In the opening shot of Back to the Future, the audience is introduced to Emmett "Doc" Brown via his eclectic garage, which is packed with gadgets, some ripped of plutonium and of course, a lot of clocks — because, hello, foreshadowing.

And of all the clocks, the one that seemingly stands out for being the most random features a Denver Broncos helmet. So, what's the deal? Is Doc a Broncos fan? Was it a memento from a Denver visit? Screenwriter Bob Gale explains to The Hollywood Reporter the story behind all the clocks for Back to the Future Day (Oct. 21).

"There were some specific clocks we (Gale and director Robert Zemeckis) asked for, such as the Felix the Cat clocks, and we knew we had to have at least one cuckoo clock," Gale tells THR. The cuckoo clock speaks for itself (is Doc a crackpot?), but the Felix clocks were important because both Gale and Zemeckis owned one in their youth. "They were very popular in the 50s (who knows, maybe even in the 40s, not sure when it hit the market)," explains Gale. "So anyone who collects clocks would absolutely have one or more of those. And it's a perfect movie clock because it's constantly and very clearly in motion."

A Safety Last! clock is also featured (an homage to silent film star Harold Lloyd dangling from a huge clock, much the same way Christopher Lloyd's Doc (no relation to Harold, but still a fun coincidence) does at the end of the film. "We knew we had to feature that," Gale says.

But what about the Broncos clock? Well, that one has no hidden meaning — unless viewers want it to have one.

Gale explains: "It was just something the set dressers or props people found, it was interesting so we put it in the movie.  Is Doc a football fan or a Broncos fan?  We know he's a baseball fan, so he could be a football fan.  Or maybe he acquired it on a trip to Denver.  We know he's not from Denver, but maybe his mother was (his father, remember, was German and originally Von Braun).  Clearly, we can invent many backstories out of a single prop, so in honor of BTTF day, I encourage readers to submit their own reasons why Doc would have this clock!"

Article by: Ryan Parker for The Hollywood Reporter

yler Perry is entering a new phase — not just in his career as a media mogul who owns a 330-acre studio bearing his name, nor in his tax bracket, after being designated a billionaire by Forbes. Perry, who has consistently stayed above the fray for much of the time he has been a celebrity, is getting political.

“We’ve all been drafted on the worst reality show that’s ever been produced, and none of us have been paid for it,” Perry says. “For the last four and a half years or so, we have been dragged through the wringer, and it is completely exhausting. So many people are exhausted at the division, at the hate, at the pandemic — people are just exhausted and angry and frustrated. And if the people who bring hope [and] positivity give up, then the world has lost its balance.

“Negativity screams, and positivity whispers. So we just need more whisperers to help people,” he adds. “I know this sounds cliché and some people may think it’s bulls—, but the truth is, I’ve lived long enough and experienced enough good and bad to know that good wins when everybody pushes in that direction.”

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It’s hard to stay positive in 2020, a year rife with so much political and social turmoil. The leadup to the impending election has been particularly charged, with added weight given by the coronavirus pandemic and renewed focus on racial injustice in America. Perry has made headlines on both fronts, becoming one of the first major Hollywood players to find a safe way to get back to production during the worldwide health crisis and donating time and money to social justice causes. For these efforts, he has been named Variety’s Showman of the Year.

Perry says of the distinction, “Just to try and use what I’ve been given — this platform [and] the gifts that I’ve managed to have — to celebrate and encourage and lift other people, that feels pretty awesome. I keep hearing the lyrics from ‘This Is Me’ [from ‘The Greatest Showman’] in my head,” he laughs.

With lyrics like “When the sharpest words wanna cut me down / I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out” or “And I’m marching on to the beat I drum / I’m not scared to be seen / I make no apologies,” there may be no better theme song for someone who has conquered Hollywood by doing things his own way in the face of naysayers. He’s a DIY mogul who crashed the A-list by leveraging success on the stage into an extended run atop the box office charts as the man behind Madea — then turned around and transformed that success into a media empire that spans books, plays, movies and television shows.

“This Is Me” holds special significance for Perry, who had singer Morgan James perform the anthem during the grand-opening gala of the Tyler Perry Studios complex in Atlanta last October for a crowd that included megastars Beyoncé, Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. Perry purchased the former Confederate Army base for $30 million in 2015, turning it into Hollywood’s largest studio lot with a $250 million renovation and expansion. Whoopi Goldberg was also on hand to witness the dedication of a soundstage in her honor.

“He’s doing life the way we all would like to do life,” she says of Perry.

Goldberg, who has teamed with Perry three times (acting in “For Colored Girls” and “Nobody’s Fool” and making a cameo in “Madea Goes to Jail”), believes the entrepreneur hasn’t gotten his full due.

“This wasn’t inherited; he earned every dime. Every piece of that studio he bought with his dough,” Goldberg says. “I think the idea of letting people know that this wasn’t a gift, this was hard-earned, [is important]. And in any other place, he’d be at the tip of everybody’s tongue, the talk of the town — it would be a huge thing. And yet somehow, people haven’t really stepped up to recognize it as far as I’m concerned.”

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Photograph by AB+DM

Perry faced adversity from an early age. “Every statistic said that I will be dead or in jail,” he says about growing up Black and poor in New Orleans in the 1970s, in addition to having an abusive father. But his beloved mother, Maxine (who died in 2009 at 64), laid a solid foundation for his entrepreneurial spirit by encouraging him to “find a way” to be successful despite the hardships.

“As I entered into Hollywood, it was always about finding a way,” Perry says. “I’ve never had an open door, or an invitation or opportunity, while I watched my white brothers and sisters get opportunity after opportunity, no matter if their shows or movies fail or not.

“I understand that this is the hand that I was dealt. This Black skin that encompasses me is beautiful. I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m not going to be ashamed of it. But I’m going to make it work for me and for us.”

Perry is defined by a number of things — among them his work ethic and his propensity for innovation in entertainment. He broke the mold in TV, taking a wildly innovative approach to producing series with his first comedy, “House of Payne,” and regularly surpasses tracking forecasts for his films, which consistently open at or near the top of the box office thanks to his homegrown — and ultra-dependable — audience.

But in 2020, the writer, director, producer and entrepreneur “found a way” while facing one of the greatest challenges to hit the industry — the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with medical professionals, Perry and his team drafted a 30-page plan to make television shows as safely as possible and created Camp Quarantine at Tyler Perry Studios. From July to September, Perry completed production on four projects (BET’s “Sistas” and “The Oval” and BET Plus’ “Ruthless” and “Bruh”). That meant about 360 people were living and working at his Atlanta-based studio.

Though Perry was one of the first to come up with a plan for getting back to work, his good friend, writer-director Taylor Sheridan, was also planning to restart production on his Paramount series “Yellowstone.”

“It made me feel like I wasn’t alone,” Perry says of the timing. “Just to have somebody to talk to and just tell them what we were doing and to hear what he was doing.”

Sheridan shared similar sentiments: “We’re both fortunate in that Tyler has his own movie studio, where you can control that world. And I shoot in the middle of nowhere in Montana on a giant ranch, where I can do the same thing.”

Trading notes is a hallmark of their friendship. “We invented the frickin’ Zoom drink years before the rest of the world found out about it,” Sheridan laughs. The two hit it off when Perry cold-called the “Sicario” and “Wind River” scribe after watching his films. Sheridan has gotten only a couple out-of-the-blue calls like that — the other was from Steven Spielberg — and he says, “I’m sure glad I did answer because he’s become a great friend and someone in this business who I trust.”

The pair are teaming on-screen for Sheridan’s upcoming film, “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” with Perry playing a small role.

“He understands all facets of what we do,” Sheridan says. “He’s extremely creative; he’s extremely business savvy; he is extremely loyal to his cast and crew. Which is extremely important because when you push a crew as hard as he does, as hard as I do, they have to be believers. Aside from being such a leader to the people around him, he commands respect because he has worked so hard and is so kind and doesn’t distinguish between speaking to the executive or the boss of a network or the fifth PA. He treats them with the same respect.”

Tyler Perry is a trailblazer. He is one of a handful of Black moguls in a monochromatic industry, someone who has total control of his destiny by owning every part of the production process, from the studio where he films his projects to the intellectual property. Once asked by a teacher what he wanted to be when he grew up, the young Perry said, “A millionaire,” and the teacher laughed at his dream. Now he’s a billionaire — and a Black billionaire at that, joining a club made up of entertainment heavyweights such as Jay-Z and Perry’s mentor Oprah Winfrey. Of his friendship with Winfrey, he says, “That, for me, is surreal.”

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Photograph by AB+DM

“I’d run home from school at three o’clock every weekday to see her on television — this Black woman who looked like my sister, aunt, friend,” he explains. “[She] was one of the first Black people I saw on television, certainly the first Black woman to control and own a television show and studio. So now to be able to pick up the phone and call her a friend is part of the miracle.”

Throughout his career, Perry has maneuvered like Winfrey — not just going “from rags to riches,” but moving strategically around those who underestimate his vision, never stopping at no and focusing on creating generational wealth through ownership of his properties.

Perry’s Hollywood journey began with his most popular character, the tough-talking, gun-toting grandmother Mabel “Madea” Simmons. When Madea made her big-screen debut in “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” in 2005, Perry’s plays had generated more than $70 million at the theater box office. He had not been an overnight success: Only 30 people arrived on opening weekend for his first play, “I Know I’ve Been Changed” in 1992. Perry spent his life savings of $12,000 to mount the production and fought through extreme poverty and homelessness as a result of the failure. But he did not give up, restaging the show in 1998. That time it was a hit, and after he created Madea in his 1999 play “I Can Do Bad All by Myself,” audiences began rolling in by the church busload. But getting his first show made into a movie was a battle. The industry simply didn’t understand Perry’s appeal, with executives telling him, “Black audiences that go to church don’t go to movies.”

“Those are the only things that I’ve said publicly,” he says. “There are some stories that I could tell that are really, really bad, but for the sake of the town, and for the sake of the people who said it, I’ve never said them, because especially in this climate [when] it’s so charged, it would blow people’s minds.”

Mike Paseornek was one of the rare executives who recognized the potential of the newcomer — and his massive following. He began pitching the creator to his bosses at Lionsgate after receiving a script from Perry’s agent. Paseornek, at the time president of production at Lionsgate Films, says that even though Perry had no experience in Hollywood, he had a preternatural confidence in his own profitability.

“Tyler had no leverage, [other than saying,] ‘Well, I’m not going to do it your way. I’m going to take my ball and go home,’” Paseornek says. “And he was willing to do that because he had such a clear-cut vision of how he saw his business.”

The studio hoped for a $20 million box office return on “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” Perry knew he could deliver that on opening weekend — and he did; the film grossed $55 million, 10 times its budget. Twenty movies later (10 of them starring Madea), Perry’s films have earned more than $1 billion at the box office.

But he hasn’t been without detractors. Some skeptics believe his films offer stereotypical or negative depictions of Black people. Others dismiss the quality of the productions, suggesting that since Perry writes them all himself, he’s stretched a little thin and it shows.

