What's news: ViacomCBS outlines its streaming plans as it misses Wall Street estimates, the latest from Berlin including this year's "hot list," it's a hedgehog vs. Harrison Ford and a CGI dog at the box office, why the Weinstein jury is taking it slow, Bloomberg took a grilling in his first Democratic debate. Plus: THR's TV pilot season studio guide, and RuPaul sashays onto Showtime. --Alex Weprin

 ViacomCBS Outlines Streaming Plans

►ViacomCBS plots "house of brands" streaming service, as company swings to a loss following merger. ViacomCBS said Thursday it will build a new streaming service that builds on CBS All Access and draws from both sides of the recently recombined company. The "broad pay offering" would expand CBS All Access "by adding the company’s scaled assets in film and TV, including world-renowned brands, and reaffirm and expand the value of entertainment, news and sports – through on-demand and live experiences – for audiences around the world."

--In a strategic update as part of its first earnings report as a recombined company, ViacomCBS also outlined three strategic priorities: "maximizing the power of content;" unlocking value from its biggest revenue lines, namely distribution, ad sales and content licensing; and accelerating momentum in streaming. Speaking of which: CBS All Access and showtime will reach a combined 16 million subscribers by the end of this year. The story.

+About the last quarter: The company swung to a loss for its latest quarter, which included various deal-related and other charges, such as $468 million for restructuring and other matters, as well as $589 million in content-related writedowns. The company was hit by disappointing box office, continued cord cutting, and difficult political advertising comparisons in addition to the charges in what it called a "transitional" quarter. It said that it was also affected by "operating items expected to be mitigated through the benefits of the combined company." More.

►Box office preview: It's a straight race between a hedgehog and a dog this weekend at the box office, and if projections are correct, the hedgehog will win. Paramount's surprise hit Sonic the Hedgehog will easily stay No. 1 in its its second weekend, leaving new family offering The Call of the Wild out in the cold.

--Sonic — which scored the top opening ever for a video game adaptation over Presidents Day weekend — should top the chart with a sophomore outing of at least $28 million to $30 million as it shoots past the $100 mark million mark domestically. The Call of the Wild, from the rebranded 20th Century Studios, is tracking to open in the mid-teens to $20 million after seeing its release delayed from this past Christmas. The preview.

 Berlin Latest

►The Berlin hot list: The European Film Market sees male-driven action movies with Sylvester Stallone and Gerard Butler go up against female empowerment tales from Booksmart director Olivia Wilde and The Farewell star Awkwafina, Scott Roxborough writes. The hot list includes titles like Remote Control, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Baccarat Machine. The full hot list.

►Buyers on the hunt for non-English fare post-Parasite. With Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar winner continuing to do big business around the world, dealmakers in Berlin are heralding a new era of increased diversity, Scott Roxborough reports: "Audiences have become much more adventurous." The story.

►Jeremy Irons addresses past comments on same-sex marriage, sexual abuse, abortion. Jeremy Irons used the opening press conference as Berlinale jury president on Thursday to address his previous comments on the subject of same-sex marriage, abortion and sexual abuse, which resurfaced recently, saying he hoped to "put to bed" the controversy. The story.

Here's more from Berlin...

+Berlin deals: STX Entertainment and Black Bear Pictures have struck an exclusive output deal that will see STXinternational sell and distribute all Black Bear productions overseas. The deal, unveiled Wednesday in time for the Berlin Film Festival, will also see Toronto-based Elevation Pictures distribute all STX productions in Canada... Herbert Kloiber Jr., who exited German mini-major Tele Munchen Group (TMG) last year following the company's acquisition by private equity giant KKR, is launching his own boutique production company called Night Train Media, focusing on high-end series for the international market...

+New projects: Liam Neeson is set to star in action crime thriller Memory, to be directed by Martin Campbell from a script written by Dario Scardapane and based on the original Dutch film The Memory of a Killer... Hany Abu-Assad, the Palestinian director who landed foreign-language Oscar nominations for both Paradise Now in 2005 and Omar in 2013, is prepping his next feature, Huda's Salon... Veep creator Armando Iannucci is reuniting with his Death of Stalin producer Yann Zenou on a coming-age-age comedy set in the world of amateur sumo wrestling, called Sumo...

