New Cover: 'Winning Time'

►Big score: "How HBO’s Lakers series ticked off the NBA, ended a friendship and became the most anticipated sports show in decades."

Lacey Rose takes the court with Winning Time producer Adam McKay and his cast and crew, who reveal the big offscreen plays and occasional fouls behind the show they were told was impossible to pull off: "We can't do this with a subpar Magic Johnson."

--A less than friendly response: "League lawyers have reached out about the use of NBA trademarks and logos, HBO confirms; and at least a few associated with the Showtime Lakers era have expressed concerns about a series with no plans to whitewash the unsavory parts of NBA life. Johnson, who has his own docuseries coming to Apple TV+ in the spring, declared he’s “not looking forward to it,” and Abdul-Jabbar (a longtime THR contributor) has said “the story of the Showtime Lakers is best told by those who actually lived through it.” Both will participate in a Lakers-sanctioned docuseries being released by Hulu this year.

“We’re coming at this with good intentions, but these guys don’t know that,” says McKay, who keeps a picture saved on his phone of him with Abdul-Jabbar at a 2019 THR party. “They’re used to a certain degree of media that’s always going after them, and if I could talk to them, I’d say, ‘No, no, don’t worry, we’re going to paint the whole picture,’ but I get it, they don’t know me or [our showrunner] Max Borenstein, and it’s their right to really not like it.”

--More to come? "[T]he writers are back in the room plotting out season two, which hasn’t been given a formal green light, but one seems likely to come soon. What initially was envisioned to conclude with Magic’s HIV announcement in 1991 now seems open-ended. 'If the stories are there and the different eras are there, why not keep exploring it?' says Bloys, whose network has quietly optioned Pearlman’s follow-up, which takes readers through the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal era of the Lakers."

The cover story.

►Discovery's CNN problem: With the DiscoveryWarnerMedia deal on track to close in a matter of weeks, David Zaslav is getting exactly what he didn’t need: a dumpster fire at CNN. 

“Anyone who didn’t say this is going to blow up like a bomb was not doing their job,” says an executive who has worked for Zucker and has lasting admiration for him even while saying that his ethics can be situational. “There is a certain quality of Jeff, a confidence, an intelligence, and ability to manage his people,” this person says. Another industry veteran who has known Zucker for decades says he “engendered incredible loyalty” at CNN, in part by hiring a number of anchors who had hit career roadblocks. “He gave these people new lives,” this person says. “Of course they were going to react with anger and fear” when he was dismissed. Kim Masters has the story.

And The Awards Went To...

►Tape delay: Several of the 23 categories which were presented live on the air during last year’s 93rd Oscars telecast will not be presented live on the air during the 94th Oscars telecast on March 27, The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg reports.

In a move that is already causing tension within the leadership of the Academy, but is likely to be well received by the general public, the presentations and acceptance of eight awards — documentary short, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live action short and sound — will take place inside the Dolby Theatre an hour before the live telecast commences, will be recorded and will then be edited into the subsequent live broadcast, a variation of a controversial approach that the Academy first adopted and then abandoned in 2018. (The Tony Awards employ a similar model.)

--Quote from the Academy's letter to members: "When deciding how to produce the Oscars, we recognize it’s a live event television show and we must prioritize the television audience to increase viewer engagement and keep the show vital, kinetic, and relevant.  This has been an important focus of discussion for quite some time. We do this while also remembering the importance of having our nominees relish a once-in-a-lifetime experience." The full story.

Paramount Pines For Chris Pine

►Pramount's Star Trek surprise: Sources say that most, if not all, rep teams for the franchise’s primary talent were not aware that an announcement for another film was coming, much less that their clients would be touted as a part of the deal during a Wall Street event.

--Insiders tell Borys Kit and Mia Galuppo that Chris Pine, who plays Captain Kirk, is the first to enter into early negotiations as he is the lynchpin to the project.

The hope is to begin filming in the fall in order to make the Dec. 22, 2023, theatrical release. The script is still being worked on, according to sources, and there is no green light or budget in place. In fact, the budget will now likely have to account for talent deals that may be supersized. The story.

►When Bill met Aziz:  Bill Murray has teamed with Aziz Ansari to star in an untitled feature for Searchlight Pictures, on which Ansari is making his directorial debut.

