Against all odds, “The New Mutants,” Disney and Fox’s beleaguered superhero thriller that’s been delayed numerous times in the past two years, might end up being the film that revives moviegoing.

Though Disney has shuffled around theatrical plans for nearly every movie slated for release in 2020 and beyond, “The New Mutants” has curiously stayed put on the weekend of Aug. 28. Many had expected that Disney would continue to postpone it, while others speculated that the film might be exported to Disney Plus or Hulu. But Disney sent exhibitors a lengthy email on Monday outlining theatrical plans, including news that tickets can be sold starting the morning of Aug. 18.

“It’s for sure opening August 28th!” one exhibitor wrote to Variety excitedly.

Theoretically, given the fast-changing nature of the pandemic, it’s still possible that Disney could amend those plans. But for now, “The New Mutants” will be the first new theatrical release from a major studio since the pandemic forced U.S. cinemas to close in March. The news is especially surprising, and not just because Disney has done minimal promotion for “The New Mutants.” Over the last few months, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic “Tenet” and Disney’s “Mulan” have received the lion’s share of attention, with exhibitors and studios alike hoping those two titles could help reignite cinemas after prolonged shutdowns. Now, “Mulan” is skipping U.S. theaters and premiering on Disney Plus, while “Tenet” is staggering its rollout — starting internationally on Aug. 26 before making its way to select U.S. cities on Sept. 3. Russell Crowe’s thriller “Unhinged,” from newcomer Solstice Studios, will debut in theaters on Aug. 21, the week before “The New Mutants.”

Even before coronavirus caused cinemas to shutter and required studios to postpone major movies, “The New Mutants” endured an especially arduous journey to the big screen. Since it was initially slated to open in 2018 under 20th Century Fox, the film reportedly went through extensive reshoots and its release date has changed five times. In a recent ComicCon at Home panel, the studio cheekily addressed “The New Mutant’s” numerous big-screen delays, even putting an asterisk next in the latest trailer and writing “Fingers crossed” next to the late-August date.

It’s unclear where in the U.S. “The New Mutants” will be able to play. Currently, 1,309 of the 6,021 venues in the country have reopened, according to Comscore. Movie theaters in New York City and Los Angeles — the two biggest moviegoing markets in the States — are still closed without a set date to reopen. There’s been speculation that Disney was contractually obligated to release “The New Mutants” in theaters after inheriting the movie as part of its $71.3 billion merger with Fox, which might explain why the studio opted to forge ahead with this release date while deferring titles including the family adventure “Jungle Cruise” and Marvel’s “Black Widow.”

In any case, the release of “New Mutants” comes at a dire time for movie theater owners. Exhibitors that have started to resume business are finding that ticket sales aren’t flowing as freely as they were before the pandemic. That’s partially because there hasn’t been a new movie to show in theaters in months. Though people might be desperate to get out of the house, they’re less inclined to do so to see “Harry Potter” or “Star Wars” for the umpteenth time.

Studios are continuing to grapple with the fact that there is no telling how willing people will be to go back to the movies — making it riskier to debut tentpoles with massive budgets. Instead, many Hollywood companies have opted to scrap theatrical plans for movies like Paramount’s “SpongeBob: Sponge on the Run,” Universal’s “Trolls World Tour” and Warner Bros. “Scoob,” in favor of having them premiere on digital rental platforms or through streaming services. Though exhibitors realize it’s a necessary move for studios during uncertain times, it’s been a major source of frustration for theater owners, who have been left without anything to entice audiences. 

Directed by Josh Boone, “The New Mutants” features an ensemble cast — including Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy and newcomer Blu Hunt — as young mutants trapped in a secret facility against their will. The movie is expected to be the final entry in the “X-Men” franchise, the 13-film series that stretched from 2000’s “X-Men” to 2019’s “Dark Phoenix.” For the most part, the superhero adaptations have enjoyed lucrative ticket sales and even an Oscar nomination (in the case of 2017’s “Logan”). But “Dark Phoenix” — which was originally intended to wrap up the “X-Men” universe before “New Mutants” was pushed into 2020 — bombed and lost the studio over $100 million, indicating that after two decades, the franchise is running on fumes.

However, there’s hope that Kevin Feige, the mastermind behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, can revive an aging franchise now that the characters have a new home at the Magic Kingdom. That could be a heroic ending everyone can root for.

Article by: Rebecca Rubin for Variety.

The Bell Digital Cinema platform for general public viewing of TIFF-selected titles in September will also be geo-blocked for Canada.

The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled plans for drive-in and "open air cinema" screenings on the city's waterfront to offset reduced capacity at its only two indoor movie theaters set for the Sept. 10-19 event.

And TIFF's Bell Digital Cinema platform for general public screening of movies selected for the 2020 edition will be geo-blocked for Canada, organizers said on Monday. TIFF co-heads Cameron Bailey and Joana Vicente, having already signaled a hybrid offering of digital and in-person screenings for their September event, revealed plans to show the public around 50 programmed films at five locations in the city.

These include the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the festival's downtown headquarters on King Street, and the Isabel Bader Theater on Charles Street, near Yorkville. As the prestigious Canadian festival heads outdoors for socially distant film viewing amid the coronavirus pandemic, TIFF will also show movies at the Skyline Drive-In and the Lakeside Drive-In at Ontario Place, on the city's Lake Ontario waterfront, and at the West Island Open Air Cinema, also at Ontario Place.

"At the drive-ins and open-air cinema, audiences can expect the same high-quality viewing experience as in past years," the festival said in a statement. At the same time, the five venues will be subject to reduced seating capacity to comply with local public health restrictions.

Elsewhere, TIFF's online plans include industry conference sessions, networking events and digital showcases of film titles by national cinema agencies. Planning for a first-time online industry conference follows the physical edition of the Toronto Film Festival being sharply reduced in size and scope due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, 2020 TIFF audiences will not, as in earlier years, view movies at red carpet venues like the Elgin Theater, the Princess of Wales Theater and the Ryerson Theater, in addition to in-person press and industry screenings at Cineplex's Scotiabank Theater.

As Toronto allows ordinary Canadians in their homes to instead view fest titles using Chromecast and a dedicated TIFF digital app, organizers said they will use anti-piracy measures, including forensic watermarking and visible watermarking, to protect the copyright of film titles, including studio fare, against piracy.

The 2020 pandemic-era edition will also see the same ticket pricing as last year, even though Hollywood A-list talent will not physically walk red carpets or onto movie theater stages at this year's socially distant event. Pre-tax screening tickets for the indoor and Bell Digital Cinema screenings will range from $19.00 to $26.00, and drive-in screenings are to cost from $49.00 to $69.00, depending on the number of people in cars.

And open air cinema screenings will cost two people $38.00 for a "lawn pod."

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

Keep your budgets low and have faith in the resilience of arthouse cinema and theaters, film festivals and markets. But also be ready to engage with streamers that could become an integral part of new indie business models in the post-pandemic landscape.

Those were some of the upbeat tips that surfaced from the Locarno Film Festival’s StepIn industry think tank, where film industry operators who form the core of Europe’s indie ecosystem come together to trash out the most pressing issues they are contending with. StepIn went online this year due to the pandemic with webinars on the future of the theatrical experience, production, film festivals and markets.

