Today In Entertainment

NOVEMBER 06, 2020

What's news: The 2020 theatrical calendar is nearly empty as 2 more films flee, ViacomCBS beats earnings expectations and bumps streaming forecast, layoffs at Lionsgate and Disney, Louise Linton's Me You Madness has landed at STXfilms and Highland Film Group, the head writer for The Tonight Show quits over Trump. Plus: TV news and the entertainment world call out President Trump's "unhinged" White House address, and a review of the video game Spider Man: Miles Morales. --Alex Weprin

 Where Things Stand

Former Vice President Joe Biden is on the cusp of the presidency, having taken the lead in Pennsylvania, and with leads in Arizona and Georgia. The big news yesterday however was President Trump's press statement from the White House, where he leveled baseless accusations of massive voter fraud.

➤Hollywood figures quickly protested President Trump's speech throwing American election integrity into doubt on Thursday, saying it was "come-to-life toilet spew" and "stunning, unhinged, breathtaking" as the presidential race was still too close to call.

--In the speech on Thursday afternoon from the White House, Trump repeated false claims that there were "illegal" votes in the 2020 presidential contest and that he had won the election. He said that Republicans were pulling ahead "despite historic election interference from big media, big money, big tech" and that pollsters "got it knowingly wrong." He added that pollsters' erroneous work was "suppression." The story.

+In late night: Visibly upset over Trump's speech, Stephen Colbert said at the top of his show that he was "dressed for a funeral" because Trump "tried really hard to kill something" in his speech. Colbert explained that for over 15 minutes, Trump stated "nonsensical stuff" and "lied" to the American people. "If you did not know that Joe Biden was getting close to 270, Donald Trump just provided all the proof you will ever need," Colbert said. More.

➤On the cable and network newscasts: MSNBC cut way quickly, with Brian Williams fact-checking the president. The network newscasts also cut away before his speech was over. Most coverage featured anchors and analysts noting that the president's claims were unsubstantiated. The one exception: Primetime on Fox News, where the hosts and high-profile Republicans backed up the president's claims of fraud. Sean Hannity even took aim at Fox's decision desk, saying "Any call of Arizona was premature, based on everybody I have talked to that knows the numbers out there."

--The coverage sparked rare pushback from other reporters and commentators, including CNN's Jake Tapper, who said Friday "The Murdochs and the people at Fox have an obligation to put their country above their profits. It is very important that people make it very clear -- that there is no credible evidence of widespread fraud."

--In a memo Friday, as reported by CNN's Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter, Fox News is instructing talent to not call Biden "President-elect" after its decision desk calls the race, and to emphasize the uncertainty around legal action.

➤Election ratings, continued: Cable news channels had another big night on Wednesday as viewers tuned in for updates on the still undecided presidential race. CNN topped primetime across all of television, moving ahead of usual cable leader Fox News. MSNBC was also way above average.

--CNN averaged 7.38 million viewers in primetime with its election coverage, beating all other cable and broadcast networks. The channel also led the key news demographic of adults 25-54 (2.7 rating, equivalent to about 3.26 million viewers in that age range) and adults 18-49 (2.2 rating/2.87 million viewers). CNN also had the second largest total-day audience in its history with 4.53 million viewers, trailing only Election Day in 2016. More.

➤John Leguizamo on Latino vote: "Trump got back what he put in." The actor and activist says outreach and fear-mongering by Republicans in combination with "insidious self-hate" explain Democratic weakness with voting block: "You've got to court us"

--"Trump did court us and did go down there and microtarget Latino people in really clever and devious ways. They do it via WhatsApp in Arizona and in Florida — targeting Latino people and telling them things that would scare them. They even attacked radio stations, Spanish radio stations in Florida, to scare Colombians." The interview.

➤Donald Trump will go back to being a regular Twitter user if he leaves office in January. The president's Twitter account has been treated differently for the last four years. If he violates one of Twitter's policies, the social network doesn't remove his tweet like it would for most users. Instead, it affixes a warning to the post and limits its algorithmic promotion but leaves it up. 

--If Trump loses the presidential election against former Vice President Joe Biden, he would stop being an acting government official on Jan. 20. As a result, his Twitter account — he largely tweets from personal account @realDonaldTrump where he has more than 88 million followers — would no longer receive special treatment. The story.

+Straight out of Veep: With the 2020 presidential election potentially hinging on the state of Nevada, many Veep viewers were quick to note the darkly comedic similarities between the fate of democracy and a classic plotline involving Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer, who had a reputation for being the ultimate narcissist and worst president of the show's version of the United States. More.