“When I hear that kind of stuff, I’m thinking, ‘Are y’all looking at the ratings? Do you understand that the audience is in love with this?’” he says. “Because if you’re complaining about my writing, you’re not the audience. My audience loves the way that it’s done and the way the stories are told. And from the beginning, it’s always been about being true to them.”

The average Metacritic score for Perry’s 21 films is a lackluster 41.6 (out of 100), and critics on Rotten Tomatoes give them a dismal average of 27.38% on the Tomatometer scale (his movies are almost 2.5 times more popular with audiences on the site, with a 67.23% approval rating), but he doesn’t let the negative reviews get to him.

“I grew up with a man who criticized me and said all kinds of horrible things to me every day of my life. And if that 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-year-old, beautiful kid can endure that and find a way, what kind of man would I be to be hurt or bothered by some other criticism?” he explains. “I never see a lot of it, but if it does get to me, I look for truth in it. There’s a lot of it that’s just vitriolic; that’s just ‘I’m going to hate on him because he’s Tyler Perry.’ I get that. But when there’s truth in the criticism, like, ‘Why did he do this, this and this?’ I go, ‘Hmm, let me think about that.’

“And if I start writing for the critics, the only movie that I ever wrote that got some critical acclaim [2010’s ‘For Colored Girls’] didn’t do very well. I know to speak to the audience — that is the business; that is the voice; those are the people that matter the most to me.”

Other critiques have come from Black creators. In a 2009 interview, Oscar winner Spike Lee appeared to take aim at Perry when he described modern depictions of Black characters as “coonery and buffoonery,” leading to a public back and forth between the filmmakers.

“If any criticisms stung, it would have been his, because I had so much respect and admiration for him,” Perry says. Indeed, in naming the 12 soundstages at his studio after Black Hollywood icons, Perry reserved one for Lee.

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Photograph by AB+DM

“People’s opinions are their opinions, but that doesn’t negate the fact of the work that he’s done. And he’s due the honor of having a stage named after him and more than that,” he says.

Explaining how the two reconciled, Perry says Lee called him after seeing an interview on “Oprah” where Perry talked about the historic feud between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, in which Hughes called Hurston “a perfect ‘darkie.’” That interview prompted Lee to make the trek to Atlanta to talk things over.

“I opened the door. I said, ‘Come in here, so I can beat your ass,’” Perry laughs. “And [Lee] said, ‘Fair enough.’ And we sat and we had a conversation. … He laid out his views and his opinions, which I respected. And he heard mine, and he respected them. So we can both exist in the same world with very different views and opinions and still respect each other.”

The issue underlying the Perry-Lee debate over the on-screen representation of Black people persists: Not enough Black filmmakers are getting studio jobs, so fewer types of stories and experiences are being told. But Perry is encouraged by the most recent calls for diversity in Hollywood on both sides of the camera, hoping they will lead to more Black voices being heard.

“Ten or 15 years ago, I could call any Black actor from Idris Elba to Viola Davis and Kerry Washington — they were all ready to go to work,” Perry says. “But now it’s like, ‘Oh, their schedule is [booked] out two years. There’s this surge of Black is in, hire Black and diversity is in.”

Over the years, Perry has been celebrated by Black actors such as Elba (“Daddy’s Little Girls”), Taraji P. Henson (“I Can Do Bad All by Myself”), Tika Sumpter (“The Haves and the Have Nots”) and the legendary Cicely Tyson for helping to reinvigorate their careers. He says that making sure performers of their caliber got opportunities was a big part of his mission as a creator.

“In my ‘finding a way’ there were a bunch of people that were coming through the door with me. The doors and the tables that I was building for myself, they were allowed to sit at and create,” he says. “That’s why I tell people when they come to work for me, this is a place for you to come and build your base, a great audience that will support you.”

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Photograph by AB+DM

Perry doesn’t only give back in business; he is set to be honored as the People’s Champion of 2020 at the People’s Choice Awards in November for his philanthropic work. The mogul and his eponymous foundation also received the Governors Award at the 72nd Primetime Emmys. There, Perry gave an inspiring speech about a patchwork quilt his grandmother had given him, using it as a metaphor for diversity.

“That speech I wrestled with a lot, because there’s just so much going on in the country and there’s so much that I want to say,” Perry recalls. “And there’s so many sides of my experiences that want to speak, and they’re all battling for the microphone at the same time within my head.

“But for me, what the country, what the world, what we all need now is hope and healing. And if I can speak to that, then that’s my purpose. Anything that doesn’t serve that, I don’t want to do, because there are enough people who are working very hard to divide and destroy and tear us apart.”

That’s why Perry is speaking out politically.

Though he hosted fundraisers for President Barack Obama and invited former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to his studio’s grand-opening bash last October, Perry has primarily taken a nonpartisan point of view.

It’s a tough position for a man who makes his home base in Georgia — a red state with a host of hot-button political issues, including the controversial “heartbeat bill,” aimed at limiting access to abortion, which rocked the local entertainment industry when Gov. Brian Kemp signed it in May 2019. In reaction, many Hollywood power players threatened a production boycott of the state, but Perry proclaimed that he would stay, telling Variety that October, “First of all, when you put a quarter of a billion dollars in the ground in one place, you can’t just go, ‘OK, I’m out.’”

The fight over the legislation, which has since been struck down by a federal judge, followed a fraying of relations between Tinseltown and Georgia over claims of voter suppression by Kemp in his 2018 gubernatorial race against Stacey Abrams. During those fraught political moments, Perry played a conciliatory role. The mogul made a point of inviting both Kemp and Abrams to his studio’s opening gala as a sort of olive branch.

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“I really, truly don’t want to get political. What I want people to do is vote because everybody has very strong opinions about this. As do I,” he says. “I have very, very strong feelings about the current administration. I have very strong feelings about a lot that’s going on. But I’m neither Democrat [nor] Republican — I’m an independent thinker. I vote for who I think is best to run the country.”

Perry may avoid party affiliations, but that doesn’t mean he’s unwilling to take a stand. This election cycle, he’s using his considerable influence to support the Biden-Harris ticket. He’s been actively involved in voter registration behind the scenes and is reaching out to his audience to get it engaged.

It’s a bold move given how much is at stake — not just in the election but for his business. A key part of the entertainer’s appeal comes from being middle of the road, almost relentlessly centrist, much like his longtime mentor Winfrey, who stayed out of the political arena before famously throwing her influence behind Obama’s 2008 run for office.

The decision also calls to mind self-proclaimed centrist Dwayne Johnson’s recent endorsement of Biden. Johnson received criticism on social media, but Perry has not been deterred.

“When you have influence, you have to be careful of how you use it and be specific in your choices of what you use,” he explains. “This is going to affect the country in the future. And the great thing about a democracy is every four years, you have an opportunity to make a change, and I’m hoping that there are enough decent people who are seeing that we need to make a change.”

One of the main reasons Perry is speaking out now comes down to his 5-year-old son, Aman.

“If it were just me, I could step back and maybe have a different opinion,” he explains. “But I want him to be able to go to the national parks and they’re not drilling inside of them, to be able to turn on a debate and see two men stand professionally, giving each other the respect to finish their two minutes that they’re allotted and not talking over and screaming at each other.”

For Perry, the choice is clear.

“If you want more of the same, then you vote the way that you did in 2016,” he says. “If you want something different, then we need to have a landslide out voting for Joe Biden.”

Outside politics, Perry is focused on creating a better future for the local Atlanta community, with plans to use his studio space to house battered women, displaced LGBTQ+ youth and sex-trafficking survivors and introduce them to the inner workings of the entertainment industry.

“I don’t know if people really realize how important it is for young Black and Brown children to be able to see examples of what it means to be successful outside of what they see in the neighborhoods,” he says. “Growing up, for me the only people that were doing well were the pimps and the preacher. And now to be able to set an example for kids that there are other options outside of sports and what everybody tells you — ‘These are the only things you can do’ — [is important]. You can be CEO; you can run a studio; you can use everything you have to help someone else.”

Article by: Angelique Jackson for Variety 

HBO's Lovecraft Country ended the season with its biggest first-night audience to date.

The series from creator and showrunner Misha Green drew series bests in both on-air (881,000) and multi-platform viewers (1.5 million) on Sunday, according to figures from Nielsen and the premium cable outlet. Those numbers are up from 760,000 linear viewers and 1.4 million all in for the series premiere in August.

Viewers watching via replays and streaming made up about 41 percent of the first-night audience, in line with both earlier episodes of Lovecraft Country and other recent HBO series.

The finale was also a draw for HBO Max users: Though parent company WarnerMedia doesn't release viewing figures for the platform, it said the episode drew a bigger audience among Max users for its first day of release than any other episode of an original series on the service since its launch in late May.

The audience for the Lovecraft Country will also continue to grow in the coming weeks. HBO says the season premiere is "approaching" 10 million viewers since its debut, putting it ahead of Perry Mason (9 million), The Outsider (9 million) and Watchmen (7 million) among recent HBO dramas.

HBO hasn't decided on a renewal for the series yet, but Green told The Hollywood Reporter "there's definitely a path forward we have" for a possible second season

Article by: Rick Porter for The Hollywood Reporter

The common ground between American film consumers and critics is when the two get to converge at a film festival. Equally measured in their “first look” at a film that has yet to open in a theater near you, the two get to take in the spectacle of a movie, sharing in those experiences and reacting to it on Film Twitter or with one another outside a theater. With the COVID-19 pandemic, that loss has yet to be quantified. It’s hard to execute a plan of “word of mouth” when no mouths are present. The Toronto, Telluride and New York film festivals all did their best with their combined effort to go virtual (and in some cases, still host in-person screenings at drive-in theaters).

The regional festival circuit doesn’t usually get the glitz of world premieres for awards season kickoffs, and has tried to navigate the pandemic with the new virtual screenings setting. While this opens their market up to many different consumers wanting to experience their festival, but is not regionally located around them, they’re hoping to survive to fight another day. This weekend saw the Hamptons, Mill Valley and Middleburg Film festivals’ conclusions; three of the more prestigious and credible voices in the awards stops. AFI Film Fest is underway with Amazon Studios’ “I’m Your Woman” kicking things off for them. This all continues with Savannah and DOC NYC next on the docket.

For the first time in eight months, I saw a film on a big screen this weekend. In early September, I was fortunate enough to see Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” on my 59-inch television screen, utilizing screencasting. Quickly falling for its charm and vibrant narrative beats, it shot up to not just my favorite film of the year thus far, but one of the frontrunners for the best picture Oscar. On Thursday evening, I was lucky enough to watch it from a balcony at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Va., with a sprawling view of about nearly 50 patrons on the green lawn made up of critics, film enthusiasts and even a few awards and guild voters. Right behind them, perched on 30 balconies, were another group of guests taking in the ambiance of the evening. On the other side of the large property, Middleburg set up a drive-in screening of the film, with a maximum capacity of 50 cars sold out. Not available for virtual screenings, the film was a must-see, and the attendance proved that.

The beauty and importance of the movie theater experience are being threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. While many are using clickbait headlines to decry the “end of movie theaters” and calling for the “canceling of the Oscars,” a four-day weekend getaway to a place where the love of movies is felt in every corner was a retreat away from our toxic climate and a reminder of the simpler times we miss. The same feeling was echoed in the Saturday night screening of Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” which takes on newer and more profound meanings with each watch.

