HOLLYWOOD’S TOP INNOVATORS SUNDANCE: ‘FIRST PETRI DISH’ OF COVID-19? CALLING B.S.

ON CEO SALARY SACRIFICES

15 trailblazers transforming showbiz More than a dozen attendees make the case Why execs pledging to forgo base pay
through the coronavirus crisis and beyond that they contracted the virus at the festival (but not bonuses) is mostly optics

May 6, 2020

TIKTOK
BOOM!
The explosive, 2-billion strong social media app is going Hollywood, leveraging a massive
sheltering-at-home audience hungry for new content to draw A-listers onto the platform
and turn its homegrown roster into bankable stars (with reality TV shows, of course)
 FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
& RON CHERNOW
PULITIZER PRIZE ®-WINNING AUTHOR OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON

3-NIGHT MINISERIES EVENT

MEMORIAL DAY | 9P

32
FEATURES
32 (Tik)Tok of the Town
The easy-to-mock-but-impossible-to-
ignore social media behemoth is going
Hollywood, leveraging a massive
sheltering-at-home audience hungry
for new content to draw A-listers onto
the platform and turn its homegrown
roster into bankable stars (with reality
TV shows, of course).
38 15 of Hollywood’s Top Innovators
From the team that made the cross-
network One World: Together at Home
broadcast possible to the director
who cut production costs by acquiring
a high school, THR spotlights the
boundary-pushers — those reinventing
how content is created, developed and
distributed — poised to thrive when
Hollywood’s production shutdown ends.
48 Shut Down and Sheltering
in Place, From a
Cinematographer’s Camera
Six lensers — trailblazers and Oscar
winners among them — document
the Hollywood lockdown, including
packing up a production and following
stay-at-home directives: “COVID-19 casts
a long shadow over all of us.”
50 Campaigning During a
Pandemic, Carefully
With the TV Academy banning the panels,
parties and other events that have long
been the staple of Emmy season, awards
experts must reassess how to push con-
tenders in a fragile climate: “No one wants
to look promotional right now.”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
30
THE REPORT
5 Will VOD Trolls Be a Win?
NBCUniversal inflamed tensions with
theater chains in order to rack up
about $100 million in on-demand rental
fees for Trolls World Tour, but the
jury is out on the ultimate success of
the experiment.
10 Sundance: A Possible ‘First Petri
Dish’ of Coronavirus
A swath of attendees suffered harsh
flu-like symptoms, leading a microbi-
ologist to question whether the January
festival was “the perfect formula to
contaminate everybody.”
ABOUT TOWN
15 How I’m Living Now: A Day in the
Lockdown Life of Paul Feig
With a Fox pilot on hold, the always-
dapper comedy master shares his own
photo essay of life at home in Burbank
and talks about his new nightly mixology
show on Instagram: “It is a lot of cocktails.”
16 The Hollywood Attorney Driving
$40M in L.A. COVID Aid
20 Rambling Reporter
THE BUSINESS
22 Creative Space: Rob Bredow
The head of Industrial Light & Magic on
producing VFX from home and how his
team’s virtual production developments
could be “an important part of us being
able to get back to work sooner.”
2 M AY 6, 2020
Issue No. 12, May 6, 2020
32
Teenager Charli D’Amelio says
she “was just making videos
for fun like everyone else was.”
Now she has more than
50 million followers on TikTok.
15
While stuck at home, director
Paul Feig has been mixing
cocktails, even creating new
15
ones, for a streaming show.
30
The Chorizo con Papa taco
kit is available for takeout from
Hermanito, a restaurant on
Sawtelle Boulevard that actor
Walton Goggins recommends.
24 Cannes Virtual Film Markets
‘Selling Hope’ Amid Global Crisis
26 Even in Extreme Times, Celebrity
Apologies Can Fall Short
After saying something dangerous
(Dr. Phil on COVID-19) or something
ignorant (Jeff Goldblum on Islam),
public figures tend to double down on
the offense or give a snarky non-apology.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar offers advice
on expressing contrition the right way.
STYLE
28 Channel That Cabin Fever
Stay fit with the best in gear, apps,
streaming content and L.A. gyms that
have pivoted to virtual group classes.
30 Walton Goggins’
Fave Takeout Spots
The actor and Mulholland Distilling
co-founder picks his L.A. go-to’s
for food, pantry staples and, yes,
cocktail kits: “We couldn’t make another
fucking dinner at home!”
REVIEWS
52 I Know This Much Is True
D’AMELIO: @CHARLIDAMELIO/TIKTOK. TACOS, FEIG: COURTESY OF SUBJECT.
Mark Ruffalo delivers a bravura turn
as troubled twins in HBO’s alternately
ON THE COVER
exhausting and exhilarating six-part Illustration by
adaptation of the Wally Lamb best-seller. The Sporting Press
53 The Great SEE YOU SOON
Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult headline The next issue publishes
Hulu’s tart and lively, if shallow, Catherine June 3. Keep up with breaking
news, reviews and video at
the Great series from the co-writer of THR.com and via Facebook,
The Favourite. Twitter and Instagram.
 “
++++
WHIPSMART AND WICKEDLY FASCINATING
HUGH JACKMAN IS STELLAR...ALLISON JANNEY IS AMAZING ”
“Jackman gives a “A bright, sharp-edged satire… “Janney brings her
CAREER-HIGH PERFORMANCE” JACKMAN AND JANNEY ARE A GIFT” A-GAME”

“THE BEST WORK OF JACKMAN’S CAREER “JACKMAN IS BETTER THAN EVER

JANNEY IS ASTONISHING” JANNEY IS EXCELLENT”

“THE PERFORMANCES COULDN’T BE BETTER

Jackman and Janney are brilliant...Geraldine Viswanathan is excellent...Ray Romano is perfect”

“JACKMAN IS DARKLY “MESMERIZING “TERRIFIC, DARKLY FUNNY… “SUPERB...

CHARISMATIC” CHARACTER STUDIES” SURPRISINGLY THRILLING” JACKMAN IS SUBLIME”

“Appallingly funny… “Perfect for our times… “Masterful…A diabolically

Irresistible… Delicious” Excellent … Remarkable” smart American crime story”

AN HBO FILM BASED ON A TRUE STORY

AND STREAMING SOON ON

TODAY,
WE THANK YOU.
To the healthcare and support workers who serve our vulnerable
MPTF community, you have our deepest gratitude and admiration.
$QGWRHYHU\RQHRQWKHIURQWOLQHVĆJKWLQJ&29,'DURXQGWKH
world: we thank you for your courage and dedication.

mptf.com/donate #TodayWeThank
 ↑ Moguls
CEOs’ Pay ‘Sacrifice’
Execs forgo salaries
but keep big bonuses p. 8

Film
‘First Petri Dish’
The Re ort Behind the Headlines
Was Sundance a COVID-19
hotspot? p. 10

Heat Index

Travis Scott
The artist, who performed
his single “The Scotts” on
Fortnite to 12 million players,
nabs his third No. 1 on
Billboard’s Hot 100 as it earns
42.2 million U.S. streams
in the week ending April 30.

Will Trolls’ VOD Experiment

Make Any Money?
Bob Chapek
As the new Disney CEO
manages closures amid a
pandemic, the company
reveals May 5 that its Parks,
Experiences and Products
As Justin Timberlake looks for backend and theater owners brood over NBCU’s on-demand play,
division has taken an rivals think profit may be out of reach: ‘They probably overhyped it’ BY KIM MASTERS

estimated $1 billion hit so far.
Chip and Joanna Gaines
As cable ratings fall overall,
MURDOCH: STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES. TROLLS: DREAMWORKS ANIMATION LLC/UNIVERSAL PICTURES. SHELL: TODD WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGES. TIMBERLAKE: ANGELA WEISS/
U
niversal’s experiment with
releasing Trolls World Tour
on demand in the midst of
a pandemic has been full of sur-
prises. For starters, NBCUniversal
shocked theater owners by not
notifying them in advance that it
It also may surprise many peo-
ple that despite NBCU’s boast that
the Trolls sequel has scored almost
$100 million domestically from
the on-demand release, the movie
is still millions in the red and, in
the opinion of some industry vet-
Jeff Shell expressed his excite-
ment about the numbers in a Wall
Street Journal interview that was
followed a couple of days later by
an ominous April 30 earnings
call in which he said the com-
pany was looking to cut costs

the Discovery reality stars

drive the DIY Network to its was going to offer the title on pre- erans, may never make a dime. (A “pretty aggressively.”
highest-rated day April 26
AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. SCOTT: THEO WARGO/WIREIMAGE. CHAPEK: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/WIREIMAGE. GAINES: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES. LACK: HEIDI GUTMAN/NBC.

with 870,000 viewers for its
Magnolia Presents special.
Andy Lack
The NBC News chairman,
who led the division since 2015,
will exit by the end of May,
with Telemundo chief Cesar
Conde set to succeed him.
Showbiz Stocks
$513.44 (+1.6%)
CHARTER (CHTR)
The cable giant reports
stronger quarterly earnings
revenue numbers May 1,
including a 582,000 uptick in
broadband user growth.
$44.33 (-2.5%)
WWE (WWE)
Despite a strong quarter with
increased TV rights fees, the
sports entertainment outfit
battled depressed ratings and
a downturn in live business.
mium on demand. They reacted
badly to the perceived attack on
their traditional windows.
But the studio also caught
its own talent off guard when
it revealed early on-demand
plans for the animated tentpole.
Sources tell THR that the Trolls
sequel’s top voice stars, includ-
ing Justin Timberlake and Anna
Kendrick, also were not informed
ahead of the March 16 announce-
ment that the film would be
available to rent for $19.99 online.
This is not the sort of surprise
such people usually like, and it’s a
sensitive matter because compen-
sation for big stars in animated
films is largely tied to box office
bonuses. The stars’ reps are now
asking for them to be paid, no
doubt to the tune of seven figures,
but they are still game to publi-
cize the film.
source with firsthand knowledge
of the studio’s thinking says that
despite the doubters, Universal
believes it can make $40 million
or more in profit from all revenue
sources.) But the
untested proposition
in this on-demand
experiment is what
happens to revenue
Timberlake
from later windows,
including the all-important
overseas box office in countries
where on-demand is not yet a big
business, as well as subsequent
electronic and DVD sales.
“They probably overhyped it,”
says Hal Vogel of Vogel Capital
Management. “But like most
people in the business, they
haven’t had a lot of success in
the past two or three months, so
any ray of sunshine helps.” Other
observers note that NBCU CEO
Whatever happens, a critical
point is that the Trolls release
is a unique experiment from
which limited information can
be extrapolated. It had a budget of
about $100 million or more and
benefited from a big-movie mar-
keting campaign, complete with
promotional tie-ins, that cost the
studio more than $35 million in
the U.S. alone. Universal won’t
be running this type of experi-
ment with the next Fast & Furious
movie; the budget is too big and
the potential box office return
too great. (The most recent film
grossed $1.2 billion worldwide, a
number that cannot be generated
from $19.99 on-demand rentals.)
In the Journal interview,
Shell horrified theater owners
by declaring the Trolls experi-
ment to be such a success that
NBCU plans to release movies

April 28-May 5

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 5 M AY 6, 2020

 The Report
Behind the Headlines
“on both formats” when cinemas
reopen. AMC Theatres CEO Adam
Aron responded with a threat
to boycott Universal’s films and
said that the conglomerate was
trying to “have its cake and eat
it too” with the on-demand play.
Universal quickly issued a clari-
fication expressing its support of
theaters, but the studio’s policy
remains unclear.
As for the ultimate success of
the Trolls experiment, the jury is
way out. It’s well situated to break
through clutter as an already
familiar piece of
intellectual property.
And Universal keeps
a bigger percentage
domestic
of revenue from on-
on-demand revenue for
demand than it would first three weeks of
release, since April 10
from box office; on the
minus side, there are
the questions about
revenue from other
sources, including
box office gross after
overseas markets. (The
film was offered on
demand only in the U.K. and a few
other places.) The original Trolls
grossed $154 million domesti-
cally, but $193 million overseas.
Exploiting the movie theatri-
cally in some markets, like Latin
America, will depend
on the chains open-
ing and on theater
owners agreeing to
Kendrick play it. Cineworld,
which has a major
presence in that important mar-
ket, has also said it will boycott
Universal films in reaction to
Shell’s comments. A veteran the-
ater executive who runs another
chain says he has no doubt that
major overseas distributors will
THR/Morning Consult Poll
How likely
are you to go to a
movie theater
within a month
of your state
passing
White House
benchmarks
to reopen?
Source: THR/Morning Consult poll conducted from April 30 to May 2 among a nationally
representative sample of 2,200 adults; percentages are rounded, don’t equal 100.
see Trolls as a relatively easy
opportunity to punish the studio.
Then there is the question of
subsequent sales of the movie.
Universal is following the normal
course, which is to put a film on
sale electronically as early as
74 days after it opens in the-
aters, or in this case on demand.
Trolls (available for electronic
purchase June 23) will cost
the standard $19.99, the same
amount Universal charged for
the premium on-demand rental.
A couple of weeks later, Trolls
will be available on DVD and to
rent digitally for roughly $5.99.
“I don’t think they’ll completely
cannibalize [sales],” says the head
of another entertainment com-
pany, “but whether it’s
TROLLS WORLD 5 percent or 50 percent,
TOUR (2020)
I am certain that their
$100M
premium
ancillaries will be
less valuable.”
As for the stars,
the original deals for
Trolls were struck a
TROLLS (2016)
few years ago, before
$153M on-demand was a
total domestic real business. Talent
its Nov. 4 release reps are not happy
with the on-demand
strategy because they won’t get
the relatively transparent box
office numbers. (Bonuses would
have kicked in when the film
reached $350 million.)
Studios “don’t have to show you
the VOD numbers, so you’re com-
pletely relying on them,” says a
person with firsthand knowledge
of the Trolls situation. But this
source expressed confidence that
the issue will be worked out. “The
lawyers will talk on both sides and
come to a number,” he says. “It
doesn’t behoove them to look like
they’re short-shrifting talent.”
Pamela McClintock contributed
to this report.
Some 56% of adults age 65+
Very
unlikely
47% time frame, while 34% of adults
Somewhat
unlikely
20%
Somewhat
likely
15%
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
O n April 27, Saudi Arabia disclosed in an SEC filing that it
say they’re “very unlikely”
to return to theaters in this
ages 18-34 say the same.
Don’t know/no opinion 10%
Very likely 7%
6 M AY 6, 2020
Mohammed bin Salman
Will Hollywood Debt Lead to
Saudis’ ‘Welcome Investment’?
As oil prices plunge, the kingdom eyes
Warner Music Group, after nabbing a $500 million
Live Nation stake to diversify BY TATIANA SIEGEL
has taken a 5.7 percent stake in Live Nation, led by CEO
Michael Rapino, via its sovereign wealth fund. The $500 mil-
lion move marked the Public Investment Fund’s first known
buy-in of an American entertainment company since the
October 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal
Khashoggi — a crime attributed to Saudi government agents
that ended Hollywood’s love affair with Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Now, the ques-
tion looms: Was the investment a one-off or a sign
of more to come?
Sources familiar with the PIF’s strategy tell
Blavatnik
THR to expect more investment. Lots more.
The $300 billion fund remains interested in the
entertainment and sports sector and is close
to completing a $380 million deal to acquire
Rapino England’s Newcastle United soccer team. With oil
at rock-bottom prices thanks to the novel corona-
KENDRICK: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. BLAVATNIK: GREGG DEGUIRE/GETTY IMAGES. RAPINO: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES. SALMAN: MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES. TREES, HOLLYWOOD, CASH: ADOBE STOCK.
virus pandemic, the Saudis are motivated to diversify, and with
showbiz stocks declining, the timing could be right.
As such, the PIF has made an offer to buy Warner Music
Group, according to a source close to WMG owner Len
Blavatnik. The privately held label — one of only three majors,
with artists like Madonna and Camila Cabello — is valued at
around $12.5 billion. “There’s one other bid in the mix, and it will
come down to a number,” says the source. Back in February,
the PIF made an offer to buy a small stake in WMG for $750 mil-
lion right before the music label submitted paperwork to begin
an initial public offering of its common stock. But on March 2,
WMG put its IPO plans on hold because of market volatility,
making a PIF offer all the more attractive.
Although everyone from Disney to AMC Theatres has begun
to offer debt in the COVID-19 fallout, some analysts say it would
be better to take Saudi equity. “It would be a welcome invest-
ment from a debt perspective to see some of these companies
that are more dramatically affected bring in some equity rather
than just bringing [on] lots of debt, particularly some of the
larger-cap media names like Disney and ViacomCBS,” says
Moody’s analyst Neil Begley. “I just can’t say whether or not
the folks at Disney would be willing to entertain issuing equity
at this juncture. But for some of these companies that have an
uncertain horizon at this time, it certainly would be prudent.”
After Khashoggi’s murder, the Saudi outrage factor was
high. Endeavor Content’s Ari Emanuel returned to the PIF a
$400 million investment. Before it became radioactive, Penske
Media, which owns Variety and Rolling Stone, took a $200 mil-
lion investment in 2018 from the Saudis. One Penske staffer
who was initially upset with the deal now notes the absence
of layoffs at the media company. The source adds, “Now that
everything is going to hell, I feel less awful about it.”
 FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS VICKY JONES AND PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE

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CEOs ‘Sacrifice’ Base Pay
But Keep Big Bonuses
A slew of top Hollywood execs pledged to forgo salaries amid cost-cutting efforts, which risks being
perceived as a token gesture: ‘Everyone can see how little that is versus what they pull down overall’
BY ASHLEY CULLINS AND TATIANA SIEGEL
S
ince mid-March, many
CEOs across the entertain-
ment and media landscape
have made headlines by pledging
to forgo their salaries amid fall-
out from the novel coronavirus
pandemic. Eventually, however,
attention will be diverted else-
where, at which time experts
say some of them will be repaid,
making their current cuts merely
a loan to the company disguised
as a financial sacrifice.
Take Disney, which has fur-
loughed more than 100,000
employees. On March 30, the
company disclosed that execu-
tive chairman Bob Iger would
forgo his $3 million salary and
other top executives like CEO
Bob Chapek — who makes
$2.5 million in base salary —
would have their pay cut in
half. While relinquishing base
salary may have been a move
toward forging solidarity with
employees, Iger makes much
more annually in additional
compensation ($44.5 million in
the past fiscal year), which likely
remains unaffected.
Lachlan Murdoch disclosed
April 22 that he will give up
his $3 million base salary, but
his non-salary compensation
in fiscal 2019 was $39.1 mil-
lion. And CAA partners Richard
Lovett, Bryan Lourd and Kevin
Huvane, Endeavor heads Ari
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell,
Cinemark’s Mark Zoradi and
Live Nation’s Michael Rapino all
announced they’d take no salary
amid the pandemic. Meanwhile,
Comcast chief Brian Roberts and
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell
are donating their pay to coro-
navirus-related relief efforts. A
former executive at both Fox and
Disney calls Iger’s and Murdoch’s
no-salary move “ridiculous.” This
source adds, “Everyone can see
how little that is versus what they
pull down overall.”
While it’s impossible to ignore
the vast disparity between what
top execs are paid compared with
$125.4M
+358%
$100M
$80M
$65.6M
$47.5M
$60M -28%
$40M $27.4M
$20M
Joe Bob
Ianniello Iger
CBS Corp. Disney
The Report
Behind the Headlines
Disney’s Bob Iger made $3 million in base salary
but $47.5 million in total compensation in 2019.
used to be. “It sounds great, but if
they’re worthless, they’re worth-
less,” he says. “Bonuses are based
on results, either individual or
corporate. I don’t see any bonuses
happening, and some of these
stocks are being decimated.”
Experts agree that avoiding
negative press is likely one of the
reasons CEOs are taking these
cuts. “It’s not a good look to com-
plain about running out of caviar
on your yacht right after you
let 10,000 people go,” says Greg
Zbylut of business management
firm Singer Burke. “By making a
sacrifice themselves, they show
that they are practicing what
they preach and get buy-in from
the average employee — as much management and staff for belt-
as 278 times more, according to tightening policies.”
a 2019 Economic Policy Institute UCLA assistant business
report — Hollywood business strategy professor Ian Larkin, who
manager Evan Bell cautions specializes in compensation and
BAKISH: MICHAEL TULLBERG/GETTY IMAGES. ROBERTS, ZORADI: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES. SARANDOS: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. STANKEY: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES. SAPAN: TIBRINA HOBSON/FILMMAGIC.
MICKEY: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES. IANNIELLO: JOHN PAUL FILO/CBS. IGER: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. ZASLAV: DIA DIPASUPIL/GETTY IMAGES. BURKE: EVANS VESTAL WARD/NBC. HASTINGS: STEFANIA D’ALESSANDRO/GETTY IMAGES.
against assuming that the huge employee motivation, says optics
gulf means top execs won’t be and peer pressure mean execu-
hurt financially by forgoing sala- tives skipping pay will continue
ries. “Some CEOs have lifestyles to be a trendy PR move. But,
where they might have a lot of “once nobody is paying attention,
assets, but they need their cash they’ll get that money back,” he
flow,” he says. says. “It’s really gross. If you’re
Plus, Bell notes, there’s no really doing it for the good of the
telling what the entertainment company, you shouldn’t claw it
business will look like when it back in the form of stock options
gets back to work — or when that or a greater bonus. I guarantee
will happen — so, bonuses and when we come out of this crisis,
stock options aren’t what they you’re going to see that.”
$129.4M
Hollywood’s C-Suite Pay
Most top media and entertainment CEOs saw total
compensation rise in the last fiscal year By Georg Szalai
2018 2019
Discovery’s David Zaslav and Disney’s Bob Iger were the highest-paid execs in
the sector in 2019 (both received incentives that boosted total pay in 2018), while CBS’
Joe Ianniello’s compensation was the result of a one-time payout as he exited the firm.
$45.8M $42.6M
-65% +7% $38.6M $36.6M $36.4M
+7% +83% +4%
$34.7M
+17%
$22.5M $20.2M
$40M
$36.1M +36%
$35M -2%
$29.6M $6.3M
$20M $20.6M
$16.6M $5.2M +21%
David Steve Reed Bob Brian Ted John Josh Sapan Mark
Zaslav Burke Hastings Bakish* Roberts Sarandos Stankey AMC Zoradi
Discovery NBCU Netflix CBS Comcast Netflix AT&T Networks Cinemark
Source: Company filings. *Bakish’s pay isn’t directly comparable as the 2018 figure was for then-Viacom’s fiscal year ended
Sept. 30, 2018, while the 2019 data is for calendar year 2019 as ViacomCBS’ new fiscal year matches the calendar year.
8 M AY 6, 2020
 The Report
Behind the Headlines
Was Sundance a
‘First Petri Dish’
of Coronavirus?
A swath of attendees suffered harsh flu-like symptoms, leading
a microbiologist to question whether the January festival was
‘the perfect formula to contaminate everybody’ BY TATIANA SIEGEL
O
n Jan. 27, actress
Ashley Jackson felt the
first symptoms of a nasty
bug — fever, clammy skin, fatigue
and shortness of breath. Given her
current locale — Park City — she
chalked it up to altitude sickness
and toughed out her final day
at the Sundance Film Festival,
where she had attended the world
premiere of Blast Beat, a family
drama in which she co-stars, as
well as a dizzying array of par-
ties and lounges. The next day,
the 20-year-old college student
flew home to Atlanta, just as
more intense symptoms began
to emerge, including sore throat,
aches and pains and a cough so
violent, her neck swelled. Within
24 hours, she made her first of
multiple visits to an urgent care
facility or emergency room and
was diagnosed with the flu based
Sundance
Snapshot
120K
Number of attendees
at the 2020 festival
2K
Number of festival
volunteers helping out
1.3K
Number of
accredited press
118
Number of feature-length
films screened
27
Number of countries
represented
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
on her condition (though no flu
test was given at the time).
Like many who make the
annual trek to the indie film
mecca, Jackson left Sundance far
worse off than when she entered.
After all, the quaint mountain
oasis transforms into a petri dish
as some 120,000 festivalgoers
from around the world huddle in
crowded movie theaters during
cold and flu season. In recent
years, the festival’s organiz-
ers have placed an emphasis on
attracting international film-
makers, and this year was no
exception, with a lineup of 118
feature-length films represent-
ing 27 countries. Industryites
long have dubbed any illness
caught while visiting the 10-day
festival as “the Sundance flu,”
a byproduct of frigid tempera-
tures, late-night partying and
all that handshaking, in which
everyone becomes an unknowing
vector for spreading germs. But
there was something different
about Sundance 2020. A swath
of attendees, including festival
regulars and at least one high-
profile actor, became sicker than
ever before, leading some to later
believe they had early, undocu-
mented cases of COVID-19.
“I started texting other people
who had been at Sundance, and
one said, ‘Yo, we just started
calling it the Sundance Plague
on social media,’ ” says Jackson.
“We all had the same symptoms,
all had the cough, all had trouble
breathing at night. Some of us got
humidifiers and some got oxygen.
And we were all just miserable for
three to four weeks. And then out
of nowhere, we’re back living in
society like nothing is wrong. And
then I see all these coronavirus
stories, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ ”
10
1
2
1 The old normal:
Canada Goose
Basecamp
on Jan. 24 in
Park City.
2 ChefDance
at Sundance
on Jan. 24.
3 BET’s Twenties
screening during
Sundance on
Jan. 27.
According to the Centers for little different for each of us — but
Disease Control and Prevention, always quite intense.”
the first U.S. case of COVID-19, Nearly all knew of others whose
the disease caused by the novel cases were comparable to theirs.
coronavirus, was confirmed One actor best known for his
Jan. 21 — a Washington state man role in a major studio tentpole
GOOSE: OWEN HOFFMANN/GETTY IMAGES FOR CANADA GOOSE. CHEFDANCE: MARK SAGLIOCCO/GETTY IMAGES FOR CHEFDANCE. BET: AARON J.
THORNTON/GETTY IMAGES FOR BET. JACKSON: JEREMY CHAN/GETTY IMAGES. JACKSON SICK, MORRIS, MCGARVIN: COURTESY OF SUBJECT (5).
who recently had returned from was “gravely ill,” and members
Wuhan, China, where the highly of his team also succumbed (he
communicable virus is believed declined to speak on the record).
to have originated. At the time, The Black List founder Franklin
the CDC had just announced that Leonard, who is a Sundance
airports would conduct health regular, says he began feeling
screenings for passengers travel- sick on Tuesday, Jan. 28 — the day
ing from Wuhan to Los Angeles, he flew from Salt Lake City back
San Francisco and New York, but to Los Angeles. “Landed with a
Salt Lake City — the main travel sore throat, and by Wednesday I
hub for Sundance attendees — was barely functional,” he says.
was not included. “[I] was as sick as I’ve ever been
Two days after Patient Zero was
identified in Washington, the fes-
for two weeks. Only really felt
100 percent by the weekend of the
tival kicked off. Few if any in Park Oscars.” He knew of at least two
City were thinking of the corona- people who left the festival early
virus. THR spoke with more than a
dozen people with similar stories.
because they were sick, including
a lawyer.
Some asked to remain anony- “At this point, corona was
mous, including one writer and kind of this internet meme,”
three of his friends who “all got
the same mysterious sickness — a
says actress Paige McGarvin,
23, who also was struck by a
1 2
M AY 6, 2020

