Today In Entertainment

SEPTEMBER 01, 2020

What's news: Netflix preps a new project with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, HBO Max scores a Fresh Prince reunion, Mariah Carey sets Apple TV+ special, streaming's next battleground is movie rights, Producers Guild COVID protocols, why Venice hopes to be a film festival "restart." Plus: Johnny Depp seeks a defamation trial delay, and another Power spinoff scores a series order. --Alex Weprin

 Netflix, HBO Max and Apple TV+ Nab Big TV Projects

➤Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are taking on another ambitious project. The duo will team with The Terror: Infamy showrunner Alexander Woo to adapt Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning novel trilogy The Three-Body Problem for Netflix (all three have overall deals at the streamer). Netflix has given a series order to the project, which also counts Rian Johnson, Rosamund Pike and Brad Pitt's Plan B among its executive producers. Cixin and Ken Liu, who wrote the English-language translation to the first and third novels, will be consulting producers. The story.

➤HBO Max sets yet another reunion special. Will Smith and the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will tape a reunion special to air on the streamer in the fall. Series regulars Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Joseph Marcell, Daphne Maxwell Reid and Alfonso Ribeiro, along with DJ Jazzy Jeff, who recurred on the show, will join Smith for the reunion, which HBO Max says will also feature music, dancing and some surprise guests.

--The special is scheduled to tape on Sept. 10 — the 30th anniversary of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's NBC debut — and debut around Thanksgiving on HBO Max. The streamer is also the exclusive SVOD home of the show, which ran from 1990-96. The story.

In other TV news...

+Mariah Carey is heading to Apple TV+. The streaming giant has confirmed Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special, an exclusive holiday event from the global pop icon superstar. It is being described as an “innovative special” that will mix music, dancing and animation “driven by a universally heartwarming story that brings the world together.”

--Expect surprise celebrity guests and songs from her best-selling holiday catalog, led by the iconic “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” the modern holiday classic released in 1994 that found its way to No. 1 in 2019 becoming her 19th overall. The story.

+AMC has put a stake in NOS4A2. The cabler has canceled the series, an adaptation of Joe HIll's 2013 novel, after two seasons. The news comes just over a week after what turned out to be the show's final season wrapped on Aug. 23. More.

+Jimmy Kimmel is headed back to work — and back to his studio. The ABC late-night host will end his summer hiatus on Sept. 21, the day after he hosts the Emmy Awards on the network. Jimmy Kimmel Live will return to its regular home at the El Capitan in Hollywood, and also return to its regular, one-hour format. The show has been airing half-hour episodes for the past few months. More.

+Starz has given the green light to a third spinoff in the Power franchise. The premium cable outlet has ordered 10 episodes of Power Book IV: Force, which will center on Joseph Sikora's fan-favorite character, Tommy Egan. The pickup comes six days ahead of the premiere of Power Book II: Ghost, a direct sequel to the flagship series. More.

 Movie Streaming Rights Up For Grabs

➤Streamers set their sights on movie mega-deals. Universal Pictures ands Sony Pictures have begun negotiations over streaming rights to their new films, beginning with movies scheduled for release in 2022, Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports. HBO and Starz, which curently hold those rights, are negotiating, but Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others are interested too, which could result in a bidding war, complicated further by the fact that many entertainment giants have streaming services of their own.

--Shaw also reports that some streaming services have asked studios whether they would produce movies exclusively for them. It's all a sign that after streamers shot up the cost of original TV shows (Netflix's Ted Sarandos said last year that prices for competitive shows were up 30 percent year-over-year), the same could be coming for the big movie library deals.

➤Producers Guild releases safety protocols for working amid COVID-19 pandemic. The Producers Guild of America guidelines recommend 10-hour production days, testing and proper ventilation, Etan Vlessing reports. The 56-page COVID-safety protocols for independent productions, created by the PGA’s production safety task force, use a “producers lens” to break down the guidelines from other unions and guilds as the industry returns to film and TV sets. The details.

➤Harrison Ford on Monday paid tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, who he co-starred alongside in the celebrated film 42. "Chadwick Boseman was as compelling, powerful and truthful as the characters he chose to play," Ford said in a statement to THR. "His intelligence, personal dignity and deep commitment inspired his colleagues and elevated the stories he told. He is as much a hero as any he played. He is loved and will be deeply missed." More.

