Innholdsfortegnelse for 6/15/2022 i Variety

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…

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…

Serious conversations about human rights and how they clash with the patriarchy are playing out across the United States — but let us remember, the personal is often political. That would make HBO Max’s update on the classic “Father of the Bride” — starring Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan, as directed by Gaz Alazraki — especially timely. The well-worn story of a doting father struggling to let his daughter ride off with her Prince Charming takes on added resonance in Alazraki’s setup, with Garcia playing a relic of machismo and old-world order. His thoroughly modern daughter, raised in a devout Mexican Catholic tradition, has found a freewheeling and emotional Cuban American boy to settle down with. In the update, Garcia’s character struggles with the evolving power dynamics between husband and…

Patrick Schwarzenegger can’t reveal any details about his work in the upcoming spinoff of Amazon’s “The Boys” — no, he won’t confirm reports that he’s playing a character named “Golden Boy” — but he admits that he has shown his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger, photos from the set. “He looked at me and he was like, ‘What the fuck are you filming?’” Patrick tells me on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “I was like, ‘It’s this show called ‘The Boys.’ … You have to watch an episode to understand it, or else I can’t articulate what happens in it.’” “The Boys” producers reached out to Patrick for the spinoff, after meeting him years ago when he auditioned to play the character of Homelander on the original series.…

Ever since the dawn of social media, fans have found creative ways to obsess over their favorite TV shows — be it chat rooms littered with “Lost” theories; Tumblr pages dedicated to “Teen Wolf”; or “Game of Thrones” hashtags filled with millions of tweets during just one episode. A handful of years ago, the internet birthed yet another mechanism to interact with television: “no context” Twitter accounts. True to their name, these profiles post captioned screenshots from popular series — from “Glee” to “Succession” — removed from the context of the show. There are no context accounts for series ranging from “The Sopranos” to “Queer Eye” to “SpongeBob SquarePants,” while 274,000 Twitter users follow a profile solely dedicated to Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) of “New Girl.” “The Office” alone has…

The 49th annual Daytime Emmys are back in a full theater for the first time in three years, but that’s not the only major change that TV viewers will notice. For starters, the drama category is finally a bit more competitive, having landed a fifth nominee (which hasn’t happened since 2014), the “Days of Our Lives” spinoff “Beyond Salem.” It faces off against usual entrants “General Hospital,” “The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “Days.” This is also the inaugural year for the Children’s & Family Emmys, which means those categories have been moved to later in the year. As a result, the show will be “a bit more focused,” says National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences president and CEO Adam Sharp. “The telecast will…

“Doc McStuffins” featured many famous voices over the years. Creator Chris Nee was especially delighted when then-first lady Michelle Obama agreed to lend her voice to the episode “Doc McStuffins Goes to Washington.” The episode appeared in 2015. In the episode, Obama invites Doc and other children who have made a difference in their communities to the White House to honor them in a special ceremony. The show explored adoption in a five-part series in 2016 that included the episodes “Baby Mc-Stuffins,” “Runaway Love,” “Hootie’s Duty,” “Bringing Home Baby” and “Baby Names/Night Night, LaLa.” Each episode explored the emotions a family goes through as they bring a child into their family and focused on normalizing adoption. In “The Emergency Plan,” Wanda Sykes and Portia de Rossi voice interracial same-sex parents.…

The Motion Picture & Television Fund, celebrating its 100th anniversary, might be the most active, admired — and most misunderstood — organization in Hollywood. Silent screen star Mary Pickford started the philanthropic org under the name Motion Picture Relief Fund (it was renamed in 1971). Over the century, entertainment’s biggest heavyweights gave support. In 1965, Variety reported Elvis Presley’s $125,000 gift, the single biggest donation to that point. The fund has been supported by directors (John Ford to Steven Spielberg, to name a few), actors (Barbara Stanwyck to George Clooney, Jodie Foster and Hugh Jackman) and execs (Samuel Goldwyn to Jim Gianopulos). Key donors and recipients are behind-the-camera workers; for example, nearly 10,000 individuals received help in 2020 as everyone was hit by COVID. “Part of my hope for the…

