Since we have a thread discussing the video game industry, I thought it would be appropriate to have a thread discussing the practices and going ons of the film and tv industries. Especially in light of recent news surrounding the sets of Batwoman and Rust.
This will not be about films and tv shows but rather about the practices and behind-the-scenes news affecting the industries.
The Author of the Book That Inspired ‘Mean Girls’ Says She Hasn’t Been Properly Paid for Its Success
Yeah this isn’t unusual - people will often be promised a share of the net profits to make them go away, and then thanks to creative accounting there are no net profits to be shared.
"Yup. That tasted purple."Also known as "Hollywood accounting".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanLooks like the charges against Justin Roiland have been dropped.
This statement comes months after NBC News reported on Roiland's legal situation in January 2023. It was there the public learned Roiland had been arrested in August 2020 and charged with felony domestic battery and false imprisonment in California. The creator's pre-trail was slated for late April 2023, but now Roiland says the legal matter has been dismissed.
At this time, there is no word on what Roiland's next plans will be. Rick and Morty is continuing on Adult Swim and will be recasting the roles Roiland voiced, namely Rick and Morty. Season 6 of Rick and Morty wrapped in December 2022 shortly before news of Roiland's legal situation was made public. Right now, Adult Swim is working on Rick and Morty season 7 as part of an episode order it made in May 2018.
Edited by windleopard on Mar 22nd 2023 at 10:05:57 AM
Uh, just because charges were dropped that doesn't make you innocent, Justin. And there seems to be a lot of accounts of you being a creep, so...
Do we know why the charges were dropped?
"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."These kinds of charges are already hard to prosecute, given that almost three years has passed the DA might not have felt confident they could get a conviction
Desperate for Profits and Souring on Streaming, Hollywood Falls Back in Love With Movie Theaters
For the first time since COVID shuttered movie theaters, business is booming, with audiences flocking to see “John Wick: Chapter 4,” “Scream VI” and, just last weekend, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” And Logan, who owns Logan Luxury Theatres in rural South Dakota, is back in the black after enduring two years where profits vanished while studios failed to furnish enough big movies to play.
Turns out that the way most affordable to the masses is best, who knew?
You know times are rough when even Law & Order is cutting shifts
Hollywood writers overwhelmingly vote to authorize strike
Criminal charges against Alec Baldwin dropped in Rust film set shooting
Pretty much as all legal experts predicted. The DA thought they could make a name on this case and it backfired.
x3, how will this differ from the 2007 strikes?
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔‘Percy Jackson’ TV Series Facing the Same Problem Marvel Dealt With for Years
The article discusses the potential pros and cons of different companies having the tv rights to the Riordan books.
Yet, readers remained hopeful that if this new series did well, it could pave the way for further adaptations of Riordan’s work, potentially leading to a shared television universe, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but for Riordan’s mythology-based young adult fiction.
Unfortunately, that hope was quickly shattered by the announcement that Netflix had bought the rights to the Kane Chronicles, the spinoff of Percy Jackson that followed the Egyptian equivalent of Percy Jackson, the Kane Siblings. This effectively destroys any hope of a crossover between the two series.
a fan recently asked Riordan on Good Reads, “Did Disney refuse the pitch for The Kane Chronicles or did Netflix just accepted it first?”
Riordan explained that, “Disney passed on Kane Chronicles multiple times. Netflix showed interest, so we went with them. That happens sometimes. Think X-Men, Spiderman, etc. before the MCU became a thing. Oh, well!”
For backstory, Marvel Comics was near bankruptcy in the early ’90s, which led to them selling off their film rights to different studios. This resulted in the first two iterations of Spider-Man films being made by Sony, and Fox making Fantastic Four and X-Men. Back then, the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy were seen as the teams that only hardcore fans knew, so Marvel maintained those less lucrative rights. How’s that for irony?
Still, the rights issues kept Marvel from using some of their biggest heroes in their movies until they partnered up with Sony for Spider-Man and bought parts of Fox, and now the Percy Jackson universe looks to be similarly fractured instead of connecting as it should be able to.
What makes the situation even more strange is that Disney shares the publishing rights to the Kane Chronicles with Penguin House, meaning they already had the rights to make a Kane Chronicles series alongside the Percy Jackson series. Instead of making the Kane Chronicles themselves or even paying to maintain rights to the series to see if the Percy Jackson series did well, they allowed Netflix to buy the film/television rights to their franchise.
