Category: Entertainment

The coming split of Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, and Netflix will mark the end of — or at least a sizable change to — what’s been a productive relationship.

The Obamas founded Higher Ground in 2018 and signed a deal with Netflix to produce both feature films and series projects for the streamer. Their first project made an immediate splash: The company joined Participant Media as a producer of American Factory, a documentary that would win the Oscar for best feature doc in 2020.

In its eight years at Netflix — the two companies extended their partnership with a first-look deal in 2024 — Higher Ground has produced more than 20 films and series, with a couple more on the way. That’s a good-sized output for most any production company over that span of time. It yielded considerably more finished results than Netflix’s deal with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, which the Higher Ground pact is often compared to since the principals were not previously known as creatives (though the former Meghan Markle was an actress prior to marrying into Britain’s royal family).

In the past couple of years, though, Higher Ground has also set up projects at HBO (Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness with Larry David) and Laika (Audition) as the first-look deal allowed it to seek buyers other than Netflix. The company is branching into live theater with the Broadway revival of Proof and has produced a slate of podcasts as well.

Not every Higher Ground project has hit, of course: Several titles in the list below came and went with little fanfare, and the company has also had some high-profile executive turnover, most recently with the December 2025 departure of company president Vinnie Malhotra. Motion pictures head Tonia Davis left her role in 2024 (though she’s continued to work with the company as a producer), and Priya Swaminathan left as co-head of film and TV in 2021.

Separating from Netflix doesn’t necessarily mean Higher Ground won’t continue to do business with the streamer — just that it won’t be the first stop for new projects. Here’s a look at what the Netflix-Higher Ground partnership has produced.

Feature Films

The biggest of the four narrative features Higher Ground was involved with — by a long shot — was Leave the World Behind. Starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke, the Sam Esmail-directed thriller released in late 2023 is one of Netflix’s biggest movies ever, based on the streamer’s internal data.

Higher Ground was also behind Rustin, a biopic about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin that earned Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for star Colman Domingo; and Fatherhood, a dramedy starring Kevin Hart. Higher Ground aqcuired distribution rights to Worth, which starred Michael Keaton as Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of a 9/11 victims compensation fund, after its Sundance premiere in 2020.

Feature Documentaries

Along with American Factory, Higher Ground was involved with the Oscar-nominated Crip Camp; Becoming, based partly on Michelle Obama’s memoir of the same name; and 2025’s Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds. Higher Ground also acquired 2022’s Descendant and 2023’s American Symphony after their festival premieres.

Unscripted Series and Specials

The former president is a three-time Emmy winner for outstanding narrator for the Higher Ground docuseries Our Great National Parks, Working: What We Do All Day and Our Oceans. Michelle Obama was nominated for an Emmy in 2023 for the special The Light We Carry, a conversation about her 2022 book between the former first lady and Oprah Winfrey.

Higher Ground also produced The G Word With Adam Conover, which highlights how government agencies intersect with people’s lives; basketball docuseries Starting 5 and Court of Gold; and the reality show The Later Daters, following six people over age 55 re-entering the dating world.

Scripted Series

Higher Ground produced the darkly comic crime show Bodkin, starring Will Forte, which premiered in 2024. That’s the only scripted series the company has backed so far, but two others are on the horizon. All the Sinners Bleed, from showrunner Joe Robert Cole and co-studio Amblin Television, is based on an S.A. Cosby novel about the first Black sheriff (Sope Dirisu) in a small Bible Belt county who is tracking a serial killer. The Altruists is a limited series about the rise and fall of crypto exchange FTX, starring Anthony Boyle and Julia Garner as the key figures in the saga — Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.

Kids Series

Three kids series produced by Higher Ground premiered in 2021. First up was the food-centric puppet series Waffles + Mochi (followed by a 2022 spinoff, Waffles + Mochi’s Restaurant). Then came We the People, a series of animated shorts about civics; and Ada Twist, Scientist, based on the popular children’s book. The latter two were created by Chris Nee of Doc McStuffins. Ada Twist had the longest run of the three with 41 episodes over four seasons.

It’s 5:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, and the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood is already bustling.  I am standing in Aisle 18 — deep in the lumber section of the cavernous space — evaluating formulations of plaster compound.  I’ve been sent here to get a 50-pound bag of “40 minute,” a box of “red dot,” a box of “green dot,” a roll of drywall tape and a roll of “frog” tape. To be clear, I don’t know what any of these things are.  

