Today In Entertainment

MARCH 04, 2021

What's news: ViacomCBS launches Paramount+, how Hollywood is dealing with problematic content, Jack Dorsey's Square buys majority stake in Jay-Z's Tidal, how Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's Westbrook Media thrived in a pandemic, how sketch comedy groups survived in a pandemic, Chris Harrison says he will return to The Bachelor, The Simpsons renewed through season 34. Plus: Pinocchio casting news, and WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar teases more Harry Potter. --Alex Weprin

 How Hollywood Grapples With Problematic Content

►Racist, sexist … classic? How Hollywood is dealing with its problematic content. As streamers build out their lucrative libraries, they are experimenting with label warnings, context panels and even purges, Rebecca Keegan reports: "These are valuable properties that you cannot just disregard. You want to keep them, but you have to make sure they don't damage the brand."

--"Nobody's canceling these movies," says TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. "Our job is not to get up and say, 'Here's a movie that you should feel guilty about for liking.' But to pretend that the racism in it is not painful and acute? No. I do not want to shy away from that. This was inevitable. And welcomed. And overdue." The story.

►It's Paramount+ day. The ViacomCBS-owned streaming service "launches" today as a rebrand of CBS All Access, but with dramatically more content, and a new pricing structure. The service unveiled its details just last week, but here's a refresher.

+The basics: The service will have a $5 per month ad-supported tier, and a $10 per month tier that inludes more live sports, local news programming and other CBS broadcast content. It will have some 30,000 episodes of TV and 2,500 films, and announced a boatload of shows (mostly reboots, sequels and revivals) at its investor day. Among the shows coming to Paramount+: A reboot of Frasier, a revival of Inside Amy Schumer, and a spinoff of Yellowstone. The details.

+In other streaming news: Square, the mobile payments firm run by Jack Dorsey, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Jay-Z's music streaming service Tidal for $297 million, the companies announced Thursday. The story.

+And: WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar talked Harry Potter sequels, ad-supported HBO Max and other topics at an investor conference Thursday. More.

 Westbrook Media's Recipe For Success

►How Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's Westbrook Media thrived in a pandemic. As many Hollywood firms stagnated amid COVID-19 shutdowns, soaring social content like the Snapchat series Will From Home has kept the company in the fast lane.

--"It was very in line with the kind of things we were trying to do during more constrained, challenging times," says Snapchat head of content Sean Mills. "I'd be hard-pressed to think of something that happened faster and yet came out with such a high-quality project." The story.

►The Simpsons is staying put at Fox. The broadcast network has handed out a two-season renewal for the Disney-owned animated veteran from creator Matt Groening. While a pickup for The Simpsons had often been a no-brainer, those discussions have become more challenging after Disney took control of the series a couple years ago as part of its $72 billion Fox asset deal.

--The show's last renewal, in 2019, included a reduced licensing fee that helped pave the way for the Fox pickup as The Simpsons has been a loss leader for the network but generates sizable profits for the studio. It's unclear if Disney further reduced its licensing fee for The Simpsons as part of the new deal. The story.

In other TV news...

+Chris Harrison eyes return to The Bachelor franchise: "I plan to be back." The face of the franchise, who had stepped back as host amid an ongoing racism controversy, gave his first interview in nearly one month on Thursday to ABC's Good Morning America. More.

+Apple has given a green light to a sci-fi series that will star Parasite's Lee Sun-Kyun. The tech giant's Apple TV+ platform has picked up Dr. Brain, based on a popular Korean webtoon. The series, written and directed by Kim Jee-Woon (I Saw the Devil, A Tale of Two Sisters), will be the streamer's first entirely Korean-language show. The story.

+CBS Studios is keeping Jenny Lumet in-house. Lumet has signed a big four-year overall deal with the studio for whom she has co-created CBS' Clarice and Paramount+'s The Man Who Fell to Earth and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Under the pact, the David Stapf-led studio will have exclusive rights to produce all TV fare created and developed by Lumet. More.

+Bosch is set to end on Amazon's Prime Video later this year, but the character of Harry Bosch will live on in a spinoff at the tech giant's ad-supported streaming service, IMDb TV. Titus Welliver, Mimi Rogers and Madison Lintz will continue their roles in the spinoff, and much of the Bosch creative team, including series creator Eric Overmyer and author Michael Connelly, is also involved. More.

+A+E Networks pushes for change in how TV ads are sold. The cable TV company is asking advertisers to buy ads based on total audience, rather than the 18-49 demographic, and says it has the data to back it up.

--“We ultimately are beginning to partner with the vast majority of these streamers, but we are trying to do so in a measured way," A+E  Networks ad sales president Peter Olsen says. "I think that is a point of distinction, because the marketplace is certainly enamored by all the new bells and whistles out there, but they are also frustrated with the shifting priorities and how difficult it is to get answers when it comes to measurement and price points and what is going to premiere here and what is going to premiere there.” The story.

 Sketch Comedy's Pandemic Pivot

►How sketch comedy brands survived the pandemic: "We figured teaching improv on Zoom would be a disaster." With live revenue decimated, The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade and Second City — now owned by game mogul Strauss Zelnick — forged new paths to varying degrees of success, Seth Abramovitch reports.

--"For its annual Groundlings Holiday Show, the theater pulled out all the stops, putting on a live, Zoom-based performance featuring 120 video cues and 40 audio cues on top of the ridiculous wigs and costume changes fans have come to expect. The Melrose theater seats 99 — but the show had as many as 200 paying households per performance. 'The audience lives in the chat room,' says Leonard Robinson, the director of the holiday show. 'People will literally type ‘LOL.’” The story.

