Variety 02/07/2024

Barbie has been shaking up the world of entertainment since last summer — but this week, our issue turns its gaze to the man behind America’s favorite doll: Ken. Or, more accurately, the man playing him. We’ve long wanted to speak to Ryan Gosling about his latest on-screen transformation, a far cry from his serious work in movies like “Blue Valentine” and “The Place Beyond the Pines,” but the SAG-AFTRA strike meant that we had to sit tight through the summer and fall. When Gosling finally agreed to talk to us, he made it worth the wait by countering our offer to photograph him in a dream house in the Hollywood Hills with his own concept: Gosling wanted to know if we’d be open to meeting him at the Warner…

Chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario spoke to the creative team behind “Shōgun” and had to do serious time-zone math, as interviewees joined him from London, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Maui. Executive international editor Elsa Keslassy took the pulse of the indie film market on the eve of the Berlin Film Festival, quizzing distributors and sales agents around the world about the upcoming leadership reshuffle at the Berlinale. Photographer Greg Williams says of Ryan Gosling, whom he captured in January, “Ryan was a playful collaborator, even when it came to using one of the biggest toys on the Warner Bros. lot — a cherry picker — to scale the famous water tower.” Photo director Jennifer Dorn highly recommends the Ryan Gosling studio tour at Warner Bros. “Running around the lot, he kept…

Playing to the Crowd The Super Bowl has long been known as the Big Game, but some people out there are treating it like a smaller one. Advertisers typically plunk down millions of dollars for a 30- or 60-second ad in the Super Bowl telecast on the broadcast network showing the annual NFL extravaganza. This year, for the first time, they have some intriguing alternatives. Some have chosen to run commercials only on Univision, which has the rights to air the game in Spanish. Others are relying on ads that will appear only on kids-cable favorite Nickelodeon, which is running a telecast aimed at families. At least one advertiser, Ally Financial, has placed an ad only in the Paramount+ stream of the Super Bowl, rather than on CBS. These niche…

Hannah Gutierrez Reed is scheduled to face a manslaughter trial in two weeks, becoming one of only a handful of people ever tried for an accident on a film set. The case against her is relatively straightforward. She was responsible for safe handling of guns on “Rust,” the Western starring Alec Baldwin. She loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s gun. As a result, Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer, was killed. “The primary goal of an armorer is to ensure that no one is injured by a prop gun,” wrote the prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, in a recent court filing. “Obviously, Ms. Gutierrez failed to ensure that the gun handed to Alec Baldwin was loaded solely with dummy rounds.” The defense will have to persuade the jury that it’s more complicated than that.…

For nearly 40 years, the Walt Disney Co. has largely been seen as an invincible force in the business of entertainment. Sure, the Mouse House has had its good and not-so-good years at the box office and in TV viewership rankings. But with one major exception, in 2004, the company’s status as a high-performing pillar among the world’s largest media companies has rarely been questioned. That changed last year when activist investor Nelson Peltz, chairman of Trian Fund Management, decided to take aim at Disney. Trian and rival firm Blackwells Capital have launched dueling PR campaigns and proxy fights to prod Disney to make changes to its corporate governance and long-term strategy. Both efforts are highly unlikely to achieve their stated goals of forcing new board members on Disney through…

When a network sitcom about a group of public school teachers sets out to make its big comeback after a monthslong strike delay, an issue arises. “Some shows are going to be able to return with no problem,” says “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson, “because they’re not going by a school calendar. But we can’t even play with the summertime!” Season 2 of the Philadelphia-set comedy ran for 22 episodes, from September 2022 to April 2023, which created room for familiar childhood fanfare like Halloween celebrations, fundraisers and Teacher Appreciation Week. The show’s writers intended to reconvene on May 2, but that ended up becoming Day 1 of the WGA strike. When they finally started working on Season 3 in October, they knew they couldn’t abandon the rhythm…