Today In Entertainment

SEPTEMBER 12, 2020

Whats news: Wonder Woman and Candyman latest films to face theatrical delays, Halle Berry's Bruised nears TIFF mega-deal, NFL opening night ratings down from last year, Paramount Animation goes to the dogs. Plus: Reviews of Ammonite and Nomadland, and Harry Styles' next acting gig. --Alex Weprin

 More Box Office Delays

➤Wonder Woman is flying to Christmas. Warner Bros. is delaying the release of Wonder Woman 1984 again, this time from Oct. 2 to Dec. 25 as the U.S. box office struggles to recover amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. The shift doesn't impact the Dec. 18 date for Denis Villeneuve's Dune, which Warner Bros. is releasing on behalf of Legendary.

--Wonder Woman's delay is a major blow for theater owners, since there now won't be a new Hollywood tentpole hitting the big screen until November. A silver lining: It gives fellow Warners event pic Tenet, from filmmaker Christopher Nolan, more time to expand its audience as cinemas continue to reopen across the country. The story.

+Meanwhile at Universal: It will be a little longer before Candyman can haunt a new generation of audiences. Universal and MGM have pushed back the horror film from Oct. 16 to some time in 2021. While the coronavirus pandemic has seen a number of films bypass theaters, MGM, Universal and the filmmakers behind Candyman are committed to a theatrical release for the movie, with a new date expected in the coming weeks. More.

In other film news...

+Paramount Animation is going to the dogs. The animation arm has picked up the rights to upcoming horror comic book Stray Dogs, setting Game Night scribe Mark Perez to write the script. Gary Dauberman, the horror filmmaker who counts the Annabelle and It movies among his credits, is set to produce via his banner, Coin Operated. The project is being described as “Silence of the Lambs meets Lady and the Tramp.” The story.

+Harry Styles' next acting gig: Three years since making his feature acting debut in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Harry Styles has chosen his next onscreen role. Styles has joined the A-list ensemble of Olivia Wilde's next directorial effort Don't Worry Darling at New Line. The already announced cast includes Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and Dakota Johnson, as well as Wilde in a supporting role. More.

➤Netflix is closing in  to make the  first deal of the Toronto International Film Festival, entering final negotiations to pick up Halle Berry’s MMA drama Bruised, THR has confirmed. The movie, which is making its debut virtually Saturday  as a work in progress, is Berry’s directorial  debut. Netflix, which got an early peek, is closing in on a deal reaching upwards of $20 million. The story.

+Berry says her directorial debut left her filled with anxiety on set. "I was scared shitless. And if you're not having any sense of worry, I don't think you care, I don't think you want to do your best," Berry said while appearing remotely at the Toronto Film Festival to tout the world premiere of her mixed martial arts drama. More.

More from Toronto...

+Producer Ted Hope sees "golden age of new voices" for indie film business. "It's been a non-stop onslaught of transformative change since I arrived in New York City.  Yes, we're no longer a single-title, revenue based, studio-driven ecosystem. Now we're in a streaming dominant, portfolio-based, attention-driven, global economy, and that's changed everything," Hope, who ran Amazon Studios at one point, said during  a virtual conversation moderated by THR executive film editor Tatiana Siegel. The story.

+Related: A group of diverse and under-represented storytellers are coming together at the Toronto Film Festival to make the Canadian entertainment industry less white, as their newly-launched Independent Media Producers Association of Cinematic Talent looks to advance Black, Indigenous and People of Color industry professionals. More.

+Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has advice for emerging filmmakers: Ignore first reactions to your work. On Friday, Guadagnino told a masterclass at the Toronto Film Festival about his experience ten years ago with Io Sono l’Amore (I Am Love), which was met with a shower of boos at the Venice Film Festival before only days later being celebrated at the Toronto Film Festival. More.

+Viola Davis says taking control of your destiny as diverse talent in Hollywood isn't enough. You need to walk the walk to keep pace with stiff competition. "The fight is not easy," the How to Get Away With Murder star told a master class at the Toronto Film Festival moderated by Nekesa Mumbi Moody, editorial director of THR. More.

