Variety 11/2/2022

Variety’s Showman of the Year franchise has one rule: The honoree must be a titan. Previous recipients — all trailblazers who are shifting the industry — have included Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, Tyler Perry, Shonda Rhimes and John Landgraf. This year, we decided to shake things up by honoring two showmen: Joe and Anthony Russo. (Zoe Saldaña, Chris Pratt and Priyanka Chopra Jonas showed up on our cover to support our guests of honor.) This week’s issue is a celebration of the directing team that is blowing up perceptions of the filmmaking business. The brothers have sided with streamers in a big way with their studio, AGBO — estimated to be worth $1.1 billion — having partnered on projects with Amazon, Netflix and Apple. All the while, the Russos are still…

Will Hollywood Block Elon Musk’s Twitter? Mercurial mega-billionaire Elon Musk finally closed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter Oct. 27, following a messy six months of wrangling. Musk did so begrudgingly, only after he was backed into a legal corner, complaining that he was “obviously overpaying” for the social network. But he hit the ground running, firing top execs and promising a content moderation council even as he tweeted a conspiracy theory to his more than 112 million followers. Here are six questions brewing about Twitter under Musk. “Musk would be foolish to make moves that would destroy the value of the (overpriced) thing he just bought, by scaring off advertisers and users and thus crimping Twitter’s primary revenue stream.” • Will Musk turn Twitter into a swamp of right-wing…

It’s de rigueur now when a show is canceled: Disappointed studio execs and producers promise fans that they’ll shop their orphaned series to other outlets. Most of the time, nothing happens — after all, who wants to pick up a show that no one was watching in the first place? But sometimes, the stars align: Netflix was able to nab “Cobra Kai” when YouTube got out of the scripted originals business and turn it into a monster hit. But the case of “Girls5eva” is a bit unique. The Universal TV comedy aired for two seasons on sister outlet Peacock to raves from TV critics — but crickets in the general population. The nascent streaming service wasn’t going to give the show a third season (figuring money could be better spent…

Start spreading the news: Viewers want to be a part of “East New York.” But audiences won’t come aboard “The Real Love Boat,” which last week became the first broadcast casualty of the fall season. That’s the topsy-turvy fall at CBS, which can boast both the most-watched new shows and the first cancellation. The Eye network’s cop drama “East New York” has been booked as the top-rated freshman series among adults 18-49, according to early Nielsen returns. Of course, it leads with a 0.6 rating, a minuscule number that illustrates the cold, hard truth about primetime viewership in the streaming age. Among total viewers, another procedural, CBS’ “Fire Country,” leads among freshman entrants with an average of just above 6.4 million viewers so far. “East New York” is close behind,…

To belt or not to belt? That was the question bedeviling Annie Symons, the costume designer of Amazon’s “My Policeman,” when it came to outfitting Harry Styles. In the film, streaming Nov. 4, the pop star plays Tom, a gay constable forced into a loveless marriage in 1950s Brighton. And, you see, it turns out that police officers at the time didn’t wear belts, which was a little bit of a problem for Symons. “I needed Tom to look young, svelte and handsome, and prior to introducing a belt, policemen looked a bit like navy blue tree trunks,” says Symons. “I had raging arguments with the so-called experts, but ultimately I decided to leave all the academics shaking their heads and the belt went on.” Symons used wool twill from…

The first TV series adapted from a TikTok is upon us, though it’s also rooted in a ground-breaking Latino show from the early 2000s. The premiere of NBC’s “Lopez vs. Lopez” on Nov. 4 will bring George Lopez back to broadcast network comedy 15 years after the conclusion of his self-titled ABC series. This time, he’s sharing the soundstage with his daughter, Mayan Lopez. They star as a father and a daughter working to repair their relationship in a fictionalized version of their own experience. Mayan and George hadn’t been on regular speaking terms for nearly a decade because of his infidelity and eventual split from her mother. But when the pandemic hit, their worry for George, who is immunocompromised, unexpectedly brought the whole family back together — and Mayan…