The Power Lawyers Issue

March 26, 2020

HOLLYWOOD IN THE TERRIFYING AGE OF

SPECIAL REPORT

Inside the pain and pressure of a pandemic and an industry on lockdown ‘ THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING ’

Why showbiz will never be the same

HERE COMES QUIBI

Does a quarantine help or hurt Katzenberg’s $2 billion startup?

SURVIVAL GUIDE

Resources, charities and how to support the vulnerable

POWER LAWYERS 2020

NO MATTER HOW YOU COME INTO THIS WORLD YOU COME OUT

BROKEN

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The Story Factory

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Live

Issue No. 10, March 26, 2020

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12:14 P.M. | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 The movie schedule board in the ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood lobby on day three of a government-enforced shutdown to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

ON THE COVER Illustration by Sawdust

FEATURES 48 Quibi Was Always Risky.

And Then Things Got Complicated Even in the best of times, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s $2 billion talent-friendly mobile platform was a gamble. Now, with the pandemic turning things upside down as they barrel toward an April 6 debut, they’re about to find out whether potential users under quarantine are a blessing or a curse.

52 Power Lawyers 2020 Forget nine-figure overall deals and executive poaching fights. For Hollywood’s top lawyers, a war between writers and agents, collapsing theatrical windows and canceled productions amid a worldwide pandemic are now just another day at the office.

54 ‘Am I Going to Get Paid During the Pandemic?’

Lawyers grapple with an unprecedented crisis and the impact on deals: “It’s going to be a fucking mess.”

PLUS How a pro bono investigation into charity fraud at amfAR sparked Harvey Weinstein’s downfall.

Photographed by Austin Hargrave

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

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M A RCH 26, 2020 Live

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Issue No. 10, March 26, 2020

Congratulations to The Hollywood Reporter’s

31 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at a rally in Baldwin Hills, California, on March 3.

41 Junghans’ 38mm Max Bill MEGA Solar features a titanium Milanese bracelet and case and a solar-powered movement that connects to a smartphone app; $1,095, available in May, feldmarwatch.com.

TOP 100 POWER LAWYERS

52 From left: Harold Brown, Bianca Levin, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia and Matthew Thompson were photographed March 5 at Atlanta Metro Studios.

41 31

SPECIAL REPORT

ABOUT TOWN

STYLE

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31

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As consumers retreat to their homes amid the pandemic, decisions from studios about the distribution of content will reverberate long after the crisis passes.

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Stuck at Home Both traditional and streaming TV audiences have risen across the board as millions of people quarantine themselves.

16

Searching for a Buyer A slew of once-festival-bound independent features are working to not get lost in the shuffle as filmmakers and sellers shop their projects virtually.

20 What Hollywood Is Doing and Saying Now A special Rambling Reporter and Quotes.

24 It Happened Before: How the 1918 Flu Halted Hollywood An influenza outbreak 102 years ago closed theaters, shut down production and felled actors: “Pessimists croaked that this was the beginning of the end.”

28 7 Days of Deals

How Joe Biden Moves Forward in Hollywood As the outbreak stalls in-person fundraisers, the Democratic frontrunner’s campaign will need to work harder to reap industry cash.

32 My Quarantini Cocktail Recipes Actor and Mulholland Distilling co-founder Walton Goggins’ ideas for after-WFH drinks.

34 Hitched, Hatched, Hired

Black But Not Basic Embrace the dark side with a status watch that contrasts diamonds with noir styling.

44 Sheltering in the Heart of L.A. Hollywood is discovering West Adams, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, where a 30-story tower will bring sleek condos to the area’s historic Craftsmans and Victorians.

REVIEWS

THE BUSINESS 36 Creative Space: Leslie Fram CMT’s Nashville-based music guru talks country’s airplay gender-parity problem, the Dixie Chicks’ return and the unknowable ramifications of the coronavirus and Tennessee tornadoes.

38 Why Trump’s Coronavirus Reaction Is Racist The president’s “blame-the-black-guy rhetoric and foot-dragging” reminds THR columnist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the unrepentant Nazis on the Amazon series Hunters.

75 The Pitfalls of Pedigree TV Recent shows created or headlined by big names (Iannucci!

Witherspoon! Pacino!) have disappointed — providing a chance for homebound viewers to discover less prestigious but more pleasurable offerings.

SEE YOU IN 2 WEEKS

The next issue publishes April 8. Keep up with breaking news, reviews and video at THR.com and via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Photographed by Donté Maurice

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

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THIS WEEK ON THR VIDEO

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The Re ort

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

—Abraham Lincoln

Behind the Headlines

WE CONGRATULATE OUR PARTNERS, FRIENDS & COLLEAGUES

10:14 A.M. FRIDAY, MARCH 20 Universal Studios Hollywood

So Now What, Hollywood?

There May Not Be a Return to ‘Normal’

BEING HONORED IN THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’S 2020 POWER LAWYERS

H

With an unprecedented shuttering of the industry, major studios break the glass to deliver films on demand while some executives and artists take up a DIY ethos amid the downturn: ‘You have to adapt’ BY REBECCA KEEGAN uw Samuel had planned to

take his girlfriend to see Universal’s The Invisible Man in a theater near his home south of London. Then the coronavirus crisis changed his plans, as it has for people around the globe in ways both dramatic and mundane. Like those in America, U.K. cinema chains were forced to close in mid-March, so Samuel, 29, did the next best thing for a date night — he brewed a pot of tea, turned off the lights in his apartment and rented Invisible Man on Amazon Prime for £16, or about $18. “I thought it was a pretty reasonable price — about what we would have paid for tickets,” says Samuel, an actor and director whose work on a commercial and a feature have been delayed by the pandemic. “It was only corona that put me off going to the cinema … but this has opened my eyes to more streaming possibilities.”

Long before a public health crisis closed exhibitors’ doors, the audience’s retreat from the theater to home video had driven both anxiety and opportunity at entertainment companies. But COVID-19 represents a watershed moment in the business, one that is accelerating current trends in media consumption and forcing Hollywood to embrace its digital future.

Desperation has driven studios

to shrink the once sacrosanct 90-day theatrical window, a move some have been contemplating for more than a decade. At the same time, new streaming video services are drawing heavy investment (see page 48), and though no company wants to be perceived as profiting from the disaster, streaming usage will be up 60 percent overall during the crisis, according to Nielsen.

Gaming will spike 75 percent,

A Note to Readers

More Inside

This issue is the first in THR’s 90-year history to be produced entirely remotely. Our lives and our industry have been upended by the coronavirus outbreak, and we know it’s going to get more challenging before it gets better. During this crisis, THR will continue to cover the developments and impact of the pandemic on all our platforms: digital, audio, video and print magazines like this one. Subscribers can switch delivery to a home address while you’re working remotely by going to THR.com/services and clicking on the “change of address” link. Every subscription includes access to a digital version of the magazine, too, so keep an eye on your inbox to access the current issue. You also can receive breaking news, the daily “Today in Entertainment” newsletter and more from THR.com delivered to your inbox by going to THR.com/newsletters and signing up. THR looks forward to servicing this unique and resilient community at a time when it needs it most.

• TV audiences spike amid stay-athome orders p. 14 • Filmmakers scramble to sell projects p. 16 • Media giants grapple with crushing debt burdens p. 18

Photographed by Austin Hargrave

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according to Verizon. Internet demand is already so high in Europe that government officials there have asked Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney to reduce the video quality of their streams to lessen the burden on the continent’s networks. “COVID-19 will expand the gaps between those lagging and leading in the transition to digital distributions and business models,” says venture capitalist Matthew Ball, former head of strategy at Amazon Studios. “OTT video services will surge, while pay TV loses its most valuable content — sports — and sees an accelerated decline in subscriptions and ad revenue. Parks and movie theaters are ground to a halt, while gaming companies hit new highs in usage.”

The virus disaster, which has shut down production at virtually every entertainment company, also has exposed weaknesses, especially in those that

The Report HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD Traffic in Los Angeles has been significantly reduced under governmental saferat-home decrees.

According to data from INRIX, a firm that specializes in analyzing traffic data, vehicles are now so sparse on the streets that rush hour has ceased to exist.

Behind the Headlines

THE THEATRE AT ACE HOTEL Marquees across L.A. acknowledged the shutdown with block-letter messages like “Intermission” and “Gone Fishing.”

DISNEYLAND Disneyland joined Disney World Resort, Disney stores throughout North America and the company’s cruise line in closing because of the pandemic.

New CEO Bob Chapek, previously in charge of the parks division, received his bachelor’s degree in microbiology.

6:25 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 17 Hollywood Boulevard

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6:29 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 17 Theatre at Ace Hotel, downtown

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ACE: BRIAN GUIDO. BLUM: JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX/WIREIMAGE. ROTHMAN: BARRY KING/GETTY IMAGES.

carry a heavy debt burden, like ViacomCBS, Endeavor and theater chain AMC Entertainment (see page 18), or those that rely on travel to theme parks and cruise ships, like Disney. Cowen analyst Doug Creutz has cut his earnings estimates for all the entertainment companies he tracks through 2022, slashing his price target for Disney from $159 to $101 and for ViacomCBS from $25 to $17. Widespread layoffs are expected in an industry that had expanded to meet the demands Blum of the streaming content bubble, with agencies including Endeavor and Paradigm already cutting staff and with UTA slashing employee salaries.

The question for many in entertainment is how permanent these changes will be — will the industry rebound once the pandemic has passed and come to resemble its former self or will this crisis cement a new normal in Hollywood?

When Universal executives called Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum to discuss plans to make The Invisible Man available for home rental just three weeks into its theatrical run, along with another Blumhouse movie in theaters, The Hunt, “I was supportive of their decision,” Blum says. “It was a very tough decision. In a time of crisis … you have to look forward.

You have to adapt.” Universal had released Invisible Man wide in theaters Feb. 28 and made it available to rent March 20 at a cost of $19.99 in the U.S., narrowing the theatrical window to just 21 days.

The $9 million movie, which had grossed $123.6 million worldwide before theaters closed, was the top movie on Fandango’s VOD service over the weekend of March 20-22.

Blum says Universal execs assured him their strategy is a temporary response to the crisis while making it clear that the Comcastowned studio will be using the unplanned experiment as a way to learn what consumers will tolerate. “Is the audience going to see it

10:24 A.M. FRIDAY, MARCH 20 Disney lot, Burbank

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as, instead of going to the theater and all the costs associated with that, getting there, parking, popcorn, a babysitter if you have kids. … Are they going to say, ‘Wow, this is a real bargain compared to that?’ ” Blum says. “Or are they going to say, ‘What a rip-off.

Netflix is $12 a month. I could watch a hundred movies.’ No one knows the answer to that.”

Universal’s groundbreaking decision was followed quickly by Disney, Sony and Warner Bros. making similar moves, albeit offering their films for purchase, rather than rental, and

by Paramount sending its April romantic comedy The Lovebirds to Netflix. Though the shifts were a response to a singular catastrophe, this change may reverberate long after the crisis has passed, as consumers, who can now watch fresh-from-the-theaters releases like Disney’s Onward, Sony’s Bloodshot and Warner Bros.’ The Way Back at home, may come to expect such convenience. So may audiences who watched Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Idris Elba about his coronavirus diagnosis via the Apple TV+ app on their iPhones rather than the linear TV sources they used to rely upon for such newsworthy moments. And households that are ditching their $100-plus cable bills without the lure of live sports may not return when the pandemic passes, especially under the financial pressures of a recession.

Some insiders counter that consumer routines are more resilient than any single crisis. “People will still want to go to events, games, concerts, movies,” says billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who sold his stake in the Landmark Theatres chain in 2018 and has been an advocate for shortening theatrical windows for more than a decade. Cuban does not believe the shorter windows will inspire people to stay home when theaters reopen. “People will forever get cabin fever, and ‘Netflix and chill’ is not a long-term solution for 16-year-olds who are dating, at least not in my house. People will return to their old habits once they trust their environments to be safe. We have had tragedies in entertainment venues before,

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yet people have returned. I don’t expect this to be different.”

Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman says the eventual end of the pandemic will unleash pent-up demand for entertainment outside the home. “There will be a great surge of emotional appreciation for collective experiences,” Rothman says. “That’s who we are, as human beings, and that’s who we have always been since telling stories around the fire in prehistoric times, and I think it’s primal. I think it’s going to remind people how much they love what they’ve missed.”

Still, the closure of theaters because of COVID-19 has provided an opportunity for studios to learn something about consumer behavior that they’ve been wanting to explore for years. In 2011, Universal attempted an experiment with its movie Tower Heist, proposing a plan to make the Eddie Murphy comedy available for home viewing three weeks Rothman after its theatrical debut at the rental cost of $59.99 to 500,000 people in Atlanta and Portland via Comcast’s VOD system. Theater chains rebelled, threatening to boycott the movie, and Universal abandoned the plan. Now a crisis has inspired a similar test, in a moment when exhibitors have scant leverage.

National Association of Theatre Owners chief John Fithian told THR in a fiery interview March 20 that “exhibitors will not forget” what Universal in particular did during this crisis. While other studios delayed their tentpole releases rather than dropping them online — MGM pushed its James Bond movie No Time to Die, Paramount delayed A Quiet Place Part II, Warners rescheduled Wonder Woman 1984 and Disney postponed Mulan and Black Widow — Universal decided to release its DreamWorks Animation sequel Trolls World Tour, scheduled to arrive in theaters April 10, direct to home entertainment. “Every other studio has demonstrated true partnership and belief in the theatrical model during this time of crisis,” Fithian said. Universal did not respond to a request for

The Report BEVERLY HILLS The typically touristpacked Via Rodeo luxury shopping mecca in Beverly Hills, which at press time March 24 itself had five confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Behind the Headlines

Paul Dergarabedian

of Comscore. “Look at Avengers: Endgame. How would you ever earn $2.7 billion on demand?”

As the industry adapts to a quarantined world, innovations are afoot. With film and TV production almost entirely shut down, key sectors of the business are finding new ways to work, with late night TV shows like The Daily Show and The Tonight Show offering programs shot from their hosts’ homes, and with scripted TV shows convening their writers rooms via video conferencing.

Hollywood’s shift to WFH where possible has accelerated the already growing trend of productions relying on cloud and other remote services for key postproduction processes like editing and visual effects work. And there can be rewards for smaller players in the industry that had already set themselves up for remote work by necessity, like tiny Imepilt Studios, a 30-person animation company based in Estonia at work on a feature written by the screenwriters of Disney’s Mulan.

“It takes just a little bit of sweat

and ingenuity for an animation production to continue without a hitch,” says Almondi Esco, CEO of Imepilt. “When your writers and producers are in L.A., your sales agents in the U.K., your head of immersive experiences is in New York, etc., you need a system that can withstand a massive amount of information given and received across different continents and time zones. ” Even the way Hollywood promotes itself, with costly parties at far-flung events, has changed in ways that may concretize, with major industry gatherings like South by Southwest, the fall TV upfronts and the Cannes Film Festival canceled or delayed.

“We’ve seen things like that in business in general all the time,” says ICM partner and managing director of talent and branding Adam Schweitzer. “You’re forced into doing something that’s not the regular practice. It ends up saving dollars, it ends up yielding a similar result, and then people go, ‘Oh my God, why weren’t we doing this before?’ ” Artists are also seizing the moment with a DIY ethos.

Musicians like Chris Martin and John Legend have begun streaming concerts for their fans at home, DJs like D-Nice are hosting celebrity-packed house parties on Instagram Live, and creators like married writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, who launched a podcast, and former daytime TV host Rosie O’Donnell, who hosted a Broadway-themed benefit for the Actors Fund from her basement, are inventing new microbudget programming specific to the catastrophe.

Blum believes the most lasting impact may be in the nature of the content itself. “Every artist is going to be touched by this event,” says Blum. “And storytelling will shift. You’ll see that in scripted and unscripted and television and movies. Everything that we’ve done pre-[COVID-19] will seem dated much more quickly than it would have in an ordinary time.”

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12

ARCLIGHT CINEMAS HOLLYWOOD The speciality chain, which began in Hollywood in 2002 and also operates locations in Chicago and Washington, D.C., has shuttered its theaters indefinitely.

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD Universal Studios’ theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando closed March 12, the same day Disneyland and Walt Disney World shuttered. Originally announced as a twoweek shutdown, the properties’ reopenings have since been pushed back at least to April 19.

CAA The empty lobby at the agency’s headquarters in Century City. Its foundation has helped launch an initiative to provide gloves, masks and other needed personal protective gear to health care professionals facing a critical shortage.

11:12 A.M. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood

4:16 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 17 CAA Lobby, Los Angeles

4:54 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 17 North Rodeo Drive & Dayton Way

12:35 P.M. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 Universal Studios Hollywood

M A RCH 26, 2020

O’DONNELL: BRUCE GLIKAS/WIREIMAGE.

an explanation of what drove the decision, but one person with knowledge of the studio’s deliberations says much of the marketing money for Trolls World Tour had been spent and there were no appealing available dates on the calendar. “When is a good weekend?” says the industry source. “It’s a clusterfuck. And it’s obviously precedent-setting.”

Tellingly, Universal is sticking with theatrical for the pricey tentpole sequels F9 and Minions: The Rise of Gru, both of which were delayed (the previous installments of both franchises made more than $1 billion in theaters).

But the $90 million price tag on Trolls World Tour makes it an unusually costly film to premiere on demand. “Movies that are extremely expensive are released in theaters worldwide for a reason because that’s the only way you can make that money back,” says O’Donnell

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The Report Behind the Headlines

How Big Is the TV Spike?

Depends Who’s Watching

Audiences return to Friday and Saturday nights amid a crisis, while network staples lift across the board and broadcast news hits decade highs BY RICK PORTER

W

ith the coronavirus pandemic keeping millions of people at home, TV use has spiked, with figures from Nielsen showing rises across all demographics. Kids and teenagers, home from school, are posting the largest percentage gains. Nightly usage levels, which typically tail off on Fridays and Saturdays, have been steadier on those days in recent weeks.

Traditional TV viewing, as measured by Nielsen’s households and persons using its television metric, was up 4 percent across all dayparts the week of March 9, with bigger increases during daytime hours given the larger share of the population staying home.

The biggest gains came from young viewers who were at home rather than school: Kids ages 2 to 11 increased their TV use by 14 percent, and 12- to 17-year-olds watched 18 percent more. Usage among adults, meanwhile, was up 5 percent overall. During the week of March 16, usage increased even more, says Peter Katsingris, senior vp audience insights at Nielsen: “We saw a 14 percent increase in Live TV usage from the prior week, a 35 percent increase in game console usage and a 28 percent increase in connected device usage among all U.S. consumers.”

In primetime, the gains have lifted all types of shows, from ABC’s Modern Family to CBS’

Survivor to AMC’s The Walking Dead. Viewing levels night-to-night have also been more consistent in recent days than they usually are.

NBC’s Chicago Fire and Chicago Med reached their biggest audiences in more than a year on March 18, with 9 million and 9.2 million viewers, respectively.

News programming has skyrocketed: ABC’s World News Tonight (12.55 million nightly viewers) and NBC’s Nightly News (12.01 million) were the top two shows across all of television from March 16 to March 22, hitting viewer figures not seen since the early 2000s.

CBS’ Evening News also grew substantially, to 7.6 million viewers; the three network newscasts were collectively up 42 percent over the same week in 2019. Cable news has seen similar growth. CNN’s total-day audience the week of March 16 to March 22 was double that of the same week last year. Fox News increased

Viewership Rise in March TRADITIONAL TV

TOTAL TV USAGE (ALL DEVICES)

+14%

+18%

+5%

+4%

+11%

+11%

Adults Kids

Teens

Source: Nielsen (March 2-15)

NBC’s Chicago Fire and its counterpart Chicago Med both posted multiyear viewership highs in March.

by 77 percent, and MSNBC was up 38 percent year-over-year — and had its most watched week ever, averaging 1.64 million viewers.

Streaming data is notoriously hard to come by, but Nielsen’s figures say use of internetconnected devices — the Rokus and Apple TVs of the world — jumped 10 percent in the week of March 9. Part of that is people watching linear TV through a connected device, but it’s also likely reflective of a rise for Netflix, Hulu and other streaming platforms.

HBO reports that from March 14 to March 23, use of its HBO Now platform rose 40 percent over its previous four-week average. That jump is driven by the debut of Westworld, but the WarnerMedia outlet also notes that past shows like Euphoria (which doubled), Game of Thrones, His Dark Materials and Chernobyl rose by 50 percent or more.

Whether the trend sustains over time as networks and streamers run low on inventory remains to be seen. For now, though, the gains are pretty much across the board.

“With the abundance of choices available to them, consumers are turning to what works,” says Katsingris. “It seems they aren’t engaging with one platform, but really with all the platforms.”

THR/Morning Consult Poll

What Americans Say They’re Watching While Self-Isolating Comedy rules, dystopian’s out for U.S. adults stuck at home as a new survey parses who’s watching what

40% 70%

Comedy

The percentage of U.S. adults who say they’re now more likely to rent movies while staying at home. However, perhaps because of economic insecurity, another 35 percent of respondents say they’d be less likely to rent movies now.

63%

Action/ Adventure

58%

Drama

56%

Thriller/ Mystery

53%

Doc.

49%

Science/ Nature

Optimal price that Americans say they would pay to stream a movie that would normally be playing in movie theaters.

(NBCUniversal plans to forgo theaters and release its sequel Trolls World Tour on demand for $20 on April 10.)

$6

45%

45%

Sci-fi/ Fantasy

41%

Food/ Travel

Romance

35%

Horror

34%

Reality

31%

20%

Musical

Biopic

15% Dystopian

ADRIAN S. BURROWS SR./NBC

Source: THR/Morning Consult poll conducted among a nationally representative sample of 2,200 adults March 19-21. Respondents were asked the question “Are you more or less likely to watch the movies or TV shows in the following genres due to the coronavirus outbreak?”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

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M A RCH 26, 2020

The Report Behind the Headlines

‘The Baseline for Filmmakers Now Is Uncertainty’ As festival markets shutter, sellers are sending screening links and brainstorming virtual marketplaces BY MIA GALUPPO

10:20 A.M. FRIDAY, MARCH 20 Warner Bros., Burbank

3:04 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 17 Spago, Beverly Hills

WARNER BROS. Among the studio’s concessions to the novel coronavirus, it has delayed its release of the musical In the Heights and animated feature Scoob! while pushing back the theatrical opening of Wonder Woman 1984 to Aug. 14.

SPAGO Wolfgang Puck’s flagship Spago switched to contactless takeout and delivery after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered restaurants closed to dine-in customers. Dishes include spring asparagus risotto and roasted half Jidori chicken.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

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M A RCH 26, 2020

get lost in the shuffle. For many filmmakers and sellers, the choice now is to send screening links to projects or wait months until a viable market takes place. “The baseline for filmmakers now is uncertainty,” says director Noah Hutton, whose movie Lapsis was set to premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition section of SXSW. After the fest was scrapped, Hutton and his producers decided to house the movie on Shift72, SXSW’s secure online screening library. The platform was used to screen the title for judges and allows filmmakers to choose whether their projects can be made available to press and buyers.

Several filmmakers had plans to Hutton screen their festival films for buyers in New York and Los Angeles screening rooms — but that was ruled out when the cities enacted stay-at-home orders. “We just don’t Botto have the luxury of waiting to try to create that experience,” notes a seller, who had a slate of features bound for both SXSW and Tribeca. The sales agents who spoke to THR note that they each had been in contact with the major streaming services about buying finished features given the halt in production. But the worry within the indie film community is that streamers will look first to the major studios, whose own films have been delayed by theater closures.

Efforts are being made to fill the virtual screening void. “We would hate to see filmmakers who spent all these years on their films not get any eyeballs,” says Richard Botto, CEO of Stage 32.

Launched as a networking site for industry pros, the platform is offering to screen films that were set to premiere at SXSW and other canceled fests. Botto says more than 35 SXSW projects have committed to screening on the platform.

Filmmakers will be able to post their films free of charge, publicly or privately, with the latter available only to the platform’s members, who include distributors, buyers and sales agents. Meanwhile, a plan led by CAA, other agencies and sellers is being made to create a virtual marketplace for the titles set for the now-postponed Cannes Film Festival and the attached Marché du Film (timing is TBD). Notes another seller, “the good news is that we have a lot of finished films.”

HUTTON: HUTTON SUPANCIC/GETTY IMAGES FOR SXSW. BOTTO: TARA ZIEMBA/GETTY IMAGES.

fter the cancellation of SXSW and A postponement of Tribeca, a slew of oncefestival-bound indie features are working not to

The Report

FREEDMAN + TAITELMAN, LLP

Behind the Headlines

The closed gates of Disneyland in Anaheim on March 16.

Disney, AT&T, theater chains and other majors carry high leverage ratios as one analyst says, ‘We worry most about Netflix’ BY GEORG SZALAI

A

mid the coronavirus pandemic, Hollywood giants face a catastrophic earnings hit this year, and debt burdens are in renewed focus as ratings agencies are busy exploring or handing out downgrades.

AT&T, for one, shelved a $4 billion stock buyback deal to boost its financial flexibility, with other companies expected to follow suit. As of March 19, S&P Global noted 23 virus-related rating actions, which includes downgrades, for North American media and entertainment firms, including the likes of Disney, National Amusements, Endeavor and its subsidiary UFC, AMC Theatres and Cinemark. “Right now, it’s all about liquidity,” Moody’s analyst Neil Begley says.

Exhibitors are most at risk from high debt burdens and fixed costs, such as theater leases, while revenue is wiped out because of cinema closures.

Regal owner Cineworld, which ended 2019 with $7.7 billion in net debt, has warned that it could potentially go out of business in a worst-case scenario. Also at a higher risk is Endeavor, which in September withdrew the planned IPO that was supposed to help it reduce its $4.6 billion debt burden. S&P’s estimate on March 16 was for a “mid-teens percent drop in events, media, and services revenue, as well as a substantial decline in UFC’s live ticketing revenue.” A downgrade would make debt refinancing more expensive and could pause any acquisitions.

