Variety June 30, Cannes Issue by armsakimbo22

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 3

F E AT U R E S

P.32-50 P.32

In Perpetual Motion After working the past year Tilda Swinton with a clutch

constantly for and a half, heads to Cannes of fresh films

By Manori Ravindran

(Cover) Styling: Jerry Stafford/CLM; Makeup: James O’Riley/Premier Hair & Makeup; Hair: Declan Sheils/Premier Hair & Makeup; Rome production: Roman Brothers; Gown: Haider Ackermann

P.42

Brave New World As streaming giants expand their reach across the globe, governments are looking for ways to rein them in to help local broadcasters and producers. Will it work?

P.50

A Time to Be ‘Merry’ The return of Shakespeare in the Park this summer signals how both New York City and the theater biz are changing By Gordon Cox

P.32 Cover photograph by James Wright

Competition ﬁlms “The French Dispatch” and “Memoria” are among the movies starring Tilda Swinton that are going to Cannes.

4 ● CONTENTS

06.30.2021

FOCUS

P.70

Musicals are making a big comeback at Cannes and mainstream movie theaters, but will audiences sing their praises?

P.82

Japan’s powerhouse film company Toei celebrates 70 years in the business

P.55

BIZ + BUZZ

P.13

Hollywood is taking steps to return to the office as the biz starts to shake free from the pandemic’s grip

P.16

“Black Widow” director Cate Shortland dishes on making the Marvel movie

P.18

Awards Circuit offers predictions for the July 13 Emmy nominations

P.20

Joshua Safran breaks down how he reinvented “Gossip Girl” for HBO Max

P.22

Kathy Hilton talks about her casting in “Real Housewives” and reality TV

P.45 Nigel Lythgoe, here with Misty Copeland at an American Ballet Theatre beneﬁt in 2017, will be honored with a star on the Walk of Fame.

OUR TOWN

ARTISANS

REVIEWS TV

FILM

“The White Lotus”

“Fear Street Part 1: 1994”

P.119

P.121

30 115 117 119 121 P.

P.27

Charlize Theron reveals news about the “Old Guard” sequel; Riley Keough talks about grandfather Elvis Presley

P.115

Costume designers Patricia Field and Tracy Cox dish on the looks for “The Devil Wears Prada” as film turns 15

P.28

YouTube talk show “Stars in the House” sets first in-person event

P.117

“Fear Street” FX makeup designer talks about creating the series’ skull mask

P.29

Dickies plans a pop-up at Fred Segal’s Sunset Boulevard location

P.117

“Mickey the Brave” art director tells how it pays homage to classic Disney

F A C E T I M E P. 1 2 2

Camille Cottin

Variety, VOL. 352, NO. 17 (USPS 146-820, ISSN 0011-5509) is published weekly, except the first week of July, the first week of September and the last two weeks of December, with 20 special issues: Jan (1), March (4), April (1), May (1) June (8), July (1), and Aug (4) by Variety Media LLC, 11175 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025, a division of Penske Business Media. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at other mailing offices. Postmaster send address changes to: Variety, P.O. Box 15759, North Hollywood, CA 91615-5759. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Publications Mail Agreement No. 40043404. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: RCS International Box 697 STN A, Windsor, Ontario N9A 6N4. Sales agreement No. 0607525. Variety ©2021 by Variety Media, LLC. Variety and the Flying V logo are trademarks of Penske Business Media. Printed in the U.S.A.

Lythgoe/Copeland: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages/AP Images; Cottin: Matthieu Cesar

6 ● MASTHEAD

06.30.2021

VARIETY IS OWNED & PUBLISHED BY P-MRC HOLDINGS, LLC

Claudia Eller

Michelle Sobrino-Stearns

Editor-in-Chief

President & Group Publisher

Jay Penske Chairman & CEO

EDITORIAL

FEATURES

SALES

MARKETING

Gerry Byrne

Cynthia Littleton

Steven Gaydos

Donna Pennestri

Dea Lawrence

Vice Chairman

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Executive Vice President, Global Content/Executive Editor

Associate Publisher

Chief Marketing Officer

Chief Operating Officer

Millie Chiavelli

Executive Editor

Tim Gray

John Ross

SVP, Sales & Global Partnerships

Lesley McKenzie

Senior Vice President

VP, Features & Events

Dawn Allen

Tim Boyer

Ramin Setoodeh Managing Editor

Andrew Barker

VP, Film & Talent

Michelle Fine-Smith

Brent Lang

Senior Features Writer

Executive Editor, Film and Media, New York Bureau Chief

Leo Barraclough

Shirley Halperin

Peter Caranicas

Executive Editor, Music

Managing Editor, Features

Kate Aurthur

Shalini Dore

Editor-at-Large

Features News Editor

Manori Ravindran

John Hopewell

Managing Director, Global Summits & Strategic Partnerships

International Features Editor, London

VP, Global Consumer Partnerships

Jason Greenblatt VP Digital Sales

Eric Legendre Co-Managing Director, International Sales

Lindsey Elfenbein

International Editor

International Features Editor, Madrid

Kelly Watson

Alejandro Castro

Carole Horst

Managing Director, Consumer Partnerships

Vice President, Video

Managing Editor, Features

Kate Roach

Jem Aswad Deputy Music Editor

Gordon Cox Legit Editor

Clayton Davis Film Awards Editor

Matt Donnelly Senior Entertainment & Media Writer

Bill Edelstein Associate Editor

Terry Flores Senior Editor

Diane Garrett Senior TV Editor

Angelique Jackson Film & Media Reporter

Elaine Low Senior TV Business Writer

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer

Marc Malkin Senior Culture & Events Editor

Joe Otterson Senior TV Writer

Rebecca Rubin Film & Media Reporter

Michael Schneider Senior Editor, TV Awards and Deputy TV Editor

Todd Spangler New York Digital Editor

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor

Sylvia Tan Associate Editor

Jazz Tangcay Senior Artisans Editor

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent

Mónica Marie Zorrilla TV Reporter CRITICS

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic

Daniel D’Addario Chief TV Critic

Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic INTERNATIONAL REPORTERS

Rebecca Davis Beijing

Patrick Frater Hong Kong

Elsa Keslassy Paris

Naman Ramachandran South Asia/United Kingdom

K.J. Yossman United Kingdom OPERATIONS

Sheila Dixon Howard Editorial Coordinator

Sime Silverman Variety Founder, 1873-1933

Creative Director

Susanne Ault Director, Programming

Dayna Wolpa Director, Event Marketing

Jamie Aronson Director, Event Marketing

María Margarita López Director, Marketing, Partnerships & VIP

David S. Cohen Senior Producer, Variety Content Studio

Holly Dillon Senior Producer, Variety Content Studio

Jenelle Riley

Sales Director

Deputy Awards and Features Editor

Henry Deas

Malina Saval

Director, Markets & Festivals

Senior Brand Marketing Manager

Editor, Features

Patrice Atiee

Emma Schmidt

Danielle Turchiano

Director, Strategic Partnerships

Manager, Event Marketing

Senior Features Editor, TV

Judi Pulver

Alex Bullard

Lauryn Kistner

Chris Willman

Director, Music Advertising

Manager, Features

Editor, Features

Christie Ricci

Whitney Cinkala

Director, Business Development

Brand Marketing Manager

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

Amy Jo Lagermeier

Hanna Hensler

Jennifer Dorn

Director, Strategic Partnerships

Marketing Coordinator

Cristina Quitania

Robyn Ozaki

Manager, Summits & Strategic Partnerships

Senior Designer

Natasha Millman

Andrew Phan

Photo Director

Ted Keller Design Director

Richard Maltz Deputy Photo Editor

Elliot Stokes Art Director

Haley Kluge Deputy Art Director

Alex Gitman Photo Editor

Tarryn Silver Designer

Michael Buckner Chief Photographer ONLINE

William Earl Editor, Variety.com

Associate Manager, Strategic Partnerships

Junior Designer

Sean Soper

Kimberly Au

Associate Manager, Strategic Partnerships

Stefan Nicoll Account Manager (Spain, Portugal, Latin America)

William Lin Sales Executive, Asia

Patie He Sales Planner

Amanda Schulze Media Planner

Isabella Dalena VCS Associate Project Manager

Sadi Kuperman Sales Coordinator, Film & Television

Emanuel Okusanya Sales & Marketing Coordinator

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor

Jené Kemp Strategic Partnerships Coordinator

Junior Designer

Maya Steinberg Event Marketing Coordinator

Flavio Gomez Marketing Coordinator

Ana Geoana Business Development Coordinator

George Grobar Sarlina See Chief Accounting Officer

Craig Perreault Chief Digital Officer

Todd Greene EVP, Business Affairs & Chief Legal Officer

Mark Howard Chief Advertising & Partnerships Officer

Paul Rainey EVP, Operations & Finance

Tom Finn EVP, Operations & Finance

Debashish Ghosh Managing Director, International Markets

Jenny Connelly SVP, Product & Technology

Judith R. Margolin SVP, Deputy General Counsel

Ken Delalcazar SVP, Finance

Lauren Utecht SVP, HR

Nelson Anderson SVP, Creative

Rachel Terrace SVP, Licensing & Brand Development

Adrian White VP and Associate General Counsel

Anne Doyle VP, HR

Brian Levine VP, Revenue Operations

Brooke Jaffe Head of Public Affairs & Communications

Christina Yeoh VP, Technical Operations

Constance Ejuma VP, SEO

PRODUCTION & CIRCULATION

Dan Feinberg

Ellen Dealy

Frank McCallick

VP, Audience Marketing

Natalie Longman Production Director

Mike Petre Director, Distribution

Andrea Wynnyk Production Manager & Graphic Designer

Pat Saperstein

VP and Associate General Counsel VP, Global Tax

Gabriel Koen VP, Technology

Gerard Brancato VP, PMC Digital Acquisition

Jacie Brandes VP, Portfolio Sales

Jamie Miles

Deputy Editor

VP, E-Commerce

Dan Doperalski

Jerry Ruiz

Digital Art Director

VARIETY INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM

VP, Acquisitions & Operations

Maane Khatchatourian Senior Online News Editor

Andrew Wallenstein

Joni Antonacci

Alex Stedman

Chief Media Analyst & President

VP, Production Operations

Karen Reed

Senior Online News Editor

Jordan Moreau Online News Editor

Preston Northrop Supervising Producer

Nicholas Stango

VP, Finance

Cheyne Gateley Creative Director

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst Heidi Chung Media Analyst/Correspondent

Kevin Tran Media Analyst Kaare Eriksen Information Editor Helene Goldsen Editorial Manager Yinchen Niu Designer

VP, Business Development

Mike Monroe Head of PMC Studios

Mike Ye

Senior Producer

Tucker Morrison

Melissa O'Hare

VP, Strategic Planning & Acquisitions

Video Producer/Editor

VARIETY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Nici Catton

Jamie Abraham

Mark Hoebich

Noemi Lazo

Video Producer/Editor

Tiana DeNicola

VP, Product Delivery VP, Customer Experience & Marketing Operations

President

Post Production Supervisor

Ellise Shafer Associate News Editor

Carolyn Finger Senior Vice President

Katcy Stephan

Ryan Pigg Senior Coordinator

Julie Sesnovich

Social Media Editor

Jennifer Nieves

Senior Coordinator, Film Research

David Viramontes

Senior Director, Business Development

Lindsay Strach

Young Ko VP, Finance

Andy Limpus Associate VP, Talent & Recruiting

Brian Garcia Associate VP, HR

Social Media Coordinator

Brian DePasquale

Senior Coordinator

Alyssa Mora

Director, Research

Bailey Wildman

Junior Content Specialist

Stephanie Diehl

Senior Coordinator

Anna Tingley

Director, Research

Keelan Brown

E-Commerce Writer

Kevin Kelly

International TV Coordinator

Director, Business Development

Yoomi Choi

Christine Morente

International Research Coordinator, Asia

Associate VP, Content

Director, Film Research

Bathilde Odolant

Amit Sannad

Sandy Shenkman

Film Research Coordinator

Senior Director, Development

Director, Business Development

Alix Kalaher

Derek Ramsay

Chris Svehla

TV Research Coordinator

Director, Product Management

Director, TV Research

Brittney Poole

Laura Ongaro

Jimmy Doyle

Research Coordinator

Manager, Business Development

Aubree Schaefer

Schuyler Fastenau

TV Production Research Coordinator

Senior Coordinator

Chelsea Tam

Hanna Pachman

Sales Coordinator

Senior Coordinator

Eddie Ko Associate VP, Advertising Operations

Gurjeet Chima Associate VP, International Markets

Karl Walter

Director, Licensing & Brand Partnerships

8 ● FIELD NOTES

06.30.2021

Tilda Swinton: An Artist for the Ages

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Claudia Eller

I have great admiration for people who refuse to fit in, go against type and live by their own rules and convictions. I applaud those who are bold, provocative and fearless in their life and career choices. That is precisely why I count myself a devoted fan of Tilda Swinton and her daring, unpredictable nature and work. She is refreshingly quirky, an individualist in every respect. From her alluring androgynous looks and platinum locks to her chameleon-like performances in a diverse body of movie roles, Swinton is “A Singular Artist” — words I used to describe her in the headline of Manori Ravindran’s compelling profile of a performer who rejects labels like “actor,” let alone “actress.” She tells our international editor that she prefers to think of herself as a “colleague,” someone who is part of a collective, or a “kindergarten” where people come to learn. As Ravindran puts it, “Swinton doesn’t join a production; she joins a family.” Thai auteur and Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul, who directed Swinton in “Memoria,” which makes its debut at Cannes, says she “considers herself one of the workers in the film who shares responsibilities,” a participant in every aspect of “what’s in the frame. So in a sense, she’s a filmmaker as I am and as others are.” Underscoring how prolific Swinton is, “Memoria” is only one of five movies at this year’s festival that

feature her, each role as different as the next. “The French Dispatch” marks her fourth collaboration with another unique artist, director Wes Anderson, who is about as far from being a Hollywood creature as Swinton is. Anderson says that for “French Dispatch” he wrote the role of art critic J.K.L. Berensen specifically for her and that she “instantly knew this is more or less a part only she could play, and had to be for her.” I first met and spoke with Swinton at a Cannes afterparty for her Netflix film “Okja,” an odd but moving work by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho about a young girl who befriends an oversize pig. Swinton portrayed twin sisters, one who becomes a CEO after pitching her plan to breed the “super pig,” the other her power-hungry sibling who attempts to topple her. I found Swinton to be engaging, soft-spoken, extraordinarily intelligent and poetically articulate. Illustrative of her manner of speaking is a line from our cover story: “The films themselves are leaves that fall off the tree — but the tree is the conversation.” There’s something indescribably ethereal and otherworldly about Swinton. “At 60, she exudes a sense of immortality,” writes Ravindran, responding to the answer Swinton gives when asked whether she believes there are signs of real change in Hollywood: “Ask me that in 100 years.”

I found Swinton to be engaging, soft-spoken, extraordinarily intelligent and poetically articulate.”

10 ● PLUGGED IN

The Biggest Stories of the Week From Our Reporters Compiled by Joe Otterson

6DP 1HLOO DQG &KULVWRSK :DOW] WR 6WDU LQ ȃ7KH 3RUWDEOH 'RRUȄ )LOP $GDSWDWLRQ

1HWДL[ *LYHV 7ZR 6HDVRQ 2UGHU WR 'DWLQJ 6KRZ ȃ6H[\ %HDVWVȄ

Netﬂix has signed on for two seasons of the reality show “Sexy Beasts,” which sees singles heading into blind dates transformed into various animals and mythical creatures through the use of Hollywood movie prosthetics. The show is based on Lion TV’s original British series for digital channel BBC Three in 2014. The format, sold by All3Media International, has traveled around the world, bolstered by demand for big, visual costume-led formats on the back of “The Masked Singer’s” success. “Catastrophe” star and comedian Rob Delaney will serve as the narrator. Lion TV will produce the series for the streamer. — Manori Ravindran

Sam Neill, Christoph Waltz and Patrick Gibson will head the cast of “The Portable Door,” a fantasy-adventure ﬁlm adapted from the series of novels by Tom Holt. The film is shooting in Queensland, Australia, with Jeffrey Walker directing from a script by Leon Ford. The ﬁlm is a Jim Henson Co. and Story Bridge Films production and is produced by Blanca Lista from Henson and Todd Fellman from Story Bridge. Sales agent Arclight Films is handling worldwide rights outside North America, Australia and New Zealand. Sky will release the film in the U.K. and Ireland, Germany and Italy. — Vivienne Chow

ȃ+DORȄ 6KRZ UXQQHU WR ([LW 3DUDPRXQW 3OXV 6HULHV $ЕHU 6HDVRQ ˊ The showrunner of the “Halo” series at Paramount Plus will exit the show once work on Season 1 is over. Steven Kane and Kyle Killen were attached as co-showrunners on the series at one time.

According to sources, Killen departed the project ahead of the start of production as he felt he was unable to render full-time showrunner duties during the show’s shoot in Budapest. Kane then took over as the lead showrunner. Production is ongoing on Season 1 of the series, with Kane set to remain on board through the post-production process. Should the show get picked up for a second season, however, he will not return. — Joe Otterson

6WDUV RI 8SFRPLQJ )LOPV

Alec Baldwin The Boss Baby 2: Family Business Vscore = 92 His score looks full grown.

,&0 3DUWQHUV $JHQW -RH\ 6WDQWRQ 'HSDUWLQJ WR )RUP 0DQDJHPHQW 3URGXFWLRQ &RPSDQ\ Veteran talent agent Joey Stanton is exiting ICM Partners to become a manager and producer. Stanton is known as a shepherd to top young Hollywood talent; insiders familiar with his plans say the exit is amicable and he’ll stay on in the coming weeks to help his department with the transition. While it’s unclear what clients he’ll take with him to manage, his current portfolio includes Caleb Landry Jones, Taylor John Smith, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Orlando Bloom, Sheila Vand, Jacob Scipio and Grifﬁn Johnson. — Matt Donnelly

Benicio del Toro No Sudden Move Vscore = 84 This may help him steal a few points.

Sam Richardson The Tomorrow War Vscore = 76 Trending up, he’s ready for battle.

8QFRYHUHG “In reality, there aren’t many, if any, living actors who are more exciting and beguiling to photograph than Tilda Swinton,” says James Wright, who photographed the Cannes 2021 issue cover star in Rome. “Having both a life and career so uniquely her own is testament

to the curiosity and vision that makes her such a chameleon.” The founder of biannual arts and culture magazine and creative agency So It Goes, Wright regularly trains his lens on Hollywood’s biggest names and shoots for brands including Dior and Chanel.

Ana de la Reguera The Forever Purge Vscore = 60 Her prospects know no end.

The Portable Door: Mark Taylor/The or/The Jim Henso Henson Company; Sexy Beast: Netflix; Halo: Xbox Game Studios; Baldwin: P hotograph by Lexie Moreland; del Toro: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP; Richardson: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP; Reguera: P hotograph by Michael Buckner

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 13

06.30.2021

B I Z + BU Z Z Corporate Hollywood Reemerges From the Pandemic

Most offices are reopening on a voluntary basis — even as production pacts are about to expire

By Elaine Low Illustration by Cheyne Gateley

Mask mandates are no more in California and New York, where COVID-19 cases have plummeted — and so much of the entertainment industry is based. Now Hollywood is largely in softlaunch mode, not for the premiere of a particular film but for its biggest comeback yet: itself. While television and film productions have adhered to their own set guidelines for some time due to the global pandemic, corporate entertainment offices are generally adopting an approach that will see their white-collar

14 ● BIZ + BUZZ

06.30.2021

workers return in fuller force after Labor Day, with the option to start shuffling into the office after July 4. The Walt Disney Co., for instance, will start welcoming a fraction of its U.S. employees back after Independence Day amid a phased reopening. On the corporate side, NBCUniversal, like many of its entertainment peers, is offering an optional return to the office this summer, with a full reopening planned for the fall. Logistically, resuming work in dozens of office buildings across multiple cities and time zones is an enormous feat. Pre-pandemic, NBCU’s New York offices normally had 6,000 to 8,000 staffers toiling within, with around 14,000 in its Los Angeles office. Domestically, excluding its theme parks, NBCU has a total of around 25,000 staffers. The company is following local guidelines in each jurisdiction: For returning, fully vaccinated office employees, that means no masks or distancing in the workplace will be necessary. And NBCU is offering some flexibility and remote work opportunities to those whose roles allow it. Also no masks for the vaccinated at ViacomCBS, which has long been public about its plans to have nearly 80% of its more than 20,000 staffers return to a hybrid post-pandemic work environment. A plan for “agile workspaces,” a model in which employees do not have assigned desks and can work remotely, is part of the plan, though not yet being implemented at this time. For the still fairly newly merged Viacom and CBS, that is likely to

prove helpful in trimming real estate costs as the conglomerate looks for those kinds of postM&A synergies over the next few years. ViacomCBS, too, is allowing an optional return over the summer. Fox Corp., on the other hand, earlier this spring set the first phase of its reopening to no sooner than Sept. 7 — just after Labor Day — with CEO Lachlan Murdoch in a March memo calling his workforce’s health safety a “priority” and the “guiding principle” for returning to work. Even as California’s businesses are reopening, Fox’s previously announced plans remain in place. Sony Pictures Entertainment staffers started to head back to the company’s Culver City lot at the start of June and will trickle in gradually over the summer. The

neighbors in the area, Amazon Studios and Apple TV Plus, likely aren’t looking to Hollywood counterparts but to their tech titan parents for guidance. According to widely reported memos from each company, Amazon is allowing its employees to work remotely up to two days a week, with three days in office, while Apple is similarly looking at a three-day-a-week return. At the talent agencies, CAA ofﬁces are opening in early July for employees who voluntarily wish to head back to the ofﬁce. Meanwhile, WME is mandating that all stateside employees return to the physical workplace on July 12, according to a source familiar with the matter, with exceptions for those with health, religious or personal reasons; those will be reviewed on

CAA ofﬁces will reopen in early July for employees who wish to return to the physical workplace.

a case-by-case basis. But staffers will be given half days and work virtually every Friday — monikered Refresh Fridays — when the offices will be closed for deep cleaning. UTA, which reopened in midJune, is also closing its physical U.S. offices on Fridays. The agency’s London office reopens on Aug. 31, while its New York corporate location unlocks its doors Sept. 7. Returning to the office is voluntary at that stage, and outdoor areas have been set up for meetings and meals, with a complimentary lunch service offered to workers. ICM Partners remains on the more cautious end of the spectrum — it has not set a reopening date. For those who choose to come to the office, the agency’s strict protocols continue to be in place. Hallways are one-directional, so that execs, agents, assistants and all others do not pass each other and potentially make contact. Employees will still have to do temperature checks with their Kinsa-branded smart thermometers before they go into the office — ICM has a contract with the company for 600 thermometers — as well as wear masks and limit elevator occupancy to no more than four people at a time. Whether TV and film sets will operate differently soon is another question — a COVID-era returnto-work agreement between the AMPTP, DGA, IATSE, SAG-AFTRA and Teamsters expires June 30. But one thing appears clear: In contrast to the simmering anxiety and uncertainty of last summer, the industry is gearing up to get back to business.

P hotograph by Michael Buckner

Hollywood is largely in soft-launch mode, not for the premiere of a particular ﬁlm but for its biggest comeback yet: itself.”

16 ● BIZ + BUZZ

06.30.2021

‘Black Widow’ Director Cate Shortland Tried to Turn Down the Job

OUT

Director Cate Shortland (second from left) confers with Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh and David Harbour on the set of “Black Widow.”

For “Black Widow,” Marvel Studios’ first solo woman director, Cate Shortland, moved from intimate character studies — “Lore,” “Berlin Syndrome” — to a superhero spectacular that still somehow feels like an intimate character study of original Avenger Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). But at ﬁrst, Shortland didn’t even want the job. • You’ve said you can only take on a project when you know you can do a really good job with it. How did that apply to directing a Marvel movie? Well, initially, I said no. I told my manager, there’s no way I can do this movie, and I’m not sure why they’re asking me. And then she never told them no. I kept thinking about it, and I spoke to Scarlett, and then I just got hooked on the idea of trying to tell a really personal, intimate story in amongst so much beauty and spectacle. • Were you familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I’d seen “Thor: Ragnarok” and

“Black Panther.” When they started calling me, I was watching more Marvel films, and it became even crazier in my mind. When I really decided that I wanted to do it, I decided 150% — like I never wanted to do anything as much as this, in a way. It was strange. • How did you bring your point of view to the action sequences? I make films before I make the film. So I researched the best fights that I loved the most, and I cut together a sequence, probably 10 minutes, of what we could explore physically. I’d look at contemporary dance, and then I’d look at scenes with women in fight sequences where a man would shove a woman into a wall or push a woman onto the ground, so that we could make the audience feel something. I was always about: How do we make them feel? • How’d you get through the pandemic waiting for this movie to open? It’s been really great taking a back seat and being quiet. But I really fell in love with action and the art of the choreography — just making people fly through the air and smash into things.

Gabriel Marano has joined Entertainment One as executive VP of scripted television. He had been senior VP of drama programming and development at Fox.

Michelle Lee has exited Allure after more than ﬁve years as editor. She has segued to Netﬂix as global vice president of editorial and publishing.

Tanya Giles has advanced to ViacomCBS’ chief programming ofﬁcer of streaming. She’ll oversee content strategy for Paramount Plus and Pluto TV.

Simon Johnson has been tapped as managing director of strategy, growth and e-commerce for Universal Music U.K. He was previously with Amazon.

David Katz will leave Fox Sports as exec VP of digital in the fall. He will return to his former role as chairman of ThePostGame marketing agency.

Randy Fibiger has been promoted to senior vice president of bookings for MSG Entertainment. He’s been with the company since 2009.

Devon Quinn has joined Trevor Noah’s Day Zero Prods. banner as senior vice president of TV. He comes to the company from Marvel.

Rodrigo Mazón is moving on after six years at Netﬂix, most recently as VP of content. He’s shifted to Univision as exec VP of SVOD.

Sasha Silver has been promoted to head of drama for Hulu Originals. She joined the streamer in 2016.

FLAG WAVING

Motherhood, apple pie and … Mickey Mouse? In a recent survey, Disney ranked as the most “patriotic” U.S. entertainment brand — a nebulous concept, to be sure, in this divided political era. It was the 19th annual study measuring consumer perception of brand patriotism by research firm Brand Keys.

1. Jeep

5. The New York Times 6. American Express, Netflix (tie) 7. Coors, Levi Strauss (tie)

2. Walmart 3. Disney

8. Fox News 9. Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, MSNBC (tie)

— Todd Spangler 4. Amazon, Ford (tie)

10. The Washington Post

Source: Brand Keys survey of 5,804 consumers ages 16-65, May 2021

Shortland: Jay Maidment/Marvel/Disney; Lee: Emily Lipson; Katz: Fox Sports; Jeep: Stellantis; Disney: Joshua Sudock/Disneyland Resort; Levi: J’rg Carstensen/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images; Coors: Courtesy Coors

By Adam B. Vary

18 ● BIZ + BUZZ

06.30.2021

Final Predictions: Here Are the Top Emmy Nominees This might finally be Netflix’s year for a major series win; plus a Max effort in comedy and a tightening limited race By Michael Schneider

The Emmy initial voting phase is over, pencils are down and now we wait for nominations to be announced on July 13. A few ﬁnal predictions for major categories: COMEDY SERIES • “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV Plus) • “Hacks” (HBO Max) • “The Flight Attendant” (HBO Max) • “Pen15” (Hulu) • “The Kominsky Method” (Netﬂix) • “Black-ish” (ABC)

Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor portray Princess Diana and Prince Charles in the fourth season of Netﬂix’s “The Crown.”