Of course, the main reason for this is money. Percy Jackson is a bigger name than the Kane Chronicles, and if the show doesn’t do well, Disney+ doesn’t want to risk putting all its eggs in one basket, especially since the streaming service is reportedly losing money due to high production costs.
However, this could be good for the franchise in the long run; instead of trying to make this massive interconnected universe of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and/or other gods, the individual shows will be able to focus on telling the one story they have. It will also be interesting to compare and contrast the adaptions with what Disney+ and Netflix will change. Two competing series may end up being the thing that shows what makes Disney+ different from Netflix. It hopefully won’t be any worse than the movies that came before.
Though, let’s hope Disney at least maintains the rights to the Magnus Chase books; it’ll be an awkward family reunion if Magnus and his cousin from the Percy Jackson books, Annabeth, are owned by different production studios.
Edited by windleopard on Apr 26th 2023 at 11:59:42 AM
I was trying to figure out who was the first movie star. I want it to be Florence Lawrence, but there's a good argument that it's Max Linder, but overall a lot of the argument depends on how you define "movie" and "star".
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.The Writers Guild of America is on strike
So, in regards to the Writers Strike, what's the worst thing that can happen during the Writers Strike? I'm not that familiar with the Writers Strike, even though I have heard about the 2007 Writers Strike and how that was the worst one of all. But, what can happen during a Writers Strike? Like, do TV shows and movies shut down because of the writers going on strike or do they still continue production, regardless if the writers are on strike or not?
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!Breakdown of the compensation Writers Guild were looking for and the counter-offers (or more often then not, lack thereof) they were told.
https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1653272585252257793?t=Kmdi_DMFQjphFCOOqrJ3Mw&s=19
TV shows will likely go on hiatus. Films that already have contracts signed may have to legally be continued (not sure on that one), but otherwise WGA members won't work on projects. Films and shows that try to barrel forward anyway by hiring scabs during the strike PROBABLY won't be very good.
This will also impact a number of talk shows, as they’re classified as comedy shows and have writers’ rooms. I think previously you got a weird situation where the host would still do the boasting bit of the show but but would be on strike in relation to actually writing content for the show.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ CyranWhat happens if a film is out of the country? Like, the film is supposed to be an American film, but they are filming in other countries like the UK or Spain or something like that?
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!The writing part still shuts down unless the production was, for some reason, entirely written by people outside the US.
One dynamic that’s different today than in 2007 is actually that foreign TV is a lot more accepted in the US, and South Korean TV especially won’t be impacted by this. So we might see that get emphasized a lot.
IMO, I’m on the side of the WGA, completely. Because the past like 15 years has been Hollywood getting increasingly taken over by the Wall Street obsessed wealthy who are chasing exponential growth (a concept that does not work in an environment like entertainment) and one of the places they decided to try and cut as much money out was the writing…which is absolutely critical to almost everything.
The other element is that it’s unlikely for this to lead to another reality TV boom. The one in 2007/2008 was probably going to happen anyway (even reality TV has production cycles longer than three months and there was a distinct uptick in the amount of reality tv before the strike really started impacting scripted TV) but the main reason is that most of the companies making reality TV are actually pretty saturated. There’s only so much content a production company can make even if it’s cheap.
Not Three Laws compliant.All those "refused without even making a counter offer" are really disgusting. Not surprising, of course, but disgusting.
SoundCloudI would imagine 2 of the Writers Guild's non-negotiables are proper compensation for streaming content and no AI usage for scripts. (Though I'm sure there's more than just thise two they'd refuse, rightfully so, to budge on)
Well, somewhat unsurprisingly, Sam Levinson’s next HBO series has devolved in “shitshow” featuring “torture porn” and copious amounts of female objectification. In a new report from Rolling Stone, The Idol, which was originally pitched as a gritty drama satirizing Hollywood exploitation and cultism, has apparently gone on to embody the exact kind of culture it initially pit itself against under the care of the Euphoria creator.
Interviews from 13 cast and crew members paint a story of financial carelessness, chaos on set, and creepy male behavior plaguing the production. The show, starring Lily-Rose Depp, Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd, Dan Levy, Hari Nef, Troye Sivan, Rachel Sennott, Hank Azaria, and K-pop star Jennie Kim, seems to have even more problems than originally thought, costing HBO millions in the process.
