Innholdsfortegnelse for January 9, 2025 i The Hollywood Reporter

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the history of streaming has so much been paid to so few for so little. But on Jan. 15, with the debut of the much anticipated With Love, Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will have perhaps one last chance to prove they’re really worth the $100 million Netflix ponied up in that 2020 five-year deal to produce and appear in shows and movies. So far, the couple’s output has been less than majestic. Yes, their initial 2022 domestic life docuseries, Harry & Meghan, was a hit, even if critics roasted it back at home (“So sickening I almost brought up my breakfast,” The Guardian sneered). But everything the Duke and Duchess have churned out since — their social justice series, Live to…

Behind every great man, as the old, outdated expression goes, there’s a great woman — and there’s a pretty decent chance she’s been played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. The 55-year-old actress has built a long, inspiring career out of portraying characters who linger just off center stage: the longsuffering wife of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Navy SEAL in 2000’s Men of Honor; Ray Charles’ mistress in Jamie Foxx’s 2004 biopic Ray; Yusef Salaam’s mother in 2019’s When They See Us (her first Emmy nomination); and Venus and Serena Williams’ mom in the 2021 Will Smith film about their dad, King Richard (her first Oscar nom). “If we only know the figurehead and we don’t know the women who were doing the groundwork, it’s not the full truth,” she tells THR. “We’d be…

Not long ago, Los Angeles went through its new-wave tapas bar cycle. Then its gentrified gastropub moment. Now the town’s next-gen izakaya era may be peaking. These fresh takes on the traditional Japanese drinking tavern still specialize in small, shareable dishes, but do so with a notable irreverence. This started a few years ago with Echo Park’s Tsubaki (1356 Allison Ave.). It’s become a crowded destination not just for its yakitori and yaki-onigiri but also echt-Angeleno plates like a Caesar salad featuring panko breadcrumbs and a creamy miso parmesan dressing, as well as “latkes” topped with dry-aged Ora King salmon, pickled veggies and yuzu scallion crème fraîche. Since this fall, Dan Rabilwongse, a Thai chef who’d worked at Tsubaki, has been operating the nearby, high-energy Budonoki (654 Virgil Ave.), whose…

From tuning out critics to reading every review, from ridiculed first-day rituals to when it’s OK not to collaborate with the crew, the directors of six of this year’s most daring movies each have their own strategies for managing their careers and their sets. On a Sunday afternoon in November, Edward Berger (Conclave), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys), Ridley Scott (Gladiator II) and Denis Villeneuve (Dune: Part Two) convened for The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Director Roundtable. The filmmakers chopped it up over their wildly different working styles but agreed on at least one thing about cinema: “Time dilates if you do it right.” Does anybody have a day-one ritual on set, a thing you do when you’re starting out to set the mood?…

Apple TV+’s Severance is better than perhaps any other show at capturing the indignities of modern work. As the Dan Erickson-created series enters its sophomore season, that sharpness as well as an insistence on the humanity of characters condemned to an environment hostile to it continue to be its twin north stars, guiding it over whatever stumbles in momentum it hits along the way. The first season established the premise: Mark S. (Adam Scott) and his co-workers had been implanted with chips that separate their work memories (their office selves are termed “innies”) from the rest of their lives (their selves outside the office are called “outies”). Where season one saw Mark’s Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team finding unlikely connection in the sterile hell of Lumon Industries, season two expounds on…

On the eve of her 50th birthday in February, Chelsea Handler has found a nice groove —personally and professionally. In addition to hosting her third Critics Choice Awards (7 p.m. ET on Jan. 12 on E! and Peacock), the comic just started her first Las Vegas residency and soon publishes her seventh book, I’ll Have What She’s Having. When we spoke in December, covering bad interviews and the things she’d like to leave behind in 2024, Handler was in the midst of a three-month stint in Whistler, British Columbia, with her dog, Doug. “I’m looking at everything through a whole new lens,” says Handler. “How can I stretch my legs and get out of my comfort zone? I feel like 50 is a kind of rebirth. It’s a reset.” This…

Just days before the 2024 presidential election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the stage in Glendale, Arizona, at an event hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Kennedy had endorsed Donald Trump in his quest to return to the White House and was delivering a stump speech with a particular focus on health care issues. “One of the things I’m going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” Kennedy told the crowd, which responded with a standing ovation. “There’s only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on the airwaves. One of them is New Zealand, and the other is us, and we have the highest disease rate, and we buy more drugs, and they’re…

Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni The feud between the stars of last year’s It Ends With Us has been more dramatic even than the film itself, with Lively suing Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation. Vin Diesel & Dwayne Johnson “Hey Dwayne.” Diesel’s callout to his Fast & Furious frenemy at the Jan. 5 Globes hinted at a years-long beef triggered by Johnson calling an unnamed co-star a “candy ass.” Tom Hardy & Charlize Theron “He had to be coaxed out of his trailer,” Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller said of Hardy. “We were either fighting or we were icing each other,” said Theron. Julia Roberts & Nick Nolte “He seems to go out of his way to repel people,” Roberts said of her I Love Trouble love…

First there was Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend, the 2022 film starring Frank Grillo and written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Moresco (Crash). Then came the higheroctane  Ferrari, the 2023 biopic directed by Michael Mann, with Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley. Now, in Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios, another legendary Italian supercar manufacturer is being immortalized in Moresco’s Maserati: The Brothers, with Italian actor Michele Morrone playing one of the three siblings who founded the trident brand in 1914. (Anthony Hopkins, Andy Garcia and Jessica Alba also star.) The producer behind all three films, 37-year-old Italian Canadian Andrea Iervolino, is bringing these automotive origin stories to the screen at a time when Hollywood is going motor mad. Witness the forthcoming F1 starring Brad Pitt, or the recently announced Austin…

