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.
Veteran unscripted producer Wendy Miller was attending a gathering for women over 40 in unscripted television who are unemployed when she had the idea. Though the get-together could easily have turned maudlin, one woman brought levity to the proceedings by telling a story about working on a past show that cracked up the whole room. Miller envisioned a storytelling event, akin to The Moth, where reality TV workers could share outrageous career tales to a paying audience, thus raising money for needy peers: “All of us are unemployed and have no money, but there are people who are way worse. What if we use this as an opportunity to raise money for someone who’s really in dire straits?” Miller pitched the group. The ensuing “Hollywood Horror Happy Hour” (tagline: “We’re…
Rachel Kondo, Justin Marks The Shogun creators guide the FX/Hulu drama series to a two-season renewal and 45 percent viewership jump for its finale on the Nielsen streaming charts. George Miller Warner Bros. had to be expecting more from the director’s Furiosa, which bowed to $32 million, the worst Memorial Day No. 1 opener in decades. Elon Musk The X mogul gets major reinforcements in his bid to challenge OpenAI with a $6 billion haul from investment firms to power his own startup, xAI. Jonah Peretti Not only does the BuzzFeed chief have to right the ship amid a slump, but he also must fend off activist investor Vivek Ramaswamy from buying up shares and calling for cuts. Showbiz Stocks $12.01 (+0.7%) PARAMOUNT (PARA) Talks keep up with Sony, Apollo…
At the Fox upfront on May 13, the network’s free ad-supported streaming service, Tubi, got just as much stage time as its traditional broadcast channels. Those so-called FAST platforms are becoming a bigger part of the entertainment conversation, and rising in popularity among users, as many paid streaming services are now bundling with one another in an effort to salvage costs, and as linear television audiences are on the decline. The advantage for companies that have FAST offerings, including Fox’s Tubi, Paramount’s Pluto TV and The Roku Channel, is that the platforms come with lower costs than paid services, thanks to their massive libraries of in-house and licensed content, and some originals (or in the case of Pluto, no originals). And they bring in a large user base, offering another…
Guest Column Lately, it seems as if there are new headlines every day about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence — everything from the technology ruthlessly taking our jobs to it perilously increasing our carbon footprint to fuel the necessary computing power. The headlines are concerning, and some even predict doomsday-like scenarios in the near future. Just like many of humankind’s inventions, AI will surely prove to be both beneficial and harmful depending on its application, but it won’t be the substantial power it will consume or the jobs it will take that pose the biggest risks. It’s the threat to our creativity and thereby our humanity itself. Our innate creativity is what sets us apart from all other living beings. As our societies became more complex, so did our…
MAY 2020 Thomson Reuters sues now-defunct legal research platform Ross Intelligence, the first lawsuit challenging unauthorized use of data to train an AI system. JULY 2022 Midjourney (text-to-image) is released, starts displacing concept artists on preproduction teams. NOV. 2022 OpenAI’s ChatGPT is introduced and scores 100 million users within months. JULY 2023 Sarah Silverman joins class actions against OpenAI and Meta, the first major Hollywood figure to sue an AI company. SEPT. 2023 Authors Guild files a lawsuit against OpenAI; the leading trade group alleges “mass-scale copyright infringement.” DEC. 2023 The New York Times sues OpenAI, sparks other publications to sue AI companies over licensing deals. FEB. 2024 OpenAI’s Sora (text-to-video) is announced, with access given to beta testers. MAY 2024 Scarlett Johansson threatens litigation over OpenAI’s audio tech, and…
For decades, TV shows lived and died by their ratings among adults 18-49, the demographic sweet spot for advertisers to reach a wide swath of potential customers with money to spend but without the lifelong habits about how to spend it. That’s not really the case anymore as an emphasis on engagement and reach in the streaming era, along with a focus on precisely targeted ads, means chasing demos is even more data-driven than it was in the pre-streaming age. That shift aligns with the reality that, thanks to streaming and the relentless pull of algorithmic content apps, only a small part of a given show’s on-air audience falls into the once coveted demo. The median age for a network primetime viewer long has been above 50 — this year,…