DRAMA SERIES • “The Crown” (Netflix) • “Bridgerton” (Netflix) • “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) • “Pose” (FX) • “The Mandalorian” (Disney Plus) • “Lovecraft Country” (HBO) • “This Is Us” (NBC) • “The Boys” (Amazon Prime Video) An Emmy win in one of the top series categories has so far eluded Netflix, but it can taste that changing this year. “The Crown” has been the front-runner from the beginning, but it’s by no means a lock to go all the way. It seems a sure thing for a nom, though, while it may also be joined by the soapy “Bridgerton.” Meanwhile, “The Handmaid’s Tale” concluded its season with a buzzy ender, propelling the previous winner back into the race. And an emotional farewell for “Pose” also gives it a good shot. It’s been a while since “Lovecraft Country” aired, which may impact its chances, while Amazon’s hefty awards push for “The Boys” could propel it into the

competition. Just bubbling under may be HBO’s “Perry Mason” and “In Treatment,” which premiered late in the season. LIMITED/ ANTHOLOGY SERIES • “I May Destroy You” (HBO) • “The Queen’s Gambit” (Netﬂix) • “Mare of Easttown” (HBO) • “Small Axe” (Amazon Prime Video) • “The Underground Railroad” (Amazon Prime Video) Limited series, newly combined with anthology offerings, may be the most unpredictable of the major categories, due to the sheer volume of high-proﬁle and heavily campaigned contenders. Just when you thought “The Queen’s Gambit” would remain the front-runner, HBO’s “I May Destroy You” — which premiered more than a year ago — is coming on strong again, winning major BAFTA, Peabody, GLAAD and Independent Spirit awards. See you on the 13th!

Des Willie/Netflix

AWARDS CIRCUIT

• “Girls5eva” (Peacock) • “Cobra Kai” (Netflix) What a year for HBO Max, with two major comedy contenders (boasting standout female leads) in “Hacks” and “The Flight Attendant.” The comedy front-runner remains “Ted Lasso,” but I still contend that the category is more interesting and competitive than the conventional wisdom that says this is an off year. It’s been great to see “Pen15,” which started out as a tiny, low-budget show for Hulu, get its due. And “Girls5eva” has been such a joyous bop that I’m rooting for it, although it came late in the year. For that eighth slot, I stuck in “Cobra Kai” on a bit of a lark and due to that Netflix magic, but it could easily be “Mythic Quest” (which I’d be happy to see) or the recently canceled “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” Another possibility could be Netflix’s “Master of None,” but it came in so late this eligibility period, and is such a dramatic (literally and figuratively) departure from the show’s past seasons.

20 ● BIZ + BUZZ

06.30.2021

‘Gossip Girl’ Begs You! Don’t Shop at Zara

How Joshua Safran reinvented the popular teen soap for a new generation

By the time Joshua Safran was pitching the “Gossip Girl” revival to HBO Max in May 2019, 019 he knew 019, exactly what he wanted ted the new incarnation to be. Based sed on Cecily y von Ziegesar’s young adult books, and created by Josh Schwartz chwartz and Stephanie Savage, the original W from 2007 show ran on The CW to 2012 and was a zeitgeist geist success, creating stars of Blake ke Lively and

Penn Badgley, and cementing y signoff g “xoxo” as a shady forevermore. Safran had risen in the writers’ room to become one of its showrunners, and Schwartz and Savage approached him about imagining a hook for a revival. The new “Gossip Girl” would be different from the ﬁrst show in both small and profound ways, adapting to reﬂect, as Safran puts

Evan Mock, Thomas Doherty, Emily Alyn Lind, Eli Brown, Jordan Alexander, Savannah Lee Smith and Zión Moreno star in the new “Gossip Girl.”

it, “a more diverse universe,” and “to tell more q queer stories.” But what would cause the bigges biggest shift in the show’s worldview, he says, was that he wanted “Gossip Girl” to be funny. If the CW versio version was “Edith Wharton-y” with an “arsenic-under-the-tongue thing,” thin to use his phrasing, HBO Max’s M “Gossip Girl” would be “‘Downton “‘Dow Abbey’ meets ‘Big Little Lie Lies.’” “I was very clear: It’s got to have more humor,” Safran rememrem bers saying to HBO Max’s Sarah Aubrey. “It’s a comedy of man manners, but it’s also a a comedy.” comedy.” The resulting 12 - epi episode series, which premieres on July 8, revolves around the lives liv of (mostly) extremely privi privileged New York City high schoo school students, who dominate a post post-pandemic city with their looks, looks their style and, most crucially, their the wit. The audience will know wh who the tapped-in, tyrannical Gossip Girl is from the ﬁrst episode. But that th is a spoiler Safran is hellbent on keeping a secret — for now, let’s just ju say it was the twist that made mad him want to do the show after meeting me with Savage and Schwartz. “And I kind of hated myself for hated mys having an idea,” Safran says about his falling-in-love process with the revival, “because honestly hon in my mind I was like, ‘I did that already, and that’s done!’” As a nascent streamer, HBO Max has nailed two buzzy hits so s far, with “The Flight Attendant” Attendant and “Hacks.” The new “Gossip Girl” could become another waterw cooler hit — one for you younger viewers. But will the show appeal a to teens, or just to their old older relatives nostalgic for the days when

Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max

By Kate Aurthur

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 21

Dee Rees on Becoming the First Black American Woman Featured in the Criterion Collection By Angelique Jackson

Safran: Karolina Wojtasik; Rees: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

Joshua Safran

Serena and Dan traipsed all over Brooklyn without having to think about wearing masks? To create the new show’s characters, Safran says, “I thought of the worlds first, and then the kids second.” There’s an influencer, of course, by the name of Julien (Jordan Alexander), and her two best friends who are stakeholders in her clout, Monet (Savannah Lee Smith) and Luna (Zión Moreno) — they’re a cheeky Greek chorus who might make you rethink Zara as an acceptable wardrobe choice. (In a signifier of the new world of “Gossip Girl,” all three characters are played by actors of color.) Scions of New Yorkbased industries such as fashion, real estate and theater are among the other Junior Masters of the Universe who comprise the show, and who deliver its arch dialogue, which Safran calls “heightened.” “Gossip Girl” is also full of barbed pop culture references, like “Twitter is a glorified chatroom for meme sharing, conspiracy theorists and LinManuel Miranda.” And Safran, a 40-something white gay man, says even the show’s youngest writers would leave blank spaces for him to ﬁll when it came to those sorts of allusions. To channel Gen Z, “I’m on Instagram; I’m on Twitter; I’m on TikTok; I’m on Snapchat,” Safran says. “If my job is to reﬂect teenagers in a certain pocket of 2021, then I need to understand that from every aspect. “I just know this world and this language. I don’t know what it is! But whatever it is, ‘Gossip Girl’ is in my bones — and it falls out of me.”

Filmmaker Dee Rees made history on June 29 when her debut feature, “Pariah,” joined the Criterion Collection, making the Oscar and Emmy nominee the first Black American woman to have her work included. Before Rees, Euzhan Palcy, who is from Martinique, was the lone Black woman to have a film (1989’s “A Dry White Season”) selected. “It feels like a formal acknowledgment of the film’s impact to the canon and being a part of the culture,” Rees tells Variety of having her movie chosen. “Even though artists have to try to find your validation from inside, it’s nice to be seen.” And as a Black filmmaker in particular, Rees adds, “it’s important to be included for future generations of filmmakers, if [Criterion] is the thing that’s being taught in schools.” “When they’re absent, then the assumption is there’s none in existence,” she explains. “There’s no Black filmmakers here, so there must not be any worthy of being here. I don’t see any queer women here, so there must not be any. I think it matters.” W h e n C r i te r i o n i n i t i a l ly reached out to the filmmaker, it was interested in featuring 2017’s “Mudbound,” but Rees instead suggested her 2011 film “Pariah,” a groundbreaking and personal piece of queer cinema starring Adepero Oduye as Alike, a lesbian teenager trying to embrace her identity despite her family

and friends’ ideas about who she should be. Rees wrote the script for the movie when she was a student at NYU, penning the project during breaks in work on her professor Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” set. Now, her work is recognized alongside his and other filmmakers she admires. “It’s heady,” Rees says of the honor. “I try to not think of the scope of it because it’ll feel overwhelming.” Some highlights from Rees’ list of favorites include “Mouchette,” by Robert Bresson; “Les Blank: Always for Pleasure,” a compilation of the documentarian’s films from his nearly 50-year career; and Marlon Riggs’ “Tongues Untied,” which was released as part of the “Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs” collection on June 22. About “A Woman Under the Influence,” from John Cassavetes, Rees says, “This is one of the films Dee Rees

that really had a big impact on how I came to understand performance and the complexities of character and relationship.” “Gena Rowlands’ performance especially is just so devastating in how she manages to be scared, funny and heartbroken all at the same time,” the filmmaker adds. For Charles Burnett’s “To Sleep With Anger,” Rees calls out Danny Glover’s lead performance. “I understand both everything and nothing just from his smile,” she says. Rees adds that the film “perfectly captures the mood and modalities of Southern transplant culture — in the casting, the vernacular, the body language, everything. “I know those people. They are my family. It’s just all around extremely skillful filmmaking, in placing you in the story, keeping you there and making you feel — and even think — exactly how the characters do.”

22 ● BIZ + BUZZ

06.30.2021

Kathy Hilton Is Not Your Socialite

Paris’ mom offers up new dimensions on ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’

By Matt Donnelly Photograph by Michael Buckner

• You are so unexpected on “RHOBH.” That Kathy is very different from the American socialite we’ve been reading about for decades. It’s funny for me to see this response too, because I know who I am. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this, but I was married very young. We lived in New York, and my husband was working with people who were 25 years older than us. I was 18! You learn there to dress a little more conservative, and you adapt to that environment. In New York, you do not want to stick out at all. At the end of the day, the women ruled the town, and you went with the status quo. Then we had children. I had Paris at 20, Nicky three years later, and then we waited a little for the boys. That’s part of me, that kind of serious part. I also think the days of the word “socialite” are gone. I’m hardworking and dedicated to my philanthropy. A socialite is one who looks pretty and does nothing else. Some are flattered by it; I think the term is frivolous.

Kathy Hilton literally helped birth reality television. Her daughter Paris Hilton, star of the landmark unscripted series

“The Simple Life” from 2003 to 2008, came to define an era of tabloid celebrity culture and über-wealthy voyeurism. But did we ever really know Kathy Hilton? Thanks to genius casting on the 11th season of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” the American society matriarch has come to vivid life. Social media superlatives have been plentiful. “Icon,” “effortlessly funny,” “national treasure,” “basically Moira from ‘Schitt’s Creek’ in real life,” fans have tweeted. Longtime viewers of the series,

on which Hilton’s sisters Kim and Kyle Richards rose to contemporary fame, have responded to her persona: part daffy aunt whose screwball antics lighten up a show rife with white-collar crime and wine throwing, part bad-girl-atthe-sleepover who convinces ladies to take martinis to the head. Hilton recently opened up her lush Bel Air home to discuss her breakout stardom, the social politics of 1980s New York and the media’s reexamination of how it treated young women like Paris in the early aughts.

Kathy Hilton holds court in her Bel Air home in June 2021.

• Who was the most exciting guest you’ve ever hosted in Bel Air? Yoko Ono. She came for Thanksgiving. She was unbelievable, so lovely and sweet. It was before we redid the house. A woman who worked for me at the time, Maggie, had no idea who she was. At that time, we had a bathroom off the kitchen, and it had a bathtub. That is where the cat’s litter box was. No one was supposed to go in there. Yoko goes down to put on some lipstick or whatever, and the caterers let her in. Maggie begged her

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 23

VA R I E T Y I N T E L L I G E N C E P L AT F O R M

VIP+ CLUBHOUSE GETS NOTABLE BOOST FROM ANDROID USERS By Kevin Tran

• Will you return for “RHOBH” Season 12? We have to see if they invite me.

CLUBHOUSE DOWNLOADS (U.S.) App Store (iOS)

Google Play (Android) 1M

852K 800K

600K

601K

400K

156K 274K 120K

200K 174K

92K 57K

Source: Sensor Tower *Data through June 16; Clubhouse was iOS prior to May

June*

May

April

16K

March

February

• Pockets of the media seem to be relitigating how young women like Paris, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears were treated in those days. Yes, everyone is saying, “I’m sorry,”

• Where does Kyle’s nickname “Doogie” come from? It’s a silly little name Kim and I came up with for Kyle as a baby. It embarrasses her, so I like to yank her tail a little bit.

For more data from VIP+, visit variety.com/vip.

January 2021

• I’d pick up the New York Post every day before school, and I remember one of her first big moments was two days after 9/11. She was photographed in a star-spangled dress at a party. My friend Muffy Potter was in New York at that time for Anna Wintour’s event New Yorkers for Children. We were both on the committee, and the board was going back and forth asking, should we still have this event? We decided to do it. I was getting my hair done at Bergdorf Goodman, and of course I always run down to the fifth floor and buy something. Catherine Malandrino had this star-spangled-banner dress. I went upstairs and I bumped into Muffy, and I said she had to go down there. She ended up getting the same dress. Paris was there too.

• You’ve been referenced off camera on “RHOBH” for years, with some heavy and very candid storylines. What made you finally say yes to coming on? Kyle and I have had our ups and downs, and if my mom was still here, it never would’ve happened. We wouldn’t have fallen out. It was frustrating because I think I could’ve had a platform if I wanted one, but I chose to keep silent. We started to put the pieces back together a couple years ago. I had a little birthday dinner for her here at the house. I started to see what I was missing out on with my nieces. Nothing should ever come between sisters. It was heartbreaking to me, and my husband could see that. So when the producer [Alex Baskin] asked me to do the show, he would not let up. My family knew how much I was hurting and wanting to spend more time with Kyle. Well, guess what? Kyle is ﬁlming this show for ﬁve, six months a year. Paris has seen the show and paid me some compliments and sent me some memes.

December

Globe P hotos/MediaPunch/IPX/AP Images

• It’s a long time ago now, but Paris was something of a supernova. Have you reﬂected on that as a family? We moved to New York, and who would’ve thought? I never wanted my daughter modeling or any of that. I made that very clear. I think because you had two girls — attractive with a very famous last name — for some reason it just blew up. Had we stayed in Los Angeles ...

now. It was totally irresponsible, totally ugly and abusive. Don’t kid yourself: People carry that scar with them forever.

November

not to use it. She went right in there with the litter box and was cool as could be. We laughed about it.

October 2020

Kathy Hilton and Paris Hilton in September 1981

Drop-in audio chat app Clubhouse debuted its Android version in May, and the launch was particularly timely. Clubhouse would have experienced its third consecutive month of declining U.S. downloads were it not for the 156,000 downloads it registered via Google Play, per data from mobile app measurement ﬁrm Sensor Tower. Moreover, U.S. downloads of Clubhouse via Google Play for June 1-16 eclipsed those on Apple’s App Store. This suggests June will likely end up being another month when Clubhouse’s U.S. downloads are noticeably juiced by Android users. It’s crucial for the app to build its reach now, with Spotify and Facebook both having launched Clubhouse rivals in June.

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 27

OUR TOWN Theron: P hotograph by Michael Buckner; Golino: James Mason/WWD; LaBelle: Derek Storm/Everett Collection; Keough: Blair Raughley/Invision/AP; DiMarco: Mark Von Holden/Variety

JUST FOR VARIETY

It’s official! Charlize Theron (1) tells me that the script is done for the sequel to “The Old Guard,” her Netflix film adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Cameras will start rolling in the first quarter of 2022. The gay couple, played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, will be back too. Meanwhile, Vin Diesel tells me that he has writers working on a “Fast & Furious” spin-off for Theron’s character, Cipher. One thing the Oscar winner won’t be doing is guest hosting “The Bachelor.” You’d think producers of the romance reality show would have asked Theron, an unabashed and vocal fan of the franchise. “They have not, goddamn it,” she cracked at her Africa Outreach Project benefit. Would she do it? “No!” she said. “I’d make a terrible host. I know my strengths.” Valeria Golino (2) is back. The Italian actor made her U.S. film debut in 1988’s “Big Top Pee-wee” but hasn’t worked stateside in more than 15 years. She’ll soon be seen in Season 2 of “The Morning Show.” She can’t say much, but the character is “volatile, kind of like a fury,” she says during a phone call from her home in Rome. She bonded with Jennifer Aniston over their heritage. “We’re both half Greeks,” Golino says. Turns out that Pee-wee Herman has something to do with Golino’s new gig: Victoria Thomas cast the actor in the Apple series more than 30 years after doing the same in “Big Top.” I caught up with Patti LaBelle (3) a couple days after Bruce Springsteen’s June 26 return to Broadway. “The audience went crazy. They were excited,” says LaBelle, who is busy promoting her new Old Spice commercial. “I love that.” A similar show could be in LaBelle’s future. “Broadway is definitely not out of the picture,” she says, adding, “I’m 77 and still kicking.” Riley Keough (4), who co-stars in A24’s “Zola,” worked with a vocal coach for her role as a 1970s singer in Los Angeles in the upcoming Amazon series “Daisy Jones and the Six.” The actor, whose mom is Lisa Marie Presley, expects comparisons to her grandfather Elvis when viewers hear her sing. “My voice isn’t like Elvis’, but I’ll tell you what — I just recently realized that I do have kind of a country voice,” she tells me on this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast. Keough says she doesn’t listen to Elvis regularly. “If it’s on, I’ll listen to it,” she says. “There’s definitely emotion around it. There was definitely a lot of grief around it growing up, especially seeing my mom and my grandmother [Priscilla Presley]. … I could see from a young age it would make my mom sad.” Nyle DiMarco (5) is executive producer of the new documentary “Audible,” about a high school football player, Amaree, who is dealing with the death of his best friend, Teddy, as he nears graduation from Maryland School for the Deaf (DiMarco’s alma mater). “Growing up with so many other deaf friends at school … and coming from a deaf family, I became very used to being a part of this community. And looking at [my own] graduation, I wasn’t really sure what was going to come next,” DiMarco recalls. “I had fears and anxieties and wondering if the real world was going to be ready for me. But of course, that’s just a natural part of life.” “Audible” premieres July 1 on Netflix.

(1)

(2)

…

(3)

… …

…

(4)

(5)

28 ● OUR TOWN

06.30.2021

Live From New York, It’s ‘Stars in the House’ By Marc Malkin

Savannah Sellers and Alex Yaraghi are engaged. Yaraghi proposed on June 18 at the Torrey Pines cliffs, a San Diego beach special to the couple, with a ring from David S. Diamonds. Sellers later surprised her ﬁancée with an engagement party that included their closest family and friends. Sellers is an NBC News correspondent; Yaraghi is an investment analyst at Cohen and Steers Capital Management.

Shortly after the onset of the COVID pandemic, Broadway veterans Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley launched “Stars in the House,” a talk show on YouTube that has raised $1 million for The Actors Fund with the help of a star-studded guest list. Now, to celebrate the reopening of New York City, Rudetsky and Wesley, who are married, will host the ﬁrst in-person edition of “Stars in the House” on June 30 at Asylum NYC, with appearances by Kristin Chenoweth, Chita Rivera, Beth Leavel, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marc Shaiman and Nine West. Here, Rudetsky and Wesley tell Variety about some of their favorite moments from the show’s virtual run. •> Dr. Jonathan LaPook

Seth Rudetsky: “From the beginning, the chief medical correspondent of CBS News has volunteered his time, giving us updates and soothing our nerves by reminding us that the pandemic would have ‘a beginning, a middle and an end.’” •> Keala Settle

Rudetsky: “Keala has made numerous appearances, but her singing ‘This Is Me’ from ‘The Greatest Showman’ while wearing the same gown she wore when she sang it on the Oscars was magical.” •> Vote-A-Thon

James Wesley: “We knew Election Day would be stressful, so we booked a 10-hour show! So many highlights: Seventy-five stars, including Josh Groban, Laurie Metcalf and Vanessa Williams,

viewers from across the country showing us their ‘I Voted’ stickers, and even Itzhak Perlman dissing Seth’s violin playing!” •> “E.R.” Reunion

Wesley: “We loved chatting with the cast of ‘E.R.’ for hours. Because it really was for hours, we were so impressed by George Clooney, who joined us from London. It started at 8 p.m. ET, but for him it was from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. And he looked fantastic the whole time!”

Keala Settle, Dr. Jonathan LaPook, George Clooney, Leslie Uggams

Furs & Feathers Hannah Hart married Ella Mielniczenko on June 12 at The Holly Farm in Carmel, Calif. Both brides wore white, with Hart’s bedazzled cape coordinating with Mielniczenko’s sparkling gown. Hart is a YouTuber; Mielniczenko co-founded BuzzFeed Video.

•> Leslie Uggams

Rudetsky: “Hearing about the racism she faced and overcame [TV stations in the South initially wouldn’t air ‘Sing Along With Mitch’ in the early 1960s when they learned Uggams was on the show] was incredible and inspiring for everyone who tuned in.”

Jon M. Chu and Kristin Hodge welcomed their third child on June 22. Ruby Grace Chu joins siblings Willow and Jonathan Heights. Chu is the director of “In the Heights” and “Crazy Rich Asians”; Hodge is the art director at production company ATTN:.

Katrina Wan and Emily Hsieh welcomed daughter Olivia “Olive” Airi Hsieh on June 21. Wan is the founder and CEO of Katrina Wan PR; Hsieh is an interior designer.

After the recent death of her cat Mouse, awardwinning songwriter Diane Warren welcomed home a 3-month-old feline she named Rabbit. “I know Mouse has been reinCATnated in her,” Warren wrote on Facebook. “There are too many similarities. She is sweet and playful and smart as shit, just like Mouse.” Warren was nominated for her 12th Oscar for best original song this year for “Io Si (Seen)” from the Netﬂix drama “The Life Ahead.”

Compiled by Haley Bosselman and Marc Malkin

LaPook, Chu/Hodge: Sthanlee B. Mirador/Sipa USA/AP (2); Uggams: Andy Kropa/Invision/AP; Settle: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP; Clooney: Shawn Goldberg/Variety; Hart/Mielniczenko: Todd Wiliamson/Variety

Newborns & Nuptials

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 29

Fred Segal’s Big Dickies Energy

MUST ATTEND By Marc Malkin

Castro: P hotograph by Michael Buckner; Pratt: Dave Starbuck/Geisler-Fotopress/picture-alliance/dpa/AP; Rodriguez: P hotograph by Lexie Moreland

For the first time in its almost 100-year history, Dickies has launched a pop-up — at Fred Segal on Sunset Boulevard, no less. The 40-piece selection, which Shawn Mendes and Nas were recently spotted browsing, includes the Fort Worth-based clothing company’s signature 874 work pant and work shirt, coverall and bib overall, and Eisenhower Jacket. Prices range from $25 for a heavyweight short-sleeve

June 30

pocket T-shirt to the $250 limited-edition Hickory Stripe Chore Coat, inspired by the 1922 garment that was a favorite among railroad workers. All the items can be customized for free by a rotating roster of artisans. The pop-up launched with customization by streetwear designers Carrot’s and Homegrown. Soﬁa Enriquez will be available July 1-4 and 8-11, followed by Dr. Collectors July 15-18 and 22-25. fredsegal.com

• Chris Pratt, J.K. Simmons and Betty

Counterclockwise from top: Homegrown cofounder Jason Castro at the Fred Segal x Dickies x Homegrown pop-up; women’s double knee bib overalls; Carrots for Dickies Insulated Eisenhower Jacket; Dickies Hickory Stripe Chore Coat

Gilpin walk the red carpet at the “Tomorrow War” premiere at Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles. • The stars of the new “Gossip Girl” celebrate the launch of the HBO Max series at Spring Studios in New York City. • Brothers Osborne and Kristin Chenoweth appear at the virtual 2021 Concert for Love & Acceptance beneﬁt for GLAAD, MusiCares and Nashville’s Oasis Center. • New York City’s Gracie Mansion’s “Raising the Curtain: Theater Is Back!” celebrates the return of Broadway. Tony winner Brian Stokes Mitchell receives the Key to the City; Sheryl Lee Ralph hosts.

July 6 • The 74th annual Cannes Film

Festival opens with “Annette,” Leos Carax’s musical starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver.

July 7 • H HBO hosts the premiere of Mike

W White’s “The White Lotus” at the B Bel-Air Bay Club in Paciﬁc Palisades.

WHERE I’M EATING Mj Rodriguez Actress, “Pose”

Cafeteria 119 Seventh Ave., New York City “Cafeteria is the place to go. All of the children go there. The food is so good.” Chris Pratt

30 ● OUR TOWN

06.30.2021

EXPOSURE June 23

‘Mary J. Blige’s My Life’ Premiere Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York City

Mary J. Blige

June 26

Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project Benefit Universal Studios Backlot, Universal City

Universal’s Donna Langley with Charlize Theron

The evening beneﬁted Charlize Theron’s HIV organization and included a live auction at which Vin Diesel threw down $70,000 for two courtside Los Angeles Clippers tickets and a Breitling watch. An outdoor screening of “F9: The Fast Saga” was proceeded by a Q&A with Diesel, co-stars Theron and Jordana Brewster and director Justin Lin. “I don’t think people want to sit in dark [ballrooms] anymore,” Theron told Variety of the event. “There’s also the connective tissue. Our programs work with young people, so we have to create a night that’s fun.” Paris Jackson told Variety, “I really look up to Charlize because she’s so inspirational, and I hope to one day be like her with my philanthropic type of work.”

Vin Diesel

Vanessa Roth and Amazon Studios’ Latasha Gillespie

Maye Musk

LaToya Tonodeo

Amber Rufﬁn and Don Lemon

Joe Pantoliano

June 22

Alec and Hilaria Baldwin with their children

‘The Boss Baby: Family Business’ Premiere SVA Theatre, New York City Amy Sedaris voices Boss Baby Tina Templeton in the animated sequel. She didn’t have to look far to ﬁnd her kid voice. “It was like a voice that I would always do with my godchildren,” Sedaris told Variety. “I knew they related to that, so I kept that in my back pocket.” Producer Jeff ducer Jeff Hermann said a third movie is in early development: “We don’t have a big idea yet, but I think we’re gonna try to do the same thing we did with the second and go in an unexpected direction.” Amy Sedaris

My Life, Boss Baby: P hotographs by Lexie Moreland; Africa Outreach Project Benefit: P hotographs by Michael Buckner

The Amazon Studios doc, which marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Mary J. Blige’s career-deﬁning album “My Life,” chronicles the singer-songwriter’s life. In the Vanessa Roth-directed ﬁlm, Blige opens up about her childhood trauma, substance abuse and mental health struggles. “This album started the movement and the conversation. Hip-hop soul is just a genre of music. It’s an assignment for a lot of us. What I do, what ‘My Life’ did, is to try and heal,” Blige said at the after-party. “God heard my prayers when I was in my deepest, darkest hell.”