mystery illness on the ground in
Sundance. “I didn’t think it was
a real threat that was anywhere
near me.” McGarvin arrived in
Park City on Jan. 23 for the world
premiere of the Alec Baldwin-
produced drama Beast Beast,
in which she plays the role of a
Georgia teenager. Over the course
of her eight-day stay, she hit
several packed parties and began
to feel “that vague ‘I’m getting
sick’ feeling” but decided to power
through. On Feb. 1, the morning
she headed back to Los Angeles by
car, she woke up “feeling like I got
hit by a truck.” She couldn’t move
and could barely speak. Over
the following days, her condi-
tion worsened. At her mother’s
urging, she went to the doctor
and was diagnosed with “flu-
like symptoms and exacerbated
asthma.” The doctor prescribed
a steroid and assured her that
she was “through the worst of it”
and her symptoms would subside
in the next day or two. Although
3 premiere and,
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
3
the severe, dry cough continued,
by Feb. 12 she felt like she was
returning to normal. But five
days later, her condition took a
dramatic turn for the worse. “My
legs were unbearably achy. I was
in so much pain. Extreme tem-
perature fluctuation, was wearing
two hoodies and still freezing,
then would start sweating a few
hours later,” she says. McGarvin
returned to the doctor, who
was mystified. She underwent
a battery of tests and came back
negative for the flu and strep. Her
chest X-ray was clean. “The doctor
basically was like, ‘OK, I’m guess-
ing you’re developing pneumonia.’
He didn’t see pneumonia, but he
didn’t know what else it would
be,” she explains. Then, on Feb. 21,
more than three weeks after her
symptoms’ onset, they disap-
peared just as suddenly as they
had materialized.
McGarvin’s trajectory mir-
rored that of Jackson, who kept
detailed notes from her six visits
1 Ashley Jackson
at a Sundance
later, in a mask
while sick.
2 Jonica T. Gibbs
(left) with
Olivia Charmaine
Morris. Morris,
later, while sick.
3 Paige McGarvin
pictured at an
event and then
while sick.
11
to doctors, including two emer-
gency room stays at Piedmont
Atlanta Hospital. The actress
shared with THR her medical
records, which ruled out flu, strep
and pneumonia via lab results
and chest X-rays. Jackson also
developed symptoms that are
uniquely linked to coronavirus,
including conjunctivitis. By
Feb. 12, she returned to class. But
as COVID-19 news coverage began
to dominate headlines through-
out the month of March, Jackson
became increasingly convinced
that the parallels with her condi-
tion were impossible to ignore.
On April 1, she called Spelman
College Heath Center to inquire
about the coronavirus possibility.
She was told there was a “high
likelihood” she had had it and “if
you had these symptoms now, I’d
say isolate or get tested.”
As the Sundance sick began to
reach out to friends, a picture of a
sprawling web of illness began to
emerge. Olivia Charmaine Morris,
28, senior director of develop-
ment and production at Kerry
Washington’s Simpson Street,
explains: “I had a few different
friends I talked to since who
were like, ‘I got sick, my law-
yer, my assistant, my stylist,’ ”
she says. “Like whole groups of
people getting sick, not just like
“I have had the flu before,
I have had bronchitis.
Nothing came close to this.”
random people here and there.”
Like Leonard, she flew from Salt
Lake City back to Los Angeles on
Jan. 28 and felt the first symp-
toms upon arrival. Over the
course of weeks and multiple
doctor visits, she was tested for
the flu and strep and received a
chest X-ray. “Everything came
back negative,” she recalls. “And
I was given three different rounds
of antibiotics. I ended up going to
a private doctor and getting an
IV drip with an immune booster.
The most startling thing about
this type of sickness over any-
thing that I’ve ever had before was
that truly nothing was mitigat-
ing the symptoms. I have had the
flu before, I have had bronchitis.
Nothing came close to this.”
M AY 6, 2020
But if coronavirus was lurk-
ing at the festival, presumably
locals — from restaurant work-
ers to Uber drivers — also would
have been hit. A spokesperson
for the Park City Medical Center
declined to comment on whether
the facility experienced an uptick
in patients during and in the
direct aftermath of the festival
and referred THR to the Summit
County Health Department. But
according to the health depart-
ment, the first official case of
COVID-19 in the county was
documented March 10. As of
April 2, the Utah Department of
Health stopped reporting visitor
cases in the state. A spokesperson
for the Sundance festival said:
“We’re sorry to hear that any of
our festival attendees were unwell
either during or after our January
edition. We are not aware of any
confirmed festival-connected
cases of COVID-19.”
Dean Hart, a microbiologist and
expert in virus transmission, says
there’s a good chance coronavirus
did, indeed, sweep through Park
City during the run of the festival
given that the Wuhan lockdown
began Jan. 23, the same day
Sundance started. “Logic dictates
that they most probably did have
it,” says Hart of the presentation
of symptoms. “With Sundance,
you’ve got the perfect formula for
this virus to really go to town and
contaminate everybody.”
It may take months before the
mystery of Sundance 2020 is
unraveled. Confusing matters,
the country was in the midst
of a particularly bad flu season.
None of the people THR talked
to has yet to receive an antibody
test. But all plan to get one as
soon as a reliable test is avail-
able and will continue to practice
social distancing.
The experience has left several
wondering whether Sundance
2020 was a previously unknown
incubator for the virus. Says
Morris, “We really could have
been the first petri dish, and then
we all just scattered.”
 The Report

7 Days of DEALS
Who’s inking on the dotted line this week

SAG-AFTR A, STU DIOS IN TALKS OV ER

FORCE M AJEU R E CLAUSES
What’s a union to do about inadequate contract
Deal language when members are taking it on the chin?
of the That’s the problem confronting SAG-AFTRA:
Week Some TV studios are holding actors under contract
on unpaid “hiatus” during the pandemic rather
than paying them as per force majeure provi-
sions. That’s because 2009 revisions to the SAG TV
Agreement made the entire force majeure concept
arguably optional.
Carteris The union, led by president Gabrielle Carteris,
declined to comment, but a source close to SAG-
AFTRA, speaking on condition of anonymity,
acknowledged the dilemma. As a result, the union
has told members, “We are working directly with
these employers to find arrangements that work.”
SAG-AFTRA A talent agency source says union staff is currently
staff is working on the issue. But a management-side law-
working to yer put it more bluntly, noting that SAG-AFTRA is
resolve
issues arising “calling companies and respectfully acknowledging
from the that the force majeure language doesn’t work.”
production The 2009 changes resulted from studio frus-
halt (albeit
mostly tration at paying force majeure claims SAG filed
from home). during the 2007-08 writers strike. Amounting to
$63 million and relating to more than 80 shows,
the grievances were settled for 33 cents on the dol-
lar and revisions to the then-arguably mandatory
provision, dating to 1937. The clauses are opaque,
as neither side has leverage for a clear win. Further
changes may result from the current SAG-AFTRA
triennial studio talks, but for now a held performer
under force majeure is paid half-salary for several
weeks, after which the performer can terminate
their services unless the studio begins paying full
boat. But those half payments aren’t applied against
wages payable when production restarts. Says the
management lawyer, “That’s a killer.” Florence
Pugh
So instead, says another management-side coun-
sel, some “companies [say] that it’s a hiatus” and
thus governed by different provisions. Those pro-
vide no protection to actors making at least $20,000
an episode (or $150,000 for a 13-episode guarantee),
theoretically leaving the matter to individual nego-
tiation and many series regulars out in the cold.
Hiatus is a position taken by the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers and disputed by
FILM
SAG-AFTRA, according to another agency source.
Taika Waititi (CAA, New
So the union and agencies pushed back.
Zealand’s Gail Cowan,
Many studios are said to be making partial pay-
Manage-ment, Morris
ments because idled actors paid now may again
Yorn) will direct and

CARTERIS: LEON BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES. SAG-AFTRA: CHRIS DELMAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. AMBANI: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. DURBAN: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. ZUCKERBERG: RICH
need — and demand — money when they resume

FURY/GETTY IMAGES. YEUN: ALBERT L. ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES. EHRIN: BRIAN ACH/GETTY IMAGES. CAGE: JC OLIVERA/GETTY IMAGES. WAITITI: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. BRITTON: RODIN ECKENROTH/
co-write a new Star Wars
work. But some aren’t. “It’s very inconsistent,” says
film alongside 1917 scribe

WIREIMAGE. LONGORIA: REDFIN. LAW: NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES. COWEN: JB LACROIX/WIREIMAGE. BUDDHIST: COURTESY OF SIMON & SCHUESTER. PUGH: DAVID M. BENETT/GETTY IMAGES
the source close to SAG-AFTRA. Still, cooperation
Krysty Wilson-Cairns.
may win out, as retaining personnel will be vital
for media companies struggling to reschedule hun-
Ben Schwartz (Haven,
dreds of shows at once, let alone while maintaining
Gang Tyre) and Sam
hygiene and social distancing. “They’re trying
Rockwell (Gersh, Untitled)
to keep the band together,” said Sheppard Mullin
will star in and exec pro-
management attorney Richard Kopenhefer. “I don’t
duce an untitled comedy
think the studios are ready to throw the furniture
for Searchlight Pictures,
off the Titanic.” — JONATHAN HANDEL
with Schwartz also writing.

Silver Lake Bets $750M on Indian Tech Giant Jio
Major U.S. investors are
taking notice of India’s
Big
Deal emerging telecom giant
Jio Platforms. On May 4,
private equity firm Silver
Lake struck a deal to invest $750 million in
the Indian tech and services conglomer-
ate, less than two weeks after Facebook
said April 22 that it would pay $5.7 bil-
lion for a holding of about 10 percent in
the company.
Silver Lake’s investment values Jio at
$65 billion, about 12.5 percent more than
the valuation implied by the recent deal by
Facebook, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The pair of investments cap off a stunning
ascent for the Indian insurgent. Egon
Durban, Silver Lake’s co-CEO and manag-
ing partner, lauded Jio’s “extraordinary
Ambani Durban Zuckerberg
engineering capabilities to bear on bring-
ing the power of low-cost digital services”
to consumers.
Jio Platforms was launched by India’s
largest conglomerate, Reliance Industries,
in late 2016. Based in Mumbai, Reliance
Industries is controlled by India’s richest
man, Mukesh Ambani. Thanks to heavy
discounting and lavish spending on
marketing, the firm has become a major
wireless operator in India. Jio counts nearly
400 million customers, has released its
Shang-Chi’s Dave
Callaham (UTA, Kaplan/
Perrone, Hansen
own low-cost mobile phones and has built Jacobson) will write a live-
a digital ecosystem of streaming video, action remake of Disney’s
music, chat and ecommerce platforms. The Hercules, with Joe and
company also owns a 5 percent stake in Anthony Russo producing.
Eros International, the veteran Bollywood
studio that announced a surprise merger Ryan Reynolds (WME,
April 17 with Hollywood indie studio Sloane Offer) and Shawn
STX Entertainment. Levy (WME, Ziffren
Jio has been working with Morgan Brittenham) are team-
Stanley to lead its fundraising efforts. ing to star in and direct,
The recent cash infusions will help Jio respectively, an untitled
pay down debt while continuing toward time-travel adventure
its aggressive growth targets. Facebook’s project for Skydance.
new investment, wrote Pivotal Research
Group analyst Michael Levine on April 30, American Hustle’s Eric
“speaks to the global strength of ecom- Warren Singer (Gochman)
merce globally, accelerated by COVID-19, will write a third installment
and specifically the opportunity they see in of Lionsgate’s heist-thriller
India.” — PATRICK BRZESKI AND GEORG SZALAI franchise Now You See Me.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 12 M AY 6, 2020

 $
528M
Big
Total movie ticket sales in
Asia-Pacific from January to March,
Number per S&P Global Market Intelligence,
an 88 percent crash in revenue.

Yeun Ehrin Cage Waititi

Britton
Florence Pugh (WME,
the U.K.’s Curtis Brown,
Ziffren Brittenham), Shia
LaBeouf (CAA, John
Crosby, Matthew Saver)
and Chris Pine (CAA,
John Carrabino, Gendler
& Kelly) will star in Olivia
Wilde’s New Line thriller
Don’t Worry Darling.
The Hunger Games direc-
tor Francis Lawrence
(CAA, 3 Arts, Hansen
Jacobson) and screen-
writer Michael Arndt
(Verve, McKuin Frankel)
will return for a prequel
film at Lionsgate, based on
Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad
of Songbirds and Snake.
Karen Gillan (UTA, the
U.K.’s Troika, Jackoway
Austen) and Aaron Paul
(UTA) will star in the sci-fi
thriller Dual.
Chaos Walking author
Patrick Ness (Michelle
Kass, Behr Abramson)
will write Warner Bros.’
adaptation of Lord of the
Flies, directed by Luca
Guadagnino.
André Ovredal (WME,
Industry, Hansen
Jacobson) will return to
Eva Longoria lost $3.2 million on the Hollywood Hills property.
direct a sequel to Scary
Stories to Tell in the Dark
from Paramount and
Entertainment One.
Seberg’s Joe Shrapnel
and Anna Waterhouse
(the U.K.’s Curtis Brown,
MARKS) are in talks to
write a follow-up to Snake
Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins.
James Wan (CAA,
Stacey Testro, Myman
Greenspan) will produce
an adaptation of sci-fi time-
travel tale Hunting Season.
MGM has acquired the
rights to the Ron Howard-
directed Thai cave rescue
movie Thirteen Lives.
Universal has inked a
five-year exclusive agree-
ment with Lego to develop,
produce and distribute
theatrical releases.
The Handmaid’s Tale’s
Reed Morano (CAA, LBI)
is in talks to direct Jennifer
Lopez in STX’s The
Godmother.
CAA’s Jeremy Plager has
launched a production and
management company,
which is producing Focus
Features’ Champions and
limited series The Most
Dangerous Man in America.
TELEVISION
Nicolas Cage (WME,
Stride, Goodman Genow)
will star as Tiger King’s
Joe Exotic in an eight-epi-
sode scripted series from
CBS Television Studios and
Imagine Television.
Dwayne Johnson (WME,
Garcia, Gang Tyre) and
Issa Rae (UTA, 3 Arts,
Hansen Jacobson) will
exec produce the HBO
wrestling show Tre Cnt.
Danny DeVito (CAA,
Behr Abramson) and Dan
Harmon (CAA, Sloane
Offer) are developing the
animated comedy Little
Demon for FX, starring
DeVito, DeVito’s daughter
Lucy and Aubrey Plaza.
Kira Snyder (Gersh, Echo
Lake, Del Shaw), Rand
Ravich (Goodman Genow)
and Far Shariat (McKuin
Frankel) will serve as show-
runners on J.J. Abrams’
HBO series Demimonde.
HBO has renewed
Insecure for a fifth season,
Westworld for a fourth sea-
son and My Brilliant Friend
for a third season.
Mark Verheiden (CAA,
Untitled, Nelson Davis)
and Michael Dougherty
(WME, Circle of Confusion,
Rosenfield Meyer)
are writing a TV series
for HBO based on the
Hellraiser movies.
DIGITAL
The Morning Show show-
runner Kerry Ehrin (RBEL)
has signed a new multiyear
overall deal with Apple.
J.J. Abrams (CAA,
Jackoway Austen) has
set three series to exec
produce for HBO Max:
the crime series Duster,
The Shining offshoot
Overlook and an untitled
show based on DC Comics
characters in the Justice
League Dark universe.
Jenji Kohan (CAA,
Jackoway Austen) is
developing the scripted
anthology series Social
Distance for Netflix that
will be produced and
filmed remotely.
Russian Doll co-creator
Leslye Headland (UTA,
Myman Greenspan)
will write and serve as
showrunner for an untitled
live-action Star Wars
series for Disney+.
Steven Yeun (CAA,
Principal, Hansen
Jacobson) has inked a
first-look TV deal with
Amazon Studios to create
series for the streamer.
Genevieve O’Reilly
(the U.K.’s United,
Australia’s RGM) and Rep
Denise Gough (UTA, the Sheet
U.K’s Independent) have
joined the cast of Disney+’s
Jude Law has left WME
untitled Rogue One: A
after 15 years to return
Star Wars Story prequel
to CAA .
spinoff series.
Peter Hamby, the
Connie Britton (WME,
journalist and Snapchat
Untitled, Hansen
host, has signed
Jacobson) is developing
with UTA .
an HBO Max docuse-
ries based on Rebecca
Actress and TikTok
Traister’s best-selling
breakout Tabitha Brown
book All the Single
has signed with CAA .
Ladies: Unmarried
Women and the Rise of an
Food content creator
Independent Nation.
Eitan Bernath has signed
with WME.
Apple has given a series
order to a The Shrink
Bloodshot director
Next Door TV adapta-
David S.F. Wilson has
tion starring Will Ferrell
signed with CAA .
and Paul Rudd. … HBO
Max has picked up Seth
Rogen’s Sony comedy
feature An American Pickle. Next
... Netflix has picked up Big
Enola Holmes, Legendary Thing
Entertainment’s adven-
ture movie centered on Abigail Cowen
Sherlock Holmes’ teen
REPS Paradigm, Link
sister, starring Millie
Bobby Brown. WHY SHE MATTERS
The Chilling Adventures
REAL ESTATE of Sabrina actress, 22,
Eva Longoria (Douglas has landed the star-
Elliman, Lux) has sold ring role in Redeeming
her 3-acre Hollywood Love, an indie adapta-
Hills compound, formerly tion of the best-selling
owned by Tom Cruise, for historical romance
$8.25 million. novel by Francine
Rivers. It is set to be
Kylie Jenner has pur- directed by D.J. Caruso.
chased a brand-new, Cowen landed the
seven-bedroom man- role after a global
sion in Holmby Hills for search. She also stars
$36.5 million. in Netflix’s upcom-
— COMPILED BY KIRSTEN CHUBA ing series Fate: The
AND ERIK HAYDEN Winx Saga.

Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal BY MIA GALUPPO

The Buddhist on Death Row (AUG. 4, SIMON & SCHUSTER)
BY David Sheff AGENCY ICM Partners
The Beautiful Boy writer pens the story of Jarvis Jay Masters, who
after being framed for murder was sentenced to death row, where
he became a renowned Buddhist practitioner. It’s evocative of the
recent screen stories Just Mercy and When They See Us.
We Came Here to Shine (JUNE 16, ST. MARTIN’S PRESS)
BY Susie Orman Schnall AGENCY UTA
A period piece about female friendships, the book is set against
the 1939 New York World’s Fair and follows a journalist and
a down-on-her-luck actress as they work together to realize
their aspirations.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 13 M AY 6, 2020

 About Town People, Places, Preoccupations
Making sure
to present myself
professionally Occasionally
on Zoom struggling to
conference calls. separate virtual
reality from
actual reality.

Rewrite is
going well.

How I’m Living Now: A Day in the Life

of Director Paul Feig During Lockdown
With a Fox pilot on hold, the always-dapper comedy master shares his own photo essay of life at home in Burbank
and talks about his new nightly mixology show on Instagram: ‘It is a lot of cocktails’ By Seth Abramovitch

L
ike the rest of
Hollywood, Paul Feig is
doing his best to take
the lockdown in stride.
The Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor
and Last Christmas director, 57,
was shooting a Fox comedy pilot
in North Carolina when produc-
tion shut down. He’s since been
holed up in his Burbank home
with wife Laurie Feig (the two
have been married since 1994)
and their beloved Scottish ter-
rier, Buster. He now fills his days
conducting Zoom meetings,
catching up on writing projects
and hosting a nightly cocktail-
making show on Instagram
COURTESY OF SUBJECT (3)
callouts of nonprofits that need
help right now — all of which he
documented April 20 for THR.
So … how are you?
PAUL FEIG I am doing well under
the circumstances. Yeah, I can’t
complain. Just trying to get by
and do what I can to help other
people out.
Is this the most time you and Laurie
have spent together in a while?
This is the most she’s had me
around during the day since we
started dating. Even then, I don’t
think I was around as much as I
am now. Obviously, it’s been very
Are you discovering new things
about each other?
What we’re discovering is how
much we enjoy being around each
other. We’ve been having a nice
time. I mean, we’re both busy
with stuff. I’m still writing, and
I’m doing this cocktail show every
day on Instagram. All I can say is
— thank God for the internet.
How did you come up with the idea
for your cocktail show?
I went into quarantine 41 days
ago because I was in North
Carolina shooting a TV pilot.
They pulled the plug, obviously,
so I came back here and thought,
all day or write and try to get
work done. I’m not a medical
professional, so there’s not a lot I
can offer to the world other than
making donations and trying to
raise money and trying to enter-
tain people, which is my job as a
comedy person. I love cocktails
and I always wanted to dabble
in mixology but never really did
other than making martinis
and Negronis all the time. So I
thought, well, I’ve got all these
cocktail books, maybe every day
at 5 p.m. I’ll do a live stream and
highlight a new charity and try to
make people laugh and we’ll make
a drink and try to have some fun.