ViacomCBS has the highest debt leverage ratio among Hollywood conglomerates, per Moody’s, and box office contributes more to its revenue than to anyone’s but Disney’s, per S&P. ViacomCBS controlling shareholder National Amusements in early March ended up in a technical violation of the covenant for a bank loan when the former’s stock price dropped below the minimum level required for the shares held as collateral. NA got a waiver until March 28 and as of March 24 was

in advanced talks about amending its loan agreement. Former Wall Street analyst Hal Vogel predicts that the terms would likely be “renegotiated to provide some relief, but it is clearly uncomfortable.” ViacomCBS on March 18 delayed the sales process for its CBS Black Rock headquarters, which it hopes to sell for more than $1 billion, while predicting that a deal would close this year.

Meanwhile, Disney’s balance sheet is seen as strong, but its financials will be hit across more

Showbiz Debt Download AT&T is saddled with the most liabilities, but its strong cash flow means it has a better debt ratio than others Company

Debt

2019 EBITDA

Debt/EBITDA ratio

AT&T

$219.7B

$67.4B

3.3x

Comcast

$109.7B

$35.4B

3.1x

Disney

$59.9B

$17.7B

3.4x

ViacomCBS

$23.7B

$6.1B

3.9x

Netflix

$16.5B

$2.9B

5.6x

Source: Moody’s. EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Coronavirus Earnings Forecast With theme park and theatrical exposure, Disney’s revenue may take the biggest fall among the Hollywood majors Company

Revenue

Change From Previous Year

Operating Earnings

Change From Previous Year

Disney

$69.9B

↑0.4%

$7.7B

↓44.5%

ViacomCBS

$27.8B

↑0.1%

$5.1B

↓7.2%

Fox Corp.

$11B

↓1.2%

$4B

↓15.3%

Lionsgate

$3.9B

↑5%

$0.5B

↓11.2%

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

Source: Cowan & Co.

18

M A RCH 26, 2020

Freedman + Taitelman, LLP JEFF GRITCHEN/MEDIANEWS GROUP/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hollywood’s Crushing Debt: ‘Right Now, It’s About Liquidity’

divisions than those of its peers; it operates film and network units (ESPN is facing double-digit ratings declines due to a lack of live sports) plus a theme parks division, and has the biggest consumer products business. “In the near term, Disney is taking by far the biggest earnings hit due to their park exposure,” Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz wrote March 23, cutting his current-year operating income estimate by 43.8 percent and revenue forecast by 13.8 percent. Needham analyst Laura Martin on March 13 cut her earnings before interest, taxes and amortization forecast for Disney’s theme parks unit for the fiscal year by 4 percent to $6.8 billion, her cable networks estimate by 6 percent to $5.4 billion and her film unit forecast by 2 percent to $3.1 billion. On March 19, Disney launched a $6 billion debt offering, taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate cut to boost its financial flexibility. Moody’s Begley lauds it for ensuring that the company “has significant liquidity,” adding the offering is “very smart. It’s like an insurance policy.”

And while many on Wall Street have contended that streaming services will benefit from people being at home, and one could argue that Netflix’s cash burn might fall as productions are delayed, the company is saddled with debt. Needham’s Martin in a March 10 report argued that “COVID-19 is bad for Netflix,” including its efforts to reduce its free cash flow losses. “In our coverage list, we worry most about Netflix, which has only $5 billion of cash on the balance sheet” and was expected to post about $3 billion in free cash flow losses in 2020, Martin explains. She added that the streamer might be forced to raise capital before the end of the year, warning: “If the equity and/or debt markets close for any extended period, this could represent a non-trivial problem for Netflix.”

congratulates our very own

Bryan J. Freedman for being selected as a Top 100 Power Lawyer

by The Hollywood Reporter for the 13th consecutive year

1901 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 90067 310.201.0005 | 310.201.0045 (fax) | www.ftllp.com

The Report

Larry David fundraises for his caddies, Amy Adams reads to kids and fake doctors support real ones as THR’s Rambling Reporter columnist takes the pulse of an industry in upheaval BY CHRIS GARDNER

Masks, gowns and other supplies from The Resident’s costume department heading to real-life first responders.

Above, from left: Matt Czuchry, Kwajalyn Brown, Eli Gelb and Manish Dayal on the show’s March 24 episode.

TV Docs Sending Their Scrubs and Gloves to the Pros

They’re not real doctors, they only play them on TV. Still, they’re helping to battle the COVID-19 pandemic just the same, with shows like Fox’s The Resident, NBC’s Chicago Med and ABC’s The Good Doctor donating such props as surgical masks, gloves and gowns to hospitals and first responders around the country. “We were lucky enough to have about 300 of the coveted N95 masks,” says Krista Vernoff, a Grey’s Anatomy veteran who now serves as an exec producer on Station 19, ABC’s Seattle-based firehouse drama. “We donated [them] to our local fire station — they were tremendously grateful.” In Atlanta, The Resident packed up two trunks’ worth of scrubs, surgical caps and lab coats and sent them to Grady Memorial Hospital. “It’s pretty appalling to think that our doctors and nurses at hospitals don’t have the proper protection — they’re facing these patients who are highly contagious without being protected,” says showrunner Amy Holden Jones. ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy sent much-needed supplies to various L.A. hospitals; FX’s Pose (which isn’t a medical show but has several hospital sets) donated prop supplies to Mount Sinai in New York; The Good Doctor, based in Vancouver, donated to the local provincial Canadian government; and NBC’s New Amsterdam sent unused props to New York’s Bellevue, where the series is shot. Making it even more personal, one of that show’s castmembers, Daniel Dae Kim, was diagnosed with COVID-19 on March 19. — RAMONA SAVISS

Stars hoard, too: Oscar-winning vegan Joaquin Phoenix (wearing an L.A. Animal Save hoodie and black latex gloves) was spied by Rambling Reporter in the checkout line at Erewhon near the Grove in mid-March with three carts full of groceries.

Other actors — Tommy Dorfman, Kaia Gerber and Cara Delevingne and girlfriend Ashley Benson — also have been spotted stocking up at the pricey health food market (sales are up 75 percent to 100 percent,

according to Erewhon vp Jason Widener, who tells THR that “this

O.J. Simpson bought supplies at Costco.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

is our time to shine”). Other high-end grocery stores are getting the star treatment as well: Charlize Theron was seen collecting provisions at West Hollywood’s Bristol Farms, Gwyneth Paltrow and husband Brad Falchuk donned designerlooking black masks while scavenging at Brentwood’s farmers market, and food star Bobby Flay was spotted buying large amounts of beef at Eataly in Century City. Of course, not all famous people shop at such

20

M A RCH 26, 2020

An Industry Insta Star Learns Social Distancing

Richard Weitz boasts one of the

buzziest (private) Instagram accounts in Hollywood. Just this past year, he’s treated his 2,500 followers to posts featuring Barack Obama (in Chicago during NBA All-Star Weekend), client Ricky Gervais (backstage at the Golden Globes) and George Lucas (in the filmmaker’s kitchen). But, of course, social distancing has put a kink in the famously social WME partner’s Instagramming habit. Instead, like everybody else, he’s stuck at home working and watching a ton of TV. “I’m not leaving the house,” he tells Rambling, listing some of the classic comedies from the 1980s he’s been binge-watching (Three Amigos, Ghostbusters, Uncle Buck and Trading Places, to name a few).

Weitz says he’s in regular contact with clients and colleagues, though there’s obviously not a whole lot of dealmaking going on

Richard Weitz in a (now) rare Insta post.

and he’s clearly growing fidgety.

“Everyone is definitely getting restless,” he says. “But everyone knows how serious this is.”

Love and (Delayed) Marriage in the Time of Coronavirus

Looks like Emma Stone won’t be having a spring wedding after all. The Oscar-winning actress has postponed her nuptials to SNL writer Dave McCary — originally scheduled for the March 13 weekend — until further notice.

And she’s not the only one putting a wedding on hold: The Irishman producer Randall Emmett and Vanderpump Rules star Lala Kent have moved their April ceremony

Emma Stone and Dave McCary were supposed to get married in mid-March.

RESIDENT: GUY D’ALEMA/FOX. HOSPITAL: @ KAREN.LL.LAW/INSTAGRAM. SUPPLIES: COURTESY OF DAVID HARTLEY. DAY: @CLDAYLA/INSTAGRAM. WEITZ: @RICHARDWEITZLA/INSTAGRAM. E. STONE: KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES. N’YONGO: AXELLE/ BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC. C. STONE: ANNA LASSEN/GETTY IMAGES FOR COLES. SIMPSON: THEREALOJ32/TWITTER. CRUSTACEAN: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. RONNEN: NOEL VASQUEZ/GETTY IMAGES FOR NAUTICA/AUTHENTIC BRANDS GROUP.

Hollywood Grinds to a Halt: Tales From the Shutdown

Joaquin Phoenix (and Other Stars) Stock Their Shelves

coronavirus crisis. “I don’t have any children, but I’ve been watching the videos,” says Betsy Zorio, head of Save the Children’s U.S. programs and advocacy. “They’ve become a nice little way to take a break during the day and get your mind off the shortage of toilet paper.” — KIRSTEN CHUBA

high-end venues; O.J. Simpson tweeted a photo of himself with a cartload of supplies outside a Costco.

Rambling Reporter

to July, while Kelly Kovacs, director of development for Jessica Biel’s Iron Ocean Films, is postponing her March 28 wedding to musician John Schroeder. “Since our priority was having our family together, we really couldn’t live with ourselves if we asked people to put themselves at risk,” Kovacs says. “Every couple needs to decide what the right thing is to do for themselves.” One pair who decided to go ahead with tying the knot: SNL’s Chloe Fineman and actor Casey Thomas Brown, who held an Instagram wedding March 23. — TARA BITRAN

Wanna Meet for Drinks?

Here’s the Zoom Link

Just because California is on lockdown doesn’t mean Hollywood isn’t hobnobbing. Virtual happy hours are popping up all over town, with industry professionals logging on to Zoom for the festivities. Longtime film exec David Dinerstein has hosted several, with attendees including former CBS exec John Wentworth (and his restaurateur husband, Jamie Gluck), filmmakers and partners Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang, advertising exec Chris Gibbin and veteran communications specialist Chris Day. “It was no different than getting together at any other time,” Dinerstein tells THR. “We talked about issues we faced in business,

How to Get Movie Stars to Read to You

Want Amy Adams to tell your kid a story? Thanks to a new Save the Children Instagram series organized by Adams and Jennifer Garner, all you have to do is click on “Save With Stories” (and, if you feel like it, donate $10) and a slew of stars — Reese Witherspoon, Jeff Bridges, Natalie Portman, Jimmy Fallon, Lupita Nyong’o and Jamie Lee Curtis, among others — will entertain your stir-crazed little ones with videos of them reading children’s books. So far, the program has 50,000 followers, the videos have drawn nearly 27 million views, and thousands of dollars have been raised to help feed and educate kids during the

Lupita Nyong’o

Meanwhile, Busy Philipps and Mandy Moore, among other entertainers, are over at the Cameo app — an online platform that stars like Caitlyn Jenner and Ice-T normally use to charge as much as $2,500 for sending personalized videos to individual fans — raising money for No Kid Hungry and World Central Kitchen. “A lot of people are asking for videos for their friends and family to cheer them up,” says Philipps, who collects $100 for the charities for each of her personalized messages. “It’s a very strange time, so [it’s nice] to be able to send a friend a pick-me-up — ‘I know you love some White Chicks,’ or whatever.” — K.C.

The caddies at Riviera Country Club have a (curmudgeonly) guardian angel — Larry David. The creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which has shot multiple scenes at the Pacific Palisades venue) has teamed with Endeavor’s Lloyd Braun (after whom David named a character on Seinfeld) to set up a GoFundMe account to help the bag carriers who’ve been put out of work because of the lockdown. As of March 25, the page had raised $95,420 thanks to donations from Tom Brady ($2,000), Ari Emanuel ($1,000), Sony’s Josh Greenstein ($500), producer David Friendly ($500), Centerview Partners’ Skip Paul ($2,500), UTA’s Peter Benedek ($1,000) and Jay Sures ($500), and, of course, David himself ($5,000).

Amazon had been planning a blowout March 18 premiere in New York for Blow the Man Down, a noir thriller about a murder in a New England fishing village

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

Chef Adam Perry Lang’s APL Restaurant is offering curbside pickup and no-contact delivery for the first time. Comfort classics such as matzo ball soup, chicken-fried pork chops and stews, among other dishes, are on offer. … Apple Pan also is jumping on the delivery train, a first for the diner, featuring its entire menu of burgers, fries and pies. … Craig’s and Dan Tana’s also are offering delivery for the first time. … n/ naka and Chateau Hanare are prepping their versions of to-go bento boxes for their takeout debuts. … Tal Ronnen’s Crossroads Kitchen has vegan meal kits for patrons who are looking for easy-to-make home dinners like fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce and chickpea marsala. …

Curtis Stone’s Gwen

Larry David Takes a Swing for Riviera’s Golf Caddies

Amazon Holds a Premiere — in Living Rooms

David Dinerstein’s virtual cocktail party.

Ronnen

Stone

recipes, movies and books we were catching up on.” CAA’s talent department also has been holding virtual parties — “Quarantine & Chill,” they’re calling them — as have stylist Warren Alfie Baker and WME’s Jordan Cerf.

How to Get Movie Stars to Read to Your Kid

Power Takeout

21

M A RCH 26, 2020

Crustacean Beverly Hills staff

and Maude restaurants have transformed into marketplaces for items including vacuum-sealed meats, cheeses and produce.

Birdie G’s, Terroni, Tesse and others also have turned into provisions markets. … Places like Katsuya and Nerano are providing discounts for takeout orders, while other incentives such as free toilet paper with each delivery order are on offer at Blue Plate Oysterette and Zinc Cafe & Market. …

Crustacean Beverly Hills is featuring blackglove service to ensure the cleanliness of each takeout order.

The Report Rambling Reporter

What Hollywood Is Saying Now COMPILED BY MICHAEL O’CONNELL

Norman Lloyd, Surviving His Second Global Epidemic

THR checked in with probably the one person in Hollywood who was alive during the last great global epidemic — the Spanish flu — to see how 105-year-old Norman Lloyd is holding up.

“Like everyone else, I’m captive in my own house,” the star of Alfred Hitchcock ’s Saboteur (and NBC’s St. Elsewhere) said over the phone.

“But there’s nothing I need at the moment.” Lloyd, who was 4 years old (and in New Jersey) when the 1918 pandemic hit, now lives in Beverly Hills with a full-time caretaker. — SCOTT FEINBERG

Four Resources to Get (or Give) Help The Actors Fund Financial assistance for basic living expenses for out-of-work actors over the next two months. actorsfund.org

“It’s a cross between a staycation and a Saw movie.”

SETH MEYERS

The Late Night host, during his first telecast from home, describing the experience of sheltering in place.

“We don’t have a penny of revenue coming in the door.”

ADAM ARON

The AMC Entertainment Holdings CEO, on CNN, revealing that the theater company needs loans to survive after closing all locations.

“We’ve never called the virus a hoax.”

SEAN HANNITY

The Fox News host, in his March 18 telecast, nine days after he called media coverage of the coronavirus a weapon to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”

“Live … from my basement … this is Today.”

“We’re looking at this as a time of war.”

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE

RANDALL STEPHENSON

The NBC anchor, on Instagram, showing that her pajama-clad husband, Mike Feldman, was working as her producer while she taped from home.

The AT&T CEO, speaking on CNN, comparing the coronavirus to World War II and calling on corporations to “help the general population.”

Entertainment Industry Foundation Its Music for Relief disaster response program is providing money to industry workers in need. musicforrelief.org SAG-AFTRA Foundation and Motion Picture Players Welfare Fund The two organizations have partnered to create a COVID-19 Disaster Fund, helping members cover rent, mortgages, utilities and other basic expenses. sagaftrafoundation.org Producers Guild Fund Launched with a $100,000 gift from former PGA president Mark Gordon, distributions (administered through the Actors Fund) go to out-of-work members to help with basic living expenses over the next two months. actorsfund.org

myman greenspan fox rosenberg mobasser younger & light llp

“Remember, despite all the current events, there is no crying in baseball.”

TOM HANKS

The actor, on Twitter, channeling his character from A League of Their Own to describe his feelings about being quarantined in Australia with wife Rita Wilson after both tested positive for COVID-19. “We are taking it one-day-at-a-time.”

MEYERS: MARK SAGLIOCCO/GETTY IMAGES. HANNITY: BENNETT RAGLIN/WIREIMAGE. GUTHRIE: DESIREE NAVARRO/WIREIMAGE. HANKS: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES.

(starring Annette O’Toole, Margo Martindale, June Squibb, Sophie Lowe and Morgan Saylor) but instead has moved the venue to a more intimate space — attendees’ living rooms. In lieu of a public gathering, the studio is sending dinner for two (menu by Annie Campbell Catering, linens by Heather Taylor Home, dessert from Valerie Confections) to the cast and crew and other industry folk so they can party on as they stream the Prime film during a delayed March 27 home event (the film began streaming March 20). A source at Amazon tells THR that all the vendors hired for the original live premiere were retained for the home version, so nobody lost any income because of the coronavirus.

congratulates our friends and colleagues in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2020 Power Lawyers issue

The Report Behind the Headlines

1 Charlie Chaplin wore stilts to promote a film in 1918 before the flu shut down production across the nascent movie industry.

2 Red Cross nurses carried a patient on a stretcher in Washington, D.C., during the pandemic.

3 Nurses in Massachusetts provided fresh air to patients in 1918.

3

2

1

It Happened Before: How the 1918 Flu Halted Hollywood

I

t should have been a joyous time in Hollywood. The First World War was about to come to an end — in November 1918 — and the nascent silent film industry was booming, distributing pictures to more than 20,000 theaters across America. But this rapid progress was threatened by the outbreak of an influenza pandemic, one that would claim millions of lives worldwide.

Much like Hollywood today amid the COVID-19 crisis, studios and theaters were forced to come to terms with an H1N1 viral threat. “Filmland is full of gloom and germs,” Moving Picture World reported in November 1918.

For months, L.A.-based studios

and theater chains believed that the so-called Spanish influenza was an East Coast problem. But the flu was moving westward.

In early October, the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, losing money because theaters across the U.S. were halfempty, announced an embargo on the release of new films for a month starting Oct. 14. Theater impresario Sid Grauman, however, told the Los Angeles Times that he had “plenty of films on hand, that no word had come from anyone to close and that he had not heard a single sneeze in any of his audiences.”

On Oct. 11, L.A. City Hall ordered all theaters, motion

1

2

1 Flu survivors Dorothy (left) and Lillian Gish in 1921’s Orphans of the Storm.

2 In a train-station scene from the 1919 Mary Pickford silent film Daddy-Long-Legs, a woman sneezes and everyone scatters, including people wearing masks.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

picture houses and places of amusement closed. Soon after, word arrived from New York that Bryant Washburn had infected co-star Anna Q. Nilsson while shooting Venus in the East. On Oct. 16, Frank Garbutt, vp of Lasky Photoplay Corp., announced that three pictures in production were being rushed and that most of the studio would go dark for a month.

The Metro, Mack Sennett and Triangle studios followed suit.

As silent-film producer Benjamin Hampton told it, panic set in as “studios closed entirely, or operated on part time, and pessimists croaked that this was the beginning of the end.” Matinee idol Harold Lockwood, 31, died of the influenza Oct. 19, and Russia’s first movie star, Vera Kholodnaya, would also succumb.

It appears that some film work had resumed by late October even though influenza was still ravaging L.A. On Oct. 24, the chief of police issued rules prohibiting crowd scenes in movies. In early November, silent superstar Lillian Gish was struck with the flu while working at Sunset Studio. Her sister and fellow actor, Dorothy, would also be infected. Lillian

24

M A RCH 26, 2020

Gish would later make light of her illness, claiming that “the only disagreeable thing was that it left me with flannel nightgowns … horrible things.”

According to Richard Koszarski, author of Flu Season: Moving Picture World Reports on Pandemic Influenza, 1918-19, guards at some studios sprayed down visitors with disinfectant, while some people believed that a “yeast cake a day keeps influenza away.”

Although many were still seriously ill or would soon become ill (Mary Pickford among them), the Los Angeles Times reported Dec. 2 that L.A. theaters, which claimed to have lost a million dollars a week ($17.1 million in today’s dollars) during the seven weeks of closure, were to reopen. The “funless season” had ended, and Angelenos could “rest assured that … the motion picture palaces have made active preparations for a rousing welcome for us.”

By early spring of 1919, the pandemic had slowed. Soon the studios were running to capacity, and the losses suffered because of the flu were tempered by the mad entertainment crush and money rush of the 1920s.

NURSES: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES. TENTS: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. STORM, CHAPLIN: HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES.

An influenza outbreak 102 years ago closed movie theaters, shut down production and felled actors: ‘Pessimists croaked that this was the beginning of the end’ BY HADLEY MEARES

The Report Behind the Headlines

‘Now We Need to Step Up for Our Own People’ While crowdfunding efforts may help, the best way to protect industry support staff is by encouraging employers to keep them on the payroll wherever possible BY LIZ ALPER AND JOHN AUGUST

In October, John and his co-host Craig Mazin started talking about the problem of low assistant pay on the Scriptnotes podcast. Listeners sent in stories of unpaid overtime, blithe bosses and having to cover writers’ lunch bills.

These issues weren’t new. But as they heard more of these stories — and researched the hard numbers — it became clear that the ladder was broken.

Assistant wages had remained stagnant while Los Angeles had become vastly more expensive. Assistant pay had gone from unfortunate to unsustainable.

Meanwhile, TV writers Liz and her co-founder Deirdre Mangan had created the hashtag #PayUpHollywood to build awareness surrounding the struggles of Hollywood support staff. Together, the organizations surveyed assistants to find out how much they were really making versus what they needed, and asked them to submit expense reports that tracked their income versus expenses.

Assistant treatment in Hollywood improved. The spotlight helped spur talent agencies, including Verve and CAA, to raise support staff rates and implement new programs to August help assistants.

In January, we identified a stunning but unsurprising trend from the assistantsubmitted expense reports; Alper none of the submitters could cover the cost of living in Los Angeles on their take-home pay alone. Only a handful made enough to pay their bills, much less put extra into savings.

And then a global pandemic hit.

Assistants and support staff went from underpaid to unemployed as productions shut down and offices closed.

Unemployment benefits, if you qualified, were not sustainable long-term.

We heard from people facing the choice of paying for rent or food, paying student loans or utility bills. But there were small rays of hope. Showrunners like Carina Adly Mackenzie (Roswell, New Mexico) were giving extra financial assistance to their support staff out of pocket. But many assistants

desperately needed relief and found there was nothing for them.

We created the Hollywood Support Staff COVID-19 Relief Fund with the goal of raising $100,000 to offer support staffers who qualified a modest stipend: a one-time payment of $450 for those eligible for unemployment or $900 for those who weren’t. We knew we couldn’t solve everyone’s financial anxieties, but we could ease the burden of an overlooked community. In response, the entertainment community, from CEOs and creators to PAs, raised more than $500,000 (from GoFundMe and outside sources) in three days. We now had the funds to help more than twice as many people as projected and were able to increase the stipends for all qualified applicants by 15 percent to 33 percent. It is exhilarating. It is not enough.

If we as an industry don’t do more to protect our support staff during this crisis, we risk losing a generation of talent. The burgeoning gains we have made in diversity and inclusion will disappear as hopefuls from historically underprivileged backgrounds are unable to afford living on their low assistant salaries after this long furlough. You will see more crowdfunding initiatives in the coming days. Support them if you can. But we should never rely on crowdfunding to provide long-term financial support throughout an industrywide shutdown.

The best way to protect support staff and the rest of our industry is by encouraging

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

26

The Hollywood & Highland mall stairs on March 20, a day after Los Angeles County announced a stayat-home order.

$353,537

Raised from 1,200 donors by March 24 in a GoFundMe relief drive organized by #PayUpHollywood for L.A.-based support staffers.

M A RCH 26, 2020

their employers to pay them. Companies must find ways to keep staff on the payroll wherever possible. Productions in limbo need to make decisions that protect their workers over their bottom line.

The same skills that make Hollywood run on time can help organize the battle against COVID-19, so if someone’s normal work can’t be done at home, pay them for their work for charitable causes, including organizing the response to this national emergency. State and federal action also is essential. California Rep. Adam Schiff is urging Congress to include protections for those who have lost work due to coronavirus-related cancellations and postponements in the entertainment industry in the next relief bill.

When he calls for action, be ready.

We have proved ourselves to be an industry that cares, that will not leave behind the most vulnerable in a time of need. We hold telethons to help the victims of natural disasters. We hold leaders to account for their promises.

Now we need to step up for our own people. Companies must take responsibility for the well-being of thousands of entertainment workers waiting for relief, both by paying them when possible and making sure state and federal relief covers their work.

Liz Alper is a TV writer and co-founder of grassroots organization #PayUpHollywood, and John August is a screenwriter and co-host of the Scriptnotes podcast.

HOLLYWOOD: AGUSTIN PAULLIER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. ALPER: JILLY WENDELL. AUGUST: ARAYA DIAZ/GETTY IMAGES.

Guest Column

Advisors & Accountants for Entertainment

www.pragerme�s.com New York| Los Angeles | Miami | London

75%

The Report

7 Days of DEALS

Increase in U.S. video game usage in

peak hours during the first week Big Number of the pandemic-induced quarantine,

Who’s inking on the dotted line this week

as reported by Verizon on March 17.

T V’S PLA N: ‘SHOWS YOU WOU LD H AV E SAID NO TO AR E NOW LOOK ING GOOD’

Uma Thurman

Ready or Not directors Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (UTA, Brillstein, Gang Tyre) will helm a Scream reboot for Spyglass Media.

Disney has acquired worldwide rights to Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back.

TELEVISION Andy Garcia (CAA, Brillstein, Loeb & Loeb) will star opposite Katey Sagal in ABC’s Erin Brockovich drama pilot Rebel.

Jon Bernthal (WME, Dani Bernfeld, Sloane Offer) will star in and produce Showtime’s long-gestating present-day update of the

BY MIA GALUPPO

You and Me and Us (WILLIAM MORROW, APRIL 7)

BY Laura Zigman AGENCY WME

BY Alison Hammer AGENCY Gersh

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

28

Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan, in season two of Disney+’s The Mandalorian.