VARIETY ● 31

06.30.2021

EXPOSURE BET Awards: P hotographs by Michael Buckner; Cooper: Angela P ham/BFA.com; Yang, Ziwe: Angela P ham/BFA.com (2); Madonna, Chachki/Gottmik, Bloom/Dijon/Moore: Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com (3)

June 27

BET Awards

Queen Latifah

L.A. Live, Los Angeles Taraji P. Henson hosted the 21st edition of the show, where Queen Latifah was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award. In her speech, the “Equalizer” star and hip-hop trailblazer publicly acknowledged her partner Eboni Nichols and their son Rebel for the ﬁrst time by expressing her love for them before ending the remarks with “Happy Pride!” A tribute to Latifah included appearances by Lil’ Kim, Monie Love, Rapsody and MC Lyte. Latifah urged Black women to celebrate themselves: “We stand stronger than when we tear each other apart. I’ve seen enough of that. So respect to all the females on the stage tonight.”

Lil Nas X

Taraji P. Henson

H.E.R.

Saweetie

Anderson Cooper

Bowen Yang

Andra Day

June 24

Pride x Boom The Standard/High Line, New York City Madonna helped kick off NYC’s Pride Weekend with a two-song set – “Hung Up” and “I Don’t Search I Find” — performed atop a bar. She also raised more than $100,000 for LGBTQ+ organizations Ali Forney Center and the Haus of US by auctioning off three original Polaroid photographs she shot with creative director Ricardo Gomes. “To celebrate Pride without people would have a tragedy for me,” the music icon said in a nod to the reopening of the city. “Take nothing for granted because you never know what’s waiting for all of us around the corner.”

Violet Chachki and Gottmik

Madonna

Leyna Bloom, Honey Dijon and Indya Moore

Ziwe

CANNES

June 30

2021

Forever bold and ethereal, Tilda Swinton heads to Cannes with ﬁve movies — and her love of cinema undaunted BY MANORI RAVINDRAN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES WRIGHT

Tilda Swinton is sitting cross-legged on a couch in her Highlands home, wearing heavy black specs and an army green Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, surrounded by her trio of spaniels. The Oscar-winning actor recently returned to her native Scotland after working “almost nonstop” for the past 18 months, at the same time the entertainment business was largely shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. An Instagram post of Swinton brandishing an appropriately funky face shield with Pedro Almodóvar on the sanguine Madrid set of “The Human Voice” became a viral sensation last summer. In the fall, after accepting the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival, she, alongside her dog Louie, starred in a Wales-set ﬁlm called “The Eternal Daughter” directed by her oldest friend, “The Souvenir” helmer Joanna Hogg. This year,

2021

she celebrated Mardi Gras in Sydney with “Luther” star Idris Elba on her first trip to Australia for George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” The two actors spent the first quarter of 2021 in Australia, where she and Elba quarantined for three weeks in a high-rise Sydney hotel, only to “emerge out of a long [elevator] ride into 2019,” as Swinton puts it. Soon, Swinton will head to the Cannes Film Festival, where she appears in five movies, including Neon’s Colombiaset drama “Memoria” and Searchlight’s “The French Dispatch,” reuniting her with director Wes Anderson. Swinton has had a frontrow seat to an industry in flux, heaving against tectonic changes in exhibition and distribution, while grappling with urgent calls for representation on- and off-screen. In recent years, she faced her own diversity-related crisis, receiving major backlash over her casting as the Ancient One in Marvel’s 2016 film “Doctor Strange” — a role portrayed in the graphic novels by an elderly Tibetan man but written for a woman in the movie. Looking back, Swinton characterizes the controversy as a “hot, sticky, gnarly moment” that was uncomfortable but necessary for the industry to move forward.

(Previous & this spread) Styling: Jerry Stafford/CLM; Makeup: James O’Riley/Premier Hair & Makeup; Hair: Declan Sheils/Premier Hair & Makeup; Suit: Schiaparelli

June 30

Does she recognize signs of substantial change in Hollywood? “Ask me that in 100 years,” Swinton smirks during a wide-ranging 90-minute Zoom interview. At 60, she exudes a sense of immortality befitting her iconic roles as Sally Potter’s ageless, gender-ﬂuid nobleman Orlando and glam-rock vampire Eve in Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers

Left Alive.” All of which is to say: She may still be around to answer the question. T h i r t y ye a r s i n t o h e r on-screen career, Swinton’s propensity for taking on daring roles is so intrinsic to her cachet as an actor that audiences have come to expect

the unpredictable — and unrecognizable — whether it’s the ghoulish Minister Mason in Bong Joon Ho’s “Snowpiercer” or the liver-spotted socialite Madam D. in Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” There’s no shortage of irony that her performance as unraveling lawyer Karen Crowder in the 2007 drama “Michael Clayton” was

June 30

2021

Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” says of Swinton: “She considers herself one of the workers in the film who shares responsibilities. She is there not only for the narrative but for the synchrony of

everything that contributes to what’s in the frame. So in a sense, she’s a ﬁlmmaker as I am and as others are.” Swinton has, in fact, worked behind the lens on a handful of documentary projects,

Shirt, pants and shoes: Chanel

one of her most conservative roles to date. And yet it is her character’s wordless collapse on a convention hall floor in the closing scenes that stands as the movie’s enduring and most haunting image. Though she won a supporting actress Oscar for her role as Crowder, Swinton rejects the label of “actor,” never mind “actress.” A more fitting descriptor, she offers, is the German “Mitarbeiter,” which means “colleague,” who fits within a collective or, as she puts it, a “kindergarten” where people come to learn. She likens her work with former mentor, late British director Derek Jarman — her collaborator on several films, including “Caravaggio” — to a “sort of lab.” Hogg remembers feeling “a deep sense of recognition when I first saw Tilda in Derek Jarman’s segment of [operabased anthology] ‘Aria.’ It was at the metro in Piccadilly, and here was my dear friend up on a 40-foot screen looking so happy and free. I found it incredibly emotional.” Thai auteur Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul, who won the 2010 Palme d’Or for “Uncle

including “The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger,” but she doesn’t plan to direct anything on a wider scale just yet. A mystery-writing project has been underway for some time with a director still pending. “One part of me is trying to encourage me to do it myself,” she admits. (Hogg, who has known Swinton since they were 10 and directed her and her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne in both installments of “The Souvenir,” says, “Tilda’s writing at school was so beautiful, I thought she’d be a poet, and in many ways that is what she has become.”) Weerasethakul first encountered Swinton when she cited his 2004 film “Tropical Malady” in an essay. They became pen pals, and in 2012 curated Thai film festival Film on the Rocks Yao Noi. Their first project together, “Memoria,” in which Swinton plays an orchid farmer who begins to hear mysterious noises while visiting her ill sister in Bogotá, will compete in Cannes’ Official Selection this year. “I love cooking things up with people, and the way one dares oneself with people you really trust,” says Swinton. “What I love most about it, and the most important element, is the ongoing conversation. The films themselves are leaves that fall off the tree — but the tree is the conversation.”

Swinton doesn’t join a production; she joins a family. There’s a casualness to her that still maintains a serious commitment to the art, notes Weerasethakul. “She suggested we have parties to celebrate certain milestones, such as moving to a new location or finishing 100 rolls of ﬁlm,” remarks the 50-year-old director. “She made drinks, soup, went around serving everybody, danced — these activities are as important as making the ﬁlm itself.” Anderson, who met Swinton at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival — he with the blackand-white short film “Bottle Rocket” and she with “Orlando” — similarly points out that Swinton, on set, isn’t “only playing her part, but she’s a collaborator in the whole project.” “That’s sort of a rare thing,” he observes. “She’s not just thinking about what she’s got to do. She’s also there to enjoy the whole experience.”

There is, perhaps, no greater party than a Wes Anderson film. “The people he invites are so spectacular,” she enthuses. “It’s not always a great thing that people look like they’re having quite as much fun as we are. One should maybe try and tone it down a little.” “The French Dispatch” marks the actor’s fourth outing with Anderson, following roles in “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Isle of Dogs.” She will also star in the American director’s next film, an as-yet-untitled movie set in Spain that will begin production in September. Anderson says he wrote the role of art critic J.K.L. Berensen specifically for her, and the pair discussed the part years before the movie actually happened. “She instantly knew this is more or less a part only she could play, and had to be for her,” he adds. Swinton describes “The French Dispatch” as a “love letter to American internationalism” and journalists like James Thurber, Rosamond Bernier and James Baldwin. “I was hanging out with the Fonz!” she says of Henry Winkler, who plays one-half of the “Uncles” in the movie, alongside Anderson regular Bob Balaban. “They were there in their homburg hats every day, and we just sat at their knee and had such fun. There is always a surprise [in Anderson’s films].”

“The way in which people get listened to is by speaking up and getting hot. And sometimes, it needs to get messy.” TILDA SWINTON

June 30

Born Katherine Matilda Swinton into Scottish nobility (her father was a major general in the queen’s Household Division, which guards the monarch and palaces) with a lineage dating back to the ninth century, she studied social and political sciences and English literature at Cambridge University, and joined the Communist Party. After graduation, she endured a grueling year at the Royal Shakespeare Company that shifted her allegiance from theater to cinema. There, she found Jarman, a gay director who would collaborate with Swinton on eight projects until his death in 1994. Certainly, the “presiding principle” that spans Swinton’s acting credits may be “people ﬁrst.” But the unwavering impetus is always the big screen. It’s why Swinton hasn’t yet dipped her toe in the premium television projects that other actors of her generation, like Kate Winslet, Angela Bassett and

Cate Blanchett, dabble in. It has been more than 30 years since her last regular TV foray, with the comedy-drama series “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (1990) for U.K. broadcaster BBC, directed by her former partner and the father of her twins, John Byrne. “I’m a cine-nerd,” Swinton shrugs. “I’m really, really, really devoted to the cinema, and this is another thing that makes me so happy about the prospect of Cannes. These films that I’m privileged enough to be taking are cinema films — they were not made for television.” There was one Cannes outing, however, that wasn’t destined for the big screen. Bong’s “Okja” for Netflix, which Swinton starred in and co-produced, was one of two projects the streaming giant brought to the Croisette in 2017 (Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories” was the other) in its first and last turn in Cannes. The festival then famously changed its rules following a powerful outcry by French exhibitors demanding that competition films play in local theaters before streaming. Swinton stands by the SVOD company. “Netflix was the only studio that gave Bong Joon Ho and us the capacity to do what we needed to do for that film,” she says. “All the other studios turned it down, so we were very grateful to Netflix for giving us that absolute welcome and carte

2021

blanche to do all the extraordinary things Bong wanted to do.” As the theatrical disruption rages on, with studios increasingly hammering out shortened cinema runs with major exhibitors, people are forgetting, says Swinton, that movies last forever. “It’s not like something going down a drain, and the screens get smaller and smaller, and then you disappear forever. We’re just in a sort of flux at the moment, and it’s all transitioning. The pandemic came along, and our relationship with live cinema shifted — we got a little screwed. But we’re not settled yet.” Would she work with the streamers again? “I’m devoted to the big screen,” she underlines after a beat. “And to be honest, the more it’s under scrutiny, or I feel that it’s not being valued highly enough, the more devoted I am to it. So I wouldn’t hold [your] breath.” What we really need, Swinton muses, is for streamers “like Netflix, who tell us avowedly that they are dedicated to big-screen cinema and filmmakers, to put some of that incredible wealth into building, developing and resuscitating great cinemas in every city on the planet that they rule.” Swinton has put her money where her mouth is. Working with Scottish-Irish director Mark Cousins, best known for sprawling documentary efforts such as the 15-hour “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” the pair took over a “smelly bingo hall” in her village of Nairn, in northern Scotland, and transformed it into a cinema space that hosted their festival, the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams. “We talked about intermingling a cinema with a children’s party and a mosh pit and installation art,” says Cousins of the venture, where festivalgoers watched movies such as “Singin’ in the Rain,” “All About Eve” and “Peter Ibbetson” on bean bags, snacking on baked goods. Cousins, whose documentary on storied director-producer Jeremy Thomas, which features Swinton, will screen in Cannes, also recalls a trip to China in which they took over a small cinema at Beijing’s China Film Archives and turned it into the Scottish Cinema of Dreams. “One day, we had a pillow fight, and the pillows burst, and the feathers were fluttering through the forest — it looked like it was snowing,” says Cousins. “It was all about innovation. Film festivals should be reminding us of the dreamlike nature of the movies. They can be industry and business, but it should certainly feel magical and a place where no passport is required.” The key word with Swinton, opines Cousins, is “transgression.” “She doesn’t like boundaries — gender or genre boundaries — because deep down, Tilda knows that when you’re trying to be creative, boundaries are the enemy and you have to jump them like you jump a fence. And when you do jump them, and you’re somewhere you’re not allowed, Tilda talks about the obligation to go there, and that’s the transgressive way.”

CANNES

The MVP of the Film Festival

Tilda Swinton stars as art critic J.K.L. Berensen in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.”

Searchlight Pictures

Tilda Swinton will appear in ﬁve new movies playing at the Cannes Film Festival. She stars in two competition titles: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” and Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.” In Directors’ Fortnight title “The Souvenir Part II,” the sequel to Joanna Hogg’s critically acclaimed indie drama, she reprises her role as Rosalind. The ﬁlm makes its world premiere in the sidebar, along with the French premiere of the original “Souvenir.” She also reunites with Mark Cousins in his documentary “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.” (Additionally, her 1987 movie “Friendship’s Death” will play Cannes Classics.)

1/ MEMORIA Weerasethakul’s atmospheric slow burner is set in Colombia and stars Swinton as an orchid farmer looking for answers to a mysterious, recurring noise.

4 / THE SOUVENIR: PART II Mother and daughter return for the daring sequel, which is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and also stars Joe Alwyn.

2 / THE FRENCH DISPATCH She plays J.K.L. Berensen, a staff member at the titular ﬁctional American newspaper in Anderson’s 10th movie, which was shot in Augouleme, France.

3/ THE SOUVENIR Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton-Byrne, is Julie, onehalf of a troubled couple with Tom Burke, in this British ﬁlm. Swinton plays Julie’s mother.

THE STORMS OF JEREMY THOMAS Swinton appeared in Cousins’ 2018 documentary “Women in Film” and starred in producer Jeremy Thomas’ 2013 movie “Only Lovers Left Alive.” She adds her voice to this doc about the iconic producer of “The Last Emperor.”

There are some boundaries, however, that are increasingly difficult to justify breaking. Swinton’s turn as the Ancient One in “Doctor Strange” was one of them. Hiring Swinton, who shaved her head for the part, over an actor of Asian descent was considered a missed opportunity for representative casting. At the time, Marvel Studios released a statement noting that “the Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular ﬁlm the embodiment is Celtic. We are very proud to have the enormously talented Tilda Swinton portray this unique and complex character alongside our richly diverse cast.” However, in May, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige suggested to Men’s Health magazine that he regretted the choice, telling the outlet that the controversy was a “wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to ﬁgure it out? Is there

any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.” Swinton hadn’t been aware of Feige’s comments, but says she is “very, very grateful that he said that.” “I remember at the time having a question mark in my own mind, and being attendant to the public response to the idea that a Scottish woman will be playing this character, and being aware that there was no resistance at all — there was widespread welcome — which shifted at a certain point, for very good reasons with which I had an enormous amount of sympathy.” A “conscious” wave of criticism grew “righteously,” describes Swinton, who relishes bringing the conversation back to the unique relationship between audiences and the cinema. “The audience feels ever more empowered to contribute to the narrative and to feel heard within the narrative, and that’s a really healthy social development.” Swinton, however, became further entangled in the narrative after reaching out privately to comedian Margaret Cho, who is of Korean descent, to gain some understanding around the casting debate. Cho,

June 30

who had never met Swinton, was offended by the ask and, during a 2016 guest appearance on the “TigerBelly” podcast, told host Bobby Lee that Swinton “wanted to get my take on why all the Asian people were so mad … and it was so weird.” In response, Swinton released their full email exchange to the website Jezebel, which depicted what appeared to be an affable conversation between the two. Cho explained that Asian and Asian American stories “are told by white actors over and over again and we feel at a loss to know how to cope with it,” while Swinton confessed that “diversity is pretty much my comfort zone” and the “idea of being caught on the wrong side of this debate is a bit of a nightmare to me.” Cho later said, however, that the interaction made her feel like a “house Asian” because she had been asked to explain “whitewashing” on behalf of all Asian Americans to someone she had never met — a request that, however well-intentioned, highlighted Swinton’s white privilege and fragility. Reﬂecting on the exchange, Swinton says, “I made a questionable decision to reach out to somebody in a certain way, which was naive and clearly confusing, because their misunderstanding came about because of it.

2021

“I was embarrassed that I had maybe gone up a blind alley in starting the correspondence in the first place — maybe I had confused matters — but beyond that, I have zero regrets.” Nonetheless, it was a “hot moment,” she admits. And for some, those moments are hotter than others. “But the way in which people get listened to is by speaking up and getting hot. And sometimes, it needs to get messy.” The past five years have exposed deep fractures within Hollywood, with movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter helping to uncover systemic discrimination and abuse toward women and people of color. The prestige once afforded to creatives with serious moral issues but still celebrated in the industry — like directors Woody Allen and Roman Polanski — has been steadily eroded, with social media turbocharging the conversation, for better or worse. Swinton, who in 2009 joined a tranche of major U.S. and European producers, directors and actors in signing a petition condemning the arrest of Polanski at a Swiss film festival, says the document — signed by Anderson, Martin Scorsese and Wong Kar-Wai, as well as Allen — was “very specific” and suggests that its intentions have been twisted over time. The petition highlighted that the director’s arrest in a neutral country “opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects,” and that the signatories wanted Polanski “to know that he has their support and friendship.” Swinton insists, however, that the petition was only in support of film festivals remaining as “safe spaces for cultural work to be experienced by audiences internationally.” “I remember Wes [Anderson] and I talking about it, and we were confused at a certain point because there was an assumption made about something we felt was inaccurate,” she says. “But you know what? It’s all fine.” Swinton seems skeptical about sustainable change in the industry happening too quickly. It’s a “long, long, long road,” she says. “There are big shiny claims made and big public shows made, and everybody claps, and it all looks great. And that is not what we’re talking about,” says Swinton. “We’re talking about institutionalized, endemic fairness across the board. Ask me that in 100 years.” While a wise absence from social media prevents her from witnessing so-called cancel culture, Swinton says she is disappointed

that “there seems to be a lack of faith in debate — the capacity to say, ‘Oh, interesting that you think that, because I think something different.’” It has to be possible to affect each other, Swinton posits, “and to just have a sense of trust that maybe you don’t know best, and maybe somebody else might be able to help you out with your understanding in something.” As Cousins puts it, Swinton isn’t scared by “the need to look at sin, and people who are doing wrong things.” “The thing about unpacking sin and owning sin in an era where we as a society are rightly calling out racism, misogyny and transphobia is that it’s a very good conversation to have,” says Cousins. “Call it out — but own it. We humans have a danger and darkness to us.” Swinton, unlike most, isn’t afraid to step into the darkness, and report back.

“I love cooking things up with people, and the way one dares oneself with people you really trust.” TILDA SWINTON

Gown: Haider Ackermann

P/ 41

INTERNATIONAL STREAMING REPORT

June 30

2021

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK WANG

Governments around the world are trying to set boundaries for streaming giants and level the playing ﬁeld for broadcasters. Will their efforts pay off? BY PATRICK FRATER, NICK VIVARELLI, ELSA KESLASSY, NAMAN RAMACHANDRAN AND K.J. YOSSMAN

June 30

In little more than a decade, streamers have shaken the TV industry to its core, laid waste to cinema sector windows, blurred the lines between ﬁlm and television and rewritten the business relations between independent producers and commissioners. In many cases, SVODs have introduced American-style work-forhire conditions that Europeans despise. Governments could surely sense that something transformational was afoot, but it’s taken them longer to decide which part of the problem should be addressed through regulation. “Are streaming services more like broadcasters, or are they more like video rental stores?” asks Amanda Lotz, professor of media studies at Queensland University of Technology. It’s a tough question to answer when streamers are now behemoths that are simultaneously producers, commissioners,

2021

distributors, exporters, bundlers, festivals and e-commerce shop windows. Government responses in different parts of the world have reﬂected local political and bureaucratic traditions, and elicited varying degrees of greed and paranoia. Some regimes have approached online video in terms of cultural identity, while others have chosen to harness streaming as an arm of industrial policy (employment creation, spectrum rationing, taxation and licensing). Still others have looked, horriﬁed, at the challenges to patriarchal government that come with almost unlimited

choice, disintermediation and the allure of foreign branding. Their analysis of the regulation of video streaming is commingled with a preference for shackling social media and fake news. In India, the first moves have thrown up an alphabet soup of acronyms and abbreviations for new regulatory (and self-regulatory) bodies. How many will be remembered — or relevant — in a couple years is hard to know. In Australia, after years of stasis, there has been a recent rush to push back against global giants, who are told they need to respect, or at least pay for, local input. The government previously tussled with Google and Facebook in the news sector, but there isn’t yet a uniﬁed industry position on streaming. And in Europe, the old Television Without Frontiers regime — the former bedrock for regulation for the audiovisual sector — is being replaced with a spruced-up Audiovisual Media Services Directive. It comes complete with familiar clauses that satisfy some countries’ sense of “cultural exception.” As such, the battle lines have been drawn, and first blows have been struck. In some jurisdictions, these have been parried, but nowhere does it seem that the skirmish is even close to being resolved.

Europe

SETTING THE BLUEPRINT FOR A FAIR FIGHT

Emmanuel Guimier/Netflix

Netflix will once again be MIA at the Cannes Film Festival, but don’t rule out a Croisette comeback in the near future. Across Europe, Netflix, Amazon and Disney are becoming more ingrained in the local fabric of film and TV. But as they start to shake up the ecosystem and reap the rewards of more subscribers in the European Union’s 27 countries — where their business is booming — the European Commission is forcing these giants to play by new rules. Among several pieces of EU legislation set to impact streamers, the most significant is the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which is in various stages of implementation across Europe. It involves investment obligations in most countries and, in some, will set out terms of trade for streamers when they engage with European producers, who welcome the work but object to the Hollywood work-for-hire model. “The new directive has made the playing field more level between VOD services and television channels,” says Laura Sboarina, a senior media analyst for regulatory research firm Cullen Intl. She notes that Europe had rules in place regarding investment quotas for broadcasters, and these are now being extended to streamers. At its core, the AVMS Directive simply states that streamers must offer a 30% quota of European content to European subscribers. On top of that, it allows EU countries to introduce nationally tailored legislation to make streamers directly reinvest a percentage of their revenues in each European country where they operate and also regulate their business models in individual territories. France — known for fiercely defending its culture and industry — is where implementation of the AVMS Directive could have the greatest impact. The French government has just issued a decree that sets an investment obligation oscillating between 20%-25% of revenue from streamers’ French operations. “France has the most ambitious plan so far,” says Paris-based producer Alexandra Lebret, managing director of the European Producers Club lobby group. The glaring absence of Netflix at Cannes — due to the festival’s rule that all films in competition have to be theatrically released in France — is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the drive by France’s powerful exhibitors for a strict windowing policy that, while separate, is still related to the country’s overarching regulatory effort.

Antoine Gouy and Omar Sy star in “Lupin,” produced by Gaumont Television.

The National Film Board and French film and TV orgs have been going back and forth over new rules under which streamers won’t just have to reinvest a portion of their annual revenue in local films and TV series, but will also share rights with independent producers. Streamers, including Netflix, have been consulted throughout the process and will now need to reach an agreement with industry orgs and broadcasting authorities. “It’s been an 18-month process, and we’re now in the home stretch,” says a Netflix representative who asked to remain anonymous. Amazon, Disney and Apple did not comment for this story.

In terms of exclusivity, Netflix is aiming to invest 20% of its revenue in French content and obtain a 12-month window between a ﬁlm’s theatrical release and its streaming debut, instead of France’s current 36-month window. But the new decree requires streamers to invest at least 25% in local content to access that 12-month window. French producers are demanding that Netflix commit to investing more money in movies made for theatrical than the current 4% of its turnover it is willing to shell out. The Netflix rep notes the streamer is already part of France’s creative ecosystem and plans to continue as such: “At the same time, we must ﬁnd

a balance between our obligations on the one hand and our business model and DNA on the other — which means that we can’t transform completely and start doing mostly theatrically released movies, when we’ve always been mainly focused on our subscribers.” Says a producer involved in the negotiations: “Netflix has a lot of preconceived ideas about films, but we’re hoping that as more movies roll out on their platform, they will see the benefits of ramping up their investment, especially with films that will get a marketing boost from their premieres in Cannes.” TV producers, ultimately, will be most affected by the AVMS Directive in France. Until now, Netf lix has owned global rights, in perpetuity, on most hit French shows it has financed. Going forward, under AVMS rules, when streaming giants work with France’s independent producers, the duration of their exclusive rights could be limited to 36 months, which could discourage streamers from pumping big money into high-end shows. Isabelle Degeorges, head of “Lupin” producer Gaumont Television, says, “Netflix gave Gaumont the resources to make this ambitious series with the scope we had envisioned and to give it a strong French DNA.” She underlines

that “it would have been a different series if we had had multiple partners involved.” In Italy, which is looking closely at France, no agreement has been reached after months of negotiations. The government is expected to unilaterally enact legislation in July that will impose an investment quota of between 12.5%-20% of the streamers’ local revenues. One of the key legal clauses for which Italian producers are lobbying is to be the only ones who can initiate development by buying rights — in the process trying to block streamers from being able to acquire rights to Italian IP and negotiating deals directly with local actors, writers and directors. Another significant issue in Italy is foreign streamers reaping the benefits of the country’s generous 30% tax rebates for production, which they get through the local producers they work with, without leaving their partners a proportionally fair piece of the upside. “By my count, I spent 2.3 million euros [$2.7 million] between 2015 and 2019 to

develop products that for the moment have not been made,” says producer Rosario Rinaldo, head of Rome-based indie Cross Prods., owned by Germany’s Beta Film, which is producing Amazon Prime Video’s Italian gender-identity TV series “Prisma.” “Going forward, will I recoup my investment with the rights that I hold on to?” he wonders. Not with the way things currently stand with the streamers, he points out. That said, Rinaldo is happy to work with Amazon, and is optimistic that dialogue and rules of engagement will improve. “We are very involved in the AVMS negotiation table in Italy, and we are taking a very constructive approach,” says a Netflix rep in Italy where the streamer is set to launch several original films — including Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” — out of the Venice Film Festival. Dialogue in Germany, however, isn’t so idyllic. “Why should streamers be subjected to the same terms of trade as linear broadcasters?” a German Netflix rep says to Variety. Meanwhile, in Spain, the so-called Netflix effect “has been very positive,” according to producer Álvaro Longoria, a former EPC chief, who notes that Netflix produces more content in the country than any obligation requires. Nonetheless, Spanish producers are hoping the country will soon enshrine the AVMS into law and make the landscape more sustainable for linear broadcasters. For streamers, many European countries “are just not big enough; the algorithm would never choose to make a movie in Polish or in Lithuanian,” argues Longoria. Now it won’t have a choice, and for Brussels, that’s essential.

“The new directive has made the playing ﬁeld more level between VOD services and television channels.” LAURA SBOARINA, CULLEN INTL.

Manoj Bajpayee stars in Amazon Prime’s “The Family Man.”

