What's news: Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro are passionately defending Alejandro G. Iñárritu online. CAA has hired Dasha Smith as COO. Apple renews Imperfect Women. Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all returning for Sicario 3. And Tulsa King has been renewed and is heading to NYC. — Abid Rahman
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Now It's Clear Why Amazon Didn't Want to Release 'Artificial' |
►Withering AF. Luca Guadagnino brought Artificial, his latest and by far most-topical movie, to the 64th New York Film Festival Monday evening. THR's Steven Zeitchik was there and writes that the Italian filmmaker's latest skewers OpenAI's Sam Altman and almost any of the other Big Tech oligarchs who ever aligned with him. It’s also largely accurate. The story.
—"A sneaky gut punch." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Luca Guadagnino's Artificial. A starry ensemble stars in this account of history unfolding, tracing how we arrived at the current crisis point in AI evolution. Starring Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Mark Rylance, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman and Chris O’Dowd. Written by Simon Rich. The review.
—"F***ing terrifying." After its premier at NYFF, the first reactions to Artificial hit social media and the consensus seems to be that the film is a horrifying, funny and very important feature that speaks to our increasingly fraught times. The reaction.
—"The fight is on to make sure that we are allowed to make things freely." THR's David Canfield spoke to Guadagnino and Artificial star Andrew Garfield, who speak frankly about what went into their daring film about Sam Altman and OpenAI, and what led to Neon rescuing it after Amazon decided not to release it. The interview.
—"I tried to speak to as many people as possible who know Sam." Garfield and Artificial co-star Yura Borisov also spoke to THR's Hilary Lewis at Monday's premiere about how they prepared themselves to play two vastly different tech titans. The interview.
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Done Deal: Paramount Completes WB Takeover
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►🤝 The saga is over! 🤝 There’s officially a new Hollywood colossus in town. David Ellison’s Skydance on Tuesday completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, officially combining two legendary film studios, an enormous conglomeration of TV networks, two large streaming services and multiple news organizations into one player that the mogul hopes will let him compete with the likes of Disney and Netflix, to say nothing of Amazon, Apple and Google. The story.
—All that Zaz! As the clock ran down towards Skydance closing the WBD deal, David Zaslav sent out one more company-wide email on his last day as CEO. This one came with a three-minute video, insiders tell THR's Borys Kit. This was, in effect, Zaslav’s farewell address. Greeting employees in the nine o’clock hour was a video with Zaslav sitting in in a director’s chair in the Loft warehouse at Warner Bros. Studios’ Ranch facility in Burbank, California, extolling the virtues of the creative class, while clips of decades worth of movies and shows the Warners labels have produced fly by. The story.
—Exiting. Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of TNT Sports, is leaving the company. Silberwasser informed his staff Monday that he’ll step down after the Paramount-WBD deal closes. CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson is set to lead the combined sports operation. The story.
—Coming in. CAA has hired Dasha Smith to serve as its chief operating officer. Smith joins the agency from the NFL, where she was executive vp and chief administrative officer. At the NFL, Smith was one of commissioner Roger Goodell’s top deputies, overseeing a wide array of business functions including technology, AI and innovation, data and analytics, strategy and business intelligence, human resources, inclusion, social responsibility and philanthropy, and league office administration. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 As The Team moves past a sales process that saw the exit of its founder Casey Wasserman, the Mike Watts-led company is in expansion mode. The Westwood-based management and production firm has acquired boutique, U.K.-based creators agency Outreach Talent Group. The move will bolt-on Outreach to a creators roster at The Team that includes Livvy Dunne, Taylen Biggs, Grant Horvat, The Bryan Bros, MatPat, Abby Baffoe and more. The story.
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Why Did 'Digger' Hit Rock Bottom at the Box Office? |
►"Digger has provided a reality check on today's unpredictable marketplace." Digger's $8m domestic opening means the Warner Bros. film goes down as an ambitious effort that will come nowhere close to breaking even. THR's box office wonk Ryan Gajewski digs into what went wrong for Alejandro G. Iñárritu's (actually excellent) big-budget satire. The analysis.
—Ride or die. As Iñárritu’s Digger entered a box-office death spiral, two familiar defenders appeared. The filmmaker's longtime friends, and fellow Oscar-winning directors, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro came out swinging on social media to defend the film. The admirable (and still ongoing defense) of their friend is the latest chapter in a remarkable 30-year creative alliance that carried the three Mexican auteurs to the pinnacle of mainstream moviemaking. The story.