(@paulfeig), which includes hard on her. well, OK, I can either sit around We just did our 40th show.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 15 M AY 6, 2020

 About Town
People, Places,
Preoccupations
Keeping up
with my general
meetings in
order to continue
discovering hot
new talent.
That’s a lot of cocktails.
It is a lot of cocktails. I already
invented two originals [includ-
ing the Squeaky Door, with gin,
cherry liqueur, orange curaçao,
St.-Germain, lemon juice and
club soda].
What show were you working on?
We were shooting This Country, an
adaptation of the BBC show [about
young people in a U.K. village; the
Fox version stars Seann William
Scott]. [Fox has] ordered a few
extra scripts, so I’m going to write
one and then Jenny Bicks, the
showrunner, is writing one. I’ve
got a movie in the pipeline that
I’m doing a rewrite on. And I’ve
been working on some book proj-
ects. I’ve had a backlog of stuff
that I haven’t been able to get to,
so now I’m trying to use the weird
time to try to get ahead.
Do you think things will get back to
normal in the industry?
Everybody is ready to, defi-
nitely, but the question is, when
is it going to be safe? In North
Carolina doing that pilot, we had
a very small footprint crew-wise
because we’re a mockumentary.
But still, we had this one scene
where we were in this little
room and there’s only like five
crewmembers and the actors
and I — and everything felt too
close and too weird. That’s when
I pulled the plug. Quite frankly,
until there’s a vaccine, it’s going
to be a very interesting gear-up
to see how we do it. It’s hard to
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
make a movie without people
standing next to each other.
You’re known for your great fashion
sense. Is it hard having everything
to wear and nowhere to go?
Fortunately, I have my cocktail
hour every day, so I always put
on something. I definitely have a
chance to get dressed up. I have
a rule that I always dress up for
Zoom meetings. I think a video
meeting is no different from a
meeting when you go to some-
body’s office, so I wouldn’t roll
into one wearing my sweatpants
and a pajama top with my hair
all over the place, unshaven. I try
to bring that same ethos to the
conference call going on.
If there was one thing you could
do in Hollywood involving crowds,
what would it be?
I’m craving to just go to a res-
taurant. I really want to be in a
restaurant and go to the bar first
and have a martini and then go
and sit at a table with everybody
and just joke around face-to-face.
I think that’s going to be the very
first call to order of mine when
we get out of here.
Any restaurant in particular?
I’m dying to go back to Musso &
Frank. I would just love to be at
Musso & Frank having a martini,
sitting around in a booth with a
bunch of friends.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.
16
SOCIAL ACTION
The Hollywood
Attorney Driving
$40M in Virus Aid
Heading up partnerships with the Mayor’s Fund
for Los Angeles’ crisis efforts, Matt Johnson
is rallying big industry donors By Ashley Cullins
W hen Hollywood talent lawyer Matt Johnson moved
to Costa Rica in 2018 to enjoy a change of pace with
his wife and kids, he never imagined a pandemic
would return him to L.A. But, when he received a call from
Mayor Eric Garcetti on March 15, that’s exactly what happened.
“He asked me to be point person for his office coordinating
their COVID-19 response with the philanthropic and business
community. I packed up my family and we came back,” says
Johnson of his work as L.A.’s Chief of COVID-19 Philanthropic &
Private Sector Community Emergency Response. The attorney
had met then-city councilman Garcetti in 2001 and went on to
serve on his mayoral transition team and as president of the
Los Angeles Police Commission.
Johnson, who reps A-listers including Tyler Perry, LeBron
James and the Obamas, isn’t quitting his day job by any
means. He’s now working long hours seven days a week.
“There’s a huge sense of urgency to try to mitigate the level of
suffering that people are going to endure,” he says, adding that
his firm, Ziffren Brittenham, fully supports his philanthropic
efforts. “The truth of the matter [is that] business is pretty slow
right now, and this is a critical moment in our history.”
Ziffren Brittenham founding partner Ken Ziffren tells THR:
“We are so proud and grateful for Matt’s achievements as the
1
1 San Vicente Bungalows
members playing the
2 Mafia game virtually. 3
2 Advertising consultant
Cindy Gallop (top)
giving a talk titled
“Time & Creativity:
Building a New World”
for NeueHouse.
3 The invitation
for h Club’s virtual
member meal.
M AY 6, 2020
 MENTAL HEALTH
AWARENESS MONTH:
PANDEMIC RESOURCES
Stars including Emma Stone and
Demi Lovato are stepping up
to raise funds and attention for
people coping with isolation
By Degen Pener

Crisis Text Line

Above: From left, L.A. Mayor
Eric Garcetti; Saundra
Bryant, executive director
of All Peoples Community
Center in South L.A.; and
Matt Johnson at the center
on April 30. All Peoples
is a distribution point for
Angeleno Campaign
financial assistance. Below:
Johnson with wife Yasmine.
Text HOME to 741741 to reach a live crisis
counselor. Demi Lovato recently signed on to
liaison between the mayor’s office and the business commu- help raise funds for a new mental health fund
nity. To date, his efforts have resulted in millions to aid in the that supports the Crisis Text Line and other
cause, with more to come.” groups. “Asking for help is a sign of strength,
The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, established not weakness,” Lovato tells THR. “It’s
in 2014 by Garcetti and senior adviser Rick important to have someone to talk to about
Jacobs, has two efforts centered on COVID-19 overcoming anxiety or the negative feelings
relief. One is an emergency fund that gives meals Rihanna we’re experiencing.”
to isolated senior citizens; provides personal
protective equipment for those who can’t afford it, including National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
unhoused individuals; expands support for domestic violence Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to be routed to a
survivors; and provides child care to health care workers. The counselor at the nearest crisis center.
second, the Angeleno Campaign, gives financial assistance to
people who are living in poverty and have lost income due to Child Mind Institute
Demi
the pandemic, regardless of immigration status. Lovato Go to childmind.org for resources,
So far, Johnson’s team has raised more than $40 million and including telehealth services. The
created infrastructure to support those programs. Bob Iger, Institute’s new #WeThriveInside
Jeffrey Katzenberg, Casey Wasserman and Screen Gems campaign — with videos from
senior vp production Eric Paquette are also fundraising. Major Octavia Spencer, Storm Reid and
donors include Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, Jay-Z, board member Emma Stone
Rihanna, Pink, Meg Whitman, NBA star Russell Westbrook (who talks about struggling
and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Says Johnson, “The response with anxiety) — supports the
from our industry, especially at a time when it is experiencing a group’s work to help children
production shutdown and so much pain, has been tremendous.” and families coping with fear
and isolation.

HOW L.A.’S PRIVATE MEMBER CLUBS ARE STAYING SOCIAL

From a virtual dinner party and A-list talks to party games and racial justice teach-ins,
clubhouses are largely waiving membership fees By Kirsten Chuba

W ith social distancing in

place, L.A.’s private social
sing-alongs. On April 30, it hosted
its first remote member meal: The
space with 11 locations, including
one in West Hollywood (which is also
member events to the public with
programming like hair-care tutorials
FEIG, BUNGALOWS, NEUEHOUSE, H CLUB, WING: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. GARCETTI: COURTESY OF MATTHEW JOHNSON. JOHNSON:

clubs are waiving fees — club’s GM dropped off ingredients waiving fees) — has had more than with Jonathan Van Ness and a con-
from $2,160 to $6,000 a month at the homes of members, who then 50,000 RSVPs to its online events, versation with Tiger King producer
RICH FURY/INVISION/AP. LOVATO: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. RIHANNA: ROBIN L MARSHALL/GETTY IMAGES FOR BET.

— and getting creative in engaging
their members.
“You log in to Instagram and
there’s seven people live and John
Krasinski has a late night show and
you’re bombarded with this amaz-
ing programming — our focus is to
do things that could be meaningful
to our members,” says h Club LA’s
director of membership and market-
ing Heather Bardocz. As a result,
the club, which is not charging mem-
bership fees during the pandemic,
has stacked its virtual programming
with sound baths, DJ sets and family
jumped on Zoom that night to cook
and eat the same meal together.
Says Bardocz, “We sold out within an
hour of posting.”
Others have been similarly inno-
vative, with West Hollywood’s San
Vicente Bungalows hosting one or
two virtual events a day, from cook-
ing lessons and skin-care master
classes to tarot card readings and
haircut tutorials. The club, whose
membership fees are on pause, also
hosted a “Truth or Drink” game with
maître d’ Dimitri Dimitrov.
The Wing — a women’s co-working
which have included talks from Kerry
Washington and Busy Philipps
as well as a home chef series with
Alison Roman.
Elsewhere, Soho House has
launched Open House, opening its
Kerry Washington spoke about Little Fires
Everywhere to members of The Wing.
Trevor Groth. The club is giving
members credits while it’s closed.
The Jane Club has hosted writing
workshops and racial justice teach-
ins, while NeueHouse, which has
also waived membership fees, has
launched, among other program-
ming, a comedy cooking series.
“I don’t think this is a temporary
solution; I think we’re watching the
world pivot,” says NeueHouse vp cul-
tural programming Meredith Rogers.
“There’s a real appetite for our com-
munity to gather virtually, and I don’t
think it’s going anywhere.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 17 M AY 6, 2020

 About Town

Yes, I Did Say That! Quotes

A look at who’s saying what in entertainment

Compiled by Michael O’Connell

“It was very interesting “This isn’t the

way TV is supposed
for me to watch. to be made.”
I’ll just leave it at that.” MICHAEL SCHUR
The showrunner, on a call with
KATIE COURIC reporters, bemoaning the tedium and
The onetime Today host, on the podcast Everything Iconic, offering labor of remotely filming his one-off
a muted review of Apple’s The Morning Show — which drew inspiration Parks and Recreation reunion.
from her former co-worker Matt Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct.  

“Let me guess,
some assholes with
“I don’t think it’s “Tesla stock price MBAs raised
a bad thing.” is too high imo.” a lot of money for an
ANDREW CUOMO
ELON MUSK app that wastes
The New York governor, on Ellen
The CEO and COVID-19
lockdown opponent, on Twitter,
teenagers’ time.”

COURIC: JIM SPELLMAN/WIREIMAGE. MUSK: RAY TAMARRA/GETTY IMAGES. HALL: PAUL ARCHULETA/WIREIMAGE. SEINFELD: EMMA MCINTYRE/GETTY IMAGES FOR NETFLIX. FORD: SEBASTIAN REUTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR SONY PICTURES.
DeGeneres’ remote show, BILL MAHER
approving of his new fans being venting and prompting an
immediate 10 percent plunge The Real Time host, during
labeled “Cuomosexuals.” his May 1 episode, offering a
in his company’s value.
blind assessment of Jeffrey
Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s
streaming upstart Quibi.

“They said it’s not “I had two candles, “I don’t want

essential.” and, yeah, one thing to see how you
REGINA HALL led to another.” really live.”
The actress, during BET’s BRITNEY SPEARS
Saving Our Selves COVID-19 JERRY SEINFELD
The singer, during an
fundraiser, explaining to The comedian, in The New York
Instagram Live workout,
Kevin Hart that she’s hiding Times, admitting that he’s
informing followers that not a fan of the remotely filmed
her hair because she can’t she recently burned down
buy any wig glue. content boom.
her home gym.

FLASHBACK! SEPT. 13, 2017

Did I “I was thinking about a couple of other things.”
Really HARRISON FORD
The actor and aviator, speaking to GQ, explaining why he landed a plane on the
Say wrong runway that year. On April 29, the FAA launched a new investigation into Ford’s
flying after another runway incident at Hawthorne Municipal Airport outside L.A.
That?

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 18 M AY 6, 2020

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 About Town
debut, per the streamer), Joe
Exotic already has been pegged Heard Around Hollywood
as the likeliest sight at this year’s
Halloween celebrations (fingers
crossed). But PETA is ready with
its own costume — minus the
publicity-hungry, rogue zoo
operator’s typical ensemble of
metallic animal print shirts,
skinny jeans and cowboy boots.
Instead, the animal rights group
is offering — through its online
store — a version made to mimic
Joseph Maldonado-Passage’s
current state: behind bars. The
costume, retailing for $159.99,

RAD+IN LOVE. KHAN: NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR DIFF. CALHOUN: COURTESY OF SHOWTIME. PEET: COURTESY OF PETA. JANETTI: FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES. DE ARMAS: JON KOPALOFF/FILMMAGIC.
RENDERING: COURTESY OF 15/40 PRODUCTIONS. SPECKTOR: COURTESY OF CAA (2). TIGER: COURTESY OF PETA. BRAFF: WALTER MCBRIDE/FILMMAGIC. WEITZ, SCHOLTES: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. CARTIER: JAMIE STREET/
includes a blond mullet wig and
mustache, a “plush pouncing
tiger,” a set of jail bars and an
A 15/40 Productions rendering shows plastic shields separating stars from media on a red carpet. orange jumpsuit with the “King” PETA’s $159.99 Joe Exotic costume
in “Tiger King” replaced with
“Killer.” Maldonado-Passage Since he’s been hospitalized,
Rambling Reporter was sentenced to 22 years in a
federal prison for his role in a
Kloots’ brother and sister also
have moved in for support.
By Chris Gardner
murder-for-hire plot against one “I could cry talking about it,”
of the documentary’s primary Braff tells THR of the situation
What Will the New Normal on Red Carpets Look Like? subjects, Carole Baskin, owner that has inspired a GoFundMe
Plastic shields separating media from stars, the elimination of entou- of Big Cat Rescue. He also was campaign (with $491,000 raised
rages plus drive-in and virtual fan experiences — these are just a few found guilty of killing five tigers so far) and hashtag #WakeUpNick.
proposals from event insiders for putting Hollywood’s once-booming in 2017. PETA’s Brittany Peet, who “It’s all very, very moving. There’s
red carpets back on track. Under Safer at Home directives, events have appears in the docuseries, says: a nonstop stream of people drop-
been shuttered since mid-March, with no end date in sight. 15/40 “Tiger King has exposed tiger ping things off” as Cordero’s
Productions, a firm that has produced 350 events annually (including exhibitors as ghouls Rock of Ages castmates take turns
Game of Thrones’ final-season premiere in New York) shared renderings who steal cubs from taking Elvis on stroller walks.
(above) that show how drastically modified a carpet could look. Says their mothers … and “A lot of people are still under the
company president Craig Waldman, “We’ve been meeting with L.A. city then often discard impression that this is only really
officials to redesign the red carpet experience in a way that works while Peet or kill them when dire for seniors, but I’m here to
accommodating social distancing to make talent more comfortable.” they grow up. This tell you that a very, very healthy
He adds that medical staff could be on hand to provide temperature Halloween, PETA will poke some 41-year-old friend of mine is
checks. The takeaway: more space, fewer attendees, healthier carpets. pointed fun at a tiger killer who fighting for his life.”
belongs behind bars, where he
film department, maintains a can no longer harm a hair on any Private Zoom Concerts Raise
roster of clients that includes animal’s head.” Nearly $2M for COVID Relief
Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren It started as a fun way for WME
Danny DeVito and Dan Aykroyd. Zach Braff on Nick Cordero partner Richard Weitz to cel-
It’s unclear if any of them did ‘Fighting for His Life’ ebrate 17-year-old daughter
the drive-by, but it is known As of press time, Nick Cordero — Demi’s birthday five weeks ago.
that many of his agency peers — the Broadway star and Blue Bloods Today, the private Zoom con-
CAA partners including Richard actor — continues to fight the certs that they host from their
Lovett, Bryan Lourd and Kevin devastating COVID-19 virus that
Huvane among them — honked has forced a leg amputation, dialy-
CAA’s Fred Specktor and wife Nancy Heller
outside their Brentwood Home. their well wishes as he looked on sis and a medically induced coma
with wife Nancy Heller and their after a lung infection that spread Nick
Honk If You Want to Wish dog. In a brief exchange with THR, to his blood. The battle hits close Cordero
(left) and
a CAA Agent a Happy Birthday Specktor seemed humbled by the to home for Zach Braff, who calls Zach Braff
Fred Specktor has likely seen it event: “I felt it showed the special Cordero one of his best friends
all as one of the town’s top talent camaraderie that exists among (they co-starred in the 2014 stage
agents for decades, but even he colleagues at CAA, and it made musical Bullets Over Broadway)
admits to being overwhelmed by me feel incredible. I sure picked … and housemate. Cordero, his
a birthday surprise outside his the right place to work.” wife, Amanda Kloots, and their
Brentwood home. On April 24, 10-month old son, Elvis, have been
a vehicle parade of 100 of his PETA’s Joe Exotic Costume living in Braff’s guesthouse since
CAA colleagues cruised by to Based on Netflix’s pandemic-era they moved to L.A. in the fall to
wish him a happy 87th birthday. hit Tiger King (64 million house- house hunt when Cordero joined
Specktor, a veteran of the agency’s holds watched since its March 20 a local production of Rock of Ages.

Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 20 M AY 6, 2020

Beverly Hills home have fea-
tured 100-plus performers from
around the world and have raised
Hitched, Hatched, Hired
Inside the industry’s celebrations and news
$1.7 million (and counting) for
COVID-19 relief while reeling in
industry titans (Bob Iger, Jeffrey
Katzenberg, Dana Walden, Robert
Greenblatt, Jennifer Salke). The
pandemic concert series featur-
ing the likes of John Legend,
Rob Thomas and Clive Davis has
contributed funds for everything
from Saban Community Clinic
and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
to cities across the country, with
participation from mayors Eric
2
Garcetti (L.A.) and Keisha Lance
Bottoms (Atlanta) and a part-
nership with Goldman Sachs
Wealth Management that kicked 3
in $150,000, pushing efforts
closer to $2 million. “I’m just
shocked because we didn’t plan
on this,” says Weitz. “Demi said
she wanted to get to $10,000 and
I pushed for $30,000. This is
beyond our wildest dreams.”

Demi Weitz and WME’s Richard Weitz.

Weddings communications at Wade Rudolph joined

Jenna Santoianni, Showtime on May 4. postproduction house
executive vp and head Goldcrest Post as head of
of development at Peter Oillataguerre was production on April 20.
Paramount Television Calhoun tapped president of
Studios, married Eric production at Spyglass Deaths
Cartier, managing direc- Media on April 20. Irrfan Khan, the
tor of Houlihan Lokey, Bollywood actor who
on March 21 at their Skydance Media crossed over to
home in Echo Park, with hired Stephanie Kyoko Hollywood to star in
their photographer as McKinnon as general Slumdog Millionaire and
the only witness. The counsel and promoted Life of Pi, died April 29
two ordered pizza and Jun Oh to president of in Mumbai of compli-
cupcakes after their global business and legal cations from a colon
Power Takeout living-room nuptials. affairs on April 29. infection. He was 53.
Ben Affleck and Ana de
Armas made a pastry run Births Mariana DiPancrazio was Sam Lloyd, who played
to Sidecar Doughnuts. … Ansleigh Scholtes, vp named chief content lawyer Ted Buckland on
Gwyneth Paltrow picked communications at revenue officer at Just for Scrubs, died April 30 in
up from Chinois on Main. Endeavor, and hus- Laughs on April 28. Los Angeles of lung can-
Janetti … Michael J. Fox, Fred
Savage and director band Patrick Scholtes cer. He was 56.
Michael Gelb enjoyed welcomed son Pierre Robyn DeMarco joined
Spago at home. … Busy Alexandre Scholtes on AMC Networks as senior Mari Winsor, a Pilates
Philipps and stylist Karla Feb. 15 in New York. vp programming strat- instructor to the stars,
Welch stopped by Petty egy, acquisitions and died April 28 in Sherman
De Armas Cash the day of its reopen-
ing. … Brooklyn Nine-Nine Anderson Cooper wel- scheduling April 21. Oaks of complications
showrunner Dan Goor ordered in Russ comed son Wyatt Morgan from ALS. She was 70.
& Daughters. … Phil Rosenthal indulged Cooper via surrogate on Yasmin Hormozi and
in Sonoratown taqueria. … Gary Janetti 1 Jenna
April 27. Santoianni Patrick Callan were Gil Schwartz, former chief
and Brad Goreski shared date night over and named vp narrative communications officer
food from Craig’s. … David Katzenberg Eric Cartier
and Maria Sharapova frequented Felix. … Congrats 2 Pierre film and television for for CBS, died May 2 of
Erin Calhoun was Alexandre Concordia Studio on a heart attack in Santa
Vanderpump Rules’ Stassi Schroeder and Scholtes
Beau Clark got eats from Boa Steakhouse. named executive vp 3 Irrfan Khan April 16. Monica. He was 68.

To submit, send email to hhh@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 21 M AY 6, 2020

 The Business Creative Space ILM’s Rob Bredow
(right) and Patrick

Rob Bredow
Tubach at the 2018
premiere of Solo; a
poster of the film
signed by director
Ron Howard.
The head of Industrial Light & Magic on producing
state-of-the-art VFX from home and how his team’s virtual
production developments could be ‘an important part of
us being able to get back to work sooner’ By Carolyn Giardina

A
s the head of visual effects powerhouse Industrial Light &
Magic, Rob Bredow is usually greeted each day by a welcoming
statue of Yoda perched atop a fountain at the studio’s head-
quarters in San Francisco’s Presidio. But like everyone at the company,
Bredow has been working from home since March 17 after a nail-biting
race to set up the VFX studio’s staff to work remotely during the novel
coronavirus outbreak.
“We heard an early report at 11 a.m. [on March 16] that there might be
an announcement coming out that day, and it was effective at mid-
night. So we had to get everybody out and home, and that was quite an
amazing sprint,” he recalls. “The fact that the very next day we were up
and running with everyone working remotely was a miraculous thing.”
Bredow, 46, admits that some ILM projects are on hiatus but notes
that others are staying in production despite the lockdown. He won’t
offer specifics, but ILM’s slate includes such high-profile titles as
Disney’s Jungle Cruise, Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion and season
two of Jon Favreau’s Disney+ series The Mandalorian, which employs
cutting-edge virtual production technology to seamlessly meld CG
imagery with live-action production techniques.
A Southern California native who grew up in La Habra, Bredow says Bredow says
he envisioned working in the film industry from a very young age: “My he’d love to play
this Nord Stage 2 EX
first job was at Knott’s Berry Farm, where I dreamed of someday work- keyboard between
meetings to relax,
ing in their video production unit while I was busy selling churros,” “but things
he says. After getting his start in 1991 as an intern at the now-defunct are too busy!”
VFX house VisionArt Design & Animation, Bredow worked his way up
the industry ladder, eventually landing at Sony Pictures Imageworks,
where he spent nearly 15 years before joining Lucasfilm in 2014 as vp
new media and head of its advanced development group. He helped “We’re all in shelter-in-place
launch the company’s immersive entertainment unit, ILMxLab, in studios,” says Bredow, in
his home office on April 28.
2015, became Lucasfilm’s chief “We’re using ILM’s on-premises
technology officer a year later and technology to give us the
ability to remote things to
was promoted to his current role each individual user.”
in 2018, all while landing a 2019
Oscar nomination as VFX super- Can you give us an update on
visor on Solo: A Star Wars Story in how you’re expanding your virtual
the process. Bredow now oversees production services?
about 2,000 employees in ILM’s five We’re fortunate to get to part-
locations in San Francisco, London, ner with Jon Favreau on The
Singapore, Sydney and Vancouver. Mandalorian. He had a huge
Bredow, who lives with his vision of how to take some of his
wife and two daughters in Marin experience in virtual production
County, talked to THR about the on films like The Lion King and
challenges of working remotely, the use that in live action. … We’d
advantages of virtual production been building up those tools
and how the AI-based image- incrementally over the years, A dice holder prop
from Solo that
doctoring technology behind deep but The Mandalorian was really Bredow keeps on his
Bredow at work in his desk for good luck.
home office. “It’s amazing fakes — President Trump tweeted the combination of everything
how much it is business one of Joe Biden recently — will coming together. We’re very
as usual,” he says.
change Hollywood. excited to actually have a [virtual

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 22 M AY 6, 2020


production services] offering
[dubbed StageCraft] that we’re not
only using on The Mandalorian
but now making available
for other shows in the industry.
How do you see virtual pro-
duction being used in light of
the pandemic?
We think tools like StageCraft will
be an important part of us being
able to get back to work sooner.
We can digitally build a big per-
centage of sets and can be doing
SUBJECT (5). TUBACH: ALBERT L.
that while we’re in this work-
from-home situation [so that]
ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES.
BREDOW: COURTESY OF
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Bredow relies
on Builders Tea
from London
“for the afternoon
caffeine kick.”
“Every time I jump
on a conference
call, Miley (right)
scratches the door to
be let into my office.
Definitely my new
work buddy.”
the first day we can safely return
to shooting, we’ll be able to pick
up as quickly as possible. We’re
continuing to collaborate with art
departments for upcoming shows
and with production designers
and directors of photography to
build their digital environments.
The first couple of weeks, we
were making sure everybody was
100 percent productive. Now we’re
in this phase of, “What does it look
like to get back up and running
and shooting these films, and how
few people can we have on set to
keep everyone safe?”
23
What’s the setup that allows
employees to work from home like?
We’re all in shelter-in-place
studios. We’re using ILM’s on-
premises technology to give us
the ability to remote things to
each individual user. And you still
have all the power of working at
ILM with all of our thousands
of computers and all the same
security protocols, but we’re just
allowing people to get a window
into all of that from their homes,
where they can work safely in this
situation. The security implica-
tions are such that we’re making
sure that no data is actually
leaving the [ILM] site, which is
unusual, but the way we rolled it
out allowed us to keep that part
secure. We’ve involved our clients
in each of these details as we’ve
gone along. It’s not quite business
as usual, but it’s amazing how
much it is business as usual.
ILM has been working on digital
humans as well as new de-aging
techniques that were used in
The Irishman. What’s next in
this space?
Our goals are really to continue
to maintain the highest-quality
digital performances, and there’s
always more work we can do on
that front while simultaneously
making the actor’s and the direc-
tor’s experience as natural and
unencumbered as possible.
Where does the technique used
for The Irishman go from here?
A smaller rig?
Yeah, that’s exactly right. More
flexibility on the rigging, meaning
more ease of use on set, continued
improvement to that. That goes
for everything from how much
the camera weighs to its physical
dimensions. But we also want to
be getting even higher-quality
data from the set so that we can
represent the actor’s performance
in even greater fidelity. And then
on the digital side, there’s just con-
stant innovation in all the little
details that make a digital human
look as believable as possible.
Everything from the way the skin
moves, as it interpolates between
the different shapes, to the subtle
details of how we continue to
shade that skin. Every few months
we have new breakthroughs in
those areas.
M AY 6, 2020
RÉSUMÉ
CURRENT TITLE
Senior vp, executive creative
director and head of
Industrial Light & Magic
PREVIOUS JOB
Lucasfilm
chief technology officer
BIG HIT
Co-producer and Oscar-
nominated VFX supervisor
on Solo: A Star Wars Story
How do you see the potential
impact of artificial intelligence
on Hollywood?
The popularization of it and the
maturing of the technologies that
are used to create software have
really changed in the past two
years. We’ve all seen examples
of deep fakes and other things
online that are an illustration of
the kinds of things that can be
achieved without using all the
individual steps in the process
that you would in a traditional
visual effects pipeline — but
still give you most of the results.
Now, when you study a deep fake,
even the good ones, it’s not quite
photorealistic enough for us to
put straight into a film, but it def-
initely is pointing to what’s going
to happen in the future. And it
will actually change the way we
do visual effects and create visual
effects for the big screen and for
streaming and other high-quality
forms of entertainment.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.
This casting is
of one of the original
characters for the
holochess table in
1977’s Star Wars. “He
keeps me company
here at home,”
says Bredow.