Australia and India

Amazon Prime Video

DIVERSE DESIRES TO DOMINATE DIGITAL VIDEO

Australia is the Asia-Pacific territory with the most developed plans to bring video-streaming companies into a regulatory orbit. The emphasis is all about local content spending. Consultation documents have been circulating for close to a year, and industry reactions were formally submitted in May. A new regulatory system could be in place by as early as January if a voluntary system for reporting investment in local content reveals failings by the streamers — or, more likely, if it is replaced by a mandatory system. The present urgency follows nearly a decade of discussions that started with theoretical talk about media convergence. Now, suddenly, the OTT future has arrived, and industry and regulators are scrambling to adjust. “Digital technologies have fractured business models and rendered many of our regulatory structures obsolete,” said Paul Fletcher, the federal government’s arts minister, in November as he launched a discussion paper. “With declining revenues, rising costs and an outdated regulatory framework, the capacity of Australia’s media sector to provide Australian programming, local content and public interest journalism is being challenged.” Terrestrial broadcasters have experienced collapsing viewership and advertising numbers, which have resulted in large financial losses and forced some channels into mergers and takeovers. The leading pay TV operator, Foxtel, is also scrambling to adjust — most notably by potentially cannibalizing itself and launching streaming alternatives. Meanwhile, the Australian public has been so enamored of streaming that long before Netflix’s official launch Down Under, it’s believed that millions of households had taken out illicit cross-border subscriptions. Now Netflix claims 6 million legal subscribers

in a population of 26 million. And launched only in 2019, Disney Plus is poised to soon overtake local incumbent Stan to become the No. 2 platform. “We’ve had intervention because the English language is both a benefit and a curse for the purposes of screen content. We’ve always been the recipients of the American and British content,” explains Matthew Deaner, CEO of lobby group Screen Producers Australia. Many see current arrangements as unduly holding back traditional media companies and allowing the streamers free rein to import content. Australia’s commercial freeto-air broadcasters must give 55% of their airtime between 6 a.m. and midnight daily to local content. Stan also is subject to local content requirements. Meanwhile, the international streamers have no current obligation to buy or produce Australian programming. Fletcher ’s green paper suggestions call for those streaming platforms with more than 500,000 subscribers or AU$50 million ($37.9 million) of Australian revenue to invest 20% of their income in local content.

The producers’ and directors’ guilds and SPA have thrown their weight behind the proposals while offering tweaks of their own. Netflix has objected to mandatory regulation. Stan wants new regulations to apply to others but not itself, because it is part of a conglomerate that also owns a free-to-air broadcaster. Netflix claims the proposed regulation is being drawn up as if Australia were still terra nullius and the company weren’t already investing in the territory. The streamer says it outspent Australia’s commercial broadcasters in adult and kids drama, dishing out AU$111 million ($84.1 million) in the 2020 financial year, compared with the broadcasters’ combined AU$89.7 million, according to data from the government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority. Netflix isn’t the only one against mandatory rules. Queensland University’s Amanda Lotz describes three reasons that regulation could backfire: It could put off international companies, it could force the international heavyweights to compete with Stan for local content and it could spark an increase of production in Australia, but not necessarily of content that is culturally Australian. “[There is] disingenuousness on the part of the Australian government in

June 30

terms of whether this is policy about Australian stories, as a lot of this reform legislation has trumpeted, or whether it’s actually about industry [subsidies],” says Lotz, who notes that the hunt for subsidies has annexed the cultural realm, and few productions can happen without them. Australia’s politicians and guilds say they have one eye on the French and Canadian regulatory systems, in which culture and subsidy culture are intertwined. That means it is odds-on that Australia will hem the streaming sector with spending rules. But more regulations imposed on streamers can do little to change Australia’s English-language conundrum. While American shows encroach on the country’s cultural identity, they also fuel Australia’s booming exportdriven production sector. In India, where the arrival of mobile broadband and streaming has created hundreds of millions of new video consumers, there’s a different language battle — one of abbreviations and acronyms — as government and industry lock horns. The country boasts one of the world’s liveliest streaming ecosystems, with the major international platforms (Netf lix, Amazon, Facebook) active and competing against a wealth of locals (ALTBalaji, Zee5) and those

2021

with multinational ownership (including market leader Disney Plus Hotstar and SonyLIV). Seeing threats to its authority everywhere, the national government views this competition as unhealthy, vulgar and potentially dangerous. The Online Curated Content Providers, operating under the aegis of the Internet and Mobile Assn. of India, devised a self-regulatory code in September. But the government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took charge of the hitherto unregulated streaming sector in November and refused to ratify the code, saying that it failed to specify what kinds of content should be prohibited, and that the self-regulatory advisory panel wasn’t independent. In February, the streamers announced an upgraded “implementation tool kit.” But the MIB ignored it and introduced its own Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code instead. The MIB’s code appears draconian. It forbids content that’s prohibited by any law, disrespects the sovereignty and integrity of India, promotes terrorism or any other form of violence against the state, is detrimental to India’s friendly relations with foreign countries and endangers national security. Given the fractious nature of Indian politics, the nation’s tangled history with neighboring countries and the elevated position of religious sensibilities in society, the scope for transgression in applying the code seems huge. Even before the code took effect, Amazon Prime had to grovelingly edit series “Tandav” over its portrayal of a Hindu character by a Muslim actor. The company also came close to being involved in a state court case after a local authority took offense at its depiction of Sri Lankan history in “The Family Man.” The code came into effect on May 26 but hasn’t yet been strictly implemented. Adding to the confusion, the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, a private industry body, previously governed only

television channels but now also monitors streamers, and has set up its own self-regulatory function, the Digital Media Content Regulatory Council. The MIB says it still wants self-regulation to come ﬁrst (but hasn’t said which body it will recognize) and that its code is a backstop. At the same time, the MIB has asked the industry bodies to provide proof of compliance. Given that the federal government simultaneously is using tough top-down tactics to bring the social media sector under its heel, the prospects for further uncertainty, lawsuits and centralized oversight of the streaming sector seem strong.

SOUTH KOREA

Inside South Korea’s ‘Service Stability Law’ Other parts of Asia show interest in regulating foreign streaming companies mostly for reasons of taxation, licensing or extracting some other form of payment. In South Korea, where Netﬂix is the leading platform and expects to invest close to $500 million in content this year, local internet service providers are lobbying for streamers to pay “network fees.” While the legal basis for such fees is questioned in some quarters (after all, the internet service providers that deliver the internet to homes and businesses also charge consumers), the providers continue to lobby government. In 2020, South Korea passed a “service stability law” that recognizes some of what the ISPs want. Ironically, the move comes at a time when South Korean streamers are trying to go global with the support of the government. If similar fee obligations were imposed on the ﬁrms’ overseas operations, that might prevent them from ever getting beyond launch. But telcos elsewhere in Asia, notably Indonesia, are now lobbying for their own version of South Korea’s service stability legislation.

UNITED KINGDOM

A Very English Quandary

The European Union’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive has the dubious distinction of being among the last pieces of European legislation to be enshrined into U.K. law. The directive was implemented by the EU back in 2018, and member states had a twoyear grace period to implement it via their own domestic legislation. Although the majority of member states missed the September 2020 deadline, the U.K. didn’t — despite the fact that just four months later, on Jan. 31, 2021, the Brexit transition period came to a close, ending any need to enact EU legislation domestically.

Still, only time will tell whether enacting the AVMS domestically will have much of an impact on what is already a booming industry in the U.K. Certainly, the directive’s requirement that streamers offer a 30% quota of European content to local subscribers feels unnecessary considering how much homegrown content is produced, from “The Crown” to “Killing Eve.” More so given that many big-budget American productions with a U.K. element can also count toward the quota. As such, perhaps it’s unsurprising that the U.K. declined to implement an optional AVMS levy compelling streamers to reinvest a percentage of their revenues in the European countries in which they operate.

Sandra Oh stars in BBC America’s “Killing Eve.”

When it comes to streamers, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee appears to be less concerned about production than about eyeballs. To ensure a balanced ecosystem, the DCMS Committee recently recommended making streamers share their viewing data and ensuring that television manufacturers — some of whom feature a “Netflix” button on remote controls — are “aware of the importance of prominence of [public service broadcaster] content” so that SVOD providers aren’t given an unfair advantage. There is also chatter about making PSBs more prominent in the SVOD sections of electronic program guides. A recent inquiry from the DCMS Committee concluded that domestic broadcasters were being “let down” by current legislation, which was allowing streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus to wield “undue influence” over consumers’ ability to access PSBs. Which is perhaps why Oliver Dowden, Britain’s secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, recently announced, via an op-ed in The Times, that he plans imminently to consult on legislative changes regarding the “future of broadcasting, and how we can make it fit for the 21st century.” These will include “stringent content and audience protection standards” for streamers, similar to those linear broadcasters are obligated to uphold, and ensuring PSBs have enough prominence on digital platforms.

Shakespeare in the Park’s return reﬂects how New York City —

— and its theater institutions — are changing • By Gordon Cox

pulls itself out of the COVID era, every baby step feels like a milestone. But perhaps no other reopening will carry the same symbolic weight as the return of the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park, the 67-year-old institution that is an annual signpost of summer — and this year, of a return to in-person life — for both the theater and for the civic fabric of New York City. When “Merry Wives,” a new version of the Bard comedy set in a South Harlem community of West African immigrants, begins performances in Central Park July 6, it arrives informed by all the tumult of the past 18 months. The production aims to be a celebration intended not only as lively communal release from the grief and hardship of coronavirus, but also as a bold embrace of Black joy following the national reckoning over equity and racial justice that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd. “It’s a statement of what kind of work we’re elevating and putting up there as epitomizing excellence,” says the show’s director, Saheem Ali, who was named an associate artistic director of Public Theater last summer. “Seeing Black immigrants being members of this city and living their lives and allowed to be fully dimensional

human beings is a really powerful way to say, ‘This is how we’re coming back.’” At the same time, “Merry Wives” represents a major step in post-pandemic producing for a storied theater company that, during the convulsions of the long work stoppage, furloughed or laid off more than 55% of its staff and shrank its operating budget from $58 million to about $26 million. Even now, the organization remains in the throes of devising and executing the changes that will ensure that the theater’s return to life does not entail a return to the status quo. For the Public Theater, that means making the structural shifts that would allow the culture behind the scenes to reflect the creative values of an organization that has long championed diverse casting and stories onstage, and more recently launched the Broadway juggernaut “Hamilton.” The still-evolving work includes a regularly updated, public plan for anti-racism and cultural transformation, the creation of a new senior staff position, and a pledge that the theater’s art, audience and staff will reflect the demographics of New York City, with metrics to measure progress. “Last year a mirror was held up to us that told us it’s finally time for the Public to take its

P.52

Jacob Ming-Trent (foreground) and the company in rehearsal for the Free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Merry Wives.”

(Previous spread) Steve Brown/The Public Theater

As the New York theater industry

values as seriously in its internal organization as it does in the work we do onstage,” says Oskar Eustis, who’s been artistic director of the Public since 2005. “Honestly, we’ve not always been as good at upholding our values when it comes to who is actually running the organization. In a way, what we’re saying with ‘Merry Wives’ is: The culture belongs to everybody. We’re trying to model that in as dramatic a fashion as we can.” The decision to produce “Merry Wives” grew out of staffwide discussions last year in which it became clear that employees wanted to return to Central Park with something “joyous and lively and celebratory,” Ali recalls. Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” described by Eustis as a “pure comedy,” seemed to fit the bill. The plot centers on two witty women who conspire to make a fool of Falstaff after they discover his scheme to seduce them both at the same time. “As I was thinking about the play, I started to hear a West African dialect,” remembers Ali, who was born and raised in Nairobi. “And it was so fucking funny!” To adapt, condense and update the occasionally convoluted farce, Ali turned to frequent collaborator Jocelyn Bioh, with whom, he says, he shares “the same passion to transform what African stories are presented onstage, and shift the narrative from the poverty porn that tends to be what depictions of African life are.” A fast-rising writer whose breakout success “School Girls; Or The African Mean Girls Play” was one of the most-produced scripts in the country during the 2019-20 season, Bioh is now at work on two stage projects with Ali attached to direct: “Nollywood Dreams,” scheduled to premiere at MCC Theater in the fall, and “Goddess,” a musical based on a Kenyan myth debuting at Berkeley Rep in the spring. (She’s also involved in developing a film adaptation of “Once on This Island” and a not-yet-announced TV series for Disney Plus.) Bioh’s new version of “Merry Wives” fits right in with her ongoing mission to write comedies that center on Black people, and especially African people. “My goal in my work is always to bring joy and light and levity, and an understanding of a community of people that some audience members maybe didn’t understand before,” she says. “Right now, we’re all coming out of a really intense and unpredictable 16 months, and we’ve seen so many sad and violent things. I think this celebration of resiliency, of finding laughter through the storm, and of Black joy — it feels like a really thrilling and fitting way to counteract all of the sadness.” But to get the show to the stage, the Public must meet the challenges confronting theater companies around the country this summer: adapting on the fly to constantly evolving safety regulations and health codes. Among the new positions created for this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production are a COVID compliance monitor for the company, one for the Delacorte facility, and a testing

Joan Marcus/The Public Theater

“It’s ﬁnally time for the Public to take its values as seriously in its internal organization as it does in the work we do onstage.” — Oskar Eustis, Public Theater artistic director coordinator. These are in addition to the team of about 10 existing staff members, all trained monitors, who oversee the company’s longterm compliance projects. Rehearsals for “Merry Wives” were held in an indoor studio with a maximum capacity of 26 (or 100 square feet per person). Masks were required for everyone, except when people were actively performing. Company members were tested three times a week, and anyone visiting rehearsal was required to test in on the morning of the visit. At the Delacorte, cramped, shared dressing rooms have been replaced by individual booths, many of which now occupy one of the gate areas that was formerly used as an entrance to the amphitheater. For audiences, the daily, in-person lines that theatergoers traditionally stood in to obtain free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park are gone, having been entirely replaced by a digital lottery. Capacity for the 1,800-seat Delacorte was initially limited to a socially distanced, masked crowd of 428, in accordance with state guidelines for small and medium performing arts venues. As regulations loosened in recent weeks, that was updated to a maximum of 1,468

masked theatergoers, with both full capacity and physically distanced sections available. For the Public, “Merry Wives” is the outward sign of an organization putting itself back together — and in many respects, reconﬁguring itself in new ways. As part of an effort to increase equity and decentralize power from the tentpole position of artistic director, the Public’s major creative decisions are, as of last year, made by a six-person team that includes Eustis, Ali and fellow associate artistic directors Shanta Thake and Mandy Hackett, plus managing director Jeremy Adams and director of producing Yuvika Tolani. In addition to the creation of a new senior staff position and a 20-person committee to oversee anti-racism and cultural transformation work, along with an increase in open forums to allow for greater staff input, the Public has pledged to implement a standardized living

P.53

wage (higher than the U.S. minimum wage) for all employees by 2023. Prior to the pandemic, the company had eliminated unpaid internships and the grueling tech-rehearsal marathons that can require people to work 12-hour days. Meanwhile, the organization aims to scale its operations back up with an operating budget of $50 million for the 2021-22 season. That will involve bringing back some of the employees that the Public left stranded when the organization furloughed 135 of its staff members by the beginning of 2021. No one’s singing kumbaya yet. “There is a lot of exhaustion and real hurt from many of our folks who found themselves without work for six months,” says executive director Patrick Willingham. “I can see how painful it was, knowing there was nothing else for them. On an individual and an institutional basis, that is going to take some real healing.” In that, at least, “Merry Wives” might be an initial step in that process. “It’s joy; it’s love; it’s a wedding,” Bioh says of the show. “It feels like the right answer to everything that we’ve gone through this year.”

VARIETY ● 55

XX 0 6 . 3X 0X . 2 0 2 1

Multihyphenate Hoofs It to Hollywood Boulevard

Gutter Credit Mathieu Young/Fox

Dockworker’s son Nigel Lythgoe pays it forward to emerging talents

Nigel Lythgoe stepped out from a dancing career to producing and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

By Jacqueline Cutler

Strip away the millions, the titles, the credits, and what’s left is a dancer. Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer of “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” Ofﬁcer of the British Empire and philanthropist, remains, at his essence, a hoofer. Lythgoe feels the music and needs nothing more than the rhythm and a ﬂoor on which to express it. He is unabashedly thrilled about receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 11:30 a.m. July 9, a ceremony that was postponed twice because of COVID. The live ceremony will be at 6258 Hollywood Blvd. “When you think of a dock-

worker’s son achieving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame …” he trails off momentarily as he considers how remarkable his path has been. Then, Lythgoe quickly returns to producer mode with an idea on how to improve matters. “I guess I am going to get a little television on my star,” he says. “I would have much preferred a pair of tap shoes or ballet shoes.” Comparisons are inevitable between Lythgoe and “Billy Elliot,” the movie and stage musical about a dockworker’s son who wants to become a dancer. Lythgoe, though, was luckier than that character. Billy’s father was embarrassed by his

06.30.2021

Lythgoe, with fellow judges Mary Murphy and Christina Applegate on “So You Think You Can Dance”

ballet-loving son; Lythgoe’s was proud. So were Lythgoe’s pals, he adds, once “we all figured out the best-looking girls were at dance school.” Lythgoe reflected on his life over the course of two lengthy interviews — the first, on the eve of Valentine’s Day 2020, when COVID was making news but not yet declared a pandemic. Then, he was preparing to have a pacemaker replaced. “It all worked out fine, otherwise, I would not be talking with you,” he says, 15 months later. Lythgoe spent the lockdown working on his golf game, pitching a show about the birth of R&B and readying a new series,

“So You Think You Can Fight” for streamer Triller. (The highly anticipated return of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” is still to be determined; the last season wrapped up with a live finale in September 2019, almost two years ago.) The format of “So You Think You Can Fight” will be familiar to fans of his shows. In this case, “we are going to take young fighters who believe they can fight, train them up, see the training, interview them — I have got some celebrities as well as champions — and then put them in the ring,” he explains. Lythgoe understands the visceral connection between boxers

Adam Rose/Fox

56 ● FOCUS ● WALK OF FAME HONOR

58 ● FOCUS ● WALK OF FAME HONOR

have a heart attack, and he’s back up and away he goes.” Independently, Lythgoe’s friends all mention his boundless energy, advocacy for dance and humor. That quick wit is evident when discussing this latest honor. “They asked me where I would like my star,” Lythgoe says. “And I said on top of Simon Cowell’s.” Told this, Cowell laughs. “That is very funny; typical Nigel,” he says.

The door opened and I stepped through it, which has happened my entire career.” — Nigel Lythgoe Mary Murphy calls Lythgoe “a multitasker on steroids.”

Lythgoe, Malissa Shriver and Frank Gehry attend the Colburn School annual gala in 2018.

Cowell and Lythgoe met more than 20 years ago when Lythgoe wanted Cowell to be a judge on the U.K. version of “Popstars,” which aired on ITV in 2001. A reality series following the formation of a modern pop-music group, it was short-lived in the U.K., but was a part of a bigger franchise that spanned countries from New Zealand to Ukraine and even got a U.S. version on the former WB network. “At the last moment, I backed out because I didn’t want to be a judge on TV shows,” Cowell recalls. “And it worked out ﬁne.

About a year later, we were working on ‘Pop Idol.’ He was absolutely fearless.” By the time they met, Lythgoe had been working in television for decades. He came to it, naturally, as a dancer. Yet, as Lythgoe notes, he switched early to choreography. As with so much of his career, there was no grand plan. “Choreography wasn’t really a decision,” he says. “I always wanted to be a singing and dancing West End star. I got into ‘The Young Generation’ on the BBC in 1968.” Two years later, when the show hired a new choreographer, Lythgoe was asked to assist. As on “So You Think You Can Dance” decades later, hoofers had to learn new routines weekly. That proved too much for the lead choreographer. “The door opened and I stepped through it, which has happened my entire career,” he says. While choreographing new numbers, he jotted down camera angles, too. “I was visualizing through the lens,” Lythgoe recalls. “And I would hand over my notes to the producers and director. The BBC then sent me on a directors’ course.” As critical of himself as he is of contestants, Lythgoe admits he was “not a great choreographer.” What he possessed, though, was a keen sense of how the action unfolded on screen. He also proved to be a natural at bringing people together and keeping track of the many facets of production. As Murphy puts it, “he is kind of a multitasker on steroids.”

Murphy/Lythgoe: John Shearer/Invision/AP Images; Lythgoe/Shriver/Gehry: Alex J. Berliner/AP Images

and dancers. “There is a kinship between boxing and dancing, and a lot of it has to do with control of your body,” he says. And that Lythgoe has. He continues to push his body because, as any former dancer knows, there’s no such thing as a former dancer. “Who has neck surgery and two days later gets on a jet to go on an audition?” asks “So You Think You Can Dance” judge Mary Murphy. “It is shocking. He will

06.30.2021

60 ● FOCUS ● WALK OF FAME HONOR

Lady Gaga, who made her first major TV appearance on “So You Think You Can Dance,” returned as a guest judge.

STAR-MAKER GAVE FACES A PLACE

Nigel Lythgoe helped a number of big names get their starts By Jon Burlingame

Fantasia Barrino

Lythgoe and director Adam Shankman the started Dizzy Feet Foundation.

Within a year of winning Season 3 of “American Idol,” Barrino was taking bows on Broadway as Celie in “The Color Purple.” She also had an album go platinum and won Grammy and Billboard Music Awards. But, she almost didn’t make it onto “Idol,” arriving late for the audition. Luckily a security guard who heard her practicing ushered her in. Looking even younger than the 19 she was, Barrino told then-judge Paula Abdul, “I’m not going to stop if this doesn’t work. I am determined, so this is going to work.”

Kelly Clarkson For more than half of her life, Clarkson, the original Idol, has taken us on a joyful ride. Her ﬁrst single busted the Beatles’ former record for a meteoric rise, and she followed that with chart-topping albums, Grammys, children’s books and a stint on “The Voice.” Clarkson parlayed the success into a home goods line and a

talk show, the aptly titled “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” renewed through 2023, where she’s also an executive producer. On that show’s “Kellyoke” segment, Clarkson continuously proves she can cover any song.

Lady Gaga Oscar and Grammy winner and international icon celebrated for accepting everyone, Lady Gaga had her ﬁrst album and major TV appearance on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2008. For Gaga, it was low-key. She wore a high-cut leotard and glasses that ﬂashed her name as she performed, appropriately enough, “Just Dance.” Returning four years later as a guest judge, she said, “In the dance community, when you do a really good job, you throw your shoe at the stage.” And then she lobbed a red, shiny missile that only Gaga would call a shoe — and be able to dance in it.

Adam Lambert On the eighth season of “Idol,” a fresh-faced Lambert strolled

in front of the judges with a conﬁdence that was apparent the moment he started singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Simon Cowell immediately sensed, “You are theatrical.” (It wasn’t intended as a compliment.) Over the years, Lambert has brought his four-octave range to a ﬁve-episode arc on “Glee” and performed “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” on the Oscars. He’s toured with Queen, sings on a new album of “Cinderella” and is Vegas-bound this fall.

tWitch The ﬁrst time Stephen Boss, better known as tWitch, danced before the judges on “So You Think You Can Dance,” Lythgoe did not pass him to the next level. Proving he was willing to work, tWitch returned the following season. Lythgoe told him, “Let me be perfectly honest, if you don’t make it through Vegas his year I am going to kick your ass.” Able to make dance not only fun but funny, tWitch parlayed that infectious joy into being Ellen DeGeneres’ resident dancer, a co-executive producer and has ﬁlled in as host.

Gaga/Lythgoe: Adam Rose/Fox; Barrino: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection; Lythgoe/Shankman: John Salangsang/Invision/AP; Clarkson, Lambert: Ray Mickshaw/20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection (2); tWitch: Michael Beckerl/FOX/Everett Collection

Those abilities led to helming more variety shows. “I thought if I were producing it, I wanted to direct it, and that led to being given big shows,” Lythgoe says. He also brought the uniquely British Christmas tradition of panto to Los Angeles. In doing these shows, he met Queen Elizabeth. He also helped found BritWeek, a nonprofit that celebrates links in the arts between Southern California and the U.K. Noticing the dearth of dance programs for kids in America, Lythgoe resolved to change that. Malissa Shriver, president of Turnaround Arts, which brings art into low-performing schools, says Lythgoe was among the group’s original volunteers. She recalls his ﬁrst question: “What do you need?” Lythgoe drives himself hours to judge middle-school talent shows. “He really, really coaches these kids, and he has very high expectations,” Shriver says. And, she adds, they rise to meet them. “Little children living in unimaginable, extreme poverty, he treats them as artists.” Yet, the 71-year-old is not quite ready for canonization.

06.30.2021

64 ● FOCUS ● WALK OF FAME HONOR

“She rushed off crying to bed, and the cameraman zoomed in on a box of chocolates on the side of the bed,” he recalls. “Nasty Nigel was born. It obviously inspired Cowell and Simon Fuller because then Simon Fuller created ‘Pop Idol’ using Simon Cowell as Nasty Simon. That, of course, became ‘American Idol’ and gave me opportunities to come out here.” Once here, Lythgoe extended opportunities to others; he knows what it’s like to harbor a dream but not know how to achieve it. “Nigel is an artist and has an understanding of artists in a way that is unusual for producers,”

Lythgoe and Debbie Allen arrive at the U.S. premiere for her “Freeze Frame.”

Lythgoe, center back row, who has supported dozens of kids in dance, at Free 2 Be Me Dance.

Lythgoe with Tony Bellissimo

Fuller says. “He speaks from the heart. He is from Liverpool, that northern Liverpool Scouse. They are charming as hell, but they tell you the truth.” People sense that. Contestants conﬁded in him as if no one else were watching or listening. In New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, hopefuls auditioning for “So You Think You Can Dance” talked about dance as their sole refuge. “It all led to, ‘dance saved my life,’ and Nigel and I said we should do something about this and what grew out of it was Dizzy Feet,” says Adam Shankman, director and “So You Think You Can Dance” judge. The Dizzy Feet Foundation is a nonproﬁt that sought to support, improve and increase access to dance education in the United States. It eventually became the American Dance Movement, which funds dance education in low-income communities. Lythgoe and Shankman lobbied Congress to designate the third Saturday in September as National Dance Day. Although Lythgoe has achieved so much, Shankman considers his friend “actually rather sim-

ple.” It is Lythgoe’s passions that drive him, he notes. Those passions are “family and dance, and every decision he makes is basically borne of those two loves.” Another ambassador for dance and Lythgoe’s co-founder of the Los Angeles Dance Festival, Debbie Allen, recalls a fun-ﬁlled escapade after taping one night: “We had been judging the show in Vegas,” she says. “We had a couple of shots of tequila. The dancers were not cutting it. I got up there with a go-go dancer and he joined me, and it was hilarious.” These days, though, Lythgoe doesn’t dance much. “My ego is too big to get up and dance because I would just let myself down badly and I dance like crap nowadays. I do it secretly with friends after a few drinks. I love it to death.” Considering the honors dance has brought him, it’s a mutual love affair. Lythgoe acknowledges being “richly rewarded” for his efforts, including being nominated for 12 Emmys and now the star on Hollywood Boulevard. “I am just grateful that other dancers will look at this as well and say, ‘If he can bloody well do it, so can I,’ ” Lythgoe says.