The three sessions — moderated by Variety journalists and hosted by the Variety Streaming Room platform —  streamed Aug. 5, 6 and 7.

Here are five takeaways from the sessions:

1. Keep budgets low 

Brazilian producer Rodrigo Teixeira, who has been instrumental in bringing to the screen films such as “Call Me by Your Name” and “Ad Astra,” warned against the danger to filmmakers posed by “big streamers coming in and full financing a movie” because “depending who you are” that can mean “completely losing” your creative freedom. The best way to not capitulate? Make self-financed indie movies on smaller budgets. “If we push the budgets down” we will survive,” at least “in the beginning,” Teixeira said.

2. Don’t lose faith in people’s appetite for indie cinema

Neon president of distribution, Elissa Federoff, has faith that audiences still want indie movies. “We know they’re hungry for genre, for an arthouse film, for a period film, for whatever,” she said. “I don’t think that the United States needs a ‘Tenet’ for people to come to movie theaters. I think that they need something that is original and exciting. And that’s all they need; it doesn’t need to be something massive; it needs to be something that speaks to them.”

3. Online film markets can open up new avenues

Cannes Film Market director Jérôme Paillard noted that roughly 20% of participants in this year’s online market were “new participants” that had not attended Cannes in the past five years. Interestingly, in general the numbers (screenings and admissions) this year were close to those of the market’s physical editions. So will the Cannes market go hybrid next year? Not necessarily. But Paillard did say he is looking at how to use “experimental tools, and see how we can combine all of them.”

4. Festivals are burying the hatchets and joining forces to help filmmakers

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera vowed that festivals are there to support the global film community more than ever. “In the past – especially in the last let’s say eight, 10 years – the competition between most festivals was really becoming a bit too much,” Barbera said. But now festivals have understood that their main purpose is not “to support theirs own ego or image or identity, or whatever,” he noted. “We are here to serve the filmmakers, to help promote films.” Therefore “It’s extremely important that the collaboration (between festivals) becomes something that we share as a common experience as a common tool, as a way to be better at doing our job.”

5. Don’t demonize the streamers

“The streamers will do what the streamers do,” said Film4 director Daniel Battsek. He went on to point out that platforms such as Netflix are not “the big bad wolf.” Why? “because in many ways they’ve created a vanguard for certain types of filmmaking and turned audiences onto certain types of (indie) filmmaking” such as documentaries and foreign-language films with subtitles. Battsek sees a landscape that, yes, “is hugely challenging” with “all these powerful behemoths.” But there have always been “huge stumbling blocks” for independent film. So “it’s just a case now of taking advantage of what we know and what we’re able to do.”

Article by Nick Vivarelli for Variety.

With blockbusters filling up the big screen and streaming giants dominating the small, independent film-makers are running out of options.

It used to be the dream scenario for aspiring indie film-makers: you would scrabble together a first feature, maxing out credit cards and remortgaging your parents’ house, and get it shown at the Sundance film festival, where your raw talent would get noticed and your movie picked up for a record sum, establishing your A-list career. In the early 2000s, thousands followed that dream, hoping to be the next Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson. It was barely achievable at the best of times – last year’s Sundance received more than 14,000 submissions – but right now is the worst of times.

In a recent interview in Variety, film-maker Oren Moverman did not mince his words. “It’s very clear that independent cinema, as we know it and as we love it, is over,” he said. Moverman, who directed movies such as The Messenger and Rampart, questioned whether there was still a place for the sort of “grungy putting-together of 10 dollars here, 10 dollars there to make a film”.

Even if they do get their films made, indie film-makers have no place to show them. The pandemic has exacerbated a trend that was already pushing studio blockbusters towards the big screen and everything else towards the small screen. Universal’s recent deal with the AMC chain to reduce the theatrical window (the period movies play exclusively in cinemas) from three months to three weeks is another blow.

Meanwhile, the small screen is now dominated by streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which are either producing their own content or snapping up indie films at festivals. And the streamers’ tolerance for “independence” is not always high. Just ask Michaela Coel, who walked when Netflix wouldn’t let her keep even 0.5% of the rights to I May Destroy You.

And what of Sundance itself? The Mecca of indie film-making is starting to look more like a sanctuary. In recent years it has premiered The Farewell and Eighth Grade, but its power to break future box-office winners is on the wane. The biggest buzz at this year’s festival was when Taylor Swift showed up with her documentary Miss Americana, which played on Netflix.

The festival doesn’t yet know whether it can physically happen in 2021, although a web-only Sundance London this weekend includes a panel discussion titled “(Re)Imagining the Future of Independent Film”. That’s a conversation worth having. It is worth stressing that Moverman was proclaiming the death of indie cinema “as we know it”. New ideas and opportunities could spring up. “Something has been built, and now it’s being wiped away,” he says. “But I think the wiping away just reveals a new thing.” If it’s just the studios and streamers left standing, the space for genuine “independence” will have to be created elsewhere.

Article By: Steve Rose for the Guardian.

The GSA BAFTA student film awards acknowledged achievements in animation, documentary and live-action with UC Berkeley’s Lucas Guilkey taking the prize for doc “What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?,” which follows a woman’s search for justice after her son dies in a Santa Rita jail.

The animation trophy went to “Sous la Glace” made by a team of from France and “Mum’s Hairpins” from Russia winning the live-action award.

A special prize was also voted on by a jury made up of actors Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Clarke Peters, directors Isabel Coixet and Reinaldo Marcus Green and filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab. The prize was awarded to “Making Waves,” a film following one woman’s work in marine wildlife conservation. 

The BAFTA-GSA Grant Jury, which launched last year, also awarded $12,000 grants to filmmakers of two projects, “Witness” and “Premature.” The grants are issued to give creators a platform for encouraging awareness of the importance for well-being amongst people age 15 to 25.

Students from across the globe virtually accepted awards for filmmaking at this year’s GSA BAFTA Student Film Awards. The stories were centered around themes of racial and economic justice, land mine detection, the plight of refugees, the Holocaust, as well as the eco-system. The show, hosted by “How to Get Away With Murder” actor Elliot Knight, streamed on YouTube Aug. 7, with nine finalists from Russia, France, Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Belgium, South Africa and the U.S. all nominated for awards.

“We are truly humbled by the talent and artistry of this year’s finalists, and proud of how this international program can provide a platform for new voices, unique stories, and alternative perspectives,” said Louise Chater, Peter Morris and Sandro Monetti, co-chairs of the BAFTA LA Learning & New Talent Committee. “The GSA BAFTA Student Film Awards have demonstrated that in spite of the incredible difficulties the year has brought, the desire to remain connected and to come together to support a new generation of creatives and storytellers remains as strong as ever.”

The Global Student Accommodation Group (GSA) and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) offer awards each year to creators in film schools, with the contestant pool this year including about 700 applicants from 35 countries.