2000 AD publisher Rebellion has partnered with Penguin Random House for a series of audiobook adaptations of classic British comic book strips.

ABC has renewed Station 19 for a fourth season. … AMC has ordered two seasons of the sci-fi drama Pantheon, its first animated original series.

FILM Woody Harrelson (CAA) has replaced Jason Statham in Columbia Pictures’ action comedy The Man From Toronto.

Separation Anxiety (HARPERCOLLINS, MARCH 3) As a means of coping with an apathetic teen son and an estranged husband, a failed children’s book author begins to wear her dog in a baby sling. The novel is reminiscent of character-driven dramedies like Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.

1980 film American Gigolo for Showtime, now led by Ray Donovan showrunner David Hollander.

Scott Foley (ICM, Sloane Offer) will star as a reality show producer in Fox drama pilot The Big Leap.

reasonably inexpensive,” explains Wieser. $440 million in cash (partially funded by “The math works in that you can justify selling its 5 percent stake in Roku) for the cost [of the deals] without fretting Tubi, which will continue to be led by CEO too much.”

Farhad Massoudi.

Still, being able to offer customBut Brian Wieser, president of ers a free, ad-supported alternative business intelligence for media amid the glut of subscription video investment firm GroupM, says offerings also is valuable, especially these deals are more about helping during the pandemic-induced companies quickly scale up their Massoudi economic downturn. If ViacomCBS’ advertising inventory, as each 2019 marketing blitz for PlutoTV is any of these services comes with licensing model, people will soon be learning a lot deals to stream thousands of hours of old more about Tubi, now that it is under the TV shows and movies that are ripe to be Fox umbrella. — NATALIE JARVEY advertised against. “It’s inventory that’s

Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal

Norman Reedus and Diane Kruger’s updated 1920s villa.

Bella Thorne (CAA, Thirty Three, Hirsch Wallerstein) has signed a nonexclusive development deal with Fox to develop scripted and unscripted programming.

Fox Joins the Ad-Supported Streaming Stampede Over the past 15 months, legacy media companies Big have invested nearly Deal $1 billion in ad-supported streaming video platforms, taking Pluto TV (ViacomCBS), Xumo (Comcast) and, as of March 17, Tubi (Fox Corp.) off the market.

“Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in noting the company’s strategic imperative amid the streaming market boom. Fox is paying

Dawson

Comparable to the sentimental work of oft-adapted Me Before You author Jojo Moyes, Hammer’s debut novel follows a working mom trying to reconnect with her teenage daughter after her stay-athome husband is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

DIGITAL Rosario Dawson (CAA, Untitled) will play Ahsoka

©2020 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Sellers will entertain and respond to all offers within this range. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

Riverdale was among the first shows to shutter, after a crewmember had contact with a patient.

more of a cable/streaming model, which would allow them to pick up high-profile pilots straight to series based on the collective strength of a script, auspices and cast. Another option being discussed is ordering showrunners to open virtual rooms in an effort to get ahead on scripts and, in success, be able to begin production as soon as it’s considered safe. (Some already had begun stockpiling scripts in preparation for a potential writers strike.) Funds that previously were earmarked for production could be redirected to pay for additional scripts.

As for what will fill network schedules, many expect bubble shows will now have a big advantage.

After all, these are projects that nets already have spent millions to license and market, and, nearly as crucial, see as known quantities. “Shows you would have said no to are now looking good because [they’re] stability in a time of change,” says a network insider. Another option likely to be considered, if it comes to it, is having unscripted shows previously earmarked for summer held for fall.

The one thing everyone seems to agree on: If the shutdown lingers for more than a few months, TV production will be the least of anyone’s concerns.

“Three months, we can keep development robust,” says an exec, one of many now fielding pitches over virtual conference calls. “If this is an eight-month scenario, then we’re all living in The Walking Dead, and it’s subsistence living.” — LESLEY GOLDBERG

RIVERDALE: KATIE YU/THE CW. THURMAN: ROY ROCHLIN/GETTY IMAGES. MASSOUDI: EUGENE GOLOGURSKY/GETTY IMAGES. SEPARATION: COURTESY OF HARPERCOLLINS. BERNTHAL: GEORGE PIMENTEL/GETTY IMAGES. DAWSON: TOMMASO BODDI/WIREIMAGE. REEDUS: REALTOR.COM. O’CONNELL: JOHN LAMPARSKI/WIREIMAGE. LANCASHIRE: YUI MOK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES.

Deal of the Week

As production grinds to a halt amid a global pandemic, television, like nearly every other industry, is navigating uncharted territory. And at least for now, there are many more questions than answers.

Resuming production, for instance, won’t be as easy as it sounds. Given the demands of the Peak TV era, soundstages and crews are booked out several months, even years, in advance; and the same is true of writers, directors and stars, who increasingly commit to other projects during their hiatuses. To accommodate, studios are in talks about extending the standard June 30 expiration date for cast options for bubble shows and network pilots.

Hardest hit, at least in the near term, are those broadcast networks, which are still tethered to a pilot system and a September-to-May schedule.

Some networks are currently toying with adopting

Bernthal

Mark Wahlberg (WME, Leverage, Sloane Offer) will star in and exec produce the eight-part HBO Max docuseries Wahl Street, which follows the actor as he balances his business endeavors with his entertainment career.

Uma Thurman (ICM, Untitled, Hansen Jacobson) will star in the kidnapping thriller series Suspicion for Apple TV+.

Reed Morano (CAA, LBI) will helm Blumhouse’s limited series adaptation of New York cover story “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence,” which has landed at Amazon.

Sports streaming service FuboTV has inked a deal to merge with technology IP developer Facebank Group.

Netflix has renewed reality shows Love Is Blind and The Circle for two seasons each and picked up The Lovebirds, starring Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani, after Paramount pulled its release amid the pandemic.

GAMING The NFL and video game publisher 2K Games, which last partnered on the NFL 2K series from 1999 to 2004, have inked a new

multiyear partnership for multiple upcoming titles.

REAL ESTATE Norman Reedus and Diane Kruger (The Agency) have purchased a four-bedroom villa in the Hollywood Hills for $8.5 million.

Kesha (PLG) has purchased a brand-new modern five-bedroom home in Los Angeles’ Mar Vista area for $5 million.

Lilly Singh (Sotheby’s) has purchased a five-bedroom, contemporary estate in Studio City for $4.1 million.

Anthony Russo (Compass) has sold one of his two neighboring Los Feliz residences for $2.05 million.

— COMPILED BY KIRSTEN CHUBA AND REBECCA SUN

Rep Sheet Jack O’Connell, who

most recently starred opposite Kristen Stewart in Seberg, has left CAA for UTA .

Joey Sasso, winner of

Netflix’s The Circle, has signed with A3, as has model Tyson Beckford.

Digital management firm TalentX has signed with ICM Partners.

YouTube gaming group

The Krew has signed with CAA, as have

fellow gaming personalities Jesse Cox and Bruce Greene.

Next Big Thing Sarah Lancashire REPS the U.K.’s

Independent

WHY SHE MATTERS

A household name in British television, Lancashire, 55, is stepping across the pond and into Julia Child’s ample shoes in HBO Max’s drama pilot Julia, about the renowned American chef. (Joan Cusack was originally attached in the role.)

Among Lancashire’s most critically acclaimed credits are Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax.

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Biden’s Next Move: ‘Big Hollywood Bundlers’ As the coronavirus outbreak stalls in-person fundraisers, the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s campaign has consolidated support in the industry but will need to find creative ways to reap cash By Peter Kiefer

A BIDEN: RONEN TIVONY: ECHOES WIRE/BARCROFT MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES. PAQUETTE: JEROD HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES. LANSING: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES.

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E L E C TIO N 2020

fter sweeping the most recent primaries, Joe Biden has all but guaranteed that he will win the Democratic nomination, a fact that leaves loyal supporter Jim Gianopulos feeling “pure joy,” the Paramount chairman tells THR. “I always felt that Joe was the statesman that the country needs right now. And, no — I never wavered.”

But the political world that Biden and supporters like Gianopulos now inherit has changed dramatically. The severity of the COVID-19 outbreak began to hit home in the U.S. around the time of South Carolina’s primary, which was the kickoff of Biden’s big

comeback. (Other industry names whose Biden support dates to 2019 include Sony’s Tom Rothman and Screen Gems exec Eric Paquette, who’s on the candidate’s national finance committee.)

Now, Biden must dramatically adjust his “Uncle Joe” style of retail politics, which has relied on high-priced fundraisers and human interaction. That won’t necessarily fly in a world in which social distancing is the norm.

“When you’re with him one-onone, he’s incredibly compelling.

It’s a pity if he’ll have to forgo that personal connection,” says Gianopulos. On March 23, Biden held a virtual fundraising event from his Delaware home, which has been outfitted with a digital

studio. “I know this isn’t how any of us would prefer to connect,” said Biden. While the event went fine, some other forays into virtual campaigning have had technical problems. Gianopulos said he’s hearing that Michael Bloomberg is expected to take a role in helping to oversee Biden’s online fundraising and outreach.

Meanwhile, don’t expect any IRL events in the short term.

The last major Biden event took place at Sherry Lansing’s Bel Air

Paquette

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

31

M A RCH 26, 2020

Lansing

Vice President Joe Biden at a campaign rally in L.A. on March 3, Super Tuesday. He won 10 of 14 states but lost California to Bernie Sanders.

home March 4, and it quickly sold out after South Carolina. (“There are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, which is fine; support is support,” says a Hollywood political insider.)

And there is some concern that the Democratic convention (July 13-16) could be jeopardized by efforts to contain the virus.

But there’s plenty of good news for Biden. His sizable margins of victory over Bernie Sanders (who is “assessing” his campaign) in key primary states like Michigan should quell legitimacy concerns.

Furthermore, current bans on gatherings may not matter all

About Town People, Places, Preoccupations

Sidley congratulates our partners

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Gianopulos

that much for Biden, according to several political advisers.

Biden never has benefited from a large grassroots donor pool, instead relying on a small cadre of donors that includes some of Hollywood’s big bundlers. Biden has seen a huge surge in fundraising since Super Tuesday. During the last debate, he said he had raised $33 million in the first half of March, but he still has a ways to go to catch President Trump, whose reelection campaign has more than $94 million in reserves. “The effort now is to stop picking up the $2,800 checks,” says one consultant in contact with Biden’s campaign.

“They’re trying to finish that and move into much larger figures.

That’s where the big Hollywood bundlers will be helpful.”

That strategy, however, comes with risks. Reaching millennial voters — the ones who typically write those smaller checks — has been a challenge for the 77-year-old Biden, and the optics of further neglecting that class of voters could be perilous.

“Obviously there will be new opportunities to fundraise, and hopefully by late summer or early fall, some of this will have subsided,” says Gianopulos. Still, how do you make a fundraising ask in such an environment? “People are feeling good about the campaign and will still actively do things to support Joe, but we also have to be sensitive and prioritize taking care of people and things in our own community,” says James Costos, a former HBO exec who has hosted fundraisers for Biden.

Adds Gianopulos: “Hopefully, once he’s the candidate, even small measures will matter.

And a lot of people giving a little money adds up.”

My Quarantini Cocktail Recipes

and all of The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 100 Power Lawyers

Actor and Mulholland Distilling co-founder Walton Goggins’ ideas for after-WFH drinks

H

ey, everybody, WG here. OK, here we are, doing our part to slow the rate of infection by staying away from each other. If there is a silver lining, maybe it’s to be more grateful for the unconditional time we’re used to spending with one another. A few days into my limited contact with friends, co-workers and family have me taking inventory of my life and the joy I derive from interacting with the world. If I’m honest, I’ve taken it for granted. I won’t anymore. I like people. I need people. I love people! It is important in this time to take care of ourselves, to boost our immune system as much as possible. But if you say, “Fuck it, I need a drankkk” — I did it day one! — here are six recipes to try at home while waiting it out.

Restaurants and bars the world over will at some point be filled again with conviviality. I can’t wait to see you there. — AS TOLD TO BRAD JAPHE

MEMOIR: HOW BARRY SONNENFELD STARTED IN PORN The ‘neurotic’ director recalls life on every sort of film set By Seth Abramovitch

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

APRIL SHOWERS

BREAKFAST IN BED

EARL GREY GOLD RUSH

2 oz. Mulholland Gin Rosemary sprig Lightly muddled lime 4 oz. tonic water Add squeeze of lime to gin and top off with quality tonic water in a Collins glass with ice.

Garnish with a lime wheel and rosemary.

2 oz. whiskey .5 oz. maple syrup Angostura bitters Orange and lemon peel Add all ingredients in an Old Fashioned glass with ice and stir. Garnish with an orange peel and lemon peel.

MAY FLOWERS

HOME BASIL (GIMLET)

1.5 oz. vodka .75 oz. chamomile syrup (make by steeping chamomile tea and adding equal parts sugar) .75 oz. fresh lemon juice Shake ingredients together in a cocktail tin with ice. Strain into a tumbler with ice. Garnish with a lemon wedge and/or chamomile flower.

1.5 oz. gin Basil leaves .75 oz. fresh lime juice .5 oz. simple syrup (make with equal parts water and sugar) Put basil and other ingredients in a shaker; don’t muddle, but shake with ice.

Strain into a stemmed glass.

Garnish with basil leaf.

1.5 oz. whiskey .75 oz. Earl Grey honey syrup (make by steeping Earl Grey tea and adding equal parts local honey) .75 oz. fresh lemon juice Shake ingredients together in a cocktail tin with ice. Strain into a tumbler with ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

2 oz. vodka 2-4 sage leaves Grapefruit soda Lime Salt Lightly press sage leaves into a Collins glass with ice. Top off with a quality grapefruit soda.

Garnish with lime wedge and salt.

In his new memoir, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker, the cinematographer turned director (The Addams Family, Men in Black) traces his rise from nebbish teen (the title refers to when his mother had him paged during a concert) to the heights of Hollywood. The book covers his early days shooting XXX movies (he learned “maximum efficiency”) and working with Scott Rudin (“Read [the script] in the next two hours,” the producer once ordered him) and Penny Marshall. The Telluride-based director, 66, finds home isolation easy: “I don’t do much.

I don’t ski or hike. I walk the dog and read.”

Book Scene

M A RCH 26, 2020

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About Town 2

Congratulations

Mileposts

to our partner

such productions as Kiss of the SpiderWoman, Master Class, Ragtime and Love!

Valour! Compassion!, died March 24 in Sarasota, Florida, of complications from the coronavirus. He was 81.

3

Lyle Waggoner, who

Hitched, Hatched, Hired Elle O’Sullivan, tal-

ent executive at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, married Peter Ryan Bradt, who works at tech software company OpenReel, on Feb. 15 at Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades in front of 205 guests. The couple honeymooned in Tulum, Mexico.

and head of programming strategy and business operations March 19.

Former ICM agent J.C. Mills was named president and commercial director of Cineflix Productions, the company behind Property Brothers, on March 11.

Lorraine Holland LoPiccolo, on Feb. 7

at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

Congrats

AMC hired Dan McDermott as president of original programming and co-president of AMC Studios and David Beck as executive vp

Alex Hamilton was

appointed CEO of StudioCanal U.K., with current CEO Nicola Shindler moving to chief creative officer April 22.

was named executive vp and CFO of Showtime Networks on March 10.

Nick LoPiccolo, an

agent at Paradigm, and Brianna Ferris welcomed their second child, daughter

elected president of the International Cinematographers Guild on March 15.

Michael Crotty

Births

Morrison

Vanessa Morrison was upped to president of streaming at Walt Disney Studios, overseeing development and production of Disney+ film content, on March 12.

Steve Asbell was named president of production at 20th Century Studios on March 12.

and “Islands in the Stream” and starred in The Gambler telefilms based on his hit song, died March 20 in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He was 81.

John Lindley was

Former Lionsgate executive Mark W. McCoy was hired as head of postproduction at Solstice Studios on March 11.

Berg

Jonathan Berg joined

Greg Silverman’s Stampede Ventures as president of production March 12.

Deaths

Kenny Rogers, the superstar country singer who had hits with “Lucille,” “Lady”

Don Gray was named director of the Las Cruces Film Office in New Mexico on March 19.

MARCH 27 Halle Bailey, 20 Mariah Carey, 50 → Quentin Tarantino, 57

Former Warner Bros. co-president of production

MARCH 28 Lady Gaga, 34 Jonathan Van Ness, 33

To submit, send email to hhh@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

Stuart Whitman,

who starred in Cimarron Strip and received an Oscar nomination for The Mark, died March 16 in Montecito, California. He was 92.

Terrence McNally, the admired five-time Tony winner behind

Birthdays MARCH 26 Jonathan Groff, 35 Keira Knightley, 35 Martin Short, 70

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Darrell Miller on being named a Power Lawyer

Gary B. Kibbe, who

Inside the industry’s celebrations and news

Weddings

spent seven seasons on The Carol Burnett Show before portraying Steve Trevor on Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, died March 17 in Los Angeles. He was 84.

MARCH 30 Mark Consuelos, 49 Celine Dion, 52 MARCH 31 Ewan McGregor, 49 Christopher Walken, 77 APRIL 1 Taran Killam, 38 Rachel Maddow, 47 APRIL 2 Michael Fassbender, 43

was John Carpenter’s cinematographer on seven features, died March 9 in Burbank.

He was 79.

Tonie Marshall, who

wrote, directed and produced the 1999 film Venus Beauty, died March 12 in Paris after a long illness. She was 68.

Larry Edgeworth, an veteran audio technician at NBC News and 30 Rock, died March 20 after being infected with the coronavirus.

He was 61.

BRADT: JENNA BECHTHOLT PHOTOGRAPHY. LOPICCOLO: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. ROGERS: PHOTOFEST. MORRISON: COURTESY OF DISNEY. BERG: COURTESY OF STAMPEDE. CAREY: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE.

1

1 Elle O’Sullivan and Peter Ryan Bradt 2 Lorraine Holland LoPiccolo 3 Kenny Rogers

Darrell D. Miller, Founding Chair Entertainment & Sports Law Department 310.598.4174 | dmiller@foxrothschild.com

The signed cajón, a box instrument Fram uses as a side table, is from Collective Soul, a band Fram supported at Atlanta radio station 99X.

The Business

“I have a button on my desk that says ‘NO,’ ” says Fram, who finds herself at live shows most nights. “It’s very hard for me to hit.” She was photographed March 9 in her office in Nashville.

Creative Space that’s devastating for Austin. I think it brings $360 million to the economy. We have not even started to understand the ramifications of this.

The Nashville Business Journal’s Women in Music City Award, which Fram received in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, looks like a mic.

Where do you stand about whether to move forward with the CMT Music Awards on June 3?

BIG HIT

the NBC affiliate and the Red Cross on the telethon. Artists came together quickly, but I’m not sure people understand the billions of dollars it’s going to take to rebuild.

With the ViacomCBS merger, what’s been the most noticeable change?

We heavily supported the Grammys, which air on CBS. I think if they can support what we do and we can support what they do, we’re one big happy family.

The next six months should be really interesting. [ViacomCBS CEO] Bob Bakish is a big country fan. He comes to all our shows and wants to stand in line to get his tickets. We’re, like, “No, you’re Bob Bakish.”

Ratings are up. That’s been positive, across the board, with all our channels. People need a break from the news. [The week of March 16, CMT ratings rose 11 percent.]

You do music programming, but there’s not a whole lot of music left in music television.

A

few hours after Leslie Fram discussed how the COVID-19 outbreak might affect the entertainment industry — and talked about bringing DIY hand sanitizer to victims of the deadly March 3 tornado that devastated Middle Tennessee — the Nashville-based exec found out she had her own brush with the virus. Fram, the senior vp of music strategy at CMT (Country Music Television), was among the network staffers who worked a March 5 Rebuilding Tennessee Telethon where one attendee tested positive for the coronavirus. Now, like most Americans, Fram and her 60-person team are working remotely. Just before she shifted to her home office (and again over the phone), the Alabama native and radio veteran sat down with THR to

talk about keeping one foot in each of two rapidly transforming industries — cable television, where her net averaged 234,000 primetime viewers in 2019, and country music. For Fram, who’s been at CMT since 2011, 2020 means pushing for equal airplay for female artists (including the long-shunned Dixie Chicks), planning their marquee awards show (CMT Music Awards) during a pandemic, helping evolve a genre full of “purists” and navigating the merger of newly combined parent company ViacomCBS.

Coronavirus has already affected the music industry, especially live events. How do you plan for a situation with so many unknowns?

Look at what happened with South by Southwest being canceled. That’s just two weeks, and

It’s hard because it’s financial.

A lot of music doesn’t rate on TV. Awards do, but they’re events.

As for the genre, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” didn’t quite fit in hiphop or in country — until Billy Ray Cyrus came in and sort of brought him into the fold. What does that say about expanding the scope of what is a country song?

We need to open the aperture.

The fans are listening to everything — hip-hop, pop, EDM, country. That is the reality.

We are never going to go back.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of purists. We are playing Blake Shelton singing with Pitbull, and a lot of people probably hate that. But if Blake is going to do a collab with Pitbull, we know our fans are listening. We can’t keep narrowing and narrowing and narrowing and making everything bland.

Photographed by Diana King

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36

M A RCH 26, 2020

As for the Grammys, how is the leadership tumult at the Recording Academy affecting the industry? [upcoming] record, and they immediately remind you why you miss the Dixie Chicks. Their voices matter, and I believe the format has sorely missed them. I know that radio stations are playing the first single, “Gaslighter.”

We are playing the video. I will do anything and everything for the Dixie Chicks. No one has ever replaced them or ever will. I’m hoping this is the year of the Dixie Chicks back in country.

The Dixie Chicks were shunned by the country purists after their 2003 comments about George W. Bush. What do you think about their return to recording?

I’ve heard five or six songs off the

Gifts from country artists who count Fram as a supporter include a signed paddle from Chris and Kelly Janson and a Colt Ford doll.

CMT started the Equal Play initiative to showcase more female voices in country. Why is the industry still so male-dominated?

HAIR AND MAKEUP BY KEISHA BUTTS.

By Ashley Cullins

PREVIOUS JOB

The CMT Awards, which reached nearly 3 million viewers on premiere night in 2019

“My female wall of fame gives me inspiration,” says Fram, who works next to framed albums

by Carrie Underwood and others.

Has there been an uptick in viewership since so many people have been ordered to stay at home?

CMT’s Nashville-based music guru talks country’s gender-parity problem, the Dixie Chicks’ return and the impact of coronavirus and Tennessee tornadoes

CURRENT TITLE

Senior vp music strategy, CMT Program director at New York’s 101.9 WRXP-FM

That’s very fluid. We’re continuing as if we’re moving forward — calls about talent, host ideas, nomination research. We’re also having conversations about rescheduling and taking this month by month.

Leslie Fram

RÉSUMÉ

Even in the ’90s, when people thought it was the heyday with Shania Twain, Reba McIntire and Faith Hill, women were only 30 percent of the playlist. Now we’re down to 10 or 11 percent.

Some female artists were leaving the format, Taylor Swift or whomever, and there wasn’t enough inventory to replenish them.

Labels weren’t signing enough female artists. Publishers weren’t signing female songwriters. It’s this horrible ripple effect.

lot of shows. A lot of it was gut as well. At CMT, we look at what’s streaming. We look at Shazam.

We still go to shows and see people live — from baby acts at the Basement East, which thank God is going to be rebuilt after the tornado, to Bridgestone Arena.

So what’s next?

Tell me a little bit about CMT’s tornado recovery efforts.

This is the year of action, as far as CMT is concerned. It’s about bringing all the gatekeepers together and working together.

If we could all move a little bit this year, then we’ll see different results at the end of 2020. We have been looking at the same miserable results year after year.

Within 24 hours, we worked with

How has your job changed in your near-decade with the network?

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Fram keeps a CMT Awards trophy from each year she’s run the show since joining the company in 2011.

When I was in radio, we always looked at sales, and we went to a

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

I’ve been a part of the Academy for over 20 years. They do so much advocacy that maybe they’re not given credit for. Do there need to be changes? Yes. I’m hoping for a quick resolution. I don’t want to take away from any artist, producer or engineer who’s won a Grammy. It is the highest honor.

37

M A RCH 26, 2020

The Business Analysis

to his usual targets. Nonwhite people. For Trump, the blame falls directly on a black man, the Chinese and the Mexicans. At his March 13 news conference, he declared, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Instead, he pointed the finger at his predecessor. Trump will never get past the fact that Obama was loved because of his intelligence, compassion, humor and humanity. Trump isn’t loved but rather adulated, the way cult members mindCULTURE | K AREEM ABDUL-JABBAR lessly follow a stern dictatorial father figure who tells them what to do and think. Like, well, Nazis.

The Trump administration made a point of calling COVID-19 the “Chinese flu” or the “Wuhan flu” in an effort to blame nonwhites.