FILM | SCOTT ROXBOROUGH & MIA GALUPPO
Cannes Virtual Film Markets
‘Selling Hope’ Amid Global Crisis
Two complementary events will run online in June, one screening completed projects and the
other pitching packages, both navigating multiple time zones as they avoid on-demand offerings
C
annes, the film festi-
val, won’t be happening
this year.
But while the French gov-
ernment’s extended ban on
large gatherings because of the
COVID-19 pandemic killed all
hope of a return to the Croisette
in the spring, the industry has
responded with two virtual
events to keep the Cannes Film
Market alive.
One is run by the official
Cannes Marché du Film and
the other is organized by the
film sales divisions of the top
four agencies — CAA Media
Finance, UTA Independent Film
Group, ICM International and
Independent Group and Endeavor
Content — as well as several indie
production and sales operations,
including STX Entertainment,
AGC Studios and Sierra/Affinity.
Details of the entertainment
industry’s first-ever virtual film
markets still are being worked
SCOTT ROXBOROUGH is
Europe bureau chief and
MIA GALUPPO is a film writer at
The Hollywood Reporter.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
out. But the two markets are set to
run parallel, kicking off June 22.
There was initial confusion sur-
rounding the dueling events, with
some thinking the two markets
were one and the same and others
considering them competitors.
In reality, says Marché execu-
tive director Jérôme Paillard, the
two will be “complementary,”
with the official Cannes version
screening mainly finished films
and the still-unnamed agencies’
version focused on big-ticket
packages — a script with director
and talent attached — pitched to
the international presale market.
Says Paillard, “We’re trying to
coordinate so the markets can
run alongside each other because
they are essentially serving dif-
ferent sections of the industry.”
Finished or nearly finished
films, such as AGC Studios’
Breaking News in Yuba County
or the German period drama
Narcissus and Goldmund, from
Beta Cinema, will screen in the
virtual Marché. Packages — akin
to Rocket Science’s female-
fronted, big-budget reboot of
Cliffhanger and FilmNation’s
Illustration by Jason Ford
24
Chris Hemsworth-Tiffany
Haddish comedy Down Under
Cover, both of which presold at
2019’s physical Cannes — will be
pitched in the new agency market.
Rena Ronson, co-head of UTA
Independent Film Group, says
their market is trying to mimic
Cannes pitching as much as pos-
sible: “Our intention is to curate
virtual gatherings
to do business that
would otherwise be
handled in hotels or
Paillard on beaches.”
The virtual Marché
will most clearly
resemble the tradi-
tional event. In place
Lacy of the “bunker” — the
physical market in
Cannes’ Palais du Festival —
there will be a new platform, the
Marché du Film Online. It will
have virtual cinemas screening
films on a set schedule — no on-
demand screenings, to preserve
the audience experience — and
virtual booths where companies
can present their sales slates and
hold one-on-one meetings via
Zoom. Cannes also plans to offer
M AY 6, 2020
live-stream versions of its confer-
ences and panels.
Meanwhile, the first two days
of the independent market will
be dedicated to presentations,
similar to industry showcases
like ShoWest or CineEurope, with
companies screening prerecorded
pitches. These are planned as the
virtual equivalent of the packed
buyer presentations of Cannes
past, where Ron Howard or Tom
Ford wowed crowds of 300-plus
international buyers in the
Majestic Hotel ballroom, securing
financing for their next project.
The final days of the indie
market will be set aside for buyer
meetings — and scheduling could
be a nightmare.
“It’ll be like herding cats,” one
PAILLARD: JACOPO RAULE/GETTY IMAGES. LACY: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/WIREIMAGE. SUTHERLAND: PHILIPPE JECKER. DECKTER: LUCA TEUCHMANN/GETTY IMAGES. 2019: STEPHANE CARDINALE/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES. 2020: SERGE HAOUZI/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES.
veteran sales agent quipped,
describing the challenge of trying
to get fierce competitors to agree
on time slots for presentations
and screenings. Many expect
companies to jump the gun and
hold private screenings for select
buyers or send secured VOD links
ahead of the official market start.
Then there’s the added chal-
lenge of doing all this in multiple
time zones. To avoid VOD screen-
ings, the virtual Marché is
planning to repeat live streams
of market films at separate slots
for Europe, the U.S. and Asia. “We
want to keep them on the same
day, if possible, to maintain that
urgency of everyone watching
the film at the same time,” says
Paillard. “If you just send links
to people, they don’t necessar-
ily take the time to watch them,
[and] it’s difficult to organize
meetings and sales negotiations
on the back of that.”
For sales agents, this will mean
very, very long days. Pacific coast-
ers, nine hours behind Cannes
and 17 hours behind Sydney, will
be among the hardest hit.
“It’ll be 7 to 8 a.m. meetings
with Europe, then North and
South America and into the
night for Asia and Australia,”
says Jonathan Deckter of
Voltage Pictures.
At least it will be cost-effective.
In addition to saving on flights

and hotels, the virtual mar-
kets essentially will be free.
Accreditations for the Marché du
Film Online cost $103 for early-
bird booking until May 29 and
$212 after that. That’s a steep dis-
count on the cost for the physical
Marché, which ran from $347 for
early-bird to $471 for on-the-spot
accreditation, with additional
costs for access to market-con-
nected workshops and conference
events. Booking a virtual booth
is free, as are virtual screenings.
And the independent market will
be completely gratis.
Another hidden advantage of
the lockdown: talent availability.
“Nobody is working, so everybody
has time to read scripts,” says
one agent. “Even A-list talent is
champing at the bit.”
But packaging in the midst of a
pandemic does pose challenges.
Where to shoot, for example.
Studios and production com-
panies are negotiating guidelines
with the unions and government
officials to resume shooting,
perhaps as early as late summer.
Certain territories, including
Iceland and the Czech Republic,
whose governments have been
more effective in containing the
spread of COVID-19, could get
going even earlier.
With the Croisette off-limits, the French festival and Hollywood’s
top sales agents are taking their business online
Marché du Film
Cinando (screenings), Match and Meet (meetings)
$103 until May 29 and $212 after
Finished or near-finished indie films
June 22 to 26
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The Business
Analysis
“Other parts of the world are
opening up faster than the U.S.,
and I think we are going to have
to be faster and more flexible
in where and how we produce,”
says Brian Beckmann, CFO at
Arclight Films, which has several
productions — including the
disaster thriller Deep Water and
the actioner Long Gone Heroes,
starring Guy Pearce and Ben
Kingsley — on the starting blocks.
At the virtual market,
Beckmann notes, projects that
can start shooting the day restric-
tions are lifted could have an
advantage. “If you have a project
that can get up and running very
quickly and get finished in nine
months instead of the usual 12
to 18 months, you’ll be at a huge
advantage over your competi-
tion,” he says.
David Garrett of production
and sales group Mister Smith
Entertainment thinks indies
actually could have a jump on stu-
dio productions, which typically
need more lead time.
“Even if things open up and
there is a window of a few months
in the summer and fall, there will
still be uncertainty, with the pos-
sibility of the virus coming back
again in the winter,” Garrett says.
“The indie market can be more
A Tale of Two Cannes
Host UTA, ICM, CAA, WME and sales agencies
Platforms TBD (screenings), Zoom (meetings)
Fees
For Sale High-profile sales packages
Dates
25
nimble because we don’t need two
to three months of prep like some
studio productions.”
A big unknown looming over
the virtual market is whether
there will be sufficient buyer
demand. The global COVID-
19 lockdown has sent viewers
flooding to streamers in record
numbers — Netflix added
15.8 million new sub-
scribers in the first
quarter of the year,
and regional SVOD
Sutherland and AVOD services
have notched high-
double-digit growth
in recent months.
In late March, the
Deckter streamer picked the
faith-based movie
musical A Week Away from CAA
Media Finance and the Melissa
McCarthy dramedy The Starling,
from CAA and UTA Independent.
“The platforms are hungry.
There’s a massive appetite for
product at the moment,” says
one sales agent. “Anyone with a
finished film will be able to sell it
at [virtual] Cannes.”
But for most international
distributors, Garrett notes,
growth in digital revenue has not
replaced the big hole created by
the loss of box office as cinemas
No fee
June 22 to 28
M AY 6, 2020
worldwide have shuttered.
“Everyone is hurting. It’s
not clear what kind of resources
people will have in order to
[pre-]buy,” he says.
One major European buyer also
pointed to an expected glut on the
theatrical market when cinemas
eventually do open up. “All the
studios have pushed their films
to the end of the year. There’s no
slots left,” the distributor com-
plained. “If I buy anything now,
it will have to be for 2021 at the
earliest. More likely 2022.”
Despite concerns and doubts,
there is broad agreement that
right now a virtual market is
exactly what the indie film indus-
try needs.
“It is important for filmmakers
and the health of the indepen-
dent film industry that we work
together to help sustain the busi-
ness through the summer and
beyond, if necessary,” notes Roeg
Sutherland, co-head of CAA Media
Finance. “When you are selling
movies that are going into produc-
tion in 2021, you are selling hope.”
Hope — that production will
start up again, that cinemas will
reopen, that the global economy
will recover — is what everyone
“attending” the Cannes market
from their respective couches this
year is counting on.
While everyone involved wants
the two markets to be successful,
there’s also a hope that the first
all-virtual Cannes will be the last.
“We don’t want to, and we can’t,
replace the physical market,”
says Paillard. “But maybe what
we learn this year will be a model
for how the virtual and physical
markets can work together in
the future.”
Jessica Lacy, head of indepen-
dent and international film at
ICM, echoes the sentiment for the
agency-led market. “A lot of what
we do with this virtual market
could be important moving
forward during this sequestered
period we are living through,”
she says. “We are hoping we can
figure this out so it can be imple-
mented effectively in the future
if needed.”
 The Business

Analysis

CULTURE | K AREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

Even During a Crisis,

Celebrity Apologies
Can Fall Short
After saying something dangerous (Dr. Phil on COVID-19)
or something ignorant (Jeff Goldblum on Islam), public figures
tend to double down or give a snarky non-apology. THR’s
columnist offers advice on expressing contrition the right way

O
ne of Jeff Goldblum’s most
famous movie lines is
from Jurassic Park, when,
as Dr. Ian Malcolm, he admon-
ishes: “Your scientists were so
preoccupied with whether or not
they could, they didn’t stop to
think if they should.” The same
can be said about stars when pub-
licly offering their opinions: They
are so focused on the entitlement
to speak, they don’t stop to think
if they should. Now Goldblum
faces media backlash for saying
something that some argue is
anti-Islam. He’s part of an ongo-
politicians and popular culture,
I’d have to say this is not such a
case. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t
dumb. It just wasn’t malicious.
Everything depends on con-
text. In this case, Goldblum
wondered aloud — oblivious and
ill-informed — about the contrast
between the traditional Muslim
outfit and the treatment of women
and homosexuals on a show that
celebrates both. He voiced a com-
mon myth about Islam: that it is
a monolithic religion. But there
are many versions that teach
acceptance. That Goldblum didn’t
Dr. Phil recently appeared on
Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle
to proclaim that the country
was overreacting to COVID-19.
Despite not being a medical
doctor, he felt qualified to tell
3 million viewers that “45,000
people a year die from automo-
bile accidents; 480,000 from
cigarettes; 360,000 a year from
swimming pools, but we don’t
shut the country down for that.”
First, his opinion is contrary
to all the data-driven medical
opinions from experts. Second,
his facts are wrong: According
“I am aware of my platform and
have always used it the best way
I know how and to shine a light
on injustice. I want to start with
saying I am sorry. I own the fact
that saying … ‘this pushed me
out of the hip-hop scene a little’
was insensitive …’ ”
In September 2019, Lizzo
tweeted, “Hey @Postmates this

ing media Geiger counter that
tests every celebrity utterance
to see if it’s radioactive. That’s
as it should be, because celebri-
ties’ words can have a healing
or harmful effect. And when it’s
harmful, some choose to apolo-
gize, some to double down, and
some offer a snarky non-apology.
Goldblum appeared on RuPaul’s
Drag Race and, while judging a
contestant’s stars-and-stripes-
themed hijab and caftan, mused,
“Is there something in this reli-
gion that is anti-homosexuality
and anti-woman? Does that com-
plicate the issue? I’m just raising
it and thinking out loud and
maybe being stupid.” The inter-
net exploded with accusations
of malicious Islamophobia. As
a Muslim who has faced insults
and threats for more than 50
years, and has consistently called
out anti-Muslim sentiments in
K AREEM ABDUL-JABBAR is an
NBA Hall of Famer and contributing
editor at THR.
know this is disappointing; that
he expressed the movie-villain
version is dangerous because it
perpetuates hatred.
Clearly, that was not Goldblum’s
intention. Anyone who knows
him from his interviews or
watches his addictive The World
According to Jeff Goldblum on
Disney+ knows that part of his
appeal is his think-aloud, off-
kilter musings. Unfortunately,
on RuPaul’s show these mus-
ings were not charming. But the
backlash and the backlash to the
backlash are merely the left and
right flagrantly waving their
street cred.
But there are plenty of exam-
ples of stars who have offered
some heinous opinions and, when
called out, refused responsibility.
to the CDC, 32,000 Americans
die annually from auto accidents
and 3,536 a year die from unin-
tentional drownings. Third, it’s a
false analogy that doesn’t relate
to how a contagion works.
Worst of all was his apology: “If
you didn’t like my choice of words,
I apologize for that.” It blames
the viewer for taking offense, for
not being smart enough to under-
stand his true meaning. This is
the Real Housewives Syndrome:
Every apology is phrased “I’m
sorry that you were offended …”
and not “I was wrong.”
Two celebrities who got it
right when it comes to apologiz-
ing are Miley Cyrus and Lizzo.
In 2017, Cyrus complained that
rap lyrics were too lewd, adding,
“I can’t listen to that anymore.
That’s what pushed me out of the
hip-hop scene a little.” YouTuber
Kenya Wilson, a Cyrus fan,
responded with a video saying, “It
was bad, it was racially insensi-
tive, it had racist undertones
and it wasn’t OK, point blank,
period.” Afterward, Cyrus wrote
in Wilson’s comment section:
GOLDBLUM: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC. CYRUS: JOHN SHEARER/GETTY IMAGES. LIZZO: ARIK MCARTHUR/WIREIMAGE. PHIL: NATHAN CONGLETON/NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES.
girl Tiffany W. stole my food.
she lucky I don’t fight no more.”
Further investigation showed the
driver had tried to deliver the food
but no one answered the door,
and Lizzo promptly apologized: “I
apologize for putting that girl on
blast. I understand I have a large
following and that there were so
many variables that could’ve put
her in danger. Imma really be
more responsible with my use of
social media and check my petty
and my pride at the door.”
Even though I don’t believe
Goldblum had malicious intent,
in the end, he does owe an apol-
ogy, because he perpetuated
a harmful myth. But equally
important is how he expresses
that regret. The biggest lesson
is to realize the consequences of
what you say before saying any-
thing. But because stars speak in
public so often, it’s inevitable that
they’ll sometimes say something
offensive or harmful. When that
happens, they need to embrace
their mistake and apologize
without caveats, stipulations
or limitations.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 26 M AY 6, 2020

 Style Wellness

Channel 2

That
Cabin
Fever
Stay fit with the best in gear,
apps, streaming content and
Los Angeles gyms that have
pivoted to virtual group classes
By Degen Pener

I
n April, during coronavi-
rus stay-at-home orders
around the world, Chris
Hemsworth’s 1-year-old Centr
fitness app grew its audience by
300 percent, adding hundreds of
thousands of users. On YouTube,
average daily views of content
with “workout at home” in titles
shot up more than 200 percent
from March 15 to 30 compared to
the rest of 2020. “During quar-
antine, one of the things we can
control is self-care, so focusing
1
on fitness and well-being couldn’t
be more important ,” says Jillian
Michaels, founder of the Jillian kit,” says Rob McGillivray of West as a support bench — resistance offers workouts, healthy-eating
Michaels Fitness app. Here’s the Hollywood’s Retrofit gym (pro- bands and a jump rope.” A mat to plans and guided meditations for
gear that trainers say is helpful ducer Michael Lombardo and Pose cushion knees is also advised. kids read by director Taika Waititi
to have at home, plus ways that actor Angel Bismark Curiel were ($30 a month with seven-day free
Hollywood is working out now. spotted working out there pre- APPS Among the many apps trial). FitOn, a free app, has part-
pandemic), which has launched available — from Tone It Up, Nike nered with actress Gabrielle Union
GEAR Most trainers say effective an at-home YouTube workout Training Club and Crunch Live to and her husband, athlete Dwyane
workouts can be done using body series, “it would include a pair of Sculpt Society and Down Dog — Wade, on content, including the
weight alone. However, “if I was Bowflex adjustable dumbbells, a one of the most popular recently former working out with water
to select my ideal home survival 65-inch fitball — which doubles is Hemsworth’s Centr, which bottles in lieu of weights.

Stylish Workout-From-Home Togs and Gear 5

10 items to stay fit and sane while sheltering in place By Carol McColgin

3
2

3
1

28 4
 4

3 6
STREAMING There are thousands
of options on such platforms as
YouTube, TikTok and Instagram
Live (a place to catch videos from
Barry’s Bootcamp; Modo Yoga LA;
choreographer Ryan Heffington;
and Damon Bell, who trains Queer
PORTER. BAG: COURTESY OF COS. SHORTS: COURTESY OF MODA OPERANDI. MAT, ADIDAS: COURTESY OF FARFETCH. BRA, LEGGINGS: COURTESY
Hollywood’s
Insider
Peloton Groups
Manager-producers
Alex Goldstone and
Trevor Engelson meet up
with colleagues for virtual
1 Centr app founder Chris Hemsworth. 2 The actor doing lunges in a Centr video.
3 Gabrielle Union’s water-bottle shoulder presses on FitOn’s app. 4 Prodigal Son’s Tom Payne rides during stay-at-home
in a virtual session with trainer Tom Fitzgerald. 5 The Fitness Marshall, known for dance videos By Chris Gardner
to songs like Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.” 6 Blogilates’ Cassey Ho working out with wine bottles.
During the COVID-19 pandemic,
5 at-home exercise program
Peloton has become a nexus
for virtual fitness gatherings for
Hollywood insiders, including
Anonymous Content’s Alex
Goldstone. Since becoming a
devotee of the cult of Peloton
(“Yes, I believe it’s a cult,” he
jokes), the manager-producer
tells THR that recently he
invited some industry friends
workouts, often at a reduced rate. Park’s Everybody. One thing that to join a live virtual morning
Tom Payne, who stars on Fox’s they all have in common: a com- bike ride. “It sort of grew from
Prodigal Son, is working out every munity approach, with things there,” he says. During one
other day with his trainer Tom like open-mic time at the begin- ride, 27 colleagues were on
Fitzgerald via Zoom calls. “He’s ning of classes. “It’s a close-knit at the same time. He likes the
app because it allows users to
helping me keep to a regular community,” says writer-director be social, courtesy of virtual
routine and steadily increas- Courtney Hoffman of One Down

Eye’s Antoni Porowski). Among ing the challenge. Sticking to a Dog, “and going virtual, they’ve
HEMSWORTH, CENTR: COURTESY OF CENTR (2). GOLDSTONE, FITZGERALD: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. NIKE, SWEATSHIRT: COURTESY OF MR.

OF TORI BURCH. BIKE: COURTESY OF PELOTON. UNION: COURTESY OF FITON. PAYNE: MIKE PONT/WIREIMAGE. ASH: RODIN ECKENROTH/

the trending sites on YouTube routine gives some semblance of replicated that feeling of connec-
WIREIMAGE. WAITITI: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. THERAGUN: COURTESY OF BRAND. BANDS: COURTESY OF GOOP.

are Yoga with Adriene (whose control in this unsteady time,” tion.” Adds Everybody founder
relatable style has gained her says Payne, who, “as soon as the Sam Rypinski of the studio’s
7.2 million followers), Blogilates lockdown hap- Zoom classes ($5), “There’s not
(5 million followers) and The pened,” outfitted his the sense of isolation in the same
Fitness Marshall (2.5 million). home in L.A. with a way as when you are watching a
The latter is helmed by 27-year- weight bench, medi- YouTube video.”
old Caleb Marshall, who, before Ash cine ball and even And many people aren’t choos-
stay-at-home orders, shot in gymnastic rings. ing just one way to get their
Griffith Park and now produces content, but are instead mixing Peloton devotee Alex Goldstone
his indelibly campy dance work- GROUP CLASSES it up, as Superstore actress Lauren of Anonymous Content at home on
his stationary bike.
outs at home in North Hollywood. According to a Ash has been doing. “My friends
He sees his calling as being Waititi spokesperson for the and I came up with Zoom Zumba, high-fives (“without catching
“Richard Simmons and Britney Mind Body booking where we follow a Zumba class anything”) and video chats.
Spears combined” and asks his app (which has pivoted to vir- on our phones and Zoom each “I’ve included a strict ‘no
fans to “get silly and just go for it.” tual offerings), among the L.A. other on our laptops. There is a judgment’ policy so it doesn’t
become uber-competitive. It’s
gyms that have seen a significant slight lag, so we are not in sync. I meant to be fun and challeng-
ONE-ON-ONE TRAINING Contact increase in signups for group laughed for an entire hour watch- ing. And hopefully we’ll all come
almost any neighborhood gym classes — done on Zoom — are ing us all flailing our arms to out of this totally ripped.”
and it’s likely that they have train- One Down Dog yoga, Pasadena’s Shakira, and now I look forward to Not everyone shares
ers available for private virtual Breakthru Fitness and Cypress doing it every week!” his chill attitude. Manager-
producer Trevor Engelson of
Underground — who had pro-
duction on FX series Snowfall
paused amid the pandemic
— rides in several industry-
heavy Peloton groups and says
8 9 he’s in it to win. Peloton allows
riders to track how they rank in
each class, a feature he keeps
a close eye on, especially when
Goldstone is also on. “As Jerry
7 Maguire said, ‘We work in a
business of tough competitors,’
1 Theragun Elite muscle-relief device, which syncs with health apps; $399, and when it comes to Peloton,
therabody.com 2 Nike Running Air Zoom Pegasus 36 Trail shoe; $130, mrporter.com that also applies. I don’t want to
3 COS Technical gym bag; $99, cosstores.com 4 Rick Owens + Champion logo- get beat by anybody.”
appliqued cotton-blend hoodie; $600, mrporter.com 5 Satisfy’s Justice running
shorts; $310, modaoperandi.com 6 No Ka’ Oi yoga mat; $188, farfetch.com
7 Super Training Products Hip Circle Sport Pack with three resistance bands; $38,
goop.com 8 Adidas Falcon sneaker; $102, farfetch.com 9 Tory Sport printed cross-
back bra, $78, and printed chevron 7/8 leggings, $138; toryburch.com

6 T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 29 M AY 6, 2020

 Style

Dining

← Actor Walton Goggins (left) picking up a

cocktail kit at Melrose Umbrella Co.

