Hollywood Reporter Best 24 Stories of 2024

The Big Squeeze: Why Everyone in Hollywood Feels Stuck

By Mia Galuppo

If you’re planning on attending Tom Rothman’s occasion in November, you’ll want a fancy dress. Rumor has it the Sony chairman is asking invitees to the occasion — which is a joint birthday bash along with his spouse, actress Jessica Harper — to decorate up as characters from motion pictures made beneath his reign. Luckily, it’s an extended listing of wardrobe selections, stretching again a mess of a long time. You may go as Jack Dawson from 1997’s Titanic. Or Satine from 2001’s Moulin Rouge! Or Miranda Priestly from 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. Or Rick Dalton from 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

The level right here is, Rothman is popping 70 and has been in cost at Sony (and earlier than that, Fox) for a really, very very long time.

As it occurs, he’s not the one silver mogul in Hollywood today. Bob Iger is 73 and has been working Disney on and off for almost 20 years. Ari Emanuel, 63, has been working WME for almost 30 years, since he began his company in 1995 (after beginning within the mail room at CAA, the corporate co-founded by then-28-year-old Michael Ovitz in 1975). Jeremy Zimmer, 66, has been working UTA for greater than 30 years, since he co-founded that company in 1991. Michael De Luca is a relative spring rooster at 59, however he’s been fronting studio slates — at New Line, MGM, Amazon and Warner Bros. — for 3 a long time. 

Many of those no-longer-so-young Turks are actually sufficiently old to qualify for AARP reductions. But few of them appear in any large rush to retire.

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What’s Ailing ‘Euphoria’? Tragedy and Trauma Inside TV’s Buzziest Show

By Kim Masters

On a sunny day final November, the grief-stricken household and buddies of producer Kevin Turen gathered on the Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, then made their technique to a reception on the Warner Bros. lot. At simply 45 years previous, Turen had been driving along with his 10-year-old son within the automobile when he out of the blue slumped over, having suffered a cardiac occasion. His son managed to cease the automobile and name for assist.

A real cineaste with a zest for all times and an extended listing of impartial movie credit (Arbitrage, The Birth of a Nation, Pieces of a Woman), Turen was beloved by many. Among the mourners that day have been Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and Zac Efron. Zendaya, the star of the most important success of Turen’s profession — the culture-rattling HBO collection Euphoria — missed the funeral however attended the reception.

Absent from the gathering altogether was Sam Levinson, the temperamental author and director behind Euphoria and the ill-fated collection The Idol, which was meant to launch The Weeknd’s performing profession. Levinson not solely had been Turen’s very shut good friend but additionally his accomplice of their Little Lamb Production firm — till Levinson shocked many who knew each males by reducing ties with Turen earlier within the yr. The causes have been mysterious to all however a handful of shut associates.

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Glen Powell Finally Conquered Hollywood. So Why Is He Leaving?

By Lacey Rose

Glen Powell arrives at lunch by means of a again door toting a container of bone broth he isn’t keen to have a look at, a lot much less eat. He’s extra a “chicken-fried-steak-in-Austin sort of a man,” he insists, however he’s signed on to star in an A24 revenge thriller and he’s imagined to drop 15 kilos in a matter of weeks. It means he gained’t be ordering the noon margarita that Ron Perlman is nursing on the subsequent desk. Reluctantly, Powell requests a inexperienced juice.

“I’ve nearly given up on this food regimen, like, 3 times,” he says, flashing a well-recognized smile. “I’m like, ‘Can’t we simply change the character?’ “

But Powell’s not one to surrender on something, so he arms over the broth. The restaurant’s going to retailer it for him, he tells me, since he doesn’t have a kitchen of his personal in Los Angeles anymore. After greater than 15 years right here, he’s transferring again residence to Texas, the place he’ll lastly full his school diploma and be nearer to his household. He’ll preserve a spot in Tribeca, too, however he’s formally turned over the keys to his spot within the Hollywood Hills that he’s been dwelling in ever since he landed his breakout position in Top Gun: Maverick. In reality, that is Powell’s final week in L.A., which is hitting him tougher than he anticipated. Still, at 35, he’s prepared for a change, and the true advantage of “getting thus far in Hollywood is that I can now depart Hollywood,” he says. “It’s like I’ve earned the flexibility to return to my household.”

