Tag: Entertainment-HollywoodReporter

Lily Collins is set to play Audrey Hepburn in a new movie project about the making of the seminal romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Alena Smith, the creator of the Apple series Dickinson, will write the screenplay based on Sam Wasson’s book Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.

Wasson’s New York Times bestselling book’s cast of characters includes Breakfast at Tiffany’s writer Truman Capote, costumer Edith Head, director Blake Edwards and, of course, Hepburn, and tracks the movie through pre-production, on-set issues and a release that became a watershed moment in film, fashion and larger culture.

Imagine Entertainment and Collins’ production company Case Study Films are behind the project, developing it with producer Scott LaStaiti (The Accountant 2, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare).

Brian Grazer, Jeb Brody and Justin Wilkes will produce for Imagine, alongside Collins, Charlie McDowell and Alex Orlovsky will produce for Case Study Films alongside LaStaiti. Imagine’s Marc Gilbar will serve as an executive producer with Sam Wasson and Brandon Millan for Felix Farmer Productions and Michael Shamberg. Joyce Choi is overseeing development for Imagine.

Collins, repped by CAA, LBI Entertainment and Sloane Offer, is best known for her role in Netflix’s popular Emily in Paris series.

AMC Theatres’ about-face on screening an AI-created animated short that had won a film festival award was one more eye-opener in a new year filled with them. The chain had been scheduled to run the short film Thanksgiving Day as part of its preshow ad bloc, the startup outfit Frame Forward AI Animated Film Fest says. But execs at AMC claimed they hadn’t been consulted by the firm that does the bookings, and now that they knew, they were shutting it down.

AI is hardly a huge bogeyman to theater owners; in fact, the coming glut could even help them. But the Adam Aron-led company grasped a fundamental truth of doing business in Hollywood, circa 2026: Wade into AI waters at your peril.

The number of AI studios blanketing Hollywood, along with the VC dollars to power them, is increasing at an astonishing rate. Hollywood-focused video-generation platform Runway AI revealed a new cash raise of $315 million; Saudi Arabia led a $900 million funding round for Amit Jain’s startup Luma; all-purpose AI giant Anthropic raised $30 billion. And the battle to release new models is ratcheting up the way the U.S. and Soviet Union once piled on new nuclear weapons.

Google, Runway and former TikTok majority owner ByteDance have all released new models in 2026, seeking to jump-start a market of creators using AI tools to vomit massive amounts of entertainment over the more limited, painstaking work of traditional shoots and studios.

But Big Tech’s push to make retch happen may not be as simple as just dumping money on the sector. All of the tech and dollar energy for AI video is emerging as many of the pros responsible for the content landscape — from writers to directors to traditional ad execs — express concern about the jobs and creativity lost, providing a key impediment to the transformation.

The push is happening even as AI’s biggest customer base expresses deep skepticism about what the movement is trying to ignite. A post-Super Bowl survey of 500 Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers by youth-focused data firm Cafeteria found that “AI missed big time,” according to the company, as a slew of respondents reacted negatively to ads with AI messaging relative to more traditional products and non-slop content. “Any of the ai ads, like Meta and ChatGPT. I don’t like what they were promoting,” a 19-year-old from Orlando said.” “All the ai ads omg,” said a 17-year-old from Mount Airy, Maryland.

“Gen Z/Alpha expressed strong negative feelings toward AI and AI-created ads,” the research firm concluded.

Neutralizing that skepticism will be key for AI companies. Right now, the main audience for these moves seems to be Wall Street, as the so-called AI boom that has powered the economy and the stock market shows no sign of slowing down. But whether end users — the group said boom assumes and ultimately depends on — will embrace the fruits of the AI age has yet to be demonstrated. And whether that misalignment can be addressed remains the central narrative of Hollywood in 2026.

A big flash point came with the release of Seedance 2.0, a video tool that leveled up what Sora 2.0 had done, as a Brad Pitt-Tom Cruise fight over a fictional Jeffrey Epstein plot spread faster around the social web than an Epstein island conspiracy theory. The model’s parent agreed to put up some guardrails after getting threatened by everyone from SAG-AFTRA to Netflix.

“Seedance acts as a high-speed piracy engine … [and] Netflix will not stand by and watch ByteDance treat our valued IP as free, public domain clip art,” its lawyers wrote to ByteDance executives. The Motion Picture Association, which reps all the major studios, followed with a cease-and-desist letter calling infringement “a feature, not a bug” of the product and major talent agency CAA said Seadance has a “brazen disregard for creators’ rights.”