Bestia What do you say about a place

that so much has already been said
about? You say, “There’s a fucking
Melrose Umbrella Co. I always go to spots reason everyone still talks about
that draw me by the look or the feel. On it.” DTLA’s Bestia is that special
Melrose Avenue, the Melrose Umbrella Co. place, and it has been that place
calls out amid the flash of the surrounding since day one. If you could
tourist shops. Right now, they are rocking say which restaurants helped
to-go cocktail kits including their Melrose bring culinary respect and
Mule with blood orange and ginger; $32, excitement back to L.A., you’d
serves four. melroseumbrellacompany.com have to give a tip of the cap to
Bestia. Now, even though we

Walton Goggins’
can’t go inside, their to-go menu
Spread Mediterranean (including Gorgonzola pizza,
Kitchen Blocks from our $20) — along with that of sister

Fave Takeout Spots

DTLA offices, Spread has
started a to-go program with
a market for my hummus-
and-pita fix, plus a to-go
cocktail program called
Spread the Love to help
bartenders in need. Buying
cocktails — like the Eastside
Spritz by Genever’s Jessie
restaurant Bavel — is what I need to
tide me over until we can go sit at their
bar and get those amazing cocktails
and eat and commune with close friends
The actor and Mulholland Distilling co-founder picks his L.A. and toast to that strange time in 2020 when
go-to’s for food, pantry staples and, yes, cocktail kits: ‘We couldn’t we couldn’t do so many things that make
make another f—ing dinner at home!’ As told to Brad Japhe life special. exploretock.com/bestiala

Smyth — to help bartend-
ers? Um, yeah. Done. Each
cocktail kit is $30 (serves
four). spreadkitchen.com
République In a city with not enough French
W
ith all the uncertainties swirling through my head — how
will the world be different and how will I be different? — the
one I keep coming back to is, “How will my neighborhood be
different?” There are many things in my life that I want to stay exactly
the same. I love the small section of city — Hollywood — I am fortu-
nate enough to call my own. And beyond, across this varied landscape,
L.A.’s restaurants and bars ground me. These are the spaces that give

food, I’d go there for the bread alone. In light
of the current state of events, the La Brea
Avenue restaurant is now a market with
bread, pastries, dishes like their kimchi fried
rice ($18, serves two), cheese, cocktails to
go and wine. Ignoring the gloves and masks,
it’s so damn comforting to be able to pull up
and feed my family with such amazing food
and drink. exploretock.com/republiquela
GOGGINS: COURTESY OF SUBJECT (2). FOOD: COURTESY OF RESTAURANT (5). JURA: COURTESY OF CASSIA. BRANCELLAO: THEODORE VANCE, COURTESY OF THE SOURCE IMPORTS. PERIGORD: COURTESY OF NOMADIC DISTRIBUTION.
me a sense of belonging within the community, they are the reasons
I and my family go east or west, north or south. In normal times, I’ll
happily battle my way to the out-of-the-way places, because there is joy
in just arriving (am I actually nostalgic for traffic right now?). Many
restaurants across L.A. are still open in a limited capacity, providing
takeout. Trying to hold on. Trying to survive. In my heart, I know we’ll
once again celebrate in person at the altar of these temples of social-
ization instead of calling them for curbside pickup
because we couldn’t make another fucking dinner at
home! This is a thank-you from me and my partner
Hermanito Who else needs to get the hell
Matthew Alper at Mulholland Distilling to some of our out of the house … even if it’s just a drive?
favorite establishments that are still going strong. The windows down, the music humming,
Making food, mixing cocktails to go, lifting our I always seem to head west these days
spirits. “City of Angels” is an understatement. To the in search of the cool ocean breeze. As I
places spotlighted here, and to all those that aren’t: pass Sawtelle Japantown, I remember that
Hermanito is there. They’re doing some rad
Hold on, y’all. We see you and salute you. And on the Mex food (including a pork belly taco kit;
next go-round, I’m eager to re-experience them anew $35, feeds five) and to-go bottles (including
with a much deeper appreciation. Mulholland Vodka). barhermanito.com

Wine Roasted Chicken

The classic pairing is
Pairings for chardonnay from Burgundy.
At-Home I also like savagnins from
the Jura that bring ripe
Cooking yellow apple and toasted
Marianna Caldwell, nut flavors. We recently
sommelier at added a roasted chicken
Santa Monica restaurant for takeout, and I opened
Cassia, suggests bottles a bottle of Jean Bourdy’s
to liven up same-old, savagnin to have with it.
same-old meals A match made in heaven!
$46, cassiala.com
Pasta
Depending on the sauce,
you can either go white
or red with pasta. I like
to meet halfway with a
lighter-bodied, chillable
red. Cume do Avia makes
a 100 percent brancellao
(a variety native to Spain’s
Galicia region) that has
bright red fruit, dried herbs
and a great minerality.
$42, thesourceimports.com
Bean Stew
With this hearty comfort
food, I like wines that are
equally comforting, such
as fuller-bodied reds from
Languedoc in the South
of France. I’m really loving
Les Equilibristes’ earthy
Hirsute Perigord, a blend
of cabernet franc and
merlot with notes of bright
plums and black cherry.
$28, cassiala.com — B.J.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 30 M AY 6, 2020

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THE DAILY PULSE IN ENTERTAINMENT, FROM

THE INDUSTRY’S MOST TRUSTED SOURCE
available on .com
 The impossible-to-ignore, 2 billion strong social media app
is going Hollywood, leveraging a massive sheltering-at-home
audience hungry for new content to draw A-listers onto
the platform and turn its homegrown roster into bankable stars
(with reality TV shows, of course)

by
NATALIE JARVEY

Illustration by The Sporting Press

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 33 M AY 6, 2020


On Tuesday, April 21, TikTok’s
biggest star crossed the 50 mil-
lion follower threshold. One day
later, video conferencing from her
bedroom in Connecticut, Charli
D’Amelio has another milestone
on her mind: her 16th birthday.
Caught up in her excitement
about the festivities, D’Amelio
doesn’t mention the appearance
she has coming up on The Tonight
Show, her second, where she will
talk with host Jimmy Fallon about
dancing in her bedroom, you’re
not alone. D’Amelio’s own TikTok
profile reads, “Don’t worry I don’t
get the hype either.” She says she
wasn’t after fame: “I was just
making videos for fun like every-
one else.” Even her parents are a
bit surprised. “I don’t know how it
happened,” says her dad, apparel
entrepreneur Marc D’Amelio. “I
saw her dancing. Next thing you
know, she had 500,000 followers.”
Fame comes fast and furious
famous. “This is definitely a place
to discover new talent.”
Less than 3 years old, TikTok
— owned by Chinese conglomer-
ate ByteDance and available in
the U.S. only since summer 2018
— has been downloaded more
than 2 billion times, according
to estimates by measurement
firm Sensor Tower. Its looping,
15-second videos have made it
the social media platform du
jour for a predominantly young,
female-skewing audience (women
ages 18-24 make up 22.6 per-
cent of its adult U.S. users, per
Comscore) that conferred similar
cultural cachet on Snapchat and
Instagram before the rest
of the world caught on.
The app’s quick rise
even has reigning
social video plat-
forms YouTube and
Instagram on edge.
Both are said to be plot-
ting copycat products.
This was all before the
global pandemic forced most of
the world indoors. Now, left with
more hours in the day than even
Netflix can sate, people have been
flocking to TikTok, each dance
routine or snappy sketch like You” feed and it won’t take long
a shot of dopamine. In March, to encounter Jennifer Lopez and
as most Americans began to Alex Rodriguez, who are isolating
shelter at home, TikTok’s global in their sprawling Miami home,

@KEKE.JANAJAH/TIKTOK. SHARPE: @YODELINGHALEY/TIKTOK. SCHWARZENEGGER: PHILLIP FARAONE/GETTY IMAGES. HOUGH: DESIREE NAVARRO/WIREIMAGE. LUGOR: @SHREKSDUMPSTER/
TIKTOK. DOBRIK: MICHAEL TRAN/FILMMAGIC. BENSON: BEN GABBE/GETTY IMAGES. NGUYEN: @NEWT/TIKTOK. D’AMELIO: @CHARLIDAMELIO/TIKTOK. O’BRIEN, CHAMBERLAIN: JEROD HARRIS/
PREVIOUS SPREAD: DERULO: C FLANIGAN/WIREIMAGE. ROSS: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. LOPEZ: THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES. LIZZO: MATTHEW BAKER/GETTY IMAGES. HART: MATT
the dance she created in March on TikTok, which uses a powerful downloads jumped 51 percent dancing to Megan Thee Stallion’s

GETTY IMAGES. JONAS: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES. CREWS: JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX/WIREIMAGE. TOMLINSON: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC. TUCKER: @TUCKERBUDZYN/TIKTOK. WILSON:
WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES. SMITH: JOSHUA SAMMER/GETTY IMAGES. RODRIGUEZ: JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGES. LIM: EDWARD BERTHELOT/GETTY IMAGES. HUDSON: ARAYA DIAZ/

GETTY IMAGES. MARTINEZ-REID: @BOMANIZER/TIKTOK. ARIEL: DOMINIK BINDL/GETTY IMAGES. HARMON: KENA KRUTSINGER/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES. FELT: ZACK DEZON/GETTY IMAGES.
KING: TARA ZIEMBA/GETTY IMAGES. MCFARLANDS: @THE.MCFARLANDS/TIKTOK. HUXLEY: @HUXLEYTHEPANDAPUPPY/TIKTOK. BLACK: ALBERT L. ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES. HUFF: @AJANI.
to encourage people to stay home algorithm to excavate someone year-over-year to 199 million, per “Savage,” or Jason Derulo, shirt-

during the coronavirus pandemic.
When she does pop into America’s
homes that Friday night — telling
Fallon that #DistanceDance vid-
eos have been viewed more than
13 billion times, contributing
donations for at-risk popula-
tions thanks to a partnership
with Procter & Gamble — the
soft-spoken teen exudes a youth-
ful naivete that makes it hard to
question her sincerity, even if a
charity campaign also burnishes
her brand. Giving back, she tells
Fallon, is “all I’ve wanted to do
since the start of this.”
If you’re wondering how society
got to a place where a doe-eyed,
freckle-nosed high schooler gar-
nered millions of followers and
coveted late night appearances for
from anonymity and turn them
into an overnight sensation. A
year ago, D’Amelio had yet to post
her first TikTok video. Now, she
has the potential to earn millions
and a team of agents, managers
and lawyers working tirelessly
behind the scenes. Though the
nature of internet virality is that
it can disappear as quickly as it
arrives, there’s evidence to sug-
gest — and a growing faction in
Hollywood who are mobilizing
to ensure — that TikTok stars
like D’Amelio won’t be fleeting.
“There’s something happening
here,” says D’Amelio’s agent, Ali
Berman, who as co-head of digital
talent at UTA has spent the better
part of the past decade mold-
ing the careers of the internet
Sensor Tower. Average time spent
on the app among U.S. users dur-
ing the month was at a record 858
minutes, or more than 14 hours,
according to Comscore.
TikTok doesn’t disclose user
data, but Vanessa Pappas, general
manager of TikTok U.S., acknowl-
edges, “We’ve seen an incredible
surge in terms of both the level
of creativity and diversity in the
content and our users and what
they’re sharing.”
As one of the few platforms
that can continue to churn out
new content while Hollywood
production is at a standstill,
TikTok is being flooded with
videos — and not just from
suburban teens. Start scrolling
through the app’s endless “For
HUFF/TIKTOK. THIS SPREAD: LOPEZ: @STEVIEMACKEY/TIKTOK. D’AMELIO: JASON KEMPIN/GETTY IMAGES. CHIKUMBU: COURTESY OF TIKTOK. PAPPAS: JEROD HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES.
less in bed, lip-syncing to his
own song, “Trumpets.” Amid the
coronavirus shutdown, TikTok
has become the great equalizer,
collapsing the distance between
a capital “s” star like Lopez and
D’Amelio, whom she previously
enlisted to help make her Super
Bowl dance challenge go viral.
They’re both stuck at home, using
the same app to reach their fol-
lowers — except that D’Amelio
has 40 million more of them.
“People say they feel like they
know me now,” says Derulo, who
just passed 17 million followers
on the app. “A lot of my career has
been people not understanding
me. This is the first inside look
at me as a human being, what my
personality is and interests are.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 34 M AY 6, 2020

 comedian Brittany Tomlinson,
floppy-haired heartthrob Chase
Hudson (along with Hype House,
his L.A.-based TikTok collective)
and actress Tabitha Brown, who
broke out on TikTok with vegan
cooking videos — are now inking
six-figure brand deals on behalf
of clients and shopping TV shows
about the unbelievable reality of
their sudden rise to stardom.
“When it comes to Hollywood,
the product has always been
influence,” says YouTube vlogger
Casey Neistat, who sold a video
app of his own to CNN in 2016
for $25 million (it shuttered two
years later). “Right now, there’s
no sexier place for that influence
than TikTok.”
B
efore TikTok, there was
Musical.ly. Founded in
Shanghai in 2014, the app
— which made it easy to lip-sync
to pop hits — had modest suc-
cess with 20 million U.S. users.
In November 2017, Beijing-based
ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for
as much as $1 billion. The follow-
ing August, it merged Musical.ly
with TikTok, a social video app
that had been gaining traction in
other parts of the world.
As a private company,
ByteDance is cagey about TikTok’s
performance metrics. The com-
pany has not shared how large
the app is or how much money it
earns, so determining the extent
of its power can be challenging.
From left: Charli D’Amelio attended NFL Honors on Feb. 1
with her sister, Dixie, and parents Heidi and Marc. Inset Sensor Tower estimates that
left: D’Amelio and Jennifer Lopez met to shoot a Super
Bowl-themed TikTok dance. Kudzi Chikumbu (above) heads users, who can tip creators during
creator community at TikTok, which in the U.S. is run by TikTok live streams, have spent
YouTube veteran Vanessa Pappas (right).
nearly $457 million on the app
since its launch. The vast major-
Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Terry hindsight. This winter, Rihanna’s ity of that spending comes from
Crews, who likes to post dance Fenty Beauty launched a collec- China, where ByteDance oper-
and comedy videos that aren’t tive for up-and-coming beauty ates a separate version of TikTok
much different from those on and lifestyle TikTokers — known known as Douyin.
his 14-year-old son’s account, as a “collab house” — including TikTok wasn’t an immedi-
concurs: “The medium was made 22-year-old Texas native Challan ate sensation with users, many
for me. Every casting agent for my Trishann (@challxn, 1.4 million of whom were turned off by
first five years in the business was followers). Brands are also catch- Musical.ly’s reputation as a
like, ‘Dude, you’re too big.’ But I’m ing on: Netflix and Warner Bros. slightly cringey platform for
perfect for TikTok.” have both recently run promo- young teens to vogue on camera.
Hollywood, caught flat-footed tions on the platform. Meanwhile, (So young, in fact that the FTC
by the rise of YouTube, is going agents — who, in addition to in 2019 fined TikTok $5.7 million
all in on TikTok, armed with D’Amelio and her family, have over Musical.ly’s collection of
more than a decade’s worth of scooped up TikTok talent like children’s data.) To lure people,
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 35 M AY 6, 2020
TikTok cut million-dollar checks
to YouTubers and Instagrammers
to post to the app and effectively
market the platform to their exist-
ing followers. David Dobrik, who
came up on the now-defunct Vine
and has 17 million subscribers on
YouTube, was one of those who
started using TikTok because he
was being paid. But he quickly saw
the appeal of the app, particularly
its personalized “For You” feed.
Though no one outside ByteDance
knows exactly how TikTok’s algo-
rithm works, it appears to reward
engagement by pushing popular
videos out to wider groups of
people. Even someone with only a
few followers can go viral as long
as they have a video that TikTok’s
algorithm has deemed “good”
— even if the app’s definition of
quality is a bit squishy.
“TikTok is the app that Vine
should have been,” Dobrik says. By
2019, it began to attract a broad
range of users, from beat-boxer
Spencer X (29 million followers)
to home cook Newton Nguyen
(4.2 million). It soon gathered
enough momentum to help turn
Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” into
a viral hit, launching it onto the
Billboard Hot 100 at No. 83, where
it broke records as the longest-
running No. 1 single.
Quick to declare someone passé
and move on, Gen Z has already
dubbed summer 2019 — yup, less
than eight months ago — as the
“golden age of TikTok,” a period
when many first discovered the
power of the platform, but before
it became overrun by boomer
celebrities and wannabe stars.
That’s when D’Amelio became
active on the app. Ditto dancer
Addison Rae Easterling, who dur-
ing the break before her freshman
year at Louisiana State University
began a steady climb to what is
now 38 million followers.
That’s also when Tomlinson
posted a video of herself try-
ing kombucha for the first time.
Her comical reaction quickly
blew up and was turned into a
meme, earning her the nick-
name Kombucha Girl. A few days
later, Tomlinson — who goes by
the name @Brittany_Broski on
TikTok, where she has 3.9 mil-
lion followers — was called into
her boss’ office at the Dallas bank
where she worked. “You have to
pick if you want to be a young pro-
fessional or a meme,” Tomlinson,
22, recalls being told. “I was like,
‘Obviously I want to be a profes-
sional,’ because I have rent to
pay. I’m not going to sit here and
be like, ‘I choose meme!’ ” But
ultimately, meme chose her. The
bank fired her days later.
For some, like D’Amelio, the
rapid rise in followers is stagger-
ing. And it’s had a ripple effect.
Her sister, 18-year-old Dixie, has
22.7 million followers. And the
D’Amelio parents — who joined
TikTok to monitor what their
daughters were posting — also
have garnered millions of follow-
ers. Everyone has an explanation
for how those numbers have
gotten so big so quickly. It could
be the global nature of the app,
which is particularly popular in
India. “We’ve never seen numbers
like this before,” acknowledges
agent Berman, who points
to D’Amelio’s growth rate on
Instagram (she’s at 17 million fol-
lowers) as a sign that her numbers
aren’t being juked.
One of the reasons that early
growth on TikTok felt so sponta-
neous was because the app lacked
all the hallmarks of corporatiza-
tion — no home decor brands
posting about enviable lifestyles,
no perfectly done beauty bloggers.
TikTok introduced advertising
in 2019, but it’s not yet a market-
ing powerhouse. “It’s definitely
early,” says eMarketer’s Debra
Aho Williamson. “It’s still very
experimental.” That is, unless
that brand is going after teens.
Netflix was clearly seeking the
youth demo when in late April
it began running TikTok ads —
including a popular campaign
called a Hashtag Challenge that
encourages users to make their
own videos — for Mindy Kaling’s
new YA comedy, Never Have I Ever.
The boon to advertising has
trickled down to TikTokers, too.
The platform doesn’t split ad
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Top: Sheri Easterling (5.7 million followers) and her daughter, Addison (37.3 million), put on
mascara for TikTok and LiveXLive’s COVID-19 benefit live stream. Bottom left: Jason Derulo has
amassed 17.4 million followers on TikTok, where he’s been posting actively during self-isolation.
Bottom right: Brittany Tomlinson posts comedy videos for her 3.9 million TikTok followers.
revenue with creators the way
YouTube does, but it has intro-
duced a marketplace to help
connect its top-tier users with
brands. “We talk to creators
every day, and being able to build
a business and careers online
is something that is important
for us to support,” says Kudzi
Chikumbu, director of creator
community at TikTok. He adds
that TikTok is “definitely explor-
ing” a revenue-share model.
Smaller creators typically can
earn a few hundred dollars for
36
sponsored posts, but it’s not until
someone hits the 500,000-fol-
lower mark that more lucrative
opportunities begin to flood in.
From there, sources say, sponsor-
ship deals can range from the low
thousands of dollars to upward
of six figures, with the biggest
paychecks reserved for creators
with tens of millions of follow-
ers. Record labels are also paying
as much as $25,000 to debut new
songs with creators on the app in
an effort to gin up buzz and get the
track to chart. (D’Amelio recently
M AY 6, 2020
debuted “Be Kind” from producer
Marshmello and Halsey.)
TikTok also opens up doors
to other revenue opportunities,
everything from podcasts to
merchandise to live events (when
those start up again). And many
are making the jump to YouTube,
where they can participate in
the Partner Program that allows
them to monetize their channels.
One young creator with fewer
than 5 million followers recently
told THR that she is on track to
earn more than $1 million this
year. That means for someone like
D’Amelio, who measurement firm
SocialBlade estimates can make
a cool half a million annually on
YouTube advertising alone, the
earning potential is even higher.
“The money is good, I’ll just say
that,” demurs Tomlinson, who
recently moved to Los Angeles to
pursue comedy full time.
Insiders say TikTok seems to
have learned from the mistakes of
predecessors like Vine, which lost
its biggest stars after it refused to
offer monetization options. The
app has dedicated staffers work-
ing with users, helping them grow
their followings or parse the ana-
lytics that are shared around video
engagement. Little things, like the
gifts TikTok sends to creators for
holidays, go a long way. “TikTok
is definitely more personal
with creators,” says Jonathan
Lynch, a college freshman who
makes comedic videos for 4 mil-
lion followers. He was among a
handful of TikTokers flown to
L.A. in February to participate
in the app’s #MakeBlackHistory
creator summit.
RAE: COURTESY OF TIKTOK. TOMLINSON: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES. DERULO: @JASONDERULO/TIKTOK.
Less top-of-mind for U.S.-based
TikTokers are the challenges that
come from its Chinese ownership,
which has U.S. regulators looking
into whether the app is a national
security risk. In an effort to
distance TikTok from its Chinese
operations and concerns about
censorship, ByteDance says it has
moved its content moderators out
of the country and that it plans
to open a “transparency center”
in Los Angeles, where it keeps its
North American headquarters.
 TH E ROA D TO 2 B I LL I O N DOW N LOA DS
300M
250 TikTok
launches
in U.S. via
Musical.ly
200
merger
150
110M
100
47M
27M 34M
50 22M
1Q ’17 2Q ’17 3Q ’17 4Q ’17 1Q ’18 2Q ’18 3Q ’18 4Q ’18 1Q ’19 2Q ’19 3Q ’19 4Q ’19 1Q ’20
A late 2019 Bloomberg report
that ByteDance is weighing
whether to offload the app as a
way to protect itself from regu-
lation serves as a reminder of
just how speculative the busi-
ness of TikTok influence is. On a
recent call, Warren Lentz, CEO of
management firm TalentX, which
works with more than 30 of the
platform’s top creators, expressed
some disbelief at TikTok’s ascent:
“When you see stats about how
TikTok has been downloaded
almost 2 billion times, it’s like,
how is that even real?” Even he’s
being cautious: “The industry
needs to look at it as more of an
incubator platform.”
T
he epicenter of TikTok
stardom was, for several
months, a rental man-
sion in the foothills of the San
Fernando Valley that serves as
“TikTokers have a magnetism that can’t be denied, but it’s
incumbent on Hollywood to figure out how to harness that.”
base camp for the creator collec-
tive Hype House. In early January,
a New York Times article painted
the house as a content-creation
utopia for beautiful, popular and
predominantly white TikTokers
like the D’Amelios and Easterling
— one of the first stops on a
fame-seeking pilgrimage to Los
Angeles. “We just wanted to put
out a lot of good content as a fam-
ily and make it feel like the fans
were connected to something,”
says 17-year-old master of the
house Hudson, who has 19 mil-
lion followers and a ’90s-inspired
skater look that, according to the
internet, makes him an “e-boy.”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
206M
199M
184M 187M
176M
157M 156M
Brent Montgomery’s
Wheelhouse Group is currently
shopping a reality series about
the Hype House that is being
pitched as a modern-day Mickey
Mouse Club. It’s just one of several
Hollywood-facing projects in the
works. The D’Amelios recently
signed a production deal with
American Idol producer Industrial
Media for a family-based reality
show of their own, and Dixie, a
singer and former drama student,
is making her acting debut in the
digital series Attaway General
from youth media company Brat,
which is best known for Chicken
Girls, a YouTube show popular
with the under-13 set.
But there’s no one way to go
Hollywood. Easterling says she’s
taking (virtual) voice and acting
lessons and keeping her dance
legs limber so that she’s ready
for auditions when the shutdown
ends. “Anything that allows me
to dance and perform in front of a
camera, or an audience, is exactly
where I want to go,” she says. “I
feel like this is the perfect route to
getting there.” Meanwhile, singer
Taylor Felt, who belts out covers
to her 3 million TikTok followers,
is using the app to gain the atten-
tion of record labels and promises
she’s got new music on the way.
And Tomlinson of kombucha
fame is hoping to find her way
into the stand-up comedy scene.
She’s spending her self-isolation
prepping a five-minute set.
It all feels a little like deja vu.
Not long ago, Logan Paul was
37
TI K TO K’ S G LO BA L TA K E OV E R
315M
REST OF
WORLD
38%
VIETNAM
3%
the second coming of Chris
Hemsworth and Grace Helbig was
the next Chelsea Handler. But
few YouTubers with Hollywood
designs managed to break
through. Lilly Singh, in the
first year of her NBC late night
show, A Little Late, has made the
biggest strides in the world of
legacy entertainment.
Those plucking promising
new TikTokers off the app swear
that Hollywood understands the
career opportunities for digital
talent better than it did when
YouTube creators first burst onto
the scene. “We’re looking for
people who are just talented,”
says Greg Goodfried, co-head of
UTA’s digital talent group. Part
of the argument: Gen Z doesn’t
need convincing that a TikToker
like D’Amelio can become a star.
To those who grew up watching
YouTube instead of ABC’s TGIF
programming, she already is.
“TikTokers have a magnetism
that can’t be denied, but it’s
incumbent on Hollywood studios
to figure out how to harness that
and not run away from it,” says
Rob Fishman, whose Brat regu-
larly works with young stars.
But everything on a frothy
social media platform happens
quickly, and downs can come
as fast as the ups, the drama
as quickly as the likes. Already,
things have gotten a bit messy
at the Hype House. In March,
one member, Daisy Keech, left
the group after a dispute about
whether she would be recognized
M AY 6, 2020
INDIA
30%
CHINA*
10%
UNITED
STATES
8%
INDONESIA
6%
BRAZIL
5%
Source: Sensor Tower; *Only iOS downloads measured
as one of its founders. “A lot of
women in business are pushed
aside and are not taken seriously,”
Keech says of why she decided to
speak up. The 20-year-old has
since started a female-led collab
house in Beverly Hills.
As for the D’Amelios, a rep says,
“When the Hype House started to
become more of a business, Charli
and Dixie stepped away from that
aspect. While their businesses are
separate, their friendships with
the members continue.”
Hudson shrugs off the notion
that there’s been drama. “We’re
always going to stick together as
a family,” he says. “We’ve always
been there for each other, no mat-
ter what happens.” And nothing
can stop the content creation, not
even the coronavirus. Though
Hype House was forced to close
its doors to the many TikTokers
who previously streamed through
its halls, there are still about 10
people isolating there. Hudson
confides that at least five people
have walked through his bed-
room — on their way to the
master bath, where many Hype
House TikToks are filmed — dur-
ing the 20 minutes that he’s been
on our call.
The Hype Housers, really,
are just carrying on a tradition
that began nearly 100 years ago,
when Hollywood studios first
flung open their doors. Countless
idealistic young people have made
the trek to Los Angeles to bunk
up, form networks, experience
heartbreak, face rejection and
— sometimes, just sometimes —
find fame. The big difference is
that these kids have a multimil-
lion-follower head start.
 THR celebrates the trailblazers carrying the industry forward through the current crises and those who will
a high school into a mask-making mini-studio, these 15 boundary-pushers are reinventing how content is

BIG
INNOVATION
Producing
the star-
studded
One World:
Together
at Home
COVID-19
fundraising
broadcast
entirely from
the cloud.

