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'Fantastic' Weekend?; "Canceled" Is Canceled; 'Elle' Director on Escaping "Hollywood Prison"; 'Patriots Day,' Oscar Contender?

November 18, 2016

Happy Friday: How fantastic will Fantastic Beasts' box office be? Plus: The TV Academy has a new leader, director Paul Verhoeven opens up about going from Showgirls to Elle, Warner Bros. acquires Machinima and Holly Hunter heads to HBO. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

What Marvel Can Learn From 'Fantastic Beasts'

Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them may not be a superhero movie, but it could teach November's other big genre release, Marvel's Doctor Strange, a few things about what makes a movie hero, writes Graeme McMillan:

Marvel could learn something about relatability from the Warner Bros. property. Almost all of Marvel's heroes are exceptional even before they become superhuman: Tony Stark is a billionaire genius, Bruce Banner a groundbreaking scientist, Stephen Strange one of the world's leading surgeons, and so on.

Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander is allowed — required, even — to be flawed in ways that Marvel's heroes never are, in order for much of Fantastic Beasts to work. Imagine, for a second, putting a character as fallible as Newt into Doctor Strange in place of Benedict Cumberbatch's titular lead. The entire movie would change, but arguably for the better — with a more relatable central character.

Elsewhere in film...

↱ In theaters this weekend. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is "action-packed and splendid-looking" and could open at $80M. The Hailee Steinfeld-starrer Edge of Seventeen, a "warm, winning teen-com," looks to debut in the $8M-$10M range. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk from Ang Lee ("more absorbing than explosive") may only clear $3M. Miles Teller's "rough, tough, somewhat familiar" Bleed for This could top off at $5M. ↲

► Patriots Day, reviewed. Mark Wahlberg plays a cop investigating the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in Peter Berg's portrait of frontline heroism, which gets a limited holiday opening on Dec. 21. Critic Sheri Linden writes of the complex action piece: "Some stories don’t require special effects."

↱ Is it an Oscar contender? Awards analyst Scott Feinberg says Wahlberg does "some of the best acting of his career" in Patriots Day and that the first-rate cast "has to be regarded as a serious contender for a best ensemble SAG Award nom, which has marked the beginning of the road to many a best picture Oscar nomination." ↲

► James Franco to direct The Pretenders. The Fault in Our Stars' Josh Boone wrote the script for the film, which is set in New York in the '80s. The cast includes a trio of rising stars as the leads. Brian Cox and Juno Temple also star.

► The Crow remake leaves Relativity. Samuel Hadida’s Davis Films, Highland Film Group and Electric Shadow have acquired the rights to The Crow Reborn, a reboot of the cult classic. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in 2017.

► Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday Mr. President" dress sells at auction. The screen siren serenaded President John F. Kennedy in the famed dress (which just sold for $48.M) at a fundraiser held at Madison Square Garden in 1962.

↱ Trailer watch: The Zookeeper's Wife. Jessica Chastain stars in the historical drama as a World War II heroine. In a new look at Paramount's Monster Trucks, Lucas Till stars as a high schooler who discovers a mysterious creature while building a truck. ↲

► Chevy Chase among comedians joining The Ogilvy Fortune. Chase, Dennis Miller, Peter Fonda, Keith David and George Wallace are joining the project from writer-director Frank Peluso. The caper comedy is set to begin shooting after the New Year in the Dominican Republic.

► Boys Don't Cry director to direct Man's Search for Meaning. Kimberly Peirce's adaptation of Viktor Frankl's memoir centers on his experiences in Nazi death camps. Straight Up Films will be financing and is eyeing a 2017 shoot. The search is out for a screenwriter.

↱ Podcast: Jessica Chastain. The two-time Oscar nominee opens up about being discovered by Al Pacino and starring in six 2011 films, the 'Zero Dark Thirty' "take-down" ("I wanted to just murder everyone") and plans for the future ("I'm probably going to act less..."). Listen here. ↲

Warner Bros. to acquire Machinima. The agreement, announced yesterday, will see Machinima become a part of the recently formed Warner Bros. Digital Networks division, building on the companies' existing relationship that began when Warner Bros. invested in Machinima two years ago.

