Tag: HollywoodReporter

For a sense of the decline in creative ambition between Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson‘s collaboration in HBO’s True Detective and Apple TV’s Brothers, one would have to imagine that after making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford and Paul Newman had made a movie that was primarily about how “Robert Redford” and “Paul Newman” loved to hang out and discuss how much fun it was to have made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The most creatively adventurous thing you can accuse Brothers of doing is taking two huge Hollywood stars and putting them in scripts that would have been deemed insufficiently creatively adventurous for ABC’s TGIF block in the mid-’90s — full of endless perfunctory bickering and bouts of limp farce, topped off with platitudes about “family” and “friendship” and how “incest isn’t incest if you aren’t blood relations.”

Much as the Emmys recently asked the longtime friends to vamp for five or 10 minutes while presenting, in order to salvage an awards show with no particular direction, Brothers asks them to vamp for eight 30-minute episodes, in order to salvage a TV show with no particular direction.

It’s a tribute, then, to the charismatic energy generated by McConaughey and Harrelson’s partnership that no matter how hacky some of its sitcom tropes are, Brothers is generally, if never propulsively, engaging.

The “created by” credit on Brothers goes to McConaughey & Harrelson and David West Read and Lee Eisenberg, which is a circuitous way of saying that Eisenberg (Lessons in Chemistry) replaced Read (The Big Door Prize) late in production. Wherever the tone of the series started or ended, whichever parts were produced under its original concept versus during reconceptions or reshoots, nothing resembling a cohesive voice ever emerges.

The “based on a true rumor” comedy begins with Woody (Harrelson) struggling to deal with the emotional volatility of his household of women — wife Joy (Brittany Ishibashi) and daughters Olive (Highdee Kuan) and Kai (Oona Yaffe) — in the aftermath of Olive’s broken engagement. He announces that what the family needs is a roadtrip in the souped-up bus known at The Mothership.

The destination? An unannounced visit to the McConaughey family — Matthew (McConaughey), wife Valentina (Natalie Martinez), teenage son Wyatt (Nolan Almeida), daughter Clara (Ella Grace Helton), younger son River (Noah Carganilla) and Matthew’s mother Mama Mac (Holland Taylor) — at Matthew’s ranch (not played by his real ranch) outside of Austin, Texas.

Woody’s arrival finds Matthew at a crossroads, as he’s planning a speech for a high school event honoring his late father and contemplating a run for governor, overseen by the politically vicious Gwen (Lisa Gilory, possibly coming from a different show, but definitely stealing every scene in which she appears).

Complication ensues when a late night conversation between Woody and Mama Mac reveals the possibility that Matthew’s deceased dad might not have been his biological father and that Matthew and Woody may be actual brothers in addition to devoted buddies.

Further complications ensue as Wyatt and Kai’s flirtation escalates in ways that are supposed to make viewers feel uncomfortable, but not grossed out.

If you’re not sure if that’s a sturdy enough foundation upon which to build a TV series, Brothers gives no indication that it’s sure either.

Woody and Matthew are playing confirmatory versions of themselves — fictionalized and superficial avatars that, rather than surprise you for a single second, suggest that what you’ve seen is what you get from these two very public figures.

Matthew is prone to meandering, pretentious monologues — his memoir and Lincoln commercials are acknowledged — but he’s a perfectly idealized Texan, in favor of both individual rights and collective empathy. Whether or not it’s true, he’s presented as a heavily present and structure-loving father, dedicated to folksy virtues and traditions.

Woody is prone to meandering and hippy-dippy monologues, as a weed-loving anarchist. While he may be freaked out by the aforementioned household of women, his detached parenting style has yielded a pair of smart, independent-minded women who appear not to have anything resembling lives of their own.

Matthew and Woody bicker, but it’s from a place of love, respect and shared references to their respective bodies of work (though never their shared collaboration on EdTV).

