| | | | | | Where's the silver lining? While THR reporters often break impactful news, sometimes it can feel like an entire industry of creatives is under siege, one headline at a time. So in The Weekender this holiday we're taking a more optimistic view with staff picks for bright spots around town. — Erik Hayden
One good thing about Hollywood right now...
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(Some) Execs Care Back when Hollywood was feeling its oats, execs were depicted as backstabbing climbers like Sammy Glick or The Player's Griffin Mill, men who would happily sacrifice art on the altar of their ambition. But now that there's less money to be made, and the fortune-seeking philistines are fleeing for AI, we're left with execs who — anecdotally at least — actually seem to care about making good movies. And we have an idealistic fictional studio head to match in The Studio's beleaguered dreamer Matt Remick. — Julian Sancton |
AI Firms Are Caving More than 50 lawsuits against AI companies have been filed over the use of copyrighted materials to train their technology. There've been ups and downs, but AI firms have increasingly been opting to settle as some major players move toward a regime of licensing copyrighted works. This year has seen the resolution of lawsuits against Amazon-backed Anthropic, Suno and Udio on what appears to be favorable terms for creators. Don't be surprised if one of the next tranches of companies to settle includes OpenAI, which has steadily been losing ground in cases initiated by authors. — Winston Cho |
A Beloved Theater Returns At one time a magnet for premieres of major films like A Star Is Born and The Fast and the Furious, the Westwood Village Theater shut its doors in 2024 due to the expiration of Regency Theatres’ lease. Luckily for L.A.-area moviegoers, the moratorium on the nearly century-old movie palace was brief. In November, a group of A-listers led by Jason Reitman revealed they were partnering with local film program American Cinematheque to light up its colorful marquee. It’s a best-case scenario for the beloved Westside venue, which will in a few years once again play host not only to world premieres and new releases but also AC’s repertory programming, film festivals and screenings with special guests. — Katie Kilkenny |
Chalamet's Tour It's time to thank our holiday blessings for the king of December, who after ending 2023 with Wonka and 2024 with A Complete Unknown, is making the rounds once again — this time clad in neon orange — for Marty Supreme. He's already gone viral for a (spoof?) 18-minute Zoom brainstorming marketing ideas of the film, which in real-life have resulted in an orange blimp circling L.A. and teaming with Adam Sandler for a two-on-two basketball game against teenagers at Fairfax High. With a month still to go until the release, Timothée Chalamet is the gift that keeps on giving. — Kirsten Chuba |
The Sphere It’s not for the vertigo-inclined or cine-purists — there’s something almost grotesque about its bended scale and retina-searing resolution — but Sphere Las Vegas offers a glimpse of where entertainment is heading. In 2025, I managed to catch both Dead & Co. and The Wizard of Oz at the giant orb that ate the Strip. Both contributed something novel, frequently dazzling and occasionally absurd to the realms of live music and moviegoing. — Seth Abramovitch |
Phil's Diner It’s a bleak time for Hollywood and L.A.'s hospitality scene. The reasons overlap. Everybody Loves Raymond creator, Somebody Feed Phil host and longtime L.A. restaurant investor Phil Rosenthal’s new Larchmont Village diner — named Max & Helen’s, after his late parents — is a rare bright spot for both. He’s partnered with chef Nancy Silverton, his longtime friend, on the bill of fare. Don’t miss the maple butter waffle. — Gary Baum |
Bring Gen Z Your Auteurs This was the year that Gen Z — the so-called Letterboxd generation — became a real engine at the specialty box office, which continues to endure the post-pandemic loss of its bread-and-butter older adult audience. 53 percent of One Battle After Another’s opening weekend audience was between the ages of 18 to 34, while the demo made up 61 percent of The Phoenician Scheme’s debut. — Mia Galuppo |
Scalpers, Out? The live music marketplace is deeply fractured. Fans wait in chaotic online queues in the hopes of nabbing tickets to see their favorite artist live, only to all too often lose out to a scalper who will gouge them on the secondary market for hundreds of dollars more instead. A new potential rule in the U.K. could put a significant damper on that though, as the country recently announced plans to outlaw reselling tickets above face value at all. Artist advocates are applauding the effort and encouraging lawmakers in the U.S. to do the same. Even the likes of Ticketmaster are standing behind the efforts as well. A local bill proposed in D.C. could bring price caps to one of the U.S.’s biggest concert markets too as well, if it’s approved. There’s no guarantee price caps will ever become an industry standard in the U.S., and caps alone won’t stop all the marketplace’s problems, but it’d certainly be a step forward for the fan. — Ethan Millman |
Indies in L.A. City officials have pledged to cut red tape and make L.A. filmmaker-friendly. Do they have a lot of work ahead? Yep. Are shoot days overall still on a downward trajectory? Yes. But there's momentum for indies, which have gotten a chunk of the $750 million in tax incentives from California's doubled annual program. In the latest round of projects receiving incentives granted by the California Film Commission, only 10 were big-budget studio titles while 42 were indie projects. Of those 42 indies, there were 32 projects with budgets under the $10 million figure. — Erik Hayden |
SkyCam, For All It’s not exactly a “right now” thing to point out how TVs have gotten larger and cheaper, but with the strides technology has made on both sides of the glass, watching sports at home has never been better. Why pay insane prices (and fees, and parking — and don’t get me started on traffic and weather…) when most games are produced in 1080p HDR? Certain cameras, like NBC’s NFL SkyCam, can up that resolution to 4K, and normalizing 8K can't be far off. It’s never been better to be an armchair quarterback. —Tony Maglio |
The Next Gen With film and TV production in the doldrums all across the country, South Carolina is looking to give the industry a boost. The state’s film commission has formed an entrepreneurship program, called Long Lens, that seeks to pair up-and-coming filmmakers with industry veterans to advise them on key aspects of the business. Among the advisors are former HBO Max executive vp of content acquisitions Michael Quigley, former Showtime/MTV Studios and MTV Docs comms honcho Liza Burnet Fefferman and Cinetic Media exec and Blue Moon co-producer Josh Foster. They’ll advise a half-dozen burgeoning SC projects across the thriller, drama and comedy genres, hoping to get them to the finish line. — Steven Zeitchik. ** + News ticker:
David Zaslav's next deadline; Bob Iger's first IMDb credit; Barry Poznick steps down; Melania Trump's new banner. ** One more thing: For 95 years, The Hollywood Reporter has been the authoritative voice for the entertainment industry. We care about crafting a magazine filled with intel that matters to people who work in or aspire to work in Hollywood. Plus, it's a great read. Subscribe (Yes, there's a Black Friday sale now, too). |
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