively on display on these pages, will also be the subject of a special Oscar Week exhibition at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Hollywood, opening March 9. We asked each artist to give their own version of an Academy Awards speech, with a behind-the-scenes look at what inspired their glittering creations. As Kenny Scharf, the Los Angeles native whose art has defined New York City since the ’80s, succinctly puts it: “I want to thank everyone who ever helped me. Oh, it’s not for me. Byyeeee…

Norwegian pianist Rune Alver carefully unfolded the brittle sheet music and began caressing the keys of the baby grand. He had found the classical piece buried in an archive and believed it hadn’t been heard in maybe a century. But as he delved into the second section, Cantando, he felt a shiver run down his spine. The melody wasn’t just reminiscent of something he’d heard before — it was iconic. He instantly recognized the unforgettable, yearning opening notes of “Over the Rainbow,” the Academy Award-winning anthem Judy Garland performed in The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most famous song to come out of Hollywood. How could this be? The sheet music was dated 1910, and The Wizard of Oz premiered nearly 30 years later. But the melody hung there (“Somewhere…

The last time Disney faced a full-fledged proxy fight was 20 years ago. More than 40 percent of shareholders voted against the Disney board and its then-CEO, Michael Eisner. The executive lost his chairman title within hours and told the board of his plans to step aside as CEO in mere months. A turning point in that battle, as Bob Iger recalled in his 2019 memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, was the decision by the influential Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) to back the activists. “I remember thinking that it was like we’d entered a conventional war … and now another party had launched nuclear weapons,” Iger wrote of learning about the ISS recommendation, noting that the organization “typically influences more than a third of the voting shares in a…

Annette Bening Nyad The five-time Oscar nominee stars with Alison Brie and Sam Neill on Peacock series Apples Never Fall (March 14), an adaptation of a Liane Moriarty novel. Also this year, Bening stars in Poolman opposite Chris Pine in his feature directorial debut. Emily Blunt Oppenheimer She stars opposite fellow Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling in David Leitch’s movie The Fall Guy, premiering at SXSW before Universal releases it May 3. Two weeks after that, Blunt can be heard voicing a unicorn in husband John Krasinski’s Paramount feature IF. Danielle Brooks The Color Purple The actress has been filming Jared Hess’ video game adaptation Minecraft with Jack Black, set for release from Warner Bros. in 2025. Sterling K. Brown American Fiction He’s part of Brad Peyton’s Jennifer Lopez-led sci-fi thriller…

A couple of years ago — around the time he garnered an Emmy nomination for The White Lotus — Jake Lacy started to get a little sick of himself. It wasn’t that he felt overexposed, but he was beginning to question whether he should be exposed at all. “I was realizing, no one needs to hear my thoughts on things,” he says. “I should just absorb information.” As an actor, it’s hard to go quiet — one’s livelihood depends on one’s exposure — so he settled on quitting Instagram. “I don’t want it to sound like my stopping social media was some grand gesture, because I had like 800,000 followers and wasn’t making any money off of it, but I just felt like, the world doesn’t need more of me,”…

Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum had a night out with friends at Funke. … Jessica Alba and husband Cash Warren stopped by Mr Chow. … Kelsey Grammer dined at e. baldi, where Benny Blanco, Lisa Vanderpump and Jaclyn Smith were also spotted (separately) on the same night. … Sofía Vergara paid a visit to Cipriani Beverly Hills. … In New York, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively had a date night at Buvette. … Bradley Cooper and Gigi Hadid grabbed breakfast at Corner Bar. Hot New Restaurant Stella West Hollywood’s former Madeo address has been reimagined at this Italian offering from Felix restaurateur Janet Zuccarini for her first new opening since the death of her husband, Robbie Robertson, of The Band. Zuccarini has partnered with noted Toronto chef Rob Gentile, whose…