The last time I was up this early for work, I was on the set of Cooper’s Bar (the Emmy-nominated sitcom I co-created for AMC), trying to convince our star, Rhea Seehorn, that one of the jokes I had written for her character would be funnier if she said the words “face anus” instead of her preferred choice, “face hole.” (Rhea, to her endless credit, ultimately agreed.) 

In the intervening months, Hollywood had suffered an actors’ strike, a writers’ strike, a spiraling production exodus and a content contraction precipitated by the economics of streaming and the rise of creators on media platforms like YouTube and TikTok. I lost my job working at a production company, and my show got cancelled. After a 30-year career in Hollywood where I held executive positions at companies like Anschutz Entertainment Group and Phoenix Pictures _­— where I wrote, produced and directed award-winning movies and TV like Ray and Afternoon Delight — I am now a construction worker.

Like going broke — as Hemingway famously quipped — my construction career happened gradually and then all at once.  I spent the first year after getting laid off holding on to the Hollywood dream. My old company, Whitewater Films, hired me to write a sports comedy — Puckheads — about an aging minor league hockey enforcer who gets coerced into playing for a cartel in Mexico City. Everyone loved the script. Ian Jeffers (The Grey) and I wrote a supernatural pilot about special ops forces in post-WW2 Germany tracking Hitler’s nukes. Everyone loved the script!! I wrote a contained horror film, The Vegetable, I planned to direct. OMFG. Everyone loved the script!!! 

I collected unemployment. I started a YouTube channel (The Cross-Eyed Chef), and I wrote a memoire, Supah Ritz. But more and more, my calls to Hollywood went unreturned, and it became clear that despite all the kind words about my work, I could not pay the rent (and college tuition for my 18-year-old) on praise alone.

It was a fast and demoralizing descent, but one I suppose I had always seen coming. Over the years, the Grim Reaper of Hollywood had already come for so many of my colleagues — forcing them to pull their kids from private school and move home. There was no way my number wouldn’t one day come up. Besides, Hollywood had always made me feel like I had no real value. As an exec, you sit in your office trying to catch falling knives, wondering which one will deliver the fatal blow. You have almost no control over it. Being a writer is even worse. What’s more, the town had made it clear to me that I didn’t have the right stuff. As a studio chief once told me in a job interview, “Affability counts for nothing in this town, Nick.” What was I if not affable? When I lost my job and show, it just confirmed the way Hollywood had always made me feel. Worthless.

Thankfully, during that first year my brother-in-law — a master cabinetmaker and general contractor in Los Angeles (and one of the all-time great dudes in the pantheon of Dudedom) — approached me about overseeing the renovation of a house in Los Feliz that he had purchased as an investment. He was planning a gut renovation, and he wanted me to keep an eye on it, handle some of the administrative work around city permitting and make sure the crew had whatever supplies they might need for the day’s planned work. Knowing nothing about construction, save the few projects I’d done at my own house, I said yes.  

Every day after writing for a couple hours, I stepped out of my effete world of character arcs and inciting incidents — coffee meetings and tracking boards — and into the manly world of construction.  I won’t kid you. It was intimidating. My brother-in-law’s team is made up of guys from all over the globe with expertise in carpentry, masonry, painting and electric. They can hurl 90-pound bags of concrete into a truck bed with the same ease I employ to sip a latte.  They speak a language of Romex wire and five-and-a-half-inch double-gang plates. I can’t tell the difference between a jackhammer and a skill saw. I stumble around the job site — a minefield of half-built concrete footings and sewer trenches — in my khakis and Gazelles like a burlesque dancer navigating the ruins of the London Blitz. 

From the start, a big part of my job was being sent to Home Depot. People of color won’t go there these days because ICE has effectively suspended habeas corpus for anyone who even looks like they may be undocumented. But someone on every construction crew must endlessly ferry supplies from the lumber yard to the site. That job fell to me, and I sucked at it. After every run, Ramon — my construction foreman — would ream me out in broken English for buying the wrong shit.  Even when he sent me pictures of exactly what he wanted, I somehow always still got it wrong.  

“You need to double check,” Ramon implores. “You need to ask for help!” I try to swallow his criticism gracefully, but it’s not easy. “My show was nominated for an Emmy!!!” I want to scream. But when I do voice my frustration, I have to then listen to the whole crew mock me in the Spanish language they know I can’t understand. I suppose if I had been hoping to feel less worthless, taking an entry-level position in a blue-collar industry where the language of choice is not my native tongue was probably the wrong move.