+Oscar winner Regina King recalled having to possibly push the release of One Night in Miami because she was short a couple scenes when the on-going novel coronavirus pandemic shut down production of her directorial debut. "We were waiting to see what the climate of the [COVID] world was going to be, and then Ahmaud Aubrey happened, and then Breonna Taylor happened and then George Floyd happened and people exploded. We were now in this powder keg moment," King told a press conference at the Toronto Film Festival on Friday. The story.

 NFL Ratings Dominate TV But Fall From Last Year

➤NFL season opener falls from last year. The Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs' 34-20 victory over the Houston Texans averaged about 19.3 million viewers on NBC, according to preliminary ratings. That's down about 13 percent from the 22.12 million who watched last year's kickoff.

--The figures above do not include out of home viewing for the game, which will likely add some to the total. Those figures will be available early next week. Rick Porter breaks it down.

+Why the dip? Porter lays out a handful of possibilities here, including the fact that for the first time the NFL had to compete with games from the NBA, NHL, MLB and the U.S. Open. More.

➤Fast & Furious producer Neal Moritz and Universal have settled their dispute over his share of profits from the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff just a week after a California appeals court refused to send the matter to arbitration — and they're planning to work together again in the future now that they've resolved what Moritz describes as "a little family disagreement."

--Moritz in October 2018 sued Universal Studios for breach of contract claiming he began working on the Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham film based on an oral agreement. The story.

 'Nomadland' Review

➤Venice review: David Rooney reviews Nomadland, writing that "[Chloé] Zhao collaborates with a major-name actor for the first time in Nomadland, guiding Frances McDormand to a remarkable performance of melancholy gravitas, so rigorously unmannered she's indistinguishable from the real-life nomads with whom she shares the screen." The review.

+Analysis: "It's hard to imagine a film that could better capture the zeitgeist — often a major consideration for members of the film Academy, conscious or not — than this portrait of mournful and weary resilience, which begs the question: is this really what has happened to America, the land of promise, and the American dream? It is set during the Obama years, but is just as much a comment on the Trump years, so it won't be easy for either side to politicize it," Scott Feinberg writes. The analysis.

➤Toronto review: David Rooney reviews Ammonite, writing that "this is the work of a mature filmmaker in full command of his voice, yielding remarkable performances, chief among them a complex character study of stoicism and desire from Kate Winslet that might be the best work of her career." The review.

+Analysis: "I imagine it will face an uphill climb [with the Academy] not because of its queer subject matter — Call Me By Your Name was a best picture nominee just three years ago and Carol probably came very close to being one five years ago — but because voters rarely embrace tone poems like this one to the same extent as critics, preferring to have their films more spelled out for them," Feinberg writes. The analysis.

+Also at TIFF: John DeFore reviews Penguin Bloom, writing that Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln bring dignity and seriousness to what might've been a painfully sappy tale of rebirth, and their star power offers the Aussie import's main hope of connection with audiences. The review.

➤Actor Jeremy Tardy has announced his exit from Netflix's Dear White People. Tardy, who plays the character of Rashid Bakr on the comedy/drama series from creator Justin Simien, posted a lengthy thread of messages on Twitter on Friday, referencing racial discrimination by producer Lionsgate. More.

In other news...

--Saban Films is closing in on a North American distribution deal for Pixie, a comedy thriller that stars Olivia Cooke and Alec Baldwin.

--Rapper and actor Clifford Harris Jr., better known as T.I., has agreed to pay $75,000 to the U.S. government in order to settle charges related to a fraudulent Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

--Rosamund Pike on why I Care A Lot is "a satire of the American dream."

--Behind the pandemic-era production of HBO's genre-defying Coastal Elites.

--WME has signed U.K. podcast production startup Noiser for representation in all areas, with a focus on building its business into television and streaming video.

--Sarah Jessica Parker on narrating a mental health PSA: "It's wonderfully poetic."

--Thomas Zadra has been promoted at Miramax to executive vp of operations and business affairs.

What else we're reading...

--"The woman taking over TikTok at the toughest time" [NY Times]

--"Disney Plus is slowly rolling out a new party watch feature, GroupWatch" [The Verge]

--"The birth of Jack" [The Ringer]

--"How do you get out the vote in the Instagram age? Ask big-name artists to help" [LA Times]

Today's birthdays: Jennifer Hudson, 39, Linda Gray, 80, Yao Ming, 40, Emmy Rossum, 34, Hans Zimmer, 63.

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SEPTEMBER 12, 2020

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