Lythgoe/Allen: Sthanlee Mirador/Sipa USA/AP Images; Lythgoe and Kids, Lythgoe/Bellissimo: Courtesy of the American Dance Movement (2)

“He brought a very acerbic, honest, non-sugar-coated version of what would become the talent show judge” to TV, says Rob Wade, president, alternative entertainment and specials, Fox Entertainment. “He was the original no-holds-barred judge, and he got quite notorious in the U.K. He was called Nasty Nigel.” Ly t h g o e c h u c k l e s a b o u t that moniker acquired during “Popstars.” “You sang all the right notes but put them in the wrong order,” he told one singer. To another, who gained weight over the holidays, he remarked, “Christmas is gone, and the goose is still fat.”

06.30.2021

66 ● FOCUS ● WALK OF FAME HONOR

06.30.2021

Dance Dream-Maker

For someone who enjoys working into a conversation that he once dated Raquel Welch and Priscilla Presley, Nigel Lythgoe leaves little doubt that he is a straight man. He is, though, that rarest of straight men: a dancer and a true ally of the LGBTQIA-plus community. As a boy who started taking dance class in 1959, he came of age when people openly mocked male dancers. As he listened to those auditioning for Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” Lythgoe was troubled by the homophobia so many hopefuls had endured. “It is a very sad thing that it has got that stigma that it obviously doesn’t have in Europe or Asia and Russia,” Lythgoe says, referring to the Alexandrov Ensemble, the singers and dancers from the Red Army Choir. “It is sad if you are gay to be picked on and sad if you are not gay to be picked on. It shows you how strong they are to put up with that. When we were going around with ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ I met kids who were thrown out of their homes.” Yet, he says, “no one picked on Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire” back in their day. Thus, the goal of “So You Think You Can Dance” was to accept everyone, but to still deliver harsh truths to the clumsy. After all, these were real people sharing their backstories. “I think we have given a look at real-life through reality television programs of what people go through and suffer and how they can overcome their problems,” Lythgoe says. “We show an incredible amount of talent that may have gone unnoticed. At the same time, it opened it up to a lot of rude,

By Jacqueline Cutler

I think we have given a look at real life through reality television programs of what people go through and suffer and how they can overcome their problems.” — Nigel Lythgoe Judges Arlene Phillips and Lythgoe are flanked by the finalists at the launch of “So You Think You Can Dance” at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.

nasty areas of our society that I am sorry we are actually putting out there on television.” While Lythgoe is loath to namedrop those speciﬁc programs, he notes that it is “uncomfortable, on occasion, to see the pettiness, the anger, then jealousy that goes on that we classify as entertainment. And I don’t like that, and that has

come out of reality television. In truth, I would call it unscripted because the moment you turn a camera on, reality ﬂies out of the window, and a lot of these shows are semi-scripted and rehearsed. There are areas I really dislike on reality TV.” When pushed, though, Lythgoe will admit to just one type of

dance he dislikes: contortionism, when double-jointed people twist their bodies into shapes not usually associated with healthy bodies. “To put that to music and to say you are dancing, ‘no, no, no!’” Lythgoe says. Other than those bone-defying stunts, Lythgoe loves it all, from tap to ballet. He’s especially proud that the hundreds of dances that played out on the “So You Think You Can Dance” stage include “routines on addiction, breast cancer and homophobia. Sometimes it is better to do it through dance than to try and explain your point. That is the dancing I like, whether fun or serious, rather than just dancing to a piece of music.” And as he’s encouraged all to tell their stories, Lythgoe says, “We celebrate life.”

Zak Hussein/PA Images via Getty Images

Nigel Lythgoe supports dancers of all backgrounds and almost every style

70 ● FOCUS ● CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

06.30.2021

Strike Up the Band Cannes-bound auteurs and mainstream movie theaters tackle musicals, but can these

With f i lms from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bill Murray, Todd Haynes, Leos Carax and others, the Cannes Film Festival, movie theaters and streamers are alive with the sound of music. “It might just be the shuffling of release dates as a result of the pandemic, but 2021 is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches for fans of movie musicals,” Miranda says. And he should know. Since last year’s successful Disney Plus

By Gregg Goldstein

Steven Spielberg joins the musical bandwagon with his take on the classic “West Side Story.”

release of his Pulitzer Prize-winning show “Hamilton,” Miranda has become a movie musical industry unto himself. With films from his 5000 Broadway Prods., he just had a five-borough Tribeca Festival premiere of “In the Heights” (adapted from his 2008 Tony-winning Broadway show) and is directing his first musical feature — Jonathan Larson’s pre“Rent” show “tick, tick … Boom!” — in theaters and on Netflix this fall.

Miranda also stars in and wrote original songs for Sony Pictures Animation’s musical “Vivo” (on Netflix this summer), co-wrote and stars in the Disney animated musical “Encanto” (in theaters Nov. 24) and is producing and writing new music for Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” now in production. After Cannes opens with Carax’s operatic musical “Annette,” there are plenty more musicals coming

to cinemas (Stephen Chbosky’s “Dear Evan Hansen” on Sept. 24, Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” on Dec. 10, Joe Wright’s “Cyrano” on Dec. 25) and streamers (“Cinderella” and “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” on Amazon Prime Video in September, “Come From Away” on Apple TV Plus this fall). Amidst Hollywood’s reliance on “bankable” IP, from reboots to sequels to comic book fare, musicals are one of the few remaining

Niko Tavernise/Fox

genre pics score with audiences?

72 ● FOCUS ● CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

about the Lou Reed/John Caleled band was a natural move. “[Andy] Warhol basically said, ‘I’m giving up painting to make movies.’ Because underground cinema and the ’60s avant-garde had such a presence in and around this band, we have the most amazing and unique way to tell this story.” Haynes included never-before-seen performances and experimental art to “put you back in that time, using layeredand multi-screen [images].” After hitting fall fests, it will be released with some similarly innovative promotions. And more mainstream ’60s rock fans can get their fix when a re-envisioned, expanded version of “Let It Be,” Peter Jackson’s doc “The Beatles:

Music captures our memory, our sense of time and place, and links up with our experiences in a way that’s hard to ﬁnd any comparable example of.” — Todd Haynes

The recently released “In the Heights” is one of several musicals that LinManuel Miranda has on deck.

Get Back,” hits theaters Aug. 27. Next year, Haynes will capture a different music legend, Peggy Lee, in his Michelle Williams-toplined biopic “Fever.” It’s anchored around Lee’s famed 1961 shows at New York City’s Basin Street East and her 1969 Las Vegas comeback. “She [had] a kind of gauzy, romantic, ironic way that she told her romantic narratives in concerts,” he says. “All of those devices are rich opportunities visually.” The $903 million worldwide gross of 2018’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the $195 million worldwide B.O. of 2019’s “Rocketman” proved audiences will turn out for music biopics. And their soundtracks’ appeal can take even a slow B.O. starter such as 2017’s “The Greatest Showman” to a $434 million worldwide gross. Studio marketers are also taking a cue from stage musicals that use cast albums, promotional YouTube videos and conventions such as BroadwayCon to create followings for shows that haven’t even opened. Chbosky’s high school drama “The Perks of Being a Wallﬂower” and his screenplay adaptations

of “Rent” and “Beauty and the Beast” made him the ideal choice to bring the tale of isolated teen Evan Hansen to cinemas. “I admired the book by [the ﬁlm’s screenwriter] Steven Levenson and the songs so much, but I knew it was going to be very tricky, because it’s not a traditional musical with a bunch of dance numbers,” he says. “It takes place in dining rooms and bedrooms. The most important aesthetic that we build the entire shoot around was capturing [Tony-winner] Ben Platt’s live performance, and it’s almost entirely sung live on set.” Some new musicals like “Hansen,” “Heights” and “Boom!” seem more personal than most earlier ones. “I hope [“Heights”] inspires future writers to tell their own stories, either on ﬁlm or on stage,” Miranda says. And this approach could be one reason more of them are coming to the screen. “Bigger talent and better roles can now be found on Broadway — that’s why these adaptations are happening,” Chbosky says. “It also feels like this generation is telling more personal stories, so the writing is following that. You

Macall Polay/Warner Bros.

genres able to attract big budgets for creative and original projects, offering enough audio-visual appeal to draw audiences back to theaters. “The first time I watch a musical, I want to see it on the biggest screen possible to take in the spectacle, the depth and details,” Miranda says. “I love to hear the applause, laughter and gasps from a packed movie house. But I also love the home rewatch — going right to my favorite sequences.” He found that directing “tick, tick … Boom!” was “not easy, especially during a pandemic! But it has taught me humility and respect for all my film mentors. I’ve been incredibly fortunate learning from the best — Rob Marshall on ‘Mary Poppins Returns,’ Tommy Kail on ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Fosse/Verdon’ and Jon M. Chu with ‘In the Heights.’ Seeing how they did it was incredibly inspiring and invaluable. I hope I make them proud.” Whether it’s a Broadway adaptation, a biopic such as Liesl Tommy’s Aretha Franklin tale “Respect” (in theaters Aug. 13) or a doc like Haynes’ out-of-competition Cannes entry “The Velvet Underground” (in theaters and on Apple TV Plus this fall), musical films are often buoyed by a pre-established following and an added element that draws in audiences. “Music captures our memory, our sense of time and place, and links up with our experiences in a way that’s hard to find any comparable example of,” Haynes says. His films (from “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” to “I’m Not There” to “Velvet Goldmine,” which won a 1998 Cannes Special Jury Prize for artistic contribution) often feature it prominently, so making his first doc

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 73

06.30.2021

Erika Doss/Universal Pictures

This year, [Cannes] is rich in musical films, and we will soon see if this phenomenon, quite difficult to explain, confirms the current trend.” — Thierry Frémaux could link it to TikTok, YouTube… Music is being tied to social media, and it’s becoming a diary of sorts for [our] entire society.” Though it’s billed as a musical, “Annette” is more of an opera. The film’s music producer, Marius de Vries (“La La Land”), says it originated as a concept album from Sparks, whose Ron and Russell Mael approached Carax. “Leos surprised them by saying, ‘I’d like to make this my next project,’” he says. “The authorship of all of the music in the film is Sparks, and the lyrics are by Leos.” Though there’s no screenplay credit for the fatalistic romance between a performance artist/ comedian (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard), who have a prodigy daughter, de Vries says “the screenplay is effectively the libretto of the songs.” It hits a few U.S. theaters Aug. 6 and Amazon two weeks later. But even commercial musicals can be a risky proposition: the last two to open before the pandemic were the animated “Frozen 2” (grossing $1.4 billion worldwide) and “Cats” (just $74 million worldwide). “Musicals have been one of the most popular genres over time,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “And I think we’re seeing a bit of a renaissance of people wanting to have that experience in a theater [because] of the big screen and the sound quality.” “Heights,” the first musical released in theaters as the U.S. pandemic subsided (and streaming on HBO Max with no surcharge), had a $11.5 million domestic opening weekend, about as much as the all-star, only-in-theaters sequel “The Hitman’s Wife’s

Bodyguard” earned the following weekend. And with no big stars, “Heights” more than doubled and tripled the opening weekends of two thrillers that were also simultaneously released on HBO Max (the Denzel Washington/Rami Malek-led “The Little Things” on Jan. 29 and the Angelina Jolietoplined “Those Who Wish Me Dead” on May 14). There are a flood of musicals now in production and development. Two Broadway adaptations, “Matilda” and “13,” are due from Netﬂix next year. And plenty of others — including “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “The Color Purple,” “The King and I,” “Mean Girls,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Wicked,” “Spamalot,” “Follies,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County

Reprising his “Dear Evan Hansen” Broadway role, Ben Platt stars with Julianne Moore in the celluloid adaptation of the the legit hit.

Spelling Bee,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and more — are in various stages of development. “This year [Cannes] is rich in musical films,” says fest artistic director Thierry Frémaux, “and we will soon see if this phenomenon, quite difficult to explain, conﬁrms the current trend.” There’s star-director Valérie Lemercier’s out-of-competition “Aline,” a bizarrely conceived biopic billed as “a fiction freely inspired by the life of Celine Dion” with soundalike Dion songs. Two other dramas, Nabil Ayouch’s competition entry “Casablanca Beats” and Audrey Estrougo’s midnight screening “Suprêmes,” feature several rap performances. In Directors’ Fortnight, Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman offer a sci-ﬁ take on the genre with “Neptune Frost,” which Lin-Manuel Miranda helped finance as a fan via Kickstarter. Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu’s midnight screening, “Tralala,” is the most traditional musical comedy among the bunch. And we may see more of the genre in France. “In 2019, there was an initiative of the CNC [the National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image] focused

on musicals, and ‘Tralala’ was selected to beneﬁt from it,” says Stephanie Lamome, artistic adviser of the fest’s ﬁlm department. “In Cannes, we will create musical events and live performances linked directly to these films.” One that’s expected will feature Bill Murray. He’s promoting a special screening of Andrew Muscato’s “New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization,” which captures his spoken word collaboration with three classical musicians at a Greek concert. Back in the U.S., musicals will soon draw crowds to theaters at the inaugural Broadway Live Cinema Festival. Running July 15-Aug. 6 at the AMC Empire 25 in New York City, it will integrate live performances by Broadway stars with films including “Chicago” and “In the Heights.” The fest hits AMC Theatres in major U.S. cities this fall and winter with a touring cast, lighting, sound system and a stage that adapts to cinemas. “What I’m most thrilled about is how different all these films are,” Miranda says of the many new additions to the genre. “[While it] hasn’t always been the case, the movie musical is now alive and well.”

74 ● F O C U S ● C A N N E S

06.30.2021

Cannes Answers Year of Lockdown With Jampacked Lineup This year’s Cannes promises to be an edition unlike any other. More movies, fewer guests, plus a slew of logistical hurdles (including a two-month date shift to early July, drawing cinephiles to the Riviera at the height of tourist season) all add up to an epic case of FOMO — fear of missing out — for those too cautious to attend. For those who do make the trek, however, Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux and his cohorts down the Croisette seem determined to make it worth their while.

Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” bows in the newly created Cannes Premiere section.

By Peter Debruge

They’ve served up a slate that, sight unseen, has cinephiles salivating: The festival will kick off with “Annette,” a musical from “Holy Motors” director Leos Carax; and includes Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” (a ﬁlm we could scarcely imagine premiering anywhere else); Paul Verhoeven’s portrait of a nun on fire, “Benedetta”; three ﬁlms featuring auteur darling Tilda Swinton; four starring Léa Seydoux; plus a bounty of anticipated titles from leading international directors.

It’s a sampling that would get audiences excited in any year, and doubly impressive that it was possible to muster such work when little new production was happening and many companies remain reluctant to play guinea pigs in the great experiment of reopening in-theater distribution. And yet, that’s precisely what Cannes signiﬁes this year: Think of it as a kind of “re-starter pistol” for the global ﬁlm industry, with many of the big titles (such as “Annette”) releasing in French

cinemas on the same day they premiere in Cannes. When last year’s festival was canceled amid COVID-19 concerns, Frémaux offered filmmakers three options: First, they could accept the Cannes 2020 label, letting the world know they’d been selected, thereby adding an aura of prestige as their films went on to screen at other festivals (“Another Round” and “Flee” went that route). Alternately, they could pass and premiere elsewhere, such as Venice, which successfully managed to host an in-person event while the coronavirus was still raging (as Maïwenn’s “DNA” did). And finally, they could take their chances and hold off an entire year in hopes of premiering at Cannes 2021. It’s a testament to the French festival’s significance to filmmakers and the industry alike that so many key titles went with the third option: They waited — although there are questions as to whether some of these titles would have really been ready in time last year. Technically, a number of the movies that accepted the Cannes 2020 label (including Steve McQueen’s “Mangrove” and Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure”) hadn’t locked editing last summer, raising doubts as to whether they could’ve played had the fest actually happened. Frémaux wanted to support them, of course, but he also wanted to put his stamp on those movies, claiming them for Cannes before Venice scooped them up and took credit. For decades, Cannes has been the world’s leading festival, but in recent years, it has been losing certain high-profile titles to Venice and the other early fall rivals.

Shanna Besson/Why Not Productions

Women’s day on competition jury, but lineup fails #5050 test

GutterOf Story Credit My Wife: ©INFORG-M&M Film; Flag Day: Allen Fraser/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.

XX 0 6 . 3X 0X . 2 0 2 1

A French industry rule forbidding Cannes from featuring Netflix movies in competition sent those titles (including “Roma” and “Marriage Story”) elsewhere. Meanwhile, the trio of Venice, Telluride and Toronto has been the beneﬁciary of a strategy shift among American publicists looking to launch their Oscar campaigns toward the end of summer. Under normal circumstances, Cannes could’ve served up a strong 2020 edition (among its selections, “Beginning” went on to win San Sebastián, while “Another Round” took the international ﬁlm Oscar). But after being forced to take a gap year, Frémaux is obliged to put his best foot forward this time around — which might explain the creation of a non-competitive section, called Cannes Premiere, in which new (and potentially unconventional) work by noted directors will screen in the Debussy theater, typically used for Un Certain Regard. Of course, Frémaux and company are faced with countless different agendas every year. (Just listen to the journalists at the press conference, asking valid questions about why there aren’t more films directed by women, or selected from this region or that country.) So it’s easy to understand why the festival might want to make room to accommodate the likes of Andrea Arnold (“Cow”), Arnaud Desplechin (“Deception”), Gaspar Noé (“Vortex”) and Oliver Stone (“JFK Revisited: Through the

VARIETY ● 75

Looking Glass”) without clogging up the competition. Then again, attendees are hardpressed to sample everything in a normal year, and no one wants to see Cannes become Berlin, with its sprawling program of hundreds of new movies. That said, the creation of Cannes Premiere allows Frémaux to entice marquee directors away from other festivals, and that may be a greater motivation than sharing this work with the world: to demonstrate that Cannes remains the first choice of serious filmmakers

Hungarian Berlinale winner Ildikó Enyedi hits Cannes competition with “The Story of My Wife,” starring Léa Seydoux (left), Gijs Naber and Louis Garrel.

Sean Penn returns to Cannes with his competition pic “Flag Day,” which co-stars his daughter, Dylan Penn.

to unveil their latest offerings. Even with these movies taken off the table, Venice should have no trouble assembling a high-profile lineup. The Italian festival has already confirmed Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” and is expected to bow upcoming Netflix titles from several Cannes regulars: Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” and Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.” Given the exceptional nature of this year, it’s hard to predict how much of Cannes’ expansion will stick in 2022. In April, France’s Syndicate of Independent Dis tributors announced that COVID-related lockdowns created a 400-film backlog in the country — that is, movies seeking theatrical release, rather than shifting to streaming options as so many distributors did in the States — and of course, Cannes programmers had two years’ worth of work to choose from. Earlier this year, as Sundance, Berlin and SXSW went virtual, those festivals scaled back the number of films they were screening. Not Cannes. Spreading the announcements out over several

weeks (and reportedly continuing to screen ﬁlms even after the lineup had been made public), Frémaux will preside over an ofﬁcial selection with 24 more titles than the 2019 edition — that’s an increase of nearly 40%. The parallel programs have followed suit: Both Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week expanded the number of features this year as well. The program may not be as studio-heavy as past editions (though Universal is bringing “F9: The Furious Saga” a few weeks after its U.S. opening), but that’s offset by some promising independent offerings. Among them is new work from the two Seans: “The Florida Project” director Sean Baker steps up to competition with his Texas-set “Red Rocket,” starring Simon Rex as a guy who returns home after a career in porn, while Sean Penn comes back to Cannes (where his previous feature, “The Last Face,” faceplanted something awful) with “Flag Day,” in which he plays true-life grifter John Vogel, as seen through the eyes of his daughter (played by Dylan Penn). Focus plans to premiere Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater,” starring Matt Damon and written by fre-

quent Jacques Audiard collaborator Thomas Bidegain and protégé Noé Debré, out of competition. (As a reminder, McCarthy’s “Spotlight” launched its Oscar run at Venice.) Palme d’Or winner Audiard himself will be back in competition with “Paris, 13th District,” adapted from a handful of stories by American graphic novelist Adrian Tomine. Three American documentaries will screen in ofﬁcial selection: Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground” — about exactly what it sounds like — and Val Kilmer portrait “Val,” plus Stone’s aforementioned JFK doc. The strength of Cannes shouldn’t be judged by its American projects, although they’re certainly worth considering, since these ﬁlms tend to drive a disproportionate share of the media attention around the event (a contest Cannes has been losing to Venice in recent years). But the Palme d’Or winner of the 2019 edition, Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” did huge business in the U.S., and made history by winning the best picture Oscar. Cannes is of course an international festival — one with a strong

06.30.2021

Gallic bent, seeing as how it’s underwritten by the French film industry — and has had for years first dibs at leading directors’ latest. That’s why it’s not unusual to see a filmmaker win the Berlinale’s top prize, then graduate to competition at Cannes with their next film. This year, that’s happening with Hungarian Oscar nominee Ildikó Enyedi (“The Story of My Wife”) and “Synonymes” director Nadav Lapid (“Ahed’s Knee”). When the opposite happens — say, a director associated with Cannes shows up in Venice — it’s usually a red flag that the French must have passed on the movie. This year’s competition, full to bursting with two dozen contenders, boasts returning Palme d’Or winners Apichatpong Weerasethakul, making his English-language debut with Tilda Swinton starrer “Memoria,” and Italian melodramatist Nanni Moretti, whose “Three Floors” seems to excite exactly no one. World-renowned Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will also be back in competition with “A Hero.” Cannes always books a disproportionately high number of French movies (which is one

Mia Wasikowska stars in “Bergman Island,” from Mia Hansen-Løve, the filmmaker’s first time in competition at Cannes.

Sean Baker moves into a Cannes competition spot with “Red Rocket.”

way it manages to check the female-ﬁlmmaker box, while inviting so few from other countries). The 2021 crop includes Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island,” starring Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth; “Raw” director Julia Ducournau’s sure-to-be-incendiary “Titane”; and new films from François Ozon (“Everything Went Fine”); Bruno Dumont (“France”); and Catherine Corsini (“La Fracture”). It’s easy to look through a lineup and identify the familiar names, but Frémaux seems committed to taking a chance on more not-

yet-established talents, which is, of course, one of the programmers’ key responsibilities. It’s exciting to see the latest work from known auteurs, but the global film community counts on Cannes to scour the world and uncover the work of exciting new artists as well, many of whom are spotlighted in Un Certain Regard — or else down the Croisette, in Directors’ Fortnight or Critics’ Week. In addition to worrying about Venice and others, Frémaux also has to compete with the parallel programs screening in Cannes. Directors’ Fortnight has upstaged the official selection by offering desirable slots to films that Frémaux might have passed on (producers and sales agents pit the two selection committees against one another). This year, Directors’ Fortnight will screen a few highprofile films from women, including Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II” and Clio Barnard’s “Ali & Ava,” before wrapping with Rachel Lang’s “Our Men.” Cannes has fallen far short of its #5050X2020 gender parity pledge, and though the festival is clearly pushing to support the industry’s reopening agenda, organizers essentially used that shift in focus as an excuse to backslide on that commitment. Sure, the coronavirus has posed an existential threat to cinema as we know it. Going in, this year’s festival feels like an attempt to restore things to “normal” — and yet, these are precisely the moments when evolution is called for.

Bergman Island: IFC Films; Red Rocket: Drew Daniels

76 ● FOCUS ● CANNES

VARIETY ● 77

06.30.2021

Cannes Fetes Fest Fave Jodie Foster From co-starring in ‘Taxi Driver’ to an honorary Palme d’Or,

Robert Trachtenberg

the star and Cannes go way back Only four of the 24 ﬁlms in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year were directed by women. Statistically speaking, the odds that one will join Jane Campion as the lone woman to win a Palme d’Or are slim — and this in a year when Venice winner Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” went on to win three Oscars. What better moment for the festival to honor one of the industry’s most respected female artists with an honorary Palme d’Or: Jodie Foster, viewed back home in the U.S. as a talented director and star who’s taken the high road her entire career — and by French

By Peter Debruge

Oscar-winner Jodie Foster has a long history with the Cannes festival as well as with France and French cinema.

as that rare American who speaks their language and deserves their respect. Foster was 12 the first time one of her films played Cannes. She’d been acting for half a decade on American television by that point, but for many festivalgoers, their first impression of Foster was her brief appearance, as a Tom Sawyer-like influence on Ellen Burstyn’s impressionable young son, in Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” It wasn’t until the following year, 1975, when Foster actually made the trip to Cannes. She had two films in competition at the time,

Scorsese’s controversial “Taxi Driver,” which was booed after Robert De Niro rescued Foster’s teenage prostitute character in the film’s bloody climax, and the more comical junior-gangster send-up “Bugsy Malone.” Tennessee Williams was president of the Cannes jury that year and spoke out against the level of violence in the films he was seeing, swearing that “Taxi Driver” would go home without a prize. His fellow jurors overruled him and gave it the Palme d’Or. “Taxi Driver” earned Foster her first Oscar nomination as well, but what may have impressed Cannes attendees as much as her performance was a trick she pulled at the press conference. When a journalist posed a question toward the young actor, she waved aside the translator and responded in French. Turns out, her mom was a Francophile and had enrolled her daughter in a French high school in Los Angeles. The following year, the Fosters moved for nine months to France, where Jodie shot a film, “Moi, fleur bleue,” in her second language. Foster’s credits are familiar enough to most that they don’t require repeating, though it’s worth

reminding that she carved out time to attend Yale, carefully selecting the roles of her adult career. She won an Oscar for playing a rape survivor who takes on the system in 1988’s “The Accused,” and that the fragile exterior and hidden inner strength she displays in 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs” are every bit as essential to that film’s success as Anthony Hopkins’ iconic performance. That same year, Foster made her feature directing debut with “Little Man Tate,” which some read as an inversion of her own experience: Here, she played the single mom trying to clear the path for her gifted but misunderstood young son, when, of course, Foster had been a kind of prodigy herself. Decades after her two Scorsese projects played Cannes, Foster would return to the festival to present out-of-competition premieres of two films she’d directed, “The Beaver” and “Money Monster.” She hadn’t come full circle so much as evolved to a different tier of accomplishment altogether. No matter what excuses the Cannes programmers make as to why they select so few women filmmakers, it doesn’t take a sociologist to recognize that the festival curates a kind of exclusive club of artists: Once a director is in, he — because it’s almost always a “he” — is almost always welcome back. But to be accepted in the first place is the challenge, and Foster pierced that ceiling. These days, she doesn’t act or direct nearly enough — though she’s helmed episodes of “House of Cards” and “Tales From the Loop,” and delivered the kind of unwavering Jodie Foster conviction that defines her in last year’s “The Mauritanian.” Fiercely private about her personal life, Foster tends to abhor superficial questions — but she’ll get them. After all, Cannes has positioned her as a symbolic counterexample to any criticisms of sexism this year. It’s as if the festival is saying, “If there were more Jodie Fosters in the world, our lineup might look different.” But alas, she’s sui generis, which is why such a prize exists.

