Variety 5/31/2023

It was hard to take the measure of this week’s cover subject, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. The company has been mired in controversy and investigations for several years over allegations that its offices were hostile places for women to work and that leaders turned a blind eye to sexual harassment. And soon it will be 18 months since Kotick cut a deal to sell Activision to Microsoft for $69 billion in cash. There’s no end yet in sight for the regulatory review process that has dragged on in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. Kotick is a master of networking, which has made him a well-known figure among showbiz movers and shakers. Even with Activision’s travails, he hasn’t been drummed out of the 1% club. He’s highly respected on…

TV editor Michael Schneider is still thinking about the brisket sandwich he ate in Austin at a private party for “Rather,” the new documentary about Dan Rather’s career in journalism. Digital news director Zack Sharf got the stories behind the star power while helping to coordinate Variety’s coverage of the Cannes Film Festival. Illustrator Mike McQuade created the cover collage: “I wanted to evoke a feeling of overseeing a large gaming company by revealing Bobby Kotick’s portrait through screen shapes and a sharp, controlled palette.” Victoria Stevens has been taking portraits at the Cannes Film Festival for more than a decade. “One of my favorite moments this year,” she says, “was when Alicia Vikander showed up to the shoot, hands in the air, and exclaimed, ‘Finally! A female photographer!’”…

These are indeed the waning days of the scripted basic cable juggernaut. That may be a strange thing to point out when once again, the most-watched entertainment show of the just-completed 2022-23 TV season was “Yellowstone,” the modern Western that airs on Paramount Network. But “Yellow-stone” is wrapping up next year, and the only other scripted series from a basic cabler to consistently be ranked among TV’s top shows, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” ended its run last year after 11 seasons. “The Walking Dead” dominated the season-ender charts for years. But as basic cable is almost completely out of the original scripted series business (unscripted hits like “Vanderpump Rules” still abound, of course), those halcyon days are coming to an end. For now, producer Taylor Sheridan can enjoy his moment…

The impact of Tina Turner can be heard in Yola’s music, but it goes far beyond any basic level of influence for the British-born, Nashville-based powerhouse. Before becoming a recording artist and Grammy nominee, she was a teacher in vocal biomechanics who would instruct singers in how to emulate Turner’s singular voice … or how to try. Yola spoke with Variety about Turner, who died May 24 at age 83. In her progression of moving through R&B, becoming known as the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll, and then becoming this pop star, Tina was collecting these things along the way, not leaving any of them behind. Once she makes it to that point of being a pop superstar, the fact that you can hear the rock and the soul in…

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” didn’t invent multiverses, but it showed how they could be explored on-screen. The groundbreaking adventure movie featured the first Afro-Latino Spider-Man in movie history, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), and teamed him with versions of the character drawn from different backgrounds, storytelling tones and even animation styles. A meme-re-creating end-credits scene that had multiple Spider-people pointing at one another hinted at what was yet to come from the film series. Now, in Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (releasing in theaters on June 2), animated-superhero architects Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who co-wrote and produced the sequel) expand their cinematic web to include wall-crawlers from even more eclectic backgrounds. Here are just a few of the far-flung (swung?) Spider-people uniting alongside mainstays Miles, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld)…

AWARDS CIRCUIT The official 2022-23 TV season ended on May 24, according to Nielsen, and as you can see a few pages back in this issue, we’ve got the wrap on this year’s winners and losers in the good ol’ fashioned linear TV world. Football, “Yellowstone” and procedurals, oh my! But we’re not living in a good ol’ fashioned linear TV world anymore. Television didn’t grind to a halt on May 24, and the Memorial Day gantlet of finales and premieres(!) was a fine reminder that TV no longer plays by the rules of a Nielsen calendar. Three of the biggest on-screen events of the year took place on Sunday night: The series finales of HBO’s “Succession” and “Barry,” and the mind-blowing Season 2 ender for “Yellowjackets,” which hit Showtime’s…