Today In Entertainment

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

What's news: The 2021 Grammy nominations, The Weeknd slams "corrupt" Recording Academy after snub, Meryl Streep and Ken Jennings score spoken word noms, ViacomCBS to sell Simon & Schuster for more than $2 billion, One Day At a Time canceled (again), NBC plans College Bowl reboot, Dave Chappelle gets Chappelle's Show pulled from Netflix. Plus: Fox News settles with the family of Seth Rich, and a review of Peacock's Saved by the Bell. --Alex Weprin

 Grammy Nominations

➤Grammy noms: Beyoncé's big summer — with the Juneteenth release of "Black Parade," her work with Megan Thee Stallion on the "Savage" remix and her Black Is King film — vaulted her into the top spot as the most-nominated artist at the 2021 Grammys.

--The superstar musician scored nine nominations, extending her record as the most-nominated female artist in Grammy history with 79 nods over the course of her career. She is currently tied with Paul McCartney as the second most-nominated artist of all time, behind Jay-Z, who received three nominations this year, and Quincy Jones, who each have been nominated 80 times.

--Six-time nominees include Dua Lipa, Roddy Ricch and Taylor Swift, with Justin Bieber, DaBaby, Billie Eilish and Megan Thee Stallion among the artists with four nods each. The full list of nominees.

+Familiar names in the spoken word category. Meryl Streep is among the Hollywood stars nominated for best spoken word album at the 63rd Grammy Awards, revealed by the Recording Academy on Tuesday. The actress received a nod on Friday for her reading of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. Among the other nominees are Ronan Farrow for his non-fiction thriller Catch and Kill, which explored the decades of sexual misconduct by imprisoned media mogul Harvey Weinstein; and Jeopardy veteran Ken Jennings for Alex Trebek - The Answer Is... 

--Rachel Maddow is also nominated for Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry On Earth; while Flea is nominated for Acid for the Children: A Memoir. Nominees in the comedy album category include Tiffany Haddish for Black Mitzvah, Patton Oswalt for I Love Everything, Jerry Seinfeld for 23 Hours to Kill, Bill Burr for Paper Tiger and Jim Gaffigan for The Pale Tourist. More.

+The snubs: Though he was a big winner at the recent American Music Awards and announced to headline the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show, The Weeknd failed to receive a single Grammy nomination this year despite pundits expecting him to be a big nominee. Harry Styles may have been nominated in the best pop vocal album category for his sophomore album Fine Line, but the former One Direction singer was shut out of all four major categories. The snubs list.

+The Weeknd vs. The Academy: After being snubbed, The Weeknd took to social media to criticize the Recording Academy for the omission. "The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency..." he tweeted.

--Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason, jr. responded to The Weeknd's claims in a statement provided to  THR: "We understand that The Weeknd is disappointed at not being nominated. I was surprised and can empathize with what he’s feeling. His music this year was excellent, and his contributions to the music community and broader world are worthy of everyone’s admiration... Unfortunately, every year, there are fewer nominations than the number of deserving artists..." More.

➤Just in: ViacomCBS to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House. The deal with Penguin Random House parent Bertelsmann values the storied book publisher at $2.175 billion. ViacomCBS began a review of its assets earlier this year, putting many "non-core" assets on the market, including Simon & Schuster and CBS' Black Rock skyscraper. Wednesday's deal was "the outcome of a highly competitive auction that attracted interest from buyers around the world," the company said. Indeed, analysts thought the oublisher would fetch between $1.5-$1.7 billion when it was first put on the market. The story.

--Would it pass regulatory scrutiny? Speaking to analysts this month, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomosn said "However cute and clever the structure, if Bertelsmann is their beneficiary, it will be a book behemoth. And this will certainly be a profound antitrust issue for the entire book industry and, no doubt, for authors around the world." Of course, News Corp. is the owner of HarperCollins, and was said to be a bidder itself...

--ViacomCBS says the deal should close in 2021, pending regulatory approval, and adds that "Bertelsmann has agreed to take all steps necessary to obtain regulatory approvals, including a termination fee payable to ViacomCBS if the transaction does not close for regulatory reasons."

 'One Day At a Time' Canceled (Again)

➤One Day at a Time's saga continues. The former Netflix comedy's time at ViacomCBS — including first-run episodes on Pop and repeats on CBS — has come to an end as the conglomerate has declined to order additional episodes of the beloved update on Norman Lear's iconic series. Producers Sony Pictures Television — who successfully found a second home for the series when Netflix canceled it after three seasons — plans to shop the Latinx-themed comedy. Sources tell THR's Lesley Goldberg that the indie studio is having ongoing conversations with multiple outlets as it searches for an unprecedented third home for One Day at a Time. The story.

+NBC is ready to play College Bowl again. The network has handed out a 10-episode, straight-to-series order for a revival of the quiz show hosted by former NFL great Peyton Manning. A premiere date has not yet been determined. The story.

+Dave Chappelle has leveraged his relationship with Netflix to get Chappelle's Show removed from the streamer. In a video from a recent stand-up set released Tuesday, the comedian — who has made several specials for Netflix — said he spoke with executives there, and they agreed to pull the show from the service. Chappelle's Show had been streaming on Netflix in the United States since Nov. 1; it also streams via ViacomCBS properties Comedy Central (where the show originally aired) and CBS All Access, and HBO Max, which recently licensed the show. More.

+The journey of The Expanse is coming to an end. Amazon has renewed the sci-fi series for a sixth and final season. The pickup comes about three weeks before the show's fifth season debut on Dec. 16. Season six will be The Expanse's third as an Amazon original. The first three seasons aired on Syfy, and Amazon revived it after the cable network canceled it in 2018. More.