78 ● F O C U S ● 10 P R O D U C E RS TO WATC H

06.30.2021

Variety Highlights Emerging Producers

HANS EVERAERT

JORDAN FUDGE AND JEREMY ALLEN

“La Civil”

“The United States vs. Billie Holiday”

With “La Civil,” the first feature from his new production company, Menuetto, headed for the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes, Belgian Flemish producer Everaert finds his many risks paying off. The film marks the fiction debut of Romanian-Belgian documentary maker Teodora Ana Mihai (“Waiting for August”) and follows a Mexican mother searching for her daughter kidnapped by members of a drug cartel. Antwerp-based Everaert, who has a background in economics, finance and technology, moved into the film business as the CFO of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) in 2004. “I knew Teodora from my time at the VAF,” he says. “I was convinced of her talent and I knew that she was looking for a producer.” He jokes that VAF also served as his private film school through his close collaboration with then-CEO Pierre Drouot, producer of Jaco Van Dormael’s “Toto le Héros.” In 2013, Everaert launched his career as general manager of the Flemish outfit Menuet. With the retirement of owner Dirk Impens, Everaert opted to launch his own company. He says, “It’s clear from the name that Menuetto wants to continue the legacy of Menuet: the same expertise, network and types of films.” He is looking for author-driven projects with the potential to reach a broad audience and aims to do roughly one feature film and one long documentary per year, along with some smaller projects, minority productions and service production. Next up is the drama “The Eight Mountains” from Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, which just began shooting. For Everaert, the best part of producing is “helping a story come to life, working with an author who has something to tell and accompanying him/her in the complex process of telling it right.” — Alissa Simon

At just 26 and 28, New Slate Ventures’ Allen and Fudge have already shown that they possess an eye for great stories, the deep pockets to tell them and more than enough industry savviness to get them seen. After selling “The 40-Year-Old Version” to Netflix for seven figures at Sundance 2020, the duo shepherded “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” to a Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination for Andra Day en route to its digital release on Hulu in February. “Neither of us is burdened with the pretense of how the business has to work,” says Allen, a former agent at WME who oversees New Slate’s film and TV development. “I think that gives us a strategic advantage in terms of how we look at projects and how we want to market them and how we want to sell them.” After starting at 20th Century Fox back in 2014, Fudge moved into private equity work before setting up New Slate with a portion of Sinai Capital Partners’ $600 million hedge fund. “In venture investing, you don’t have the opportunity to really do the work and being there in the trenches with the cast and the crew,” Fudge says. “That’s a really fun exercise that I enjoy.” With a docuseries about Magic Johnson’s athletic and entrepreneurial endeavors on the way, as well as projects from Kenya Barris and “The Peanut Butter Falcon” filmmakers Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, the duo thrills at the chance to develop projects from start to finish on a variety of platforms. “I believe in thinking laterally instead of having this sort of received wisdom of how things are done,” says Fudge. Allen adds: “We’re very adamant on thinking about where [a project] best lives in this changing market, and helping creators to understand that full process as well.” — Todd Gilchrist

Jordan Fudge and Jeremy Allen shepherded “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” to awards noms.

Everaert: Mathias Hannes; United States Vs. Billie Holiday: Takashi Seida/Paramount

The class of 2021 filmmakers comes from around the globe

06.30.2021

HRÖNN KRISTINSDÓTTIR AND SARA NASSIM

VARIETY ● 79

NICOLE LAMBERT “The Many Saints of Newark”

Lambert: Matt Sayles

“Lamb”

In their first collaboration on a feature project, mother Kristinsdóttir and daughter Nassim of the Icelandic production company Go to Sheep hit paydirt with their unusual drama “Lamb,” set to premiere in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. Also forming part of the production family is director and co-screenwriter Valdimar Jóhannsson, Kristinsdóttir‘s husband and Nassim‘s stepfather. Reykjavik-based Kristinsdóttir has been active in the Icelandic and international film industry since 1997; her line producing and producing credits number more than 20 titles. Nassim was practically raised on movie sets and never really got away. The American Film Institute Conservatory graduate has an extensive background in physical production. Early in her career she served as a production coordinator on the Icelandic unit of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah.” These days, she splits her time between Iceland and Los Angeles, developing and producing independent feature projects. Currently, Go to Sheep is also producing Gustav Geir Bollason´s artistic documentary “Mannvirki,” showing how the post-industrial landscape is shaped by forces of nature. After that? Kristinsdóttir and Nassim say, “We do have a few ambitious projects in the pipeline: both TV series and feature films.” They aim to produce quality works that may sometimes escape classification in commercial categories and will announce more details about their forthcoming lineup at the end of the year. Meanwhile, they are also in the early stages of developing a project with Jóhannsson and his “Lamb” co-writer, Icelandic novelist Sjón. — Alissa Simon

ELISABETH MOSS AND LINDSEY MCMANUS “The Shining Girls”

By industry standards, Lambert’s path to her first credit as a producer was almost quaint: she worked at CAA before learning the ropes as an assistant on globe-trotting projects including “Hancock” and “The Bourne Legacy,” eventually shadowing “The Sopranos” creator David Chase through the development of his long-gestating prequel film. “I have simply always loved film,” Lambert says. “I find it very interesting stepping into another time and place. And I got to do that on ‘The Many Saints of Newark.’ ” Working for Chase, Lambert quickly developed an aptitude for understanding how to support an artist’s process and to communicate that to the members of her or his team. “I know David so well, it’s easy for me to interpret that to people to ease his burden and make sure that he’s only focusing on the art of it and not where is this dollar going or where is that dollar going,” she says. “I was lucky because David believes in me and makes it clear that I am part of his voice.” Many of her plans involve projects either created or inspired by members of “The Sopranos” extended family, including one from Terrence Winter and a pilot based on an idea from Chase that she wrote herself. But Lambert insists her first priority is supporting storytellers and not the properties they may be mining. “I don’t necessarily think about its marketability. I would rather tell a good story in an interesting way than to think about if this is going to sell. “We got lucky,” she acknowledges. “‘The Many Saints of Newark’ is in the ‘Sopranos’ universe, so there’s what you would call IP to back it. And obviously the bigger the IP, the more something is going to sell. But I would rather find fresh original ideas and voices and promote those.” — Todd Gilchrist

As the star of “The Invisible Man” and four seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (with at least one more on the way), Moss has steadily become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors. The next step, of course, was to add even more to her plate as a producer, launching Love & Squalor Pictures with former WME agent McManus to develop projects both for Moss to star in and contribute to behind the scenes. “I was taking on more and more and not feeling like I had enough to handle all the things that I wanted to do,” Moss tells Variety. “A lot of actors hire somebody and they run their company and that’s the end of that. I wanted to have a real partnership with somebody. And Lindsey was a terriﬁc ﬁt.” The pair currently executive produces “The Shining Girls” for Apple, an adaptation of Lauren Beukes’ 2013 bestseller in which Moss also appears. “We’re there to be everyone’s guardrails,” says McManus. “We have our parameters of supporting the creative and our job at the end of the day is just doing that. There’s no task too small for us.” They’ve already assembled a robust slate for Love & Squalor that includes several other book adaptations in various stages of development, including Eileen Zimmerman’s “Smacked,” Emily Ruskovich’s “Idaho” and Alison Wisdom’s “We Can Only Save Ourselves,” which they’re thrilled for Moss to work on solely as a producer. “We’re very big readers and book optioners,” McManus says. “The thing that I love so much about producing is it’s not a solo sport,” Moss adds. “You have to collaborate with many different artistic minds who have strong opinions, and corralling those creative ideas into one vision is the most important part of the job.” — Todd Gilchrist

80 ● F O C U S ● 10 P R O D U C E RS TO WATC H

06.30.2021

SIENA OBERMAN

“Larry Flynt for President”

“The Birthday Cake”

Mekhael always wanted to be a storyteller, but after attending film school in Paris and helping raise finances through Qatar’s Doha Film Institute for “Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet,” Asghar Farhadi’s “The Salesman” and Kanye West’s “Cruel Summer,” she moved to Los Angeles four years ago to take a more hands-on approach to the creative process. “I’m drawn to truly authentic stories that really have something to say, shift a perspective or make a difference somehow,” Mekhael says. “It feels like there is a real culture of activism and curiosity across the world right now. I like that there seems to be more opportunity right now for women in the industry and that same, more inclusive energy feels reflected in the storytelling.” Currently developing and producing for Seine Pictures, Mekhael recently premiered “Larry Flynt for President” at Tribeca, a documentary using a wealth of unearthed footage to explore a little-known footnote in the 1984 presidential election. “The film really makes you think about how much things have changed in politics, or haven’t changed at all,” she says. “When Larry was campaigning alongside Ronald Reagan, and how progressive Larry was back then, despite what some think of him, [the fact] that he was ahead of his time is undeniable.” With an expansive slate of documentaries and narrative projects at different stages, Mekhael believes in balancing a creative sensibility with business acumen. “Producing means finding the right resources for the creative ambition of a film and sharing those responsibilities with amazingly talented collaborators. I love the challenges within that process and one of my favorite feelings is being able to enable and support a director through the entirety of the process.” — Todd Gilchrist

Oberman loves movies and storytelling. It’s palpable when she talks about her films. “I’ve been drawn into movies since early childhood. I actually was one of those people running around with a Flip camera,” says Oberman, adding that she loved how film “brought all of the different aspects of art together. I loved how you can share such different perspectives and people can empathize with a story and a situation that they may never otherwise see.” Her 2018 drama “Skin” made a splash on the fest circuit, while films like “Mainstream,” from Gia Coppola, explore relationships in the internet age, and the recently released “The Birthday Cake,” from Jimmy Giannopoulos, offers a twist on mobster movies. She was also looking to open doors to characters she felt were underrepresented onscreen, as well as female creatives. “It’s interesting because I think my first 10 features were all male directors, which was a big wake up call for me that I really needed to make an effort and do something for more female directors. … But I think it’s very challenging for any first-time filmmaker to get their movie made. And ‘The Sinners’ and ‘On Our Way’ are two films that I recently did where they were both young, first time, female directors, and those were not easy to finance at all. They’re much, much harder than if I’m going to a second-time male director or more established male director.” Oberman says, “As a producer, I’m very director-driven and a lot of them are writer-directors so it really is their unique visions.” She’s especially excited about “finding Sophie Lane Curtis, who I just did ‘On Our Way’ with. I’m doing her sophomore feature as well. She was 24 when we shot her movie … I think telling empowering stories is important.” — Carole Horst

Siena Oberman produced Penn Badgley-starrer “Birthday Cake.”

Birthday Cake: Screen Media Films

LAUREN MEKHAEL

Talbert: Courtesy Lyn Talbert; Yue: Gosh Film

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 81

JUSSI RANTAMÄKI

LYN SISSON-TALBERT

SHAWN XIANG YUE

“Compartment No. 6”

“Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey”

“Detective Chinatown 3”

Can Finnish producer Rantamäki and director Juho Kuosmanen score a hat-trick at Cannes? The initial collaboration of these longtime friends, “The Painting Sellers,” nabbed the Cinefondation award; later their first feature, “The Happiest Day in The Life of Olli Mäki” (2016) topped Un Certain Regard. Now, their Russiashot drama “Compartment No. 6” will premiere in the main competition. During and after his university studies in cultural management, Rantamäki worked as assistant director and location manager for various companies. He joined Aamu Film in 2008, becoming the owner in 2013. He says, “My film school was working with director-producer Auli Mantila in Aamu and with theater director Leea Klemola as an actor in her plays. I’ve learned the principles of content development from these two. Although women producers and directors were a minority in Finland, I was clearly taught and led to art making by two strong women.” Aamu aims to build long relationships with directors and screenwriters who have a unique approach to filmmaking. Rantamäki notes, “We don’t choose projects, we choose people. I have been working closely with four directors for the past eight years.” He usually starts with short films and moves on to longer formats. “Along the way,” he says, “my job is to find the right people to support them and make their vision sharper and develop their artistry. I try to help them to be brave and precise.” Among his other chosen people are Hamy Ramezan, “Any Day Now”; Hannaleena Hauru, “Fucking with Nobody”; Mikko Myllymäki, now in post with his helming debut “The Woodcutter Story”; and Tia Kouvo in development with the debut feature “FaSmily Time.” — Alissa Simon

When Sisson-Talbert needed a boost of morale during the 20 years it took to get “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey” off the ground, her go-to tune —and mantra — was “The Square Root of Possible,” a song now featured in the Netflix live-action musical starring Forest Whitaker and Keegan-Michael Key. SissonTalbert and her husband, David E. Talbert, who wrote and directed the passion project, have since inked a multi-year first-look deal with Netflix under their banner Golden Alchemy Entertainment. This success, says Sisson-Talbert, who cut her teeth producing national sold-out theatrical tours, is the byproduct of unrelenting passion and commitment. “One thing my dad always told me is to never accept no from someone who can’t say yes, and those words really stuck with me,” says Sisson-Talbert. “I always felt like those who were saying no, they couldn’t say yes anyway. I knew I needed to keep going and get past them to the yes.” She’s found that yes for several projects. SissonTalbert has executive produced feature comedies “Baggage Claim,” “Almost Christmas” and Netflix’s original film “El Camino Christmas.” But it was “Jingle Jangle,” a holiday tale about an eccentric toy-maker and his granddaughter, that lit a fire inside Sisson-Talbert. As a Black filmmaker, it was crucially important that she create something “original” set in the Black cinema space to which her young son could relate. “I wanted to make something for him to watch, because I’m tired of the Black version—the remakes— of everything,” she says. “There are so many original stories to be told, stories that feature Black characters but have a universal worldview and message.” — Malina Saval

Chinese producer Yue worked in TV making 600 hours of programming for international companies such as Fremantle Media Enterprises before segueing to producing films. “It wasn’t easy, but ended up being a natural transition,” he says via email. “The details are all different but the core of the business remains the same. Have a workable plan, maintain the control during the whole process and deliver on the promise.” The Beijing-based Yue recently set up Bamboo Curtain after making “Detective Chinatown 3” for director Sichen Chen. The Feb. 22 release grossed $680 million in China. “I have always been fascinated by this job, and love working with creative talent,” Yue says. “I love collaborating and having different experiences in order to refine my skills and build the next generation of artists and producers.” Bamboo Curtain was set up to bridge systemic differences between China and the U.S. “Hollywood has both the studio and independent film system, each with its own infrastructure. Most films in China have to be set up and packaged as an independent film first and then financed by the big Chinese studios. This does not mean Chinese films are smaller in budget or size. Chinese financiers greenlight mega budget films all the time but it requires the producer in China to pay enough attention to everything and to build the infrastructure required.” Yue is taking the best of Hollywood, hiring talent in China and making his films. “I am bringing the Chinese market to the West, and some of the Western market to China, creating films for both the Chinese and Western markets. This loop can sound redundant, but that’s exactly what I am doing.” — Shalini Dore

82 ● FOCUS ● TOEI 70TH ANNIVERSARY

X0 X6 . X 30 X.2021

Box Office Powerhouse Toei Aims for a Renaissance

Born of a merger between two ﬁlm companies in 1951, Toei is one of Japan’s leading ﬁlm producers, distributors and exhibitors, with a wide range of media businesses. Starting in the 1950s with samurai swashbucklers and continuing in the 1960s with actioners featuring Japan’s native gangsters, the yakuza, Toei gained a reputation as maker of entertain-

Sequel “Blood of Wolves II,” Shiraishi Kazuya’s follow-up to his hit 2018 crimer, launches later this year.

ment for the masses, not the critics. Rival Toho may have had Kurosawa Akira and Shochiku, Ozu Yasujiro — both world-class auteurs — but Toei had Ishii Teruo, whose “Abashiri Prison” action series (1965-’72) made a major star of the strong-but-silent Takakura Ken, and Fukasaku Kinji, whose “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” series (1973-’74) was a

groundbreaking re-creation of a real-life yakuza war. Neither won many awards or much international recognition at the time, but their contributions helped make Toei a box office powerhouse. (And critical recognition did come later, especially for Fukasaku, whose “Battles” series is now widely recognized as a cinematic landmark.)

By Mark Schilling

Beginning in the 1950s and continuing in the 1960s as the diffusion of television caused theatrical earnings to plummet, Toei branched out from its signature genre films into animation through subsidiary Toei Animation, with future anime auteurs Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao on the payroll, and tokusatsu (“special effects”) TV

Gutter Credit Production Committee

The company, celebrating its 70th anniversary, fought its way to a leading position with popular fare

84 ● FOCUS

06.30.2021

Kinji Fukasaku’s groundbreaking “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” series brought in boffo B.O. for Toei.

All employees are producers … [all] should be able to say ‘let’s try’ when they have something they want to make.” —Tezuka Osamu rewards and jointly publicize the ﬁnished product. Toei also exploits its content over a range of platforms, including the Toei Channel, which is broadcast on cable and satellite, and the Toei Tokusatsu World Ofﬁcial YouTube channel. Among other revenue streams are merchandising, real estate, talent management and rights licensing. The company is headed by Tezuka Osamu, who took over as president in June 2020. A company lifer, who spent most of his career in TV program production, Tezuka is no relation to the pioneering manga artist of the same name who was responsible for Japan’s first animated

Actioner “Blood of Wolves” (2018) carried the DNA of Toei’s classic yakuza pics.

TV series, the 1963 “Astro Boy.” Only the sixth president at Toei since its founding, Tezuka told staff after his promotion last year that “all employees are producers,” explaining that all “should be able to say ‘let’s try’ when they have something they want to make.” This runs counter to the standard decision-making process in the Japanese industry, in which, as Tezuka noted, proposals that “aren’t sure bets have a hard time getting a hearing.”

But Tezuka ascended to the top in the midst of a pandemic and Toei, like every other film company in Japan, has taken a hard hit to its bottom line. In the fiscal year ending in March, Toei’s operating profit plunged to ¥12,997 million ($118 million) from $200.5 million the year before, a drop of 41%. Total sales fell from $1.3 billion in financial year 2019 to $981 million in fiscal 2020 for a year-on-year decline of 24%.

BGauttlersCWreitdhitout Honour and Humanity: Toei Company

series featuring spandex-wearing superheroes. Among its hits was the “Kamen Rider” show (1971-’73), about the adventures of a motorbike-riding cyborg, and the Super Sentai series, which featured color-coded superheroes, starting in 1977 with “Himitsu Sentai Gorenger.” Later iterations became the source material of the 1990s “Power Rangers” series, made in collaboration with L.A.-based Saban Entertainment. Today Toei is still very much in the live-action film business, with upcoming releases including “Blood of Wolves II,” director Shiraishi Kazuya’s follow-up to his hit 2018 cops-vs.-gangsters actioner “Blood of Wolves.” Both ﬁlms carry the DNA of Toei’s signature 1970s yakuza pics, particularly those by Shiraishi favorite Fukasaku. Shiraishi is also directing “Kamen Rider Black Sun,” the reboot of a well-remembered 1987-’88 tokusatsu series, for a summer 2022 start. Also under the Toei corporate umbrella are a national chain of 23 cineplex sites, operated by subsidiary T-Joy and its partners; studios in Tokyo and Kyoto that make film and TV content; the Toei Digital Center post-production facility and the Toei Animation Oizumi studio, both in Tokyo. In common with other Japanese majors, Toei has long been a vertically integrated company, able to take projects from the development to the distribution and exhibition stage, while partnering with other media companies in “production committees” that share the ﬁnancial risks and

88 ● FOCUS ● TOEI 70TH ANNIVERSARY

06.30.2021

earned $78 million worldwide. Together with Toho and Anno’s Khara animation house, Toei is also a distributor of “Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time,” the fourth and ﬁnal entry in the “Rebuild of Evangelion” series, all directed by Anno. Opening March 8, the ﬁlm had grossed $81.4 mil-

Tezuka told newspaper Sports Hochi that he doesn’t know ‘how far business will return to normal,’ adding hopefully, ‘The Black Plague in the Middle Ages was followed by the Renaissance.’ ” Tezuka told newspaper Sports Hochi that he doesn’t know “how far business will return to normal,” adding hopefully, “But the Black Plague in the Middle Ages was followed by the Renaissance.” Toei is not wasting any time in getting its own renaissance going. Shiraishi’s “Kamen Rider” reboot is part of a project celebrating

the 50th anniversary of the ﬁrst “Kamen Rider ” show, which bowed in 1971. For the project, Toei has recruited Anno Hideaki, creator of the long-running “Evangelion” sci-ﬁ franchise, to direct “Shin Kamen Rider,” a movie set for release in March 2023. The title is suggestive of another Anno hit, the 2016 “Shin Godzilla,” which

Toei distributed 1997’s “The End of Evangelion” and has grossed $84 million so far in the next film in the popular series, “Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time.”

lion on 5.86 million admissions as of June 16, making it the box office leader for the first half of 2021. Will this success spark a renaissance in Japan’s pandemic-hit box office — and Toei’s corporate fortunes? We probably won’t have to wait until “Shin Kamen Rider” opens in 2023 to find out.

90 ● FOCUS ● TOEI 70TH ANNIVERSARY

06.30.2021

Kamen Rider Accelerates Toward Int’l Markets Toei’s live-action cyborg hero set to fight new villains Kamen Rider may not have the international recognition of Godzilla — yet. But Toei, whose first “Kamen Rider ” live-ac tion TV series aired in 1971, has announced an ambitious project for raising the profile of its motorbike-riding, insectfaced cyborg hero both at home and abroad on the franchise’s 50th anniversary. Unveiled in April at a splashy live press conference in Tokyo, the project is headlined by a new ﬁlm, “Shin Kamen Rider,” directed by Anno Hideaki, the creator of the Evangelion sci-fi franchise and the scriptwriter and co-director of the 2016 smash “Shin Godzilla.” Details about the ﬁlm, including story and casting, are still sparse, though Toei has penciled in a March 2023 release date.

Toei plans big things for “Kamen Rider” with a refresh and a push for international distribution.

By Mark Schilling

When Variety met project producer Shirakura Shin-chiro at Toei’s Tokyo headquarters, he reaffirmed that his aim was to make “entertainment that viewers can enjoy,” while “targeting a wide demographic.” This is hardly the ﬁrst time Toei has courted the international market with its signature tokusatsu (live-action special effects) TV series and films. Starting in 1993 with the hit “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” show, a co-production with Saban Entertainment, Toei has made its formula of color-coded superheroes battling monstrous opponents into a worldwide phenomenon. In 1995, Toei again joined forces with Saban to launch “Masked Rider,” an American version of the 1988 “Kamen Rider Black RX”

TV series. Also, “Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight,” an adaptation of the “Kamen Rider Ryuki” series (2002-’03) developed in partnership with Adness Entertainment, aired on the CW Network from 2008 to 2009. “We are trying to sell ‘Kamen Rider’ to not only the United States but also to the world. And like the Power Rangers shows in the past we are doing it mostly with live-action contents,” Shirakura says. The one exception is “Fuuto PI,” Toei’s ﬁrst Kamen Rider animated TV series, which is set for a spring 2022 bow in Japan, with franchise veteran Tsukada Hideaki serving as producer. The international rollout is scheduled to start in the summer of the same year. Sony-owed streamer Funimation will distribute the show in North America.

“We’re not aiming at children,” Shirakura says. “The show is targeting older teenagers and young adults.” The third part of the project is “Kamen Rider Black Sun,” a reboot of the hit “Kamen Rider Black” series originally broadcast in 1987-’88. The new series will be directed by Shiraishi Kazuya for a summer 2022 start. Toei, says Shirakura, does not expect Shiraishi to turn in a typical tokusatsu show: “Since he’s Shiraishi Kazuya, I expect that it will have the flavor of the sort of films he makes. It will be a new type of superhero show that adults can watch with a straight face. It’s like Christopher Nolan with ‘The Dark Knight’ — he could make a Batman film that way because he’s Christopher Nolan. I’m sure ‘Kamen Rider’ as viewed by Shiraishi will also be something completely different since he’s directing all the episodes.” The show will use CG not possible when “Kamen Rider Black” was first broadcast in the 1980s, but the foundation of the show, says Shirakura, “will be the performances of its human cast.” “We then layer stunts and CG onto the human performances,” he adds. “Shirashi doesn’t want characters who are pure CG creations. “ ‘Kamen Rider Black’ was an extremely popular TV series not only domestically but also internationally. It was remade by Saban as ‘Masked Rider’ and aired in 1995, but unfortunately it got bad reviews and was a flop. Now we’re getting our payback,” he says with a smile. One model for the project is the Marvel Universe, which has expanded over a range of platforms over decades. “Toei takes pride in its live-action, which doesn’t come from manga and doesn’t come from animation,” Shirakura continues. “We want Kamen Rider to be better known by people all over the world using any means necessary, be it Anno’s ‘Shin Kamen Rider’ movie or Shiraishi’s ‘Kamen Rider Black’ or Tsukada’s animation.” Batman better move over — another motor-powered hero will be coming to a screen near you.

06.30.2021

Toei Animation Taps AI, Overseas Market Tech advances help toon division overcome pandemic, cost challenges For nearly seven decades, animation studio Toei Animation Co. has relied on recognizable franchises, including pirate adventure “One Piece” and fantasy “Dragon Ball,” in making itself a leader. But publishing platforms are now such that just about anyone can distribute animation, or so bemoaned Toei Animation president Katsuhiro Takagi two years ago. “I feel that the number of hits is small compared to the number of works that are out in the world,” he says. “How do you now make a proﬁt from animation works that are expensive to produce?” The pandemic proved to be a challenge of another sort. But investors are sanguine that the company can come up with an

“Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal,” streaming on Netflix worldwide, is part of Toei Animation’s export effort.

answer to the president’s question — its stock price has more than doubled over the past year — and advances in technology and a further tapping of the overseas market will be keys. Despite its success, the industry suffers from labor shortages. For that, Toei Animation is utilizing AI. In March, the company announced it will be using the AI tool Scenify, by technology ﬁrm Preferred Networks Inc., to convert real landscape photographs into animation-like images. A task that might typically take four hours and 50 minutes will be reduced to a mere 50 minutes with Scenify. To showcase the collaboration, Toei Animation posted the experimental ﬁlm “Urvan” on its

By Brett Bull

YouTube channel in February. Toei Animation also said this year that it was utilizing another AI technique to quicken the coloring of the clothes of characters. Such techniques were likely the furthest from the collective mind of Kenzo Masaoka and Zenjiro Yamamoto when they founded what would become Toei Animation in 1948. The studio, headquartered in Tokyo, became a subsidiary of Toei Co. eight years later. Since then, it has gone on to garner acclaim worldwide for more than 400 television and ﬁlm productions. Reduced box office receipts, suspended production of television productions and cancelled events were among the factors that led to a slump in sales of

nearly 6% for 2020 over the year before, the company said. With theaters closed, Toei Animation was forced to postpone releases of films, such as the latest installment in the “Pretty Cure” franchise. Though streaming is taking off worldwide, this proved to be problematic given that the movie theater remains a force in Japan — a point driven by the box office smashing success of “Demon Slayer” (by Ufotable Inc.). “We see animations on TV and in theaters as still being important if a producer expects to make an IP popular among all generations nationwide,” says Shinnosuke Takeuchi, a leisure analyst at Jefferies. The overseas market is shaping up to be crucial. For the past fiscal year, overseas revenue accounted for 59% of the company’s total, a significant increase over five years before, when it was 34%. Contributing to that success is the streaming of legacy content, including on the site for distributor and publisher Crunchyroll. As well, “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal” began streaming on Netflix worldwide (excluding Japan) in June. The company cited in its most recent annual report a solid performance from the licensing of the IP for “Slam Dunk” and “Dragon Ball” for games in Europe, the Americas and parts of Asia. Down the line, Toei Animation will continue to have success overseas through strategies like these, says Roland Kelts, the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.” “Streaming in particular enabled Toei Animation to leapfrog the middlemen distributors of physical media like DVDs who were scraping off a huge chunk of global profits,” Kelts says. “Today, Toei Animation can mine their own inventory for stalwarts like ‘Slam Dunk’ and ‘One Piece’ and go directly to the international consumer through borderless streaming media and online games. The company’s on fire now.”

