What's news: Warner Bros. Birds of Prey poised to win the weekend box office, HBO Max and Warner Bros. create a new streaming film studio, remembering Kirk Douglas, a first look at this year's Oscars set and green room, State of the Union ratings were down, there's a Marilyn Monroe TV show in the works, Fox brought in $600 million on Super Bowl Sunday. Plus: Ken Ziffren on streaming talent deals, and remembering Star Wars' "secret Weapon." --Alex Weprin

 'Birds of Prey' Eyes B.O. Win

►Box office preview: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) will easily fly to No. 1 at the U.S. box office this weekend with a domestic box office of $50 million or more. Warner Bros. and DC's female led feature is the year's first studio superhero pic, and sees Margot Robbie reprise her role as Harley Quinn following Suicide Squad.

--The film, which cost cost $80 million to $90 million to produce after tax incentives and rebates, also flies into numerous markets overseas, where it is hoping to take off with $60 million-plus. The box office preview.

►Birds of Prey review. John DeFore writes of the Warner Bros. DC Comics supervillain film "those hoping for a Deadpool-like fusion of mayhem and wit should lower their expectations: Harley may be known for her unpredictability, but Birds plays by action-movie rules." The review.

+Marketing Birds of Prey: The Warner Bros. promotional campaign leaned on a star-studded soundtrack and enlisted multiple brand partners for its neon-infused rollout, Chris Thilk writes. The marketing story.

+What the other critics are saying:  Margot Robbie's return to Harley Quinn is a stylish, violent affair — according to the reviews. The roundup.

►HBO Max, Warner Bros. unveil new film division for streaming service. The new venture, called Warner Max, will focus on releasing eight to 10 mid-budget movies per year via the company's new streaming service. Budgets for the films be in the $25 million range, Pamela McClintock reports. Warner Max will be overseen by HBO Max chief content officer Kevin Reilly and Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich, who will share greenlight responsibility. The story.



^Obituary: Kirk Douglas, the son of a ragman who channeled a deep, personal anger through a chiseled jaw and steely blue eyes to forge one of the most indelible and indefatigable careers in Hollywood history, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 103.

--Douglas walked away from a helicopter crash in 1991 and suffered a severe stroke in 1996 but, ever the battler, he refused to give in. With a passionate will to survive, he was the last man standing of all the great stars of another time.

--Nominated three times for best actor by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956) — Douglas was the recipient of an honorary Oscar in 1996. Arguably the top male star of the post-World War II era, he acted in more than 80 movies before retiring from films in 2004. The obituary.

+Hollywood pays tribute: Steven Spielberg expressed how "honored" he felt to have worked with the late actor... SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris praised Douglas as "a powerful voice who helped end the blacklist in our industry."... His son Michael Douglas remembered him as "a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to." The tributes.

►Women, people of color make gains onscreen but not off: Study. UCLA's latest Hollywood Diversity Report also finds that audiences of color are increasingly responsible for the majority of ticket sales for popular films (eight of 2019's top 10 movies). More.

Elsewhere in film...

--The classic children's novel The Wind in the Willows is set to receive a movie treatment, to be written by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes.

--Radha Blank's The 40-Year-Old Version, which counts Lena Waithe as a producer, has been picked up by Netflix. The streamer is planning a theatrical release for the title ahead of its streaming debut later this year.

--Johnny Depp is set to produce an upcoming doc about legendary Irish folk-punker (and his friend) Shane MacGowan.

--The Obamas won't attend the Oscars despite American Factory Nomination.

--Trailers: Here's the first trailer from Chris Rock's Saw reboot, called Spiral... Here's the trailer for Minions: The Rise of Gru...

 SOTU Ratings Crash

►TV ratings: State of the Union falls 21 percent vs. 2019. President Trump's address and the Democratic response averaged 33.67 million viewers from 9 to 10:30 p.m. ET on broadcast networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC and cable news channels CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. That's down about 21 percent from the total for those same networks last year. Fox News drew the largest audience of any single network by a wide margin and was the only outlet among those seven to increase its audience from a year ago. The other networks were all off by a good amount. The numbers.

