The American Film Institute and Universal Pictures have launched a week-long “Black Stories Matter” series with “BlacKkKlansman,” “Get Out,” “Girls Trip,” “Loving” and “Straight Outta Compton” available for free through Aug. 30. 

AFI Movie Club content will feature new interviews with composer Terence Blanchard, director Malcolm D. Lee, cinematographer and AFI alum Matthew Libatique, actors Ruth Negga and Ron Stallworth and writer Tracy Oliver. Amazon, Apple, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Dish, FandangoNOW, Redbox, Verizon and Vudu are offering the films.

“For decades, Universal has supported thought-provoking stories and powerful perspectives that have served to enlighten, enrich and entertain,” said Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and an AFI trustee. “Through this partnership with AFI, we are proud to further shine a light on these distinctly important works that continue to so poignantly amplify today’s conversation.”

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety.

Just a little over a month before Hollywood came to a screeching halt in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, about 3,000 people crowded into the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for the 92nd Academy Awards.

“There were inklings of the virus because people started to hear about it, but what we’ve seen happen certainly wasn’t on our radar,” Stephanie Allain, who produced the Oscars with Lynette Howell Taylor, told Variety on Monday afternoon. “I’m sure people might have had it at the Oscars.”

In fact, Hollywood’s last red carpet premiere for Disney’s “Mulan” wasn’t for another full month. While there were bottles of hand sanitizer available for guests and some people wore masks and gloves to the event, Hollywood was shut down later that week.

“Honestly, is feels like we were in completely different time making the Oscars,” Taylor said.

And then she adds while shaking her head, “Imagine if the Oscars were in March or April. I don’t know what we would have done.”

What they did pre-pandemic shutdown was create a show that has earned nine Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding live variety special. “The number of nominations is really the highlight for us that we can celebrate everybody else and their work and the key people that really make the show what the show is and are deeply creative,” Taylor said.

Allain and Taylor were named producers of the Oscars in November. By the time nominations were announced in January, they had just four weeks to finalize their plans. “[Oscars director] Glenn Weiss said it the best,” Taylor said. “He said the run-up to the show is like going up the roller coaster and then the day of the show is the ride. The adrenaline is so intense.”

“The build up is so intense and then it’s live theater on live television and in front of all your peers, all the people you respect, in front of all the people you revered for your whole life, you just don’t want to f— it up,” she said.

The Oscars were hostless for the second year in a row. Allain and Taylor preferred it that way. “Our motto for the show was really just joy and celebration,” Taylor said. “We said it from the minute we met each other, we did not want to make a snarky show. We wanted to make something that was genuinely about love and appreciation of cinema.”

Allain added, “One of our guiding principles that we both agreed on from the get go, having both worked in theater, is we wanted it to feel like it was a theatrical experience. At one point, we wanted to eliminate the voice of God until we realized we just couldn’t.”

The show opened with a performance by Janelle Monáe that included nods to films that were nominated, but also movies that didn’t make it onto the ballot. “Our mission was to show how much good work happened,” Allain said. “We wanted to celebrate all of it.”

One of their hardest tasks was keeping the surprise Eminem performance under wraps. Very few people knew about the plans and even during a run through the night before with Academy governors in attendance, they staged a fake “Saturday Night Fever” number in place of the rapper’s spot in the show. “They thought we had lost our minds,” Allain said. “They were texting [Academy president] David Rubin being like, ‘What’s happening here?’ David obviously knew so he wasn’t worried about this three-minute tribute to ‘Saturday Night Fever.’”

Like so many Oscar producers before them, they tried to get Gene Hackman to present, but the legendary actor once again turned down the invitation. “We also invited people who turned in great performances, but weren’t nominated, but it’s hard to show up to a party that didn’t put you on the list,” Allain said.

The day before the big show, Tom Hanks whispered to Taylor during rehearsals, “You know, this is the most thankless job in Hollywood.”

Maybe so, but Taylor and Allain have no regrets. “We had a blast doing it,” Taylor said. “We’re really proud of the show.”

Ask if there’s something they would have done differently, Allain and Taylor answered in unison, “Made it shorter.”  The ceremony clocked in at three hours and 32 minutes. “There were probably little things here and there that could have cut some time, but we also decided never to play anyone off during their acceptance speeches,” Allain said. “Even though, we warned people that we would, we didn’t. This is potentially the biggest moment in someone’s life and to get played off in that sort of embarrassing way wasn’t part of our joy and celebration motto. We just couldn’t do it.” The band accidentally started, but then stopped playing off the producers of “Parasite” after the film won best picture because it seemed like they were done with their acceptance speeches.

What words of advice do they have for next year’s producers, who may find themselves producing a virtual Oscars? “I don’t know,” Taylor said. “I don’t envy the people that have to come up with that show.”

Article by: Marc Malkin for Variety.

A judge on Tuesday denied Roman Polanski’s request to be reinstated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, finding that the organization behind the Oscars had a right to expel him in May 2018.

Polanski sued the Academy in April 2019, alleging that he had been thrown out without any warning and without a fair process. Polanski fled the United States in 1978, after pleading guilty to the rape of a 13-year-old girl. He has remained a fugitive ever since, and efforts to extradite him have been unsuccessful.

Judge Mary Strobel concluded that while the Academy could have given Polanski advance notice, the organization had ultimately corrected that failing and given him a fair hearing. She adopted a tentative ruling that she had issued earlier on Tuesday as her final order.

“Board had cause to expel Petitioner,” Strobel wrote. “While the Board could have found the circumstances surrounding Petitioner’s continued fugitive status, including his allegations of serious judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, mitigated the need for expulsion, the Board’s decision is supported by the evidence, was not arbitrary or capricious, and was not an abuse of discretion.”

Polanski’s attorney, Harland Braun, said he would probably not appeal. Asked why Academy membership was important to Polanski, Braun said it was not.

“It means nothing to him,” Braun said. “It’s the idea he’s being thrown out without any due process.”

The hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court was held remotely, with the judge in chambers and the attorneys for the Academy appearing via videoconference. But Braun appeared in the courtroom in person, wearing a mask, and carrying a copy of “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood.”

Over the years, Braun has repeatedly asked that Polanski be sentenced in absentia, which would allow him to travel freely. But the Los Angeles courts have said that he must return to the U.S. first.

The civil suit against the Academy gave Braun a venue to reargue some of the claims that have not prevailed before the criminal courts. During the hearing, he spoke for about 30 minutes straight about the unfairness of the case, and the rulings of courts in Switzerland and Poland that refused to return him to the U.S.

“Is he supposed to come into a court system he doesn’t trust?” Braun asked. “Mr. Polanski has already done all the time he owes our system.”

Braun cited “An Officer and a Spy,” the French-language film Polanski recently made about the Dreyfus Affair, and compared Polanski’s situation to that of Alfred Dreyfus, the French military officer who was railroaded in an anti-Semitic panic.

“There’s a similarity,” Braun said. “Alfred Dreyfus was innocent, and Mr. Polanski is guilty. There’s no question. He’s never denied his guilt. But when the French military realized they made a mistake, they couldn’t admit it. It was the bureaucracy. And in this case, judge after judge ignores the obvious solutions… This case is not gonna be forgotten. This case is like a Dreyfus case. It’s maybe more interesting than the Dreyfus case.”

Braun also mentioned that he had seen “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the Quentin Tarantino film that features Polanski and deals with the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate. He said he advised Polanski not to watch it.

“It’s not a very good movie in my opinion,” Braun said, saying it “made fun” of Polanski and presented Tate as a “joke.”

Outside court, Braun said that he believed that only one or two Academy members were behind the decision to expel Polanski.

Kristen Bird, arguing the case for the Academy, said the Academy was not in a position to adjudicate the criminal court proceedings. She said the Academy had demonstrated that its decision was not arbitrary or capricious, and said the only question was whether it was “long overdue.”

“He was given an opportunity to be heard,” she said. “There’s not any new information.”

Article by: Gene Maddus for Variety.

Director Yeon Sang-ho returns to familiar territory with an oddly timely sequel to his creative 2016 zombie thriller 'Train to Busan.'

Who knew a zombie film could be so prescient? When Train to Busan surprised everyone in 2016 with its simultaneously fresh and familiar spin on the zombie apocalypse, it did so because co-writer and director Yeon Sang-ho splashed blood and guts all over characters we grew invested in, whose tragedies came like a punch to the gut and whose redemption felt earned. It helped that the $100 million grossing Train had a laser focus and could rely on the tension inherent in a confined space; it was a haunted house on rails.

A sequel was inevitable, and despite some truly white-knuckle car chases and creative lighting, Peninsula, like many films that jump on the surprise hit bandwagon, proves lightning in a bottle happens only once. Yeon, who broke out for his caustic animations — The King of Pigs, about the legacy of class and violence, and the first part of the zombie “trilogy,” the much darker disenfranchisement allegory Seoul Station — has crafted what could be argued is his first truly mainstream film, and it makes you pine for his edgier, angrier work.

With South Korea weathering its pandemic storm better the most, Peninsula scored a healthy, social distancing-influenced $13 million opening in July. It should continue to gain steam as it rolls out in other territories (it’s collected $32 million so far) where niche audiences and genre devotees might be tempted to slink out to see how Yeon followed up his game-changing horror thriller. Hong Kong audiences will likely be charmed by the more halcyon images of the city unmarred by scorch marks and infection, and by characters who actually speak Cantonese.

Peninsula picks up four years after the events of Train, with our new hero, soldier Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won, Kim Ji-woon’s Illang: The Wolf Brigade), coldly abandoning a family of survivors on a deserted, woodsy road (in a move that never truly comes back to bite him) as he races to the port with his sister, her husband and their son. We get the requisite TV news/talk show exposition to fill us in on what happened in the interim: The South Korean government lost control of the virus, the Hong Kong-bound ship Jung-seok was on turned out to have infected passengers on board, Jung-seok’s sister and nephew die, and just like that Korea is effectively quarantined from the rest of the world. The refugees are pariahs wherever they go.

Up to this point, there’s nothing particularly innovative or compelling about Peninsula, though the fraught race to freedom and the simmering feeling that something is about to take a catastrophic turn is nicely, if predictably, handled. Yeon is good in tight spaces, and if Peninsula had been stranded aboard a super-ferry that might have worked just fine. Nonetheless, like the earlier film it sets up its premise (or seems to) and so far, so expositional.