Ansari, known for co-creating the Netflix comedy-drama series Master of None, is running quadruple duty on the project. On top of helming, he wrote the script, will play a role in the movie and is producing with Youree Henley. The project is based on the Atul Gawande nonfiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. The story.

►A Black Samurai movie: Netflix is developing what it hopes could be its next big action franchise. The streamer has picked up the rights to Marc Olden’s Black Samurai novels, with the intent of adapting the material into film.

John Schoenfelder and Russell Ackerman, who produced the 2021 supernatural horror movie Séance and Jeremy Saulnier’s gritty thriller, Hold the Dark, will produce. The story.

+Meanwhile: James Mangold and 20th Century Studios are in development on a film about the life of silent-screen legend Buster Keaton, with Mangold set to direct and produce. More.

+Film casting news: Alden Ehrenreich and David Krumholtz are the latest talents to lend their atomic strength to Oppenheimer... Fred Hechinger is joining Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters with a role in Kraven the Hunter... Aaron Pierre  is joining Marvel Studios’ Blade...

+Film first looks: Here's Cillian Murphy in the first photo of him as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer... And Daniel Radcliffe in costume as Weird Al Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story...

Awards Focus

►NAACP Image Awards, night two: On Tuesday, the NAACP presented awards in a number of short-form, writing and directing categories. And the organization recognized its 2022 Activist of the Year: Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut state conference of NAACP branches. The winners.

+Critics Choice Super Awards: Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home lead this year’s nominees for the Critics Choice Super Awards. Both films nabbed five nominations, while on the television side, Paramount+’s Evil and Netflix’s Midnight Mass lead with six nominations each. The nominees.

+Guillermo del Toro is scheduled to receive the inaugural Gene Kelly Visionary Award at the Advanced Imaging Society’s 12th Lumiere Awards, which will be presented during a March 4 luncheon at The Beverly Hills Hotel. More.

+The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA) unveiled on Tuesday its 2022 Dorian Award nominations, which recognize the best in mainstream and independent movies. Jane Campion’s western drama The Power of the Dog led the pack with nine nods in total. The nominees.

+Also: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr. will open the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards... Kenneth Branagh and Aunjanue Ellis will receive honorary awards at the fifth annual HCA Film Awards...

►Red Reddington’s to-do list is getting longer again. NBC has renewed its espionage drama The Blacklist for a 10th season. Star and executive producer James Spader announced the pickup Tuesday during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, a few days before the show’s return from a month-long hiatus. The renewal will also take the series past the 200-episode mark early in the 2022-23 season. The story.

In other TV news...

+Production workers at Rick & Morty and Solar Opposites filed a petition on Tuesday for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board in a bid to join The Animation Guild.

+Emmy Rossum, who starred for 11 seasons in Showtime’s popular series Shameless, has joined Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried in The Crowded Room, a drama that Akiva Goldsman is writing and executive producing for Apple Studios and New Regency. Emma Laird is joining too.

+Fox’s anthology drama Accused has lined up its first episodic star. Emmy winner Michael Chiklis (The Shield, HBO’s upcoming Winning Time) will star in the first episode of the series

And In other news...

--For the first time, YouTube will hold its annual Brandcast advertising event during TV’s upfront week, giving the Google-owned digital video giant stage space alongside The Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, Fox Corp., and (presumably) Warner Bros. Discovery.

--Gabrielle Union is launching a content series with LinkedIn that will focus on uplifting Black and other underrepresented entrepreneurs through the exploration of topics like gender equity and mental health in the workplace.

--Nielsen says it will make streaming data available to users of its media planning products, further integrating the company’s measurement of streaming platforms into information for media planners.

--The Hong Kong International Film Festival, scheduled to have kicked off on the last day of March, has been indefinitely postponed due to an ongoing wave of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

What else we're reading...

--"Meta’s Facebook escalates TikTok rivalry, launches Reels globally" [WSJ]

--"Apollo Global partner reveals strategy behind firm's acquisition of Dune producer Legendary, TV station group Tegna, and plans for further media M&A and 'our own IP'" [Insider]

--"How CNN betrayed its audience" [The Atlantic]

--"How Arthur grew up: Inside the beloved TV show’s emotional finale" [LA Times]

Today's birthdays: Linda Nolan, 63, Emily Blunt, 39, Aziz Ansari, 39, Dakota Fanning, 27.