For Pixar’s latest feature, “Lightyear,” director of photography Jeremy Lasky worked with production designer Tim Evatt and lighting DP Ian Megibben to establish the look of the CGI film. Together they decided it needed to be not only cohesive and clear but also cinematic. The movie, in theaters June 17, is a new adventure about one of Andy’s favorite toys, Buzz Lightyear, from the “Toy Story” franchise. This time around, though, Buzz is human — the hero who inspires the toy. The film is set in space, with Buzz, voiced by Chris Evans, stranded on a hostile planet with his crew, and he’s now on a rescue mission to get everyone safely home. Lasky used a single-point-per-spective camera for tight framing to capture Buzz’s initial solitude and to guide the…

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…

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…

FX has long been known for iconoclastic dramas like “The Shield” or “The Americans” that feature flawed protagonists and inventive plots. Next year, it may serve up more of those things—but not from scripted series. In 2023, FX will start showing spring football games from the XFL, the startup league backed by Dwayne Johnson. Under a pact unveiled recently, FX and its corporate siblings at Disney will televise XFL games between 2023. and 2027. In its earlier days as a startup under the former News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, the cable network offered NASCAR races and Major League Baseball games. Even so, featuring regular-season football — particularly that of a new league — represents a fresh twist for the outlet founded in 1994. “Will some people stop watching FX…

KUDOS VARIETY IN-HOUSE OR CORPORATE PUBLICATION WEBSITE, TRADITIONAL NEWS ORGANIZATION DANIEL D’ADDARIO CHIEF TV CRITIC ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR RAMIN SETOODEH CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PRINT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR JEM ASWAD DEPUTY MUSIC EDITOR PRINT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR OWEN GLEIBERMAN CHIEF FILM CRITIC ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR CHRIS WILLMAN EDITOR, FEATURES ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR JAZZ TANGCAY BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO ENHANCE AND / OR COVER A STORY ANGELIQUE JACKSON JAZZ TANGCAY ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY PROFILE / INTERVIEW ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER BREAKING NEWS MICHAEL SCHNEIDER CHRIS WILLMAN COLUMNIST TIM GRAY MALINA SAVAL COMMENTARY DANIEL D’ADDARIO MALINA SAVAL MICHAEL SCHNEIDER COMMENTARY / ANALYSIS OF TV / FILM RAUL AGUILA JENNIFER DORN SOPHY HOLLAND COVER ART CHRIS WILLMAN CRITICISM OF BOOKS JEM ASWAD STEVEN GAYDOS OWEN GLEIBERMAN CRITICISM OF MUSIC…

Three years after its last appearance on the French Riviera, the Cannes Lions — the advertising and creative marketing industry’s top international awards — are back June 20-24 for its first post-pandemic physical gathering. As execs and creatives assemble, they’ll confront new priorities facing their business. In the spotlight this year: sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion, data and technology, business transformation and creative effectiveness. Another new reality: tighter budgets. Many ad agencies are reportedly scaling back on parties, yachts and formal presentations. As digital advertising spend continues to outstrip all other forms of ad spend (it’ s due to account for more than 60% of global spend in 2022) the ad business finds itself challenged by a new reality. A Cannes Lions report, “State of Creativity: A High-Speed Evolution,” identifies…

FILM REVIEW Director: Angus MacLane With: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi “Lightyear,” the 26th Pixar film, has a premise that’s explained by the movie’s opening title. Back in 1995, it seems that Andy, the young hero of “Toy Story,” was given a Buzz Lightyear action figure as a present. That was because he’d seen a Buzz Lightyear movie and loved it. “Lightyear” is that movie. There are plenty of ways that the Pixar wizards could have spun that premise. One imagines a Buzz Lightyear origin story in which he’s a brash young upstart going through flight training. And since Buzz, in his curvy plastic spacesuit with the chartreuse trim and the bubble helmet, is the most futuristic of all the “Toy Story” playthings, one could envision that…