►Fox Corp. reels in $600 million in Super Bowl Sunday revenue. Fox. Corp. blew past a Wall Street forecast for a per-share loss of 4 cents for the latest period. Quarterly revenue rose 5 percent to $3.78 billion compared to a year-earlier $3.58 billion. Fox said its quarterly income line for the latest quarter was boosted by changes in the fair values of its investments in Roku and The Stars Group, which were offset by higher operating costs and expenses after the Disney sale.

--Advertising revenues at Fox News were hit by a rise in breaking news preemptions, causing ad declines of $16 million, but Sunday's Super Bowl was a big win for the network, which pulled in more than $600 million that day. The story.

+Twitter reported fourth quarter earnings on Thursday, revealing that it now has more than 150 million active users. The social media company, led by CEO Jack Dorsey, posted its first $1 billion revenue quarter, with its stock price rising in pre-market trading. More.

Oscars 2020: The Academy Awards' new set and green room revealed. The show’s traditional proscenium frame is gone, replaced by a less static, more sculptural set design covered in Swarovski crystals (see below), while Rolex unveils a polar-themed Green Room. The photos.



+The "Night Before," one of the most exclusive events of Hollywood’s awards season, is returning for its 18th year. Leonardo DiCaprio, Cynthia Erivo, Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Lopez are among the A-listers who have signed on as host committee members for this year's event, which benefits the Motion Picture & Television Fund. THR is a sponsor. More.

+Oscars: Who will win, who should win. Brad Pitt's a lock, so is Joaquin Phoenix, but can Parasite play the spoiler? THR's awards analyst Scott Feinberg and chief film critic Todd McCarthy cast their votes. The predictions.

+The New York Times is returning as an Oscars advertiser this year. The news outlet, which previously ran an Oscars ad in 2017, will use this year's spot, which will star singer, actor and producer Janelle Monáe, to promote The 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in America. You can watch the ad here.

+Also: The American Black Film Festival will honor Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx at its 2020 ABFF Honors on Feb. 23 in Los Angeles. Foxx is set to receive the Excellence in the Arts Award, which honors a contemporary artist whose work has amassed critical acclaim.

►Lost, My So-Called Life among 20 shows coming to IMDb TV in Disney licensing deal. Lost, Ally McBeal and My So-Called Life will soon be available to stream for free — with a catch. Those hits are among a group of more than 20 shows are coming to the Amazon-owned IMDb TV platform as part of a larger deal with Disney's Direct-to Consumer and International department. The catch is that all of them will stream with ads as IMDb TV is an ad-supported free to stream platform.

--All of the shows listed above — save for My So-Called Life — will continue to stream ad-free on Disney-backed subscription service Hulu. The story.

►TV Pickups and renewals : Showtime has handed out a series order to anthology First Ladies, with Viola Davis set to play Michelle Obama in the first season... Judge Jerry will continue presiding over daytime TV in 2020-21. The syndicated courtroom show starring Jerry Springer has been renewed for a second season, with clearance in more than 95 percent of the United States...

+Marilyn Monroe TV series in the works: 101 Studios and U.K. production company Seven Seas Films are teaming up to develop a TV series based on the final months of Marilyn Monroe's life.The project, which doesn't yet have an outlet attached, is based on Keith Badman's nonfiction book The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe. It's also the first filmed project about the late star's life to be endorsed by Authentic Brands Group, the owner of the Monroe estate. The story.

Elsewhere in TV...

--Why Netflix is ending The Crown at season five.

--Disney+ will reach 126 million subscribers worldwide by 2025, Digital TV Research analyst Simon Murray forecast in a Thursday report.

--Daniel Fienberg reviews the CBS police procedural Tommy.

--David Schulner is solidifying his future with Universal Television. The creator and showrunner behind NBC's New Amsterdam has closed a new four-year overall deal with the studio behind the Ryan Eggold medical drama.

--The fifth season of If Loving You Is Wrong at OWN will be its last. The cable network announced that the Tyler Perry drama will debut its fifth season on March 10, and that it will wrap with the coming run.

 Talent Deals Fall Into The Stream

►How talent deals are evolving as studios become streamers. Disney wants to be Netflix, yet the new contracts for stars and producers are causing entertainment lawyers to question which platforms are better for profit participants, writes attorney Ken Ziffren in a guest column for THR.

