Variety 6/15/2022

The abruptness and timing of Peter Rice’s firing last week by Disney CEO Bob Chapek remains a complete mystery to many, including Rice, I’m told. The move came as a total shock to the industry and to the well-respected media executive, who is unusual in having spent his entire industry career at one studio, -€th Century Fox, and then its successor company, Disney.. As everyone now knows, Rice had absolutely no idea what was about to happen when his boss called him into a meeting on June 8, and I hear he was told that Chapek wanted to discuss the Disney board meeting taking place in Orlando later this month, at which Rice was scheduled to make a presentation. .Instead, in a conversation that lasted all of seven minutes, Chapek…

1 Julia Garner Offered Lead Role in Madonna Biopic “Inventing Anna” actor Julia Garner has been offered the role of Madonna in a biopic about the pop icon. Garner has emerged the favorite from more than a dozen candidates, one insider adds, and has for months been speculated as a front-runner for the part — a performance Madonna herself will shepherd as director. The film is set up at Universal Pictures, and will follow the early days of the oft-controversial artist and queen of perpetual reinvention. Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Donna Langley won the script in a multi-studio bidding war, and Amy Pascal is attached as a producer. — Matt Donnelly and Ramin Setoodeh 2 CBS Might Opt for Comic Panel for Exiting James Corden CBS is considering replacing…

Dana Walden is ready for this moment. On the heels of a shocking Hollywood management shake-up at Disney, the newly promoted chairman of Disney General Entertainment Content now oversees a massive portfolio that includes the programming arms of Hulu, FX, ABC, Freeform, Nat Geo, 20th Century Television, ABC Signature and more. Walden’s ascent at Disney is not a surprise, but the sudden departure of her predecessor and longtime boss, Peter Rice, surely was when the news surfaced on June. that Disney CEO Bob Chapek had fired him. Walden has the respect of the Hollywood community, the chops of having run (or co-run) two broadcast networks and multiple studios, plus deep relationships with towering creatives like a certain superstar producer (ahem, Ryan Murphy) who is, by all accounts, itching to reunite…

Is Comcast finally going to make a big move? The cable and media giant has missed out on snazzy acquisitions in recent years, failing to outmaneuver Disney to buy the bulk of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets and falling short of nabbing WarnerMedia. Losing out on the latter stunned Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBCUniversal chief Jeff Shell, who were enmeshed in planning how WarnerMedia would be integrated into their operations until David Zaslav-led Discovery landed their prize. The company has been looking at Electronic Arts, though it appears that efforts to acquire the game maker have stalled. In recent weeks, Shell has told confidants that he’d love to buy Netflix, which has become more digestible thanks to the recent stock slide during which it has lost some $185 billion…

In the final episode of “Gaslit,” the Watergate hearings play in the background as socialite truth-teller Martha Mitchell languishes in the hospital, stricken with cancer and ridiculed as crazy by Republicans and members of the media. Five decades later, Wyoming legislator Liz Cheney is playing a similar straight shooter at the congressional hearings about the Trump White House’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. But the media is much more stratified than it was during Watergate, and the consequences for the former president and those political figures complicit with him that day are far from preordained. Robbie Pickering, creator of the Starz series starring Julia Roberts as a boozy Mitchell, considers the Jan. 6 hearings “remarkably consequential” but questions the ultimate impact they will have. “The…

From November 2021 through the end of 2022, nearly 50 subscriber-only mobile games are expected to be released by Netflix, per a Washington Post report. However, data from digital intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows global downloads of Netflix games have fallen steadily throughout this year since their December high, as the number of offerings released has also shrunk. Netflix’s existing Stranger Things games may help boost downloads following the debut of the show’s fourth season. But the streamer ought to take advantage of its own original series based on games — like Resident Evil, due in July — by partnering with a bigger gaming entity. Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription service relaunches June 13 with various tiers enabling downloads and streaming of select games, including Resident Evil and the popular Uncharted…