Innholdsfortegnelse for May 29, 2024 i The Hollywood Reporter

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…

Weddings Samantha Friedman, a film publicist at Focus Features, married investor Sieva Kozinsky in Santa Barbara on April 27. The couple met on Jewish dating app Lox Club. Births Rachael Trager, vp consumer communications at Endeavor, and husband Arthur Nowak welcomed Charles Trager Nowak on April 17. Congrats Diana Mogollón was tapped as the first CEO of Rideback Rise, Dan Lin’s nonprofit content accelerator for POC creators, on May 23. Rob Westerling was hired as senior vp U.S. content for Regal Cinemas on May 16. Neon promoted Elissa Federoff to chief distribution officer and Ryan Friscia to CFO on May 15. Cheryl Huggins was named executive director of Wildflower Studios, co-owned by Robert De Niro, ahead of its July 1 opening. Kaplan/Perrone upped managers Lindsay Perraud and Hannah Ozer to partners…

The art was bold and colorful with a bit of a street vibe, so I knew that the house would need to radiate that same warmth and energy,” says 22 Interiors designer Lucie Ayres, recalling her first visit to the Spanish-style Studio City home of Benjy Grinberg — founder of Rostrum Records, one of rap’s biggest independent labels (Wiz Khalifa, Fat Nick) — and his wife, Ellen. Ayres encouraged the couple to have fun with their home. “She understood what we wanted better than we did,” says Ellen, who points to the formal living room, ringed with bookshelves, as one of her favorite spaces. “Now we use it all the time. No one ever sat there before.” It’s decorated with comfortable club chairs and a sofa covered in a bright…

SHANNON SHARPE ARRIVES promptly at noon at the South Beverly Grill, a short drive from his home in Holmby Hills. He is 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, a wall of muscle sheathed in black athleisure wear. He slides into his favorite booth, orders a cranberry ginger ale and offers a hello — friendly but guarded — to an awaiting journalist. It’s usually Sharpe asking the questions — whether on his blockbuster podcasts Club Shay Shay (3.17 million YouTube subscribers) and Nightcap (1.26 million subscribers) or on ESPN’s First Take, where through the NFL season he spars good-naturedly with host Stephen A. Smith. Sharpe, who turns 56 on June 26, shot to fame as a tight end for the Denver Broncos. He’s an NFL Hall of Famer and three-time Super Bowl champ.…

In terms of tone and style, the first episode of Hulu’s Clipped plays like the scrappy, less successful younger brother to HBO’s Winning Time — an appropriate parallel for the relationship of the Clippers to the Lakers. This sells the FX-produced six-parter a bit short. I watched the Clipped pilot twice. The first time, I thought it a cartoonish mess. The second time, once I’d gotten comparisons to other shows out of my system, it became easier to see what Clipped was doing. Underneath what feels derivative and coarse, creator Gina Welch’s adaptation of Ramona Shelburne’s 30 for 30 podcast is a suitably prickly examination of the cost of the American Dream and the responsibilities that come with fame in a voyeuristic social media age. It’s a story with an…

Ken Jennings was initially stumped by the national attention that his record-setting Jeopardy! run garnered 20 years ago. Now the Jeopardy! host, Jennings was a software developer at a health care staffing facility in Salt Lake City when he and his former college roommate drove to Los Angeles to audition for the long-running game show that Jennings has loved since childhood. It wasn’t until a year later that Jennings learned he had earned a spot to compete and was expected to film in three weeks. “There were reruns on in our market, so I could watch Jeopardy! 12 times a week, and I went into this very serious Rocky training mode where I would stand up behind a recliner that I pretended was a contestant podium,” he tells THR. In…

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…

Historically Black Los Angeles has one less landmark that speaks to its cultural heritage. The iconic “Welcome to Black Beverly Hills” billboard, once proudly stationed near the neighborhood of Ladera Heights, has come down. The creator of the billboard, Robert China Berry, says that he was forced to take down and move the billboard multiple times and is now seeking more permanent signage elsewhere in the area. Berry trademarked the term “Black Beverly Hills” in 2012 for his clothing brand, which honors the history and cultural importance of the Black community in the region. But the legacy of Black Beverly Hills goes back decades. During the 1950s, amid a backdrop of segregation and systemic racism, the area encompassing Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, View Park and Windsor Hills emerged as a…

