Today In Entertainment NOVEMBER 02, 2020
What's news: Steve McQueen, John Boyega and Letitia Wright talk Small Axe, Disney's Muppets grapples with its boys' club culture, inside Netflix's surprise reorg, Chelsea Handler on why she returned to stand-up, Johnny Depp loses his defamation suit, Come Play tops a muted box office. Plus: AMC Theatres looks to raise more cash, and Sean Connery tributes. --Alex Weprin On 'Small Axe' ➤On the cover: "We are the pillar of something new": Steve McQueen, John Boyega and Letitia Wright on the emotional journey to spotlight Black British life in Small Axe. The director and actors discuss their film anthology about London's West Indian community and embracing their power amid Hollywood's racial reckoning: "I don't care about trying to mesh in with the system in order to secretly work it." --"For McQueen, Boyega's experience on the Star Wars films and [Boyega's Small Axe character Leroy] Logan's in law enforcement are parallel ones. 'John is this golden boy, who had the situation to be in this amazing franchise,' McQueen says. 'Leroy Logan passes all the tests and is set up to be the poster boy to encourage other Black policemen. But when he's in there, the carpet gets pulled from under his feet, and not because of anything he's done. Not being given the leg up. Not being supported. That's just one aspect of life for Black people, in the movies, the police force, this is the issue. We want to participate, we want to integrate, but there seems to be resistance.'" --"After Boyega's interview decrying his experience on Star Wars was published, the actor says he was contacted by a Disney executive. 'It was a very honest, a very transparent conversation,' Boyega says. 'There was a lot of explaining on their end in terms of the way they saw things. They gave me a chance also to explain what my experience was like. I'd hope that me being so open with my career, at this stage, would help the next man, the guy that wants to be the assistant DOP, the guy that wants to be a producer. I hope that the conversation is not such a taboo or elephant in the room now, because someone just came and said it.'" --"Filming Small Axe represented an arrival back at a familiar place for Wright. 'It felt just beautiful to be on set and the lingo of Trinidadians, Jamaicans, just flowing and you know exactly what they're saying,' Wright says. 'You don't have to go get a little dictionary. You just know it. You feel it. It's in the food. It's in the way we walk. It's in the way we talk to each other. The way we would suck our teeth. Whatever it is, it was us, and we were unapologetically Black on our set and it was beautiful. Everything that you were born with just comes out and everybody on set gets you, feels you.'" The cover story. A Muppets Reckoning? ➤Disney's Muppets problem: Can the franchise reckon with its boys' club culture? In a streaming-centric Hollywood, the beloved ragtag troupe is poised for a rebirth, but first its corporate overlords must rectify a workplace that hasn't been inclusive, Seth Abramovitch writes. --"Recently, Disney has been hiring fewer and fewer noncore puppeteers as a cost-saving measure. Not too long ago, Michelan Sisti, who got his start when Jim Henson chose him to play Michelangelo in 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, made a steady living with the Muppets. 'I was the drumming hands of Animal for the last decade or more,' Sisti says, 'and penguins, chickens, rats, things of that nature.' But well before the COVID-19 pandemic, Sisti's work with the company had dried up. 'They stopped using as many of us additional puppeteers as they did before,' he says. 'That's been the biggest change.' He figures he's hung up the drumsticks for good: 'Where the Muppets are concerned, I'm a retired guy.'" The story. ➤Box office: Focus Features and Amblin's Halloween offering Come Play filled its trick-or-treat bag with $3.2 million in domestic grosses, easily enough to top another hollow weekend at the box office amid the ongoing pandemic. Opening in 2,183 theaters, the horror-thriller came in ahead of expectations and jumped 18 percent from Friday to Saturday (Halloween). --Another new entry overseas was Warner Bros.' The Witches, which was sent straight to HBO Max in the U.S. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Anne Hathaway, the film grossed $4.8 million from its first 17 markets, led by Russia with $1.6 million. Back on the North American chart, Liam Neeson's action pic Honest Thief, from Open Road, came in No. 2 in its third weekend, grossing $1.4 million from 2,360 theaters for a cume of $9.5 million. The numbers. ➤Hollywood races to Nov. 3 with wave of last-minute election events: "2016 taught us to never be complacent again." With the memory of Hillary Clinton's stunning loss still fresh, Hollywood activists and organizers are all-hands on deck, Kirsten Chuba reports: "There's no 'too late' this year." The story. +Political actions of LeBron James, Ice Cube and Diddy in spotlight as Democrats and Republicans vie for Black male vote. Black male celebrities active in presidential politics are hardly a new phenomenon but more attention is being paid to their words during an election cycle where the Black male vote is believed to be more in play than in years past. The story. ➤Johnny Depp has lost his defamation suit. U.K. tabloid The Sun wins a landmark decision after a U.K. judge concludes ex-wife Amber Heard's tale of being physically assaulted was "substantially true." The story. Inside Netflix ➤Behind Netflix's upheaval: Departures, anxiety and another reorg. As co-CEO Ted Sarandos reshapes exec ranks, talent and producers are feeling the ripple effects: “It’s a lot of ‘We’re figuring it out’ and ‘We can’t come back to you on that right now.’” The story. In other business news... +AMC Networks earnings: AMC Networks, the cable networks company that operates AMC, IFC, WE tv, BBC America and SundanceTV, reported lower third-quarter earnings and said U.S. advertising revenue fell 15.5 percent after a 14.6 percent drop in the second quarter. The company's latest financials, disclosed early Monday, showed the continued impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The story. +AMC Theatres is raising more cash: Cinema giant AMC Theatres is looking to raise more fresh cash, in part for