The Southern Bridge that connects the nether end of tony Palm Beach Island to the mainland city of West Palm Beach was once a calm overpass where people strolled alongside Bentleys over the Intracoastal Waterway. But since Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election, news crews have amassed on the West Palm side, while tourists are huddled on a small island adjacent to the bridge, iPhone cameras fully zoomed in and aimed at Mar-a-Lago, which sits just yards away. All are hoping to catch a glimpse of the bustling activity at the president-elect’s beach club estate home and club, which Trump called the “Winter White House” during his first term. In addition to a steady flow of world leaders, tech moguls once critical of Trump — including Elon Musk, Tim…

In 2022, the drought in the Czech Republic was so severe that the Elbe River receded to reveal a rock along the bank with an inscription chiseled in 1417. It read, Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine. If you see me, then weep. Such warnings, found throughout Europe, are known as Hunger Stones. I tell you this for two reasons. One, it demonstrates great storytelling skills that would be useful to any corporation looking to explain its brand in a crowded marketplace. But also because I am a Hunger Stone. My warning is much easier to understand than the one along the bottom of the Elbe River because, first, I’m a great storyteller, and second, it’s not written in 15th century German. Though, if you’re a multinational company in Berlin,…

AS A BOY, BEN SHAPIRO SPENT WEEK nights at Miceli’s, an Italian joint near Universal Studios famous for its greasy pizzas and singing waiters. His father, David, had moved the family to Los Angeles from Boston in the early 1980s in search of a career in film scoring. “But a lot of people come to Hollywood wanting to do that,” Shapiro observes, adding that his father never achieved his John Williams dreams. Those were lean years for the family of six. They occupied a tiny house in Burbank, with Ben sharing a bedroom with his three older sisters. To make ends meet, Dad found work at Miceli’s as a pianist. Ben’s father was a natural entertainer and delighted the crowd with physical gags, like putting his jacket on as he was…

Nearly a year ago, at UFC 298 inside Anaheim’s Honda Center, featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski walked into the arena to the sound of Men at Work’s 1981 classic “Down Under” with an unexpected guest at his side. Alongside his trainers and medical techs, Volkanovski had in his corner Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., dressed in the same black sweat suit as the rest of the team, his head bobbing to the music. For the tech mogul, whose net worth is above $200 billion, it was a public welcome to the favored sport of president-elect Donald Trump. “No matter how much money you have, no matter what you have in life, it is one of those very unique and amazing things if you get the opportunity…

When it comes to the most decorated artist in Grammy history, two things can be true at the same time: Beyoncé can break records (99 nominations in 25 years) and still be snubbed. Alas, the album of the year trophy has eluded the multifaceted artist, and she’s only picked up one of the big three awards despite multiple nominations. This year, her groundbreaking Cowboy Carter is up for 11 Grammys — the most ever for a single album — including four in the country music category and one for best Americana performance. Could Queen Bey take home music’s biggest prize on music’s biggest night? Her track record of noms and wins doesn’t offer a clear path to victory, but many Recording Academy members would agree it’s a recognition long overdue.…

Weddings Star Wars actress Philicia Saunders married Jordan Wilson, a voiceover actor and executive IT support specialist at Scopely, on Nov. 10 at Ebell Club Long Beach. The wedding was Bridgerton-themed, with guests encouraged to dress up, and the couple borrowed their first dance from the Bridgerton prequel series Queen Charlotte. Births R&CPMK vp Caroline Stegner and husband  Garrett Ehrhart, a pricing analyst at Comtech, welcomed Ada Ehrhart on Nov. 20 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. Congrats Joel Kaplan was promoted to president of global affairs at Meta on Jan. 2. Marcus Ellington was appointed executive vp ad sales and sponsorships at Sphere on Dec. 17. Lauren Davis was upped to associate chair of NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music on Jan. 2. Former Crackle head Philippe Guelton was…

One of the great things about animated movies in recent years is how they’ve become more than just enjoyable entertainment — they’ve become meaningful. Sure, they’re still tons of fun to watch. And 6-year-olds still love ’em. But many of these films also tell us something about what it means to be human, no matter how old we are. With this in mind, The Hollywood Reporter set out to find some of the bigger names in global entertainment to see which animated films they’re loving right now, pairing them based on their backgrounds or even just their passions — from CODA’s Siân Heder to This Is Us’ Dan Fogelman, from The Book of Life’s Jorge Gutierrez to Snowtown’s Justin Kurzel and Matewa Media’s Tweedie Waititi. We even brought in a…

“There is only brutality here,” an Army captain (Lucas Neff) offers via voiceover in Netflix’s American Primeval, a six-episode miniseries about life on the Western edge of civilization circa 1857. That observation concerning a specific time and place could also apply to the show itself, which hails from writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and director Peter Berg. Indeed, rather than exploring the vast emotional palette of human existence, Smith and Berg fill their canvas with a bloody intensity that makes the drama effective for a while, but ultimately monotonous. American Primeval is set in the Utah Territory, where conflict is simmering among Zion-seeking Mormons, Manifest Destiny-driven pioneers, Native American tribes getting pushed farther into the corner of land that was once theirs and the U.S. Army entrusted with keeping…