Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/11/2023 i Variety

Variety|4/11/2023

A Keen Eye on How We Watch

We have to credit our dynamic writers Selome Hailu and Jennifer Maas for enlivening this issue with an enterprise story that is long overdue. The pair cast a critical eye on the overall user experience in TV now that streaming has taken root. Hailu and Maas spent months taking the temperature of industry insiders about what they like and don’t like about the user interfaces of major streaming services. After all, who would have better insight than those who craft the content that powers these streamers? Surprisingly, it took a little prodding to get thoughtful responses from the creative community. “Several of the insiders we polled felt they didn’t have enough expertise about interface design to comment — until we mentioned specific items like homepage categories and search functions,” Hailu…

2 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Belle of the Box Office

Jeff Logan is feeling relieved. For the first time since COVID shuttered movie theaters, business is booming, with audiences flocking to see “John Wick: Chapter 4,” “Scream VI” and, just last weekend, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” And Logan, who owns Logan Luxury Theatres in rural South Dakota, is back in the black after enduring two years where profits vanished while studios failed to furnish enough big movies to play. “It’s nice,” he says. “We don’t have to reassure our bankers every time we meet for coffee.” Logan’s theaters aren’t the only ones experiencing a dramatic change of fortunes. Overall, the domestic box office stands at $2.3 billion, up 34% from the same period last year and an astounding 576% improvement over 2021. The exhibition industry is finally looking like…

5 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Alison Herman Joins Variety as TV Critic

Alison Herman is Variety’s new TV critic, joining chief TV critic Daniel D’Addario. In the role, Herman will be a key voice in television criticism, writing reviews, commentary, appreciations and cover stories across all of Variety’s platforms. She will work with editor-at-large Kate Aurthur, who oversees the publication’s TV criticism and features. Herman was a staff writer at The Ringer from 2016 to 2023, where she covered television and popular culture. During her tenure, she wrote columns on new shows, profiled performers such as John Mulaney and reported the definitive piece on the aesthetics of “Succession.” “TV criticism is one of the bedrocks of Variety, as the No. 1 brand covering the business of entertainment,” co-Editors-in-Chief Cynthia Littleton and Ramin Setoodeh say. “Alison’s deep knowledge of television and pop culture…

1 min

Variety|4/11/2023

EXPOSURE

April 6 GQ Global Creativity Awards WSA, New York The inaugural event honored “Squid Game” star Hoyeon, Donald Glover and Tim Cook, among others. “While I was gifted with so many unbelievable experiences thanks to ‘Squid Game,’ I also experienced moments of self-doubt. One day, I wondered, ‘Am I too much?’ And the next day, I asked myself, ‘Am I enough?’” Hoyeon said after being presented with her award by “Pachinko” author Min Jin Lee. “Through it all, I have come to understand that in order to be fearlessly creative, the question that matters is, am I myself?” April 4 ‘Shucked’ Opening Nederlander Theatre, New York Set in the fictional Cob County, the original musical comedy follows Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler in her Broadway debut) as she leaves her small town…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Miami Rises as Cultural Center

Miami, home to the two leading U.S. Hispanic networks — TelevisaUnivision and Telemundo — as well as a host of smaller television companies, studio outposts, recording artists and independent entertainment companies, has long been the cultural epicenter of both Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic population. “It is not just the geographic location that makes Miami a hub: In so many ways, the city is also representative of the cultural diversity across Latin America and among all U.S. Hispanics,” says Karen Barroeta, executive VP, production and development, Telemundo Global Studios, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. “On top of its rich cultural diversity, Miami is a world-class city in which to make television, with the highest quality production studios and a skillful workforce including incredible talent, from production teams to writers and actors,”…

6 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Raúl Alarcón Doubles Down on Radio

When Variety chose to honor Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) founder Raúl Alarcón with its Legends & Groundbreakers Award at its Miami Entertainment Town event on April 13, it picked the perfect person to fit that definition. Among SBS’ 22 stations in the leading eight Latin markets are New York’s WSKQ-FM (Mega 97.9), the most-listened-to and streamed outlet in the U.S. in any language, Miami’s No. 1 station WXDJ-FM (El Nuevo Zol 106.7) and WCMQ-FM (Zeta 92.3) as well as L.A.’s top-ranked KXOL-FM (Mega 96.3) and KLAX-FM (97.9 La Raza), the first FM station to program regional Mexican music such as Norteñas and Banda, which once famously beat out an incredulous Howard Stern in morning ratings on KLSX. “I’m absolutely honored Variety would think of me in those terms,” says Alarcón,…