Depending on the episode you’re watching, Brothers is a very meta but largely unstructured comedy in which the interaction between its stars and our awareness of their identities is the source of its periodic laughs, or else a very cliché-driven sitcom about an odd couple of friends, or else an even more meta commentary on cliché-driven sitcoms.

I don’t know why anybody would care about any episodic storyline, given that I legitimately couldn’t tell if A-plots like “Woody and Matthew chaperone a high school dance” or a “Woody and Matthew wear silly latex makeup so that they can debut a musical act in a coffee shop and find out if people like them for their talent” — ones I swear came out of the “too obvious for Hannah Montana” discard pile — are meant to be amusing on their own (they’re not) or a commentary on bad TV plotting. But I’m not sure Brothers finds a recent to care about the big “Are they biological brothers or not?” question, either.

The two performances at the center are broad yet naturalistic, and nobody can dispute that Harrelson and McConaughey are convincingly able to play themselves. But if Gilroy feels like she’s coming in from a different show, most of the rest of the the supporting performances feel like they’re coming in from four or five different shows.

You have Taylor in from the kind of multi-cam that she’s proven to be so terrific at, but she often treats lines that aren’t punchlines like they’re punchlines, with head-scratching results. Martinez and Ishibashi play McConaughey and Harrelson’s real-life spouses like easily exasperated sitcom spouses, half disapproving wet blankets and half the only sane people in their respective families. Kuan and Yaffe, though both extremely likable, are understated, or else somebody forgot to write their characters individual personality traits other than “Woody Harrelson’s daughter.” Matthew’s three kids are just TV archetypes, rarely resembling real people at all.

Somebody like Gilroy or Jeff Kober and Barry Corbin (popping up occasionally as a pair of geriatric gangsters) will come and go in situations knowingly designed to feel contrived. But then the series will do a documentary-style montage of McConaughey meeting real Austin people in real Austin locations.

Sometimes the directors — Trent O’Donnell, Jason Winer and Erin O’Malley — capture a loose, unforced tone, with handheld realism and very pleasant photography of Texas settings. Then there are over-lit, flatly framed scenes that would be at home in a broadcast or basic cable half-hour.

None of it, regardless of style or tone, has anything interesting to say about stardom in general, nor about the specific type of approachable Everyman stardom enjoyed by McConaughey and Harrelson, modern families nor, really, about anything at all. I smiled here and there at Brothers, but I don’t remember experiencing more mirth than the occasional chuckle, and the show leaves nothing to latch onto or dwell on for a second past the conclusion of each installment.

If Adam Sandler’s greatest stroke of genius has been getting movie studios and Netflix to pay for and film his vacations with all of his close friends, one might as well give McConaughey credit for the inverse, getting Apple to pay him to hang out roughly at home with his one best friend. Calling Brothers “Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s Grown-Ups” doesn’t offer much incentive to watch. But it properly sets expectations.

Donald Trump doesn’t want to stay in the White House past 2028, Ari Emanuel says — he’s too excited about JD Vance and Marco Rubio coming in instead.

“I spoke to him three weeks ago,” the TKO chief told Rachel Maddow at New York’s 92Y Tuesday night, describing a call with the president about the federal tax credit. “And in that conversation… He thought JD and Marco Rubio would be a formidable group.”

You mean as a joint ticket (presumably with Vance at the top), Maddow asked?

“Yes,” Emanuel said. “That’s what he thought.”

The best cable-news show Tuesday night wasn’t on the air. It was inside the New York venue, as Maddow interviewed her agent on the day of his memoir’s release, and despite their association repeatedly held his feet to the fire on a range of political and cultural topics. The (unstreamed) conversation went from convivial to feisty to testy and back again, as Emanuel sought to convince the audience, only sometimes successfully, that his friendliness with the White House and oligarchs like Elon Musk was for the greater good.

“I don’t think it’s productive to say I’ve never changed him,” Emanuel said of Musk. “I do think I’ve changed him a little.” (Emanuel is notably friendly with Elon Musk, his company even investing in Musk’s Twitter.)