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Courtesy of Middleburg Film Festival

Being from New York City, I’ve never had the chance to attend a drive-in movie, and that was changed by “The Last Shift” from first-time director Andrew Cohn and producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (“Little Miss Sunshine”), boasting another strong performance from two-time Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins. Also on a big screen, we got to take in Francis Lee’s “Ammonite,” Ricky Staub’s “Concrete Cowboy” and Edward Hall’s “Blithe Spirit.”

Many might remember the last film they saw on the big screen before the lockdowns began. Mine was Pixar’s “Onward,” with my 9-year-old daughter Sophia. I can also recall the last two films I was invited to see before everything shut down, with “Promising Young Woman” and “A Quiet Place Part II,” which has been moved to late 2021. Some of you may have ventured out since then to take in Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” or other films, but there’s been a real reluctance to venture into a theater, especially on the East Coast.

In addition to the screenings, patrons were able to take in the virtual tributes that included Zhao receiving the Agnès Varda Trailblazing Filmmaker award, which will just add to the many accolades she will likely receive this year for her work on the film in which she produces, directs, writes and edits. Also receiving tributes were Aaron Sorkin, who received the screenwriter award, and Sophia Loren, who picked up the legacy tribute prize. No stranger to Middleburg, composer Kris Bowers performed a concert along with his distinguished film composer prize. Simultaneously, the director spotlight award went to George C. Wolfe, prepping his launch for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Aldis Hodge received the actor spotlight award in a year where he’s delivered top-notch work in “One Night in Miami” and “The Invisible Man” while the cast of “Minari” took in the ensemble cast prize, hoping to bleed over to the SAG Awards.

We don’t know when this pandemic will end, but the movie theaters and film festivals need to have an avenue to remind us why art is so crucial.

Article by: Clayton Davis for Variety 

San Francisco Film has selected filmmakers Aaron Sorkin and Chloe Zhao for honors at its annual San Francisco Film Awards ceremonies, due to be livestreamed on Dec. 9.

Sorkin, whose “Trial of the Chicago 7” is streaming on Netflix, will receive the Kanbar award for storytelling. Zhao, the director of awards contender “Nomadland,” will receive the Irving M. Levin award for film direction.

“We are thrilled to honor such exceptional talent at our SF Film Awards Night and to bring an even wider audience together virtually this year for our annual fundraiser,” said executive director Anne Lai. “Both Aaron and Chloé’s remarkable work resonate deeply for us, not only in their beautiful cinematic expression but also in presenting deep and complex characters and questions for us as a society today. We hope that by celebrating these artists, their films, and these values, SF Film can have a positive impact on the cultural conversations that arise this time of year around highly anticipated awards contenders.”

The Kanbar award acknowledges the importance that storytelling plays in the creation of outstanding films. It’s named for Maurice Kanbar, a longtime member of the board of directors of SF Film, and a philanthropist with a particular interest in supporting independent filmmakers. Past recipients include Lulu Wang (2019), Boots Riley (2018), Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (2017), Tom McCarthy (2016), Paul Schrader (2015), Stephen Gaghan (2014), Eric Roth (2013), David Webb Peoples (2012), Frank Pierson (2011), and James Schamus (2010).

Sorkin won an Academy Award for adapted screenplay for his “Social Network” script and was nominated for his “Moneyball” and “Molly’s Game” screenplays. He also made his directorial debut on “Molly’s Game,” starring Jessica Chastain. Sorkin created and produced NBC’s “The West Wing.”

The Irving M. Levin award for film direction is presented each year to one of the leaders in world cinema and is given in memory of the founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which launched in 1957. Past recipients include Marielle Heller (2019), Steve McQueen (2018), Kathryn Bigelow (2017), Mira Nair (2016), Guillermo del Toro (2015), Richard Linklater (2014), Philip Kaufman (2013), Kenneth Branagh (2012), Oliver Stone (2011), Walter Salles (2010), Francis Ford Coppola (2009), Mike Leigh (2008), Spike Lee (2007), and Werner Herzog (2006).

Zhao’s first feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and her second feature “The Rider” premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight in 2017 and won the Art Cinema Awards. “The Rider” also won best film at the 2018 Gotham Awards.

Her latest film “Nomadland,” starring Frances McDormand, premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. It won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on Dec. 4 by Searchlight Pictures.

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety 

There are two big factions among the 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA, and they have rarely, if ever, gotten along, even in the eight years since SAG and AFTRA merged into a single union. No event exemplifies the deep divide within SAG-AFTRA like the 2000 commercials strike, which lasted six months and ended 20 years ago this week.

William Daniels, the Emmy-winning actor known for “St. Elsewhere” and “Boy Meets World,” was the face of the strike as SAG president at the time. He was so bitter at enemies that emerged during the work stoppage that when his term ended in 2001 he vowed to never set foot again in SAG’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters.

But in an interview last month with Variety, Daniels said he would do it all again if he could go back in time.

“Nobody cared about commercial actors and people who were not commercial actors did not have an understanding of their issues,” he said. “I would do it again. It was worthwhile. I was very glad when it was finished. And I made some great friends.”

Sara Kreiger, who served as a strike captain in New York, still has nothing good to say about the experience. She asserts that her career came to a virtual standstill and maintains that the unions wound up inadvertently encouraging advertisers to shoot commercials non-union.

“I took all of my energy and put it into showing up at strike headquarters every day, five to six days a week,” she said. “The greatest take-away from the strike was not the gains that we made, but the losses that were created. Nonunion people crossed the picket line, as advertisers learned how to get their jobs done without professional union talent.”

The debate among performers and union activists still rages as to whether the contractual gains offset the long-term losses. The nitty-gritty of the issue turned on effort to change the long-standing protocol for paying actors who appear in TV commercials. But the bitterness of the battle was fueled by conflicting approaches with SAG and AFTRA to dealing with employers and the willingness to use a labor organization’s ultimate weapon — a work stoppage.

The strike began on a May 1, 2000, with a rousing rally by thousands of members at the La Brea Tar Pits with Tom Hanks as the keynote speaker, followed by a march down several miles of Wilshire Boulevard. From there, it was day after day of hundreds of demonstrations and pickets.

“For me, the strike was an endless picket every single day,” recalled actor Cynthia Steele. “You’d be asking, ‘Are you going to Nestle or AT&T and I’ll go if you go.’ It was my contract so I felt like a mama bear about it.”

The work stoppage revolved around the ad industry’s demand to replace what is known as Class A, or a “pay-per-play” system of compensation for broadcast TV blurbs with the proposal that advertisers pay actors a lump sum on a quarterly basis, eliminating per-play fees for actors. SAG and AFTRA negotiated the contract jointly even though the unions were separate entities at the time. Both unions were opposed to the ad industry’s proposal and in fact pushed for implementing the Class A pay-per-play system for commercials shown on cable, where quarterly buyouts were the norm.

The final deal was announced on Oct. 23, 2000, a few weeks after the boycott started. It preserved Class A for broadcast TV, boosted cable pay by 140% and gave the union an important jurisdictional victory over actors in internet ads.

But the length of the strike widened longstanding political divisions. Daniels was attacked as incompetent and the gains were characterized as illusory. Daniels chose not to seek re-election in 2001. Melissa Gilbert was elected president of SAG later that year by running on a “Restore Respect” platform against Valerie Harper.

“It was important for our political enemies to paint the strike as a failure,” Daniels wrote in his 2017 autobiography. “If they gave us any credit, how could they possibly win the next election? By continually declaring that the commercial strike was a failure (and convincing the membership of this false premise), they have virtually ensured that the membership will never again approve a strike and without the ability to strike, our union — any union — has no power whatsoever. They have effectively undermined every negotiation since then.”

But many SAG members, such as Becca Lish, insist to this day that the strike should have been avoided.

“Calling for a work stoppage should only be a last resort,” Lish said. “Although the power to strike is an important tool to have in reserve, using it can cause serious harm and the risks must be weighed with care as there is no certainty of gain. For example, the commercials strike in 2000 resulted in devastating personal losses for performers in our community, some of whom lost their homes, or drained savings meant for their children’s education or their own retirement.”

The 2000 strike has remained the dominant argument at the performers union for the past two decades — particularly among members outside Los Angeles, who have insisted that the work stoppage was a flop. The failure narrative gained power within the union as the moderate side gained clout via Unite For Strength and United Screen Actors Nationwide. SAG and AFTRA voted to merge in 2012, creating a mega-union of performers that was billed as having greater clout at the bargaining table.

But SAG-AFTRA doesn’t use that clout, according to Gordon Drake, a strike captain and negotiating committee member.

“I don’t recognize my union any more,” he said. “The 2000 strike was successful because of the high level of member education that took place. The merger was all about suppressing the voice of the members, so union leadership never mobilizes members during negotiations.”

The origins of the strike date back to the mid-1990s as actors specializing in commercials found that cable networks could run a single ad heavily and pay only $11.32 a day. During the 1997 negotiations for the commercials contract, ad industry negotiators signaled that they wanted to revamp the compensation formula. Actors who specialized in commercials such as  Steele, Steve Barr, Gary Epp, Todd Amorde, Ruth Peebles and Cyd Strittmatter began to organize into a SAG faction dubbed as the Performers Alliance. They made a point of buttonholing other actors at auditions.

“We always thought the strongest group in the union were the working actors,” Amorde recalls. “Our slogan was ‘Working performers for a union that works.’ And we were getting screwed on the commercials contract.”

Daniels was recruited to run for the SAG president’s post in mid-1999. On paper he was a shoo-in, an accomplished and respected actor who won two Emmys for his work on the NBC drama “St. Elsewhere” and was at the end of his seven-season run on the ABC comedy “Boy Meets World.” His candidacy was galvanized in part by a group of commercial actors — Chuck Sloan, Bob Carlson, David Jolliffe and Paul Napier — who were deeply worried about the ad industry’s proposal. They wanted a hard-nosed contender to challenge Richard Masur as the leader of SAG.

In a meeting at Art’s Deli in Studio City, Daniels offered to run even though his wife, actor Bonnie Bartlett, had said earlier that he would not: “How about me? I don’t know if I’d be able to win.”

“You’d win in a second,” Sloan replied.

Sloan was right. Masur was seeking a third term and was well known — he memorably played Princeton recruiter Fred Rutherford in Tom Cruise’s “Risky Business.” — but Daniels had a bigger profile and resume. In his new role as SAG president, Daniels was widely quoted as saying, “I’m not afraid of anyone in Hollywood.”

Two decades later, New York actor Paul Christie asserts that Daniels and his Performance Alliance allies were strategically inept. “It was a huge mistake by the Los Angeles people trying to prove how tough they were. The rhetoric out of Los Angeles was not helpful because both sides got dug in,” Christie said.

“By definition, a strike is a failure,” he says. “It was devastating for us. People lost their homes.”

At the time, Christie’s misgivings did not preclude him from running an active campaign against the ad industry.