The full show is available on BAFTA’s YouTube channel, and the complete list of winners is listed below:

• Student Film Award for Animation -“Sous La Glace,” by Milan Baulard, Ismaïl Berrahma, Flore Dupont, Laurie Estampes, Quentin Nory and Hugo Potin (École des Nouvelles Images, France)
• Student Film Award for Documentary – “What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?,” by Lucas Guilkey (UC Berkeley)
• Student Film Award for Live Action – “Mum’s Hairpins,” by Tatiana Fedorovskaya (Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Film Directors, Russia)
• Special Jury Prize – “Making Waves,” by Laura Zéphirin (NYU)
• Short Film Commissioning Grant – “Witness,” by Mishal Mahmud and “Premature,” by Julio Ramos (USC).

Article by: Eli Countryman for Variety.

Luca Guadagnino is set to direct the Scarface remake written by the Coens, and he says it will be relevant to the current era. Luca Guadagnino received a Best Picture nomination for his last film, Call Be By Your Name, but is also known for his remakes — primarily Suspiria, but also the Italian/French film A Bigger Splash.

Speaking with Variety promoting his upcoming HBO series We Are Who We Are, Guadagnino talked about what drew him to the Scarface remake. 

“People claim that I do only remakes, but the truth of the matter is cinema has been remaking itself throughout its existence,” he said. “It’s not because it’s a lazy way of not being able to find original stories. It’s always about looking at what certain stories say about our times. The first “Scarface” from Howard Hawkes was all about the prohibition era. Fifty years later, Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma make their version, which is so different from the Hawkes film. Both can stand on the shelf as two wonderful pieces of sculpture.”

He continued, “Hopefully ours, forty-plus years later, will be another worthy reflection on a character who is a paradigm for our own compulsions for excess and ambition. I think my version will be very timely.”

The Scarface remake was originally set to be directed by Antoine Fuqua but production was delayed and he ultimately dropped out, to be replaced by Guadagnino.

Article by: Jeremy Thomas for 411 Mania.

“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” she said. “The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”

Twenty-one years after her breakthrough film’s release, Lilly Wachowski has finally confirmed theories about the trans allegory at the heart of The Matrix, the blockbuster film franchise she codirected with her sister Lana. In a video interview for Netflix, Wachowski spoke candidly about the trilogy’s implicit trans narrative, explaining how she and Lana—who are both trans, but were not out at the time of the film’s release—crafted their sci-fi story.

“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” Wachowski said. “The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”

The franchise tells the story of Neo (Keanu Reeves), a hacker trapped inside a simulated version of reality, dubbed the Matrix. At its heart, she explained, the Matrix itself “was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view.” The character Switch (played by Belinda McClory), she noted, was originally written as someone who presented as male in the real world, and as a woman in the Matrix.

Both Wachowskis came out after all three Matrix films were released, Lana in 2010 and Lilly in 2016. Since then, there have been numerous pieces retroactively examining The Matrix series through a trans lens.

“I don’t know how present my transness was in the background of my brain as we were writing it,” Wachowski said. “We were always living in a world of imagination. That’s why I gravitated toward sci-fi and fantasy and played Dungeons and Dragons. It was all about creating worlds. It freed us up as filmmakers because we were able to imagine stuff at that time that you didn’t necessarily see onscreen.”

Wachowski has addressed this in the past, speaking warmly about the ongoing conversation around the film in a GLAAD Award speech in 2016.

“There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens of our transness,” she said. “This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”

The discourse around the franchise will only grow deeper in the coming months, as Lana prepares to write and direct a fourth Matrix film. Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Jada Pinkett-Smith are a few of the stars confirmed to reprise their roles, while newcomers like Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Neil Patrick Harris are set to join the cast as well. Trans allegories aside, fans might also wonder how the upcoming installment will tackle how right-leaning internet users have co-opted the concept of the “red pill,” turning it into a conservative meme. Both Wachowskis had largely been quiet about the co-opting, but Lilly spoke out about it in May after Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump tweeted about the meme. “Fuck both of you,” Wachowski wrote.

Wachowski’s interview with Netflix arrives after she was featured in Disclosure, the 2020 documentary about the history of trans representation in media. She also cocreated the series Sense8 with Lana for the streamer.

Article by: Yohana Desta for Vanity Fair.

Next year’s Sundance Film Festival will be significantly shorter than previous editions of the annual celebration of the best in indie cinema. The news comes after Sundance previously announced that it would upend the way it was hosting the 2021 version of the festival due to coronavirus, adding virtual screenings and talks to the program.

Organizers for the event sought and received approval from the Park City Council this week to trim the festival from 11 days to seven. It will now take place from Jan. 28 to Feb. 3 — moving back from the original plans to host Sundance from Jan. 21 to Jan. 31.

At the council meeting, Sundance said that it was also limiting capacity in theaters to 25% because of public health concerns. Sundance also asked Park City to wave a requirement that 70% of events be hosted in the mountain community, according to ParkRecord.com.

 Sundance previously said that it is considering partnering with cinemas in several other cities to host screenings and events, and is engaged in “exploratory discussions” with theaters in the likes of New York, Nashville, Austin, Detroit, Atlanta, and Mexico City.

The festival officially updated its dates on its website this week. News of a shorter Sundance comes as other film festivals are changing the way they approach events during COVID-19. Fall festivals in New York and Toronto, for instance, will be a mixture of physical and virtual events.

Article by: Brent Lang for Variety.

Antitrust rules barring studios from owning movie theaters were swept aside Friday after a federal judge approved an effort by the Justice Department to do away with the Paramount Consent Decrees.

These laws have been in effect since the golden age of movies. They were intended to break up the stranglehold that major studios such as Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Paramount once maintained on the business by preventing them from owning both the means of production and distribution. Other studios, however, such as the Walt Disney Company and Lionsgate, which became distributors after the law went into effect, were not subject to the rules.

The move comes after the department proposed eliminating the regulations last fall, noting that they were anachronistic and failed to predict the complex ways that various forms of entertainment are made and distributed.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres found “…that termination of the Decrees is in the public interest.”

It’s unlikely that the decision will change how business is conducted in Hollywood. Movie theaters are suffering an existential threat due to the coronavirus and entertainment companies have become increasingly dependent on television and streaming in recent years. Judge Torres noted this new landscape, writing, “as internet movie streaming services proliferate, film distributors have become less reliant on theatrical distribution. For example, some independent distributors, relying on subscription, instead of box office revenues, currently release movies to theaters with either limited theatrical runs or on the same day as internet movie streaming services. Netflix, which plans to release over fifty movies this year, ‘mostly bypasses theaters.'”

Even before the pandemic, attendance at cinemas was flat. The move to do away with the decrees was part of a larger anti-regulatory drive on the part of the Trump administration and was not a major focus of the movie studios.

Eliminating the rules will also eventually lift restrictions against “block booking” and “circuit dealing” after a two-year sunset period. Doing away with those regulations will allow studios to force theater owners to show films limited commercial prospects if they want access to their more popular franchises.

Article by: Brent Lang for Variety.

Though many theaters across the U.S. are still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ava DuVernay is making sure Angelenos can take a safe (and free) trip to the movies.

For a special two-night pop-up event, DuVernay’s non-profit cinema and social justice organization Array Alliance will present “Selena” and “Purple Rain” on a 40-foot screen in Downtown Los Angeles.

“Selena,” which celebrates the life and tragic death of singer Selena Quintanilla and earned Jennifer Lopez a Golden Globe nomination, will screen on Friday, Aug. 14. “Purple Rain,” which marked Prince’s big-screen debut before going on to win an Oscar for best original score, is featured on Saturday, Aug. 15.

