Today In Entertainment NOVEMBER 13, 2020
What's news: Disney beats Wall Street expectations as the pandemic continues to take its toll, Disney+ tops 73 million subs as theme parks struggle, CNN beats President Trump in court, Friends reunion taping early next year for HBO Max, American Horror Story spinoff details, Black Lightning spinoff at The CW. Plus: Gotham Award nominations, and John Mulaney joins Late Night. --Alex Weprin Disney Earnings ➤Disney continues to be battered by the coronavirus pandemic, but streaming is a bright spot. Exactly one year to the date after launching streaming service Disney+ to great fanfare, Disney on Thursday reported a $710 million quarterly operating loss. --Around the rest of the company, the picture is still bleak. Disney took a $6.9 billion hit to its Parks, Experiences and Products business in fiscal year 2020 as many of theme parks sat empty. The impact on its Media Networks, Studio Entertainment and Direct-to-Consumer businesses was not as great. Still, all told, the company said COVID-19 had a $7.4 billion impact on its full-year segment operating income across all its businesses. --Still, Disney managed to pull off a fiscal fourth quarter that was better than expected. Its adjusted loss came in at 20 cents-per-share, smaller than the 71 cents-per-share that Wall Street had forecast, per FactSet. And its quarterly revenue hit $14.7 billion, up from Wall Street's $14.1 billion consensus. The story. +Disney+ domination: Disney+ has attracted 73.7 million subscribers in its first 11 months, far exceeding the company’s expectations. Disney had previously forecast that the family-friendly streaming service would reach between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by 2024. It hit the lower end of that threshold after just nine months. The story. +Theme parks trouble: The company reported that the company took a hit of $6.9 billion in 2020 due to parks around the globe either being shuttered or operating at a greatly reduced capacity due to the pandemic. Domestically, Disney reopened its Florida destination back in July. However, in California, the company has been in a bitter stalemate with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Disneyland, along with other major Southern California theme parks, has pushed to reopen and want an easier path than the one currently in place in order to do so. --Disney CEO Bob Chapek noted Thursday on the earnings call the company has proven it can responsibly operate its parks with strict health and safety measures in place. He then took a shot at Newsom, saying he was "extremely disappointed" with Newsom's "arbitrary standard," for Disneyland to reopen rather than looking at the "science" of their operation. More. +Wall Street's take: Most analysts raised their guidance as Disney leaned into streaming and revealed its big Disney+ numbers. "Even the most bearish Disney analyst has to admit that the ramp of Disney+ from zero to 73.7 million subscribers in less than a year is a magnificent and thesis-changing accomplishment..." More. CNN Bests Trump (In Court) ➤Judge dismisses Donald Trump's libel suit against CNN. The suit fails because Trump hasn't shown actual malice on the part of an author who wrote that Trump's campaign was soliciting Russia’s help in 2020. "Most of the allegations in the complaint regarding actual malice are conclusory," writes the judge, also not accepting that an alleged record of anti-Trump bias on the author's part is sufficient. --For example, with respect to how Noble [the author] once tweeted that Trump "cheats and lies," the judge writes, "The tweet might show Mr. Noble’s ill will towards the President, but it fails to plead actual malice in the constitutional sense—that is, it does not show Mr. Noble made the Statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false." The story. ➤Michel Gondry has come aboard to direct As She Climbed Across the Table, an adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel being made by Amazon Studios and Chernin Entertainment. Joe Penhall, the creator of Netflix’s crime drama Mindhunters, will write the script for the romantic sci-fi tale, with Chernin producing. Raffi Adlan will executive produce. More. +Solstice Studios will release a new cut of Mark Wahlberg’s latest film under the new title Joe Bell on February 19, 2021, timed to this year’s delayed awards season. "The version of the film that was screened at Toronto was very promising, and after working with the filmmakers and Mark Wahlberg on a revised cut, we feel it has now reached its full potential," Mark Gill, president and CEO of Solstice Studios, said in a statement. More. In TV News... ➤The year 2021 could be The One With the Friends Reunion Special. Matthew Perry tweeted Thursday that the HBO Max special, which has been delayed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, is set to film in March. That would likely put the show on track to air in the spring. Sources tell THR that while plans are still being finalized, the goal is to film the reunion special in the first part of the new year. The story. +The CW has ordered a Black Lightning spinoff. The younger-skewing broadcast network has put Painkiller into development. Jordan Calloway, who started with the series in season one and was promoted to regular a year later, will reprise his role as Khalil Payne, aka Painkiller. The pilot for the potential series will air as a backdoor pilot and be the seventh episode in the upcoming fourth season of Black Lightning. The story. +Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story