The action heads back to zombie-torn Korea when Jung-seok, now an unwelcome virus refugee in Hong Kong, agrees to help his brother-in-law Chul-min (Kim Do-yoon, The Wailing) and a couple of other castoffs sneak back into the country and steal a truck loaded up with U.S. greenbacks, which they’ll split with a gang of unscrupulous Hong Kong gangsters.

Once there, Jung-seok and Chul-min are separated by movie-mandated stupidity: The former is saved from the hordes by Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun, Battleship Island) and her undead-hardened children, the latter falls in with Unit 631, a lawless community led with military harshness by Hwang (Kim Min-jae) and, marginally, Seo (Koo Gyo-hwan), who might be mad. Unit 631 also keeps itself amused with gladiatorial combat. You can guess what substitutes for lions. The end result of this mash-up is a zombie heist/rescue adventure with a detour to Thunderdome — Aunty Entity sadly not included.

Peninsula suffers the same type of sequelitis that suggests a second entry must be more/bigger/louder than its predecessor. Where Train to Busan’s two hours were impeccably paced and every frame meticulously used, Peninsula spins its wheels in between its admittedly impressive key set pieces. The devastated Incheon area is eerie in its calm (until someone leans on a car horn), the derelict shipping containers always feel threatening, and the otherworldly light and long shadows cast by orange flares on the final dash to safety is a gorgeous complement to the chase, making the city seem haunted even as it teems with “life.” The truck heist is well staged, but entirely unnecessary, a symptom of Yeon and co-writer Ryu Jong-jae too often falling back on tropes so deftly sidestepped in the first film.

Apart from the increased use of CGI, the biggest digression from the first film is in the lack of rounded characters that gave the story its emotional heft and actors something to work with. Jung-seok is moody, but an ace shot. Seo becomes a different person when faced with millions of dollars and a chance at escape. Min-jung is self-sacrificing and forgiving, because children. The B and C stories here don’t efficiently serve the A story the way they did the first time around; they feel more like diffuse filler that gives the film an aimless quality it shouldn’t have, with a big emotional finale that feels forced.

Tech specs are as clean and polished as would be expected from a Korean film, though the sound mix seemed to toggle back and forth between ear-splitting and normal too frequently.

Article by: Elizabeth Kerr for the Hollywood Reporter.

A warning message from Alamo Drafthouse requires theatergoers to agree to assume all risks associated with attending movie screenings.

As tickets go on sale for the reopening of various Alamo Drafthouse locations, all ticket purchasers must acknowledge a warning assuming all risks for COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed the way every business operates and moviegoers have been without this pastime for quite a while. Alamo Drafthouse originally closed back in March and gave no word on when their locations would open back up. As with so many other businesses, decisions to slowly reopen have been made as more information regarding the status of the pandemic is being released.

Select Alamo Drafthouse locations reopened on August 21 after closing down for the COVID-19 pandemic. As with so many other business, this reopening comes with several safety precautions in place to minimize the risk of exposure to the virus. Masks, social distancing, and new sanitation practices are just a few of the safety measures that will be practiced at Alamo Drafthouse once people are let inside the doors. But the theater also requires attendees to acknowledge there's a risk in going to the movies.

In a screenshot shared by Twitter user Brock Wilbur, we are given a look at how the new safety protocols are affecting ticket purchases. Before you can complete your ticket purchase, you are required to check off a waiver acknowledging the risks of attending a screening and agreeing not to hold Alamo Drafthouse responsible for any exposure to COVID-19. The waiver details that though Alamo Drafthouse and its employees are doing what they can to keep their audiences safe, there is no way to be entirely sure that no one will contract the virus while visiting their facilities.

The Alamo Drafthouse plans to reopen include new release screenings such as Bill & Ted Face The Music, New Mutants, and Tenet. In addition, to go along with the theme of “making up for lost time,” there are a ton of screenings of classic films that deal with time to be shown. Alamo Drafthouse is definitely working to build up the excitement for their reopening after a five month hiatus, but that is not without the recognition we are still very much in the middle of a pandemic.

Moviegoers have been longing for the moment that theaters will resume screenings, and while this news may be exciting, it is important to remember that this virus is still real and very prevalent. Remaining closed would be the safest decision as it would reduce the risk of exposure and encourage people to stay home. Movie theaters are usually not a place that people attend by themselves and this would be yet another avenue for people to be in a group in a public setting. No amount of social distancing or sanitation measures can completely eliminate the risk of contracting this virus. It would seem that if you have to require everyone to acknowledge such a poignant agreement, then it may not be wise to start reopening doors. In addition, it seems contradictory to entice people into the theaters while simultaneously recognizing that people may get sick if they attend these screenings.

There are also the potential profit ramifications for deciding to have new releases in theaters like Alamo Drafthouse. While some may be lining up for their seats, other will decide not to attend, thus, negatively impacting the amount of profit to be received by both studios and Alamo themselves. We have yet to see how this will affect both the health of moviegoers and the theaters, but adapting is unavoidable, and everyone is doing what they need to do to remain afloat during these unprecedented times.

Article by: Kelsey Lawson for ScreenRant.

The Batman director Matt Reeves explains why Robert Pattinson was cast as the iconic DC hero, with the filmmaker citing the actor's versatility.

The Batman director Matt Reeves explains why Robert Pattinson was cast as the next Caped Crusader. Taking over the mantle after Ben Affleck exited the DCEU, there was initial skepticism about the actor and his ability to do the role justice. However, the director and co-writer of the project makes a great point why Pattinson is perfect for the gig, hopefully easing naysayer's worries about the upcoming iteration of the iconic DC hero.

After months of the rigorous casting process, the choice for the next Bat of Gotham went down between Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult. Both actors reportedly went through screen testing wearing the Batsuit, and not long after news broke out about it, Warner Bros. officially confirmed that the former Harry Potter franchise star has secured the role. At that point, the actor was best known for playing Edward Cullen in the Twilight films which weren't exactly his best acting work, this resulted in some fans getting wary about Warner Bros.' pick to play the titular role in The Batman.

During the film's special DC FanDome panel, one fan asked Reeves what makes Pattinson the best pick to play the Dark Knight in The Batman. The filmmaker cited several reasons, but mainly he chalked it up to his acting range with a string of critically-acclaimed works in the past several years after finishing up his stint as Cullen.

The thing about Robert Pattinson is that he's an incredible actor. I feel like the work that he's done in the last, I don't know, six years, has been incredible. A friend of mine made a movie called The Lost City of Z, and Rob appeared in that movie and I was like 'who is that guy?' Just such charisma, and he, Rob in the movie has this incredible beard and you were like 'who is that' and it's Rob. And Rob in the Rover, and Rob in Good Time, he is like a chameleon...he's just a gifted actor. He's been working on his craft in this really incredible way, and he also happens to be a tremendous, passionate sort of fan of Batman that way that I am and so... it was an incredible thing to be able to connect with him and to share the excitement about the character and to work with him. I mean, you know, he looks like Batman but more than anything, he has the soul of someone I think can play a Batman like you'd never seen before.

Reeves is correct; while Pattinson is still mostly known as the lead of the five-film Twilight series based on Stephanie Meyer's romance fantasy novels, he has since then diversified his portfolio. Over the course of the years, Pattinson has tried different projects which forced him to flex his acting muscles and hone his talent. And if he's going to give the same kind of performance in his more recent projects in The Batman, then fans do not really have anything to worry about. In the meantime, it's only fair to give his version a chance before anyone judges his take on the character.

People are starting to turn around with regard to their initial skepticism of the Pattinson as the new Caped Crusader. The newly-released trailer for The Batman is only helping his cause as the public can actually see what it's like in the role. Based on the general reaction, it seems like the majority is digging his iteration, or at the very least interested to see the entirety of his performance. At this point, that's already a big win considering the initial wave of doubt about his ability to do the role justice in the upcoming project.

Article by: Ana Dumaraog for ScreenRant.

The filmmaker talked about the grounded, "year two" reinterpretation of the Dark Knight.

At the heart of Matt Reeves’ The Batman are a number of questions, not least because the Riddler is one of the villains of the piece. Saturday evening’s panel from DC FanDome saw filmmaker Matt Reeves answer some of those questions — and leave even more dangling after the debut the first teaser for the 2021 project.

Reeves, known for Cloverfield and the Planet of the Apes films, made the point that, although he was a longtime Batman fan, he hadn’t started off intending to make genre movies — until he realized the opportunities available to him. “As I got deeper into genre, that was a way to do very emotional stories under the guise of these very mythic stories,” Reeves said.

Illustrating that, he talked about the fact that The Batman, set roughly a year and a half after the debut of Batman in Gotham City, will see the hero “make mistakes and fail and grow and be heroic” as he struggles with his own failings. This version of Batman will not be the idealized version seen elsewhere, he teased, but is instead “broken” and “confronting the shadow side of himself,” a process that Reeves hopes will allow the audience to empathize with Bruce Wayne in an all-new way.

Helping that process will be actor Robert Pattinson, who Reeves described as “an incredible actor… He’s been working on his craft in this incredible way, and he also happens to be a tremendous, passionate fan of Batman, like I am.” Pattinson, he added, “looks like Batman, but more than anything, I think he has the soul” of the character — or, at least, a Dark Knight in the second year of what Reeves described as an “experiment” to see if Gotham can be changed by one man.

That experiment won’t go well, Reeves hinted, in part because of the deeply corrupt nature of the city, something that will be explored further in the Gotham City Police Department show being developed for HBO Max. That series will be set in the first year of Batman’s career, and will use a dirty cop as its point of view character as it looks into the history of the city’s police department and quite how far the corruption spreads.

Batman himself will be dealing with the same question in the movie, with Reeves saying that Bruce Wayne will have to ask himself how involved his own family was in the corruption thread throughout the city as he investigates a series of murders. Those murders will touch upon a series of familiar Batman villains — including Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) and Oswald Cobblepot (Colin Farrell) ahead of their adoptions of their supervillain identities. Similarly, Paul Dano will play “a version of the Riddler that no-one’s ever seen before,” according to Reeves.

Asked about the inspirations behind the movie, Reeves cited Darwyn Cooke’s Batman graphic novel, Batman: Ego, as well as the movies Chinatown, The French Connection and Taxi Driver. “I guess a lot of really ‘70s, street, grounded stories,” Reeves said, suggesting the movie will be a more down-to-earth, less superheroic version of the character and his mythos.