WORLD: COURTESY OF GLOBAL CITIZEN. CIONI: NATHAN JOHNSON. CHAPMAN: LILY CHAPMAN. VAUGHAN: PAUL DRINKWATER/NBC. DEBEVEC: MORGAN LIEBERMAN/WIREIMAGE. CHANG: COURTESY OF ©A.M.P.A.S.
D O U G VAU G H A N , M I C H A E L C I O N I , PAU L C H A P M A N Says Frame.io’s Cioni,
“Everybody had own-
• Executive vp specials and late night programming, NBC; senior vp innovation, FRAME.IO; ership of their assets
VP engineering and technology, SIM
and then centralized
it in the Frame.io
Cioni
During the last innovation is something a long list of performers from space, where [each
COVID- that the team behind One World: Lady Gaga to the Rolling Stones asset] was uploaded,
19 crisis, Together at Home — the global to Lizzo. Said to be the brainchild reviewed, exchanged
necessity broadcast and digital special that of NBC exec Vaughan, the One and approved” by
has indeed aired April 18 and raised $128 mil- World production — involving anyone from record
become the lion for the COVID-19 Solidarity four U.S. broadcast networks and Chapman label reps to agents
mother of Response Fund — knows well. A international outlets like the BBC to show producers.
invention as Hollywood trades centralized cloud-based produc- while produced in partnership “Every single artist,
in meeting rooms for Zoom, sets tion environment, provided by with Global Citizen and the World whether it’s Eddie
for living rooms, cameras for collaboration systems company Health Organization — evolved Vedder or Billie
smartphones and studios for Frame.io, allowed numerous play- from an initial meeting April 1 Eilish, could upload
cloud-based technologies. The ers to work remotely — including to broadcast just two weeks later. Vaughan their assets,” he adds.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 38 M AY 6, 2020

transform it on the other side. From the team behind the One World broadcast to the director who converted
developed, distributed and destined to influence Hollywood for years to come Edited by NATALIE JARVEY

The team uploaded an estimated BIG INNOVATION

R O B B R E DOW
3,600 of them, with 6,400 views “are an important part Smoothly melding
CG imagery with
of those assets. of getting back to work live-action production
In setting up the workflow, • Senior vp, executive creative director sooner. We can digitally at ILM.
postproduction house Sim had and head of INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC build a big percentage
additional challenges, not the of our sets now; the first day we can safely return
least of which was quickly getting T he former Lucasfilm chief technology officer to shooting, we’ll be able to pick up quickly.”
its eight editors and three assis- and Oscar-nominated VFX supervisor (Solo: (For more on his view of deep fakes and digital
tant editors working remotely. A Star Wars Story) believes tools like StageCraft humans, see page 22.)
“We treated this like one of our
live event shows, but the chal-
BIG
lenge is that normally Sim has
AN N I E CHANG INNOVATION
Harnessing
color
• VP creative technologies, technology
UNIVERSAL PICTURES to preserve
filmmakers’
creative intent.
he blue that a cinematographer sees when filming
T the ocean can look different from the blue that a
viewer at home sees when watching those waves crash in
a movie. Chang aims to change that.
The co-chair of the Motion Picture Academy’s Science
and Technology Council is leading one of its most vital
initiatives, the rollout and continued development of the
Academy Color Encoding System, a standardized tool
to manage color across production and postproduction.
“Color is not just what it looks like, but it’s also a means to
Far left: A view of the assets, including impart a storytelling point,” she explains. “And so, messing
performances by Billie Eilish and Lizzo, on
Frame.io’s cloud. Above: The multi-network up the color basically messes up your storytelling.”
One World: Together at Home broadcast Chang’s endeavor to preserve creative intent — what At Universal, Chang steers the “future of filmmaking”
allowed members of the Rolling Stones to she describes as one of her “core values” — also turned initiative that focuses on making workflows more efficient
appear (and play) side-by-side despite being
miles apart. her into an active participant in the UHD Alliance’s recent so that filmmakers have more time to focus on being cre-
effort to introduce “filmmaker mode,” a UHD TV setting ative. A key part of this initiative is guaranteeing that all
a much larger staff of assistant that ensures the picture looks as the filmmaker intended. systems used in production can “talk to each other.” She
The UHD Alliance — a coalition whose members include explains, “In order to get to that point where you have that
editors who would be working Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufac- ultimate nirvana of being able to search for anything and
in-house to ingest all the mate- turers — recently announced support from set makers find your production asset, you need to be able to connect
rial as it comes in,” says Sim vp including LG, Panasonic and Samsung. all these systems.” — C.G.
Chapman. For One World, “we had
a much smaller staff, and we had BIG INNOVATION
PAU L D E B E V E C
a significant amount of material put them into any scene, in any Creating new techniques via a
360-degree lighting system to
in a very short time.” lighting, from any angle, even allow socially distanced actors
Looking ahead, Cioni projects, • Senior staff engineer, after you’ve filmed their perfor- to be composited together.
“The No. 1 result coming out [of GOOGLE VR, and adjunct mance. You just focus on getting
research professor, USC
the lockdown] is that a signifi- the performance right and worry positions relative to each other
cant portion of the work that has about where the camera goes in 3D and create the shot that
become remote will remain T he latest work from and how to light it later.” In this way,” he says. “You could even
remote, as much as 20 percent. Debevec — a past co-chair time of social distancing, actors simulate the shadows that one
Everyone has had a rapid crash of the Science and Technology could be filmed separately and actor would cast on the other.”
course in how to be efficient and Council — uses a 360-degree composited together later. “We Adds Debevec, whose tech-
to be remote, and One World is a Google light stage and control- have the ability to niques are seen in Avatar, The
prime example where people who lable LED lighting. “This could record actors at Matrix and Blade Runner 2049,
had very little experience with be used to record actors in 3D,” different times and “It’s like having the whole power
this totally thrived, making use he says of the type of system then light them of the Star Trek holodeck at
of the technology that was ready he initially used at USC for the the same way, your disposal for the purpose of
today.” — CAROLYN GIARDINA making of Gravity. “You can Debevec put them in the making your movie.” — C.G.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 39 M AY 6, 2020

 Fey and Robert Carlock have a rat-a-tat joke style
that posed a challenge. “You can’t fire six jokes at
an audience when they have to decide what their
choice is,” Weil says. To work out the pacing, they
ran through the script with the special’s director,
Claire Scanlon, the writing staff and a group of

BIG INNOVATION
Pushing the boundaries of interactive storytelling,
including May 12’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt special.

non-actors. With that workflow, they found ways to

CA R L A E N G E L B R E C HT,
A N DY W E I L
• Director of product innovation;
vp of original series, NETFLIX
E ven before the 2018 debut of Netflix’s first big
interactive programming swing, Black Mirror:
Bandersnatch, the architects behind it knew they
would need to find a way to top the hit project and
thus prove that the format wasn't just a one-off
gimmick. “What can we do that’s just as impact-
ful, but feels different?” Engelbrecht remembers
asking Weil over breakfast at Netflix’s 13th-floor
cafe a few months before the Charlie Brooker film
was released, generating significant buzz and
garnering two Emmys. The answer soon became
clear: an interactive Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
special, now set to debut May 12.
But this was not a simple case of transferring
Netflix’s choose-your-own-adventure storytelling
from polarizing horror to comedy. Creators Tina
bring choice-making into the jokes themselves.
For Netflix’s interactive content, they use tech
developed during production on Bandersnatch
called Branch Manager, a program that inte-
grates with Final Draft’s screenwriting software.
Engelbrecht describes it as a “previsualization
tool” where writers can create a map of the story.
Engelbrecht says they focused on making the
tool — available during the entire Kimmy Schmidt
project, subtitled Kimmy vs. the Reverend —
accessible to filmmakers: “The last thing we want
is for someone to not want to [use] it because the
software is terrifying.” Instead, the opposite is
happening. A writer recently joked with Weil that
he’d like to use the software to break stories on
his non-interactive TV show. — TRILBY BERESFORD

J O N FAV R E AU that $22.6 billion franchise. He

• Creator & exec producer, THE MANDALORIAN
Before was novel not just for its storytell-
November ing — and the memeable charm of
2019, there The Child (aka Baby Yoda) — but
were certain for its production, which relied on
unspoken video game engines, real-time ren-
truths about dering and video wall technology
stories told to thrust audiences into a world
developed his comfort with digital
tools and cutting-edge tech while
directing the CGI adaptations
of animated Disney classics The
Jungle Book and The Lion King and
on his 2016 virtual reality project,
Gnomes and Goblins. “Usually when
you say, ‘Hey, let’s take a big risk
and do something completely new
here,’ a director looks at you like
FAVREAU: GABRIEL OLSEN/GETTY IMAGES. MANDALORIAN: MELINDA SUE GORDON/LUCASFILM LTD. GROSSMANN: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES. TICKET: ADOBE STOCK.

in the Star Wars universe: They of desert planets and spaceship you’re nuts,” says Ben Grossmann,
have a Jedi, a galaxy in peril and cockpits. Favreau, 53, didn’t add who worked with Favreau on both
a sweeping sense of scope. But these effects in postproduction, as Disney adaptations (see above
when Favreau’s The Mandalorian is commonly done on right). “They know what it’s going
premiered on Disney+, the series CGI productions, but to take to convince the studio, and
did something unusual — it told rather shot his actors you never get out of the gate. Jon
a small story in the vast world against the video wall takes the time to truly understand
George Lucas had created, about Favreau scenery. The technol- it and says, ‘That sounds like a
a lone bounty hunter who takes ogy, which allows better way, let’s explore it!’ But
a job that leaves him tending to filmmakers to place casts in far- most importantly, he protects it,
a child with special powers. The flung locations without leaving a and it shows in the final picture.”
first live-action Star Wars series, soundstage, has practical applica- Favreau, who operates from
it became tions, but is particularly valuable his Playa Vista studio, wrapped
BIG the linchpin in the COVID-19 era, when travel production on the second season
INNOVATION of Disney+’s for shoots will be scarce. of Mandalorian in early March,
Developing
filmmaking launch, a must- Mandalorian is in some ways just before the pandemic led to
techniques see show that a culmination of Favreau’s a production shutdown. He’s
for The helped drive the disparate talents. As the inau- now at work writing season
Mandalorian
that now seem service to more gural filmmaker in the Marvel three. — REBECCA KEEGAN
even more than 50 million Cinematic Universe with 2008’s
urgent during Jon Favreau, on the set of Disney+ series
a pandemic. subscribers. Iron Man, he played a key role in
The Mandalorian, stood next to the bassinet that
Mandalorian setting the tone and template of held breakout star The Child.

Illustrations by Joe McKendry

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 40 M AY 6, 2020

B E N G R OSS M A N N
• Co-founder and CEO, MAGNOPUS

G rossmann wants to marry the physical and

the digital, exploring what he describes as a
mirror world — a “connection between a physical
BO LD I D E AS TH AT
place and a digital copy of that place, so that it W E NT B U ST
becomes accessible to anyone, anywhere.” Hollywood swings that
The VFX vet is one of three Oscar winners who ultimately missed the mark
founded L.A.-based Magnopus, which has been
innovating in areas like VR, AR and AI. Combining
these opens up the potential to create what
he calls a “new kind of movie theater” or other BIG
INNOVATION
immersive environments: “We’ve been working on Melding the
creating a digital twin of a very large site that’s a physical and
virtual worlds
few square kilometers, so that it will exist both in a to create new increases its virtual produc-
physical world that people can go to and in a digi- realms of tion, such as the process AEREO
tal copy of that world that people can go to,” he entertainment. Magnopus helped Jon The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the
says of the site whose location is still under wraps. Favreau develop for The NYC-based internet TV startup was illegal,
“Then we’ve been connecting those two worlds, Lion King to simulate a virtual set. “People go on and TiVo bought its assets for $1 million.
so people in the physical world can look through a the internet and play games with everybody around
lens and see the digital world around them. People the world,” he says, explaining that the same
in the digital world will also have portals to see concept can work for filmmakers. But Grossmann
what the physical world looks like.” warns that the internet infrastructure isn’t robust
Grossmann admits he still has “a ways to go enough yet: “Hollywood needs 5G to create and
before it just works,” but says development will display these new kinds of worlds that are much
only accelerate during COVID-19 as Hollywood more interactive than traditional video.” — C.G.

FYRE FESTIVAL
Billy McFarland’s luxury music festival
turned out to be a sham, and he was
sentenced to six years in prison for fraud.

GO90
Verizon shut down its $1 billion bet on
ad-supported shortform video after three
years and little interest from viewers.

MOVIEPASS
Heavily discounted movie ticket
memberships were a money loser, forcing
the company to fold and file for bankruptcy.

SCREENING ROOM
Sean Parker’s 2016 plan to charge $50 for
new releases at home angered distributors,
but it may be mounting a comeback. — N.J.

J E R E M Y GA R E L I C K
• Founder, AMERICAN HIGH
Garelick is like John
Hughes, if the elder
statesman of angsty
teen dramas had owned
his own high school.
After building a career
as a writer-director
with credits like The Wedding Ringer, Garelick
was weary of the bruising nature of the studio
system. “It’s a miracle when a movie gets
made, and I was tired of waiting for a miracle,”
he says. Working to produce two R-rated high
school comedies at a major studio, Garelick
couldn’t get traction. But that process did yield
an epiphany: “Wherever you go,
high schools are all the same. You
need a gym, classroom, teacher’s
lounge and a cafeteria.” With
Garelick research, Garelick discovered that
shooting two high school movies
back-to-back and employing the same crew
could cut below-the-line production costs by
one-third. If he did three, he could halve them.
So, he googled “high schools for sale.”
That’s how he found A.V. Zogg Middle School
in Liverpool, New York, a small Syracuse
suburb where the tax rebate on below-the-
line production costs is 40 percent. Built in
1928, the school closed in the 1980s and was
converted into an office space and, later, a
church. It didn’t take long to find backing:
Mickey Liddell and his LD Entertainment
wrote a check. Garelick purchased the school
for $1 million and opened American High.
In two years, American High has produced
seven features, each with a budget between
$3 million and $5 million — equating to mil-
lions in savings on every title. (It is currently
producing 3D-printed face shields for medi-
cal workers.) The school transforms for every
movie: Walls are repainted and basketball uni-
forms are swapped out. “If a director wants to
change everything, we help them realize that
vision,” says Garelick. Of the four features in
production, two — The Binge, written-directed
by Garelick and starring Vince Vaughn, and
The Ultimate Playlist of Noise — are headed to
Hulu, which recently released the banner’s Big
Time Adolescence, starring Pete Davidson.
Garelick is aware that American High’s
projects might draw comparisons to the high
school comedies of the ’80s and ’90s, but he
believes those titles have some shortcomings.
“We have seen the nerdy white kid trying to BIG
INNOVATION
get laid by the cheerleader and he suddenly Streamlining
realizes his best friend with glasses is the the high
right person for him,” he says. “What I am try- school movie
by converting
ing to do with American High is tell different an actual high
high school stories.” — MIA GALUPPO school into
a film studio.

H OW A RTI F I C I A L I NTE L L I G E N C E I S VISUAL EFFECTS

A L R E A DY C H A N G I N G H O L LY WOO D
AI looks poised for use in all phases of making a movie, from
analyzing viewers’ reactions to creating digital humans:
‘Decades from now, an AI algorithm will make your movie from
the text of the script’ BY CAROLYN GIARDINA
OPERATIONS
One of the hum-drum housekeeping tasks that AI already
handles at VFX studio Industrial Light & Magic is overseeing
the workflow of rendering animation and visual effects. “We
use it for scheduling render jobs on the render farms to get
our workloads done every single night in a predictable fash-
ion,” says Rob Bredow, senior vp, executive creative director
and head of ILM, whose recent
work includes Star Wars: The
Rise of Skywalker. “One of the
things that’s interesting about
machine learning algorithms
is, even when they’re only 80 or
90 percent effective, sometimes
their guesses tend to pretty
much align with if you had put
a person there and had them
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker make that guess.”
Adobe Premiere Pro Auto Reframe uses AI.
EDITING
Bones editor Harry B. Miller relates that
AI is used for certain tasks in various
editing systems including Avid’s Media
Composer, “which has a software add-on
that matches dialogue spoken in dailies
to the script, allowing the editor to
quickly find every take and angle for that
part of a scene.” Adobe’s Premiere Pro
can also use AI “to reframe video for dif-
ferent aspect ratios,” adds Miller, though
he sees limitations. “A computer may
know what a joke is, but it can’t tell what
is funny,” he says. “Stanford University
has worked on software that takes
motion picture dailies and assem-
bles shots in script order. But
it can’t tell what is the best
dramatic scene. To know
what ‘works,’ for now,
takes a human.”
VFX house Digital Domain used AI as
part of its Masquerade facial capture
system to superimpose Josh Brolin’s
performance onto the villain Thanos in
Avengers: Infinity War. “We’ve seen huge
advancements in that area of research
lately,” says Darren Hendler, director
of the studio’s digital human group.
“Real-time rendering together with our
AI-driven real-time facial capture system
is changing the timelines for creating
movie creatures. Soon we’ll be able to
generate realistic Thanos-like perfor-
mances live on set.” Hendler says a suite
of deep learning technologies on the hori-
zon “can potentially allow us to quickly
and realistically transform a stunt double
into an actor or change an actor’s lines.”
A facial capture
system with AI
helped create
Josh Brolin's
Thanos.
 1 2
1 Jeremy Garelick was a writer-director on studio films before
shaking things up with his own shingle. “The pace is crazy, but with
each movie we get better at figuring the most efficient system,” he
says of his new setup, which has produced seven films in two years.
“Once we get back in [after COVID-19 lockdowns ease up], we want
to increase that pace. We are trying to break records.”
2 “Watching Swingers in college made me realize I could do it, too,
because it was two guys and a camera,” says Garelick, who later cast
the film’s star, Vince Vaughn, in American High’s The Binge. “To have
him play the principal in an assembly in a high school that I bought
was just one of those moments that was the coolest thing ever.”
3 The American High sign that graces the front of A.V. Zogg Middle
School changes depending on the movie.
4 American High’s structure — and the tax credits available in
upstate New York — allow Garelick to significantly reduce the cost
of making a film. By his calculation, projects that normally would
cost $12 million to $15 million can be made for $4 million to $5 million
because “we use the same crews, we have our own equipment
and our own location. So much of what takes time on a normal
movie, we’ve eliminated.”

4
3

ANALYTICS HOW ABOUT A MOVIE FROM SCRATCH?

