Today In Entertainment

JANUARY 06, 2021

What's news: How Pete Docter is helping to reanimate Pixar, L.A. production pause may get extended as virus rages, Grammy Awards pushed to March, behind podcasting's M&A frenzy, what will 2021 bring for the entertainment business? Hollywood celebrates apparent Democratic wins in Georgia Senate runoff. Plus: Comcast's Sky gets a new CEO, and Sundance canes its L.A. drive-in screenings. --Alex Weprin

 How Pete Docter Rejuvenated Pixar

►On the cover: Reanimating Pixar: How Pete Docter steered the studio out of scandal. After John Lasseter's exit, the Soul co-director has reinvigorated Disney's multibillion-dollar Oscar-winning powerhouse by ushering in a new diverse generation of filmmakers and projects, Rebecca Keegan reports.

--In June 2018, Disney CEO Bob Iger invited Docter to the company's corporate headquarers in Burbank, offering him the job of a lifetime, the chance to run Pixar. "I did wonder, 'If I say no, what happens?' I don't want to seem too self-aggrandizing here, but I wasn't sure who else would do it. And so I said yes," says Docter, 52, speaking by Zoom from his home in Piedmont, California, in mid-December. Since Pixar moved to working from home, Docter has been using his grown son's old bedroom as his office, and there are artifacts of teen life, including a collection of stickers from burrito wrappers, scattered around him.

--"John had picked him as his successor quite a while ago," says Ed Catmull, the computer scientist who co-founded Pixar with Steve Jobs in 1986 as a spinoff of Lucasfilm's computer division and retired as president of Pixar and Disney Animation in 2019. "Pete was the next leader, the one that's highly loved. I don't think we talked a lot about it, but it wasn't a secret that Pete was the one who would step in if something happened to John."

--"Disney moved the release date [for Soul] back to November 2020 in hopes that theaters would be open, but when the COVID-19 numbers began spiking again in the fall, Iger called Docter and said he was going to put Soul on Disney+. 'That was, just to be honest, a kick in the gut initially,' Docter says. 'We finaled every frame on the big screen. We wanted it to be experienced together. That's still sad. However, where we are now, boy, if he hadn't made that call, I don't know that people would've seen the movie at all.'" The cover story.

+Animated shorts take big steps in onscreen representation. Pixar and Netflix are using smaller films made for their massive platforms to showcase diverse creators and groom them for bigger projects, Carolyn Giardina reports. 

--"'Originally the family [in the Pixar short Float] was white,' [director Bobby] Rubio admits, adding, 'marketingwise, I thought the lead character had to be white.' But that wasn't the message he got when he pitched it to the studio. "They asked, 'Why are the characters white? This is a story about you and your son. The characters should be Filipino.' I was so grateful that they went there.'" The story.

 Production Pause May Persist

►"The situation remains fluid": Production pause in Los Angeles may extend longer amid COVID surge. The major studios and streamers have halted their L.A.-based projects with plans to restart them mid-January — but sources say that's increasingly unrealistic, Bryn Sandberg reports. The story.

►Behind podcasting's M&A frenzy: "Easier to buy than build." Companies like Wondery, Stitcher, Megaphone, The Ringer and Serial Productions all became acquisition targets in 2020 amid a boom in listenership, Natalie Jarvey writes. The story.

In other business news...

►What will 2021 bring for the entertainment business? A MoffettNathanson report addresses pressure on content creators, the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and a possible merger of Comcast's NBCUniversal with AT&T's WarnerMedia, Georg Szalai reports.

--"Our thoughts about the logical combination of NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia to give the combined companies the needed scale to compete with Disney and Netflix were reinforced by other conversations across town," Nathanson wrote about his check-in with his Hollywood contacts. The story.

+Verizon looks set to keep investing in its wireless phone network via partnerships with major Hollywood players and content brands like Walt Disney and Discovery. Ronan Dunne, executive vp and group CEO of Verizon Consumer, on Tuesday said offering initial free trials of Walt Disney's Disney+ streaming service and now offering the just-launched Discovery+ for free was bolstering subscriber loyalty and retention among around 100 million wireless phone customers. More.

►The Pandemic-fueled TV delays are continuing into 2021. The Grammy Awards have been postponed as COVID-19 cases surge in Los Angeles, where the ceremony was set to be held. The awards program is now slated for March 14. The ceremony was originally set to take place on Jan. 31 at the Staples Center in downtown L.A. and air on CBS at 8 p.m. that night.

--Late on Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA issued a statement expressing displeasure about the fact that the Grammys were moved to the same date and time for which the SAG Awards has long been scheduled. "We are extremely disappointed to hear of the conflicting date, March 14th, announced today for this year’s Grammy Awards telecast," the statement begins. "We announced the same date for the SAG Awards last July with the intent to give the greatest possible scheduling consideration for other awards shows. We expect the same consideration from sister organizations throughout the industry."  The story.

►How the Gotham Awards became an awards-season heavyweight. In an interview with Pamela McClintock, Jeffrey Sharp addresses the challenges posed by the pandemic, and why the Independent Film Project is rebranding itself as the Gotham Film and Media Institute. The interview.

 Georgia On Hollywood's Mind

►Hollywood feeling hope from Georgia. Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff edged decisively ahead in their respective Georgia runoff races on Wednesday morning, leaving the Democrats on course to secure a majority in the Senate, and Hollywood stars such as Debra Messing, Josh Gad and Billy Eichner didn't hold back their excitement at the prospective result. The story.

+Related: Tyler Perry, who is based in Atlanta, said he flew home to Georgia after his absentee ballot didn't arrive on time. More.