“One of the joys of being in the comic book world is to say, ‘hey, what can we do to put our spin on these characters?’” Reeves said, before debuting the first teaser for the movie, promising that he and everyone involved in the movie were trying to come to the material anew but still stay connected to everything that’s come before.

The Batman is set for Oct. 1, 2021.

Article by Graeme McMillian for the Hollywood Reporter.

With less than a month to go before the Primetime Emmys, the telecast’s producers are still building the show and figuring out how to make it as live — and safe — as possible. And at the same time, they promise that they’re not aiming to do “Emmys Light.”

“We shouldn’t lose sight that Emmys are prestigious awards, and we’re not giving them out for fun, we’re giving them out to reflect excellence,” said Done+Dusted president Ian Stewart, whose company is handling production on the show for a third year in a row. “However, apart from that, it’s all available to be blown up, quite frankly. Because awards have been the same way for many, many years.”

Variety recently spoke with 72nd Emmy Awards executive producers Reginald Hudlin and Stewart, who revealed for the first time how this year’s ceremony will look. Host Jimmy Kimmel will anchor the Emmys from a stage in the Staples Center, but there will be no audience and no red carpet.

“Jimmy loves to work live, and we love to work live,” Hudlin said. “This is a show that will still very much be, whenever and however possible, a live show. There’s a lot of challenges that come with doing a live show in a COVID environment. But we’re not running from those problems, we’re embracing them.”

The Emmys normally take place across the street at the Microsoft Theatre, but Staples (like the Microsoft, owned by AEG) was chosen because of the facility’s tremendous size.

“One is that it’s so large that the crew can work safely under COVID-safe protocols and be at the appropriate distance from each other,” Hudlin said. “Because obviously the most important thing is safety first. The second part is, this show will need an unbelievable number of wiring connections in and out, because the nominees are not going to be there. So we’re going to take cameras to where they are. And the number of feeds that that requires is so massive that we need a facility like the Staples Center, which is used to having that much signal from reporters covering sports to handle the kind of in and outputs that it requires.”

The producers require that capacity because of an ambitious plan they’ve crafted to have professional cameras and, if possible, camera operators stationed where every nominee is located. (For programs, one of the nominated producers will be chosen to serve as the show’s on-camera representative.) That’s as many as 140 live feeds coming into the control room at Staples.

“This will all depend on the comfort level of the people at the other end, but we’ve got to go and find them,” Stewart said. “They might be at home, they might be in the garden, might be in a hotel, they might be standing on the side of the street. It doesn’t really matter, wherever they feel comfortable. But we want to bring every nominee that we can logistically, live into the show.”

In comparison, the five-night Creative Arts Emmys (Sept. 14-17 and 19) producers are asking all nominees to send over a pre-taped acceptance speech, but only the winner’s thanks will air. In this case, Hudlin, Stewart and team want to be live as much as possible, adding an extra layer of technical difficulty. The producers said they’re prepared to address nominees’ different concerns, particularly when it comes to sending over crew. In some cases, they may agree to have a family member in a nominee’s COVID bubble to operate the broadcast camera. The goal is to avoid using platforms like Skype, Facetime or Zoom on their laptop or phones.

“We’re not trying to make the Zoomies, we’re trying to make the Emmys,” Stewart said. “So one of the things we are trying to do is get the highest-end kit to wherever that person is on whatever level of comfort they have. The best thing for us is to have very high-end cameras, with a person operating them in somebody’s house or wherever they are. That’s our starting point.”

But the producers are aware that some nominees may be in a strict quarantine as they prepare to head into production.

“There will be people who logistically or whatever, we can’t do this,” Stewart said. “We’ll come up with other solutions. But our start point is nothing technology-wise that people have seen before.”

Then there are other challenges that they’re still working through, such as whether winners will get a chance to hold an Emmy while giving their live acceptance speech. (One idea, of having cars race to winners’ homes to slide them an Emmy statue, was ultimately nixed.)

“There are people who are nominated who live in Los Angeles, who live in London, who live in Berlin and Tel Aviv, so we’re looking through all those all those questions and all those challenges and trying to figure it out,” Hudlin said. “But again, that gets into what people’s comfort level is. Do you want someone ringing your doorbell? We’re coming up with a lot of interesting possible solutions. And one of the things that we’re working through in terms of the show is that everything doesn’t have to be the same. We want to have a lot of variation and experimentation within the show. Once you say the world is your studio, then you can do some inventive things.”

Stewart said that variation also extends to the nominees who will be seen on camera: Some may be dressed in their designer best, while others may sport pajamas. “If you want to be in your sweats on your sofa that’s also fine,” he said. “It will be much more casual, much more fun, as we’re more in it together. It will go where it goes. We hope really well, but I can’t sit here and say that it’s going to go 100% perfectly because no one’s ever done it before.”

Added Hudlin: “So often when people win they award, they dedicate it to their kids. Well, your kids can be right there with you. Maybe you’re accepting the award from their bedroom. This is a chance to reinvent every aspect of it. We really want people to think about that.”

Among other elements for the show, the producers are looking at having some presenters at the Staples Center, while others will be remote. They’re also looking at potential musical numbers by major artists, and how to replace the usual orchestra that plays people on and off stage. And they plan to give viewers a glimpse behind the scenes at how they’re pulling off a live event in such an unusual way.

“As you watch the show, you’ll see what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” Hudlin said. “We think that will actually be part of the excitement of watching what we’re doing. We’re going to be very transparent about what’s happening and why.”

Stewart said this year’s ceremony would focus on the fact that television has been a bit of a lifeline and diversion for people stuck at home during these quarantine times.

“Every person has sat down and sought comfort with their TV,” Stewart said. “So we want to try to reflect that, celebrate that, and the fact that we’re all in this together now.

Of course, Hudlin and Stewart said they’re also leaning on host and fellow executive producer Kimmel, a live TV veteran who has spent a good chunk of this year figuring out how to do a virtual show in these times. “I’ve done live all my life but I don’t have a tenth of his instinct for it,” Stewart said.

An element that the producers nixed early on was the idea of having any sort of actual audience in the Staples Center. “It’s still too dangerous, especially in Los Angeles at the moment, to put people in close proximity,” Stewart said. Added Hudlin: “Award shows are typically designed for theatrical setting, a bunch of seats and people watching and you’re performing to that audience. Once you remove the audience, that frees up how you think about how you’re showing everything.”

The decision to cancel the red carpet, and the traditional arrivals pre-show, came after they nixed bringing nominees to the Staples Center. After early conversations about how to reinvent the red carpet as a virtual experience, the producers decided they should just focus on the main ceremony instead. “Ultimately it felt like we should stick to what’s on our plate and get that done,” Hudlin said.

And that includes figuring out the complicated logistics to having a camera on 140 different nominees across the world. “Normally, you’re concentrating on what’s going out of your venue. Here, before we even can make something go out, we’ve got to deal with 120-140 things coming in,” Stewart said. “And also there’s human beings at the end of those feeds. We don’t want people on edge, we want them feeling comfortable to come in and have fun.”

The producers have already sent one letter to nominees hinting at how the Emmys might go live from their house, and Hudlin said much more detailed information would be sent out shortly.

Hudlin and Stewart said the producers have received full support from the Television Academy and ABC as they set out to create this new version of an Emmy broadcast. But Stewart does have one gripe: He was hoping the awards show’s accountants might bend the rules and give the producers an early peek at the winners to plan accordingly.

“That was shut down,” he said. “We thought maybe this year was an extraordinary situation, but unfortunately there’s no leeway on that. We will find out when everyone else finds out. Which is the right way to do it, it’s just annoying.”

Kimmel, Hudlin and Stewart will be joined by Done+Dusted’s Guy Carrington and David Jammy as executive producers, while the company’s Hamish Hamilton is directing. The TV Academy made history this year by tapping Hudlin, whose credits include the 2016 Oscars, as the first-ever Black executive producer of the Emmys.

“It was a no brainer,” Stewart said. “We need every voice in this room in this time. I’m a pale male stale guy, I’m not speaking for everybody in America and we want to make sure that we are. You always want to build a team that has everything in it, and Reggie brings us so many bloody skills that we don’t have. And also, we get to steal his ideas, which was really cool for the future.”

Hudlin made headlines just this weekend by revealing at DC FanDome that he was helping revive the Milestone Comics imprint and that a “Static Shock” movie is in the works. Hudlin, who earned an Emmy nomination for producing the Oscars, and whose awards show credits also include executive producing the NAACP Image Awards for nearly a decade, said he relished the challenge of figuring out this year’s Emmy telecast.

“We start every day by reinventing the show,” Hudlin says. “And then by the end of the day we rip it all down and then we start again the next day. I sound like I’m joking, but I’m kind of not. You may be wondering, ‘Reggie, aren’t you’re very close to show time to not be certain?’ Yes, we know!”

Article by: Michael Schneider for Variety.

The toll the coronavirus has taken upon the U.S. TV ad industry is, to date, $3.7 billion, or a decline of 9%.

That’s according to estimated ad spend data from ad analytics firm iSpot. The annual spend to date of $37 billion is the lowest level seen since 2016.

Among the broad industries, Vehicles and Automotive led the decline, with a $1.2 billion shortfall versus 2019, as consumers’ interest in buying vehicles dried up while many sheltered at home. Electronics and Communication (cell phones, tablets, computers and other electronic goods) saw a decline of $720m, with Travel close behind with $711m less spent. 

Not all industries saw a decline in spend for 2020. Politics and Government was up by over half a billion and should be expected to continue to grow as election season heats up. Home and Real Estate also saw big gains, by $336 million, as increasing numbers of Americans look to relocate away from expensive cities, or catch up on home improvement tasks that have been on the to-do list for years.

When looking at the categories seeing increased ad spend this year, the largest by far is Video Streaming Services. This is partly due to the launch of Quibi, HBO Max and Peacock this year; streaming services are also aware of the lack of content available on traditional TV and trying to tempt viewers to add their services to chase away the lockdown blues.

Being stuck at home has proved a boon for numerous industries, but Laundry Detergents in particular have spent $179m more on ads this year as they seek to capitalize from people looking to minimize outside contact and do their own laundry.

