Today In Entertainment

NOVEMBER 09, 2020

What's news: Entertainment stocks soar on vaccine news, the (virtual) American Film Market kicks off, Hollywood reacts to Joe Biden's win, how SNL covered the news, CNN plans a post-Trump "Trust" brand campaign, Let Him Go leads the box office. Plus: Kevin Mayer's new job, and tributes to Alex Trebek. --Alex Weprin

 Remembering Alex Trebek

➤Alex Trebek dead at 80. Trebek died early Sunday morning at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by family and friends. On March 6, 2019, the game show icon revealed that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, but he vowed to beat it "because under the terms of my contract, I have to host Jeopardy! for three more years." In November 2018, he had extended his deal through 2022.

--Presiding over a glossy rebooted version of Jeopardy! since fall 1984, the good-natured Trebek collected seven Daytime Emmys from 34 nominations and a Peabody Award for his work on the show. He hosted in the vicinity of a Guinness World Record 8,000 episodes — all from the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City since 1994 — taping multiple installments two days a week for about 45 weeks a year.

--Episodes hosted by Trebek will air through Dec. 25; his last day in the studio was Oct. 29, according to Sony Pictures Entertainment. The show "is not announcing plans for a new host at this time," the company said. The obituary.

+Bob Iger, Steve Harvey and more stars remember Alex Trebek: "An immense talent and class act." Steve LoCascio, the president of CBS Television Distribution, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Jeopardy! legends Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer were among those remembering the TV legend. The tributes.

+A critic's appreciation: Daniel Fienberg writes that "I don't know how many Jeopardy! fans are aware or give consideration to how bordering on impossible it is to be a likable smarty-pants for four decades, especially one as dapper and immaculately coiffed as Trebek. When your job is telling some of the cleverest people in the world that they're wrong, it would be easy to come across as supercilious or aloof, especially looking down the barrel of one of history's great mustaches."

--"With the rare exception of shows in which that's precisely the gimmick — something like Win Ben Stein's Money comes to mind as a successful example — nobody wants to be on a game show hosted by a snob, or to relax on the couch enjoying a post-work beverage watching somebody who's sure they're better than us." The column.

A virtual edition of the American Film Market is kicking off today, and while the world will not be descending on Los Angeles this year, the marketplace still expects to be a hotspot for dealmaking...

➤Zombies, sex and thrills: AFM returns to its roots amid pandemic. For the producers, sales agents and indie distributors scheduling their Zoom meetings ahead of this year's all-virtual AFM, the fact that the moneymakers right now are YA sex dramas, Gerard Butler and Liam Neeson thrillers, and Asian zombie flicks should give them hope. AFM, after all, was initially set up to finance movies for the so-called ancillary markets — basically home video and international. Amid the pandemic, those markets are just about the only game in town, Scott Roxborough reports.

--"It used to be the focus was on theatrical. Buyers were taking more aggressive bets on strong directors, on auteurs, with the idea that if it worked in theaters, the ancillaries would come," says Brian O'Shea of veteran sales outfit The Exchange, which is introducing Bruce Willis' action film Apex to AFM buyers. "Now it's almost the opposite — buyers are looking for the safety of a movie with a strong ancillary. If you have a Liam Neeson or Jason Statham or Gerard Butler project, you know you'll get very aggressive bids." The story.

+AFM roundup: Adrien Brody and Vera Farmiga are set to headline Ant Timpson's mystery thriller The Salamander Lives Twice, heading to the virtual American Film Market with XYZ Films... Global Screen, the international sales and distribution arm of Germany's Telepool, has consolidated its television and film businesses under one roof and named Julia Weber to run things... Scandinavian sales outfit TrustNordisk has racked up its first deals, closing multiple territories for Betrayed, an upcoming World War II period drama from Norwegian filmmaker Eirik Svensson...

+The schedule: AFM has a full sate of streaming panels, conversations and presentations, mirroring the programming that would have taken place in person. You can see the schedule here.

➤Georg Szalai writes that entertaiment stocks are soaring on positive vaccine news: Movie theater, theme parks and live event stocks rose in early Monday trading along with the broader market after news that a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech showed 90 percent efficacy in a trial. The broad-based S&P 500 stock index was up 3.7 percent shortly after Monday’s market open.