Emanuel’s Roll the Calls tracks his time from a young apprentice in the CAA mailroom to his current status, at 65, atop the agency and UFC-WWE heap, with all the rage he (proudly) unleashed to get there.

But at the event he showed a cannier side, one willing to play nice with power, as Emanuel praised moguls like David Ellison — whom the agent very publicly supported in his successful bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

Though Emanuel allowed that he didn’t like how Paramount’s Stephen Colbert cancelation went down, he pointed to how Ellison has “let Matt and Trey do what they’re doing, and Jon do what he’s doing,” referring to South Park and The Daily Show, which regularly take aim at the president.

“That’s like a cop pulling you over and you saying, ‘Look at all the people in the crosswalk I didn’t hit!’” Maddow said.

“I appreciate the metaphor but I disagree with you,” Emanuel replied, as he talked up the (much-eyerolled) oversight board charged with ensuring CBS News and CNN independence.

“Do you worry about compliant billionaires taking over media?” Maddow asked.

“You’re getting most of your news from your phone and social media,” Emanuel said, avoiding the question.

Maddow was not done, noting how Ellison has “tanked the [CBS] morning show, the nightly news and is deep-frying 60 Minutes.” She called “the CBS News and 60 Minutes situation under Ellison” an “embarrassment.” She said she knew that for Emanuel there were “business reasons [to support the mogul] — he paid $8 billion to get UFC rights.”

“7.4,” Emanuel corrected. “I wish it was eight.”

The two spent some time in a lighter mode talking about such topics as Emanuel’s unusual longevity plays that has him doing cold plunges and eating live worms. (No, really.) But then one of the pricklier exchanges emerged when Maddow pressed the TKO leader on his 2018 meeting with Vladimir Putin (over potential UFC initiatives in Russia) and warming again to Saudi crown prince MBS after previously returning a $400 million investment in the wake of the Jamal Khashoggi murder.

“Where’s the line?” Maddow asked Emanuel.

“I’m sorry to say we’re adults… It’s not always black and white,” Emanuel responded, saying that he thinks MBS has now “done some incredible stuff.”

“You’re getting frustrated,” Maddow said.

“I’m not frustrated,” Emanuel replied, seemingly a little frustrated.

Emanuel also defended his decision to hold a UFC event on the White House lawn in June (“there were incredible videos on American history”) and doubled down on Musk. “I don’t agree with Elon [on immigration],” Emanuel said. “On the other hand I was happy what he did in Ukraine blocking the Russians, happy what he’s doing with Neuralink, happy what he’s doing in space,” he said.

Despite the support for some of the biggest business players around, Emanuel couldn’t resist a shot at the brass of rival CAA. “They have not handed the reins down,” he said of the top leaders, which includes Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and several other longtime execs. “That’s bad leadership.”

Emanuel also sought to downplay the singular threat of Trump’s presidency. “You don’t think people said at the time Nixon was the most dangerous president in all of U.S. history?” Emanuel asked, to demurrals from Maddow and some in the audience. “Shut the fuck up, stop,” he said, half-smiling. “He’s a different kind of cat,” Maddow pushed back on Trump, noting her belief that “I don’t think he’s going to leave [in 2028].” Emanuel said the Vance-Rubio comment indicated to him “that’s not a man trying to be in the White House forever.”

(Rubio, incidentally, has indicated he won’t challenge Vance, which could pave the way to a VP selection. Of course, Vance would first have to win the nomination in what is expected to be a competitive primary, then deem Rubio enough of an asset in a post-Trump world to choose him. Also, an outgoing president hasn’t successfully joysticked the new one since the 1980’s.)

Meanwhile, Emanuel’s own family may also be a factor in the race as Rahm Emanuel potentially positions himself to play centrist spoiler on the Democratic side. The younger Emanuel did nothing to cool the speculation about his brother when he said he would do “whatever I can” should he try to run, because “he’d be a great candidate,” as he talked up the former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor. “Is there anybody more qualified than my brother?” Ari Emanuel asked.