“The strike was like guerrilla warfare,” he recalled. “We’d go to City Hall since the film permits were filed there, then we’d have to clear our actions with the NYPD. We’d try to disrupt the shoot with pots and pans and chainsaws. You’d get two minutes on Eyewitness News. So it felt like we were constantly swimming upstream because the ad industry was still getting the work done.”

In Los Angeles, the strike committee took over the James Cagney Room on the first floor of SAG’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters. Members began posting hundreds of photos of strikebreakers on a “Scab Wall,” and they learned on the fly how to hold demonstrations and disrupt commercial shoots. Julie Sanford, who had recently started making a living in commercials when the strike started, recalls becoming a strike captain and going “all in.”

“I remember using compact mirrors to disrupt shoots, whistles and pots and pans,” she said. “And I remember the first time I told a police officer, who had told me to leave and I said, ‘No, I have a right to be here on the sidewalk.’ We were picketing a casting office that was shooting non-union at Olympic and Bundy. He backed off because he knew I was right.”

Sanford says she was blacklisted for years. “It took a while for me to get work again. I had been quite visible. I might have not done as much during the strike had I known,” she said.

Peaches Johnson, who had been in national ads for Gap and Geico, began holding a daily demonstration at the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard, which soon became known as “Peaches’ Corner.”

“I know my shortcomings but I’m good at simplifying,” she said. “I learned how to do soundbites — boom, boom, boom — when reporters showed up. By the time we picketed Elizabeth Scabley (Hurley) at the premiere for ‘Bedazzled,’ we really knew how to run a demonstration.”

So why did the strike last so long? Ad industry negotiator Ira Shepard told Variety he remains surprised two decades later at the outcome. Shepard said SAG would not compromise on pay-per-play for networks. He also blames what he sees as the intransigence of Daniels and his supporters.

“We wanted to modernize the contract but it went back to a basic format,” Shepard notes. “But it’s hard to says that it could have been done quicker. It’s easier to go on strike if you’re not working every day. You had a minority that was promising pie in the sky. Pay-per-play was a lottery situation so our proposal was for a minimum level, giving the industry a cost guarantee with higher minimums. I explained it until I was blue in the face.”

Doug Ely, a partner at the Los Angeles-based AKA Agency, went on hundreds of pickets in support of his clients but admits the strike essentially helped advertisers learn how to do nonunion work.

“It was very shortsighted of SAG and AFTRA not to have more input from agents,” Ely said. “Once it ended, there was tremendous resentment among advertisers. Everyone walked away unhappy. It really took off in the nonunion world and it became out of control. They resented having to pay. And commercial actors were always looked down upon.”

On the SAG-AFTRA website, the 2020 strike is covered in two sentences: “May 1: SAG & AFTRA joint Commercials Strike begins, and will officially end October 30th. It is the Guild’s 8th strike and AFTRA’s 4th national strike.”

Anne-Marie Johnson, who lost her 2009 bid for the SAG presidency to Ken Howard as the head of the Membership First ticket, said the current leadership rules by instilling fear into the members. Johnson said it’s wrong for the union to minimize the impact and effectiveness of strikes.

“The biggest weakness of SAG-AFTRA is that unionism is never explained to the members,” she said. “The leadership and staff has always done a horrible job of explaining what it means to be in a union.”

Peter Nguyen, a SAG staff organizer during the strike and an 18-year labor negotiations veteran, is just as blunt.

“The reason for the opposition to the 2000 strike was that a lot of staff and New York actors were not comfortable with a member-driven union,” he notes. “The ad industry wanted to get rid of Class A and that triggered a revolt at SAG. A lot of working actors said privately that if they took Class A away, they’d come after residuals on the film and TV contract. What won the strike was Ivory, Crest and Tide. We needed to figure out who the real power was and it turned out to be Proctor & Gamble.”

Many of those involved in the strike left the union long ago. Epp withdrew after he revealed in 2006 that SAG’s commercial earnings rose 41% between 2000 and 2005 to $750 million, asserting guild staff and leaders refused to divulge the numbers because they want to continue portraying the strike as a failure. For his trouble, Epp was kicked off the 2006 negotiating committee.

 Since then, SAG-AFTRA has never revealed its annual commercial earnings figures. In its 2019 announcement about the national board approving a successor deal on its commercials contact, it gave only one specific dollar figure: increased funding to the health and retirement/pension plans estimated at $22.2 million.

For all the drama that ensued during the battle of SAG vs. Madison Avenue, Epp is still in agreement with Daniels’ view of the decision to flex union muscle.

“If you say the strike was a failure, it shows that you can’t do simple math,” Epp said.

Article by: Dave McNary for Variety 

Since its inception in 2013, the Middleburg Film Festival has become a major fixture on the crowded festival circuit, offering four days of films in Northern Virginia’s historic wine country, one hour from Washington, D.C. The festival will run Oct. 15-18 with most films screening virtually while a select number of films will be programmed as outdoor and drive-in screenings. This eighth edition, a hybrid version of in-person and virtual screenings, conversations and events, follows in the footsteps of numerous other recent fests that have also had to reinvent themselves and radically reshape crowd logistics in order to deal with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Curated Contenders

Despite the pandemic, MFF promises a carefully curated selection of narrative and documentary films, followed by Q&As with world-renowned filmmakers and actors. Variety editors Clayton Davis and Jazz Tangcay will return to host their popular Coffee and Contenders discussion with the Film Experience’s Nathaniel Rogers. A stellar slate of diverse films includes Oscar contenders, acclaimed festival favorites, foreign films and regional premieres.

Hits and Streamers

Launching the fest is the widely celebrated “Nomadland,” Searchlight Pictures’ winner of the Venice Golden Lion Award as well as the TIFF People’s Choice Award — and the first film ever to receive both. Directed by Chloé Zhao (“The Rider”), it stars Frances McDormand in her first role since winning the Academy Award for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Screening in the Centerpiece slot is Lee Isaac Chung’s critically acclaimed family drama “Minari,” the A24 and Plan B Sundance hit that won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. “Concrete Cowboy,” from first time feature director Ricky Staub, and starring Idris Elba in a father-son drama set in North Philadelphia’s Black cowboy community, is the Friday Spotlight film. And Regina King’s feature directorial debut, Amazon Studios’ “One Night in Miami,” is the Saturday Spotlight film. It’s a fictional account of one night in 1964 where icons of sports, music and activism — Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) — gather to celebrate underdog Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) defeating heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. Other notable titles include the upcoming Apple TV Plus original animated film “Wolfwalkers” from two-time Oscar-nommed director Tomm Moore (“Song of the Sea,” “The Secret of Kells”) and director Ross Stewart (“The Secret of Kells”); “I Am Greta,” Hulu’s doc about the teenage climate activist; another timely doc, IFC’s “MLK/FBI”; and Brit comedy/fantasy “Blithe Spirit,” a reboot of the Noel Coward classic co-starring Judi Dench.

In-Person and Virtual Tributes

Legendary icon Sophia Loren, star of Netflix’s upcoming “The Life Ahead,” will receive MFF’s Legacy Tribute Award and Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) will receive the Screenwriter Award. Other honorees include Zhao (“Nomadland”), the Agnes Varda Trailblazing Filmmaker Award; George C. Wolfe (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), the Director Spotlight Award; the cast of “Minari,” the Ensemble Cast Spotlight Award; and Kris Bowers (“Respect,” “Green Book”), the Distinguished Composer Award. Bowers will perform selections from his scores in a virtual tribute concert from L.A.’s Capitol Records.

Article by: Iain Blair for Variety 

Diverse storytelling and representation are the core focus for Angela Bassett and Emilia Clarke, who are serving as jurors and mentors during this year’s sixth annual Tribeca Through the Lens filmmaking program.

“The biggest reason I wanted to be a producer was that I had spent a huge amount of time in several very big machines where I got to have a very fulfilling role but I felt left out of a bunch of rooms, and as a creative human I wanted to be in them,” Clarke told Variety ahead of Tuesday’s virtual Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program luncheon. Actors, directors, writers, producers, casting directors, executives and costume designers all came together to support their filmmaking community and the emerging filmmakers selected for the program.

The actress-producer, one of the mentors who will sit on the three-day program and has set up her own production house, went on to say the motivation to produce came from a need to be heard. “The smaller films you do, and the better well known you get, your  voice can be heard, but not in the beginning [when I was starting my career]. That left this gaping hole in me where I want to be a part of telling the story, the whole story. I want to be on set, knowing the reason why this script came into being.”

Clarke talked about the lack of diverse storytelling that exists within the industry and championed the need for more stories about the underrepresented. “I’m interested in the stories we are not seeing and the cultures that we know nothing about. If you give them a chance to be the story, then I’m interested, then there is a whole fresh, new light to it.”

Inspired by female filmmakers such as Sofia Coppola and Greta Gerwig, Clarke hopes to help bring those underrepresented stories to the foreground. “Hopefully someone will watch “Game of Thrones,” see me and see me as the woman with the dragon and want to see what I’m up to,” she joked.

Angela Bassett, who voices “Dorothea” in Pixar’s upcoming “Soul” and serves on the jury alongside Angelica Ross, Channing Dungey, Kirsten Dunst, Lucy Boynton and Uzo Aduba, also took a moment to reflect on diversity saying,” It’s interesting because we say, ‘art reflects humanity’ and it seems that during with time with all that has been going on in our world really has made an impression on our industry.”

Bassett went on to say, “We know the influence the industry has around the world, and this is a moment that is seriously being considered.”

Bassett said she believes the #Oscarssowhite movement was a brief fleeting moment, but “this seems to be a more intense opportunity to make a change by giving, women, minorities, Indigenous people and people of color a real opportunity to bring their stories to bear.”

Tribeca’s executive chair Jane Rosenthal, speaking before the kickoff luncheon, spoke to the importance of the virtual program. “The stories we tell should wait for no one. There’s the importance of continuing and continuing to support diverse women filmmakers.”

Rosenthal, who has produced over 55 films including “The Irishman” and “The War With Grandpa,” talked about the need for government to step in and subsidize the industry and artists who are not working. Rosenthal said, “Let’s look at New York, the artists out of work, small businesses that are out of work, Off-Broadway, places like The Shed and The Armory and Broadway, there definitely needs to be some type of WPA program for artists right now until we can gather.”

The conversations on diversity and government were very much a focus of the luncheon. “In an age of misinformation and disinformation, there is something louder than words, and that is action,” Rosenthal said during her introduction. “We all have to be action heroes, whether that is by voting or telling a story or mentoring the next generation. Each one of us has the tools and the power to do something that breaks through. We have our own power to act. Creating a sustainable plan for change by telling stories that can’t be ignored, twisted against us, or interrupted is what Through Her Lens is all about.”

Director and producer Mira Nair added, “There is nothing more powerful than one’s own skin color, poetry, music, and experience.”

The Through the Lens conversations are available to stream on Tribeca’s YouTube channel.

Article by: Jazz Tangcay for Variety 

A big part of what makes for a good fright is settling into the time and place of a particular story. From early horror works like “Nosferatu” to classic movies such as “Dracula” and “Frankenstein,” the realms that cinema’s scariest creatures inhabit all feel specific and full of life — even of the undead variety.