+Also: Megan Fox is set to play an astronaut in upcoming suspense thriller Aurora... Taylor Kitsch fights crime in post-war Berlin in an exclusive first look at Shadowplay... A Berlin hidden gem: Death of Nintendo depicts a coming-of-age tale from the Philippines... Why the Polish film industry is quietly on a roll... 

Download THR's day 1 Berlin daily here.

Elsewhere in film...

--Dev Patel is set to star in Flash Crash, a dramatic thriller based on an upcoming book by Liam Vaughan that See-Saw Films and New Regency have teamed on to adapt.

--The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has partnered with Universal Filmed Entertainment Group to pilot its “Spellcheck for Bias” digital tool, this time in order to help increase Latinx representation onscreen.

--The upcoming survival thriller The Beast, co-produced by Japanese internet giant Rakuten and The H Collective, has found its director and star. Norwegian filmmaker Espen Sandberg, best known for Kon-Tiki and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, has signed on to direct, while Morena Baccarin is set to play the lead.

--Tom Holland and Chris Pratt talk "budding bromance" at Onward premiere.

--Frank Scheck reviews The Night Clerk.



Why the Weinstein trial jurors are deliberating slowly. The 12 men and women who will decide Harvey Weinstein's fate in New York County are proceeding slowly and surely, Jeremy Barr reports. That has been evident since they began deliberating on the five criminal charges facing Weinstein on Tuesday morning. Wednesday's session, like Tuesday's, ended without a verdict.

--But trial observers have been able to get a window into the jurors' progress by way of the five notes — containing requests — they have passed along to the judge. The story.

+Movie studios back Oracle in Supreme Court fight over computer code. In a dispute dubbed the "Copyright Case of the Century," the Motion Picture Association, minus Netflix, argues that software is "inherently different" than works like movies and television shows — and so Google can't defend theft of code as a "transformative" fair use. Eriq Gardner has the story.

+Kickstarter unionizes, with goals that echo Hollywood guilds’ creative rights. The employees want transparency and a voice in decisions, objectives that the directors and writers unions sought eight decades ago. The story.

+Also: Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll says she has been fired from Elle magazine after accusing President Donald Trump of raping her.

►Mahershala Ali to star in Apple TV+ movie Swan Song. The drama project from Benjamin Cleary, which is to shoot this spring, will join the Apple TV+ original film slate and will also get a theatrical release, Apple announced Wednesday. More.

+Casting roundup: Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd are set to star in and exec produce dark comedy limited TV series The Shrink Next Door... Annaleigh Ashford will star in one of Chuck Lorre's two CBS comedy pilots, B Positive... Jennifer Lawrence has come aboard to star in Don’t Look Up, a comedy that Adam McKay, the filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated movies Vice and The Big Short, wrote and will direct... Tate Donovan has joined the Fox pilot Blood Relative... James Wolk has been tapped to play the title role in the NBC pilot Ordinary Joe...



^Pilot season: How TV studios are adapting to new priorities. As media giants launch their own streaming services, studios at companis like Disney and NBCUniversal are focused on supplying content to their growing roster of platforms rather than focusing purely on broadcast, Lesley Goldberg reports in a broadcast pilot season studio breakdown.

Quote: "Sources say the shift away from broadcast is part of a larger mandate for ABC Studios and 20th TV as both expand to focus first on being a content supplier to Disney's growing number of platforms. Those include streamers Disney+ and Hulu, as well as ABC, the younger-skewing basic cable network Freeform, the recently acquired FX and NatGeo. While the new priority is to supply to in-house outlets, Disney TV Studios will continue to sell to outside networks, streamers and, yes, broadcasters." The pilot season studio breakdown.

►Bethenny Frankel to topline HBO Max competition series. The unscripted show from Mark Burnett and MGM TV, called Big Shot with Bethenny, will give contestants a chance to work as part of the Skinnygirl founder's executive team. The story.

Elsewhere in TV...

--RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars will migrate to Showtime in the summer for what the premium cable outlet is calling a "special edition" of the series.

--In book/streaming news: A book co-authored by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will be released May 12. No Rules Rules: Netflix And The Culture Of Reinvention, will be published by Penguin Randomhouse... Popular streamer Guy "Dr Disrespect" Beahm has signed a deal with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for a comedic "memoir" due out next spring...

