Today In Entertainment

OCTOBER 07, 2020

What's news: Hollywood goes to the Prom, U.S. movie theaters brace for a worst-case scenario for 2020, Jurassic World: Dominion stomps to 2022, Pinewood Studios in Atlanta rebrands and expands, Netflix indicted in Texas over Cuties, an HBO Max/Cartoon Network partnership, media and entertainment SPACs flourish. Plus: Remembering Eddie Van Halen, and Steve McQueen talks Small Axe. --Alex Weprin

 Hollywood Goes to the 'Prom'

On the cover: Prom stars Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington and Nicole Kidman talk activism, Black conservatives and awkward dances. Director Ryan Murphy and a supercast that also includes James Corden and Keegan-Michael Key reveal why a musical about narcissistic celebrities is ultimately about withholding judgment: "If only I would have had this feeling of acceptance and belonging."

-- "In my career when I was starting off, if you wanted to do a gay movie or a gay TV show they would basically give you pennies," Murphy says. "You had to beg, borrow and steal to make content that had LGBTQ characters. On The Prom, I never once had a conversation about, 'Mmm, it’s about a gay girl going to the prom. Let’s make it for X.' It was treated like, 'Oh, this is a big movie.' "

--"The last scene that we shot [before the shutdown] was Nicole [Kidman, who plays one of the visiting actors] on the bed with Jo Ellen. And in the middle of shooting that scene, there was a strange silence on the set, and then everybody was running to their phones," Murphy says. "I was like, 'What’s happening?' And somebody said, 'Tom Hanks just announced that he has COVID.' We were like, 'OK, that’s bad.' We were supposed to shoot Thursday, Friday and be done. They shut us down that day. We finished Nicole’s number and that was it." The cover story.

+Related: The Tony-nominated Broadway star Ariana DeBose has a breakout role in Ryan Murphy's all-star Netflix musical and will follow it up next year in Steven Spielberg's update of the classic film West Side Story in the role that won Rita Moreno her Oscar: "Steven really allowed my own life experience to imbue Anita." More.

➤U.S. theaters stare down worst-case scenario for 2020. With New York and Los Angeles cinemas still shuttered, "the business feels dead" as studios pull major tentpoles and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo comes under fire for keeping N.Y.C. cinemas closed, Pamela McClintock reports.

--“We’ve had a request to put all of our CEOs on a conference call. He wouldn’t schedule it. And there are very senior Hollywood executives who have placed calls to him and ended up speaking with his staff, not him. Nothing. Crickets,” says John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “He’s put us in a category with big music concerts. That’s absurd.” The story.

 'Jurassic World' Latest Film To Be Pushed

➤Jurassic World: Dominion is stomping into 2022. Universal and Amblin Entertainment announced Tuesday that the tentpole is vacating its June 11, 2021, release date following production delays and continued uncertainty amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 

--Dominion, the latest installment in the revived dino-franchise, will instead open on the big screen on June 10, 2022. The event pic was among numerous movies whose production scheduled was impacted by the pandemic. Currently, it is about three weeks from wrapping principal photography in the U.K. The story.

In other film news...

+Pinewood Atlanta Studios is reinventing itself. The Georgia-based production facility, long home to blockbuster films like the Avengers movies, is ditching the Pinewood name and rebranding as Trilith. As part of the change, the production hub is also expanding into a new 935-acre master development that includes not only the studio but a newly built 235-acre, European-inspired town, complete with its own houses, restaurants and schools. The story.

+Steve McQueen on tackling 5 films at once for his series Small Axe. Even though the anthology — which opens the BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday — sheds light on unheralded Black British history, the helmer says he's here to entertain: "I’m not interested in history lessons; I’ll leave that to [textbooks]." The interview.

+Elisabeth Moss, Michael Seitzman and Jason Blum have teamed up to adapt She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality, a memoir by former Congresswoman Katie Hill. Moss is attached to portray the politician while Seitzman will write the screenplay for the adaptation, which hails from Blumhouse Television and is intended to be a streaming movie. More.

+Netflix has been indicted by a Tyler County, Texas grand jury in connection with its Cuties film. According to the indictment cited by a number of local news stations, Netflix is accused of promoting "visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time the visual material was created, which appeals to the prurient interest in sex and has no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value..." The story.

+Free Guy's new trailer scored 55 million views in 24 hours. In terms of comps, the trailer surpassed Ready Player One (44.5 million) and Marvel's family-friendly Ant-Man and the Wasp (50 million), according to those with access to the stats. More.

 An HBO Max/Cartoon Network Team Up

➤HBO Max and Cartoon Network are getting in gear together. In a sign of WarnerMedia's increasing commitment to shared resources, HBO Max and Cartoon Network have picked up animated preschool show Batwheels to series. The company's streamer and linear cable network will share the show, though it's unclear if it will debut concurrently or in a windowing pattern. Cartoon Network will retain global rights to the series. The story.