During a Feb. 28 rally (yes, despite his own The president’s ‘blame-the-black-guy rhetoric and foot-dragging’ reminds experts’ warning against crowds, he held a THR’s columnist of the unrepentant Nazis on Amazon’s Hunters rally), he touted the border wall as necessary to keep out the virus: “We’ll have 500 miles [of the Southern border fence] built by very early n the enthralling thriller series Hunters, camera isn’t going to get you anywhere!” Tell next year sometime, so, one of the reasons the leftover German Nazis from World War that to the 30 million uninsured in the U.S. numbers are so good” — a reference to why we II are living the high life in America Testing the poor was not a priority even didn’t have a higher number of cases, which while planning a Fourth Reich built around though they, because of the accompanying he attributed to the unbuilt wall rather than a biological attack aimed at killing the poor, health problems resulting from being poor the fact that we weren’t testing many people. particularly people of color. Far-fetched and their reduced access to medical attention, “We will do everything in our power to keep liberal posturing? Not if you’ve followed the are more at risk than the middle and upper the infection and those carrying the infection Trump administration’s blame-the-black-guy classes who are prioritized for testing. Nor is from entering our country.” So far, no cases in rhetoric and foot-dragging in reaction to the staying home from work an option for those the U.S. have been linked to anyone entering COVID-19 outbreak. Seeing its response has who live on hourly wages and must choose through the U.S.-Mexico border. been like watching the gleefully unrepentant between earning money for rent and food or Ironically, it was the NBA, not the USA, Nazis on the Amazon show. For almost two getting infected and spreading the disease. that led the way for responsible practice by months, Trump, like a sneering Bond superAdd to that the closure of schools, which suspending its season. Perhaps the league was villain, allowed the virus to spread knowing keeps children at home, thereby creating a more sensitive to the needs that poor communities made up of people of double burden for lowerof all Americans because color would pay the greatest cost. It wasn’t income families: They lose 76 percent of its players are until it started affecting the Mar-a-Lago set the benefit of school meals people of color. and their businesses (and therefore his reelecand parents who are unable Referring to politicians tion) that he started to take it seriously. to remain home to care for or individuals as Nazis has On March 5, seven weeks after the first the kids. become a favorite pastime death from the virus in China, Vice President Trump not only delayed in America, almost to the Mike Pence, who is in charge of the Trump public health efforts, he Al Pacino (left) and Logan Lerman in Hunters. point where we have diluted administration’s response team, said, “With deliberately sabotaged the meaning. Everybody can’t be a Nazi just regard to the cost, let me be very clear: HHS them through his lies and actions. Most because they disagree with you. They have [Health and Human Services] has designated egregiously, to save money, in 2018 he elimito exhibit a will to exalt the fortunes of their the coronavirus test as an essential health nated the Pandemic Response Team that “people,” based on race, religion, etc., above benefit. That means, by definition, it’s covPresident Obama had set up in 2014 to fight the welfare of all others, even to the point of ered in the private health insurance of every the Ebola threat. As government health American as well as covered by Medicare and experts warned the public to not shake hands, exterminating all others.

The Nazis in Hunters are powerful people Medicaid.” As health experts have pointed Trump deliberately and defiantly did so with in business and government, devoted to out, this statement isn’t “clear” because polihis supporters. As the death toll around the protecting only those they deem worthwhile cies don’t have to cover the testing. When a world rose, on March 9 Trump downplayed humans. The government’s early response to reporter asked Pence whether the testing the coronavirus with a tweet incorrectly coronavirus was not a Nazi conspiracy, but it’s would include the uninsured, Pence walked comparing it to the common flu. Of course, Nazi-adjacent, meaning that the same attitude off without answering as his press secretary CDC studies indicate that the common flu has regarding race and class are being employed Katie Miller scolded, “Screaming for the a higher mortality rate among the poor than in determining who’s worthy of government other economic groups. So, no reason to be protection. Despite the limp efforts of Pence alarmed in Trump Tower.

K AREEM ABDUL-JABBAR is an and his administration lackeys to now praise Amid the public outrage over his lack of NBA Hall of Famer and a contributing Trump for his mythological early and decileadership, Trump began to distribute blame editor at The Hollywood Reporter. sive actions, his actual failure as a leader will forever be Trump’s legacy of shame.

Illustration by Joe Gough

Why Trump’s Coronavirus Reaction Is Racist

I

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M A RCH 26, 2020

Covering the World of Entertainment and Digital Media We congratulate the Hollywood Reporter’s Power Lawyers,

HUNTERS: CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS/AMAZON STUDIOS.

including our partner

Robert Darwell

Brussels | Century City | Chicago | Dallas | London | Los Angeles | New York | Orange County | Palo Alto San Diego (Downtown) | San Diego (Del Mar) | San Francisco | Seoul | Shanghai | Washington, D.C.

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Chanel

In ceramic and steel, the redesigned 38mm J12 features a new self-winding movement and a black lacquer dial with diamond indices; $7,000, chanel.com

We are proud to congratulate Dan Black, Jess Rosen, and Bobby Rosenbloum on being recognized as 2020 THR Power Lawyers honorees and Jay Cooper on being named to the Legal Legends list.

H. Moser & Cie

The 39mm white gold Venturer Concept Vantablack Diamonds features an ultra-black dial and 313 diamonds totaling 3.77 carats; $54,000, westime.com and cellinijewelers.com

MB&F

Under the Legacy Machine Flying T’s domed crystal, a tilted dial and flying tourbillon are framed by a black-lacquer plate in a diamond-set white gold 38.5mm case; $125,000, westime.com and cellinijewelers.com

Dior

Diamonds accent the oscillating weight and the bezel of the 38mm Dior VIII Grand Bal Résille in black ceramic and steel; price upon request, by special order, dior.com

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PROP STYLING AND PAPER SCULPTURES BY MIAKO KATOH.

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The French label’s Chaine d’Ancre motif is crafted in spinels and aventurine on the dial of the diamond-embellished Cape Cod watch; $10,550, hermes.com

Black But Not Basic Embrace the dark side with a status watch that contrasts diamonds with noir styling

By Laurie Brookins

Photographed by Claire Benoist

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER

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M A RCH 26, 2020

Style Watches Ulysse Nardin

The self-winding Diver in steel features a vintage-inspired dial in a 42mm case on a mesh-style Milanese bracelet; $6,500, westime.com and wempe.com

Montblanc

Inspired by midcentury design, the 42mm Heritage Monopusher Chronograph highlights a domed silver-white dial in a steel case; $5,160, montblanc.com

Omega

In No Time to Die, Daniel Craig will wear the 42mm Seamaster Diver 300M 007 Edition, in titanium with a tropical-brown aluminum dial; $9,200, westime.com and omegawatches.com

To the Hollywood Reporter’s Top 100 Power Lawyers and Raising the Bar Award honoree: David Hyman, Netflix

Raymond Weil

A moon phase is included on the gray dial of the 39.5mm Maestro Moon Phase Automatic, in steel; $1,595, feldmarwatch.com

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Mesh Gets a Refresh Watchmakers pair their latest mechanical timepieces with sleek and lightweight Milanese-style bracelets By Laurie Brookins

The self-winding 44mm Superocean Heritage Chronograph 44 in steel features the maker’s Ocean Classic bracelet; $6,240, breitling.com

S I G N AT U R E R E S O LU T I O N .C O M

Style Real Estate

Sheltering in the Heart of Los Angeles

FIRST! LO OK

Hollywood is discovering West Adams, one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods, where a 30-story tower will bring sleek condos to the area’s historic Craftsmans and Victorians By Peter Kiefer

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KOREATOWN

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Wilshire Blvd.

4

Western Ave.

x Ave

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MIRACLE MILE

10 Freeway

WEST ADAMS CULVER CITY

5

Jefferson Blvd.

Obama Blvd.

CRENSHAW

d.

H O T R E ST O S F O R TA K E O U T

2 Delicious Pizza Hip-hop-themed pizza shop founded in 2015.

4 Alta Adams California soul food restaurant founded by chef Keith Corbin.

1 Bee Taqueria Seven-month-old spot serving tacos (like slowbraised lamb) and ceviches.

3 Mizlala West Adams Popular Middle Eastern restaurant founded by chef Danny Elmaleh.

5 Mel’s Fish Shack Hole-in-the-wall for fried snapper and catfish, plus fresh fish by the pound.

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Top: A rendering of the 30-story apartment tower at the 11-acre Cumulus District on the corner of La Cienega and Jefferson boulevards. Developer Carmel Partners expects leasing to start in June (rents start at $2,800), with a September move-in. Inset: A rendering of Cumulus’ 1-acre central park.

The entertainment industry has a foothold in the area. The studio Broadcast West has been operating there for 10 years, and NBA All Star turned producer Baron Davis recently opened an office. Reality producer Vincent Rutherford and his wife, writer Kristen Rutherford, live there, as does actor DaJuan Johnson (Bosch, Narcos). Brokers say they have seen a surge in interest from production companies that are curious if it’s the right fit.

One of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods, West Adams is bordered

by Crenshaw, Pico, La Cienega and Jefferson boulevards. During the 1940s, a section known as Sugar Hill became home to affluent black Angelenos, including Gone With the Wind actress Hattie McDaniel. In recent decades, West Adams has been a satellite neighborhood of USC. Much of the architecture is protected by several historic districts that have

We congratulate our partner and friend RENDERINGS: COURTESY OF CUMULUS (2). ALTA: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. DAVIS: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES. JOHNSON: VALERIE MACON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. NICE: MATT LINKER.

L.A. and Santa Monica and demarks the southern border of West Adams, making it easily accessible to residents. The Expo has spurred interest from young homeowners who are priced out of the Westside and eager to ditch their cars, as well as from some of the city’s biggest developers who are looking to capitalize on Mayor Eric Garcetti’s push for transit-oriented development.

According to data from MLS, the median home price in the area is $770,000, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year.

really like, and that’s why they’re interested,” says Lissone.

When Lett’s new venture opens later this year, it will join an already robust scene for restaurants (see map) — none of which are currently accepting anything other than pickups or deliveries because of the coronavirus ban.

The impending foodie destination will tie into a residential real estate market that has exploded over the past six years, in large part thanks to the opening of the Expo Line. The 15-mile light rail system runs between Downtown

La Cienega Blv

n Los Angeles, foodie culture usually swims upstream from real estate, so when chef Travis Lett decided earlier this year to sell his stake in Venice restaurants Gjelina, Gjusta and MTN to pursue a project in West Adams, it felt like a page had turned in the city’s history. The 2008 opening of Gjelina helped reshape the beachside community, and Lett’s departure to reopen the Johnny’s Pastrami on West Adams Boulevard has warmed the hearts of locals while leaving Venetians feeling like yesterday’s news.

“We’re not going to be Abbot Kinney Davis in a year or two — that’s going to take a while longer,” says Claire Lissone, founder of the Real Johnson Estate Collective, which focuses on West Adams, the 1.5-square-mile neighborhood in South L.A. that is home to charming Craftsman bungalows, Victorian mansions and Spanish revival homes. Lissone estimates that half her clients who are eyeing West Adams live in Venice Beach or Brooklyn. “A lot of people missed what ‘old’ Venice was

Fair fa

I

Mitch Kamin

on being named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 2020 Power Lawyers Building on the addition five years ago of our Los Angeles office, Covington has become a leader in high-stakes entertainment and media litigation, as well as other practices serving the creative community. Thanks to a firm culture of collaboration, colleagues in all of our offices work together to offer seamless transactional, intellectual property, litigation, regulatory, and public policy expertise to our clients, including the major film studios, television networks, record labels and publishers, video game publishers, and sports leagues.

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Style BACK YA R D BU ILD Real Estate

Add an Extra Roof to the Dream House (Without a Permitting Nightmare)

T

hanks to West Adams’ average lot size of 5,500 square feet, it is an ideal neighborhood for homeowners to consider building an accessory dwelling unit, which is a small residence, aka a granny flat, next to a single-family home. And there’s never been a better time to build one in California. A state law that went into effect Jan. 1 cuts much of the red tape that made ADUs a permitting headache. The impetus to streamline the process is the state’s housing crisis, and elected officials are hoping that ADUs might serve as a new affordable housing-stock option (most current ADUs rent at below-market rates). As a result, a cottage industry has sprung up, with hopes of capitalizing on the new law.

Below are three companies approaching ADUs in distinct ways.

Interior of a modern four-bedroom, two-bathroom Spanish residence in West Adams that is listed for $1.2 million. ACME Real Estate’s Dominique Madden has the listing.

helped make it a popular filming destination. Case in point is the Victorian-style Auguste Marquis Residence, which was the funeral home in HBO’s Six Feet Under.

CAA agent Jim Nice recalls driving by the Six Feet Under house on his way to look at a Craftsman bungalow 15 years ago — a home he ultimately bought.

“For me, it was a selling point because we loved that show,” he says. Nice says the transformation of the neighborhood has been profound — much, but not all, of it positive. He enjoys the new restaurants and the neighborly pride people take in keeping their homes and lawns pristine.

But he’s seen more developers come in to flip homes and show less interest in maintaining the rich history. “As a homeowner, you’re always happy that values are going up, but some of the displacement that is happening is disappointing,” he says.

“We’re here because we like the

$965K

This 1,500-square-foot Craftsman bungalow in Historic Jefferson Park is listed by Andrea Dunlop of Sotheby’s International Realty.

neighborhood, and we’re not trying to change it in any way.”

Today, there are dozens of new building projects in various stages of development, sandwiched in by upholstery shops, auto repair shops and a couple of old-school vinyl record stores.

“It’s actually getting really hard to keep track,” says Letty Vermeulen, owner of brokerage firm Aspire Los Angeles and an 11-year resident of the area.

Nice CIM Group, which has been credited with helping transform Hollywood, currently has four projects in West Adams, including a 29,000-square-foot, three-story, mixed-use development at 5600 West Adams Blvd., plus a 43-room hotel down the street. But the largest project is Cumulus, which will boast a 50,000-square-foot Whole Foods as its anchor tenant. Located at the corner of La Cienega and Jefferson boulevards and developed by Carmel Partners, Cumulus is being constructed on an 11-acre site and includes a 30-story high-rise with 1,200 apartments, 200,000 square feet of office space and a 1-acre park.

Compared to the market six years ago, Vermeulen sees a dramatic change in the psychology of potential buyers who are considering a move to West Adams. “The proof of concept is here. We no longer have to just sell the prospect of this place.”

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United Dwelling Culver City’s United Dwelling is partnering with homeowners to build new ADUs on their property at zero cost to clients. The company also manages the rental and splits proceeds with the homeowner in a 15-year lease arrangement. During the life of the agreement, owners can buy back ownership by paying United Dwelling $87,900. “In a neighborhood like West Adams, very few people have the capital on hand to build an ADU, nor do most have the mentality to be a landlord,” says founder Steve Dietz. The ADUs are not custom and come in one style.

According to Dietz, owners can expect to earn about $320 a month.

Bunch Design Bunch Design co-founder Bo Sundius realized the transformative power of ADUs after his father was stricken with Alzheimer’s and he and his co-founder/ wife, Hisako Ichiki, needed to move him into accessible housing. “It was a horrendous situation, but the ADU we built on our property was a lifesaver,” says Sundius. L.A.-based Bunch offers four pre-designed prototypes and higher-cost custom options. Among the four prototypes, $175,000 is the base price for a 400-square-foot studio with one bathroom, and $250,000 buys you an 880-foot, two-bedroom with one and a half bathrooms.

Cover L.A.-based Cover fancies itself a hybrid of a technology firm and a design-build firm. After they launched it in 2014, the founders spent several years developing both proprietary software and a panelized building system that allows for a new twist on prefab homes. “We have a finite set of blocks — think of them as life-size Legos — and we can combine them to create an infinite number of designs,” says Cover CEO and co-founder Alexis Rivas. “We are geared toward mass production but can tailor it to each specific property.” Costs start at around $190,000, which includes permitting, construction and utility hookups. — P.K.

Latham & Watkins congratulates The Hollywood Reporter ’s 2020 Power Lawyers, including our partners:

Joe Calabrese

Ken Deutsch

Marvin Putnam

LW.com

ELYSIAN ADU: YE RIN MOK. HILLCREST: COURTESY OF ACME REAL ESTATE. MIRACLE MILE ADU: COURTESY OF COVER. WEST BLD ADU: COURETSY OF UNITED DWELLING. BUNGALOW: CHARMAINE DAVID. NICE: MATT LINKER/COURTESY OF SUBJECT.

$1.2M

Latham Watkins 10_032520.indd 1

3/18/20 2:57 PM

Lichter Grossman 10_032610.indd 1

3/23/20 9:34 AM

M A RCH 26, 2020

Quibi Was Always Risky.

And Then Things Got Complicated Even in the best of times, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s $2 billion talent-friendly mobile platform was a high-stakes gamble. Now, with the global pandemic turning the world upside down as they barrel toward their April 6 debut, they are about to find out whether the millions of potential users under quarantine are a subscriber-boosting blessing or a platform-derailing curse By Natalie Jarvey

T

hey’re converting garages, dressing home offices like sets, even transforming their living rooms with stage lighting. The hosts of two dozen Quibi news shows are doing everything they can to ensure that they will be ready when Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman launch their brazen $2 billion bet on the future of mobile entertainment April 6.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended production on the slate of current events-driven shows, dubbed Daily Essentials, that Quibi is relying on for its debut. So producers are finding creative ways to proceed with filming. Tim Kash, who will host music show Pop5, has moved a scaleddown set into his garage, and Jimmy Mondal, the face of gaming show Speedrun who is now shooting from his living room, has been watching YouTube makeup tutorials so he can handle his own touch-ups. They’re all

rushing to get the process in place to meet the deadline to start trial runs one week ahead of launch.

“On the majority of our shows, our partners have been very entrepreneurial,” says Katzenberg. “And, you know, they’re delivering.” So far, he’s expecting the premieres of only two shows to be delayed, including Hot Off the Mic, which relies on recent footage of comedy club sets, and the

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman announced the name of their mobile video startup (short for “quick bites”) at the 2018 Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit.

Illustration by Adam Simpson

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60 Minutes-inspired 60 in 6, which is on hold after an outbreak inside CBS News.

The final days before launch would be a frenzied period for any startup, but the unprecedented global shutdown brought about by the coronavirus — which has infected more than 52,000 people in the U.S. and killed more than 18,000 worldwide — has added a new level of uncertainty to Quibi’s already high-stakes debut.

The company’s 265 employees transitioned to work-from-home days filled with Zoom conference calls after the March 16 closure of its Hollywood headquarters. Meanwhile, Katzenberg and Whitman are still working out details on what to do instead of the star-studded party they had planned (now canceled, along with virtually all L.A. gatherings) for the eve of Quibi’s launch. Alternate options, like bringing talent to Quibi’s offices for individual shoots, were quickly called

Even before the world (and Hollywood) went topsy-turvy, Quibi’s launch was a favorite topic of conversation at power lunches. Insiders, many of whom have projects with the streamer, quietly questioned whether it can possibly work. After all, Quibi is playing in a decidedly different space than the legacy media conglomerates and the tech giants waging a multibillion-dollar war for people’s attention (and wallets) with tentpole IP like Disney+’s The Mandalorian and beloved classics like Friends (for AT&T’s forthcoming HBO Max) and The Office (NBCU’s Peacock).

For $5 a month with ads, or $8 without, Quibi (short for “quick bites”) will offer a mobile-only mix of serialized scripted stories, reality shows and news-driven fare — all delivered in installments shorter than 10 minutes.

Though mobile video consumption is on the rise — the average time spent per day is expected to grow to 44 minutes by 2021, per eMarketer — no one has proved that consumers, especially those in Quibi’s target demo

of 25- to 35-year-olds, will pay for such programming when they can watch YouTube and Twitch for free. And Verizon already tried to lure viewers to a free product, go90, that quickly went bust despite a billion-dollar investment. “A lot of these mobile-only streaming services haven’t been successful,” says eMarketer media analyst Ross Benes, making the case that many sources have made to THR privately but few will say publicly. “How many of these streaming services in the graveyard do you need before you stop trying to revive an idea?”

Katzenberg argues that no one has really tried, at least not with the type of expensive, creative-driven projects that Quibi has lined up. The company boasts a launch slate of 50 shows, which THR has sampled, including the unflinchingly dark thriller Survive, starring Sophie Turner as a tortured plane crash survivor; the broadcaststyle unscripted series Thanks a Million,

Fuqua

Santora

I’m confident that you will have to be on an island, in a cave under a rock, to not know that Quibi is coming.”

K ATZ EN BERG

from executive producer Jennifer Lopez, in which celebrities give back to those who helped them on their path to success; and the HGTV spoof Flipped, about a down-on-their-luck couple (Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson) who get more than they bargained for with their new fixer-upper. Rounding them out are the Liam Hemsworth drama Most Dangerous Game, Chrissy Teigenas-judge series Chrissy’s Court and a Punk’d reboot. In its first year alone, it plans to release more than 175 original

Why Quibi Is Going All In on Mobile Video consumption on cellphones has increased as on-the-go streaming quality improves

Mobile Phone Video Viewers U.S. 2020-24 202M

207M

MILLIONS 211M

Average Time Per Day With Mobile Video

% OF POPULATION 216M

220M

U.S. 2020-24

MINUTES

% CHANGE

2017 12.6%

34.5

2018 8.3% 60.8%

61.8%

62.6%

63.6%

64.2%

37.3

2019 7%

39.9

2020 5.5%

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

shows. Everyone from Jason Blum to Antoine Fuqua to Catherine Hardwicke has signed on.

Still, there’s no clear model for how consumers will respond to an app devoted to shortform episodic programming meant to be viewed during breaks in the day. And despite a $500 million year-one marketing campaign that kicked off in earnest with a Super Bowl commercial, general awareness of Quibi is low, a THR/Morning Consult poll finds. Of 2,200 nationally representative adults surveyed March 19-21, 68 percent said they had heard nothing at all about Quibi and just 5 percent said they’d heard a lot. But Katzenberg is confident that Quibi’s social media launch strategy will change all that, declaring, “I’m extremely confident that you will have to be on an isolated island, in a cave under a rock, to not know that Quibi is coming.”

On top of it all, Katzenberg and Whitman are now barreling toward launch day without the slightest clue what the world will look like when they get there.

If the coronavirus threat continues through the spring and even early summer, Americans’ self-isolation could give Quibi a captive audience primed to take advantage of its lengthy 90-day free trial. “If you can’t go to school and you can’t go to work, odds are you’ve got more time on your hands than ever before,” suggests LightShed Partners media analyst Rich Greenfield, who is generally optimistic about the service’s chances of catching on with consumers. “It bodes well for a mobile video launch.” But Quibi is a product designed to be viewed on the go (and only available on a mobile device). Says Needham & Co. entertainment analyst Laura Martin, “Their value proposition just went down in a world where everyone’s quarantined in their home with their television and trying to fill five hours.”

Even Whitman admits there are a lot of unknowns. “I don’t think we know how people will respond,” she says. “It depends on what people are doing at home, how many people are at home.

This situation is different every day.”

Katzenberg is more sanguine: “All of us now have as many in-between times as we had before. They’re just different.”

42.2

2021 4.6%

44.1

Source: eMarketer

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Source: eMarketer

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In the three-act play of Katzenberg’s career, Quibi is the climax. He’d been kicking around the idea for a mobile video venture for years when, after

Quibi’s Content Universe A 50-show slate will launch April 6 on the mobile-only streaming service, now on track to release 175 original shows (or 8,500 pieces of bite-sized content) in its first year

From left: Elba vs. Block, 50 States of Fright, Dodge and Miles, Thanks a Million, Survive, Chrissy’s Court, Flipped

PREVIOUS SPREAD: KATZENBERG: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: SANTORA: JASON LAVERIS/FILMMAGIC. TOTH: GREGG DEGUIRE/WIREIMAGE. ELBA: JAMES GILLHAM/QUIBI. 50, CHRISSY’S: COURTESY OF QUIBI. DODGE: STEVE WILKIE/QUIBI. MILLION, FLIPPED: DARREN MICHAELS/QUIBI. SURVIVE: JANIS PIPARS/QUIBI. PELL: JIM SPELLMAN/WIREIMAGE. FUQUA: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES.

off as the health risk mounted. Though nothing has been finalized, the current plan is to conduct a virtual press junket and then unleash social media missives from Quibi’s talent partners.

“The bad news is we had to cancel the party,” says Katzenberg. “The good news is we have 200 talent getting on social media to talk about what they’ve made for us.”

In spite of it all, Whitman insists there’s nothing stopping Quibi from moving forward with its rollout as planned. “We have every confidence we’re going to be able to launch,” she says, calling from the West Hollywood condo where she has set up her home office. “We have the right content to launch, the technology is ready, our messaging has been out in the market.

We’re ready to go.”

Content

Release Plan

Movies in Chapters

Quibi will launch with four of these scripted stories told in daily 7- to 10minute installments, including:

Most Dangerous Game: The Nick Santora- penned action-thriller stars Liam Hemsworth.

Survive: Sophie Turner leads this novel adaptation from director Mark Pellington.

Flipped: Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson are down-on-their-luck home renovators in this HGTV spoof.

Unscripted & Docs

There are 19 of these weekly, 10-minutesper-episode talk shows, variety series and narrative stories planned for launch, including:

Thanks a Million: Celebrities give back to those who helped them in this Jennifer Lopezproduced series.

Chrissy’s Court: Model-cookbook author Chrissy Teigen dons a robe and presides over small-claims cases.

Elba vs. Block: Idris Elba goes head-to-head with race car driver Ken Block on increasingly outrageous stunts.

Daily Essentials

More than two dozen regularly updating news and entertainment briefings will be offered in five- to six-minute bites at launch, including:

Last Night’s Late Night: Entertainment Weekly breaks down the best moments from late-night TV.

The Daily Chill: Meditation and ASMR combine with peaceful visuals.

Morning Report/ Evening Report: NBC News offers a twice-daily update on the stories that matter most.

he sold DreamWorks Animation to NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion in 2016, he finally found his opportunity. A year later, Whitman had just announced she was stepping down as CEO of HewlettPackard when she got a call from her old friend. “He said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Whitman says, recalling that she answered by listing all the things she would do with her newfound free time. “And he goes, ‘No, what are you doing tonight for dinner?’ ” So Katzenberg flew to Silicon Valley and, during a three-hour meal, persuaded the veteran tech executive and 2010 Republican nominee for California governor to move to Los Angeles to help him construct what eventually would become Quibi. “I’ve built things, and I’ve fixed really big companies. In the end, it’s a bit more fun to build,” she says.

With more than 80 years of work experience between them, Katzenberg, 69, and Whitman, 63, have grown fond of calling themselves “the old dogs” leading Quibi, which has an average employee age of 30. But these old dogs

Shows

Toth

Pell

are the only two people who could have made an idea as ambitious as Quibi happen.

Early on, Katzenberg said he would need $2 billion in backing to make Quibi a reality. He and Whitman didn’t quite get there — they’ve raised a total of $1.75 billion across two funding rounds from backers including Madrone Capital and Alibaba — but they did something arguably more impressive. They lined up small investments from every major studio in Hollywood — Disney and Warner Bros. among them — and got them all to agree to produce programming for the service. The shortform video industry, still largely derided as low-quality and home-produced YouTube videos, had never seen that level of investment from the entertainment industry.