But the feeling abides that something has fundamentally changed. Around town, writers and directors went about their work with a kind of grim acceptance, like a farmer shuffling to his plow even as the tornado clouds above grow darker.

“I’m shook,” wrote Deadpool screenwriter Rhett Reese in a viral X post. And even though writers — whose currency is the very non-AI realm of imagination and humor — may be in a comparatively good position relative to set designers and other physical production professionals, the mood remained bleak just the same. 

All of this is happening as the biggest Hollywood AI deal to date — a Disney+/OpenAI partnership that will encourage an inundation of the platform with user-generated Sora 2.0 content — hovers above.

As the battle heats up, politicians have stepped in. Democratic senator and emerging anti-AI force Bernie Sanders just came to California to meet with tech executives and Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, telling reporters shortly before the trip that he hoped these AI moguls can address his fears.

“We would be very, very mistaken not to have deep concerns about the transformative impact these technologies are going to have and the understanding that we are in no way prepared to deal with them,” Sanders noted. He said he planned to communicate this to executives. 

Sanders said he recently met with AI godfather turned alarm-raiser Geoffrey Hinton, who has argued that a new kind of work- and humanity-threatening intelligence was rising quicker than he can handle it, and it helped shape Sanders’ thinking.

Industry grassroots activity has continued apace. After helping launch the industry-wide Creators Coalition on AI to deal with the risks, Everything Everywhere All at Once director Daniel Kwan has continued to beat the drum, telling the audience at a Sundance panel, “There’s this feeling that this tech is inevitable.” It isn’t, he said. “Filmmakers, you are experts. You’re experts in storytelling,” and “we cannot allow the tech industry to set the terms for our industry.”

Meanwhile, another creative with a history of pushing back, 2023 strikes guild adviser Justine Bateman, was planning her own offensive. The founder of Credo23, a seal-of-approval for creative work signifying a lack of AI use, is about to debut her second “No AI” film festival in Hollywood in March and has recruited a who’s who of major names to attend and speak, including 2025 Oscar juggernaut Sean Baker as well as Gus Van Sant and Matthew Weiner.

Bateman says that she takes heart not just in the pushback from Hollywood but the audience via surveys like the Super Bowl one. “If Generative AI is being incorporated into entertainment, and the people who are supposed to view it don’t want it, then who is really your customer?” she asks.

She remains vexed that the biggest Hollywood companies like Disney are making deals with AI firms that have trained their models on unauthorized data.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, you’re stealing from us, so I’m going to invest in your burglary enterprise so you’ll stop stealing,’ ” she says. “It’s such an odd thing to do.” Given how pitched Hollywood’s AI wars are getting, odd may be the least of it.

This story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. 

BBC Studios CEO Tom Fussell and Zai Bennett, CEO and chief creative officer of BBC Studios Productions, discussed tariff talk by U.S. President Donald Trump, mega-consolidation, including the planned Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal, the growth of the company’s U.S. streaming business, and the Bluey movie.

They spoke to the press on the first day of the 50th annual BBC Studios Showcase in London. BBC Studios, the commercial arm of British broadcaster BBC, is known for such hit franchises as animated powerhouse Bluey, Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, legal drama The Split and its upcoming spin-off The Split Up, and such natural science hits as Walking With Dinosaurs, and it recently unveiled new shows to mark broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough’s 100th birthday on May 8.

“We have seen no impact” from Trump tariff talk, Fussell said when asked about any possible fallout, also lauding the continuing popularity of BBC News in the U.S. He didn’t discuss Trump’s lawsuit against BBC News, simply touting the resilience of the BBC brand and saying “we are not seeing any changes.”

Asked about Netflix-WBD, he said “we are well diversified, and obviously, you can only control what you can control, so you focus on your priorities, and our priority is carrying the transformation and the growth in the areas we’ve got.” He emphasized though that “no doubt, … people have talked about challenging markets and the rest of it, and our view going forward is that the market growth is not going to be anything like what it had been in the [past] five years.”

Continued Fussell: “And when you start seeing rumors upon rumors about takeovers and consolidation, that normally is testament to the fact there aren’t huge amounts of growth in the market, because everyone’s looking for … synergies. But we know what we’re doing. We know where we want to be investing in our global expansion of our studio.”

In that context, he also highlighted that BBC Studios was “a growing business that’s transforming,” with revenue up 55.7 percent over the last four years.

