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VP Debate Early Ratings; HBO's 'Westworld' So Far; 'Stranger Things' Star's Demanding Dad

October 05, 2016

What's news: Full ratings for last night's combative vice presidential debate aren't in yet but this won't be a record-breaker. Plus: Disney's live-action Mulan is a go and a Stranger Things star's father is making some hefty demands on agents that want to represent her. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

Did you watch?

Michael O'Connell has the early ratings: A look at the Big Four's overnight ratings have the debate on track for a similar performance to 2012 — potentially even smaller once adjustments and other details arrive.

Across NBC, ABC and CBS, the debate averaged a 13.2 rating among households. That preliminary stat is roughly half of the comparable broadcast numbers that Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump debate brought in a week ago. A critic's take.

How did CBS' Elaine Quijano do?

The social-media reactions, at least from Media Twitter, appeared to be on the positive side (USA Today's Twitter reax headline: "Moderator Quijano did her best to rein in the 'mansplaining'").

The sharpest critique, from Slate's Isaac Chotiner: "For a moderator so attached to her questions, the questions themselves were terrible."

Most importantly, who had the best version of the same joke?

"What a matchup it was. It was like watching a glass of whole milk do battle with a jar of low-calorie mayonnaise." — Jimmy Kimmel.

"...Like watching a loaf of white bread get pistol-whipped by a jar of mayonnaise." — Stephen Colbert.

"...Like watching two pairs of khakis debate each other." — Daily Show's Hasan Minhaj.

'Birth of a Nation' Fails History...

An emerging narrative: Through flawed sources, Nate Parker's movie overly simplifies the horrific history of rape as a tool of oppression, writes author Danielle McGuire, who wrote a book on Rosa Parks. The provocative guest column:

Using women like Rosa Parks [on the film's website] to highlight male leaders makes the graphic rape scene in Birth of a Nation seem like another effort to justify male vengeance and retributive violence — as if women are simply things men fight over — instead of identifying rape as a political weapon used to terrorize individuals and communities. Worse, it makes the black women who were victims of interracial rape and sexual terror invisible in the long struggle for freedom and human dignity.

If this is the kind of history “curriculum” Parker and Fox Searchlight have in mind, then Parker’s dream of using his film to plumb the horrors of the past to understand our present will fail. Instead, he will have created just another film that uses women and the defense of women’s bodily integrity as a prop to glorify male violence. And how different is that premise from the one put forward in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of a Nation?

Also read: "The Birth of a Nation isn't worth defending," by The New Yorker's Vinson Cunningham: "It’s hard even to call it a successful attempt at propaganda. The early euphoria surrounding the movie was prompted by the way it seemed to answer the demands of its time."

Elsewhere in film...

► Ben Affleck's Live by Night joins Oscar race. The Affleck-directed crime drama will hit select theaters on Christmas Day before opening wide on Jan. 13. Insiders say Warner Bros. decided to move up the release after seeing an early cut of the film.

► Disney's live-action Mulan is a go. The new take on the 1998 animated hit is being fast-tracked and will arrive in theaters Nov. 2, 2018. The studio is launching a global casting search for a Chinese actress to play Mulan.

↱ Trailer watch: Mark Wahlberg's Boston marathon bombing movie Patriots Day just released its first teaser, showing a police officer racing against the clock to hunt down the bombers before they strike again. The film hits theaters Jan. 13. ↲

► Jay Roach to tackle Amblin's Intelligent Life. Roach, best known for directing the Meet the Parents movies, is in talks to do the rewrite with Larry Stuckey and possibly direct the feature. Earlier, Ava DuVernay was to direct but left in May for Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time.

► Nicholas Hoult to join The Current War. The X-Men star is in talks to join Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon in The Weinstein Co. period drama helmed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, which tells of the Thomas Edison-George Westinghouse feud.

► New Regency in talks to hire Scot Free exec. After the exit of Pam Abdy as president of production, the company is in early negotiations to hire Michael Schaefer, who previously worked for Ridley Scott's banner Scott Free, as her replacement. Details.

↱ Noted! Seth Rogen: "This is a pretty inside tweet, but we didn't do a press junket for Sausage Party. So you don't need to do those I guess ... We all did a lot of press, but no traditional junket." ↲

► Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro reteam for comedy. The Deer Hunter actors will play best friends in the comedy The War With Grandpa. Director Tim Hill will helm the adaption, set for release next April from Dimension.

