Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/2/2022 i Variety

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,…

Don’t call “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” just another comic book movie. Helmed by Ryan Coogler, the sequel to the 2019 best picture nominee delivers a wrenching story of grief and reclamation, as the family of T’Challa — played by the late Chadwick Boseman — adjusts in a world coping with his death. At the center of the saga is Angela Bassett as Ramonda, the queen mother of Wakanda, who carries the devastating loss of her child with stunning resolve. Bassett’s ferocious work is arriving in a wideopen Oscar race for supporting actress. An Oscar-size crater was created in the category when Michelle Williams’ camp announced her lead actress campaign for her role in “The Fabelmans.” As it stands, multiple performers from the same films are vying for supporting attention. Meanwhile…

Oct. 27 WIF Honors The Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills This year’s event celebrated women forging a path toward transforming Hollywood, including those behind upcoming film “She Said.” Based on the book by journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the drama follows their investigation of Harvey Weinstein’s decades of abuse. “How we ended up on the big screen, let alone at an awards ceremony like this, is something that is going to take, frankly, years to understand,” Kantor told Variety before she and Twohey received the Crystal Award for Advocacy. Actor-activist Jane Fonda presented her eponymous humanitarian award to Michaela Coel (“I May Destroy You”), though she wasn’t in attendance. “The way she writes and her values may just be the kinds of things that are going to save the world, if…

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2022 is as diverse as they come, ranging from a daughter of early Americana (the late Elizabeth Cotten) to a true multi-hyphenate (Harry Belafonte) to game-changers in music production (Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis) and industry titans (Jimmy Iovine) — not to mention icons of country (Dolly Parton), hip-hop (Eminem), pop (Duran Duran, Eurythmics) and, of course, rock (Pat Benatar, Judas Priest). To pay tribute to the performers being inducted on Nov. 5, Variety teamed with the on-air talent of SiriusXM, whose programming runs the musical gamut, day in, day out. Duran Duran BY LORI MAJEWSKI SiriusXM Volume “WE WERE PERFECT,” Duran Duran’s John Taylor told me in 2013, “and very few bands come out of the bag perfectly formed. A…

Sylvia Robinson (1935-2011) has deservedly been called “the mother of hip-hop” for her efforts in co-founding and running Sugar Hill Records. But even as impressive an honorific as that can’t begin to encapsulate a wide-ranging career that predated the dawn of rap and unfolded over a remarkable half-century in music. Like her fellow 2022 Ahmet Ertegun Award honorees, Grubman and Iovine, Robinson created a world in which musicmakers could come to the fore and thrive. Not only did she co-found one of the first hip-hop labels, Sugar Hill Records, and serve as its CEO, but she was one of the architects of its signature hits as co-writer and producer of “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang and “The Message” (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Robinson had…

In 2021 with America barely emerging from the pandemic, Louis Faranda and his team struggled to get comedians and clubs to commit to the New York Comedy Festival. This year, however, people were approaching Faranda way back in February, eager to be included in the event running Nov. 7-13. The result is a festival “with more shows than ever — more than 150 shows and way over 200 comedians,” says Caroline Hirsch, festival founder and Carolines on Broadway owner. She says the fest continues expanding into new territory including the UBS Arena, just over the Queens border into Nassau County, the brand-new Midnight Theatre in Manhattan and even the Gutter in Williamsburg. “Now we’re doing comedy in bowling alleys.” The festival is expanding in other ways too. In addition to…

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…

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…

My mother died on Sept. 29. I don’t know how to grieve. I cried when she took her last breath. I cried a couple of days later when I eulogized Arlene Malkin from the pulpit of a Long Island funeral home in front of about 75 friends and family members. The crying actually began about six months before, when my mother was put in hospice care. She wasn’t admitted to a facility but taken care of at home. In her own bed. There was nothing more to be done. There would be no more doctor visits or trips to emergency rooms. The poking, prodding and testing were to stop. I traveled back and forth between New York and Los Angeles several times during her final months. As my mother’s health…

