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SAG-AFTRA Members Authorize Strike; THR Comedy Actress Roundtable; 'Little Mermaid' Faces Racist Backlash in Asia; 'Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' Review

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June 06, 2023

What's news: It's magazine day! This week's cover stars are comedy actresses Jenna Ortega, Elle Fanning, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Natasha Lyonne, Ayo Edebiri and Devery Jacobs. The premiere of HBO's The Idol drew less than a million viewers. Apple has launched its $3,499 VR/AR headset. Law & Order is set for a Toronto-based spinoff. Becky G will have a voice role in Blue Beetle. Helen Mirren will receive the American Cinematheque prize. — Abid Rahman

THR Comedy Actress Roundtable

►On the cover. THR's award-winning Roundtable series continues, with Jenna Ortega, Elle Fanning, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Natasha Lyonne, Ayo Edebiri and Devery Jacobs sitting down with Lacey Rose for the Comedy Actress Emmy Roundtable. The six stars discuss fighting stereotypes, digesting gross notes and the prospect of playing Pete Davidson’s girlfriend. The cover story.

SAG-AFTRA Members Authorize Strike

►"We are in it to win it." The members of Hollywood’s largest union, SAG-AFTRA, have given the green light to their negotiators to call a strike if deemed necessary in upcoming labor negotiations with the studios and streamers. THR's Katie Kilkenny reports that nearly 98 percent of members of the performers union voted to authorize a strike in a referendum that lasted a little over two weeks and concluded Monday evening. Union president Fran Drescher called the vote an "achievement." The story.

—"The thought of Piers Morgan and his band of journalists earwigging into my mother’s private and sensitive messages … makes me feel physically sick." Prince Harry has outlined the impact the British tabloid press has had on his life in his first day giving evidence in London’s High Court as part of his legal case against Mirror Group Newspapers. The Duke of Sussex made history on the second day of his hacking trial, becoming the first senior royal to testify in the witness box for 130 years. The story.

—Where multihyphenates are born. The 2023 Tribeca Festival is offering well-known actors a chance to show up as directors. Michael Shannon, David Duchovny, Chelsea Peretti, Jennifer Esposito, John Slattery, and partners Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater all directed movies that will world premiere at the festival, with Rabe and Linklater, Shannon, Peretti and Esposito making their feature directorial debuts. The actor-director lineup.

—Hmmmm... Apple has entered a new category of interest to Hollywood: The virtual reality/augmented reality space. On Monday, the tech giant revealed the Apple Vision Pro, the company’s first product in that sector, as well as its first entirely new product category in nearly a decade. The headset was announced by CEO Tim Cook during a keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The headset will start at $3,499 and launch in early 2024. The story.

'Little Mermaid' Gets Doused in China, Korea After Racist Backlash

►Shameful. The Little Mermaid has grossed a mere $3.6m its first 10 days of release in China, by far the worst showing among Disney’s live-action adaptations. The movie is also struggling badly in South Korea, where it has earned $4.4m through June 4. THR's Pamela McClintock and Patrick Brzeski report that the poor box office returns come amid a racist backlash in those countries over the casting of Black actress Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel. The story.

—Meh. The premiere of The Idol didn’t draw a huge audience for HBO Sunday — but it did fall in line with some other recent series debuts on the premium cable outlet. The Idol, which courted controversy with provocative trailers and was met with mostly negative reviews, drew 913,000 viewers across HBO (for the premiere and three replays) and Max on Sunday — with the majority of that likely coming via streaming. Euphoria, from The Idol co-creator Sam Levinson, opened to 1.1 million viewers in 2019. The ratings.

—Heading north. Dick Wolf is expanding the world of Law & Order to Canada. Citytv, which has aired a full docket of NBC’s L&O dramas over the years, has greenlit a local version of the investigative crime series, Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, in partnership with Universal Television. Based on the L&O global format, the 10-episode drama will follow an elite squad of detectives who investigate high-profile crime and corruption in Canada's biggest city. The story.

—Another go. ABC is developing a new version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which ran for nine seasons on ABC beginning in 2004. The new version is set to be hosted by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, founders of The Home Edit, and counts Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine (which acquired Shearer and Teplin’s company in 2022) among its producers. The ABC project would be the second update of Home Edition. HGTV aired a single season of the show, hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, in 2020. The story.

'Succession' Effect: Do Other Dramas Stand a Chance at Emmys?

►Strong frontrunner. THR's awards editor Tyler Coates writes that the muted Emmy campaigns and strategic submissions of its competitors suggest that HBO's critical darling Succession, which aired its final episode on May 28, will take home the top prize — while also shaking up the lead actor and actress races. The analysis.

