Innholdsfortegnelse for November 13, 2024 i The Hollywood Reporter

The mid-19th century was defined by the gold rush, as investments poured westward to fund the mining of the precious metal. The early 20th century was powered by the oil boom, as demand for petroleum products skyrocketed and new pockets were uncovered around the country. Broadcast spectrum may not be as valuable as gold, or as versatile as oil, but there are early signs that beginning in 2025, it will be the asset that has Wall Street salivating. Call it the Broadcast Land Grab. The incoming Trump administration has made it clear that deregulation will be at the top of its priority list, and the companies that own local TV stations — Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, E.W. Scripps and Tegna, among many others — are practically giddy at what it could…

What is John Malone up to? One of the long-running parlor games on Wall Street and in Hollywood is afoot again amid the media mogul’s portfolio-changing moves. His knack for lying low until a deal comes to him earned him the nickname “swamp alligator,” and observers see this as the time for the 83-year-old to settle unfinished business. All the more so given the incoming Donald Trump administration is expected to sweep away regulatory hurdles and usher in a volatile period of M&A. Asked at a Paley event in New York on Nov. 12 about what will happen at the FTC and FCC under Trump, Malone replied: “The very cheap money of the last 10 years led to way too much competition based on just cheap capital. I think consolidation…

For left-leaning Hollywood, the stakes of the Oscar race might seem moot in light of the widespread panic around Donald Trump’s return to office. Shake off the shock, though, and you’ll realize we’ve been here before. In 2017, an awards season triumph reflected Hollywood’s anti-Trump sentiment, with a surprise best picture win for Moonlight coming just months after the shock waves of the 2016 election. That movie, a sensitive and stirring look at racism and sexual repression in the shadows of toxic masculinity, embodied fragile progressive values and provided a sharp reminder of the potential victims at hand in the looming Trump administration. Director Barry Jenkins was not afraid to lean into the resistance vibes. In the midst of the Moonlight campaign in January 2017, days before the inauguration, he…

Just before midnight on Nov. 5, Milo Yiannopoulos’ phone rang. On the horn from West Palm Beach, says a source familiar with the matter, was a member of Donald Trump’s family. The caller would soon take the stage at Mar-a-Lago, beaming at the president-elect’s side as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blasted across a room full of supporters awaiting a victory speech. But first they wanted to personally thank Milo for helping the campaign smear once “useful idiots,” an ally no longer wanted in Trump’s orbit, he says. The call — if indeed it happened as described, which, when Yiannopoulos is concerned, is never a given — capped a return from the ash heap for the once-ubiquitous flamboyant farright rabble-rouser, who shot to notoriety during the first Trump campaign…

In the spring of 2023, about 18 months after a live bullet passed through cinematographer Halyna Hutchins’ chest and lodged in writer-director Joel Souza’s shoulder during the making of Rust, Souza was back on the set of the indie Western, waiting to call action. He and his crew were setting up a crane shot of two characters riding horses through the snow in a picturesque river valley in southern Montana, and Souza paused to make some remarks. “I remember saying that it would annoy Halyna that we were standing around not shooting, so let’s go shoot,” Souza says. “As soon as that first shot finished, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is making movies. This is the part I know. This part makes sense.’” Very little else had made sense since…

At its heart, Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard’s unclassifiable transgender Mexican cartel telenovela musical, is a film about transition, transformation and rebirth. The transformation is not just that of Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a Mexican drug kingpin who longs to escape a life of violence and death and undergoes gender affirming surgery to become her true self: the glamorous, vivacious Emilia Pérez. (The magnetic Spanish trans actor Karla Sofía Gascón plays both roles). Emilia Pérez is also the story of the transmutation of Zoe Saldana. The Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy star finally gets to inhabit her own skin on the big screen, neither blue nor green, as Rita Moro Castro, an overworked, overlooked defense lawyer closi ng in on 40 who has spent her career keeping unrepentant cartel slime…

