Weekender: Simon Cowell's Star Designers; What's Next for Amazon; 'Florida Project' Praise; ESPN's Headaches

Hello and welcome to the Weekender, the first regular Saturday edition of the Today in Entertainment newsletter. We're expanding to six days a week to offer a better mix of what's going on in Hollywood. Think of it as an intriguing, diverse selection of reads for you to enjoy during your morning coffee, afternoon at the park or cross-country flight. [The Hollywood Reporter - Today In Entertainment]( October 21, 2017 Hello and welcome to the Weekender, the first regular Saturday edition of the Today in Entertainment newsletter. We're expanding to six days a week to offer a better mix of what's going on in Hollywood. Think of it as an intriguing, diverse selection of reads for you to enjoy during your morning coffee, afternoon at the park or cross-country flight. This week: We extol the many virtues of The Florida Project, analyze what's happening with Jemele Hill at ESPN, peer into Amazon's future, and take a long look into the only design team that Simon Cowell trusts to craft his homes. Have story ideas, tips or suggestions for the Weekender? Email: newsletter@thr.com or [tweet me](. — Ray Rahman Designin' Simon The weekend read: When it came to picking interiors pros for four of his residences, from London to L.A., reality TV superproducer Simon Cowell was as choosy as he is with onscreen talent. Enter top British duo March & White, known for Saudi royal retreats and chic club makeovers, Amanda Eberstein writes in [a new feature](... As a judge on American Idol, The X Factor and now America's Got Talent, Simon Cowell, 58, is known for being both a fierce critic and a passionate champion of new talent. He brings that same perspective to home design. “If I hadn’t done TV or music, I might have done interior design,” he says. “I like it, and I’m quite good at it. So I like to work with design teams who become collaborators.” Specifically March & White, the London-based duo that Cowell enlisted to work on his residences in London and New York, along with two in Los Angeles. “They have good taste,” Cowell says of partners Elliot March and James White, both 39. “But they don’t try to push you to do what they want to do rather than what you want to do.” March and White met at Oxford in the ’90s and made a name for themselves in Europe and the Middle East creating residences, private jets and mega yachts for a client list that includes members of the Saudi royal family; their designs for London’s Devonshire Club and The Arts Club (investor Gwyneth Paltrow is planning an outpost in West Hollywood) also made a splash. The designers then transformed Cowell’s longtime Beverly Hills residence, located in the Flats and purchased from Jennifer Lopez in 2005, from a bachelor pad into a family home he shares with partner Lauren Silverman, their 3-year-old son and Silverman’s 11-year-old son from a previous marriage. The couple use Pinterest to share ideas. “We argue [about fabrics] all of the time, but then we love the same things,” like lighting and symmetry, says Cowell. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take her downstairs and go, ‘I think I know why I hate this room!’ and I’ll drive her crazy.” Staying true to the monochromatic aesthetic found in all of Cowell’s homes — not surprising for a guy who is almost always in a black or white shirt — March & White created subtle art deco-style interiors incorporating ebony lacquered woods, black and white stone, polished nickel and rubbed bronze. Custom sofas and arm - chairs offer hidden compartments for iPhone chargers or packs of Cowell’s cigarettes. They also redesigned the pool and covered the grounds in lush vegetation. “When I moved here, the house was uncomfortable and the garden looked like a desert,” Cowell says. “Now we have millions of flowers, so it smells nice and birds and insects come in.” The master bedroom is a sanctuary with plush gray carpeting and a fireplace. French doors lead to a terrace with a fire pit. “We spend a lot of time in our bed - room,” Silverman says. “Simon likes to have breakfast in bed. At night, we sit outside and have a drink, and it’s really cozy.” L.A. power dining for October. Looking for a new dining destination? Gary Baum is ready with his latest ranking of the city's hot restaurants: Say hello to The Mighty and Gesso. Manuela and Gwen have fallen off the chart. [Full map.]( Visit 'Florida' The Gotham Awards nominations have officially kicked Oscar-speculation season into high gear. But our resident award-watcher Scott Feinberg takes a step back to share his thoughts on the movie he liked best this year. Feinberg emails: As our awards columnist, my job is to observe the Oscar race and tell readers how it’s shaking out, not how I want it to shake out, which is why you’ll rarely read my personal opinions of films, as opposed to objective assessments of how they will play with the Academy. But, ultimately, I do have my own tastes as well, and there is one movie I've personally loved more than the others so far this year. It’s Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, a film starring only one person you’ve ever heard of, Willem Dafoe, in a role supporting a bunch of incredibly talented little rascals you’ve never heard of — including and especially Brooklynn Prince, who was just 6 when she played the principal role of a little girl growing up poor with her young mother in a motel near Disney World. No movie this year has made me laugh, cry or smile more than this one, which I want to watch again and again. It’s that beautiful. As far as its Oscar