Variety 11/29/2023

By the time we get to the last push on our annual Hitmakers issue, the entertainment world is just starting to reflect on the year that was. Oh, there will be lists in the coming weeks — so many lists. But in fact Hitmakers is a year-round editorial project in terms of planning, tracking, analyzing and reviewing the biggest songs of the year. We study a wide range of sync, sales and audience data to determine the year’s Top 25 hits. We also go with our gut on recruiting the biggest music players of the year for in-depth interviews and profiles. Jem Aswad, our executive editor of music, led the charge in assembling this genre-rich package. Aswad put SZA at the top of his wish list of cover subjects early…

Our Hitmakers cover story took Jem Aswad, executive editor of music, to a strange and beautiful desert ranch high in the hills of Malibu, where horses, tarantulas and SZA roamed free. Chief music critic Chris Willman spent time in Nashville with Ashley Gorley, who showed up fresh from a songwriters’ Bible study; then he came home to L.A. to see Boygenius, who were about to go on “SNL” to perform “Satanist.” “I wanted the day to feel like an escape for SZA,” says cover photographer Mason Poole. “The ranch in Malibu where we did the shoot gave us exactly that. SZA looked right at home in the golden afternoon sunlight.” Says photographer Jingyu Lin about Boygenuis: “It was an experience to capture the dynamic between people who have such an…

Every year around Christmas, Phoenix Theatres puts all of its chips on one major tentpole, gambling on a movie so big, so broadly appealing, it’ll keep auditoriums stocked into the new year. In the recent past, the Midwest-based chain has gone all in on 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” But this holiday season is different. For the first time in more than a decade, excluding the pandemic-stricken 2020, there’s no surefire blockbuster with the potential to gross $1 billion globally to cap off the year. “You can’t look at the release schedule between now and the end of the year and find one movie that stands out like ‘Avatar’ as the big film,” says Phoenix Theatres…

All summer long, writers and actors led a backlash against artificial intelligence outside studio gates. “AI has no soul,” one picket sign read. “ChatGPT doesn’t have childhood trauma.” But in the end, the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA embraced a balanced approach to the technology. Both guilds obtained job protections against AI abuse, including consent and protection against diminishment of pay. But their agreements also allow the use of AI tools both in screenwriting and in the creation of performances. AI companies have been pleased with the outcome, which sets up guardrails for further development of such tools. “I’m happy with the agreement the WGA made,” says James Yu, the co-founder of Sudowrite, an AI fiction writing tool. “We believe in the power of the writer to choose whether…

On a cold November Saturday night, hordes of mulleted and mustachioed Brooklynites line up outside Warsaw, the Greenpoint punk club, waiting to see indie rock band Geese. On a wall opposite the box office, a sign warns: “No Moshing.” That rule is broken not 20 minutes into the set, when the band unleashes the guitar riffs of “2122,” a shape-shifting blues-rock romp flecked with nonsense lyrics, banjo plucking and Elvis impersonations. “Voodoo Balarama Baba Yaga, I’m taking my love to the outside!” Cameron Winter yowls a cappella, with a delivery that would do Jon Spencer proud, before a distorted guitar spirals over pattering drums. It all somehow … works? That’s because Geese grasps a fundamental aspect of rock ’n’ roll that seems lately to have been neglected: It’s supposed to…

Filmmakers finally dipping their toes into television often embrace the trope that they’re not actually doing TV — instead, they’re doing a “10-hour movie” split into segments, or some other nonsense. Here’s the truth: Filmmakers have been making TV for years; they just didn’t realize it. But now that the tide has turned and the small screen is no longer seen by the movie crowd as a step down, directors are rushing to recut their films into the lengthy opuses they always wanted to release. And how do they do that? As television episodes, naturally. (Just don’t tell them that: They still think they’re making movies.) The trend has picked up steam this fall, as Canada’s CBC has endeavored to recut several films into limited series — like the recent…