Analyzing Amazon's MGM Deal; Hollywood Sentiment Shifts on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; Anthony Ramos THR Cover

[View on web]( [New reader? Subscribe]( May 26, 2021 What's news: Amazon buying MGM, what will it mean for James Bond, MGM's theatrical strategy, Epix, and Amazon Studios? Why Discovery CEO David Zaslav is "happy" about the Amazon-MGM deal, Hollywood sentiment shifts on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The CW's new season plans. Plus: Daytime Emmy Award nominees, and Anthony Ramos' long journey to In The Heights. --Alex Weprin The Summer of Anthony Ramos ►On the cover: Anthony Ramos’ long journey to In the Heights and how he embraces the “superpower” of being a Latino actor. Hollywood is betting that the multihyphenate has the star appeal to catapult Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jon M. Chu's musical into one of the first post-pandemic hits, Rebecca Sun writes. --“Besides the regular assets of a leading man, our movie is unique in that this person had to be able to cross mediums,” says director Jon M. Chu, who compares Ramos to a multihyphenate talent on the order of a young Will Smith. “He had to be able to act through singing, and dance through dialogue. He had to rap from that genuine center of truth and bring moments as small as the flicker of an eyelid to a big number where he’s moving just as well as the best dancers in the world. And then there’s the English and Spanish on top of that. As soon as Anthony got on camera, it was very clear to me that this guy was a star for a whole generation of people.” --"But the $55 million movie adaptation of Miranda’s first Broadway musical won’t just test Ramos’ star power. It will also help gauge the industry’s health, being among the first wave of summer films to hit theaters during their post-COVID reopenings (its release was pushed from June 2020) while also part of WarnerMedia’s controversial same-day streaming debut on HBO Max. In success, the movie has a chance to become a cinematic cultural touchstone that Latinos, who over-index as moviegoers but are the most disproportionately underrepresented demographic in Hollywood, have been waiting for." --“We haven’t had a movie that feels like Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians,” says Ramos, who on the Heights set was prone to kick off each day with the rallying cry, “For the culture!” or its variants, “For la raza!” and, “For my familia!” [The cover story](. It's a Done Deal ►In a landmark mega deal, Amazon is acquiring MGM Holdings — whose storied studio boasts one of the largest film and TV libraries — in a bid to turbocharge its Prime membership offering to customers and potentially mine intellectual property of franchises such as James Bond and Rocky. --The deal values the studio at $8.45 billion. In its deal announcement, Amazon said that MGM “complements the work of Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV show programming. Amazon will help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films, and provide customers with greater access to these existing works. Through this acquisition, Amazon would empower MGM to continue to do what they do best: great storytelling.” --The acquisition, unveiled just days after AT&T announced a $43 billion plan on May 17 to spin off its WarnerMedia division, including HBO and Warner Bros., to Discovery, marks the latest major consolidation to rattle the entertainment industry. Amazon, led by CEO Andy Jassy and founder Jeff Bezos — who has pushed the tech giant further into Hollywood — recently enlisted Jeff Blackburn to rejoin the Seattle-based company as head of global media and entertainment, overseeing divisions from games to audio and video, with a June 7 start date. [The story](. +How will Amazon run MGM? Is the tech giant buying the venerable studio mostly for its vast library or does it want to supercharge the studio's production capabilities? --On the theatrical front, it’s unlikely that MGM and United Artists Releasing would change plans for their remaining 2021 theatrical releases — including James Bond pic, No Time to Die — particularly since the deal is likely to take months to close. Still, the announcement left many key questions unanswered regarding the future of how MGM movies will be released once Amazon officially owns the storied studio. Unlike rival Netflix, Amazon Studios has been supportive of the theaters, including giving many of its original movies an exclusive release in cinemas before they launch on Prime. --Also unclear for now is what Amazon will do with the premium cable network and streaming service Epix (would it be integrated into Amazon Prime Video?), and if it will continue to function as a third-party supplier to competitors with shows like The Handmaid’s Tale at rival Hulu, Vikings at Netflix, or an upcoming Vanderpump Rules spinoff at Peacock. --As the finishing touches on the Amazon-MGM deal were being negotiated May 24, MGM worldwide TV group chairman Mark Burnett posted a video to his Instagram of a helicopter dropping him on the side of a remote mountain in