prospects? It’s not always easy to convince people to check out the film, but once they do they fall in love. So it’s really up to A24 to continue to screen the hell out of the film and keep the great word-of-mouth spreading. I don’t doubt them — they faced a similar challenge last year with their film Moonlight, and you may recall how that turned out. In theaters this weekend... Aaron Couch emails: There are three wide releases this weekend that aren't very good, but only one of them is properly marketed as such. There's Geostorm, the big budget Gerard Butler disaster movie that even millions spent on reshoots couldn't save. Then there's Michael Fassbender's serial killer drama The Snowman, which has become a social media curiosity after U.S. critics finally began seeing it this week and began tweeting out the most confusing parts about it and the film's director [admitted]( 10-15 percent of the script was never even shot. Both of these movies could fall into the "maybe it's so bad, it's good" territory, yet the marketing continues to play it straight — with Warner Bros.' selling Geostorm as a spectacle movie in lines of director Dean Devlin's work on Independence Day, and Universal and Working Title pegging The Snowman as something edgy and artsy, along the lines of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Why not embrace the idea that these films aren't necessarily good, but they may actually be fun to watch for all the wrong reasons? Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween knows what it is (yet another Madea movie) and is [expected to crush]( its bigger budgeted newcomers. Or perhaps this is the weekend to go back and see what the fuss was about Blade Runner 2049... + Is Geostorm so bad that it's actually OK? For John DeFore, the film is "big, dumb and boring. It finds the co-writer of Independence Day hoping to start a directing career with the same playbook — but forgetting several rules of the game. [Full review.]( + What went so wrong? [Flashback]( to Dec. 2016: "The reshoots are not just light spruce-ups. Up to $15 million is being spent, according to sources, and some notable characters are even jettisoned from the script," Borys Kit and Rebecca Ford wrote in their detailed account of the changes to the film." Film reads... ► Putting Harvey in context. On a visit to Real Time With Bill Maher, Janice Min gave a bird's-eye view of the Harvey Weinstein scandal: “I think the pattern we see is how prevalent it is, and how there are walls of secrecy around these cases of abuse everywhere, whether it’s Penn State, the Catholic Church, the White House, politics — there are always people covering up for them.” She adds, “Harvey Weinstein is just emblematic of this whole larger issue that we have not been able to solve, of women not being treated equally and not being in positions of power.” [Full story.]( ► Does the new Pixar film Coco hold up to past classics? In Michael Rechtshaffen's review, he writes that "the production ranks among Disney-Pixar's most engaging efforts." + "At every imaginative juncture, the filmmakers ... create a richly woven tapestry of comprehensively researched storytelling, fully dimensional characters, clever touches both tender and amusingly macabre, and vivid, beautifully textured visuals." [Full review.]( ► How to finish your book when Robert Downey Jr. already wants to be in the movie. After selling the megastar the rights to produce and star in Chasing Phil, the true story of a charming con man, author David Howard wrestled to complete his book accurately despite "Downey's commanding persona filling the screen inside my head." [His story.]( ► Sherry Lansing's new mission at The Broad. One of the perks of sitting on the board of an arts organization is early access to buzzworthy exhibits. The former studio chief and newly appointed board member and superfan of the museum ("it's almost like entering a cathedral") hopes "Infinity Mirrors" will continue to draw new and young audiences. [Full story.]( Also: Who got a boost from the Gotham award noms? Good Time and I, Tonya, which landed slots in the best feature category alongside the widely expected Call Me by Your Name, The Florida Project and Get Out. They also got lead acting noms for stars Robert Pattinson and Margot Robbie, respectively. [Full story.]( What's Next at Amazon Studios Despite the Roy Price controversy and a narrative of failure, there's a golden opportunity for the next Amazon Studios head — likely a woman — to build a winner, Tim Goodman writes in his [new column:]( What the streaming service has been unable to do, mainly, is get out of its own way. In the summer of 2016 I wrote about complaints creators had with being able to find their shows in the Amazon Prime Video world — it was as if every show other than Transparent was no different than some widget from the main site that could be shipped to you in two days. But that's been fixed for the most part — the user experience looks slightly improved, and Amazon Studios is no longer shy about its originals. The question it faces now is what it wants to be. Netflix is in the volume business. HBO and FX are in the prestige business. Hulu is a combination of shows you missed last night and ambitious originals. Amazon? Well, in fairness to Price and the team that's currently in place, the headlines that were generated about Bezos wanting big hits like Game of Thrones that could play internationally came from an interview Price himself gave to Variety at the beginning of September. Which means that on the programming side, Price and company were essentially following different orders up until