Following TV market challenges, Bennett on Monday suggested that “there are definitely green shoots of recovery,” sharing that “Paramount is back in the market, spending money,” among other things. But he reiterated that things are “definitely not” expected to return to the highs of the past five years but play out in a new normal range.

Fussell suggested though that he felt the business would be “talking about striving again,” from scripted to unscripted and, vitally, kids programming.

Mentioning the 2019 BBC Studios deal with what was then Discovery to take full control of UKTV’s entertainment channels, including Dave, Gold, and Drama, as well as a 2024 deal with ITV that gave the company full control of streamer BritBox International, Fussell also signaled that BBC Studios could also strike more acquisitions of its own. He said it would “carry on investing organically and maybe inorganically.”

Bennett, who started his role in late 2024, similarly noted that BBC Studios Productions is seeing “solid organic growth and investment” and “looking for inorganic growth in some territories,” mentioning the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa as one possible region for deals.

Fussell added that there “are opportunities for inorganic growth in streaming across the genres,” adding: “I think we have a right, as the home of British streaming, to grow that even further.” But he emphasized that “these opportunities take time,” concluding: “We are very judicious with how we spend that investment.”

Fussell on Monday also touted the success of streaming services BritBox and BBC Select, which focuses on documentaries, in North America. “Last week was the fifth birthday of BBC Select, and BBC Select is now the third-largest factual SVOD in the States, and we’re really proud of that,” he said. He also touted the growth of BritBox and its launch of a premium tier.

Among content trends, Bennett was asked about the growth of microdramas, saying that “we’re looking at that right now” and signaling the company could talk about this space more in the coming months. He added: “We’re certainly experimenting.”

Questioned about audience and buyer appetite, he sees for escapist content versus programming dealing with the world’s cultural and political divisions, Bennett said BBC Studios Productions looks at market needs and is “leaning into specificity and Britishness” more than anything else.

Current and old content favorites also drew reporter questions on Monday. Could motoring show Top Gear return to U.K. screens? Replied Bennett: “Never say never.”

Of course, the upcoming Bluey: The Movie was also a talking point. Fussell shared that he just visited creator Joe Brumm in his studio in Brisbane, calling the experience “an absolute pleasure,” and saying that the work on the film was going well. But “I can’t say anything” more, he emphasized. And Bennett shared: “We’ve seen bits of it, and it looks amazing.”

BBC Studios CEO Tom Fussell and Zai Bennett, CEO and chief creative officer of BBC Studios Productions, discussed tariff talk by U.S. President Donald Trump, mega-consolidation, including the planned Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal, the growth of the company’s U.S. streaming business, and the Bluey movie.

They spoke to the press on the first day of the 50th annual BBC Studios Showcase in London. BBC Studios, the commercial arm of British broadcaster BBC, is known for such hit franchises as animated powerhouse Bluey, Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, legal drama The Split and its upcoming spin-off The Split Up, and such natural science hits as Walking With Dinosaurs, and it recently unveiled new shows to mark broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough’s 100th birthday on May 8.

“We have seen no impact” from Trump tariff talk, Fussell said when asked about any possible fallout, also lauding the continuing popularity of BBC News in the U.S. He didn’t discuss Trump’s lawsuit against BBC News, simply touting the resilience of the BBC brand and saying “we are not seeing any changes.”

Asked about Netflix-WBD, he said “we are well diversified, and obviously, you can only control what you can control, so you focus on your priorities, and our priority is carrying the transformation and the growth in the areas we’ve got.” He emphasized though that “no doubt, … people have talked about challenging markets and the rest of it, and our view going forward is that the market growth is not going to be anything like what it had been in the [past] five years.”

Continued Fussell: “And when you start seeing rumors upon rumors about takeovers and consolidation, that normally is testament to the fact there aren’t huge amounts of growth in the market, because everyone’s looking for … synergies. But we know what we’re doing. We know where we want to be investing in our global expansion of our studio.”

In that context, he also highlighted that BBC Studios was “a growing business that’s transforming,” with revenue up 55.7 percent over the last four years.

Following TV market challenges, Bennett on Monday suggested that “there are definitely green shoots of recovery,” sharing that “Paramount is back in the market, spending money,” among other things. But he reiterated that things are “definitely not” expected to return to the highs of the past five years but play out in a new normal range.

Fussell suggested though that he felt the business would be “talking about striving again,” from scripted to unscripted and, vitally, kids programming.

