| | | | | | What's news: The VP debate scored 43.15m viewers. Reese Witherspoon is writing a novel with Harlan Coben. Layoffs have hit ABC News and the ABC stations. Charter Spectrum has cut a carriage deal with NBCU. Apple has renewed Sugar. Jonathan Majors' Magazine Dreams will screen in theaters in 2025. A live-action/CG Rugrats movie is in the works. — Abid Rahman
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'Rust' to Premiere at Camerimage (Without Alec Baldwin) ►Honoring Halyna. Three years after the tragic on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, Alec Baldwin’s indie Western Rust will have its world premiere in late November at Poland’s Camerimage Film Festival, a respected specialty event focusing on achievements in cinematography. The festival said Thursday that it plans to hold a panel discussion after Rust's first screening to honor Hutchins’ memory. Speakers at the premiere will include writer-director Joel Souza, who was struck by the same bullet that killed Hutchens when a prop gun handled by Baldwin was discharged during production in October 2021. According to an outside source with knowledge of the situation, Baldwin will not be present for the premiere. The story.
—🤝 New contract incoming! 🤝 New York and Los Angeles-based casting professionals have voted to ratify a new three-year agreement with studios and streamers. The Teamsters Local 399, which represents the group alongside Local 817, announced on Tuesday that 91.85 percent of its bargaining unit voted to support the deal. The two Locals bargain on behalf of around 700 freelance casting directors, associate casting directors and casting assistants in entertainment. The story.
—"Our ongoing work to empower entertainment professionals." IMDb has unveiled a feature allowing members of SAG-AFTRA to display their affiliation with the performers’ union on their public and IMDbPro profiles. The Amazon-owned online film and television database introduced verified badges for union members in September. Members of both IMDbPro’s free subscription service and its paid service can verify their union membership and display the badges. As part of the change, users of IMDbPro Premium can also filter their advanced searches by SAG-AFTRA membership. The story.
—Renaissance woman. Reese Witherspoon is adding “published author” to her résumé. Ben Sevier, president and publisher of Grand Central Publishing, announced Wednesday the acquisition of a new suspense novel by Witherspoon and best-selling author and TV creator Harlan Coben. The novel is Witherspoon’s debut and is based on her original idea. In addition to writing and publishing the book, a screen adaptation is also in development. The story. |
Inside the CAA-Range Legal War ►The problem with the TAA. For years, Hollywood talent managers have grumbled at a California law that puts them in danger of losing their commissions if they’re found to have engaged in activities related to obtaining work for their clients. THR's Winston Cho writes that a lawsuit filed by CAA targets Range Media Partners' core dealings related to representing talent, accusing the company of skirting a law designed to prevent conflicts of interest. The analysis.
—Cuts. ABC News and the ABC stations group were impacted by layoffs Wednesday, part of an ongoing round of restructuring at Disney. Some 75 staffers at ABC News and at ABC’s owned local TV stations will be let go, split about evenly between the national news organization and the station group. No programming will be impacted, and no entire teams will be eliminated, but the company is making the changes to be “sustainable, efficient and future-forward,” per someone familiar with the decision. The story.
—More cuts. Production and finance company Village Roadshow Entertainment Group is undergoing a small round of layoffs. The banner has cut eight staffers in business affairs, administration, as well as film and TV roles over the course of the past couple of weeks. The pink slips arrive as the company is exploring strategic options, including taking on more investors. Village Roadshow has been relatively quiet this year. The company, which has produced more than 90 features with Warner Bros. over the past several decades, including Mad Max: Fury Road and Joker, has been locked in arbitration with the studio since it filed a lawsuit in February 2022. The story.
—🤝 Carriage deal 🤝 Charter Spectrum has cut a new carriage deal with NBCUniversal, one that will bring its Peacock streaming service to the pay-TV giant’s TV customers at no extra charge. With the addition of Peacock, Spectrum will offer some $65 worth of streaming services to customers of its Spectrum TV Select packages, including Peacock, Disney+, ESPN+, Paramount+, AMC+, BET+, ViX, Max and Discovery+. The story. |
TV Ratings: VP Debate Falls 25 Percent vs. 2020 ►Down big. The lone debate between the two major-party candidates for vice president in 2024 drew a big audience — but not nearly as large as four years ago. Final Nielsen ratings for Tuesday’s face-off between Tim Walz and J.D. Vance put the debate at 43.15m viewers across 15 networks. More than 90 percent of those viewers — 40.25m — watched on the big four broadcast networks and three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). Preliminary figures had those seven outlets totaling 38.62m viewers. The ratings for Tuesday’s telecast are down by 25.5 percent from the 57.92m viewers who watched the 2020 debate between sitting Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. The ratings.
—Woof! OpenAI has closed a massive $6.6b funding round that values the generative AI giant at $157b. The company announced the news in a blog post Wednesday, writing that “the new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems.” The round was led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, and also includes Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Fidelity and other high-profile investors. The story.
