SONY sets Russell Crowe to lead exorcism genre pic

Former WME partner Venit gets new assault lawsuit / NFL SUNDAY TICKET's unprofitable math / Maddow slot decision made at MSNBC

Jun 28

Mornin! This is Sean McNulty and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on TUESDAY June 28, 2022.

Where yes it’s now almost the end of June and the long expected official announcement for the CAA / ICM deal… still isn’t here - what gives? 😬

While the news could still be as imminent as my “What Sean is making for Dinner” report (inquire within for details), ICYMI Peter Kiefer has more in The Transom here including everyone’s favorite dish - a leaked email from CAA about a senior staff meeting yesterday addressing the delay. In their defense - DocuSign really isn’t as user friendly as it says it is.

I mean heck if the Boss doesn’t know… via Giphy

AND: Paul Haggis’s NYC rape trial got an Oct 11 start date. No word on how his looming charges in ITALY may affect these stateside proceedings.

PLUS: If you missed the Kareem Daniel read that dropped yesterday - it’s a real good one, both for the (comparatively) definitive clarity on how his division ya know, actually works there… but also for what’s not in the piece 👇.

Of note from the NY Times piece by Brooks Barnes:

While individual divisions (PIXAR, HULU, etc) have input on content distribution decisions, there is no question who has the final say at DISNEY: “Ultimately, we will make the best decisions that we feel are right for the consumer.” - Kareem Daniel
His division is referred to as “D-Med” internally (guessing that is not due to their affinity for communicating via DM but…🤔)
Bob Chapek chose to uh, email his thoughts on his 20+ year-long protege rather than giving a brief phoner to a NY Times reporter. Way to keep it on brand.
Also curious - Peter who? While yes the interview took place in May, zero mention of the Rice axing in the piece.

ICMI: Nicole LaPorte did a pretty extensive dive looking at the town’s interactions with Kareem over the years for The Ankler a few weeks ago - link to that good read here.

📽 THE SILVER SCREEN

Russell’s vaunted deal announcement toast tradition. via Giphy

SONY / SCREEN GEMS sets Russell Crowe to star in exorcist-thriller pic

Called “The Pope’s Exorcist”, Russell playing the longtime “chief exorcist” of the Vatican who did 100k+ exorcisms in his lifetime. (trying to resist a CEO comment, so hard). He died at 91 in 2016.

Now. About that math… let’s say he became a priest at 21, and did exorcisms as soon as he started #surewhynot, up until his death at 91. That’s about 1430 exorcisms a year. Or 4 a day. No weekends off. Ever. Yeah that tracks.

Will shoot in Sept in IRELAND, which actually does track pretty well with this topic. /THR

SONY adds Emma Roberts to “Madame Web” MARVEL pic

The “Spidey”-universe pic is led by Dakota Johnson, and Sydney Sweeney is in a supporting role as well. Roberts’s role is not known. /Deadline

ALSO IN MOVIES

Weekend Box Office wasn’t as close as it looked: “Elvis” did $31 Million, and PAR was bit too optimistic on “Top Gun: Maverick”, whose actuals were $29.6 Million. /THR
LIONSGATE adds Jason Schwartzman to “Hunger Games” prequel. He’s playing Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman - “the host of the 10th Hunger Games and ancestor to Caesar Flickerman, who would become the voice of Panem.” Which hopefully makes more sense to you folks than to me. /Deadline
A24 adds Ed Harris & Dave Franco to Kristen Stewart pic “Love Lies Bleeding”, set in the world of bodybuilding where Stewart plays the protective lover a female bodybuilder. Pic is about to shoot. /Deadline

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trust me he’s actually very excited about this. via Giphy

APPLE TV+ sets Alessandro Nivola to co-star with Andre Holland in limited series

Called “The Big Cigar”, 6 episodes, about Huey Newton’s escape to CUBA in the 70s. Don Cheadle is the lead director.

Nivola is playing film producer Bert Schneider (”Easy Rider”) who was also Newton’s best friend and helped him escape with the FBI on his tail. /Deadline

APPLE TV+ close to deal for David Oyelowo dramedy

Called “Government Cheese”, about a recently released ex-con trying to keep his criminal past in the past in order to win back his family, while trying to understand moments of divine intervention that seem to keep happening.

Aeysha Carr (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) is a co-creator along with Paul Hunter who created the short film upon which it’s based. APPLE producing with MACRO. /Variety

NEFTLIX sets leads for their “Obliterated” action comedy series from the “Cobra Kai” team

Shelley Henning (“Teen Wolf”) and… Nick Zano. Wow Cool. That name personally brings me back to MTV 2004 and a time when I had hair, but apparently he’s been in the DC universe at WB in “Legends of Tomorrow” more recently.

This is the show about an elite Special Forces team brought into diffuse a bomb in Vegas. They hit the town hard after a job well done… but find out they got the wrong bomb and have to get the right one while 🥴🥳😵‍💫.