Maddow seemed most upset by Emanuel cozying up to Trump and oligarchs for what she suggested was his own benefit.

“Is there anything about your relationships [with them] that has ever had a positive or mitigating effect on the harm they are doing to our country?” she asked.

“I want to live in a society. You have conversations [in a society],” Emanuel answered. “When I’ve disagreed with the president, with Elon Musk, with a lot of the people you’ve mentioned, I have in my opinion swayed them. That might not satisfy you. I’m sorry,” he said.

After two years, MIP London has ended and is set to be replaced by a new two-day conference taking place during the London Book Fair.

On Wednesday, RX France confirmed the launch of MIP Talks from Mar. 16-17, 2027. The event will be backdropped by the London Book Fair, one of RX’s flagship events, bringing together leading voices from across the worlds of entertainment, media and culture to explore what is changing, what is breaking through and where new opportunities are emerging.

MIP Talks will take place at London ExCel and is set to represent a “new expression of MIP in London, looking beyond traditional television and content to the wider cultural, creative, technological and commercial shifts reshaping global entertainment,” according to organizers.

The inaugural MIP Talks will be built around the editorial theme ‘From IP to Fandom — and Fandom to Global Business,’ in which experts will explore an entertainment landscape where traditional boundaries are disappearing, audiences move across platforms and experiences, and IP can come from anywhere.

Programming will be highly curated and editorially led, organizers added, spanning headline conversations, unexpected pairings, global trends and data, cultural insight and case studies from across the international entertainment business.

Lucy Smith, director of the entertainment division, RX France, said: “The boundaries of entertainment have all but disappeared. IP can come from anywhere, audiences don’t think in sectors and an idea can travel further and faster than ever before. MIP has always been about understanding where the entertainment business is going next. MIP Talks at The London Book Fair takes that curiosity further bringing together the people shaping what breaks through, how fandom is built and where new global businesses are emerging.”

George Lucas, the mind behind the legendary Star Wars franchise, revealed that he intended to helm three more movies, but decided to retire from directing instead after 2005’s Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

During a recent interview with Norah O’Donnell on CBS Sunday Morning, Lucas, alongside his wife and business partner, Mellody Hobson, opened up about bringing the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to life in Los Angeles.

After Hobson noted that the “level of detail” Lucas put into the museum “nearly killed him,” the director added, “Well, I’m 82, so there is a limit to…”

“When I did this,” Lucas continued, referring to the museum’s creation, “I decided to retire from making movies, which was a big deal because I had three more Star Wars to make. But I realized that I was running out of time, and I did want to make this museum, and I’d spent a lot of time developing digital technology for the movie business. You know, all art depends on technology.”

Lucas directed four Star Wars films across his career, beginning with the franchise’s first installment, 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. While he handed off the directing duties to Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand, respectively, for the next two films in the original trilogy (1980’s Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi), he still wrote and executive produced them before returning to the director’s chair for the prequel trilogy (1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith).

In 2012, Lucas sold Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4 billion. In addition to the sequel trilogy (2015’s The Force Awakens, 2017’s The Last Jedi and 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker), Disney has continued to expand the universe with shows like The Mandalorian, Andor and The Acolyte, and the 2026 film The Mandalorian and Grogu. The next movie in the franchise, Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, hits theaters next year.

During the museum’s star-studded opening night on Saturday, Hobson spoke on the stage, emphasizing that Lucas “was driven to create a space that would showcase the brilliant illustrators that he thought were too often overlooked and ignored. And if critics say a museum on narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we like popcorn movies in our family,” as she dubbed the space “a director’s cut.”

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened to the public on Tuesday.

Munika Lay and Toni Wang have teamed to launch Luna Media.

The production company carries a mission to “shine a light on unseen stories” and will work across film, television and digital content. Luna Media’s slate already includes a recently wrapped feature, Tap Twice, from multi-hyphenate King Bach, aka Andrew Bachelor, who directed and stars in the project.