BEST PICTURE I would have preferred to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as a nominee over Maestro — it’s an incredible feat of animation and storytelling. American Fiction and The Holdovers were enjoyable but very old-fashioned — meaning, not edgy — in terms of their stories and their filmmaking. When I first heard about Barbie, I couldn’t even imagine that it would be here, and then after seeing it, I couldn’t imagine that it wouldn’t, and that’s because Greta Gerwig nailed it. Killers of the Flower Moon had a lot of great stuff in it, but no movie needs to be three hours and 25 minutes — like me, a lot of people had to watch it at home, and unlike me, a lot of people probably didn’t make it…

Hollywood’s regal red carpet is the rare symbol of ageless glamour — despite being born in 1922, for a premiere at the Egyptian Theatre. But this awards season, the slightly dusty rug has been shaken out and freshened up: It’s got a whole new face, a full facelift, as we say. New designers, actors, jewelry, styles, shapes, hairstyles — even lip colors — are replacing old standbys. Here are THR’s new red carpet rules — for those who still want to claim the world’s best-known runway as their domain. IN Fit ’n’ flare silhouettes, like a waist-accentuating look that Jenna Ortega nailed in her Christian Dior dress at the Emmy Awards. OUT Big old-school 1950s-style ball gowns à la Jennifer Lopez's extra-voluminous full-skieted Elie Saab at the 20215 Oscars. IN…

As Jimmy Kimmel sees it, hosting the Oscars is a lot like taking a plane trip. “You don’t think too much about it if it went well,” he explains. “If it was terrible, you tell everyone you know about it — the turbulence, the delay, how long you had to sit in the airport waiting.” Kimmel, who will be emceeing for his fourth time, concludes, “We just want a flight that’s on time and cocktails are served and nobody throws up.” Between prepping for the March 10 telecast and his ABC late night series, which share a team of writers, he and his executive producer and wife, Molly McNearney, hopped on a Zoom to discuss his ideal audience, famous frenemy Matt Damon and his wish for Golden Globes host Jo…

In early 2021, Megan Ellison emerged from a self-imposed Hollywood exile and did something she hadn’t done in over a year: She signed on to back a movie, Nimona. There was a time when this would not have been remarkable, when Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures was producing five films a year and she was considered the industry’s own Medici, the premier patron of prestige cinema. But Ellison had backed away from Hollywood in 2019 after a series of missteps and become elusive even to some of her own executives. When her former distribution chief, Erik Lomis, asked her whether she wanted to look at some reels of Nimona, which was about to get axed in Disney’s closure of Blue Sky Animation, “I wasn’t really engaging in new film projects at the…

As Hollywood legend or, rather, a recycled talk show anecdote tells us, Kate Winslet keeps her best actress Academy Award for 2008’s The Reader in a guest bathroom. This location allows visitors some private time with Oscar — a chance to hold him, gaze in the mirror, maybe mouth the acceptance speech they’ll likely never give. But her statuette’s proximity to the toilet could be the reason Winslet has yet to win a second. Placing any symbol of career achievement or good fortune in the bathroom is generally a feng shui no-no. “I’ve certainly been in many homes with a Grammy in the bathroom,” says Kim Colwell, a Los Angeles-based interior designer and feng shui practitioner. “I get the punk rock attitude, but, from a feng shui standpoint, that’s good…

PARTNER CONTENT Latino directors, producers, and actors are set to take this year’s Oscars, with nominations across categories like Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Animated Feature. The nominations are a huge milestone for Latino representation in Hollywood—like America Ferrera’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress (and her first-ever Academy Award) for her powerful and moving portrayal in Barbie. For Equis, a set of organizations dedicated to creating long-term change and advocacy for Latinos, these wins are just the beginning. By leveraging the transformative power of Latino culture in music, films, TV, sports, and digital content, their work amplifies progressive Latino narratives and forms strategic partnerships with the long-term goal of shaping a more equitable future in entertainment. Many of Equis’ strategic partnerships—with notable targeted commitments in projects like Eva Longoria’s…