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'Batman 2' Production Paused
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►"Matt has the full support of DC Studios." THR's Borys Kit and Aaron Couch report that The Batman: Part II is on pause while filmmaker Matt Reeves deals with a personal matter. The feature began filming in London in June after a winding development process that saw its start date pushed multiple times while Reeves and co-writer Mattson Tomlin wrote the script. The film currently has a release date of Feb. 18, 2028. The story.
—Counter doc. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s much-talked about documentary NAZA, which won plaudits at the Venice Film Festival and blowback from the IDF, has now inspired a counter-documentary. NAZA: The Real Story, from Israeli director and IDF reserve officer Roi Danino, claims to have first-hand testimony from IDF soldiers about how they fought the Gaza war. The story.
—🟢 Greenest of green lights. 🟢 Production has begun on filmmaker Marie Jamora’s We Could Be in Love. Jasmine Curtis-Smith, yao, Jamie Chung, Lou Diamond Phillips, Tamlyn Tomita and Airline Inthyrath round out the cast for the feature that starts shooting next month on location in New York and Manila, Philippines. We Could Be in Love centers on Jasmine Aquino (Curtis-Smith), a working-class Filipina American woman who falls for Ambrose Lee (yao), the affluent heir to a Chinese-Filipino dynasty. Terence Chen wrote the script. The story.
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Blunt, Del Toro, Brolin Board 'Sicario 3'
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►🎭 Bring back Reggie Wayne! 🎭 Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all set to return for Sicario 3. The third chapter in the drug war action franchise would reunite co-leads del Toro as assassin Alejandro Gillick and Brolin as CIA agent Matt Graver with Blunt's FBI agent Kate Macer from 2015’s Sicario. Blunt was missing from 2018's Sicario: Day of the Soldado. Black Label Media and Thunder Road have also attached The Weight's Padraic McKinley to direct and the prolific Steven Knight to write a script. Taylor Sheridan wrote the script for the first two films. The story.
—"A true return to form for Aaron Sorkin." On a busy Monday night for new films, the first reactions to The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin‘s intriguing follow-up to The Social Network, hit social media. The consensus seems to be that Social Reckoning is a timely slow-burn legal drama with a compelling performance from stars Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong. The reaction.
—"An intense rollercoaster of a survival thriller." The first reactions to Brian Duffield‘s survival thriller feature Whalefall have also hit social media, and it appears that lead actor Austin Abrams‘ banner year continues, even though the characters he plays continue to suffer in more elaborate and awful ways. The reaction.
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Emmys: Amazon Inks 6-Year Deal
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►🤝 Enter the streaming era. 🤝 The Television Academy and Prime Video have signed a six-year deal that will make the streamer the exclusive home of the Primetime Emmys from 2027-32. Next year’s ceremony will mark the first time in the 79-year history of the awards that they won’t air on a broadcast outlet. Under the new deal, Prime Video may also carry other TV Academy programming, like the Hall of Fame and Television Academy Honors ceremony. The televised future of the Creative Arts Emmys, which have aired on FXX for the past decade-plus, is still being discussed. The story.
—🟢 Surprise! 🟢 Apple TV has ordered a second season of the drama Imperfect Women, with Kerry Washington set to reprise her role as Eleanor. Justin Hillian is also joining the series, based on a novel by Araminta Hall, as co-showrunner with series creator and season one showrunner Annie Weisman. The renewal for Imperfect Women comes about five months after the first season concluded. The show was initially positioned as a limited series, with Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara starring alongside Washington. The story.
—🎭 Filling out. 🎭 Prime Video has added six new cast members to its upcoming series Things We Never Got Over. Sean Teale, Sarah Jeffery, Megan Stott, Lili Simmons, Anthony Keyvan and JoBeth Williams have signed onto the streamer’s adaptation of Lucy Score’s bestselling contemporary romance novel. Teale will play Lucian; Jeffrey will play Sloane; Stott will play Waylay; Simmons will play Lina; Keyvan will play Stef; Williams will play Liza J. The story.
