Variety 6/14/2023

At Variety, the reporters in our newsroom would be hard-pressed to name something they love more than summer-movie season. It’s the time of year when so many of us fell in love with the business that we cover. Back in the day, there was that unforgettable feeling of digging into a tub of popcorn as the air conditioning blasted, or breaking curfew to fork over a few dollars to park at the drive-in. And summer could even be a state of mind — the big and bombastic movies that came out in the warmest months were always there waiting at video stores later in the year. So much has changed in Hollywood, and in America, since the communal experience of moviegoing defined relatively carefree times. The industry is anything but…

Senior entertainment and media writer Matt Donnelly profiled new Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy in Las Vegas and Antibes, France. Guess which setting he liked more? Associate web editor Ethan Shanfeld shared a basket of french fries at lunch with Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke and couldn’t help but think of all the shallow Hollywood journalists depicted on their showbiz satire “The Other Two.” Art director Will Hooks designed the pages of this week’s cover story as well as the Biz + Buzz section. “It’s seeing the small pieces come together to form a big picture that makes my job satisfying,” he says. “Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca’s even-keeled and forceful personalities were evident as we moved from setup to setup around…

One of the most influential and alluring jobs in journalism just opened up. But it’s a rescue mission, and the parent company of CNN is about to find out if anybody really wants the task of running the global news operation. Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to move deliberately rather than quickly in its search for a new CEO for CNN. Executives are telling staffers and TV agents that it will likely take a few months to fill the role that Chris Licht held for one turbulent year. Licht, the TV news veteran and “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” executive producer, was ousted last week after spearheading a series of programming moves and talent decisions that kept “Turmoil at CNN” headlines circulating more often than anything else produced by the…

In the summer of 1952, guilds representing directors and actors reached a historic deal with Hollywood studios to earn a residual on TV reruns. But the Screen Writers Guild held out for a royalty — a percentage of the gross, not a flat fee — and declared the first-ever writers strike. After three months, the writers accepted the residual and returned to work. That is the definition of “pattern bargaining,” and that has been the protocol for contract talks for the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA ever since. The largest studios and platforms make a deal with one guild, and the other two are usually forced to take the same general terms. The WGA is now in the middle of its eighth industrywide strike.…

Minimum increases DGA deal ‣ 5%, 4%, 3.5% WGA demand ‣ 6%, 5%, 5% ‣ 25% hike in writer-producer minimums SAG-AFTRA demand ‣ Unknown Foreign streaming residual DGA deal ‣ 76% increase WGA demand ‣ 200% increase SAG-AFTRA demand ‣ Unknown Viewership-based residual DGA deal ‣ Not requested WGA demand ‣ Shows with more views pay more ‣ Data transparency SAG-AFTRA demand ‣ Unknown Artificial intelligence DGA deal ‣ AI is not a person ‣ AI cannot replace director ‣ Consultation on use WGA demand ‣ AI use cannot affect pay, credit ‣ AI cannot be trained on writers’ work SAG-AFTRA demand ‣ No AI use without permission, pay ‣ AI cannot be trained without permission Sources: DGA, WGA, SAG-AFTRA, AMPTP statements…

I’ve always been shy when it comes to writing about Wes Anderson, because he’s a filmmaker I rarely connect with. When I watch one of his movies, I can’t help but see his talent (the visual wizardry, the debonair lapidary cleverness), but I feel like I’m experiencing something that was made on a different planet from the one I live on. I first felt it at the Toronto Film Festival in 1998 when I saw “Rushmore” — because everyone there did a backflip of ecstasy, hailing Anderson as the filmmaker of his generation, and I didn’t get it. I mean, I kind of saw what people were talking about: that “Rushmore” was like “The Graduate” for the new millennium, that the Jason Schwartzman hero had a formidable Holden Caulfield-gone-meta-deadpan attitude…