Automakers, including Toyota, GM and Ford, have seen the steepest cuts in the ad budget, spending a billion dollars less this year. Not far behind them are ads for theatrical movies. With theaters closed throughout much of spring and summer and movies delayed, sold to streaming services or released via PVOD, the industry hasn’t had much to advertise, with spend down $944 million.

Of the categories seeing declines of $200m or greater, it is interesting to note that Soda spent $264 million less. One possibility for this is that soft drink ads are usually frivolous in tone, thus something companies avoided running during the “serious” stage when the pandemic set in during March and April. 

It will be interesting to see whether categories such as Soda continue to spend below 2019 levels once the pandemic has passed; VIP suspects some categories that cut on spend but didn’t see a big hit in sales may opt to keep things per the new normal.

Article by: Gavin Bridge for Variety.

A career behind the camera begins at these elite institutions — from USC to NYU — even as COVID-19 complicates curricula.

With both entertainment and higher education deeply impacted by the COVID-19 shutdown, top film schools across the U.S. spent the summer break reassessing established curricula. Many programs are moving classes completely online to comply with local and state health restrictions (student films will mostly be shot on cellphones and star family members and roommates). Colleges, universities and conservatories alike are filling in the gaps in their promised programs with Zoom lectures from top talents like Taika Waititi and Spike Lee, and are hoping to hold makeup physical production classes over the spring and summer breaks in 2021, assuming the world returns to relative normality by then.

But no matter how they are handling the pandemic, all of The Hollywood Reporter’s top film programs are committed to ensuring their graduates will be ready for a career in Hollywood — whatever it may look like. Whether it’s adding new virtual and augmented reality labs (like the University of California Los Angeles), or offering more courses in Black film theory (USC, Chapman, CalArts and UT Austin are among the schools to do so), these programs aim to evolve with the industry and educate the storytellers and executives who will shape the future of entertainment — even if that future is currently on hold.

1. American Film Institute

After much turnover in the dean’s office, Susan Ruskin took over the reins of the famed conservatory just in time for The American Film Institute’s 50th anniversary and a major year of awards and endowments. She replaces Richard Gladstein, Ruskin who stepped in after Jan Schuette left in 2016. The school swept the narrative category at last year’s Student Academy Awards, picking up the gold, silver and bronze honors, and had a similar showing at the DGA Student Awards, winning three of its four eligible categories. Alums and industry professionals note that the grad-student-focused conservatory guarantees students the opportunity to make their own films, with plenty of support. Alum Max Barbakow, whose Sundance feature Palm Springs sold to Neon/Hulu for a record-setting sum in Park City, says the conservatory excels at “empowering young filmmakers to make stuff,” adding that “the opportunity to dive in and make three substantial short films in my first year was undoubtedly the boon of the AFI experience.” Its strong alumni network includes veteran helmer Mimi Leder and Midsommar director Ari Aster, and, thanks to a $3 million gift from trustee emeritus Lawrence Herbert, the school plans to boost alums with a new physical Alumni Center and a digital portal, called AFI Backlot, designed to expand the center’s global reach to alumni. Even by oft-inflated film school standards, AFI offers an expensive education but hopes to continue to offset some tuition and production costs with a new $15,000 Bridges/Larson Production Award and the T.R. Paul Family Foundation Scholarship, and has seen an overall increase in gifts to its general scholarship fund, including installments from Bob Daly, Alan Horn and David Geffen.

TUITION $63,575 to $65,800 grad

ALUMNI David Lynch, Ari Aster, Julie Dash

2. USC

While most film schools focus on the creative and technical side of filmmaking, few cater to students looking to become execs or producers. USC’s renowned School of Cinematic Arts, which encompasses roughly 1,000 undergraduates and 700 grads, focuses on both disciplines, with a track record to prove it. SCA boasts both Marvel movie director Ryan Coogler and head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige as alums. In the last school year, SCA established the John H. Mitchell Endowment for the Business of Entertainment chair — William Morris agency alum Bonnie Chi is the inaugural holder — and the school’s Peter Stark producing program celebrated its 40th anniversary with past grads who include UTA co-president David Kramer. “Rely on the talent and insights of your peers, the people you trust and respect,” says Nahnatchka Khan, the creative force behind Fresh Off the Boatand Always Be My Maybe, on the lessons she learned at SCA. “Keep in close contact with them, Khan keep it real, and you will all lift each other up and hit new heights together.” As Hollywood tries to uproot entrenched systems of racism and sexism, the school has made a new class a requirement for all students: Visions of Diversity in the Cinematic Arts, which looks at cinema and television history through the lenses of equality and inclusion.

TUITION $59,260 undergraduate;$39,900 grad

ALUMNI Robert Zemeckis, Doug Liman, Shonda Rhimes

3. New York University

After an online spring semester of Zoom calls with auteurs like Taika Waititi and Darren Aronofsky, New York University students will partially return to campus this fall with a hybrid approach, and international and L.A. students will have the option to study at one of its global network of campuses. In addition to welcoming Oscar-winning producer Donna Gigliotti (Shakespeare in Love) and nominated sound mixer Tod Maitland (Joker) to its graduate school faculty, its undergrad program has added classes in storytelling with a modern twist (“Aristotle to Beyoncé and Beyond”) and bulked up on its state-of-the-art equipment with new Alexa Mini cameras. Spike Lee, who is a professor at the school, also established a production fund that gives annual grants to student filmmakers, and the newly launched Black Family Film Prize awards $150,000 to grad students whose film projects exemplify innovation in story, style and tone. Says Watchmen producer Tiffany Chung: “My years at NYU have accompanied me beyond graduation as I continue to grow and be inspired by my peers, both personally and professionally, in the collaborative world of storytelling.”

TUITION $60,282 undergrad; $65,926 grad

ALUMNI Martin Scorsese, Damon Lindelof, Nia DaCosta

4. Columbia University

The Ivy League MFA program, which will start this fall with a mix of online and in-person classes, will also return with a new commitment to diversity, inclusion and safe-space initiatives, focusing on the ways in which racism, privilege and inequity impact its community through facilitated discussion workshops. With programs for screenwriting-directing, creative producing and a growing emphasis on the production side, Columbia has been the starting ground for star alumni like Walt Disney Animation chief creative officer and Frozen writer-director Jennifer Lee, who says she chose the school “because it takes a holistic approach — you write, direct, edit, act and produce before specializing. I gained skills to complete every script I could imagine and learned the power of rewriting. In directing, emotion and character drove every shot and frame; in producing, I found the power of collaboration — it truly was everything I dreamt of and more.”

TUITION $62,912 grad

ALUMNI Kathryn Bigelow, Simon Kinberg, James Mangold

5. UCLA

Amid the box office shutdown, UCLA alum Gina Prince-Bythewood entertained the self-isolating masses with her Netflix feature The Old Guard, which was viewed by 72 million subscribers in its first four weeks, according to the streamer. At 19, the filmmaker was at first rejected from the school but wrote a letter to its then-head, Teri Schwartz. “Two days later, she called me and told me she read my letter and I was in,” says Prince-Bythewood. “She literally changed the trajectory of my life.” The school will educate the next generation of Prince-Bythewoods with the new Forever Sunny Directing Scholarship, which provides the female recipient with support for four years to cover tuition and fees, as well as up to $50,000 to cover production costs on the recipient’s thesis film. The Department of Film, Television and Digital Media also boasts diversity among its ranks, with the majority of both the studentbody (60 percent) and faculty (65 percent) being nonwhite. While the new school year begins under the leadership of interim dean Brian Kite, UCLA is looking to fill its top administrative spot, after Schwartz stepped down as dean a year ago.

TUITION $27,712 undergrad, in-state; $57,466 undergrad, out-of-state; $17,486 grad, in-state;$32,588 grad, out-of-state

ALUMNI Frank Marshall, Ava DuVernay, Marielle Heller

6. Chapman University

Actively recruiting students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, Chapman’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts is launching a scholarship fund that will provide up to 10 full scholarships per year for underrepresented young men and women from the local community. Additionally, a mentorship program is set to launch in 2021 that will see the film school partner with L.A. and Orange County high schools and the nonprofit College Access Partnership. Faculty additions include dean Stephen Galloway (former THR executive editor), as well as nine Black female professors who will teach across the school’s curriculum, which includes such new offerings as Black Cinema and Fake News. Justin Simien (Dear White People) says an influential course he took as a student was Acting for Non-Actors. “[Instructor] Joel [Moffett] spent the first few classes teaching us why Star Wars was actually about self-doubt and how to similarly drill down to the theme of any story,” says Simien, who adds: “We eventually did scene work, but only after understanding that what we were actually learning was how to make creative choices driven by what we felt the story was ultimately about.”

TUITION $56,830 undergrad; $44,240 to $56,830 grad

ALUMNI Matt and Ross Duffer, Carlos López Estrada

7. Loyola Marymount University

As construction continues on its Howard B. Fitzpatrick Pavilion, which will house teaching spaces, an AR/VR area and a state-of-the-art theater, LMU also has formally created five specializations in its MFA in film and television program: creative producing, directing fiction, directing nonfiction, cinematography and editing (plans to launch a new International Documentary minor based in Germany were put on hold, however). Classes are scheduled to return entirely online this fall, including a cross-disciplinary elective pairing animation students with screenwriting students and English majors to encourage side-by-side development of story ideas. Plus, with nine new full-time faculty hires (including four people of color), the expansion under new dean Peggy Rajski continues. Says Brian Helgeland, Oscar-winning writer of L.A. Confidential: “I learned how to write at LMU — first of all, by having it expected of me, and secondly, by having instructors with real industry writing experience. It was a film school that took the mystery out of film and replaced it with the practical, the craft. That’s how I learned.”

TUITION $52,553 undergrad; $20,775 to $33,240 grad

ALUMNI Francis Lawrence (Hunger Games), Jim Toth (Head of content acquisitions at Quibi), Patricia Whitcher (Captain Marvel, producer)

8. CalArts

As expected with a school that was founded by Walt Disney, CalArts leads in animation education. Since the creation of the best animated feature Oscar category in 2001, 12 of the 19 winning films were directed by CalArts alums. Grad Bruce Wayne Smith co-directed the recent Oscar-winning short Hair Love; the school is now investing in new classes about animation and identity like Afro-Centric Character Design in its Character Animation Program. Looking outside the scope of traditional animation, CalArts has also brought on Pulitzer winner and alum Ann Telnaes to teach Commentary Through Cartoons.

