Is Movie Comedy Dead?; J.J. Abrams ‘Arms Race’; ‘MiB’ Autopsy; Jon Stewart vs. Congress; TV Actor Roundtable

What's news: J.J. Abrams is nearing a rich deal with WarnerMedia, new fall premiere dates for NBC and The CW, a look at Hollywood's new power data. Plus: What went wrong with MiB: International? THR's Comedy Actor Roundtable, a first look at the new Formosa Cafe. --Alex Weprin June 18, 2019 What's news: J.J. Abrams is nearing a rich deal with WarnerMedia, new fall premiere dates for NBC and The CW, a look at Hollywood's new power data. Plus: What went wrong with MiB: International? THR's Comedy Actor Roundtable, a first look at the new Formosa Cafe. --Alex Weprin Comedy Actor Roundtable New: Jim Carrey, Don Cheadle, Ted Danson, and Sacha Baron Cohen join Henry Winkler and Timothy Simons in an antics-filled discussion with Lacey Rose, touching on why comedy should be dangerous, and moving on from indelible roles... Q: What would you want to play, if only it were being offered? SACHA BARON COHEN: "When I was at university, I'd play this genre that was called tragicomedy, which is like Cyrano de Bergerac or even Fiddler on the Roof. The character starts off as really funny, and then in the second half, tragedy happens. And because the audience loves you and is engaged with you, they transition really quickly into being sad for you. My eyesight's not very good, and I remember playing Cyrano de Bergerac and I'd see bits of white coming up. They were tissues. People were starting to cry. It's a genre you don't see much of anymore, but something like that." JIM CARREY: "Can I coin a phrase?" COHEN: "Please." CARREY: "Calomedy. That's what I look at it as. My show, Kidding, is calomedy. It's about a calamity and it's handled with humor and levity, and pretty much that's what I do. Every trauma — and I could build a ladder to the stars with the things that have happened or the things that I've had to endure — but they've all turned into something really creative." TED DANSON: "That's true for all of us. You get to work through your life and your emotions through your art, and it's pretty cool." [The full Comedy Actor Roundtable](. ►What went wrong with Men In Black: International? Despite an initial script that showed promise, infighting between the director and producers led to conflict on the set. Ultimately, the studio tested two different cuts of the film, and the one that made it to theaters had an underwhelming U.S. debut. Borys Kit [has the full backstory](. ^The Disney-Fox deal will be felt at CineEurope this week. The now-combined company will present tomorrow, June 19, and as Alex Ritman notes, many European exhibitors are wondering what it will mean for their businesses. "What was already one of the most powerful companies in the industry just got more powerful," says an exec at a U.K. exhibitor. "Where there used to be a poker table where everyone had a roughly similar set of cards, there's a very real concern that the pack is now very much weighted in their favor." [The story](. +Warner Bros. previewed its slate at CineEurope Monday. Joker, Wonder Woman 1984, Birds of Prey and other films were featured in extended previews. [More](. Also: Universal [previewed]( a new Minions movie, Downton Abbey, and Cats. StudioCanal previewed Playmobil: The Movie, Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, and Farmageddon. [More](. Casting roundup: Debra Messing [will return]( to Broadway in Birthday Candles next Spring... Tyra Banks [will host]( and produce a docuseries called Beauty for Quibi... Here's [the cast]( for season six of ABC's Bachelor In Paradise... Elsewhere in film... --Here are [all the winners]( from last night's MTV Movie & TV Awards. --Hollywood studios were awarded $62 million, after a jury found that the streaming service VidAngel willfully infringed copyright. [More](. --A giant film and TV production center [is being built]( in Ontario, Canada. The development will span hundreds of thousands of feet, and include six sound stages. --Dee Rees [sets new movie]( with musical The Kyd’s Exquisite Follies. WarnerMedia Nears Bad Robot Deal ►WarnerMedia set to win J.J.Abrams bidding war. Abrams' Bad Robot productions is closing in on an overall deal with WarnerMedia that could be worth $500 million, one of the richest deals on record. The deal would cover TV, film, and digital content. Bad Robot currently has a film deal with Viacom's Paramount Pictures, and a TV deal with Warner Bros. Sources tell Lesley Goldberg that the process to move Bad Robot's film deal from Paramount to Warner Bros. has already begun. Netflix, Apple, Comcast, Amazon, and Sony were all said to have explored a deal with Bad Robot. [The full story](. +WarnerMedia entertainment chair Bob Greenblatt addressed the Abrams deal at the Cannes Lion festival, saying that the company was in an "arms race" to keep him. “Just because you increase the volume [of shows], you can't increase the number of really talented people in the world that can produce these shows, so when they come along as a J.J. Abrams does once in every generation, you want to hold on to them,” he said. “We hope to keep him in the family.” The[full report from Greenblatt's panel](. +The day in deals: Trevor Noah's Zero Day Productions [has tapped]( Haroon Saleem to serve as president of production... Troy Tomlinson [has been named]( chairman/CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville... LucasFilm [has named]( Michelle Rejwan senior VP of live action development and production... The Fourth Estate director Liz Garbus and her husband, Oscar-winning documentary producer Dan Cogan, [are launching]( a new production company, Story Syndicate... KKK