The event will be held at Los Angeles Center Studios in L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown/Westlake neighborhood. Tickets are free with advance registration online at ARRAY Drive-In and will be issued one per car, with admittance on a first-come, first-served basis. Putting safety first, the Array Drive-In will adhere to the County of Los Angeles social distancing and health safety mandate for staff and attendees. And because the two films celebrate musical icons and some of their most classic tunes, “singing along is encouraged” at the screenings.

“At ARRAY’s core, we produce, distribute, exhibit, and amplify images by Black artists, people of color, and women of all kinds,” Mercedes Cooper, Array’s director of programming, said in a statement. “While the Amanda Cinema at our ARRAY Creative Campus is closed for safety, along with all theaters in LA, it was important for us with this event to continue our mission of offering free film screenings in communities that are underserved.”

The community cinema pop-up will be presented by Lyft, which earlier this year launched a new initiative called LyftUp, which expands transportation access to underserved communities. Explaining the partnership, the team at Array noted LyftUp’s goal to provide ride credits for voters in an effort to make getting the polls easier and more affordable “resonates deeply with Array’s mission of providing various streams of access in Black and Brown communities.”

Article by: Angelique Jackson for Variety.

Even amid a pandemic that has battered major parts of its business, including theme parks and studio entertainment, Disney flexed the power of its streaming service Tuesday, releasing whopper subscriber figures and announcing that its tentpole film “Mulan” will bypass American theaters and go straight to Disney Plus next month.

Disney Plus now has over 60.5 million paying subscribers as of Aug. 3, just nine months after the launch of the direct-to-consumer streaming platform. And after several delays to its theatrical release date, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said that “Mulan” will premiere on the service on a “premiere access” basis on Sept. 4 for $29.99. The film will be released theatrically in markets in which access to the movie on Disney Plus is not available. 

Chapek was quick to emphasize on the call with analysts that the “Mulan” release on Disney Plus is a one-time event.

“We’re looking at ‘Mulan’ as a one-off, as opposed to saying there’s some new business windowing model that we’re looking at,” he said.

“We find it very interesting to take a premiere offering to consumers at that $29.99 price and learn from it,” said Chapek, noting that they would study the number of transactions and the number of subscribers generated by the movie.

He also said that the premiere access window created on Disney Plus for “Mulan” acts as a “fairly large stimulus” for new consumers to sign up for the streaming service.Between Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, the company has surpassed 100 million in global SVOD subscribers. That has made the company “even more confident about our future” and encouraged them to be “more aggressive” with programming. During the last earnings call, Disney reported 54.5 million worldwide subs. Chapek highlighted the 15 Emmy nominations earned by the service’s flagship live-action “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian.”

Hulu’s total subscribers have reached 35.5 million as of June 27, up 27% from the year ago quarter. Of those subscribers, 3.4 million take the SVOD Hulu service as well as the Hulu Live virtual MVPD service. Hulu Live subs are up from 2.2 million in the year-ago frame.

ESPN Plus now has 8.5 million subscribers.

Disney plans to launch an international direct-to-consumer general entertainment offering under the Star brand in calendar year 2021. Chapek said it would draw content from Disney-owned ABC Studios, FX, Freeform, 20th Century Studios and Searchlight, among other Disney assets.

At this stage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the company’s direct-to-consumer and international segment is the only division that generated year-over-year revenue growth during the quarter, rising 2% to $4 billion. The unit delivered an operating loss of about $706 million, which was $200 million less of a loss than previously forecast, thanks to the growth of Disney Plus and Hulu.

Meanwhile, the normally lucrative parks, experiences and consumer products segment saw revenue plummet 85% to $1 billion, while studio entertainment revenue sank 55% to $1.7 billion. Media networks segment revenue slipped 2% to $6.6 billion.

Disney’s direct-to-consumer offering is a “top priority and key to the future of the company,” said Chapek on the call.

In the company’s fiscal third-quarter earnings, total revenue plummeted 40% to $11.7 billion and diluted per-share earnings sank 94% to 8 cents.

Article by: Elaine Low for Variety.

The rising tide of programming for the small screen, along with a greater push for diversity in Hollywood, has increased the number of roles for actors of color overall in recent years. And while it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how many of those gains have been made by younger performers — organizations such as SAG-AFTRA don’t tabulate that info — there are plenty of positive signs on the big and small screen.

Among them: Latinx characters on streamers; Kenya Barris series with a plethora of young Black talent; and roles for Asian-American kids on a number of platforms. Family-friendly shows such as “One Day at a Time” and “Party of Five” have been rebooted with Latinx families at their core, while Hulu’s “Love, Victor,” a small-screen spinoff of “Love, Simon,” centers on a Latinx teen’s struggles to fit into a new school. Ensemble shows seem almost pointedly diverse, whether it’s Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever,” produced by Mindy Kaling, or the streamer’s reboot of “The Baby-Sitters Club.”

“Certainly, it seems better,” says Gloria Calderón Kellett, “One Day at a Time” co-showrunner and an outspoken voice for greater diversity in Hollywood. “The stuff that my kids watch feels far more diverse than the stuff I had access to when I was a young person.”

“Baby-Sitters Club” showrunner Rachel Shukert updated the character of Dawn — who is blonde in earlier iterations — to a Latinx girl, portrayed by Xochitl Gomez in the updated series. “When I thought about what an archetypal California girl is now, I realized it’s not really this Malibu bleached Barbie,” Shukert says of the original Dawn. “She’s Latinx, she’s an activist, she’s political, she really cares about justice and making the world a better place. That’s Dawn. She’s an essential piece of the club’s modernization.”

The ensemble includes a biracial character, Mary Anne (Malia Baker), Japanese American Claudia (Momona Tamada) and Stacey McGill, a stylish blonde with an underlying health issue, portrayed by Shay Rudolph.

Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere,” for its part, explores racial issues with nuance, showing why a Black teen (Lexi Underwood) might be attracted to a white family that is more rooted in the community than her nomadic mother (Kerry Washington).

The East Coast boarding school in “Selah and the Spades,” a feature Amazon began streaming in April, is also racially diverse. But Black actor Lovie Simone (a star on OWN’s “Greenleaf”) is unapologetically the queen bee, and undeniably complex. Tayarisha Poe, who wrote and directed the Sundance release, is adapt-ing the movie into a series for the streamer.

“We need to tell stories about all sorts of people so there’s not a deficit anymore,” Poe says. “That’s what I think about when I think about the story I want to tell.”

Studies by UCLA and USC show that, recent gains aside, actors of color are still underrepresented on the big and small screen. The 2020 Hollywood Diversity report from UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies found there were notable gains in film for actors of color, but they still accounted for 27.6% of lead roles, and 32.7% of all actors. The 2019 Hollywood Diversity report, the latest to focus on TV, found that 21.5% of lead actors in broadcast-scripted television are people of color. The number lowers

to 21.3% for leads of both cable- and digital-scripted series.

USC’s Inclusion Initiative analyzed 1,200 films from 2007 to 2018 and found that white actors represented 63.7% to the 36.3% of people of color. According to the report the percentage of white characters decreased significantly compared to 2017, when it was 70.7%. Black characters notched a 12-year high in 2018 at 16.9%.

