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Anonymous Content Plans Feature Adaptation Of James Baldwin Biography

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Anonymous Content’s new CEO Darren Walker said the management and production company is developing a feature film on iconic writer James Baldwin that it will produce with the Obamas’ Higher Ground.

It’s commissioned Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James and his partner, James Baldwin scholar Nicholas Boggs, to write a script based on Boggs’ best-selling biography Baldwin: A Love Story, Walker said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in LA, appearing with Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of Emerson Collective, Anonymous Content’s majority owner.

Walker was tapped as chief executive early this year. He was formerly the president of the Ford Foundation, leading its $17 billion endowment.

“Our balance sheet will be increased. Will have an envelope to do [more] … We can, because what happens when you have a long-term investor? You can be courageous if you have conviction and you have an investor who is aligned with that,” he said. The idea is to move away from the “fee-for-hire” production model. “Now Emerson has made it possible for us to become a financier in the market, so we’ll be able to co-finance, finance, take the lead in financing a film. So it won’t be like it has been, where our production team gets a great script and they say we’ve got to go out and find someone to finance this.”

Jobs, also a major investor in The Atlantic, said Anonymous Content founder Steve Golin had “a beautiful vision” but that people grieved and “entropy set in a bit” after he passed away seven years ago, followed by tough times in the industry with Covid, then Hollywood strikes. But the company is attached to several dozen festival films this season, Emmy wins, and, under television head David Levine, co-produced Zoe Kazan’s upcoming Netflix series East Of Eden as Walker said the independent builds up to “version 3.0”

Jobs, along with former HBO chief Richard Plepler, are joining a reconstituted board under chairman Michael Klein, Walker said. Steve Shikya was named COO in August following the hires of Liza Burnett Fefferman as chief communications and marketing officer and Michael Sinclair as chief legal officer.

Asked about the unconventional choice of Walker to run the company, Jobs said: “People were asking that at the beginning, and within a few months, everyone was saying what a brilliant stroke of genius it was, because he’s electrified Anonymous Content and also created quite buzz across the industry.”

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DOJ Argues CNN & Other Outlets Can Be Banned From White House

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The Justice Department argued that Donald Trump can legally ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House because he determined that they didn’t meet the “minimum requirements of professionalism.”

Last month, a federal judge granted the three outlets a temporary restraining order that forced the White House to reinstate dozens of their reporters’ hard passes. The outlets are now asking the judge to extend that 14-day order for a longer term via a preliminary injunction, claiming that Trump’s ban is a violation of their First and Fifth amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, has said that he is bound by the precedent set in In a 1977 D.C. Circuit opinion, Sherrill vs. Knight, in which the judges ruled that “the protection afforded newsgathering under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons.”

In a court filing on Friday, the DOJ claimed that the Sherrill case still would allow for the president to restrict the three outlets from accessing the White House grounds because the White House has a “compelling interest.”

The DOJ lawyers claimed that the Sherrill decision does not “prevent the President from concluding that bona fide journalists would identify sources instead of relying on anonymous sources, commit to factual accuracy, and provide the White House an opportunity to comment, rather than ‘perform their duties in a way that … interfere[s] with the White House’s daily operations.’ …At a bare minimum, it is a significant violation of decorum to publish classified and sensitive national security information.”

The news outlets’ legal team has rejected that assertion, writing in a filing earlier this week that Trump’s “statements also make clear he implemented the ban to coerce more favorable coverage from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and to deter other journalists and news organizations from newsgathering and reporting that the President might view as negative. And his administration has continued to retaliate against Plaintiffs even after the temporary restraining order, only underscoring that Defendants’ motive is to punish and chill journalism they dislike.”

Even as access to the White House grounds has been reinstated, the White House has continued to restrict CNN from coverage of TV pool assignments, including travel with Trump on Air Force One.

The outlets’ lawyers, led by Theodore Boutrous Jr., also noted that Trump and other White House officials “overlooked that the First Amendment protects reporting on matters affecting national security.”

Kelly has set a hearing for Thursday on the news outlets’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

In granting a TRO, Kelly concluded that the White House failed to provide due process to the news outlets.

The DOJ has pointed to letters sent to the outlets as evidence that they were given due process. But those letters were sent on Sept. 22, four days after Trump’s ban was started.

The judge also has noted that some of the objectionable stories cited by the DOJ do not have to do with national security. Kelly wrote in his order that “even the justifications provided to Plaintiffs after this case was filed are ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations: while Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that ‘threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods’ leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former.”

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Zach Bryan Dons “Free Palestine” Shirt At Gillette Stadium Concert

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Following Robert Kraft‘s campaign against Macklemore, Zach Bryan made a statement with his performance at Gillette Stadium.

During Friday’s stop at the Kraft-owned venue for his With Heaven on Tour, the Grammy winner stepped onto the stage with a “Free Palestine” shirt after Kraft and other venue owners pressured Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his tour over his outspoken support for Palestinians.

With another performance scheduled at the Massachusetts venue on Saturday night, it remains to be seen if Kraft will pull the plug.

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The show comes after Ed Sheeran was forced to cancel his Gillette Stadium shows last weekend amid a nor’easter headed for Boston, despite caving to Kraft’s demands.

Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his tour last month amid an outcry around the opener’s “Free Palestine” onstage remarks. Opting to remain publicly neutral on the issue, Sheeran subsequently released a statement saying it was the “promoter’s decision” after Kraft assembled several of the tour venues to give him an ultimatum.

Following the statement, fellow tour openers Finneas, Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham dropped out of the tour, along with Sheeran’s backing band Beoga.

Meanwhile, Macklemore announced the Free Palestine Tour last week, which is “supporting the Palestinian people and movement,” running 10/26-10/30 in Dublin, Paris and London. He since gave an update that the tour “sold out immediately.”

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Pedro Pascal Was Surprised By Tony Gilroy’s ‘Behemoth!’

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With the world premiere of Behemoth!, Pedro Pascal is praising Tony Gilroy for the intimate drama.

During a Q&A after the film’s premiere screening at the New York Film Festival, the Golden Globe-nominated actor admitted he thought Gilroy was “gonna be kinda mean” before they worked together.

“You have created this complex Jason Bourne-like puzzle over something that is so intimate and so healing this mysterious way,” Pascal told Gilroy in a video shared by NYFF. “And I didn’t think it was gonna come from him, you know what I mean? This intimidating intellectual … you know, I thought you were gonna be kinda mean. And you thought I was gonna be a dork.

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In Behemoth!, premiering Dec. 4 in theaters, Pascal stars as cellist Alex Serian, a former child prodigy who returns home to Los Angeles to compose film scores and reconnect with his family.

Written and directed by Gilroy, the Searchlight Pictures film also stars Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, Margarita Levieva and Matthew Lillard.

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