Haunted castles, abandoned hotels and stately manors are par for the course for horror movie fans, but finding luxurious worlds to dive into makes for the best nighttime viewing. The gothic styling of Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy films and the grotesque surreality of Tim Burton’s stop-motion oeuvre both pull viewers into their cinematic domain.

The opulence of vampire stories, the baroque design of period films and the fairytale whimsy of dark fantasy movies make for a perfect Halloween horror binge. Ranked from spooky to downright terrifying, here are 13 movies with immaculate production design viewers will find easy to get lost in.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Timothee Chalamet will join Jennifer Lawrence in the star-studded cast of “Don’t Look Up,” a new Netflix comedy from Adam McKay.

Jonah Hill and Himesh Patel will also star, along with Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi and Matthew Perry. As previously announced, Cate Blanchett and Rob Morgan are part of the cast.

McKay, the filmmaker behind “Step Brothers,” “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” and “The Big Short,” wrote and directed “Don’t Look Up,” which follows two low-level astronomers who embark on a media tour to warn mankind of an impending asteroid that could destroy the planet. Lawrence and DiCaprio are expected to play the two astronomers, but Netflix would not confirm.

The movie is scheduled to start filming before the end of the year.

McKay is also producing the film with Kevin Messick under McKay’s Hyperobject Industries banner.

Ahead of “Don’t Look Up,” DiCaprio is starring in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” adaptation. Streep has another Netflix film, Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom,” up next, along with Steven Soderbergh’s HBO Max comedy “Let Them All Talk.” Chalamet, who previously starred with Streep in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” remake, has “Dune,” “The French Dispatch” and James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “Going Electric” on deck. Patel, the breakout of Universal’s musical rom-com “Yesterday,” recently appeared in Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet.”

McKay’s most recent movie, “Vice” — a scathing biopic about former Vice President Dick Cheney — was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture. McKay won an Academy Award for 2015’s “The Big Short,” nabbing the prize for adapted screenplay.

Article by: Rebecca Rubin for Variety 

The U.K.’s Film and TV Charity has launched the Whole Picture Program, a two-year initiative designed to to improve the mental health and wellbeing of the 200,000 people who work behind the scenes in film, TV and cinema.

The Film and TV Charity has now secured £3 million ($3.87 million) in funding from Amazon Prime Video, Banijay U.K., BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, IMG, ITV, Sky, Sky Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, The Walt Disney Company, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia to deliver the program that is supported by the BFI and backed by U.K. mental health charity Mind. The charity estimates that mental health problems, including staff turnover, cost the sector at least £300 million ($387 million) in losses each year.

The program will deliver a toolkit for mentally healthy productions; enhanced professional and peer support for freelancers; people skills and training guides; industry actions to improve behavior; and anti-bullying services and resources.

Alex Pumfrey, CEO of the Film and TV Charity said: “It has been a devastating year for many people in our industry, and it’s clear we cannot afford to return to ‘business as usual’. Our 2019 research showed a mental health crisis in the industry, which has only been exacerbated by the terrible effects of the pandemic.”

More than 9,000 people took part in the research last year, sharing their experiences and stories confidentially, which identified a mental health crisis within the industry. The findings revealed issues including self-harm and bullying. Since then, the pandemic has meant increased isolation and anxiety for many, and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the industry have identified the effect systemic racism and discrimination has on mental health.

“The case for improving the mental health of the industry has never been stronger or more urgent,” added Pumfrey. “This program of work is designed to turn the tide on poor mental health by enhancing the available support, changing behavior and improving ways of working; but this will need to be an industry-wide effort to create sustainable change.”

The project has been on hold for six months whilst the charity has dedicated all of its resources to responding to COVID-19, raising £6.4 million ($8.2 million), and supporting thousands of workers with grants and financial and mental wellbeing services.

Emma Mamo, head of workplace wellbeing at Mind, said: “Unfortunately, self-employed people, freelancers and those in the film and TV industry are among those hit hardest by coronavirus. That’s why we’re pleased to be supporting the Whole Picture Program, which will provide much-needed resource and support to the many experiencing poor mental health in the sector.”

Industry leaders are part of the program’s mental health taskforce and they will work collaboratively to adopt and champion the work both within their own organizations and widely across the sector.

Article by: Naman Ramachandran for Variety

Thinking of making a movie and titling it Alone? You wouldn’t be alone.

During this year alone — a stretch of time when many found themselves at home alone due to the COVID-19 pandemic — there have been three thrillers that share the same moniker: Vladislav Khesin’s Alone starring Elizabeth Arends from Broken Cage Studio; John Hyams’ Alone starring Jules Wilcox and Marc Menchaca from Magnolia Pictures genre arm Magnet Releasing; and Johnny Martin’s Alone starring Donald Sutherland and Tyler Pose for Grindstone Entertainment. Those are also not to be confused with the seven seasons of the History Channel series of the same name or the more than 100 exact title matches on IMDB.

Hyams’ Alone tracks a recently widowed traveler who is kidnapped by a killer only to escape and run for her life in the wilderness. It’s the remake of a Swedish thriller called Gone but, in an ironic twist, those involved with the film opted to zero in on a new title because they felt there were too many films with that title already.

“We needed a title that was not as popular, so we started going through a whole list and the thing I always liked about [Alone] is that it matched our film’s minimalistic, stripped-down format. It takes the thriller genre and strips away all the unnecessary exposition and backstory and gets to the essence of the genre in its most crystallized form,” explains Hyams, who is currently in production on Season 2 of his Netflix series Black Summer. “The title needed to reflect that and we needed a title that was perhaps so basic it inevitably would have others just like it.”

They settled on Alone and it wasn’t that long ago when Hyams logged on to Facebook to see a friend of his, Martin, promoting his own thriller called Alone about a zombie apocalypse. The two titles are being released within weeks of one another. “I started to realize that there are a lot more Alones than Gones,” says Hyams, laughing.

Keeping a smile on his face is how his film has delivered the best reviews of his career, currently sitting at 95 percent Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. “Hopefully we all benefit from having the same title,” he adds. “It’s an interesting thing that you can now watch multiple movies with the same name and have different experiences.”

Hyams is alone in his reaction. The other filmmakers did not respond to requests for comment.

Article by: Chris Gardner for The Hollywood Reporter

No need to introduce Viggo Mortensen, the multi-award winning actor, whose most recent accolade was a career achievement Donostia Award at the San Sebastian Festival last month. But the Lumière classic film festival in Lyon was a chance to get up close and personal with Mortensen, the director, at a masterclass in the intimate Comédie Odéon theater.

Switching comfortably between French, English and the occasional Spanish – Mortensen lives in Madrid – the actor-turned-director answered openly to the questions put to him.

Mortensen’s debut, “Falling,” is among 23 films originally selected to premiere in Cannes that will be screened at this edition of Lumière, whose director, Thierry Frémaux, also runs the Cannes fest. It tells the story of John, a gay man whose conservative and homophobic father starts to exhibit symptoms of dementia, forcing him to sell the family farm and move in with John and his husband. Asked how autobiographic the film is, Mortensen said that while he was inspired by his own parents’ illness, he wanted to show the world from the point of view of the person suffering from dementia.

“Most movies about people with dementia show them as confused, but in reality the people who are confused are those on the outside. The one who thinks it’s 1956 and he’s making love to his wife – he’s not confused, he’s there, that’s his present,” said Mortensen. “It was a very short shoot – just five weeks – and I wanted a library of pictures from different seasons to use as a memory for this person. I wanted to find a way of showing this (reality) through image and sound, that was the challenge for me.”

How did he prepare for the film?

“Making movies is about solving a series of problems that don’t end until the movie is there,” he said. “You can do it happily and collectively or you can be screaming and yelling… it’s like life.”

Displaying characteristic humility and humor, Mortensen said it was a good thing he had made his first movie at 60 as it had given him time to learn from others.

“I’ve always learned from the films I’ve done, even the bad ones. I’ve learned how to make a good film, how to manage a shoot, how a good director talks with his team and is open to suggestions.”

Mortensen made special mention of Peter Jackson, who gave him his break with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “With his intelligence, his energy and problem-solving abilities, he taught his team how to adapt and overcome problems. You can do it if you really want to, there’s always a way.”

“Two things: You can never prepare too much or too early for a shoot, because more problems will come anyway. It allows you to anticipate.” He paused, and added with a smile: “It’s not going to be the way you expect it anyway, but you’ll be ready for that, too.”

Referring to his 2019 Oscar-winning film “Green Book,” Mortensen said he had a lot to learn as he had never done this kind of character. The director, Peter Farrelly, simply told him to trust himself.

“For comedy it’s the same as drama,” said Mortensen. “It’s about timing, music. Once we started doing some of the scenes, we had a very good connection with Mahershala (Ali), and I thought: ‘If they edit this well, it will work.’ The crew was laughing, but you never know. I’ve seen some shoots where you think it’s going well, but it turns out bad. It’s very hard to make a good movie.”

What kind of film did he want to make?

“I’m very stubborn, I don’t like it when a director tells me what I’m supposed to think or what I’m supposed to feel. For my first film, I wanted to make one that I would want to see,” he said.

“Independent films tell stories that are more original than big studio productions: the more money is spent on a film, the more investors want to recover their money. So, they make something that has worked before, it’s no surprise you keep seeing the same stuff.

“If my film works, it’s because it draws you in and you take part in the storytelling. And if it works, the film is not mine, it’s in your hands.”

“Falling” is out now in Spain and from Nov. 4 across Europe

Article by: Lise Pedersen for Variety

Part of the release of the Michael B. Jordan-starring film last year, Represent Justice has grown from an advocacy campaign to a fully fledged nonprofit working to reform the criminal justice system.

When the film Just Mercy came out late last year — it stars Michael B. Jordan as civil-rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson working to free a wrongly convicted death row prisoner — the team behind it launched what many movies that tackle pressing issues do these days. They mounted an accompanying campaign that both promoted the movie and amplified its message.

Titled Represent Justice and launched last October, two months before the film's release, Just Mercy’s campaign worked to highlight the need for criminal justice reform in the United States. (The film was co-financed by producer Scott Budnick's One Community banner and released by Warner Bros.) Its activations included a concert by rapper Common at the California Rehabilitation Center; screenings of Just Mercy for governors around the country; and an initiative called Play for Justice, which engaged NBA players, including Kyle Kuzma, Caron Butler, Trevor Ariza and Giannis Antetokounmpo, in the fight for legislative reform.

“The campaign was really about creating public demand for change and raising awareness around the systemic inequality of the justice system, and we developed a lot of programming. We’re using stories as an advocacy tool,” says Daniel Forkkio, who lead the campaign for a part of its run. “We did nearly 500 screenings and forged a lot of partnerships with justice reform organizations. We brought [sports] players into facilities alongside policy makers to hear the stories of people who were inside, to bring them closer and more proximate, as Bryan Stevenson would say, to the issue.”

