Variety 2/16/2022

As of this writing, the Motion Picture Academy has yet to officially announce its policy regarding COVID protocols for next month’s Oscar ceremony. Nonetheless, many in the Hollywood community are going on the assumption that The Hollywood Reporter’s Feb. 9 scoop that no proof of vaccination will be required for the March 27 awards show at the Dolby Theatre is already set in stone. And I’ve spoken with multiple insiders over the past week who tell me they’re plenty furious and flummoxed about a no-vax requirement if that turns out to be the case. Right after THR broke its story, Seth MacFarlane, who is livid over the matter, tweeted that for the Academy not to mandate vaccines is a “colossal abdication of responsible management. I cannot fathom what piece of…

“Meeting the man who has shaped my understanding of so many American cultural institutions, from jazz to baseball to war, was a real privilege,” says award-winning British-born portrait photographer Benedict Evans, who captured documentarian Ken Burns on Jan. 25 in his Brooklyn studio. “His knowledge and wit made the day a memorable and inspiring one.” Evans’ numerous subjects have included Tessa Thompson, Mark Rylance, Issa Rae, Christopher Walken, Idris Elba and Martin Scorsese. His work is regularly seen in ESPN the Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire and New York Magazine, among others.…

Team Zaslav didn’t waste any time. The same day the Justice De partment issued the regulatory greenlight for AT&T and Discovery to proceed with the $43 billion spinoff transaction that will create Warner Bros. Discovery, incoming CEO David Zaslav was on the WB lot in Burbank the morning of Feb. 9 to begin a series of meetings with senior executives from across Warner Bros.’ major divisions, HBO and HBO Max and the Turner networks. Zaslav, the Discovery CEO who began to orchestrate the takeover of WarnerMedia with AT&T CEO John Stankey this time last year, brought a small team of his top lieutenants, including Bruce Campbell, Discovery’s chief development officer; Gunnar Wiedenfels, Discovery chief financial officer; and Adria Alpert Romm, the company’s chief people and culture officer. The sessions left…

By the time Ivan Reitman launched his Hollywood career in the late ’70s, it seemed like there wasn’t much left to rebel against — at least, not in middle-class American life. But that’s where Reitman, who died Feb. 12 at 75, had an inspiration. What if rebellion as we knew it really was played out? After the moralistic fervor of the ’60s and ’70s, what if there was nothing left to the idea of a “counterculture” but the sheer scruffy joy of bad behavior? What if the rebel no longer stood for anything but himself? The world was ripe for a new breed of rebel, the kind who didn’t take anything he stood for seriously. It was also ripe for the kind of rebellion that looked like you could have…

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” defied expectations last week when it nabbed Oscar nominations for best picture, director, adapted screenplay and international feature. The Japanese movie, released domestically by venerable art-house distributor Janus Films, surpassed titles with more robust campaigns, including Amazon’s “Being the Ricardos” and Netflix’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!” Even Hamaguchi was surprised by the noms. “I could have never imagined that I would be a realistic contender,” he tells Variety, speaking through Stacy Lee, a Japanese interpreter. “In terms of the campaign, it was a steady effort where people at Janus made these recommendations. They also have very strong connections with the critics and other parts of the community.” Hamaguchi tells the story of being on a plane with no internet when the nominations were announced, and…

The generational differences in media consumption have never been greater, as revealed in an ongoing study of respondents who were asked to rate their favorite sources by consumer insights firm GetWizer, in partnership with Variety Intelligence Platform. The results show attitudes that shift depending on age. For the younger set (ages 15-29, who’ve never known a world without the internet), YouTube gets the highest marks, followed by social media; traditional TV options placed considerably lower. Older Americans (60+), meanwhile, favored cable and broadcast TV by a wide margin, with the web-based formats far down the list. Groups in the middle (33-44 and 45-59) chose a more even mix of sources and delivery systems, though cable and broadcast still fell far short among the younger of those two demos. Simply put,…