Today In Entertainment

DECEMBER 21, 2020

What's news: Movie theaters and entertainment venues secure earmarked funds in COVID relief bill, Wonder Woman 1984 underwhelms overseas, Netflix settles Sherlock Holmes suit, Jim Carrey is done playing Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live, L.A. Film Critics Association award winners, Curb Your Enthusiasm boss on making TV amid the pandemic. Plus: 48 showrunners pick the shows that got them though 2020, and why the Oscars should expect some mean tweets from Trump. --Alex Weprin

 Movie Theaters And Entertainment Venues In Line For COVID Bailout

►A new COVID relief bill will provide much-needed help for struggling entertainment venues, including movie theaters. Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate announced on Sunday a compromise COVID relief bill, a bill which if passed and signed by President Trump will provide financial support to a number of companies in the entertainment space.

--The bill includes $15 billion earmarked specifically for live event venues, independent movie theaters and cultural institutions, all businesses hit hard by the pandemic. It also expands the eligibility of the Paycheck Protection Program to include local TV and radio broadcasters, as well as newspapers. The story.

+ British theaters will also get government support. More than 200 independent cinemas across England are set to receive grant awards totaling £16 million ($21.6 million) to help see them through the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. More.

 'Wonder Woman 1984' Underwhelms Overseas

►Wonder Woman 1984 opened to an underwhelming $18.8 million in China, behind expectations and a less-than-wondrous start for WarnerMedia as it embarks on a bold plan to release its films both in theaters and on HBO Max. The Warner Bros./DC superhero pic placed No. 2 behind The Rescue, a new Chinese film that debuted to an estimated $35 million.

--In total, Wonder Woman 1984 opened to $38.5 million overseas as it began rolling out in 32 territories a week ahead of its Dec. 25  debut on HBO Max and in those cinemas that are still open amid the ongoing pandemic. That included $5 million from Imax theaters. The story.

►48 showrunners reveal the series that got them through 2020. Damon Lindelof, Kenya Barris, Krista Vernoff and many more pick the comedies and dramas that helped make an otherwise treacherous year a bit more bearable. The list.

►Just in: Netflix settles Enola Holmes lawsuit with Conan Doyle estate. The short-lived copyright suit alleged that the movie infringed upon Sherlock Holmes even though most of the stories about the famous detective are in the public domain. The story.

►Jim Carrey is done playing Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live. The actor will pass the role of the president-elect on to someone else for the remainder of SNL's season. Sources tell THR's Rick Porter that the plan was always for Carrey to play Biden in the first six episodes of the season, leading up to and immediately following the election — though that wasn't stated outright when Carrey first came aboard. The story.

+Who replaced Carrey? Cast member Alex Moffat stepped in as SNL's new Biden Saturday night, though it was Beck Bennett's Mike Pence who stole the cold open... Meanwhile, host Kristen Wiig delivered a musical monologue... Other sketches included a fake celebrity game show, The Grinch in a compromising situation, and a "never before seen" scene from Home Alone 2. The rest of the sketches...

 Oscars Shaping Up To Be a Political Affair

►Why the Oscars should expect a mean tweet From Trump. The presidential contest may have been decided, but that doesn't mean politics is over. Awards contenders — from The  Trial  of  the  Chicago  7 to One  Night  in  Miami — are full of blue state agendas and red state critiques. Even Borat could crash the party. The story.

+The Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Sunday determined their picks for the year's best in film. Small Axe was tapped as best picture. Chloe Zhao was chosen as best director for Nomadland with Steve Mcqueen as runner-up for Small Axe. Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman was selected as best screenplay with Eliza Hittman's Never Really Sometimes Always as runner-up. Carey Mulligan, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman and Youn Yuh-jung were among the stars who won the acting prizes in the vote. The full list of winners.

+In other awards news: Two non-fiction films with ties to Italy, Gianfranco Rosi's Notturno and Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw's The Truffle Hunters, will receive top honors at the 25th — and first virtual — edition of Capri, Hollywood — The International Film Festival. More.

+Kingsley Ben-Adir locked himself in a room for three days to prepare for Malcolm X role. After the One Night in Miami actor portrayed Barack Obama, he is generating awards-season buzz for his turn as the late civil rights leader: "‘I’d love to have gotten to know him." The interview.

►Curb Your Enthusiasm boss on making TV comedy in the pandemic era and convincing Larry David to return to set. "Our protocol is just above and beyond what is required," Jeff Schaffer tells THR's Jackie Strause about running two all-location shows — HBO's Curb and FXX's Dave — amid the second wave in hard-hit Los Angeles.

--"So we made the decision to set the new season [of Curb] in a post-COVID world. COVID definitely happened and we definitely talk about it, but we were assuming that Biden would win and that things would be better by the fall of 2021. COVID is in the rearview mirror, but it happened. And Larry [the character] has opinions on all of it. (Laughs.) I can’t tell you which characters got COVID, but I can definitely tell you that we do examine peoples’ behavior during the COVID era." The story.

►Critic's notebook: Movies have always had their place on the small screen. With big-ticket films like Wonder Woman 1984 premiering on streaming platforms, some purists have lamented the death of cinema as we know it — but theater-going is only a small part of celebrating film, Robyn Bahr writes.

--"While Golden Age studio execs and aging stars dreaded the increasing popularity of TV, portending it would extinguish the film industry altogether, television ended up cultivating legions of film buffs and future auteurs who got their first taste of wild, moody and obscure cinema via the small screen at home." The notebook.

In other news...

--Sing 2 is adding some A-list musical talent to its lineup. Bono, Pharrell Williams and Halsey are joining the animated sequel, along with Bobby Cannavale, Letitia Wright, Eric Andre and Chelsea Peretti.

--Lionsgate has acquired the U.K. rights to Living, starring Bill Nighy, ahead of production set for the U.K. in spring 2021.

--Peter Jackson has released a sneak peek of his upcoming documentary The Beatles: Get Back, teasing some of the 56 hours of unseen footage the director has had access to of the Fab Four.

--Hockey is set to return Jan. 13 after the NHL and players completed a deal Sunday to hold a 56-game season that would include playoffs lasting into July to award the Stanley Cup.

--Doug Crane, who drew Spider-Man, She-Ra and He-Man cartoons and worked on films including Heavy Metal and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America during his six-decade career in animation, has died. He was 85.

--After becoming two of Hollywood's most vocal political activists during the 2020 presidential election, Eva Longoria and America Ferrera are reteaming ahead of the Georgia runoffs.

What else we're reading...

--"Star Wars noveslists seek years of missing royalty payments from Disney" [WSJ]

--"The 'red-slime' lawsuit that could sink right-wing media" [NY Times]

--"Hollywood changed this year. Some things will never go back to the way they were" [CNN Business]

--"The otherworldly comedy of Julio Torres" [The New Yorker]

--"Record labels reap billion dollar bonanza from tunes on social media" [Bloomberg]

Today's birthdays: Samuel L. Jackson, 72, Kiefer Sutherland, 54, Ray Romano, 63, Jane Fonda, 83, Jane Kaczmarek, 65.

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DECEMBER 21, 2020

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