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Jake Paul Hits Back: How a Fallen YouTube Star Found Redemption within the Ring

By Seth Abramovitch

What does it really feel wish to take a punch to the face from a legit boxer?

Since turning his consideration full time to the game in 2020, Jake Paul, 27, has absorbed his share of them — first from fellow YouTubers, then professional athletes, then MMA fighters and now from precise boxers.

“Eighty-five p.c of the hits you don’t actually really feel — however then there’s that different 15 p.c,” Jake says, munching on an omelet and a bowl of berries on the poolside terrace of his compound in Puerto Rico.

The island has been residence to Jake and his older brother, 29-year-old YouTuber turned WWE wrestler Logan Paul, since late 2020. Many assume it’s to keep away from paying federal taxes on passive earnings, which the territory’s Act 60 permits as a method of selling native funding. To that, Jake responds, “This is essentially the most stunning place on the planet, and it’s my residence and I wouldn’t reside someplace that I don’t completely love.” It additionally occurs to be a spot that, like Jake, is obsessive about boxing.

With his wiry blond goatee and a towel wrapped throughout his torso like a toga, he suggests Zeus sitting atop Mount Olympus. It’s scorching out right here — a sultry warmth that feels a lot hotter than the temperature, at the moment 91 levels.

Jake bought the house in Dorado — what a neighborhood tells me is the “Beverly Hills of Puerto Rico” — in 2023. Old habits being arduous to interrupt, the boy who made it large posting outrageous, aspirational content material promptly confirmed it off to his 21 million YouTube followers in a video titled “My New $16,000,000 House.”

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“F*** This, Let’s Just Talk About It”: Jodie Foster, Jennifer Aniston, Sofía Vergara Let Loose on THR’s Drama Actress Roundtable

By Lacey Rose

“I don’t know if anyone instructed you, however none of us is aware of what we’re doing,” proclaims two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster midway by means of the Drama Actress Emmy Roundtable. She’s surrounded by two extra Oscar winners — Expats’ Nicole Kidman and Lessons in Chemistry’s Brie Larson — who nod in settlement. The True Detective star continues, “and that’s the true fantastic thing about it, having that freshness of doubting your self.” Over the course of an hour at The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica, that trio, together with The Morning Show’s Jennifer Aniston, Shogun’s Anna Sawai, Griselda’s Sofía Vergara and Feud’s Naomi Watts, focus on every little thing from mentorship to menopause.

Who right here has ever lied to land a job? 

NAOMI WATTS Oh, for positive.

BRIE LARSON We all lied and mentioned that we knew learn how to trip a horse, and we couldn’t.

NICOLE KIDMAN I can trip a horse, however I did lie about ice skating. Not a superb one to lie about. 

JENNIFER ANISTON I might need not been totally sincere. I mentioned I couldn’t trip a horse, simply because I didn’t need to trip the horse. 

WATTS Oh, I positively added particular expertise to my résumé again within the day. Multiple languages, numerous bizarre sports activities. 

SOFÍA VERGARA I didn’t deceive get a job, however I lied to my brokers so that they’d take me after I moved to L.A. I mentioned I may sing and dance. Why not? I didn’t assume they have been going to ship me out. Then they despatched me to an audition for Chicago on Broadway.

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Is the Embattled Young ‘Rust’ Armorer Getting a Fair Shot?

By Rebecca Keegan

On Oct. 21, 2021, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, then 24, arrived on the Bonanza Creek Ranch simply south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an hour or so earlier than dawn and reported to her job because the armorer and props assistant on the set of the low-budget indie Western Rust. She took a COVID check, swung by the catering tent and headed to the prop truck to arrange weapons the solid would want that day, together with Alec Baldwin’s gun, an extended Colt .45 revolver, which she loaded with what she has mentioned she thought have been dummy rounds.

When first assistant director Dave Halls referred to as for Gutierrez-Reed on a walkie-talkie, she walked to a church set on the sting of the ranch’s mock Western city and approached Halls, seated in a pew with director of pictures Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza, conferring concerning the schedule. That morning, a lot of the digital camera crew had walked off in a protest of their working circumstances, and the remaining crew have been scrambling. “I instructed him I wanted a weapons verify, and he mentioned, ‘We don’t have time,’ ” Gutierrez-Reed mentioned of Halls, in accordance with testimony she gave to New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) in December of 2022.

