Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/6/2021 i Variety

It will be a downright fiasco if the leadership of Hollywood’s studios, networks and streamers doesn’t do everything in its collective bargaining power to prevent the labor union representing camera operators, editors, production designers, grips and other workers from going out on strike. Such a self-inflicted action — after what was a devastating year for the entire industry as it involuntarily navigated its way through an unforeseen pandemic — would be, well … unconscionable. As one of my colleagues said to me, “This is a CEO moment,” a time when the influential heads of the most powerful media companies must step up and make sure the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers finds a way to satisfy IATSE’s understandable call for better working conditions and improved wages. This week,…

“Ummm.” Monica Lewinsky takes a long pause. “I know this is going to sound weird. It’s a totally legitimate question. I don’t know how to answer that.” She thinks about it before finally saying: “In some ways, I just feel too close to it.” Lewinsky is speaking about her experience with Bill Clinton, and responding to whether he would have been “canceled” had his White House affair with an intern occurred in current times. “I would hope that we would be having a different kind of conversation,” Lewinsky says. “I would hope that most of the blame would not have rested on my shoulders, and most of the consequences.” Nearly 25 years later, even in the post-#MeToo era, Lewinsky is not sure how differently things would have turned out today.…

There are infinite anecdotes about what happened to our best-laid plans when the coronavirus hit. But in the context of Hollywood, one must stop and appreciate the unique pain of Erik Feig — a veteran film executive whose rogue production and financing company Picturestart was only months into its infancy when the global shutdown arrived. Funded by a consortium of top private and strategic investors (including Warner Bros., Scholastic and Bron), former Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-president Feig’s vision was to serve distinct voices with a uniquely pliable infrastructure. A shop that could fully or partially finance and produce indie-to-mid-budget films without the deep pockets of streaming or tie-ups with the studios. One that could foster talent, cross it over into new mediums and offer full marketing services. COVID-19 scrambled…

When Stephen C. Byrd began producing on Broadway 16 years ago, he and his partner Alia Jones-Harvey were usually the only Black faces they saw in the business. “We would walk into marketing offices, PR firms, general management offices, and there was no one that looked like us, ever,” Byrd (“Ain’t Too Proud,” “Eclipsed”) recalls. “We would question it when we went in. ‘Why aren’t there people of color here?’ We felt strange sitting at the table.” Now, many of Broadway’s most prominent Black producers, creatives and executives are working to change that. Last month, the organization Black Theatre United released its New Deal for Broadway, a sweeping commitment to create more equitable practices in the theater with buy-in from every facet of the industry. The effort was marshaled by…

Eighteen months after theaters around the country shut down, Jerry Zaks is back doing exactly what he was the moment things went dark: rehearsing his next big Broadway comedy. One of the industry’s go-to guys for laughs, the director (“Six Degrees of Separation,” “Guys and Dolls”) is getting the stage version of “Mrs. Doubtfire” up and running after the pandemic halted it just before its fourth preview. He’s also prepping for the follow-up to his starry box-office-busting staging of “Hello, Dolly!”: a buzzy revival of “The Music Man” set to star Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. But not everything is the same as it was prior to the pandemic. Over the past year and a half, the rising awareness and advocacy of the trans and gender-nonbinary communities has made the…

ZACH BAYLIN (“King Richard”) Tennis biopic “King Richard” earned rave reviews at its Telluride Film Festival premiere this year, with critics singling out Will Smith as a frontrunner to score what would be his third Oscar nomination for lead actor. Smith plays the titular Richard Williams, father to world-beating tennis stars Venus and Serena, in a film that explores the trials he faced positioning his daughters for a shot at glory. “I had a 4-year-old daughter at the time and I wanted to write something about parenting, and huge ambition,” says scribe Baylin, making his debut feature. “As I dug into what Richard really had to go through, I really felt it was one of those moments where suddenly there was a story that was so big and so urgent.”…

Even before he was James Bond, Daniel Craig was making a name for himself as a talented actor on the rise. He’d already been in an action blockbuster (“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”) and an acclaimed period piece (“Elizabeth”) years before 007 came calling. And while he’s best known for his work in two franchises — Bond and “Knives Out,” which just wrapped the second of three planned films — here are some of his other roles that are worth checking out. Road to Perdition (2002) If Craig were to make this film today, he would be heralded for being cast against type — as Connor Rooney, the weak and sniveling son of a mob boss (Paul Newman) whose unpredictable nature sets the entire plot in motion. First, he botches a…