Luna Lab will seek to accomplish its work of advancing representation through the launch of a development initiative called Luna Lab. An inaugural installment of it is already on the rails with a screenwriting portion that kicked off this summer. From a large pool of applicants, a team of industry professionals first selected 10 semifinalists before the group was whittled down to six finalists (including a writing team of two).

The finalists received a stipend for the four-month program, which featured workshops, meetings and mentorship. It culminated with a Luna Lab Pitch Day that took place at Rideback Ranch in Los Angeles, where finalists pitched projects to an audience of industry insiders. Additional information on the finalists and their projects is below.

Lay comes to Luna after having served as a senior vp of film at Miramax, where she oversaw such films as The Holdovers, The Beekeeper and Wrath of Man. Prior to Miramax, she had executive stints at MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros. and WME. The Long Beach native, who graduated from USC’s Marshall School of Business and Stanford University, serves as a co-founder of digital-first action studio Melee and works as an adjunct professor in film studies at Mount Saint Mary’s University.

Wang is a producer whose recent credits include Sung Kang’s TIFF selection Drifter and Jill Sachs’ Sundance Film Festival short selection Taga. She also executive produced the indie A Great Divide starring Ken Jeong. Wang previously worked at Columbia Records, where she worked in digital, helping steer content for artists like Destiny’s Child, Train, Lauryn Hill and Leonard Cohen. The Shanghai-born producer, who graduated from Wellesley College, also co-founded an electronic pop trio and created an album titled A Little Mandarin to reimagine Chinese children’s classics for contemporary audiences.

“Growing up, I was obsessed with movies but I never quite found people like me onscreen, even in the few Asian characters I encountered,” Lay said in a statement. “Asian Americans are often treated as a monolithic group, when in reality, most Southeast Asians arrived in the US as refugees from war and genocide. Few of us are fortunate enough to even dream about working in entertainment, and our stories are rarely depicted in films or TV shows.”

Added Wang: “Our goal, beyond elevating these six projects, is to equip every participant with the skills and connections to thrive as a professional filmmaker — and to carry that momentum into the Southeast Asian creative community, and ultimately, into the broader cultural zeitgeist.”

Luna Lab’s finalists and details on their scripts:

Bunthoeun Real with Demon Arms: After being released from prison, Fia, a former gangster turned kung-fu master, must infiltrate a high-society demon syndicate to rescue her sister. Fia’s mission takes her into a shadow world of literal monsters, forcing her to battle, survive and ultimately embrace her legacy to become the city’s phantom protector.

Phet Mahathongdy with Go To Sleep: A woman returns to her estranged mother’s house where they awaken a vengeful Lao spirit hellbent on destroying her family. Now she must uncover the secrets of her family’s journey to America and force her mother to confront the past before it’s too late. Based on the true events that inspired A Nightmare on Elm Street where over one hundred Southeast Asian refugees died in their sleep mysteriously, Go To Sleep explores the story from a Southeast Asian perspective.

Saila Reyes with In the Smoke of You: A world-renowned pianist returns home on the eve of his first love’s wedding to his crime-boss brother, forcing them to confront the violent past they covered up together and the wounds that they still share.

Samantha Tan with Ally Chia: A hungry, horny American dream story. With only six months to secure her green card, an ambitious home chef in Los Angeles doubles down on the hustle while fighting not to lose herself or the loved ones who make it worth staying in the first place.

Sebastien Tobler with Lino’s Vortex: An aging Filipino hippie and his uptight estranged grandson chase a mystical vortex in the Arizona desert, unearthing family secrets and forging an unlikely bond through psychedelics.

Tom Dang and Nico Wan with Happy Pizza: When a recently laid-off rave bae and his equally degenerate best friend are hired to throw the grand reopening party for a beach resort, they have to convince everyone they know what they’re doing — before the police bust them, the gangsters get them or the party drugs kill them.

