Tag: Entertainment-HollywoodReporter

The Walt Disney Co.’s top communications executive is leaving the company.

Kristina Schake, the senior executive VP and chief communications officer of Disney, will exit the company at the end of March. Schake joined Disney in in 2022.

The executive, who signed a new long-term deal with Disney a few months ago (alongside essentially all top Disney executives that had reported to outgoing CEO Bob Iger), will exit at the end of March, shortly after Iger officially steps aside.

Josh D’Amaro will succeed Iger as CEO and Dana Walden will be elevated to president and chief creative officer in connection with Disney’s annual meeting on March 18. The company will announce Schake’s successor at a later date.

“Kristina is an accomplished and respected communications leader, and Disney has been fortunate to have her expertise and insight during a dynamic period that has demanded strategic clarity and judgment,” said Iger in a statement. “Kristina is a skilled strategist, a trusted advisor, and an admired leader whose positive impact on Disney will be lasting. She strengthened how the company aligns communications with business and strategic priorities, ensuring critical stakeholder audiences are engaged with discipline and purpose. I am grateful for her partnership and friendship, her counsel, and her innumerable contributions.”

“I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to serve The Walt Disney Company during such a pivotal chapter in its history,” added Schake. “The company I joined in 2022 was in a vastly different place from where it is today, both reputationally and from a business perspective, and I am proud of the work our worldwide communications team has done to support Bob as he has put Disney on a steady course for growth for the next generation of leaders. With that mission now successfully completed, I’m looking forward to my next challenge. Working alongside Bob, his management team, and so many exceptional communications professionals has been a privilege I will carry with me forever, and I leave with tremendous respect for this institution and great confidence in Disney’s future under Josh D’Amaro and Dana Walden.”

Iger and Schake also sent memos to staff about the change Tuesday. You can read them below.

Iger’s memo:

Dear Fellow Employees and Cast Members,

I’m writing to share that Kristina Schake, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer, will be departing The Walt Disney Company after March 18, coinciding with the end of my tenure as Chief Executive Officer.

Since joining Disney in 2022, Kristina has been an accomplished and respected leader and trusted advisor throughout a period of significant change for our company and our industry. Disney has been fortunate to have her expertise and wisdom during the most consequential moments over the past four years.

Beyond her strategic expertise, Kristina has built and strengthened Disney’s outstanding global communications function into the world-class organization it is today, positioning it as a critical partner to our businesses and leaders. I am personally grateful for Kristina’s partnership and friendship, and for the lasting impact she has made at Disney. Please join me in thanking her for her leadership and wishing her the very best in her next chapter. We will share more information about future communications leadership in due course.

Sincerely,

Bob

Schake’s memo:

Team,

I wanted to write to you directly and simply say thank you.  Working alongside this outstanding communications team has been one of the great privileges of my career.

The past four years have been among the most consequential in our company’s history, and I could not be more proud of how you showed up for every moment.  You brought clarity, creativity, and thoughtful strategy to the work, helping to communicate and advance Bob’s strategic priorities in ways that employees, investors, reporters, and consumers could understand and believe in. 

As Disney begins its next chapter, the company is fortunate to have outstanding leaders in Josh and Dana guiding the way.  I am excited to see the stories you will help tell and the impact you will continue to have as that chapter unfolds.  This team’s talent, care, and creativity are exactly what this moment calls for, and I know you will shape what comes next in remarkable ways.

With gratitude,

Kristina

Fox Entertainment Studios is getting into business with Etan Frankel.

The writer-producer has signed a first-look producing deal to develop and produce scripted series with Fox Entertainment’s in-house studio spanning different genres, the division announced on Tuesday. Under the deal, Frankel will collaborate with the studio on key objectives like producing premium, genre and creator-driven series that can attract an international audience.

Frankel most recently served as creator and showrunner for Peacock’s Joe vs. Carole, a dramatization of the real-life clash between private zoo owner Joe Exotic and animal rights activist Carole Baskin that was chronicled in the Netflix documentary Tiger King. He was also the showrunner and executive producer of the Facebook Watch series Sorry for Your Loss.

Prior to that, Frankel wrote and produced on MGM+’s Get Shorty, TNT’s Animal Kingdom and Showtime’s Shameless.