►Disney has found some of its magic for its live-action retelling of Pinocchio. Cynthia Erivo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have been tapped to play Disney icons the Blur Fairy and Jiminy Cricket in the feature project that is being directed by Robert Zemeckis. The duo join Tom Hanks, who is plating Geppetto, and has been associated with the long-gestating project since 2018. The project is combining live-action and heavy visual effects. The story.

+Neil Patrick Harris has joined 8-Bit Christmas, a New Line comedy for HBO Max that Michael Dowse is directing. Harris is headlining a cast that includes Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made star Winslow Fegley, June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie), and Steve Zahn. The movie, currently in production in Toronto, adapts the debut novel by Kevin Jakubowski that is meant to be a heartfelt and humorous look at childhood misadventures. The story.

+Boogie star Taylor Takahashi on his unusual path from personal assistant to leading man. The first-time actor opens up about his improbable move starring in director Eddie Huang's film about a Chinese American high school basketball star. More.

+Netflix has picked up Teddy and the Guardians of the Night, a family adventure feature, with Seven Bucks Productions, the banner founded by Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia, and Beau Flynn’s FlynnPictureCo. on board to produce. At the same time, Josh Stolberg and Bobby Florsheim have been hired to pen the new screenplay, after an original draft written by Luke Passmore (Archenemy). More.

+Free Association– the production shingle run by Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin, and Peter Kiernan— has signed a first-look deal with MGM. The studio and production are working together on Tatum's directorial debut Dog, which is due out in theaters in 2021. More.

+Paramount has tapped Reinaldo Marcus Green to direct the studio's Bob Marley biopic. Ziggy Marley, Rita Marley and Cedella Marley will produce on behalf of Tuff Gong. Robert Teitel will also produce the feature that will focus on the life and career of the famed Jamaican singer, one of the pioneering voices of reggae. More.

►"Gawker slayer": A Time's Up referral and a lawyer's journey from Hollywood to Trumpland. Charles Harder releases a book on the anniversary of his influential victory for Hulk Hogan and reveals something fairly astonishing, Eriq Gardner writes. The story.

+In other legal news: With a few weeks to go until the possible beginning of one of Hollywood's biggest ever trials, AMC has scored a small victory. On Wednesday, in the $280 million profits lawsuit that Frank Darabont and CAA brought over The Walking Dead, a New York judge ruled that plaintiffs' experts can't offer an assessment of the "fair market value" of the hit zombie series. The story.

+And: Instead of amending its federal lawsuit against Amazon Web Services after a judge ripped its request for an injunction, Parler is trying a different course. It dropped that suit and filed a new one in Washington state court — this time alleging violations of its rights as a consumer. More.

►Berlin: Dealmakers praise digital market's "efficiency," but pine for return to human contact. Building on lessons from digital Cannes and digital AFM, Berlin's online-only European Film Market is running like a well-oiled machine, though participants long for a return to in-person events. "It's slick and efficient, if a bit dull." The story.

+Berlin roundup: Natalie Morales on writing and shooting Language Lessons in just four weeks... Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly) on "being in a state of pure panic" on his upcoming thriller One Way... Here's a first look at Christopher Lloyd and William Shatner in Senior Moment...

Awards roundup: The nominations for the 2021 Costume Designers Guild Awards — recognizing excellence in film, TV and short-form costume design — were unveiled on Thursday... The United States vs. Billie Holiday was named best picture by the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards, it was announced today... Soul and Wolfwalkers lead the Annie Awards feature nominations with 10 apiece. They are followed by Onward and Over the Moon, with seven apiece, and The Croods: A New Age and The Willoughbys, with six apiece... The Hollywood Critics Association is set to give Zack Snyder its first-ever Valiant Award at the virtual 4th Annual HCA Film Awards ceremony on Friday...

►How a plumber altered history by taping the attack on Rodney King. In the early morning hours of March 3, 1991, George Holliday pointed his new video camera at the commotion unfolding less than 100 feet from his apartment balcony in the San Fernando Valley. He speaks to Seth Abramovitch about what happened next. The interview.

►TV review: Daniel Fienberg reviews Paramount+'s For Heaven's Sake, writing that "The thing that For Heaven's Sake ultimately ends up becoming is surprisingly effective, but it requires making your way through a bumpy beginning that feels even bumpier when weighed down by almost any expectations at all." The review.

In other news...

--Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest local TV station owners in the country, is laying off approximately 5 percent of its workforce, citing the economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

--An elite Hollywood private school has been hacked. Insiders describe security breaches at The Center for Early Education that have exposed confidential staff salaries and parent contact information.

--After working together on the domestic release of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Neon has acquired the North American rights to Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman.

--The 11th annual Athena Film Festival has unveiled its 2021 honorees as well as set two more screenings and additional panels for its month-long virtual edition.

--UTA has acquired the U.K.-based Echo Location Talent Agency.

--Nick Loeb's Roe v. Wade actors are calling foul over no-show paychecks. 

What else we're reading...

--"The era of audio creators has arrived" [NY Times]

--"Paramount+ is a mountain. But can it move them?" [Bloomberg]

--"It’s better late than never for Paramount+, even if it was actually first" [The Ringer]

--"Xandr says it will be flexible to work with all ads in the post-cookie future" [Ad Age]

Today's birthdays: Patricia Heaton, 63, Chaz Bono, 52, Whitney Port, 36, Sam Taylor-Johnson, 54, Brooklyn Beckham, 22.

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MARCH 04, 2021

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