Today In Entertainment OCTOBER 15, 2020
What's news: NBC News grapples with the backlash amid dueling Trump-Biden town halls, the parts of the country where moviegoing remains strongest, Adam McKay's star-studded Netflix comedy, Buck Rogers returns? Showtime revives Dexter, nixes The President Is Missing. Plus: Last Man Standing and L.A.'s Finest canceled, N.Y. Times brings Modern Love in-house. --Alex Weprin The Debate Over The Town Halls ➤It's safe to say that NBC News was not prepared for the public backlash it received after announcing its town hall with President Trump yesterday. At issue was not so much the town hall itself (tonight at 8 ET!), but rather that it was scheduled such that it would be head-to-head against a town hall with Joe Biden on ABC, forcing viewers to decide which to watch (of course, both will be available on-demand). --Multiple former NBC News executives criticized the decision, including former VP of news specials Mark Lukasiewicz, former senior vp and chief digital officer Vivian Schiller, and former Nightly News ep and senior vp Cheryl Gould, who called it "a shameless grab for ratings!" on Facebook. "I don’t think many of us are proud of this moment," a veteran NBC executive tells THR. Even MSNBC's top-rated host Rachel Maddow asked Sen. Kamala Harris last night: "Are you as mad as everybody else is that NBC is doing a town hall with President Trump tomorrow instead of the debate at the same time that Vice President Biden is going to be on ABC?" --To a certain degree NBC was boxed in. As CNN's Brian Stelter notes, NBC was obligated to give Trump roughly equal treatment to what it gave Joe Biden in a town hall last week. Similarly, the campaign schedules for both Trump and Biden are fully booked, but both had blocked off the evening of the 15th for the debate. NBC had expected ABC to schedule Biden's town hall for 9 PM, matching what it gave Trump in a town hall last month, and was caught off guard when it was scheduled for 8 PM. Stelter adds that last night an NBC executive asked if ABC would move their Biden program to 9 PM. No dice. --Meanwhile, Trump is expecting his town hall on NBC to beat Biden's ABC town hall in the ratings, giving him bragging rights, according to The Daily Beast. His reasoning is sound: NBC's town hall will also simulcast on MSNBC and CNBC, giving it an extra ratings jolt. As James Poniewozik notes, Biden's NBC town hall averaged 6.8 million viewers (thanks in no small part to the simulcasts), as compared to 3.8 million for Trump's ABC town hall. --So what comes next? For now, the dueling debates are on, and expect Trump to take a ratings victory lap. Though CBS Radio correspondent Mark Knoller has his own idea: "What if ABC and NBC secretly combined their Town Halls tomorrow? They could have a debate, if the candidates didn’t walk out. Just saying." Today's 'Hit' Movies Are Big In The South ➤Where U.S. moviegoing is strongest in dire times. The South and the Southeast states are overperforming for theater operators amid Los Angeles and New York closures, Pamela McClintock reports. --The War with Grandpa overperformed — some thought it might only take in $2 million — in the South and Southeast, where moviegoing has been consistently stable since cinemas began flipping on the lights in late August for Solstice Studios' Unhinged and Warner Bros.' Tenet. Those cities include Dallas, Houston, Austin, Atlanta and Orlando. Elsewhere across the country, other markets that have seen a strong turnout in the past six weeks include Phoenix, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Denver and Orlando. The story. +The executive committee of the Global Cinema Federation sent a letter Wednesday to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo imploring the lawmaker — who has allowed indoor dining and other pubic-facing activities to resume operation — to let movie theaters reopen wherever possible. --As long New York City cinemas remains off limits, Hollywood studios will continue to delay their remaining 2020 event pics, or send those titles straight to home entertainment or premium VOD, according to the letter, which was signed by federation chairman and Cinepolis CEO Alejandro Ramirez Magaña and other members of the executive committee. The details. ➤Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill and Himesh Patel will star opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s comedy at Netflix that is shaping up to be a major talent tsunami. Cate Blanchett and Rob Morgan are already on board with Lawrence and, just as he did with The Big Short, McKay is using the stylistic format of cameos to populate his feature with bold-faced names. Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Matthew Perry and Tomer Sisley are among those lined up to make appearances. --McKay is directing and wrote the script that centers on two low-level scientists who, upon discovering that a meteor will strike the Earth in six months, go on a media tour to try to warn the world but find an unreceptive and unbelieving populace. The story. +Buck Rogers is going back to the future. After months of negotiations, Legendary has closed a deal for the screen rights to the classic and influential sci-fi character, sources tell THR's Borys Kit. --Sources say that Legendary, the company behind the upcoming sci-fi epic Dune and movies such as Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, is envisioning a big-screen take that would pave the way for a prestige television series as well as an anime series, giving audiences a 360-look at heroics sets in the 25th century. The story. +Two decades after the release of Gladiator, Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix are looking to reteam on another historical drama. Scott is set to direct Phoenix in a Napoleon Bonaparte movie Kitbag, which is in early development. David Scarpa (All the Money in the World) will write the screenplay. More. +A new Sammy Davis Jr. biopic is in the works at MGM and Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad banner. David Matthews will pen the movie based on the book Sammy Davis Jr.: My Father, written by Davis' daughter, Tracey, and Dolores A. Barclay. More. Showtime's Blast From The Past ➤After a sojourn in the Pacific Northwest, Dexter is headed back to Showtime. The premium cable outlet has