Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/31/2022 i Variety

Whether HBO and Amazon like it or not, “House of the Dragon” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” were always destined to be compared to each other by die-hard fandoms and intrigued Hollywood industry types. The conversation about the dueling fantasy series has only grown since the Aug. 21 premiere of “House of the Dragon” drew nearly 10 million viewers — a record — for HBO less than two weeks before the Sept. 1 debut of “Rings of Power” is set to stream on Amazon’s Prime Video. Shared literary roots aside, there are distinct differences between the competing shows, some of which quickly become apparent on viewing. Here’s a look at the battle for fantasy supremacy based on the first two episodes of each show.…

I am running around the Beverly Center trying to find something to wear for my interview with actor Luke Macfarlane. It’s not often I think about my outfits because I’m classic and consistent — chinos, button-up shirt, bow tie and a pair of colorful sneakers. However, my time with Macfarlane is going to be different because my editor has convinced me not only to work out with him but to do it on camera. Why? Because Macfarlane is ripped. In fact, his body is almost its own character in Universal’s upcoming “Bros.” Macfarlane co-stars in the gay rom-com as Billy Eichner’s love interest, Aaron, a “straight-acting and - appearing” attorney with serious commitment issues. He spends most of his screen time shirtless or in a T-shirt. I find the perfect…

CASA MADERA AT THE 1 HOTEL Chef Olivier Le Calvez’s menu owes as much to the Mediterranean as to Mexico City. Cocktails can be a show: Smoke, fire, fog and other tableside flourishes make for extraordinary drinks. Oysters Cascara are the favored briny starter, or splurge on the showy seafood tower. Where: 550 Wellington St. W Web: thecasamadera.com D|AZUR AT THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL At the Four Seasons’ alfresco D|azur, diners can feast on offerings from world-renowned chef Daniel Boulud’s menu of elevated bistro classics. A special TIFF-only lineup of seven film-inspired cocktails includes the After Party: Kahlua, double espresso and Kraken spiced rum topped with whipped cream. Where: 60 Yorkville Ave. Web: fourseasons.com/toronto LOUIX LOUIS AT THE ST. REGIS Louix Louis, on the 31st floor of The St. Regis…

Spain has a long tradition of big international shoots. More recently, there’s been a production renaissance: “Wrathof the Titans,” “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon” and “Vampire Academy,” among many others, have chosen Spain. One key driver is tax incentives. Tax breaks were raised in March 2020 when the government established a new rate for Spain’s mainland of a 25%-30% deduction on spend for both rebates on international shoots and credits for Spanish co-productions. No less important, the incentive cap per shoot was raised from €3 million ($3 million) to $10.1 million. The minimum production budget to trigger incentives was set at $2.02 million; a $1.01 million minimum expenditure in Spain qualifies a shoot for incentives. At the same time, the Canary Islands established a 50% tax rebate, with…

Backed by the country’s €1.6 billion ($1.6 billion) Spain AVS Hub plan, the Spain Film Commission (SFC) is launching an action plan that tackles head-on some of the biggest questions now facing the big-shoot locations industry. With a total budget of $5.1 million over 2021-25, the Spain Film Commission’s Action Plan breaks down five ways: • Creation of the Spain Film Talent Network, placing special emphasis on women working in the industry. • Strengthening of SFC’s territorial network under a Spain Film Friendly Land program. • An overhaul of SFC’s website, updating content and formats and transforming the site into a transmedia platform. • Promotion of the country as an international destination for shoots and audiovisual investment under the Shooting in Spain brand. • Spain Virtual Locations: The creation of…

It took a village — and several hours a day — to transform “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” actor Owain Arthur into Prince Durin IV for the Amazon Prime Video series launching Sept. 2. The Peter Jackson films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” brought Middle Earth to life and established an elaborately detailed style for its inhabitants. The new series, which cost $462 million for the first season alone, brings a similar cinematic blockbuster quality to the small screen. Set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, it introduces a new world of characters, including Durin IV, who leads a clan of dwarves known as Longbeards. Hair and makeup department head Jane O’Kane wanted Durin IV “to be larger than life and…

Saying you are looking for “the next Kevin Feige” to oversee Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV adaptations of DC Comics is akin to declaring you only want to make hits. If only wishing could make it so. Feige’s reign as the chief creative officer of Marvel Studios — overseeing films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2006 and streaming TV since 2018 — has earned Disney upwards of $25 billion in global box office grosses to date and helped drive Disney+ to more than 152 million subscribers worldwide. Of course, WBD CEO David Zaslav wants to emulate that success. Dan Lin, the producer of “The Lego Batman Movie,” has emerged as one possible DC chief, as has Emma Watts, a veteran executive with stints at Paramount and 20th Century…