 Two More Films Flee The 2020 Calendar

➤The 2020 theatrical calendar gets even thinner. The 2020 calendar lost two more high-profile titles on Thursday as Shawn Levy's action-comedy Free Guy and Kenneth Branagh's sequel Death on the Nile delayed their releases amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Both films are from 20th Century, which is owned by Disney. Starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Levy, Free Guy was set to hit theaters on Dec. 11. The sci-fi action-comedy is now unset. Death on the Nile was most recently set to open on Dec. 18. The star-studded sequel to Murder on the Orient Express does not yet have a new date. The story.

+So what's left? The big one remains Wonder Woman 1984, which is set for Christmas, and there is also Universal's Freaky and Croods: The New Age, set for later this month.

➤Lionsgate layoffs: Lionsgate is laying off more employees within its film group amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. "While our business remains fundamentally strong, we are not immune to the ongoing COVID crisis that is impacting us like so many other studios," Motion Picture Group CEO Joe Drake said in an internal email obtained by THR's Etan Vlessing.

--The cuts are understood to be around 15 percent of an overall film group workforce of around 450 employees. Besides the current coronavirus pandemic accelerating the need for a streamlining of the film group, the shift to streaming viewership has also brought about the job losses. The story.

+Disney too: Thursday morning ESPN announced plans to reduce its workforce by 500 positions. Yesteday afternoon, Disney's studio division, including Searchlight Pictures, followed suit, cutting dozens of roles. Six individuals at the specialty studio label were let go, while a number of staffers across Disney divisions that include the studio’s marketing team and theatrical group, which handles live staged performances like The Lion King, were affected. More.

➤ViacomCBS beats expectations. ViacomCBS on Friday reported mostly better-than-expected third-quarter financials, including a percent a 6 percent drop in advertising revenue, a clear improvement over the 27 percent decline in the second quarter.

--In the company's TV Entertainment arm, which includes the CBS network, advertising revenue declined 1 percent after a second-quarter decrease of 27 percent. Cable networks unit ad revenue fell 11 percent after a 26 percent decline in the second quarter. The company also now has 17.9 million subscribers for its CBS All Access and Showtime streaming services. The story.

+ViacomCBS on Friday boosted its domestic paid streaming subscriber forecast for the year. CEO Bob Bakish on the company's third-quarter earnings conference call touted streaming momentum, before new CFO Navreen Chopra said management now expects to end 2020 with "at least" 19 million U.S. paid streaming subscribers. More.

In other earnings news...

+Lionsgate on Thursday swung to a second-quarter loss on lower overall revenues and continuing growth at Starz. The premium cable and streaming channel added a record 1.8 million streaming subscribers in the U.S. during the latest quarter to get to 9.2 million streaming customers domestically, while it added 2.3 million streaming customers in international markets to get to 13.7 million subscribers overall. More.

+Dish Network on Friday said it added 116,000 net pay TV subscribers in the third quarter, compared with a gain of 148,000 in the year-ago period and a loss of 96,000 in the second quarter of 2020. The latest quarter's figure includes subscribers to the traditional Dish pay TV service, as well as the Sling TV streaming service. More.

+Roku grew its active account base to 46 million as it continued to see a streaming boom during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The company, which makes streaming devices and smart TVs, has added 13.7 million active accounts in the last year. That growth helped drive a 54 percent year-over-year increase in streaming on its devices, which hit 14.8 billion hours during the third quarter. More.

+NBA 2K and other flagship titles from Rockstar Games and 2k Games fueled revenue for parent company Take-Two Interactive during its most recent quarter. Net revenue reached $841.4 million for the three months ending Sept. 30, compared to $857.8 million during the same period last year. Though that represented a year-over-year decline, the current quarter topped the $830 million in revenue that Wall Street was anticipating. More.

 News From the (Virtual) American Film Market

➤Louise Linton's new film Me You Madness has landed a home at STXfilms and Highland Film Group. The campy comedy-thriller marks the feature directorial debut of Linton, an actress and the wife of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. STX has acquired U.S. rights to Me You Madness, while Highland will introduce the title to foreign buyers at next week's virtual American Film Market. The story.

+The award-winning team behind 2013's Philomena — Stephen Frears, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope — are reuniting for another comedy-drama based on a true story, The Lost King, which will make its debut at the virtual American Film Market. Like Philomena, which landed four Oscar nominations, Frears will direct from a script co-written by Coogan and Pope, with Coogan set to co-star. Pathe International is launching the project at the virtual American Film Market. More.