TUITION $52,850 undergrad; $52,850 grad

ALUMNI Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Kirby Dick (The Hunting Ground)

9. Emerson College

Nestled in picturesque Boston’s Back Bay, the liberal arts college has a globe-spanning footprint with the one-year-old Paris College of Art film program as well as the well-established 107,000-square-foot L.A. outpost on Sunset Boulevard. The Beantown campus, which serves most of the 1,700 undergrad and grad visual and media arts students, features an Emerging Media Lab that includes AR and VR suites as well as 3D modeling and animation. On the diversity front, the program has a nearly 50-50 male-female student ratio, with 24.2 percent of the Visual & Media Arts student body being persons of color (3.5 percent are Black), according to fall 2019 data. In 2018, Emerson announced the Norman Lear Scholarship Fund, which provides a four-year scholarship to students from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds. The first recipient, Worlanyo Mensah (2023), met Lear at his home in Los Angeles in September. Faculty comprises 11 percent persons of color, with 4 percent being Black (numbers are expected to increase for the 2020 academic year but are not complete by press time). Perhaps the biggest draw for prospective students is the active Emerson-Hollywood network. “I’ve hired Emerson interns at every job I’ve ever been at,” says MGM film group president Pam Abdy. “I’m just a real advocate for the school.”

TUITION $50,240 undergrad; $1,296 grad, per credit

ALUMNI Jay Leno, Richard LaGravenese, Adele Lim (screenwriter, Crazy Rich Asians)

10. University of North Carolina School of the Arts

The alma mater of Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Jody Hill— who have collaborated on hits like Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down — UNCSA is a small creative and performing arts conservatory that alum Vera Herbert, a co-executive producer on This Is Us, says “emulates a Hollywood studio system in producing student films, and from my first year I learned how to pitch, develop, take notes, and work with both my peers and the faculty to bring a project to fruition — and experience all the ups and downs that come with that.” With training in drama, film, dance, music, design and production, and new offerings of motion-hand-face-capture, immersive VFX entertainment and effects technologies, the school, which plans to return with hybrid classes, is on the cutting edge of technology, launching an immersive storytelling residency in its technology lab last fall. Last year also marked UNCSA’s first freshman filmmaking school class that was predominantly female, with a focus on creating a pipeline of women into the entertainment industry.

TUITION $6,497 undergrad, in-state; $23,040 undergrad, out-of-state; $9,169 grad, in-state; $23,203 grad,out-of-state

ALUMNI directors Brett Haley (Heartsbeat Loud), Jeff Nichols (Loving)

11. University of Texas

Between its facilities (including a motion-capture studio and one of the largest greenscreens outside Hollywood), its TV writers room workshop class (which culminates in a student-written series shopped to major networks) and an advanced producing class taught by alum Matthew McConaughey, UT has taken innovative approaches to film education. “RTF (RadioTelevision-Film) helped me find my voice,” says WME partner and Advisory Council member Kevin Shivers, who also citesthe recent hires of Ileana Sosa, Alex Rivera, Sarah Seulki Oh and Adrien Sebro as new additions“to a talented and diverse faculty to create an empowering and creative experience.”

TUITION $10,946 undergrad, in-state; $38,748 undergrad, out-of-state; $9,996 to $10,882 grad, in-state;$18,816 to $20,310 grad, out-of-state

ALUMNI Wes Anderson, Renée Zellweger, Mark and Jay Duplass

12. Wesleyan University

In addition to its new 16,000-square-foot expansion of its Center for Film Studies, the past year saw the launch of the Wesleyan Documentary Project, an initiative to teach, support and produce nonfiction film and video to students graduating into an industry that is experiencing a nonfiction boom. Doc producer Sadia Shepard (The September Issue) will be joining the faculty this fall, while recent classes included Oscilloscope co-founder David Laub teaching “The Art and Business of Contemporary Film” and New York Times critic A.O. Scott tackling Italian Cinema.

TUITION $69,704 to $71,764 undergrad

ALUMNI Joss Whedon, Matthew Weiner, Lin-Manuel Miranda

13. Stanford University

While the Palo Alto university offers an expanding film and media studies major — with lessons on film language, genre, video production and visual and narrative structures — it is known for its exclusive MFA in documentary film and video production program, which is capped at eight students annually. In their second year of the program, students produce a 15- to 20-minute thesis film on a pressing social issue, some of which have gone on to screen at Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca. The school is on track to return for some in-person classes this year and, after voicing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, says actionable plans for justice and equality issues are forthcoming.

TUITION $55,473 undergrad; $54,315 grad

ALUMNI Lisa Joy (Westworld co-creator), Sarah Naftalis (writer, FX’s What We Do in the Shadows),  Ramona Diaz (Imelda)

14. Columbia College

Columbia College will see changes to its faculty with filmmaker Thelma Vickroy starting as a new chair and cinematographer Robert Edgecomb joining as an assistant professor of photography. The school will also launch its new BA in Film and Television program — which encourages cross-pollination between the two mediums — while offering online, face-to-face and hybrid classes, with assignments redesigned to incorporate social distancing, smaller crews and remote production. Says alum Carl Seaton (Batwoman, Chicago PD): “I constantly run into people in different places who go, ‘I went to Columbia,’ and it’s a constant thread. We are here to work, we’re striving for excellence.”

TUITION $27,142 tuition only

ALUMNI Lena Waithe, George Tillman Jr., Christian Sprenge (cinematographer, Atlanta)

15. Boston University

This East Coast institution has trained Hollywood’s old guard, like Jim Gianopulos, as well as creatives shaking up the industry, like Uncut Gems helmers Josh and Benny Safdie. While the school is situated far from entertainment hubs, it re-creates the business of content creation on campus with courses like Hothouse Productions, a student-run production banner that shoots PSAs and short documentaries for local nonprofits and TV stations. The school also boasts a revamped MFA in screenwriting, which will see students take a fourth semester in Los Angeles.

TUITION $56,854 undergrad; $57,686 grad

ALUMNI Jennifer Getzinger (director, Westworld) Bonnie Hammer, Bonnie Arnold

16. Syracuse University

After launching a new BFA film curriculum last year offering hands-on experience starting freshman year, Syracuse’s College of Visual and Performing Arts has added essay film, script analysis and sci-fi courses, along with a new film history survey class that will take an anti-sexist, anti-racist and international approach to cinema history from the 1960s to today. With classes planned for in-person and hybrid instruction, its film program, the Newhouse School (Syracuse divides up performing arts and film disciplines), will continue to expand its offerings in TV, radio, podcasting, VFX, production design and entrepreneurship with an emphasis on diversity, inclusion and equity. Pixar president Jim Morris credits the animation courses he took at Syracuse for setting him on his path: “The technology then was stone age compared to what we do at Pixar now, but the soul of creating the illusion of life has never changed.”

TUITION $54,270 undergrad; $30,294 grad

ALUMNI Dan Silver (Disney+), Danny Zuker, Mike Laskersony (VFX supervisor)

17. Ithaca College

At the Roy H. Park School of Communications, student-run production company Park Productions has been delivering client-driven materials like local TV ads and PSAs for a half decade, allowing students to put their production and story skills to work. Newer additions at the-school include an MBA program in Entertainment and Media Management and a collaboration with Ithaca’s business school, as well as West African filmmaker Idrissou Mora-Kpai joining the faculty. Says One Day at a Time writer and executive producer Mike Royce: “Ithaca taught me that, while it was fine to idolize Spielberg, it was even better to graduate knowing how to be me.”

TUITION $46,610 undergrad; starting at $10,500 grad

ALUMNI David Boreanaz, Liz Tigelaar (showrunner, Little Fires Everywhere)

18. ArtCenter College of Design

This Pasadena-based program, which has a three-track focus on directing, editing and cinematography, is known for educating blockbuster helmers like Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, but the film school offers more than just technical wizardry by taking advantage of ArtCenter’s robust advertising and design programs. A cross-curriculum class, Media Maker’s Lab, sees students create a semester-long advertising agency, taking a note from alum Bay, who got his start directing commercials before graduating to giant robots. “It was those courses that enabled me to develop my own personal style and point of view,” says Snyder, who is also a board of trustees member, of his BFA production classes. “The most important lesson I learned was to value your own unique perspective.”

TUITION $45,776 undergrad; $48,380 grad

ALUMNI Don Burgess (cinematographer, Aquaman), Ericson Core (director, Togo), Tarsem Singh (director, The Fall)

19. San Francisco State

SF State was founded in the ’60s with an emphasis on political activism and experimental filmmaking, an ethos that can be seen in its contemporary coursework, with classes like Experimental Documentary. The program, which has been under the direction of noted film scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu for a year, outlines an 18-point statement of values surrounding “diversity, equity and inclusion” (point 18 reads: “Down with censorship!”). The school recently named endowed chairs in both African American Cinema and Social Justice Fiction Filmmaking — Artel Great and Mayuran Tiruchelvam, respectively.pasadena

TUITION $7,440 undergrad; $8,704 grad

ALUMNI Annette Bening, Lisa Cholodenko, Steven Zaillian

20. Florida State University

Amid the renewed call for diversity and Black representation, Florida State established a Diverse Voices in Cinema grant this year for underrepresented film school alumni who seek to overcome injustice through cinematic storytelling. It will include a $10,000 production grant, a full production equipment package, access to postproduction facilities, distribution consultation and a social media campaign. The university has also set up an Equality Scholarship to support first-year students of color, as well as faculty and staff workshop initiatives and annual diversity events. Though classes are set to resume fully in person this fall, FSU will introduce a Real Solutions for Real-Time Filmmaking curriculum that teaches students how to navigate virtual filmmaking with a focus on the innovative technology for previsualization of animated and live-action films. “At the end of the day, it’s the stories that matter, and FSU is empowering filmmakers to tell the stories they want to tell,” says Race to Witch Mountainwriter Matt Lopez of his experience at the college, which counts Moonlighthelmer Barry Jenkins as its star pupil.