Vista Group’s Movio is a marketing “Decades from now, an AI
data analytics firm that focuses on the
cinema industry, applying AI to analyze algorithm will make your
audience behavior and box office trends movie simply from the
for releases like Hobbs & Shaw and Once text of the script,” even in a
Upon a Time in Hollywood. With clients
including all the major studios, co-
particular director’s style,
Jordan founder and CEO Will Palmer says that AI predicts Paul Debevec,
Peele's
deep fake helps Movio “to predict which movies will senior scientist at Google.
PSA appeal to each and every moviegoer” and “Both scripts and features

GARELICK: JASON KEMPIN/GETTY IMAGES. SCHOOL: COURTESY OF AMERICAN HIGH (4). STAR: WALT DISNEY STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES/
featuring offer “insights used to drive marketing

PHOTOFEST. ADOBE: COURTESY OF ADOBE. AVENGERS: COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS. ONCE: COLUMBIA PICTURES/PHOTOFEST.
“Barack
and distribution strategy and support are just strings of 0’s and
Obama.”
creative decision-making. Ultimately, AI 1’s on a computer. If we
DIGITAL HUMANS removes complexity and continuously provide a sufficiently large
AI is having a “drastic” effect in the world of digital humans, learns more about moviegoer behavior.”
neural network and enough
says Christopher Nichols, director of Chaos Group Labs and training pairing scripts
key member of the Digital Human League, a research and and movies, it will learn the
development group: “The massive challenges that were put mapping and generate an
on artists and tools to find all those subtle nuances that entirely new movie from
make a human look real are actually much easier to solve an entirely new script. You
through deep learning.” The improvements have led to could even ask it to make
deep fakes, such as the viral faux PSA using FaceSwap AI in your new film — or remake
which Jordan Peele ventriloquizes former president “Barack an old one — in the style
Obama” calling President Trump a “complete dipshit.” Says of Kubrick, Tarantino or
Nichols: “A great number of people want to stop the technol- Scorsese by emphasizing the
ogy and outright outlaw it. [But] the tools themselves have correlations between each of
AI helped predict which moviegoers
huge potentials that we should all continue to explore.” would find Once Upon a Time appealing. their scripts and movies.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 43 M AY 6, 2020

J O E I N Z E R I L LO, Making it free and accessible, what we
call “no friction” distribution, has been
J E R R E L L J I M E R SO N one of the reasons we’re so successful.
• CTO; senior vp product management/UX,
DISNEY STREAMING SERVICES 2. MAKE IT URGENT

nzerillo and Jimerson were nearing the next

I
phase in their global rollout of Disney+ when
the novel coronavirus shut down everyday activi-
ties throughout the world.
The duo, responsible for the technical infra-
structure and product experience for the
high-priority new streamer, already had brought
Disney+ to the U.S. and Canada with a success-
ful (albeit a tad glitchy) November launch, which
garnered 10 million sign-ups in one day. But that
was just the beginning. By early March, they were
working at what Inzerillo calls a “breakneck pace”
to launch Disney+ in eight more countries, includ-
ing the U.K., France and Italy. “We knew we were
going to be deploying quickly, faster than anyone
had done it before,” he says. (It took Netflix sev-
eral years to launch in those same markets at the
dawn of streaming.)
They had begun contemplating the chal-
lenges of the global rollout “months and months
BIG INNOVATION
Seamlessly rolling out Disney+ in Europe during the
pandemic lockdown (without breaking the internet).
in advance,” says Jimerson, explaining that for
every country, they had to create a localized
user interface, introduce the correct payment
methods, determine content ratings and navi-
gate varying internet infrastructures. Ultimately,
despite the pandemic, Disney moved forward
with the European launches for Disney+, though
they delayed the service’s debut in France at the
request of the country’s government and lowered
its bandwidth use by 25 percent across Europe to
minimize congestion for those relying on Wi-Fi to
work from home. “The joke about people breaking
the internet — this was a case of, we could actu-
ally break the internet,” says Inzerillo.
The European launches boosted Disney+ to
50 million paid subscribers — well on its way to a
goal of up to 90 million subs by 2024. Now, Inzerillo
and Jimerson are turning their attention to bring-
ing the service to the rest of the world. — T.B.
GEOFF KE IGH LEY We found the model of premiering new
games and making announcements
• Creator, producer, host, drives urgency for the show. It’s called
THE GAME AWARDS The Game Awards, but it’s really half
awards show and half first look at what’s
Since its inaugural next. I’m still amazed that the Oscars
outing in 2014, doesn’t preview upcoming films. Maybe
The Game Awards that would make it too commercial, but
has managed to we know the gaming audience wants
more than double to be marketed to. It drives an urgency
its audience every to watch the show live instead of just
year at a time when watching the clips on YouTube.
traditional awards shows are posting
record lows in viewership. In 2019, the 3. EMBRACE THE COMMUNITY
sixth annual show hit a record 45.2 mil- Other awards shows recognize the
lion global live streams. people who create the content — we
Keighley took a risk by eschewing recognize the entire community. The
traditional broadcast for digital distri- Oscars would never give an award
bution when launching the December for “moviegoer of the year,” but we
event. He also strayed from the usual can award gamers [who stream, also
awards show format by premier-
ing game trailers, giving the stage to
publishers for big announcements in
between handing out trophies. The
result is a show that draws a dedicated
audience of millennial and Gen Z view-
ers. The former Spike TV host shares his
five-point plan for keeping young audi-
ences engaged year after year:
1. DON’T MAKE DIGITAL AN AFTERTHOUGHT
At the start, in 2014, people said, “You’re
not on TV? How is that possible?” A lot
of existing awards shows are a TV show
first and think of digital second. We
focused fully on digital from the get-go Geoff Keighley (left) spoke with J.J. Abrams (right)
and Epic Games creative director Donald Mustard at
and distribute the show everywhere. The Game Awards in 2019.
TH E D E CA D E ' S B I G G E ST I N N OVATI O N ?
Streaming transformed Hollywood thanks in large part to Netflix, which
saw its revenue increase tenfold after it pushed DVDs to the side in 2011 …
$20B
$20B

$16B
Netflix
15 introduces
streaming originals
like House of $12B
Cards (left) and
Inzerillo (left) Orange Is the
and Jimerson New Black.
10 $8.8B

$6.8B
$5.5B
$4.4B
5 $3.2B $3.6B
$2.2B

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Source: Netflix

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 44 M AY 6, 2020

 known as streamers] like Ninja (aka
BIG
Tyler Blevins) or Shroud (aka Michael INNOVATION
Grzesiek). When I started the show, I Pushing the
envelope
really wanted the community to be a in virtual
part of it and have the opportunity to production
win alongside game creators. Gaming with his real-
time tech.
is a unique medium because stream-
ers and content creators are part of the
ecosystem. That extends to Twitch,

JIMERSON, KEIGHLEY FORTNITE: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. INZERILLO: IMEH AKPANUDOSEN/GETTY IMAGES. KEIGHLEY: JC OLIVERA/GETTY IMAGES. LIBRERI: MAX MORSE/WIREIMAGE. CARDS: PATRICK HARBRON/NETFLIX.
where we let streamers translate the
show in real time and comment on it as
it’s happening.

BIG INNOVATION
Reinventing the awards show for Gen Z and
pulling in 44 million viewers for the effort.

4. REWARD YOUR AUDIENCE

We often do “Twitch drops,” where
viewers get content as they watch the
show. This year, [in conjunction with
the show] we also did a Game Awards
sale offering discounted rates on
nominated games. There’s a utility
to watching the show that has been
very valuable.
KIM LIBRERI
5. BE AUTHENTIC
• CTO, EPIC
Other shows sometimes try too hard
to cater to the celebrity or entertain-
ment aspect. We’ve been able to say A VFX vet who worked on The Matrix, Libreri
that games and game developers are knows a thing or two about bringing tech
the centerpiece of our show. We want capabilities to filmmaking. The chief technology
them to be onstage — we want to tell officer of Epic Games helps Hollywood find appli-
their stories. All the other shows are cations for its real-time gaming engine, Unreal,
so celebrity-dependent. What we’ve used by the likes of Disney and Jon Favreau for
shown is that, yes, it’s great to have The Mandalorian (and to develop the smash hit
meaningful talent, but our show really game Fortnite).
has the games as the star. I don’t worry As an example, the Oscar nominee (for his VFX
about who we’re going to book this work on 2006’s Poseidon) cites Unreal’s multi-
year, I worry about booking the biggest user capability as a tool that can bring disparate
games. — AS TOLD TO PATRICK SHANLEY departments together to continue producing
projects during the current shutdown. “It’s like
being on a physical set — but in the virtual world,"
he says. “During this COVID-19 nightmare, we’ve
D U H , IT ’ S STR E A M I N G seen people connecting their computers across
… And its legal application for music listening via Spotify and others the internet and doing virtual production sessions
helped the recording industry recover from a piracy-inflicted sales dip together even though they’re all at home working
on their individual computers.”
2010 2019
As the coronavirus crisis began, Epic was start-
PAID CDS
VINYL
ing to experiment with Xsens motion-capture
SUBSCRIPTIONS $648M
$248M $498M suits. He describes a motion-capture-from-
SOUNDEXCHANGE
SOUNDEXCHANGE DISTRIBUTION SINGLE anywhere setup, where an animator wears a
DISTRIBUTION SYNCHRONIZATION $908M DOWNLOADS
$249M $189M $415M
suit, and a director — logged in to the Unreal
RINGTONES ALBUM
Engine system from home — can go in and out
MUSIC
$448M VIDEOS DOWNLOADS of VR to make the action come to life. Looking
$178M $395M
ahead, Libreri says that digital representation of
$7B $11B humans will become more real, “from a leading
VINYL character in a game to a digital double for film, to
$89M a live-venue hologram, or the virtual Travis Scott
that 27.7 million players experienced in Fortnite,”
ALBUM CDS AD-SUPPORTED SYNCHRONIZATION where the rapper debuted new music April 28.
DOWNLOADS $3.4B STREAMING $276M
$872M $1.2B Adds Libreri, “For many of these applica-
SINGLE PAID tions, having more photorealistic likenesses is
DOWNLOADS SUBSCRIPTIONS
$1.3B $6.7B Source: RIAA essential.” — C.G.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 45 M AY 6, 2020


M ATTH E W P E LTI E R , STE V E N GA L A N I S
• CEO, COMMUNITY; CEO, CAMEO
On April 20,
Post Malone
startled his
28 million
Twitter and
Instagram
followers by
posting a photo of himself in his
bathroom, one foot propped up
on a toilet seat, with the caption:
“Text me:) 817-270-6440.” But the
24-year-old tattooed “Rockstar”
sensation hadn’t taken leave of his
senses under quarantine; what
he shared was his Community
text number.
Launched in July, Community
connects fans via SMS messaging
to public figures like celebri-
ties, politicians, even COVID-19
experts. The thinking is that a
text message — even one sent to
thousands of people simultane-
ously — is far more likely to grab
someone’s attention than a tweet
or IG post. “North America is
all about text messaging,” says
Matthew Peltier, Community’s
29-year-old founder and CEO. “It’s
an intimate place where you talk
to friends and make plans with
family. We knew we needed to
play in that sacred space.”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
BIG INNOVATION
Using pre-existing tech to transform
artist-to-fan communication
Community isn’t the only
company using existing tech
to rethink the fan experience.
Many have by now caught wind
of Cameo, an online marketplace
where 30,000 celebrities — some,
like the Howard Stern “Wack
Pack,” in only the loosest sense of
the term — peddle personalized
video messages to fans for special
occasions. The videos can run
from $20 for a TikTok performer
to $75 for a bespoke
greeting from Dillon
Passage, husband of
incarcerated Tiger
Peltier King Joe Exotic, to
$550 for a birthday
wish from Charlie
Sheen. Choosing the
price point is left to
Galanis the talent. “We don’t
want them coming to or “leaders.” The more fans opt
us and saying it isn’t worth their
time,” says Cameo co-founder
Steven Galanis, 32. Galanis came
up with the idea in 2016, while
watching a video of NFL player
Cassius Marsh congratulating a
total stranger — a Nike execu-
tive — on becoming a new father.
“The exec said it was the cool-
est gift he’d ever received, and
46
a lightbulb went off: This is the
new autograph,” recalls Galanis.
The first bookings were athletes
and YouTube stars. Then reality
TV and Hollywood came calling.
“Our first year, we did 10,000
videos,” says Galanis. “In 2018,
it was 100,000. Last year, we did
350,000. In 2020, we want a mil-
lion.” Cameo keeps 25 percent of
each transaction; the rest goes
into the artist’s pocket.
A year ago, Cameo signed its
biggest stars yet: Sheen and
Snoop Dogg. But a
higher Q-rating doesn’t
guarantee success:
2019’s biggest earner
was 65-year-old comic
Gilbert Gottfried, who estimates
he’s taped thousands of Cameos at
$150 a pop. During the pandemic,
Cameo has been his sole source of
income, bringing in six figures a
month. “I’ll put extra effort into
things,” says Gottfried. “I’ll look
stuff up about what they do for a
living and tailor my jokes to that.”
He begins his day by checking
the app for requests. “Then I lock
myself in the bathroom until I
finish taping them all,” he says.
“It’s become my recording booth.”
The company logged $20 mil-
lion in bookings in 2019, up from
$4 million in 2018, according to
Galanis. “For the first time in
world history, every musician,
comedian, athlete, actor are at
home with nothing to do,” he says.
“On the customer side, people
who can’t go to a birthday dinner,
a bar or a movie are spending that
money sending Cameos.”
Community uses a different
revenue model, asking fans to pay
nothing and instead charging a
monthly fee to the public figures,
in, the higher the monthly fee.
After attending a 2013 summit
led by venture capitalist Peter
Thiel, Peltier became fixated on
social media’s ability to allow
its users “to connect deeper
to things out of your world,” a
phenomenon he calls “parasocial
relationships." He adds: “Fans
wanted to connect more directly
M AY 6, 2020
with their idols. They wanted
to feel spoken to. They wanted a
deeper relationship.”
His first attempt was a Reddit-
style app called Shimmur that
faded in 2017, but a pivot the
following year to text messaging
drew the interest of music man-
ager Guy Oseary and his investing
partner, Ashton Kutcher.
Rebranded Community, the Santa
Monica-based company raised
$35 million in funding; Kutcher
was the first star to sign on.
Other A-listers — from Metallica
to Ellen DeGeneres to Paul
McCartney — followed. Most are
still experimenting with the new
service, feeling out the appro-
priate number of texts to send
without becoming a nuisance.
The company is not revealing
any financials, but the waiting
list to join the roughly 1,000
Community leaders using the ser-
vice is around 10,000 names long.
Post Malone, of course, didn’t have
to wait. His April 24 COVID-19
relief concert — featuring Malone
in a sundress playing faithful
Nirvana covers — was an internet
smash, raising over $4 million
PELTIER, MYERS: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. SHANKS: MICHAEL TULLBERG/GETTY IMAGES. RISE: MICHAEL YARISH/CBS. REDNISS: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES. GALANIS: JOE SCARNICI/GETTY IMAGES.
and drawing 8 million views.
Among them were his Community
fans, whom he thanked, of course,
in a text: “wow. Over 33,000 of
you responded to this. I love you
guys … I’ll text you tomorrow:)”
— SETH ABRAMOVITCH
Ashton Kutcher and
Kerry Washington
are among
the 1,000 stars
(called “leaders”)
on Community.
 M ICHAE L ROBI N
• Director and exec producer, ALL RISE
Robin was three days
into directing the 21st
episode of CBS legal
drama All Rise when
the novel coronavirus
forced productions
to press pause. The
industry veteran worked with editors via
Zoom to try to salvage what he could of the
episode. But with only 18 minutes of usable
content that he would later scrap entirely,
he says he began thinking outside the box:
“What if we actually saw our characters in
this situation?” On May 4, CBS made that
idea a reality, debuting a full-length episode
of the Simone Missick-fronted courtroom
series that was filmed, edited and directed
remotely while observing government-
mandated Safer at Home orders. As the
lockdown nears the end of its second month,
other productions — including NBC’s
April 30 Parks and Recreation special — are
using the same protocol to deliver enter-
tainment to captive audiences.
To make sure that the All Rise epi-
sode reflected the current state of the
L.A. judicial system, Robin — alongside
BIG INNOVATION
Making a scripted show about
the legal system during the pandemic
— during the pandemic
co-showrunners Greg Spottiswood and
Dee Harris-Lawrence and head writer Greg
Nelson — turned to consulting producer
and former L.A. district attorney Gil
Garcetti (the father of L.A.’s mayor, Eric
Garcetti). “Gil said they were going to have
to start remote trials and then that became
the legal spine of this episode,” says Robin.
Robin worked with the show’s line pro-
ducer and video playback company Jargon
Entertainment to determine the best way
to shoot the episode, turning to Straight
Up Technologies to film scenes via WebEx,
which offered the best-quality image. He
also used Zoom sessions to scout the cast’s
homes for filming setups, lighting and cam- J E SS E R E D N I SS
era angles. “The actors served as a location • Exec vp data strategy, WARNERMEDIA,
scout, a cinematographer and ultimately a and GM, WARNERMEDIA INNOVATION LAB
gaffer,” Robin says.
With three teams of editors work- W hile Redniss primarily oversees data
ing simultaneously on different scenes, strategy and privacy at WarnerMedia,
the entire episode, from the pitch to the including for the coming streamer HBO Max,
final moment of postproduction, was put he also manages the WarnerMedia Innovation
together in less than four weeks with help Lab, a 20,000-square-foot Manhattan facility
from 50 of the show’s 90-person staff. that will serve as an incubator for content and
(Crewmembers who were not able to work tech. Though its May opening has been delayed,
on the episode were sent a week’s salary.) Redniss says his team is already exploring
Says Robin, “The separation between actors everything from volumetric capture, a type of 3D
and their characters are completely blurred, scan that could increase the realness of digital
and that’s led to these beautiful and honest depictions, to how social distancing will impact
performances.” — LESLEY GOLDBERG experiential activations. “We really want to push
the boundaries of how you can bring in the tactile
components, hearing, seeing, smelling,” he says.
Before the pandemic, Redniss helped the NBA
conduct its first live broadcast over AT&T’s 5G
network, shot by six smart-
BIG phones. He’s now toying
INNOVATION with ideas for democratized
Harnessing
5G tech to broadcasts where instead of
democratize live using only cameras on courts,
broadcasting directors could cut to fans
with 5G-enabled smartphones.
Redniss says not every idea will work as well —
which is where the Innovation Lab comes in: “The
lab can help all our brands do really small proofs
of concepts and fail fast. And failing fast helps
you succeed faster.” — ASHLEY CULLINS

E R I C S H A N KS , STE V E M Y E R S Series debuted across

• CEO, FOX SPORTS; exec vp, iRACING
n March 13, two
O days after the
NBA announced it would
suspend its season amid
the coronavirus pandemic,
NASCAR followed suit, can-
Shanks, celing all future races. That
Myers same morning, Fox Sports’
Shanks contacted Myers
at game company iRacing
BIG INNOVATION about replacing real-world
Quickly bringing virtual
NASCAR racing to millions races with virtual ones.
of stuck-at-home fans Within 10 days, the
eNASCAR iRacing Pro
Fox networks featuring 35
NASCAR drivers — includ-
ing Dale Earnhardt Jr.,
Denny Hamlin and Jimmie
Johnson — using iRacing
rigs to compete on virtual
tracks from their homes.
In a world devoid of live
sports, the series has
become a hit, with races
routinely pulling in more
than a million viewers. In
addition to the star drivers,
Fox NASCAR broadcast-
ers Jeff Gordon, Mike Joy
and Larry McReynolds
are there to call all the
action. Former football
player Troy Aikman has
waved the checkered flag,
and Rita Wilson, recov-
ered from her COVID-19
diagnosis, has sung the
national anthem.
The new competition
came together so quickly
that no contracts have
been drawn up, confides
Shanks, explaining that
“Steve Myers put out one
call and literally the entire
NASCAR world said yes.”
The key to its success,
Myers says, was iRacing’s
preparedness. Originally
launched in 2008, the
company has produced
and broadcast esports
competitions for more
than a decade. “One of
the real struggles for TV
companies now is that they
don’t have the ability to
fully staff broadcast rooms
amid social distancing,” he
says. “Ninety-five percent
of what you’re seeing on
the air is coming from our
broadcast rooms.”
The shutdown may
be temporary but it has
opened the door for
esports on TV going
forward. Notes Shanks: “I
don’t think anyone wants
this to go away.” — P.S.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 47 M AY 6, 2020

Shut Down and Sheltering in Place,
From a Cinematographer’s Camera
Six lensers — trailblazers and Oscar winners among them — document the ongoing process of the Hollywood lockdown,
from packing up a production to following stay-at-home directives: ‘COVID-19 casts a long shadow over all of us’ By Carolyn Giardina

3 4
1. Dan Laustsen
(The Shape of Water)
On March 17, after returning
to Copenhagen after the 2
shutdown of Guillermo del
Toro’s Nightmare Alley in
Toronto, Laustsen snapped
this image of Denmark’s
iconic Little Mermaid statue.
Says the Oscar-nominated
DP, “Copenhagen’s Little
Mermaid never felt
this lonely.”

2. Robert Richardson
(Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood)
“Finding respite on an
isolated beach,” writes the
three-time Oscar winner
for JFK, The Aviator and
Hugo of this mid-April
photo of Cape Cod, where
Richardson is sheltering in
place. “COVID-19 casts a
long shadow over all of us.”

3. Mandy Walker
(Mulan)
The DP took this picture
March 27 at Village
Roadshow Studios in
Queensland, where she was
reteaming with her Australia
director Baz Luhrmann.
“This is the last image I took
as we were closing up for
the Elvis Presley project,”
she says. “We were days
away from shooting.”
4. Rachel Morrison
(Mudbound)
The first female DP to be
nominated for an Oscar
writes: “This pic of [my
daughter] Cleo, 19 months,
feels like something out
of Mad Max to me. Safety
is priority, but it’s all so
disturbingly dystopian.”
5. Seamus McGarvey
(Anna Karenina)
The Oscar nominee
photographed Los Angeles
during his daily walk up
Laurel Canyon: “It is a
picture of the beauty
of a city but one tinged
with unease.”

6. Nancy Schreiber
(FX’s Better Things)
“I took this self-portrait
near the Santa Monica
bike path on March 21, one
day before Gov. Newsom
ordered the beaches
closed,” says Schreiber,
who became the first
woman to receive the
American Society of
Cinematographers
Presidents Award in 2017.

5 6
 EMMYS
2020

FIRST LOOK

CAMPAIGNING DURING
CORONAVIRUS, CAREFULLY
With the TV Academy banning the panels, parties and other events that have long been the
staple of Emmy season, awards experts must reassess how to push contenders in a fragile climate:
‘No one wants to look promotional right now’ BY M I C H A E L O ’ C O N N E LL

T
his year, one word
requires extra
emphasis in Emmy
season’s ubiquitous
“for your consider-
ation” slogan. With
the COVID-19 pandemic pushing
the voting window by nearly a
month and plenty of talent still
reticent about the prospect of
either literal or figurative glad-
handing, some awards strategists
are at a loss about how to stage
sensitive, self-aware campaigns.
“There’s a symbiotic relation-
ship between TV and America,
especially during this pandemic,”
says one talent publicist, who
is still holding back on making
commitments for clients. “It’s a
relationship worth celebrating,
but nobody wants to be the first
one through the wall. You might
get bloodied.”
Rethinking advertising mes-
saging, putting a greater focus
on May premieres and finding a
way to incorporate fundraising
are all being discussed as ways to
soften the industrywide atten-
tion grab. But this wait-and-see
approach also has a great deal to
do with the relative absence of
framework. Though this Emmy
season has dates (nomination-
round voting now starts July 2),
the assumed tentpoles are gone.
After a long call with reps from
studios, platforms and networks
March 23, TV Academy leader-
ship voted to shift the calendar
but ban events — the screenings
and panels that provided FYC’s versions of the Tribeca Film
skeleton for years, not to men- Festival and 92nd Street Y. And
tion a great deal of revenue to advertising, for one, is expected
the Academy. to largely stay the course. Most
“Whether it’s above the line platforms have existing deals
or below the line, most people with outdoor providers in Los
don’t feel it’s appropriate to be Angeles and in New York, with
out there, for lack of a better most other commitments
term, hawking themselves,” says
TV Academy president and COO
Maury McIntyre. “The decision to
eliminate FYC events wasn’t just
about the shutdown, it was about
them not feeling right this year —
even if things do get sorted out.”
The onus is now on the awards
strategists to make tentpoles of
their own — not that all standbys
are going away. Some are hoping
to see bumps from podcasts and
streamed events from altered

Illustration by Guy Shield

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 50 M AY 6, 2020


— radio, print and local TV —
also made in advance. What those
ads look like is another matter.
“You have to adjust the mes-
saging, so I wonder how much
you’ll actually be seeing the
words ‘For Your Consideration’
around town,” says one top
awards strategist. “I think most
everyone is going to shift their
advertising to support the shows
launching now.”
That’s good news for May pre-
mieres like Netflix’s Steve Carell
comedy Space Force and Hulu’s
Elle Fanning period piece The
Great and recent breakouts such as
FX’s Mrs. America and HBO’s The
FYC: HARMONY GERBER/GETTY IMAGES. CHANDLER: ERIK VOAKE/GETTY IMAGES FOR HULU. BECOMING: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. KILLING: LAURA RADFORD/BBCAMERICA/SID GENTLE. LAST:
Plot Against America. It’s less aus-
ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES/COURTESY OF NETFLIX. ARETHA: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/RICHARD DUCREE. FARGO: CHRIS LARGE/FX. UNDOING: COURTESY OF HBO.
picious for major players that have
been out of the public eye since
2019, such as previous Emmy
heavy hitters Succession (HBO),
Stranger Things (Netflix) and The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon).
“Unless it’s for a project that
people are actually talking about
in this moment, no one wants to
look promotional right now,” says
another personal rep.
Roughly 3.7 million people have
applied for unemployment ben-
efits in California alone since the
start of the coronavirus outbreak,
so the fear of appearing to spend
millions on FYC while having
to fire and furlough employees
is equally unsavory to enter-
tainment companies. The Walt
Disney Co., which is said to have
largely stayed the course with
its pre-coronavirus FYC budget,
has to navigate Emmy season
after significant layoffs and the
From left: In 2019, Netflix’s FYSee space
hosted hundreds of guests; Kyle Chandler at
a crowded May 2019 FYC event for Catch-22.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
furloughing of 43,000 parks
workers. Deep-pocketed stream-
ers such as Netflix, Apple and
Amazon, however, have both the
resources to be nimble and less
pressure on optics. All three are,
comparatively speaking, thriving
in the struggling economy.
Several executives at smaller
platforms, with smaller budgets,
are still attempting to recalibrate
after the loss of the TV Academy’s
curated panel calendar — largely
viewed as the Emmys’ last even
playing field. As one exec put it,
quite simply: “As if it wasn’t hard
enough before, but how is any-
body expected to compete with
Netflix now?”
One way several campaigns are
hoping to get attention, without
looking too thirsty, is by tying
talent to the many fundraising
initiatives popping up in response
to the human and economic
tolls COVID-19 has taken. “If
you’re going to get out there and
talk, do it with a purpose,” says
McIntyre. “Do it to raise money
for The Actors Fund or the Motion
Picture & Television Fund. That’s
something I think you’ll see a lot
more of in June.”
For everyone who’s hopeful
about some return to normalcy
in June — be it an eagerness to
participate in small gatherings,
should they be permitted, or just
more traffic in the shadow of FYC
billboards — many others aren’t
holding their collective breath.
“I don’t think you’re going to see
anybody eager to be seen out of
the house, regardless of where we
are in June,” says another top per-
sonal rep. “A lot of ring lights are
being FedExed to actors’ homes
right now” for WFH-produced
FYC messaging.
May is historically the month
when series go all-in on their
Emmy play — but with no fixed
end date for California’s stay-at-
home order, it’s likely to be eerily
quiet. The one silver lining, men-
tioned by everyone who spoke for
this story, is that the quiet at least
means the people at home (many
of them TV Academy voters)
are likely watching much more
51
HOW T H E PA N DE M IC
I S I M PAC T I NG T H E R AC E
A look at which shows are out
(because of production shutdowns) and
which are newly in as their Emmy chances
improve thanks to earlier debuts
eligible television than they would
have in previous years. Linear TV
ratings are up, streaming is hit-
ting highs, and the TV Academy,
with more time on its hands, has
been aggressively pushing mem-
bership to FYC sites now that DVD
mailers have been banned.
“A lot of this content doesn’t
M AY 6, 2020
BECOMING
↑
Netf lix
Netflix is sure to suck up a lot of
the nonfiction oxygen with its
just-announced Michelle Obama
project named after the former
first lady’s 2018 memoir that sold
10 million copies.
KILLING EVE
↑
BBC America
It was set to return before the dead-
line, but moving its third-season
premiere up two weeks gives voters
more time with the Emmy darling
that stars two-time nominee Sandra
Oh and 2019 winner Jodie Comer.
THE LAST DANCE
↑
ESPN
An early premiere on Netflix
garnered wild coverage for ESPN’s
10-part examination of the 1997–98
Chicago Bulls. Originally set to
drop in July, it is now eligible for
round two of voting.
GENIUS: ARETHA
↓
National Geographic
Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo as
Aretha Franklin is Emmy bait in any
year, but the actress still has HBO’s
The Outsider to keep her in the
race after Nat Geo delayed the lat-
est Genius installment.
FARGO
↓
FX
Weep not for FX. It still has Cate
Blanchett in Mrs. America and Alex
Garland’s Devs (both shared with
Hulu) in the mini race, but a Chris
Rock installment of Fargo, delayed,
was sure to get attention.
THE UNDOING
↓
HBO
Big Little Lies producer David E.
Kelley and producer-star Nicole
Kidman will now have to wait for
2021 to unveil their crime mini. But
season two of their original HBO
collab remains in the running. — M.O.
connect or even exist without
awards,” says one strategist. “So
many shows, and a whole part of
this industry, are economically
reliant on there even being an
Emmy campaign season. It has
human impact on our commu-
nity that people might want to
keep in mind.”

