Gorgessity Celebrating the Glam Squads The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Power Stylist issue has, over the last decade or so, become an entertainment industry standard, establishing the value of fashion and styling in the business and therefore the importance of stylists in the business. This is why Law Roach invented his job description: Image Architect. By Lainey • Oct 26, 2023 12:11 pm
Business of Hollywood The A-listers are on notice On Friday, I mentioned a meeting between some A-list actors and the leadership of the SAG-AFTRA union. The purpose of this meeting was to, among other things, put forward a proposal to restructure residual payments and remove the dues cap for high-earning actors, in the hopes of “closing the gap” By Sarah • Oct 25, 2023 09:33 am
Maple Leaf Intro for October 20, 2023 Dear Gossips, As Lainey mentioned in What Else? yesterday, SAG-AFTRA has issued guidelines for Halloween costumes during the strike, which basically amount to “don’t dress up as a movie or TV character”. It sounds sort of killjoy-ish, but I wonder if they did so because they’re getting questions By Sarah • Oct 20, 2023 09:08 am
Business of Hollywood Intro for October 13, 2023 Dear Gossips, It’s Friday the 13th and here’s some scary news—the billionaires are at it again. “Activist investor” Nelson Peltz (father of Nicola Peltz-Beckham), has restarted his proxy fight with Disney CEO Bob Iger. First of all, I hate the term “activist investor” because it makes me By Sarah • Oct 13, 2023 09:04 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Is this the end of A24? Growing up in Texas in the 80s, there were three sports everyone took very seriously: football, college football, and professional wrestling. Every kid had their favorite wrestler—mine was Ric Flair because he was the sparkliest—and everyone knew about the “Von Erich curse”. As a kid, I was never By Sarah • Oct 12, 2023 02:09 pm
Business of Hollywood Strike setback After nearly two weeks of negotiations, and rising hope that the SAG-AFTRA strike would end sooner rather than later—a setback. Last night, AMPTP announced the negotiations are “suspended”. Now, take this with a grain of salt, because it is all coming from the management side, and as of this By Sarah • Oct 12, 2023 09:52 am
Movie Reviews and Previews The actors finally figured it out As we learned after a summer of strikes, actors are not supposed to promote struck work, which is any project, film or television, produced and/or distributed by one of the 32 companies belonging to AMPTP. But as we saw earlier this week when Bradley Cooper attended a New York By Sarah • Oct 05, 2023 10:52 am
Movie Reviews and Previews The actors are getting on with it Behold! A rare strike-era movie premiere appears. Not a festival premiere, but an actual, honest to goddess red carpet for a new film. Rebecca Miller’s new film, She Came To Me, has an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA, so the cast was able to attend the screening in New York By Sarah • Oct 04, 2023 10:55 am
Business of Hollywood Intro for September 29, 2023 Dear Gossips, Oh no, the worst possible unintentional outcome occurred—the studios/streamers banded together to form a lobbying group. Far from AMPTP splitting up—damn, I was hoping for that, honestly—Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and other studios with streaming interests have formed the Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA) By Sarah • Sep 29, 2023 09:17 am
Business of Hollywood It’s the actors’ turn The writers’ strike officially ended at midnight, as the WGA West and East leadership voted to recommend the tentative agreement reached with AMPTP over the weekend. Next comes ratification by the guild membership, which will occur from October 2-9. The new mutual bargaining agreement is effective from September 25, 2023, By Sarah • Sep 27, 2023 09:15 am
TV Updates Strike cleanup As we wait for the WGA to ratify their tentative new mutual bargaining agreement, here are some housekeeping notes as the writers’ strike winds down. First, while scripted shows, and films, will be slower to come back, with production delays likely to continue for at least another month as the By Sarah • Sep 26, 2023 01:49 pm
Business of Hollywood Intro for September 26, 2023 Dear Gossips, An interesting interview popped up in Matthew Belloni’s Puck newsletter this week (elsewhere in Puck, Belloni name-checked writers who spoke out unabashedly during the strike, questioning if this will make them un-hire-able going forward. Do not consider this an endorsement of Puck, I just like this one By Sarah • Sep 26, 2023 09:01 am
Top Reads Half the strike is over After five days of negotiations, following 146 days of striking, the WGA and the AMPTP have reached a tentative deal for a new three-year mutual bargaining agreement between screenwriters and the studios. The deal is still “subject to drafting final contract language”, per a statement WGA leadership sent to their By Sarah • Sep 25, 2023 09:34 am
Business of Hollywood Schrödinger's strike As Lainey mentioned, the latest word on the strikes is “encouraging yet suspicious”. Suspicious because the only reports are from unnamed sources undoubtedly coming from the AMPTP side—because it’s the same three trades owned by Penske Media, which also owns Dick Clark Productions, an AMPTP member company, publishing By Sarah • Sep 22, 2023 01:01 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Intro for September 22, 2023 Dear Gossips, Sometimes important things happen in the world, and sometimes you find out there’s an insurance company called Chubb. This is the latter instance. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was one of the better movies of the summer, but it struggled at the box office, barely eking By Sarah • Sep 22, 2023 08:59 am
TV Updates Drew Barrymore got on the right side What a week it’s been for Drew Barrymore. Last weekend, she announced she would be resuming tapings of her daytime talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show. This was not met well, to say the least. Then, on Friday, she posted an apology on Instagram—it was a bad week By Sarah • Sep 18, 2023 10:02 am