--Among exhibitor stocks, AMC Theatres shares rose 48 percent, while Cinemark even gained 67 percent. Disney, which has a big theme parks business, saw its stock climb 15.1 percent, Comcast, whose NBCUniversal also operates parks, was up 7.5 percent after hitting a 52-week high, and pure-play theme parks firm Six Flags recorded a 22.9 percent stock boost. The stock of live events giant Live Nation was also up 23.1 percent. 

--Meanwhile, shares of streaming giant Netflix, which had benefitted from the coronavirus stay-at-home orders, lost 8.2 percent in early trading.

 Hollywood Rejoices To Biden Projection

On Saturday morning, the network calls began falling like dominoes, as a fresh batch of votes from Pennsylvania sealed the deal for former Vice President Biden, giving him enough electoral votes to be projected as President-elect. At the same time, Calfornia Senator Kamala Harris became Vice President-elect, which would make her the first woman to hold the office. Harris' ascendancy also gives Gov. Gavin Newsom an opening to name a replacement senator...

➤How it was called: After an agonizing election night, followed by three full days of continued vote counting, everything played out over the course of a mere 20 minutes. CNN was first to make the projection at 11:24 AM ET, with ABC, CBS and NBC following within two minutes. The Associated Press, which used a different set of data it shared with Fox News, made the call at 11:28, and Fox called the race at 11:40. More.

+In a primetime address Saturday night, Biden told supporters in Wilmington, Delaware "I am humbled by the trust and confidence you have placed in me." Biden said he would "make America respected around the world again." Biden said he understood that Trump supporters were disappointed, but "this is the time to heal." Biden said the novel coronavirus pandemic would be his No. 1 focus as soon as he entered office. More.

+The industry reacts: The Motion Picture Association, Hollywood's top lobbying org, congratulated Biden and Harris, as did National Association of Broadcasters CEO (and former Republican senator) Gordon Smith... Biden bundlers Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman and Gorning|Lin|Spahn partner Andy Spahn also spoke to THR about the win...

+Another Biden bundler, Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos, spoke to Kim Masters about the win. "Should the Democrats still fall short in the Senate, if there’s anyone who’s proven that he could get something done with Mitch McConnell, it’s Joe. The thing I think is in their favor, and comes out of the imperial presidency that has been created is the expansion of the reach of the executive order. Let’s see what Joe can do with his Sharpie." More.

+Celebrities react: Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Ava DuVernay, John Legend and Lady Gaga were among those that weighed in on social media after the call was made... Reese Witherspoon, Elizabeth Banks, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Keke Palmer and Samantha Bee were among the stars who celebrated the election of Harris as Vice President-elect...

+Also: Norman Lear on Saturday morning said in all his 98 years, he never had a "more joyous" morning than when he learned Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump to become the next president-elect of the United States. More.

➤Twitter will change how it flags POTUS' tweets: According to a Twitter spokesperson, with the 2020 election now called, the platform will no longer apply warnings on tweets commenting on the outcome. However, Twitter will continue to apply labels to provide additional context on Tweets regarding the integrity of the process. More.

➤Critic's notebook: In a postmortem of Trump's "reality TV presidency," Frank Scheck writes that "every reality show needs drama, and the administration provided it in spades. From the impeachment to the bitterly contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings to the repulsive separating of migrant children from their parents to the Helsinki summit in which he sided with Vladimir Putin over our intelligence agencies, Trump has delivered one shocking twist after another. Ever the showman, he even teased future developments, such as his Game of Thrones-inspired poster, "Sanctions Are Coming," for which he posed like a black sheep member of the Stark family." The notebook.

➤CNN leans into "trust." In a memo to staff Monday morning, CNN president Jeff Zucker wrote that "the last week has been a defining moment for CNN." Zucker adds that the cable news channel is unveiling a new brand campaign this week, dubbed "Matter of Trust," a play on its "The Most Trusted Name in News" tagline...

 On 'Saturday Night Live'...

➤SNL's cold open addressed Biden's win and Trump's loss in the cold open. Beck Bennett played Wolf Blitzer, and Alex Moffat played John King in a CNN spoof of Biden declaring victory. Bennett’s Blitzer joked that it was the longest week in American history. “I’ve never felt so alive, which is ironic because I’m not that alive,” Carrey’s Biden said.

--In a repeat of 2016, when he hosted the first episode after Hillary Clinton's loss, Dave Chappelle hosted the program, once again delivering a blistering monologue...