TUITION $7,328 undergrad, in-state; $24,517 undergrad, out-of-state; $22,619 grad, in-state; $51,032 grad, out-of-state

ALUMNI Stephen Broussard (Marvel Studios vp production and development), James Laxton (cinematographer, If Beale Street Could Talk), Lauren Miller Rogen (director, Like Father)

21. Ringling College of Art & Design

Accounting for Hollywood’s ever-evolving definition of content, Ringling has introduced a new emphasis21Smith under its BFA film program: Branded Entertainment. The curriculum will focus on creating more advertorial content as a way to provide a faster track to the director’s chair than the traditional film or television career path. Last year, the Florida school finished construction on its 36,000-square-foot Studio Labs complex, which includes five soundstages, multiple edit suites, dubbing and Foley stages, and a color-correct theater, along with traditional classrooms. And with the complex comes the likes of Beau Bridges, Kevin Smith and Dylan McDermott as visiting film-makers, which have long been part of the program. “Two big experiences were getting to be in the edit room with Werner Herzog and taking a lighting workshop with [Inceptioncinematographer] Wally Pfister,” says alum Jason Letkiewicz, who is the senior writer and producer on this year’s Emmys broadcast. “Herzog changed the way I think about storytelling, and Wally opened my eyes to so many new possibilities on set.”

TUITION $45,130 undergrad

ALUMNI editor Andrew Halley

22. Rhode Island School of Design

As one of the premier fine art schools in the country, this Providence mainstay boasts an avant-garde student body spanning all mediums (think David Byrne, who attended in the early ’70s). The 2019-20 student body reflects the college’s commitment to diversity, with 33 percent domestic students of color, including 5 percent Black (the 37 percent international students are not broken out by race). Likewise, 19 percent of the domestic faculty is of color, while 5 percent is Black (7 percent hail from abroad). Although many colleges are forgoing face-to-face instruction due to COVID-19, RISD plans to keep its upcoming core studio and shop-based courses in person with expanded spaces to ensure safe social distancing (courses that don’t require hands-on technique will be offered remotely or in a hybrid version). That’s a huge plus for the program, whose graduates have excelled in the field of animation in recent years.

TUITION $53,820 undergrad

ALUMNI Gus Van Sant, Seth MacFarlane, Martha Coolidge

23. Savannah College of Art & Design

 SCAD’s signature event, the annual Savannah Film Festival with its big-name attendees and awards circuit influence, is going virtual from Oct. 23-31 because of the pandemic, while the school will continue (largely online) with a new curriculum, led by its Collaborative Experiences in the School of Entertainment Arts class, where students from different film specializations work together start-to-finish on a piece of content. “The time I spent in Savannah fully immersed in a creative community and constantly making stuff was probably the most valuable experience in my life,” says producer Jett Steiger (Super Dark Times). “Filmmaking is a team sport, and the only way you can really learn how to do it is to find a group of people you trust and go make something — SCAD gave me that opportunity over and over again.” Those opportunities will be expanded more than ever this year after SCAD recently created 15 endowed scholarships for incoming and current Black students.

TUITION $37,575 undergrad; $38,475 grad

ALUMNI DeRon Horton (actor, Dear White People), Steven Walker, Q. Manning and Peter Yoder (founders of digital product design agency Rocksauce Studios)

24. DePaul University

While it’s not in L.A. or NYC, DePaul’s Chicago campus offers entry into another of the nation’s entertainment hubs: If screenwriting and production students want to get serious about comedy, the school offers a degree program in conjunction with the famed Second City theater, which boasts a who’s who of comedy alums, including Dan Aykroyd, Tina Fey, Jordan Peele and Stephen Colbert. And for the practical production curriculum, DePaul students learn while working on soundstages at Cinespace Chicago, a busy production facility that has played host to everything from Dick Wolf’s Chicago franchise to FX’s Fargo and Fox’s Empire. “We were encouraged to make things as often as possible (especially outside of class), and that’s exactly what I did,” says alum Daniel Willis, director on Grey’s Anatomy and The Black List. “When I left DePaul, I had material that I could show, and those work samples have opened many doors for me over the years.”

TUITION $40,511 undergrad; $20,760 to $31,140 grad

ALUMNI Kevin McGrail (producer, LeBron James' The Shop),  Art O’Leary (editor, Deadliest Catch), Brian Lannin (cinematographer, High Maintenance)

25. Cal State University Northridge

This state school offers a cost-effective education that has the added value of being Los Angelesadjacent. And thanks to a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the department of cinema and television is finishing a three-year cycle of updating production facilities, which includes new camera, sound and lighting equipment. Curriculum additions include a dedicated documentary production program, while extracurricular adds include a gallery devoted to the art of film posters, an upgraded script library and a public screening series that centers on 21st century LGBTQ films and rock ’n’ roll fare.

TUITION $7,012 undergrad; $8,446 grad

ALUMNI Glenn S. Gainor (head of physical production at Screen Gems), Ami Cohen (executive director of television at lionsgate), John Hampian (vp physical production at LucasFilm)

Article by: by Mia Galuppo and Kirsten Chuba for the Hollywood Reporter.

MGM is re-launching its Orion Pictures as a mean to amplify underserved voices and has hired veteran executive Alana Mayo as president of the label.

The studio announced Thursday that Orion will concentrate exclusively on underrepresented voices and authentic storytelling in film with a focus on developing, producing and acquiring feature films that amplify underserved voices, both in front of and behind the camera.

Current Orion president John Hegeman will be stepping down along with his team in early October, after the release of “Bill and Ted Face the Music.” The announcement was made jointly by Michael De Luca, MGM’s Film Group Chairman and Pam Abdy, MGM’s Film Group President.

“We are at an exciting and critical tipping point in our industry. For years many filmmakers and creators who have been considered and treated as outsiders have nonetheless persisted in creating visionary films that drew audiences across the globe and defined culture,” Mayo said. “Many of these films and filmmakers inspired me to pursue storytelling as a career, and to work towards creating a more equitable environment for all creators.”

Mayo will oversee the label’s day-to-day operations, including development, acquisitions, physical and post production, while also working closely with the marketing and publicity team at MGM, and the studio’s distribution partners, on the release strategy and the social impact campaign activation for each film. MGM will handle global distribution, with United Artists Releasing marketing and distributing films under the Orion Pictures label in the U.S. as part of the studio’s joint theatrical distribution venture.

Mayo most recently served as head of production and development for Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, overseeing “Just Mercy” and the upcoming “Without Remorse,” a film adaptation of the fantasy novel “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,”  an untitled original monster movie from Jordan Vogt-Roberts; and World War II action drama “The Liberators.”

De Luca and Abdy said, “We believe deeply in creating content that reflects our global communities and we are thrilled that Alana will be heading up the newly relaunched Orion Pictures label to elevate and empower the many voices whose stories deserve to be told. As a company dedicated to entertaining audiences across the world, MGM is committed to increasing access for all people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities and other historically marginalized groups as a moral and business imperative.”

Orion was launched in 1978 by Arthur Krim, Eric Pleskow and Robert S. Benjamin and released four Best Picture winners — “Amadeus,” “PLatoon,” “Dances With Wolves” and “The Silence of the Lambs” — during the next decade and a half. Orion has been owned by MGM since 1997.

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety.

Whoopi Goldberg, Lee Daniels, Marvel executive Victoria Alonso and more Hollywood heavyweights are on board for a new virtual conversation series from the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The series, titled “Academy Dialogues: It Starts With Us,” is part of the group’s Aperture 2025 equity and inclusion initiative. Topics will include race, ethnicity, gender, history, opportunity and the art of filmmaking.

“With our ‘Academy Dialogues’ series, the Academy is creating a space for our members — and the public — to talk about inclusion in a way that is timely, relevant and allows for a meaningful exchange on how to bring systemic change to Hollywood,” said Lorenza Muñoz, exec VP of member relations and awards. “These conversations may be uncomfortable for some, but they are necessary to broaden the stories that are getting told and increase opportunities for those who have been excluded.”

First up is a chat with Academy governor Goldberg and civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Shot on July 21, the pair discuss the role of narrative storytelling in addressing racial and ethnic inequity, as well as the lasting impact of racist tropes and harmful stereotypes in Hollywood films. This conversation is now available on the AMPAS YouTube page.

Read more about upcoming conversations and participants:

Academy Dialogues: “Native Son”

The Academy will present a conversation with Oscar®-nominated director Lee Daniels (“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”) and Oscar-winning writer Tarell Alvin McCraney (“Moonlight”) about their personal and professional journeys navigating the film industry as Black gay men. Emil Wilbekin, media executive and founder of Native Son, a networking group for professional Black gay men, will moderate the discussion. Available on YouTube on August 27.

Academy Dialogues: “Owning Our Stories”

Bird Runningwater, director of the Indigenous Program at the Sundance Institute, will moderate a conversation with writers Misan Sagay (“Belle”) and Ligiah Villalobos (“Under the Same Moon”) and filmmakers Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (“The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open”) and Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”) on the role that gatekeeping at the studios and production companies has played in preventing authentic stories from being told. Available on YouTube on September 3.

Academy Dialogues: “The Erasure of Latinos in Hollywood”

Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the United States, representing 18% of the population, and yet – whether it is in front of the camera, behind the camera or in executive positions – they are largely missing from America’s storytelling. Moderated by Muñoz, this discussion will explore identity, the complexity of being Latin, the legacies of colonialism, and, most importantly, solutions for inclusion. Panelists include Executive Vice President, Production, Marvel Studios Victoria Alonso, casting director Carmen Cuba (“The Martian”), director Nadia Hallgren (“Becoming”), founder/president, American Entertainment Marketing and co-founder, LA Collab Ivette Rodriguez, among others. Available on YouTube on September 10.

Academy Dialogues: “ICON MANN: We Are the Culture”

In partnership with ICON MANN, a media and consulting company committed to positively transforming the dialogue and image of Black men, the Academy will present a town hall focused on the Academy’s Black membership and the challenges to representation and inclusion in the industry, moderated by Shawn Finnie, the Academy’s associate director of member relations and outreach. Panelists include Oscar-nominated actor and filmmaker Taraji P. Henson (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), actor Delroy Lindo (“Da 5 Bloods”) and writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Old Guard”), among others. Available on YouTube in September.

Academy Dialogues: “ICON MANN Part Two: Investing in Yourself”

Presented in collaboration with ICON MANN, this discussion will explore taking ownership and control of one’s stories and content to find success outside of the traditional Hollywood system. In conversation with Franklin Leonard, founder of the Black List, panelists include producer and Academy governor DeVon Franklin (“Breakthrough”) and producer Debra Martin Chase (“Harriet”), among others. Available on YouTube in September.

