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Bob Iger's Trump Talk; Freeform's Fraught First Year; Making 'Moonlight' Magic; "Why I Voted for Trump"

November 11, 2016

What's news: It's Day 2 of President-Elect Trump and everyone from Disney's Bob Iger to Jon Voight to a vocal 21st Century Fox shareholder is making his or her opinion known. Plus: An look inside Disney's Freeform network and its chase for millennials, Hollywood mourns Leonard Cohen and 60 Minutes scores the first post-election Trump family interview. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

Twitter: Literally a bully pulpit. Erik writes: Hours after a cordial photo-op meeting with Obama at the White House, Trump sent his first tweet as President-Elect. And if you were in the camp of "he's going to be more presidential now," it looks like you lost that bet. Insulting protesters exercising their freedom of assembly and painting them as paid shills following the whims of a biased media is just as conspiratorial as ever. Get used to presidential decrees by tweet.

Elsewhere in real-life...

► Megyn Kelly hints at being poisoned, then takes it back. The New York Times got an early copy of the Fox News anchor's memoir, in which, as the paper's reviewer writes, Kelly "never says outright that someone tried to poison her" but implies it. Kelly also writes that Trump called Fox execs after he heard about a question he was going to be asked at a primary debate. Other reveals.

Kelly tweets: "For the record, my book Settle for More does not suggest Trump had any debate Qs in advance, nor do I believe that he did ... Also for the record, I believe the reason I got sick the day of the first debate was I contracted a stomach virus, just as Rand Paul did."

► Murdoch family forced to defend themselves over Trump's ascension. At the 21st Century Fox annual meeting, one shareholder asked Rupert Murdoch if he expected a "backlash" for FNC's sometimes favorable coverage of Trump. "All the media is given too much credit for influence. People can make up their own minds," Murdoch said.

Fun Murdoch quote: "There was never any risk of a Trump TV. It would have taken a big investment."

► Disney CEO Bob Iger says Trump bust already in the works. On an earnings call yesterday, the exec confirmed that, yes, they do it for all presidents in the Hall of Presidents at the Disney park. But it still seems like something out of Idiocracy. "It looks like there's cordiality, which we've not seen in a long time," the exec said of Obama and Trump meeting.

Fun Iger quote: "We've already prepared a bust of President-elect Trump to go into our Hall of the Presidents at Disney World."

Elsewhere from your industry Trump supporters...

► Jon Voight: Calm down everyone. "I was deeply pleased by the election," the actor, a huge Trump backer, told THR at last night's Fantastic Beasts premiere. "To those people who are heartsick, I felt the same way when Mitt Romney lost. Just calm down, let not your heart be troubled, this man is going to be a wonderful president."

► An L.A. socialite explains: Why I voted for Trump. Nikki Haskell on her decision: "I was the first person to ever have a celebrity talk show, long before Entertainment Tonight and those shows. I am the first person that ever interviewed Donald Trump. I had met Donald in the early '70s while I was still working as a stock broker through the social scene in New York. Donald caught my eye immediately. I knew he was destined for greatness."

Freeform's Fraught First Year

Despite digital gains, Disney's Freeform has yet to deliver a big show among the cord-cutting demo. From Lesley Goldberg's close look:

When the 15-year-old ABC Family rebranded as Freeform in January, executives at the Disney-owned network touted the move as a way to shift its audience from parents with kids to more desirable millennials and teens. Now, nearly a year later, production wrapped Oct. 26 on the series finale of the network's biggest hit, Pretty Little Liars, and no show has emerged to take its place.

Worse, the linear ratings erosion that has hit all cable networks has pummeled Freeform even harder. Without DVR or digital viewership, Freeform has dipped 16 percent this quarter — below the ad-supported cable average.

What agents are saying: They don't quite know what Freeform is looking for, and without a recent buzz-building breakout, it's tougher to lure talent. "When you're trying to do young, cool stuff, something popping and in the zeitgeist is the key," says one top agent. "Freeform has Pretty Little Liars, and that's it."

Viacom has made headlines for the ratings struggles at its youth-targeted networks, but Freeform is down more than its Viacom-owned direct competitors MTV (7 percent) and Comedy Central (10 percent). Budgets on Freeform originals are said to be in the $2 million-per-episode range, while some rivals can average $5 million.

Elsewhere in TV...

► USA Network orders Tupac murder pilot Unsolved. The drama is based on the experiences of former LAPD Detective Greg Kading. Kyle Long (Suits) is writing the pilot, while Anthony Hemingway (People v. O.J. Simpson) is set to direct.

► Ratings: Fox News wins election hangover Wednesday. Viewership spiked in the late morning yesterday as more than 15 million tuned in across cable for Hillary Clinton's concession. See how the other networks fared.

↱ "The Joys of Formula-Free Comedy." Critic Daniel Fienberg writes: "The pleasure in watching the first 20 episodes of Atlanta and Better Things this fall has been in never knowing in any week what the show might turn out to be." ↲

► Outbreak drama Patient Zero scrapped at NBC. The miniseries from Oscar-winner Graham Moore and director Marc Forster is no longer moving forward at the network. Sky U.K. was co-developing the 10-part mini. NBC had ordered the project straight-to-series in May 2015.