“That was the hardest thing we did,” Katzenberg says. “It wasn’t about the money. The essential thing in having them as our partners was the access to their showrunning talent and their IP.” With the studios’ buy-in, Katzenberg focused on assembling a roster of

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talent that would woo subscribers. For creators, there were questions about what exactly Quibi would amount to. But the money was good — Quibi is spending more than $100,000 a minute on some of its top-shelf shows — and it was offering unusual licensing deals where, after two years, studios could repackage the 10-minute episodes into movies and take them to market; and, after seven years, they would regain the full rights to the project.

Plus, Katzenberg was happily buying projects that had been gathering dust for years. That was the case with the Fuqua-produced drama #FreeRayshawn, which the filmmaker had been trying to get made into a movie. “The script we had wasn’t written for shortform,” says Fuqua, “so I had to go back and rewrite it with the writer and work with the director. It had a strong impact on how you approach the story. But it’s worth the risk and challenge that comes with it.” Nick Santora, writer and executive producer on two Quibi shows — Most Dangerous Game and the Kiefer Sutherland thriller The Fugitive — was impressed by how quickly Quibi moved to make his shows. “Jeffrey Katzenberg is not a guy to sit on his hands,” he says. “If he wants it done, he’s going to support you so it can get done.”

Katzenberg himself is often cited as Quibi’s biggest draw. “Jeffrey’s relationships with everybody in town allowed him to get a lot of traction very quickly,” says David Freeman, co-head of CAA’s digital media group. “That was crucial because it took a little bit of time to get everybody to understand what Quibi was.”

By all accounts, the mogul has approached Quibi’s startup period with the same zeal as he has his whole career, from his days as Barry Diller’s assistant at Paramount to his turnaround of Disney’s box office during the ’80s. But his hard-driving management style (he’s known to call Quibi senior management meetings on Sundays) has ruffled some feathers, and several high-profile executives already have left, including former DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson, onetime Hulu dealmaker Tim Connolly and Janice Min, former editorial director of THR. “I have a bottomless well of the need to win and a thirst for it,” Katzenberg concedes, “but everybody here knows that. They came here knowing that.”

Continued on page 72

14 TH ANNUAL

Who you gonna call in a global crisis?

For the top 100 entertainment attorneys in America, the COVID-19 pandemic raises the stakes in an industry facing canceled productions, force majeures and an uncertain future for everyone

It takes an army of lawyers to keep up with the legal work for Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia’s growing business empire, which includes Seven Bucks Productions, Athleticon and Teremana tequila. “Our attorneys are an integral part of our process,” the duo tells THR. “They sit side by side with us as we look at the intricacies involved in all our endeavors and do an amazing job of holding our best interests as their core priority, regardless of the complexities of our deals.” From left: Matthew Thompson, Bianca Levin, Garcia, Johnson and Harold Brown were photographed March 5 at Atlanta Metro Studios in Atlanta.

Photographed by Donté Maurice

into Tinseltown. He repped Pokémon in adapting Detective Pikachu and negotiated toy brand Spin Master’s growing expansion into film and TV, including a PAW Patrol animated feature. Says Black, “That old adage of all roads lead to Rome, well, most entertainment roads lead to Hollywood.”

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Equality in the workplace.”

TALENT

James Adams Schreck Rose

CORNELL LAW SCHOOL

Adams

Austen

Basinger

A theater major, New York-based Adams has a soft spot for actor clients who look for behind-the-camera opportunities — like Jack Ryan star and A Quiet Place Part II director John Krasinski, who struck a landmark first-look TV deal with Amazon Studios.

Meanwhile, Rashida Jones will star in and executive produce Kenya Barris comedy Black Excellence for Netflix, where client Natasha Lyonne’s Russian Doll has been renewed.

Please reboot M*A*S*H

TALENT

Gordon Bobb COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL

“We’re in the business of building careers, not just doing transactions,” says Bobb, who negotiated Ava DuVernay’s eight-figure Netflix pact after her Emmywinning When They See Us. Meanwhile, Pose’s Janet Mock became the first transgender woman to lock in a multimillion-dollar overall deal at Netflix, and Lena Waithe landed an overall at Amazon Studios.

My biggest challenge now is “Dealing with circumstances outside of my control, like the WGA-ATA fight or the coronavirus.”

TALENT

Karl Austen HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Bernstein

Austen’s longest-standing client, Matt Reeves, is directing The Batman while his shingle, 6th & Idaho, expanded its Netflix deal to include TV projects.

Meanwhile, Seth MacFarlane moved from Fox to Comcast in a five-year, $200 million deal and Norman Reedus signed a $90 million holding deal with AMC for his role in the Walking Dead Universe.

We’ve hit peak content when “I’m pretty sure it’s already here. Now it’s even hard to watch the pilots of everything.”

Brettler

Brown

TALENT

Leigh Brecheen Brecheen Feldman

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW

Calabrese

See page 58.

LITIGATION

LITIGATION

Glaser Weil

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL

While Basinger often keeps her clients out of the press, the litigator, who represents both accusers and the accused on #MeToo issues, continues to battle a very public rape lawsuit against client Russell Simmons. In 2019, she also sued Celine Dion on behalf of ICM, which claims the “My Heart Will Go On” singer failed to pay commission on a $500 million deal.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Really good mashed potatoes. When shit hits the fan, who doesn’t want really good mashed potatoes?”

LITIGATION

John Berlinski

Kasowitz Benson Torres UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF LAW

Berlinski knows where to dig on the profit participation front. In 2019, he helped Bones stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz achieve a landmark win against Fox, and he’s now representing Gaumont Television’s former chief Katie O’Connell Marsh in a lawsuit that claims she’s been shorted millions in profits from series including Narcos and Hannibal.

Please reboot Hart to Hart TALENT

Jeff Bernstein Jackoway Austen

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Bernstein reps one of the biggest female stars in town, Margot Robbie, closing a deal for her to star in David O. Russell’s latest feature. He also extended the film and TV deal of her production company, LuckyChap, with Warner Bros. Elsewhere, Hilary Swank will star in and executive produce Away, while Tessa Thompson renegotiated her Westworld deal.

We’ve hit peak content when “The streamers start paying significantly less than they are now.”

CORPORATE

Daniel Black Greenberg Traurig

GEORGE WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF LAW

Black is a go-to for brands looking to branch out

‘Am I Going to Get Paid During the Pandemic?’

LAWYERS GRAPPLE WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS AND THE IMPACT ON DEALS: ‘IT’S GOING TO BE A F—ING MESS’ By Bryn Elise Sandberg In late February, the biggest concern facing the industry was the threat of a strike as writers and studios prepared to enter heated contract negotiations.

But, in recent days, that great unknown has been displaced by a global pandemic that’s brought Hollywood — and society at large — to a screeching halt. Says lawyer Jamie Feldman, who works with Steven Soderbergh: “It now feels like all the time we’ve spent talking about the WGA and the ATA and the potential strike issues was just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

As COVID-19 sweeps the globe, its domino effect is becoming increasingly evident in Hollywood. Offices have emptied as studios, agencies and law firms transition to remote work, major events and festivals including SXSW have been canceled and dozens of productions have been suspended. In the midst of it all, dealmakers are having to counsel clients through an unprecedented moment of unrest.

“This has to be the most devastating example of a true force majeure event Hollywood has ever had,” says attorney Lev Ginsburg, who reps Timothée Chalamet and director Colin Trevorrow.

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M A RCH 26, 2020

He points out that a global pandemic is triggering simultaneous industrywide shutdowns, whereas strikes are usually one union at a time and natural disasters like wildfires are local. “We are going to have to figure it out day by day.”

Even before most productions made the decision to delay filming, talent was hesitant to show up to set. One actress shooting an indie movie was said to have felt so uncomfortable doing so that she raised concerns with producers — but they couldn’t call off filming because their insurance would only cover a shutdown if it was governmentordered or an individual on set tested positive for the virus. Though one attorney suggests someone in the actress’ position could try and claim a disability if he or she felt vulnerable to being infected, an insider says they came to a compromise: It’d be a closed set, a body double would be used and everyone would stay at least 6 feet away from her at all times — the recommended distance to avoid spreading the virus.

As productions began to shut down in mid-March, many agents, managers and lawyers received an influx of calls from their clients, all asking the

PREVIOUS SPREAD: GARCIA HAIR BY MILES JEFFRIES, MAKEUP BY SIDNEY JAMILA, STYLING BY ALEXANDRA MANDELKORN. JOHNSON HAIR BY RACHEL SOLOW, GROOMING BY BJOERN REHBEIN AT THE MILTON AGENCY, STYLING BY ILARIA URBINATI AT THE WALL GROUP. THOMPSON, LEVIN, BROWN ON-SET HAIR BY SERENA JENKINS AND ON-SET MAKEUP BY SAMANTHA TRINH. THIS SPREAD: COLBERT: SCOTT KOWALCHYK/CBS. ADAMS: WARREN ELGORT/COURTESY OF SUBJECT.

Jill Basinger Black

Brecheen

Del Shaw

Jackoway Austen

Berlinski

Bobb

same question: “Am I going to get paid?”

The answer isn’t so simple. Events of force majeure traditionally give studios latitude to make decisions they can say were motivated by the incident. “During a force majeure, your compensation is typically suspended. And then after that period, which is usually about eight weeks, the employer can terminate [the contract] if it doesn’t look like it’s going to go anywhere,” says attorney Linda Lichter, whose client Niki Caro had her film Mulan’s release pushed back amid the frenzy. “If we actually get to this stuff, which God forbid we don’t, it’s going to be a fucking mess.”

During the 2007-08 strike, the last time there was a major work stoppage, studios used their newfound power to kill certain unproductive deals, and there’s already chatter about whether they might do it again. “We always knew the Writers Guild strike, should it happen, could be the basis for studios terminating deals,” says attorney Jamie Mandelbaum, who represents several showrunners with overall pacts.

“Perhaps the coronavirus will provide the studios with the same opportunity.”

For those who aren’t under overall deals, there’s even less certainty. Say you’re an actor on a television show that suspended production before the season

Late night hosts, including Stephen Colbert, seen here taping his March 12 show, are performing sans audience or filming new monologues from home.

could be finished. Do you get paid for the episodes you didn’t shoot? Most dealmakers agree studios wouldn’t be obligated to pay for episodes that weren’t actually filmed. That’s because contractually most actors get paid for all episodes “produced,” and studios often define that as episodes in the can.

But just because studios aren’t obligated to pay doesn’t mean they aren’t doing so. For instance, a source says NBC has committed to compensating its Saturday Night Live employees for their three weeks off. And Netflix set up a $100 million coronavirus relief fund for the industry’s hardest-hit workers.

However, with the chances high that those short-term delays may become indefinite, some are wondering just how long studios can postpone projects without violating contracts. “If we assume this lasts six months, clients, especially actors, will start asking when they can ‘get out’ of their contracts,” notes one rep, who suggests that unions should work with studios to clear up the ambiguity. “But where the fuck else are they going to find work during a pandemic? Are there a bunch of projects hiring actors on the moon?”

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Andrew Brettler Lavely & Singer

BROOKLYN LAW SCHOOL

Since the dawn of #MeToo, Brettler has been one of the busiest attorneys in town, representing clients including Bryan Singer, Danny Masterson and Ryan Adams. He also recently took the reins on Chris Brown’s defense (he’s accused of facilitating a sexual assault). Outside of #MeToo matters, Brettler helped extinguish the media wildfire that engulfed Kevin Hart after his life-threatening automobile accident.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Coffee.”

TALENT

Harold Brown Gang Tyre

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW

“Subject to God knows what happens with this virus,” Brown says, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale are taking their Back to the Future musical to the West End and George Miller is gearing up for the latest Mad Max film and Three Thousand Years of Longing.

He also inked Steven Spielberg’s deal for West Side Story and Stephen King’s for HBO’s adaptation of The Outsider.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Doughnuts.

And I probably could, but it would be a short life.”

CORPORATE

Joseph Calabrese Latham & Watkins

CORNELL LAW SCHOOL

After Parasite’s surprise Oscar success, Calabrese closed a $275 million deal in which client Skydance Media received an investment from the film’s studio, CJ Entertainment, and Red Bird Capital Partners. He also extended HFPA’s TV deal for the Golden Globes with NBC through 2026 and advised the International Olympic Committee on multiple matters.

Please reboot Weekend at Bernie’s LITIGATION

Dale Cendali Kirkland & Ellis

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Cendali has helped Fortnite developer Epic Games ward off a number of copyright lawsuits from

M A RCH 26, 2020

Cendali

Clark

TALENT

Stephen Clark

Darwell

Lichter Grossman

UC HASTINGS COLLEGE OF THE LAW

Clark’s client Rian Johnson is already working on a sequel to his $300 million-grossing whodunit Knives Out, while prolific feature director Tate Taylor is taking on his first network series, Fox’s Filthy Rich.

The lawyer also moved Black Monday showrunner Jordan Cahan’s overall deal from Sony to Universal.

“My clients have evolved with the business, which is why I retain an optimistic view,” says Clark, who also reps John Wick 3 writer Shay Hatten and producer Ram Bergman.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Tacos.”

Dern

Deutsch

CORPORATE

Robert Darwell

Dybala

Sheppard Mullin

GEORGETOWN LAW

Increased demand for global content has boosted Darwell’s practice. He worked on seven films that screened at the Toronto festival, including Focus’ Harriet and Amazon Studios’ Honey Boy. Disney Animation, meanwhile, has kept him busy as it preps projects for Disney+. For Gaumont, he’s inked deals for Paul McCartney’s High in the Clouds (Netflix) and James Wan’s Train to Busan (New Line).

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Business as usual, with a social conscience.”

TALENT

Warren Dern Sloane Offer

SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL

Todd Phillips turned to Dern when setting up his now Oscar-winning, $1 billion-grossing movie Joker. Client Paul Feig moved his overall from the Disney-owned Fox, where he’d been since 2013, to Universal, setting up Dark Army in the studio’s Monster Universe. Amy Poehler, Zack Snyder and J.A. Bayona, who’ll direct Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, also are clients.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pizza.”

TALENT

Ken Deutsch Latham & Watkins

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

When MGM decided to push No Time to Die’s release because of the coronavirus pandemic, it turned to Deutsch. The consigliere also assisted New Republic Pictures in striking co-financing deals with Amblin for the Oscar-nominated 1917 and with Paramount for Elton John biopic Rocketman.

Client A24 will produce a slate of films for Apple and licensed its film library to Netflix, and Deutsch advises ICM Partners, which obtained a $150 million equity investment from Crestview Partners.

We’ve hit peak content when “My kids get bored of their phones.”

CORPORATE

Kelly Dybala Sidley Austin

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF LAW

Dallas-based Dybala specializes in working with private equity firms and their portfolio companies, with a focus on financing transactions and debt

A Texas Lawyer, a Cannes Scam and an Open Secret HOW A PRO BONO INVESTIGATION INTO A SUSPECT TRANSACTION AT AMFAR SPARKED HARVEY WEINSTEIN’S DOWNFALL By Tatiana Siegel In January 2017, Tom Ajamie sat in a luxury hotel suite at Main & Sky in Park City when Harvey Weinstein came bounding in for an awkward face-to-face meeting. The Houston-based financial fraud attorney had been hired by the amfAR board to investigate a suspect transaction involving Weinstein. Ajamie had recently submitted his eight-page confidential report, the details of which Weinstein appeared to know well. But as the two-hour meeting kicked off, the Oscar-winning producer was focused on a different subject entirely.

“He began screaming at me, ‘You’re telling everyone I rape women. You’re causing problems for me. I have a very good reputation. And you’re the source of all these rumors,’ ” Ajamie recalls. “Harvey was manic. One minute he’d be yelling, and then he would calm down. He was all over the place. Yelling, screaming, cajoling, begging, trying to explain, often talking in circles, confused, not confused, justifying his actions — ‘I slept with dozens and dozens of women, and you know they all won Academy Awards.’ ” Fast-forward three years, and Weinstein is now a convicted rapist and has been bouncing around New York correctional facilities amid health issues. Although Ajamie’s amfAR investigation never received the same level

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of attention as Weinstein’s sexual predation, it remains the key event that led to his downfall. After all, it was during the eight-month inquiry, which Ajamie’s firm did pro bono, that he learned of Weinstein’s open secret.

“Everyone I interviewed started off by saying things like, ‘You know he’s a sexual predator, right?’ as opposed to jumping right to this issue of financial transactions,” Ajamie says. “As a lawyer who’s done dozens of these investigations, it was very odd.”

At Main & Sky, he faced off with Weinstein — Ajamie, the Hollywood outsider, was unimpressed with the mogul’s name-dropping. (Weinstein was in Sundance with Jay-Z for the premiere of their TV series Time: The Kalief Browder Story, and days earlier, it was reported that Malia Obama would intern for him.)

Attorney Lisa Bloom, who arranged the meeting, was the only other person present.

Near the end of the meeting, Weinstein leaned close to

Tom Ajamie conducted an eightmonth inquiry into a Harvey WeinsteinamfAR transaction.

M A RCH 26, 2020

Ajamie and told him to sign an NDA. “He said, ‘David Boies wants you to sign this nondisclosure. You have to keep everything you learned about me secret,’ ” recalls Ajamie.

He refused. Soon after, he was contacted by New York Times writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. “I told them what I was able to tell them,” he says. The rest is history.

O WEINSTEIN: JANE ROSENBERG/REUTERS/NEWSCOM. AJAMIE: TROY FIELDS/COURTESY OF SUBJECT.

personalities who lay claim to in-game dances. “It’s a relatively new art form and there are always new issues,” she says of the video game industry. She also helped Take-Two in disputes over in-game tattoos on athletes in NBA 2K20 and “cheat menus” in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V. Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Getting people back in theaters despite the coronavirus.”

n a cold February day in Manhattan, the maitre d’ at Fleming greets Ajamie by name. The 59-year-old lawyer splits his time between Houston and New York. Days earlier, he won a $79 million class-action settlement against Wells Fargo on behalf of former financial advisers who said they were forced to forfeit deferred compensation when they left the company. Though he rarely intersects with Hollywood, Ajamie says power lawyer Howard Weitzman served as a mentor. They first met in the early ’90s in a case against Time Warner. Ajamie was a young litigator who wanted to learn the art of trying a case.

“We were co-counsel and have been friends ever

since,” says Weitzman. “Tom was young, smart, a willing student and had great energy.

He became a dynamic and successful trial lawyer. But more importantly, he has integrity, and it came as no surprise to me that his amfAR investigation ultimately exposed Harvey Weinstein.”

Having won more than $1 billion in awards and settlements, his practice is booming. But Ajamie, who is single and has no children, is passionate about donating his time in the nonprofit sector, as he has done with the Sundance Institute for some 15 years and with amfAR since March 2016.

As he dug into Weinstein’s activities, he discovered that at the 2015 amfAR benefit in Cannes, Weinstein struck a deal with then-chairman Kenneth Cole in which Weinstein would auction off two items on the condition that the money be split, with $600,000 going to the American Repertory Theater.

Separately, ART promised to reimburse Weinstein for staging the producer’s forprofit play Finding Neverland so long as third parties donated $600,000 to the theater by

“Everyone I interviewed started off by saying things like, ‘You know he’s a sexual predator, right?’ ” recalls Ajamie.

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June 1 of that year. The auction items fetched far less than $1.2 million, but Weinstein still pushed amfAR to wire $600,000 to ART by June 1, even though amfAR had not yet received the donations.

Cole acquiesced, to the horror of other board members, some of whom stepped down.

In fall of 2016, Ajamie submitted his report to the board.

Some sent it to reporters and the New York attorney general, while at least one other gave it to Weinstein, who already was working with Bloom, both as her client and on a Trayvon Martin project based on her book Suspicion Nation. But Ajamie had no knowledge of that relationship when Bloom — whom he had met only months before, while investigating Weinstein — suggested the three meet in Sundance.

Per Ajamie, who travels to the fest annually, Bloom said she bumped into Weinstein at the Kalief Browder premiere party, Ajamie’s name came up, and Weinstein asked for a meeting.

“The clear impression she gave to me was she didn’t know him,” he says. “At this point I’m still thinking she’s a hardcore women’s rights advocate.”

Around the same time as that Main & Sky meeting, Cole began agitating for a new investigation into the transaction and hired Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Unlike Ajamie’s firm, which did $2 million worth of work basically for free (it collected about $40,000 to cover expenses), Gibson Dunn was charging. After a $1 million investigation (the bill was later reduced to $450,000), the firm found the transaction was acceptable.

“It is blatantly wrong,” Ajamie says. “They looked at the issue very narrowly.

There’s no way that money raised in a fundraiser for AIDS research is ethical or legal to cast through several entities and give it back to Harvey.” (A

M A RCH 26, 2020

Gibson Dunn rep says, “After a thorough review, we concluded and reported to the board that this contribution was a lawful charitable donation to ART.”) On Feb. 7, 2017, Gibson Dunn shot off an email to Ajamie that said: “We demand that you immediately cease and desist from communication with any and all third parties and individual amfAR board members about any issues you ‘investigated’ since March 2016, including but not limited to any issues regarding Mr. Weinstein.” (An amfAR board member tells THR it declined to sign a similar NDA.) But the genie was out of the bottle. And perhaps it was only fitting that the subject of Twohey’s first story on Weinstein — published 12 days before the jaw-dropping Oct. 5, 2017, sexual misconduct exposé she wrote with Kantor — was about the amfAR transaction.

O

n Feb. 24, Weinstein was convicted of third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act. Ajamie was with clients in Phoenix when the news flashed across his phone.

“I looked down, didn’t skip a beat, looked right back up and continued the meeting,” he says. “I expected a guilty verdict against Harvey Weinstein.

Clearly what Harvey was accused of was exactly what I had been hearing during the course of my investigation.”

Still, the question looms: If Weinstein hadn’t been greedy and didn’t push to be reimbursed the $600,000 from ART, would he be a free man?

“I don’t know,” Ajamie says after some thought. “For the first time that I’m aware of, someone stood up and challenged him aggressively, me and my legal team. We raised a lot of issues — suspicious, sleazy, unethical behavior — and wrote it up. Everyone else kind of swept it under the rug.”

TALENT

David Fox

Myman Greenspan WESTERN STATE COLLEGE OF LAW

Fox’s clients broke new ground, with Christopher McQuarrie signing on to write and direct two Mission: Impossible movies, Leigh Whannell rebooting Universal’s monster movies with The Invisible Man and David Koepp writing his first novel, which he’s now adapting. Other clients include The Witcher creator Lauren Schmidt and the prolific James Wan. We’ve hit peak content when “I don’t see it happening soon. Content is more transient than ever, so the demand for new content is increasing.”

Edelman

Emanuel

Endlich

TALENT

Fox

Frankel

Freedman

Jeff Frankel

McKuin Frankel Whitehead UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Frankel has spent the past year shoring up overall deals for TV creators. He landed On My Block co-creator Lauren Iungerich at Netflix, Little America co-creator Lee Eisenberg at Apple and New Girl creator Liz Meriwether at 20th Century Fox TV. Plus, client Milo Ventimiglia will star in a USA limited series as Evel Knievel (a childhood hero of Frankel’s).

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Harmony for all playing in the sandbox.”

Feldman

Felker

Leigh Brecheen

LITIGATION

Bryan Freedman

with client

Fischer

Conan O’Brien

Freedman & Taitelman

UNIV. OF THE PACIFIC MCGEORGE SCHOOL OF LAW

At the forefront of the burgeoning esports business, Freedman is representing Turner “Tfue” Tenney, a professional gamer and former member of organization FaZe Clan, in his ongoing dispute over an “oppressive” contract. “It’s the Wild West in some respects,” says Freedman. Elsewhere he’s representing Gabrielle Union in her fight against America’s Got Talent over its alleged “racially insensitive” workplace, as well as Megyn Kelly and Jordan Belfort.

After veteran lawyers Jake Bloom and Alan Hergott retired in 2019, Brecheen left Bloom Hergott, her home of more than 20 years, to launch a firm with four colleagues who, she says, “share a common vision about how to negotiate and how to treat people.” All her clients, including late night hosts Conan O’Brien and John Oliver and actors Mel Gibson and Jenny McCarthy, came with her.

O’Brien says his lawyer “always exudes incredible calm, confidence and good cheer while at the same time getting a deal done with ruthless intelligence.”

Hollywood’s biggest priority in 2020 “Making sure that huge corporations don’t deprive artists of all rights in the IP they create, particularly in future iterations.”

LITIGATION

Scott Edelman

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher UC BERKELEY

Yes, all lawyers are busy, but Edelman has an especially active calendar. “I have five trials scheduled this year,” he says, including representing AMC in closely watched lawsuits over profits for The Walking Dead. Plus, he’s defending Universal Music Group from musicians who are upset over recordings allegedly destroyed in a massive backlot fire and Sony in litigation over the distribution of Days of Our Lives.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Making sure the casting couch is forever banished.”

Matt Galsor

Greenberg Glusker COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL

Leigh Brecheen and Conan O’Brien were photographed Feb. 5 on the set of Conan at Warner Bros. in Burbank.

One client takes up about a third of Emanuel’s time: Ryan Murphy. The creator has a $300 million Netflix deal, which the rep continues to oversee as Murphy churns out new series. Emanuel also represented producer Dede Gardner when Plan B entered into an overall TV pact with Amazon and production company Radical Media in its partnership with Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry on their mental health series for Apple.

My biggest challenge now is “The ability to actually take a mental break continues to be challenging.”

and it’s across all platforms,” says Endlich, who reps one of Hollywood’s most prolific creators: Taika Waititi, who took home an Oscar for his script for satire Jojo Rabbit. Waititi’s upcoming projects include (but are certainly not limited to) Searchlight soccer drama Next Goal Wins, Marvel’s next Thor movie and two projects based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for Netflix. Endlich’s roster also includes Raphael Bob-Waksberg (BoJack Horseman) and Liz Feldman (Dead to Me).

My biggest challenge now is “Working from home during a global pandemic with my 7-year-old and two 4-year-olds who have lots of energy and no place to go.”