Academy Dialogues: “Documentaries Through Our Own Lens”

Although the field of talented documentarians is among the most diverse in the entertainment industry, opportunities to tell their stories continue to be a challenge for people from underrepresented racial and ethnic communities. Academy governor and Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams (“The Apollo”) will moderate a discussion on the systemic changes that need to occur for marginalized communities to be able to tell stories through their own lens. Panelists include filmmakers Lisa Cortés (“All In: The Fight for Democracy”), Bao Nguyen (“Be Water”) and Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”). Available on YouTube in October.

Academy Dialogues: “Color-Conscious Casting”

There is a long history of casting decisions that have severely limited the opportunities for actors of color to stereotypes and minor roles, echoing the overtly racist use of blackface in “classic” films, and there remains a ripple effect of Hollywood’s discriminatory history in hiring practices today. The creative collaboration between casting directors and filmmakers offers a tremendous opportunity to better reflect, on screen, the world as it truly is. This frank conversation will look back at the effects of inequitable and biased casting and look forward to the ways inclusion and authenticity can enrich both our movies and our culture. Available on YouTube in October.

Academy Dialogues: “How Would Gender Parity Change Hollywood?”

Since film is one of the most far-reaching and impactful artforms, what needs to happen for women and girls to see themselves reflected in stories and to find more role models on the screen and behind the camera? How would increasing the number of female directors, producers, executives and others in decision making positions usher in work culture that allows full expression of women’s abilities, leadership skills, intellect and strength? Studies have shown that workplaces with more equity, inclusion, and gender balance result in more collaboration, diversity of thought and higher productivity. This Academy Dialogue will dive into what true equity and inclusion means, how it will inevitably lead to a safer work environment and how to normalize and amplify female leadership and empowerment. Available on YouTube in October.

Academy Dialogues: “Broadening the Aperture of Excellence”

The Academy membership’s role as arbiter of excellence in film has been an influential and important one in the past 93 years. This discussion will center on the importance of broadening the aperture through which cinematic art is viewed and how excellence comes in many forms. Available on YouTube in October.

“Academy Dialogues: It Starts with Us” is part of Academy Aperture 2025, the next phase of the Academy’s equity and inclusion initiative furthering the organization’s ongoing efforts to advance inclusion in the entertainment industry and increase representation within its membership and the greater film community.

Article by: Matt Donnelly for Variety.

The film will premiere in theaters and on Apple TV+ in October.

Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray have reteamed for a new twist on family and love in the trailer for On the Rocks, which dropped on Tuesday.

Starring Murray, Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans, the A24 film under its new partnership with Apple TV+ is about a young New York mother (Jones) faced with sudden doubts about her marriage with husband (Wayans) and teams up with her audacious playboy father (Murray) to investigate her husband.

On the Rocks brings Coppola and Murray back together for the first time since 2003’s Lost in Translation, which nabbed Coppola an Oscar for best original screenplay and received nominations for best picture, best director (Coppola) and best actor (Murray).

On the Rocks will premiere in theaters and on Apple TV+ in October.

Trailer here.

Article by: Ryan Parker for the Hollywood Reporter.

The Canadian chain will open the doors on all 164 theaters countrywide, just as its U.S. peers accelerate their phased relaunches this weekend.

Canada's Cineplex will have all of its 1,687 of movie theater screens open for Hollywood tentpoles on Friday, making the exhibitor the first major theatre chain in North America to fully reopen.

On Thursday, Cineplex said all 164 Cineplex theaters operating across Canada will have their doors open this weekend, including 22 VIP Cinemas locations.

In mid-March, the Canadian exhibitor shut down its entire circuit as the novel coronavirus spread led to a nationwide lockdown. Having its entire circuit open in time Christopher Nolan's Tenet playing in Cineplex theatres from August 27, and for new releases like The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Unhinged, contrasts with major U.S. chains this weekend accelerating their own phased reopenings.

“I want to assure our guests and employees that alongside this great milestone, we have implemented industry-leading health and safety protocols and will continue updating and evolving our practices as necessary to keep everyone healthy and safe,” Ellis Jacob, president and CEO of Cineplex, said in a statement.

Cineplex started its own phased reopening of its nationwide circuit amid the coronavirus pandemic on June 26 in Alberta.

Since then, greenlights have come from all public health authorities in individual provinces to allow the entire Cineplex circuit to finally reopen.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

The arena of film criticism continues to look like a man’s world.

A new study shows that in early 2020, male film reviewers outnumbered their female counterparts by nearly 2 to 1, before the coronavirus pandemic interrupted the film business and movie theaters closed worldwide this spring.

Female film critics contributed 35% of the film reviews across print, broadcast and online outlets, up 1% from 2019, according to the report, titled “Thumbs Down 2020: Film Critics and Gender, and Why It Matters.”

Though the increase in numbers of female film critics seems marginal, the numbers show a marked improvement from the 73% male to 27% female breakdown in 2016.

Since 2007, the study has been conducted annually San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women Film and Television. Researchers, led by Dr. Martha Lauzen, analyzed more than 4,000 film reviews by over 380 individuals working for print, broadcast and online outlets from January through March 2020.

The researchers also profess to consider the potential “impact of the gender imbalance” through their analysis of the representation among the population of film reviewers — “reporting on the relationship between the gender of film reviewers and the gender of protagonists; the relationship between the gender of reviewers and their quantitative assessment of films (i.e., assignment of stars, grades, etc.); and the relationship between the gender of reviewers and the gender of directors.”

Lauzen’s team explains: “The overrepresentation of men as film reviewers coupled with the fact that a higher proportion of their reviews focus on male-driven stories and films directed by men advantage these films by giving them greater visibility.”

For example, the report indicates that female-driven films or films directed by women were more often reviewed by women than men. In a film with at least one female protagonist, women wrote 54% of the reviews, while men wrote 55% of the reviews of films with male protagonists. As noted in the study, “it is not clear whether these differences are due to reviewer preferences or editorial assignments.”

When it comes to the type of media outlet film critics work for, women outnumber men in radio and television; female critics make up 58% of the reviewers on those platforms. But men vastly outnumber women when reviewing for newspapers, news websites and wire services; men account for 69% of the film critics in those arenas.

Regarding race and ethnicity, film critics of color remain underrepresented. The 2020 study shows that 70% of female reviewers are white, 23% are women of color, and 7% have an unknown racial/ethnic identity, while 73% of male reviewers are white, 18% are men of color, and 9% have an unknown racial/ethnic identity. The 2019 report detailed the racial and ethnic breakdown of film critics as a whole — showing 50% of writers were white males, 23% were white women, 10% were minority males, 6% were minority women and 11% of the men and women were classified with “an unknown racial/ethnic identity.”

The study goes on to break down the genres of films reviewed by male and female critics, the job titles they hold and the average scores given to films, as well as the gender makeup of “Top Critics” as designated by Rotten Tomatoes.

Article by: Angelique Jackson for Variety.

While 'Schitt's Creek's' homophobia-free utopia earned an impressive 15 Emmy nominations for its final season, the Television Academy also recognized several other shows, from 'Euphoria' to 'Killing Eve.'

Schitt’s Creek bid adieu earlier this year in a series finale that pulled out all the romantic stops. Co-created by Daniel Levy, the CBC/PopTV show follows a richesto-rags family forced to move to a small town they’d “bought” as a joke, which turns out to be an unglamorous but welcoming utopia free of homophobia. In its last few seasons, the show had become as much about David’s (Levy) relationship with Patrick (Noah Reid) as it was about his family, as one beau navigated his first serious relationship and the other struggled with being newly out of the closet. The finale, titled “Happy Ending,” showcased the series’ queer sensibility, with grooms David and Patrick briefly derailed (David mistakenly believes his fiance had gifted him not just a massage but the eponymous perk), then having their wedding officiated by David’s costume-loving mother (Catherine O’Hara), who became an exaggeration of her already camp self by decking herself in full papal gear and knee-length Pre-Raphaelite curls.

If Schitt’s Creek wins best comedy, it’ll be the first time since 2014 that a series with a central queer character takes home the trophy. The show finds an analogue in 2010-14 winner Modern Family, which also centered on adult siblings — one gay, one straight — and their aging parent(s). But you’d arguably have to go back to 2000, when Will & Grace clinched the award for the first and only time, for a best comedy victor in which queerness isn’t relegated to the B-plots.

Television and LGBTQ representation have enriched each other for the past two decades, and the 2020 nominations largely reflect the variety of queer stories and characters on TV. Admittedly, there’s room for improvement in the two big categories, with only the homoerotic cat-and-mouse thriller Killing Eve joining Schitt’s Creek among the queer-centered series nominees. But there’s no shortage of Emmy recognition for LGBTQ performers — or for actors playing queer characters. The 2020 noms also show healthy progress on two fronts where Hollywood has often failed LGBTQ representation: racial diversity in the queer community, and gay, trans and otherwise nonstraight love stories.

After his lead drama actor win in 2019, Billy Porter was practically guaranteed another nod for Pose this year. But Porter was joined not only by other faces familiar to the TV Academy, like Orange Is the New Black’s Laverne Cox, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy v. the Reverend’s Tituss Burgess and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Andre Braugher, but also relative newcomers like Euphoria’s Zendaya and Hollywood’s Jeremy Pope.

And if the industry has often faltered in letting LGBTQ characters find and keep love, that’s certainly not the case this year. In addition to Schitt’s Creek — for which Levy also was nominated for his performance — the Emmys recognized the romances in Euphoria, Pose and Hollywood through those show’s acting nods. What’s notable here is how different, and from so disparate walks of life, these queer relationships are. On Schitt’s Creek, David and Patrick’s love story is largely domestic, the outwardly quaint husbands the owners of an artisanal gift shop. On Euphoria, things are more somber, with high-schooler and recovering addict Rue (Zendaya) in love with her trans best friend Jules (Hunter Schafer), who’s grappling with the aftereffects of her sexual past. Pose found Porter’s HIV-positive ball emcee Pray Tell once again willing to risk love, this time with a much younger man whose youth he feels wary toward. And on the more fantastical end, there’s Hollywood’s alt-historical romance between Pope’s fictional screenwriter and Jake Picking’s Rock Hudson, who, unlike his real-life counterpart, publicly comes out in the late 1940s and opts for an open love in lieu of a fear-filled closet — and a career in the movies.

