On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Michael Schneider breaks down the last lap of upfronts week as Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and YouTube grabbed the megaphone. And Variety music chief Jem Aswad goes deep on the music of “Heated Rivalry” in a session with showrunner Jacob Tierney, composer Peter Peter and music supervisor Scotty Taylor. It was recorded May 7 at Toronto’s Departure Festival for music creatives.
Listen to the full episode here:
The springtime ritual of the upfronts has changed significantly in the post-COVID era for the largest platforms. As Variety covered extensively this week, the dominant themes were sports, streaming and a lot of tech talk that industry leaders see as vital to bringing the traditional TV business, rooted in advertising and subscription revenue, into the modern era.
The sobering effect of industry consolidation was on display this year at the Warner Bros. Discovery event held May 13 as usual at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. The presentation opened with a tribute to Ted Turner, the late Turner Broadcasting mogul who birthed CNN. That set a somber tone that never really lifted. At the same time, Schneider noted that the biggest players leaned on star power to dazzle Madison Avenue.
“Amazon had a presentation that was filled with A-listers, including Oprah [Winfrey]. They also spent some money to open the show with a performance by Kacey Musgraves. And Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up. Shaboozey performed at their after-party. So Amazon spent some money, but then so did Disney. The fact is, they ended their show with Olivia Rodrigo, who performed three songs,” says Schneider, who is Variety‘s executive editor of TV. “Netflix had a ton of their stars. They opened up with [Jennifer Lopez] and Brett Goldstein.”
In the “Heated Rivalry” conversation, composer Peter cites influences on his score that range from techno to Handel. Peter, who is a Montreal-based singer-songwriter, gave a great deal of thought to the sound design of the romance between Shane and Ilya.
“I knew that I wanted to create something noble for them because for me, when I read the script, I thought it was just a whole quest of love. So I just wanted something noble,” Peter says. “And the whole world of ‘Heated Rivalry’ is really connected to Renaissance and everything. So I just wanted something very elegant for the theme of two souls.”
(Pictured top: Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein at Netflix’s May 13 upfront presentation in New York)
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