+Veep cast revisits recount episode to get out the vote in Georgia. The 2016 show, titled "Mother," was trending after Election Day over its prescient plot about a POTUS (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her flip-flopping request for a recount amid a reelection bid. Now the cast will do a table read of the episode to raise funds for the Georgia Senate runoff. More.

+Lamar Odom is ready for his close-up...again. The former NBA star, who played for the Los Angeles Lakers when the team won back-to-back championships, has teamed with producer Jojo Ryder (American Heist, Hawaii Five-O) for a documentary series that will feature the 41-year-old Odom opening up about his life and athletic career and the many ups and downs along the way. More.

 Fox News Settlement

➤Fox News has reached a settlement with the parents of Seth Rich in a dispute over the network's coverage of his death. Rich, then a staffer for the Democratic National Committee, was shot in the back in July 2016. While law enforcement characterized it as a botched robbery, a Fox News story about his death included allegations that he had leaked thousands of DNC emails to WikiLeaks. Joel and Mary Rich in March 2018 sued the network claiming the coverage painted their son as a traitor and gave them PTSD. The story.

+In other legal news: A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed legal claims brought by Norwegian entertainment journalist Kjersti Flaa against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that conducts the annual Golden Globe Awards. More.

➤Terry Press on how the "media bubble" became her support group during the Trump era. In a guest column for THR, the veteran marketing executive and former CBS Films chief opens up about her devotion to the news "peeps" who helped "this scarred citizen" make sense of chaos and had her scrambling for a Slingbox at international film festivals and tracking their personal lives: "Is it time to say goodbye?" The column.

+Netflix chief Reed Hastings' wife, Patricia Quillin, was a quiet force in the 2020 election in California. The philanthropist spent millions on races on the November ballot but eschews the spotlight, Peter Kiefer reports: "She has no publicity team." The story.

In other awards news...

+IDA Awards: Netflix's Crip Camp, IFC's MLK/FBI, Amazon's Time and Sony Classics' The Truffle Hunters are among the most frequently mentioned titles on the nominations list for the 36th IDA Documentary Awards, the International Documentary Association announced on Tuesday. Winners will be announced during a virtual awards ceremony on Saturday, Jan. 16. More.

+Cinema Eye Honors: HBO Documentary Films, powered by Welcome to Chechnya and I'll Be Gone in the Dark, is the most represented content provider in this year's Cinema Eye Honors' broadcast nominations, the documentary organization has announced. Cinema Eye's higher-profile feature film nominations will be announced later in 2020 or early in 2021, with the 14th annual Cinema Eye Honors ceremony set for March 9, 2021. More.

+DGA Awards: The 73rd DGA Awards has long been scheduled for Saturday, April 10, 2021. But the key dates leading up to it have just been announced by the Directors Guild of America. More.

➤TV review: Inkoo Kang reviews Peacock's reboot of Saved by the Bell, writing that it "is funnier than the original show ever was, but it’s also a far more earnest and socially conscious (some will definitely say “woke”) affair, tackling educational inequality, bias against students of color and the ways in which willful blindness toward racial and economic privilege have pernicious downstream effects on some of the most vulnerable members of society. It’s what the old Saved by the Bell never was: ambitious." The review.

Obituaries: Jery Hewitt, who served as the stunt coordinator on Dick Wolf-produced shows for more than 30 years and on 14 Coen brothers films from Raising Arizona to Inside Llewyn Davis, has died. He was 71... 

--Duke Struck, a 14-time Emmy winner and CBS Sports veteran who directed installments of The Oprah Winfrey Show, The NFL Today, Good Morning America and The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, has died. He was 82...

In other news...

--Three weeks into Tayshia Adams' historic starring turn, ABC's The Bachelorette devoted a significant amount of air time to racial issues.

--YouTube has temporarily suspended and demonetized the channel for pro-Trump outlet One America News Network. OANN will be barred from publishing videos and livestreams for one week, and will need to reapply to the YouTube Partner Program to regain its monetization status.

--Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has revealed that she had a miscarriage in July, giving a personal account of the traumatic experience in hope of helping others.

--Comcast-owned European pay-TV giant Sky has signed a major deal with Entertainment One spanning both the studio's existing library of titles and new releases in development.

--Veteran Canadian film director Xavier Dolan has joined the golden age of TV. After his eighth feature film, Matthias & Maxime, Dolan is partnering with Canal+, Quebecor Content and Studiocanal for his first drama, the five-episode The Night Logan Wakes Up series.

--French cinemas will be able to reopen Dec. 15, after more than a month of COVID-19 lockdown, although strict curfew measures will remain in place, meaning theaters will have to stay closed between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.

--APA has promoted Kyle Loftus to the newly created position of head of scripted content development as the full service agency bolsters its executive committee and promotes five staffers to become agents.

What else we're reading...

--"What the hell is happening with masks on network TV? [Vulture]

--"At James Bond studio MGM, questions mount about the company's direction" [LA Times]

--"Republicans are flooding the Georgia runoffs with millions of dollars in digital dark ads" [Protocol]

--"Why Newsmax supports Trump's false voter-fraud claims" [The New Yorker]

Today's birthdays: Christina Applegate, 49, Bob Ehrlich, 63, Amy Grant, 60, Kevin Chamberlin, 57, Bruno Tonioli, 65. 

Editor's note: Today In Entertainment will be taking a break for the Thanksgiving weekend. We'll be back in your inbox Monday morning.

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NOVEMBER 25, 2020

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