TALENT

TALENT

Morris Yorn

Lichter Grossman

TALENT

Craig Emanuel Paul Hastings

MONASH UNIVERSITY LAW

Jeff Endlich

Jamie Feldman

BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO SCHOOL OF LAW

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

“There is such a huge demand for content creation,

Feldman has a knack for crafting innovative

Photographed by Diana King

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M A RCH 26, 2020

overall deals for the industry’s top filmmakers — like Steven Soderbergh’s cross-platform pact, which will see the director create content for Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max. The rep, who works with talent including Viola Davis and Dev Patel, also negotiated Barry Jenkins’ overall at Amazon, where he’s making Underground Railroad.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Philly cheesesteak.”

Riegel, “I’ve been doing this since 1983, and you finally have that feeling where women want women to represent them.”

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Making sure that they have safe working environments.”

TALENT

Patti Felker Felker Toczek

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW

Amid discussions of coronavirus action plans, Felker took a moment to share, “This is the year for overall deals,” citing Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman’s multiyear deal with Netflix and One Day at a Time showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett’s deal at Amazon. Says Felker, whose recent signings include Maggie Gyllenhaal and director Nicole

Galsor orchestrated the deal for AMC’s The Walking Dead movies for Universal. “I can’t think of another example of a movie based on a TV show that’s still ongoing and doing well,” he notes. Meanwhile, he handled deals for Tom Cruise and Chris Hemsworth in the Mission Impossible and Thor franchises, respectively, and negotiated Amr Salama’s pact with Netflix for an Arabic-language series — “they call him the David Fincher of Egypt,” says Galsor.

We’ve hit peak content when “7-Eleven launches an SVOD service.”

TALENT

Jonathan Gardner

TALENT

Sam Fischer

Cohen Gardner

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW

Ziffren Brittenham UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

BRECHEEN HAIR AND MAKEUP BY CHECHEL JOSON AT DEW BEAUTY AGENCY.

restructurings. She repped Univision in a deal that will see an investor group led by former Viacom CFO Wade Davis acquire a 64 percent stake. She has also advised clients on deals involving the likes of casino operator Affinity Gaming and Newport Television.

Please reboot Cheers

TALENT

Three of TV’s top shows will hit streamers thanks to Fischer: The Simpsons at Disney+ on behalf of client James L. Brooks; Friends at HBO Max, for exec producers Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane; and The Office at NBCUniversal, for which he advised Greg Daniels. “The studios recognize these are crown jewels,” Fischer says.

He also continues to rep the Obamas via their Hollywood production company Higher Ground, as well as Steve Levitan, Matt Damon, Joss Whedon and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

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Gardner has a penchant for representing buzzy directors, including Ryan Coogler and Boots Riley. In the past year, there’s no one hotter than Bong Joon Ho. The two began working together after Snowpiercer’s 2013 release, so Gardner saw every step of Parasite’s historymaking Oscars ride. He remains tantalizingly mum about details of the HBO adaptation and Bong’s next steps, saying, “There is a great number of incoming calls, but he’s not really interested in director-for-hire-type projects.”

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Scotch.”

M A RCH 26, 2020

Galsor

Gardner

Power Lawyer Confidential Poll

WHICH NEW STREAMER IS MOST LIKELY TO FAIL? DISNEY+

IF YOU COULD ONLY KEEP ONE STREAMING SERVICE, WHICH WOULD IT BE?

PEACOCK

2%

76%

OTHER

Gatti

NETFLIX

5%

68%

Joe spinoff Snake Eyes and helped set up his banner, Long House Productions, which already has a pact with China’s Starlight Cultural Entertainment Group.

Genow also got Christian Serratos cleared from The Walking Dead to star as late Tejano icon Selena Quintanilla for Netflix and still reps another recently emancipated woman, Meghan Markle (he won’t reveal what she’s working on).

Please reboot “Given what’s going on now, The Andromeda Strain.”

TALENT

CORPORATE/TECH

Hansen Jacobson

Loeb & Loeb

Craig Jacobson

B. Gellman TALENT

Cliff Gilbert-Lurie Ziffren Brittenham

Arash Khalili

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW

Jacobson put together one of the most unique deals of his career when repping Spotify in its podcast partnership with the Obamas, a negotiation that he describes as “complicated but fun.” He also crafted Bonnie Hammer’s contract to run Comcast’s new TV content and distribution studio and The Irishman producer Jane Rosenthal’s overall with Netflix, and continues to rep Lorne Michaels, Trevor Noah and Ryan Seacrest.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Salmon.”

When streaming superstar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins made the surprise announcement that he would be leaving Amazon-owned Twitch for Microsoft’s Mixer, it sparked a war over online talent that dominates the market today. Khalili, as a business and legal adviser to Blevins, was instrumental in the landmark deal.

“There was nothing on the shelf for a deal of that magnitude,” says Khalili. Outside of that “marquee transaction,” Khalili inked deals for Blevins with Adidas and the NFL, while also restructuring Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures.

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW

G. Gellman

HBO MAX

APPLE TV+

11%

12%

SPOTIFY

6%

HULU

10%

AMAZON PRIME 11%

Gendler

WILL THERE BE A WRITERS STRIKE? Genow

YES 41%

NO 24%

Gilbert-Lurie spent much of 2019 working on two complex, intertwined deals for megaproducer Dick Wolf that total more than $1 billion — first sorting out streaming rights for Wolf’s iconic Law & Order series between NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Disney-backed Hulu, and then inking a massive new five-year overall deal with Universal TV, Wolf’s home for 36 years. “Nothing rises to this level of intensity,” says Gilbert-Lurie, whose client list also includes Greg Daniels, Sandra Bullock and Tina Fey (who also has a new UTV deal).

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “We have to get transparency of streaming numbers so we can better represent our clients.”

TALENT

TALENT

CORPORATE

Goodman Genow

Loeb & Loeb

Goodman UNSURE

35%

Hobel

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

What kind of lawyer would Vin Diesel have in his corner? The actor is being accused of breach of contract in a lawsuit involving xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Gatti is representing co-defendant Revolution Studios in the fight (which was revived by an appeals court). He also reps Tracy Chapman, who is suing Nicki Minaj over a sample, and is handling several #MeToo matters.

Please reboot Shane

Hurwitz

Hansen Jacobson

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW

Gellman struck multiple overalls for clients, including Dan Fogelman (This Is Us) for 20th Century Fox Television, Jennie Snyder (Jane the Virgin) for CBS Studios and Adam F. Goldberg (The Goldbergs) for ABC Studios. “Studios are investing in talent and writers they believe in, who can create multiple shows,” Gellman says. Other clients include Denise Thé (Westworld) and Debora Cahn (Homeland).

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Pay equity.”

Jacobson

Michael Gendler

TALENT

Rick Genow

TALENT

Gregg Gellman

Johnson

Kagan Bierman

Kaller

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL

As Lulu Wang’s The Farewell became a critical

As Henry Golding’s star continues to rise, Genow negotiated his turn as the titular commando in G.I.

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The go-to rep for auteurs and top talent wore his tux proudly as Quentin Tarantino’s box office hit Once Upon a Time in Hollywood earned 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director, while Ford v Ferrari star Christian Bale earned a Golden Globe nom for the second year in a row. Elsewhere, Goodman made an overall TV deal for Steve McQueen at Amazon and inked Alex Garland’s deal to create, write and direct Devs for Hulu/FX. We’ve hit peak content when “I think the demand for content production will continue to grow — the only issue is when and how drastically will the SVOD premiums reduce.”

SCHOOL OF LAW

This summer, Kinsella will be telling a jury that AMC owes $270 million to his clients Frank Darabont and CAA. Other trials further down include producer Neal Moritz’s against Universal over Fast & Furious franchise profits and a case brought by two producers who worked on the original television adaptation of Stephen King’s It, who say Warner Bros. denied the right to participate on the recent film blockbusters.

Munger Tolles & Olson STANFORD LAW SCHOOL

The legal mind representing most studios in negotiations with unions, Kagan Bierman in May also brokered the first major agreement between the WGA and a talent agency, Verve, since the union began its dispute with the ATA. On the other side of her business, Kagan Bierman helped Time’s Up create its safety guide for entertainment employees and trained independent producers on harassment, discrimination and bullying prevention.

Please reboot The West Wing

Adam Kaller

Michael Hobel

Hansen Jacobson

WHITTIER LAW SCHOOL

Katten Muchin Rosenman

Kaller has one of the most diverse client rosters in Hollywood, from digital stars like Lilly Singh (who launched her NBC late night show in September) to podcasters including Leon Neyfakh (who launched new series Fiasco on Luminary) to traditional talent like Darren Criss (who will star in Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood). “My practice is the natural evolution of the business at large,” says Kaller.

My biggest challenge now is “I would have said the WGA-agency fight, but now I’m saying the coronavirus.”

Hobel’s specialty is working with legacy and streaming-first distributors as they navigate the changing dealmaking landscape, including helping Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s Quibi lock in programming ahead of its April 6 launch. “My streaming and pay TV clients have been really active with innovative deals,” notes Hobel, whose other clients include HBO, Epix and AMC Networks.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Mitigating and recovering from coronavirus impacts.”

TALENT

LITIGATION

Frankfurt Kurnit

Covington & Burling

Andrew Hurwitz

Goodman Genow

Morris Yorn

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRITZKER

NYU SCHOOL OF LAW

TALENT

Gendler represents a collection of top showrunners.

Shonda Rhimes is readying her first two projects out of her groundbreaking Netflix deal for a fall launch: Bridgerton and an untitled Anna Delvey series.

“There’s a lot of ongoing work that comes with these giant deals,” says Gendler, who also works with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin. Meanwhile, David E. Kelley has six new shows in production at a slew of outlets, and Courtney Kemp has four Power spinoffs at Starz.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Electing a president who is not Donald Trump.”

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

CORPORATE/TECH

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Bruce Gellman

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Kelly Klaus

Ivy Kagan Bierman

TALENT

Gendler & Kelly TALENT

Kinsella Weitzman

Dale Kinsella

Johnson’s powerhouse clients include Barack and Michelle Obama, Tyler Perry and Adam McKay. Following the latter’s split with producing partner Will Ferrell, the rep, who divides his time between Costa Rica and Los Angeles, helped set up the next chapter of McKay’s career. So far, that includes a feature deal with Paramount, a TV deal with HBO, a podcasting deal with Sony Music and a Jennifer Lawrence movie at Netflix.

Please reboot The Wire

M A RCH 26, 2020

Mitch Kamin

GEORGETOWN LAW

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Hurwitz has seen firsthand how good it is to be an IP owner in Hollywood right now. He represented the Roald Dahl estate in its (reportedly $1 billion) deal with Netflix and works with the Agatha Christie estate. Meanwhile, he negotiated Spotlight director Tom McCarthy’s eight-figure overall with Fox 21 TV and The Favourite co-writer Tony McNamara’s pact for The Great at Hulu.

We’ve hit peak content when “The studios and networks stop giving first-time television writers the opportunity to run their own shows.”

For most of the major record labels (including Warner, Sony and Universal), Kamin fought to ensure internet service providers took piracy seriously. For TV networks, including Fox News and AMC, he took on cable companies over carriage rates. But he’s particularly proud of his pro bono work, including representing the city of L.A. against the federal government over grant money withheld because of Trump’s immigration agenda.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Ending all forms of discrimination in the industry.”

STRIKE: CHARLEY GALLAY/GETTY IMAGES.

John Gatti

darling, Gellman negotiated her deals to write and direct Amazon drama The Expatriates and Big Beach’s sci-fi feature Children of the New World.

He also began negotiating projects under Kenya Barris’ massive Netflix deal, including Kid Cudi’s animated anthology Entergalactic and comedy Black Excellence, in which Barris will star for the first time.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Hickory cheeseburger with extra sauce and fries well done at The Apple Pan.”

NYU SCHOOL OF LAW

LITIGATION

Gilbert-Lurie

LITIGATION

LITIGATION

Ziffren Brittenham

Carlos Goodman

During the 2007-08 writers strike, studios terminated certain deals.

Matthew Johnson

Klaus has become a favorite litigator for MPAA members, including Disney, Warner Bros. and Netflix. He represented the plaintiffs in a copyright lawsuit against VidAngel when the streaming/filtering service was sued for copyright infringement. In June 2019, a jury ordered VidAngel to pay more than $62 million in damages for copyright violations.

Please reboot The Brady Bunch TALENT

Exit West, Kole helped seal the deal. (Ahmed will star in and executive produce the project.) The lawyer also brokered Hobbs & Shaw team David Leitch and Kelly McCormick’s first-look deal at Universal. She oversaw the return of Michelle Dockery to Downtown Abbey for the 2019 film and Sarah Hyland’s last season on Modern Family.

Please reboot Roadhouse

Kamin

LITIGATION

Michael Kump

Khalili

Kinsella Weitzman

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL

The Kardashians’ favored attorney in business disputes, Kump helped Kim, Kourtney and Khloe win more than $10 million from Haven Beauty, which used the Kardashians’ name to promote a beauty brand after ending payments to the sisters (the case is currently on appeal). Kump also repped Sandra Bullock in a fake endorsement case.

We’ve hit peak content when “The streaming services start lowering prices and/or cutting back offerings and services.”

Kinsella

Klaus

TALENT

Bob Lange

Kleinberg Lange UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL

After the fallout over his infamous Access Hollywood chat with now President Donald Trump and subsequent three-year hiatus from TV, Billy Bush returned to news in 2019 thanks to the efforts of Lange. He also signed Sylvester Stallone and Kate Beckinsale and continues to rep Mark Hamill and Carrie-Anne Moss, who is returning as Trinity in Matrix 4.

My biggest challenge now is “The continued vertical and horizontal consolidation of the traditional entertainment companies is an ever-increasing challenge.”

Klein

Kohner

Kole

TALENT

Bianca Levin Gang Tyre

Deborah Klein

YALE LAW SCHOOL

Jackoway Austen

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

With Booksmart, Hustlers and Dead to Me, Klein saw client Will Ferrell and Jessica Elbaum’s production company Gloria Sanchez have a knockout year, and secured the female-focused outfit first-looks at Netflix for TV and Paramount for film. She inked Jim Carrey’s pacts for Kidding and Sonic the Hedgehog, along with five (yes, really) new movie deals for Samuel L. Jackson including Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, The Last Full Measure and The Banker.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Graeter’s mocha chocolate chip ice cream.”

Dwayne Johnson will become a supervillain thanks in part to Levin, who handled his deal for Black Adam as well as those for Red Notice and Young Rock. She also negotiated Henry Cavill’s turn in The Witcher and Melina Matsoukas’ deal for Queen & Slim and her first-look at FX, and helped Honey Boy director Alma Har’el create Time’s 100 Women of the Year initiative.

“She is an incredible force,” Levin says of her client.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “French fries.”

TALENT

Jared Levine

Kump

Lange

Levin

Morris Yorn

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

TALENT

Alex Kohner Morris Yorn

LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL

Kohner helped Matt and Ross Duffer parlay the Stranger Things buzz into a nine-figure overall deal at Netflix that allows them to monetize the success of the series, rare for a distributor known for buying out the backend. Longtime client John Cho recently booked the lead in the streamer’s Cowboy Bebop series and Pete Chiarelli will pen Crazy Rich Asians 2.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Remembering how lucky we are to get to do what we do.”

Levine set up Jordan Peele and his Monkeypaw Productions with a huge five-year first-look at Universal Pictures that includes the upcoming horror reboot Candyman. “While many TV deals recently jumped into the nine-figure arena, I can’t think of [another] deal that’s exclusively feature films to hit that stratosphere,” he says. Plus, he secured Ramy Youssef a first-look at A24 after the success of his Hulu series Ramy and got the ball rolling on Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media deal with Sony Pictures.

Please reboot The Eiger Sanction TALENT

Jamie Mandelbaum

TALENT

Tara Kole

Jackoway Austen

NYU SCHOOL OF LAW

Gang Tyre

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

When the Obamas’ production company wanted Riz Ahmed for its fiction film, an adaptation of 2017 novel

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“You no longer just go on the show as a showrunner,” says Mandelbaum, who reps a stable of writerdirectors. “You make an overall deal as the price of

M A RCH 26, 2020

Levine

Mandelbaum

Mastroberte

How The Walking Dead Could Redefine Dealmaking

The Walking Dead co-creator and director Frank Darabont on the set of the AMC series.

TWO LEGAL FIGHTS OVER THE ZOMBIE SERIES WILL SHAPE HOW CREATORS ARE PAID IN A FUTURE WHERE EVERY STUDIO HAS ITS OWN STREAMER By Eriq Gardner

Mayerson

McKuin

Court Judge Daniel Buckley has indicated he’ll announce his interpretation of AMC’s deals with Robert Kirkman (who authored the Walking Dead graphic novels) and the show’s executive producers, including Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert.

Because AMC both produces the series (through its studio) and distributes it (via its cable network), the core issue is license fees. Is a formal transaction required between two sister companies, or does AMC get to “impute” an amount? If the latter, must the fee be on fair-market

admission.” He’s made recent deals for 9-1-1’s Tim Minear at 20th TV, The Americans’ Joe Weisberg at FX and Grey’s Anatomy’s Krista Vernoff at Disney. The lawyer, who also reps Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller, brokered a hefty deal for Nicholas Braun to star in a new WeWork series.

We’ve hit peak content when “Talent salaries start dropping.”

CORPORATE

Glen Mastroberte Skadden Arps

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Meigs

Miller

Morris

Mastroberte represented beIN Media Group in the sale of a 49 percent Miramax stake to ViacomCBS, which included a $375 million production funding commitment. He also represented The Ringer in its nearly $200 million sale to Spotify and negotiated founder Bill Simmons’ contract.

Other clients include Glassman Media (which sold to Endeavor Content), A24 (which has a multiyear financing and distribution deal with Apple TV+) and Facebook.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pizza, preferably Neapolitan.”

CORPORATE

Mickey Mayerson Paul Hastings

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL

Moss

“Parasite offered a glimmer of hope that there are opportunities for movies to find audiences through independent distribution,” says Mayerson, whose clients include Fibonacci Films, Old Hill Capital and

terms? The answers go to how much The Walking Dead is booking in revenue, which changes the pool for Kirkman profit participants.

The creatives say if a fair market fee was used, it would have resulted in hundreds of millions more for profit participants. AMC disputes that.

At a trial in February, Hurd testified that AMC’s former boss, Charlie Collier (now Fox Entertainment CEO), promised the creative executives would be “treated fairly,” which she

thought meant that license fees would flow as if the show had been produced by a third party.

“I might tell them they’re going to do well and that they’ll be treated fairly,” said Collier in his own testimony. “I wouldn’t typically talk contingent compensation with anybody. It’s beyond the scope.”

Judge Buckley’s ruling won’t be the end of the story. In June, another set of plaintiffs

— Walking Dead co-creator Frank Darabont and CAA — are set to go to trial against AMC in New York, although both sides anticipate COVID-19-related delays.

Each side is preparing to tell a story about the sophistication of the other’s attorneys. “Mr. Darabont had the best agents and lawyers in Hollywood negotiate his deal,” says AMC’s attorney Orin Snyder. “Now that The Walking Dead is a huge success, he

is trying to rewrite his deal years later through litigation.”

Darabont’s attorney Dale Kinsella counters, “ ‘All transactions’ means all transactions,” referring to a provision in the contracts specifying that AMC’s transactions with affiliates had to be fair-market. “Even if their super-sophisticated lawyers wanted to limit ‘all’ [to deals outside of cable television], that could have been put in [the contract].”

Indian Paintbrush. He handled a deal with the TV side of Motion Picture Corporation of America, which primarily produces movies for Netflix and Hallmark.

We’ve hit peak content when “Netflix decides to sell itself.”

“She had me reach out to the author and optioned the book before anyone even knew about it.” Other in-demand clients include Issa Rae (The Lovebirds, Insecure) and Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, GLOW).

Please reboot Love Jones

Blood Moon. Morris also brought Jordana Brewster back into the Fast & Furious fold for F9.

We’ve hit peak content when “As long as people are watching and subscribing, they’re going to keep making shows.”

TALENT

TALENT

LITIGATION

McKuin Frankel Whitehead

Fox Rothschild

Greenberg Glusker

Joel McKuin

Darrell Miller

Aaron Moss

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

GEORGETOWN LAW

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

McKuin helped to craft unprecedented dual overall deals for Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Fake Empire. The team behind Hulu’s Looking for Alaska signed with both Apple and CBS TV Studios.

“Writers are being valued in a way they never have been before,” says McKuin, who reps some of Hollywood’s top scribes. This includes Noah Hawley, who will wrap his fourth season of Fargo and is set to write and direct a new Star Trek franchise, and You co-creator Sera Gamble, who has an overall at Universal Content Productions.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pizzeria Mozza’s fennel sausage pizza comes to mind.”

Longtime client Angela Bassett has become a powerhouse behind the scenes and is doing “dynamic and diverse things,” says Miller. She’s a director, an exec producer on her Fox show 9-1-1 and its spinoff, and is continuing her partnership with Ryan Murphy on his projects. Also on Miller’s roster are newcomers Teyonah Parris, who signed on for Disney+ series WandaVision, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who’s stealing scenes in Hulu’s High Fidelity and starring in Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Trying to accept the redefined consumer consumption habits.”

Moss has no shortage of billable hours thanks to “bro sports network” Barstool Sports, for which he helped fend off a number of lawsuits from “run-of-the mill, copyright troll stuff” to a wiretapping case from the mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, and a contentious battle with actor Michael Rappaport. Says Moss, “The dozen or so Barstool Sports things took up about a third of my time in 2019.”

Please reboot Alfred Hitchcock Presents

TALENT

TALENT

Hansen Jacobson

Jackoway Austen

John Meigs Jr.

Marcy Morris

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Meigs saw big change in his clients’ lives in 2019.

“Seeing Winston [Duke] being able to buy a house based on the money we got for [Netflix film] Spencer Confidential, these things are really gratifying,” he says, adding that he’s proud of Kaley Cuoco developing her own Big Bang Theory follow-up, HBO Max’s adaptation of Chris Bohjalian’s The Flight Attendant:

“I pride myself in being tough and fair in negotiations, and not making enemies,” says Morris, whose longtime client Kate Hudson had a banner year.

Her deals span athleisure (Fabletics), alcohol (King St. Vodka), podcasting (Sibling Revelry, which she records with her brother Oliver) — and, of course, film and TV projects like Netflix’s Mona Lisa and the

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DARABONT: AMC/PHOTOFEST. KIRKMAN: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES. MYMAN: DEBBIE MYMAN.

After seven years in court, AMC will soon see some big legal rulings concerning The Walking Dead, the mega-successful drama about a fictional group of survivors living at a time when a virus had turned most of humanity into ravenous zombies. Assuming society’s real-life viral pandemic doesn’t interfere with the timetable, these court decisions may also influence ongoing profit participation fights and the changing way that many creatives are compensated in the streaming era.

The first big ruling may come April 17. That’s when L.A. Superior

TALENT

Bob Myman

Myman Greenspan USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

Client Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen is an unmitigated hit, but the lawyer and the writerproducer took quite a roller-coaster ride thanks to controversial political satire The Hunt, which was pulled from release at the eleventh hour last fall. When the feature finally hit theaters March 13, it met another complication: the coronavirus pandemic. Myman’s roster also includes Angela Lansbury, Benjamin Bratt and Laura Prepon.

My biggest challenge now is “Trying to balance work and spending time with my grandchildren.”

Since Darabont sued in 2013, industry changes have boosted the profile of this case. Netflix showed Hollywood its future in streaming. AT&T acquired Time Warner, Disney gobbled up Fox and CBS merged with Viacom.

Now, these giants are launching Netflix competitors and licensing content from subsidiaries to wholly owned streamers. More affiliate dealmaking means more EPs are claiming they’re being shortchanged of fair license fees.

In fact, O’Melveny & Myers litigator Daniel Petrocelli says he has billions’ worth of affiliate transactions being challenged in arbitration: “My list involves all the studios and a number of very famous properties.” It may be the trendiest area of his practice.

Snyder resists the notion that his case has anything to do with streaming. While it’s true those Walking Dead deals predated

TALENT

Peter Nelson Nelson Davis

UC HASTINGS COLLEGE OF THE LAW

Nelson negotiated a precedent-setting deal with Disney for the acquisition of Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back, featuring The Beatles’ last recording sessions and concert in 1969. He also closed a deal for Allison Janney to star in the Netflix movie Lou, produced by J.J. Abrams, and reps one of the most in-demand young actors, 10-year-old Azhy Robertson, who appears in Marriage Story, HBO’s The Plot Against America and Ray James for Apple.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Fresh crab.”

TALENT

Jeanne Newman Hansen Jacobson

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

Newman’s client Tracee Ellis Ross is switching gears from Black-ish to play a singing diva in Universal’s High Note, while Patti LuPone is doing a Netflix show with Ryan Murphy (“It’s a special role that people will be surprised to see her in,” Newman teases). And she helped revive Endemol’s Extreme Makeover (HGTV).

My biggest challenge now is “Staying positive.”

TALENT

Robert Offer Sloane Offer

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Offer’s slew of superheroes includes Robert Pattinson, who’ll star in The Batman and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, and Gal Gadot, who renegotiated her Wonder Woman deal and secured a big payday for Netflix’s

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Netflix’s success, the trial will nevertheless test something significant in the age of affiliate dealmaking: How does one determine what’s “fair market”?

Darabont’s lawyers, estimating nearly $300 million in damages, will call experts to testify as to how much highly rated TV shows receive in license fees. They’ll also argue that, more than any other series, including Breaking Bad and Mad Men, the zombie show made AMC what it is today and Darabont and his agents deserve to share in that success.

AMC asserts that this calculation ignores the fact that when The Walking Dead was being shopped a decade ago, other networks passed. “Most didn’t think a postapocalyptic show about zombies would be successful,” says AMC attorney Scott Edelman, adding, “Neither AMC nor any cable channel has ever paid the types of license fees they are arguing this show should have received.”

Red Notice. Benedict Cumberbatch inked a Jane Campion indie and a new Doctor Strange pact, and Brie Larson landed Apple’s Life Undercover.

We’ve hit peak content when “The Bachelor gets eight hours per week on the schedule.”

Myman

LITIGATION

Anthony Oncidi Proskauer

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL

As counsel for the Recording Academy, Oncidi is embroiled in the explosive dispute between the Grammys organizer and former CEO Deborah Dugan, a case that threatened to upend the music industry awards. He’s also the point attorney for Viacom and other studios in their exec poaching battle with Netflix and repped CAA against UTA over a group of defecting agents (the two sides settled last year).