About two hours later, the gun Gutierrez-Reed had saved, cleaned and loaded for Baldwin fired a reside bullet into Hutchins’ chest, killing the 42-year-old cinematographer and injuring Souza, who stood beside her. The taking pictures, a uncommon and horrifying accident in a movie business that was constructed on gunslinging imagery, would shine a light-weight on using actual weapons on units, the ramifications of low-budget filmmakers’ penny-pinching and the dysfunction of a Santa Fe prosecutor’s workplace charged with determining who precisely is guilty.

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‘Schindler’s List’: An Oral History of a Masterpiece

By Scott Feinberg

“Schindler’s List was by no means a treatment for antisemitism,” emphasizes Steven Spielberg. “It was a reminder of the signs of it.”

These days, tragically, antisemitism is everywhere in the headlines: Neo-Nazis chanting “Jews is not going to exchange us” in Charlottesville. The Tree of Life Synagogue taking pictures in Pittsburgh. The Oct. 7 terrorist assault on Israel that claimed the lives of some 1,200 Jews, the biggest slaughter because the Holocaust. Not to say a former and presumably future American president utilizing Hitler-like language at his Nuremberg-esque rallies, referring to immigrants as “vermin” who’re “poisoning the blood” of America.

All of which is why, 30 years after Spielberg gained greatest image and greatest director for his film about Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis throughout World War II, THR is revisiting his movie with an oral historical past concerning the miracle of its making. Speaking to those that labored to get the movie onscreen — together with stars Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, composer John Williams, agent Michael Ovitz and Martin Scorsese, who at one level was connected to direct the image — what follows is essentially the most full telling of one of the vital essential motion pictures not simply of Spielberg’s profession, however of all time.

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Cheryl Hines … as First Lady? The ‘Curb’ Star on Life After Larry and Marriage to RFK Jr.

By Seth Abramovitch

It’s Christmas on the Kennedys’, and a contented type of chaos has upended the household residence, nestled within the prosperous L.A. enclave of Mandeville Canyon.

Conor, 29, the heartthrob son as soon as romantically linked to Taylor Swift, has emerged from the yard sauna and is wandering round the home in a towel. His putting sister, Kyra, 28 — a fashionista and “Page Six”common again in her occasion days — is fussing over their father, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 69, in preparation for in the present day’s photograph shoot.

Amid this flurry of exercise, affecting an air of regal calm as greatest as she will be able to, stands Cheryl Hines. Hines, 58, has been Kennedy’s spouse since 2014 — a second marriage for her and a 3rd for him. Kennedy’s second spouse, Mary Richardson Kennedy, mom to Conor, Kyra and two different sons — Finn, 26, and Aiden, 22 — died by suicide in 2012. Hines now oversees a blended household that additionally consists of her personal daughter, Catherine Young, 19.

Not 24 hours earlier, Kennedy — who’s working as an impartial for president (and polling greater than anticipated, with 1 in 5 Americans saying they’re open to voting for him) — was within the scorching seat for a combative CNN interview that challenged his extremely controversial views on vaccine security. Right now, nevertheless, he’s debating the deserves of beige versus blue costume shirts.

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How ‘The Chosen’ Creator Turned the Bible Into Binge TV: “This Is Such a Dangerous Show”

By James Hibberd

“It was, by each goal measure, one of the vital devastating days of my life,” Dallas Jenkins recollects.

The Midwest-born director and son of a best-selling creator of Christian novels had for years struggled to construct a Hollywood profession and had lastly landed his large break: directing a film for Get Out producer Jason Blum, who shared Jenkins’ perception that there was an untapped marketplace for elevated non secular fare. Their movie — 2017’s rom-com The Resurrection of Gavin Stone — scored “insanely” nicely at a check screening and their hopes have been excessive.

Then got here opening weekend.

“I used to be at residence with my spouse and shell-shocked,” Jenkins recollects. Gavin Stone ranked 18th on the field workplace and opened to only $1.2 million. “I imply, we have been crying. I believed this was my likelihood. I had lastly received within the door. I used to be working with one of the vital prolific and influential producers in Hollywood, who appreciated me. And it simply utterly failed. I believed, ‘Maybe that is the unsuitable enterprise for me.’ “

But inside weeks, Jenkins had one other concept. This one was for a TV collection, which might go on to assemble a flock of greater than 200 million viewers worldwide who’ve watched a minimum of one episode, largely pushed by word-of-mouth. The present has additionally bought an unimaginable $63 million in theatrical ticket gross sales after changing into the primary collection to display screen a complete season in theaters. It even has its personal annual fan conference. All this, and also you’ve in all probability barely heard of The Chosen, which tells the story of Jesus and his disciples throughout a deliberate seven seasons.