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…

AWARDS CIRCUIT We never can say goodbye, and that is especially true when it comes to beloved TV shows. The post-finale spinoff has always been a popular way to keep a franchise going. In recent decades, some of these spinoffs have been just as good as the original: I would lead with “Frasier,” out of “Cheers,” of course, and “Better Call Saul,” an idea that began as a bit of a lark when “Breaking Bad” was ending. But what has always fascinated me is when a show ends … and then continues on in a new form with the same lead characters. I was too young to really understand how “All in the Family” morphed into “Archie Bunker’s Place,” and as a kid it confused me: Wasn’t “Archie Bunker’s Place”…

Animal Roars Back to Life Before there were Jon & Vinny’s sprinkled across Los Angeles, there was Animal. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s nose-to-tail minimalist restaurant (435 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles) put the catering duo on the culinary map and launched a slew of spinoffs before becoming a pantry goods store during the pandemic. Now that it has finally reopened, we checked in with Jon and Vinny to see if the beast remains the same. “Changing the concept was discussed briefly,” says Dotolo. “But for now we are playing the hits.” That means the famous poutine; crispy pig ear with red chili; and braised rabbit. Like other restaurants, Animal is dealing with supply chain and staffing issues, so it’s open Tuesday to Saturday, with a tight 20 dishes on…

Ten years ago, an animated show about a young Black girl who tended to the wounds of her toys and aspired to become a doctor remade the preschool TV landscape. “Doc McStuffins” was the first show to feature a young girl of color using science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skill set to solve the problems of those around her. She was also part of Black family in which the parents were professionals and positive role models. This watershed moment for representation came from creator Chris Nee’s own struggles as a child, feeling lost and left out as an LGBTQ youth who never saw herself represented in the shows she watched or the culture around her. Nee wanted to make something that made kids feel seen and feel accepted. “My…

Many in Hollywood value golden statues, but some put more value into the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated. The folks who run the Motion Picture Television Fund take the notion of caring for their colleagues to heart, lending a helping hand to industry members who need extra assistance during difficult times. The charity, founded in 1921 by Mary Pickford, is memorializing its 100th anniversary at its 100 Years of Hollywood: A Celebration of Service gala on June 18. Though technically in its 101st year of existence, the nonprofit was unable to revel in the monumental milestone in-person in 2021 due to lingering COVID. MPTF president and CEO Bob Beitcher says, “We were going to do it last year, but it didn’t seem like it was…

The Palm Springs Intl. Short-Fest will mark its grand in-person return to the California desert oasis from June 21-27, showcasing 300 short films in 51 different curated programs. If that seems like a markedly high number of films considering all the disruptions in both the film production and festival space over the past two years, interim festival director Sudeep Sharma has an explanation. “One thing I’ve been saying a lot is that the pandemic has seemingly affected everything except for the production of short films,” says Sharma, a ShortFest veteran currently helming the festival while director Lili Rodriguez is on maternity leave. “I mean that kind of tongue-in-cheek, but our submissions numbers did not drastically change.” ShortFest has always cast a long shadow in the world of short filmmaking, with…

The third season of Paramount+ series “Evil” returned on June 12, and the show is darker than ever as it continues to straddle the worlds of science and religion. For the season opener, production designer Ray Kluga transformed an airport hangar in New York into a space for a group of scientists to examine patients who are near death. The idea is to measure the weight of a soul — a question that goes back to the early 20th century, when scientist Duncan MacDougall determined the weight lost after death was 21 grams. Kluga’s biggest challenge was envisioning what a century-old experiment in the modern world would look like. The ethically questionable measurement was never repeated, so he was free to let his imagination run. “I was trying to have…

TV REVIEW Drama: FX (seven episodes; four reviewed); June 16 Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat Jeff Bridges, in his new series “The Old Man,” is playing the kind of spy they don’t make anymore. His Dan Chase is, even at an advanced age, a master tactician; he repeatedly bests men many years younger than he is in hand-to-hand combat. He’s also winningly persuasive, so much so that the FBI counterintelligence chief tasked with finding him (John Lithgow) can’t resist giving him a head start. Indeed, the aptly named Chase seems perpetually one step ahead in evading pursuit, and the show is similarly ahead of us at home: We find out just what has made Chase, and what makes the chase, as we go. While part of…