Today In Entertainment

JANUARY 11, 2021

What's news: Fox News and CNN shake up their lineups ahead of Biden transition, COVID-19 litigation begins to pile up, Sex and the City revived at HBO and HBO Max, FX orders a Sex Pistols series, Wonder Woman 1984 stays atop the (still grim) box office, Parler in trouble after being dropped by Apple, Amazon. Plus: CBS This Morning names a new exec producer, a new SPAC that counts Brian Grazer as a board member, and the winners from the Critics Choice Super Awards. --Alex Weprin

 Here's Comes the COVID Litigation

►A New Year’s nightmare: COVID-19 litigation piling up. More than 1,000 lawsuits across industries have been filed against insurance firms over pandemic claims as Hollywood’s largest companies take a "wait and see" approach on who prevails in court, Ashley Cullins reports.

--"A few major entertainment players, like United Talent Agency and Major League Baseball, have waded into the fight and sued their insurers. But despite widespread production impacts, shuttered theaters and billions in financial losses, most of Hollywood’s largest companies are sitting on the sidelines for now, notes Greenberg Glusker partner Jonathan Sokol. 'A lot of businesses in the entertainment industry are going to wait and see how these cases play out before they decide whether to invest in coverage litigation,' he says, adding that one big win could trigger a deluge. 'There could be 20 to 30 decisions at the trial court level that all go in favor of the insurer, and if there’s one appeal that goes in favor of the policyholder, then the others don’t matter.'”

--Pandemic policies: The SARS outbreak of 2003 was an expensive lesson for insurers, and experts on the policyholder side say that each time a new catastrophe occurs the insurance industry responds by tightening policies to avoid future liability. “Virus and bacteria isn’t new,” says Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute. “That’s why it’s already excluded in most policies.”

Ruiz cites Wimbledon as an exception. Organizers of the iconic tennis tournament were willing to pay up for a pandemic specific policy — reportedly as much as $2 million a year in premiums for nearly two decades — and a nine-figure insurance payout is in the works after this year’s event had to be canceled. (One exec told the press it’s “impossible” to get the same coverage for next year, though.) The story.

 'Sex and the City' Rebooted

►Sex and the City is officially returning to television. Original stars Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie), Kristin Davis (Charlotte) and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda) made the announcement Sunday on social media that their former HBO comedy will live on with a new chapter on the premium cable network's streaming sibling, HBO Max. The new series will be called And Just Like That..., a nod to the original series. It will follow Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte as they navigate friendship in their 50s. Production on the series will begin in late spring in New York. The story.

+In other TV news: FX wants to be anarchy. The Disney-owned outlet has ordered a six-episode limited series, Pistol, about punk rock legends the Sex Pistols. It's based on a memoir titled Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol by the band's guitarist, Steve Jones, and will be directed and executive produced by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire). Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge!) created the series and wrote the episodes with Frank Cottrell Boyce (Sometimes Always Never). Pistol comes from FX Productions and Wiip. The story.

►Wonder Woman 1984 stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its third outing, but continued to fall off steeply. Overall it was a grim weekend for the North American theaters as total revenue tumbled 93 percent compared to the same weekend a year ago due to the ongoing pandemic and no new wide releases.

--WW84 took in an estimated $3 million — a drop of 47 percent — for a domestic cume of $32.6 million, according to Warner Bros. Overseas, WW84 grossed $4.7 million for a foreign tally of $98.8 million and $131.4 million globally. Elsewhere, at the domestic box office, Universal and DreamWorks Animation's The Croods: The New Age remained at No. 2 in its seventh weekend with $1.8 million for a domestic total of $36.9 million and $127.8 million globally. The story.

 Shakeups Across TV News...

►Fox News shakes up daytime, and adds a new opinion show: The cable news channel is shifting its dayside news lineup around, including moving John Roberts off of the White House beat to anchor in the afternoon. However, the most significant change may be moving an opinion show to 7 p.m., even though it does not yet have a host to fill the timeslot on a permanent basis. The story.