Most film campaigns fizzle out not long after a movie is released. But one year later, Represent Justice has evolved: its organizers tell The Hollywood Reporter exclusively that it has become a fully fledged criminal justice advocacy organization. “I haven’t seen it happen before,” says Budnick (Just Mercy's executive producer) of Represent Justice's trajectory from film advocacy campaign to nonprofit group. Adds April Grayson, a formerly incarcerated woman who serves as one of the ambassadors of the campaign-turned-organization, “Something that started out as, ‘We’re going to give this a shot and see what we can do around this movie’ has turned into, ‘We’re bringing on a director of policy’ and we’re going to keep expanding.”

Notably, Represent Justice puts justice-system-impacted individuals at the center of its work, with a speaker’s bureau — financially supported by the organization ­— that features Grayson and 15 other ambassadors around the U.S. “We have all of these surrogates, who had spent [years] in prison themselves,” says Budnick, “and they were all over the country talking to folks on panels, showing their own leadership and they just kept saying to us, ‘Why does this need to end?’” Adds Forkkio, who is now the CEO of Represent Justice, “One of our fundamental beliefs is that those who are most impacted by an issue are the ones whose stories need to be told.”

Grayson — who lives in Sacramento, California, and who is the statewide coordinator for the Young Women’s Freedom Center’s Sister Warrior’s Freedom Coalition, an advocacy group comprised of formerly and currently incarcerated women — says her experience with Represent Justice stands in stark contrast to many other groups that ask her to speak on criminal justice issues. “Most organizations exploit the people who are the most impacted,” says Grayson. She shares that she’s been asked to speak at political forums where “people give us a pizza and say, ‘You’re so great.’” By contrast, she says, “Represent Justice has been very giving in the way that they treat us and has created space for people just like myself to really highlight the issues that our system has, the way that it treats Black and brown people. People of color have had a raw deal for hundreds and hundreds of years. We’re still fighting a system that was created to not give us dignity.” Represent Justice has invested in media training for its speakers, and also, adds Grayson, provided therapy sessions, which can be especially critical for some ambassadors who can find that telling their stories of being part of the carceral system can feel like reliving them.

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w" alt="Represent Justice ambassador April Grayson speaks at a Play for Justice event at Folsom State Prison with the Sacramento King." />

Ricky Horne Jr. for Represent Justice

Represent Justice ambassador April Grayson speaks at a Play for Justice event at Folsom State Prison with the Sacramento King.

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Folsom-Justice-557-EMBED-2020-1602279878-compressed.jpg 1047w" data-alt-text="Represent Justice ambassador April Grayson speaks at a Play for Justice event at Folsom State Prison with the Sacramento King."> 

Budnick — who serves as a founding board member of the organization — says that Represent Justice also has stepped up to support nonprofits that its ambassadors work with. “Through the campaign, we were able to grant a couple million dollars to organizations that were working with us. A lot of folks that are doing films come to organizations and ask them to promote their film for free. We said, ‘If you are working with us on the issues around this campaign, then we want to be able to help increase the capacity of your organization. We did that monetarily. And we did that with our communications director helping organization increase their digital capacities. We want to empower the groups that know better than we do.”

Grayson’s organization, the Sister Warrior’s Freedom Coalition, has received three grants from Represent Justice, which started an emergency COVID-Relief Fund to support organizations helping people recently released from prison. “When COVID-19 hit, we were awarded a $50,000 grant to help start support networks throughout the community, as well as two smaller grants that allowed us to have funds on the ground for people coming home [from incarceration] who needed toilet paper or phone bills paid. I did a school supply drive for mothers who couldn’t afford school supplies for their kids,” says Grayson, who served over 17 years in California’s criminal justice system, most of it at the Central California Women’s Facility. She came home in 2015.

One of the key approaches for Represent Justice is that surrogates have been included all along at events such as film screenings for politicians — the film has been shown to district attorneys and attorneys general across the country as well as the governors of Oregon, Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. When the film was screened for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, recalls Budnick, “we had our Represent Justice surrogate Jarrett Harper there in the room. I got to say to the governor, ‘You released him from prison. You could see how impactful that was to the governor,” says Budnick, adding, “All of his commutation staff were sitting in the theater with us. Two weeks later, he started commuting his first batch of 20 people.” According to the Sacramento Bee, Newsom has granted a total of 42 pardons and 65 commutations since taking office.

Going forward, Represent Justice is continuing its Play for Justice initiative, which was active in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin; the shooting was met with a one-day sports strike by professional sports teams across the country.  According to Budnick, “We’re advising the Milwaukee Bucks players on political strategy in Wisconsin around issues of policing and criminal justice. Obviously, the shooting of Jacob Blake really shook them to their core,” he says, adding that players for the Bucks as well as the Sacramento Kings “have adopted criminal justice reform as the main pillar of their work in their communities.” The Represent Justice team works with players on ways to effectively leverage their platforms and community connections to push for change with district attorneys, state governments and parole boards.

The organization has also launched a voter tool kit, Free Our Vote, a guide to voting for — and by — people impacted by the justice system. In addition to offering information on voter rights and eligibility status, one of the goals is to encourage passage of laws that restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated individuals. “Right now, I’m working with a coalition that is helping to pass [California] Proposition 17,” says Grayson, of a proposition on the ballot in the state this year that would allow individuals on parole to vote. “I feel like the thing that shows that the community has accepted them back is allowing them to have their voice matter when it comes to voting.”

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w" alt="Represent Justice CEO Daniel Forkkio" />

Ricky Horne Jr. for Represent Justice

Represent Justice CEO Daniel Forkkio.

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rep-Justice-Headshots-1332-EMBED-2020-1602279886-compressed.jpg 1047w" data-alt-text="Represent Justice CEO Daniel Forkkio"> 

In Oklahoma, Represent Justice is active with a campaign called Justice for Julius, an effort to free Julius Jones, a Black man on death row in the state, who it says is innocent. “We’ve been able to rally a lot of Oklahoma celebrities behind the case, including NBA stars who come from Oklahoma like Trae Young and Blake Griffin. They’ve written letters to the governor and the parole board,” says Budnick, adding, “I have to thank Kim Kardashian, who turned me on to his plight. Kim has been a hero in the fight for innocence and getting innocent people out of prison.”

The group also works to change the conversation when it comes to how the public and news organizations speak and write about people who have been in the criminal justice system. “We don’t use terms like inmates or felons — anything that sort of removes someone’s humanity by defining them as their worst act is what we stay away from,” says Forkkio. “If you compartmentalize a person that way, you remove your own obligation to think about them as an equal, as a person who’s worthy of empathy.” Represent Justice suggests using terms like “incarcerated individuals” or “people who are incarcerated.”

And the organization continues to screen Just Mercy. “I just got an email yesterday that both Democrats and Republicans in the Ohio legislature want to do screenings and want to do a panel afterwards around actual policies they are trying to pass this next legislative session,” says Budnick. “This isn’t a partisan issue. That’s what I’m excited about most. It’s an issue of humanity. It’s people from the left, right and center who share values of justice and mercy and grace and redemption.”

Article by: Degen Penerfor The Hollywood Reporter

Based on the true events featured in a 2011 documentary, the LGBTQ-focused musical drama reunites much of the West End production's creative team and also stars Richard E. Grant, Sharon Horgan, Sarah Lancashire and Lauren Patel. 

20th Century Studios has released a trailer for its upcoming musical drama Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

Based on the 2017 West End hit and Olivier Award nominee, which is based on a 2011 documentary, the upcoming film doubles as a reunion of the stage show's creative team, with director Jonathan Buttrell, writer Tom MacRae, composer Dan Gillespie Sells and choreographer Kate Prince all involved. Newcomer Max Harwood stars as Jamie, a 16-year-old gay teen who wants to play his childhood games of dress-up forever through a career in drag performance.

"I don't just want to be one," Jamie exclaims. "I have to be one."

But first, he must face those who challenge his refusal to adhere to society's rigid gender standards. That means taking on his homophobic father Wayne New (Ralph Ineson) and careers coach Miss Hedge (Sharon Horgan), as well as class bullies before Jamie debuts as his new persona, Mimi Me, at prom. With the help and encouragement of his friend Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel), his mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire) and Richard E. Grant's former drag queen Loco Chanelle, the young teen is able to see that he doesn't need anybody's permission to embrace himself.

"You can't just be a boy in a dress, Jamie," Grant's Loco Chanelle tells the teen in the trailer. "A boy in a dress is something to be laughed at. A drag queen should be feared."

The film, which was set to release this year but was pushed back due to pandemic-related theater closures, also stars Shobna Gulati, Ralph Ineson, Adeel Akhtar and Sam Bottomley. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is now slated to release in theaters on Feb. 26, 2021.

Article by: Abbey White for The Hollywood Reporter

The idea of a U.S. film festival sticking to its dates in 2020 with a fully programmed, all-physical, non-virtual slate of screenings? It might seem beyond possibility, but then, the suspension of disbelief is particularly accentuated at L.A.’s annual Beyond Fest, which programs “genre” films every fall at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. With all indoor theaters in the county currently mothballed, the celebration of horror and fantasy moved to the most fantastical of SoCal places — Montclair — for a week of double-features at the Mission Tiki Drive-In, wrapping up with Thursday night’s riotously received world premiere of Blumhouse’s “Freaky.”

“If you had told us a year ago we were going to premiere at a drive-in, it might not have felt like an awesome thing,” said Adam Egypt Mortimer, the director of “Archenemy,” standing beneath the big screen and stars before the world bow of his film Wednesday night. “But that Beyond Fest figured out how to do this thing with all these people together is f—ing rad. The guys that do this festival have the most incredible weirdo curatorial eye, and it’s good to be out among people who love genre, because people who love genre really love film.

“I haven’t seen this many people at once in nine months, though,” Mortimer added. “It’s kind of freaking me out. Is Amy Coney Barrett here?” (The 100% mask compliance at the screenings — and the fact that Mortimer brought a newly purchased megaphone to conduct conversations at his premiere — would suggest the fest will only be a glee superspreader.)

Beyond Fest’s three programmers — Grant Moninger, Christian Parkes and Evrim Ersoy — got on a conference call shortly before Thursday night’s festival finale and still seemed slightly surprised that they pulled it off. That the festival dates and lineup weren’t announced until Sept. 18 (less than a week before they held a pre-festival kickoff event with the premiere of “Possessor Uncut”) testified to a lot of loose ends being tied up at the last minute to make it all come together.

Some other festivals this year have had a mixture of online programming with a few outdoor screenings mixed in; they believe they’re the first entirely in-the-cinematic-flesh fest to happen since pre-pandemic Sundance.

“It was really important for us to do that,” says Ersoy. “We had an opportunity to produce Beyond Fest as virtual. But one of our core tenants and founding principles is to bring people together. It’s always been about celebrating the theatrical experience in the communal environment, and that’s just not something you can do at home in isolation. But to be honest, we were hesitant. The (partnering) American Cinematheque came to us and said, ‘What do you think about doing it at the drive-in?’ We had reservations over, in part, concerns about the technical components of what the Cinematheque is known for, so we didn’t want to do anything to downgrade the experience for filmmakers and for fans. But somehow everything fit together. Film editors, sound designers and crew members are reaching out to say how great it was to drive up and see the crowds react, and to hear them honk their homes.”