Reporting age and race is optional for SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members, and they often choose not to. A guild spokesperson said performers “who want to be known more for what they can play, rather than what they are” are reluctant to self-identify.

There are other issues beyond getting cast: Even strongly reviewed shows such as the “One Day at a Time” reboot have struggled on a business level: Pop TV picked it up after Netflix cancelled the series. Freeform cancelled its “Party of Five” reboot in April, after just one season.

Creatives such as Poe also lament colorism in casting, pointing to a long-standing tendency to give the role to lighter-skinned or biracial child performers.

“Growing up, I thought it must be better to be lighter,” Poe says.

But she takes heart from young actors of color who are pushing for success. “These kids try to protect each other and themselves; I don’t think that support system for young actors of color existed even a few years ago,” she says. “They’re barreling ahead.”

Article by: LaTesha Harris for Variety.

A study from Pen America warns of the long-term effects of studios censoring content to appease the Chinese government.

A new report has found that the Chinese government’s influence on Hollywood is posing a serious threat to free expression.

The 94-page study, from the literary and human rights group Pen America, details the many ways that studios and film-makers continue to change “cast, plot, dialogue and settings” in an “effort to avoid antagonising Chinese officials” in films including Iron Man 3, World War Z and the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick.

“The Chinese Communist party is increasingly shaping what global audiences see,” said James Tager, deputy director of free expression research and policy at Pen America, also a lead author of the report. “While we are all well aware of the strict controls that China’s government maintains over dissent, independent thought and creativity within its own borders, the long arm of Chinese censorship – powered by vast economic incentives – has also reached deep into Hollywood, shaping perceptions, inculcating sensitivities and reshaping the bounds of what can be shown, said and told.”

Through dozens of interviews and case studies, the authors explain the many changes that have been forced upon films before they are granted a release into a lucrative market. LGBT content was removed from Bohemian Rhapsody, Star Trek: Beyond, Alien: Covenant and Cloud Atlas, scenes where Chinese people were killed were taken out of Skyfall and Mission: Impossible III and a major character was changed from Tibetan to Celtic in Doctor Strange, a decision made by the screenwriter to avoid the risk of “alienating one billion people”.

In the report, Stanley Rosen, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California, says that the government “will focus on everything that has a China component in it. Don’t think that if you’re doing something that’s not intended for China, that’s an indie film meant for a small market, that China won’t notice and that it won’t hurt your blockbuster film. It will.”

The report recommends that “Hollywood studios commit to publicly sharing information on all censorship requests received by government regulators for their films”.

In 2019, American films made over $2.6bn in China with Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw making more money there than in the US.

The release of the report comes after the US government has openly criticised Hollywood for kowtowing to Chinese intervention, also blaming the studios for pre-emptively censoring or canning potentially difficult projects.

“Many more scripts never see the light of day because writers and producers know not to test the limits,” the attorney general, William Barr, said in July. “Chinese government censors don’t need to say a word because Hollywood is doing their work for them. This is a massive propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist party.”

In June, Richard Gere appeared before the US Senate to warn about the dangers of letting China control content. “The combination of Chinese censorship, coupled with American film studios’ desire to access China’s market, can lead to self-censorship and overlooking social issues that great American films once addressed,” he said.

America is at a crossroads ...

... in the coming months, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth.

The country is at a crossroads. Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time, the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice – as the White House stokes division along racial lines. At a time like this, an independent news organisation that fights for truth and holds power to account is not just optional. It is essential.

Like many news organizations, the Guardian has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We rely to an ever greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the financial strength to facilitate that reporting.

You’ve read more than 17 articles in the last nine months. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and analysis. We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers across America in all 50 states.

Article by: Benjamin Lee for the Guardian.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, according to a new suit, has monopolized the foreign entertainment reporting market and is excluding qualified applicants.

Kjersti Flaa, a Norwegian living in Los Angeles who has written about entertainment for a variety of publications, has filed a rather unusual but provocative antitrust lawsuit against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that conducts the annual Golden Globe Awards.

 According to a complaint filed on Monday in California federal court, the HFPA has adopted membership rules that exclude qualified applicants who compete with existing members. The suit further alleges that foreign markets are allocated, and that applicants must execute agreements pledging not to write for any rival publication claimed by a HFPA member. It's also reported in the complaint that HFPA's 87 members are using the Golden Globes as a way to monopolize opportunities to attend industry events or interview "hot" movie stars to the exclusion of other foreign journalists. 

Flaa, states the complaint, "seeks to enforce the right of fair procedure long applied by California to private organizations that affect a person’s ability to earn a lawful living; declare unlawful the provisions of the HFPA’s Bylaws used unfairly to deny admission to qualified applicants; and recover under applicable antitrust laws for the economic harm she has suffered as the result of defendants’ unlawful conduct."

She's represented by David Quinto, who notably was a longtime lawyer for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, the outfit that puts on the Oscars. Now at the firm of One LLP, Quinto has returned to being an outside lawyer after a stint as general counsel at VidAngel.

Flaa, who most recently has been a celebrity interviewer for Norway's TV show God Kveld Norge ("Good Evening Norway") and also posted work on YouTube, alleges that she was sponsored for membership by French and Tunisian members before other HFPA members raised concern about competition in Scandinavia. The journalist says that at one point, she was presented with an agreement committing to never compete with others in the markets of Norway and Denmark. The lawsuit details more behind-the-scenes lobbying and posturing at the organization, which the complaint emphasizes enjoys tax-exempt status. Flaa says her rejection was unrelated to her achievements but rather the result of a conspiracy within the organization, which derives a great deal of power by voting on Golden Globes winners each year.

"The HFPA not only fails to offer a fair procedure for seeking membership, it does not even make a pretense of doing so," states the complaint. "It also requires two votes of approval by the membership without providing any guidelines or standards for approving or rejecting applicants. It places no emphasis whatever on evaluating the quality of an applicant’s work. Instead, it freely allows its members to base their admissions decisions on whether an applicant might become a competitive threat to an existing member."

In a statement, the HFPA said, "While the HFPA has not yet been served with this complaint, it seems consistent with Ms. Flaa’s ongoing attempts to shake down the HFPA, demanding that the HFPA pay her off and immediately admit her prior to the conclusion of the usual annual election process applied to every other HFPA applicant. The HFPA has refused to pay ransom, telling Ms. Flaa that membership was not gained through intimidation. Ms. Flaa and her attorney are now asking a court to order her into the organization and pay her."

Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes, is a division of MRC Media, which also owns The Hollywood Reporter. DCP is not a party to the latest action.

Article by: Eriq Gardener for the Hollywood Reporter.

Michelle Rodriguez narrates the documentary that details the work and fights of stuntwomen on 'Wonder Woman,' 'John Wick,' 'Black Panther,' 'Total Recall' and more.

In the opening moments of the trailer for director April Wright and Shout! Studios' Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story, one stuntwoman boldly declares, "I wanted to be respected, and I didn't want to be respected for a girl."

