Variety 10/18/2023

From “The Wizard of Oz” to “Gone With the Wind,” from “Hamlet” to “Harry Potter,” some of the greatest movies in the history of Hollywood have come from the printed page. So literary Hollywood — and the race to develop the next “Game of Thrones” or “The God-father” from library shelves — has been a subject we’ve long wanted to explore in a special issue of Variety. Our reporter Selome Hailu’s trip to Vancouver in January gave us the opportunity. Hailu visited the set of the upcoming TV show “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” — the second stab at adapting Rick Riordan’s smash young-adult book series after 20th Century Fox’s 2010 film and its sequel had a box office fate that looked more like “The Golden Compass” than “The Hunger…

Reporter Selome Hailu grew up reading Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” books. So it was a full-circle moment when, on the set of the new show, she spilled coffee all over herself and Riordan himself brought her a new cup. On the set of “All the Light We Cannot See,” executive editor of international Elsa Keslassy told Shawn Levy and Mark Ruffalo that her 13-year-old son was a fan of the Hulk — so they made him a video saying hi. Deputy photo editor Richard Maltz knew Variety’s cover subjects would be a fun group to photograph when Aryan Simhadri and Walker Scobell asked for the “Rocky” soundtrack to be played during the shoot. Cover photographer Peter Yang says about the stars of “Percy Jackson,” “They were a blast. I don’t…

For the past five months, it’s been “eerily quiet” at Steiner Studios, a sprawling complex of soundstages in Brooklyn. When the Writers Guild of America ended its strike on Sept. 27, Doug Steiner, the chairman of the company, was hoping production would rebound. But on Oct. 11, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers suspended talks with SAG-AFTRA, meaning there is still no end in sight for the actors strike. The sides held five bargaining sessions this month, but management surprised the union with a late-night announcement that they were too far apart to stay at the table. “I’m more stressed out than ever given the pause in the SAG negotiations,” Steiner tells Variety. “We’re just hoping it ends sooner rather than later. The amount of collateral damage is…

During the recently ended writers strike, many staffers on TV’s late-night shows couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal. Roy Wood Jr. was surprised to find he was not one of them. Wood, one of the faux news correspondents on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” since 2015, says the strike got him thinking about his place at the venerable series — and about late-night TV in general. He decided to exit, even though he’s been seen in some circles as a candidate to take over as host of the program, which has been without a steady on-air leader since Trevor Noah left in late 2022. “I do not believe late night as we know it will be the way we continue,” Wood tells Variety. “Budgets are changing, and…

It’s hard to overstate the late 1970s stardom of Suzanne Somers, who died on Oct. 15 in Palm Springs at 76. “Three’s Company” made Somers one of the most popular faces on TV, thanks to Chrissy Snow, the naive and charming character she played on the ABC sitcom. Somers fought for equal pay decades before it became a rallying cry for female actors — and she wound up getting fired for it. But Somers bounced back with TV series like “She’s the Sheriff” and “Step by Step,” and became a ubiquitous author and TV pitch woman. Perhaps even more importantly, she inspired a new generation of stars — including Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg. Here, the performer pays tribute to her mentor and longtime friend. We all aspire to leave behind a positive…

Here comes the Hulu showdown. The brawl over the sale of Comcast’s 33% stake in the streamer to Disney could come to a head as early as Nov. 1. The expected outcome is that Disney and Comcast will finalize the transaction early next year. But the two sides will likely have to turn to a third-party referee to determine the final price tag. The long-held theory on Wall Street is that Disney, the majority stakeholder in the streaming service, has not expanded Hulu outside the U.S. so as not to increase the streamer’s value — and thus keep a lid on what it will have to shell out to Comcast. Once it owns Hulu outright, Disney will be poised to launch it as a general-entertainment service worldwide. Disney and Comcast…