Earlier this summer during the Mediterrane Film Festival, Malta’s film commissioner Johann Grech teased plans for an ambitious new soundstage, dubbed the Land Sea Super Stage. Housed at Malta Film Studios, the facility could host major Hollywood blockbusters with blueprints that include a water tank and construction sturdy enough to hang two Black Hawk helicopters.

We want to create something unique,” Grech told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “To build the entire facility — in addition to the soundstage, there will be workshops, offices, production offices, warehouses, etc. — it will take two years. We have every detail in place. We just need to issue this public call.”

Grech is back with an update: The call has been made and Malta is now accepting proposals for investments to finance, build and operate the first-of-its-kind superstudio. Per the Malta Film Commission, the project would see more than €80 million in private investment in Malta’s film industry.

“Today’s launch marks the final piece of the jigsaw in creating a world-class film industry in Malta. We are committed to taking Malta’s film infrastructure to the next level,” Grech explains. “We have already seen major franchises such as Gladiator and Jurassic World repeatedly choose Malta for our versatile locations and our water tanks. We now want to complete Malta’s offer to the global film industry by developing a world-class studio facility that is truly unique.”

Grech has not been shy about the bid to lure more blockbusters to the country after hosting such high-profile productions in the past like Gladiator and its sequel, Napoleon, Captain Phillips, Troy, Munich, Assassin’s Creed, Murder on the Orient Express and Enola Holmes 3.

“By developing the world’s first Land-Sea Super Stage at the Malta Film Studios, we will strengthen our ability to attract more high-end, high-budget and high-value productions. Malta can become the home of some of the world’s biggest movies and film franchises,” added Grech. “I’ve always been ambitious for Malta’s film industry and now we are ready to reach even higher.”

Submissions are now open for a three-month period.

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.

Fall is officially here and that means it’s the best time for wearing sweaters and hoodies in breezy weather, drinking pumpkin spice lattes and watching (or rewatching) episodes of Gilmore Girls.

For more than 25 years, the drama/comedy series has been tied with the cozy fall season, thanks to its iconic New England foliage, sharp and witty dialogue, and quirky, but relatable characters and situations.

Luckily, all seasons of Gilmore Girls are streaming online.

At a Glance: How to Watch Gilmore Girls Online

Where to Stream Gilmore Girls Online Without Cable

While the TV drama was a Warner. Bros Television production, all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls are not streaming on HBO Max (although there is a new documentary in the works from the streamer). However, every episode can be found on Prime Video and Hulu.

All seasons of Gilmore Girls is streamable on Prime Video for subscribers only with prices starting at $8.99 per month. If you’re not a member, then you can sign up for a 30-day free trial to take advantage of all that Amazon Prime has to offer, including access to Amazon Music, Amazon Photos and Prime Reading; fast and free shipping in less than two days with Prime Delivery; in-store discounts at Whole Foods Market; access to exclusive shopping events, such as Black Friday in November, and other perks.

Meanwhile, Hulu (No Ads) costs $18.99 per month. Both the ad-supported and ad-free plans offer unlimited access to Hulu‘s massive streaming library, including entire seasons of exclusive series, hit movies, Hulu Originals and music festival livestreams. Meanwhile, Hulu (No Ads) comes with the ability to download movies and TV shows on your device for offline viewing.

For even more, add ESPN Unlimited to Disney+ and Hulu, starting at $35.99 per month.

Gilmore Girls: Synopsis & Cast

Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, Gilmore Girls follows the lives of single mother Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her overachieving daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel) in the small fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. Lorelai can’t afford private school for Rory, so she turns to her wealthy, yet estranged, parents Richard (Edward Herrmann) and Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop).

The TV drama stars Melissa McCarthy, Keiko Agena, Yanic Truesdale, Scott Patterson, Liza Weil, Chris Eigeman, Jared Padalecki, Milo Ventimiglia, Matt Czuchry and Sean Gunn.

Additionally, the revival mini-series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, is available to stream on Netflix. However, episodes can be purchased on Prime Video too.