He is currently in development on Prism, a Netflix series starring Millie Bobby Brown, on which he will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Brown, Joe and Anthony Russo’s production company AGBO and Rachel Brosnahan are also set to executive produce.

“Etan is an exceptional storyteller with a rare ability to blend emotional depth, sharp perspective, and commercial appeal,” Hannah Pillemer, Fox Entertainment Studio’s head of scripted, said in a statement. “He has built an impressive body of work across platforms and genres, and his voice, taste, and leadership make him an ideal partner as we continue to expand our premium scripted slate.”

Frankel, who is represented by CAA, Literate and Gendler Kelly, said he was excited to be partnering with the studio at a moment when it is investing in “bold, creator-led storytelling.” He added, “Hannah and her team have built an environment that champions ambition, collaboration, and originality, and I’m thrilled to develop meaningful, resonant series together.”

Broadway grosses dropped 6 percent last week as eight productions canceled Sunday evening performances due to the blizzard in New York City. 

Wicked, one of the highest earners on Broadway, saw the biggest drop due to the storm, as the musical fell $408,223 from the prior week. It was still one of the highest grossing shows of the week with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as the top grossing show ($2.6 million), followed by The Lion King ($1.9 million), then Wicked ($1.6 million) and Just In Time ($1.5 million).

& Juliet (down $195,292 from the prior week), All Out: Comedy About Ambition (down $77,149), Chicago (down $169,110) and Oh, Mary! (down $216,345) also lost their Sunday evening performances. 

Though it was not impacted by the snowstorm, Chess had the largest drop of the week, falling $802,675, as lead Lea Michele was out of the show from Wednesday through Sunday due to a scheduled absence. Attendance also fell to 80 percent from 95 percent and the average ticket price dropped to $85 from $144. 

Operation Mincemeat was meant to have a nine-performance week, with Sunday evening marking the final performance of original cast members David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Natasha Hodgson, Jak Malone and Zoë Roberts. However, the cast members performed the matinee and then held a live-streamed concert in the evening, in lieu of the final performance. The show still saw a $150,000 boost from the prior week, bringing in $1.1 million as the average ticket price jumped up $23 to $175. 

Hell’s Kitchen played its final performance Sunday, after opening on Broadway in April 2024. The musical brought in $1.4 million, and saw its grosses jump up about $200,000 from the prior week. 

Stranger Things: The First Shadow also had to cancel Sunday night’s performance due to the storm, but still brought in close to $1.6 million across seven performances, above its totals at the beginning of February. The production was dark the prior week to allow for filming.

Broadway also canceled Monday performances, impacting six productions that were scheduled to go on that night. Those cancellations will be reflected in the upcoming grosses. 

The studded leather stage garb, the ear-splitting falsetto and thrashing guitars of a bunch of heavy metal gods suggest a stereotype bordering on satanic. Even the name given to the industrial birthplace of this lovingly assembled rock doc’s subjects, “The Black Country,” sounds like a demonic spawning ground. But one of the chief takeaways from fanboy co-directors Sam Dunn and Tom Morello’s entertaining legacy salute, The Ballad of Judas Priest, is how endearingly this canonical band comes across.

Sure, they helped define heavy metal culture by dressing like a biker gang, sparked a culture war trial over accusations of subliminal death messaging and superfan Jack Black describes their sound as “the song you want to fuckin’ play on the electric chair; it’s the song you want to play before you fuckin’ head off into oblivion.” But these guys seem approachable, unpretentious and refreshingly uninclined toward bad-ass macho-aggressive posturing. They are the kind of nice, self-deprecating working-class English lads you could take home to meet Mum and Dad. Maybe it’s the delightful Birmingham accents.

That’s not to imply that Dunn and Morello’s film makes the pioneering metallurgists seem in any way inauthentic or soft. But when you partly frame a Judas Priest doc with longtime frontman Rob Halford, now a cheerful septuagenarian, strolling down to his local to order fish and chips with mushy peas and a pickled egg, you inevitably demystify your Metal Lords.

Then again, Judas Priest appear never to have cared much about cultivating an offstage mystique to match their hard-edged, high-energy performance style. Any band in their genre that would craft a metal power anthem out of Joan Baez’s introspective folk ballad “Diamonds and Rust” clearly isn’t just playing to expectations.

