Variety 7/29/2021

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF I spent last week in New York having face-to-face business meetings with entertainment executives after not being able to make direct contact over the past 15 months. Last time I was in Manhattan was February 2020, right before COVID-19 began wreaking havoc on my favorite city away from home, and of course on the entire country. There were residual signs of pandemic fallout: A number of restaurants long favored by industry folks had shuttered for good. But New Yorkers were nonetheless out in force, and it was heartening to hear those whom I and New York bureau chief Brent Lang met with talk about just how resilient their companies were during the height of the health crisis. “At the start of the pandemic, we knew we needed to do…

Even Val Kilmer doesn’t consider the movie he produced about his life to be a documentary. “Val,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this month and begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video Aug. 6, traces his career from his “Top Gun” breakthrough to recent health struggles, incorporating footage from Kilmer’s vast personal archive into the film. His son, Jack, also an actor, supplements his father’s narration, the elder Kilmer’s voice virtually unrecognizable from his heyday as a performer due to treatment for throat cancer. “Val would say in relation to this film that we are not making a documentary; we’re making a Val Kilmer movie where he’s playing himself as Val Kilmer,” co-director Leo Scott says. However you classify “Val” — Cannes labeled it a documentary — it is…

GUEST COLUMN Bill Prady is probably best known as the co-creator of “The Big Bang Theory.” But four years before the launch of that sitcom mega-smash, Prady — on a lark — was among the motley crew of candidates who ran in the 2003 California recall election circus. Now, as California faces another recall drama, this time an effort to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom, there isn’t nearly the same kind of bedlam that led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this time out, Prady is less amused. “I think the Newsom thing is yet another example of politicians exploiting the ‘red team/blue team’ sports nature of politics for their own benefit,” he says. “The GOP so loathes the combination of the supermajority in Sacramento with a Democratic governor that…

For more than 30 years, Black families have celebrated occasions big and small with Hallmark’s Mahogany cards, a line designed with those consumers in mind. Now, Mahogany will launch on the small screen, with original movies coming to Hallmark Movies & Mysteries in 2022. Mahogany is set to be the first of several new content extensions that will strategically embrace the breadth and depth of the larger Hallmark brand — which counts Vida (Spanish cards celebrating Latino culture), DaySpring (Christian and religious cards), Tree of Life (Jewish cards), Eight Bamboo (Chinese values and customs), and Golden Thread (Indian celebrations), as well as cards for the LGBTQ community, among its range of culturally specific offerings. While many networks and studios have pivoted to spotlight content for Black audiences, Crown Media Family…

There are three main ways to stream video content: via subscription service (such as Disney Plus and Netflix), free on demand (YouTube and Facebook Watch) and free via live channels (also known as FAST, including Pluto TV and IMDb TV). New research for Variety Intelligence Platform from leading multichannel streaming company Future Today shows the most important reasons viewers choose a subscription service are that it offers the desired content, provides the opportunity to binge-watch and/or has content available on demand. Meanwhile, key drivers for FAST channels include content distributed much like regular TV and the appeal to viewers who just want to pass the time. All this points to a world where FAST will stick around despite the growth of subscription viewing. For more data from VIP+, visit variety.com/vip.…

AWARD SCIRCUIT In last week’s column, I suggested that TV Academy voters got it mostly right with the 2021 Emmy nominations. But what if I told you there was an easy way for them to get it even more mostly right? Yes, welcome to my annual plea for the Emmys to expand some of its key categories to a nice round 10 slots. Perhaps I’m a broken record on this, but hear me out. Peak TV is still alive and well, and even in a pandemic year, the volume of original scripted fare is astronomical. Granted, basic cable has pulled back from first-run dramas and comedies, but the rise of new streaming services has made up for it — and has brought more so-called prestige fare to the forefront. I…