Wright's latest inside look at the movie business tackles the on- and offscreen battles of the women who do one of Hollywood's most dangerous jobs. Based on Mollie Gregory's book of the same name, the documentary mixes interviews and archival footage as it follows the film's narrator, actress Michelle Rodriguez, as well as numerous veteran and high-profile stuntwomen, through their daily lives on and off the set.

In addition to capturing the experiences of those working in the present stunt industry, the trailer also gives viewers an inside and intimate look at the long history of stuntwomen in Hollywood, dating back to the silent film period.

"They fought so hard for us to get here, that now we don't have that luxury of not being able to do something," says one stuntwoman.

Directors like Paul Feig and Anne Fletcher talk about the significance of stuntwomen on their own films, while film historian and host of Turner Classic Movies Ben Mankiewicz dissects clips of stunt work in early cinema. Sequences of the stuntwomen, their training and projects visually detail the intense and often dangerous conditions they return to day after day. In one scene, a stuntwoman relays that "there's no way to practice a car hit besides getting hit by a car," before a clip shows one stuntwoman practicing it.

Alongside stars like Rodriguez, the more-than-two-minute trailer sees a host of female stuntpeople unpacking how they make movie magic possible on a host of projects, including Kill Bill, John Wick, Charlie’s Angels and The Fast & the Furious franchise.

The thrill, talent, and dedication of stuntwomen is on full display as they recount their numerous injuries, and touch on their fight not just for space in the stunt community but for a chance to be seen as equals and leaders.

Wright has previously directed movie-business documentaries Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace and Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-in Movie. The documentary is produced by Stephanie Austin, Michael Gruskoff and Marion Rosenberg, with Rodriguez, Alex Hamilton, Jay Strommen, Larry Nealy, Robert Hickman, Lynwood Spinks, Ryan Bury, and James Andrew Felts all attached as executive producers.

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story debuts on digital platforms on Sept. 22.

Article by: Abbey White for the Hollywood Reporter.

A COVID-wrought content drought is coming. It might be the best thing to happen to entertainment in ages.

Christopher Nolan has made so many movies about how time is weird, he no longer seems to understand what “two weeks” means.

How else to explain the repeated pushing back of Tenet, his latest movie about time being weird, by a mere fortnight—as though movie theaters might somehow seem less like COVID incubators between July and August of 2020. Last week, however, Warner Bros finally caved and delayed Tenet’s release for the foreseeable future. Probably because very few people seem comfortable with the idea of going back in theaters until vaccines are as easy to obtain as movie tickets.

Tenet has now joined a rising glut of fully finished major movies we won’t be seeing for some time. White-hot properties like Halloween Kills, The Conjuring 3, and the new Wonder Woman are all currently just sitting on a shelf somewhere, going unfought about online. Meanwhile, a lot of TV shows that should be returning this fall or next spring are experiencing similar delays in even getting off the ground, their productions complicated by COVID. (Where art thou, Succession S3, Russian Doll S2, and the continued adventures of The Mandalorian?) Studios keep green-lighting cool new series and movies all the time, but these announcements seem impossibly optimistic in a world where it’s unsafe to go to a theater.

As the finished and in-process projects continue to pile up and streamers like Netflix clear out their reservoirs of finished movies and shows, we are fast-approaching a drought of fresh content.

It can’t come fast enough.

Not that it’s going to be an actual drought. We’ll be seeing brand new Zoom-centered projects like Shudder’s Host and HBO’s Coastal Elites, more pandemic-themed episodes of existing shows, a lot of talking head-based TV, and a whole Spider-verse’s worth of animated movies the entire time—but not much else.

And that’s a good thing!

Every fool like me, trying in vain to keep up with pop culture, could stand to take a break from the forever-cresting tidal waves of newness.

Ever since Netflix became an original content behemoth, the explosion of streaming platforms has been downright oppressive. Their constant hyper-churn accounts for why, without hesitation, we now refer to material that often approaches art as “content” in the first place. On some level, our precious movies and shows have always been commodities—the crap between commercials—but in an era where every conglomerate wants to build out its own branded video library, they’ve never felt more like it.

After years of attempting to sop up every juicy droplet from a gushing content-geyser, a drought seems like a vacation. It’s a mandatory order to slow down for a beat and actually separate the content from the art.

It’s impossible to catch every show as it rolls off the assembly line, but lately it’s been hard even to know when to bother. For many years, I was aware that Eugene Levy and Catherine “The Great” O’Hara had a sitcom together, but never actually tuned in. What if it was just okay, or worse? It wasn’t until a groundswell of support for Schitt’s Creek’s erupted during its fifth season that I paid it proper attention. Because there are just that many shows.

Schitt’s Creek was where I realized that, statistically speaking, a significant number of “promising but who has the time?” TV shows must be quietly delivering the goods. In a semi-quarantined world with no new movies and shows, the person who finally has time for “promising but who has the time?” is you.

(Well, unless you have kids.)

It’s time to put a canyon-size dent in that Meaning to Check Out file. All those classic movies you never got around to watching. Every show not enough people talked about fondly and thus passed you by. Those animated shows everyone said weren’t just for kids. It might not be “fresh content” for the world, but if it’s new to you, it’s still new.

Not only is the content drought a perfect time for discovery, it’s also a moment for second chances and “completioning” (i.e. finishing a show you stop watching for no real reason). The need to explore every shiny new object you could potentially love makes it hard to stick with shows you merely like a whole lot.

There are so many sitcoms I haven’t seen all the way through, for instance, because they have no overarching story that requires having seen every episode. While Brooklyn Nine-Nine revamps its planned eighth season for Black Lives Matter reasons, I might finally check out the several seasons I haven’t seen yet. Maybe I’ll watch the second season of Barry, a show whose first outing I adored but which simply slipped from my mind upon its return a year later. Maybe I’ll binge on every show like Pen15 that I saw enough of to know I liked it but never explored any further.

The entertainment world is my oyster, and the quarantine is my super-shucker.

The coming content drought is also an invitation to rewatch movies and shows you already love. Remember watching things a second time? Picking up on little details you missed before and deepening your overall appreciation? It became harder to do once everyone adopted a mile-long Netflix queue and a surplus of must-watches. Having fewer hot new movies to check out makes it easier to find out that Ex Machina holds up, or determining once and for all that the second season of The Wire is criminally underrated.

And why not rewatch old movies when there are more fun ways than ever to do so? You can either throw a Watch Party with your friends on Zoom, go to one of the newly thriving drive-in theaters, or possibly watch Jaws at sea.

Options like these make the temporary loss of Tenet feel like not much of a loss at all.

When we finally conquer the coronavirus, and new movies and shows return, they might be all the better because of the wait. For one thing, whenever a tight turnaround is prized over quality control, movies and shows often suffer. SNL overlord Lorne Michaels famously said, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready, it goes on because it’s 11:30,” but that mentality need not apply to every project. A lot of movies and series get better when they have a little space and breathing room; when the creators took the time to make exactly what they wanted. (Mad Max: Fury Road, Titanic, Game of Thrones, and The Sopranos come to mind.) Maybe under quarantine, the editing of already-filmed movies and shows will be more cohesive in the absence of a ticking clock. Maybe some thwarted filmmakers will take the time to get their screenplay just right, unbeholden to a schedule. Maybe all the pop-culture junkies, insatiable gluttons that we are, will finally rediscover our sense of anticipation.

