movies
NBCU’s Donna Langley On Industry Mergers, Taylor Sheridan, And The Road To 2027
Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios, is not a fan of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery combining. “I think it is bad. I think it’s bad for everything,” she said bluntly, addressing the feature film market in particular.
“What this year has proven is, if you build it, they will come. Right? If you have the right mix of films in a steady diet for the audience, they’re going to show up. And we’re also cultivating this great habit with young people, who are coming to the cinema and we need to keep them there. So volume matters, and if we if we essentially lose a studio — which is I know not the stated plan and goal — but if we lose a studio, it’s bad … Look back at Fox-Disney. It wasn’t great, she said during a Q&A at the Bloomberg Screentime conference.
Paramount has committed to a legal settlement calling for the combined studios to release 30 theatrical films a year for the first two years post-merger, and 32 films for the following three years. The deal is expected to close next Tuesday.
Last fall, Universal detached the prolific Tyler Sheridan from his longtime studio home at Par for a new five-year film and television deal starting in early 2029. Asked how, Langley said, “Look, I think I saw an opportunity, with disruption and instability at moments where companies are going through something. And you know they are just moments to kind of look around the marketplace and see if there’s a competitive advantage. But really, where I started talking to Taylor was about film, because I knew that he had a film deal at Paramount but it was a first look deal, didn’t have as many teeth to it as his television deal. That’s how it started, and then we just got to talking, and one thing led to another.”
Split Looming
NBCU itself is in the midst of big corporate wrangling as parent Comcast plans to spin it off with Sky into a standalone, publicly traded company. “I’m mostly excited and optimistic about it. I’m not fearful of it at all, actually. I think it’s going to be good … Not to be tethered to a legacy business, Comcast, where the stock has struggled for a while, is a good thing.
“Now we are going to be the masters of our own destiny. It is more pressure. But in our neck of the woods, when you have to open movies, you know, however many times a year, there’s no more pressure than that.” She acknowledged “the scale question, of course,” but said it will be interesting for the slimmed down company to explore “at a moment of this real historical transformational change, what else can we be doing, and where else should we be playing in terms of growth.”
The split should be completed by mid-2027.
Box Office Run
The head of the number one movie studio in the world this year in the best overall box office since the pandemic, is more cautions about next year. “I think 2027 has a different complexion to it. I don’t think it has as much potential for the kind of big billion-dollar hits like this year, if you think about the breakouts, the ones that were surprises … But I think ‘28 will be kind of back again.”
“But you know, you really never know. I mean, I think if this year taught us anything, it was so exciting because it sort of reminds you that one of the fun things about this business is that surprises can always happen, good or bad. Luckily, it was good.”
Universal’s Christopher Nolan’s epicThe Odyssey is a juggernaut led and Obsession from Focus Features one of the year’s unexpected hits.
“They were both surprises for different reasons. I felt very confident that The Odyssey was going to cross a billion and then some. But the play-out pattern was so extraordinary. I mean, the fact that in week three we actually outgrossed the second week. It was just filled with surprises all the way along.”
Obsession “was just a good old-fashioned over-performing surprise. We knew we had something that could hit the cultural zeitgeist when we apparently, according to reports, overpaid for it in Toronto … We caught lightning in a bottle.”
The studio acquired the film for $15 million and it went on to gross over $500 million worldwide.
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movies
DOJ Argues CNN & Other Outlets Can Be Banned From White House
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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movies
Zach Bryan Dons “Free Palestine” Shirt At Gillette Stadium Concert
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.
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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movies
Pedro Pascal Was Surprised By Tony Gilroy’s ‘Behemoth!’
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.
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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