+Critic's notebook: Daniel Fienberg reviews the show, writing that "The episode feigned as if the show was saying goodbye to Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump, just like Twitter spent much of today pretending that the actual Donald Trump is just a puddle of water at a Kansas girl's feet, rather than the very real president of the United States for at least a minimum of two-plus more months. Echoing McKinnon's Leonard Cohen/Jeff Buckley cover, Baldwin's Trump sat at the piano for a mournful cover of 'Macho Man,' which was… definitely a thing that doesn't need to be discussed." The notebook.

➤Former Disney streaming chief and TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer has a new job. Mayer has joined Len Blavatnik's Access Industries as a senior media advisor, where he will "focus on Access’ strategic media-related businesses and identify new opportunities, across media, entertainment and telecommunications sectors, from wireless communications and production services to broadcast/streaming media and entertainment licensing ventures." Access owns or has big stakes in sports streamer DAZN, Warner Music, and other companies. The story.

➤Box office: Focus Features' Let Him Go rode to No. 1 in its domestic debut with $4.1 million from 2,454 locations, the top gross in six weeks amid the challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The movie's performance also marks the first time in the history of Focus that the specialty label has had two titles open at N0. 1 on back-to-back weekends, and is a reflection of the lack of bigger studio fare. The numbers.

➤How Hollywood grieves now: Tributes on hold, informal Zooms. While actor Nick  Cordero, who died in July of COVID-19, was recently remembered with a full-scale production on a streaming platform, many industry families who've lost loved ones are pushing memorials to 2021, as others plan impromptu videoconference get-togethers. The story.

➤Univision earnings: Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications, which earlier this year agreed to sell a majority stake to an investor group led by former Viacom CFO Wade Davis, reported lower third-quarter financials amid the coronavirus pandemic, but advertising trends improved. The company, which previously said it was targeting $125 million in cost reductions, posted  third-quarter earnings of $30.9 million, compared with a year-ago profit of $77.4 million. More.

➤Film review: John DeFore reviews Fatman, writing that despite the casting of Mel Gibson as an alcoholic Saint Nick, "and the increasingly head-spinning plot — the U.S. government hires Santa's workforce to make parts for fighter jets; a rich kid who gets coal under the tree hires a hitman to punish the once-jolly gift-giver — Fatman doesn't elicit the response one rightly expects, the mouth-agape astonishment of wondering how and why such a movie came to exist." The review.

In other news...

--A trio of investing veterans have teamed up to launch a new fund dedicated to backing video game businesses. Griffin Gaming Partners has assembled a $235 million fund to invest in startup game studios, up-and-coming platforms and infrastructure companies that form the backbone of the gaming industry.

--Following layoffs at the Disney-owned sports giant, ESPN's top content executive Connor Schell announced his intention to leave the company by the end of the year.

--The Tokyo International Film Festival handed out its audience award Monday to Japanese director Akiko Ohku's for her latest feature Hold Me Back, a socially astute comedy about the romantic struggles of a Japanese woman entering her early thirties.

--Dash & Lily producer Nick Jonas opens up about his producing aspirations.

--Eva Longoria took to social media late on Sunday to clarify comments she had made in an interview on MSNBC that were construed as downplaying the role of Black women in helping Joe Biden win the presidential election.

--Whitney Houston, Notorious B.I.G., the Doobie Brothers, Nine Inch Nails, T. Rex and Depeche Mode were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony that aired Saturday.

--Norm Crosby, the stand-up comedian who spent more than five decades amusing and bemusing audiences in nightclubs and on television as the "Master of the Malaprop," has died. He was 93.

What else we're reading...

--"Will the media be able to resist citizen Donald Trump" [Bloomberg]

--"How advertisers are evaluating YouTube’s rising connected TV viewership" [Digiday]

--"The NBA will return to the real world in December for a new season" [WSJ]

--"‘A story in 3 minutes’: the magic and mechanics behind Disney’s Christmas ad" [The Drum]

--"The Trump presidency is ending. So is Maggie Haberman's wild ride" [NY Times]

Today's birthdays: Chris Jericho, 50, Sisqo, 42, Nick Lachey, 47, Vanessa Lachey, 40, Lou Ferrigno, 69.

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NOVEMBER 09, 2020

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