debt refinancings and repayments, as it continues to look to fend off the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The cash raise comes ahead of AMC unveiling its third-quarter earnings later on Monday after the close of financial markets. The regulatory filing calculated that the 20 million shares, priced at a maximum offering price of $2.39 each, would raise $47.7 million. The story. +Telecom giant and WarnerMedia owner AT&T has raised $1.95 billion in cash to reduce its debt load after closing the sale of its wireless and wireline operations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to John Malone's Liberty Latin America. More. ➤Chelsea Handler grows up (kinda): The queen of caustic comedy gets self-aware. The comedian opens up to Lacey Rose about her new stand-up special, white privilege and how her psychiatrist helped her discover empathy: "I had no idea what a c*** I'd been." --"I just associated that whole period of my life with Chelsea Lately. It was like I was rebelling against my childhood. So, first of all, I had to get my head out of my ass. And once Trump was elected, it really did change my whole life. I was like, 'Oh, no, no, no. I'm not going to be one of those people who stands by and doesn't say anything.' It was earth-shattering, and it woke me up to how easy things were for me. To come to terms with my entitlement and my privilege is really humbling." The interview. ➤Remembering Sean Connery: Connery's death at the age of 90 reverberated around the world over the weekend. Here are some of the tributes... +A critic's appreciation: David Rooney writes that "His screen magnetism was unlike that of most of the pack of Hollywood he-men. He brought warmth, playful self-irony, lightness of touch and a uniquely relaxed vitality, seeming to derive sheer joy from his masculinity in a way that implied the giving as much as the taking of pleasure. To watch Sean Connery onscreen in his prime, or even what for most actors would be well beyond, was to desire, admire or envy him." The appreciation. +Connery's The Hunt For Red October co-star Alec Baldwin tells THR's Sharareh Drury that "he was the first monolithic movie star I ever worked with in a film." More. +The Rock director Michael Bay writes in a guest column "We all have a few teachers in our careers. The ones that imprint something special on your being. Teachers that you haven’t seen in 20 years, but you still remember their wisdom like yesterday. Sean Connery was one of those for me." The column. +Untouchables screenwriter David Mamet shared two stories about Connery with THR's Seth Abramovitch. More. +Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman pens a guest column, writing that "At a moment when the media and Wall Street prematurely proclaim the end of movies, the very name Sean Connery serves to remind us that greatness and the unmatched cultural impact of the artform will long endure." The column. +All the other tributes, from George Lucas and Connery's fellow James Bonds to Kevin Costner and Michael Caine, can be read here. ➤On Saturday Night Live: Jim Carrey came back to SNL for the last episode before the presidential election, reprising his impression of Joe Biden in the anti-Trump and Halloween-themed cold open... Weekend Update tackled the election as well as COVID-19, touching on Trump’s baseless claim that doctors make money off of COVID... John Mulaney hosted for the fourth time, and the sketches once again included an extended musical number set in a Times Square gift shop... ➤TV reviews: Daniel Fienberg reviews HBO's Industry, writing that "The more seriously you take Industry, the less satisfying it's bound to feel. The more you can detach it from reality and accept that it's essentially a series about twentysomething sexcapades with a 'first job' backdrop — like a kinkier version of Freeform's The Bold Type — in which characters occasionally blather about currency exchanges and shorting stocks, the less distracted you'll be by the fact that you're basically beholding an expensive London-set Petri dish." The review. +Inkoo Kang reviews FX on Hulu's A Teacher, writing that "this A Teacher isn’t a stretched-out “five-hour movie” of her original vision, but a miniseries that feels much more fleshed-out and thought-through, with surprisingly little overlap between the two projects." The review. Obituaries: Charles Gordon, the Oscar-nominated producer behind such films as Field of Dreams, Die Hard, October Sky and Waterworld, has died of cancer in Los Angeles. He was 73... David Rodriguez, a director and producer for series such as TNT's Animal Kingdom, Showtime's The Chi and Starz's Power, has died. He was 50... Nikki McKibbin, a singer best known for placing third during the first season of American Idol, has died. She was 42... Eddie Hassell, an actor who appeared in the Oscar-nominated 2010 film The Kids Are All Right and NBC's 2005-06 sci-fi series Surface, died Sunday morning. He was 30... In other news... --The top film and TV execs at Netflix, the heads of Paramount, Universal and Sony, and Haim Saban and Jeffrey Katzenberg were all bundlers for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, according to a list released over the weekend. --Cinemas — and all non-essential businesses — across England are going to be ordered to close for a second time this year, with the government on Sunday announcing that the country will be going into a month-long nationwide lockdown from Thursday until the start of December. --Taraji P. Henson will host the 2020 American Music Awards, which are set to be handed out Nov. 22 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. What else we're reading... --“'I’ve decided to give myself permission to focus on my joy': How Beyoncé tackled 2020" [Vogue UK] --"Netflix will keep raising prices with confidence as its value proposition remains superior to cable TV" [CNBC] --"ESPN among NFL partners to scale back Super Bowl plans in Tampa" [Sportico] --"It's the end of an era for the media, no matter who wins the election" [NY Times] --"Corona satirist? Trump troller? Modern crooner? Will the real Chris Mann please stand up?" [LA Times] Today's birthdays: David Schwimmer, 54, Cornell Haynes Jr aka Nelly, 46, Pat Buchanan, 82, Naomi Ackie, 28, Michael Buffer, 76.
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