+CNN is shaking up its lineup too: For starters, The Lead with Jake Tapper will expand to two hours airing from 4-6 p.m. with The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer being cut down to one hour, from 6-7 p.m. Blitzer "will also have a principal anchor role for all major breaking news and continue to host CNN special reports," CNN says, while Tapper will be the lead anchor for all Washington events. CNN has also named Dana Bash co-anchor of its Sunday public affairs show State of the Union. Bash will split the anchor duties with Tapper. All the changes.

+CBS This Morning is getting a new executive producer. Shawna Thomas will join the program, which is anchored by Gayle King, Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil, on Feb. 1. CBS This Morning has been without a permanent ep since October of last year, when Diana Miller stepped down after a year and a half in the role. Thomas joins CBS from Quibi, where she was a content development executive on its news team, working with news outlets like NBC News, the BBC and, yes, CBS News to develop short-form programming for the ill-fated streaming service. More.

+Jeanine Pirro pivots to mansions: Pirro, who hosts the weekend opinion show Justice with Judge Jeanine for Fox, will add a Fox Nation program that almost sounds more at home on HGTV. Castles USA will give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at famous castles and mansions across the country, incuding The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, and Beardslee Castle in upstate New York.

►Parler is in trouble. After being dropped from the Google Play store Friday , the conservative social media site was dropped from Apple'a spp store, and subsequently saw Amazon drop it from its web hosting service. Parler's CEO and founder John Matze shared the news of Amazon's decision to no longer provide cloud services to Parler, writing on his official Parler account that come Sunday at midnight, all of the app's servers will be shut down "in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet." The story.

+Meanwhile: President-elect Biden's insugural committee quietly released its list of donors over the weekend, and Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast were among the corporate donors helping to fund the event...

►A new entertainment-focused SPAC that counts Brian Grazer as a board member has filed to go public. D and Z Media Acquisition Corp. is being led by former Bloomberg anchor Betty Liu, and is seeking to raise $250 million to merge with a company in the media or education technology spaces. In addition to Grazer, former Showtime CEO Matt Blank is an adviser.

►TV series The Boys and the films Palm Springs and Soul led the winners at the inaugural Critics Choice Super Awards, which were handed out during a broadcast Sunday night on The CW. The show, which was produced remotely following COVID-19 safety protocols, with most of the winners accepting via video, was hosted by writer-director-podcaster Kevin Smith and actress-writer Dani Fernandez. It honored the genre series and movies in categories encompassing superhero/comic book, science fiction/fantasy, horror, action and animation. The winners.

+The National Society of Film Critics on Saturday named Nomadland as its best picture of 2020. Nomadland's Chloe Zhao picked up a win for best director, while Frances McDormand won best actress for her performance in the drama film that explores the life of a nomad woman living in the American West. More.

►Guest column: My kid killed Santa with capitalism. Jimmy Kimmel Live! co-head writer Danny Ricker shares his lesson in free-market economics care of his Frozen-loving six-year-old. The column.

Obituaries: Steve Carver, a director of action films whose portfolio included An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuade, both starring Chuck Norris, and Big Bad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, has died. He was 75... John Reilly, a veteran daytime television actor who starred on General Hospital and Passions, has died. He was 84... Patricia Loud, who is best known for being the matriarch of the PBS docu-series An American Family, died Sunday at her home in her sleep of natural causes. She was 94...

In other news...

--Netflix's Umbrella Academy is bringing in its new class, of sorts. Cazzie David, Justin Cornwell, Britne Oldford, Genesis Rodriguez and Jake Epstein will join returning co-star Justin H. Min in the upcoming third season of the Netflix drama from showrunner Steve Blackman.

--Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday morning released a deeply personal video in which he compared the violent riot that took place on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C to the rise of Nazi Germany.

--Herself writer-star Clare Dunne explores domestic violence in breakout film.

What else we're reading...

--"Warner Bros. guarantees filmmakers a payday for HBO Max movies" [Bloomberg]

--Dan Le Batard and John Skipper are launching a new sports media venture [Sports Business Journal]

--"Talk-radio owner orders conservative hosts to temper election fraud rhetoric" [Washington Post]

--"OpenAP adds technology to further automate TV ad sales" [WSJ]

Today's birthdays: Mary J. Blige, 50, Amanda Peet, 49, Joel Zwick, 79, Ben Crenshaw, 69, Cody Simpson, 24.

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JANUARY 11, 2021

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