Sushi Goes Sustainable Colin Whitbread has opened his first sushi restaurant, Fiish, at Culver City’s Platform LA. The former professional surfer — who hosted private dinners for the Jonas Brothers, Jason Derulo and Lil Nas X for a decade — calls his approach “guilt-free” since he sources almost all his fish from the waters of California and Baja California. The kanpachi, similar to yellowtail, hails from Omega Azul Seafood, a highly rated hatchery in La Paz, Mexico, where Fiish executive chef Cody Requejo is a consultant; the striped bass is from Pacifico Aquaculture in Ensenada. In addition to ethical sourcing, a key component of Fiish’s sustainable ethos is dry aging the fish in a refrigerated cabinet for up to 30 days, which boosts the umami flavor and cuts down on…

Oops, it happened again. Billy Eichner, eligible gay bachelor, was kicked off Tinder. Somehow, the team behind the dating app had the audacity to boot Eichner from its screens because they thought he was a random loser pretending to be Billy Eichner. Eichner, 43, went public with his Tinder travails during a 2019 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmy Live,” and got an apology from the company along with a care package shipped to his home with T-shirts and mugs that said, “World’s Hottest Single” and “Happy Valentine’s Day … to Me.” And then, inexplicably, Eichner got dumped from the service a second time last year. “I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’m not going through this again,’” Eichner says, letting out a dramatic sigh. “I can’t book a late-night talk show appearance…

AFTER TWO years of virtual events or limited-capacity premieres, the festival returns in spectacular fashion, with more than 250 films expected to screen during the 10-day event. To break down the musts from the meh, here are nine films we’re dying to see. CAUSEWAY Though Jennifer Lawrence had a juicy supporting role in Adam McKay’s disaster comedy “Don’t Look Up” last year, we have not seen the former Katniss Everdeen in the driver’s seat of a film since the one-two punch of “Mother!” and “Red Sparrow” (released in 2017 and 2018, respectively). She returns in earnest at TIFF with “Causeway,” about a soldier with a traumatic brain injury trying to readjust to normal life. —Matt Donnelly THE FABELMANS In this making-of-a-film-director tale, Steven Spielberg goes back to his early days…

The Toronto Intl. Film Festival Tribute Awards recipients rep an eclectic and deep bench of talent. “For years we had fundraisers during the festival and for years we had events to celebrate filmmakers like the Ebert Award. We brought it all together to create the Tribute Awards Gala,” says Cameron Bailey, CEO of TIFF. “In a few short years it’s become TIFF’s biggest annual fundraiser to support our year-round philanthropic work as well as a way to raise the curtain on awards season. “In the past three years Joana Vicente did terrific work to build the event, along with former board chair Jennifer Tory. Now, I’m working with our volunteer board members and new COO Beth Janson to keep that growth going. Beth and I worked together this summer as…

Ten reasons why Spain is a favorite for big-budget productions: ⚫ Up to 70% Tax Incentives In 2020, a tax break hike catapulted Spain into the top echelon of destinations for big international shoots. Its mainland offers a competitive 30% tax rebate for the first €1 million ($1 million) of spend and 25% for further expenditure, capped at $10.1 million. In the Canary Islands, the rebates reach 50% for the first $1.1 million and 45% thereafter, with a $19.4 million ceiling. The Basque Country’s Bizkaia province looks set to offer tax breaks up to 70% beginning in 2023. ⚫ A Compact Variety of Climates and Landscapes Spain boasts mountains, deserts, forests, rivers and lakes, 5,000 miles of coastline, nature parks, tropical areas, flatlands and plateaus. “The combination of its…

When Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) signed on to direct superhero epic “Eternals,” she was given free rein to take the film in whichever direction she chose. That creative freedom allowed her to shoot “Eternals” on Spain’s Canary Islands, among other sites. It became the Marvel film that shot the most on-location of any in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “You want to see the character in relationship to the world behind them. It’s very difficult to make that feel real on stage. So going to a location was a very natural progression,” Zhao says in Marvel Studios doc “Assembled: The Making of Eternals.” Canary island Fuerteventura is known for its rugged landscape and black-sand beaches. It stood in well for Mesopotamia, Babylon, the Neanderthal era and the Australian Outback in the…

TV REVIEW Drama: Amazon Prime Video (8 episodes; 2 reviewed); Sept. 2 Starring: Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Markella Kavenagh Several years (and several hundreds of millions of dollars) after Amazon bought the TV rights to “The Lord of the Rings” from the J.R.R. Tolkien estate, the mammoth effort to boost Prime Video’s profile with the same kind of phenomenon HBO found in “Game of Thrones” is upon us — and it’s just as grand, if not as downright surreal, as the occasion calls for. Sure, “Game of Thrones” might have solidified a television format for fantasy epics. But George R.R. Martin’s novels simply wouldn’t exist without Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” and bringing these stories to episodic life requires not just all the considerable money Amazon can provide, but a…