—"It’s the first time he’s finally lost everything." Staying with Succession, creator, showrunner and head writer Jesse Armstrong spoke to NPR's Terry Gross about the decisions and takeaways from the series finale. More pointedly, Armstrong explains the final episode fates for Kendall, Shiv and Roman. Warning: Spoilers! The story.

—"Movie audiences eagerly embrace her talents in a career that glows brighter with every captivating performance." Helen Mirren is set to be the recipient of the 37th American Cinematheque prize. The legendary British actress is set to be feted on Nov. 4 during a ceremony that will also honor Kevin Goetz and Screen Engine with the Power of Cinema Award. The story.

Excerpt: 'Burn It Down' Explores 'SNL' and Its "Culture of Impunity"

►"For decades, SNL has been a frequently terrible, punishing experience for a lot of people who worked there or ended up in the show’s orbit." In an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, author Maureen Ryan writes that Lorne Michaels’ "long tenure as a power player and Saturday Night Live's enduring importance are intertwined with a culture of impunity within the world of comedy, in which abuse and toxicity are not just permitted but often celebrated." The excerpt.

—🎭 New additions 🎭 Companion, the sci-fi thriller from the team behind last year’s horror hit Barbarian, is filling out its cast. Lukas Gage, Megan Suri and Harvey Guillén have boarded the feature project that marks the directorial debut of scribe Drew Hancock. The trio join The Boys star Jack Quaid in the story whose plot details are being kept hush-hush but is described as being a self-contained thriller. The story.

—🎭 Late addition 🎭 Singer and actress Rebbeca Marie Gomez, also known as Becky G, has been tapped to voice a key role in Blue Beetle, Warner Bros.’s family adventure feature based on the DC Comics character. Gomez will voice the entity known as Khaji-Da, a being that imbues and controls the Scarab. The story.

Film Review: 'Transformers: Rise of the Beasts'

►"Hasn't transformed into anything original." THR's Frank Scheck reviews Steven Caple Jr.'s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The return after a five-year break of the popular sci-fi action franchise stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback and features the first big-screen appearance of fan favorites the Maximals. The review.

—"An overlong sob story." THR's Angie Han reviews Apple TV+'s The Crowded Room. Akiva Goldsman's drama centers on a man (Tom Holland) whose arrest for a 1979 shooting attracts the attention of an investigator (Amanda Seyfried) sure there's more to his story than meets the eye. The review.

In other news...

—Adam Devine and Pierce Brosnan team up after bank robbery in Netflix’s The Out-Laws trailer

—Bird Box Barcelona trailer: Unseen evil force unleashed in Sandra Bullock movie spinoff

—Kim Cattrall takes charge as the head of a makeup empire in Netflix’s Glamorous trailer

—South Korea’s Beyond Music raises $170m for more catalog acquisitions

—Melissa McCarthy wears “Say Gay” headpiece at WeHo Pride parade

—Dior pool pop-up at the Beverly Hills Hotel marks beginning of summer

—Michael Lamont, Broadway actor turned photographer, dies at 76

—Anna Shay, Bling Empire star, dies at 62

What else we're reading...

—The always excellent E. Alex Jung profiles Drew Barrymore, the new queen of daytime of television [Vulture]

—Michelle Goldberg posits that HBO's The Idol is shaping up to be the first big-budget TV show of the backlash against wokeness era [NYT]

—Peter Kafka looks into the target audience for Apple’s new $3,500 VR/AR goggles [Vox]

—With the end of Succession, Better Call Saul, Barry and more prestige shows, David Renshaw wonders whether we are at the end of the peak TV age [Guardian]

—Incredible must-read Maria Cramer story on what happened when a Brooklyn neighborhood policed itself for five days [NYT]

Today...

...in 1998, HBO introduced Carrie Bradshaw and Sex and the City to television audiences. The original review.

Today's birthdays: Paul Giamatti (56), Hirokazu Kore-eda (61), Jason Isaacs (60), Jonathan Nolan (47), Ashley Park (32), Harvey Fierstein (69), Robert Englund (76), Danny Strong (49), Sandra Bernhard (68), Elliot Villar (43), Sonya Walger (49), José Condessa (26), Staci Keanan (48), Cameron Britton (37), Sasha Luss (31), Brandon Scott Jones (39), Max Casella (56), Gideon Glick (35), Abbie Cobb (38), Frida Gustavsson (30), Danny Webb (65), Paula Brancati (34), Lyndie Greenwood (40), Ellie Kendrick (33), Kyra Zagorsky (47), Alex Datcher (61), Matthew Heineman (40)

Peter Meyer, who represented the likes of Tom Hanks, James Caan and William Shatner as a talent agent at William Morris before spending the past three decades leading his own management firm, has died. He was 68. The obituary.

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Written by José Vizcarra
on Tuesday, June 06, 2023 at 7:01 AM.

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