Iceland, before flying away. “Nothing like being dropped off and as the rotor blades fade away, you hear only the wind,” Burnett wrote. [The story](. As for the Warner-Discovery deal... +Why Discovery CEO David Zaslav is “happy” about Amazon’s MGM deal. “I don’t think Amazon got the idea for MGM from us, but we are happy about that deal,” he said. “Look at the value. It’s all about the IP,” intellectual property. Zaslav also called WarnerMedia “the greatest treasure of global IP.” [The story](. +Can Discovery-WarnerMedia get to “400 million” subscribers? Will the marriage of HBO and Warner Bros. — with reality staples like HGTV and Food Network — result in a super-service to tackle Netflix or individual offerings that could be bundled? [The story](. +Discovery-WarnerMedia’s $3 billion in cost-savings: Where will that come from? There will be layoffs in the corporate and overhead side, but the content teams are expected to remain untouched. Meanwhile, the company will look to save costs on marketing and streaming tech, and will likely cut back its real estate footprint. [More](. ►Hollywood sentiment shifts on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some in the industry are more willing to take a pro-Palestinian stand on social media, while others are privately saying "the situation is just too intense for me to speak up at the moment." --"Unlike with past hostilities in the region, this year’s conflict exposed a fissure thousands of miles away in Hollywood, where public support for Israel is shifting and a counter viewpoint is increasingly finding traction, with notables such as Viola Davis to Michael B. Jordan to Zayn Malik using their social media platforms to show solidarity with the Palestinian people." --"Yet others, like Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, a Democratic Party megadonor who was born in Egypt and grew up in Israel, are criticizing those who, he claims, 'have zero understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict' amid the showbiz sentiment shift. 'Misinformation spreads like wildfire in our digital era, and unfortunately blatantly distorted, one-sided memes, posts and images paint a completely false picture of the situation in Israel and Gaza,' Saban says to THR. 'Whether in Hollywood or elsewhere, uninformed influencers should refrain from posting inflammatory information about issues they don’t understand.'” [The story](. The CW's Plan ►The CW's fall schedule: The CW is opening up a seventh night of programming in the fall, but don’t expect to see any high-profile scripted series on Saturdays.The network, which made the surprise move to expand its primetime slate to Saturdays in 2021-22, will air a pair of reliable unscripted shows on the relatively low-traffic night: Whose Line Is It Anyway? and World’s Funniest Animals. Each will have two half-hour installments. Both weekend nights, in fact, are devoted to unscripted series, with an update of beloved Nickelodeon competition Legends of the Hidden Temple and an American version of the horror-themed British show Killer Camp filling Sundays. --Of the addition of Saturdays, The CW chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz said, “We’d have liked to have done it earlier, but were able to get it accomplished in the past few months. We felt like it’s an opportunity here to increase our linear reach and also give us more programming,” which in turn feeds the network’s digital platforms. [The schedule and story](. +Speaking of The CW: It's is getting into the holiday movie business by resurrecting a beloved title from TV’s past: The Waltons. The original movie The Waltons’ Homecoming is one of three specials the network has ordered for the fourth quarter of 2021. The others are The Scooby-Doo Reunion Special, an animated spoof of TV cast reunions, and Beebo Saves Christmas, an animated show centered on the Legends of Tomorrow character. [More](. +Pedowitz also addressed the Powerpuff Girls pilot: “The reason we do pilots is sometimes things miss,” Pedowitz said. “We believe in cast and in [writers Diablo Cody and Heather Regnier] and [executive producer Greg Berlanti] and studio Warner Bros. In this case, the pilot didn’t work. Because we see enough elements in there, we wanted to give it another shot. It may have felt a little too campy and not rooted in reality. You learn things when you test things out. We felt, ‘let’s take a step back and go back to drawing board.’ This is a powerful property, it engaged a lot of interest and we want to get it right.” [More](. +TV’s upfronts pitch for advertisers: Shift more spending to digital. Networks leaned into the idea that they aren’t in the broadcast business so much as they are in the streaming business, competing with giants like Google, Netflix and Amazon. [More](. +Chris McCumber has made his first big swing since taking over as Blumhouse TV president last year. The former USA Network and Syfy president has, following a competitive bidding war, landed the rights for Blumhouse TV to adapt The Battersea Poltergeist podcast as an ongoing scripted series. Additionally, the production company is readying a companion unscripted series called Blumhouse’s Ghost Story. [More](. +Also: Netflix is taking on Tolstoy with Anna K., its first-ever Russian original series. The new drama is a modern-day retelling of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. Svetlana Khodchenkova (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will play the titular lead. [More](. ►Daytime Emmy Awards nominees: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced the nominees for the 2021 Daytime Emmy Awards, set to air on CBS on June 25. ABC’s General Hospital scored the most nominations, with 21, followed by fellow soaps The Young and the Restless (CBS) and Days of Our Lives (NBC), which scored 11 nods each; and CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful, landing nine nods. All four of those shows are up for outstanding drama series. --Other high-profile shows scoring multiple nominations include seven-time nominees Trinkets and Julie and the Phantoms, both from Netflix and Netflix’s Dash & Lily and the syndicated Kelly Clarkson Show, which scored six nods each. [The nominees list](. ►Netflix’s High on the Hog team on tackling “the omission of Black people in American food culture.” Host Stephen Satterfield and showrunner Shoshana Guy break down their docuseries' look at how Black history transformed American food: "I certainly don't think that that impact has been adequately chronicled." [The interview](. ►How Hollywood and true-crime impacts social movements today. On the anniversary of George Floyd's murder, Rashad Robinson, president of civil-rights organization Color of Change, writes about the links between cop shows and cop killings in a guest column for THR. --"Shows like the new and rapidly beloved HBO drama, Mare of Easttown, only make it worse — wonderful performances and an enlightened script that appears to tackle rich social issues, covering over deeply problematic portrayals of policing that serve to normalize unjust practices in the real world, practices that ruin Black people’s lives. It’s just another show promoting the idea that police can and should do whatever they want, no matter who gets hurt, in service of catching the bad guys." [The guest column](. ►Film review: Lovia Gyarkye reviews Disney's Cruella, writing: "To fill [Glenn Close's] shoes — or should I say her furs — is a daunting undertaking. But it’s one Emma Stone tackles with admirable hustle and considerable charisma in Disney’s new Cruella. Stone’s task in this fitfully fun, frenzied, beautifully costumed version directed by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) is to help us understand a Cruella-in-progress — the person she was before she started kidnapping and skinning puppies." [The review](. Revolving door: Former Barack Obama White House advisor Dr. Maya Shankar [has signed]( with CAA... Pure star Charly Clive [has signed]( with Echo Lake Entertainment for representation in all areas... In other news... --John Cena on Tuesday [posted a video]( in which he apologized to fans in China after he referred to Taiwan as a country. --Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures’ horror thriller Spiral: From The Book of Saw [will launch exclusively]( on Starz on October 8, in time for Halloween, as its first U.S. pay window. --In a significant streaming push, Fox News Channel says it will put its [entire primetime opinion lineup]( on its streaming service Fox Nation. --New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro, director of Disney’s live-action Mulan, is [set to direct]( a female-driven big wave surfing drama for Charlize Theron’s Denver & Delilah banner and Netflix. --Alan Dershowitz [will be able to move to discovery]( after surviving the first round of a defamation lawsuit against CNN over its coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment. --On Tuesday, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish and chair Shari Redstone [outlined the entertainment giant’s progress]( since the mega-merger that created it — and touted the company’s streaming upside. --Samuel E. Wright, the two-time Tony-nominated actor who provided the Trinidadian-accented voice of the fun-loving Sebastian the Crab in the 1989 film The Little Mermaid, [has died](. He was 74. What else we're reading... --"In U.S. creator economy boom, big tech battles for online talent" [[Reuters]( --"Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu talks Hollywood diversity and the making of In the Heights" [[Bloomberg]( --"CNN chief says Chris Cuomo made a mistake in joining strategy talks with Andrew Cuomo" [[WSJ]( --"New York Times in talks to buy The Athletic" [[Axios]( Today's birthdays: Helena Bonham Carter, 55, Matt Stone, 50, Lauryn Hill, 46, Pam Grier, 72, Stevie Nicks, 73. This email was sent to {EMAIL} by Penske Media Corporation. Please add email@email.hollywoodreporter.com to your address book to ensure delivery to your inbox. Visit the [Preferences Center]( to update your profile and customize what email alerts and newsletters you receive. 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