Variety 05/29/2024

Some naysayers thought it would be a lackluster 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. But judging by the dispatches from our team of reporters and editors on the ground in the south of France, we can assure you that Cannes still has the power to captivate. The world’s most glamorous celebration of film brought both glitter and grit, with prizes going to films including Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light.” But the Palme d’Or — bestowed by a jury led by “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig — went to Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a raucous comedy about a stripper (played by Mikey Madison) who befriends a young Russian oligarch. Indeed, it was a choice that speaks to…

TV audiences tracked down “Tracker” in a big way this season. The freshman CBS drama, which stars Justin Hartley as a survivalist who helps law enforcement and others solve tough cases, was the 2023-24 TV season’s most-watched entertainment series. According to the Eye network, that’s the first time a first-year TV series was ranked as the No. 1 show since “Survivor” premiered as an instant phenomenon in 2000 (and that was a summer show, so there’s an asterisk on that one). “Tracker” was helped, of course, by premiering in February behind Super Bowl LVIII — giving it a huge jump start. And this was an unusual, truncated TV season due to the Hollywood strikes, which meant limited episodic orders for most programs. Last year’s top-rated show, Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone,” hasn’t…

Apple misread the room Long seen as the gold standard in marketing, the tech giant did a face-plant with its ad for the new iPad Pro tablet. The 60-second spot shows a massive hydraulic press literally crushing an array of objects — including a record player, a piano, a guitar, an old TV set, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and tubes, and a classic arcade machine — and compressing them into (voilà!) the ultrathin iPad Pro. “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Apple CEO Tim Cook cheerily posted on X along with the ad. The commercial was meant to be whimsical and clever. It was instantly panned. “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” actor Hugh Grant posted on X. “Disgusting,” a…

Bran Stark took the Iron Throne. GoJo acquired Waystar Royco. But who will rule the Texas Renaissance Festival? That’s the battle at the center of “Ren Faire,” HBO’s new docuseries, set to air in the network’s coveted Sunday-evening slot during the two weeks ahead of “House of the Dragon” Season 2. “It sounds like that’s what their calculus was, to put it as close to that show as possible,” director Lance Oppenheim says, laughing. “Ren Faire” may have the knights and knaves of “Thrones,” but the power dynamics running through it more closely resemble “Succession.” Produced by Josh and Benny Safdie’s Elara Pictures, the three-episode doc centers on George Coulam, the iconoclastic octogenarian founder of the “nation’s largest Renaissance theme park,” which welcomes about half a million guests annually to…

Mark Johnson has produced some of the most distinctive movies and TV shows of the past 40 years. Think “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Rain Man,” “The Notebook,” “The Holdovers,” “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” Yet Johnson was a surprise choice by AMC Networks to lead its massive investment in building out the Anne Rice literary universe in multiple TV series. AMC bought the TV rights to Rice’s literary vault of Southern Gothic vampire tales in 2020. Four years later, AMC has two successful Rice-based series on the air — “Interview With the Vampire” and “Mayfair Witches” — and a third hot prospect in development: “Talamasca,” which explores a mysterious society within the Rice universe. Johnson had little experience with the fantasy and horror genres. But he was the perfect person…

Back in 2017, a little red debit card was the hottest ticket in town. One swipe of a Movie-Pass membership card gave access to daily movie tickets at a staggeringly low monthly subscription rate of $9.95. And the concept promised to redefine the future of moviegoing. Subscriptions exploded, the company’s stock soared and investors rushed to get in on the venture. But the deal was, as skeptics suspected, too good to be true: MoviePass lost $150 million in 2017, and ultimately shuttered in 2019. It’s tempting to chalk up the failure to an unsustainable business model. Yet the new HBO documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” which premieres May 29, aims to paint a clearer picture of just what went wrong. “There’s a story under the story,” Stacy Spikes, who co-founded MoviePass with…