—Revamp. In the biggest overhaul to its mobile app since 2008, The New York Times is rolling out a completely new app experience, one that brings all of its products and brands into one place, and adds personalized recommendations to users in a bid to help solve the problem of news discovery. The redesign will see users swipe right to get taken into a larger news environment, or left to be taken to the Times family of brands, including games, The Wirecutter, The Athletic, cooking, and audio. The story. |
Grammy Ballots: 'Cowboy Carter' Will Compete in Country ►Yee-haw! THR's Mesfin Fekadu has the scoop that Beyonce's Cowboy Carter will compete for best country album at the Grammys while Sabrina Carpenter — whose pop star breakthrough came with the release of her sixth album this year — will appear on the ballot for best new artist, according to a source. Mesfin reports that the Recording Academy held its screening committee meeting last week, where members determined the categories in which albums or songs will compete, as well as who qualified for best new artist, where Carpenter is the frontrunner along with Chappell Roan. The story.
—"If you’re gonna make country albums, come into our world." Luke Bryan weighed in on the discourse surrounding the lack of CMA Award nominations for Cowboy Carter. In a new interview, Bryan was asked about the Beyoncé’s snub and said, “It’s a tricky question because, obviously, Beyoncé made a country album and Beyoncé has a lot of fans out there that have her back. And if she doesn’t get something they want, man, they come at you, as fans should do." The story. |
AEW and WBD Ink New Rights Deal, PPV Events Head to Max ►🤝 From the top turn-buckle! 🤝 Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max is getting into the pay-per-view business. The streamer will enter the space as part of a wide-ranging rights deal with Tony Khan's wrestling promotion AEW. The new deal will see live episodes of AEW Dynamite continue to run on TBS on Wednesday nights and episodes of AEW Collision continue to run on TNT on Saturday nights, but the shows will also simulcast live on the Max streaming service beginning in January, joining live programming from CNN and TNT Sports on the platform. The story.
—Quick as you like. Apple TV+ has picked up a second season of Sugar, the drama which stars Colin Farrell as Detective John Sugar. The drama, which streamed in the spring, contained a big twist in its finale. The first season followed John’s search for a missing woman — and revealed a big twist late in the season that helps set the stage for season two. Apple says, will bring Sugar back to Los Angeles for another missing-person case while he continues to look for answers about his missing sister. The story.
—Spooktacular news. Just ahead of Halloween, a horror-centric FAST channel is set to make its debut in the U.S. Scream TV, owned by NYX Media Corp., will debut via the Distro TV app on Oct. 13 and be available to stream via Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, as well as on mobile platforms. NYX, which is based in Edmonton, Alberta, also operates FAST channels in Canada and the U.K. The story. |
Can 'Joker 2' Sing and Overcome Worrisome Tracking? ►Not looking good. When Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux came on tracking three weeks ago, forecasts showed the Warner Bros. movie opening to $70m — $26m lower than the previous installment five years ago, but still a respectable sum. Since then, projections have slipped to anywhere from $50m to $60m. THR's Aaron Couch and Pamela McClintock look at why the tracking numbers have dropped so precipitously. The box office report.
—Coming to theaters. Jonathan Majors' bodybuilding drama Magazine Dreams has found a path to theaters after being dropped by Searchlight in January following the star’s criminal conviction. Briarcliff has picked up the project for distribution, and plans to release it in theaters in the first quarter of 2025. The Tom Ortenberg-run distributor has a history of acquiring controversial projects, and will release the Donald Trump feature The Apprentice later this month after no major Hollywood studio would touch it. The story.
—🎭 Heading the Highlands 🎭 Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead and Luis Gnecco are set to star in Borges and Me, an adaptation of Jay Parini’s memoir of his 1970s journey through the Scottish Highlands with renowned Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Marc Turtletaub is directing and Oren Moverman is adapting. Parini is best known for his historical novel The Last Station, which was adapted as an Oscar-nominated feature by Michael Hoffman in 2009. The story.
—Coming to life. Nickelodeon's animation favorite Rugrats is getting new life at Paramount Pictures. The studio is developing a feature adaptation of the long-running series that will be a hybrid of live-action and CG. Pitch Perfect's Jason Moore is attached to direct the Rugrats film that is based on the series of the same name. Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó and Paul Germain co-created the show. Saturday Night Live writing partners Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell penned the script for the movie. Producers on the project include Klasky, Csupó and Karen Rosenfelt. The story.
—🎭 EDM4lyfe 🎭 Suzanna Son, Chace Crawford, Mena Suvari, Grace Van Dien and Laura Harrier star in writer-director Taylor Cohen’s EDM-focused film Strobe, which has recently wrapped production. Hailing from production companies Happy Place and Super Frog, Strobe is a thriller centering on a high school senior (Son) embarking on an obsessive quest to track down a mysterious EDM artist. Rohan Campbell, Suraj Sharma, Steve Howey, Bella Murphy and Matt Champion round out the cast. The story.