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‘SNL’ Turns 50. Now What? Lorne Michaels, Colin Jost and Michael Che on Election Insanity, Succession Plans and Trying to Make America Funny Again

By Lacey Rose

It can be completely cheap to imagine that debuting on the tail finish of essentially the most wildly unpredictable presidential election in trendy occasions would offer Saturday Night Live with the entire drama it might probably deal with because it celebrates its hotly anticipated fiftieth season. But drama typically lurks behind the scenes, too, because it has with the will-he-or-won’t-he retirement rumors surrounding TV maestro Lorne Michaels. In the autumn of 2020, it was Michaels who appeared on Sunday Today and revealed that the fiftieth season can be his final. “By that time, I feel I actually need to get lost,” he instructed host Willie Geist.

The remark, which he then doubled down on in subsequent interviews, prompted a tireless succession of media tales about who may exchange him. Tina Fey’s title emerged, together with that of Seth Meyers, Colin Jost and Michael Che. Then one thing occurred because the milestone season approached: Michaels determined that he didn’t truly need to depart the present he created 50 years in the past and has been fastidiously lording over for the previous half-century, save for a short window within the early Eighties. Sure, he’d reduce as he prepares to show 80 later this yr, however the man who has launched the careers of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig — amongst many, many others — nonetheless loves the sketch collection and its command of the zeitgeist, notably throughout political intervals. “It’s all the time going to be described the identical approach, which is ‘uneven,’ and but folks have determined in some way that it’s essential,” Michaels says now. “And so so long as it’s essential and I might be helpful, I’ll keep.”

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“I’m Bloody Tired of Hiding”: Lynda Obst on Her Trailblazing Career and Devastating Diagnosis

By Chris Gardner

Oscar nominations have been introduced in Los Angeles at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 23. The backlash started by dawn. Barbie acquired eight nominations, together with for greatest image, however the place have been particular person nods for director Greta Gerwig or star Margot Robbie, the A-list architects who constructed a billion-dollar blockbuster out of an $18 plastic doll that was born in 1959? Barbie followers went berserk on-line, denouncing the Academy for what they noticed as a sexist snub. Breathless press protection of the controversy dominated the information cycle for days, and even Hillary Clinton weighed in to help her shunned sisters. 

By Jan. 26, producer Lynda Obst had heard sufficient. “I’ve to jot down about this misplaced horror,” Obst unloaded on Facebook, providing a historical past lesson pulled from private expertise, reminding her readers that comedies hardly ever fare nicely on the Academy Awards in prime classes. Furthermore, she and greatest good friend Nora Ephron “didn’t flip out” when the late filmmaker’s motion pictures failed to achieve traction outdoors of screenplay classes. Ephron didn’t “count on kudos” merely for being feminine, nor did Obst “count on applause” for casting Jodie Foster in 1997’s Contact, one in every of Hollywood’s uncommon female-fronted sci-fi blockbusters, alongside Alien, with Sigourney Weaver. “Barbie is a brilliant enjoyable, tremendous business film that made a trillion {dollars} or one thing and that could be a critical reward. This is feminism run amok and having devoted my profession to hiring and creating feminine expertise I do know from whence I converse.” 

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When a Ketamine Therapy Visit Goes Horribly Wrong

By James Hibberd

If it’s a classy well being or wellness hack, I’ve in all probability tried it. Meditation apps, gratitude journals, bulletproof espresso, sleep optimization — performed all that. I went by means of a cryotherapy part, which has now developed into a chilly plunging part (as a result of why be merely shivering for 3 minutes if you might be freezing in agony for six?). Infrared sauna? The Finnish are onto one thing. Red mild LED masks? Let’s glow!

So I used to be in all probability all the time going to get round to making an attempt ketamine remedy, which I did two years in the past. I had learn all of the issues: How the animal tranquilizer and occasion drug can work wonders for treatment-resistant melancholy. How it might probably “reset your mind.” How ketamine’s distinctive dissociative impact permits the person to take a step again, get off their hamster-wheel of ego-driven considering and procure some therapeutic distance on previous traumas. 