Mentioning the 2019 BBC Studios deal with what was then Discovery to take full control of UKTV’s entertainment channels, including Dave, Gold, and Drama, as well as a 2024 deal with ITV that gave the company full control of streamer BritBox International, Fussell also signaled that BBC Studios could also strike more acquisitions of its own. He said it would “carry on investing organically and maybe inorganically.”

Bennett, who started his role in late 2024, similarly noted that BBC Studios Productions is seeing “solid organic growth and investment” and “looking for inorganic growth in some territories,” mentioning the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa as one possible region for deals.

Fussell added that there “are opportunities for inorganic growth in streaming across the genres,” adding: “I think we have a right, as the home of British streaming, to grow that even further.” But he emphasized that “these opportunities take time,” concluding: “We are very judicious with how we spend that investment.”

Fussell on Monday also touted the success of streaming services BritBox and BBC Select, which focuses on documentaries, in North America. “Last week was the fifth birthday of BBC Select, and BBC Select is now the third-largest factual SVOD in the States, and we’re really proud of that,” he said. He also touted the growth of BritBox and its launch of a premium tier.

Among content trends, Bennett was asked about the growth of microdramas, saying that “we’re looking at that right now” and signaling the company could talk about this space more in the coming months. He added: “We’re certainly experimenting.”

Questioned about audience and buyer appetite, he sees for escapist content versus programming dealing with the world’s cultural and political divisions, Bennett said BBC Studios Productions looks at market needs and is “leaning into specificity and Britishness” more than anything else.

Current and old content favorites also drew reporter questions on Monday. Could motoring show Top Gear return to U.K. screens? Replied Bennett: “Never say never.”

Of course, the upcoming Bluey: The Movie was also a talking point. Fussell shared that he just visited creator Joe Brumm in his studio in Brisbane, calling the experience “an absolute pleasure,” and saying that the work on the film was going well. But “I can’t say anything” more, he emphasized. And Bennett shared: “We’ve seen bits of it, and it looks amazing.”

Imax posted $28 million in box office over China’s latest Lunar New Year seven-day period, with the thriller Pegasus 3 leading the way with $24 million in tickets sales in its first week, the film technology company said on Monday.

That compared with Imax nabbing a record high of $53 million in box office over China’s Lunar New Year period in Feb. 2025 on $36 million in ticket sales for the animated blockbuster Ne Zha 2. That also followed Imax posting a previous Chinese New Year box office record of $34 million in 2023.

Director Han Han’s Pegasus 3 marks the fourth collaboration between Imax and the Chinese filmmaker, and to date has taken in $373 million in overall box office in China. “Our continued success with the Chinese New Year holiday underscores the diverse global breadth of our content portfolio — and our unique ability to create opportunity and generate results throughout the year,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said in a statement on Monday.

The latest Chinese New Year slate for Imax included Super Lion’s martial-arts actioner Blade of the Guardians earning $3.3 million, and Damai’s thriller Scare Out taking in another $500,000 across the holiday period. Imax and the Beijing film industry look to Lunar New Year holiday numbers as a bellwether for how box office in China may play out for the rest of the year.

Pegasus 3 will receive an exclusive North American Imax release starting Feb. 23 in select giant screen locations, ahead of UK, Australia and New Zealand play for the thriller. Imax China is a subsidiary of Toronto-based Imax and its shares trade on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Andy Roddick will join ESPN as a tennis commentator. 

The former world No. 1 and 2003 US Open champion has signed a multiyear deal with the network to serve as an analyst for both match and studio coverage. He will join ESPN just prior to Wimbledon, which begins June 29, and will cover the tournament, as well as the U.S. Open.

Roddick retired from professional tennis in 2012 after a 13-season career, in which he reached the finals of Wimbledon in 2004, 2005 and 2009 and the US Open in 2006. He won 32 ATP Tour singles titles, including five ATP Masters 1000 crowns and helped lead the United States to the 2007 Davis Cup title and was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017.  

Roddick has been a temporary contributor to the Tennis Channel, and hosts a weekly podcast for the channel entitled, Served With Andy Roddick.  He previously cohosted Fox Sports Live on FOX Sports 1 and hosted a show on FOX Sports Radio with Bobby Bones, now host of The Bobby Bones Show.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Andy to the team. ESPN has long led the way in delivering in-depth tennis analysis, and with several recent talent additions, we’ve further strengthened our coverage,” Linda Schulz, ESPN Vice President of Production, said. “Andy brings a distinctive, energetic, and highly relevant voice that will elevate both our studio and match coverage.”