--Ratings: This Is Us and NCIS remained in their usual position atop Tuesday's ratings, with the former once again scoring the night's top 18-49 number and the latter dominating the total-viewer rankings. ABC's For Life held up reasonably well in its second week opposite improved numbers for the other 10 p.m. dramas.

 Bloomberg On Defense In First Debate

►Bloomberg under fire in first debate. As he rises in the polls, Bloomberg had a target on his back during his first debate on Wednesday night. He was "ready" for it, a campaign aide tells THR's Jeremy Barr.

"I'd like to talk about who we're running against," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday night. "A billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians, and no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg."

Warren continued: "Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, of supporting racist policies like red-lining and Stop and Frisk. Democrats take a huge risk if we substitute one arrogant billionaire for another." The story. 

►Rapper Pop Smoke killed in Hollywood Hills during home break-in. Born Bashar Jackson from Canarsie, Brooklyn, the musician was 20. The call for the shooting was placed around 4:30 a.m. at 2033 Hercules Drive in Mount Olympus, Los Angeles police said. The 911 call came from a friend of the victim. Multiple people were in the home when the shooting took place, police said, noting that homicide detectives are interviewing a number of witnesses. The story.

In other business news...

►Imax CEO uncertain about when China will reopen theaters. Box office from Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, Frozen 2 and Joker helped Imax beat Wall Street analyst forecasts for fourth-quarter earnings and revenues. The fourth-quarter results came before the decision last month to postpone the Chinese New Year film slate in China because of the Coronavirus outbreak, a move that Imax supported.

--CEO Richard Gelfond looked beyond the current virus outbreak, which he called a "serious, short-term challenge," to when the Coronavirus crisis passes and Chinese moviegoers return to the local multiplex, not least to get out of their homes. "We're confident the business will rebound once conditions in China normalize," he told analysts. The story.

+Dish chairman says merger with DirecTV "inevitable." Charlie Ergen said a long-rumored merger of DirecTV and Dish was "inevitable" — despite reticence from AT&T to divest itself of the asset — as neither satellite TV-delivered linear TV service was growing. "The growth in TV is not coming from linear TV providers, but from huge programmers," Ergen told analysts with a reference to streaming era competition. He conceded regulatory issues stood in the way of a potential DirecTV-Dish merger, but added industry logic made a transaction likely at some point. The story.



^Vue CEO Tim Richards on Parasite, battling Netflix and pulling out of Saudi Arabia. "We are about to enter into the next golden age of cinema," says the CEO of the world's leading independent theater chain in a Creative Space interview, arguing that streaming "is having zero impact on theater attendance." The interview.

 Two of Hollywood's management firms are teaming up. Artists First has acquired a minority stake in Select Management Group as part of a larger strategic partnership between the two companies... Comcast-owned European pay TV giant Sky's Sky Studios production arm and Fremantle’s The Apartment, one of the production firms behind The New Pope, on Wednesday unveiled a multi-year drama development and production partnership...

Revolving door: Sarah Schechter has been promoted to chairwoman and partner of Greg Berlanti Productions. Additionally, Berlanti Productions has tapped former Fox Broadcasting and AMC Networks topper David Madden as president of the company... Angelyne, the L.A. billboard icon whose life serves as the inspiration for the forthcoming Peacock show of the same name, has joined the project as an executive producer... Literary agent Chris Ridenhour, who has been with APA since 2011, has been promoted to vice president... Paramount Players has lost two key executives as executive vp development and production Matt Dines and Ali Bell have exited their posts...

What else we're reading...

"Political ads are flooding Roku, Hulu and other streaming services, revealing loopholes in federal election laws" [Washington Post]

--"NFL owners are considering expanding the playoffs to include more teams" [CNN Business]

--"Cord-cutting accelerated in 2019, raising pressure on cable providers" [WSJ]

--"Netflix and Amazon will make first-ever Cannes Lions presentations in June" [Ad Week]

--"Barr suggests big tech 'titans' no longer need legal shield" [NBC News]

Today's birthdays: Rihanna, 32, Gordon Brown, 69, Sidney Poitier, 93, Ivana Trump, 71, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 79.