My biggest challenge now is “Making Hollywood safe from the ‘seven-year rule.’ ” TALENT

Jodi Peikoff

Nelson

Newman

Offer

Peikoff Mahan

BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO SCHOOL OF LAW

Viewers excited to see Cynthia Erivo play Aretha Franklin in the next season of Nat Geo’s Genius have Peikoff to thank, in part. She also negotiated America Ferrera’s surprise exit as a star and exec producer of NBC’s Superstore and role as EP of Netflix’s Gentefied, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch writer John Cameron Mitchell’s foray into podcasting.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “The thoughtful dialogue around inclusion is great and now the practice needs to catch up.”

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Oncidi

Peikoff

LITIGATION

Daniel Petrocelli O’Melveny & Myers

SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

Netflix can’t recruit employees anymore at Disney’s Fox studios thanks to Petrocelli’s work in a lawsuit filed after the streamer poached two execs.

Petrocelli will go to an appeals court to preserve that injunction while handling an Irving Azoff outfit’s antitrust case against terrestrial radio operators and defending Kesha from Dr. Luke’s defamation claims.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Dark chocolate ice cream.”

Petrocelli

we all have a platform. My platform isn’t as big as those of my clients, but I support them, speaking passionately about the things they care about. I wanted to tell them that I’m modeling that behavior, too, or following their lead for those who are out in the world having conversations that are sometimes challenging to have.

Putnam

LITIGATION

Marvin Putnam

Reynolds

Latham & Watkins

GEORGETOWN LAW

LITIGATION

Richman

Roman Griffith

Jeremiah Reynolds Eisner

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

A go-to litigator for A-list clients including Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne and in conflicts over independent films, Reynolds currently represents a U.K. company that claims the distributors of Traffic, Gangs of New York and Ali downplayed the films’ revenue to circumvent millions in fees. He’s also fighting STX for allegedly backing out of a deal to co-finance an adaptation of Killers’ Game on behalf of client Endurance Media.

Please reboot The Rockford Files

Rose

Rosenbloum

TALENT

Ken Richman

Rush

Hansen Jacobson

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Several of Richman’s showrunner clients landed lucrative overall deals across town. The Good Place’s Mike Schur and 30 Rock’s Robert Carlock inked major deals at Universal, while Barry’s Alec Berg and Veep’s David Mandel signed pacts with HBO. He also reps Elisabeth Moss, who stars in The Invisible Man on top of her Emmy-winning role in The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as Full Frontal host Samantha Bee. My biggest challenge now is “Helping my clients and firm navigate the impact of the coronavirus.”

CORPORATE

Marissa Roman Griffith Akin Gump

STANFORD LAW SCHOOL

As MRC’s lead dealmaker, Roman Griffith spearheaded the co-production and co-financing pacts for such films as Knives Out, Dora and the Lost City of Gold and The Lovebirds. On the TV front, she put together the financing agreements for shows like The Great, The Outsider and Ozark. (MRC and THR share a parent company, Valence Media.) And she repped Portfolio Funding Company in its acquisition of 191 titles from The Weinstein Co. library.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Lobster.”

TALENT

Nancy Rose Schreck Rose

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

The New York-based attorney negotiated the biggest

Would you feel comfortable sharing your own abortion story with THR? I was 17 and living in Japan. I had left college and was seeing the world, and I became pregnant. I went back to the U.S. to have an abortion because in Japan a woman could only have an abortion through a lot of special waivers. It was not a hard decision, because it would have completely derailed all my professional aspirations and I would have been an unwed teenage mother without a college degree. I would have had a very difficult path to the life that I have now, and [so] it was not even a question. My family was supportive.

Why I Revealed My Abortion in Court

TALENT LAWYER JODI PEIKOFF SHARES HER PERSONAL STORY, WHY SHE FIGHTS TO SAVE ROE V. WADE AND HOW HOLLYWOOD CAN HELP By Katie Kilkenny When Jodi Peikoff joined hundreds of other women working in law who shared their abortion stories with the U.S. Supreme Court in December, it wasn’t the first time she fought for the cause. But the amicus brief she signed, which argues against the constitutionality of Louisiana’s 2014 Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, was far more vast in scope than when she challenged a similarly restrictive Texas law in 2016. Coordinated by the firm Paul Weiss, the brief signed by 368 female legal professionals excerpts (and anonymizes) stories from women who wouldn’t have been able to realize their goals were it not for their “ability to control their reproductive lives.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Peikoff, a New York-based talent lawyer who represents Cynthia Erivo, Felicity Jones, Lili Reinhart, Carrie Coon, Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and America Ferrera, among others, went further, sharing her own story without the cloak of anonymity. Says Peikoff, “It’s really important to speak openly about these issues because it destigmatizes the decision that so many women have to make.”

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Why did you add your name?

I had the opportunity to control my reproductive destiny, and without it, I wouldn’t be the owner of a law firm.

So I felt I had to pay forward my privilege to make sure the next generation has the same right that I had.

Hollywood is a pretty liberal industry, but did you pause before publicly sharing your beliefs?

I didn’t give it a second thought.

As soon as it was published, I got a call from a number of women lawyers in the industry. One called to thank me: Her father had been a gynecologist who performed abortions and her family had been terrorized by the anti-abortion right, and she was so happy that Paul Weiss and the amicus brief people had spoken up, and that she knew someone who had. So, no. And the response — to my face, anyway — was uniformly good.

Have you talked to your clients about signing the briefs?

I have mentioned it to a handful of clients, in the context of saying that

PROTEST: SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. REYNOLDS: TODD WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGES FOR THR.

As Hollywood #MeToo disputes proliferate, studios and networks increasingly are conducting internal investigations. Putnam has become a go-to attorney in such situations (ICM being one well-reported example). He represents Miramax and former Weinstein Co. board member Tim Sarnoff in a slew of Harvey Weinstein-related lawsuits. Also high-profile is his work on behalf of the Association of Talent Agents in its packaging fees battle with the WGA.

indie film deal ever by selling worldwide rights to client Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton live capture to Disney for $75 million. Rose also spearheaded the pact for Miranda’s film adaptation of In the Heights and his directing debut with Tick, Tick Boom.

Elsewhere, Rose closed a rich multiyear overall deal for The Affair co-creator Sarah Treem with Fox 21 and reps theater-film crossovers including Kenneth Lonergan and Tony Kushner.

We’ve hit peak content when “We’re there already.”

CORPORATE/TECH

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

Greenberg Traurig

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Rosenbloum has been at the fore of the music industry’s shift to digital over the past two decades.

Lately, that means serving as lead counsel for TikTok owner ByteDance on content deals, assisting Spotify with its music licensing agreements and leading music content deals for Equinox Media and SoulCycle. He also works with Amazon Studios and Luminary.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Sushi.”

Schreck

Schwartz

Schwartz scored a win for Elon Musk in December when a judge ruled the billionaire didn’t defame a British cave explorer when he called him “pedo guy” on Twitter. He also helped Kanye West settle with EMI Publishing after an eight-month battle and is quietly representing victims of sexual harassment and abuse. Says Schwartz, “We hold people accountable, we don’t hold press conferences.”

My biggest challenge now is “Finding time to goof off.”

TALENT

P.J. Shapiro

TALENT

Gretchen Rush

Shapiro

Hansen Jacobson

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Rush is a magnet for top female talent. She brokered deals for Jennifer Lawrence to star in Adam McKay’s Netflix movie Don’t Look Up and for Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington to headline and produce Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere. But her biggest deal of the year was Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ five-year overall pact with Netflix. “It was my entire summer,” says Rush of the negotiation, which involved six other buyers.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Fries!”

It already feels like [abortion access] has been changed for women who have even the obstacle of waiting a day; for someone who has a job where they can’t take off a day’s work or lose a day’s wages; for women who have to travel hours and hours, when many don’t have cars. Access for all women, regardless of income, regardless of location, to have safe abortions is already dramatically diminished and it’s horrible. It’s infuriating and it makes me more passionate to assist in doing that work.

Cravath

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Robert Schwartz Quinn Emanuel

Bobby Rosenbloum

CORPORATE

The more the stories that are told on TV and film destigmatize this choice and show a wider variety of responses in storylines when women have pregnancies they don’t want to carry to term, the more comfortable people will be in having these conversations and understanding why women have to have control over the choices around their reproduction.

LITIGATION

Schenkman

In your legal view, how realistic is it that Roe v. Wade would be overturned?

What can the entertainment industry do to protect abortion rights?

Saeed

careers of two newcomers that Schreck says were the “deepest experiences of the past year.” One is bringing deaf actress Lauren Ridloff (The Walking Dead) into the Marvel fray in Eternals and the other was setting up Ali Stroker in the stage production of Oklahoma!, making her the first actress to use a wheelchair for mobility on Broadway.

Please reboot The Odd Couple

Shaw

Shire

Ziffren Brittenham USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

TV’s golden age has kept Shapiro busy this year.

He shepherded Fleabag phenom Phoebe WallerBridge’s deal at Amazon and Succession head Jesse Armstrong’s overall pact at HBO deal. He explains, “These mega overall deals have essentially shifted the backend to the front end.” On the features side, he helped transition John Cena from wrestler to fulltime movie star, with roles in the ninth Fast & Furious movie and Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad sequel.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pad Thai with a side of pizza and a scoop of ice cream … and maybe a slice of butter cake.”

TALENT

Faiza Saeed

Nina Shaw Siegel

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

After repping Disney in its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s major entertainment assets and Time Warner in its sale to AT&T, Saeed took on more mega-deals, advising Viacom’s board on the company’s $30 billion recombination with CBS Corp. and Hasbro on its $4 billion acquisition of Entertainment One. She also represented Disney in its $10.6 billion sale of the Fox Regional Sports Networks to Sinclair.

Del Shaw

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL

Time’s Up co-founder Shaw remains committed to equitable representation in her day job, too: She brokered Nia DaCosta’s jump from indie to studio filmmaking with Candyman, negotiated John Legend and his banner Get Lifted’s ABC overall deal, and is helping Oscar winner Regina King expand her talents with a Netflix multiyear producing pact and her feature directorial debut One Night in Miami.

TALENT

Lawrence Shire

TALENT

Michael Schenkman

Grubman Shire

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

Goodman Genow

UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW

It was a whirlwind year as Schenkman’s firm Bloom Hergott dissolved with the retirement of Jake Bloom and Alan Hergott, reconstituted as Goodman Schenkman, then merged with Stone Genow. “We received kudos from various members of the community, including some of our friendly competitors,” he notes. Meanwhile, he inked Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas’ rich deal for Tenet, and a two-picture pact with Universal for M. Night Shyamalan.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Avoiding self-inflicted disruption while the world experiences unprecedented disruption.”

Shire guided George Cheeks out of NBC and into a shiny new role as president and CEO of CBS Entertainment Group. The veteran NYC lawyer is also working with Richard Plepler on his new venture, Eden Productions, and its exclusive deal at Apple.

Shire continues to represent talent including LeBron James, Drake and Robert De Niro.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Keeping everyone healthy.”

CORPORATE

Amy Siegel

O’Melveny & Myers LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL

TALENT

Ira Schreck Schreck Rose

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL

While his roster includes stars like Kevin Hart, Sarah Jessica Parker and Ang Lee, it was boosting the

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Siegel repped ViacomCBS in its deal with beIN Media to acquire a 49 percent stake in Miramax, and Univision in its rebranding of its sports network Univision Deportes as TUDN in its alliance with Mexico’s Grupo Televisa. She also worked with Square Enix in deals to adapt video games, such as

Just Cause, for the big screen. Other clients include Warner Bros. and Bron Studios.

Please reboot My So-Called Life

went to Sundance before it was Sundance,” she says. She also cracked the glass ceiling as one of the first female partners at an entertainment firm.

CORPORATE

Christopher Spicer Akin Gump

GEORGETOWN LAW

Slewett

Spicer’s work as the lead lawyer for Comerica Bank helped bring the massive hit Joker to the big screen (he closed a $100 million revolving credit facility to Bron Studios to co-finance a slate of Warner Bros. films including the R-rated $1 billion earner). Though Hollywood-China transactions have largely dried up, Spicer finalized several on behalf of East West Bank including Perfect Universe’s film-slate financing deal with Universal and Bona Film Group’s investment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as CBS’ partnership with Nina Tassler.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Resolving the WGAtalent agency situation.”

TALENT

Gregory Slewett Ziffren Brittenham

BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO SCHOOL OF LAW

Sloane

Smelkinson

Little Women scene-stealer Florence Pugh earned her first Oscar nomination, and it was Slewett who helped her take on that role as well as A24 horror flick Midsommar. Meanwhile, Yesterday breakout Himesh Patel landed roles in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Station Eleven at HBO Max. The highlight for Slewett was seeing Michael B. Jordan “flourish as a producer and a voice behind the camera,” as he did in Just Mercy. The actor will star in and produce Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Kale salad from Porta Via.”

Sullivan

Don Passman Gang Tyre

Thompson

Tobey

THR’s Legal Legends

LITIGATION

Kathleen Sullivan Quinn Emanuel

Snow

TALENT

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Jason Sloane

Sullivan, a former Stanford Law School dean, leveraged her Silicon Valley connections and became a forceful voice shaping law. She’s involved in the marathon battle between Mattel and MGA, had a key case before the Supreme Court over whether North Carolina has sovereign immunity from a filmmaker’s copyright claims and is seeking to reverse a decision allowing the Friday the 13th screenwriter to reclaim franchise rights from the film’s producer.

If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Should say something else, but it’s steak.”

Sloane Offer

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Snyder

RAISING THE BAR HONOREE

‘It’s Never the Same Company’

Spicer

NETFLIX GENERAL COUNSEL DAVID HYMAN HAS SURVIVED (AND THRIVED) ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE STREAMING REVOLUTION By Natalie Jarvey

Sloane reps some of the biggest names in movies, including the Chrises: Evans, who is in negotiations for Warner Bros.’ Little Shop of Horrors, and Pratt, who garnered a new deal for Jurassic World: Dominion. Meanwhile, Tom Hardy got a hearty deal for Venom 2, Mark Wahlberg mapped big bucks for Uncharted, Will Smith received a princely sum for King Richard, Michael Fassbender scored with Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins and Anne Hathaway found her way to Sesame Street.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Restoring the health of the theatrical business and the business in general.”

hobby” — manages a team of more than 650 legal professionals worldwide who cut some of the biggest (and most unique) deals in Hollywood.

Recently, that’s meant spending a fair amount of time contemplating Netflix’s new role as both a content producer and a content distributor, and frequent trips from Los Gatos to Los Angeles.

“I often talk about it like, ‘We’ve gone from being a company that sells cars to a company that manufactures and distributes cars,’ ” explains Hyman. Now, “that means everything from negotiating the talent arrangements to dealing with the physical production to dealing with the labor guilds. All those areas of expertise had to be developed at Netflix over the last 18 years, and really the last five years as we’ve ramped it up.”

That work will only become more complex as Netflix continues to prioritize local productions overseas. While it’s not quite the same thrill as completing a good ski run, for Hyman it’s all part of the adventure: “Things are always changing. It’s never the same company, in many respects. I thrive in that environment.”

Photographed by Christopher Patey

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Weber

Sidley Austin

UC HASTINGS COLLEGE OF THE LAW

“It’s hard to survive as an independent producer and distributor in today’s market if you’re not part of a broader organization,” says Thompson, who represented Entertainment One’s management in its $3.8 billion acquisition by Hasbro. The attorney also helped Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman form T-Street and enter into a joint venture with MRC, and advised Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia in the formation of Siete Bucks Spirits as part of their recent Teremana tequila launch.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Making sure we all recover well from the current unsettled times.”

Mitch Smelkinson Goodman Genow

LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL

Smelkinson’s first client, Craig Mazin — whom he’s repped for 25 years — won numerous awards for HBO’s Chernobyl, which he created and wrote, while Anthony Hopkins was lauded for his performance in The Two Popes. Elsewhere, Smelkinson negotiated final-season deals for Modern Family’s Ty Burrell and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Paul Dano’s turn as the Riddler in Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman.

Please reboot Logan’s Run

Cheryl Snow Snow reps a slew of multihyphenates including Jim Parsons, who signed an overall deal at Warner Bros., where he’ll executive produce Call Me Cat, and Irishman scribe Steven Zaillian, who’s showrunning, writing and directing every episode of Ripley for Showtime. Meanwhile, Ben Stiller will direct and executive produce Severance for Apple TV+. While streamers want to buy out the backend, she says many clients still “want to play for the upside.”

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Avoiding strikes.”

LITIGATION

Orin Snyder

Snyder helped Jerry Seinfeld beat a lawsuit claiming that he stole Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee from the guy who directed the pilot. He’s assisting Facebook in navigating the morass triggered by Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting of tens of millions of users. Plus, he’ll defend AMC this summer in a $270 million suit over Walking Dead profits.

His first big client was Phil Spector, his first movie deal was Easy Rider and his first TV pact was Get Smart. More recent clients include Jerry Seinfeld, Katy Perry, John Williams and Mel Brooks.

Loeb & Loeb

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW SCHOOL

Greenberg Traurig

TALENT

Fred Toczek Felker Toczek

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

Toczek balances his growing list of television players (Bill Hader saw a renegotiation for Barry, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey Pictures continues making inroads in setting up comic book

Frankenheimer spent decades advising artists like Quincy Jones

Marty Singer Lavely & Singer

and Diana Ross. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“We’re back to the ’60s,” he says of today’s streaming world. “Everything is hit-driven.”

Neville Johnson Johnson & Johnson

Jay Cooper

O’Melveny & Myers

Tobey put together a complex deal for ViacomCBS’ stake in Miramax, weaving together an M&A contract with an operating agreement as well as giving Paramount the right to distribute Miramax’s library.

He helped negotiate Bona Film Group’s investment in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and CBS’ partnership with Nina Tassler and Denise Di Novi’s indie production banner PatMa, which includes a first-look deal for shows like the upcoming American Martyrs. “I think we’ll see more of these as distribution platforms need more and more products to feed their pipelines,” Tobey says.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Stay relevant. There’s a lot of competition for consumers’ time and eyeballs.”

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Weinsten

He pioneered the “backend deal” and launched Pixar with Steve Jobs.

“In the beginning, I was mentoring him,” says Brittenham. “By the end, he was mentoring me.”

John Frankenheimer

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

Gang Tyre

Skip Brittenham

CORPORATE

Bruce Tobey

TALENT

SEVEN ATTORNEYS (PLUS A FEW MORE) WHOSE ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE INDUSTRY HAVE EARNED THEM LIFETIME STATUS ON THIS LIST

Ziffren Brittenham

Matthew Thompson

GROOMING BY SU NAEEM AT DEW BEAUTY AGENCY.

David Hyman, photographed March 4 at the Netflix offices in Hollywood, will be presented the 2020 Raising the Bar award at THR’s Power Lawyers breakfast.

Warren

CORPORATE

TALENT

David Hyman’s nearly 30-year law career can be traced back to the season he spent as a ski bum in Aspen, Colorado, before his first year of law school. When he wasn’t on the slopes, Hyman discovered a law firm in town specializing in real estate. He figured if he wanted to become a permanent mountain dweller, he should become a real estate lawyer.

But his plans were interrupted when life (and a girl, now his wife) led him to San Francisco, where he ditched property law for the thrill of startup culture and took a job at delivery service Webvan during the height of the dot-com boom. “I like to say it was well ahead of its time,” chuckles Hyman, who found himself with a J.D. from University of Virginia and extensive bankruptcy law experience but no job after the company went belly up in 2001.

It was then that Hyman interviewed for the general counsel role at an unprofitable, soon-to-go-public DVD-by-mail startup called Netflix. In his nearly two decades with the company, it has transformed into a global entertainment powerhouse with 167 million subscribers, and his job has grown with it. Today, Hyman — who admits that keeping up with new Netflix shows is “a full-time

Toczek

“I wanted to write something for people who don’t like to read,” he says of his best-seller All You Need to Know About the Music Business, now in its 10th edition. He’s also shepherded the careers of Adele, Taylor Swift and Stevie Wonder.

Johnson represents underdogs, winning hundreds of millions for writers, directors and actors battling the studios and sometimes their own guilds. “I am not loved,” he says. “But I am respected.”

Linda Lichter Lichter Grossman

When she started out in the ’70s, Lichter was the Independent Film Project’s first lawyer. “I

He wanted to be a doctor, then an engineer, but became one of the world’s most famous litigators, representing Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I still don’t consider myself to be an entertainment lawyer,” he says. “I wanted to be a tax lawyer.”

Legends Honor Roll

This year’s inductees join THR’s inaugural class of legendary lawyers Jake Bloom, John Branca, John Burke, Melanie Cook, Bert Fields, Patricia Glaser, Allen Grubman, Tom Hansen, Barry Hirsch, Jim Jackoway, Ken Kleinberg, Sky Moore, Lee Phillips, Bruce Ramer, Larry Stein, Howard Weitzman and Ken Ziffren

properties, Jon Bokenkamp added an eighth season to The Blacklist) with his growing list of emerging stars such as Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma) and Kaitlyn Dever (Unbelievable) .

Please reboot Harry Potter

Fanning sisters, also struck a deal with CBS for Drew Barrymore’s daytime talk show.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “To do whatever possible to unite our country and get us on a path of empathy, inclusivity and compassion during our election.”

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Hansen Jacobson

Sloane Offer

Steve Warren

David Weber

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

A go-to rep for A-list movie stars, Warren crafted deals for Leonardo DiCaprio to reunite with Martin Scorsese in Killers of the Flower Moon, Charlize Theron to star in her first Netflix film, The Old Guard, and Colin Farrell to play the villain Penguin in The Batman. The talent attorney, who reps Millie Bobby Brown, Constance Wu, Jessica Chastain and both

Weber’s clients won back-to-back best actor trophies at the Oscars: first, Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody and then Joaquin Phoenix for Joker. The attorney set up the former’s deal to star as the villain in the upcoming James Bond movie No Time to Die. Weber also reps actors Ryan Reynolds and Alison Brie, along with directors David Ayer and Jean-Marc Vallée.

Illustrations by Zohar Lazar

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Michael Weinsten Lavely & Singer

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

Wertheimer

Wigdor

After a couple of years in court, Weinsten helped the founders of Gurney Productions (Duck Dynasty) settle a very bitter power struggle with the U.K.’s ITV. He’s now representing Ellen DeGeneres and Sandra Bullock in a lawsuit against anonymous operators of websites touting their false endorsements, and has a heavy #MeToo caseload including defending actor David Caruso.

TALENT

Yorn

Zuckerman Williams

Susan Zuckerman Williams

Bryan Wolf

Paul Hastings

USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL

LITIGATION

Wolf has proven himself uniquely adept at getting fledgling Hollywood companies up and running. The suit helped guide Michael Ellenberg’s outfit MediaRes into production on Apple TV+ flagship series The Morning Show (starring client Steve Carell), as well as three more upcoming series. As he did with client Hasbro, the lawyer is assisting Scholastic with its Hollywood ambitions — the children’s book publisher made a deal to give access to its IP for development to Erik Feig’s Picturestart. Speaking of Hasbro, the toy manufacturer paid a massive $4 billion to acquire indie studio Entertainment One.

Wigdor Law

TALENT

Jackoway Austen

STANFORD LAW SCHOOL

Wertheimer is a master at negotiating tentpole terms, including J.J. Abrams’ return to the Lucasfilm fold to direct Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Patty Jenkins’s upcoming Wonder Woman 1984.

Among other clients, Nicole Kidman made the awards rounds for her performance in Bombshell and Wes Anderson is headed back to the box office with The French Dispatch.

Douglas Wigdor CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

Wigdor is best known as a thorn in the side of Fox (he has repped some 20 current and former staffers in suits involving claims of sexual harassment, retaliation and

Kevin Yorn Morris Yorn

TULANE LAW SCHOOL

Scarlett Johansson and Zoë Saldana reaped benefits

Byrnes engineered Beyoncé’s Netflix deal for Grammy-winning film Homecoming, with colleague David Lande, and her role in Lion King. He also oversaw the posthumous release of Mac Miller’s Circles and negotiated Blake Shelton’s contract for The Voice.

Damien Granderson Granderson Des Rochers

Clients don’t get much bigger than Granderson’s: Kanye West,

Profiles written by Trilby Beresford, Ashley Cullins, Mia Galuppo, Eriq Gardner, Lesley Goldberg, Natalie Jarvey, Katie Kilkenny, Borys Kit, Pamela McClintock, Ryan Parker, Bryn Elise Sandberg, Patrick Shanley, Tatiana Siegel, Piya Sinha-Roy, Rebecca Sun and Georg Szalai

Aaron Rosenberg

LaPolt Law

Myman Greenspan

Cardi B, A$AP Rocky and J Balvin — who the rep says signed a “revolutionary” deal with Universal Music Latin Entertainment.

LaPolt has been “buried” in 21 Savage’s deal to executive produce the soundtrack to Saw film Spiral. Meanwhile, she signed TikTok star Jadn (Jaden Hossler) and continues to rep Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj and Steven Tyler.

Rosenberg “did a little thing called the Super Bowl” for Jennifer Lopez, orchestrated Ariana Grande’s world tour for Grammy-nominated album Thank U, Next and renegotiated John Legend’s deal for The Voice.

Grace Kim

Doug Mark

Grubman Shire

Mark Music & Media Law

In 2012, Kim met and signed a Minneapolis artist who could belt tunes, spit rhymes and play a killer flute — and the rest is Lizzo history. “I hate when people on their way to being established have shitty deals,” says Kim, who recently inked the star’s publishing pact with Warner Chappell.

Billie Eilish “exploded critically and commercially,” says Mark, who co-captains the singer with partner and “long-standing protege” David Ferreria. Mark also reps Guns N’ Roses and Bret McKenzie, who’s writing the music and lyrics for the Paddington stage adaptation.

David Lande

Kenny Meiselas

Ziffren Brittenham

Grubman Shire

Lande negotiated Shakira’s Super Bowl halftime show and Justin Timberlake’s return to the Trolls franchise, both as an actor and the executive producer of the sequel’s soundtrack. For breakout artist Rosalía, whose “rise to celebrity has been extraordinarily fast,” Lande renegotiated a deal with Columbia.