I Know This Much Is True
Mark Ruffalo delivers a bravura turn as troubled twins in HBO’s alternately exhausting
and exhilarating six-part adaptation of the Wally Lamb best-seller By Daniel Fienberg
Like the Wally Lamb novel it’s
based on, Derek Cianfrance’s
HBO limited-series adaptation
I Know This Much Is True tells a
tragic tale of the most spiral-
ing sort — a torrent of misery
so unrelenting, it passes from
Strindbergian to Shakespearean
to biblical.
The family at the center of the
story seems endlessly cursed, and
the Blue Valentine auteur knows
a thing or two about finding
emotional truth in wallowing and
wretchedness — a good thing,
because if the performances in
I Know This Much Is True weren’t as
terrific as they are, the catharsis
wouldn’t justify the exhaustion.
If you are planning to watch all
six-hour-ish installments of the
show, you either have fond memo-
ries of Lamb’s 1998 best-seller
and Oprah’s Book Club selection
or you’re intrigued by the idea of
Mark Ruffalo playing very differ-
ent identical twin brothers — one
svelte and one husky, one goa-
teed and one clean-shaven, one a
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Reviews
paranoid schizophrenic and the
other plagued by anger issues.
The dual roles of Dominick and
Thomas Birdsey, perhaps unsur-
prisingly, make for a tour de
force from Ruffalo. As the story
begins, Thomas has just perpe-
trated an act of horrible violence
on himself in protest against
the first Gulf War, causing him
to be committed to a maximum
security hospital. Dominick, who
has spent his life as his brother’s
keeper, is desperate to get him
moved to a more lax facility.
That effort requires long
conversations with social worker
Lisa Sheffer (Rosie O’Donnell)
and therapist Dr. Patel (Archie
Panjabi) — sessions that touch
on the twins’ socially awk-
ward mother (Melissa Leo) and
affection-withholding stepfather
Ray (John Procaccino), as well as
AIRDATE 9 p.m. Sunday, May 10 (HBO)
CAST Mark Ruffalo, Melissa Leo,
Rosie O’Donnell, Archie Panjabi,
Imogen Poots
CREATOR-DIRECTOR Derek Cianfrance
Television
Dom’s tragedy-marked divorce
from Dessa (Kathryn Hahn) and
current relationship with aerobics
instructor Joy (Imogen Poots).
It’s a story that spans decades
and continents, traveling to the
Old Country — in this case, Italy
— as Dom seeks answers about
his mysterious paternal lineage.
You name the adversity and
it comes into play in I Know This
Much Is True. Cancer. Crib death.
Car accidents. Rape. Grieving of
all kinds. Needless to say, this is
not light self-isolation viewing.
For the most part, Cianfrance’s
adaptation (Anya Epstein co-
wrote the finale, which runs a
whopping 78 minutes) sticks
close to Lamb’s text, right down
to the dialogue — which is not
always a good thing. Even with
a substantial running time, the
adaptation has to significantly
condense the book, and by the
third and fourth episodes, the
story has become such a steady
stream of harrowing misadven-
tures that it’s hard not to engage
52 M AY 6, 2020
Mark Ruffalo plays identical twin brothers
struggling with mental illness, a history of
abuse and unsolved family mysteries.
in morbid and/or nervous laugh-
ter. And that isn’t intentional
since the only humorous outlet
in the whole project is Dom’s best
friend, Leo, played by Rob Huebel
with far more subtlety than the
character was given on the page.
Cianfrance struggles with the
book’s most challenging and
tonally confusing segment — cen-
tering on the protagonists’ Italian
grandfather — which plays here
as a subpar My Brilliant Friend
episode. He’s also made the ques-
tionable decision to remove nearly
the entire 1969 portion of the
narrative, which cuts out Dom’s
darkest character beats and some-
what cheapens the story’s end
(but also covers for the casting of
Philip Ettinger, who is way too old
to be playing teenage twins).
Stylistically, the director
maintains the jittery intimacy
that has marked his big-screen
features. He relies heavily on the
sort of extreme close-ups that
aren’t usually part of the televi-
TRUE: COURTESY OF HBO. GREAT: NICK WALL/HULU.
sual vernacular, collaborating
with cinematographer Jody Lee
Lipes to come up with a gritty
and grainy aesthetic that’s more
familiar from indie films.

It’s an approach that showcases
the range of emotions and moods
Ruffalo conveys, from fragility
to pent-up rage. As played by the
actor, the brothers have a sweet,
sad chemistry, each seeming ever
on the brink of self-destruction.
The technology pairing them
is fairly seamless — though,
interestingly, the tightness of the
framing accentuates the individ-
uals rather than their interaction.
Dom is the more dynamic
brother, though Ruffalo’s quieter
turn as Thomas is arguably even
more impressive. It’s hard not to
compare this volatile, versatile
performance to Ruffalo’s even
better work in You Can Count on
Me — and to acknowledge that
as American tragedians go, that
film’s writer-director, Kenneth
Lonergan, is in a different
world from Lamb — but he fully
delivers in a part tailor-made
for award nominations. (It will
be more confusing when Leo,
verging on a nonfactor here, gets
similar recognition.)
There are great support-
ing turns, especially from
Procaccino, whose character
starts in a dark place — Thomas’
complaints of abuse are harrow-
ing — and evolves with surprising
feeling. O’Donnell, stripped of
her usual wisecracking persona,
builds off the momentum of
her great work on Showtime’s
SMILF, and Panjabi has a quiet
and impressive empathy. Hahn is,
as ever, astonishingly good even
when she has almost no dialogue,
and Poots makes the most of a
character that both Dom and the
series — which removes basically
all of Joy’s best scenes — seem to
look down on.
The acting, and Cianfrance’s
commitment to letting the
performances play out in long,
uninterrupted conversations, are
what occasionally make I Know
This Much Is True exhilarating
rather than just a miserablist
dirge. The conclusions the series
reaches — regarding mental
illness, family and the challenge
of finding hope amid the bleak-
est of circumstances — don’t
feel as revelatory or profound as
they should. But there’s enough
artistry here, both behind and in
front of the camera, to pull you in
and often keep you there.
The Great
Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult headline Hulu’s tart and lively, if shallow,
Catherine the Great series from the co-writer of The Favourite By Inkoo Kang
Should Catherine the Great have risen to
power as ruler of Russia? History offers an
enthusiastic yes — the 18th century mon-
arch earned her epithet by reforming Russia,
expanding its borders and presiding over
its Enlightenment movement. But in Hulu’s
The Great, starring Elle Fanning as a 20-year-
old Catherine, the answer is less certain.
Arriving six months after HBO’s Catherine
the Great, starring Helen Mirren as an older
queen who’s not only used to power but practi-
cally embodies it, this arch, hyper-verbose
girl-power exercise, which bills itself as “an
occasionally true story,” finds its titular
character scheming to take her idiot husband
Peter’s (Nicholas Hoult) crown for herself.
The Great’s anachronisms, exoticisms and
observations of the ways privilege breeds rot
recall Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite —
unsurprisingly, since that film’s co-writer,
Tony McNamara, is the creator here.
A more surprising comparison might be
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Despite her
aristocratic bloodline, The Great’s Catherine
is a bookish idealist more provincial than she
realizes. The German princess arrives at the
Russian court to find herself a prisoner in a
gilded cage, which happens to be stuffed with
pet bears, heads on pikes, strange desserts
and a decomposing corpse. The beast to her
Belle is Peter, who ends their first meeting
by saying, “I have to get back to my whores.
Whorses. Horses. Going riding!”
Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne in The
Favourite — with her howling impatience,
weakness for sex and fatty foods and 17 bun-
nies — was an utterly original character.
Hoult, who co-starred in The Favourite, plays
a more familiar figure — a man who, save for
his delight and skill in cunnilingus, would
have made for a bro-rrific frat president three
centuries later.
The Great makes no bones about the fact
that he is Russia’s greatest menace, dragging
the country into war and violently enforcing
arbitrary laws (such as a ban on beards) just to
prove his might. To his unhappy wife, he brags
that he’s above hitting women, then punches
her in the stomach. Not that he’s a total King
Joffrey: Later, in a mood of generosity, he
appoints her a lover (Sebastian de Souza)
famous for his large but sterile organ.
But The Great doesn’t quite make the case
that it should be Catherine who succeeds
him. McNamara is charmed by his heroine’s
pluck, but he’s aware that leadership requires
more than noble intentions, which are all that
moony Catherine comes to Russia with. Then
there’s her utter unfamiliarity with Russia
itself — a country she only knows through its
bratty king and his enablers.
A more complex show might have explored
the delusions necessary to believe oneself the
savior of a nation one’s just arrived in. Instead,
The Great would rather celebrate Catherine’s
gumption. Over the consistently entertain-
ing 10-part season (episodes run close to an
hour), we follow the heroine as she figures out
whom she can enlist as accomplices in her
future coup. Allies include lady-in-waiting
Marial (Phoebe Fox) and cerebral bureaucrat
Orlo (Sacha Dhawan). Harder to budge are
Peter’s aunt Elizabeth (Belinda Bromilow),
highest-ranking general (Douglas Hodge) and
mistress (Charity Wakefield).
None of the supporting characters approach
the three-dimensionality of Catherine and
Peter (Fanning and Hoult are both stellar), but
many get deliciously catty lines, as when one
of the queen’s rivals tells her, “You are nothing
but a tolerated womb.”
Eventually, The Great abandons such plea-
surable little shocks for a more conventional
tale of royal intrigue. The result is a show that,
while good, never quite lives up to its name.
(Producer MRC is a division of Valence
Media, which also owns THR.)
AIRDATE Friday, May 15 (Hulu)
CAST Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox,
Gwilym Lee, Sacha Dhawan, Adam Godley,
Belinda Bromilow
CREATOR-SHOWRUNNER Tony McNamara
Elle Fanning plays a young, pre-power Catherine the Great
and Nicholas Hoult her husband, Peter III of Russia.
 Reviews

Film

Left: Asia.
Below:
Stray.
THR’S SOCIAL CLIMBERS
A ranking of the week’s top actors, scripted TV and
news/talk/variety shows based on social media engagement

Faves From across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more

This Last
Actors
This Last
Scripted TV

Spring Film
Week Week Week Week

1 ←
→ I 1 I Dwayne Johnson 1 ↑ I 5 I SpongeBob SquarePants
2 ↑ I 8 I Chris Hemsworth 2 ↑ I 3 I Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Fests-in-Place 3 ↑ I 4 I Dove Cameron

4 ↑ I 5 I Will Smith
3 ↑ I 4 I Stranger Things
4 ↓ I 1 I Riverdale
Standouts from (online) SXSW and Tribeca
include docs about Johnny Cash’s first wife 5 ↑ I 7 I Jennifer Lopez 5 ↓ I 2 I Peaky Blinders
and gay conversion therapy, as well as a
6 ↑ I 23 I Alyssa Milano 6 ↑ I 8 I The Flash
drama starring Unorthodox breakout Shira Haas
7 ↑ I 16 I Priyanka Chopra Jonas 7 ↑ I - I Rick and Morty
ASIA (Tribeca) 8 ↑ I 19 I Sabrina Carpenter 8 ↑ I 9 I Killing Eve
Israeli writer-director Ruthy Pribar makes an assured feature debut,
balancing maturity with emotional intensity, about the circumstances that
coax a single Jerusalem woman (Alena Yiv) and her ailing teen daughter 9 ↑ I - I Ricky Gervais 9 ↑ I - I Parks and Recreation
(Shira Haas, star of Netflix’s Unorthodox) to forge the connection previ- Gervais shoots into Top Five years after its series
Actors’ top 10 for the finale, the NBC comedy
ously missing from their lives. The film won three prizes. — DAVID ROONEY first time since February, engineered a reunion featur-
thanks to the release of ing the original cast in an
FREELAND (SXSW) season two of his Netflix April 30 one-hour special
Krisha Fairchild is riveting as a long-thriving Humboldt County pot farmer series After Life on April 24. to raise money for Feeding

ASIA: DANIELLA NOWITZ/TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. STRAY: COURTESY OF TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. GERVAIS: JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGES. PARKS: NBC/PHOTOFEST. SATURDAY: COURTESY OF NBC. WITHERSPOON: TONI ANNE BARSON/WIREIMAGE.
It spent a few days as the America. The April 23
left on the outside looking in as the cannabis industry booms around streamer’s top-trending announcement helped
her. Within its brief running time, writer-directors Mario Furloni and show, a fact the comedian the show grab 147,000
Kate McLean infuse this story of a changing culture and economy with called out on social media. Facebook post likes.
an anguished depiction of generational displacement. — SHERI LINDEN
10 ↑ I - I Mark Ruffalo 10 ↓ I 7 I Doctor Who
MY DARLING VIVIAN (SXSW)
In Matt Riddlehoover’s engaging and revelatory documentary, Johnny 11 ↓ I 9 I Kevin Hart This Last
Cash’s four daughters set the record straight about their mother, Vivian Week Week News/Talk/Variety
Liberto, a spirited, resilient woman who has been all but written out of the 12 ↑ I 15 I Camila Mendes
Hollywood and Nashville versions of their famous father’s life story. — S.L. 1 ←
→ I 1 I The Daily Show
13 ↑ I - I Aislinn Derbez
PRAY AWAY (Tribeca) 2 ↑ I - I Saturday Night Live
Four prominent defectors from the religious right’s gay “conversion” 14 ↑ I - I Ruby Rose SNL vaults back onto News/
therapy programs speak out about the damage inflicted on themselves Talk/Variety thanks to the
15 ↑ I - I Ansel Elgort April 25 airing of its second
and countless LGBTQ youth in Kristine Stolakis’ powerful documentary,
episode from isolation,
executive produced by Jason Blum. It’s a sobering account of Christian 16 ↑ I - I Keke Palmer generating a 307 percent
intervention rooted in toxic homophobia. — D.R. boost in social engagement.
17 ↑ I - I Ice Cube The 90-minute episode
SHITHOUSE (SXSW) featured cameos from Brad
The winner of SXSW’s narrative feature competition, first-time writer- 18 ↓ I 10 I Madelaine Petsch Pitt, Miley Cyrus, Paul Rudd,
Charles Barkley and more.
director Cooper Raiff’s comedy centers on a college freshman (played by
Raiff) who you’d assume was popular, but who silently longs to go home 19 ↑ I - I Ian Somerhalder
to his sister and mom. As the protagonist woos a classmate, the film 3 ↓ I 2 I Today
20 ↓ I 12 I Vanessa Hudgens
becomes a refreshingly frank study of male vulnerability. — JOHN DEFORE
4 ↑ I 5 I The Late Show
21 ←
→ I 21 I Jennifer Aniston
SHIVA BABY (SXSW) 5 ↓ I 3 I The Rachel Maddow Show
Following an NYU senior (Rachel Sennott, exuding a frazzled radiance) 22 ↑ I - I Tia Mowry
forced to juggle her lover, parents and ex-girlfriend at the same funeral, 6 ↓ I 4 I Entertainment Tonight
Emma Seligman’s debut showcases the sort of sex-positive Jewish hero- 23 ↑ I - I Reese Witherspoon
ine most often seen in series like Broad City and Transparent. The result
On her Instagram,
7 ↓ I 6 I The Tonight Show
is a squirmy, sweaty, deftly crafted comedy of discomfort. — JON FROSCH Witherspoon celebrated
the “incredible experi- 8 ↑ I - I Jimmy Kimmel Live!
STRAY (Tribeca) ence bringing Little Fires
This affecting debut documentary from Everywhere to the screen” 9 ←
→ I 9 I Un Nuevo Día
after the eight-episode
Elizabeth Lo does for Istanbul’s dogs what Hulu miniseries, starring 10 ←
→ I 10 I Tucker Carlson Tonight
2017’s Kedi did for the Turkish city’s cats. Witherspoon alongside
The earlier film was generally soothing and Kerry Washington, con-
hopeful — a cinematic valentine — while cluded its run April 22. Data Compiled By
this one pierces, illuminating, through its
central canines’ adventures, the economic 24 ↓ I 3 I Eugenio Derbez Source: The week’s most active and talked-about entertainers on
leading social networking sites Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter
and political divisions and cultural hierar- and YouTube for the week ending April 28. Rankings are based on a
formula blending weekly additions of fans as well as cumulative weekly
chies that define our time. — S.L. 25 ↓ I 14 I George Takei reactions and conversations, as tracked by MVP Index.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 54 M AY 6, 2020

 PROMOTION

The creative class in Taiwan has been pushing the boundaries in culture

H OW TAIWAN for decades with groundbreaking films, books, music, and more recently,
virtual reality projects. The nation is investing heavily in culture and the
people that drive it, garnering attention from creative industries around

I S B ECO M I N G the world. Last year, the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) was
formed -- a new organization designed to support artists and help them
make their visions a reality.

A G LO BAL H U B As part of its mission, TAICCA supports Taiwan’s culture and its creators
whether they are working in film and television, pop music, publishing,

FO R CR EATIVE
cultural technologies, or across genres. As Taiwan is home to many
tech startups and entrepreneurs, TAICCA also manages the National
Development Fund to develop intellectual property, incubate culture
technologies, and give startups working in Taiwan a much-needed boost.

CO NTENT One of the first areas that TAICCA is focusing on combines art and
technology -- virtual reality (VR), the futuristic art form that many believe
BY MELISSA LOCKER is the next great frontier in filmmaking. “To accelerate the VR industry,
TAICCA provides an Immersive Content Grant to encourage international
collaboration in the industry, and as a pioneer in VR production, Taiwan
welcomes professionals worldwide to join us,” explains TAICCA president
C.F. Hu. Taiwan’s creators have quickly emerged as leaders in the VR
space, creating ground-breaking and occasionally mind-bending
cinematic experiences.

In addition to the Immersive Content Grant, the organization launched

TAICCA school, a new program designed to help anyone who wants to
join the creative content industry or turn brilliant ideas into new businesses.
Both of these visionary programs aim to help Taiwan continue to grow as a
global creative powerhouse. “There are no short cuts for culture creations,”
says President C.F. Hu. “TAICCA is putting more efforts on developing the
great works from the very start, and promoting the talents with effective
marketing strategies. It takes time, and TAICCA will be there in every step
of the way.”

Focusing on the future is nothing new for Taiwan, whose culture has been
forward-thinking for years, in both art and life. Taiwan was the first place in
Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, but Taiwan’s cultural scene has been
inclusive and representative for decades, as seen in books like Miao-Jin
Qiu’s 1994 LGBTQ classic Notes of a Crocodile, films like Ming-Liang Tsai’s
1997 The River, Angelwings, and Jui-Yuan Tsao’s 2003 TV series Crystal
Boys. The home to East Asia’s largest gay pride is encouraging creative
content makers from around the world to turn to recognize Taiwan as a
creative hub for culture and voices that will not be censored.

To promote the incredible art made in Taiwan and show others what is
possible by working there, TAICCA has been taking its show on the road,
literally. Taiwanese cinema made a splash at the 2020 Berlinale, launching
an IP Showcase featuring films made in Taiwan to help connect the island
and its filmmakers to global and local film markets. “We curate Taiwan IP
Showcase to attract global investors and audience,” says President-C.F. Hu.
“By doing this, we hope to give the world a glimpse of the wonders Taiwan
has to offer.”

TAICCA also has big plans for the 2020 Culture X Tech Next, one of the
biggest events for creative content industries in East Asia. Speakers from
all corners of the world will gather to discuss how technology and creativity
can work together to drive cultural and social innovations and ultimately
shape the future. It’s a big subject with global implications that ask
enormous questions about creativity -- questions that Taiwan is
clearly ready to answer, and the world is noticing.

TAICCA Chairperson Hsiao-Ching Ting, and President C.F. Hu

 91 Years of THR

Memorable moments from a storied history

19
939 1 94
40 19
9 411 19
9 42 194 3 194
44 1 9455 1946 199 47 1948 1949 1950 19
9 51 1 9552 19
9 53 1955 4 19
955 1 9 56
6 1957 19
958 1 959

Milton Berle Hosted the First Celebrity Telethon

While it seems that for the foreseeable future
charity fundraisers will occur online, the
practice of putting them on television began
in 1949 when Milton Berle hosted the first
“telethon” (a portmanteau of “television” and
“marathon”). Though there were only 4 mil-
lion TVs in U.S. homes, on Tuesday nights
most were tuned to Berle’s Texaco Star Theater.
His involvement with the telethon began
with his friendship with Damon Runyon, a
writer whose characters were the basis for
the musical Guys and Dolls. After Runyon died
in 1946, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research
Foundation was established. Marathon fun-
draisers, especially to sell war bonds during
World War II, already were established on
radio, so it was a natural step for TV to adapt
the format. Who better than “Mr. Television,”
Berle, then 40, to take fundraising to a new,
televised level? NBC broadcast the Runyon
Cancer telethon to 12 East Coast cities from
noon Saturday, April 9, until nearly 4 a.m. the
next day. Berle only left the stage to change
clothes. Life magazine described the telecast
as “probably the longest sustained vaudeville
performance on record.” Much of it was pure
Berle shtick. When he brought his mother
onstage and urged her to smile, the comedian
said: “Show your teeth, Mother, but don’t take
them out.” The telethon raised $1.1 million
($20 million in today’s dollars). — BILL HIGGINS

MARTHA HOLMES/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

Milton Berle manned phones at the first-ever telethon that began April 9, 1949, on NBC. Inset: Berle’s obituary ran in THR on March 28, 2002, after he died at 93.

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T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 56 M AY 6, 2020