| | | | | | What's news: Kamala Harris' campaign is breaking Zoom records. 29m people saw Joe Biden's Oval Office address. Gina Carano's lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm can move forward. Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized. Marvel held a surprise screening of Deadpool 3 at Comic-Con. — Abid Rahman
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The Obamas Back Kamala Harris ►"This is going to be historic." Barack and Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris for president. The former president and former first lady revealed their prized endorsement in a short call with Harris, a video clip of which was released Friday morning across the vice president’s social media and posted to her YouTube channel. In the almost minute-long clip, Harris is seen taking a phone call from the Obamas as she walks and talks. The story.
—Enthusiasm! Hundreds of thousands of Kamala Harris supporters have rallied behind the presumptive Democratic nominee this week, with Zoom calls breaking attendance records. On Sunday, more than 44,000 Black women joined a call and raised $1.5m. The trend continued with thousands of Black men on a call earlier this week, followed by Zooms for LGBTQ supporters, South Asian supporters and more. On Thursday night, white women supporters had more than 100,000 participants joining a call, a number so staggering it caused technical glitches. The story.
—America tunes in. Joe Biden’s Oval Office address on ending his re-election campaign Wednesday drew a large TV audience. Nearly 29m people watched the 15-minute speech at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT across 15 broadcast and cable networks, according to final same-day Nielsen ratings. ABC had the largest single-network audience for Biden’s address with 6.82m viewers. Fox News drew 5.37m viewers, followed by CBS (4.22m), NBC (3.82m), MSNBC (3.53m), CNN (2.53m), the Fox broadcast network (1.62m) and Fox Business (145,000). The ratings. |
NBCU Bets Big on Olympics to Boost Peacock ►"We have learned a lot from [last time]." In January 2020, NBCUniversal execs unveiled a plan to use that year’s Tokyo Olympics to help launch Peacock, including streaming the opening and closing ceremonies live before they aired on TV in the evening. Alas, the COVID-19 pandemic would warp those plans. THR's Alex Weprin writes that Peacock will get a do-over of sorts and is going all in, with plans to stream everything live from Paris 2024. Every sport, every ceremony, every NBC broadcast, the works. The story.
—Don't forget Max! Warner Bros. Discovery, and its streamer Max, is also looking to benefit from the Paris Olympics. The company will show the 2024 Games across 47 markets in 19 languages on its streaming platforms Max and Discovery+, with TV coverage on its Eurosport channels. "The Olympics is going to be a really important ingredient in the [European] launch plans for Max," said Andrew Georgiou, president and managing director of WBD U.K. & Ireland and WBD Sports Europe on Thursday. The story.
—La nuit étoilée. On the night before the opening ceremony, Hollywood arrived in Paris ready to party. Charlize Theron, Serena Williams, Rosalía and Omar Sy co-chaired a Prelude to the Olympics event at Paris’ famed Fondation Louis Vuitton on Thursday, with Comcast NBCUniversal chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, Louis Vuitton men’s creative director Pharrell Williams and Anna Wintour serving as hosts for an evening celebrating sports, culture, music, fashion and art. The story. |
SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike Against Major Video Game Studios ►"Enough is enough." For close to two years, SAG-AFTRA has been in talks with major video game companies on a new contract agreement that would cover voice and performance capture workers on titles from Disney Character Voices, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Warner Bros. Games, Insomniac Games and more. Now, at an impasse over artificial intelligence concerns, the union’s chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland has called a strike. The story.
—Moving forward. The lawsuit from actress Gina Carano against Disney and Lucasfilm appears set to move forward, after a federal judge declined to dismiss the suit. The move by Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett will likely mean that the suit goes to trial, or Disney and Carano come to terms on a settlement. Carano had sued Disney earlier this year over her high-profile firing from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian in 2021, for social media posts the company deemed to "abhorrent and unacceptable." The story.
—Tragic incident. A crewmember working on Warner Bros.’ Superman died on Wednesday after an apparent suicide attempt. The incident happened at Trilith Studios near Atlanta, officers with the Fayetteville Police Department and paramedics were called to the film studio complex early Wednesday morning and discovered a deceased female Teamster member in her car, the victim of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. The story.
—Hospitalized. Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19 and double pneumonia. The disgraced mogul and convicted rapist was taken back to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward to be treated for a “myriad of health conditions” that still affect him “on a daily basis such as diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, fluid on his heart and lungs, and various other conditions,” according to his representative. The story. |
'The Boys' S4 Scores 55M Worldwide Viewers ►F***in' diabolical. Season four of The Boys is among the biggest series Amazon Prime Video has ever offered, at least according to internal viewing figures from the streamer. The company says 55m people worldwide have watched at least part of the season from its June 13 premiere through July 21 (a span of 39 days), three days after the season finale began streaming. That’s a 20 percent increase over viewing of season three in the same time frame — which would put season three at roughly 46m viewers globally. The story.
