Today In Entertainment

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

What's news: Ken Jennings will be the first interim host of Jeopardy!, Taylor Swift dropping a surprise Disney+ film, Trevor Noah tapped to host the Grammys, TV advertising has a surprisingly good quarter, HBO Max looks to Industry to boost subs, Anthony Mackie's Netflix thriller. Plus: Cindy Holland resurfaces on the board of a SPAC, and Tracy Wigfield talks about the (very adult) Saved by the Bell reboot. --Alex Weprin

 'Jeopardy!' Will Return With Guest Hosts

➤Ken Jennings will become the interim host of Jeopardy! Jennings, arguably the game show's best-ever contestant, will be the first in a series of guest hosts since the death of Alex Trebek on Nov. 8. The show is holding off on naming a full-time host for the time being; other guest hosts will be announced in the coming weeks. Production on the program will resume Nov. 30.

--"Alex believed in the importance of Jeopardy! and always said that he wanted the show to go on after him," said executive producer Mike Richards. "We will honor Alex's legacy by continuing to produce the game he loved with smart contestants and challenging clues. By bringing in familiar guest hosts for the foreseeable future, our goal is to create a sense of community and continuity for our viewers." The story.

➤An advertising surprise: U.S. TV advertising revenue rose 3 percent in the third quarter, even though national spending fell 3.5 percent, MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson calculated in a report published on Tuesday. In the report, entitled "That Was Unexpected!," he cited the return of sports and the elections as driving ad revenue despite the coronavirus pandemic. His team estimates that TV station advertising rose 22.9 percent in the latest period, pay TV companies' ad revenue increased 12.8 percent, and cable networks spending climbed 2.3 percent, while broadcast ad revenue fell 13.2 percent. The story.

 Disney+ and HBO Max Make Fresh Plays For Subs

➤Taylor Swift is dropping a surprise film on Disney+. The film, Folklore, follows Swift and her band as they record studio sessions of Swift's Folklore album, at Long Pond Studios in New York's Hudson Valley. The film will drop at midnight PT tonight, and Swift is booked on ABC's Good Morning America to discuss it tomorrow. The film is the latest effort by Disney to bolster content for its streaming service, as the pandemic delayed production on many projects. More.

➤Industry heading early to HBO Max in latest effort to draw subscribers. Is the early release of Wonder Woman 1984 not enough of a draw to get you to subscribe to HBO Max? Well, WarnerMedia has some other tricks up its sleeve. On Monday, HBO announced that the final five unaired episodes of its rookie finance drama Industry would arrive early — as in Nov. 27 — on HBO Max in addition airing weekly on the linear network.

--It's the latest move in an ongoing effort from HBO and HBO Max parent company WarnerMedia to help draw new subscribers to its recently launched streaming service. HBO Max also quietly announced last week that the premiere of its slick Kaley Cuoco thriller The Flight Attendant was arriving online for free more than a week before its first three episodes arrive on the subscription platform. The story.

➤Just in: Comedy Central's The Daily Show host Trevor Noah has been tapped to host the Grammy Awards, set to air Jan. 31, 2021 on CBS. The news was announced on CBS This Morning today. The move marks yet more syngery following the Viacom-CBS merger. More.

➤Anthony Mackie will star in and produce The Ogun, an action thriller for Netflix. Jason Michael Berman will produce the feature project along with Mackie. Stuntman-turned-scribe Madison Turner (The Dark Knight Rises is amongst his credits) is penning the script for Ogun, which centers on a man named Xavier Rhodes who brings his teenage daughter to Nigeria to find a cure for the rare genetic condition that he passed on to her.

--When his daughter is kidnapped, Rhodes goes on a rampage through the criminal underworld to find her before it's too late, testing his powerful abilities to the limit. The project has been described as being tonally in the vein of John Wick crossed with Dante's Inferno. The story.

+Casting roundup: Neil Patrick Harris is set to play Nicolas Cage's talent agent in the action comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent for Lionsgate... Ben Groh and Dion Costelloe are toplining God's Time, a crime comedy set in Coronavirus-stricken New York, directed by Daniel Antebi for Topic Studios... Mark Ruffalo and Catherine Keener have joined Ryan Reynolds in The Adam Project, the sci-fi adventure feature from Skydance and Netflix...

 'Saved by the Bell's' Grownup Reboot

➤Tracey Wigfield on showrunning Peacock’s Saved by the Bell reboot and rethinking writers rooms. In an interview with Michael O'Connell, the Emmy-winning comedy scribe also talks about writing a news network show pre-Trump and problematic 30 Rock episodes.

--"People think it’s going to be Fuller House. It’s actually closer in tone to any of the other shows I’ve worked on. It’s a comedy for adults — a high school show but a Mean Girls kind of high school more than a Saved by the Bell one." The interview.

In other TV news...