For all of the money Amazon Prime Video’s original programming department spends on vaguely connected tales of international espionage or low-cultural-impact origin stories for various hobbits and dwarves, the thing the streamer does most successfully is hearken back to its “that place you started buying books from when Waldenbooks at the mall went under” roots with polished, middlebrow series adaptations of polished, middlebrow best-selling novels. As this burgeoning category goes, the pragmatic urban tapestry of Bosch is probably the smartest example, the blunt pleasures of Reacher the most satisfying and Jack Ryan a show that definitely also exists. That’s enough of a positive track record that Amazon has already renewed Cross for a second season, before audiences have even had the chance to sample a series awkwardly wedged between an…

Amy Reinhard The Netflix advertising chief grows the streamer’s ad tier to 70 million users, scaling past many rivals (but not Amazon), a gain from just 15 million users a year ago. Kevin Costner Yellowstone fans knew the show’s star wasn’t part of the new season, yet showed up to the tune of 16.4 million viewers for the premiere of Taylor Sheridan’s series. Tyler, the Creator The artist’s Chromakopia spends its second week atop the Billboard 200 with 160 million-plus streams of the album’s songs, per Luminate. Ari Emanuel He led Endeavor to pick up OpenBet for $800 million two years ago. Now, the CEO is buying out the betting platform and IMG Arena for about half that price. Showbiz Stocks $4.56 (+1.3%) AMC THEATRES (AMC) The Adam Aron-run exhibitor…

Since the Nov. 7 reveal that Simon Kinberg had signed on to develop, write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm and Disney, debate has focused on whether it would be a continuation of the so-called ninefilm Skywalker Saga that concluded in 2019 with the billion-dollar grosser Episode IX. At the center of the franchise’s next big-screen turn is Rey, the scavenger turned Jedi played by Daisy Ridley in the past three episode movies. That potentially puts Kinberg’s trilogy story development on a collision course with a Rey stand-alone movie from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy that’s in the works. That feature, revealed with fanfare in April 2023 at Star Wars Celebration in London, is to star Ridley and was to have at one point started production early in 2025.…

With every awards season comes something new: emerging talent, groundbreaking technology, fresh storylines. This season, at least six new directors hit the ground running. Actor Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List, Matilda and The Morning Show) wrote and made her feature directorial debut, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, about a white Zimbabwean family following the Rhodesian Bush War; actor Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire, Fargo, American Hustle), a grandson of John Huston, wrote and helmed the boxing drama Day of the Fight; Malcolm Washington, son of Denzel Washington, co-wrote and directed The Piano Lesson, based on the August Wilson play; cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Black Panther, Mudbound) jumped behind the camera for The Fire Inside, another boxing movie; Josh Margolin wrote and directed Thelma, based on something that happened to his grandmother;…

Hulu’s FX-produced limited series Say Nothing, like its source book by Patrick Radden Keefe, takes its name from the 1975 poem “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” by Seamus Heaney. Sad and angry, the piece looks at the unfolding tragedy of the Troubles, focusing on speech, storytelling and the power and limitations of words in contrast to what Heaney refers to as “Northern reticence, the tight gag of place / And times.” Keefe’s mission, and the mission of Say Nothing creator Joshua Zetumer (RoboCop, the 2014 one), is to break through the silence. To use a different metaphor, it’s about the disinfecting power of sunlight. Following Keefe’s structure in a way that maybe isn’t wholly suited to the limited series format, Say Nothing tries to tell three or possibly four tales…

Poland’s Energa Camerimage film festival is a cineaste’s dream. Established 31 years ago as a specialty event focused on cinematography, the Toru? fest has expanded significantly in recent years but has retained its essence as a pure celebration of the art of filmmaking, prioritizing craftsmanship behind the camera — DPs, directors and production designers — over celebrities and industry functions. Not that this year’s festival will be without stars. Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett will serve as the president of the festival’s main competition jury, Emmy-winning Shogun star Hiroyuki Sanada will receive a new award honoring excellence in TV, and iconic indie cinematographer Ed Lachman will get a lifetime achievement prize. The fest also will generate a widely watched industry moment by playing host to the world premiere of Rust,…

