Today In Entertainment APRIL 12, 2021
What's news: Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith's Emancipation is the first major film to leave Georgia over voting law, Godzilla vs. Kong still king of the box office, MIPTV kicks off virtually, Shameless showrunner John Wells talks series finale. Plus: The winners from the BAFTAs, DGA Awards, Art Directors Guild Awards, Music Supervisors Guild Awards, and Society of Camera Operators Awards. --Alex Weprin ![]() Georgia Loses Its First Major Film ►The first major film project is leaving Georgia over its restrictive new voting law. Director Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith are withdrawing the production of their slave drama Emancipation from the state. Fuqua, who is directing and producing through his Fuqua Films, and Smith, who starring in and producing the production via his media company Westbrook Inc, made the announcement Monday. The project is being made by Apple Studios, which picked it up in in July 2020. --“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” said Smith and Fuqua in a joint statement. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access. The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state.” The story. ►Box office: Godzilla vs. Kong easily stayed No. 1 in its second weekend despite tumbling 58 percent to $13.4 million from 3,084 theaters for a domestic total of $69.5 million and worldwide haul of nearly $360 million. The tentpole is doing monster business and has already passed up fellow Warner Bros. release Tenet to become the top-grossing pic of the pandemic era in North America. --Globally, its total through Sunday stood at $357.8 million, with an international total of $288.3 million. Sometime early this week, it will pass up Tenet ($365 million) sometime this week to rank as Hollywood's top-grossing, pandemic-era tentpole. The story. +Meanwhile, in China: Godzilla vs. Kong suffered a second stinging defeat at China's box office over the weekend, going down again to Sister, a local drama that was reportedly made for just $5 million. Sister, which is produced and distributed by Shanghai-based Lian Ray Pictures, among others, pulled in $20.8 million in its second weekend. Godzilla vs. Kong, meanwhile, added $13.1 million in its third weekend on Chinese screens. More. ![]() Awards Weekend Awards season is in full swing, and with the Oscars just a few weeks away, the BAFTAs, DGA Awards and Art Directors Guild Awards handed out their top honors over the weekend... ►The BAFTAs: Nomadland emerged as the clear overall winner on the second and final night of the 2021 BAFTA film awards weekend on Sunday. Chloe Zhao’s critically-acclaimed exploration of the nomad community in the American West took home the best film award, plus leading actress for Frances McDormand, director for Zhao and best cinematography for Joshua James Richards. In celebrating her win, Zhao — who become the first woman of color to win the director award and only the second woman in the award's history — later said she would be “very hungover” on Monday morning. She added: “It’s never too early to be drunk in California.” Elsewhere, there was a broad spread of love, with four films coming home with duel wins. --Anthony Hopkins won the leading actor award for his performance in Florian Zeller’s The Father, which also landed the statuette for best adapted screenplay. Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman claimed outstanding British film and original screenplay, and Pixar’s Soul won for animation and original score. The winners. +BAFTA Craft Awards: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Mank, Sound of Metal, Tenet and Rocks were among the winners on the opening ceremony of 2021 BAFTA film awards. Held virtually from London's Royal Albert Hall, eight primarily craft-focussed awards were handed out on Saturday, including casting, costume, makeup and hair, production design, sound, special visual effects, British short film and British short animation. The winners. ►DGA Awards: The 2021 Directors Guild Awards took place Saturday, with Chloé Zhao receiving the evening's top honor for Nomadland. Zhao became the first woman of color to win the DGA’s feature directing prize, cementing the Nomadland filmmaker as a frontrunner in the Oscar race and breaking open one of the industry’s most notoriously male-dominated guild awards. In a brief and humble speech, the Chinese director talked entirely about her fellow nominees, thanking them "for teaching me so much." --Like most of this year’s awards shows, the DGA’s event had a more casual feel than typical years. "Oh come on, that’s crazy!" said Darius Marder, who won the first-time feature directing award for Amazon Studios’s Sound of Metal. Marder thanked the deaf community in Boston where he filmed the Riz Ahmed movie and singled out his fellow nominees in his speech. "I raise a plastic hotel cup to you guys," he said, noting, of his telecast Zoom shot, "I’ve got my iPhone propped on a boot sitting on a Kleenex box." The winners. ►DGA and BAFTA awards analysis: Nomadland holds court, while the acting races remain fluid. THR's awards columnist Scott Feinberg breaks down the weekend's winners... --"The main headline: Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, the art house portrait of a slice of post-recesssion America, remains the clear favorite to win best picture and best director on April 25, having — as was universally expected — won both prizes at the BAFTAs on Sunday, on the heels of Zhao becoming the first woman of color, and only the second woman, to win the Directors Guild of America's top prize." "BAFTA is a hit-or-miss predictor of Oscar, and theoretically could be even more off than usual this year given that BAFTA — as part of a quest to recognize a more diverse pool of talent — implemented new voting processes to determine its nominations and the winners of some categories. But the DGA honor has predicted the best director Oscar on all but eight instances in its history (last year being one of them), and the film directed by the DGA winner has won best picture on all but 18 occasions." The full analysis. ►Art Directors Guild Awards: Mank, Tenet, Da 5 Bloods and Soul won the feature film categories during Saturday's virtual presentation of the 25th Art Directors Guild