—Good 4 Olivia. Grammy-winner Olivia Rodrigo has set her first concert special at Netflix. The streamer announced Wednesday that it would be releasing Rodrigo’s concert film from her GUTS World Tour on Oct. 29. James Merryman directs the special, which is produced by Aleen Keshishian and Blink, Inc. in association with Lighthouse Management + Media and Interscope films. The story. |
Sarah Snook to Star in 'Dorian Gray' On Broadway ►🎭 All 26 characters! 🎭 Sarah Snook will come to Broadway this season in The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play, the Emmy-winning Succession star plays all 26 characters, in a set involving on stage cameras and video screens. She will make her Broadway debut in the play, after starring in the show’s West End run earlier this year and winning an Olivier Award for best actress. The production is set to open at a Shubert theater in March, but the exact theater and dates have not yet been announced. The story.
—Copyright claim. A former sound engineer who wrote a memoir about working on the Fleetwood Mac album Rumors is suing the creators of the Broadway play Stereophonic for allegedly stealing copyrighted material from a 2012 book. In the suit filed this week, Kenneth Caillat, the former sound engineer, and his co-author Steven Stiefel, allege that playwright David Adjmi stole copyrighted material from their book Making Rumours to create the play, which won the 2024 Tony Award for best play. They allege scenes in the play are “substantially similar” to passages from the book and say the premise of setting the play in the recording studio, with the audience having the point of view of the sound engineer, replicates the trajectory of the book. The story. |
'Rings of Power' Creators on That Big S2 Finale Reveal ►Sauron’s mistake. THR's James Hibberd spoke to showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay about the season two finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. From The Stranger's identity reveal to Galadriel's fight and whether Sauron and Celebrimbor were lovers, the duo break down the ending and look ahead to season three. Warning: Spoilers! The interview.
—"When I think about it as an arc, from beginning to end as a period of time in my life, it went by too fast." For THR, Demetrius Patterson spoke to actor Patrick John Flueger about season 12 of Chicago PD. The actor who has played Adam Ruzek for the last decade unpacks the devastating trauma that kicked off the new season, and talks about how the veteran NBC cop show keeps viewers engaged. Warning: Spoilers! The interview.
—"I don’t look at Carol as a badass the same way everybody else does." For THR, Josh Wigler spoke to legendary horror mastermind Greg Nicotero, and The Walking Dead executive producer, about spinoff The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol. Nicotero discusses the return of Melissa McBride's Carol Pelletier (and more zombies) back to the franchise. Warning: Spoilers! The interview.
In other news...
—Studio Ghibli to rerelease Hayao Miyazaki’s classics in Southeast Asia cinemas
—Aidy Bryant to return to host 2025 Independent Spirit Awards
—Hello Sunshine Collective talent incubator announces 2025 class
What else we're reading...
—Aaron Blake lists the five key takeaways from the big new filing on Trump’s 2020 election plot [WaPo]
—Francis Ford Coppola discusses the books that influenced his dystopian epic Megalopolis [New Yorker]
—Nate Jackson talks to Tim Dillon about his nostalgic comedy talk show special This Is Your Country [LAT]
—Tom Joudrey wonders if Miloš Forman's Amadeus is the most misunderstood Oscar best picture winner ever [BBC]
—Louis Staples looks at how HBO's Industry became the kinkiest show on TV [Guardian]
Today...
...in 2006, NBC debuted a new football drama, Friday Night Lights, that went on to run for five seasons and nab 13 Emmy nominations. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Ayo Edebiri (29), Alicia Vikander (36), Denis Villeneuve (57), Greig Fraser (49), Tessa Thompson (41), Lena Headey (51), Neve Campbell (51), Clive Owen (60), Tommy Wiseau (69), Gwen Stefani (55), Aramis Knight (25), Seann William Scott (48), Keiko Agena (51), Amanda Walsh (42), Janel Moloney (55), Erik von Detten (42), Alanna Ubach (49), Jessica Parker Kennedy (40), Shannyn Sossamon (46), Michele Morrone (34), Kirsten Nelson (54), Christopher Rodriguez Marquette (40), Tommy Lee (62), Christian Coulson (46), Meghan Heffern (41), Pamela Hensley (74), Jennifer Campbell (57), Jack Wagner (65), Lyna Khoudri (32), Greg Proops (65), Ashlee Simpson (40), Joonas Suotamo (38), Alan Rachins (82), Peter Frechette (68) |
| Ron Hale, who starred as Roger Coleridge during the entire 14-year run of Ryan’s Hope and had an even longer stretch as Mike Corbin on another ABC soap opera, General Hospital, has died. He was 78. The obituary. |
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