+One of Hollywood's most famous leading men is getting the feature documentary treatment. Rock Hudson: Accidental Activist comes from Stephen Kijak and producers George Chignell and Will Clarke, with Altitude set to produce and handle international sales, introducing the project to buyers at the virtual American Film Market next week. More.

➤The head writer of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is leaving the NBC late night series. Rebecca Drysdale wrote in a Facebook post (as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times) that the decision to leave was mutual — but it's also motivated in part by her desire not to write more comedy bits about President Trump.

--In her Facebook post, Drysdale wrote the desire to get out of the Trump comedy business also helped lead to her departure. At Tonight and on other jobs she's had in recent years, "the project of project of making fun of Trump, or doing material about Trump, has led to divided creative teams, anxiety, tears and pain. I can't decide the outcome of this election, but I can make the choice for myself, to vote him out of my creative life." The story.

➤Streaming ratings: The anecdotal, social media evidence of "everyone" watching Emily in Paris on Netflix shortly after its early October premiere now has some statistical backup. The Darren Star comedy, starring Lily Collins as the title character, ranks sixth in Nielsen's top 10 streaming shows for the week of Oct. 5. It's one of three Netflix originals to make the rankings for the first time, along with The Haunting of Bly Manor (second) and the Adam Sandler movie Hubie Halloween (third). The numbers.

➤Video game review: Richard Newby reviews Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, writing that "Players really find themselves immersed in the perspective of this new Spider-Man when they’re in Miles’ new home of Harlem, where his mother Rio is running for City Council. There’s a sense of community between Miles and his neighbors, which the game highlights through a celebration of street art, Black and Latinx culture, music and history." The review.

➤TV review: Inkoo Kang reviews HBO Max's Two Weeks to Live, writing "Slight and stubbornly unfunny, the six-episode series is a diverting-enough showcase for its two female leads. But it also feels lumpy and ungainly, somehow underwritten and overstuffed at the same time." The review.

➤TV's Top 5 podcast: In this week's podcast, hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg discuss the election and why some shows are avoiding writing about the pandemic. They also speak with Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the longtime friends and first-time showrunners behind HBO's financial drama Industry. Listen.

➤Obituary: Cheryl Tiano, an agent for the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency who represented composers for film, television and video games, died Monday in Los Angeles of complications from heart surgery, a publicist announced. She was 59.

Casting roundup: Jason Priestley is attached to star in Fear The Worst, an adaptation of Linwood Barclay's thriller novel of the same name... William Jackson Harper is set as the lead for season two of HBO Max's anthology Love Life. The Good Place alum will star as a man coming out of a long relationship in the series...

In other news...

--A positive COVID-19 test has shut down production on Olivia Wilde's Don't Worry Darling, which stars Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and Harry Styles.

--NBC Today co-host Al Roker announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday morning.

--As NASA prepares to bring its Artemis Moon exploration program to a worldwide audience, it's seeking collaborators from the entertainment industry. The agency released an Announcement for Proposals for potential partnerships from studios, broadcasters and other organizations that include potential advanced technologies such as cameras to augment NASA imagery.

--In an unprecedented twist, Bachelorette star Clare Crawley wrapped her journey early by getting engaged to her frontrunner, Dale Moss, and exited the show. In her absence, former contestant Tayshia Adams made her debut as the show's new Bachelorette, becoming only the second-ever Black lead of the female franchise.

--Days before its contact with video game producers was set to expire, SAG-AFTRA leadership said it reached a deal with nine employers to extend coverage for voiceover and performance capture talent.

--U.S. and Brazilian law enforcement agencies have executed an anti-piracy effort dubbed "Operation 404."

--After being the first studio tentpole to venture back into theaters amid the continued pandemic shutdown, Christopher Nolan's Tenet is heading to home entertainment.

What else we're reading...

--"John King, CNN’s master of election maps, has slept just 6.5 hours since Tuesday" [LA Times]

--"Major brands mute Twitter, Facebook advertising amid election chaos" [Ad Age]

--"Facebook, alarmed by discord over vote count, is said to be taking action" [NY Times]

--"The reign of Donald Trump's fifth (and possible final) spox" [Vanity Fair]

Today's birthdays: Sally Field, 74, Thandie Newton, 48, Maria Shriver, 65, Taryn Manning, 42, Emma Stone, 32.

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NOVEMBER 06, 2020

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