Julian Assange Should Not Be Extradited to U.S., L...
Discovery+ Coming to U.K., 11 More Markets Via Vod...
Tanya Roberts, Bond Girl and 'That '70's Show' Sta...
SAG-AFTRA and Producers Guild Recommend "Temporary...
Golden Globes: Inside the Genre and Category Delib...
Box Office: 'Wonder Woman 1984' Slips to $5.5M in ...
Fox's 'The Great North': TV Review
BBC America's 'The Watch': TV Review
Fox's 'Call Me Kat': TV Review
Today In Entertainment JANUARY 04, 2021
What's news: Discovery+ joins the streaming fray, ViacomCBS strikes a deal with Hulu, the box office's lost year, Wonder Woman 1984 slows down, unions recommend production shutdown as virus cases explode, obituaries of Tonya Roberts and Mike Fenton. Plus: How the networks covered New Year's, and Quibi revived at Roku? --Alex Weprin   Discovery+ Joins Streaming Fray A new year, a new streaming service. Despite being somewhat late to the party, and despite its (relatively) small size, Discovery Inc. launches Discovery+ today, trying to carve out a wide niche in a sea full of streaming options. With an emphasis on unscripted fare led by familiar talent from the world of Food Network, HGTV, TLC and Discovery Channel, the company is betting that it can be a complement to the scripted-centric offerings of Disney+ and HBO Max, or the all-encompassing Netflix. ►The basics: Discovery+ launches today, Jan. 4, for $5 per month with advertising and $7 per month without advertising (like Disney+, Discovery+ struck a deal with Verizon to give some wireless customers free subscriptions). At launch it will have more than 55,000 episodes from some 2,500 Discovery shows. Unlike HBO Max and Peacock, Discovery+ will launch on Roku and Amazon devices, avoiding major carriage concerns. Thanks to deals with Sky and Vodafone, it will launch in a few dozen countries. The details. +The shows: In addition to the 55,000-plus episodes, the service will debut some 50 new titles in its launch month, with more rolling out every week of the year. Multiple spinoffs of TLC's popular 90 Day Fiance franchise and previews of several titles from Chip and Joanna Gaines' forthcoming Magnolia Network are among the highlights. The programming slate. +The review: "Continued quarantine, combined with the winter chill, probably makes the January 4 launch of Discovery+ one of the best-timed debuts of a streaming service," Inkoo Kang writes. "Aspirational and makeover-heavy, with an unmistakable focus on home improvement (at a time when the luckiest of us are forced to stay home as much as possible), the service peddles the fantasies most alluring to us mid-pandemic: easy transformations, uncomplicated domesticity and (oof) housing stability." The review. +The business pitch: "Scripted has had its moment, and this is our time," Discovery CEO David Zaslav told an investors conference last month about the launch. "There's all kinds of wonderful content out there. But if most people are like me, I'm calling my friends and saying what do I watch now?" More. +A muted response from Wall Street: "Pretty much every media platform we have ever seen lives or dies based on the strength of its original content, and while Discovery has significant expertise with unscripted programming, it remains unclear whether 'original' unscripted programming will be as much of a draw for a pay TV/OTT service as scripted originals on other platforms, such as Game of Thrones (HBO), Stranger Things (Netflix), or The Mandalorian (Disney+)," Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in an investor note. More. +What's next? ViacomCBS will unveil details of its major streaming effort, Paramount+, later this month. +In other streaming news: ViacomCBS has reached an agreement with Hulu to distribution its portfolio of cable channels on via streamer's live television bundle. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, means that channels including BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Network will be available through the Hulu + Live TV bundle for the first time. It also includes continued carriage of CBS, CBS Sports Network, Pop TV, Smithsonian Channel and The CW. Premium cable channel Showtime also remains available as an add-on for Hulu live TV subscribers. More. +Also: Roku is in talks to buy Quibi's (RIP) library of shows, the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal would give Roku a slate of original shows to bolster its ad-supported Roku Channel.  A Bleak Year For The Box Office ►It's official: North American box office revenue plummeted 80 percent in 2020 amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and unprecedented theater closures, while global revenue tumbled more than 70 percent. As predicted, domestic movie tickets sold between Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 came generated an estimated $2.3 billion (or $2.68 billion) compared to $11.4 billion in 2019, according to Comscore estimates. That's the lowest showing in at least 40 years. The dramatic fall-off was expected, considering that many cinemas have been closed for more than nine months in the U.S. --In a first, China supplanted North America as the world's moviegoing market in 2020, generating an estimated $2.7 billion in ticket sales, per Comscore. In another first, a Chinese movie — the World War II epic The Eight Hundred — topped the worldwide box office chart with nearly $440 million. A number of other Chinese films, including My People, My Homeland, populated the upper reaches of the chart, as did Japan's hit Demon Slayer. In non-pandemic times, Hollywood blockbusters generally dominate. The story. +Box office: Wonder Woman 1984 grossed $5.5 million over New Year's weekend as the official holiday season ended and Hollywood bid adieu to its worst year ever at the box office. The superhero sequel has now earned an estimated $28.5 million domestically and $90 million overseas for a muted worldwide tally of $118.5 million. WW84 fell 67 percent in its second weekend of play domestically, a hefty drop for the holiday weekend even with the pandemic. The Croods: The New Age, for example, was up 25 percent in its sixth weekend with $2.2 million. The numbers.  