Which sounded terrific. I wasn’t depressed, precisely, however felt caught in a rut — like a type of Westworld androids that preserve doing the identical patterns of habits time and again. Also, after I was a bit youthful, I had watched each my mother and father decline and perish from sicknesses which can be among the many worst our world has to supply, and people reminiscences nonetheless haunted (my mother had most cancers and my dad had Alzheimer’s, and, in case you’re questioning, Alzheimer’s wins that individual “which is extra fucking terrible” race arms down). I believe these experiences, and wanting to scale back the chances of contracting an analogous illness myself, are an enormous motive I chase wellness traits (“not in the present day” as Syrio Forel declared).

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A Heartbreaking Rift of Staggering Intensity: Toph Eggers on His Estrangement From Brother Dave

By Gary Baum

Hollywood writing partnerships dissolve for a lot of causes. There could also be inventive disagreements, persona conflicts, workload imbalances. For the celebrated creator Dave Eggers and his youthful brother Toph, who’d had a run of collaborations, the rupture of their bond may maybe be attributed to all this stuff. But, primarily, to far deeper, darker troubles.

“For so a few years I used to be locked in a sure relationship with Dave, and I simply couldn’t see fault in him — after which, as soon as I did, it flipped,” says Toph over one in every of a number of lengthy meals at diners and delis throughout L.A.’s Eastside.

Dave emerged as a literary phenomenon a quarter-century in the past with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his memoir about elevating Toph after each of their mother and father died of most cancers inside weeks of one another. The e book turned a generational touchstone for its joking-but-not, manic-expressive model — evidenced within the title itself, in addition to the stream-of-consciousness prose — together with its wry exploration of ’90s youth tradition, elevating Eggers to the uncommon pantheon of younger writers, from Jack Kerouac and Bret Easton Ellis to, extra just lately, Sally Rooney, whose work remodeled them into bona fide celebrities. One passage recalled how Dave, who then labored as an illustrator, narrowly misplaced out on being solid for The Real World: San Francisco to cartoonist Judd Winick.

In the e book, Dave depicted Toph (brief for Christopher) as a guileless child, the personification of hope. Now, at 41, Toph is wearied and aggrieved. Fair or not, he locations a number of the blame on Dave.

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The Street-Fighting Lawyer Who’s Become Hollywood’s Dark Knight

By Gary Baum

In 2021, ESPN broadcaster Sage Steele was suspended following feedback she made on a podcast, together with calling father or mother firm Disney’s vaccine mandates “sick” and questioning why Barack Obama considers himself Black when he was raised by his white mom. When she returned to her job, she felt she’d been sidelined from key on-air alternatives. So she dialed one in every of her closest buddies, Chris Harrison, for recommendation. They’d gotten to know one another whereas co-hosting the Miss America pageant and the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He, too, had just lately misplaced an enormous gig — as host of ABC’s The Bachelor, after defending a contestant accused of racism.

“Chris mentioned, ‘I do know who that you must discuss to — my lawyer. He’ll be calling you momentarily,’ ” Steele remembers. “Within 5 minutes, Bryan Freedman was on the cellphone with me.” Steele left ESPN — she now has a podcast at Bill Maher’s Club Random Studios and can voice an upcoming animated collection for conservative media outfit The Daily Wire — however was happy by the settlement Freedman clinched. “He’s the sort of particular person you want when you’re David preventing Goliath,” she says. “Little me versus Disney? He’s the defender of what’s proper. He fought for me after I didn’t even assume I used to be worthwhile. He made me really feel fearless after I was at my most weak.”

Freedman, the divisive Hollywood legal professional who’s referred to himself as a “pit bull” and is understood for a rabidity and ruthlessness that may make even his fellow ferocious practitioners marvel in astonishment, has ascended as a powerhouse in recent times, changing into the go-to for alpha canines who see themselves because the underdogs in a disaster.

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Nicole Kidman Exposed

By Rebecca Keegan

Nicole Kidman’s new movie, Babygirl, opens with a scene moviegoers might imagine they’ve seen many occasions earlier than — an actress having a really fairly orgasm. For a worldwide film star with 5 Oscar nominations and two Emmys, you may even take into account the opening risqué. But it’s what follows that reveals Kidman to be in recent cinematic territory and why she calls this position “a calling.” In subsequent scenes, director Halina Reijn divulges that the meant viewers for the opening breathy efficiency had been the character’s good-looking, loving husband (Antonio Banderas) — and Kidman delivers different, far more feral climaxes with out him. In the A24 film, a gender-flipped love letter to erotic thrillers like 9½ Weeks and Basic Instinct, Kidman performs a robust CEO, spouse and mom whose attraction to a brazen younger male intern (Harris Dickinson) threatens to explode her Instagram-perfect life.