Still, I clearly wasn’t doing everything wrong, because three months into the job, my brother-in-law called me to the job site one morning and offered me a promotion, tasking me with taking a crew up to an iconic music venue in Hollywood to scrape and repaint the hulking landmark in anticipation of a grand unveiling to celebrate its fortieth year. He also asked me if I was down to help him oversee the rehabilitation of a Neutra jewel box in Bel Air, a Spanish two-bedroom in West Hollywood and the gut renovation of an Eichler split level in Thousand Oaks. I wasn’t in a place to turn the opportunity down. My wife — the Emmy-winning costume designer Marie Schley — shattered her spine in a ski accident in December, so no one in this household has been earning any income for quite some time. Naturally, I said yes.

Painting the music venue goes bad right out the gate. I don’t know what I am doing, and I don’t even know what to look for. It reminds me of my earliest visits to film sets when I’d linger around video village praying no one asked me to do anything. Even the language barrier in construction reminds me how it felt to wander too close to the camera truck and overhear the grips chattering in exotic terms about c-stands and stingers, quarter-apples and Duvetyne. I try to employ the same strategies I used back then: look attentive, stay positive and be patient knowing it will all eventually start to make sense. Still, I somehow miss the fact that our stucco team — as they scrape and patch the venue’s walls — leave drippings under every surface they touch. 

One afternoon — after my team has left the site — the guy who runs the club’s VIP room tells me there’s stucco on his staircase. “Get a mop and clean it up.” He tells me. “Now! Tobey and Leo are coming.” I don’t have a mop, so I find myself at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday on my hands and knees in the blistering L.A. sun using my own T-shirt to scrape stucco from the club’s decrepit steps. “I met Leo, once,” I think to myself, “at Edward Norton’s birthday party at the Wattles Mansion. Courtney Love invited me. And look at me, now!”  

I want to scream out in frustration. I want to cry. I am so angry that Hollywood has reduced me to this level of desperation. All the favors I doled out when I was in a position to do so have gone unreciprocated in my darkest hour — my direct pleas for help treated as the humorous pangs of a spoiled child. Why is nobody returning my calls!? How could the end of my 30-year career find me scrubbing floors? Why wasn’t I taken more seriously by my peers? Was I too haughty? Did I not sleep around enough?  

I feel like a fool for ever believing in myself, and I want to take my stupid bucket and knock the Hailey Bieber smoothie right out of the hands of every smug development exec in town. But on some level, I also feel this is exactly what I deserve. It’s the penance I’ve wrought for my incompetence, my indifference and my failure to attack the biz with requisite psychosis assuming my privilege would somehow see me through.  Hollywood is telling me where I belong. 

And where I belong, it turns out, is where I began this story — in Aisle 18 at Home Depot on Sunset at 5:45 in the morning.

After I finish shopping, I’m loading my supplies into my trunk when I hear a plaintive voice offering help. I assume it’s one of the many day laborers looking for work, and I say, “No, thanks,” without looking up. But then I feel a hand smack my back and when I turn around I’m greeted not a laborer but the toothy grin of an old TV writer friend. 

“What are you doing?” he asks incredulously. 

I’m caught off guard. Stammering, I answer, “This is what I do, now — for a living.”  It’s the first time I’ve revealed to anyone in the industry what’s become of my life. I’m embarrassed, and I feel my bottom lip quiver like I might burst into tears. But when I look up to meet his gaze, I see something there I’ve never seen before when talking about my projects or my pitches or my career. I’m not even sure what it is.  

“Good for you,” he says, sizing me up as if seeing me for the very first time. “That’s what my dad did growing up!” And I realize the look on his face is one I’ve rarely seen from Hollywood. It’s respect. 

As I pull out of the Home Depot, I experience a kind of spiritual reconstitution as I feel the many parts that make up my psyche — father, comic, husband, Deadhead, tennis maniac and now “construction worker” — flow back into the strange amalgam that is Nick Morton. Perhaps I am not something less for this unlikely turn my life has taken — for my determination to not go broke waiting for a call that may never come. Perhaps, even in the act of running around this wild city, working on a team of guys from all walks of life and meeting the kinds of people you tend to ignore when ensconced in your Hollywood bubble, I am becoming something more. 