 The Venice Film Festival

➤Venice Film Festival watchers hope event marks a "restart for everybody."  Despite COVID-19 concerns, the industry is looking to the event — the first in-person festival since the pandemic — to ignite the global film sector, Scott Roxborough reports: "No one can afford to stay in lockdown much longer." The story.

+The Venice Hot List: With fewer big studio offerings this  year, the  focus is all on the indies, from Regina King’s directorial debut to a true-life heist tale starring Jim Broadbent. The list.

➤Johnny Depp seeks defamation trial delay over Fantastic Beasts shoot. "When the Court set the current trial date in this case, Mr. Depp understood that Warner Bros. planned to shoot Fantastic Beasts 3 in London long before January 11, 2021," states the filing. "COVID-19 disrupted the studio's plans, causing repeated postponements. With conditions in London having improved somewhat, Warner Bros. has now set a shooting schedule that conflicts with the trial date in this case." The story.

+Charter finds out Supreme Court isn't its savior from race bias suit. A judge decides that Byron Allen has pled a viable case against the cable giant, allowing Allen's lawsuit to proceed despite the Comcast decision earlier this year. More.

+Bret Easton Ellis, Irvine Welsh press satire series American Tabloid facing legal complaint. A former National Enquirer journalist claims he was developing the project with the producers based on his own experiences, but no option was taken out. More.

➤Emmys 2020: Who will win, who should win. THR's awards prognosticator Scott Feinberg declares his picks for the shows and actors likeliest to score while chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg weighs in on the contenders he wishes would take home a trophy Sept. 20. The list.

➤TV ratings: ABC's commercial-free airing of Black Panther and a tribute to its late star, Chadwick Boseman, gave the network some of its best ratings of the summer on Sunday. The CW, meanwhile, looks to have given the Video Music Awards a bit of a boost. The numbers.

➤Film reviews: Jourdain Searles reviews horror-thriller Antebellum, writing that the film "functions mostly as a B-side to Get Out, covering the same themes with more brutality and much less nuance." The review.

+And: Elizabeth Kerr reviews China's box office juggernaut The Eight Hundred. "But like the ambitious The Wandering Earth, the last Chinese epic to make a play for international glory, and indeed Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, The Eight Hundred is thin on characterization, and too often slips into rote narrative and war movie cliches (really, a runaway white horse?)." The review.

➤Critic's Notebook: Criterion's "Complete Films of Agnès Varda" offers a welcome chance to explore the visions of a tireless searcher.  Though often overshadowed by her male counterparts, the Belgian-born Greek-French filmmaker was a New Wave innovator who left a vibrant body of work, all of it restored and available in a new collection. The notebook.

In other news...

--Amazon Studios has picked up the worldwide rights to director Matthew Heineman's The Boy From Medellín, a portrait of Colombian Latin music star J Balvin.

--Several top editors of animated features appeared on a panel at the American Cinema Editors-produced virtual EditFest Global event, and speculated that post-pandemic, more filmmakers might split editing between a home and office environment.

--The 24th American Black Film Festival in Miami Beach has wrapped its virtual edition, with Chris Bailey's basketball drama Curtis picking up the best U.S. narrative feature prize.

--Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley’s Number 9 Films, together with Rachael Horovitz's West Fourth Films, has acquired the television rights to the memoirs of legendary punk musician Viv Albertine.

--Ron Jeremy on Monday was charged with 20 additional sexual assault counts, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced. The new counts involve 13 women and date back to 2004.

--The Glorias got invited to the Hamptons. Donna Karan and the Cinema Society hosted a screening of Julie Taymor’s film The Glorias Sunday night at Karan’s waterfront home in East Hampton.

--Niecy Nash has married Jessica Betts in a surprise ceremony, the couple announced on social media on Monday.

What else we're reading...

--"Netflix teases potential subscribers with a taste of popular shows for free" [Ad Age]

--"Local TV stations team up to launch streaming servicve" [WSJ]

--"CBS' Super Bowl wait-and-see approach to be tested in Tampa" [Sportico]

--"Ben & Jerry's is launching a podcast about white supremacy in America" [CNN Business]

--"InfoSum raises $15 million, Brian Lesser named executive chairman" [Axios]

Today's birthdays: Zendaya, 24, Jungkook, 23, Padma Lakshmi, 50, Phil McGraw, 70, Rachel Zoe, 52.

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SEPTEMBER 01, 2020

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