+Dee Harris-Lawrence is setting up shop at Warner Bros. Television Group. Harris-Lawrence, the showrunner of OWN's David Makes Man and co-showrunner of CBS' All Rise, has signed an overall deal at the studio, which produces both dramas. The pact marks her first overall deal with any studio. The story.

+NBC is teeing up another reboot, developing a drama based on the 2000 movie Finding Forrester. The Sony Pictures TV project comes from writers TJ Brady and Rasheed Newson. Tim Story is attached to direct, and NBA star Stephen Curry is executive producing via his Unanimous Media. NBC has given a script commitment to the drama. More.

+Showtime is looking to Gabrielle Union, Jemele Hill and Kelley Carter for its next comedy. The premium cable network is developing New Money, based on an original idea by culture writers Hill and Carter and exec produced by Union. More.

+Netflix's limited series The Queen's Gambit has set a viewership record for the streamer. The seven-episode drama about a chess prodigy (Anya Taylor-Joy) who rises to the top of her field while battling addiction and emotional issues, is the top scripted limited series ever for Netflix. The streamer says 62 million member accounts worldwide have watched at least a couple minutes of the show over its first four weeks. More.

➤Joe Biden's first interview as President-elect is with NBC News. NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt will interview Biden today, with the bulk of it set to air on the program this evening. Other excerpts will run tomorrow on Today and on MSNBC.

➤Netflix is doubling down on New Mexico as home for production. The streamer plans to boost its presence in the state by expanding ABQ Studios — which it acquired in 2018 as a central production hub — and committing to an additional $1 billion in production spend. In the last two years, Netflix has spent more than $200 million in the state, utilized more than 2,000 production vendors and hired over 1,600 cast and crew members. More.

➤Film reviews: David Rooney reviews the animated family film The Croods: A New Age, writing "an early whir of intended excitement with the clan forming a kill circle to ward off attack from an army of kangadillos (as the name suggests, a kangaroo-armadillo cross) is a dispiriting sign of what's to come — over and over with diminishing returns." The review.

+Michael Rechtshaffen reviews Black Beauty, writing that "even with all the updating and reimagining, writer-director Avis, herself a lifelong equestrian, struggles to unharness the plot mechanics and characters from the printed page." The review.

➤Cindy Holland, the former vp of content at Netflix, has joined the board of directors of a special purpose acquisition company focused on the media and entertainment space. Holland has been appointed to the board of Horizon Acquisition Corp. II, a SPAC led by Eldridge Industries CEO Todd Boehly, which raised $500 million in an IPO earlier this month to seek a “market-leading company in the media & entertainment industry that delivers a unique product or service to consumers.” More.

+Revolving door: Walt Disney Television CFO and president of business operations Ravi Ahuja is leaving the company to pursue new opportunities.... Canada's actors union, ACTRA, has named Olivia Nuamah to lead its inclusion and diversity efforts in a newly-created post... The Association of Film Commissioners International, better known as AFCI, has found a new president in Kevin “KJ” Jennings... Jodhi May, who plays the role of Queen Calanthe in Netflix's The Witcher fantasy series, has signed with APA...

➤TV review: Daniel Fienberg reviews the HBO documentary The Mystery of D.B. Cooper, writing that "I like the intellectual exercise of The Mystery of D.B. Cooper and how unavoidably unsatisfying [director John] Dower's approach is intended to be." The review.

In other news...

--Universal Pictures announced Monday that it is pushing back the release of The 355 from Jan. 15, 2021 to Jan. 14, 2022, the beginning of the lucrative Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.

--Netflix swept the top two categories at the International Emmy Awards.

--Peggy Jo, the upcoming true-crime love story starring Lily James, has sold out internationally for HanWay Films.

--WarnerMedia International has shaken up its leadership team and installed a new organizational structure in the key Asian territories of India, Southeast Asia and South Korea.

--Robert Garland, who wrote the features No Way Out, The Electric Horseman and The Big Blue, died Saturday in Baltimore of complications from dementia, his son announced. He was 83.

What else we're reading...

--"Latinos, long dismissed in Hollywood, push to make voices heard" [NY Times]

--"Pandemic has forced producers to bring new technology to sets" [LA Times]

--"'Lets's buy Trump off so shuts the f--k up': Will Rupert Murdoch spring for a post-presidential Fox gig?" [Vanity Fair]

--"How 'I’m so excited' became the most ridiculous—and iconic—Saved by the Bell moment" [The Ringer]

Today's birthdays: Sir Billy Connolly, 78, Katherine Heigl, 42, Pete Best, 79, Carmelita Jeter, 41, Sarah Hyland, 30.

Is this e-mail not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser. 

©2020 The Hollywood Reporter. 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 All rights reserved.

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

UNSUBSCRIBE 

MANAGE PREFERENCES

PRIVACY POLICY

TERMS OF USE