► China selects Xuan Zang for Oscars' foreign category. The film, directed by Huo Jianqi, depicts the legendary seventh-century spiritual journey of Buddhist monk Xuanzang from China to India. Despite critical favor, the film made only $5 million at the Chinese box office.

Just updated: Early Oscar forecast. In the latest heat index of awards contenders, analyst Scott Feinberg checks in on which titles are benefiting midway through the 54th New York Film Festival. New Feinberg Forecast.

HBO's 'Westworld' Launch

How's it doing so far? HBO is playing the long game with Westworld, its new drama with a $100 million price tag, Michael O'Connell reports:

Sunday's opener bowed to nearly 2 million viewers in live-plus-same day returns for the premiere telecast alone. Sources put the grand total for the night, which combines HBO Go and HBO Now streams, up at 3.3 million viewers.

The latter number is more telling, given HBO's moves into cable-free services, but the live tune-in does a fairly good job of ranking the series among other HBO drama openers from the last five years. Across that even playing field, it ranks south of the reigning linear champ (True Detective, which took 2.33 million viewers in 2014) but far north of Vinyl.

Takeaway: Westworld's complete numbers are a ways off. In the meantime we are left to speculate based on the live-plus-same day debuts below. Game of Thrones, after all, premiered to just 2.2 million viewers on its premiere night. It now averages 25 million a week.

Elsewhere in TV...

► American Horror Story is coming back for more. FX has renewed Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's series for a seventh season. The pickup arrives after the show premiered last month to 5.6 million in the adults 18-49 demo and 11 million total viewers in live-plus-three numbers.

► Robin Hood getting the small screen treatment. CBS has given a hefty put-pilot production commitment to a drama about a group of modern-day Robin Hoods exec produced by Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek: Discovery) and Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious).

► Paul Giamatti series is a go at AMC. The cable network has given a straight-to-series order to Lodge 49, a drama exec produced by Giamatti. The project is described as a modern fable set in Long Beach, Calif. AMC Studios will produce the drama, which has received a 10-episode order.

↱ Trailer watch: Netflix's Lemony Snicket's debuts first teaser. Meanwhile, HBO's Silicon Valley debuted a two-minute extra scene tied to a Google product event. ↲

► Hurricane threatens TV production in southeast. As Hurricane Matthew inches its way closer to the coast, productions are readying for the storm. Florida's Ballers and Bloodline aren't currently in production, but North Carolina's Underground could be most affected.

► The CW's Frequency, reviewed. The CW's entry in the time-travel TV game, premiering Wednesday, stars Peyton List in the drama that is described as "highly flawed" with "room to grow." Full review.

► Simon Cowell extends America's Got Talent deal. NBC's new pact will keep Cowell on the network through at least 2019. His addition coincided with five-year ratings highs for the show, which wrapped up the off-season as broadcast's No. 1 summer series.

► Streamy Awards honor Christina Grimmie. In an awards show that honored the Snapchat storyteller of the year, Viner and Breakout creator, fellow performers also paid tribute to the late Voice contestant and singer killed in Orlando earlier this year. Full winners list.

Deal of the day: Anderson Cooper stays at CNN. The anchor, whose profile has risen amid a tumultuous election season, has signed a new long-term deal to remain at CNN, thus taking himself out of the running to be Kelly Ripa’s co-host on ABC’s Live. Details.

Eleven's Dad Wants $100,000

The strangest thing: Parents of child stars have been making A-list demands since the days of Shirley Temple, but the father of one recent breakout star has taken the concept to a whole new level, Matt and Borys Kit report:

Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven on Stranger Things, has not had a talent agent since she left Paradigm's kids division earlier this year. Given the 12-year-old Brit's status as perhaps the most buzzworthy young actor on a hot new show, there is intense interest from all the major agencies, which have mobilized in recent weeks to sign her.

The one hiccup: Brown's father has been demanding what amounts to a signing fee for the privilege of representing his daughter. Sources at five separate agencies tell THR the elder Brown made it clear that a sizable cash payment would be necessary for Millie to sign with that agency. Two sources say the number floated by Brown was $100,000 ... up front.

"It is completely unorthodox," says one agency source. Agents have been known to reduce their traditional 10 percent commission in order to sign in-demand talent, but a payment up front "would open a Pandora's box," says another agency veteran.