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Toronto Buzz So Far; Emmy's First Winners; Hillary Cancels L.A. Trip

September 12, 2016

Happy Monday from Toronto, where the film festival is delivering an abundance of Oscar contenders. THR's full report is below, plus: Hillary Clinton's pneumonia diagnosis forces her to cancel a big Hollywood fundraising trip, Sully flies high (especially with older audiences) and who's sitting where for L.A. Rams games. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

FIRST HALF: A slow market, for how long?

Senior writer Tatiana Siegel reports: As in Cannes, the focus has been on prebuys of in-progress projects. Two monster prebuys before the festival drew smiles from sales agents: Focus Features plunked down $35M for Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in a 1950s-set fashion pic, and Lionsgate paid $20M-plus for Good Universe’s Kin, a James Franco-Jack Reynor thriller financed by No Trace Camping. Other packages on the verge of deals are the Johnny Depp vehicle Labyrinth (Good Universe, UTA) and Rebel in the Rye (CAA).

"There’s not much action so far, and there’s less of a sense of urgency this year,” says Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard. "A lot of people don’t want to lay the big gun on the table and then get slaughtered by critics."

A downbeat Toronto market for finished films should show signs of life when Natalie Portman's Kennedy biopic Jackie finally sells as rumored. Fox Searchlight has a right of first refusal.

^In THR's photo lounge at TIFF: The Birth of a Nation cast. From left: Gabrielle Union, Jackie Earle Haley, Aja Naomi King, Penelope Ann Miller, Nate Parker, Aunjanue Ellis and Armie Hammer.

REVIEWS: Chief film critic Todd McCarthy's assessment so far: As always at Toronto, it's a question of everyone having one hand on the elephant and claiming they can describe the whole animal. This year, with almost 300 films entered in the festival, this is more the case than ever.

For festival followers who hadn't been to Telluride or Venice, it was a question of catching up with must-see titles including La La Land, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals, Norman, Jackie and Voyage of Time.

For awards watchers, there was the question of whether Nate Parker could begin the process of moving his disruptive personal scandal out of the spotlight so that his The Birth of A Nation could move back into it (Toronto audiences were said to be very accommodating).

Among the brand new titles, there were many mixed decisions; this certainly applied to Ewan McGregor's Philip Roth adaptation American Pastoral, Oliver Stone's Snowden and Garth Davis' Lion.

SURPRISES: Among the smaller pleasant surprises have been Vikram Gandhi's Barry, the second young Obama feature to appear this year, and veteran Walter Hill's smartly transgressive neo-noir (Re)Assignment.

UP AHEAD: Reviews of Eleanor Coppola's Paris Can Wait (Monday), Mark Wahlberg in BP oil spill drama Deepwater Horizon (Tuesday) and Woody Harrelson in Rob Reiner's presidential LBJ biopic (Thursday).

► Exclusive TIFF portraits I All Toronto news/video lounge interviews I All reviews

Box Office: 'Sully' Gets Liftoff

It's a liftoff: Clint Eastwood's Sully launched over the weekend to a heroic $35.5M, the top takeoff ever for an adult drama opening in September, senior writer Pamela McClintock reports:

Nabbing an A CinemaScore, the biographical drama skewed female (56 percent) in North America, while 80 percent of the audience was over the age of 35. Despite the older crowd, Sully earned an impressive $4M in 375 Imax locations.

Also: Sony/Screen Gems' surrogate thriller When the Bough Breaks, starring Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall, opened in second place with $15M. And, in fewer theaters, or roughly 1,554 locations, was The Disappointments Room, which bombed with $1.4M after receiving a D grade from audiences.

► Full U.S. box office results I China box office results.

Elsewhere in film...

► Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried to star in Paul Schrader's next film. First Reformed follows an ex-military chaplain (Hawke) tortured by the loss of a son as he befriends a young parishioner (Seyfried). Killer Films is producing the film, which is in preproduction.

► Sarah Jessica Parker to sing in new drama. The Sex and the City star will play a singer in an untitled film that she developed and will produce for AMBI Pictures. House of Cards writer Laura Eason wrote the screenplay.

► R.I.P., Alexis Arquette. The transgender actress and sister of David and Patricia died on Sunday at the age of 47. No cause of death was given. Full obit.

↱ In theaters this weekend: Lionsgate's new entry in the Blair Witch horror franchise "is a dull retread," Universal's rom-com sequel Bridget Jones's Baby "fails to deliver" and Oliver Stone's true-life thriller Snowden is a "flat biopic of the famous whistleblower." ↲

► Relativity co-president Adam Fields is out. The exec, who has only been on the job for less than five months, was terminated for what the company called breach of contract, sources said. Details here.

► Academy president talks diversity push. "We want to increase our inclusion by 50 percent," Cheryl Boone Isaacs said at a Toronto event, restating the primary objective of the "A2020" plan she unveiled at the 2015 Governors Awards. "Gender and race. It's a big goal — that is for sure. But if you don’t set a big goal, what is the point?"