6 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Beau Is Afraid

FILM REVIEW Director: Ari Aster Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey Poor Beau. Nearly half a century on Earth, and he’s never really lived. Sure, he was born — that much director Ari Aster depicts from Beau’s point of view at the outset of his wildly self-indulgent and frequently surreal third feature, “Beau Is Afraid,” lingering long enough to witness the infant’s umbilical cord being snipped — but what has Beau done with his life since then? Can it be said that he ever really developed an identity apart from his successful single mom, Mona Wasserman, who haunts the film for the better part of three hours before finally revealing herself? Not since “Psycho” has an offscreen mother loomed so large over a protagonist, played here by Joaquin Phoenix,…

5 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Contributors

Variety TV editor Michael Schneider saves everything, including several old 1980s issues of Muppet Magazine, which he brought to his interview with Brett Goldstein — a Muppets superfan who squealed in delight. TV business writer Jennifer Maas gets daily calls from streamers’ news-spinning PR teams. She’s eager to hear their takes on this week’s feature detailing the industry’s brutally honest opinions about the pros and (mostly) cons of the streamers’ user interfaces. Selome Hailu once thought she might grow up to be a graphic designer. She became a reporter instead, but enjoyed returning to her roots to write this week’s story critiquing the designs of different streaming interfaces. “Brett Goldstein — what an awesome guy!” enthuses Peggy Sirota, who photographed our cover subject in Los Angeles on March 25. “Funny,…

1 min

Variety|4/11/2023

The Phantom’s Final Bow

Ask Cameron Mackintosh if “The Phantom of the Opera” will be back, and he doesn’t play coy. “Of course it will return,” he says. “All the great musicals do.” But the British mega-producer, whose credits include “Cats” and “Les Misérables,” also speaks candidly about the forces pushing “Phantom,” the longest-running show on Broadway, to end its record streak on April 16 after 35 years. Even before lockdown, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which had fallen into a boomor-bust pattern of sales fluctuations based on seasonal tourism influxes, seemed to be reaching the end of its life span. “Over the years, the number of good weeks at the box office started to shrink,” Mackintosh says. “Some of the really bad weeks, we lost a lot of money, particularly in New York.”…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

The Little Epic That Did

“The Last Kingdom” didn’t get nearly the promotional push that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” or Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” received. And it didn’t have anything like the budgets of those shows. Yet, as the historical drama series concludes with Netflix film “Seven Kings Must Die,” it’s proving once again why it is one of the most popular shows on streaming. Originally produced for the BBC in 2015 before moving to Netflix for its third season, “The Last Kingdom” has become a sleeper hit for the streamer. The show is regularly praised for its performances, production design and breathtaking battle scenes. The numbers tell the story: Nielsen ranked “The Last Kingdom” at No. 14 on its list of the top 15 streaming originals of 2022, coming…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

JUST FOR KICKS

Here’s the quickest way to make Brett Goldstein speechless: Ask the “Ted Lasso” star and “Shrinking” co-creator how he feels about becoming a sex symbol. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he tells me, after almost doing a spit-take when I bring up what I’ve dubbed “Sexy Brett Goldstein.” “I’m flattered you’re telling me this, and I will expect you to address me as such from now on,” he says, grinning at the madness of me broaching such a silly topic. “How do I feel about becoming a sex symbol? I don’t know. You can say, ‘He blushes, looks confused, his head explodes.’” Sexy Brett Goldstein blushes and looks confused. His head explodes. “Listen,” he says, “If that’s a thing, that has nothing to do with me. That…

13 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Showbiz’s New Beachhead

The dynamic executives and creatives on Variety’s Miami Entertainment Impact list will be celebrated April 13 at the Miami Entertainment Town event, presented by City National Bank Manuel Abud CEO The Latin Recording Academy Abud’s appreciation for Miami is multi-layered. The Latin entertainment and business exec has lived there for the past decade, as it’s the only other place in the world he’s spent the most time in besides his home country of Mexico. He credits the city’s vastly diverse and expanding entertainment network for the Academy’s international expansion in Mexico, Brazil and Spain. “The Latin Recording Academy is a global organization and, just like me, it has made Miami its home for the past decade because we believe it is a city that truly reflects the global and inclusive…

26 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Timbaland’s Sunshine State

It is no understatement to say that Timbaland is one of the most influential and successful songwriter-producers of the last three decades: Justin Timberlake, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Madonna, Drake, Bjork and even Chris Cornell are just the best-known of the literally hundreds of artists that Timothy Zachery Mosely has worked with since the Virginia-born, Miami-based hitmaker first popped onto the scene with records by Aaliyah and Ginuwine in the mid-1990s. His monumentally prolific musical output slowed down to normal speed for a few years while he focused on a multitude of other projects — most prominently “Verzuz,” his pandemic-spawned rap/R&B battle series launched with fellow hitmaker Swizz Beatz, which he says has a top-secret announcement coming that will “take us to a whole other level”; and Beat Club, a…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Beef

