Today In Entertainment

DECEMBER 14, 2020

What's news: Box office poised for a sobering 2020 haul, The Croods: A New Age wins another week, Jeff Robinov quietly mounts his Hollywood comeback, why Fox's The Resident will be set post-pandemic, new additions to the National Film Registry, Electronic Arts swoops in to buy Codemasters. Plus: Did Timothy Chalamet quietly protest Warnermedia on SNL? And remembering John le Carré and Charley Pride. --Alex Weprin

 A Sobering 2020 Box Office

►2020 box office: Domestic revenue falls to 40-year low. Mid-December is usually a launching pad for yuletide-fueled holiday blockbusters. That isn't the case this year as Hollywood and theater owners grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and a virtual nine-month standstill in moviegoing that will result in the worst showing for domestic ticket sales in at least four decades, Pamela McClintock reports.

--Case in point: there were no new wide releases at the North American box office over the Dec. 11-13 weekend. Universal and DreamWorks Animation's The Croods: A New Age topped the chart for the third consecutive weekend with a mere $3.2 million — a veritable fortune during the pandemic — for a domestic total of $24.5 million.

--Preliminary estimates show North American movie ticket sales for 2020 inching toward $2.3 billion. That would be the lowest showing since the early 1980s, if not the late 1970s, and that's before adjusting for inflation. The full story.

 Jeff Robinov's Comeback Play

►Former Warner Bros. exec Jeff Robinov quietly mounts his Hollywood comeback. After a lengthy absence marked by personal tragedy and professional setbacks, the industry veteran — who helped launch the careers of Christopher Nolan and the Wachowskis  — returns with a renewed focus on Studio 8, Tatiana Siegel reports: "If you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done."

--"Studio 8 launched in 2014 with a reported $1 billion in backing from China's Fosun Group and Sony and the ability to finance the types of films and franchises Robinov helped birth at Warners — blockbusters like Gravity, Inception and Harry Potter. But after a difficult period marked by personal adversity and professional setbacks — including an unexpected trade war with China that blew up his business model — he is quietly mounting a comeback."

"About six months ago, the 61-year-old Robinov started setting up scores of his Studio 8 projects around town, including Black, an adaptation of the Black Mask comic series, at Warners, the family comedy Adulting at Sony and a pair of Ben Affleck star vehicles — Houdini at Disney (with Black Mirror's Dan Trachtenberg directing) and the Robert Rodriguez-helmed thriller Hypnotic at Solstice Studios." The story.

►New additions to the National Film Registry: The Dark Knight, A Clockwork Orange, Lilies of the Field, The Joy Luck Club and films directed by Ida Lupino and Kathryn Bigelow — two of a record-breaking nine helmed by women — are among the latest cinematic jewels chosen for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, it was announced Monday. The story.

►The Fox medical drama The Resident will take place after the pandemic. Here's why. Rather than tell stories from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fourth season of the series becomes the second show to take place in a post-vaccine world, Jean Bentley writes.

--"We thought that by the time we got on air — January, February, March of 2021 — not just the public but we as staff writers were going to be so underwater with covid and covid stories, and so sick of the pandemic and being locked down and the tragedy of it. We were trying to figure out a way that we can both honor the frontline workers and tell a story that's compelling, so we made a sort of educated guess." The story.

►Netflix has underlined its recent promise to double its investment in its U.K. productions, announcing seven new scripted series commissioned by the original series team in London. Developed by renowned British talent — including Rowan Atkinson, Sam Mendes and Joe Cornish, as well as newer creators including Sarah Dollard, Sophie Petzal, Richard Gadd, Barney Ronay and Jonathan Liew — these commissions span horror, sci-fi, romance and physical comedy. All will be written and produced across the U.K. in the coming months. The details.

►Electronic Arts has agreed to buy U.K. game studio Codemasters for $1.2 billion. The offer trumped an earlier takeover bid from Take-Two Interactive for the maker of racing games, such as Formula One and Dirt, for close to $1 billion. It wasn't immediately clear if Take-Two would counter the offer and set off a bidding war. The story.

►On Saturday Night Live: SNL addressed the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine in the CNN-themed cold open for its Dec. 12 episode, which was hosted by actor Timothee Chalamet... Ego Nwodim played Dionne Warwick in a talk show parody, poking fun at the star's recent popularity on Twitter. Nwodim read some of Warwick’s actual recent tweets about The Weeknd and Snoop Dogg, with Chalamet playing Harry Styles... In his monologue, Chalamet touched on growing up in New York and shared that his mother used to do background work on the show. His mom was also in the limited audience at studio 8H...