“Simply, I’m always just a massive fan of tennis. I’m very excited to join the ESPN tennis team and look forward to covering the two biggest tournaments in the world,” Roddick said.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is known for having the occasional terrific idea (let’s get rid of toxic food additives, let’s make people aware of the dangers of ultra-processed foods) and also having rather terrible ideas (let’s cut funding for vaccine research, let’s recommend vitamin A during a measles outbreak instead of the vax, let’s claim keto diets cure schizophrenia).

RFK Jr. is also known for his very fit-looking physique. For a 72-year-old, the man looks great. He likes to show off his body during media events and on social media. Yet he seems incapable of doing workout videos without at least some undercurrent of oddness.

So here are five of RFK Jr.’s workout videos, ranked from least to most weird.

5. RFK Jr. Posts Work-Out Video Before Biden Debate (June, 2023)

@robertfkennedyjrofficial

Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden! As President, I will restore America as the global example of health & well-being. Not through pills or syringes, but through character and self-discipline. And I will continue to walk the walk and lead by example. Americans gained an average of 29 pounds during the Covid lockdowns. I will help turn this around by encouraging our citizens to exercise, eat well, and fortify their immune systems by removing harmful chemicals from our food. Conversely, we must never allow ourselves to succumb to fear. Fear disables both the immune system and the capacity for critical thought which is key to the survival of democracy. We will restore our health as we reunite our communities and rebuild our nation. So start doing your morning calisthenics everybody. Get yourself in shape for a Kennedy Presidency! p.s. And yes, I can do more than 10 pushups. That was my last set. #Kennedy24

♬ original sound – Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Running as a third-party candidate at the time, RFK Jr. posted the above video saying he was getting ready to debate President Joe Biden (he didn’t end up qualifying for the debate stage). It’s not a particularly impressive workout, as it shows the man struggling to complete some push-ups (he says he was on his final set). This is also the video that introduced most Americans to RFK Jr.’s tendency to work out while wearing dad jeans. (A pet theory about why he doesn’t wear shorts in his videos: The man skips leg day.)

4. The “Pete and Bobby Challenge” (August, 2025)

RFK Jr. and 45-year-old Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth teamed up for a workout they called the “Pete and Bobby Challenge” — perform 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in any order you want within five minutes. Their video, filmed in “the bowels of the Pentagon,” has RFK Jr. once again exercising in jeans and now adding cowboy boots to make his workout look even less practical. Fitness experts chided that encouraging such intense stunts for the average person is “not recommended,” though that seems a bit petulant. But RFK Jr. and Hegseth’s push-up range of motion would be totally called out by any fitness trainer as you’re supposed to start in a high plank. Also, notice this workout doesn’t include any squats.

3. Pull-ups at Reagan National Airport (December, 2025)

RFK Jr. announced a $1 billion grant to “incentivize more family friendly resources in airport terminals” — including play spaces for children and mini-gyms (if there’s one thing every traveler wants, it’s to sit next to a person on a flight who just worked out). Still, one could see some good coming from this and, to help promote the initiative, RFK Jr. performed 20 pull-ups at Reagan National Airport.

Two things can be true at once: Doing 20 pull-ups is impressive for anybody, and especially for a man RFK Jr.’s age, and also for anybody in our political class (34-year-old New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani couldn’t perform a single unassisted bench press of 135 pounds at a photo-op). But also, technically, as with the push-ups, these are not pull-ups — a pull-up is performed from a dead hang and your chin must clear the bar (this is still more than I can do, and probably more than you can, too, but we’re not posting workout videos to inspire a nation to use improper form).

Exercising in slacks, a button-down shirt and a tie is strange, but is fitting for being in an airport, and still somehow less odd than jeans.

2. “What I Do to Stay Healthy” (July 2024)

Now we’re talking: Jumping from a helicopter to swim with a shark. This is the kind of content we want. Otherwise, this is a montage of RFK Jr. lifting weights, skiing, surfing and hiking. You can briefly see his legs during the surfing shot, and here’s a closer look, below. What do you think: Do those calves look neglected compared to his upper body?

1. Working Out with Kid Rock (February, 2026)

Filmed at Kid Rock’s highly enviable home gym and wet suite setup, this is a music video of RFK Jr. working out with the singer, taking a sauna and doing a cold plunge (points for going all the way under). Much has been made about the vaguely homoerotic frenetic fever dream quality of this montage, which seems one minute away from the duo snorting coke off toilet seats (Stephen Colbert dubbed the video “senior softcore”). Nothing here is more off-putting, however, than the prospect of drinking milk in a hot tub.