It sucks that Halloween Kills, The Conjuring 3, and Tenet are collecting dust and we can’t watch them. But imagine how much more excited we’ll be when we finally can.

Article by: Joe Berkowitz for Fast Company.

Tendo Nagenda also opens up about his dream projects, whether moviegoers will return to theaters post-COVID, the next stage of the streamer's evolution, and why diversity in Hollywood needs to begin "in the rooms where the decisions are made."

Netflix finds itself in an unprecedented position in an unprecedented time. The streaming giant added 10.09 million subscribers during its second quarter, raising its global base to nearly 193 million. And as the studios push back movie release dates because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the streamer finds itself virtually the only game in town when it comes to delivering movies to a (literally) captive audience on lockdown.

Helping lead that charge is Tendo Nagenda, vp original films, who took the position in August 2018 after nearly nine years at Disney. It was this spring that the earliest seeds of his labor bore fruit: Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, the first project given the green light under his reign, generated all-important social media buzz and already is in the awards-season conversation. More high-profile features followed, including the Mark Wahlberg starrer Spenser Confidential ("action-comedy is an area that audiences have been starved of and respond to," he says) and the very recent Charlize Theron action vehicle The Old Guard, which drew rave reviews and has audiences clamoring for a sequel ("It's a high possibility," is all he's willing to say).

During the pandemic, Nagenda, 45, is working from the home he shares with his partner, Chelina Odbert, the co-founder and executive director of nonprofit design firm Kounkuey Design Initiative. While on lockdown, Nagenda says he tries to draw a hard line separating work and home life, setting aside time to cook and learn guitar, even as the days are filled with the noise of the renovation crew working on their home, nestled in the hills between Beachwood Canyon and Los Feliz.

As workers drilled and hammered, Nagenda spoke to THR — from a distance — about the streamer's willingness to take risks, his dream directors and why big-budget, family-oriented fare is "the next frontier."

When things go back to "normal," can theaters make a full recovery after audiences have been streaming so much content?

There are still going to be plenty of movies that people will want to see in the theater. I just think that there is also going to be an awareness that there is a super-high-quality film available that might or might not be in theaters. The choice is not going to be, "Do I go to the theater or do I watch something in the comfort of my own home?" It's going to be, "What do I want to watch and where can I find it?" If that answer is on Netflix, and not in a theater, then people will be a lot more used to, and happy about, watching it at home.

How much runway does Netflix have contentwise in the film division?

We have a lot of runway, definitely through 2020 and part of 2021.

We want to get to work and back into production just like everybody else, and we want to get through this year. We're still in pretty good shape.

We're at a stage where studios can't make anything that isn't a big brand or a remake or a sequel. Netflix doesn't have that kind of IP, but it doesn't seem to be held back by that. Why do you think that is?

People want to be entertained, and they don't necessarily need a preexisting brand or a sequel of something they've already seen for that to be the case. They are showing that they are hungry for new stories and new IP. Netflix is a good place to find those things and discover. The idea of discovery is a lot more baked into Netflix than, "What am I going to go see in a theater that is on opening weekend?" [It's] a big risk to make something two years in advance, predicting there will be a big audience. We know there will be a big audience on Netflix all the time, and so our willingness to make new things and build IP is very strong in that regard.

With so much conversation now about how to make Hollywood more inclusive, what is something that you would like to see done that can move the needle?

The facts and the data will tell you that representation behind the camera leads to an inclusion and representation in front of the camera. And that's in the executive suites and in the directing, producing, writing and filmmaking and the below-the-line elements. What I'd like to see is representation increase in the rooms where the decisions are being made.

People talk about the hits, but you never hear about Netflix bombs. What is considered a bomb by Netflix standards?

We don't really think in those terms, which I think is refreshing. There are a lot of metrics that go into determining what is successful for us. Not just viewing but quality, awards, representation. Did it service a particular audience that we value at Netflix, in a particular region, or demographic, or viewing habit? Any movie that we make, regardless of how it does in the first month on Netflix, will be on Netflix forever. So it's possible that something gets more attention and viewing two years after it's released. You don't have to think in terms of hits and bombs.

You guys chase a lot of big packages. At what point does a budget become unreasonable?

We don’t have a set number. There are a lot of inputs and factors that go into it. How big do we think the audience is based on films that have performed on Netflix, or other places successfully? How much library value, how much of a pioneering piece of content it is from a filmmaker or talent or storytelling standpoint?

So on something like The Gray Man, with the Russo brothers, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, which was over $200 million, it checks those boxes?

Well you look at that as a potential investment in a franchise if successful. You also are doing so with the most successful franchise producers of all time in terms of theatrical box office, and there you’re pioneering talent on Netflix since it will be our first film with Ryan Gosling as well as other people we will hopefully put in the movie. So we look at it as an investment in the long-term and not just a per picture amount.

Who is your dream filmmaker with whom you'd love to work?

I've love to get Jordan Peele to make a Netflix film. We love Chris Nolan, we love Quentin Tarantino. We have to concentrate our efforts on finding people of that talent level that we can work with as early as possible and then get them to make movies only for Netflix.

What's on your list of dream projects?

We're looking at big, broad-audience, PG-level adventure films as something that we want to get into. Something along the lines of the first Star Wars, or Harry Potter 1 and 2. A lot of family live action, fantasy, spectacle movies that we think are big and can play great. A Jumanji-type of story. That is the next frontier.

That’ll put you even more in competition with studios.

Well, we look at it as what aren’t the studios focused on. New ideas. We want to encourage great talent to think that way. George Lucas created Star Wars — it wasn’t based on a book. If you have that kind of imagination — like the Wachowskis with The Matrix — we feel like we’re the place to take the chance on those types of innovative ideas and filmmakers.

You guys chase a lot of big packages. At what point does a budget become unreasonable? 

We don’t have a set number. There are a lot of inputs and factors that go into it. How big do we think the audience is based on films that have performed on Netflix, or other places successfully? How much library value, how much of a pioneering piece of content it is from a filmmaker or talent or storytelling standpoint?

So on something like The Gray Man, with the Russo brothers, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, which was over $200 million, it checks those boxes?

Well you look at that as a potential investment in a franchise if successful. You also are doing so with the most successful franchise producers of all time in terms of theatrical box office, and there you’re pioneering talent on Netflix since it will be our first film with Ryan Gosling as well as other people we will hopefully put in the movie. So we look at it as an investment in the long-term and not just a per picture amount.

Who is your dream filmmaker with whom you'd love to work?

I've love to get Jordan Peele to make a Netflix film. We love Chris Nolan, we love Quentin Tarantino. We have to concentrate our efforts on finding people of that talent level that we can work with as early as possible and then get them to make movies only for Netflix.

What's on your list of dream projects?

We're looking at big, broad-audience, PG-level adventure films as something that we want to get into. Something along the lines of the first Star Wars, or Harry Potter 1 and 2. A lot of family live action, fantasy, spectacle movies that we think are big and can play great. A Jumanji-type of story. That is the next frontier.

That’ll put you even more in competition with studios.

Well, we look at it as what aren’t the studios focused on. New ideas. We want to encourage great talent to think that way. George Lucas created Star Wars — it wasn’t based on a book. If you have that kind of imagination — like the Wachowskis with The Matrix — we feel like we’re the place to take the chance on those types of innovative ideas and filmmakers. 