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'Tulsa King' Renewed for S5, Moving to NYC |
►🟢 Heading home. 🟢 Paramount+ has renewed the hit series Tulsa King for a fifth season, with a surprise twist — the production is moving to New York City. The story will bring Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) back to his roots, with production now underway (previous seasons of the series have been shot in Atlanta and Oklahoma). The switch makes Tulsa King the first show from the famously heartland-focused Taylor Sheridan to film a season in NYC or LA (The Madison shot some scenes in Manhattan but was largely set in Montana). The story.
—Lottie heads to the screen. StudioCanal and Deadpan Pictures are developing a live-action television adaptation of Katie Kirby’s bestselling The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks book series. Josie Long, whose credits include Skins, and playwright and screenwriter Holly Phillips, whose credits include The Athena, Get Even and Dance Academy, are adapting the books for television. The story.
—🟢 The game is afoot! 🟢 The Roku Channel has greenlit Scarlett Holmes, a limited series that will star Lucy Hale as a descendant of Sherlock Holmes who has inherited the family’s observational powers. Rather than solve crimes, however, Scarlett and sidekick Jane Watson “take on mysteries of love, dating, and relationships.” The show comes from Jaggi Entertainment and writers Paris Herbert-Taylor and Katie Wilbert. The story.
—🟢 Coming back. 🟢 Panta Mosleh’s queer comedy Pass the Salt has earned a second season renewal before the first season kicks off next month. Director and star Mosleh’s sitcom about a Muslim-Iranian grad student who falls in love with a young Jewish woman will debut on the OUTtv streamer on Nov. 2, with new episodes running to a finale on Dec. 7. The story.
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TV Review: 'Small Prophets'
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►"Charming, amusing and unexpected." THR's chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg reviews BBC/Apple TV's Small Prophets. Created, written, directed and co-starring Detectorists' Mackenzie Crook, the dramedy tells the story of a melancholy man who enlists a new friend and supernatural forces to learn the truth about his girlfriend's disappearance. Starring Pearce Quigley, Lauren Patel, Michael Palin, Mackenzie Crook, Paul Kaye, John Pointing and Shola Adewusi. Created by Mackenzie Crook. The review.
In other news...
—Hans Zimmer, Jade team on BBC’s Blue Planet III song "Into the Deep (Seas Cry)"
—Ron Howard to be honored at 2026 Critics Choice Documentary Awards
—Fox beefs up leadership at creator studios business
—Italian filmmaker Paolo Strippoli signs with WME
—George Fenton, Oscar-nominated composer for Cry Freedom and Dangerous Liaisons, dies at 76
—Robert Kelker-Kelly, Days of Our Lives and General Hospital star, dies at 62
—Mark Mortimer, former Another World star, dies at 59
What else we're reading...
—Sasha Mistlin talks to John Cena on how he made it in Hollywood and why he refuses to abandon Vince McMahon [Guardian]
—Jagmeet Singh reports that Meta has started testing a new Facebook UX in India that sends some users directly to Reels when they open the app [TechCrunch]
—Jeffrey Sparshott looks at why Americans are unhappy with an economy that outwardly looks strong [Bloomberg]
—Jim Vejvoda writes that Michael Mann's new director's cut of Miami Vice invites a darker reading of the cult classic [IGN]
—Jason Zinoman talks to Kyle Gordon, the man with an uncanny knack for making viral parody songs that are actually bangers in their own right [NYT]
Today...
...in 2000, CBS debuted a new procedural crime drama, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which would go on to span multiple spinoffs in the years since its premiere. The original review.
Today's birthdays...
Ioan Gruffudd (53🏴), Olivia Thirlby (40), Addison Rae (26), Elisabeth Shue (63), James Downey (74), Emily Mortimer (55), Brett Gelman (50), Melia Kreiling (36), John Knoll (64), Stefanie Martini (36), Amy Jo Johnson (56), Jeremy Sisto (52), Britt Ekland (84), Jacqueline Obradors (60), Alexis Georgoulis (52), Luisa d'Oliveira (40), Scarlett Hefner (36), Matt Cornett (28), Ida Engvoll (41), Cheryl Texiera (44), Rafferty Law (30), Aya Asahina (33), Rhyon Nicole Brown (34), Jessica Hausner (54), Jazz Jennings (26), Michael Tollin (71), Kevin Cronin (75), Richard Hissong (79)
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Jim Bakker, who along with his first wife Tammy Faye built an evangelical empire around the hugely successful The PTL Club TV show, only to lose it all over a sex scandal and financial crimes, has died. He was 86. The obituary.
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