+Did Chalamet take a subtle jab at Warner Bros. during the show? THR's Kim Masters noted that the host wore a Dune t-shirt early in the episode (he appears in the upcoming project) and a Legendary hoodie in the closer. "No doubt both Chalamet and [directoe Denis] Villeneuve want fans to see #Dune on the big screen and they are also concerned about the health of theaters and the movie business."

 Obituaries

►John le Carré, the British intelligence agent turned enigmatic author of such iconic espionage novels as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, has died. He was 89. Le Carré died Saturday evening in Cornwall, England, after a short illness that was not COVID-19 related, his literary agent, Jonny Geller of The Curtis Brown Group, reported. The obituary.

+Charley Pride, one of country music's first Black superstar whose rich baritone on such hits as "Kiss an Angel Good Morning" helped sell millions of records and made him the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, has died. He was 86. Pride died Saturday in Dallas of complications from COVID-19, according to Jeremy Westby of the public relations firm 2911 Media. The obituary.

+A CMA connection? After a handful of artists questioned if country legend Pride could have been exposed at Nov. 11's CMA Awards, where he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Nashville ceremony, the Country Music Association and representatives for Pride released a joint statement explaining the show and Pride's testing procedures. More.

+Carol Sutton, a film, television and theater actress who appeared in films such as Steel Magnolias and Ray, has died. She was 76. The actress died of complications from COVID-19, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell shared in a statement on Friday. The obituary.

Awards roundup...

+SFFILM Awards Night: A fundraiser for the epnoymous San Francisco-based arts organization, the event typically draws heavy in-person attendance from local Oscar voters, Scott Feinberg reports. (There are more in the Bay Area than any other except for Los Angeles and New York.) But this year, they watched from home as honors were presented and accepted via Zoom. The story.

+Streamy Awards: YouTube personality Jimmy Donaldson, known online as MrBeast, was the big winner from the 10th annual Streamy Awards. The winners.

+European Film Awards: Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round was the big winner at the 33rd European Film Awards, taking best film, best director, and best actor for star Mads Mikkelsen who plays a day-drinking high school teacher in the Danish crowd-pleasing dramedy. The winners.

►The best TV shows of 2020: THR's TV critics, Daniel Fienberg and Inkoo Kang, reveal their top picks for a most unusual year. Among Fienberg's faves are a Southern strip-club noir, a pair of politically urgent docuseries and auteur knockouts from Lil Dicky and Michaela Coel. Fienberg's list... Kang's picks include a miniseries about modern feminism, an adults-only animated treat and the latest chapter in a lush Italian coming-of-age drama. Kang's list.

In other news...

--Sky Studios, the production arm of Comcast-owned European pay TV giant Sky said on Monday that its CEO Gary Davey would step down next year.

--Amazon and Sky have become the latest streaming and pay TV bedfellows, signing a major multiyear deal that will see Amazon content integrated into the services of the Comcast-owned European giant.

--Phone predator cases double as FBI investigates potential "Con Queen" links.  Authorities have been looking into whether a sexual predator who has been cold calling actresses under the guise of an Oscar-winning filmmaker is actually the notorious Con Queen of Hollywood, who was arrested in the U.K. at the end of November.

--With an estimated 850 million active users worldwide, it's no surprise that philanthropies with strong ties to Hollywood like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are turning to the social media app TikTok for the next generation of fundraising.

--Elf stars Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel were joined by John Lithgow, Wanda Sykes, Ed Helms and others filling in various roles during a live script reading of the movie on Sunday that raised money for the Democratic Party of Georgia.

--Why stars are selling on livestream shopping site Talkshoplive.

--Anna Kendrick's official Twitter account appeared to have been hacked for a brief period on Saturday evening.

What else we're reading...

--"Apple was making a TV show about Gawker. Then Tim Cook found out" [NY Times]

--"CNN ratings surge as network boss's fate is uncertain" [WSJ]

--"YouTube will enable viewers to toggle out of ads for alcohol and gambling" [TubeFilter]

--"Reddit to buy TikTok riva Dubsmash in new video push" [The Information]

--"The prognosticator is at it again: Here’s what to expect in sports media" [Sports Business Journal]

Today's birthdays: James Comey, 60, Hal Williams, 86, Vanessa Hudgens, 32, Jane Birkin, 74, Kiari Cephus aka Offset, 29.

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DECEMBER 14, 2020

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