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TV's New Salary Heights; WB's 'Fantastic' Weekend; RIP 'Duck Dynasty'; Songwriter Roundtable Arrives

November 17, 2016

What's news: Meryl Streep is making $825,000 an episode for a miniseries, just one of Hollywood's elite cashing big checks for TV work. Plus: Behind Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts marketing challenge, why Trump won't be getting an invite to the Oscars, and Justin Timberlake, Sting, Alicia Keys and more join THR's first-ever Songwriter Roundtable. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

TV Gigs: An ATM for Top Actors

With more than 50 outlets now producing scripted original programming, the price tag for Hollywood's elite has skyrocketed, Lesley Goldberg finds. A few examples:

Robert De Niro is getting $750,000 for each of 20 episodes of an upcoming Amazon series produced by filmmaker David O. Russell.

Kiefer Sutherland is said to be getting around $300,000 per episode to star in ABC's fall hit Designated Survivor, the highest pay ever for an actor on a first-year broadcast network series.

Meryl Streep is said to have commanded a whopping $825,000 per episode to sign on for J.J. Abrams' Warner Bros. TV miniseries The Nix, which has yet to land at a network.

"Someone is going to crack the $1 million mark," one veteran TV buyer tells THR of the escalating salaries.

Elsewhere in TV...

↱ Duck Dynasty to end after 11 seasons. A&E said last night that after five years and 130 episodes, the unscripted series will come to an end after the current season. A series of holiday specials are also likely to come later.

Matt emails: It might be going out with the quiet warble of a broken duck caller, but let's not forget this show was the top-rated cable series just a few years ago, pulling nearly 12M viewers. The Robertson family was so popular its fans made death threats to A&E's CEO when she suspended the patriarch for making homophobic comments in a magazine profile. In a way, Duck Dynasty's death represents the end of the era of the cable reality megahit. For now, at least. ↲

► TBS is sticking with Samantha Bee. Her weekly show, Full Frontal, has been renewed for a second season for a Wednesday night time slot in 2017. Ratings have improved, with the show pulling an average 3.3 million viewers across platforms.

► CW's midseason lineup looks different than fall. The network is moving both Supernatural and Legends of Tomorrow — also confirming that freshmen No Tomorrow and Frequency will not get anything beyond the initial 13-episode orders this season.

► Viceland to launch in France. Six months after launching in the U.S., Viceland will debut its first non-English channel in France on Nov. 23 after launching in the U.S., U.K, Canada and Australia.

↱ Exec suite: Netflix's Lisa Nishimura. At her Beverly Hills office, the vp of original doc and comedy programming discusses Making a Murderer season two and the road to Netflix's first Oscar. ↲

► MGM plans network with Roma Downey, Mark Burnett. The husband-wife duo are set to launch a new faith and family digital multicast offering called Light TV, which will debut in partnership with several Fox stations and affiliates in top markets this December.

► Fox plans comedy with Damon Wayans Jr. The actor is teaming with New Girl's Jake Johnson and the network for The Henchman. The single-camera comedy will be written by Wayans and Johnson. Vali Chandrasekaran will serve as the showrunner.

► E! renews Total Bellas. The pickup of the WWE docuseries comes a week after the first-season finale, which delivered a series high of nearly 1 million total viewers. Season two will bow sometime in 2017.

In THR, Esq... First-Amendment lawyer Ted Boutrous, who says Trump is a threat to free speech, offers his services pro-bono ... OWN employee sues for pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment ... Judge rejects Bill Cosby bid to dismiss sexual assault case.

WB's 'Fantastic' Challenge

For more than two years, Warner Bros. has been walking a fine line in marketing Fantastic Beasts in a gamble to win over fans, Rebecca Ford and Pamela McClintock report:

If the $180 million movie works (and early reviews have been strong), Warners CEO Kevin Tsujihara can claim the biggest victory of his tenure amid an $85 billion bid by AT&T to buy parent company Time Warner. If not, the studio's decision to announce five films will be heavily scrutinized.

"If you're Tsujihara and you want to build franchises, who better to tap than J.K. Rowling?" says analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners. "However, for the new series to succeed long term, you must have characters that are just as beloved as those in Harry Potter." Still: Handler expects the movie to gross at least $600 million.

One of those courted Potter fans: Kat Miller, 34, the marketing and creative director of MuggleNet.com, a Rowling fan site that, with The Leaky Cauldron and Snitch Seeker, are known as the "big three." Miller says Warners worked with her site extensively.

↱ Box office preview: The first tentpole of the year-end holidays, Fantastic Beasts hopes to make magic with a $70-80M U.S. debut. Daring to open opposite the Harry Potter prequel are Edge of Seventeen, looking in the $8-$10M range, and Bleed for This, tracking at $5M. ↲

Elsewhere in film...

► Kong: Skull Island trailer debuts. Kong is in full force in the film set in the '70s starring Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman and Samuel L. Jackson. Hiddleston appeared on last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (in a gorilla suit) to present the trailer. Watch here.

► Tupac/Biggie movie adds Forest Whitaker. The actor is in talks to join Johnny Depp in Labyrinth, which follows the investigation behind the murders of rap legends Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG. Brad Furman is set to direct the crime drama.

► Guy Pearce, Vanessa Redgrave join Andorra. Clive Owen is also shifting roles in Fred Schepisi’s romantic thriller due to scheduling. Production on the film, based on Peter Cameron's novel, is scheduled to begin in April in Italy.

↱ Fox goes family friendly with animation-heavy slate: With the success of Alvin and the Chipmunks and Disney's Finding Dory, 20th Century Fox is making it a priority to snap up various children's books and develop more live-action hybrids. ↲

► La La Land finally makes it to L.A. Damien Chazelle's Los Angeles-set film, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, first premiered at Venice, traveling on to Toronto, Telluride and London. At the film's AFI Fest Gala screening on Tuesday, the filmmaker called La La Land "a love letter to the city."

► Kung Fu Panda director to adapt cult comic Bone. Mark Osborne has come aboard to helm Warner Bros.' animated adaptation of Jeff Smith's comic series Bone. Dan Lin’s Lin Pictures is producing with Animal Logic’s Zareh Nalbandian with the goal of making a trilogy.

► Activists cry foul over producer Joel Silver's decaying Venice property. Four years after the Matrix producer bought the Venice Post Office amid big promises of a Silver Pictures headquarters, the L.A. "eyesore" sits in squalor.

THR's first-ever Songwriter Roundtable: Justin Timberlake, Sting, Alicia Keys, Tori Amos, John Legend and Pharrell Williams discuss gender bias, Trump's "Hitler-level" rhetoric and fears of a "Divided States of America." Watch here.

Why Trump Won't Get an Oscar Invite

Don't look for a Trump appearance at the upcoming Oscars, emotions about the election still will be pretty raw by February, Gregg Kilday writes:

Donald Trump's election was a wake-up call for liberal Hollywood and right now throughout the industry, it's mourning in America. It wasn't just a rejection of all of the prominent Hollywood players who were front and center in Hillary Clinton's campaign — from Haim Saban and Rob Reiner to Barbra Streisand and Beyonce.

Insofar as the election also represented what CNN commentator Van Jones has called a "whitelash," it was a rejection of the multicultural ideal — with all its talk of diversity and inclusion — that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has put at the top of its agenda.

But, in the near-term: Hollywood studios, whose job it is to maximize profits, may have to look at their upcoming release slates to decide if they are talking to the audience of angry Trump supporters that found a voice at the ballot box, and the MPAA will have to cozy up to the Republican Congress. But that's not the job of the Academy or the Oscars.