ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY and AWARD NEWS FROM HOLLYWOOD, compiled by REBECCA KEEGAN
Thursday, September 14, 2017
It's Thursday, and I'm waiting for an invitation to a sweatpants-appropriate Emmys party.
Hello from Los Angeles, where we're making bold Emmy Awards predictions, looking back at the Blade Runner that was, and getting on Trevor Noah's calendar for 2022.
BUCKLE UP, TV FANS
"Live television is not for the faint of heart," Glenn Weiss told me this week. Weiss ought to know—he and his White Cherry Entertainment partner, Ricky Kirshner, produce high-profile TV events like the Tony Awards, the Super Bowl halftime show, the Kennedy Center Honors, and, this weekend, the Emmy Awards. I spoke with Weiss and Kirshner about their plans for Sunday's big show, including bits they've worked out with host Stephen Colbert, a unique In Memoriam segment to be performed by Hamilton's Christopher Jackson, and their overarching, roll-with-it approach to live TV. Weiss was the man in the director's chair at the Oscars this year when an accountant handed off the wrong envelope for best picture. "It's obviously something that you don't want to happen," Weiss told me of the Oscars night snafu. "The most important thing at that point was to be honest about it, not try to pull away . . . It was important for me to stay in the moment and make sure everybody had as much real information presented to them as possible." To learn more about what to expect on Sunday's Emmys show—which Weiss and Kirshner hope will involve handing off all 27 award envelopes correctly—you can read my full interview with the producing duo here.
Glenn Weiss, Ricky Kirshner and Allen Kelman pose with Emmys at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on September 9th.
From Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.
AND THE WINNERS (PROBABLY) ARE . . .
V.F.'s Hillary Busis writes:
Can anything or anyone stop Julia Louis-Dreyfus from winning her zillionth Emmy on Sunday? (No, almost certainly not.) Does RuPaul's Drag Race finally have a prayer in the reality-competition category? (Perhaps surprisingly, yes, it does!) And who will come out on top in the night's most tantalizingly overstuffed category—leading actress in a limited series or TV movie, which boasts the likes of Carrie Coon, Felicity Huffman, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Lange, Susan Sarandon, and Reese Witherspoon, all competing for the same prize. (Of them, Kidman is most likely to pull ahead of the pack.) All this and more gets dissected in V.F.'s final Emmys predictions, which tackle all of the ceremony's most talked-about categories. And after you've gone through our picks, don't forget to fill out an Emmys ballot of your own.
COLD-BLOODED KILLER
V.F.'s Yohana Desta writes:
Jennifer Lawrence is a destroyer of men in her upcoming film Red Sparrow. A new trailer has finally dropped for the film, teasing the spy flick and its seduction-centric drama. Lawrence plays Dominika, a tormented ballerina who suffers a career-altering injury. Desperate, she joins the Sparrow School, a covert Russian operation that trains young people to become highly skilled assassins. They use whatever tools they have at their disposal—be it brute strength or raw sexuality—to vanquish their enemies; Dominika, naturally, becomes the greatest Sparrow in her ranks (after all, it's her movie!). Directed by Francis Lawrence,Red Sparrow looks like classic, highly stylized spy fare, a movie that would have been a perfect Angelina Jolie vehicle in the early aughts. Alas, Jolie is busy saving the planet, but Lawrence is willing and able to be our action star du jour—remember, she also carried The Hunger Games and X-Men to worldwide success. Red Sparrow hits theaters on March 2, 2018.
CONTRACT HIGH
V.F.'s Hillary Busis writes:
Two years ago, Trevor Noah stepped into Jon Stewart's intimidating Daily Show shoes, injecting youth and a refreshing multicultural perspective into the Comedy Central mainstay. But his first year at the helm was bumpy, enough so that some wondered whether Comedy Central's brass might eventually decide to replace him—much as they did his onetime time-slot successor, Larry Wilmore. Today, however, shows that Comedy Central has firmly declared itself to be in the Trevor Noah business: the channel just announced that Noah will remain at his Daily Show desk at least through 2022, giving him at minimum five more years to convince any remaining naysayers who still long for the good-old Stewart days. As V.F.'s Laura Bradley points out, this renewal, plus the upcoming premiere of Jordan Klepper's new nightly series—which is taking over Wilmore's old slot—indicates a network charging boldly into a new era. As Noah himself put it in a statement, "I'm thrilled to be continuing this amazing journey with both fans of The Daily Show and Comedy Central. It's really exciting to renew this contract for either five more years, or until Kim Jong Un annihilates us all—whichever one comes first."
TEARS IN THE RAIN
V.F.'s Katey Rich writes:
Of all the sequels Hollywood has produced this year, none seems as unlikely as Blade Runner 2049—a follow-up to Ridley Scott's moody sci-fi drama, which received mixed reviews and toxic box-office results when it opened in 1982, even with a peak-fame Harrison Ford in the lead. You may be even more surprised by how we got here when you read Vanity Fair's account of the making of the original Blade Runner, by Michael Shulman. Sure, lots of films have production drama, but how many feature arguments between the director and the star over whether the main character is even a human being?
That's the news for this sunny Thursday in L.A. What are you seeing out there? Send tips, comments, and a laundry-doing replicant to Rebecca_keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.
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