► COLUMN: "How CAA's Top Players Got Played." Dozens of agents past and present talked for a new book about the agency, Powerhouse. They did nothing to help CAA, executive features editor Stephen Galloway writes.

And the Venice film fest winners are ... Filipino director Lav Diaz won the Golden Lion for The Woman Who Left. Tom Ford won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for his second feature film, Nocturnal Animals, and the Coppa Volpi prize for best actress went to Emma Stone for critically praised La La Land. Full list of winners.

At the Creative Arts Emmys...

^^Yes, Chris Hardwick and his @midnight producers may have had the most entertaining Creative Arts Emmys press room pose. But the big winners of two-day (!) event included some heavy hitters and surprises. From Natalie Jarvey and Arlene Washington, a few highlights:

► Game of Thrones led the awards show with nine wins on Saturday night followed by five wins for FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson, and four wins each for Fox’s Grease Live and Netflix’s Making a Murderer. The HBO drama, a perennial favorite, was nominated for 15 Creative Arts Emmys and 23 total Emmys.

► RuPaul nabbed his first Emmy win in the reality host category, beating out Ryan Seacrest, who was nominated for American Idol, and Project Runway duo Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn.

► Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made Emmys history on Saturday night when they took home a joint award for guest actress in a comedy series for their stint as Saturday Night Live co-hosts in December.

► John Oliver's Last Week Tonight won the Emmy for outstanding writing for a variety series for HBO over TBS' Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer and Key & Peele, IFC's Portlandia and NBC's Saturday Night Live.

► Full winners list I Best quotes from the two-day event I Full Emmys coverage.

Meanwhile...

↱ Clinton cancels California trip. Following a diagnosis of pneumonia, "Hillary Clinton canceled her trip to California planned for Monday and Tuesday after she revealed she had pneumonia and had appeared unsteady on her feet Sunday. ... Clinton had been scheduled to spend two days in the state for fundraisers and the taping of an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show." [Los Angeles Times]

In TV...

► ABC cancels Mistresses. The summer soap won't return after four seasons. While the show was once a sturdy performer, its recent finale drew 2.5 million total viewers, about half of its series debut.

► Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll canceled at FX. The series, created by and starring Denis Leary, will not return after two seasons after averaging 680,000 total viewers with three days of DVR.

↱ On TV this week: Premieres of Dancing With the Stars (Monday, ABC), Blindspot (Wednesday, NBC), American Horror Story (Wednesday, FX), South Park (Wednesday, Comedy Central), Easy (Friday, Netflix), Fleabag (Friday, Amazon), Z Nation (Friday, Syfy), High Maintenance (Sunday, HBO). ↲

► Vince Gilligan's Jonestown drama set at HBO. The limited series, from Breaking Bad duo Gilligan and Michelle MacLaren, with exec producer/actress Octavia Spencer, is based on the nonfiction book Raven by Tim Reiterman.

► Hulu orders Seth Rogen's Future Man to series. The streaming service has handed out a series order to the 13-episode half-hour comedy from Rogen and Evan Goldberg with a cast including Josh Hutcherson and Eliza Coupe.

► Game of Thrones alum to star in Amazon pilot. Richard Madden (the actor formerly known as Robb Stark) will play a priest in the streaming service's drama Strange New Things, based on the book by Michel Faber.

Why the Beverly Hills facelift is on the decline. Contradicting the town's reputation for going further than anywhere else in its blind pursuit of a youthful appearance, L.A. is experiencing a decrease in under-the-knife procedures like never before.

Who Scored Rams Tickets?

After 37 years, the NFL returns to Hollywood: As the L.A. Rams get the regular season started, editor Andy Lewis checked in on which execs are grabbing prime seats for the team's first home showdown at the Coliseum this Sunday. The rundown:

About 70,000 fans have ponied up for season tickets (from $360 to $2,025), including WME CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell and agent Richard Weitz and his stylist brother, Andrew.

Others signed on include CAA's Nick Khan and Adam Biren and UTA's Josh Hornstock, Ryan Hayden, Allan Haldeman and Leslie Schuster; they'll rub shoulders with Universal's Jeff Shell and Wasserman head Casey Wasserman. While the aging stadium lacks luxury boxes, VIPs will be welcomed in tented hospitality suites on the field and the peristyle level.

HBO's Bill Simmons, for one, believes the team's return will be triumphant. "The fan base for a typical NFL game is rich people and blue-collar people," he says, "and SoCal is loaded with both."

Take note: Seats for the season opener ($121 to $10,000) still are available from the team and on StubHub and other outlets. But official Rams parking is sold out to season-ticket holders.

And, finally: How to go to the Rams home game at the Coliseum and still make it to the Emmys at Microsoft Theater in time this Sunday.