In November, The Weeknd unveiled “Blinding Lights,” the first single from his new album After Hours, in a Mercedes-Benz ad thanks to a partnership Meiselas arranged.

Other chart-topping clients include Lady Gaga, Usher, Nas and Lizzo, whom he co-reps with Kim.

MEET THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO NEGOTIATE TOURS, BRAND DEALS AND HOLLYWOOD ROLES FOR A-LIST ARTISTS

Ziffren Brittenham

Continued consolidation is driving Zuckerman Williams’ business. She advised Vine Alternative Investments in its acquisition of Lakeshore Entertainment’s 300-title library and international sales operation, and the ongoing deal for Vine to take over a restructured EuropaCorp, in which it has a controlling stake. She repped SunTrust Bank in arranging a syndicated loan facility to Industrial Media, the indie TV company whose assets include American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, and also Sight Unseen Pictures in its financing of Bad Education.

Hollywood’s 2020 priority “It’s all about the virus now.”

Dina LaPolt

Top Music Dealmakers David Byrnes

from deals made in previous years thanks to the performance of movies such as Avengers: Endgame.

Saldana also renegotiated her deal for a third Guardians of the Galaxy while Johansson became the highest paid actress in Hollywood. Ansel Elgort signed on for Steven Spielberg’s take on West Side Story and finalized a deal to star in HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice. Other clients include Ellen DeGeneres, Jenny Slate and Neil Meron.

CORPORATE

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Ziffren Brittenham

Alan Wertheimer Wolf

racial discrimination). He also was at the center of the biggest #MeToo case to hit Hollywood, representing six Harvey Weinstein accusers including model Tarale Wulff, who testified during the convicted mogul’s trial.

“It was really gratifying to have played a role in that prosecution,” Wigdor says. Also explosive was the EEOC complaint he filed on behalf of ousted Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan, citing gender discrimination, sexual harassment and unlawful retaliation.

Please reboot The Paper Chase

Grace Kim signed Lizzo in 2012 after seeing her perform.

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Jess Rosen Greenberg Traurig

Rosen repped Kenny Chesney in a stadium tour, Kacey Musgraves in an Amazon Christmas special, Brad Paisley for his ABC variety show Brad Paisley Thinks He’s Special and Reba McEntire in her return to Universal Music.

Debbie White Loeb & Loeb

Few lawyers are on a firstname basis among legions of music fans, but White is to BTS’ loyal ARMY. Her work for the worldwide sensation includes a distribution deal for its concert documentaries, a multimillion-dollar merchandise pact with Live Nation (including pop-up stores on three continents) and a slew of eye-popping performances.

LIZZO: ROBYN BECK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. ALL HEADSHOTS: COURTESY OF SUBJECT.

LITIGATION

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Top Entertainment Law Schools WHERE DID THE LAWYERS ON THIS LIST LEARN THEIR SKILLS? MOST WENT TO HARVARD (19 IN ALL), BUT UCLA ISN’T FAR BEHIND (15), AND EVEN MICHIGAN BOASTS SOME BIG HOLLYWOOD ALUMS (4) by Ashley Cullins

Columbia Law School (5 ALUMNI)

Its focus on experiential learning includes a Lawyering in the Digital Age clinic and an externship in coordination with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

Navigating new paths to growth As the media and entertainment landscape continues to evolve, new entrants and industry veterans alike count on a team of savvy advisors and industry experts to help them navigate new paths to growth.

We congratulate all of the honorees recognized in The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 100 Power Lawyers List, including our partners:

George Washington University Law School (5 ALUMNI)

Known for its legendary patent law program, D.C.’s oldest law school boasts more than 24,000 living alumni.

Georgetown Law (5 ALUMNI)

The D.C.-based school is launching two tech programs: an LLM in Technology Law and Policy for attorneys and a Master of Law and Technology for non-lawyers.

Craig Emanuel

Mickey Mayerson

Susan Williams

Cardozo School of Law (4 ALUMNI)

The midtown Manhattan-based school features the FAME Center for fashion, art, media and entertainment, a tech startup clinic and an indie film clinic.

Loyola Law School (4 ALUMNI) Harvard Law School (19 ALUMNI)

Despite being 3,000 miles from Hollywood, Harvard’s impact on the industry is undeniable. The Cambridge school’s Entertainment Law Clinic and Recording Artists Project offer hands-on experience with trademarks, copyrights and rights acquisition for companies and talent across film and music. Classes on intellectual property, technology and entertainment range from artificial intelligence to fashion to sports law.

UCLA School of Law (15 ALUMNI)

The Westwood campus, which celebrated its centennial in 2019, is home to the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law. UCLA also launched a tech, law and policy institute with its engineering school and a Master of Legal Studies program to teach non-attorneys skills like negotiation and contract drafting.

USC Gould School of Law (10 ALUMNI) Its newest law class is more than half female and includes a record number of

economically disadvantaged students (who also have the highest median GPA in school history). USC fosters relationships with Hollywood through its externship program and offers concentrations in media and entertainment, technology and business law.

UC Berkeley School of Law (7 ALUMNI)

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan recently visited the Berkeley campus, where its top-ranked IP program has six new technology law courses to keep ahead of the curve.

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Loyola in 2019 launched a Transactional Lawyering Institute and hosts an annual TechTainment symposium.

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We congratulate our colleagues and friends recognized as 2020 Power Lawyers by The Hollywood Reporter, including our partners Ivy Kagan Bierman, Arash Khalili, John Frankenheimer, and Debbie White.

NYU School of Law (4 ALUMNI)

NYU’s student-run Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law society fosters networking and skills across fashion, tech, entertainment and patent law.

University of Michigan Law School (4 ALUMNI)

The Ann Arbor school highlights skills across IP, labor and employment, and litigation through its Entertainment, Media and Arts Law Students Association.

A POWER LAWYER’S ADVICE TO STUDENTS “Don’t be afraid to separate the forest from the trees. When I was a young lawyer, I spent way too long negotiating a force majeure clause. I was worried — as was the studio lawyer — about what the client’s rights

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would be in the case of nuclear war. My mentor politely pointed out that in that case, there probably wouldn’t be anyone left to read the contract — and certainly no judge to enforce the rights I wanted clearly

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spelled out. In the end, the studio lawyer and I and flipped a coin to see whose language we would include — which no one ever read — and had a glass of wine.”

— HAROLD BROWN, UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW (’76)

Los Angeles

New York

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Nashville

Washington, DC

San Francisco

Beijing

Hong Kong

www.loeb.com

3/20/20 10:29 AM

QUIBI

Continued from page 51 While Katzenberg has been busy building Quibi’s content slate, Whitman has been focused on developing its operations, striking a technology partnership with Google and booking $150 million in advertising commitments from brands like Procter & Gamble, Walmart and PepsiCo. She also negotiated a distribution partnership with T-Mobile that will see Quibi bundled along with some wireless plans and subs offered early access to certain programming.

It’s a deal that Greenfield suggests could give Quibi its biggest advantage in the race to acquire subs.

The carrier, which will have 100 million customers following the finalization of its deal to acquire Sprint, could help boost Quibi to 10 million subs in its first year, he forecasts, though he notes, “Ultimately, for this to really work, they need tens of millions of subscribers over time. They’re playing for a lot more than 5 or 6 million subscribers.”

Whitman recently came under fire after The Information tech news site reported that, during a company all-hands, she likened the journalist-source relationship to that of sexual predators who groom their subjects. She since has issued a public mea culpa. “I felt really badly about it,” she says.

“It was a mistake.”

Though Katzenberg and Whitman’s differing styles have led to whispers that they are on the outs, Whitman insists she has no plans to leave. “Jeffrey and I get along great,” she responds.

“Yeah, there are times when we get into arguments, but that’s because we come at things so differently.”

Adds Katzenberg: “What we have come to value and appreciate in one another is that we are opposites. But let me be really clear, there would be no Quibi without Meg Whitman. Her contributions to this place will never, ever get the credit that she absolutely deserves.”

For years, Katzenberg woke at 5 a.m. and worked out for two hours before holding back-to-back

breakfast meetings. Lately, he’s been setting his alarm for 3:30 a.m. to watch test footage from Quibi’s Daily Essentials — which will provide regular updates on everything from news to sports to pop culture — and deliver notes before the shows’ largely New York-based creative teams start their workday.

In the absence of library content, those shows — which make up more than a third of Quibi’s launch programming — will be central to keeping viewers coming back day after day, which is why the company has gone out of its way to make sure production can continue in the midst of coronavirus-related shutdowns.

When possible, producers are sending cameras, lighting and set backdrops directly to talent so they can shoot at home.

Figure skater Adam Rippon, whose This Day in Useless Celebrity History is set to debut a few weeks after Quibi’s launch, took to Instagram on March 21 to show off the equipment that had just been “dropped off at the front door,” explaining that he’d been taught how to set it up over Apple’s FaceTime.

Despite the challenges to the Daily Essentials productions, Quibi top brass says that most of its launch slate won’t be impacted since production on its serialized shows (called Movies in Chapters) and unscripted series has largely been completed. Jim Toth, the former CAA agent who joined Quibi in 2019 to head content acquisition and talent, estimates that the company has enough programming lined up that it can keep releasing new shows through its first six months. “We’re confident in our ability to bring subscribers new content on a weekly basis well into fall, actually,” he says. Even shows planned for post-launch premieres, like Murder, She Wrote spoof Mapleworth Murders from former Saturday Night Live writer Paula Pell, are largely in the can and ready to be released.

“Especially these days, it’s nice to know that we can make people laugh,” Pell says.

And, like most networks in town, Quibi development execs continue to hear pitches and

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are even, according to sources, quietly encouraging some freshman shows to prepare scripts for second seasons — all so production can quickly resume once Hollywood returns to normal.

Quibi’s tech team has had a much easier time making adjustments. Whitman’s daily 90-minute “war room” meeting, where they run through final adjustments to the app, went virtual a week before Quibi made work-from-home mandatory. “Everyone’s getting better at Zoom,” she says with a chuckle.

Because Quibi was developed on the cloud, she adds, there are no concerns about launching it remotely: “If we had a data center like I did at eBay 20 years ago, it might be a different thing.” (The company’s Turnstyle technology that allows people to view videos in either horizontal or vertical orientation is the subject

One of the reasons Katzenberg and Whitman are eager to release Quibi is so that they can start to receive data about how people are using the app. They’ve been holding tastemaker screenings around Hollywood and have done some market testing, but it’s not the same as real-time feedback from real users. “I’d like to get the app out in the wild,” she explains.

“I’d like real customers to experience the content. I just want to see how they react, what they watch, what they think about it.”

Though the pair decline to share how many subs they are targeting in Quibi’s first year, Disney+ — with its 10 million sign-ups in 24 hours — this won’t be. “Hulu, Showtime, HBO, Netflix, none of them has ever behaved that way, and we won’t likely either,” Katzenberg says. “We’re not going to be a rocket ship.”

Jeffrey and I get along great.

Yeah, there are times when we get into arguments, but that’s because we come at things so differently.”

W H ITM A N

of a patent infringement lawsuit that Quibi is calling “a campaign of threats and harassment.”)

Even Quibi’s freshly deposited funding — $750 million from undisclosed backers — and advertising commitments are secure, she says, despite the recent stock market slide and ensuing financial panic.

Despite all their big talk over the past two years about what they’ve been building, Katzenberg and Whitman are muted about their expectations for Quibi.

“I would be very disappointed if somebody misinterpreted confidence as arrogance because I don’t have any of that,” Katzenberg says. “I actually have a great deal of humility about [the fact that] we are about to be schooled by our customers. I am thrilled that, in real time, we will actually be able to see with extraordinary precision what they want to watch and the way in which they want to watch it.”

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Still, Whitman says the company has the financial runway to reach its goals, regardless of how long it takes for daily life to return to normal: “We’ve got plenty of time. We’re good.”

At Quibi’s headquarters on the second Thursday in March, just a few days before the company will shutter its offices to wait out the pandemic, Katzenberg jumps out of the seat he’s been occupying inside a glass-walled conference room and walks to the whiteboard on the opposite side of the room. He has a point he wants to make: “If you want to be unique, and you want to be original, those things equal risky,” he says as he scrawls the words in blue marker.

He’s no novice. He’s heard the whispers about Quibi’s challenges, and he’s unfazed. “I’m not fearful,” he says as an unseasonable L.A. rainstorm pounds the window behind him. “Failure is something that could happen. It’s not going to, but it could.”

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Reviews Television

C R ITI C S CO NVER SATI O N

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We proudly congratulate our partner, Andrew Hurwitz, on his recognition in The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 100 Power Lawyers list.

28 Liberty Street New York, NY (212) 980 0120

Recent shows created or headlined by big names (Iannucci! Witherspoon! Pacino!) have disappointed — providing a chance for homebound viewers to discover less prestigious but more pleasurable offerings By Daniel Fienberg and Inkoo Kang DANIEL FIENBERG We’ve all spent

www.fkks.com

LITTLE: ERIN SIMKIN/HULU. AVENUE, OUTSIDER: COURTESY OF HBO. HIGH: PHILLIP CARUSO/HULU. HUNTERS: CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS/AMAZON STUDIOS. DISPATCHES: JESSICA KOURKOUNIS/AMC.

2029 Century Park East Los Angeles, CA (310) 579 9600

The Pitfalls of Pedigree TV

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a lot of time recently staring at picked-over grocery-store shelves, pondering why one kind of peanut butter is out of stock while another remains. It’s the same when we look at our TV options in these long, socially distanced or quarantined days and nights. Who doesn’t know the feeling of having an hour for free viewing and wasting that time looking over the menu bars at Netflix? Often, of course, what jumps out is the show from the big-name creator or headlined by the A-list star, when the reality is that some of the best stuff out there is the stuff that doesn’t come with that pedigree, that preordained aura of prestige.

INKOO KANG I think I saw a Wile E. Coyote cartoon once where

poor, dumb Wile E. steps on a string of bear traps he’s laid out for the Road Runner, and that’s sort of how I feel right now. The show that inspired my observation of this deceptive-pedigree moment was HBO’s Avenue 5, which seemed to have everything going for it: cherished creator Armando Iannucci (Veep), a cast of comedy veterans (Hugh Laurie, Zach Woods, Josh Gad) and a genius premise of a spaceship cruise gone awry and the various performances of authority and expertise that quickly reveal their hollow core. Wrapping up just as the White House finally began to take the coronavirus seriously, it even derived some unexpected relevance with the

Clockwise from left: Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, HBO’s Avenue 5, Hulu’s High Fidelity, Amazon’s Hunters, AMC’s Dispatches From Elsewhere and HBO’s The Outsider.

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flailing of its fictional leader in the face of calamity mirroring our own country’s leadership. But holy moly, did it underdeliver on nearly every level of execution.

Writers and artists are of course prone to missteps, and mistakes might even be necessary to the creative process, because how else are people to learn and evolve?

But Avenue 5’s fatal unfunniness, grating characters and curiously uninvolving storylines certainly reminded me that there’s no such thing as a “sure thing.”

FIENBERG I gave Avenue 5 a somewhat positive review because I felt like the third and fourth episodes showed improvement. Then the fifth and sixth episodes were generally chaotic and unfunny,

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but the seventh episode made me laugh hard. I guess I ended up feeling like the first season was a frustration. A lot of the class struggle the show was trying to depict was semi-timely. What I never got was any level of satire beyond that. Still, I found Hugh Laurie consistently engaging; when they gave Zach Woods enough to do, he was hilariously unhinged; and this may be the juiciest part Suzy Nakamura has ever had. But that’s sort of liking the show for its pedigree rather than what said pedigree is being deployed in service of.

I felt the same way about HBO’s The Outsider. Great auspices!

Stephen King! Richard Price!

Emmy winner Jason Bateman!

Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, who’s great once she shows up,

Reviews

as is Ben Mendelsohn once he stops being exclusively glum! To me, though, the show felt trapped between supernatural and procedural and didn’t live up to its ample potential.

I’d put Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere in the same category of polished, pedigreed letdown. Best-selling novel. Reese Witherspoon being terrifyingly type A and Kerry Washington flaunting her trademark quivering rage. But is that enough?

KANG After the disastrous second season of Big Little Lies, the mixed bag of The Morning Show and now the thoroughly “meh” adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere, should we revoke Reese’s pedigree card? It might help if she didn’t continue playing the same plucky role that we’ve seen her do a hundred times. To be fair, Witherspoon does expand in Little Fires Everywhere as the clueless white lady to Washington’s black struggling artist. The actresses share one exquisite scene in episode two, an acting tour de force in which the shaky alliance between their characters based on their common womanhood quickly gives way to the race and class differences between them. But the rest of the series, which finds them squaring off on opposing sides of a legal case, fails to live up to that Emmy-reel moment.

Witherspoon’s gradual move to the small screen suggests that movie stars no longer connote quality TV projects. That’s been the case for a while, but it’s still jarring to see such celebrated actors take on such relatively minor and shallow roles. At least

Witherspoon and Washington are the stars of Little Fires Everywhere.

I’m not entirely over seeing Sally Field and Richard E. Grant trying to give AMC’s Dispatches From Elsewhere, about a quartet of strangers playing a live-action, citywide game that … may not be a game … the heart and intrigue the show so desperately needs.

FIENBERG Dispatches From Elsewhere fits into this conversation because it feels like the glossy brand-name version of my beloved Lodge 49, only with Jason Segel as the slacker whose life turns upside down when he discovers a secret society that allows him to connect with a world of eccentric strangers.

Unlike Lodge 49, however, this show spells everything out, which reduces a lot of the magic. For all the stars and Oscar nominees in Dispatches, I think Eve Lindley is the most interesting performer — and I doubt even she will be enough for me to stick with it.

Sometimes star power just isn’t sufficient to turn a show into something people care about.

Look at Hunters on Amazon.

Juicy premise, legendary lead actor (the show leans hard on Al Pacino and his Yiddish accent).

But once the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum condemns you, it’s tough to rebound.

I found it to be a provocative piece of Jewsploitation, and there were interesting conversations to be had about it. But I’m not sure people had those conversations, because Hunters ultimately isn’t quite good enough to be seen as anything more than yet another show streaming on Amazon.

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to a docuseries about cheerleaders (Netflix’s Cheer) or a scripted series about possibly homicidal cheerleaders (USA’s Dare Me), but they’re great! Netflix’s Feel Good, about an unlikely lesbian love affair in London, probably won’t make you feel good, with its backdrop of pain and addiction, but it’s moving and frequently funny in a way that calls to mind Catastrophe (a great Amazon comedy that folks might enjoy if they haven’t seen it before). These are special shows, and if you don’t know the names of the people who created or star in them, hopefully you’ll know them soon.

And don’t let the similarities in title between Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This and Freeform’s Everything’s Gonna Be Okay confuse you; they’re both worth watching, the latter especially — not just for Aussie star and creator Josh Thomas but for co-stars Kayla Cromer and Maeve Press as well. That show, with its bittersweet, unexpectedly hilarious story of an entomologist raising the two half-sisters he barely knows, might actually bring new pedigree to Freeform — which I hear has a new military witch drama, by the way.

KANG Dan, please don’t conjure up my memories of Motherland: Fort Salem again! I do hope you’re right in predicting that smaller shows that arrive on our screens without the marquee names — or the accompanying expectations — might get more of a chance while we’re all stuck on the couch. Some of the most pleasant yet eye-opening or brain-challenging TV I hope more people check out during periods of social distancing or self-quarantine are network stalwarts like NBC’s Superstore and ABC’s Roseanneless The Conners.

In the same category — entertaining yet substantial — but on cable/streaming are Showtime’s Work in Progress, a lesbian suicide comedy (trust me), and Netflix’s Next in Fashion, a fashion-design competition hosted by Tan France and Alexa Chung. Sourcing designers from all over the world, it provides just the right amount of jet-setting, glamour and even faith in human perseverance that we could all use right now.

THR’S SOCIAL CLIMBERS A ranking of the week’s top actors, comedians and TV personalities based on social media engagement across nstagram, Twitter, Facebook and more This Week

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Last Week

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Actors

This Week

Tom Hanks With a rush of attention as Hanks became the first high-profile celebrity to be diagnosed with COVID-19, the veteran actor reaches No. 1 on Top Actors. Hanks, who posted multiple times giving updates on his selfquarantine, hit 2.4 million Twitter likes.

FEEL: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. EVERYTHING’S: FREEFORM/ERIC LIEBOWITZ. HANKS: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. NANJIANI: MARK RALSTON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. BROWN: DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY IMAGES. DEGENERES: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES.

Netflix’s Feel Good (top) and Freeform’s Everything’s Gonna Be Okay.

I feel similarly about Hulu’s High Fidelity, which has double IP prestige from Nick Hornby’s book and Stephen Frears’ film but never quite nails why this story is relevant for 2020. That’s despite the freshness of Zoë Kravitz’s vulnerable and edgy performance.

I don’t want to make it sound like I’ve been disappointed by all recent shows with splashy casts or big-name creators. HBO’s The Plot Against America, for example, is stimulating and infuriating and artfully unpleasant. Have you found satisfaction in any new tentpole offerings? Or have you had to seek your joy elsewhere?

KANG Tentpoles, not really, which is why we’re having this discussion. (Though I’ve yet to dive into The Plot Against America.) Which isn’t to say smaller shows haven’t been good! Many of them have.

(Check out Lena Waithe’s extraordinarily promising BET series, Twenties.) But as for the matter at hand: Do you think we can really qualify this as a moment of prestige failures, or does it just seem more like a function of TV’s usual “let’s see which spaghetti sticks on the wall” model? Any guesses as to how these highly distinguished disappointments might impact the industry as a significant production lull and recession look increasingly likely? And since those questions are kind of heavy, which unabashedly unprestigious shows are making you happy right now?

FIENBERG It’s a scary and uncertain moment for TV, the industry and, really, everybody, but I almost think there’s an upside to how many of this spring’s best shows might be flying a little under the radar at the moment. Sure, people can tune in for Al Pacino the Nazi hunter or Reese Witherspoon the TV star — if that’s still a thing that makes us jolly after her third show in less than a year — but eventually, when the fancy, hypedriven series have exhausted their enjoyability, there’s going to be a long period of discovery of lowerprofile, word-of-mouth treasures.

So many of the things I’ve been enjoying most these days are things I have to keep telling people to watch. It’s tough to immediately convince mass audiences that they want to tune in

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Jennifer Lopez

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Vanessa Hudgens

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Kumail Nanjiani In a March 15 tweet, Nanjiani responded to detractors who “get upset and annoyed” when he urged people to stay inside.

“My favorite person in the world is immunocompromised,” he wrote in a post that got 534,000 favorites.

“Go ahead and unfollow me.”

The top post by an actor in the tracking week showed Brown in an Instagram upload with her dogs, racking up 3.8 million favorites.

“This is the perfect time to be with our families and fluffy friends,” she wrote, referencing the outbreak of the coronavirus.

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HaHa Davis

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Emily Ratajkowski

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Idris Elba

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Will Smith

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Lily Collins

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Kumail Nanjiani

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TV Personalities Ellen DeGeneres Like many shows with a studio audience, DeGeneres’ daytime talk program has suspended production, with the host announcing the news in March 13 social media posts. “I love you guys and can’t wait to come back,” she wrote.

“I’m already bored.”

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Chris Hayes

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Sandra Lee Data Compiled By

Source: The week’s most active and talked-about entertainers on leading social networking sites Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for the week ending March 17. Rankings are based on a formula blending weekly additions of fans as well as cumulative weekly reactions and conversations, as tracked by MVP Index.

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TODAY Dear Entertainment Community, Today we face a mighty challenge. For the last 100 years, MPTF has worked to help individuals in our great industry weather the storms of life. We have been the entertainment industry’s safety net. But the impact of COVID-19 on our community is unlike anything we’ve previously encountered. With production shut down and layoffs mounting, we need urgent and bold action to support our work family. If you are someone in urgent need, we encourage you to reach out.

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3. CONNECT: Complying with CDC’s directives to shelter in place is imperative, but it will also amplify the already pervasive global phenomenon of social isolation. Daily Call Sheet is our social connection program providing a loving telephone call of support to those who need to hear a friendly voice. The proven emotional and physical benefits of this program are well documented. Our on-campus TV station, Channel 22, is also accepting video recordings with messages of positivity for our isolated industry members, both on and off campus.

In ’15, Major League Baseball Staged a Crowdless Game injury while in police custody.

The Hollywood Reporter said the Orioles’ decision was made “in light of the city’s rioting.” Gary Thorne, the Orioles’ play-byplay television announcer, says: “The situation in Baltimore was tense. There was a fear that playing the game might create a place in the downtown area for more turmoil both inside and outside the stadium.” Similar situations had unfolded before.

For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers postponed four games during the 1992 riots after the Rodney King verdict. But this was the first time a game went forward in an empty stadium.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which has 45,971 seats, held only

the players, three scouts sitting behind home plate and 92 reporters in the press box. One Orioles employee retrieved foul balls from the grandstands. “Ladies and gentlemen” were asked to stand for the national anthem.

When the announcer made the traditional report of paid attendance, he said, “Zero.” During the seventh-inning stretch, no one sang along with John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” (which plays in the stadium after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”). The word “eerie” was used frequently to describe the scene. “You realize how much the crowd adds to the ballgame,” says Thorne.

“How important it is to have

that ebb and flow of excitement.”

Before the game began, Orioles first baseman Chris Davis said, “This isn’t the way you want to make history.” In nine innings, the Orioles won 8 to 2. — BILL HIGGINS

Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis launched a three-run home run against the Chicago White Sox in an empty stadium on April 29, 2015. Right: THR.com covered the team’s decision.

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Five years ago, the 133-year-old record for fewest paying fans at a Major League Baseball game was broken. It had been set in 1882, when only six people watched the Worcester Ruby Legs of Massachusetts host the Troy Trojans of Alabama. But the record went to zero — as would have happened with current sporting events had the NBA, NHL and MLB not postponed games because of coronavirus — when the Baltimore Orioles played the Chicago White Sox on the afternoon of April 29, 2015.

The fan-free day was brought on by civil unrest in Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old African American Freddie Gray, who had received a spinal

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