And yet the most progress on TV might still be happening when it’s chronicling real life — and real queer people. The breakout Tiger King, nominated for best documentary or nonfiction series, gave us the kind of sideshow gay character perhaps too outlandish to dream up: Who’d believe the meth-using, straight man-chasing, big cat-loving, wannabe governor Joe Exotic if he weren’t flesh and blood? RuPaul’s Drag Race and the similarly drag-centric We’re Here — nominated in the competition and unstructured reality categories, respectively — offer spectacles of gender play that scripted TV still doesn’t seem to know what to do with. As the show announces, the queens are here, and queer, and still wonderfully stranger than fiction.

Article by: Inkoo Kang for the Hollywood Reporter.

A new tool aims to get screenplays to the top of the pile at agencies and studios, and not tossed back onto the unwanted stack of unsolicited submissions.

Before a studio exec reading your film or TV script will ring your agent to demand a meeting, it has to be judged a hidden gem and not tossed back onto the slush pile, or what Hollywood unkindly calls a stack of unsolicited screenplays.

So the creators of ScriptHop, a script-reading software that uses artificial intelligence, are about to roll out The Packet, a interactive online tool for script-submissions they believe will change the way scripts travel in Hollywood -- while also streamlining the job of a reader so they can focus on critiquing a screenplay.

"What we've created is a way to build everything you need to market your script into one simple link," Portland, Ore.-based techie Brian Austin tells The Hollywood Reporter. Austin and UTA veteran Scott Foster launched ScriptHop in 2016, before deciding to pivot more towards the needs of screenwriters.

"We wanted to step away from the AI, because a lot of industry people were expecting AI to actually read scripts and then pull off character breakdowns," Austin recalled, and algorithms are still a long ways from accomplishing that.

So ScriptHop, still wanting to satisfy the industry's need to know what the scripts in their slush pile were all about, set about finding a way to make the script reading and breakdown process easier to navigate for studio execs.

And Austin wanted to give the writer more creative control. "You lose total control once you hit that send button," Austin said of submitting a script as a giant PDF file in an email.

Foster, who left UTA in 2013 when he teamed with Austin, helped design the original ScriptHop AI and now The Packet by collaborating with top screenwriters and industry professionals, including a board of directors with A-list writers like Shane Black and David Hayter, partners like screenwriting software maker Final Draft, and industry players like Film Independent.

Their screen-submitting software solution acts like an online package agency and studio execs receive and which contains a script and accompanying documents, including the latest revisions. Clicking on an online link will produce a browser that initially explains what the script project is about, allows you to download and view the script and other information like the logline, synopsis and character breakdown.

But crucially, the screenwriter has control over what information a studio exec receives, and can manage how it will be viewed. That's because an agency or studio that receives a script usually passes it off to a reader, who may be an assistant or intern, and who then writes up coverage of the screenplay -- basically a synopsis of the story and character breakdowns.

"Now that coverage document is the marketing of the script at that entire agency. They'll just go off of what the reader wrote up," Austin says of execs not wanting to read through an entire script on their own. The Packet allows the screenwriter to circumvent the reader by having their own version of required information like a logline, synopsis and character breakdown be built into the documentation accompanying a screenplay.

The Packet software also allows the reader to fold a writer's source materials into their coverage. The result, says Austin, is readers can focus on the script and respect the writer's vision without having to waste time producing their own logline, synopsis and other materials.

"Now when the reader wants information, they are seeing the writer's words that goes along with this package," Austin adds. In addition, the information provided is interactive. So if the reader wants to know more about the writer, they simply click on a name and open up a biography, or links to other projects.

And to know more about a character, you can click on a sidebar that offers complete character descriptions. Austin argues The Packet preserves the writer's vision and materials as a script is passed within a studio or agency, or to other Hollywood players.

And The Packet aims to bring structure to a complicated and times helter-skelter process of script-submission and reading in Hollywood. "We're just stepping in and trying to bring order to chaos," Austin says.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/scripthop-launches-the-packet-script-submitting-program-to-escape-the-slush-pile

As theaters reopen after being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors are warning that a trip to the cinema might not be a good idea.

Two major movie theater chains in the United States—AMC and Regal—are reopening this week after being closed for nearly five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but doctors are warning that a trip to the cinema might not be a good idea. New film releases have been delayed for months as the industry has struggled to respond to the virus. Still, three new films will be released in theaters over the next two weeks; the Russell Crowe action thriller Unhinged will open on August 21, and The Personal History of David Copperfield and Marvel's New Mutants will both open on August 28. Christopher Nolan's Tenet is still set for a September 3 release as well.

Theaters across the country shut down in masses in March as COVID-19 spread quickly. The film industry has been struggling to adapt; most major releases have been pushed to late 2020 or early 2021. Some films have been released on VOD, but it's clear that studios want to get their movies back in theaters as soon as possible.

As they reopen, theaters are implementing safety protocols and social distancing guidelines, but The A.V. Club spoke to two epidemiologists who believe going to the movies is still unsafe. Dr. Anne W. Rimoin, a professor at the University of Californa, Los Angeles, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, host of the America Dissected podcast, said they would not currently go to a theater. Dr. El-Sayed said:

"From what we understand, the virus is transmitted through through aerosolized droplets that come out of our mouths, oftentimes when we talk or when we laugh or when we sing. And so, being in a room for two hours with a bunch of folks who are laughing at a movie, and where air is not being circulated in an efficient way, and where you don’t know who has been in there before you, that’s really hazardous exposure."

Even wearing a mask throughout the film and not consuming any food or drinks isn't enough to stay safe. In a dark theater, it's impossible to tell if everyone else is wearing a mask. Still, Drs. Rimoin and El-Sayed agreed that, if you're dead set on going to the theater, you should, at the very least, avoid the concession stand and make sure all transactions and interactions are contactless.

While it might not be a good idea to return to indoor film screenings yet, Dr. El-Sayed said outdoor theaters and drive-ins are a safer alternative. Some large retailers, like Walmart, are even hosting drive-in screenings in their parking lots. As the industry grapples with the pandemic, drive-ins could make a comeback. Traditionally, drive-ins rarely show new film releases, but with uncertainty about the safety of indoor theaters, studio distribution models could change.

Article by: Jennifer Lennon for ScreenRant.

The planned Jurassic World: Dominion shoot in Malta has been disrupted due to a coronavirus outbreak on the island that affected crew members. The third entry in the Jurassic World franchise reunites the three stars of the original Jurassic Park, namely Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, who will team up with current franchise stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. This time around, the dinosaur action will take place on a global scale, following their release into the wider world at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Jurassic World: Dominion began production earlier this year but, like all other movies, was forced to take a long break due to the coronavirus. However, it was also the first major blockbuster to return to shooting once filming restrictions in the UK were lifted. Despite the long delay director Colin Trevorrow recently said that the movie was not tweaked during shutdown, with the crew using the time to work on visual effects instead. There have since been a number of photos released from the set, including one that teased a connection to The Lost World: Jurassic Park, in the form of Site B, aka Isla Sorna.

Now, Deadline reports that an outbreak of coronavirus on the island nation of Malta has disrupted the filming plans for Jurassic World: Dominion. According to the report, four crew members from the island have been infected as part of a new uptick in cases on the island, causing the production to scale back in Malta. Initially, the plan was to shoot first and second unit, meaning the lead actors from the movie would be on location. Now, Universal says the shoot will just be second unit, which doesn't require the lead actors to travel there. You can see a comment from the studio below:

“Jurassic World: Dominion will have a significant presence in Malta with a second unit crew shooting there from the end of August through to September. Working with an abundance of caution as we have done throughout this production, first unit will no longer shoot in Malta to keep our presence on the ground to a minimum. We’d like to thank the Maltese Government and Film Commission for all their support and we look forward to a successful shoot in this beautiful country.”

The decision was also likely made due to new restrictions put in place by the UK government on people travelling there from Malta. All returning passengers will now be required to quarantine for two weeks, meaning production would have been delayed while waiting for the actors to quarantine. The situation now will mean that the cast can shoot their close-ups either on green screen or with a backdrop, which can then be edited in to the second unit footage shot on location.

While this may seem like a setback for the production, it is actually likely to streamline the filming process. Given that the entire cast and crew no longer have to travel, they may actually be able to speed up the filming process, as the actors will be able to shoot in a set that has already established its COVID-19 safety protocols. It's a rare piece of good news for Hollywood productions, which have been on the back foot throughout 2020.

The news also reveals that Jurassic World: Dominion is going to be a truly global movie. Previous movies in the franchise mostly shot in Hawaii when on location, so the fact that a Malta shoot was planned, in addition to studio work that included an arctic set, proves that the action this time will be worldwide. It's a change for the franchise, and hopefully allows for interesting and exciting new action set pieces.

Article by: Daniel Gillespie for ScreenRant.

“Pain and Glory” director Pedro Almodovar, “The Nun” actor Isabelle Huppert and “Call Me by Your Name” filmmaker Luca Guadagnino are among a galaxy of 70 film, television, literature and eminent personalities from other walks of life who have signed an open letter expressing “outrage” over the repression of the LGBT+ community in Poland.

Addressed to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the letter states: “We, the undersigned, express our outrage at repressions directed against the LGBT+ community in Poland. We speak out in solidarity with activists and their allies, who are being detained, brutalized, and intimidated. We voice our grave concern about the future of democracy in Poland, a country with an admirable history of resistance to totalitarianism and struggle for freedom.”

Other signees include Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski, whose “Ida” won an Oscar, “The Favourite” director Yorgos Lanthimos, “Vera Drake” director Mike Leigh, and actors Ed Harris and James Norton.

After Polish president Andrzej Duda was reelected for a second term earlier this month, several opposition members showed up at the swearing in ceremony wearing Pride colors. During his election campaign, Duda had said that members of the LGBT+ community “are not people, it’s an ideology.” Some Polish towns have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.”

The letter goes on to provide details of activists who were arrested and detained Aug. 7 for participating in a gathering, and requests the Polish government to control growing homophobic aggression in the country.

“We call on the Polish government to stop targeting sexual minorities, to stop supporting organizations that spread homophobia, and to hold accountable those who are responsible for unlawful and violent arrests of Aug. 7, 2020,” the letter continues.

“We call on the European Commission to take immediate steps to defend core European values – equality, non-discrimination, respect for minorities – which are being blatantly violated in Poland. LGBT+ rights are human rights and must be defended as such,” the letter concludes.

The letter was started by Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, alongside filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and sociologist Agnieszka Graff.

Article by: Naman Ramachandran for Variety.