—🏆 Congrats! 🏆 The 2024 News & Documentary Emmy Awards nominations have been announced. The awards, presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, will be handed out across two nights, one recognizing winners in news categories and another recognizing documentaries, in September. The nominees for outstanding live news program are the CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, ABC’s World News Tonight With David Muir, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and the NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt. The nominees.
—🎭 New fire chief 🎭 Dermot Mulroney is joining long-running NBC series Chicago Fire for its upcoming 13th season, which is set to premiere on Sept. 25. He’ll play Chief Dom Pascal in the series. Other details about the character are being held back for the time being. The show’s fire house is potentially in need of a new chief after Eamonn Walker, who played Chief Wallace Boden for all 12 previous seasons, departed as a series regular at the end of last season. The story.
—🎭 Crossing the Ts and dotting the... 🎭 Daniel Diemer will join the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians as Tyson the cyclops, a fan-favorite character from author Rick Riordan’s quintet of novels. Diemer’s casting was announced Thursday during a panel for the show at Comic-Con. Season two is based on the second book in the series, The Sea of Monsters, is set to go into production next week in Vancouver. Diemer will be a series regular, joining stars Walker Scobell (Percy), Leah Sava Jeffries (Annabeth) and Aryan Simhadri (Grover). The story.
—Get in. Jordan Peele is bringing back the hidden camera prank show. The Oscar-winning filmmaker is reviving Scare Tactics for USA Network, which originally launched on Syfy in 2003 and ran for five seasons. The series debuted just one month after MTV’s Punk’d and featured ordinary people being put into terrifying situations with the help of professional Hollywood special effects, stunt and makeup teams. The story.
—Back for more. Hulu will stream a sixth season — and potentially more than that — of The Kardashians. The streamer has ordered 20 more episodes of the unscripted series featuring the Kardashian family. The renewal comes a day ahead of the show’s fifth season finale. What’s not clear yet is how, or if, those 20 episodes will be divided up. The five seasons of The Kardashians have all run for 10 episodes since the family moved its on-camera life to Hulu after 14 years and 20 seasons of Keeping Up With the Kardashians on E! The story.
—Eating up the competition. FX/Hulu's The Bear had its biggest streaming week to date for the June 24-30 period. The Emmy-winning series, whose third season premiered June 27, racked up 1.23b minutes of viewing for the week — beating its previous high of 1.01b minutes shortly after its season two premiere last year. The Bear was one of seven shows to score more than a billion minutes of viewing for the week, a rarity in the four-year history of Nielsen’s streaming rankings. The rankings. |
Marvel Screens 'Deadpool 3' at Comic-Con ►Surprise! Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, director Shawn Levy and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige gave San Diego Comic-Con a multiverse-shaking surprise on Thursday, when the panel for Deadpool & Wolverine turned out to be a secret screening for the new movie. “We’ve been all around the world with this movie, but the icing on the cake is right here, right now,” declared Jackman, who was also joined onstage by co-star Emma Corrin, who plays the villain of the film. The screening took place in the cavernous Hall H. The story.
—Edging out of (development) hell. Todd McFarlane's long-gestating Spawn movie has moved closer to reality. King Spawn now has a completed script, one that McFarlane and producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse have enough confidence in to start meeting with directors for the movie. The news comes two years after they commissioned a script from rising scribe Matt Mixon, Falcon and the Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman and Joker Oscar nominee Scott Silver. The story.
—🎭 She's played a Blinder 🎭 Dune star Rebecca Ferguson is joining Cillian Murphy in the Peaky Blinders movie. Netflix greenlit the movie based on the beloved BBC series that stars Murphy as Thomas Shelby, the war hero turned gangster who works his way up in the world of crime in 1900s Birmingham. While the film is described as a “continuation” of the series, plot details are being kept under wraps, along with Ferguson’s role. The story.
—Hitting the road. The Beyond director Hasraf “HaZ” Dulull is set to produce and helm an animated feature based on Mutant: Year Zero Road to Eden, a tactical adventure video game. The Mutant: Year Zero movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world where an unlikely team of animal-mutants, led by a witty duck and a gruff boar, set out on a dangerous mission to reclaim an essential generator stolen from their sanctuary, the Ark. Dolph Lundgren and Ian McElhinney are among the big names in the voice cast. The story. |
The Kings Talk Ending 'Evil' ►"It seems like a funny time to say goodbye." THR's Mikey O'Connell spoke to Michelle and Robert King about the end of their Paramount+ series Evil. The husband and wife duo discuss their sadness at saying goodbye, their worries over the future of television ("The most concerning conversation is the one that just happens over and over — which is, 'There’s no money to make shows.'") and what the industry might look like if Donald Trump was elected again. The interview.