Netflix

92 ● FOCUS ● TOEI 70TH ANNIVERSARY

94 ● FOCUS

06.30.2021

Toei Through the Years Media giant marks many highs over the decades

1975

By Mark Schilling

Toyoko Eiga, Oizumi Eiga and Tokyo Film Distribution Co. consolidate as Toei Co. Ltd.

Toei’s ﬁrst color tokusatsu (special effects) superhero show, as well as Japan’s ﬁrst color live-action ninja TV series.

1956

1969

Propelled by the smash hit “47 Loyal Samurai,” Toei become Japan’s No. 1 studio at the B.O.

The “Mito Komon” samurai action series begins airing on Japan’s TBS network. In 2009 it celebrates its 40th season on the air.

1983 Imamura Shohei’s period drama “The Ballad of Narayama” wins the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

1957 Toei releases Japan’s ﬁrst CinemaScope ﬁlm, “Otori Jo No Hanayome” (Samurai Bride Hunter). Toei calls the format ToeiScope.

1958 Toei releases Japan’s first feature-length color animation, “The Tale of the White Serpent.”

1963 Tadashi Imai’s “Bushido” wins the Golden Bear at the 1963 Berlin Film Festival. With “Theater of Life — Hishakaku,” Toei launches its signature line of yakuza pics.

1967 “Masked Ninja Akakage” becomes

1971 The first “Kamen Rider ” TV series — about a motorcycle-riding cyborg superhero — airs, launching an enduring multimedia franchise.

1986

1972

1989

“Mazinger Z” and “Devilman,” superhero TV anime series based on popular comics by Nagai Go, debut and spawn longrunning franchises.

Toei releases “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” the ﬁrst commercial hit of former Toei Animation staffer Miyazaki Hayao.

Animated series “Dragon Ball,” based on Toriyama Akira’s manga, airs on the Fuji network and generates a multimedia franchise.

“The End of Evangelion,” a feature animation based on Anno Hideaki’s cult hit TV series, becomes a major hit.

2000 “Battle Royale,” Fukasaku Kinji’s film about teens forced to kill each other in a state-sanctioned murder game, becomes a controversial hit in Japan and is widely shown abroad.

2005 The World War II sea-going drama “Yamato” — which was produced to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the war’s end — is released.

2012 The animated action fantasy “One Piece Film Z” becomes the biggest hit of the “One Piece” feature series with a box ofﬁce gross of $62 million in Japan and $85 million worldwide.

2013

1992 1973 Fukasaku Kinji’s gang actioner “Battles Without Honor and Humanity,” the ﬁrst of a ﬁve-part series, is released. The series rede-

The “Himitsu Sentai Gorenger” tokusatsu TV show debuts. It is the first of many super sentai shows about teams of costumed superheroes who battle an array of monsters. Saban Entertainment later adapts super sentai shows into the smash-hit “Power Rangers” series, starting in 1993. Also, the Toei Kyoto Studio Park, which give visitors a behind-thescenes look at TV and film production, opens for business.

1997

In 1968, “Red Peony Gambler” kicked off a popular series of pics.

The “Sailor Moon” anime TV show, with its girl power theme, becomes a hit and generates a ﬁve-season series that is widely distributed abroad.

Toei Hero World Namco Action Museum opens in Aeon Mall, Makuhari Shintoshin.

2021 Toei announces a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first “Kamen Rider” series. The crown jewel is “Shin Kamen Rider,” a live -action movie directed by Anno Hideaki, slated for a 2023 release.

Toei Company

1951

fines the genre with its focus on the down-and-dirty realities of modern-day yakuza life.

96 ● FOCUS ● MEDIA PROGRAM 30TH ANNIVERSARY

06.30.2021

Media Program Boosts Diversity and Reach of European Cinema European filmmakers are fortunate to have a friend in Brussels who reliably lends a hand getting their movies made and seen. For the past 30 years, the European Union’s Media program has supported ﬁlm industries across the EU in myriad ways, investing more than €2.6 billion ($3.1 billion) in programs that boost the output of new local movies and other content from development to distribution. Since 1991, the Media Program has been systematically pursu-

“Hive” received promotional push from the Media Program-backed EFP at Sundance.

ing its stated goals of promoting European cultural and linguistic diversity and pushing to increase circulation of European films within Europe and beyond. Almost every European auteur, from Pedro Almodóvar to Bosnia’s Jasmila Žbanić (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”) — whose latest works are both recent recipients — draws vital beneﬁts from the program’s unwavering support. Among the films that have received recent support from Media are Cannes competition

By Nick Vivarelli

titles “The Story of My Wife,” “Bergman Island,” “Compartment No. 6,” “Titane” and “Three Floors.” Other Media-backed titles at Cannes include “Onoda — 10,000 Nights in the Jungle,” which opens Un Certain Regard. “Our indirect long-term goal is to create the habit amongst European audiences to see non-national [European] films that do not necessarily have to be supported by us,” says Media chief Lucía Recalde, who adds that cross-border circulation of

these pics has been increasing signiﬁcantly. Since its outset, the Pro gram has offered two specific schemes to boost distribution: the Media Automatic Support, a grant to distributors for European films when they play outside their countries of origin, based on a percentage of their box ofﬁce performance; and the Media Selective, which supports groups of at least seven European distributors from different countries who acquire the same

Alexander Bloom/Zeitgeist Films

From Almodóvar to Žbanić, the biz benefits from pan-continental initiatives

Gutter Credit Cinéart

XX 0 6 . 3X 0X . 2 0 2 1

film, thus giving the pic a de facto pan-continental release. “Media is simply the most important fund that exists for us as a sales agent, and also for our distributors,” says Jenny Walendy, head of legal and business affairs at German sales powerhouse the Match Factory. Walendy points out that the automatic support scheme, in which Media provides distributors a grant to invest in a minimum guarantee to buy a new European film only if their previous movie made money at the box office, works well because you are being rewarded “for doing a good job.” The selective scheme, in which a group of distributors can get funding for up to 50% of their print and advertising expenses for the pan-European launch of a European pic, is “a really nice program to encourage closer collaboration among [European] distributors, but also between distributors and sales agents.” “One thing I’m sure about is that Media is extremely important when I’m making my decision to buy a film,” says veteran French distributor Eric Lagesse, president of Pyramide Distribution. “When the sales agent tells you: ‘There are already 12 distributors and we might get the selective Media support,’ that makes a big difference.” But he’s less enthusiastic about the increasingly “complicated” paperwork needed to get that grant, especially during the pandemic. Indeed, “during the pandemic, access to [Media] cash flow stopped,” says Christine Eloy, managing director of Europa Distribution, which represents more than 100 indie distributors across the E.U. Eloy points out that “in general, Media is not equipped to offer a very immediate and direct answer” to calls for help because its rules are bound by a stiff legal framework, but that “it still provides a very important safety net.” Media’s greatest accomplishment, according to European Film Academy president Matthijs Wouter Knol, is that it has enabled filmmakers and the

VARIETY ● 97

industries in individual E.U. countries “to start thinking on a European level when it comes to projects and say: ‘This is a great idea! How can we make it work for the rest of Europe as well?,’” while giving them the tools to team up with the most congenial pan-European partners to get it on the screen. Knol has been involved with Media in many ways during his more than two decades in the industry. First as a ﬁlm producer, tapping into its funding; then as head of the Media-supported Berlinale Talents program, which nurtures emerging global filmmakers; as chief of Berlin’s European Film Market that, though not ﬁnancially backed by Media, is strongly supported by all the events it organizes there; and finally as chief of the program-supported European Film Academy, which runs Europe’s rough equivalent of the Oscars. He points out its “whole fine maze of training programs” that “have really professionalized the industry in Europe.” “They’ve shown up everywhere in parts of Europe that were not on the map, setting up programs and

Oscar-nominee “Quo Vadis, Aida?” drew on Media-backed programs.

adapting to how the market is evolving,” Knol adds. “Our support goes in a more than proportional way to content and film professionals from smaller countries; this is how we are broadening their participation in the market,” Recalde says. “Content from smaller countries, in lesser-used languages,” clearly has a tougher time breaking out internationally. Besides being born with the idea of creating strong pan-European collaborations, and raising the profile of countries that had lower production capabilities, Media’s goal from the outset has also been to “foster real European co-productions; not just purely financial ones,” says Lucia Milazzotto, director of Rome’s MIA market for international TV series, films and docs. It was launched in 2015, with support in part from Media, and has become a cornerstone of pan-European cross-pollination. Another key area of the Program’s support is promotion of the continent’s works and talents through European Film Promotion, the umbrella entity that, besides its Shooting Stars initia-

tive for talents, sets up stands for sales agents at events including the Toronto Film Festival, the Asian Film Market in Busan and Hong Kong’s FilMart. “We try to help improve circulation of European films by working on a business-to-business basis,” says EFP managing director Sonja Heinen. E.U. sales companies can apply for 50% support on their spend for film promotion campaigns at international festivals. “We think: ‘What can we do for the films?’” At this year’s Sundance, which took place virtually, EFP organized a dedicated session with 10 invited U.S. buyers to plug six European pics at the fest, including “Hive,” the female empowerment drama from Kosovo by first-time director Blerta Basholli. “Hive,” which ended up winning three major Sundance awards, has since been sold by Danish sales company LevelK for theatrical distribution pretty much around the world, including North America, the U.K., China, Australia and New Zealand, besides having secured releases in a large swathe of continental Europe.

100 ● FOCUS ● MEDIA PROGRAM 30TH ANNIVERSARY

06.30.2021

Media Program budget gets a boost, with sharper focus on digital

Lucía Recalde leads the pumped-up Media Program, with an eye on innovation.

In May, the European Parliament voted to almost double the European Union’s entire Creative Europe program up to €2.4 billion ($2.9 billion) over the next five years. It also earmarked $1.69 billion for its Media strand, which will continue to stimulate and nurture Europe’s film, TV and video games industry as it contends with the many challenges of a rapidly changing market. “The final decision on the budget was taken in the midst of the COVID crisis, which so dramatically affected the financial situation of the audiovisual sector,” says Media chief Lucía Recalde. The increase is also partly “to assist” the European industry in its recovery. The new program

will be “more of an evolution than a revolution,” she says. Media’s new mandate will strike a balance between recovery and transformation and push boundaries by promoting industry initiatives that contribute to achieving key E.U. goals, such as its ecological Green Deal action plan, as well as inclusiveness and gender balance. But it will also “encourage even more cooperation between [pan-European] organizations and across the value chain,” to support co-productions and networking, Recalde says. In particular, Media is keen to spawn more projects from co-development deals between different European territories.

By Nick Vivarelli Though details of most of the new grants haven’t been finalized yet, in June, Media launched its first calls for funding proposals. Grants for European co-development projects and to develop co-production slates were on the top of the list, which also comprised grants to support pan-European VOD platforms that can help boost digital cross-border circulation of E.U. content. Media is “really aiming to reach a different audience when it comes to circulation of European works,” says European Film Academy president Matthijs Wouter Knol. It is now targeting people who don’t have access to cinemas or to platforms that specifically show European works. Furthermore, execs would like to ensure that people from underrepresented groups have access to Media money, which “hopefully in the next 10 years will lead to better distribution and better accessibility to the means to make European works for more people.” The three key words that crop up in initial statements and documents about Media’s 2021-’27 mandate are “diversity,” “development” and “digital.” “They’ve been supporting digital initiatives in many ways,” says

Media new mandate will encourage even more cooperation between [pan-European] organizations and across the value chain.” — Lucía Recalde

Anna Kaduk

Looking Forward to Program’s Future

sales agent Jenny Walendy of Germany’s the Match Factory. For distributors, this means new incentives for films to be released by streamers if they can’t go out theatrically and also more support for digital promotion, including virtual market platforms that, after mushrooming during the pandemic, are now gaining ground. Though Media is pushing digital, Walendy doesn’t sense “an immediate change in what they are demanding from us in terms of how we release films.” There is no threat to support of theatrical, for which “they’ve just started to focus on promotion, which I think is exactly the thing to do.” For its 30th anniversary, Media is launching a social media campaign that aims to “spread the word to Gen Z and millennials that the E.U. is behind the content they love,” according to an internal document. The campaign will also encourage the industry to “embrace collaboration, innovation and technology” as well as ecology and inclusion. As for more specific innovations, the Media Program “will put more emphasis on helping organizations that want to scale up,” Recalde says, “because we have to fight some excessive fragmentation [too many companies are too small to compete] and reap the benefits of scale that the common market is offering.” In the same spirit of scaling up, Recalde adds that Media is also developing more schemes to support private investment in the European market, and will soon launch an equity investment platform called MediaInvest “where European and private funds can be blended.”

XX 0 6 . 3X 0X . 2 0 2 1

Kering Opens Screen Doors

Gutter Credit

Women in Motion events are back in full force at Cannes In 2015, Kering, a partner of the Cannes Film Festival, launched the Women in Motion Program to highlight female contributions in cinema. More than a celebration, the program works to advance gender equality throughout the industry. “The cinema is the most inﬂuential way to touch people,” Kering chief communications and image ofﬁcer Valerie Duport tells Variety. “When we started Cannes, it was a huge opportunity to push the visibility and to use this fantastic leverage, which is the cinema. I think as a

luxury group, one of our key roles is really to give visibility to conversations which can make the change.” Kering’s platforming of women in ﬁlm is a larger reﬂection of the company’s commitment to them. Looking at the Cannes Film Festival’s past 71 editions, just 82 women in total were selected for awards, in comparison to over 1,600 men. It mirrors a larger issue in the industry, in line with the fact that only two women have ever won the Academy Award for director in its 93 years.

By Haley Bosselman “It gives the impression that a woman, because she’s a woman, she’s less an artist than a man,” Duport says. “I cannot believe that, nobody can believe that. So we have to evolve. We have to wait to give a voice to this conversation and I think it’s really one of our jobs.” Women in Motion fosters safe, stable spaces for newcomers to be ambitious in ﬁlm and for industry veterans to reﬂect upon their careers. The program regularly organizes talks, many of which take place at the fest, that feature

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis with their Kering Women in Motion Awards at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

entertainment leaders including Jodie Foster, Geena Davis, Salma Hayek-Pinault and Emilia Clarke. It also presents annual awards, one of which recognizes the careers and commitment of leading women in cinema, such as Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Patty Jenkins. Paving the way for a more equal industry also requires nurturing new talent, as Women in Motion does with its Young Talent Award. The prize is given to a promising female director, who is chosen by the award’s previous winner, and includes a €50,000 ($59,000) prize. “I think what is extremely important is to give the right visibility to women, like we do with the Young Talent Award,” Duport says. “When you give visibility to a conversation, when you give viability to a young director, you open the door to a new [opportunity].” Despite the cancellation of Cannes in 2020, the festival and Kering forged ahead with granting Maura Delpero with the Young Talent Award. The Italian filmmaker debuted “Maternal,” her first full-length fiction film about an Argentinean refuge for adolescent mothers run by nuns. The 2021 Young Talent Award is set to be given to Australian film director Shannon Murphy, who made her feature film debut in 2019 with “Babyteeth.” “It gave me a little more sense of peace, ‘OK I have time,’ ” Delpero says of winning. “I’m happy the awards exist because they make people talk about that there are minorities in cinema, and not just women.” When Delpero reflects on what it means to be an award recipient, she describes such filmmakers as courageous, watchful and determined. She knows this kind of recognition is important because it serves as a catalyst for people to talk about the larger inequality issue in the film industry. “Cinema reflects the world but also generates the world because what we see in cinema can influence society,” Delpero says. “Until now, cinema has not reflected the reaches of the world. … We have a duty to try to solve it.”

Venturelli/Getty Images

W O M E N I N M O T I O N ●V AFROICEUT SY ● 1 0 1

102 ● F O C U S ● T H E B I G R E STA RT

06.30.2021

Luxury Pivots Post-Pandemic

When it comes to travelling in style to location shoots or even a getaway after a shoot, the current demand is for private everything. Many are not yet completely comfortable with sharing space with their fellow travelers who may or may not be vaccinated. Distanced outdoor dining, upscale private hotel gyms and sequestered hotel stays are a few of the ways hospitality businesses are adapting to the pandemic’s ongoing challenges and guest preferences. Restaurants, hotels, wineries and other venues reworked their conﬁnes over the past year, with the intent of keeping guests separated, satisfied and ultimately healthy. Those in production bubbles have extra in-

centive for cloistered socializing. Variety runs down possibilities for getting out and keeping apart. Restaurant-Style In-Room Dining

Malibu Beach Inn, Malibu

The Marley in Palm Springs offers secluded accommodations for groups of up to 22 people.

There’s no question guests will have the best view and table in the house for dinner on their own private oceanfront terrace at the Malibu Beach Inn. The 47-room Carbon Beach property offers an ultra-custom, private dining experience, starting with mixologist-made cocktails and a fourcourse tasting menu tailored to guests’ preferences and paired thoughtfully with select wines. The meal is served restaurant-

style, en-suite with no other guests nearby or in sight. Reservations requested 72 hours in advance. malibubeachinn.com Workout En-Suite

Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, Los Angeles The Private Fitness Suite at the Fou r Season Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills features healthminded extras — a specialized air filtration system, shower head with water purifier and hyper-allergenic hardwood floors — that attract hotel guests who appreciate the option of working out behind closed doors. One to three people in the same party can make

By Kathy A. McDonald use of the fitness suite’s sanitized gear plus state-of-the-art Peloton bike and spiffy Hydrow rowing machine. The room is available in two-hour intervals exclusively to hotel guests. The fitness suite complements the hotel’s fourth floor wellness rooms and suites launched in June. fourseasons.com/losangeles In-Town Hideaway

Palihouse Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Downtown Santa Barbara’s mellow vibe is exemplified at this 24-room recently opened boutique hotel, which blends seamlessly into the seaside city’s low-rise Spanish revival architecture. Book the large El Apartmento for all the comforts of an apartment-sized, in-town sophisticated retreat (terrace, sunken tub and ﬁreplace included plus a fully stocked bar). There’s no need to venture out although the hotel’s Linus bikes are at the ready. The secluded Club Room, tucked away in a leafy corner of the property, opens to the outdoors and Santa Barbara’s ideal weather. Its hidden location allows for separated socializing and meetings. palisociety.com Escape to an Offshore Wine Tasting

Folded Hills, Gaviota Most know the Folded Hills Winery Ranch Farmstead for its oak tree-dotted outdoor wine-tasting patio overlooking the Santa Ynez Valley. But for those who want to go farther out, the winery has a private onboard tasting on a 50-foot Catalina sailboat. A group of four can set sail from Santa Bar-

Courtesy Marley in Palm Springs

Hotels and restaurants adapt to private everything for travelers and production crew alike

VARIETY ● 103

XX 0 6 . 3X 0X . 2 0 2 1

bara’s harbor along with a wine steward for an offshore reserve tasting and relaxing journey along the coast. Folded Hills Winery’s organic vineyards occupy15 acres of the 600-acre estate; visitors can book a back-country ranch tour where they can meet exotic animals including Zazu the zebra, a spirited camel and regal Clydesdales. The winery’s farm stand in a historic barn vends organic vegetables and local goods. foldedhills.com Boutique Hotel Just for Groups

The Marley, Palm Springs

Gutter Credit Malibu Beach Inn: Courtesy Malibu Beach Inn; Folded Hills Winery: Courtesy Folded Hills Winery

The Marley in Palm Springs’ Warm Sands neighborhood is a privatized, gated and colorful alternative for groups of 10 to 22 people. Owners Jessica and Tim Spry completely transformed the former roadside motel into a fashion-forward stay with playful decor, large pool and catering kitchen. The Marley is open to only one group at a time: guests can upgrade their visit via a menu of add-on services from cabana attendants to a bartender or private chef. “No one can see you or get in,” says Jessica Spry. Nearby sister property Hotel El Cid is geared to groups only too. marleypalmsprings.com Epicurean Boxed Lunches

The Pontchartrain Hotel, New Orleans Chef Brian Landry of the 1927-built Pontchartrain Hotel says, “You have to seize the opportunities in front of you.” To meet requests for sequestered experiences, Landry has cooked off site, executing a full-on restaurant experience in private homes. Production crews applaud his customized NOLAthemed box lunches delivered to sets: individually prepared, each box features NOLA brands such as Zapps potato chips, Barq’s classic root beer, beignets and po’boys, Louisiana’s signature French bread sandwiches. Crews and talent are known to kick back at the hotel’s Hot Tin Rooftop Bar named as homage to play-

wright Tennessee Williams, once a frequent guest. thepontchartrainhotel.com

Bubble Experiences

Kimpton Angler’s Hotel, Miami Beach, Fla. Need a poolside meeting space that suits socially distant and hybrid events? South Beach’s Kimpton Angler’s Hotel has private entrances for its poolside bungalow and villa and ample space for private bubble indoor/ outdoor events next the hotel’s Mermaid pool where Miami Swim Week events are upcoming in July. The property is blocks from the beach and set apart from the wild party crowd. Fresh Florida seafood is the specialty at the hotel’s Art Deco-styled Seawell Fish N’ Oyster. anglershotelmiami.com

R&R in Lakeside Luxury

The private dining experience at the Malibu Beach Inn means luxury as well as safety.

The Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee, Greensboro, Ga.

Ritz’s Lake House and nearby private cottages come with a dedicated cottage concierge to arrange in-house activities from movie nights (on a 72-inch flat screen TV) to a chef-prepared Southern-style breakfast or a select bourbon tasting. The drive from Atlanta is 90 minutes to the sporty and upmarket lakeside resort, located approximately 90 miles east of southwest Atlanta (home to Tyler Perry Studios). ritzcarlton.com

At the Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee, up to eight guests can check into their own fourbedroom lakefront home at the recently renovated Lake House complete with chef ’s kitchen, wrap-around deck and private pool. On property are five golf courses providing 99 holes of physically distanced play. The

Private Wine Tastings in Designer-Outfitted Tent

Macari Vineyards, Mattituck, N.Y.

Folded Hills Winery gives patrons the chance to experience its wines on a yacht.

The intrepid winemakers of Macari Vineyards out on the North Fork of Long Island added a unique tasting room last fall. Groups of up to six can book one of the cool climate winery’s recently installed all-season Bergen Road Bungalows for a private catered lunch and wine tasting. The cozily decorated and fully heated platform tents are outfitted with vintage and contemporary furniture plus accessories (all for sale) including

records and board games. A selection of Macari’s wines (such as the estate grown Chardonnay and crowdpleasing Dos Aguas Red) is paired with artful cheese and charcuterie boards. Tastings are by appointment only. macariwines.com Retreat in Royal Style

The Milestone Hotel & Residences, London Stay adjacent to royalty at central London’s Milestone Hotel & Residences across from Kensington Palace, the official residence of William and Kate. The hotel’s six stand-alone, two- and threebedroom residences are fittingly sophisticated and decorated in muted tones and plush finishes. There are views toward the historic palace and grounds. Each residence has 24/7 butler service and a private entrance, making it possible to never mingle with other hotel guests while still enjoying the hotel’s room service and plentiful amenities. A residence’s full kitchen can be stocked per request before arrival. milestonehotel.com

104 ● F O C U S ● T H E B I G R E STA RT

Obscure Old World Charm Angoulême gets a big boost with Wes Anderson’s Cannes pic ‘The French Dispatch’ Dotted by hilltop views and an historic city center, France’s southwestern city of Angoulême had certainly played host to a handful of live-action shoots in recent years. But for the most part, the commune, just under 50,000 strong, had made its name as the country’s cartoonist capital, the place where Gallic scribblers go to burnish their reputation at the Intl. Comics Festival — the second largest in Europe — and maybe stuck around to work at one the three dozen animation or post-productions studios. So it goes without saying that nothing quite prepared the locals for when, in late 2018, Hollywood came knocking.

“The French Dispatch” excited the residents of Angoulême, spurring some locals to create more production infrastructure.

Earlier that year, Wes Anderson looked toward a number of options when prepping the Cannes-debuting “The French Dispatch,” set in 1950s Paris and in the suitably tongue-in-cheek (and, as goes without saying, entirely fictional) commune of Ennui-sur-Blasé. Anderson nixed Nice and, for a time, considered Albi, but once Anderson’s eyes ﬁxed and heart warmed on Angoulême’s Old World architecture, he promptly sent a crew the likes of which few locals had ever seen into the southwest town. With an estimated budget of $25 million, and a cast that mixed regular stalwarts Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray with

By Ben Croll

Anderson newcomers Timothée Chalamet, Benicio Del Toro and Kate Winslet, “The French Dispatch” marked the largest-scale Hollywood shoot to hit the area since Steven Spielberg lensedscenes from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the nearby La Rochelle in the early 1980s . And even then, Spielberg and crew only stayed for four days. Anderson and crew, however, stuck around a lot longer, descending on the hillside city in November 2018 to kick off a sixmonth shoot that swept many locals right into the fray. “Everyone mobilized to host this exceptional project,” says David Beauvallet, director of communications at the city’s audio-visual

development body, Magelis. “The production recruited 80 local technicians (out of a crew of 200) and repurposed a local high school for its canteen.” The shoot became the talk of the town; while businesses kicked in supplies and locals came to gawk, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region (where Angoulême is located) offered a €150,000 ($167,000) production grant. In all 2,500 residents auditioned as extras — with just under a third of them even making it into the film. “Angoulême was able to welcome a production of such international scope because for 20 years we have created and maintained a high level of activity in the field, and thus had a substantial pool of local technicians and seasoned extras [to provide],” Beauvallet says. Though the city does not have any productions of commensurate scale planned for the near future, it does hope to capitalize on its unprecedented exposure once “The French Dispatch” launches out of Cannes. In the intervening years since the shoot, two local businessmen have taken a former factory that was repurposed as a soundstage and plan to develop it into a permanent production facility. And staying true to form, 12 local cartoonists have co-authored an omnibus book, called “Wes in Town,” detailing their experiences on the shoot, which is due for release just in time for Cannes. Meanwhile, Beauvallet hopes that the film might dispel certain misconceptions for Americans coming to shoot in France. “Big international productions tend to shoot in Paris,” he says. “They want the street scenes, the Eiffel Tower in the background, and they think it will be easier in terms of logistics, while shooting in [other parts of France] tends to worry them more. “We showed that a small town in France could host a production of such scale because we have an ecosystem already in place. We had all the technicians, production staff, and casting heads right here. And it worked out great.”

Searchlight Pictures

06.30.2021

T H E B I G R E STA RT ● F O C U S ● 105

All in This Together

Comedy Central

New York City productions navigate roadblocks to stage a strong comeback As an increasingly vaccinated New York lifts virtually all of its COVID-19 restrictions, there’s a turf war brewing between New York City productions and restaurants, with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment caught in the crossfire. Just ask Awkwafina. “The most challenging — but thrilling — part of filming in New York, both pre- and post-pandemic, is that you really have no idea what will happen at any given time, or who will be very pissed off that you’re shooting on their block,” jokes the star and exec producer of Comedy Central/HBO Max’s “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens,” now filming its second season. Without a doubt, NYC production has been on a rollercoaster ride. It was at an all-time high just before the pandemic, generating more than $60 billion in direct economic activity and $3 billion in tax revenue for the city. Yet the number of productions shooting on the ground in May 2019 — 306 — dropped to zero a year later, making last month’s count of 179 projects a promising turnaround. Every film and TV professional Variety interviewed wants local businesses to have a similar rebound. “There is a somber acceptance of reality, and realizing how different it was before,” Awkwafina notes. But as many COVID-19 regulations were recently lifted, allowing for larger location crews, there’s been contention around some rules, as well as NYC’s Open Restaurants and Open Streets programs. In the former, more than 11,000 eateries have built some 6,000 outdoor eating sheds, many of them immovable and placed

in traffic lanes where trailers and cameras could once sit in sought-after neighborhoods. And in the latter, access to more than 350 streets has been entirely blocked. Fortunately, soundstages including Steiner Studios and Silvercup Studios are providing much-needed alternatives, and productions

Lori Tan Chinn, left, and Awkwafina on location for “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens.”