Although there have been attempts at doing live Zoom Q&As projected onto the big screen at a few other drive-in premieres this year, those haven’t always gone flawlessly, so Beyond Fest opted to have filmmakers and cast members film introductions for their movies. But a more personal touch was in evidence in some of these. In the pre-recorded intro to “Archenemy” Wednesday night, the director, Mortimer, said he would respond to tweets during the screening from his car, and then actually put his cell phone number on screen for any attendees wanting to more personally check in with questions.

“Adam’s a very brave man,” laughs Ersoy. “He apparently got a hundred calls and messages and responded to all of them.”

Says Moninger, “I just want to say that it was on the Cinematheque budget all year long. We never took it off, because the people wanted it, the filmmakers wanted it, Beyond Fest wanted it and we wanted it — but we didn’t know how it was going to happen, where it was going to happen or what it would be, in a year where at some points you have no theaters and no films being released. We really didn’t have any budget to do this because it had to come together so quickly. It’s amazing that it even happened, to put up an entire festival of films that we were all very proud of and excited to get, at a theater that is a real drive-in — like, has been a drive-in for decades and decades” (as opposed to a pop-up). “Without the support that the Mission Tiki gave us, this would never have happened. They really did us a solid. No one’s getting rich off this — the Mission Tiki didn’t milk us and we didn’t milk any of the audience. We tried to keep tickets as low as possible, knowing this is a tough year for everybody.”

Adds Parkes, “The shifting landscape from a studio standpoint really impacted us, because obviously there were studio films that were dated. So from a program standpoint, it was pretty late in the day that we were able to actually lock down the date, which put even more pressure on us to pull together something so quickly with a tight window that was actually afforded to us. But we all just want to get back to watching movies again, so there was a real desire to pull off from Universal, Blumhouse, Neon, A24, RLJ, all the way down.”

For some filmmakers, the drive-in experience was more personal than others. “Jim Cummings, the director of ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow,’ actually goes to the Mission Tiki, and he saw Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ there, which he says is his favorite film. So he said that to have ‘Wolf of Snow Hollow’ play there meant a lot to him.”

This might not be a solution that will work for other film festivals. Would the patrons of the tony New York Film Festival rent cars to drive to the nearest drive-in in upstart New York to see European art films? Moninger says that shouldn’t be so much of a stretch as it sounds, philosophically, if not geographically. “Roger Corman produced Bergman films,” he points out. But, notes Parkes, “I’ll say this. There are definitely films that warrant the honking of horns more than others. And I’d like to think that we program those.”

“And,” says Moninger, “certain films… like, I would say ‘PG: Psycho Goreman’ played so well, and it was a huge hit Wednesday night and a great marriage between the film and the drive-in experience.” The film, which combines juvenile leads with a mean-spirited alien for something akin to a R-rated “Goonies,” “blew the roof off the place,” even though he’s quick to add, obligatorily, that “there’s no roof at a drive-in.”

By the time festival season rolls around next fall, everyone’s hoping theaters, including the Egyptian, will be back open in full. The Mission Tiki may not be, since the land has long since been sold for a long-delayed redevelopment that is considered likely to kick in in 2021, which will be sadly ironic after the mid-century-dating four-screener has finally been discovered by all of adjacent L.A. County after counting as a secret for so long.

Says Parkes: “I think the key statement is that as long as there’s an opportunity for us to screen films with filmmakers that we love, to fans that will appreciate it, we’ll be screening films, whether that’s at a theater, at a drive-in, or totally guerrilla-style in someone’s backyard — we’ll figure out a way to do it. As long as there’s a screen, we will project onto it.”

Prior to the “Archenemy” premiere Wednesday night, Mortimer and his co-producer and leading man, Joe Manganiello, were riffing on the different strains of genre filmmaking that come together in their movie, which is a grittier and literally punchier variation on a “man who fell to earth” theme.

Manganiello said that he and the director drew from a similar dip into “the cauldron of independent comic books that people read during the ’80s and ’90s — putting our heads together on subject material that generally is only handled by studios.”

“This is not a horror movie,” emphasized Mortimer, setting it apart from some of the festival’s other fare. “It’s like a f—ing science-fiction crime superhero psychedelic breakup action meditation on violence. … One of the many ways that we sort of thought about this was the idea of like, if Doctor Strange, who is the most cosmic of superheroes, lost his superpowers, he would become the Punisher.”

“It’s good to be among people that love good, weird movies,” said the actor, surveying the scene of masked attendees, loosely congregated before the movie. “It feels like we’re in high school, somewhere we shouldn’t be. This feels the kickoff for a horror movie. This is how it starts.”

“It’s like the pep rally has just ended,” said Mortimer, “and we’re going to walk into the corn maze.”

“For sure. You’ve got the megaphone,” said Manganiello. “We’re here to ruin the pep rally. I got kicked off the football team. And now we’re going to get our revenge, but then s— happens.”

“Then the demon comes,” agreed the director, inspired. “Yeah, we should work on that.”

Article by: Chris Willman for Variety 

Movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse has temporarily closed all six locations in Dallas and two venues in Omaha, citing the lack of new major movies to draw crowds.

“Due to a lack of upcoming major studio films, some of our franchise locations have opted to temporarily close until a consistent schedule of new releases resumes. We are working alongside all of our franchise operators to help them strategize and restructure as the COVID-19 era rolls on, and we continue to be optimistic about Alamo Drafthouse’s future,” a spokesperson for Alamo Drafthouse said in a statement. “There are no plans to close theaters across the brand and we continue to reopen new theaters, welcoming guests with a wide range of programming options and affordable private theater rentals.”

Alamo Drafthouse operates 41 theaters in 10 states. Within the last few days, new Alamo cinemas in Raleigh, N.C. have opened, as well as a third location in Austin.

Alamo is far from the only cinema chain that had to shutter venues after reopening. This week, Cineworld, the movie theater operator that owns Regal in the U.S., closed all 536 locations. In response, rivals AMC and Cinemark issued statements saying they don’t intend to close any U.S. venues. Independently owned cinemas, especially those in the suburbs, also had to close their doors again or reduce hours of operation during the pandemic.

Upon reopening at the end of the summer, Alamo Drafthouse unveiled detailed plans to keep customers safe, including implementing enhanced cleaning protocols and enforcing physical distancing between seats. But no cleaning procedures can make up for the fact that studios aren’t debuting new buzzy movies. Recently, Disney moved “Soul” to Disney Plus, while Denis Villenueve’s big-budget adaptation of “Dune” and Bond sequel “No Time to Die” were pushed to 2021. As it stands, “Wonder Woman 1984” on Dec. 25 is the lone potential blockbuster left on calendars this year. Numerous smaller movies, like “Promising Young Woman,” “War With Grandpa” and romance drama “2 Hearts,” are still expected to hit the big screen before the year ends.

In the meantime, Alamo Drafthouse has implemented exclusive programming to entice patrons. Among the incentives are “Dismember the Alamo,” consisting of four secret horror screenings throughout the month of October, and “Trick or Treat Cinema,” with discounted family-friendly Halloween films. They’re also offering private theater rentals. For $150, guests can invite up to 30 friends to rent out an entire theater.

Article by: Rebecca Rubin for Variety

A couple of years ago, Taraji P. Henson was searching — and struggling — to find a therapist for herself and her son.

“It was hard finding therapists who were culturally competent,” the actress told ‘Marie Claire” editor-in-chief Sally Holmes. “It’s not that they don’t exist. But pooling them together and finding them is quite daunting.”

The conversation was hosted via “Marie Claire’s” invite-only Power On Summit. The now virtual gathering included conversations from Gabrielle Union, Vanessa Pappas, Stephanie Ruhle and many more. Henson’s headline talk was a frank discussion about mental health and revealed why she decided to launch The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation with her best friend. The actress and producer saw a demand for an organization that seeks to eradicate the stigma around mental health issues specifically in the Black community.

“We have trust issues when it comes to the medical industry, especially when it comes to therapy,” she said. “We have been told to stay strong. If you suffer from mental illness, that’s a weakness.”

She also called for a more empathetic look at phrases like “strong Black woman” or “Black girl magic.” “I understand the notion behind or the meaning behind ‘strong Black woman’ or ‘Black girl magic.’ I get it. It’s to lift us up. But you have to be careful with that term, because what it does is it dehumanizes our pain,” she said.

Henson, who recently launched her own production company, wants to pass the torch to new talent. To amplify new voices, Henson is reaching out to casting directors, watching new programming, and calling in actors for auditions.

“That’s what John Singleton did for me in ‘Baby Boy.’ I’ve done a lot. I’ve opened a lot of doors and now I’ve become a figure who can green light and get projects made,” she said.

For Henson, it’s important to use her power to help others. When she launched her foundation, she used $250,000 of her own money.

“I’m not the richest person in the world, but whatever I have, I share,” she said. “What’s a billion dollars if you’re going to keep it to yourself? There’s no way I could be a billionaire and be OK driving down the streets seeing homeless people. I [wouldn’t] be able to live with myself.”

Power On was presented by the United Explorer Card. Additional partners for Power On included Dell, Dermstore, Sarah Flint, Simon G. Jewelry, Soma and White House Black Market.

Article by: Meg Zukin for Variety

Disney is getting ready to ride Space Mountain onto the big screen.

The venerable ride is getting the movie treatment, with the studio hiring Joby Harold, who has worked a range of movies from Zack Snyder’s upcoming Army of the Dead to Warner’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, to write the script for what is to be a live-action adaptation.

Harold will also produce with partner and wife Tory Tunnell and their Safehouse Pictures banner. Also producing is Rideback, the shingle run by Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich and was behind Disney’s billion dollar-grossing Aladdin.

Space Mountain is an indoor roller coaster with a space-theme. The ride was first introduced in Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort in 1975, followed by installations in California’s Disneyland in 1977. It became a fixture in the Tomorrowland section as other parks opened up and is now in five of the six parks around the world. The ride has no overarching theme nor memorable “scenes” or characters seen in such rides as Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact, Space Mountain in Disneyland has turned into Hyperspace Mountain and given a Star Wars make up on occasion. As such, the story is being created whole cloth with the ride acting as inspiration.

Logline details are being kept hidden amidst the rings of Saturn but it is described as a family adventure.

The project, which is in the early stages, is intended for theatrical release.

Harold is currently writing and executive producing the Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars series for Disney+ and earned an executive producer credit for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. He was  also an exec producer on Underground, the historical drama co-created by Lovecraft Country’s Misha Green.

Tunnell also exec produced Underground and served in the same capacity on Safehouse's Spinning Out, Netflix’s figure skating drama that starred Kaya Scodelario and January Jones.

Harold is repped by Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment and Goodman Genow.

Article by: Borys Kitfor The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter's international producer of the year talks hitting a peak with her Oscar-winning movie, how her multibillion-dollar CJ Entertainment is pivoting in the pandemic, and building relationships with the likes of Jimmy Iovine and Julian Schnabel. Says David Geffen: "She's the big deal."