In other TV news...

+Apple has ordered a docuseries that will focus on four of the most famous women ever to walk a runway. Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington are the subjects of The Supermodels, a four-part series from Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Documentaries and Oscar winner Barbara Kopple. More.

+Tamron Hall's daytime talk show has been renewed for a third season following a strong start to its second year in syndication. The pickup from ABC-owned stations comes less than a month after Tamron Hall's second season premiered. The show grew its audience in its premiere week, improving by 9 percent in total viewers over the same time a year ago to 1.22 million. More.

+Ratings: Saturday Night Live drew its biggest premiere audience in four years, benefiting from the show's usual election-year boosts. Other weekend shows, including the NBA Finals on ABC and Sunday Night Football on NBC, didn't fare as well, nor did the delayed season 10 finale of The Walking Dead on AMC. The numbers.

+Also: Godzilla continues his rampage on Netflix. The streaming service has ordered a new anime series centering on the classic Japanese monster, with Godzilla Singular Point planned for 2021. More.

➤"Blank Check" bonanza: SPACs hit media and entertainment market. Investors are pouring money into SPACs targeting the media, entertainment and gaming spaces, but are there enough acquisition targets to go around? This year alone, SPACs have raised more than $48 billion, according to industry tracker SPAC Insider. That is more cash raised than the previous 5 years combined, and many of the new efforts are focusing on companies in the entertainment, sports and gaming sectors. The story.

➤Hollywood tentpoles lacking diversity face steep box office losses, study says. UCLA's latest diversity report predicts a $159 million movie lacking authenticity from diverse voices will lose $32.2 million in its first weekend, and potentially $130 million in overall box office. The story.

➤Disney stalemate with California keeps up as one union details layoff impact. Workers United Local 50, which represents food and drink castmembers at Disneyland, posted a notice that 2,858 of its members were to be laid off, which included 436 full-time employees."As far as blame, I would imagine that government is not the sole reason for the action of layoffs but wouldn’t deny that not getting guidance did not play a roll," Workers United Local 50 president Christopher Duarte told THRabout the layoffs. The story.

Obituaries: Eddie Van Halen, the legendary rock guitarist and band leader, has died of cancer at age 65... Edward S. Feldman, the studio publicist turned producer who guided such films as the best picture nominee Witness, The Truman Show and The Hitcher, died Friday in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 91...

+Van Halen's has shaken up Hollywood and the music industry, with numerous stars quickly taking to social media to pay tribute to the legendary guitarist. The tributes.

Revolving door: The CW's head of casting, Lori Openden, is retiring after a career that spans more than 40 years... Paula Pell has been tapped to co-star in Peacock's Girls5eva... BritBox, the U.K. content-focused streaming service launched by BBC Studios and ITV, is set to lose its CEO and president for the U.S. and Canada, with Soumya Sriraman deciding to step down at the end of October...

➤TV review: Daniel Fienberg reviews Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor, writing that creator Mike Flanagan "has taken one of the most elegantly simple and enigmatic of novellas and found a way to over-explain everything from plot mechanics to theme, producing a nine-episode season that's sensuous, spooky and evasive one moment and cumbersomely obvious the next." The review.

In other news...

--The Second City, the Chicago-based improv and sketch comedy brand that spawned Hollywood talent like Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Adam McKay, John Belushi, Bill Murray and Keegan-Michael Key, has put itself up for sale.

--Temple Hill Entertainment, the Twilight movie franchise producer founded by Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey, has signed a first look TV deal with Lionsgate.

--Keith Olbermann is leaving ESPN — again — but the parting is amicable. The veteran sports- and newscaster is departing the Disney-owned network to host a political show on YouTube. 

--Francesco, a new documentary feature about and featuring unprecedented access to Pope Francis, is set to have its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival on Oct. 21 and its North American premiere at the Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 25. 

--The Philadelphia Film Festival has unveiled its 2020 film lineup for an Oct. 23 to Nov. 2 event set to stream movies and feature nightly drive-in screenings amid the coronavirus pandemic.

What else we're reading...

--"SNL had a live audience. It went home with paychecks" [NY Times]

--"Why are pandemic sports ratings so terrible?" [New York Magazine]

--"AT&T pushes ahead with auction of DirecTV despite lowball bids" [NY Post]

--"Howard Stern nears deal with SiriusXM for around $120 million a year" [Bloomberg]

--"'This gravy train is coming to an end': The news media begins to contemplate a post-Trump White House" [Vanity Fair]

Today's birthdays: Desmond Tutu, 89, Simon Cowell, 61, Yo-Yo Ma, 65, Thom Yorke, 52.

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OCTOBER 07, 2020

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