—"Where do you draw the ethical lines when something just makes you feel okay and complete? Does it matter whether it’s another person or not?" THR's Patrick Brzeski spoke to Katie Robbins about her new Apple TV+/A24 sci-fi drama series Sunny. The showrunner behind the show, a futuristic mystery drama starring Rashida Jones as an expat in Japan investigating the sudden death of her husband and son, discusses her thoughts on AI and the "bonkers" upcoming episodes. Warnings: Spoilers! The interview.
—"I’ve always wanted to make movies — way before I decided it might be fun to talk about them online." THR's Brian Davids spoke to YouTuber-cum-filmmaker Chris Stuckmann about his new film Shelby Oaks. Stuckmann discusses the chance encounters with a pre-fame Mike Flanagan and producer Aaron B. Koontz that led to a feature debut with Neon, made in part with $1.4m in Kickstarter funds. The interview.
—"There were talks of me going to the premiere and pretending to be Hugh’s plus-one, which would’ve been hilarious." Brian also spoke to Dafne Keen about her emotional reunion with Hugh Jackman in Deadpool 3. The Brit actress, who returns as Laura/X-23, discusses the film and also her role in Disney+ series The Acolyte. Warning: Spoilers! The interview.
—"I really wanted to avoid that and have [Kudrow] play what is normally written for men." For THR, Max Gao spoke to Lisa Kudrow, Taika Waititi and Iain Morris about their new Apple TV+ adventure series Time Bandits. The trio discuss their small screen adaptation of Terry Gilliam's 1981 cult film, and how they convinced Kudrow to travel to New Zealand to work in a genre she had never worked in before. The interview. | Film Review: 'The Beast Within' ►"Intriguing, if never very frightening." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Alexander J. Farrell's The Beast Within. Kit Harington, Ashleigh Cummings and James Cosmo star in Farrell's werewolf movie, set around a British castle haunted by a dark family secret. The review.
—"Insightful, even when stretched thin." THR's Lovia Gyarkye reviews Chelsea McMullan's Swan Song. This doc follows Karen Kain, the artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, as she directs her first show for the company before her retirement. The review.
In other news...
—Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon assist ailing dad in Netflix’s His Three Daughters trailer
—Pedro Pascal reveals first Fantastic Four cast photo
—Demi Moore’s The Substance to open Midnight Madness at Toronto Film Fest
—Deadpool & Wolverine drops this weekend: The coolest gifts and merch to wear to the cinema
—Vince Vaughn buys pickleball team Coachella Valley Scorpions
—Iconic Hollywood restaurant Yamashiro listed for $100m
—Inside Katharine McPhee and David Foster’s coastal chic retreat
—How to stream KCON L.A. online for free and find last-minute tickets
What else we're reading...
—Thrill of the chaise: Hafiz Rashid reports on the scurrilous rumors around Trump running mate J.D. Vance and whether he had sectional relations [New Republic]
—Irrespective of the couch thing, Rebecca Jennings writes that J.D. Vance is still extremely weird with dangerous views [Vox]
—With Michael Winner's Death Wish hitting 50, Charles Bramesco reflects on the "reactionary and repugnant revenge thriller" that became all too influential [Guardian]
—Jason Farago on why the Parade of Nations from the opening ceremony of the Olympics is the world’s costume party [NYT]
—Here's your Friday list: "The greatest disaster movies of all time" [THR]
Today...
...in 2013, 20th Century Fox released James Mangold's The Wolverine in theaters. The Hugh Jackman superhero film was a critical and commerical hit and was followed by Mangold's Logan in 2017. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Helen Mirren (79), Mick Jagger (81), Sandra Bullock (60), Jason Statham (57), Kate Beckinsale (51), Elizabeth Gillies (31), Thomasin McKenzie (24), Olivia Williams (56), Nana Visitor (67), Eve Myles (🏴46), Taylor Momsen (31), Monica Raymund (38), Mageina Tovah (45), Juliet Rylance (45), Susan George (74), Cress Williams (54), Ellen Latzen (44), Grace Byers (40), Ben Cotton (49), Francia Raisa (36), Tom McGowan (65), Miriam McDonald (37), Megan Ketch (42), Louisa Mignone (41), Danny Woodburn (60), Peter Hyams (81), Bianca A. Santos (34), Tembi Locke (54), Emily Axford (40) |
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