drama Burden [has landed](at David Glasser's 101 Studios... Last night in late night... --Jon Stewart slams Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during fiery appearance on Colbert. [[Late Show](] --James Corden and "Team U.K." take on Michelle Obama and "Team U.S." in a game of dodgeball [[Late Late Show](] --Jimmy Kimmel challenges kids to throw cheese on their dad's faces for Father's Day. [[Jimmy Kimmel Live]]( ^NBC's fall season set. Much like rival CBS, NBC is opting to launch almost all of its new and returning shows in the first week of the new season, staring Sept. 23. Only The Blacklist will be held until October. [The full list of premiere dates](. +The CW also released its fall premiere dates. As usual, it will premiere its new and returning shows a few weeks after the season kicks off, with Batwoman the first new show to bow. The CW's premiere dates [are here](. Elsewhere in TV... --FX [renewed]( drama Pose for a third season, just a week after season two debuted. --Showtime has [picked up]( Kirsten Dunce's On Becoming God in Central Florida. The show, originally developed for AMC, ultimately debuted on YouTube.- -Jeremy Barr [interviews](MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell about President Trump, programming for ratings, and the first Democratic debate. --D'arcy Carden and Ken Jeong [will announce]( this year's Emmy Nominations. --Robyn Bahr [reviews]( ABC's Grand Hotel and [writes about]( "the brutal, bloodthirsty catharsis of cooking competition shows." --Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse [to fuel]( CBS-backed digital network "Dabl." Hollywood's New Data ►The entertainment business has always been about data. Big movie stars that can drive box office returns command monster deals. TV shows get canceled or renewed based on Nielsen ratings. Increasingly, however, new forms of data are beginning to drive business decisions. Consider Hulu and its upcoming drama Little Fires Everywhere from Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. [Speaking at Cannes Lion](, Washington said that it was data that sealed the deal for Hulu over other distribution options. + “Hulu was the winner for us, not only because of the passion in the room but the data indicated to us how direct our relationship could be with the audience,” Washington said during a conversation with Hulu CMO Kelly Campbell. “It indicated to us that we knew where people were going to watch me already, we knew where people were watching Reese [Witherspoon], and we knew who would be into the content we were creating." +As producers, writers, and actors weigh their creative options, streaming services and traditional studios are trying to leverage these new forms of data to convince creatives to work with them. The numbers include viewership, of course, but also reach, relevance, and detailed analysis of who their core audience is and why they will love the movies and TV shows that each service releases. That push for data is also a driver behind new direct-to-consumer offerings from Disney, WarnerMedia, and NBCUniversal. The data they gather will not only allow them to target consumers, but help convince creatives that they will be the right home for their content. ►[Obituary](: "Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress with a knack for reinvention, dies at 95." --Vanderbilt (pictured above) was remembered by her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, in an on-air tribute that ran Monday. [Watch](. --Ingrid Schmidt [writes about]( Vanderbilt's "lasting impact on American fashion." ►The comedy box office is dwindling, Stephen Galloway writes, and part of the blame falls on Netflix. "The streamer is delivering a steady diet of comedies — specials, classic series and even Eddie Murphy's comeback Dolemite Is My Name, out this fall — that have trained its audience to think small screen instead of big when looking for laughs, he writes. [The full column](. +Music biopics are on a roll lately, but Kareem Abdul-Jabaar writes that "fans of the genre — as well as the performers portrayed — are being poorly served by these entertaining but ultimately vapid confections that seem pre-fabbed to sell song downloads rather than take a deep dive into the artists' psyches. Why not do both?" [The full column](. ►First look: L.A.'s famed Formosa Cafe will reopen later this month after a two-year, $2.4 million renovation. "I'm using my memories of Formosa, plus movies like L.A. Confidential, photos and artifacts, to make it look almost exactly the same," says 1933 Group lead designer Bobby Green. [Here are the first photos](. What else we're reading... --"Marvel on Netflix: What Went Wrong?" [[NY Mag](] --"The most popular kids’ video site in the world isn’t for kids." [[Bloomberg](] --President Trump is planning to live-tweet next week's Democratic primary debate. [[WSJ](] --Keanu Reeves, Nintendo dominate E3 Twitter conversation [[THR](] --Sports Illustrated's new owner is licensing the magazine's editorial product to startup firm The Maven. [[NY Post](] On this day... June 18, 1999: Disney's animated Tarzan hit theaters. "The surface of the movie is adventure, comedy and movement--there are sequences here as exciting as the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast--but underneath is something of substance," Roger Ebert [wrote in his review](. Today's birthdays: Barbara Broccoli, 59, Blake Shelton, 43, Paul McCartney, 77 Follow The News Is this email not displaying correctly? [View it in your browser.]( ©2019 The Hollywood Reporter. 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 All rights reserved. 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