Variety 9/20/2023

Nothing happens in a vacuum. That’s one of the first things you learn when covering macroeconomics in general and the entertainment business in particular. We decided to zero in on the merger of UFC and WWE because it’s a splashy transaction that reflects so many trends in the world of pay TV, sports and fandom. It’s catnip for editors when one big newsy story slams itself right into the crosscurrents of influential market developments. But that was before Disney and Charter Spectrum engaged in a 12-day standoff over contract carriage terms for ESPN and other channels owned by the Mouse House. That was not an insignificant battle to UFC, which banks on ESPN as its key distribution partner in the U.S. It also validated our general thesis that the business…

TV editor Michael Schneider spent a few days embedded with “The Amazing Race” and later risked his life performing one of the show’s challenges, all for a story. Senior entertainment writer Adam B. Vary used artificial intelligence to transcribe his interview with filmmaker Gareth Edwards about his AI epic “The Creator”; otherwise, no robots were used for this piece. Chief correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister was the only journalist invited to the infamous “Bachelor” mansion to watch history unfold as cameras rolled on night one of “The Golden Bachelor.” Social media editor Katcy Stephan went web-slinging around New York (virtually, that is) as she previewed the highly anticipated game Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.…

It’s 6:34 a.m., and the sun is rising as Gerry Turner hands out his final rose of the night. His bedtime came and went long ago. Giddy producers are watching him from a control room, 11 hours into an overnight shoot that’s not done yet. Turner isn’t exactly a night owl. Typically at this time, the 72-year-old would just be waking up to fry some bacon and eggs. His day might then include a jog around the lake, or perhaps a game of pickleball. But on a summer night at a mansion in the hills above Malibu, Calif., Turner has been speed-dating 22 women who’d arrived in limousines to meet him. His teenage granddaughters had helped him choose the perfect tuxedo, so he would look his best. After all, their…

One of Google’s founding principles, famously, was “Don’t be evil.” The U.S. government isn’t accusing the internet behemoth of behaving evilly, exactly — but it is alleging Google violated antitrust law to preserve its virtual monopoly on search. Almost three years after the Justice Department filed its antitrust suit against Google, a trial in the case commenced Sept. 12 in D.C. District Court and is expected to run 10 weeks. It’s a watershed moment: United States of America v. Google LLC marks the first antitrust case to go to trial since the U.S. attempted to break apart Microsoft in the late ’90s over tying the Internet Explorer browser to Windows. What’s the likely outcome? Legal experts say the case will probably have limited effect on the search market or how…

The documentarian Roger Ross Williams usually establishes trust by getting a meal with his subjects before shooting. In the case of “The Super Models,” he and co-director Larissa Bills were meeting four legends. Cindy Crawford hosted the pair at her Malibu home; Christy Turlington took them to a bookstore in Manhattan; Naomi Campbell Zoomed them from her closet. (“She was very apologetic,” says Bills, but “her closet was as big as my apartment.”) In early 2020, Crawford, Turlington, Campbell and Linda Evangelista came to Imagine Entertainment with the notion of executive producing a documentary about their reign over fashion in the 1980s and ’90s. Williams, an Oscar winner for 2009’s “Music by Prudence,” and Bills were brought in to tell their collective story of living as icons — and finding…

Stuart Gordon is known as a master of horror, a title earned from his work on such seminal 1980s films as “Re-Animator,” “From Beyond” and “Dolls.” But the director, who died in 2020, was also a master storyteller — so his family can be forgiven for thinking he was prone to fabulation. “I would compare it to the movie ‘Big Fish’ in how someone might exaggerate,” recalls Jillian Gordon, one of his three daughters. “He would tell you these stories, and you’d think, ‘Is that really what happened?’ It was only after he passed and I was going through his emails and archives that I realized it was all true.” Indeed, Gordon made movies, but his life had enough twists, turns and serendipitous encounters to command its own film. Now…