How set in stone are this year’s Oscar contenders? With festival season upon us, the field is starting to take shape. Barring bad reviews, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” (soon to appear at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival), Florian Zeller’s “The Son” (a Venice bow, followed by a stop at TIFF) and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Bardo” (Venice, then a trip to Telluride) should be duking it out for the next few months. Yet, an eleventh-hour entry could shake up the landscape. Apple, for instance, is considering launching Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation,” an escaped-slave thriller with Will Smith, at the end of 2022. But the streamer needs to be sure that the fallout from Smith’s Oscars slap won’t overshadow the film’s release. It has already opted to delay Martin Scorsese’s costly historical mystery,…

After an unexpectedly robust summer at the international box office, there is a near-term question mark about what will happen next: Will recovery stall due to a paucity of Hollywood tentpole movies? Or will international theatrical decouple and find new drivers to maintain the momentum? The good news is that most of the international market’s top territories are now fully open and operating without significant restrictions on seating capacity. These include the U.K. and Ireland, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The smaller number of territories still laboring under restrictions nevertheless include some valuable ones: China, Turkey, Argentina, Hong Kong and Russia. Hollywood movies that have driven the recent international recovery include “Jurassic World Dominion” ($611 million internationally); “Minions: The Rise of Gru” ($486…

AWARDS CIRCUIT Two more awards shows went gender neutral last week, fueling further speculation about the day when major awards shows — think Oscars, Emmys and (yes) Golden Globes — might follow suit and drop the distinction between “actor” and “actress” in their respective competitions. Organizers behind the Spirit Awards and the Canadian Screen Awards are following the examples set by the Recording Academy, MTV and the Gotham Film & Media Institute. The announcements by Film Independent on Aug. 23 and the Canadian Academy on Aug. 25 follow the July decision by backers of the British Independent Film Awards to eliminate gendered categories with this year’s competition. I’ve been writing about this trend for several years. It began to pick up steam when the MTV Movie & TV Awards dropped…

HANIF HARJI runs Figo, an Italian joint a block away from the heart of the Toronto International Film Festival. Over the years, he’s had a chance to see a lot of A-listers in their element — Bill Murray starting a conga line, Joaquin Phoenix stepping outside to take a puff of a cigarette while basking in the glow of the “Joker” premiere. But since COVID, TIFF has operated as a shell of its former self, with either virtual editions or festivals that unspooled at limited capacity. This year, though, the party is back. For the first time since 2019, TIFF is expected to have a full slate. For local restaurants, bars and hotels, those packed screenings and star-studded red carpets mean big business. Harji and his counterparts in Toronto areeagerforthefestivaltoreturn…

There’s a reason why event producer Bob Bain didn’t employ a host for this year’s two Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies. He has 45 awards to give out Sept. 3 and 48 categories to honor Sept. 4, which means there’s little time for anything else. “If you think about it, the biggest challenge for a host is that once you have him or her, you have to justify them being up there,” Bain says. “For us to create, over the course of two hours, six or eight throws or standups for a host, just takes up more time than we feel we need to spend.” Instead, the two ceremonies will open with short monologues, with other comedic breaks sprinkled throughout. But Bain’s goal is to bring these events in at between…

Seismic shifts in the world’s entertainment industry have thrown a global spotlight on Spain’s film and TV industry as never before. Foreign productions are flocking to Spain, spending €263 million ($266 million) in 2021, double the 2016-19 average, according to a ProFilm study. International inward investment in national productions has also grown on an unprecedented scale. All the big streamers have beached in Spain. Reed Hastings cut the tape on Netflix’s first European Production Hub, in Madrid’s Tres Cantos, in 2019. Viacom Intl. Studios (VIS) EMEA and Asia and AMC Networks Intl. Southern Europe have set up production operations in Spain. Other players — Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and Starzplay — run offices in the country. Capitalizing on such a massive presence, in March 2021 the federal…

Launched early May, the Spain Audiovisual Bureau acts as a facilitator for the production sector, attending enquiries about international markets, handling information about processing filming permits and providing tax incentives information. A ground-breaking development in Spain, the Bureau marks a first-ever effort to coordinate public and private entities related to the international presence of the Spanish film and TV production industry. The Spain Audiovisual Bureau represents an innovation of the Spain AVS Hub, an initiative launched in March 2021 by the Spanish government with a €1.6 billion ($1.6 billion) budget to power up local film and TV production and encourage big foreign players to shoot and set up production centers in the country. ICEX Spain Trade & Investment, the country’s export and inward investment board, and a key player in…

In the opening scene of Episode 8, Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown,” a young Princess Elizabeth, played by Claire Foy, addresses the British Commonwealth from Capetown, South Africa, on the occasion of her 21st birthday. What follows is a montage of people listening to her radio broadcast speech in different member countries, from India to Australia, to Jamaica and a number of African nations. These scenes were all shot in Spain, encapsulating — in less than three minutes — the great diversity of the country’s locations. Several scenes in Seasons 3, 4 and the upcoming Season 5 of “The Crown” have all been shot in Spain while the sixth and final one, which starts shooting in late August, promises to be the show’s “largest investment in Spain in terms…