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In the first episode of When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s bleak drama about the Central Park Five, Linda Fairstein, then head of the sex crimes unit investigating the case, gives an order to dispatch an army of officers to Harlem. “Every young Black male who was in the park last night is a suspect in the rape of that woman who is fighting for her life right now,” says her character, played by Felicity Huffman. “You go into those projects, and you stop every little thug you see.” Is that DuVernay leveraging broad artistic liberties under the First Amendment to make Fairstein the central villain in the miniseries, even though the ex-prosecutor might not have given that command? Or is it defamation? In the acclaimed show, Fairstein is portrayed…
Tom Rothman Even his rivals were glad the Sony chief’s bet on Bad Boys: Ride or Die overperformed tracking with a $56.5 million bow, revitalizing box office (and Will Smith’s career). J.T. Rogers Max cancels the creator’s Ansel Elgort drama series Tokyo Vice after two seasons that boasted positive reviews but didn’t break out with viewers. Taylor Tomlinson In a vote of confidence for the new host and format, CBS gives a season two renewal to the late night show After Midnight. Elon Musk The X mogul, who has his own AI startup, threatens to ban Apple devices at his workplaces if the tech giant integrates OpenAI into its system. Showbiz Stocks $7.10 (+2%) LIONSGATE (LGF.B) The studio reveals plans for a new Hunger Games movie timed to the announcement…
Hollywood has long been enamored with self-driving cars as storytelling devices, from Minority Report to I, Robot. But now that autonomous vehicles are a reality thanks to companies like Waymo and Cruise, behind-the-scenes workers who drive for a living are fighting back against the potential future use of this technology on sets. In contract talks, the drivers union Hollywood Teamsters (Local 399) is presenting ideas for regulating this tech in motion picture work, obliging the studios and streamers to grapple with the issue for the first time. Per the existing agreement, Teamster members are supposed to be doing driving work on productions; the union also has an article in its agreement stating that if a technological shift replaces the work of a union member, that member — as long as…
If 2023 was the year of “streamflation,” to use a term coined by the consulting firm KPMG, 2024 is shaping up to be a fast sequel — Streamflation Part 2: They’ll Keep Paying. Streaming services across video and music are raising prices again, or are poised to do so, marking the second such price hikes in as many years. Beginning in July, NBCUniversal’s Peacock will bump up the cost of its Premium and Premium Plus plans by $2 per month after raising them by $1 a year earlier. The timing coincides with the beginning of the Paris Olympics, for which Peacock will be the streaming home. In June, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max hiked the price of its ad-free tiers by $1 a month, just ahead of the debut of the…
Bonnie Hammer is, by her own estimation, agenda-free in a way that she never could be before. There’s no longer a boss to win over, no purview to extend. “In many ways, I actually work for nobody now,” she says as our late May dinner veers into hour three. Having spent a healthy portion of her five-decade career as the “Queen of Cable,” a label that outlets (including this one) gave her, she segued into her current role as vice chairman at NBCUniversal in 2020. At the time, it positioned her as a consigliere to CEO Jeff Shell, but he’d later get caught up in a scandal of his own making and was fired abruptly last spring. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh assumed his responsibilities, then restructured the executive ranks. Hammer…
Like many agents seeing client schedules cleared by the 2023 strikes, David Duchovny’s suggested he start a podcast. Unlike many actors faced with that proposition, Duchovny had a hook: failure — or, rather, a reassessment of it. “This is the podcast that’s like, ‘OK, David failed at being a movie star,’” says the 63-year-old, referring to the period just after his wildly successful nine-season run on The X-Files. “Well, it enabled me to be a novelist, a musician, a director. I don’t really call it failure. It’s opportunity.” Duchovny’s relationship with failure might be so healthy because of his successes. Fail Better debuted May 7 and soon made headlines for a viral interview with Bette Midler, during which the actress said she should have sued Lindsay Lohan for bailing on…