The movie has surprising warmth and heart, notably so in its handling of Halford’s sexuality. The singer was never in the closet with his bandmates or management, but he was encouraged to hide that side of himself as their popularity grew in the 1970s. Halford acknowledges that metal was an alpha male-dominated sphere in which he himself believed there was no place for an openly gay man.

That created a struggle between success and fame on one side and loneliness and angst on the other, leading to a period of alcoholism, which he kicked with a 30-day rehab stint. But when Halford casually came out during a 1998 MTV interview, and the news traveled round the world in 24 hours, he was astonished at the outpouring of love and acceptance from the metal community.

The doc makes wry points about going back and looking for hidden queer meaning in the band’s lyrics, yielding not exactly subtle clues like Halford strutting around the stage singing “Grinder! Looking for meat!”

Earlier, they switched from sequins and satin into their defining leatherwear look, finding the initial pieces in a gay sex shop in London’s Soho. There’s humor in Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, a San Francisco native, recognizing the look from late 1970s Castro leather boys: “I was thinking, huh, maybe it’s different in Britain.” But Halford drolly specifies: “There was never any equation to S&M, because I’m the most vanilla guy in the gay world.”

The doc mixes present-day interviews with the band, archive material and input from contemporaries like Ozzy Osbourne and next-gen rockers Dave Grohl and Hammett. Black’s contributions are both reverential and light-hearted.

But some of the most insightful and witty commentary comes from co-director and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Morello. He talks about starting a heavy metal appreciation club while he was at Harvard, which would meet every week to discuss Harvardian topics like “The social impact of the twin axe attack on ‘80s metal post Defenders of the Faith.”

In subsequent years, Morello started organizing similar gatherings of like-minded friends to discuss metal at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. One such meeting, extensively excerpted here, is a “Judas Priest Round Table,” at which Morello is joined by Run-DMC vocalist Darryl McDaniels, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Scott Ian from Anthrax and Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale.

The group’s Priest love is contagious, and there’s a nice note of inclusivity in the fact that two Black musicians, Morello and McDaniels, were instrumental in getting Judas Priest into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame after the band had been passed over on two previous ballots.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter looks back on the “Satanic Panic” period, when mainstream America’s fear of the heavy metal subculture peaked. Concerned mothers formed the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) to scapegoat hard rock as a pollutant of their children’s minds, while Senate subcommittee hearings pushed for censorship.

The most significant offshoot of all this came in 1990, when a Nevada civil action funded by Christian conservatives went after Judas Priest for $6 million, alleging that subliminal messages in the band’s music prompted the suicide pact of two young males. This would seem ludicrous today if not for the far right’s habitual moral hysteria. But watching a courtroom full of people straining to hear vague signals like “Do it” in a Priest song raises eyebrows, especially when it’s determined that the subliminal words were never there. “The common-sense thing is, why would you tell your fans to fucking kill themselves?” observes Halford.

While the band was cleared of any suspicion, the experience of their music being put on trial left behind a heavy cloud. They argue that, rather than feeding loneliness and despair, metal allowed misfits to find their communities. Hammett gets emotional talking about it, calling the music “medicine.”

This is more of a celebration than a warts-and-all study, with relatively little on the personal side. Conflicts are glossed over, line-up changes happen without drama and any life or relationships outside the band are mentioned only in passing. LGBTQ audiences might wish to know if Halford ever managed a clandestine relationship over the 25 years of fame during which he remained closeted, or indeed since. But Dunn and Morello make no apologies for sticking to the music and the rapport among the band members.

As with any group that’s been recording and performing in various configurations for more than half a century (Morello calls them “the Willie Nelson of heavy metal”), time takes its toll.

Longtime guitarist K.K. Downing’s departure in 2011 was a blow, though he’s vague about the reasons, beyond saying it started to feel more like hard work than joy. Even more saddening was the Parkinson’s disease diagnosis that struck Glenn Tipton, Downing’s other half in the twin axe “guitarmony” component so essential to the band’s dynamic. (The late Osbourne makes touching comments about the sense of solidarity he felt as a fellow Parkinson’s sufferer.)

The biggest change to the band came in 1992 when Halford decided to step away for a while to pursue solo projects. That lasted 11 years, but despite any rancor the break might have caused, when the time came for him to return, Tipton says, “He didn’t need to ask.” Nevertheless, that negotiation took place, in quintessentially British style, over a cup of tea.