Connie Britton is rarely at a loss for words. But when she learned she’d be receiving the fourth Variety Icon Award at the opening ceremony of Canneseries on Oct. 8, the four-time Emmy nominee wasn’t sure how to process it. “I thought, ‘I’m not old enough to be an icon!’” Britton says of her initial reaction. But she soon realized, “an icon is someone who has a very distinct voice, or who can embody a look or a talent or whatever. It’s about unique individuality.” And Britton has that locked up. Over the past 25 years, Britton has dazzled in long-running TV roles including “Spin City,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Nashville.” She also made a splash in shorter stints, such as on “American Horror Story” and “The White Lotus.” Yet,…

Broadway is back and so is New York’s residential real estate market. The sector (those properties priced at $4 million-plus) is on pace for a record 2021 with the number of signed contracts doubling year-over-year and volume on track to surpass 2014’s benchmark high numbers, per the Olshan Luxury Market Report. Several factors are fueling the velocity of trades. “There’s a lot of inventory and opportunity here in New York,” says Ryan Serhant, founder and CEO of Serhant. The real estate broker — and talent on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York” — finds “now people are excited about real estate and are hedging against inflation, and buying because they want to rather than because they have to.” The first half of 2021 saw a record-breaking number of residential contracts…

In 2015, IATSE International President Matthew Loeb went into the negotiating room determined to do something about long hours worked on productions. The issue has been a sore point among members for years, especially after there were car accidents caused by drowsy driving. In the final hours of negotiating, Loeb made a fervent speech to his counterparts at the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “I only wish every rank-and-file member could have witnessed his fire and passion,” Scott Bernard, the business representative of Local 695 reported afterward. And yet, Bernard said, “the employer refuses to bend.” Loeb is once again enmeshed in negotiations with the AMPTP, and he is once again trying to make some progress on the issue. On Oct. 4, more than 52,000 IATSE members —…

Anders Jensen, the sleek and mild-mannered president and CEO of Nent Group, has transformed the company’s Scandinavian streamer, Viaplay, into Netflix’s biggest European competitor since taking its helm in 2018. Jensen, who describes himself as a “content nerd,” is the recipient of Variety’s Vanguard Award, which will be presented at Mipcom in Cannes this year. He is behind the company’s big strategic move into scripted content. Jensen joined the company in 2014 when it was part of the listed conglomerate Modern Times Group, before it split into two companies and rebranded its entertainment assets into Nent Group. Jensen says having a focused approach is a prerequisite to have a chance to thrive in today’s increasingly concentrated media landscape. “A lot of companies that end up in conglomerates typically tend to…

The region’s golden light and natural beauty first attracted the Hudson River School — Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt — whose luminous paintings captured the local landscape. While the region has long attracted filmmakers, Hollywood on the Hudson has never quite arrived. Until now. As Manhattanites throng the area approximately 90 miles north of the city, there’s hard data to show there’s never been more production upstate, from Beacon to Troy, and Fleischmanns to Amenia. According to the Hudson Valley Film Commission (HVFC), the area hosted no fewer than 15 film and television projects in the second quarter of 2021, including “The White House Plumbers,” “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and “Life & Beth.” The three-month period was the most active production in the commission’s 21-year history,…

Amid ongoing disruption in the Arab world’s unstable fest landscape, Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is staying the course and increasingly proving its mettle in promoting the cream of the region’s cinematic crop while also providing key support in nurturing new works. El Gouna chief Intishal Al Timimi proudly points out that the fifth edition of the Oct. 14-22 event has secured eight high-profile features from Arab directors, most of which will be having their Middle Eastern premieres in the Egyptian Red Sea resort after bowing in Cannes and Venice. They comprise French-Moroccan veteran Nabil Ayouch’s high-energy hip-hop drama “Casablanca Beats”; and two works from Lebanon: Mounia Akl’s dramedy “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” which targets Lebanon’s political malaise; and Ely Dagher’s “The Sea Ahead,” about a young woman who returns from…

Despite opening in London’s West End first, and having been written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini, “The Lehman Trilogy” is ultimately a New York saga. “It’s an American story,” says set designer Es Devlin, who has created a slowly rotating masterpiece: an 800-square-foot glass box that sits at the center of the stage, for the tale of the demise of the Lehman brothers, which bows Oct. 14 at the Nederland Theatre. “It treats the rise and fall of Western capitalism in three hours with three actors and a piano dancing around this revolving sculpture,” says Devlin. New York was always going to drive Devlin’s design, and working alongside the play’s director, Sam Mendes, added what she calls a “filmic aspect” to everything. “You could turn the turning box as a…

AWARDS CIRCUIT History was made last Oscar season, with two women getting nominated for best director, yet the upcoming awards race doesn’t have the depth of female voices we would hope for following such a banner year — at least in terms of what the Academy typically chooses. But there are strong contenders in the mix. At the top of the list is Jane Campion with her Western drama “The Power of the Dog.” It’s the only film to make stops at each fall festival, yet one of the uncertainties is that it may not translate to casual Netflix viewers. However, it snagged a runner-up spot at the Toronto International Film Festival, which shows its resonance with audiences. With 1993’s “The Piano,” Campion became just the second woman nominated for…

