| | | | What's news: It's magazine day! This week's cover stars are Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci. Hollywood is in shock over WBD's decision to shelve Batgirl. Vin Scully, the voice of Dodgers baseball, has died. Selena Gomez will produce a Working Girl remake. Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a Road House remake. The Daniels sign an exclusive long term deal with Universal — Abid Rahman |
How 'Yellowjackets' Stars Survived Hollywood ►On the cover. Showtime's survival drama Yellowjackets turned critical praise and social media hype into a host of Emmy nominations. THR's Rebecca Keegan spoke to stars Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci about overcoming industry indignities and wishful do-overs: "I think people without regrets are narcissists. I think they're lying to themselves." The cover story.
—Yang wins it. Janet Yang has been elected the 36th president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The producer (The Joy Luck Club, The People vs. Larry Flynt) is just the fourth female and second person of color ever tapped by the Academy's board to hold the top job. The story.
—Damn Daniels. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the directors behind the excellent Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as their producer Jonathan Wang have inked a five-year exclusive partnership with Universal. The deal follows a similar long-term exclusive pact the studio signed with Jordan Peele. The story.
—On the road, again. Jake Gyllenhaal will star in Amazon Studios' remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze cult classic Road House. Doug Liman will direct from a script by The Nice Guys writer Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry. Billy Magnussen, Daniela Melchior, Gbemisola Ikumelo and Lukas Gage are set to co-star. In the remake, Gyllenhaal plays a former UFC fighter who takes a job as a bouncer at a rough-and-tumble roadhouse in the Florida Keys. The story.
—"2022 will be the high watermark." FX CEO John Landgraf is predicting that the “Peak TV” boom of scripted originals will truly peak this year. The executive, speaking at the TCA’s summer press tour on Tuesday, provided a rare mid-year update on the total volume of U.S. scripted originals with that tally clocking in at 357 from Jan. 1 through the end of June. That sum is up 16 percent for the same period last year, which finished with an all-time high of 559 originals. The story. |
DC Shocker! $90M 'Batgirl' Shelved! ►💥 Ka-pow 💥 In a surprising development, Warner Bros. will no longer be releasing Batgirl, the DC film that already completed shooting and was expected to arrive on HBO Max this year. The unusual move comes after a change in leadership at Warners, with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav prioritizing cost-cutting measures and refocusing the studio on theatrical films rather than projects for streaming.
Batgirl was budgeted at around $80m, with costs rising to nearly $90m due to COVID-19 protocols. It’s a hefty sum, but significantly lower than DC theatrical releases, thus the film is said not to have the spectacle that audiences have come to expect from DC fare. Warners has also decided to shelve animated feature Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, which had a budget in the $40m range. The story.
—Back to Hulu. The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss will topline and exec produce an FX-produced Hulu limited series thriller called The Veil, which comes from prolific Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. An international drama, The Veil will focus on the fraught relationship between two women. The story.
—Will she star? Selena Gomez and 20th Century Studios are partnering for a reboot of Working Girl. Gomez is in talks to produce a remake of the 1988 comedy that starred Melanie Griffith as a Long Island woman who secretly takes over her boss’ job. It is unclear if Gomez would also star in the project, which is eyeing a release on Hulu. The story. |
Vin Scully 1927-2022 ►"I have said enough for a lifetime." Vin Scully, the gentlemanly, yarn-spinning play-by-play man whose mellifluous voice provided the soundtrack to Dodger baseball from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for a jaw-dropping 67 seasons, has died. He was 94.
Scully, a member of the Dodgers organization from 1950 until his retirement following the 2016 regular season, died on Tuesday at his home in Hidden Hills, the Dodgers announced. When he bid farewell to the broadcast booth, he had called nearly half of the games for a franchise that was born in 1890. The obituary. |
Hollywood's Recession Hedge ►Lean on IRL businesses. For much of Hollywood, things are looking rough right now, with streaming growth stalling, ad spend down and a possible recession on the horizon. THR's Alex Weprin and Caitlin Huston write that as bad as things look now for streaming subscriptions and advertising, live events and theme parks are booming — offering a lifeline to entertainment giants that boast this revenue stream. The analysis.
—It begins! The 2023 Oscars may be well over seven months away, but that hasn’t stopped the Irish Film & Television Academy choosing Irish-language feature The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) as Ireland’s best International feature film entry for the upcoming 95th Academy Awards. The feature debut of Colm Bairéad, the film broke box office records in Ireland and the U.K., earning more than four times the record for the previous Irish-language film. The story.
—New addition. Paramount+ will join Roku’s lineup of premium, add-on subscriptions later this month. Subscribers will have access to a TV guide for all the streamer's live content, including NFL games on CBS, within The Roku Channel. The story.
—"You’re only as good as your last joke." Jay Leno says the reaction from a member of his former Tonight Show staff to a joke he made about transgender people resulted in him apologizing and promising to never make transgender people the target of his jokes again. Leno shared the story while appearing as a guest on the latest episode of Club Random with Bill Maher. The story.
