Today In Entertainment

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

What's news: 366 films eligible for the Oscars, HFPA mea culpa, Hulu v. Mike Tyson, AT&T spins off its pay-TV business in deal with TPG, Amazon exploring G.I. Joe series, Cinemark swings to a loss, AMC Networks touts its streaming efforts, Wall Street mixed on Paramount+. Plus: Berlin hot list, and how Disney TV is tackling diversity. --Alex Weprin

 Oscars List

►366 feature films — meaning 40 minutes or longer — have been deemed eligible for the best picture Oscar at the 93rd Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Thursday as it released its annual "reminder list" for members. This is the highest tally of eligible titles in 50 years — there were 374 titles eligible in 1970 — but only the 22nd-highest total in the history of the Oscars. The first Oscars ceremony considered films from 1927 and 1928, hence its record-setting 562 entries. The rest of the top 20 is filled with other years from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The story.

+Award nominations roundup: The Art Directors Guild announced the nominations for the 25th ADG Awards for production design, which will be presented during a virtual ceremony on April 10... The Guild of Music Supervisors has announced the nominees for its 2021 awards celebrating achievement in music supervision in film, TV, games, advertising and trailers...

►Golden Globes: HFPA says "we understand that we need to bring in Black members." In the wake of last Sunday's scathing exposé in the Los Angeles Times, and with just days remaining before the 78th Golden Globe Awards next Sunday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization behind the Globes, is vowing to do better.

--"We are fully committed to ensuring our membership is reflective of the communities around the world who love film, TV and the artists inspiring and educating them," said the HFPA. The story.

 Hulu v. Mike Tyson

►Hulu is stepping into the ring. The Disney-backed streamer is turning its lens on polarizing boxer Mike Tyson with an eight-episode limited series fittingly titled Iron Mike. From the team behind I, Tonya, the eight-episode series will explore the wild, tragic and controversial life and career behind what the streamer calls "one of the most polarizing figures in sports culture" — heavyweight champion Tyson. Tyson is not involved with the series in any capacity, though sources say Hulu executives briefed him and his team on the series a couple months ago.

--"Hulu's announcement to do an unauthorized miniseries of my life, although unfortunate, isn't surprising," Tyson said in a statement to THR. "This announcement on the heels of social disparities in our country is a prime example of how Hulu's corporate greed led to this tone-deaf cultural misappropriation of my life story... My authorized story is in development and will be announced in coming days." The story.

+Disney TV turns to leadership, not talent, for inclusion efforts. The company's inclusion panel at the Winter TCA press tour put the onus on white leadership to take responsibility for implementing lasting institutional change, Rebecca Sun reports.

--"It doesn't cost you anything to engage, or not to engage," director DMA said. "What we're learning into is shining a light on the people who've been allowed to watch it all happen. Could [Disney TV's efforts] be a model for other people who've been able to watch their Black, brown, female, LGBTQIA colleagues do all this work while they go about their day?" The story.

+Amazon is entering the world of G.I. Joe. The tech giant's Prime Video streaming service is developing a potential TV series based on the franchise. The project would center on Lady Jaye, a covert operative played by Adrianne Palicki in the 2013 film G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The story.

+Phoebe Robinson is bringing her book Everything's Trash, but It's Okay to life for Freeform. The 2 Dope Queens breakout will star in and write the script for the potential series, which is being developed as a half-hour comedy at the Disney-owned younger-skewing cable network. More.

+Entertainment One, the entertainment arm of toymaker Hasbro, is doubling up on Transformers animated shows. The studio has landed new Transformers series at both Nickelodeon and Netflix. EOne will also produce a My Little Pony animated series for Netflix that will continue the story of a feature film set for release on the streamer later this year. The story.

+The Animaniacs are not leaving Hulu anytime soon. The Disney-backed streamer has handed out an early third-season pickup for the revival of the beloved cartoon from Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. Television. More.

+How The Handmaid's Tale season 4 captures post-Trump era angst. Hulu's flagship drama, starring Elisabeth Moss, returns in April with "a historical time in Gilead" that mirrors the current political climate, says creator Bruce Miller. More.

►AT&T is spinning off its video businesses, including DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-Verse, in a deal with private equity firm TPG. The deal values the unit at $16.25 billion. AT&T will own 70 percent and TPG will own 30 percent of the new DirecTV, which will include all three of those businesses. AT&T will receive $7.8 billion from the new venture after the spinoff is complete, including the assumption of $200 million in debt. AT&T had in 2014 agreed to acquire DirecTV for $48.5 billion, or more than $67 billion including debt, and closed the deal in 2015. The story.

 Berlin's Plan

►Berlin Festival winners to be decided by socially distanced, mainly in-person jury. Thanks to the efforts of Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian, an old-school cinephile who believes you can't judge a movie from its online stream, the members of this year's jury will watch the 2021 competition as it was intended: on the big screen.

--The festival will fly five of the six jurors to Berlin and, after COVID-19 testing, screen the 2021 competition titles for them in a theater in the German capital starting Feb. 25. The jury will watch the movies together — masked and socially distanced — and discuss them in group sessions as they would in a normal year. The story.

+Berlin hot list: "Berlin is going to be a litmus test. A lot of buyers who pre-bought in Cannes last year thought they'd have full slates by now, but many of these films haven't gone into production," says Mark Gooder of Cornerstone "The question now is: Will they be gun-shy or will they be willing to keep buying?" While there are a few strong packages on offer at Berlin 2021, expect much of the business to be for the handful of buzzy titles screening across the festival's official program, with work from art house darlings (Céline Sciamma, Hong Sang-soo, Claire Denis) among the hottest titles. The hot list.