Quote: "Today, as we see spending on premium scripted content — both in production and marketing — rapidly accelerate, there has been a pronounced shift in business models from linear to on-demand; the result thus far has been a race to the bottom for profit margins and free cash flow generation. Will the media giants treat profit participants in the same manner as the giant digital companies?" The column.

►The political strategist at the center of the Iowa caucus debacle is doing damage control with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, in the wake of scrutiny of her company's role in developing Shadow, the vote-reporting app which caused much of the vote-counting meltdown. ACRONYM founder Tara McGowan has reached out to six-figure donors including Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and J.J. Abrams to try and outflank the online criticism she has received in the last 48 hours over the super PAC's role in the Shadow vote-reporting app. More.

+Also: Joe Biden was not pleased with President Trump's decision to award Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom. "Rush Limbaugh spent his entire time on the air dividing people, belittling people," the former vice president said during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. More.

 Final accuser in Harvey Weinstein’s trial testifies that he groped her: "I said no, no, no the whole time." Lauren Young, the sixth and final accusing witness in Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes trial in New York County, told jurors on Wednesday afternoon that he grabbed her while masturbating in a hotel bathroom in February 2013. The story.

+ And: Donald Trump once famously boasted he'd "open up" libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations, but on Tuesday, he took a step in the opposite direction thanks to the overriding interest of his own self-preservation. At the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, his attorney argued that a federal judge was within his authority to throw out a defamation complaint filed against him by porn star Stormy Daniels. The story.



^He was Star Wars' secret weapon, so why was he forgotten? Ashley Boone Jr., the first black president of a major Hollywood studio, helped make George Lucas' quirky space opera a hit in the 1970's — yet chances are you've never heard of him, Scott Feinberg writes: "He was way ahead of his time."

Quote: "He understood the industry, and he understood that to be in those rooms, you've got to carry yourself a certain way," says Robert Townsend, one of the young black filmmakers Boone informally counseled. "He was old school, and he shared a lot of information in terms of how the game is played." The story.

►Xbox head sees Amazon, Google as "main competitors." As a new era of game streaming services dawns, Phil Spencer sees tech giants that are now entering the industry as the major threat to his company moving forward. More.

Casting roundup: Ice Cube is lacing up some gloves for Flint Strong, Universal Pictures’ dramatic adaptation of the 2015 boxing documentary, T-REX...  O'Shea Jackson Jr. is stepping into the lead role of the Apple TV+ drama Swagger, produced by NBA star Kevin Durant... Jeremy Jordan will step into the hit off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, playing the nebbishy florist's apprentice Seymour... Lior Raz and Sanaa Lathan will lead the cast for Hit and Run, a thriller currently in production for Netflix... Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal and Richard Thomas are joining Viola Davis and Sandra Bullock in Netflix's as-yet untitled thriller to be directed by Nora Fingscheidt...

Revolving door: Robert Downey Jr. and his production banner, Team Downey, have exited CAA and signed with WME for representation in all areas... Warner Bros. Animation has signed its first major overall deal: Family Guy writer-producer Wellesley Wild has inked a multi-year pact with the studio... Seth Gordon is set to direct Ground Control to Major Tom for Solstice Studios... Cheer star Jeremiah "Jerry" Harris has signed with influencer management company Digital Brand Architects and its parent agency UTA...

Obituaries: Jane Milmore, who co-created the Don Rickles-Richard Lewis sitcom Daddy Dearest and wrote and produced for such shows as Martin, The Wayans Bros. and The Hughleys, has died. She was 64... Douglas Knapp, a longtime camera operator and cinematographer with credits including Murphy Brown, two Star Trek series and films from John Carpenter and Tim Burton, has died. He was 70...

What else we're reading...

--‘The Facebook of TV’: Roku rankles media companies as platform pushes The Roku Channel" [Digiday]

--"Larry King opens up about his near-fatal stroke: 'They told my family I was going to die'" [People]

--"Dear Oscars, I love you. But we need to talk" [NY Times]

--"'Peloton Wife' helped spur holiday sales for the fitness brand" [Ad Age]

Today's birthdays: Axl Rose, 58, Tom Brokaw, 80, Kathy Najimy, 63, Gayle Hunnicutt, 77, Rick Astley, 54.