Awards. The awards were presented to Mank production designer Donald Graham Burt in the period film competition; Tenet's Nathan Crowley, who claimed the fantasy film prize; Da 5 Blood's Wynn Thomas, who collected the award for a contemporary film; and Soul's Steve Pilcher, who was honored for an animated film. The winners. +Music Supervisors Guild Awards: Soul, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Promising Young Woman and The Cuban were among the film winners at the 2021 Guild of Music Supervisors Awards. The Trial of the Chicago 7's "Hear My Voice" won best song written and/or recorded for a film at the virtual event on Sunday night celebrating achievement in music supervision in film, TV, games, advertising and trailers. The winners. +Society of Camera Operators Awards: Geoffrey Haley won the Society of Camera Operators' Camera Operator of the Year Award in film, for his work on the Russo Bros.' Cherry. The Apple TV+ release — for which its DP, Newton Thomas Sigel, is nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award — follows the journey of the film's titular PTSD-suffering war vet, played by Tom Holland. Also Sunday during the SOC Awards celebration, Jim McConkey won the camera operator of the year award in television, for Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The winners. ![]() MIPTV Market... The MIPTV market, typically held in Cannes, France, is virtual this year, but that isn't stopping production companies, streamers, and international broadcasters from seeking new deals and new programming... ►Foreign markets become "next big battleground" as streamers bet big on global growth. Following Netflix's lead, Disney+, HBO Max and others are investing heavily in international series, heating up the global market in "a real arms race," Scott Roxborough and Georg Szalai write. And for creatives around the world, "it is the best of times." --International markets are "the next big battleground in the streaming wars," argues Peter Csathy, founder and chairman of advisory firm CreaTV Media. With the domestic U.S. market "essentially saturated," he says, major players are "increasingly dependent upon overseas subscriptions to justify their long-term goals and ambitions." The story. +Why MIPTV is more relevant than ever thanks to COVID-19. A world in lockdown desperately needs content, and organizers are determined to put on a show despite the pandemic, enlisting Marc Anthony and David Beckham, among others. Some of the hot projects. ►Oscars: Blurring the line between fact and fiction with narrative films and docs. While such narrative features as Nomadland and the docu-comedy Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lean into reality, this season's docs Collective, My Octopus Teacher and The Mole Agent play more like dramatic inventions, Gregg Kilday writes. The story. +How to produce the 93rd Oscars: 7 modest proposals. Operating under once-in-a-century pandemic protocols, the Academy Awards face formidable obstacles. So here’s two cents' worth of advice on what's needed — think Tom Hanks and Super Bowl-like ads of coming attractions. The proposals. ►Shameless boss explains the surprising and open-ended series finale. Showrunner John Wells talks with THR's Lesley Goldberg about the ways the pandemic changed the series finale and how travel challenges prevented one long-awaited reunion from happening. The interview. ►Arty vs. Marshmello: This battle of the DJs has a victor. On Friday, DJ Marshmello was declared the winner in a copyright lawsuit that took an unexpected turn by examining remix rights. Artem "Arty" Stoliarov was the plaintiff in the case that targeted "Happier," an international hit from electronic music producer/DJ Marshmello and British band Bastille. The Russian DJ alleged that "Happier" is "note for note" plagiarism of his remix of "I Lived" by One Republic. More. ►On Saturday Night Live: SNL tackled a news program in Minnesota during its cold open. The KDBD Midday News featured a group of four engaging in a debate about the trial of Derek Chauvin. The sketches. In other news... --Vox Media has made another deal. The digital media company is acquiring Cafe Studios, the podcast-focused media company co-founded by Preet Bharara, the high-profile former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. --The Met Gala is coming back. Actually, twice. The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Monday that the annual high-wattage celebration of both fashion and celebrity — held virtually last year because of the pandemic — will return in person, first in September, and then again on its usual date on the first Monday in May. --Fox News has a new general counsel. The cable news channel has named Bernard Gugar general counsel and executive vp of corporate development. He joins from Google, where he was U.S. Head of Industries for Google Cloud’s Deal Pursuit Organization. --Joseph Siravo, the veteran Broadway actor and educator who played Johnny "Johnny Boy" Soprano on HBO's The Sopranos, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 64. --Harry Kooperstein, a director, producer and trumpet player who received 17 local Emmy Awards, eight for his work on the annual Live From the Hollywood Bowl telecasts, had died. He was 78. --WME has signed media creator Sheena Melwani in all areas. --Dwayne Johnson is open to making a run for the White House. The wrestler turned movie superstar recently addressed the notion after a poll showed he has high favorability to campaign. --Mikko Oikkonen, creator of Netflix Finnish crime series Bordertown, has received the greenlight for his next project, the Nordic thriller Helsinki Syndrome. What else we're reading... --"Inside the Jeopardy! guest host rotation" [The Ringer] --"DMX took us all to the basement of our emotions" [Vulture] --"Jessica Alba's Honest Company files for IPO" [CNBC] --"Google's secret 'Project Bernanke' revealed in Texas antitrust case" [WSJ] --"Why we're freaking out about Substack" [NY Times] Today's birthdays: David Letterman, 74, Claire Danes, 42, Shannen Doherty, 50, Ed O'Neill, 75. ![]()
Is this e-mail not displaying correctly? ©2021 The Hollywood Reporter, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. 11175 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles, CA, 90025 All rights reserved. APRIL 12, 2021
|