What to Make of the Picketer Outside the San Vicente Bungalows? Usually, it’s what’s going on inside the San Vicente Bungalows — the deals, the spiels, the meals — that gets Rambling Reporter’s attention. But lately we couldn’t help noticing what’s going on outside the buzzy Hollywood clubhouse: For nearly a week, a lone 26-year-old woman, often dressed in extravagant evening wear, has been picketing the property, brandishing a sign claiming, “I Have Been Sexually Harassed @ San Vincente Bungalows.” Her name is Anazia Akhalu, and it turns out the target of her accusation is none other than Dimitri Dimitrov, the legendary 74-year-old maître d’ who has been a decades-long Hollywood high life fixture, working for years at the Sunset Tower before decamping for the Bungalows in 2018 (both are…

In 2018, when Steven Zaillian began writing a first draft of Ripley — his TV adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley — one item in his office made its way into his screenplay: the heavy crystal ashtray that (spoiler alert) kills Freddie Miles in the fifth episode. But Zaillian’s foray into the story of con man Tom Ripley started long before 2018. Ten years ago, a unique proposal popped up on his radar — a TV series. “If it had been proposed as another movie, I would’ve said no,” he tells THR, “but as an eighthour series, I thought, ‘This could be interesting.’” For starters, he wanted the limited series — about a grifter, Tom Ripley, who covets, and then kills for, the lifestyle of his…

There are two shows contained within Netflix’s Eric. One is a harrowing portrait of Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch), sent into a self-destructive tailspin by the disappearance of his 9-year-old son (Ivan Howe’s Edgar). The other is a sprawling drama set around Manhattan’s underclass, the poor and Black and queer communities persecuted by greedy politicians and violent cops. The miniseries’ attempt to merge them is a self-consciously noble one in theory. But in execution, these throughlines do not enhance each other so much as get in each other’s way, until the entire thing feels like less than the sum of its prestige-y parts. Vincent’s story emerges first, equal parts off-putting and devastating. As created by Abi Morgan (The Hour), he’s an alcoholic narcissist who spends his days picking fights with his…

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…

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,…

No one in my building wears suits anymore,” says a very well-dressed senior executive at a big agency, when asked if he still gets his suits made. But the trend away from more structured, tailored clothing and toward smarter casual wear hasn’t lessened the desire for having one’s clothes made to measure. In fact, it’s opened up a whole new arena for menswear enthusiasts, with a crop of shops in L.A. ready to make not only a well-fitting custom suit but everything you’d want to wear — from a pair of perfectly cut five-pocket pants to a creamy-to-the-touch vicuña wool shirt jacket — just for you. Thom Sweeney, the British menswear brand founded by two Savile Row-trained tailors, Thom Whiddett and Luke Sweeney, recently opened an L.A. flagship on Melrose…

TADANOBU ASANO SHOGUN (FX ON HULU) The ways in which I’m like my character I’m like Kashigi Yabushige in the sense that he goes “all out” during every interaction on the show. Similarly, when I’m performing, I just go for it. And the ways that I’m not The fact that I’m not going to boil someone alive in real life — we are definitely not the same in that way. The last celebrity who had me starstruck Woody Harrelson. The show on which I’d like to guest star The cooking show with Paris Hilton! SARAYU BLUE EXPATS (PRIME VIDEO) The ways in which I am like my character We don’t have many similarities, but I’d say our sarcastic humor? My husband says the one moment he sees me in Hilary…

Tribeca Film Festival June 5-16 New York He’s been known for being many things — a football star who played for the Raiders, Eagles and 49ers; a TV and film actor; and Kerry Washington’s husband — but lately Nnamdi Asomugha, 42, has been gaining fresh notoriety as an auteur. His first feature, The Knife — a drama he produced and directed about a family whose home is invaded by an intruder, in which he stars alongside Aja Naomi King, Melissa Leo and Manny Jacinto — premieres June 9 at the Tribeca Film Festival, an auspicious beginning to the latest chapter in what’s turning out to be an increasingly busy career. “When you’re an actor, you always want to work with your favorite directors,” he tells THR. “But I had a…