—Coming back. Freeform used its platform at the virtual Television Critics Association’s summer press tour to announce a fifth-season renewal for Good Trouble, its second-longest-running scripted original. The series, a spinoff of The Fosters, ranks as one of the year’s top 10 ad-supported cable dramas among women 18-34. The story. |
Nichelle Nichols' Legacy ►"She made the wildest dreams of Black Americans, especially Black women, a reality." In a guest column for THR, Celia Rose Gooding, who stars as Nyota Uhura on Paramount+'s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, writes that the late Nichelle Nichols' inspired Black women to dream big and her portrayal of Uhura on the original Star Trek series played a pivotal role in shifting the stories of Black women away from "servants and sidekicks." The column.
—Scarier than Aunt Lydia. Ann Dowd has joined the first film in the planned The Exorcist trilogy from Blumhouse, Universal, and Morgan Creek Productions. The Emmy winner joins a previously announced cast including Leslie Odom Jr. and Ellen Burstyn, who is reprising her role as Chris MacNeil. David Gordon Green is directing the movie. The story.
—Solid title, no notes. Snoop Dogg is set to star in MGM’s upcoming comedy The Underdoggs. Snoop will also produce the feature under his Death Row Pictures banner, with Kenya Barris, Mychelle Deschamps, Constance Schwartz-Morini and Jonathan Glickman also sharing the producer credits. Charles Stone will direct a script written by Danny Segal and Isaac Schamis. The story.
—Gone! Beyoncé has removed the interpolation of Kelis‘ 2003 hit “Milkshake” from her Renaissance track “Energy” on Tidal and Apple, after the latter called out the music superstar and The Neptunes for allegedly failing to seek permission for usage. The story.
—🤝 Tentative deal 🤝 SAG-AFTRA and Netflix have reached a tentative deal on a new contract to replace the novel agreement they penned in 2019. The original 2019 streamer-specific agreement covered live-action scripted production, incorporated dubbing and performance capture. The deal will now go to the union’s National Board and, later, to members for approval. The story. |
TV Review: 'Reservation Dogs' S2►"Like nothing else on TV." THR's chief TV critic Dan Fienberg reviews season two of FX/Hulu's Reservation Dogs. The Oklahoma-set Indigenous comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi returns with new episodes that are full of heart, laughter, occasional tears and distinctive coming-of-age misadventures. The review. — "Agreeably wholesome." THR critic Lovia Gyarkye reviews Peggy Holmes' Luck. A chronically unlucky woman teams up with a magical cat in hopes of turning her and her friend's fates around in this Apple TV+ release, a first film from the John Lasseter-led Skydance Animation. The review. — This Week in TV. THR's Rick Porter runs down the TV premieres, returns and specials over the next seven days. Among the things to look out for over the coming week include the debut of the long anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman on Netflix and Beavis and Butt-Head on Paramount+. There's also the debut of season two of the FX-produced Reservation Dogs on Hulu, season two of Amazon's comedy Outlaws and the NFL's preseason slate . The full guide. In other news... — Atlanta releases final-season trailer —Mario Puzo estate signs with APA —Blink49 Studios launches Canadian unscripted TV arm —Cinesite nabs majority stake in Quebec animation studio Squeeze —Noah Baumbach’s White Noise to open 2022 NY Film Festival — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery to close London Film Festival —Kit Harington joins rescheduled Game of Thrones official fan convention —Warner Bros. Discovery sets leadership team for U.K. and Ireland What else we're reading... —Matt Zoller Seitz writes that Bruce Willis' later career, where he became a man-of-few-words, made his mental decline that much harder to notice [ Vulture] —Carrie Battan is full of praise for HBO's lascivious drama Industry and reflects on the rise of workplace TV [ New Yorker] —Peter Bradshaw reflects on the Batgirl shelving, writing that the studios will suffer if they become too cynical [ Guardian] —Daniel Chin has a handy guide to The Sandman [ Ringer] —Not ideal: "As Pelosi leaves Taiwan, China’s military looms larger" [ WSJ] Today... ...in 1992, Warner Bros. premiered Clint Eastwood’s R-rated Western Unforgiven. The film went on to win four Oscars, including best picture and director honors, at the 65th Academy Awards. The original review. Today's birthdays: Martin Sheen (82), Evangeline Lilly (43), Stephen Graham (49), Christine Ko (34), Lisa Ann Walter (59), Chandler Kinney (22), Molly Hagan (61), John C. McGinley (63), Hannah Simone (42), Michael Ealy (49), Steven Berkoff (85), Emily Baldoni (38), Mamie Gummer (39), John Landis (72), Lambert Wilson (64), Isaiah Washington (59), Mathieu Kassovitz (55), Melissa Ponzio (50), Justin Kurzel (48), James Hetfield (59) |
| Cinematographer Tom Richmond, whose résumé included work on such films as Stand and Deliver, Killing Zoe, Little Odessa, Slums of Beverly Hills and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, has died. He was 72. The obituary. |
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