By Gregg Goldstein

are finding creative solutions that can benefit local businesses. For now, though, there are headaches. Sharon Lomofsky, production designer on the Focus Features drama “A Thousand and One,” is having difficulties re-creating the ’90s-era Lower East Side before her film’s July 12 start. “We’re unable to clear both

sides of the street, so we can’t put period cars on them,” she says. “Then the next street over is great, but it’s full of outdoor restaurants. They’re just in the way everywhere — which I like for real life, but not for ﬁlming.” She may camouﬂage some with graffiti-sprayed trucks or construction boards. “What’s most challenging for stunt shows is that we’re only allowed to hold one side of the street,” echoes “Law & Order: Organized Crime” location manager Dennis Voskov. “If I’m doing a car crash into another car, having a bunch of real cars in the street is a problem,” he laughs. But the show has “embraced outdoor dining,” replacing one indoor restaurant scene with it.

106 ● F O C U S ● T H E B I G R E STA RT

Some things are getting better for productions. Gilbert has seen big improvements since the 50% occupancy and oversized vehicle limit rules, which forced “Maisel” to shift to bigger soundstages, recently expired. “At small comedy clubs with a capacity of 100 people, we couldn’t even get our crew inside, let alone any actors,” she recalls. “Now that people can operate at 100% of occupancy, we can use locations as locations, and we’re allowed to stage equipment on the sidewalk again.” She’s found neighborhoods that are adaptable. “In Chinatown, they were amazing — they put eating sheds on wheels! We could roll them away and transform it into 1959.” Her show also made a deal with the mid-20th century West Village diner La Bonbonniere to move and replace its wood cabana. “If we had a particular difficult location,” Gilbert adds, “we would build it” at Steiner Studios, where owner Doug Steiner has 780,000 square-feet on 50 acres in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, she adds. He has a nearly two-acre outdoor lot enclosed by shipping containers where he’s planning a studio backlot with “quintessential NYC buildings and false-front neighborhoods.” And a nearby area called the Annex, boasting a WWI military hospital and other historic buildings, will be fully restored for production offices, post-production, and various support spaces. The buildings have been used as a backlot, and this will resume when their restoration is finished this fall. “At full build-out,

In Chinatown, they were amazing — they put eating sheds on wheels! We could roll them away and transform it into 1959.” — Dhana Gilbert

Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” makes the most out of classic New York City locations.

[the studios] will be 1.6 million square-feet,” Steiner says, with a new Sunset Park facility he hopes to finish in three to four years. Shows looking for an outdoor backlot can now find it at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, which recently opened two new soundstages. And Robert De Niro’s in-the-works Wildflower Studios is expected to be built in Queens by 2023. While one might assume that some shows fled New York City for less-congested areas, Queensbased Silvercup Studios co-owner Alan Suna says, “only one [of ours] considered leaving New York for a more exurban location last year. But when they evaluated everything — facilities, crew, where the talent lives — they decided to stay put.” Another factor that’s led productions to keep seeking nearby locations — versus, say, less-congested spots in Staten Island or

the Bronx — is their proximity to soundstages and the need to minimize costly travel time, del Castillo notes. Shows have long fought angry residents whose complaints have sometimes turned certain areas into “hot spots” blocked from filming. But Suna, who rents equipment for location shoots, sees this improving. “My guess, at least for the near future, is that people are going to be far more tolerant when they see production happening,” he says. “During this pandemic, people were watching a lot more television, so there’s a greater appreciation for the jobs these shows have created.” And, just maybe, a greater tolerance for the circus-like environment that shoots can bring. “One thing all New Yorkers have in common,” Awkwafina points out, “is a total disillusionment to the craziest things.”

Amazon Studios

Production manager Dhana Gilbert, who wraps Season 4 of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in July, says she “hopes the Mayor’s Office adjusts some of their rules. Open Streets closes streets [to us] seven days a week, but if restaurants are only seating outside on a Saturday or Sunday, we should ﬁgure out a way to work on them Monday through Friday. And we should get back to being able to park on two sides of the street right now. It will keep our footprint smaller and have [less] of an impact on a neighborhood.” But even with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s June 15 lifting of most COVID-19 regulations, NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment commissioner Anne del Castillo — who’s managing the city’s production comeback and issuing weekly updates online — is keeping this balancing act steady for the time being. “I don’t think our directive for production is going to change very much while the city settles into this new world order of open spaces,” she says. “Some people have asked about [using both sides of streets], but productions have largely been able to work around that. It’s something that we’re watching. We’re keeping it in place now because there’s a lot of street activity, and we want to give both productions and communities a level of predictability, and strike a balance so both industries can thrive [along with Open Culture live performances]. I don’t think it’s helpful to keep changing directives until we have a sense of how these programs are all playing together.”

06.30.2021

112 ● F O C U S ● VA R I E T Y S P O RTS A N D E N T E RTA I N M E N T S U M M I T

Women in Sports in Spotlight Variety’s virtual Sports and Entertainment Summit looks at key aspects of the business of athletics Despite the drop in viewership for live sports during the pandemic year, sports still remains the best way to get audiences to gather round the TV. Advertisers love sports. Prices for rights are on the rise. Variety’s Sports and Entertainment Summit, presented virtually July 14, gathers top professionals in the business to discuss the multifaceted industry. A focus will be on women’s sports and storytelling in sports. As the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics get set to kick off July 23, female athletes will grab the spotlight, with gymnast Simone Biles the most visible, while swimmer Katie Ledecky looks to continue her gold medal streak, and the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, basketball squad and track

By Carole Horst

Simone Biles shows off her championship form during the 2021 U.S. Gymnastics Championships in June.

and field stars will excite fans. Indeed, the summit features a conversation with Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, NBC Olympics Production. NBC has turned sports storytelling and the stories of the Olympic athletes into crowd-pleasing high art. Haley Rosen, CEO of Just Women Sports, will speak alongside Paul Martin, executive producer of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” and Greg Whiteley, exec producer, “Last Chance U,” on the Visionaries in Sports Storytelling panel. Rosen says she started her site, which includes news, podcasts and viewer guides, to ﬁll a need that wasn’t met out there. She played soccer at Stanford, and transitioned to a pro career that was cut short because of injuries.

Rosen was frustrated in the lack of coverage of women’s sports. Rosen points out that some 50% of athletes are female, and professional women’s soccer and basketball leagues are strongly gaining in popularity. “We have the website, we have a newsletter, we have podcasts. I think that’s really important, but more than anything, women’s sports are dope” she enthuses. “We say this all the time and we are stoked. So how do we get people excited? We need to be excited. It’s an amazing product. “And something that we’re very focused on right now is world-building, knowing what the rivalries are and who’s beefing with who, and who’s in the MVP contention. That’s all part

of sports, and we miss that sometimes on the women’s side because of the lack of coverage.” Rosen notes that it’s important to tell these stories of women as humans, “who these characters are, who are the heroes” in order to build compelling stories. As Rosen and JSW work to give greater visibility to women’s sport, one of its biggest pro leagues, the WNBA, takes center court at the summit. The WNBA Super Panel will explore how its athletes navigate the rising success of their league, the growing fan base and how players are balancing their interests across basketball and elevating their individual brands. Panelists include WNBA superstars Elena Delle Donne of the Washington Mystics, Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm, sisters Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike, both of the Los Angeles Sparks. City National Bank’s Todd Burach moderates. The WNBA, celebrating its 25th season, earlier this year announced that 100 of its games will be broadcast over ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, CBS, CBS Sports Network and NBA TV; 12 games are scheduled to be streamed on Twitter, and 20 on Facebook Watch and Oculus from Facebook. For women in sports, Rosen underscores the importance of Title IX, which was passed by the federal government in 1972 and opened up all sports to girls. “I think we cannot understate the importance of Title IX — since then, we’ve seen over a thousand percent increase in participation at the high school level and over 600% increase of women playing in college and something similar to the professional level. Just literally the amount of people playing in and interested in women’s sports is higher than ever before. It’s a whole new demographic that wants women’s sports.” A keynote conversation with NBA star Carmelo Anthony launches the summit, while Religion of Sports co-founders Gotham Chopra and Michael Strahan (“Good Morning America” host and Pro Football Hall of Famer) are in a keynote conversation spotlight.

Kyle Okita/CSM/ZUMA Wire/Cal Sport Media/AP Images

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 115

ARTISANS It’s in the Details

20th Century Studios/Everett Collection

Meryl Streep, in Miranda’s arrival look at Runway, eyeballs some designs with Patricia Field on set in 2006.

On the 15th anniversary of ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ costume designers share how they built their Oscarnominated wardrobe

By Haley Bosselman

“The Devil Wears Prada” turns 15 on June 30, but like any good fashion piece, it remains timeless. Anne Hathaway plays Andy Sachs, a recent college graduate who has come to work at Runway, a high-fashion magazine overseen by haughty editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. Emily Blunt co-stars as Andy’s colleague, Emily, with Stanley Tucci as Nigel, the magazine’s art director. Costume designer Patricia Field was Oscar-nominated for assembling the film’s stunning

116 ● ARTISANS

06.30.2021

Cox: Pat and I love to shop together; we’re a really great tag team. We went to Starstruck Vintage in New York. I was looking for something really strong for his big personality because I think he was supposed to be André Leon Talley’s likeness. So I was just looking for really bold things, and I found this three-piece suit. And it didn’t need much; it just really ﬁt him. I think it was from probably the ’70s.

When Meryl enters, her ﬁrst time walking into Elias-Clark, in that fur coat … everyone starts running away from her. That was a great, assertive look for her character.” — Tracy Cox

• Andy’s transformation after

wardrobe, from its magnificent array of coats to the selection of moody sunglasses. Assistant costume designer Tracy Cox, who worked with Field on the final season of “Sex and the City,” was relatively new to the job when he joined the team. “I knew I was involved with something special because Meryl Streep was there,” Cox says. “When she came in and we had her fittings and picked out her wigs and all of that, I’m like, ‘OK, this is gonna be something really big,’ but I didn’t know [to what extent].” Field and Cox have continued to collaborate over the years; most recently they sought Black designers to elevate the outfits of Starz’s “Run the World.” Here they break down some of their favorite looks from “The Devil Wears Prada.”

• Miranda’s arrival at the Elias-Clark building, home to Runway (the opening look) Tracy Cox: When Meryl enters, her ﬁrst time walking into Elias-Clark, in that fur coat — and then the shoes were Azzedine Alaïa; they were kind of like an oxblood with a black motif — when you ﬁrst see her, everyone starts running away from her when she’s coming in through the elevators. So I really think that was a great, assertive look for her character.

• Emily’s suit during Andy’s job interview at Runway Cox: This outﬁt was three pieces. I think it was a little bolero with the strong shoulders, a tank top and a matching skirt, but really thin, elegant, ripped by Rick Owens. I think that was her signature. Rick Owens is a really good friend of Pat’s, and he sent over a bunch of stuff, so we just had free rein and that was a great piece and it just worked. • Nigel’s blue three-piece

• Andy’s John Galliano for Dior

gown at the Runway Gala Cox: We really had to get that right. There weren’t a lot of options, and we couldn’t necessarily ﬁnd her size, so we had to call the showrooms to get that, but that’s in my top 10.

plaid suit while previewing a collection with Miranda Patricia Field: Loved Stanley Tucci’s three-piece suit. He was the most fun and creative to dress as he was an art director and he was game. I felt that this was a perfect ensemble for him.

• Andy’s green vintage coat with animal-print trim (in the montage of coats) Field: Loved the green coat when Andy was coming outside of the subway. It was unique and vintage, and I received very positive reactions from the fans. Cox: My No. 1 favorite was the vintage coat that Andy wears in the coat montage. That was a vintage find from [What] Goes Around Comes Around [in Beverly Hills]. It was packed down in a box, and it had this really old smell to it, so I was concerned about having to dry clean, but we didn’t get a chance, so she ended up having to wear it like that.

Sketches: Hayden Williams/20th Century Studios (2); Hathaway: 20th Century Studios/Everett Collection

Nigel’s pep talk Field: A head-to-toe Chanel ensemble, which was one of my favorites [and] a fan favorite. Fun fact: The stark difference between the former Andy and the new Andy made me very happy as I saw the expression on her face when she stepped out on camera.

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 117

The Guy Behind the Mask

A Bright Homage to Classic Disney

By Jazz Tangcay

For art director Alan Bodner, working on animated special “Mickey the Brave!” (premiering July 16 on Disney Junior) was a chance to pay homage to “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which he grew up watching as a child. “You felt as if you were in a storybook,” Bodner reflects as he remembers the beautiful sets. The styling and whimsical feel of the series were ideas that he pointed to when it came to creating the special episode that kicks off the “Mickey Mouse Funhouse” series. The primetime special sees Mickey Mouse and his friends Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Daisy and Pluto go on an adventure to the funhouse forest to find out if dragons are good or bad. The fearlessly bold colors and fantastical world of Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland” served as an influence for “Mickey the Brave!,” but the new episode wasn’t simply a copy. “We wanted to look at what was the feeling that made those films so special in the design, so we took that and built the world,” he says. For a scene in a pie shop that bursts with color and warmth,

Fear Street: Netflix; Mickey The Brave: Disney

The skull mask for “Fear Street” gets scares with a familiar, classic look.

When “Fear Street” writer-director Leigh Janiak recruited Christopher Allen Nelson as special makeup FX designer and department head for Netflix’s trilogy based on the R.L. Stine books, she knew she had the right person to pay homage to ’90s slasher flicks such as “Scream.” Janiak’s goal was that the “skull mask” killer in the first installment, “Fear Street: 1994,” should be “iconic.” Nelson, a horror veteran and Oscar winner for “Suicide Squad,” cites classic horror films like “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween,” noting the simplicity of the masks. “I wanted this to look familiar, as if it were something you bought

from a Halloween store,” says the FX designer, who also created special makeup effects for the 2018 “Halloween” and for another Stine adaptation, “Goosebumps.” He went through numerous iterations in designing the skull mask, starting with concept art before experimenting with different shapes and sizes of skulls. “I realized the more complicated I tried to make it, the further away I got from the point.” As he worked, he also had to consider the actor — making sure there was room to breathe, see and emote through the latex. He created at least 15 variations for the ﬁlm. The three-part series, coming July 2, gets its “creepy and scary” feel from the combination of makeup, effects and costumes. Nelson teases, “This is more than a guy-in-a-mask movie.”

To help “Mickey the Brave!” pop, art director Alan Bodner used bold colors.

Bodner drew on the idea of being in a diner on Disney’s Main Street, U.S.A. To complete the shop’s rooftop, he ditched the standard red brick and animated a pie, with frosting on top. The idea was for the viewer to feel as if walking into the store was like “opening up this jewelry box, and the rooftop made from pie was just magical.” One sequence sees the characters atop a mountain, ﬁghting off the dragon, only to learn that the creature is not such a baddie after all. “I got the biggest charge out of the dragon squirting water from the river at Mickey,” says Bodner. While the art director didn’t have physical locations to enhance, he still had to create worlds — including a refreshing waterfall sequence. He prioritized color and emotion, considering the water as a character and making the vegetation a warm, earthy tone and the sky a baby pink so the green-blue of the water would stand out. As a tribute to Disney style, the art director kept characters like Minnie Mouse in her hallmark pink with white polka dots. The dragon was a vibrant purple that was appealing to children. “We went for that color and made him nonthreatening in his shape and curves,” Bodner says. “He’s not fearsome.”

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 119

REVIEWS The White Lotus By Caroline Framke

TV REVIEW Limited series: HBO (6 episodes; all reviewed); July 11

Mario Perez/HBO

Alexandra Daddario and Jake Lacy star as a honeymooning couple in “The White Lotus.”

Starring: Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario

The best compliment to give a Mike White series is that it’s near impossible to categorize it. As with “Enlightened,” the 2011 Laura Dern vehicle that proved ahead of its time in more ways than one, “The White Lotus” defies attempts to pin it down from the very beginning as it deftly threads the needles of several genres at once. It similarly examines the human costs of self-absorption, materialism and the double-edged sword of righteous crusading from those who don’t quite know how to help the world without making themselves the center of it. As entirely written and directed by White, “The White Lotus” seems to conclude that any character not battling an existential crisis is painfully oblivious — or at least not nearly as interesting as they might be, given an ounce more introspection.

If forced to classify “The White Lotus,” I’d say that HBO’s new limited series is largely a comedy with dramatic elements. When I asked my fellow chief TV critic Daniel D’Addario, he contended the opposite in part because of each episode’s hourlong runtime. Either way, we agree that “The White Lotus” is a fascinating trick of light that bends its interlocking stories with the kind of impressive dexterity we’ve come to expect from White. By the time you get used to this show’s rhythms, it’s already shifted into something else entirely. Filmed in a production bubble in Maui during the pandemic, the series unfolds over a single week at a Hawaiian luxury resort where rich guests expect nothing but the best and employees — like Natasha Rothwell’s heartbreakingly patient spa manager Belinda — steel themselves for the worst. Despite the gorgeous vistas and glistening seas surrounding The White Lotus hotel, an anxious claustrophobia quickly sets in. To the tune of Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s unsettling score, White’s swooping camera frequently plunges in and out of the crashing ocean to settle on someone slowly splintering under the pressure of keeping themselves together. In these moments, it’s hard not to feel a swell of seasick sympathy, disgust or dread for what’s yet to come. It would admittedly be easy for “The White Lotus” to become a hyperbolic farce given its opening sequence, which teases an untimely death before flashing back a week to simpler times. This

06.30.2021

in medias res framework, which has become a storytelling crutch for too many shows in recent memory, introduces an overdone dramatic-irony effect that ultimately isn’t needed. As its characters circle the collective emotional drain, however, the show builds an undeniably hypnotizing whodunit with no ready conclusions. There’s the requisite honeymooning couple, featuring a preppy husband (Jake Lacy) who throws a ﬁt when anything doesn’t go his way while his beautiful new wife (Alexandra Daddario) quietly wonders if she made a huge mistake. Both are well cast, but Lacy transforming himself from a go-to nice guy into something more belligerently clueless leaves a more lasting impression with a perfectly bitter aftertaste. Elsewhere in the hotel is a vacationing family headed up by a wellness company CEO (Connie Britton) and her insecure husband (a very game Steve Zahn). Their lonely son (Fred Hechinger) avoids the wrath of his terrifying older sister (Sydney Sweeney) and her wary friend Paula (Brit-

Fred Hechinger plays the lonely son of Steve Zahn in the Mike White limited series.

tany O’Grady) by sleeping on the beach, where he wakes up every morning just a little bit more in love with it. White leans on Sweeney’s glare, both penetrating and eerily blank, to such sharp effect that O’Grady tends to get lost in it even as she ends up shouldering a more complex arc. The entire cast pulls its weight, but the show leaps into a whole other gear when centering its two smartest performances. No one on the island is as exquisitely tortured as Murray Bartlett’s spiraling hotel manager Armand and Jennifer Coolidge’s grieving guest Tanya. Their experiences couldn’t be more different; they rarely even share a scene, perhaps because the fizzing neuroses of each might swallow the other whole. And yet throughout the series, both characters teeter on the edge of total nervous breakdowns before swan-diving straight into them to drastic effect. Bartlett and Coolidge are exceptional as they embrace every twisted knot of conﬂict inherent in their roles. As Armand’s and Tanya’s behavior reaches manic heights, the perfor-

mances grounding them become ever more mesmerizing. Coolidge in particular creates some of the show’s most memorable moments by the sheer force of her charisma, and “The White Lotus” ﬁnally gives it ample room to stun the audience into awed submission. Her every scene, whether opposite Rothwell’s beacon of patience or Tanya’s own internal chaos, is viscerally compelling. Coolidge is canny as she beckons viewers with her signature breathy whisper before bursting into shocking, guttural howls of desperation. When someone calls Tanya “crazy,” Coolidge unleashes a maelstrom of pain as Tanya cries, “I know, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Most people might find Tanya ridiculous, and there’s no doubt that a lesser actor would have made her so without much thought. Coolidge, however, refuses to make her anything less than completely, painfully human. CREDITS: Executive producers: Mike White, David Bernad, Nick Hall, Mark Kamine. 60 MIN. Cast: Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Fred Hechinger, Jake Lacy, Brittany O’Grady, Natasha Rothwell, Sydney Sweeney, Steve Zahn

Mario Perez/HBO

120 ● REVIEWS

06.30.2021

VARIETY ● 121

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 By Peter Debruge

FILM REVIEW Director: Leigh Janiak Starring: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr.

Debuting July 2 and rolling out a fresh installment every Friday for three weeks, Netﬂix’s new “Fear Street” trilogy slices and dices R.L. Stine’s other book series — less popular but slightly more grown-up than the fright-meister’s best-selling “Goosebumps” franchise — into three feature-length horror movies, each one detailing a different bloodbath in small-town Shadyside. “Fear Street Part 1: 1994,” takes a page from “Stranger Things” as director Leigh Janiak appeals to audiences’ near-past nostalgia,

evoking a time when landlines and shopping malls were still a thing. The strategy supplies an intriguing retro veneer to an otherwise generic showdown between several misﬁt teens and their waking nightmares. Set two years before Wes Craven’s “Scream” clued horror fans into the genre’s most enduring clichés, “Part 1” faithfully plays by certain codes while bending others. A dense opening-credits montage samples newspaper clippings from previous decades, wherein a pattern of spirit possession and murder emerges: It seems that Shadyside — which TV reports describe as the crime-ridden sister city to upscale Sunnyvale, “one of the safest and wealthiest communities in the country” — has a history of mass murder and witch-related mischief dating back to 1666 (when “Part 3” is set). This ﬁrst movie channels vintage slasher films while serving up a

more contemporary ensemble of queer and nonwhite teens — precisely the kind of characters who typically get axed, hanged or otherwise offed early in a horror movie. After pulling a stunt that sends a car full of rival Sunnyvalers off the road, these rejects unleash a gnarly witch’s curse whereby a handful of the area’s most notorious killers reemerge to seek fresh blood. The trouble all traces back to someone named Sarah Fier, who will no doubt be properly introduced later in the trilogy. The movie’s supernatural elements operate by a sketchy kind of logic, in part because Janiak and co-writer Phil Graziadei diverge from the familiar mythology of disgruntled spirit movies. But it can be frustrating to watch the main characters — various shades of obnoxious, yet consistent in their way of overacting — kick around theories about how to appease the witch,

Maya Hawke stars in “Fear Street Part 1: 1994.”

only to see their plans go sideways time and again. “Fear Street” may look like countless horror movies that have come before, but it’s desperately trying to be original, and that may pay off in the two installments to come. Frankly, the backstory of this project seems more compelling than the plot we get on-screen: With only one previous feature under her belt, Janiak convinced the producers to let her tell her story (loosely inspired by Stine’s) across three ﬁlms. It’s all intended to tie together, although there will be plenty who see “Fear Street” as a dead end from the outset. Only time will tell. CREDITS: A Netﬂix release and presentation of a Chernin Entertainment production. Producers: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, David Ready. Executive producers: Kori Adelson, Timothy M. Bourne, Leigh Janiak. Co-producers: Doug Torres, Jeffrey Harlacker, Jeremy Platt. Director: Leigh Janiak. Screenplay: Phil Graziadei & Leigh Janiak; story: Kyle Killen, Phil Graziadei & Leigh Janiak, based upon the “Fear Street” books by R.L. Stine. Camera: Caleb Heymann. Editor: Rachel Goodlett Katz. Music: Marco Beltrami, Marcus Trumpp. Reviewed online, Los Angeles, June 23, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 106 MIN. Cast: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Julia Rehwald, Fred Hechinger, Ashley Zukerman, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Maya Hawke, Jordana Spiro, Jordyn DiNatale

NAME COMPANY

ATTENTION VOTING MEMBERS Please update your contact information to receive: • Invites to Variety's Exclusive Virtual Events • Unmatched Awards Coverage • Variety Magazine (For AMPAS Members only)

UPDATE INFO AT VARIETY.COM/AWARDSUPDATE

Netflix

or mail this form.

STREET CITY STATE

ZIP CODE

EMAIL CHECK ALL THAT APPLY AMPAS PGA

ATAS SAG-AFTRA

HFPA

BAFTA

DGA

WGA

OTHER Variety Attn: Illescas Mitchell 12444 Victory Blvd Fl 4 North Hollywood, CA 91606

Q0AAMP3

122 ● FACETIME

06.30.2021

Camille Cottin

“My character in ‘Stillwater’ … stands for her values with integrity.”

Things you didn't know about Camille Cottin:

Age: 42 --Hometown: Paris --In her genes: She’s the daughter of Gilles Cottin, a wellknown painter and illustrator. --Beauty and brains: She has the equivalent of a master’s degree in English and worked as an English schoolteacher at the start of her acting career to make ends meet.

Although she broke out playing the tough-skinned Andréa in the French show “Call My Agent!,” Camille Cottin comes off as gentle, bubbly and down-to-earth in real life. The hardworking Cottin didn’t shoot to fame; she became one of France’s hottest actors in her late 30s, after appearing in numerous stage plays, shorts and TV series over more than 15 years. Now, she is navigating between big American movies and French cinema with Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater,” which

bows at Cannes, and Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” lined up for later this year, as well as Rachel Lang’s war drama “Our Men,” the closing ﬁlm of Directors’ Fortnight. • What was your reaction when you read the “Stillwater” script and what did you think of the character you played? I read it in one go, and it was a very nice feeling because I got completely pulled in. I was on a set shooting another ﬁlm, reading the script between takes, and didn’t want

to put it down. I liked this role very much. It’s a character who has a temper that I never got to play before; that’s much closer to who I am in real life. • She’s very different from Andréa, your character in “Call My Agent!” even if they’re both strong women. Yes, my character in “Stillwater” has an inner strength because she’s a single mother, raising her daughter on her own, but she’s not harsh. She tries to juggle everything. She stands for her values with integ-

rity, but she’s not driven by conflict or anger. Up until now, I’ve played lots of characters who are a bit hard-bitten. • What was it like to star opposite Matt Damon and see him look so unrecognizable? I met him for the first time during our first reading in Marseille; he was the Matt Damon we know with his amazing blue eyes and his smile. And then once we started shooting I saw him in this Bill Baker outfit every day; the metamorphosis was stunning, but it helped me stay in my role. In this film he doesn’t say much and hardly moves. I remember when we had that scene in a restaurant, at some point he told me, “You’re so lucky you can move around and express things with your body!” • What’s up with the fifth season and TV movie of “Call My Agent!”? The announcement of a fifth season took us by surprise because it was very premature. So far what we know is happening is a TV movie that the producer, Dominique Besnehard, spoke about. The writers are working on it. • How was it to shoot with Ridley Scott on “The House of Gucci”? It was so great to meet and work with Ridley Scott and Adam Driver, who is an immense actor; Lady Gaga, who is extremely committed. The casting process happened in different stages over several months. I did two tapes and found I got the role in November on my birthday! And we shot in March and April. I play Paola Franchi [Maurizio Gucci’s girlfriend for whom he left his wife].

Eliott Bliss

By Elsa Keslassy