Hopefully they still have time to squeeze in Deborah Vance’s 10pm show. /Deadline

ALSO IN TV

FX renews “The Old Man” for a Season 2. /THR
HBO adds Kristen Johnson to “The Righteous Gemstones” Season 3. /Variety
NBC sets 1-hour UKRAINE fundraising special on… Sunday, July 3 at 7p. #subprimetime Called “Ukraine: Answering The Call” will feature a mix of actors (Kristin Bell, Brian Cox), musicians (Alicia Keys, Brad Paisley) and Broadway talent (Brenda Braxton, Liz Callaway). Zelenskyy will also appear. /Deadline
WBTV set their COMIC-CON panels including “GOT: House of the Dragon” and… a bunch of other panels that people will have an actual shot at getting into. /Deadline

IN THE HOLLYWOOD BUSINESS AFFAIRS

Former WME Agent / Partner Adam Venit sued for 9 counts including sexual battery & domestic violence by his estranged wife. /Deadline
APPLE TV+ sets first-look deal with Maya Rudolph & Natasha Lyonne’s company (the company is behind the new show “Loot”). /THR

📝 IN OTHER WORDS…

“The accessibility of steel and lumber due to supply chain issues have driven up the cost of materials by at least 25% to 30%.”
- HERB GAINES, EVP of Physical Production at LEGENDARY in a good THR read on how inflation and supply chain pressures are raising Movie & TV shoot budgets, which has to be another consideration for streamers starting to look at “Are we making too much?” #PeakTVpeak?

💻 THE MEDIA BIZ

funfact: this is not the USFL. they have no gifs 😥. via Giphy

FOX renews the USFL for a Season 2

So we’ll now definitely have 2 “Spring Football” leagues going head-to-head to split a viewer pool in the… hundreds of thousands in 2023. Yeah this checks out.

USFL sticking with 8 teams, but will expand a bit from playing all their games in one place for FOX and NBC channels.

Can’t wait to see what an empty stadium looks like in Philly. (for the record the “expansion” cities aren’t set yet). /SBJ

#USFLFunFact1: Games averaged 715k viewers this year… but the final weekend games did 181k viewers. I’d say in-stadium attendence averaged a number you could count by hand.

#USFLFunFact2: Players make about $4500 a game, which is finally income news in this newsletter that makes me feel better about doing a newsletter.

MSNBC picks Alex Wagner to replace Rachel Maddow Tues-Fri

Will begin in August, Rachel will still do a weekly Monday show in the 9p hour so… that’ll be a fun Nielsen ratings watch for late Summer. /THR

ALSO IN MEDIA

One of The Information’s big streaming biz-scoop writers Jessica Toonkel is moving to the WSJ’s Media Desk.
Small follow up on the NFL SUNDAY TICKET rights thing from yesterday - Some back-of-the-napkin math on a $2 Billion a year asking price from the NFL:
- Whomever gets the deal would need roughly 6.5 Million to 7 Million people to pay $300 a year to just break even. Granted - maybe bars pay more which would lower this a bit but… yeah there’s a reason DIRECTV was losing at least $500 Mil a year on their deal.
- NOTE: This assumes the disro rights will remain US only - I doubt the NFL’s int’l TV deals allow for SUNDAY TICKET to go global.
DISNEY+ had 1.9 Million viewers in its first week in POLAND according to Nielsen (it launched there on June 14) - while not official actual subscriber numbers… that’s quite promising. DIS+ goes for $6.50 a month in POLAND.
- HBOMAX launched with about 700k their first week in POLAND. /BroadbandTVNews
- DIS+ launched in a total of 42 countries in mid-June (mostly in Eastern EUROPE, TURKEY, and West AFRICA), which should help mitigate any losses from early cricket-cord-cutters in INDIA…. and just help boost that Q2 DIS+ subscriber number overall. /Variety

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🏦 STOCK NOTES

Quiet Monday except unsurprisingly for Movie Theater stocks:

AMC THEATERS +13% ($14.13)

CINEWORLD (REGAL THEATERS) +9% ($0.28)

👩‍💻 NEW TO WATCH:

HULU “Only Murders in the Buliding” Season 2 - STREAM HERE

HBO “Endagered” - Doc about a year in the life of 4 journalists working in regions where democracy has increasingly fallen into danger - Premieres at 9p

🎥 TRAILER HOUSE

APPLE TV+ “Surface” series trailer - Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman who gets “Jason Bourne’d” and tries to sort out what’s the truth and what people’s real motivations are as she suffers amnesia from an accident involving a head trauma. PREMIERES FRI JULY 29

SONY PICTURES “The Invitation” movie trailer - Horror pic debunking the myth that it’s always a good idea to go off to a wedding in a foreign country with a guy you just met who says he’s your cousin after you take a DNA test. Who knew? 🙋‍♂️ IN THEATERS AUGUST 26.