When I arrive at the job site, my crew is oblivious to the beatific transformation I’ve just undergone. The plaster compound’s not right, and I didn’t get the correct tape. I thought “frog” tape was just a cute idiom for green drywall tape. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever master my new construction gig. I’m pretty sure I will never understand what I did so wrong to make me fail at my earlier job, writing for Hollywood. All I do know is that after six months of construction, my skin has cleared up, I’ve lost 12 pounds, and I sleep like an adolescent boy. I’ve learned a crazy fuck-ton about re-bar and sewer lines and Simpson ties and mortar. I can strap a thousand pounds of cut lumber to the roof of my truck with barely a second thought. I’ve grown one serious set of man balls, and I take shit from no one.  

While there’s no glory in this work — no red-carpet ceremony awaiting us at the end of the year — there’s no bowing and scraping, either. I’m not begging for an opportunity to prove my worth. On some days, when I’m bombing up to Bel Air in my beat-up old truck,  mariachi music blaring from the radio, the grate of the old F-150 scraping the street shrubs and sending gusts of sweet lavender billowing into my cab, I wonder why I would ever ask for more. 

Sure, I make an hourly wage, but I’m wanted, here. I’m valued. It’s a feeling I rarely experienced in Hollywood, and sometimes it’s enough to make me believe I will never go back.

Madonna‘s victory lap following a buzzy surprise Coachella appearance with Sabrina Carpenter has hit a snag just three days after the show, as the pop superstar shared Monday that the garments she wore during the set are nowhere to be found, and she’s asking anyone with knowledge to help her get them back.

“This full circle moment hit different until I discovered that the vintage pieces that I wore went missing,” the superstar wrote in an Instagram story published on Monday. “My costume that was pulled from my personal archives — jacket, corset, dress and all other garments. These aren’t just clothes, they are part of my history.”

Madonna said Monday that other archived pieces from that same era have gone missing as well, writing that “I’m hoping and praying that some kind soul will find these items,” further encouraging anyone with leads to reach out to her team at Infomaverick2026@gmail.com.

The archived pieces in question include a light purple corset as well as a darker purple jacket. “I’m offering a reward for their safe return,” Madonna said. “Thank you with all My Heart.”

Madonna’s surprise appearance with Carpenter was one of the biggest highlights across both weekends of Coachella this year, with the two pop stars performing several songs together including “Vogue,” “Like a Prayer” and Madonna’s “Bring Your Love” from her upcoming Confessions II album.

Madonna expressed her gratitude to Carpenter in her post, starting it by saying “Thank you to Sabrina and everyone who made it possible. Bringing Confessions II back to where it began was such a thrill.”

Madonna’s surprise performance came days after the star had announced Confessions II would release this July. A sequel to her critically lauded 2005 album Confessions On a Dance Floor, it will mark Madonna’s first album since 2019’s Madame X.

As Madonna referenced, this Coachella performance was particularly symbolic given that she performed Confessions on a Dance Floor tracks in America for the first time at Coachella 20 years ago.

“And that was such a thrill for me, so you can imagine what a thrill it is for me to be back 20 years later in the same boots, the same corset, the jacket I had on earlier, the same Gucci jacket,” Madonna told the crowd on Friday night. “So, it’s like a full circle moment, very meaningful for me.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping aside at the tech giant, shifting to a new role as executive chairman.

John Ternus will succeed him as the company’s new CEO. Apple announced the change Monday, with the transition set to take effect Sep. 1. Ternus is senior VP of hardware engineering for Apple.

Cook isn’t leaving, of course, Apple says that in his new role he “will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.” Art Levinson, currently Apple’s non-executive chairman, will become its lead independent director in connection with the change, and Ternus will also join the board.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company. I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world,” said Cook.

The exec added of his successor:“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”

The change may have a real impact on Hollywood: Apple has become a major player through its Apple TV platform, releasing original movies and TV shows and pouring investment into the space. Services like Apple TV have been one of Cook’s focus points, with the company noting that services are now a $100 billion-plus business.

Ternus comes from the hardware world, and could have different priorities. That is still to-be-determined.

“Tim’s unprecedented and outstanding leadership has transformed Apple into the world’s best company. He’s introduced groundbreaking products and services time and again, and his integrity and values are infused into everything Apple does,” added Levinson. “On behalf of the entire board of directors, we are incredibly grateful for his countless contributions to Apple and the world, and we are thrilled he will now be executive chairman. We believe John is the best possible leader to succeed Tim and as he transitions to CEO we know his love of Apple, his leadership, deep technical knowledge, and relentless focus on creating great products will help lead Apple to an extraordinary future.”

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” said Ternus. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

Cook, of course, succeeded Apple founder Steve Jobs as the company’s CEO in 2011, growing its market cap from $350 billion to $4 trillion, and more than quadrupling its revenue.