►The 2021 Sundance Film Festival has canceled its planned Los Angeles-area drive-in screenings due to surging COVID-19 infection rates in southern California. "The safety and well-being of our audiences, community and staff is the most important thing to Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival. In consideration of the overall public health situation in the Los Angeles area and the trajectory of the spread of the virus there, the health guidelines, and crisis the hospital systems are facing we will be pivoting our planned drive-in screenings to our online platform," Sundance said in a statement. More.

►Why Hamilton is eligible for Globes and SAG Awards, but not Oscars. THR's awards columnist Scott Feinberg gets to the bottom of a situation that has left many scratching their heads. The story.

►New Year's Eve TV ratings: CNN's New Year's Eve ratings soared over the previous year, with the news channel nearly doubling its audience compared to the final night of 2019. Usual ratings leader ABC also improved year to year, though specials on NBC and Fox were down some. The numbers.

+New Year's Day ratings: ESPN dominated New Year's Day's ratings with its two College Football Playoff semifinal telecasts. The two games pulled in an audience virtually identical with the previous season's semis. More.

►School is in session for Lashana Lynch. The No Time to Die star is in final negotiations to join the cast of the feature adaptation of the musical Matilda for Netflix. More.

+In other casting news: Showtime's Dexter revival has found its bad guy. Clancy Brown will star opposite Michael C. Hall in the limited series, which reunites Hall and Dexter's first showrunner, Clyde Phillips. He'll play a character named Kurt Caldwell, the unofficial mayor of a small town called Iron Lake and be the primary antagonist for Hall's avenging serial killer. More.

+Also: Pandemic scheduling delivered a big loss to season two of NBC musical Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist as star Lauren Graham exited the series — for now, at least. More.

►Johnny Depp has failed to leverage a new law that he may be partially credited for bringing about. On Monday, a Virginia state court judge rejected the actor's bid for immunity over statements made about Depp's ex-wife Amber Heard. As a result, if the case moves to trial later this year, Depp will face counterclaims after his attorney told media outlets that Heard's tale of domestic abuse was a "hoax." The story.

+Despite a second shot at summary judgement, AMC still can't avoid a trial over Frank Darabont's share of profits from The Walking Dead, though a New York judge has found the network doesn't owe the co-creator a share of product integration revenue. More.

►Just in: Comcast said Wednesday that Sky Group CEO Jeremy Darroch will shift to a new role as executive chairman of Sky, with Dana Strong becoming CEO, reporting to Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts. Strong most recently served as president, Consumer Services for Comcast Cable. More.

+Revolving door: Walter Hamada will continue to steer the ship for DC Films as president. The executive has signed a new deal that will keep him with Warner Bros. through 2023...C-SPAN is reinstating Washington Journal host and political editor Steve Scully, three months after he was suspended from the channel. However, Scully will initially return in an off-air capacity... Stephanie O'Keefe has broken a glass ceiling at the American Federation of Musicians by being elected as the first woman president for AFM Local 47 in its 123 year history... Top Canadian broadcaster Bell Media has launched a management restructuring to streamline its executive suite amid a pivot to its Crave streaming platform and the digital space...

--The Television Academy, the governing body of the Emmy Awards, announced Wednesday the appointment of six new chair members of the executive committee — tapping two prominent writers and four executives. Joining the group are One Day at a Time showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett, and Insecure’s Issa Rae, as well as ABC svp and alternative series, specials and late-night chief Rob Mills, recently-tapped Anonymous Content CEO Dawn Olmstead, Amazon Studios’ television co-head Vernon Sanders and Apple’s Zack Van Amburg.

►Behind the Screen: Just prior to next week's virtual CES, Sony Electronics announced a pair of new Crystal LED modular direct view displays aimed at professional applications including virtual production — an area that has experienced an uptick in interest during the past year and has been used on projects from The Midnight Sky to The Mandalorian. More.

►TV review: Daniel Fienberg reviews Netflix's Pretend It's a City, writing that the docuseries "is a tribute to two things [director Martin] Scorsese loves, Fran Lebowitz and New York City, and that affection is contagious for much, if not quite all, of its running time." The review.

In other news...

--Cameo, the celebrity video service that caught fire during the pandemic, has expanded its executive team. Former Quibi chief technology officer Rob Post is among the leaders who have joined Cameo's C-suite.

--After a bizarre false report over the weekend, the actress Tanya Roberts passed away on Monday.

--Singer-songwriter Neil Young ("Down by the River," "Heart of Gold") is the latest music star to strike a catalog deal, selling a 50 percent stake in his song catalog to investment firm Hipgnosis for an undisclosed price.

--Music mogul Dr. Dre is "doing great" after he was hospitalized in Los Angeles following a reported brain aneurysm.

--Riding the worldwide popularity of K-content, Endeavor Content has struck a multi-year deal with Korean TV producer Bon Factory to develop English- and Korean-language series for the world market.

--Meryl Streep, Rashida Jones and Laverne Cox are partnering with Sarah Jones for the sex-industry documentary Sell/Buy/Date.

--Apple CEO Tim Cook received compensation for the fiscal year ended in September 2020 worth $15 million, up 28 percent from fiscal 2019. As has been the case in recent years, Cook also received a nine-figure windfall from vesting Apple stock.

--Wolfe Releasing has acquired the North American rights to The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, setting a day-and-date release for Feb. 26.

What else we're reading...

--"WGN America adds Ashleigh Banfield talk show as NewsNation struggles to find audience" [LA Times]

--"The tech that will invade our lives in 2021" [NY Times]

--"NBCUniversal's Linda Yaccarina named Ad Council board chair" [AdWeek]

--"The politics of Mr. Mayor" [Vanity Fair]

Today's birthdays: Rowan Atkinson, 66, Kathy Sledge, 62, Kate McKinnon, 37, Irina Shayk, 35.

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JANUARY 06, 2021

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