I confess that aside from a handful of Led Zeppelin bangers, I’ve never been much of a metal fan and before The Ballad of Judas Priest, I couldn’t have named even one of the band’s hits. But watching them perform at the 2022 Hall of Fame ceremony, with all four core members — Halford, Downing, Tipton and bassist Ian Hill — together again on stage, I found myself thinking “Priest! Fuck, yeah!” as my index and pinky fingers involuntarily formed devil horns.

Pierson Fodé has signed with CAA for representation in all areas.

The former Bold and Beautiful star went from a soap for which he earned two daytime Emmy nominations to a leading man in Hollywood thrillers, including with a breakout role opposite Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson in Netflix and Sony Pictures’ The Man From Toronto from director Patrick Hughes.

Having made his acting debut in a 2012 episode of iCarly, Fodé recently wrapped production on the upcoming Netflix thriller The Last Mrs. Parrish, directed by Robert Zemeckis and also starring Jennifer Lopez and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. In 2025, he performed alongside Lily James in Swiped, the 20th Century Studios biopic inspired by Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd and directed by Rachel Lee Goldberg for Hulu.

His other film credits include Netflix’s The Wrong Paris with Miranda Cosgrove; the romantic comedy A Merry Little Ex-Mas; the thriller romancer Dope Queens; Naomi & Eli’s No Kiss List, also starring Victoria Justice; director Alastair Orr’s horror pic Indigenous, which bowed at Tribeca; and director Frank Waldeck’s drama It’s Time, about the Ole Miss cornerback Chucky Mullins. 

On the TV front, Fodé starred in Animal Kingdom, Leverage: Redemption, Dynasty, and the spoof series The Real Bros. of Simi Valley, where he played the role of Yonder.  Fodé also appeared in the “Big Game” Super Bowl commercial for T-Mobile alongside the Backstreet Boys.

Fodé, who has around 2.6 million TikTok followers, continues to be represented by Zero Gravity Management, Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman and The Initiative Group.

So now I have to admit that I’m watching it. This is a touchy subject for those who actually knew John and Carolyn. Do you purposely and deliberately not watch, assuming Love Story — Ryan Murphy’s latest extravaganza dramatizing their relationship and tragic death — will be dreck that they’d both have hated? In solidarity with John’s beloved nephew Jack Schlossberg, who was the ring-bearer at his secret wedding, and who, months before a trailer was even released, accused Murphy of profiting off his uncle “in a grotesque way”? Yikes. Shouldn’t we all be virtue-signaling and (grandly) announce that we will not be watching it?

Well, no. I worked for John at George. He started a magazine, for chrissake. And one of the reasons he was an excellent editor (yes, he was) was because John had the No. 1 quality of a great editor: an insatiable curiosity. Journalists are curious. He also, in a very Tina Brown kind of way, wouldn’t miss something that was so clearly part of the zeitgeist. Everyone’s talking about this. It was the same reason he invited his staff to a dinner party (with big-screen TV)  at the Racquet Club the night Monica Lewinsky blabbed all to Barbara Walters — even though he was visibly uncomfortable, squirming through the whole thing, just the idea of this thing, a 21-year-old intern talking about flashing her thong and then fellating the President of the United States in the oval office. Ick. But of course he watched. And I think he’d have hate-watched Love Story.

So, I gathered my tissue boxes, and I did cry — before it started. That choked-upness that comes at any John trigger, and there are so many. JFK airport can do it to me. But the lead-up to this series has been a nonstop bombardment.  Then it started. And first, I was pissed. The opening of the pilot, obnoxiously named “Pilot” (get it?), is focused on their normal-for-them lives before they get to the airport. John is at the office, talking to staff, handwriting a personal note. Yeah, he would do that. Then, Murphy recycles that old debunked trope, first promulgated by Ed Klein in Vanity Fair (as John used to say, “He had one lunch with my mother and has been dining out on it ever since”), that they were late taking off because Carolyn kept getting her toenail polish changed, to the perfect shade of lavender. In Love Story, it’s her fingernail polish and it’s red, though Carolyn never wore nail polish on her fingers, and certainly not red (red was for lipstick). But that shit doesn’t bother me in a fictionalized miniseries. What does bother me is the implication that her vanity caused the crash. As Klein’s source has explained numerous times, she left the salon before 5:00. The plane took off at 8:15. Jeesh. Let it go.