►Cinema giant Cinemark Holdings swung to a loss for the fourth quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic, but expressed confidence in a rebound in movie-going once the virus is more contained. "It is almost unfathomable that one year ago, we were reporting Cinemark’s fifth consecutive year of record results with the North American industry touting the second-highest grossing box office of all-time," CEO Mark Zoradi said. "While COVID-19 has caused significant distress to our industry and our company, Cinemark has maintained discipline and consistency, while demonstrating relentless perseverance and agility." The story.

In other film news...

+Linda Cardellini and Kelly Hutchinson — who met on the Netflix hit Dead to Me — are partnering on a feature film project that has just been acquired as a pitch by Amazon Studios in a competitive situation that drew multiple offers from four studios and streamers. The story.

+Pitch Perfect actress Rebel Wilson is on board to star in the high school comedy Senior Year for Paramount Players. Alex Hardcastle will direct the film about a cheerleader who wakes from a 20-year coma and returns to high school to earn the prom queen crown that she missed the first time around. Brandon Scott Jones penned the Senior Year script. More.

+Rachel Zegler, the up-and-coming actress who makes her screen debut as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, has nabbed a key role in Shazam: Fury of the Gods.  Zachary Levi is starring in New Line’s sequel to the 2019 DC Films hit Shazam!. Also back are Shazam!’s director, David F. Sandberg, and producer Peter Safran. More.

►AMC Networks reported better-than-expected streaming subscriber growth for 2020 and better-than-feared U.S. advertising trends in the final quarter of the year. The firm ended 2020 with more than 6 million streaming subscribers, including AMC+, exceeding its target. The story.

+Wall Street had mixed reactions to ViacomCBS' unveiling of paramount+ Wednesday. One analyst lauds a "robust content slate, differentiated live strategy." Another says: "We still need to work on updating our projections." And a third: "We don't understand Showtime's reason to exist." The story.

Casting roundup: Showtime's The First Lady has cast its Barack Obama. The Handmaid's Tale's O-T Fagbenle will play the former president and star opposite Viola Davis in the anthology... Abigail Spencer has joined the ABC drama series Rebel in a recurring role... The voice cast for Pixar's upcoming Italian Riviera-set animated feature Luca has been revealed, with Jacob Tremblay as the titular character Luca Paguro...

►Film reviews: David Rooney reviews Tom Holland's Cherry, writing: "Basically a two hour-plus marriage of dirty-realist misery porn with flashy technique followed by five minutes of the most clichéd and unearned redemption, this grandiose misfire does nothing to advance Apple TV+'s footprint in the original film arena." The review.

+John DeFore reviews Tom & Jerry, writing that the film "is five to ten minutes of action that might have worked in one of the cartoon duo's shorts, surrounded by an inordinate amount of unimaginative, unfunny human-based conflict." The review.

+Also: Leslie Felperin reviews Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, writing that "the family drama is the real meat of the movie. It almost plays like a Highland Park hipster version of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, although as a family the O'Connells have way more angst and innate talent (even if they seem, in their own boho way, as L.A. as you can get)." The review.

+Related: Chris Gardner has 12 revelations from the doc. The list.

►TV's Top 5 podcast: It's a Sin creator Russell T. Davies joins podcast hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg for an in-depth interview as this week's episode also features a deep-dive on Paramount+, the Globes controversy and state of Marvel TV. Listen.

In other news...

--Resident Evil franchise director Paul W.S. Anderson is set to direct In The Lost Lands, an adaptation of a story by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.

--The cable television industry has again fended off the prospect of being forced into offering programming on an à la carte basis. On Wednesday, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals refused to disrupt a district judge's injunction on Maine's unique unbundling law.

--A man was shot and two French bulldogs were stolen in the process Wednesday night in Hollywood, according to Los Angeles police. The dogs are believed to belong to Lady Gaga and the victim, one of her assistants.

--RLJE Films and Shudder have picked up the North American rights to the horror film Seance, which stars Suki Waterhouse and Inanna Sarkis.

--The enchanting world of Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki is heading to the stage. The director's beloved 2001 Oscar-winning classic Spirited Away will be adapted into a stage play for the first time, with a premiere date set for February 2022 in Tokyo. 

--Gimlet podcast Reply All is going on hiatus and won't air the final two episodes of its miniseries about the toxic environment at food magazine Bon Appetit as it reckons with allegations about its own troubling work culture.

--Alan Robert Murray, the supervising sound editor and decades-long collaborator with Clint Eastwood who earned Oscars for his work on the director's American Sniper and Letters to Iwo Jima, died Wednesday. He was 66

What else we're reading...

--“The agents certainly did not like being called crooks”: How Hollywood writers won a war" [Vanity Fair]

--"Where are they now? The people Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made fun of at the Golden Globes" [The Ringer]

--"Facebook ad campaign promotes personalized advertising" [WSJ]

--"Will anyone pay $75 to visit Disney California Adventure with no rides open? You bet" [LA Times]

Today's birthdays: James Wan, 44, Erykah Badu, 50, Michael Bolton, 68, DeRay Davis, 39, Corinne Bailey Rae, 42.

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FEBRUARY 26, 2021

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