After tackling witches, vampires and werewolves, Robert Eggers is tackling perhaps the scariest of monsters: teenage love.

Eggers is setting up an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at Focus Features, which has come out on top of a bidding war that included A24, Sony and Warner Bros.

When deals close, it will reteam Eggers with the Universal specialty arm that released his 2024 surprise hit Nosferatu and will be releasing his latest, Werwulf. Eggers will direct the feature and produce. It was not immediately clear who else was producing or executive producing.

As befitting a filmmaker who is known for his meticulous attention to detail in capturing a time period, even when it comes to dialogue, sources say that this adaptation will feature actors speaking in Olde English.

A tragic romance, Shakespeare’s play told the ill-fated story of the titular young lovers who hail from two warring families, the Capulets and the Montagues, in the city of Verona, Italy.

Written in the 1590s, it has been one of the Bard’s more enduring and famous plays and has consistently attracted cinematic attention. Among the more notable productions have been the 1968 iteration directed by Franco Zeffirelli and the 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Lurhman’s modern take (Verona Beach, anyone?) that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

While numbers were not revealed, sources say the deal for the project is in the high-seventy millions, which will include filmmaker and talent fees as well as the budget for the production. Romeo and Juliet is intended to be Eggers’ next production.

Focus had no comment.

While he doesn’t have a deal with Focus, Eggers has consistently set up films at the studio division. The company, run by Peter Kujawski, has released and worked with Eggers on all his films, including The Northman, and his earlier movies, The Witch and The Lighthouse. (Focus handled international distribution through Universal International for The Lighthouse.)

Eggers’ latest, Werwulf, reunites him with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Lily Rose Depp, who both starred in Nosferatu, in a unique and arty-looking take on the werewolf horror story. Like Nosferatu, it is set for a Christmas Day theatrical opening.

Eggers is repped by WME and Frankfurt Kurnit.

Sombr says it’s “incredibly insane” that people would consider him a child of nepotism.

The Grammy nominee addressed nepotism claims in a Tuesday profile with Elle, where he pointed out both of his mother’s and father’s professional history with amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. He said he’s proud of his parents’ work, and doesn’t think that specifically his father, Andy Boose, boosted his career.

“Every time I see an artist blow up, I’m like, ‘OK, this artist is great. I love them so much. They’re so talented.’ Three months later, somehow they’re a nepo baby,” Sombr said. “I will forever respect my dad and my mom. I’m so fucking proud of them, because to devote your life to something like that is so incredible and important. To think that that could help me get signed or become a big artist because my dad devotes his life to fight AIDS is just incredibly insane.”

Boose worked at amFAR for a decade and became the director of special events, he told The World’s Best Events in a 2018 interview. He was also a musician, and now serves as the president of AAB Productions, a single-source event management company that has managed and developed charity dinners for amFAR, The Elton John AIDS Foundation, The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Madonna’s Raising Malawi and more, per its website. Bennah Serfaty, the singer’s mother, works at the nonprofit as the senior director of public relations.

Boose explained to The World’s Best Events, after 2018’s UNICEF Summer Gala, how he books talent, citing Ricky Martin’s participation in the event as an example.

“He’s a UNICEF ambassador, so the cause is close to his heart. I happen to have known his publicist for many years,” Boose said of Martin. “We have a lot of relationships because we have been doing this for a while, and we are constantly building new bridges to help connect actors and musicians and the fashion elite with new causes.”

The “Back to Friends” singer also opened up about criticism he’s seen of his body online. He said, “Women get the worst of it. So who am I to complain? But no, it’s real. People fucking body-shame me.”

Somber said he has seen people “mak[ing] fun of how skinny I am, which is why I’m in the fucking gym now.” He also spoke about why it was important for him to release the song “My Body Isn’t Ready,” which touches on body image.

“I feel like it’s so important to have this message for the kid who’s growing up and going through this,” he said. “Everything you see on the internet is these sexy people with perfect bodies. I want there to be a song for the kid who is growing up and doesn’t always love the way he looks, and I want him to know that Sombr feels the same thing.”