ordered a 10-episode Dexter limited series that will reunite star Michael C. Hall and original showrunner Clyde Phillips. The show will be a continuation of the original, eight-season series, which ended in 2013 with Hall's Dexter Morgan going on self-imposed exile as a lumberjack and living a solitary life. Production is scheduled to begin early next year for planned fall 2021 premiere. More. +Showtime has opted not to go ahead with its thriller The President Is Missing, based on the novel by James Patterson and former President Bill Clinton. The show is the latest project to be scuttled due to concerns over COVID-19. Sources tell THR that challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic and uncertainty about when circumstances will change led to Showtime's decision. More. ➤Amazon is dipping into the late '90s nostalgia well with a series based on I Know What You Did Last Summer. The tech giant has greenlit a YA horror drama based on the 1997 movie and its source material, a 1973 novel by Lois Duncan. The show will share a premise with the movie, in which a group of teenagers is stalked by a killer a year after a fatal accident on their graduation night, but put a modern spin on the material. The story. +A Grease prequel series is on the move. The show, set at the beloved musical's Rydell High, has landed at ViacomCBS' nascent streaming platform Paramount+ after originally being ordered for WarnerMedia's HBO Max. It's also being retitled and reconceived: The initial title, Grease: Rydell High, has been jettisoned in favor of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, with a focus on how Sandy, Rizzo, Jan, Marty and Frenchy came together and how the reverence, fear and moral panic they sparked changed Rydell forever. The story. In other TV news... +Last Man Standing is getting a last run on Fox. The network says the Tim Allen-led comedy's forthcoming ninth season will be its last. The show, which began filming this week, is set to premiere in January. The story. +Reba McEntire is set to star in a new drama series based on Fried Green Tomatoes in the works at NBC from Norman Lear. The show is a modernization of the beloved novel and film that will explore the lives of descendants from the original work. More. +Spectrum is parting ways with its first original series. The cable company has canceled L.A.'s Finest after two seasons. The series, a spinoff of the Bad Boys film franchise starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba, was the first show picked up by the Spectrum Originals platform in 2018. More. +Amazon is ready to lay 2020 to rest. The streamer has ordered a comedy special called Yearly Departed that will feature a lineup of women comics eulogizing things they lost in the past year, ranging from casual sex to beige Band-Aids. More. ➤BAFTA unveils TV awards rule changes in response to diversity push, coronavirus impact. While nowhere near as comprehensive as for film — where more than 120 amendments to its voting, membership and campaigning processes were unveiled — the changes for the TV awards are still sizeable, and come not simply in response to the review but also the BAFTA television committee's annual assessment of its rules and guidelines across both the TV awards and TV craft awards. The changes. ➤The New York Times is bringing the Modern Love podcast in-house. On Wednesday, after some 200 episodes, Modern Love will relaunch with a new, 10-episode season produced by NYT Audio, the group that built The Daily into a regular chart topper. “We have a team now, whereas we didn’t before,” says Wendy Dorr, executive producer of NYT Audio shows. “We actually have more bandwidth to do these kinds of projects.” More. ➤Disney looks to hold onto Avengers profits in dispute over "stolen" technology. In a long-running lawsuit, the studio argues that its legal adversary can't establish a link between the use of special effects software and why consumers are buying movie tickets. More. ➤Film review: Jordan Mintzer reviews the Gerard Butler action thriller Greenland, writing that "It’s premise may be a bit second- or third-grade-ish — Butler has to save his family from a comet threatening to destroy all of humanity — but the gritty verisimilitude that the star and director Ric Roman Waugh bring to the table goes a long way in making this B-level blockbuster a timely and guilty pleasure." The review. In other news... --Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday penned a letter to Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Chapek and chairman Bob Iger concerning the recent theme park layoffs the company made, which officials largely blamed on California for not allowing Disneyland to reopen. --David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jennifer Aniston and Adam Aron are among the Hollywood heavyweights who have donated to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. --Jim LeBrecht, the co-director of Sundance doc Crip Camp, Politician actor Ryan J. Haddad and artist-filmmaker Tourmaline are among the Disability Futures Fellows, announced by the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon foundations. --Sean "Diddy" Combs has relaunched his "Vote or Die!" campaign for the 2020 presidential election, with a slew of new initiatives (and, yes, new tee shirts) aimed at persuading Americans to do their civic duty. --Netflix has released the first trailer for the Ron Howard-directed addiction drama Hillbilly Elegy. --Inside Tribeca and Chanel’s Through Her Lens kick-off with Emilia Clarke, Angela Bassett. --The Bachelorette kicked off its "most dramatic season ever" in similarly dramatic fashion on Tuesday night, hosting its first-ever drive-in premiere at The Grove in Los Angeles. What else we're reading... --"Rupert Murdoch predicts a landslide win for Biden" [The Daily Beast] --"Amazon expands NFL coverage with playoff game" [WSJ] --"Do the Sopranos love Joe Biden? Just as Michael Imperioli" [Vanity Fair] --The pandemic hit working moms hard. In her new TV role, Danielle Brooks records the toll [LA Times] --"Trump campaign suggests Omarosa Manigault Newman pay for $1 million in ad spending" [NY Times] Today's birthdays: Tito Jackson, 67, Dominic West, 51, Chris de Burgh, 72, Keyshia Cole, 39, Anthony Joshua, 31.
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