Hollywood On Hold? ►SAG-AFTRA, the Joint Policy Committee and the Producers Guild of America on Sunday recommended a "temporary hold on in-person production" amid the pandemic. The Joint Policy Committee, a multiemployer bargaining group that represents commercial advertisers and advertising agencies, also is recommending a pause in production amid a COVID-19 surge, according to a statement released Sunday evening. The story. ►Golden Globes: Inside the genre and category deliberations, from Promising Young Woman to Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Scott Feinberg takes a look at where the HFPA reminders list committee has — and hasn't — raised objections to distributor submissions. The story. ►Networks and cable television rolled out slightly different editions of their annual New Year's Eve celebrations in 2020. Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, ABC, NBC, Fox and CNN aired from a strangely empty Times Square in New York, which was closed to the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as hosts generally expressed eagerness to say goodbye to 2020. Here's what happened. Obituaries... +Tanya Roberts, the actress best known for playing a Bond girl in A View to a Kill and Midge Pinciotti on That '70's Show, has died. She was 65. The obituary. +Mike Fenton, the influential casting director who found actors for such landmark films as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Godfather: Part II, E.T. — The Extraterrestrial and the three Back to the Future movies, has died. He was 85. The obituary. +Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind Hester Street and Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85. The obituary. +MF Doom, a masked rapper who awed hip-hop fans and fellow musicians with intricate wordplay, has died. He was 49. The obituary. +Ron Dominguez, a former vice president of Disneyland and exec vp of Walt Disney Attractions for the West Coast, died on Jan. 1, according to a post by the Disneyland Alumni Club on Friday. He was 85. The obituary. +Gerry Marsden, lead singer of the 1960s British group Gerry and the Pacemakers that had such hits as “Ferry Cross the Mersey” and the song that became the anthem of Liverpool Football Club, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” has died. He was 78. The obituary. TV reviews... +Daniel Fienberg reviews Fox's The Great North, writing that "there's no question that The Great North will fit perfectly into Fox's Sunday lineup, which hasn't always been the case with the network's new animated entries." The review. +Robyn Bahr revies Fox's Call Me Kat, writing that "[star Mayim] Bialik lets Kat Silver's eccentricity soar like a deflating balloon. It's too bad, then, that Call Me Kat suffers from the very same weakness as [the original BBC series] Miranda: Only the main character keeps your attention and nothing else." The review. +Inkoo Kang reviews BBC America's The Watch, writing that "Compared to the show’s imaginative world-building (and apparently lavish budget), the plots are crushingly rote and uninvolving." The review. ►TV's Top 5 podcast: In this week's podcast, hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg are joined by the showrunning trio of Netflix's Karate Kid sequel Cobra Kai and preview at the most-anticipated new shows and the game-changing hits that are signing off. Listen. In other news... --Disney Television, CBS Studios, Warner Bros. TV and Universal TV have pushed the post-holiday restart dates on several of their series back as COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County have surged. --WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange looks to have escaped extradition to the U.S. to face espionage charges following the dramatic ruling of a British judge on Monday. --Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical raised over $1 million for The Actors Fund. --Larry King, 87, is receiving treatment in a Los Angeles hospital for COVID-19. --Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, famous for his love of the spotlight, hasn't been seen in public in over two months following Beijing's aggressive crackdown on his Alibaba business empire. What else we're reading... --"The Bruce Willis journey from in-demand to on-demand" [NY Times] --"The Office is Peacock's hail mary" [The Ringer] --"Trump's exit may be too much to save the presidential movie" [Washington Post] --"What happened to Ryan Murphy?" [Vulture] Today's birthdays: D'Arcy Carden, 41, Dave Foley, 58, Michael Stipe, 61. 
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