Fresh off brushing past California attorney general Rob Bonta with a settlement in which arguably only minor concessions were made, David Ellison is ready to re-commit to the idea of keeping his Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery empire in Los Angeles.

“Now that we reached and announced a settlement, we’re eager to get to work building a stronger Hollywood,” Ellison said in a statement. “Let me be clear: the newly merged company will be headquartered in Los Angeles. We aren’t going anywhere. Our history is here and this is where our future is being built.”

This brings the mogul back in line with his tune circa February of this year, when he was making promises to California politicians about how he would boost local production and bring back glory to Hollywood’s hometown. Then California attorney general Rob Bonta and his posse of 12 states filed a lawsuit in July that seemingly had Paramount on the ropes.

And then the whispers started. You know, Ellison and his family have deep ties to Tennessee, he could pull up stakes and move Paramount there. Texas officials want the state to be the corporate headquarters capital of the United States, plus they have lower taxes — how does Austin sound for a Paramount base?

Even at the time, these hints were chalked up to a game of high-stakes chicken over the summer between Ellison and California. Bonta himself, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August when he struck a more defiant tone about the lawsuit, characterized it as a “Hail Mary” move and said “it seems like they’re grasping at straws.”

But with each passing day, and with the threat of a $7 million-per-day ticking fee that Paramount would have to pay starting in October, the threat of a relocation kept feeling a bit more serious. Also, other states appeared to start taking the rumors seriously, too, which probably helped kick up the dust even more.

Now there’s a legal settlement in place between the 12 states and Team Ellison dictating some terms for what “Stay in L.A.” means. Per the consent decree, the Warner Bros. and Paramount lots in L.A. County can’t be sold during the commitment period, which is five years. (Right now the Warner Bros. lot sits on about 140 acres, including the Ranch, while Paramount’s Melrose Ave footprint is about 65 acres.)

It’s worth noting that up until Ellison’s buy, Paramount had been headquartered in New York (Paramount has an office in Times Square), and only last year had moved to L.A. And outside of the studio lot infrastructure itself, there are no commitments in the consent decree for, say, having a new office complex in another market outside of L.A.

WarnerMount (ParaBros?) is a sprawling empire, after all. For example, does a combined company that owns both CBS News and CNN need office space in L.A., New York and Atlanta? Paramount owns 14 properties totaling 2.1 million square feet of space while Warner Bros. owns 14 properties totaling around 9.5 million square feet globally, per a June report commissioned by L.A. County. There are plenty of real estate scenarios to walk through that have yet to be sorted.

But the question was never really about the fine-print of where the corporate HQ was. It was about intent. Through this summer of leaks, the implied message from Team Paramount was that Ellison would be ready to potentially do damage to the Los Angeles entertainment economy if things didn’t go his way in the court battle. There were plenty of locales that would be happy to greet Paramount and set up a water tower and some soundstages.

Just look at the production flight that had been plaguing L.A. for years on individual feature films and television series. Local officials feared that a Paramount move would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, despite California doubling its tax incentive annually to $750 million and pledges to cut red tape and make it easier to shoot in state.

Now that things did go the way that Paramount hoped as far as the settlement, it may prove tougher to just hit rewind to when Ellison was writing letters in March to California lawmakers saying, “my expectation that the commitments I have made will preserve and expand good-paying film and television jobs in the area.” But as of this settlement Monday, we’ve now hit full circle in that regard.

Next up, if the deal closes as expected in a couple weeks, is the plan to start finding those $6 billion in cost synergies between the companies while fulfilling the rules-of-the-road in the consent decree. If L.A. County’s own commissioned report in June is any indicator, there will be a lot of redundancies up ahead as the studios start integrating. “The merger places about 2,495 jobs in Greater Los Angeles County and about 6,000 globally at potential risk,” it estimates, “mainly in corporate, tech, real estate, and other shared functions due to duplicative roles across the two companies.”