Variety 8/17/2022

It started about a year ago. Seemingly out of nowhere, the term “Web3” began popping up in conversations among industryites, often in breathless discussions about how it points the way to a radical rethink of how content is created and distributed. For all those who have wondered what the “it” or the “there” there is when it comes to Web3, this issue is for you. Deciphering and understanding what Web3 means — and more importantly, what it will mean for Hollywood over the long haul — became a mission for our newsroom. Our cover package offers a primer on the push to “decentralize” the online universe via blockchain technology and thereby curb the power enjoyed by today’s tech giants. But we examine it all from an entertainment industry-centric lens to…

Not very long into the pandemic, a collective tremor of dread passed through the movie industry: Was this the beginning of the end? It wasn’t the first time the industry had been roiled by a crisis mentality. The most obvious precursor was the rise of television in the late ’40s and ’50s, which resulted in movies turning themselves into over-the-top widescreen spectacles — a frantic race to be big, bigger, biggest. But I think it’s fair to say that for much of 2020 and 2021, the fear about what was going to happen to movies was nothing less than existential. Would they survive? Would movie theaters, those seductive mass cocoons that ruled for a century, now dwindle and die, their marquees standing as relics of a lost civilization, like something…

Streaming service subscription rates are rising as companies look to offset ballooning content expenditures and roll out lower-priced, ad-supported options as an alternative. Last week, Disney became the third entertainment giant to raise its rates this year, following Netflix in January and Amazon, which offers Prime Video as part of its broader e-commerce offerings, a month later. Hulu’s new rate goes into effect next month, while the cost of Disney+’s base ad-free plan will increase 38% in December. To keep subscribers hooked on their services even as prices go up, streamers are pouring money into ever elaborate offerings. But will these reduce churn at a time when consumers are already feeling the sting of inflation in their pocketbooks? Regardless, big streamers have no choice but to hike their prices as…

Anne Heche was a showrunner’s dream. She was a strong and empathetic leader who always showed up ready to do the work. She knew what her job was as No. 1 on the call sheet. She knew how important it was to set the right tone of inclusion and happiness on the set. She was able to give generously and voluminously to her fellow actors. This is the Anne Heche that I will remember when I think of my friend and collaborator on the dramedy series “Men in Trees,” which ran on ABC from 2006-08. It is hard for me to reconcile the Anne that I knew with the circumstances of her death, which came Aug. 14, nine days after a fiery car crash in West Los Angeles that made…

At the beginning of the third season of “Succession,” Kendall Roy, played by Emmy winner Jeremy Strong, was on a high, and for once, the reason was virtuous, not chemical. His attempt to overthrow his father, Logan (Brian Cox), from his perch atop Waystar Royco, the family business that happens to be a multinational conglomerate, appeared to be going well. But for Kendall, peaks quickly become valleys. As Strong puts it during a conversation with “Succession” executive producer Adam McKay moderated by Variety, during those early episodes, “I thought a lot about Uncle Albert from ‘Mary Poppins’ — the laughing, floating guy, trying to keep up this positivity that is really a desperate dance over an abyss.” By “Too Much Birthday” — the season’s seventh episode, set at Kendall’s 40th…

When Jessica Gao signed on as the creator and head writer of Marvel Studios’ Disney+ series “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” her biggest concern was how to approach the titular alter ego of lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany). While TV series have had CG characters in the past, no one had attempted a fully CG (giant, green) person as the lead before — especially on a TV budget. (Lou Ferrigno wore green makeup as the Incredible Hulk in the 1977-82 CBS series co-starring Bill Bixby as Bruce Banner.) So Gao asked Marvel chief Kevin Feige: How much She-Hulk could she actually include on the show? “And he said, ‘If I’m gonna watch a show called “She-Hulk,” I want to see She-Hulk,’” Gao recalls. Making that happen proved to be one of…