TV REVIEW Dramedy: Netflix (10 episodes; all reviewed); April 6 Cast: Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, Joseph Lee, Young Mazino We abhor most in others what we hate in ourselves. So it is that Amy Lau (Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) become enemies despite being kindred spirits. The protagonists of the Netflix half-hour “Beef” first meet when both are behind the wheel, navigating the parking lot of a home improvement store. Each driver is there for different reasons: Danny is a handyman who works at the motel his family used to own; Amy owns a houseplant boutique the hardware chain is in talks to acquire. But the two react in the same way to a minor spat over exiting a spot. Their explosive road rage propels the pair on…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

power of WOMEN

PRESENTED BY Lifetime TUESDAY, APRIL 4 NEW YORK THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS…

1 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Have Feathers — Will Travel

“Fair to middling” is how Angie Dickinson is feeling this morning as she talks about “Rio Bravo,” the 1959 film that made her a star. “Somebody who says they’re great at 90, you can figure out that they lie a lot.” It’s a line that could have come straight from Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett’s script for the film — and a reminder that Dickinson’s gift for delivery isn’t dependent on working with a brilliant director, though she has many times in her seven-decade career. Dickinson has more than 350 screen credits — an enormous body of work that includes “Ocean’s Eleven” (the 1960 original), “Point Blank” and “Dressed to Kill.” She’s set to appear April 13 at the TCM Film Festival to introduce a 4K restoration of Howard…

4 min

Variety|4/11/2023

JUST FOR VARIETY

Mark Consuelos (1) doesn’t mind hand-me-downs from Ryan Seacrest. Consuelos tells me he’s inheriting Seacrest’s dressing room when “Live With Kelly and Ryan” becomes “Live With Kelly and Mark” on April 17. “I’m no dummy,” Consuelos says on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “Ryan is very fancy — he’s got fancy stuff.” When it was announced in February that Seacrest was leaving “Live,” it also was revealed that Consuelos will replace him as his wife Kelly Ripa’s co-host. “The first conversations started with like, ‘That is the worst idea ever,’” Consuelos recalls. As Variety’s Elizabeth Wagmeister reported in March in a cover profile of Ripa for the Power of Women issue, the longtime host’s deal is about $20 million a year. Consuelos says of his pay,…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

IT’S COMPLICATED

TELEVISION VIEWING has never offered consumers more agency. Though the streaming revolution has provided viewers with a dizzying array of TV and movie choices, it has also led to a free-for-all in how that content is accessed across various devices. Every streaming service has added custom touches to the overall user interface — the tabs, the rewind and fast-forward buttons and myriad other functions that viewers need in order to cue up their shows. From the ability to speak into the Apple TV remote’s microphone instead of using a search bar to the fateful day when Netflix allowed users to shut off the bombardment of homepage auto-play, the interactions that fans have with streaming services have come a long way. But according to Hollywood insiders — who may have an…

7 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Buyers Go Nuts for Coconut Grove

Once bohemian and artsy, the leafy bayside enclave of Miami’s Coconut Grove has gone decidedly upscale. In 2022, the suburb was home to Miami’s priciest residential real estate transaction when entrepreneur and Citadel CEO Ken Griffin paid $106 million for two mansions on a combined lot with expansive bayfront frontage and unobstructed views. Jill Hertzberg of the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker Realty, who represented Griffin, describes the 4-acre estate as akin to a Picasso and “priceless.” The pandemic accelerated the Grove’s popularity, attracting transplants from New York, Chicago (such as Griffin) and California due to its proximity to all things great about Miami — including well-regarded private schools, a relatively quick drive to downtown, sophisticated dining, bayside parks and the revitalized Dinner Key pleasure boat marina. According to…

3 min

Variety|4/11/2023

Brandon Scott Jones

“When you’re young and doing theater, in your brain you’re essentially on Broadway.” Brandon Scott Jones loves horror films. But the actor and writer, who stars in the CBS series “Ghosts” as forgotten Revolutionary War soldier Capt. Isaac Higgintoot, has yet to appear in the horror genre. That all changes with the April 14 release of “Renfield,” starring Nicolas Cage as Dracula and Nicholas Hoult as his put-upon underling. Jones plays Mark, the leader of a co-dependency support group who advises Renfield — with no idea just how toxic his relationship with the vampire truly is. Jones will also be seen in the third season of “The Other Two,” hitting HBO Max on May 4, reprising his role as Curtis, the confidant to aspiring actor Cary (Drew Tarver). • “Renfield”…

3 min