Issues emerged early on the set of The Idol, as many felt director Amy Seimetz was set up to fail as she was given half-finished scripts, a tight filming schedule, and Euphoria-level expectations fit with music videos, expensive mansions, nightclubs, and stadiums.
“Amy was doing her best in an impossible situation, but she was going to lose this no matter what,” one production member says. “Honestly, I think HBO handed her a shit stack.”
Still, Seimetz worked with what she was given, completing 80 percent of the first season. However, in April of 2022, it was announced that Seimetz would leave the project, and Levinson would take over, starting from scratch.
“I went into The Idol thinking that this might be an interesting collaboration, but I left it pretty convinced that [Levinson] is not quite collaborative,” one source says. “It’s really frustrating seeing Amy doing her damn best to turn around some kind of product that she can be somewhat proud of to HBO… and then [for HBO] to turn around and have Sam get essentially a blank check to turn it into ‘Euphoria Season Three with pop stars’ is extremely, extremely frustrating.”
Reports on Seimetz’s departure illuminate a rather unsavory side of The Weeknd. Tesfaye, who’s attached to The Idol as its star, co-creator, and “co-writer,” reportedly felt the show leaned too much into the “female perspective,” and thought Seimetz was focusing too much on Depp’s character. Once Seimetz left the show, Levinson apparently had no problem tossing out its “feminist lens” and giving Tesfaye all the screen time he desired.
“It was like the Weeknd wanted one show that was all about him—Sam was on board with that,” a source tells Rolling Stone.
Once Levinson assumed complete control over the project, cast and crew members say the shooting schedule and script process never got any smoother. Production schedules and budgets ballooned, with most of the cast and crew left in the dark on day-to-day operations. Daily script revisions and reshoots made room for Levinson to “dramatically [ramp] up the explicit content.” Allegedly, scripts stopped going upstairs to HBO and department heads for approval.
Some of the script iterations from Levinson contained “contained disturbing sexual and physically violent” scenes, including one where Depp’s character begs to be raped by Tesfaye’s Tedros after she’s tasked with holding an egg in her genitals. In another, she’s beaten by the cult leader, who is aroused by the abuse. While interviewees say these scenes never went to film, they also are unsure of what will end up in the final cut due to the constant revisions.
“It was like any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show—and then the woman comes back for more because it makes her music better,” one production member says of Levinson’s revisions.
It’s not surprising that the man who’s made his millions off of a show featuring teenagers experiencing cyclical substance and relational abuse, has a grim and frankly perverse approach to telling the story of an exploited young woman in the industry.
“It was a show about a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it,” one source says.
Levinson’s affinity for nude scenes has been well-documented over the course of Euphoria’s production, with Sydney Sweeney admitting that she’s had to push back against him on unnecessary nudity, but says the director always heeded her calls. Similar to Euphoria, storytelling on The Idol has reportedly gone by the wayside in favor of sleek visuals and shock factor.
“It’s almost such an extreme that it’s like, there is no message,” one crew member says of The Idol. “There is no point. They’re just trying to see how much of a reaction they can get.”
On the other side, Depp calls Levinson “the best director” she’s ever worked with. In a statement to Rolling Stone, HBO says, “the creative team has been committed to creating a safe, collaborative, and mutually respectful working environment, and last year, the team made creative changes they felt were in the best interest of both the production and the cast and crew.”
There’s the ghastly nature of the storyline in The Idol, and then there are the grim financial movements happening behind the scenes. As Warner Bros. cries “tax write-offs” and the need to cut down costs, they’ve seemingly given Levinson a blank check. While Seimetz was given a small budget relative to the expectations of HBO, the company seemed fine with scrapping completed work and giving Levinson a budget of unknown proportions. One veteran crew member calls the excess spending “the most egregious I’ve ever witnessed in this business.”
“This was such a strong example of just how far [Levinson] can really push HBO and they will continue to cover [him] because he brings in money,” a second crew member adds. “He’s able to walk away unscathed and everybody still wants to work with him… People ignore the red flags and follow him regardless.”
There’s still no set release day for The Idol. It was expected to make its debut in the fall of 2022, following the finale of House Of The Dragon, but months later there’s still no premiere date. With any luck, this dismal project will never see the light of day.
https://www.avclub.com/hbo-the-idol-sam-levinson-script-changes-on-set-chaos-1850172985