The international feature film race has always been a minefield for global politics and a vehicle for soft power. With no shortage of drama, scandal and diva antics, it’s basically the Eurovision of the film biz. But in recent years, as international contenders have become more powerful following “Parasite’s” boundary-breaking best picture win, this particular Oscar race has invited more scrutiny than ever. The decisions of national film committees are keenly observed, analyzed, debated and even contested. And what many consider the most deserving film doesn’t always make the cut. Besides setting submission deadlines and greenlighting selection committees, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is fairly hands off, and its criteria straightforward: A country’s entry has to be in any language but English (which is why Ruben Östlund’s…

The deadline to submit films in the international Oscar category was Oct. 3, but the Academy has not yet announced the full list of accepted titles, so it is a provisional report. AMPAS will release a shortlist of 15 movies on Dec. 21 and the nominations will be announced Jan. 24. The Oscar ceremony will take place March 12 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. ALBANIA A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On Director: Gentian Koçi LOGLINE: Deaf-mute twins in Tirana discover they have a genetical disease that will take away their sight slowly. They have a decision to make. PRODCO: Artalb Film, Graal ALGERIA Our Brothers Director. Rachid Bouchareb LOGLINE: Mixing documentary and fiction, pic explores police violence and the deaths of student Malik Oussekine and bar patron…

TV REVIEW Documentary: Showtime (4 episodes; all reviewed); Nov. 6 With: Carol Connors, Nicole Spector, Richard Tomlin, Darlene Love The pop hits of Phil Spector — and there are many of them — depend on a theatrical maximalism. As a producer, Spector’s innovation was the “Wall of Sound,” a shockand-awe approach to music that is as dazzling as it is overwhelming. Just listen to the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” or Ike & Tina Turner’s “River Deep — Mountain High” to understand his approach: The songs are so densely orchestrated that they’re practically tactile. Spector’s reputation today is, rightly, more rooted in the events of his life than in the art he made. (He died in 2021, incarcerated for the 2003 murder of the actor Lana Clarkson.) But “Spector,” a four-part…

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…

EVER SINCE Joe and Anthony Russo released “Avengers: Endgame,” in 2019, the sibling directors have been asked over and over if they would ever work again with Marvel Studios. Each time, they’ve tried to politely deflect — “We’re always talking; we’d need to see what would work” — even though, as Joe put it to Variety in early October, they’ve known the truth for years. “We won’t be ready to do anything with Marvel until the end of the decade,” he says. ¶ Instead, the Russos have dedicated themselves to assembling their own creative cosmos with AGBO, the independent, artist-friendly studio they launched in 2017 with producing partner Mike Larocca. Their “Endgame”-sized ambition is no less than to help lead the industry into the future of entertainment, which is why…

Allen Grubman is one of music’s renowned dealmakers. On Nov. 5, the chief partner in the entertainment law firm of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks will be the last of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s original founders to be inducted into the institution he helped launch with none other than Ahmet Ertegun, Jann Wenner and Seymour Stein. When asked about his biggest contributions over his half-century in the music industry, Grubmandoesn’t hesitate with his answer. His work boils down commanding respect for the work of artists. “If you ask me what my contribution has been, it’s that talent is properly compensated, properly treated, properly respected by the people they’re dealing with,” Grubman says of his firm, which now numbers 50 lawyers. “It’s my job to get the most…

The AFI Fest returns this year to its full glory as an in-person event, Nov. 2-6. “You know, we asked ourselves really early on — because the world is still weary from pandemics and politics and the rest — what is a film festival in 2022? And the answer was really clear, which is that the AFI festival is going to be a place for people to come together,” says Bob Gazzale, AFI president and CEO. No hybrid screenings in sight. “While watching a film alone on your computer is great, it does not put the word festive in festival. This is the year to be together and to be present,” he says. The festival kicks off with the world premiere of doc “Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me,” from…