On Nov. 2, CBS and CMT simulcast a one-hour prerecorded benefit on behalf of the United Way for relief following hurricanes Helene and Milton, which caused $50 billion-plus in damages across Appalachia and the broader Southeast. Blake Shelton, the Zac Brown Band, J.B. Smoove and others made appearances and performed. While the effort raised $6.2 million, it was also indicative of the shrinking footprint of linear television. In the past, such endeavors were mostly live events, and media conglomerates at times made extraordinary shows of “roadblocking” their air to command the public’s attention and pocketbooks. Veteran TV producer Joel Gallen recalls hearing from the heads of the major networks immediately after Sept. 11 to give them two hours of primetime to orchestrate what became America: A Tribute to Heroes, which…

Season four of Netflix’s YA drama Outer Banks debuted at the top of the streamer’s TV charts for the week of Oct. 7, racking up 62.3 million hours of viewing worldwide. It was a strong showing — particularly considering it was only for half a season, in keeping with Netflix’s strategy of splitting some of its more popular scripted shows into two parts and releasing them about a month apart. Here’s the rub, though: That 62.3 million hours of viewing for Outer Banks was about 60 percent less than the opening week for season three, which had slightly less than 155 million hours for a full-season binge release. A similar pattern holds across several popular Netflix series whose most recent seasons were split into multiple parts: Fewer episodes to start…

Are you frustrated by how Americans pick presidents? Do you sometimes wish there were another method for choosing the leader of the free world? Luckily, Hollywood has just what you’re looking for. If only the U.S. voted for president the way members of the Academy vote for the best picture Oscar — through ranked-choice voting, or RCV — the sort of people who end up in the Oval Office might look very different. The way RCV works is that voters select their first, second and third choices on their ballots; if their first choice doesn’t reach 50 percent in the initial tally, their ballot counts toward their second choice in the next tally, and so on, until one candidate emerges victorious. It’s likely how long-shot movies like Moonlight and Parasite…

Alexander Payne had modest expectations for Sideways when his unassuming indie about an antic-filled buddy road trip through idyllic California wine country hit theaters in the fall of 2004. With an estimated budget of $16 million, the film wound up raking in more than $100 million worldwide and an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay — in addition to nominations for best picture, best director and best supporting actor (Thomas Haden Church) and actress (Virginia Madsen). “As we were making Sideways, I thought it was just a nice little comedy and had no idea that it would ever stand the test of time,” says Payne. “And the merlot line that supposedly changed the wine industry? Well, it was just a joke, one single line in a movie. Who could have…

When Vir Das hears an American comedian talk about being “canceled,” he can only laugh. “Every time an American comedian complains about getting canceled, I’m like: ‘Grab a flight to India, just let me show you something,’” says the Indian stand-up comedian and actor. Three years ago, Das got a taste of cancel culture, Indian style. His “Two Indias” routine, performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Nov. 12, 2021, in which he pointed to the absurd contrasts in his home country — “I come from an India where we worship women during the day and gang rape them at night” — triggered furious backlash. Politicians from the ruling BJP party accused him of defaming the nation and filed criminal charges. He got bombarded with death threats. “I had…

Zoe Saldaña, the guest on the latest episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, has been a screen actress for 25 years. She has been described as “the queen of the film fran-chise,” having starred in installments of the Avatar, Avengers, Guardians and Star Trek series. (She’s the only person ever to have been part of four films that grossed more than $2 billion.) But this year, with her performance as an attorney recruited to help a cartel leader with a top-secret mission in Jacques Audiard’s unconventional musical Emilia Pérez, she has re-minded people that she’s also much more. Those who have already seen Emilia Pérez have gone wild for it. It received an 11-minute…