then. Or he was making his own decisions and Amazon was living with them until two boring and not very good F. Scott Fitzgerald dramas drove Bezos insane. Late breaking in TV... ► Amazon is losing another key executive. Following a months-long negotiation, Morgan Wandell is exiting the retail giant and streamer and [heading to Apple](as part of the company's scripted push. ► Jane Lynch developing daytime talk show. Can Lynch, the Emmy-winning actress and host of Hollywood Game Night, find success in the wildly crowded daytime talk landscape? Warner Bros. [seems to think so](. ► Magnum P.I. reboot in the works at CBS. The network has handed out a sizable [pilot-production commitment]( to a reboot of the Hawaii-set Tom Selleck cop drama. The new show is being written Peter Lenkov and Eric Guggenheim, who also are behind the network's Hawaii Five-0 reboot. ► Mike Schur developing family comedy at ABC. The network has handed out a [put-pilot commitment]( for a script produced by Schur and author Shea Serrano. The untitled single-camera comedy is based on Serrano's life growing up. AMC takes swipe at Hulu in snarky Walking Dead email. "Watch everywhere except HULU," read the subject with "AMC The Walking Dead" listed as the sender. The email, pasted below, continued with a reminder of the Oct. 22 return and another reminder: "Fans can watch everywhere except Hulu." ["Except" is underlined.]( Mooch, ESPN and the Media It's been a weird week for the worlds of television and media, as loyal readers of The Scaramucci Post may know (whoever you are). A pair of former Trump staffers are trying to find their way post-White House, while ESPN is navigating choppy waters. Making sense of it all is Jeremy Barr, who emails: Ex-Trump team on media tour. Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci don't really like each other, but they have a bunch of things in common. Both achieved national fame during short stints in the White House communications shop, and both have expressed an interest in exploring extensions on television. But, when are we actually going to see them on TV? Spicer [told THR]( this week that he has nothing yet to announce on that front (he's been busy speaking for corporate and academic audiences), while The Mooch spent this week [screaming]( at a Page Six reporter and trying to explain why his semi-fake news organization, The Scaramucci Post, seems to be anti-Semitic for some reason. Asked why Scaramucci hasn't been on TV lately, his Hollywood spokesman Howard Bragman told me that "it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon." Ok, cool. Jemele Hill's suspension ends Monday. As for ESPN, the network is in a weird position right now. The Disney-owned sports behemoth has recently been in the national spotlight as Donald Trump and his spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have tried to get company brass to fire Jemele Hill, an ESPN personality that has gotten into hot water for some raw tweets about the president and his friend, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Hill is still technically on a two-week suspension for a tweet that some interpreted as an endorsement of an advertiser boycott against the Cowboys. The suspension is over on Monday, but some company-watchers are [openly saying]( that her career at the network might be over. At the same time, ESPN is getting hit for giving a show to the bro-ish gentlemen at Barstool Sports, a show that only attracted 88,000 viewers for its debut and might be sort of off-brand for the network. ESPN would probably enjoy a few weeks out of the news. Update: What's going on with Sinclair-Tribune? And, finally his week, the Federal Communications Commission announced a decision to give the public 15 more days to comment on Sinclair Broadcast Group's acquisition of television broadcaster Tribune Media. The deal has drawn a lot of opposition from groups that oppose it on public interest grounds, but also from conservative media companies that are looking at it from a competition angle. THR reached out to prominent merger opponents about the delay, and none seemed to see it as a game-changer. "I really doubt that it's going to change many minds one way or the other at the commission level," said former FCCC commissioner Michael Copps. "If I was a betting man, I would say the chances are that it's going to be approved." Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Fox-lite media company Newsmax, has been the most prominent and vocal media industry opponent of the deal. Ruddy is Donald Trump's old friend, and he recently spent a week in Washington lobbying against it in meetings with legislators and with FCC chairman Ajit Pai. "I think it's a positive development," Ruddy said, before adding that "it's too early to say whether it's a serious development." He said that Sinclair has not made much of an effort to illustrate how the deal, which would give the Maryland-based broadcaster massive market share, would benefit the public. While Copps is not bullish on chances of the deal getting killed, he said, "I think public opposition is growing to this deal. I don't think there's any question about that." Today's birthdays: Amber Rose, 34, Andrew Scott, 41, Kim Kardashian West, 37, Ken Watanabe, 58, Catherine Hardwicke, 62, Judy Sheindlin, 75. Follow The News Is this email not displaying correctly? [View it in your browser.]( ©2017 The Hollywood Reporter. 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 All rights reserved. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Preferences]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Terms of Use]( October 21, 2017