On a late September afternoon, Miky Lee is sitting in a makeshift office in her home in Orange County, watching footage from the new K-pop reality show I-Land. Sporting a black sweater, white T-shirt, black leggings and a messy ponytail, she pushes back loose strands of hair with her headband as her Japanese Akita named Sasha walks into the frame during the Zoom call. The Tennessee-born, Seoul-raised mogul easily could be mistaken for a SoCal dog walker, given her casual vibe and the quartet of canines in her charge. But looks can be deceiving. Lee, in fact, presides over one of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates with CJ Group, which she has built into a globe-spanning media powerhouse over the past 25 years. In terms of female-led entertainment empires, Lee’s kingdom is eclipsed by only ViacomCBS’ Shari Redstone.

In this sprawling house in which Julian Schnabel paintings hang, Sasha competes for Lee’s attention alongside Kyra the Australian shepherd, TJ the Sapsaree and Marlo the Great Pyrenees — fittingly, all girls. Also occupying major mental bandwidth for Lee are CJ’s assets, which generate billions in revenue across film, TV, music, exhibition and live theater. As vice chair of the South Korean giant, the mogul boasts overall revenue of $28 billion, $4.8 billion of which comes from CJ’s entertainment and theater exhibition. Lee’s grandfather, Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul, launched CJ as a sugar manufacturer in 1953. But it was the Harvard-educated Lee who steered the company into entertainment in the 1990s by taking a $300 million stake in DreamWorks and forging longlasting friendships with the Sun Valley set, whose expertise she brought back to her home country.

CJ’s footprint now includes 4,222 theatrical screens in seven countries as well as 16 TV networks. On the music front, CJ produces more than 300 concerts and festivals throughout the world each year, bringing the K-pop phenomenon to the masses worldwide. And on Broadway, Lee has bolstered CJ’s presence with the company backing everything from Kinky Boots to Moulin Rouge!

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w" alt="Miky Lee" />

Courtesy of Soo-Young Kim

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MKL03Color-EMBED-2020-1602112929-compressed.jpg 1047w" data-alt-text="Miky Lee"> 

"She’s like a sponge," says David Geffen, who has been close friends with Lee since 1995, when she signed on as an investor in the fledgling studio from Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. "When I first met her, she had no involvement whatsoever in the entertainment business. And today she’s the big deal. She’s very thoughtful, not frivolous or careless in any way," he adds. "She does the work. She investigated the potential for [DreamWorks]. She and Paul Allen had virtually all the investment in the company, and it was a big risk. Fortunately, it paid off and put [CJ] in the entertainment business."

Lee, who this year is THR’s International Producer of the Year, is dominating the entertainment industry both here and abroad. The 62-year-old mogul’s unlikely Hollywood ascent reached a peak in February, when she took the stage and accepted the best picture Oscar statuette for Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, a film that CJ backed and that she executive produced. In a moment for the history books, the Dolby Theatre crowd egged her on to continue talking after the show’s producers cut her mic for exceeding the allotted time.

"I wasn’t really expecting to give a speech. I wasn’t really prepared," she recalls. "Bong was telling me, 'You should say something.' And I said, 'You should say something.' And he said, 'I’ve done so many, so please.' Then when the microphone went down, I didn’t know that it meant get off the stage. I thought it was technological," she recalls with a laugh. "And then Charlize [Theron] and Tom Hanks were like, 'Go, Miky. Go, Miky.' So I was like, 'OK.' "

Two days after CJ’s Oscars triumph, the company announced that it was taking a $100 million-plus investment in David Ellison’s Skydance Media, raising the latter’s valuation to $2.3 billion. (The deal closed in late 2019, but the announcement was held until after the Academy Awards.)

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1205192232-EMBED-2020-1602096928-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1205192232-EMBED-2020-1602096928-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1205192232-EMBED-2020-1602096928-compressed.jpg 1047w" alt="Miky Lee" />

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Lee (second from left) onstage with the cast and crew of Bong Joon Ho's 'Parasite' after the film won best picture in February at the Academy Awards.

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"I will never forget I had lunch with Miky at Ivy at the Shore [about a decade ago], and the first impression was her intelligence, her taste and really her desire to build something prolific with CJ Entertainment," says Ellison. "This was during the DreamWorks days, and if you look at what she talked about doing then and what she has built now, she has accomplished just about everything she set out to do, which is pretty remarkable."

If Parasite’s success wasn’t enough, Lee’s CJ also launched the comedy Extreme Job in 2019. The film became the No. 2 all-time-grossing film in South Korea and is now being remade at Universal with Kevin Hart starring. Parasite and Extreme Job earned $378 million worldwide combined, punctuating South Korea’s cultural arrival on the world stage.

"The Korean population is 50-some million, and 17 million people came to watch that film," notes Lee of Extreme Job. "And Parasite, big hit, right? Every year is going to be 2019 from now on, right?" she says with a laugh.

Unfortunately, 2020’s coronavirus pandemic ushered in a devastating era for companies like CJ that are heavily invested in theaters, concerts and conventions. (CJ also produces the culture festival KCON, which attracts about 1.1 million attendees in seven countries.) But Lee is nothing if not pragmatic, and she quickly pivoted. With 33 artists on the bill, KCON went virtual this summer, and more than 4 million fans from 150 countries tuned in, marking a turnout 3.5 times larger than a typical KCON.

Likewise, Lee also moved forward with the I-Land reality series in which a new K-pop sensation is assembled and anointed through a Big Brother-meets-American Idol process. Before coronavirus hit, CJ had been building a huge soundstage in a forested region of South Korea that later became an ideal pseudo-bunker for the quarantined contestants.

The program, which wrapped in September with the christening of the boy band ENHYPEN, attracted more than 44 million online global viewers. Moving forward, the production space will be used seasonally for I-Land, so CJ will take advantage of the vacant period by booking COVID-friendly film productions. Lee says she already has identified two projects that will shoot on the campus, which provides sequestered room and board for a cast and crew.

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w" alt="Oldboy 2013 Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen" />

FilmDistrict/Photofest

Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen in Spike Lee’s 2013 remake of the South Korean thriller 'Oldboy.'

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w, https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Oldboy_2013_09ATjpg-EMBED-2020-1602096937-compressed.jpg 1047w" data-alt-text="Oldboy 2013 Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen"> 

On the hard-hit exhibition front, South Korean multiplexes like those owned by CJ are open, offering an industry bright spot. But Lee is thinking ahead about enticing the post-COVID moviegoer, citing CJ’s investments in 270-degree screens that cover peripheral vision — a technology that could be melded with auteur storytelling.

"In Korean, we have this expression of break it apart and put it together," says Lee. "Even right before coronavirus, it was starting. Like lots of streaming services [launching] and the movie theater going through such a hard time. And Imax and an all-different format is going to be the future. We are having a hard time, the movie theater, exhibition business people. This is the time for breaking it apart and putting [our business] together in different forms."

***

As a toddler, Lee moved with her family from Tennessee to Seoul. It was there in the South Korea capital that she fell in love with cinema and Western pop culture. One wall of her father’s work studio housed his music collection containing Japanese pop, classical — from Bach to Tchaikovsky — as well as Brenda Lee, Harry Belafonte and Chuck Berry. "The Twist! I remember the vinyl with the black-and-white visual of him doing the Twist," says Lee of the classic song by Chubby Checker as she grows animated, gyrating her body. "I grew up with an abundance of global music."

Decades later, Jimmy Iovine struck up a relationship with Lee after being introduced to her by Geffen. He was always impressed by her musical fluency and sophistication. "I found her to be unique because she had a feel for Western culture as well as global popular culture," says Iovine, who collaborated with Lee on some music projects when he was at Interscope. "I’ve watched her along the years, and I’m not surprised at her success at all because she was ahead of her time. You meet a lot of people who are ahead of their time, but sometimes they’re not the ones to reap the reward. But she had a tenacity and a stick-to-it-ness, and we developed a great relationship."

As a youngster, Lee also became a budding cineaste thanks to her father’s obsession with the masters. By the 1970s, he was collecting pneumatics (a precursor to VHS) of Kurosawa and Hitchcock films and movies starring Yul Brynner, Kim Novak, Vivien Leigh, Bette Davis and Cary Grant. "We grew up watching all these black-and-white movies," recalls Lee. "You just name it. Of course, everything was dubbed in Korean, so we had the voiceover actor who specialized in Cary Grant’s voice and one who specialized in Vivien Leigh’s voice."

But the movie experience that proved to be most cathartic was watching The Sound of Music in a big theater that was a short walk from her house. She was 10. "Every weekend I would sneak out and watch Sound of Music. I ended up watching it like 12 times," she remembers. "I memorized all the songs, all the dialogue." Five years later, it was The Godfather. "James Caan getting killed in the ticket booth with the machine gun, the horse’s head cut off in the bedroom, the scene of the swimming pool," she says in rapid succession. "Still, it’s my favorite film."

In the process, Lee developed a critical eye, gravitating to the era’s bold auteurs. It’s a passion that later fueled her relationship with artist and filmmaker Schnabel, whom she refers to as one of her best friends. "She just has a beautiful mind and a great spirit," he says. “She’s got an amazing amount of energy, and so she’s got a lot of things going all the time, a lot of which I don’t know anything about. But our taste in films is something that we commiserate over. I don’t know if I talk to anybody as much as I talk to Miky."

After graduating from Harvard in 1987 with a master’s in Asian studies, Lee set out to forge her own path in the family business. Following a brief marriage to Kim Seok-ki that ended in divorce in 1994, she became singularly focused on expanding the company from commodities like sugar and flour into the entertainment space. Imax CEO Richard Gelfond, who met Lee about 25 years ago in Hong Kong, remembers that she was interested in learning about the economics of theaters. He left the meeting slightly skeptical. “She was incredibly upbeat, positive and really confident, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little dubious because she had such grand ambitions," says Gelfond, who became one of Lee’s closest friends. "Not only did she pull it off, she maintained her core character and values structure, and she’s even more confident, more outgoing, just an incredibly bubbly person. During the COVID pandemic, my wife, Peggy, and I sometimes will call her because we just need a dose of Miky and her optimism."

***

On this sunny afternoon Lee is trying to stay optimistic despite the news that coronavirus continues to wreak havoc across the planet. In the meantime, the CJ pace won’t abate. The company has more than 20 projects in active development, including Save the Green Planet, an English-language remake of the Korean movie, with the original director, Jang Joon-Hwan, teaming with Midsommar director Ari Aster. On the TV side, the company’s Studio Dragon division has 14 projects in development, including Hotel Del Luna with Skydance.

Lee pauses to rub her hands, feeling pain in her extremities. The titan suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited genetic condition that affects the nerves in the feet, legs, hands and arms. "It’s exactly the same mechanism as ALS, but it stops at your elbow and your knee and doesn’t travel up to the spine," she says. "So I am really grateful. But balancing and mobility is really tough. You lose all this mobility gradually." Lee’s grandmother also had CMT. There’s no cure, but Orange County has some of the best CMT doctors in the world, and she’s feeling, well, optimistic.

"Coronavirus is really disastrous for so many people, but in the midst of all this disaster, I have had time to focus on my therapy. So in that instance, I’m kind of grateful."

And with that, Lee takes a sip of water. The glass is half full, naturally.

Article by: Tatiana Siegel for The Hollywood Reporter