It was the Jackie depiction that had me howling. Naomi Watts did such a spectacular job playing Babe Paley in Murphy’s previous miniseries (that I mostly loved) Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, that I expected big things from her Jackie. I did not expect a cartoon character that was too off-the-charts to even be considered camp, from her first scene, where she is at her dining-room table in her Park Avenue apartment, imperiously ringing a dinner bell to summon the help. But the hilariously bad Jackie scene comes in Episode 3. You know that great portrait of President Kennedy that hangs in the White House, the pensive one where he is glancing down, the one Jackie actually did approve? Well, Murphy has it in her apartment. And one night, all alone in a dark room (where’s Maurice, you damn fool?!), and knowing she is dying, she puts Camelot on the record player (well, it was 1994), lifts up the painting in her fragile state, and dances with it to Camelot. Are you fucking kidding me, Ryan Murphy? Of all the zillions of Jackie stories in circulation for 70 years, some of them true, this is what you pull out of your ass?

And what’s his beef with Daryl Hannah, who comes across as a certifiable ditz? Clingy, dim, goofy, stoned. Was/Is she that much of a flake? I never met the woman, but I can’t imagine that John, who was preternaturally attracted to smart strong women, could have lasted five minutes, let alone five years, with Murphy’s Hannah. It’s all so comical that even when John accidentally gets her dog killed (which, apparently, is true), I didn’t cry.

And whoever cast Rose Marie Terenzio, John’s effortlessly hip executive assistant, as a fat and dowdy bore, should be taken out in an alley and beaten up.

In fact, the actors that offended me the least were the main characters. Let’s be real. This had to be the bitch of all casting assignments. Starting with Carolyn, who never gave a single interview in all the years she was with John. Sarah Pidgeon had little more than mythology to work with. I don’t pretend to have known Carolyn well. I knew her the way you know a boss’ wife — being seated next to her at dinner parties, sneaking out for a smoke together, that kind of stuff. She was, as Pidgeon portrays her, smart as a whip and funny. And in that sense — plus the indescribable aura of Carolyn, that thing she had where you just knew, of course John would be head over heels for her — Pidgeon nails it. She also had that elusive mix of confidence and empathy that made both men and women love her. Pidgeon nails that too.

About Paul Anthony Kelly. Does he look like John? No one looks like John. (Or Carolyn.) So cut him a break there. But don’t actors have to prepare for their roles? Shouldn’t someone have sent him to the gym for a few months to get rid of those flabby abs? On John Kennedy? Horrors! Or at least not shoot him the way you’d shoot John Kennedy, naked to the waist in a locker room or Central Park. (Nice package, though.)

What Kelly does get right, and it’s no small thing, is John’s mannerisms, the way he walked, the way he locked up his bike. Or forgot to lock up his bike. That was real. And the lateness. That was real, too. He also, in most scenes, though not all, captures his voice. John had a distinctive way of speaking, the cadence, the intonation. When he sounded like him, I got chills. And he got the banter, the rhythm, which we also should credit the screenwriters for. John was a gifted conversationalist. He could return the volley with anyone. And he often did so with humor and self-deprecation. Kelly gets that, too. One quibble: Kelly has said in interviews that he tried to get the lisp down. What lisp? This was news to me. Was there something about his intonation that you might call a faintly discernible stammer? OK. But lisp? Nah. John Kennedy did not lisp, for chrissakes. And in any event, it is way overplayed.

Here’s where I did choke up. The spot-on depiction of the ‘90s in New York. The Odeon! Which John loved. Pay phones. Business lunches at Michael’s. Book parties with gift bags. That soundtrack. And especially the publishing world of the ‘90s, when magazines were on fire and George was the new bright shiny object. How I miss those days. And I’m sure I will ugly-cry eventually. We haven’t gotten to the crash.

Would John have liked Love Story? No. But I think he would have been happy about the depiction of his wife — at least as far as the first four episodes — as a smart and intoxicating creature. His mother? He’d have hated it. But laughed. When these things arise — documentaries, anniversary specials, the whole John Jr. oeuvre — I always ask, is this good for his legacy? (That’s my virtue signaling.) And they usually are. I like that, I like when 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds know who he was.

Love Story would not have come as a surprise to John. He got it. Though he might have wondered what took so long.