It’s a bracingly weak efficiency, provocative even for the girl who raised eyebrows 25 years in the past with Eyes Wide Shut, and a task that caps a yr wherein Kidman is, seemingly, all over the place. Her six 2024 initiatives embody the soapy Netflix homicide thriller The Perfect Couple, which turned essentially the most watched unique streaming collection within the U.S. in September; the Taylor Sheridan spy thriller collection Lioness on Paramount+; and Lulu Wang’s status drama collection for Amazon Prime, Expats. The crush of output is thanks partially to a scheduling quirk attributable to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, nevertheless it additionally displays the rarefied place wherein Kidman finds herself at age 57, extra in demand than ever. 

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‘Squid Game’ Returns: Inside Netflix’s Darker, Terrifyingly Relevant Season 2

By Rebecca Sun

A inhabitants riven in two, however sure to the identical destiny. Individuals whose identities are diminished to the faction they’ve chosen, pink or blue. And the bitterly contested stakes: prosperity or dying.

Sound acquainted?

“I need to spotlight the theme of taking sides,” Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk says of the foremost motif for season two of his worldwide hit collection, wherein folks in private monetary disaster have interaction in a battle royale for the possibility to win a life-saving sum of cash. Hwang is standing within the present’s huge dormitory contained in the stomach of Studio Cube, Korea’s largest manufacturing facility, about 100 miles south of Seoul. While the acquainted set nonetheless options rows of bunk beds stacked midway as much as the ceiling like scaffolding, it’s unattainable to miss a brand new function: a large blue “O” and pink “X” illuminated on the ground, with corresponding blue and pink traces bisecting the room.

Though it’s November 2023, with the U.S. presidential contest nonetheless a yr away, Hwang is aware of that season two will drop across the time of the election — which he calls “the final word O-X occasion.” He additionally notes that sectarianism is common. “In Korea today, we’re seeing a lot worse battle between the aged and the youthful era. And you see demarcation all over the place. There’s no room for debate, solely hostility. So I used to be impressed by the route the whole world is taking.”

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50 Cent on Conquering TV, His Beef With Diddy and Why He Brought $3.5M to Our Photo Shoot

By Mesfin Fekadu

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s forty ninth birthday was three days in the past, however he’s nonetheless in a celebratory temper.

If there was any query as “Fiddy” nears 50 whether or not he’s nonetheless on the prime of his recreation, the reply arrives with him on the photograph shoot for this story: The rapper turned mogul brings $3.5 million in chilly arduous money, most of it stuffed into two heavy black suitcases. Some is assembled right into a sq. stool that he sits on whereas smoking a cigar. Every at times, as he poses for photographs, he digs into the stash and provides just a few extra stacks to the desk beside him — as these on set watch in awe, together with the 4 safety guards Jackson arrived with. The doorways are locked shut, and the window shades are closed for max privateness.

Asked whether or not he needed to go to the financial institution to get the funds, Jackson says with a relaxed smile: “I simply had that. I received greater than that,” then provides that “I used to be impressed [to bring it] by [Muhammad] Ali,” referring to the 1964 Sports Illustrated cowl for which the then-22-year-old boxer posed with $1 million in winnings. “I used to be like, ‘I need to do a shoot like that.’”

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Andy Cohen Finally Speaks Out on ‘Real Housewives’ Reckoning: “It’s Hurtful. But I Have No Regrets”