spinoff is starting to take shape. The prolific showrunner has revealed that the previously announced individual episodic anthology series will be comprised of 16 standalone episodes and will feature familiar faces from the FX franchise. Murphy's announcement also confirms that the series will indeed be for FX instead of Netflix, where Murphy is now based under a $300 million overall deal. The story. +Emmy-winning Watchmen writer Cord Jefferson has signed a multi-year overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. The pact marks the former Gawker scribe's first major overall with a studio. The TV writer — whose credits also include such acclaimed shows as Succession, The Good Place and Master of None — will create original programming for the studio under the pact. The new projects, which will span scripted and unscripted, will be made for HBO, HBO Max and other WarnerMedia-affiliated outlets, as well as external buyers. The story. +John Mulaney is teaming up with frequent collaborator Seth Meyers on a somewhat unexpected (old) project. The Emmy-winning stand-up comic is joining the writing staff of NBC's Late Night. More. +Amazon has booked an all-star roster of female comedians to say goodbye to 2020. The streamer has lined up Tiffany Haddish, Sarah Silverman and Natasha Rothwell to be part of its year-end comedy special Yearly Departed. The show, hosted by Phoebe Robinson and executive produced by Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), is set to premiere Dec. 30. More. +Also: Disney+ has set a release date for WandaVision, its first streaming series from Marvel Studios. The show, which stars Avengers actors Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, will premiere on Jan. 15, 2021... BattleBots is back. After production was halted earlier this year due to the pandemic, Discovery Channel has set a Dec. 3 return for the robot combat series... MTV said Thursday that it has scheduled a pre-recorded special in lieu of the MTV Movie & TV Awards as a result of the pandemic... An original cast member returned to Grey's Anatomy... ➤Gotham Award nominations: Kelly Reichardt's First Cow earned a leading four nominations for the 2020 Gotham Independent Film Awards. In the category of best feature, where for the first time all of the nominees are directed by women, Reichardt's film will face off against Kitty Green's The Assistant, Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Chloé Zhao's Nomadland and Natalie Erika James' Relic. The list. ➤PGA Award changes: The 32nd Producers Guild of America Awards will take place Wednesday, March 24, as was announced back in September. But several other key dates on the PGA's awards timeline, including the date of the nominations announcement, have since shifted, the organization announced Thursday. The changes. ➤Streaming ratings: The Haunting of Bly Manor spooked a lot of Netflix users in its second week of release, moving to the top of Nielsen's streaming charts. The second season of the Haunting anthology racked up 1.82 billion minutes of viewing time in the week of Oct. 12. That's up by 54 percent from the 1.18 billion minutes Netflix users spent on the show in the show's opening weekend after its Oct. 9 premiere. The numbers. ➤TV reviews: Inkoo Kang reviews Showtime's The Reagans, writing that "The Reagans is certainly more pointed and zippily edited than if it had run on, say, PBS. But there’s little here that isn’t conventional progressive history, even if some of the minor details retain their power to shock." The review. +Daniel Fienberg reviews Alex Rider, writing that "the decision was made to double down on exposition for this reintroduction to Alex Rider and his undercover world, which leads to long stretches of narrative clunkiness. But it feels like a reasonable eight-episode set-up for a fun series." The review. ➤TV's Top 5 podcast: During this week's podcast, hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg welcome showrunner Tracey Wigfield to preview the revival of the former NBC comedy Saved By The Bell and are joined by The CW CEO Mark Pedowitz for a look at the impact of his long-running genre drama Supernatural. Listen. Revolving door/Casting roundup: Lisa Schwartz, the longtime IFC Films co-president, will step down at the end of the year... CAA has signed business woman Nicole Walters... Harvey Weinstein accuser Sarah Ann Masse and Dear White People actress Quei Tann have joined the cast for A More Perfect Union... Publicity executive Melissa Hufjay is departing Warner Bros. Home Entertainment after nearly 18 years at the studio... In other news... --As President Trump railed against Fox News on Twitter, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch and company shareholders met on the Fox lot in Los Angeles for the company's annual meeting. The names "Biden" and "Trump" never came up. --The Weeknd announced Thursday he will headline the Pepsi Super Bowl LV Halftime Show. --Quincy Jones is set to receive the Icon Award at the 2021 Music Supervisors Guild Awards. What else we're reading... --"Wonder Woman 1984 may go to HBO Max shortly after theater opening" [Bloomberg] --"YouTube is canceling Rewind this year because 2020 has been too much" [The Verge] --"U.S. backs down on TikTok" [WSJ] --"Go ahead, call her a spoiled celeb kid. No one shades Cazzie David better than Cazzie David" [LA Times] Today's birthdays: Whoopi Goldberg, 65, Metta Sandiford-Artest, 41, Chris Noth, 66, Jimmy Kimmel, 53, Gerard Butler, 51.
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