TV Trend: Has "Canceled" Been Canceled?

Network chiefs increasingly won't pull the plug on little-watched shows as a new lexicon takes shape, Lesley Goldberg reports:

As viewership fractures and the bar between success and failure becomes more blurred than ever, broadcast networks have become more gun-shy of outright yanking a show off the air. Hence the rise last season of wishy-washy buzzwords such as "trimmed" or "reduced" as unproduced episodes foretold a slow death for several shows.

ABC dud Notorious was reduced from 13 to nine episodes, and the network said it would not order more of Hayley Atwell's barely watched Conviction, but it wouldn't be pulled from the schedule (at least not immediately). What's more, ABC is keeping options on the cast as the legal drama remains in consideration for next season.

Suddenly, ABC dumping remaining episodes of Selfie on Hulu and ABC.com a few years ago doesn't sound so bad.

Elsewhere in TV...

↱ Netflix unveils its official trailer for Lemony Snicket series: Footage from the eight-episode series shows Neil Patrick Harris deep in the character of Count Olaf, guardian of the Baudelaire orphans. Watch here. ↲

► TV Academy elects Hayma Washington as new chairman/CEO. The first African-American leader of the Academy, Washington replaces Bruce Rosenblum, who is wrapping up a five-year term as Academy chief.

► Courtney B. Vance, Felicity Huffman to star in ABC political comedy. From Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, Libby & Malcolm is a blended-family show about two polar opposite political pundits who fall in love. The series has a hefty pilot-production commitment at the network.

► NBC returns to the Night Shift. NBC has renewed the medical drama for a fourth season. The Night Shift is one of the few scripted success stories of the past summer on broadcast television, most recently averaging a 1.4 rating among adults 18-49 in live-plus-seven numbers.

↱ Facebook fake news writer on tricking Trump supporters: "I think Trump is in the White House because of me," said Paul Horner. "His followers don't fact-check anything — they'll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up." ↲

► Holly Hunter to star in HBO's Alan Ball family drama. The Oscar winner has been tapped to star in the untitled drama, which focuses on a contemporary multiracial family. Ball created the drama and will executive produce alongside his Your Face Goes Here banner topper Peter Macdissi.

► Epix doubles down on Berlin Station, Graves. The network has renewed its first scripted originals for the joint venture among Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM. Both will return for 10-episode seasons in 2017.

► Designing Women, Northern Exposure casts set upcoming reunions. Both casts have signed on to appear at the ATX Television Festival, held June 8-11, 2017 in Austin, Texas.

In THR, Esq... Star Trek fan-made filmmaker argues Paramount/CBS own the rights to the show/film but not all of the elements of the Star Trek universe ... Mediaite's hiring of Nikki Finke sparks legal threat from Deadline Hollywood parent.

Paul Verhoeven: 'Basic Instinct' to "Hollywood Prison"

The director of Total Recall saw his career take a beating with Showgirls and Starship Troopers. But after a decade, the provocateur opens up with THR's Stephen Galloway about his Cannes breakout Elle. An excerpt:

When Paul Verhoeven was asked to direct Elle, the story of a woman who is raped and perversely welcomes her assailant's return, the intent was to make a Hollywood film. Then one major star after another turned it down. "There was a resolute and very fast response: no," says Verhoeven, who won't name names (they reportedly included Nicole Kidman).

After two months of rejection, the film was moved to France. Isabelle Huppert agreed to star, and despite the challenges of the material, filming went smoothly. The $9M picture, at the time inaccurately described as a "rape comedy," debuted at Cannes in May, earning the director some of his best reviews. "They applaud comebacks here," he says.

Also: Verhoeven says Showgirls was "seen as a masterpiece in France"