It’s just a few days before Uzo Aduba begins rehearsals of “Clyde’s,” a new Broadway production from writer Lynn Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey. In the play, Aduba stars as Clyde, the owner of a truck-stop sandwich shop staffed by formerly incarcerated people. “Clyde’s,” with a cast that also includes Ron Cephas Jones, Reza Salazar, Kara Young and Edmund Donovan, is set to open at the Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Nov. 23. Previews begin in less than a month, which seems like a lifetime when planning live entertainment during a pandemic. “When you’re on Broadway, the question that is always overhead is how long until we’re told we’re going to close?” Aduba tells me over the phone from her New York-area home. “I’ve never been in a show where…

A new hotel is popping up in the heart of New York’s Theater District that’s inspired by and hopes to amplify Broadway. Civilian, from Sixty Collective hotelier Jason Pomeranc and designed by David Rockwell, has 27 stories and 203 rooms and is chock-full of theatrical memorabilia. More than 250 pieces of theater-centric art, including sketches, still photos, costumes and custom furnishings, are incorporated in the public spaces. Forty-one sconces feature sketches of Broadway houses by set designers such as Derek McLane, Es Devlin, Scott Pask, Tony Walton and Mimi Lien. Opening later in the fall (no official date has been announced), the hotel will display in its lobby black-and-white photos by Little Fang, the husband-and-wife team known for their opening-night portraits. A secret garden, a library with a piano and…

Film history is filled with examples of screenwriters whose subsequent dazzling directorial careers have often eclipsed their brilliant roots as writers. Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder and Sam Peckinpah are only three of the American wordsmiths-turned-helmers that come to mind. This year’s Variety Creative Impact in Screenwriting honoree, Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino, has more than two decades of great screenwriting on his resume and he’s never lost his love for the scribe’s journey. Sorrentino will appear in conversation with Variety features editor Malina Saval at an event on Oct. 17 at the Mill Valley Film Festival. “I love writing much more than I love directing and this is probably due to my personality and my temperament,” says Sorrentino on a Zoom chat from his home in Rome where he’s prepping his…

The 16th-century Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus famously proclaimed “Clothes make the man.” This is categorically true of James Bond, Ian Fleming’s swashbuckling secret agent, whose costumes through the years — from the Savile Row suits worn by Sean Connery in “Dr. No” and “Diamonds Are Forever” to Pierce Brosnan’s dapper duds courtesy of Italian couture label Brioni in “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “The World Is Not Enough” — have come to personify the British spy as much as his proclivity for glamorous women, Aston Martins and death-defying shoot-outs. Fleming, in fact, altered the face of spy attire forever. Before the British author put Bond in a navy blue single-breasted suit with a four-in-hand knotted tie, spies were walking around in long trench coats and wide-brimmed hats. So 007 is nothing…

Fully booked production facilities are one bright spot in New York City’s commercial real estate landscape. “Speaking as a New Yorker, the pandemic proved the importance of this industry to the economic diversity of New York,” says Hal Rosenbluth, CEO of Kaufman Astoria Studios. The Kaufman Astoria facilities and all available borough full-service soundstages are mostly filled with at least 34 projects filming as of August. A recent report by New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment documented the profound economic impact and ripple effect of production coin, as well as the region’s return to pre-pandemic production levels, all bolstered by the state’s production tax credits. These solid occupancy rates have attracted major capital investment and enticed investors into former industrial zones to build out soundstages, support facilities…

FILM REVIEW Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga Starring: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch “No Time to Die” is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-tothe-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neoclassical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge. Before I go further, though, let me lay my baccarat cards on the table. I thought “Casino Royale,” the first film in which Daniel Craig portrayed 007, was the greatest Bond film since the early Sean Connery days, and in many ways the most perfectly realized Bond movie ever. To me, the trio of Bond films that came after “Casino Royale” have added up to one…

Birthplace: London Age: 56 Go-to Broadway show tune for karaoke: “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls” Favorite movie musical: “West Side Story” Sharon D. Clarke was raised on classic movie musicals featuring the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, but she struggled to picture herself in one as an actor. “There wasn’t much diversity,” she says. After Clarke watched “West Side Story,” which included prominent Puerto Rican characters, the world opened up to her. She went on to become a staple on London’s West End with acclaimed turns in “Ghost” and “Death of a Salesman.” She makes her Broadway debut in fall’s “Caroline, or Change,” reprising her Olivier Award-winning eponymous role. • Were you worried “Caroline, or Change” might not open after Broadway’s prolonged shutdown?…