► 60 Minutes scores first Trump interview after election. The former reality star is set to sit down on Friday (airing Sunday) with the CBS show. Also scheduled to appear are members of the Trump family — wife Melania, and children Ivanka, Eric and Donald, Jr. Even Tiffany Trump is said to have been invited to participate.

Hollywood exec rushes to the altar over fears of a Trump presidency. Women in Film executive director Kirsten Schaffer tells THR about her rushed nuptials: "We're doing this for our children. And focusing, as a family, on love and kindness."

Beatty's 'Rules Don't Apply' Hits AFI

At the AFI Fest last night, Warren Beatty's hyped return Rules Don't Apply made its world premiere. Chief critic Todd McCarthy gives a mixed verdict:

At this point, Warren Beatty has been off the big screen for 15 years — or five years longer than Howard Hughes, the man he plays in his new serio-comedy Rules Don't Apply, was a recluse so mysteriously out of the public eye.

At once an amusingly eccentric take on a billionaire fixated with controlling others people's lives and a romance about a young couple constipated by the conservative religious and social sexual mores of the 1950s, this is a fitfully funny quasi-farce that takes off promisingly, loses its way mid-flight and comes in for a bumpy but safe landing.

Light in feel and yet keenly personal, this long-aborning entertainment has enough engaging elements to interest Beatty fans, but the two twentysomething lead characters are insufficiently developed to grab the imaginations of younger viewers.

↱ Rules Don't Apply: What are the Oscar odds? Scott Feinberg writes: At the Oscars, the climb for recognition is steeper. In the picture category, there could be as few as five nominees; in the best actress category, Lily Collins is competing in an unusually strong year; and best actor won't be any easier for Alden Ehrenreich. As for Beatty? Others apparently disagree, but I feel that his Hughes, while very solid, largely is in the background (and literally in the shadows). ↲

Elsewhere in film...

► IMDb sues to invalidate CA's actor age censorship law. A complaint filed Thursday in California federal court aims to overturn Assembly Bill 1687, which requires IMDb.com to remove the ages or birth dates of public figures in the entertainment industry on its site upon request.

► Luc Besson's Valerian unveils first trailer. The filmmaker's adaptation of the 1960s-era French sci-fi comic book stars Dane DeHaan as the time-traveling hero Valerian and Cara Delevingne as his love interest and partner. Watch here.

► Fox picks up comedy Turned On with Paul Feig to produce. The script is by Charlie Kesslering, an up-and-coming writer currently working as an assistant to James Corden. The story follows a brilliant but awkward engineer who creates an android to fill in for her in life's difficult situations.

► Antonio Banderas to star in Andrea Bocelli biopic. The film, which will feature songs Bocelli composed when he was young but have never been released, is being produced by Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi's AMBI Group together with Roberto Sessa's Picomedia.

► Brie Larson's Free Fire gets spring release date. Ben Wheatley's shoot-'em-up will open nationwide on March 17. Brie Larson and Armie Hammer star in the 1970s-set action-thriller that will open opposite Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast.

► Brad Pitt hits red carpet post-divorce. One day after the father of six was cleared in a child abuse investigation, the actor appeared to be in good spirits, making his first public appearance the night prior to cohost a screening of Moonlight, with Allied as his first red carpet appearance.

↱ THR's Next Gen Class of 2016: Suki Waterhouse and X-Men actors Alexandra Shipp and Tye Sheridan and more 35-and-under honorees mingled at a bash in Nightingale Plaza in Los Angeles. Full gallery. ↲

Miss Golden Globe 2017 unveiled. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association revealed on Thursday that Sylvester Stallone's daughters, Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet Stallone, will be Miss Golden Globe for the 74th annual show. This is the first time that a trio will take on the role.

The Making of 'Moonlight'

An in-depth look at an Oscar contender: Moonlight, a coming-of-age story about a black gay man growing up in Miami, could have been a hard sell. But director Barry Jenkins had no doubts, Gregg Kilday writes:

In the summer of 2003, then-aspiring playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, in the wake of the death of his mother, sat down to try to make sense of his early life in the hardscrabble Miami neighborhood of Liberty City.

What poured out, he says, "was a personal memoir. I was really trying to figure out some hard questions about my life with my mom, my life as a grown man, as a gay-identifying man."

The result, which he poetically titled In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, amounted to about 60 pages, "but it wasn't a theater piece, and it wasn't necessarily a film." Mutual friends at Borscht passed it on to director Barry Jenkins, who immediately recognized his own life in what he read. Says Jenkins, "I knew that relationship like the back of my hand because that's where my life and Tarell's overlapped."

In the original pages, the three versions of Chiron — boy, teen, adult — all interacted with one another. Jenkins proposed a new structure: Give each his own chapter. Behind-the-scenes.