Article by: Borys Kit for the Hollywood Reporter.

The in-theater advertising firm swung to a second quarter loss as it faces continuing theater closures amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In-theater advertising firm National CineMedia has swung to a second quarter loss, on sharply lower revenues, after major cinema chains face an uncertain reopening amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The company recorded a net loss of $13.8 million, or 18 cents per share, against a year-earlier profit of $8.9 million, or 11 cent per share. Revenue for the quarter was $4 million, down 96 percent against a year-earlier $110.2 million, after theater circuits in mid-March shuttered their venues and face an uncertain reopening across the U.S.

"Almost all of these closures continued throughout the entirety of the company’s second quarter of 2020 and remain closed as of the date of this press release. Due to these closures, the company was unable to advertise in the theaters and did not generate any in-theater revenue during the three months ended June 25, 2020," National Cinemedia reported on Monday.

The reopening of movie theaters has been complicated by the Hollywood studios' release schedule being thrown into disarray by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, pushing back such tentpoles as Disney's Mulan and Warner Bros.' Tenet.

National Cinemedia CEO Tom Lesinski in a statement said his company has sufficient liquidity to withstand prolonged closures of the local multiplex, but the same cannot be said of all the major circuits in which the company advertises.

"We believe that the exhibition industry has historically fared well during recessions, and management remains optimistic, though cannot guarantee, that the founding members and network affiliates will rebound and attendance figures will benefit from pent-up social demand as state and local restrictions and other social distancing orders subside and people seek togetherness with a return to normalcy," National Cinemedia said in a statement.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for the Hollywood Reporter.

SAG-AFTRA has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on a three-year deal covering TV animation.

The deal, announced on Monday, covers animated programs produced for television, including network TV, basic cable and streaming platforms.

The new three-year agreement, which will need to be approved by the SAG-AFTRA executive committee, will apply retroactively to July 1 and extend through June 30, 2023. The performers union said terms of the deal include gains in its recently ratified master contract covering feature film and primetime TV. If approved by the committee, the deal will be submitted for ratification to “affected members” — those who have worked on the contract.

Those gains include wage increases of 2.5% in the first year, 3% in the second year and 3% in the third year; a 1% increase in the contribution rate to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan and optional wage diversions in years two and three that allow the union to shift .5% from the wage increase to the contribution rate for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan or the SAG Pension Plan/AFTRA Retirement Fund.

The new deal includes a 26% improvement in residuals for high-budget animated programs made for subscription streaming services like Amazon and Hulu, and reduction of the budget threshold that triggers high-budget coverage for half-hour animated programs made for subscription streaming services from $550,000 to $500,000.

The union said it needed to make a concession to the AMPTP by changing the broadcast syndication residual from a fixed residual to a revenue-based residual at 6% of distributor’s gross ​receipts — the same formula that applies to content moving to basic cable.

“The new formula was the key concession that paid for the increase in streaming residuals, an exchange that positions SAG-AFTRA animation voice actors to grow their residuals in the fastest growing area of their work while increasing opportunities for animated programs to be exhibited in broadcast syndication, which is a declining market,” the union said.

“This is a future-focused deal that builds off our successful television and film contract negotiations and even breaks new ground in the application of scale minimums to animated programs made for subscription streaming services, a very important bread-and-butter issue for our members and a strategic breakthrough that is unique to this contract,” SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris said.

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety.

An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Ashley Judd can pursue a sexual harassment claim against Harvey Weinstein, finding that he held power over her career when he invited her to his room at the Peninsula Hotel in the mid-1990s.

The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court, which had thrown out the claim on the grounds that Judd was not Weinstein’s employee at the time of the meeting.

“(T)heir relationship consisted of an inherent power imbalance wherein Weinstein was uniquely situated to exercise coercion or leverage over Judd by virtue of his professional position and influence as a top producer in Hollywood,” wrote Judge Mary H. Murguia, for the panel. “Therefore, the district court erred when it dismissed Judd’s sexual harassment claim.”

Judd sued Weinstein in April 2018. She alleged that Weinstein had lured her to his hotel room, asked her to watch him shower and tried to give her a massage. She also sued for defamation and retaliation, claiming that after she rebuffed his advances, Weinstein effectively blacklisted her in the film industry. 

She brought the suit after “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson revealed in an interview that Miramax had discouraged him from casting Judd and Mira Sorvino, saying they could be a “nightmare to work with.”

Judge Philip Gutierrez allowed Judd to proceed with the retaliation and defamation claims, but threw out the harassment claim on the grounds that California law did not cover a producer and an actress who did not have an active employment relationship. The law has since been amended to explicitly cover producers and actors. 

But in its ruling, the three-judge panel held that the producer-actor relationship has a similar power imbalance to the relationships that were enumerated in the statute at the time, such as teacher-student and landlord-tenant relationships.

“That is, by virtue of his professional position and influence as a top producer in Hollywood, Weinstein was uniquely situated to exercise coercive power or leverage over Judd, who was a young actor at the beginning of her career at the time of the alleged harassment,” Murguia wrote. “Moreover, given Weinstein’s highly influential and ‘unavoidable’ presence in the film industry, the relationship was one that would have been difficult to terminate ‘without tangible hardship’ to Judd, whose livelihood as an actor depended on being cast for roles.”

The case will now head back to the lower court and proceed on all claims.

Theodore Boutrous, who represents Judd in the case, praised the ruling.

“This is an important victory not only for Ms. Judd but for all victims of sexual harassment in professional relationships,” Boutrous said in a statement. “The court correctly holds that California law forbids sexual harassment and retaliation by film producers and others in powerful positions, even outside the employment context, and we look forward to pursuing this claim against Mr Weinstein at trial.”

Update, 1 p.m.: Weinstein’s attorney, Phyllis Kupferstein, says she too looks forward to a trial, “where we expect the truth will come to light.”

“The most minimal investigation of the events will show that Mr. Weinstein neither defamed Ms. Judd, nor hindered or interfered with her career, and certainly never retaliated against her,” Kupferstein said in a statement. “Instead, Mr. Weinstein championed her work and approved her casting for two of his movies. Mr. Weinstein fought for Ms. Judd as his first choice for the lead role in ‘Good Will Hunting’ and, in fact, arranged for Ms. Judd to fly to New York to be considered for the part. Thereafter, Ms. Judd was hired for two of Mr. Weinstein’s movies, ‘Frida’ in 2002 and ‘Crossing Over’ with Harrison Ford in 2009. In addition, the record on ‘Lord of the Rings’ will finally be made absolutely clear – that Mr. Weinstein had no authority over the project as it belonged to a different production company that had full staffing control of the film.”

SAG-AFTRA also issued a statement applauding the ruling.

“The California Legislature took action to make sure that individuals like Ashley Judd, who may not be traditional employees, would have remedies against abusers, and that those abusers couldn’t escape responsibility based on technicalities related to employee status,” the actors guild said in a statement. The Ninth Circuit has rightly determined that statute means what it says, and that victims of harassment, abuse, and assault will not be cut off from justice based on technical details of employee status.”

Article By: Gene Maddaus for Variety.