By Maer Roshan

It’s a frigid Sunday afternoon in April, and Andy Cohen is perched on a park bench, ruminating concerning the ups and downs — however largely the ups — of his almost three-decade-long profession in broadcasting. Occasionally, a passerby walks previous and smiles, or shyly waves whats up. This, it rapidly turns into obvious, is a typical incidence for Cohen, 55, who appears to be one thing of the unofficial mayor of this cobblestoned, townhouse-lined neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, the place he — and now his two kids, Benjamin, 5, and Lucy, 2 — has been dwelling for 27 years. Everybody, it appears, loves Andy Cohen. Well, not everybody, however we’ll get to that in a second. He began his profession in New York in his early 20s, a precocious, fiercely bold community govt with not-so-secret desires of creating it large in entrance of the digital camera as a TV host (regardless of being instructed by a mentor that he had “no charisma”). Today, he’s not solely a producer of one of the vital profitable actuality franchises in tv historical past (the one with all of the Housewives), however he’s spent 15 years as host of Bravo’s much-buzzed-about late night time discuss present Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, on which everybody from Hillary Clinton to Mariah Carey has answered his jaw-droppingly blunt questions. He oversees two unruly radio channels on SiriusXM — and hosts two reveals himself. He has written 5 best-selling books (about himself, naturally), and each New Year’s Eve he entertains tens of millions of CNN viewers worldwide by getting wasted on digital camera along with his pal Anderson Cooper.

It’s been a outstanding ascent for the fast-talking Jewish homosexual child from St. Louis who turned out to have much more charisma than his former boss may see. And that rise has shocked — and delighted — no one greater than Cohen himself, who makes no bones about how a lot he adores being well-known. Like a sure different Andy, he has a Warholian fascination with movie star, particularly his personal, even when it does typically make his courting life a tad difficult (he as soon as received kicked off Grindr for “impersonating” Andy Cohen).

Lately, although, Cohen has been coping with one thing he’s beforehand solely had the nice fortune to poke enjoyable at: scandal. 

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Howard’s End? How SiriusXM Will Survive After Stern

By Caitlin Huston

A number of years in the past, audio platforms and media firms threw huge quantities of cash at creators to construct their podcasting slates. Spotify, which spent greater than $1 billion on its push, inked offers with the Obamas, the Sussexes and extra, along with bankrolling its largest star, Joe Rogan. Now, after a content material spending pullback, it’s a unique panorama. One that, within the telling of SiriusXM president and chief content material officer Scott Greenstein, has matured to the purpose the place it’s clear which large gamers within the audio area nonetheless can write checks. Namely, SiriusXM, Spotify, Amazon’s Wondery and iHeartMedia.

SiriusXM has been notably aggressive in making wealthy expertise offers this yr, snapping up each SensibleLess and Call Her Daddy, two of the most well-liked podcasts within the business. The acquisitions have been notable not solely due to their value tags, each at $100 million-plus, but additionally for what they are saying concerning the satellite tv for pc radio big’s bigger enterprise technique and status as a talent-friendly vacation spot. 

“No one is sort of correcting us or saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it is best to do it this manner,’ ” says Ted Danson, who’s new to the podcasting area with Where Everybody Knows Your Name With Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (Sometimes), which is beneath Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco banner, acquired by SiriusXM in 2022. “We get this sort of carte blanche: ‘Go have enjoyable and discuss to fascinating folks.’ ”

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The Last Thing Standing Between Kathy Griffin and a Real Comeback

By Mikey O’Connell

Kathy Griffin breaks her silence simply as soon as throughout the hourlong flight. “So far,” the redhead whispers, “it’s only a lot about meals.” 

Earbuds again in, she returns to the supply of her frustration: hour 23 of Barbra Streisand’s 48-hour audiobook memoir. The comic enters a semi-meditative state, eyes closed and left hand on Elliot Stabler, the vibrating chihuahua mutt who’s as a lot her emotional help animal as she is his. Griffin has just a few causes for wanting quiet on our June journey from Los Angeles to her San Jose tour cease, however the one which issues most proper now could be that she footed the invoice for this chartered jet. The 5 different passengers, all however two of us on her payroll, oblige her want. My first time flying personal is on the behest of a self-identifying fourth-tier movie star who spent two months of 2017 on the No Fly List. 

For those that stopped being attentive to Griffin after that photograph — the one she posted of herself holding the bloodied likeness of Donald Trump’s severed head that left her unemployed, ostracized and in scorching water with the Feds — issues received a hell of quite a bit worse from there. Though she in the end was by no means charged with conspiracy to assassinate the president, she says the ordeal price her greater than $1 million in authorized charges. She turned hooked on drugs, primarily OxyContin and benzodiazepines. She tried suicide. She was identified with lung most cancers. She misplaced use of a vocal twine after an operation to arrest that most cancers. And, in December, her relationship of greater than a decade dissolved when she filed for divorce from her husband. Griffin calls it “the laundry listing.” This flight is as a lot about shushing these demons as it’s making certain she’ll nonetheless have the ability to converse after the two-plus-hour set places her battered larynx by means of the wringer. 

