Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/26/2023 i Variety

In her 64 years as America’s favorite doll, Barbie’s been an astronaut, a nurse and even president. But her latest role may be the toughest one yet. With the help of actor-producer Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig, the doll at the center of Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” has saved the summer box office. Millions of theatergoers dressed in their rosiest, as well as a national shortage of pink paint, were early indicators of just how huge the film might get — and at $162 million for its opening weekend, “Barbie” is without precedent. It’s the biggest opening of all time for a movie made by a female director, not to mention the biggest of the year, leaving “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in its sparkly dust. The success of “Barbie,”…

For the first time in decades, San Diego Comic-Con held its annual fan convention without any major stars or blockbuster panels from Marvel and DC — and the vibes were deeply chill. With actors joining the writers on the picket lines, several panels were canceled outright, and Hall H, the 6,500-person main stage, often sat empty during the convention, which was held July 19-23. Many events for the franchises that did appear — like panels for the “Star Trek” and “The Walking Dead” TV shows and the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” movie — relied heavily on exclusive footage to keep attendees entertained. The tiny handful of stars who showed up did so on the fringes: Both Jamie Lee Curtis and Patton Oswalt came to promote their new comics.…

jeff Zucker was breezing through the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach when he spotted David Zaslav across the room. The former CNN chief was there on vacation on March 31, while the current Warner Bros. Discovery CEO was on hand for the Saudi-backed FII Institute’s Global Priority Summit. As corporate leaders mingled with Saudi princesses, Zucker approached Zaslav with tears in his eyes. Zucker complained that Chris Licht, his CNN successor, was unfairly maligning him in the press, according to sources familiar with the conversation. Zucker insisted he would never deploy such a low-blow tactic. It was a strange claim given that, to that point, Licht had only done a single published profile with The New York Times’ James B. Stewart, in which Zucker was never mentioned. ¶ Zaslav stopped…

Executive editor Brent Lang spent four months trailing Brian Robbins for this week’s cover. The Paramount chief asked him if he was writing a multivolume biography instead of an article. Three months after exposing CNN anchor Don Lemon’s misogyny, executive editor Tatiana Siegel returned to familiar turf following the exit of CEO Chris Licht. This time, she uncovered a secret plot to wrest control of the storied cable news network. “Big Brother” host Julie Chen Moonves admitted to senior editor Emily Longretta that sometimes she watches the live feeds. Before she made that admission, though, she said a prayer. Cover photographer Dylan Coulter says of shooting this week’s cover, “Brian Robbins was a fantastic collaborator, but frankly, getting Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello to stay on their marks was a challenge.”…

Pop-jazz singing legend Tony Bennett died July 21 at age 96, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease seven years earlier. His 75-year career followed a classic three-act structure: a rise through the 1950s and early ’60s that culminated in his biggest hit, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” in 1962; the loss of pop opportunities as rock took over, resulting in deeper explorations of jazz; and a return to superstardom in the 1990s as he won the album of the year Grammy for “MTV Unplugged.” Actually, “we had a fourth act, with Lady Gaga, that lasted 10 years,” says his son Danny Bennett. Danny became his dad’s manager in 1986 and oversaw one of the great comebacks in music, which ended with Bennett and Gaga taping a final special at…

FAVORITE LINES • Bender: Get a room, you two! Man: We’re in a room. Bender: Well then, lose some weight! —“A Head in the Polls” (S2, E7) • Hermes: I’m gonna jump! Bender: Do a flip! —“How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back” (S2, E11) FAVORITE EPISODES • “Anthology of Interest I” (S2, E16) • “Anthology of Interest II” (S3, E18) • “Amazon Women in the Mood” (S3, E1) • “Mars University” (S2, E2) • “The Luck of the Fryrish” (S3, E4) • “Jurassic Bark” (S4, E7)…

July 19-23 Comic-Con International San Diego Convention Center With the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes top of mind at the annual event, a panel of voice actors explained the potential problems concerning artificial intelligence, a major sticking point of the actors and writers walkout. “We’ve got to reject the idea that this is just something that’s going to happen to us and we can’t say anything about it,” SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said. “I think it definitely could — the question is whether we’re going to let that happen.” He added, “All of us could stand up to the abusive use of technology, to really say, ‘We’re going to say what can be done with our bodies, our voices, our faces, our likenesses’ — and we must do that.”…

When director Justin Simien was looking for a composer to score Disney’s “Haunted Mansion,” he called his frequent collaborator Kris Bowers. The two had worked together on “Dear White People” and Simien’s last feature, “Bad Hair.” “I’ve always wanted to have that relationship with the director where you work on a number of projects and develop this trust,” says Bowers. For their latest film, which opens in theaters July 28, Bowers pays homage to the Disney theme-park ride and its famous “Grim Grinning Ghosts” tune while making his mark on the feature. With “Haunted Mansion,” which stars LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson and Rosario Dawson, Bowers tinkered with ghostly organ sounds and brought in elements of New Orleans jazz for the film’s sonic landscape. • Although it’s inspired by…

Prince Royal, an actor in Los Angeles, was working as an extra on a Warner Bros. superhero film when he was directed to a tractor trailer to “take pictures.” Inside were hundreds of cameras. He stood with his arms up as the operators took a 3D scan, which he was told would be used for continuity and special effects. “We were told if we didn’t do it, we’d be sent home without pay,” he says. Now he feels like he was duped. “We don’t know what all our scans are being used for,” he says. “They could possibly use our scans in other movies and shows.” That fear has become a flash-point of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator, has warned that studios want to scan background…

Sitting in her writing office, surrounded by mossy green bookshelves, Jenny Han is telling an origin story of sorts. She was 24, and her first novel was about to be published. At the time, it wasn’t considered appropriate for authors to put their headshot on the back flap of their books. But Han wanted hers to be on it — not for vanity’s sake but to reinforce the magnitude of her achievement. Because when she was younger, she “just didn’t know it was possible to be an author.” Eleven books, three movies and two TV shows later, the YA writer has built a fervent fan base through her ability to capture the flutter of an emerging crush, the euphoria of falling in love, the scald of heartbreak. Netflix’s adaptation of…

Something was amiss with Michelangelo’s waistline. ¶ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the team behind the high school comedy “Superbad,” had sold Brian Robbins, the CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, on the idea of adding some adolescent anarchy into their animated reboot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” But there was a problem with the initial designs for the film’s four reptile heroes: Instead of looking like muscular teens, these Turtles were scrawny and malnourished, barely strong enough to wield nunchucks or hurl a throwing star. “They looked like they were on Ozempic,” Robbins jokes. ¶ In his peripatetic career, the 59-year-old Robbins has been on every end of these kind of creative discussions, working as an actor, writer, director, producer, digital entrepreneur and now, studio chief. And that separates…

MUSIC REVIEW Artist: Post Malone Label: Republic With “Austin,” Post Malone has finally gone full pop star — as opposed to partial “Rockstar,” or hip-hop-adjacent star, or anything else he might’ve previously represented or flirted with. The Post Malone we hear here would have been hard to imagine a few albums ago, when he was employing guest rappers by the boatload (there are none on the new record) and embracing trap sounds (also pretty much now absent). If he was going to turn himself from a part-time rapper into something else, you might have guessed he’d become a rock dude, like Machine Gun Kelly did. But no. “Austin” is his bid to make something so unabashedly pop that it’s practically a cousin to the ’80s-inflected music Harry Styles has been…