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How the NBA’s Slam Dunk Deals Will Reshape TV

By Alex Weprin

The NBA’s blockbuster $76 billion megadeals with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime are a testomony to its product, and the unequalled attain and energy of reside sports activities. And the offers also needs to ship shivers down the spines of virtually everybody in Hollywood outdoors the community govt suites.

While the 11-year agreements are seen as a crucial strategic maneuver by the media firms seeking to construct streaming enterprise and are a monetary boon for the league, they’re additionally, within the phrases of 1 veteran media govt who declined to be named, the most recent instance of a “switch of wealth from Hollywood to the sports activities leagues.”

Already, brokers and writers are grumbling that the wealthy offers will imply fewer new TV reveals ordered, and fewer reruns, which is able to end in decrease residuals.

NBC’s deal alone will exchange greater than 150 hours of broadcast TV leisure with reside NBA programming on Sunday and Tuesday nights (not together with the playoffs, NBA All Star Weekend or choose WNBA video games, which will even run on NBC). “When you zoom out and take into consideration the full image of what we’re making an attempt to do, which is to carry our wonderful TV media property into the longer term, I feel we view the NBA as a superb piece in that puzzle,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh instructed Wall Street analysts July 23, whereas including that “it would enable us to rebalance programming from different areas — clearly, we’ll fill just a few nights on NBC with this content material versus different content material.”

That “different content material” shall be, largely, leisure programming.

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“F*** These Trump-Loving Techies”: Hollywood Takes on Silicon Valley in an Epic Presidential Brawl

By Benjamin Svetkey

If you have been to stay a pin in a timeline on the precise second Silicon Valley declared warfare on Hollywood, it might probably land on Aug. 29, 1997. That’s the date Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph received collectively in Scotts Valley, about an hour south of San Francisco, and began a bit DVD supply firm referred to as Netflix.

The relaxation is historical past: Within simply a few a long time, all the normal pillars of the previous leisure order began to crumble. Linear tv, cable TV, theatrical field workplace — nothing was left standing, a minimum of not as tall because it as soon as had. This everyone knows, all too nicely.

But right here’s what’s new. Very just lately, simply over the previous a number of weeks, there have been indicators that Southern California as soon as once more is rising — or making an attempt to, at any fee. This time, although, the civil warfare with the north isn’t over digital platform home windows or on-line content material safety; this time, it’s mogul-to-mogul fight on a a lot grander battlefield, as each side — super-rich techno libertarians versus not-quite-as-super-rich previous guard Hollywood liberals — conflict over what kind of authorities the nation ought to be electing in November. Today, they’re preventing over nothing lower than the presidency of the United States.

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How Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ Fell Apart

By Borys Kit, Pamela McClintock and James Hibberd

“I belief myself as a author, I belief my course of,” Quentin Tarantino declared onstage on the Adobe Max inventive convention in 2016. “I by no means attempt to take something out too quickly. If I do, I notice it, and I put it again.” The acclaimed filmmaker added: “Not each movie must be made. Not each film ought to be made.”

And a type of motion pictures that won’t be made — because the world realized April 17 — is The Movie Critic, which was billed as Tarantino’s tenth and last movie. The mission initially targeted on a author working for a fictional porn journal within the late Nineteen Seventies after which it quietly developed, amid a flurry of rewrites, into one thing resembling a derivative of his ninth movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (with some potential meta twists, as we’ll clarify later).

The choice got here as fairly a shock given the mission was anticipated to movie a minimum of one sequence this yr, after which go into full manufacturing in early 2025 with an A-list expertise connected (Brad Pitt, reteaming with Tarantino for a 3rd time). “I don’t recall him rewriting a lot and pushing a begin date as soon as he had a film in thoughts,” says one company accomplice.

A studio was by no means formally introduced, however two sources near the now-scuttled mission inform The Hollywood Reporter that Sony Pictures was firmly on board after ushering 2019’s Once Upon a Time to blockbuster standing. That movie grossed $377.4 million globally to rank because the writer-director’s largest film behind Django Unchained ($425.4 million). Tarantino felt like he discovered a brand new compatriot in Sony studio chief Tom Rothman after having made almost all his earlier movies with Harvey Weinstein. Sources say the temper on the Sony lot isn’t one in every of disappointment, nevertheless. 

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